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Rules..for the many, or the few ?


Rewulf
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I did wonder and came up with a few possibilities;

  1. The Angel Gabriel will descent into No 9 Court at the Old Bailey and appear for the defence - possibly even conduct the defence?
  2. She will convert the water into wine - and the court will all be "3 sheets in the wind" and let her off
  3. There will be an event like the meeting after the resurrection where all of the court members start talking in 'foreign tongues' and everyone becomes good friends and her appeal overturns the verdict
  4. He constituents, seeing the gross injustice against her, line the steps of the Old Bailey with palm fronds, the judge sees a vision, and her appeal overturns the verdict

Of course there are other possibilities, but they verge on the incredulous.

My apologies to anyone who I may have offended with my attempt at quasi religious humour

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From the Guardian;

"It seems a strange thing to say about the disgraced Labour MP for Peterborough, but Fiona Onasanya is a lucky woman. Onasanya was found guilty of conspiring to pervert the course of justice last month. She faces a prison sentence. She is contemplating the ruin of a career that included her public aspiration to become Britain’s first black female prime minister. I’m not sticking my neck out very far to say that this last is not now going to happen.

Onasanya’s offence: she repeatedly denied to police that she was behind the wheel when her car was caught speeding in Cambridgeshire in 2017. She refused to say who was driving. In fact it was Onasanya, who is a qualified solicitor as well as an MP. After a first trial failed to agree a verdict, Onasanya was found guilty at the retrial. She will be sentenced soon.

Amazingly, Onasanya remains an MP, at least until then. This is the first reason she is lucky. Many of us would have already been fired by now. MPs, however, enjoy some privileges, often rightly (think for a moment about the potential for partisan mischief of a general zero-tolerance statute). So a conviction does not debar someone from being an MP unless they are sentenced to 12 months or more (the result of a law brought in after the IRA hunger-striker Bobby Sands was elected in 1981 while serving 14 years). So Onasanya is entitled to remain until she is sentenced.

Yet her determination is unusual. In recent cases in which MPs have faced criminal trials, they have often resigned before trial or sentencing. The Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne, who also lied to police about a speeding offence, resigned as an MP after pleading guilty in 2013. During the expenses crisis, Labour’s David Chaytor, Jim Devine, Margaret Moran, Elliot Morley and Denis MacShane all quit before trial, and Eric Illsley did so before sentence. Conservative Nigel Evans stayed in the Commons while on trial for sexual offences in 2014, of which he was acquitted. Onasanya, convicted, remains.

What is more, she is up for a fight. In an unabashed article for the Peterborough Telegraph last week, Onasanya wrote that “anyone who has been following the news” would know that politics has recently been busy and fractious over Brexit and welfare reform, and that she was fighting for Peterborough. There was zero acknowledgment that anyone who had been following the news would also know she had been convicted of a serious crime – and no suggestion she had let her electors down. Far from it. Onasanya has now compared herself to Jesus, whose conviction “by the courts of his day” was the start of “the next chapter in his story”.

Her messianic defiance hasn’t gone unrebuked. As soon as she was convicted, the Labour party suspended her. Jeremy Corbyn said she was “obviously” not going to stay an MP. Onasanya’s article prompted the paper’s editor to say that, while he felt duty bound to publish her column because she was the local MP, she ought to resign. “She is no longer fit to represent the people of Peterborough,” Mark Edwards wrote. But represent Peterborough she still does. It will be fascinating to see how far she pushes her luck in the Commons when it returns on Monday.

Because here’s the second reason Onasanya is lucky. Convicted MPs are actually very rare. No sitting MP has been imprisoned since 1991. That’s not because, as the expenses scandal showed, there have been no miscreants. It’s because, in the past 25 years, a story like hers would have had only one ending. Onasanya would have been driven out of Westminster, probably by the media alone, and also by political and parliamentary ostracism. But not, perhaps, any longer.

That’s because Onasanya is a beneficiary of something new – the Brexit obliteration effect. With politics so preoccupied, stories like hers have slipped down the agenda to become merely a sideshow. Neither her peers nor the media have the energy or space to chase her down in the old way. The blanket of Brexit has settled across almost everything in politics, like a deposit of volcanic ash, making traditional politics all but impossible. That same blanket is heaven sent for someone such as Onasanya.

Moreover, and let’s face facts here, she is a vote. In a knife-edge hung parliament, every vote matters. Last month, when Theresa May’s leadership was on the line, the Conservative high command quietly took Burton MP Andrew Griffiths and Dover’s Charlie Elphicke back into the fold. They did so because their votes for May mattered more to Tory whips than the claims of inappropriate sexual behaviour, which the MPs deny, that led to their suspensions.

Convicted MP Fiona Onasanya intends to stay in parliament

Labour has decisively cut its ties with Onasanya. But she still has a vote, and she is a vote for Corbyn’s pro-Brexit stance. That vote would be lost if there was an early byelection in leave-voting, marginal Peterborough, which Onasanya won from the Tories in 2017 by a mere 607 votes. You can see why Labour might be willing to wait. Not even the Tories want a Peterborough byelection right now, especially if Nigel Farage reverses his pledge not to run, turning the contest into a toxic verdict on May’s Brexit. In the end, it may take a recall petition to oust Onasanya.

Britain can “turn a corner” and start a new chapter if parliament backs her Brexit deal, said May in her new year’s message. She makes that all sound so simple. Get Brexit sorted and move on. In essence it’s what Corbyn wants too, to get back to “real” politics after this long distraction. But as the Onasanya saga shows, such politics is asphyxiated by Brexit. Post-Brexit politics will be much more like Brexit politics than May and Corbyn think. There will be no quick turning of corners and no tidy new chapters, whatever MPs decide in two weeks’ time."

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6 minutes ago, TIGHTCHOKE said:

From the Guardian;

 

6 minutes ago, TIGHTCHOKE said:

but Fiona Onasanya is a lucky woman.

Here I go at the risk of being politically incorrect; I think that she is also lucky that in the present climate of paranoia about discrimination against various groups, she is female, black, lefty, immigrant ....... all of which might (justifiably in some instances) claim to be (as groups) victims of discrimination.  A white male MP would very possibly have been convicted at the first trial.

In this case - at the second trial - I believe the right verdict was reached (based on the evidence of what I can read in the press).  However she might claim that press coverage is also biased ........

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On 17/01/2019 at 05:33, JohnfromUK said:

Bless her, being part of the political elite she can continue to plunder the public purse with impunity. Just adding fuel to the fire.

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1 hour ago, Dibble said:

"Last night she said in a statement through her son’s lawyers: ‘I would like to apologise if any of my actions or words have been misinterpreted by others in any way over recent months."

Brilliant!

 

So she has apologised for talking ****?

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3 minutes ago, Newbie to this said:

Which one, the one who has apologised isn't the one awaiting sentencing.

Quite, it is Osamor that has apologised, I guess she can see some trouble coming. 

2 minutes ago, Yellow Bear said:

That will be a first for a lieboor politician:D

Can we get it carved in to a large piece of stone like Ed Millibands pointless effort?

283E58AE00000578-0-Mr_Miliband_ordered_the_huge_stone_monument_to_be_created_despit-a-9_1430696386310.jpg

Edited by TIGHTCHOKE
Image.
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Just now, JohnfromUK said:

Kate Osamor - lied to try and reduce sentence for son convicted of drugs dealing; also alledged to have threatened journalists.  Not charged or tried (yet) herself.

Fiona Onasanya - lied to try and avoid speeding charge - found guilty. Awaiting sentence.

And coupled with the lovely Dianne Abbott poor old Jeremy has his work cut out!

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3 minutes ago, JohnfromUK said:

She is bright enough to make them look really stupid!

 

8744716-0-image-a-36_1547944150893.jpg

Edited by TIGHTCHOKE
Image!
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8 minutes ago, TIGHTCHOKE said:

She is bright enough to make them look really stupid!

Trouble is - if they go on long enough, they may end up costing her the job.  The BBC hierarchy are unlikely to risk any prolonged allegations of bias - especially if they are implied to be of a racial nature.

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1 minute ago, JohnfromUK said:

Trouble is - if they go on long enough, they may end up costing her the job.  The BBC hierarchy are unlikely to risk any prolonged allegations of bias - especially if they are implied to be of a racial nature.

Then the BBC's defence should be that she has a track record of STUPIDITY!

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