British cabinet minister quits to become a throttlehead

Let's see now. When ministers of the Crown resign, any minister, they have a rather limited menu from which to select when writing the letter which the stenographers in the news media will reproduce. It's pretty much the same for cabinet members in almost all western democracies.

I wish to spend more time with my family.

My children are now of an age where my presence is now vitally important to their well-being.

My decision is based purely on personal reasons.

I have decided to pursue opportunities in the private sector.

My mistress is about to blow the whistle on me.

Well, when Lord Drayson, the British minister for defence equipment and support wrote his letter of resignation to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, he took the opportunity to go out with a bit of a bang and a lot of class.

"I have the opportunity to race next year in the American Le Mans series in the United States, a key step towards my eventual dream of success in the Le Mans 24-hour endurance race," Drayson said in a letter to Brown.

"Unfortunately, it cannot be combined with the challenge of full time government office."

Not bad!

For what it's worth, Drayson is not just driving a typical LeMans race car. He has been competing in a British GT series of races in "green" experimental race cars which provide high mileage and feature substantially reduced emission levels. His goal is to move the best of those vehicles into the field of the LeMans 24 hour endurance races.

It could all end there... except its politics and Lord Drayson was right in the middle of it.

Drayson is widely credited with being the architect of the strategy, which is aimed at reforming MoD procurement and support policy. That was rushed out by Drayson in December 2005, just seven months after he joined the government.

A revamp of the strategy was expected in December. Speculation has been rife, though, that the effort had run into problems caused partially by serious funding shortfalls in the equipment budget for the next three years.

One political analyst said there had been other signs Drayson was becoming disenchanted with the MoD.

“He had been snubbed by new Prime Minister Gordon Brown when he took the decision in July to disband the MoD Defence Export Sales Organisation without any consultation,” he said.

But at least he brought something new to the world of political resignations. That in itself is an accomplishment.

Never get caught naked in a baseball cap

Nothing will tear a government apart like a nice juicy sex scandal.

A simmering sex scandal at the top of the European Commission is set to come to a head with new allegations that could derail Angela Merkel’s coalition Government in Germany.

Claims that Günter Verheugen, the second most influential man at the Commission, promoted his lover to chief of staff are to be published in the German media today.

I wonder. Does he spit on his comb too?

Speculation surrounding the 63-year-old German Commissioner, who was photographed last year naked on a beach with his adviser, Petra Erler, has been rife. Mr Verheugen has always denied that his relationship with Ms Erler went beyond friendship.

Good friends, though. Apparently they bared more than their souls to each other.

The latest allegations, in the new issue of Bunte magazine, are made by Katrin Fuchs, a German politician, who has been a friend of Mr Verheugen and his wife, Gabriele, for 20 years.

Ms Fuchs says that the commissioner confessed that he was having an affair with Ms Erler in January 2006. “And he then admitted that the relationship with Ms Erler had been going on since the spring of 2005. He was sorry about it, and didn’t know what had got into him,” she says.

Didn't know what got into him? I can't write that, can I?

In April 2006 Ms Erler was promoted from being a member of his advisory team to become his chief of staff. The promotion of a lover would be a violation of Commission guidelines.

Is there actually a rule that says you can't promote your lover? Man, they think of everything.

Her fear is that the forced resignation of Mr Verheugen, a Social Democrat, would create a chain reaction in the German Government, which is a coalition of her Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, that could lead its eventual break-up.

The Social Democrats would insist on putting one of their own people in his place – and the only politicians of sufficient seniority are the Finance, Foreign and Environment ministers who are indispensable to the approaching general election campaign. The Christian Democrats, meanwhile, will put Ms Merkel under heavy pressure to place one of their own in Brussels – a clear breach of the coalition agreement between the two parties.

Politician gets laid by younger assistant; whole government collapses. The only thing that could make it worse would be if there were pictures.

Photographs later showed the Commissioner and his adviser hand in hand on holiday in Lithuania. During the same holiday, in July 2006, he was snapped naked apart from a baseball cap with Ms Erler. This was shrugged off as a cultural oddity: Ms Erler, the highest ranking East German in the Brussels bureaucracy, was said to be a convert to nudist philosophy. The Commissioner took out an injunction to stop further publication of the pictures.

By this time the German press had caught wind of impropriety. Photographs showed Mr Verheugen entering Ms Erler’s house at night and emerging ruffled the next morning. He was also spotted buying roses, apparently for Ms Erler, at a petrol station this summer. When he glimpsed the camera, he crouched low in the back of Ms Erler’s car.

I'm guessing it was the baseball cap which gave him away.

The sewage which occupies parliament

I'll admit to a bit of a prejudicial dislike for most politicians, whatever their ilk. Falling somewhere between a grade nine biology teacher I would have liked to have seen hit by a bus and a traveling snake-oil salesman, I have rarely encountered a politician I felt deserved any real respect.

Yesterday's brawl in Canada's parliament simply underscored the reasons for those feelings.

All that was missing was fisticuffs, or maybe a member of Parliament dropping his trousers and mooning his opponents. The House of Commons and its environs devolved into a scene of schoolyard taunts, shrill denunciations, partisan knee-capping, and procedural constipation Wednesday as the spring session ground toward its summer recess.

And one particular member displayed, without the aid of loco-weed, that he is unfit to hold the position of Deputy Speaker of the House.

Deputy speaker Royal Galipeau - a Conservative whose parliamentary position makes him responsible for keeping the peace - charged over to Liberal MP David McGuinty in the middle of question period and launched a finger-wagging tirade.

And it just went on from there, doing little to enhance the public perception of politicians beyond something that simply increases the fecal coliform count of the wading pool which used to be the House of Commons.

And the Conservatives, unable to accept their minority position, led the way.

You can read more about it here, here, here and here. And... here.

I've never agreed with the way Oliver Cromwell dealt with the British parliament, but if yesterday's behaviour was any indication of where Canada's parliament is going, I can understand why he did it.