David Cameron is making himself and others pay back £250,000 in excessive expense claims. He claims not to be interested in a witch-hunt - which is a shame because I think the public want one from his Shadow Cabinet, just as Brown has had his miscreants summarily removed. Divisions have erupted because the central party has been looking privately for more scapegoats to be sacrificed from among the backbenches, evidently seen as an excuse to impose "foxy" candidates on seats. Whether this is right - as sitting MPs are the ones causing the problems - or wrong - because of the obvious lack of resignations from within the party putting off normally loyal commentators such as Peter Oborne - is still to be seen, but it might not be seen to be enough, particularly when the leader himself is implicated with his own mortgage claims and has only so far paid back a tiny fraction of what he reasonably owes the taxpayer.
A card, you say? How about... (from the Random Card on the Gatherer database)
Spitfire Handler - Red - Goblin
"Wait till Toggo sees this!"
Goblins are not renowned for their sensitive handling of things, and tend to spit fire - and have it back-fire. While this is not perhaps the biggest danger in the situation the volatility of the situation's handling suggests to me a lot more will have to be done later to shore up the party if the leadership continues to mess with the constituency chairmen and long-serving MPs; though I hold no sympathy for MPs that would be facing deselection under these moves, anything that begins to rock the boat for the Tories as much as they assume this will damage Labour is - personally speaking - to be welcomed. Owlie can't take a view on it himself, but he notes that part of the problem Michael Howard faced at the end of his leadership term was that he tried to fiddle with party procedures and unnecessarily centralise decision-making within the party for short-term political ends.
And Cameron is still not really to be punished properly over his own misclaims. Payback is the very least of what he should do, but even Hazel Blears wrote that cheque and was not spared the axe, at least from the Cabinet. With an ornery group on Facebook dedicated to getting rid of John Redwood from his Wokingham seat, I'm not sure whether the public will relax just because £250,000 has been repaid. It should never have been claimed in the first place, and the only reason why Cameron and his cronies are saying that the rules were flawed are because they got caught. Sorry is no longer good enough.
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I will be doing a card a day for another while, just to see whether things are hotting up or cooling down. This will still be a random Magic card, again from the Gatherer Database. I'm enjoying using them as an oracle for something that is clearly visible to me, and they seem to work reasonably well and reasonably consistently. Onward.
For today, 25 June 2009, we have:
Sigiled Paladin - White - Human Knight
Each sigil marks the recognition of a great deed and signifies a duty owed to the one who granted it.
There is an honour about today that hasn't been seen in a while - someone, somewhere, steps forward and does the right thing without asking. The nobility of the card goes beyond petty party politics, and involves some sort of gesture that is recognised as more than just that. It is a bit like Justice in the tarot - that karma begins to work for the good of the situation and the good of all rather than in narrow partisan interests. It's not going to be spectacular, nor is it going to be something negative like a resignation or someone being found out and sacked, nor does it relate to the above story about the Tories' payback day. But it stands outside the fray and makes the whole situation inside the Parliament of Manure seem even worse.
By the way, we are now into Sun in Cancer, which means things should get a lot more fluid and we will begin to make a bit more headway before Leo appears to start the wildfires later on. Don't expect much from this sign - it normally governs the winding down towards the long summer recess - but the intensity of this spring's events suggests to me that after airy and the less coherent aspects of Gemini things begin to coalesce again into something more viscous and definable. The trend is still downward, but after the elections things begin to settle into recognisable patterns.
