Tuesday 1 October 2019

No Lord Carwyn?. However why not get rid of the lot of them.

It seems that it may take awhile before we see Lord Carwyn of Pen y Bont yr Ogwr, taking hsi seat on the red benches in the house of Lords.

Wales Online have reported that 
"A plan to nominate former First Minister Carwyn Jones for a peerage has been shelved while inquiries continue into his treatment of the late Carl Sargeant, we can reveal.
It was originally mooted that Mr Jones should be included in Theresa May's resignation honours list, published earlier this month, but we understand his name did not appear after the conclusion was reached that it would be inappropriate to nominate him before all the inquiries relating to his treatment of Mr Sargeant have been concluded.

In July, an inquest into Mr Sargeant's death concluded that he had  taken his own life in  November 2017, four days after he was dismissed from his post as Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children following unspecified allegations of sexual harassment that he denied.
In response to an order made by Mr Gittins at the conclusion of the inquest, the Welsh Government has introduced new procedures for supporting Ministers after they are sacked.
An inquiry to be undertaken by Paul Bowen QC into Mr Jones' treatment of Mr Sargeant has still not got under way.
We have been told that Mr Jones’ name was put to the Cabinet Office by Labour and the Welsh Government for a steer on whether he would be accepted for a peerage by the House of Lords Appointments Commission.
According to a well-placed source the Cabinet Office said the nomination would not be approved.  The matter was not pursued further.
A senior Labour source said: "You are on safe ground to say that the peerage for Carwyn was blocked because the inquiries into his treatment of Carl Sargeant have not been completed.
"That doesn't mean he won't necessarily go to the Lords in the future."
A second senior Labour source suggested that the former First Minister's name was "discounted" because of concerns about inconsistencies in his evidence to the inquest.
 Vale of Clwyd Labour AM Ann Jones, the National Assembly's deputy presiding officer, gave evidence to the inquest disputing earlier testimony from Mr Jones that she had been appointed to a pastoral care role to help Mr Sargeant after he was sacked. Mr Jones has since said he made a mistake in his initial evidence.A spokesman for the Welsh Government would only say: “The awarding of peerages is a matter for the Prime Minister and the House of Lords Appointments Commission.”
The Cabinet Office said it did not discuss honours lists.
Carl Sargeant’s son Jack Sargeant, who succeeded his father as the Labour AM for Alyn & Deeside, said: “There remain so many unanswered questions over the former First Minister’s conduct. Until these are answered, any peerage would be disturbing, distressing and wholly
inappropriate.”
Mr Jones, who has said in several interviews since he announced he was standing down that he would like to go to the Lords, did not comment.
He stepped down as First Minister in December 2018 and will not seek re-election as Labour AM for Bridgend at the next Assembly election in 2021".
Quite frankly whilst  I think it would be inappropriate to raise Carwyn to the peerage unless he is at least partly vindicated, considering  Theresa May has been accused of “rotten” cronyism after handing out peerages, knighthoods and other honours to her closest aides, including her controversial former advisers Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, who left office amid accusations of bullying behaviour it seems a bit rich to exclude Carwyn in the future.

The Guardian tells us

.Several financial backers were also rewarded with peerages, including David Brownlow, who has donated more than £2m to the Conservatives, including cash for May’s own Maidenhead office, and two other Tory donors, Rami Ranger and Zameer Choudrey. Another major Tory donor, Ehud Sheleg, who has given the party almost £3m, was given a knighthood.Olly Robbins, May’s EU adviser, who was loathed by Brexiters, and George Holingbery, her former parliamentary aide, were both made knight commanders of the order of St Michael and St George. It emerged on Monday that Robbins is to take a sabbatical holding a visiting fellowship at Oxford University before leaving the civil service to join Goldman Sachs’ investment banking division.
Nothing new here.


 In 1916 David Lloyd George replaced Herbert Asquith as Prime Minister at the head of a coalition government that relied heavily on the support of the Conservative Party. This resulted in a split in the Liberal Party between the Asquith Liberals or Squiffites and the Lloyd George or Coalition Liberals. Since the Asquith Liberals controlled the party and its funds, this left the Coalition Liberals in need of money, and the easiest ways of raising money for party funds was to sell honours.Now there was nothing new about the practice of selling honours, or indeed of using the funds as a means of party financing. This had been going on for some time, but by tradition such deals were made with a nod and a wink over a glass of port in the Carlton or Reform clubs. What distinguished the sale of honours under Lloyd George was the sheer scale of the operation and the brazen manner in which honours were offered for sale. Ostensibly handled by Lloyd George's Chief Whip Freddy Guest and his press agent William Sutherland, the operation was actually run by a former actor and theatrical impressario by the name of Maundy Gregory. Gregory had his own offices in Parliament Square and openly touted the sale of honours on official government letters that were sent out boasting of the "exceptional opportunity" on offer. There was even a published tariff with a knighthood being available for £10,000, a baronetcy for £30,000, with a peerage title costing upwards of £50,000.Between December 1916 and July 1922 an astonishing number of 1,500 knighthoods were awarded and Lloyd George similarly bestowed a total of 91 peerage titles within the same period, twice as many as had been created in the previous twenty years. Indeed Gregory, noting that there were men with cash to spare who couldn't quite afford a knighthood, specifically invented the Order of the British Empire to fill the gap in the market. As a result 25,000 people were 'given' the OBE over a period of four years and the 'honour' became so rapidly devalued that it was commonly known as the Order of the Bad Egg.
In the time honoured fashion Lloyd George appointed a Royal Commission to look into the whole matter, but rather craftily ensured that the terms of reference restricted the commission to only making recommendations as to future practice and thus excluded it from examining past conduct.6 In this manner Lloyd George managed to avoid any responsibility for the whole scandal, although this did little to arrest the declining fortunes of his government and he resigned in October 1922 and never saw office again.The Royal Commission published its report in November 1922 and the result was the establishment of the Political Honours Scrutiny Committee, to oversee those names put forward by the Prime Minister as worthy of receiving an honour, and the Honours (Preventions of Abuses) Act 1925 which made it an offence to accept a monetary reward in return for granting an honour.7None of the above has necesarily removed all trace of scandal from the British Honours system. Many have since commented on the number of occasions on which the gift of a large amount of money to a political party has been followed by the subsequent granting of an honour to the donee. This is of course entirely co-incidental and in no way indicates that deals have been done with a nod and a wink over a glass of Chablis at the Groucho Club

There is only one way to stop such abuses and that is to not  only abolish the House of Lords but peerages and knighthood. 

Why should we be expected to call anybody who is nothing but a corrupt or sexual predator My Lord or Sir as if they were better than us.

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