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Bully for the justice committee

Michael Crick | 13:06 UK time, Monday, 22 February 2010

This coming Wednesday's meeting of the Commons Justice Select Committee was going to be an interesting event in any case.

Their witness that morning is the Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell, who was due to talk about what happens constitutionally if there is a hung parliament after the election.

Now surely committee members won't be able to resist the urge to ask Sir Gus as well what exactly he advised Gordon Brown about his treatment of Downing Street staff - especially since two of the Conservative members of the committee are the professional trouble-makers Andrew Tyrie and Douglas Hogg.

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    The political bias of Michael Crick is showing again!

  • Comment number 2.

    Cue tumbleweed.... and cicadas.

  • Comment number 3.

    what political bias does Michael have? He likes MUFC led by an ardent socialst who has a foot in number ten so that makes Crick a socialist? The Mancs got in bed with the Glazers hardly Karl Marx material in fact i think he has a liking for Dodgy Dave.......

  • Comment number 4.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 5.

    I reckon Hogg and Tyrie should take O'Donnell around the back of the bike sheds and give him a right good kicking. And then nick his dinner money.

    (I would like to point out to the moderator that this an ironic joke and I am not encouraging physical violence.)

  • Comment number 6.

    Actually Michael why has no one investigated the comments of Jeff Randall which he made specifically about David Cameron. They are widely reported on the internet - but I get moderated whenever I mention them.

    Why is it ok to make generalised smears towards the sitting prime minister but if you repeat a direct comment on the behaviour of the leader of the opposition it is defamation?

    Why is David Cameron getting such an easy ride from the media?

  • Comment number 7.

    This is Paul Waugh of the Evening standards quote

    Here's just a wee recap of Randall's assessment back in 2005:
    "I wouldn't trust him with my daughter's pocket money.
    "In my experience, he never gave a straight answer when dissemblance was a plausible alternative.
    "Whether he flat-out lied I won't say, but he went a long way to leave me with the impression that the story was wrong. He put up so much verbal tracker you started to lose your own guidance system."
    Since then, Cameron has dumped Labour's spending pledges and Jeff has been sufficiently impressed to give his backing. It's a good job he switched tack before tonight....
    *FOOTNOTE: Randall's withering assessment was apparently backed up by City journalist Ian King, who called him "a poisonous, slippery individual".
    "He was a smarmy bully who regularly threatened journalists. He loved humiliating people, including a colleague at ITV he would abuse publicly as 'Bunter', just because the poor bloke was a few pounds overweight.
    "He was a mouthpiece for that company's charmless chairman, Michael Green, who operated him the way Keith Harris works Orville."

  • Comment number 8.

    Paul Waugh was quoting Jeff Randalls view of David Cameron

  • Comment number 9.

    Crick's usual blatant bias.
    We need "troublemakers" to hold this lousy government to account. It was great that O'Donnell admitted he had to advise Brown on how to treat staff.
    Brown is utterly dysfunctional and must go.

  • Comment number 10.

    Stevie,
    Crick used to be a member of the Labour Party. I don't know if he still is but the bias in his reports and this blog are obvious. I think the ´óÏó´«Ã½ should have to disclose the party memberships of all reporters and presenters.

  • Comment number 11.

    Why oh why is the bbc so biased toward this totally incompetent government?
    In a real democracy they would be treated as traitors, but as the bbc in a recent radio 4 programme stated, "this is now no longer applicable" - only in their world is it not.

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