Captain Underpants stays as OT minister

(CNS): According to the Governor's Office, Chris Bryant remains UK minister with responsibility for Overseas Territories following a Cabinet reshuffle in which he and Baroness Glenys Kinnock essentially switched jobs. Bryant has now been given the more prestigeous post of minister for Europe while Kinnock takes on Africa. CNS reported this morning that the Kinnock had now also replaced Bryant as OT Minister but this appears not to be the case. Bryant, a former vicar who is notorious for posing on a gay website in only his Y-fronts, has attracted more derision by scooping Downing Street and the Foreign Office in announcing the mini Cabinet reshuffle by posting it on  Twitter.

Shadow Europe Minister Mark Francois is quoted in the Daily Mail as saying, “Gordon Brown’s government is again stumbling into farce. Glenys Kinnock was appointed in chaos, now she has the embarrassment of being the first minister ever whose reshuffle has been announced on Twitter by her successor.”

The move into a less prestigious ministerial position is largely seen as acknowledgment by Prime Minister Gordon Brown that he made a mistake by appointing Lady Kinnock, the wife of former Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock, into the high profile European post. However, she retains her minister of state salary of £106,136, while Bryant keeps his parliamentary under-secretary of state salary of £96,167.

CaribWorldNews reports that yesterday (12 October), in a written ministerial statement to the House of Commons, Bryant said elections for a new government in the Turks & Caicos Islands, where Britain has imposed direct rule, should be held by July 2011, if not sooner. He also insisted that the 14 August suspension of ministerial government and the House of Assembly for a period of up to two years in TCI was “taken to restore the principles of good governance and sound financial management in the Turks and Caicos Islands.”

He also revealed that a full review of the TCI government`s finances has been undertaken and measures put in place to limit public expenditure, increase revenue and bring the Islands` debt under control.