Possibility 1: He’s not very bright and he isn’t on top of his brief. He wasn’t engaged when Dr Brown was making these statements. No one told him what was going on. He was, after all, only Minister of State at the Scottish Office at the time.
Possibility 2: He’s a liar. And, moreover, he is, as Scottish Secretary (having been promoted due to Alistair L Carmichael’s departure from government [L is for Liar by the way]) lying to parliament and to the Speaker, as well as to us plebs.
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On an entirely separate point, I’m wondering what his colleague (the lady sitting next to him) came as.
I’m a great believer in equality. Unlike the Scottish Labour Equalities spokesperson, Elaine Smith, I back it all the way. I’m an anti-discrimination kind of person.
I’ve been backing Carrie Gracie in her row with the BBC. Remuneration, I reckon, should be based on the difficulty of the job, not on the gender, colour, religion or sexuality of the incumbent. And given what a hard job she had, she probably should have been earing a good deal more than her colleagues in “easier” places in the world. Just for a start, she is fluent in Cantonese, which I suspect her counter[part in the USA is not.
And I don’t think it is ‘political correctness’ to have the views of Black, Asian, White, LGBTQ, male, female, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, etc. people heard in parliament, or in the cabinet. I don’t think there should be quotas but I think we need a parliament that reflects life in Scotland (or the UK).
I also don’t think that clothes are that important. As long as they are clean, keep you warm and cover your private bits, I can’t see that it makes a lot of difference if MPs wear jeans and t-shirts.
It’s what they do, not what they wear, that really matters. (I mean, I’d trade Fluffy in his expensive suit, for a SoS that cared about Scotland, no matter what they wore.)
However, we are where we are, and what’s good for one is good for another, and I was just wondering what the Speaker would say if a man turned up to sit on the front bench wearing a stripy t-shirt.
Seriously, if there is a dress code for men (and there is), there should be a dress code for women.
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MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
Sorry, whose dress are you objecting to? (Or what am I missing?)
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The lady with Mr Muddle. I’m not objecting to it exactly. As long as it’s ok for everyone in parliament to wear a pink and white striped t shirt to work, then it’s fine with me.
But I suspect that had Fluffy turned up in a t shirt he’d have been told to go home and change.
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Fluffy should go home and change into a clown outfit, except he just isn’t in the least funny 😦
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LOL Yeah!
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I’ve clarified it in the text a bit.
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OK, I’d just assumed from what I could see that the lady was wearing a dress, no big deal IMO.
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Maybe it is… I thought it looked like a t-shit (I have one like that, which I can’t wear to work). If men have to be in business dress, women should be in business dress, in my opinion.
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I cringe every time Fluffy opens his gub! How could something like that become Secretary of State for Scotland?
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Come to think of it, how could something like become an M.P.?
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Now… that is quite beyond me. Who’d vote for him?
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Well, initially of course they kept him as the back up, and Carmichael was SoS. But when the Tories won the election there were no Liberals to give it to, and there were no other Tories to give it to… so it was him or a cat.
Then May found out that he made good tea and kept the place quite tidy, so when the shed-load of utter roasters won at her otherwise disastrous election (where she lost her majority but bought Arlene) she let him stay on. Training one of the new numpties to make the tea just the way she likes it, would have taken too long.
I doubt if Arlene would care for him, but he’s so junior he probably never gets to meet her.
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Now you’ve go me imagining Fluffy as a cat, and honestly it’s not too difficult. He’ll purr contentedly if you scratch behind his ears, but does have the unfortunate habit of making little smelly ‘mistakes’ in odd places now and again where someone might step in them 😉
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My granny once had a cat called Fluffy. She was lovely. Not in the least like Fluffy Muddle.
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Indeed, the No. 10 cat couldn’t manage to do the job much worse, and would at least be a lot more endearing to visitors 🙂
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OK, let’s have the Downing Street cat then.
Larry, isn’t it? Bet he doesn’t lie…well, except in front of the fire.
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Besides his important tea making duties Fluffy is also charged with the onerous task of changing Larry’s litter tray. His responsibilities are many and varied.
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Oh goodness… what a multi-talented man.
I hope he doesn’t get confused and put the wrong stuff is Mrs May’s tea.
No, what am I saying?
Why would I care?
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Oh dear. I suppose he would have to be a ginger tom, even though his name is David.
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Alistair L Campbell? Carmichael?
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Damn. I always gt them mixed up. Thanks SF! 🙂
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This will cheer you up!
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Fluffy forgot, despite his enormous increase in staff and budget. Methinks he’s been spending that entertainment cash on booze for himslef.
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0.56 It’s all done in the best possible –
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lol
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Is that Fluffy in his alter ego?
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What we need for a start is a motion in Holyrood for the abolition of the Scottish Office and the position of Secretary of State. A toom tabard since devolution. All monies saved to be transferred to the Scottish budget. Future negotiations with Westminster would be conducted by the responsible ministries of both governments. No useless middle man.
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That sounds like a plan. The idea was that he was supposed to be Scotland’s man in the cabinet, but as we all know he’s the cabinet’s man in Scotland.
His job seems to be to try to frustrate the Scottish government as much as possible.
Yes, let’s get rid of him and his waste of space department.
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Agreed, George. Brilliant comment.
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I’ve been saying the same thing for quite a while now – Fluffy and his spontaneously inflating office are literally worse than useless, because their only function must be as a focus for Project Fear II. I do believe that it is past time that the Scottish Government and Parliament called time on the whole threadbare fiction: nobody has the right to represent Scotland if they were not empowered by us to do so.
As for the outrageous bit of mendacity we just saw in that clip – is that alone not enough to provoke some kind of censure from the Scottish Parliament, even if the Speaker at Westminster can’t be bothered?
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Agreed.
The question is, is he a liar or is he just stupid/lazy enough not to know the truth?
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It doesn’t actually matter whether it’s stupidity and laziness or deliberate mendacity in pursuit of a political goal, because either way Mundell is unfit to perform the office he holds and unfit to be a parliamentarian. The possibility exists, of course, that he is a stupid, lazy, deliberate liar all at once, because he apparently lacks the intelligence to make his lies particularly convincing. In a way, he is rather like the current President of the USA, on a less monstrous scale, and without the nukes.
Of course, based on the past performance of the current Westminster regime and all its members, of whom Mundell is just one, the default position we should adopt must be that none of what they say is true, absent corroborating evidence to the contrary. In that regard, Mundell is no different from the fragrant Theresa and such other odoriferous personages as Johnson, Fox-Werrity, Gove, Hunt and Rudd.
Now, those earlier statements of mine could be construed as defamatory, and are certainly unparliamentary; however, the egregious Mundell’s reality-defying performance shown in that clip provides evident and sufficient proof of veritas. In other words – fair comment.
It may be that we need a further proximate cause – or a casus belli – to move a vote of no confidence in the Secretary of State for Scotland, and in his office, both with and without an initial capital letter. If so, we will probably not have long to wait: oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive…
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Oh, what is it with WordPress – I usually sign in as eddjasfreeman, in case you we wondering who this Edward Freeman character is, but today WordPress is giving me error 403 Forbidden! when I try to log in that way. Just when I was feeling like strangling someone already…
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LOL.
Munguin says, please, not him.
God knows with WordPress.
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Oh lord… I had a vision there of Fluffy with his finger on the button!
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