BREAKING: “Hitler not fit to hold office, says Stalin”.

This is silly and short-termist. Think about it, people! If we insisted that every Conservative MP who lied or expressed contempt for people lower down the social pecking order had to resign, we’d have none of them left in government to run the country!

can’t decide which I find the most repellent. certainly don’t believe either.

Hunt got promoted, Laws is back…..Mitchell will probably get promoted.

The Sun, the Police and the Government, all at odds. Nice to see Leveson having the right effect so far.

So either the police and the Sun are telling the truth or a Tory MP is telling the truth.

No, there must be a third choice or else I might have to fundamentally rethink my giew of reality.

Oh this should be good. Pass the popcorn.

Arrogant posh tories on one side, rabid, right wing trade union on the other. Of course we know that in call me Dave’s world a smug, insincere apology solves all problems. Coulson, Laws, Hunt, Mitchell. So Mitchell will probably be Chancellor next week.

On the other hand the tories are supposed to be the the party of the thin blue line. Decisions, Decisions. Whatever he decides this has been another glimpse into the real world of what tory vermin really think of the public.

Shame really.

I doubt there was a better Development Secretary for two decades. He publicly argued the case for increasing development aid during a time of domestic austerity. Never again will the Left be able to effectively argue the Tories cannot be trusted on aid. All of this work in the face of the ‘charity starts at home’ objections of the tabloids. The Conservatives honoured their commitment to increase development aid. Something never written about LC. Mitchell personally wanted to enshrine the new 0.7% target in law.

Sadly, none of this is Sunny’s concern. He prefers tittle tattle and political positioning.

On the point of public outbursts that cause offensive. I wonder if somebody could point me in the direction of the LC article that argued Livingstone should resign for calling a Jewish journalist a concentration camp guard. Or perhaps the one about Brown having to resign for calling a member of the public a bigot. Or perhaps the one about dinosaurs like Skinner having to resign for talking about the Chancellor have ‘coke running his nose’. Or maybe the ones concerning Prescott – there must be about 20 or so cases for him.

tory
why should Livingstone resign for calling a gutter journalist a nazi? Just because he happened to be jewish and was low enough to claim victimhood through that? Who was the victim in the actual situation?
Dirty sophistry, and you are riding on the liberal consensual inability to call this what it was; disgraceful exploitation of his own community’s suffering for the sake of political point scoring. Obnoxious.

@9

Point scoring? Exploitation of his own Jewish identity? The victim of Ken’s abuse was obnoxious? The Jew was responsible for the abuse he got? Extraordinary stuff. Amazing you are blaming the victim for that one but so be it. By the way, the journalist told Ken he was Jewish but the drunken Mayor repeated the insult once again. This is clearly more offensive than what Mitchell allegedly said. Even Ken’s buggest supporters would admit it was at least as offensive.

Yet no calls for his resignation?

On the charge of faux outrage over Mitchell – I would say caught red handed.

@10 What’s Ken going to resign from these days anyway?

he swore at a copper.hehehe very Class War of him.

I think Mitchell should be made to watch ‘Withnail and I’, to learn the correct procedure for posh swearing.

…. and the south yorks police lie happily for 23 years? Replace all police, sans pension, whether they’ve killed anybody or not.

So it’s a “crime” to swear at the police now? My gods what has the country come to. When the top news item is the case of an MP getting a bit emotional after a long day and swearing at what was probably an officous policeman who couldn’t be bothered to open the main gate, then you know that politicians and those on the beltway have lost touch with reality.

This has all the hallmarks of political point scoring and has nothing to do with respect for the police (which they lost years ago).

So a millionaire on a power trip is finally honest, yet he doesn’t have the spine necessary to stand by his words publicly. Typical.

Nice to see his hired apologist desperately trying to distract away from that too. Whoopedoo, all of 0.7% of GDP allocated to overseas development, most of which would actually find it’s way into another millionaire’s already bulging wallet, while the locals would be told to be grateful for their newfound ‘wealth’, just like the Chinese people who have been pulled out of poverty with, er, poverty wages…

There’s no doubt it is a real dilemma.

1. Tory minister looking down his nose at someone who is his social inferior (that’s Britain folks, like it or not, we still have social inferiors). Utterly believable, if a trifle stupid in full hearing of members of the public and press.

2. Tory minister lying through his backside about anything. Utterly believable.

3. Plod telling a pack of lies to make someone else look bad and them look good. Utterly believable.

What’s a guy to believe?

This is a spin piece from the Tory press machine.

the Tories are now so desperate that this is their version of a good news story. This story has none of the following:
1) Evidence of ministers having clandestine meeting with powerful media barons to protect and even promote their positions evin while those empires are becoming exposed for conducting widespread criminal activity

2) Anything vaguely connected to the economy

3) Any foreign policy story that exposes the government’s increasing lack of influence abroad

4)Anything with the Lib Dems in it

5) Anything with Boris Johnson in it.

So all in all, the Tory machine must be keen that this story of toff declares class war against police constables gets as much covereag as possible.

@16

Care you backup the following assertions?

1. That I am ‘hired’ to give my opinion?

2. That most British aid and development expenditure ends up in the bank accounts of millionaries?

3. Where did I say foreigners should be ‘grateful’?

Good luck with that.

By the way, the increase in aid and development expenditure doesn’t affect you one bit. It does of course affect the needy and vulnerable people whose lives it saves. Your tribalism is so all consuming it is me lecturing you about how helping the vulnerable is a good thing. Weird.

Oh, and about 600 million Chinese have indeed been brought out of poverty by evil capitalism. This is just a matter of fact. That you find it ‘ideologically annoying’ only says something about you I’m afraid.

Priceless. Every time a tory fucks up the trolls appear to inform us that this is a non story because who cares if the party of law and order , (and in a week when 2 officers were shot dead), tells a copper to shove it.

As usual It’S OK if you are a Conservative. IOKIYAC

@20

still a nutter then.

Tory, I do have issues with your defense of an obviously obnoxious attitude revealed in Andrew Mitchell’s tirade, however I am more amused by what you chose to defend him with.

I have thought overseas development aid was for big business, to use as a leverage fund for the privatisation of public services in third world countries for a long time, ever since reading this.

http://www.monbiot.com/2004/10/19/exploitation-on-tap/

Which incidentally was a critique of overseas development aid in the late Clare Short’s Foreign Office, which political party was she in, pray tell? Does overseas ‘aid’ actually help or hurt people in third world countries, or go into the hands of the rich, especially when ‘development’ is tagged onto it? I have never had a problem with aid, just when it is perverted into something else entirely, which doesn’t benefit the people it is supposed to.

If it was about aiding through microcredit etc to set up new local businesses and infrastructure for local people, controlled by local people in places like say the Soweto townshpis, it would indeed be a good thing that I would prefer to invest as much as 5% of GDP in, simply because I know that is the surest way of making it work, and in the long run, I would also benefit, even if it is only indirectly.

Here is more information for you about the 600m Chinese pulled out of poverty (is it absolute or relative poverty you are talking about?) What it looks like to me is relative poverty is far worse, because your sights are suddenly raised far higher than mere survival.

http://m.ceip.org/publications/?fa=47380

Do those 600m Chinese people feel better off, when they still have to work, work, work while another kind of elite plays with the resulting profits, and they still have no real voice.

What makes you thing I am against capitalism? When I am a shareholder, and I know it is a vast improvement on it’s predecessor feudalism? It is the actions of far too many capitalists I despise, from backroom corruption and greed to elitism. I am reminded of a saying about communism here – it would be perfect, if it wasn’t for communists!

In short, I wanted to see how you would bite, by mildly trolling you (saying you were hired should have been a giveaway!) Instead you are doing this defense of him for free! What if he directed that kind of tirade against you, how would you feel then?

It’s incredibly, really. Lord knows how much time and money the police have spent on public relations and all they had to do to win the peoples’ sympathy was get insulted by a Tory. I’m sending a note to Michael Gove to ask if he’ll call me an arsehole. I predict that it’ll do wonders for my social life.

He should have called the copper a fascist, and rather than being a posh tory, he should have been labourite from an old mining constituency. The same script would be followed, but the actors would be reading different parts.

I wanted to make a sarcastic, bordering on silly, comment, but apparently this will be a candidate for deletion. Since when has homnest sarcasm been so threatening to a liberal editor, I wonder?

Technically Mr Mitchell is right. PC Plod is a pleb by the classical definition. If it has upset the bobby in question I would suggest that he is an ignorant Snob.

Now thats better than a grovelling apology

15,26 the police officer was a woman,

5 Micthell has already admitted he said it and it was a msitake so the WPC wasn’t lying

9well said

That many of the stories about this non-story also mention that it is bad timing that it comes so soon after the murders of the two police women in Manchester shows that it is being abused by those in politics for political ends. Mitchell’s aledged swearing and discourteous attitude to the police at Downing St has nothing what so ever to do with the situation in Manchester. To link the two is extremely discourteous to the families of the two police women.

First of all, the Tories have suggested that Mitchell had simply ‘lost his rag’ and said something ‘rude’. I am here to tell you that ‘losing one’s rag’ will mean a night in the cells, tasered or worse depending on the class of the person involved. People who were losing their livelihood shouted abuse at the police got fucking cavalry charged, not all that long ago.

The use of the term ‘pleb’ and ‘I’ll have your job for this’ is rather telling though. It signals the contempt that rich elite have for the rest of us. Mitchell feels that being rich means that there are certain rules and laws that he is exempt from. Gerry Hayes and our own Owen Jones were going at this on five live last night. Hayes and that dick Nolan were simply not allowing Owen to make the point that this was symptomatic of the Tory Party, so it was clearly hitting a nerve.

The Tories are clearly stung with this ‘Tory Toff’ label, which is why the Labour made no attempt to exploit it. Perhaps Labour could go for the jugular and paint the Tories as the type of people who feel they should be allowed to sack people merely because they took a dislike to someone?

I just keep boggling at that headline. This is a representative of the British police speaking. Did Andrew Mitchell kill someone and then say he was ‘wearing a bulk coat’ or that he jumped a barrier to escape? All of a sudden it’s wrong to tell lies is it? The barefaced hypocrisy is mind numbing.

The defence of Mitchell shows the true nature of tory scum. The police are seen by tories as their servants. To beat the shit out of trade unions and lefties. They are not there to inconvenience pompous tories.

A lot of people would have been arrested for what Mitchell said. If you don’t believe me go and try it in your local high street. But beware, being arrested is the least of your worries. You may get tassered, or have your head collide with concrete.. I so wish the police officer had tassered this tory tosser. Then he could have made his insincere apology from a hospital bed.

And to do it to a female officer the week 2 female police officers were shot dead should be a resigning matter. But we know that tories have no shame.

@27 And??????????????????woman/man they all get paid the same.
I have been sworn at by Police in my role as a civil servant so its swings and roundabouts.Get over it.

@32 Difference is that if you’re an 18 year old lad from a council estate and swear or otherwise insult a copper you can expect to see the inside of a jail cell for a few months.
http://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2012/09/22/the-boy-who-went-to-jail-for-what-andrew-mitchell-did/

Andrew mitchell is such a liar. We have been told that the policemen involved have “accepted” his apology, so now we must draw a line under thie unfortunate incident.
An arrogant politician {goes well together doesn’t it) swears at the police for doing their job…..their bosses TELL them to accept apology and so it is all over.another example of the government ( whoever is in power) missing the point.
Mitchell is an arrogant tosser and should go.