UK Cabinet Minister Faces Prison

[unloadonme]

Chris Huhne, who until recently was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change in the coalition government is facing prison tonight.

Back in 2003 he persuaded his wife to falsely claim that she was driving when his car was photographed speeding so that he could avoid prosecution. This came to light last year after he left his wife for another woman and, after a police investigation, he was charged with perverting the course of justice.

Huhne has consistently denied the allegation and resigned from the government (but not from parliament) last year to devote his energies to his defence. He pleaded not guilty in court before Christmas and the trial was set down to begin today.

It appears that his defence was based more on claims that the trial should not proceed for various technical reasons rather than on any foundation of innocence. Once Mr Justice Sweeney had dismissed the applications to have the case set aside, Huhne realised that the game was up and that the jury would convict. So, at his QC's request, the charge was put to him again this morning and this time he pleaded guilty. He will undoubtedly go to prison for this. He has resigned as an MP today.

So here we have a politician who not only lied, nothing unusual there you might say, but who lied about lying.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21320992

[Falcon16]

...sounds like everyday politics here in the US...

[unloadonme]

I guess it's just that getting caught out doing it isn't an everyday occurrence.

[Rolyo85]

Hopefully they send him down, if not for the crime, which is pretty minor, but for being a smug liberal twit.

Darn i have to watch my language in here.

No, why, if you're gonna spew the "liberals should go to jail" rhetoric, you'll fit right in...

[unloadonme]

Hopefully they send him down, if not for the crime, which is pretty minor, but for being a smug liberal twit.

Darn i have to watch my language in here.

No, why, if you're gonna spew the "liberals should go to jail" rhetoric, you'll fit right in...

Maybe that should have been Liberals with a capital L Bender. Wouldn't want anyone thinking you meant liberals in general. The Liberals in this case are actually left wing socialists.

[unloadonme]

Look back at the expenses scandal, it was rarely a Lib Dem hitting the headlines then, oh no, Labour and Tory representatives took that honour.

Erm, have we forgotten David Laws?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10191524

[White Eagle]

Hopefully they send him down, if not for the crime, which is pretty minor, but for being a smug liberal twit.

Darn i have to watch my language in here.

We don't hear of this very often over here. Is it commonplace like we have? You can't throw a rock at a crowd of Congress critters without hitting one of them that needs to go to jail.

[Telstra]

If he is going to prison for this, the law is stupid and waste of public money.
Maybe the judge should go to prison with him.

[unloadonme]

You'll notice that i said rarely. The list of MP's guilty of the grossest misconduct of expenses were far more numerous of the largest two parties. Furthermore, in David Laws case, it wasn't so clear cut, as he wasn't concealing just expenses was he??? The motivation for him was far greater (and sympathetic) than greed.

Well, there were a large number of MPs from all parties who were accused of making inappropriate expenses claims. If by "grossest misconduct" you mean those MPs who were actually prosecuted then I'm aware of six cases; David Chaytor (Guilty, 18 months imprisonment), Eric Illsley (Guilty, 12 months), Elliot Morley (Guilty, 16 months), Jim Devine (Guilty, 16 months), Margaret Moran (mentally unfit to stand trial) and Denis MacShane (pending). All six were Labour MPs.

I don't buy the line that David Laws only made inappropriate expense claims to conceal his homosexuality. Laws is a millionaire and had no need to claim for rents he was supposedly paying to his partner. It was greed and he broke the rules, just like all the others.

[unloadonme]

If he is going to prison for this, the law is stupid and waste of public money.
Maybe the judge should go to prison with him.

I'd be surprised if he does go to prison, but i expect that if he does, it won't be excessive a sentence, and most people would argue that its his own fault for not being honest like he should have been to begin with. That has cost the public money.

The judge has already made it clear that Huhne can expect to go to prison. It's not for the speeding, but for lying about it. I predict 12 months. You can't have Members of Parliament passing laws to regulate the conduct of others and then treating the judicial process with such contempt. I expect the sentence will be longer than you or I might receive for the same offence to reflect that, and rightly so in my view.

[unloadonme]

Nevertheless, my initial statement holds true. I said rarely and the facts prove it. No Lib Dem's were prosecuted, and of all those who were investigated and found to some extent guilty of taking advantage, only 6 were Lib Dem's, whilst 21 were Labour and 28 Conservative. I think the audacity of claiming a 'duck house' can be considered gross purely in its absurdity.

Not sure where you get the figures of 6, 21 and 28 from, but you should bear in mind that the Liberals have and had fewer seats than the other major parties. In the 2005 parliament, the Liberals held 62 of the 646 seats (9.6%). If they were responsible for 6 of your 55 investigated MPs, that's 10.9%. This suggests that the Liberals were proportionately 1.3% more dodgy than your average MP.

[Telstra]

If some of you guys want him to go to prison.
You should go to prison too. That is fair.

[bankside]

This doesn't change the standing of the coalition or its stability does it?

I'm starting to get the vibe that this coalition may not go as far as they announced in their initial deal.

[unloadonme]

If some of you guys want him to go to prison.
You should go to prison too. That is fair.

You're an Aussie Telstra, so I bow to your superior knowledge of prisons and convicts.

[unloadonme]

This doesn't change the standing of the coalition or its stability does it?

I'm starting to get the vibe that this coalition may not go as far as they announced in their initial deal.

No. Huhne left the government last year and his final departure as an MP is for criminal rather than political reasons. There'll be no impact on the government. There will be a bye-election to replace him, but the result won't upset the coalition's parliamentary majority.

There have been difficulties. The Liberals pressed for and got a referendum on Proportional Representation as a condition of going into the coalition and were defeated 2 to 1 in the resulting vote. Then they pressed for House of Lords reform and were defeated by backbench Conservative MPs. As a result, the Liberals have blocked the Conservative Party's attempts to redraw parliamentary boundaries in time for the next general election in 2015. Hopefully they've now got the squabbling out of their system.

The 2015 General Election will be interesting. The Liberals are becoming so unpopular that they could be annihilated. If the Conservatives win, they've promised to hold a referendum on withdrawing from the EU and, currently, a majority would vote for that.

[bankside]

That would be a very short-sighted majority. I don't understand how London can expect to be the financial epicentre of a continent in whose currency it does not participate. It seems like it's willing to walk away from too much just to keep Liz on the money. My impression is that Britain in Europe would make Europe very British in all the ways that make the UK commendable.

[unloadonme]

That would be a very short-sighted majority. I don't understand how London can expect to be the financial epicentre of a continent in whose currency it does not participate. It seems like it's willing to walk away from too much just to keep Liz on the money. My impression is that Britain in Europe would make Europe very British in all the ways that make the UK commendable.

There's absolutely no question of the UK joining the Euro currency for the foreseeable future, whether we remain in the EU or not. It would have been political suicide for any government to have proposed it before the economic collapse of Greece, Ireland and Portugal. Now it would be completely and utterly unthinkable.

Despite remaining outside the Euro, London has continued to be the principle financial centre of Western Europe, but that's because it's involved with global rather than purely European markets.

[bankside]

There's absolutely no question of the UK joining the Euro currency for the foreseeable future, whether we remain in the EU or not. It would have been political suicide for any government to have proposed it before the economic collapse of Greece, Ireland and Portugal. Now it would be completely and utterly unthinkable.

Despite remaining outside the Euro, London has continued to be the principle financial centre of Western Europe, but that's because it's involved with global rather than purely European markets.

Bottom line though, the UK is faced with getting over the tantrums and enthusiastically making the EU a better place with a good dose of Britishness that needs to be applied there, or shuffling off into irrelevance.

I would have stood London as not just the principle financial centre of Western Europe but of the world, though I have heard people refer to Singapore moving into that role of late. Either way, the detached on-again off-again thing doesn't make sense.

I think the real poles of power in Europe should not be Germany and France, but Germany and the UK. I think that would make for a vast number of improvements. But it won't happen with the Brits sitting at home. You guys could own the place!

[Telstra]

You're an Aussie Telstra, so I bow to your superior knowledge of prisons and convicts.

No convicts here.
I was a refugee. New info for you guys

[unloadonme]

I pulled the figures from wikipedia. Its interesting to see how the Conservatives fared too. Have you done the maths for them??? 20.1% more dodgy. I'll say no more.

So what we're saying is that the Liberals are worse than you tried to make out, but not as bad as the Conservatives. Also, if we look at prosecutions rather than lesser transgressions, Labour are worse than either. I think I can live with that.

[T-Rexx]

Chris Huhne, who until recently was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change in the coalition government is facing prison tonight.

Back in 2003 he persuaded his wife to falsely claim that she was driving when his car was photographed speeding so that he could avoid prosecution. This came to light last year after he left his wife for another woman and, after a police investigation, he was charged with perverting the course of justice.

I am slightly astounded that you would send someone to jail for lying about speeding.

Here, we don't send people to jail even if they attack other countries unprovoked (resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people). Not even if they establish extrajudicial prisons where they imprison people indefinitely without charge or trial. Not even if they torture people. Not even if they start hate wars against minority groups. Not even if they wiretap people's phones and emails without warrant. Not even if they destroy the economy of the entire world.

You people are rank amateurs.

[unloadonme]

You know what they say. If you owe your bank £5,000, they'll take you to court to get it back. If you owe them £5 million, they'll put you on the Board.

[unloadonme]

Thought I'd get this thread back on track with an update.

Huhne can't be sentenced until his wife's trial is concluded. She's pleaded not guilty to perverting the course of justice on the grounds of marital coercion and her trial collapsed today when the jury was unable to reach a verdict. The judge had made it pretty clear that he considers the jurors were too stupid to be able to grasp the relatively simple basis of the case. A retrial will begin next week.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21516473

Has the day come when the hard of thinking should not be allowed to serve on juries?

[unloadonme]

And now the case threatens to take out one of the most senior black women in the British legal profession!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21587980

[Quacktastic]

The Liberals in this case are actually left wing socialists.

Don't make me laugh.

There are elements of the Liberal Democrats which are slightly left of centre, but socialism? No. They, as most mainstream British political parties are, firmly in the neoliberal camp.

[unloadonme]

The sentencing was today. Huhne and his former wife were given 8 months each.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21737627

[unloadonme]

Which will be reduced to 4 months and they'll probably be sent home on a tag for the last 2 months.

True, and very nice seven-figure homes they both have by all accounts. Still, a fall from political grace and only two months at Her Majesty's pleasure is quite a price for one lie to PC Plod.

[Kulindahr]

What?

Don't you guys have the "too rich to jail" system that applies in the States?

...or is that just for bankers?

[unloadonme]

Don't you guys have the "too rich to jail" system that applies in the States?

If I said we did, I'd be lying.