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January 15, 2004
The Unconstitutional Secretary
The behaviour of the affable and popular Constitution Secretary Lord Falconer has rightly raised more than a few eyebrows. Exasperated by the apparent chronic incompetence of the new Children and Family Court Advisory Service (Cafcass), he sacked the entire board. One board member, however, Judy Weleminsky, refused to 'resign' on the grounds that she had done nothing wrong. It appears that Lord Falconer then went on a fishing expedition to find incriminating evidence against her, and came up with two items. Item one: that she told the press about 'delays and overspending'. Item two: that she undermined the organisation by giving separate evidence about it. Problem: she gave this evidence to the commons Standards and Privileges committee, whose chairman has now rightly protested that Ms Weleminsky is allegedly being sacked for performing her constitutional duty. Falconer, threatened with being hauled before that committee to explain himself, is now desperately backtracking and claiming that there was no problem with Ms Weleminsky's evidence after all. If so, he appears to have sacked her for blowing the whistle on incompetence. Altogether, not very constitutional. Posted by melanie at January 15, 2004
Comments
If I were the chairman of the Commons Standards and Privileges committee, I would be starting to worry about now. After all, look what happened to Elizabeth Filkin. Posted by: Andrew Duffin at January 15, 2004 12:59 PMBliar has a clever tactic...re-shuffle so that the new incumbent makes his predecessor look good. I do miss Lord Irvine, he at least had dignity with his pomposity.......but he was Joda to Bliar's Luke Skywalker (or is it 3CPO ?)......and Bunter Falconer was just his school chum from the Scottish Eton...FATTIES or Fettes......so if Tony had actually been more socially inclined he met have met some competent people.......but I guess they never returned his calls. Posted by: Romulus at January 21, 2004 11:00 AMTotally agree that Lord Filkin has used underhand tactics to try and dismiss the last remaining board member of the despised Cafcass board. Judy Weleminsky deserves praise for helping highlight the boards inept attitude and lack of relevent experience in family law issues. This is a disgrace, and Lord F needs to go. I for one have been pushing for improvements in Cafcass for the last 2 years, and we wait to see if the new board can improve things...I doubt it ! Posted by: David at January 21, 2004 04:47 PMMarriage does matter and this country, especially this Labour Government has totally lost that concept. There are no incentives to marry anymore, and marriage has in a cynical way become merely a pre-requiste for diviorce. The promotion of gay & lesbian marriage has done nothing to promote traditional (natural) narriage of hetrosexual couples. What we need is to bring back a culture of values revolving around the ideal. We should promote marriage, provide incendives, like tax breaks. We should push the virtues and benefits of long-term relationships. The health benefits, the social benefits on improved child developement and we should certainly highlight the major damage caused by family breakdown and divorce. I wonder if Beveridge ever thought how the system devised in 1944 would be perverted away from dealing with the Five Great Wants and to re-structure society, by capping unemployment pay so money could be used to support asylum-seekers, and sState-sponsored family breakdown ? It looks as if the welfare state will disappear as an ageing population switches the funds to pensions, especially since Gordon taxed them into dissolution to fund his means-tested nirvana. Posted by: Romulus at January 22, 2004 06:33 PM |
