Sops for the toothless clones of Cerberus

The Commissioner for Standards has issued a scathing report on how backbenchers’ loyalty to the Government stands a very good chance of taking precedence over everything else in matters that an elected official of non-Ministerial status should uphold first and foremost: one’s independence of the Executive.

There is not one, single, lonely PL backbencher that has not been given an expensive treat dished up by the Government: a very expensive sop to a very toothless Cerberus, some two dozenplus clones (almost went for ‘clowns’) of a toothless Cerberus.

But let’s put the backbenchers aside – because it is an open secret that they have the spine of jelly-fish – and go back to a few months before the 2013 General Election.

And post-2013 this would have been no backbencher, had he not received six shots to the head in cold blood and had no choice but to kiss goodbye to the PL’s Deputy Leadership and, of course, Deputy Premiership in the few months that would have followed.

What followed those six shots to the head in cold blood was even more stunning as news, but even more deadly were the six years of the whiz-kid economy that has left these Islands in unprecedented turmoil.

We were told that the PL is hostage to the building moguls, the contractors. Not just close, but hostage – with dozens being summoned to clandestine meetings on the PL HQ’s Fourth Floor.

That was for openers, for the fatallyshot ex-Deputy Leader promised there were more earth-shaking – if not earthmoving – revelations to come.

And most of the natives of these sunny Isles hung on every word of the man.

But those earth-shaking revelations remained under wraps, and do so to this day, for after the 2013 Election this damp squib of a whistle-blower became the beneficiary of a plum post, independent of the Executive, true, but possible only through the PM’s approval – or rather connivance, if not machinations: a plum post, independent of the Executive but at the tax-payers’ expense.

Blood being thicker than water, well – one could not forget an aspiring member of the family, could one? And no one who was any one did. Some sop. Some Cerberus. Joe Genovese