David Camero - He knowingly lied to Parliament (allegedly)

For someone who was educated at Eton and Oxford, it seems strange that David Cameron never learns his lesson.

Today in Prime Minister’s Questions he got on the wrong side of an argument on the Coalition government’s botched sale of the Royal Mail and committed every MP’s cardinal offence: He knowingly lied to Parliament.

Ed Miliband had caught him out with a question about share prices, pointing out that Royal Mail shares had been sold far too cheaply. Referring to Cameron, he described the Prime Minister as “not so much the ‘Wolf of Wall Street’, more the ‘Dunce of Downing Street’.

Cameron hotly denied that his government had bungled the sale, and in response to Miliband’s claim that nobody had wanted it, he told Parliament that Labour had planned to do the same. “It’s in their manifesto!” he ejaculated.

It isn’t.

I have a copy of Labour’s 2010 manifesto on my computer, so I was able to check it immediately and found no mention of any such sell-off. Cameron was inaccurate.

Not only that, but unless the memory cheats, this is not the first time Cameron has made such a claim. His advisors would certainly have informed him of any inaccuracies, so any repetition is a conscious decision. Cameron was lying.

This blog has covered the offence known as Contempt of Parliament in considerable detail before (mostly in relation to serial offender Iain Duncan Smith). By rights, anybody misleading Parliament who does not apologise and put the record straight should be expelled from the House. The current government seems to be ignoring this (for obvious reasons).

Labour’s Jon Ashworth raised a point of order after PMQs, demanding that Cameron return to the Commons to correct himself. Fat chance.

Credit to Vox Political

http://mikesivier.wordpress.com/2014/04/02/the-dunce-of-downing-street-can-no-longer-rely-on-lies/

More lies from this chancer and his cronies. Get them out.

Cameron doesn't care how many times he lies and deceives Parliament. He's happy to do anything to get away with what they are landing on us. He's a lying scumbag and only the cap doffers and knee benders are keeping him in power, because the like being kicked.

It seems others agree:


David Cameron, retract your claim about Labour privatising Royal Mail
And while we're at it, Vince Cable can come clean about these 16 'priority investors' who sold their shares so quickly



Despite his best efforts, David Cameron couldn't bluster his way through the questions asked of him about his government's handling of the Royal Mail sell-off at Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday. The fact of the matter is that his government lost hundreds of millions of pounds for taxpayers, who have now been deprived of a treasured national asset.

Perhaps it was the heat of the moment, but Cameron falsely claimed that Labour committed to privatising the Royal Mail in our 2010 manifesto. This is categorically untrue. We recognised, and still do, that the universal postal service delivered by the Royal Mail is a service that connects and binds us together as a country. Critically, for that to continue, ongoing modernisation and investment will be needed by the Royal Mail in the public sector. We stated that in our manifesto. Cameron must now do the right thing: retract his statements and correct the record.

The cavalier way in which Vince Cable and the prime minister have handled this fire sale is epitomised in the comments from the business secretary on the morning shares were traded back in October. What did he think of the significant jump in share price, which indicated that Royal Mail was worth much more than the value given to it by the government? In his words, it was just "froth". But £750m isn't "froth" to the taxpayers who have lost out.

The National Audit Office's report this week revealed that 16 "priority investors" allocated the largest stakes of Royal Mail shares – and who the government claimed would provide long-term stewardship and stability for the privatised company – sold almost half of their shares within weeks, making huge profits as a result. As Ed Miliband said yesterday at PMQs, it would appear that they have been given preferential "mates rates".

Last night Cable denied that there had been any "gentlemen's agreement" between the government and the banks, as had been reported. However, he refused to name the 16 "priority investors". Why won't he name them? He claimed that these investors would provide long-term stewardship and stability for the privatised company. Why won't he tell us what percentage of Royal Mail shares allocated to them are still held by these "priority investors"?

With people up and down the UK facing a cost-of-living crisis, it's time for Cameron and Cable to explain why they are asking hard-working people to pay more, when they were prepared to sell Royal Mail for less. The prime minister must recognise his mistake and admit that Labour never proposed privatisation in 2010 as we have bitterly opposed his ideologically driven fire sale of Royal Mail.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/03/david-cameron-labour-privatising-royal-mail-vince-cable-priority-investors