Dear All
After Jack McConnell was defeated in May 2007, he stood down from being the leader of the Labour MSP to make way for Wendy Alexander.
To do so, baubles and trinkets were thrust into his general direction.
One of the ‘bribes’ by Gordon Brown was to give McConnell a controversial taxpayer-funded, globe-trotting, peace envoy role specially created for him to oil the wheels.
It was bullshit.
McConnell never applied for nor had any experience for the job that he was given.
It was a shameful exercise in cronyism.
As soon as the Tory/Lib Dem coalition got into power, they scrapped this sham.
But… but, not before McConnell ran up a £70,000 bill during his first 10 months in the job, with business class travel to North and South America and the Far East.
Prime Minster David Cameron rightly saw no need for the dedicated ‘conflict resolution’ post, which was a farce.
The responsibility for conflict resolution and peace building is now passed to a junior Tory minister, Henry Bellingham MP.
Removing McConnell was the correct decision.
A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said yesterday;
“Jack McConnell hasn’t been replaced. The post no longer exists.”
It should never have been created in the first place; people should be given jobs on merit rather on political expedience.
Another bauble pushed towards McConnell was the job of High Commissioner to Malawi and I think we can be pretty sure that post is also off the cards as well since the new management has taken over.
McConnell has since been made a peer and indicated he now wants to continue to ‘serve’ the people of Motherwell and Wishaw as an MSP.
People mockingly refer to McConnell as ‘Joke’ McConnell for that is what he truly is, a complete joke, £70,000 of public money spent with no benefit to the taxpayer.
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
After Jack McConnell was defeated in May 2007, he stood down from being the leader of the Labour MSP to make way for Wendy Alexander.
To do so, baubles and trinkets were thrust into his general direction.
One of the ‘bribes’ by Gordon Brown was to give McConnell a controversial taxpayer-funded, globe-trotting, peace envoy role specially created for him to oil the wheels.
It was bullshit.
McConnell never applied for nor had any experience for the job that he was given.
It was a shameful exercise in cronyism.
As soon as the Tory/Lib Dem coalition got into power, they scrapped this sham.
But… but, not before McConnell ran up a £70,000 bill during his first 10 months in the job, with business class travel to North and South America and the Far East.
Prime Minster David Cameron rightly saw no need for the dedicated ‘conflict resolution’ post, which was a farce.
The responsibility for conflict resolution and peace building is now passed to a junior Tory minister, Henry Bellingham MP.
Removing McConnell was the correct decision.
A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said yesterday;
“Jack McConnell hasn’t been replaced. The post no longer exists.”
It should never have been created in the first place; people should be given jobs on merit rather on political expedience.
Another bauble pushed towards McConnell was the job of High Commissioner to Malawi and I think we can be pretty sure that post is also off the cards as well since the new management has taken over.
McConnell has since been made a peer and indicated he now wants to continue to ‘serve’ the people of Motherwell and Wishaw as an MSP.
People mockingly refer to McConnell as ‘Joke’ McConnell for that is what he truly is, a complete joke, £70,000 of public money spent with no benefit to the taxpayer.
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
No comments:
Post a Comment