The OFSTED chair, Labour’s Baroness Sally Morgan, has been relieved of her post….but stays on until the Autumn (Though personally I would now sack her as she clearly is at odds with the government)
She is complaining bitterly that this is a Tory Party coup to clear out non-Tory supporters from government quangos……she is Labour…but in the interview on Today this morning said it wasn’t about Labour people being ousted, and anyway the government is also part LibDem…so why does she complain she has been party politically ‘cleansed’?
The BBC has made hay with this all day…running with it as its headline story on every news bulletin immediately after the interview. (The Today interview is available halfway down this BBC report)
This was the headline on the Frontpage for much of the day:
No 10 ousting non-Tories from posts
Now there was absolutely no proof given, or asked for by Naughtie (Labour supporter), that this was happening….just a vague comment that ‘there’s a lot of talk about this…no really!’.
What was strange was that this ‘revelation’ didn’t seem to be a surprise to Naughtie who was well informed about the ins and outs of the system to appoint staff to quangos….maybe he is just brilliant and has this information tucked away in his head.
…or perhaps he had prior notice this subject would come up and came prepared.
It does look like the BBC were tipped the wink about this and ran with it whilst avoiding actually looking for any confirmation of the claims…..Labour have planted a story and have had a days worth of anti-Tory headlines courtesy of the BBC.
Only now, early evening, are we getting a truer picture, but of course the damage is done, and the legend will become fact on the leftwing blogs and the BBC hope, will lurk in the back of more sensible people and colour their thinking however subconsciously….drip drip drip.
Fraser Nelson in 2012 said this:
Gordon Brown’s secret army could defeat the Coalition’s welfare and education reforms
Britain’s charities and quangos are now stuffed to the gunwales with Labour placemen
In the article he tells that under the Tories it is Labour who have had the lion’s share of appointments:
Figures out yesterday show that 77 per cent of politically active quango appointees last year were Labour supporters. Not even Gordon Brown dared top up his government-in-exile at such a rate.
No such story from the BBC.
And Nelson reprises his article today in the Spectator:
Sally Morgan is wrong: quangos are not stuffed with Tories
Public Appointments by political allegiance (Red being Labour…black neutral))
Shows that far from packing in Tories it is neutral appointees being given many positions whilst Labourites still rule the roost.
Even some of Labour’s own people aren’t impressed by OFSTED:
Streamline Target Culture and Reform Ofsted
Education has become too politicised……..Ofsted’s current tactics and staffing ensures an outdated, unsupportive view in many cases and a large stress in the best cases.
Yet another Labour story run by an accommodating BBC.
Perhaps one public body the Tories should ‘cleanse’ is the leftwing BBC.
Who was in power when she was appointed in 2011? The Tories. So these claims of anti-tory bias are baseless.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2549888/Labour-links-official-overseeing-probe-infamous-Battle-Orgreave-miners-strike.html
Make the most of this one, before the BBC splash it all over their offices like Mandelsons champagne in 97!
NOT!
“Figures out yesterday show that 77 per cent of politically active quango appointees last year were Labour supporters.”
The key here is “politically active”. As the table in this article from Conservative Home shows the vast majority of those appointed do not declare a political interest.
“These numbers compiled by The TaxPayers’ Alliance refer only to the percentages of people with known political backgrounds. Most people appointed to public bodies do not have known political backgrounds. The table below comes from the Public Appointments Commissioner’s Annual Report.”
Citing only 2 examples (from the House of Lords for some reason) the author goes on to assert, without any foundation, “my instinct is that many of those without known political allegiances are nonetheless secretly political. Many Crossbench peers appointed during the Labour years were not-so-secret Left-leaners – John Birt and Ian Blair being two good examples.”
http://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2012/10/in-the-last-year-five-times-more-labour-people-were-appointed-to-public-bodies-than-tories.html
You mean the 2012 CH article that is entitled:
‘In the last year five times more Labour people were appointed to public bodies than Tories’
yep….you’ve really proved that Labour does not dominate the quangos.
Alan, I know you have a bit of trouble with getting to the “conclusions”.
Read the table at the foot to see the small percentage of appointments where “political allegiance” was actually known. To extrapolate that to “five times more Labour people were appointed to public bodies than Tories” is stretching things even for you.
Based on this logic if only one individual had known political allegiances and that was to the Tories you could argue that 100% of politically active quango appointees were Tory supporters.
It is apparent you don’t understand what Morgan was saying.
Let me spell it out simply…..
Morgan says the Tories have been appointing more Tory supporters than non-Tory supporters.
The figures disprove this.
Of those who admit a political persuasion and who were appointed to office by the Tories 77% were Labour supporters.
If the rest who don’t admit any leanings are neutral appointees they are irrelevant to the discussion as they have no apparent political allegiance and therefore are appointed regardless.
The figures clearly show, whatever the percentages of the whole, that Labour supporters dominate and have been readily appointed by the Tories…..in major roles….people like Milburn and Hutton…never mind the powerful and highly influential PAC chair, Margaret Hodge, who has been kept in place.
All of which, getting to the point of this blog, points to the fact that the BBC has run a non-story, one seemingly designed to undermine public trust in the Tories…which in fact your own posts prove.
As always you are a great help to this site Albaman.
From your original post:
“Britain’s charities and quangos are now stuffed to the gunwales with Labour placemen”
“In the article he tells that under the Tories it is Labour who have had the lion’s share of appointments”
So what are you saying Albaman…that there is no domination by any political party in the quangos and no sign of politically motivated appointments?
That would completely undermine Morgan’s point…..and you would then have to ask why the BBC has been running with this story as its headline all day.
Which of course is the point of any post here….highlighting BBC bias.
Job done.
Once again cheers Albie.
I think albaman’s motto must be ‘If you can’t win the argument, try a different one’.
Not much else the quangoers are fit for so no surprise they are all squealing. . The commercial world would not want them( except for contacts) and they could not survive a year on their own .
Typical lefty state fodder. Probably a bit hard for the coalition to find non lefty quangoers as most on the right do not like sucking at the teat of the state. Makes them sick. .
“The commercial world would not want them……………………..”
Let’s test this assertion by looking at the first 3 names from this list:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10489120
* Sir David Hartmann Higgins (born 1954) is an Australian businessman, the Chief Executive of Network Rail (since February 2011) and the former Chief Executive of the London 2012 Summer Olympics Delivery Authority.
After graduation, he worked in the United Kingdom and Africa, before returning to Australia in 1983, and joining the international property and construction company Lend Lease Corporation in 1985. In 1995 he was appointed managing director and chief executive, when the corporations developments included the 2000 Summer Olympics Sydney Olympic Park, and the Bluewater Shopping Centre in Kent, England.
* Tony Fountain
CEO, Refining and Marketing, Reliance Industries Limited
Tony Fountain comes from a heavyweight corporate background and has held many significant positions at leading global organisations. He is an Oxford graduated economist and has served more than 25 years at British Petroleum (BP Plc.). He held the Group responsibility for BP’s Strategy, Planning and Performance Management, following which he took over the role of the chief operating officer of BP’s Fuels Value Chains business, responsible for the strategic and operational leadership of BP’s integrated businesses in the Eastern Hemisphere. He was also the president of BP’s North American power unit.
He moved on to join Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, the taxpayer-funded body responsible for dealing with Britain’s estimated £73 billion radioactive decommissioning and clean-up of 19 civil public sector nuclear sites, as its chief executive in 2009.
Taking the reins of one of the world’s largest refining operations facility, Tony Fountain is expected to optimise Reliance’s efforts and improve its output producing capabilities. At present, Reliance’s refining business is bigger than most listed operators in India. Its Jamnagar complex is one of the world’s largest with refining capacity of 27 million tonnes per annum (540,000 barrels per day) and one of worlds the highest refining complexities in the world.
* Howard Shiplee’s early career was in engineering and management positions with Sir Alfred McAlpine, Cemenatation Construction, John Howard and Company and with Shell UK. He then moved to the Middle East as a Senior Manager and then General Manager with the Al Qahtari Group in Saudi Arabia. Returning to the UK, he joined Bovis Construction as Divisional Director then moved to Capitaland as Director of Building, before joining GCHQ as Director of Construction.
Following this he moved to Amec Construction where he was Project Director for new international airport terminals in Manchester and Hong Kong.
From there he moved to be Programme Director for the Thameslink Performance Upgrade before being appointed as the Redevelopment Chief Executive for Ascot Racecourse.
In 2006 he joined the Olympic Delivery Authority as Director for Construction responsible for delivering the infrastructure and major venues for the London 2012 Olympics – delivering an industry changing performance. Finally over the last two years he has been executive director at Laing O’Rourke Group and, in parallel, a non-executive director for the Health and Safety Executive.
Some quangos are more useful than others so I concede a point. The seamless move from the corporate world to the quango world is most enlightening.
It is just that I could no more imagine working for the state than taking up all in wrestling.
And before anyone asks I do not include the armed forces in this.
It is just not the sort of thing we do in my family. Never have and I hope never will.
I would be most dismayed if any of my many children and grandchildren ever ended up breaking this tradition.
My, my, you are working hard these days, Albaman. New bonus scheme in place at the Beeb is there?
Please take part in the bBC survey in which to let them know how you feel:
http://ecustomeropinions.com/survey/survey.php?sid=301205908&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fworld-asia-26000534&probes=%7B%7D&locale=&data1=&data2=news-world&data3=&test=false&installationId=INS-642345567&deploymentId=239722648&triggerpointId=701143321
“…………. sucking at the teat of the state………………….”
Do you mean like this guy who headed up a quango?
Air Chief Marshal Graham Eric “Jock” Stirrup, Baron Stirrup, KG GCB AFC FRAeS FCMI (born 4 December 1949) is a former senior Royal Air Force commander who was the Chief of the Defence Staff from 2006 until his retirement in late 2010. He is now a Crossbench member of the House of Lords. In April 2013, he was appointed Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter by Queen Elizabeth II.
As a junior RAF officer, he was a fast jet pilot, seeing action in the Dhofar War. Later in his career, Stirrup commanded No. 2 Squadron and RAF Marham. After several senior air force appointments, Stirrup was made the Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Strike Command and during this time he served as the first commander of British forces engaged in fighting the Taliban. In 2002, Stirrup was appointed the Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff responsible for equipment and capability and was heavily involved in procuring equipment for the invasion of Iraq. Spending a little over a year in that role, he was then appointed the Chief of the Air Staff, in which capacity he served from 2003 to 2006. He became Chief of the Defence Staff in 2006: during his time in office the British Armed Forces faced significant commitments both to Iraq (Operation Telic) and Afghanistan (Operation Herrick).
And that Sally Morgan, the Labour Party politician who’s moaning about not getting her Government contract renewed, gets plenty of easy pro-propaganda from BBC-NUJ all day today. It fits the Beeboid political agenda.
And without checking, BBC-NUJ publish her more generalised Labour Party moan about discrimination against non-Tories on quangos, e.g. Arts Council. Where is the actual evidence? And how does BBC-NUJ compare Labour Party representation on quangos of yesteryear with representation of Tories today?
A point of view on Labour’s Ms Morgan-
“Farewell, Sally Morgan of Ofsted – ousting lefties from key public sector posts is a really great idea”
http://scottgronmark.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/farewell-sally-morgan-of-ofsted-ousting.html#more
Hmmm…Jock Stirrup…one quango job…….not really ‘sucking at the teat of the state’….but this might be…..
Quango queen Suzi Leather….The 57-year-old Labour Party member was handed 13 prominent quango jobs after Tony Blair’s 1997 election victory.
The Charity Commission role, which she quit last summer, paid £80,000 for a three-day week.
“Quango queen Suzi is savaged for allowing tax scam to receive charitable status due to lack of checks”
(2013).
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2335477/Quango-queen-Suzi-Leather-savaged-allowing-tax-scam-receive-charitable-status-lack-checks.html#ixzz2s6oyWN3S
More on that Labour Party ‘quango queen,’ Suzi LEATHER-
“Pay-off is sweet charity for the quango queen”
By ANDREW PIERCE. (2012.)
[Excerpt]:-
“The Labour Party stalwart (she was made a Dame by Tony Blair) has infuriated Conservatives by using the quango to make a series of politically motivated attacks on the Coalition’s spending cuts.
Dame Suzi, whose name is a byword for quango cronyism, has held 30 public posts in 15 years.”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2174004/Pay-sweet-charity-quango-queen.html#ixzz2s9ayWwN6
I think we can assume that Labour Party’s Sally MORGAN is as friend of Labour Party ‘quango queen’ Suzi LEATHER.
That would be class warrior ‘Dame’ Suzi Leather who singlehandedly attempted to dismantle the public schools system.
Does Albaman know that the former head of OFSTED-Christine Gilbert-was the significant other/life partner to Tony McNulty…former Labour trough surfer who screwed us all over for expenses using his parents house as I recall(THERE`S a boy to be proud of eh?).
No Albie…no Labour bias at all…maybe you could look up Cindy Butts/Orgreave Enquiry by the IPCC to see yt one more example of Lefty dispassionate “enquiry and adjudications”.
Bet Uncle Joe wishes he`d have thought of Quangos, when he was stuck in the past with Mayday airbrushings and psychiatric hospitals to bend the Plebs to his will.
Softly, softly eh?…Beria in hush puppies!
What I find ironic is that the BBC which purposely does not recruit right wing or conservative leaning writers, directors, comedians, presenters, panellists, producers, etc should make such fuss about political selection……
Yes, e.g Director General of BBC, Tony HALL’s selection of
Labour Party’s James Purnell as left-hand man-
“Former Labour minister lands £300,000 BBC job: James Purnell faces accusations of bias.”
“Ex-Culture and Work and Pensions Secretary resigns party membership.
“He will be a key figure in BBC charter renewal negotiations.
“Purnell will become one of the Corporation’s most powerful executives.”
By PAUL REVOIR (2013).
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2278944/Former-Labour-minister-lands-300-000-BBC-job-James-Purnell-faces-accusations-bias.html#ixzz2s9VelbT2
Glad you found that article showing the extent of Labour placemen. As stated did the bBC shout it from the news rafters upon every appointment, NO.
…
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2014/02/02/the-environment-agency-where-does-all-the-money-go/
…
BBBC used to have links in the sidebar to sound clips and quotes, like the “corridors of the BBC” by Jane Garvey, or the Kebabbed interview between Kinnock and Naughtie, and the Persil quote from Paxman.
Could we get them back?
This is hardly a BBC only issue. Every media outlet is running the story. Just because the BBC reports an event, why is then suddenly biased, but not if the Telegraph does the same?
The Telegraph is reporting that Gove is giving the job to a Tory donor. Education clearly not much valued by Gove if he first puts in one of Blair’s acolytes then another pig to the trough.
I suppose this is acceptable? Surely not. I suspect Alan will be a bit silent again.
What Tory Donor? – Mr Gove on BBC said no one had been lined up and would be selected on merit.
The BBC highlighted three newspapers where this was main headlines.
The Independent
The Observer
The Times
Right
Ted – please see my comment below.
The point is, the mainstream press also led pretty forcefully with Labour’s Falkirk fiasco at the time yet it barely got a mention on the BBC, even though it had (and still has) far more serious implications for our democracy than the appointment of quangocrats.
This story need only concern us in that it only shows how much the Left now assumes it is the dominant, centred, normal attitude to strike.
They have had over fifty years of crawling up the drainpipes of universities, schools, quangos, charities, health, social services, law…and of course the BBC and its paper organs like the Guardian…and so are genuinely affronted when they find that there is an alternative to muck out the barn after their “virtuous doing good”.
Just because the craven Tories didnt lop the whole f***in lot of them as he said he`d do in 2010…that means it desperately has to be done now, if we still actually want a country to live in.
The likes of Chris Smith, John Prescott, Kinnock, Mandelson, Morgan, Leather and the like are scumchums we have GOT to shake off the body politic…they are bleeding us to death, and bring EU/Islamofascism that bit nearer by the day.
And the BBC seem shocked?…what…after all those years of stuffing the skips with recycled ex commies, pinkos, reds in beds and cheriddee scurf like Flowers?
It`s all Labour ever did…and the Tories are thick if they reckon the Left don`t want to finish the job if they`re too nice to clear them out.
This will be a fight for survival-if the Tories want to scoot off and let some real patriots have a go, then they`re going exactly the right way in doing it.
It’s what Gramscis do .
Very much to the point.
If anybody thinks that the Ofsted boss is not a key political appointment then they are living in unreality inc.
Education is one of the the key battlegrounds in the culture war that will decide whether we go down as a nation or survive.
It is that important and the liberal left knows it.
A bit like the old divine right of kings the left believes it has the right to control the debate on education so it is no surprise the liberal media is upset.
To start to mend England we have to break a few taboos.
The new Ofsted boss is a start.
Along the line are a few more liberal sacred cows and our bloated BBC is a prime target.
Well overdue a counter revolution.
What amuses me is that the “edgy ” commedians and commentators simply do not realise they are now the establishment and that the wheel has to turn.
This establishment is scared of us hence it’s increasingly bizarre behaviour. Just wait till the EU elections.
Why is this? it is the way of the world.
“What amuses me is that the “edgy ” commedians and commentators simply do not realise they are now the establishment ”
Oh they know it all right ,and are determined to keep it that way.
Getting rid of one boureios liberal mole is ,as you say a start , but we will have to wait and see if her replacement shares her common purpose
Funny how the BBC have managed to keep this the lead news item for over 24 hours and yet Labour’s appalling Falkirk fiasco barely registered a ripple.
R5 had a go this morning with guests that awful lefty Blowers union leader and and some other lefty. Strangely they agreed with each other on everything and and of course no balance provided from Campbell eitther. would it not have been more informative to have guests with opposing views?
Yes, BBC NUJ + NUT + Labour Quangos v. Gove
-as on ‘World at One’ today.
a key question to ask here is why Labour and their useful idiots are so intent on attacking Michael Gove? Could it be that he’s attacking their precious unionised state education system? According to one stat I’ve seen something like 2/3rds of active Labour party members are teachers so anything that disadvantages them will be fought tooth and claw, regardless of the benefit to the millions of children and parents currently disappointed by a system that churns out some of the highest functional illiteracy and innumeracy rates in school-leavers in any developed economy
Not totally unrelated:-
“The extent of corruption in Europe is ‘breathtaking’ and it costs the EU economy at least 120bn euros (£99bn) annually, the European Commission says.”
Of course this does not deter BBC-NUJ from continuing its support for UK membership of E.U.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26014387
“A ruthless Tory takeover of Quangoland? If only it were true!”
By DOMINIC LAWSON.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2550725/DOMINIC-LAWSON-A-ruthless-Tory-takeover-Quangoland-If-true.html#ixzz2sGgthXD6
On Saturday I think it was, I noted that even after 24hrs pushing Morgangate at the head of radio news bulletins and top of the web site, it still didn’t make the 10 most read stories.
Maybe they should have used this headline ‘Unelected Labour politician criticises elected Conservative politician – shock’