The Loss of David Laws
May 30th, 2010 | 
Author: 
David Laws who was appointed as Chief Secretary to the Treasury under the Coalition and despite a promising start especially in the House of Commons last week, has had to resign due to the Daily Telegraph exposing that he is Gay and had been paying his boyfriend rent on his house though paying a ‘partner’ rent has been banned since 2006, apparently. He is wealthy in his own right having made his money in “The City” by the age of 28.
He has said that the reason he did this was he wanted to keep his private life and sexuality secret which one might say that in these apparently “more liberated days”, seems sad but coming out to family and friends will never be easy and childhood background plus ‘assumed social norms’ could intimidate most people but never the less, it is a sad loss though, the clear and ‘warm’ support he received from David Cameron, George Osborne and Nick Clegg over his resignation was a nice touch.
The Media as Usual…
The British Press is getting worse by the day in terms of the quality or rather lack of quality of their writing. I started with Martin Ivens in the Sunday Times and clearly here is someone who really shouldn’t give up the day job, journalism is not his forte but judge for yourself: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/martin_ivens/article7140267.ece
I couldn’t resist writing a comment but with the Times, they are very hot on censorship and if they don’t like what you have written, it won’t get published and this certainly wasn’t.
“What a load of doom laden tosh. With the size of the Deficit, there are bound to be all kinds of problems ahead of one kind or another and in order for the writer to earn a crust, we will have to put up with infantile journalism like this. The thing I dislike about this article is just like the whole “Expenses Scandal”, there is far too much “judgement” and no application of common sense.
With regard to the so called Expenses Scandal, instead of harping on about toilet paper and dog food, it would have been far more sensible to look at the cost per MP and worked their ‘package’ out from there with their Tax affairs overseen, the same as for the rest of us by the Revenue. The way it was approached was childish especially by the Media, a bit like moaning about a stainless steel bolt costing £X each on a £20bn Trident Programme, daft.
Out of frustration with a “Nanny Knows Best” Government that had wrecked the economy, MPs expenses were used by the public as a stick to beat with but frankly enough of this nonsense and high time we moved on. For 30 years, there was a complete lack of courage by politicians of all parties to deal with MPs salaries and costs on the basis that “It wouldn’t look good…” Well this looks hardly better and has cost us a clearly talented Minister.”
John Rentoul
As usual, John Rentoul in the Independent put in a good piece, yes, he does indulge himself a little of a LibDem being caught in an ‘expenses trap’ because as a Party, they were all a bit “holier than thou” over it all. But that aside, he as with most writers to some extent, are sympathetic/empathetic to David Laws.
Editorial
The Editorial in the Independent on Sunday is as usual pretty poorly done, sort of “caught between a rock and a hard place” with a good bit of pomposity thrown in for good measure. I guess for them it was a nightmare story involving “Public Money” on the one hand (“Naughty Dog !”), someone who is Gay (“We support your rights…”) and him being a Liberal Democrat MP a Party they support (“You Bastard !”). Probably a bit like the Catholic Herald writing articles on child abuse by Priests !
The Observer
In fairness and although no fan of the Guardian/Observer crew, their Editorial did quite well to try and strike a proper balance. They came down on the side that “He Had to Go…” but without being judgemental, a good piece and worth a read:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/30/david-laws-resignation-mps-expenses
Posted in Politics | 
Tags: British Media, Liberal Democrats, Political Parties, Politicians, Within the UK