British Government Under Siege

June 3. 2009

Beleaguered British Prime Minister has suffered the resignation of three top cabinet officials in the fall out from the MP expense scandal. Letters are circling urging his resignation.

This isn't the first expense scandal to hit a world government and probably will not be the last. The government needs to gird its loins and do what it has to do. 60,000,000 people are depending on you.

This is not the end of Britain, so stop moping around and wringing your hands. Both sides need to come together and come up with a quick solution to end this scandal and move forward. You've survived worse than this...namely Madonna living in your country (smirk).

From porn to political chaos, UK expenses row spreads

Wed Jun 3, 2009 5:41pm EDT - LONDON (Reuters) - Like many political scandals, from Watergate to Italy's notorious "Bribesville" affair, Britain's parliamentary expenses row has its roots in humble if somewhat undignified events.

In March, the husband of Jacqui Smith, Britain's interior minister and one of the most powerful politicians in the country, had to publicly apologize for charging two pornographic films he watched at home to his wife's parliamentary expenses.

It followed a disclosure about Smith's use of parliamentary housing allowances, and led to a flood of revelations about politicians' expenses in The Daily Telegraph newspaper that has gripped the nation for the past four weeks.

Smith, once regarded as a future potential leader of the governing Labour Party, has now announced she is resigning, becoming the latest in a string of members of parliament (MPs) to be brought down in the slowly seeping affair. Another senior minister, Hazel Blears, announced on Wednesday she was going.

At its heart, the scandal is about MPs, who are relatively lowly paid in Britain by comparison with politicians in the United States or elsewhere in Europe, earning around 65,000 pounds ($108,000) a year, using the expenses system to its fullest extent in order to flesh out their income...

http://www.reuters.com

The letter circulating which calls on Gordon Brown to resign

June 4, 2009 - The ringleaders of the plot calling for the Prime Minister to resign tried to keep their identities hidden by creating an anonymous e-mail for disgruntled Labour MPs to sign in secret.

In an effort to smoke them out, Nick Brown, the Labour Chief Whip, said last night that he believed they centred on a group nicknamed the Blearistas. As well as the former Cabinet ministers Stephen Byers and Alan Milburn and a group Mr Brown called “eccentric individualists”, the whips are also suspicious of Jeremy Corbyn, MP for Islington North, and John McDonnell, MP for Hayes and Harlington, who unsuccessfully tried to stand against Mr Brown when he declared for the leadership.

According to The Guardian, the e-mail plot evolved as a way of keeping the identity of the plotters, thought to be a group of seven or eight individuals, hidden.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk