Tag Archives: vince cable

Flip-flopping Vince Cable fails to vote for his own legislation

5:10pm Tue March 20th

Business Secretary Vince Cable refused to vote on his department’s own legislation yesterday, mysteriously going AWOL when MPs were called to a division to slash employee’s rights.

The threshold for unfair dismisal claims was extended, meaning those unfairly sacked will no longer have redress if they have been employed for less than two years.

The proposal was originally put forward in October by David Cameron’s bonkers guru, Steve Hilton, with Vince slamming the plans as:

“unnecessary, based on no evidence and unlikely to improve labour market flexibility”

On 23 November he went on to claim that:

“We want to safeguard workers’ rights, while deregulating to reduce the onerous and unnecessary demands on businesses.”

Having made his view clear, Cable had the opportunity to stand up for what he believed in — by voting against the “Unfair Dismissal and Statement of Reasons for Dismissal (Variation of Qualifying Period) Order”. But despite voting on Employment Tribunals at 3:59pm, the business secretary failed to participate in the whipped vote just ten minutes earlier.

Rather than resign, Cable simply slinks off and hopes none of us will notice.

We’re sorry Vince, it’s time for us to let you go.

Saint Vince fails to take his own advice on personal data losses

8:27pm Fri November 4th

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News International today savoured revenge on Vince Cable in the form of The Sun’s attack on the business secretary for dumping unshredded personal documents outside of his constituency office. Approached for comment yesterday, Scrapbook wonders whether Vince’s team recalled their own high-horsery over data security.

Laying the blame for the loss of 25 million tax records personally with Gordon Brown, Cable was apparently fond of delivering lectures on how to safeguard people’s personal information throughout 2007 and 2008:

“If data and valuable information is consistently lost or stolen or abused the public completely lose confidence in government in general at all levels.”

And again in the Commons:

“Is there not a growing diversity of data breach, involving not merely CDs, but memory sticks, laptops and paper files, and a growing variety of places where these things are lost, including on trains, in backs of cars and in bars?”

Or, indeed, left outside of MPs’ offices.

Destined to languish on opposition benches with the rest of the Liberal Democrats, what a relief that Vince will never be the custodian of sensitive Whitehall data. Oh, wait …

Vince didn’t predict a riot

3:17pm Sun August 7th

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As North London smoulders, Vince Cable should probably take his crystal ball for a service. Here’s what he said the day before the Tottenham riot:

“Britain is an oasis of calm” — Vince Cable

Not that we would ever take a quote out of context.

Hat-tip: Huffington Post’s Dina Rickman

The cabinet of the living dead: who will expire first?

4:57pm Wed May 18th

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The growing scandal around Ken Clarke’s disgusting remarks on rape brought the following observation from Fraser Nelson earlier this afternoon:

“By my count, this is five Cabinet members now in ‘dead man walking’ category: Clarke, Cable, Huhne, Spelman, Lansley. #zombiecabinet”

Will someone please put them out of their misery?

Vince Cable's top five cock-ups

7:13pm Tue December 21st

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Vince Cable’s near-death-experience today marks the end of a startling transformation. It’s hard to imagine that at the start of this year this same gaffe-prone curmudgeon was hailed by the Daily Telegraph as a “saint” (how’s that for irony, eh?).

Here is Scrapbook’s round up of his top five cock-ups:

1. Being wooed into showing off for two young (female) Telegraph journos, “declaring war” on Rupert Murdoch

2. Placing himself in the ridiculous position of not being able to decide how to vote on his department’s own bill

3. Signing a letter reversing the Foreign Office’s position on the Chagos Islands, leading islanders to think they would be allowed to return home when they can’t

4. Claiming to the Politics Show that Liberal Democrat MPs had not broken a promise on tuition fees

5. Agreeing to going into coalition with the Tories in the first place

Cable was toasted for his Commons quip on Gordon Brown’s “remarkable transformation in the last few weeks from Stalin to Mr Bean.”

In the space of one week Vince has gone from “Mr. Bean” to “Mr. Has-been”.

Tweeting about Christmas trees: Vince Cable's PPS Jo Swinson is in denial

4:45pm Tue December 21st

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With Vince Cable’s engulfed by a scandal that could end his political career, one would assume his bag carrier Parliamentary Private Secretary Jo Swinson had more pressing concerns than Christmas trees on the parliamentary estate:

Perhaps Swinson should take a leaf out of her boss’ book with some injudicious honesty:

“La, la la! This isn’t happening!”

Vince Cable says he would quit government as "nuclear option"

11:28pm Mon December 20th

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So hats off, once more, to the Telegraph. Having already skewered a government adviser with a tape recording, they have now turned their undercover attentions to a minister in the form of Vince Cable. The business secretary told reporters posing as constituents:

They know I have nuclear weapons, but I don’t have any conventional weapons. If they push me too far then I can walk out and bring the Government down and they know that.

As one tweeter observed earlier:

Aren’t the Lib Dems against anything nuclear?

Vince Cable Facebook profile hijacked

11:15am Tue December 14th

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With five images now displayed across the top of the new-style profile, French artist Alexandre Oudin exploited the new Facebook design to tag a series of images which had him peering out as if trapped in the screen. Pranksters today used the same trick to display “Vince Cable ♥ COCK” on the Facebook page of the Business Secretary. At the time of writing this is still visible.

Facebook art: Alexandre Oudin's profile

Oh dear!

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