Dawn Primarolo
If there is something wrong with Britain's body politic, it is creatures like Dawn Primarolo. Let's start with her good point: She's unprincipled. A former CND activist, she voted for trident's renewal mostly because her position in the government depends on her not having ideas of her own. A good thing too. If people like Dawn, whose "training" for politics was a degree in social science from Bristol poly, were allowed to think for themselves, we'd be in a right mess. As a "former" left-winger turned new-labour loyalist she'd be voting for 3 day weeks, cavorting trades unionists, and industrial planning, were she not told by her betters (yes even Gordon Brown is better than her) what to do. About the only interesting thing to happen to her on the way up was sexual harassment by John Reid. This incident, apparently put her off drinking. I imagine it had the same effect on him.
A spell at the treasury saw her overseeing child tax credits, which in Primarolo-world are "a great success", but her tenure saw civil servants walk out, and the Treasury select committee suggested she had "lost control" of her department. Thousands of the poorest people in the land face a bureaucratic struggle of Kafkaesque proportions to beg the Government for a bit of the money they shouldn't have been relieved of in the first place.
Her climb up the greasy pole has finally led her to the exalted hight of minister for public health, where she can exercise every nannying, vindictive, authoritarian instinct, in her understanding of our best interests, naturally. She's led the charge against the "scourge" of middle class "binge" drinkers (that's half a bottle of plonk of an evening to you or me). She's acted as cheerleader for innumerable petty revenue raising masquerading as public health measures. Her latest wheeze in this position is to remove cigarettes from pubs and ban shops from displaying them for sale. When discussing this on Radio 4, she came across as smug, hectoring and patronising. She actually said "it's for the children": the last refuge of the Daily Mail totalitarian.
When, oh when will Labour stop promoting people like this to parliament? She's never done anything outside the bubble of left-wing politics. She's married to a Trades union official. She went to a poly to read social science. She's incompetent, patronising, ignorant, illiberal and fucking ugly. She's got a voice like a tin bucket being pissed into - and that's when she thinks she's being measured and reasonable.
One suspects that if it weren't for her genitalia, she'd never make it to parliament. So few women put themselves forward, that if you think 50:50 is an ideal, you've got to accept what you get, no matter how unprepossessing. This tokenism means that you've got non-entities like Primarolo running your country. You've laws passed because people who've no concept of unforeseen consequences and no experience of business think it might be a good idea. That's why a new law has been passed every day for a decade and the tax code is an order of magnitude longer and more complex than it was in 1997.
Yes, Dawn, it would be better if people didn't smoke cigarettes, or drink too much or have sex at 13 to spawn vast hordes of bastards, or fight, or take drugs. But they will continue to do so, whether or not you and your vicious band of left-wing nanny-state authoritarians legislate or not. All you can do is make peoples lives harder and more miserable by taking away things they like and making them pay through the nose, though they can ill afford it.
Why don't you make our lives better by fucking off and dying you appalling bitch?
17 comments:
Wouldn't it be nice if they fucking listened? Unfortunately we don't belong to quangos flush with Eurogold. Oh, woe unto us...
That post has immeasurably improved my day, I laughed so hard I almost pissed myself.
Why are leftist hypocrites always so ugly?
I have no time for 'Red' Dawn, but hold a bit of fire on CND, on which I thought you might want a bit of historical perspective.
They were never just a simple anti-war organisation and their founding members were by no means pacifists.
They were simply an organisation, just dedicated to nuclear proliferation.
One of the their founders and leading lights was the terribly erudite but politically inept former Labour leader Michael Foot.
He was no pacifist. He was one third of Cato, the anonymous author of Guilty Men, the seminal tome which attacked those who backed appeasement before the Second World War and argued for British involvement.
Their star has certainly waned and their message muddied by loose association with Stop the War and left beggars and hangers on.
But just thought you should know.
Now you can carry on with the vitriol.
And she's got a moustache.
joel
Just a bit of perspective: "Guilty Men" attacked appeasers alright but made little mention of the other "official" appeasers; the Labour Party which - as a matter of policy and when Foot was a candidate for Parliament - opposed rearmament in the mid-30s.
And oh yes CND: do you remember the mass demonstrations outside the Soviet Embassy in CND's heyday? No, of course you don't, because they never happened. CND were and are the epitome of the useful idiotarian tendency. It is not "just an organisation": it appears to concern itself in every "movement" opposed to Britain and America. Furthermore, it is in love with Iran, potential nuclear weapons and all. However, you are correct that they are not pacifists except, of course, when it comes to British foreign policy.
Sorry Umbongo, but you lost in your own mists.
Guilty Men attacked all appeasers and wasn't party political.
Perhaps that is why Foot was a hopeless politician, because he had principles to which he stuck, and indeed sticks, regardless of whether they are popular.
As for the rest of your argument, perhaps it is just an example of 'mis-speak', because your brain cannot possibly be properly engaged.
joel
Your praise of Foot's principles implies that in "Guilty Men" Foot criticised himself and his party's anti-rearmament policies. Perhaps you should read the book and then comment rather than peddling ignorance.
BTW a suggestion: don't accuse me of lying because I disagree with you about CND's curious and well-publicised blind-spots. It's not a convincing argument.
Yes Guilty Men criticised Labour as well as the other parties.
Cato was three people, Foot, Liberal Frank Owen and Crossbencher, former Tory member and England Rugby captain Peter Howard.
Their particular targets were Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain, along with a few other ministers and officials.
A more cross party author and attack would be hard to find.
And, for the record, I didn't accuse you of lying, but of misspeak, which is completely different.
joel
Far be it from me to disparage your research on wikipedia but the whole point of "Guilty Men" - Conservative co-author notwithstanding - was to nail Chamberlain and the Tory appeasers. I've actually read the book. It's an admirable example of a polemic hatchet job on the pre-war Conservative policy of appeasement and exposes Conservative and fascist fellow-travelling appeasers. Labour doesn't get a look-in and, by omission, is awarded a free pass on its pre-war deriliction.
"Mis-speaking" is how Hillary describes her lying: please excuse my sensitivity.
Umbongo,
Sorry, old boy, but you must read it again.
Absolutely, Chamberlain is the principal target, but then he was PM so that feels only fair.
I quote:
'The fearful menace of the new Nazi Imperialism had been appreciated and forcefully exposed for five years past by a few clear-eyed and courageous figures in British public life, chief of all Mr. Winston Churchill. But under MacDonald-Baldwin these warnings were derided, their authors charged with cheap adventurism or alarmism.
'When the time came, only three years ago for MacDonald-Baldwin to wind up their firm at last and relinquish their emoluments they bequeathed to their successor, Mr. Neville Chamberlain, besides a mass of urgent problems which they had fumbled or funked....' etc etc.
All three hit, except future National and Tory PM Churchill.
And for the regard, it's Wikipedia idiot, it comes from the mouth of Michael Foot himself with whom I happen to have known for years and dine in the fine environs of the Gay Hussar.
PS, please excuse any typos, am busy working on the Terminal 5 fuck up.
joel
Of course Ramsey MacDonald was attacked. He was, after all, the traitor (to Labour) who sold out in 1931 to form a national government with the Conservatives. An attack on Macdonald was therefore not a criticism let alone an attack on Labour of whose anti-rearmament policy Foot was a big supporter. Sorry, you'll have to do better than that. Maybe you should ask Foot over dinner at the Gay Hussar why he fought the 1935 Monmouth election on a disarmament ticket but failed to mention that in his book.
Oh dear Umbongo (what sort of name is that?), I feel you are sinking without trace.
You are even resorting to Blairite arguments.
If one has been found wanting, find another path until that has worn through.
I can do no better than recommend you actually read the book and for once understand it in its historical context, rather than rely on generalist platitudes that seem to be de rigueur round here.
joel
You give evidence of Foot's even-handedness in criticising Labour by citing a criticism of Macdonald who was, to Foot and those in the Labour Party, the arch-turncoat of the 30s. Then, when this is pointed out, you claim it is, of all things, a "Blairite" argument: no - it's just a statement of fact.
It's now pretty obvious that you initially mouthed off in complete ignorance of your subject and rather than defend your view, seek to shift your "argument" to ad hominem flim-flam. I'm afraid you've been rumbled as the ignoramus you are. Frankly, AFAIC it was hardly worth the very little effort it took.
Dawn Primarolo is this season's Patricia Hewitt don't you know. ;-)
Where DO these harridans come from?
You showvinist pig.
You wouldn't know a good health minister if she bit you on the arse.
This is nothing but sexist drivel as you can see all the commenters are men.
I agree entirely, except with the part about her being ugly. That's ot meant as criticism of Jackart (although I don't think being pug ugly or otherwise makes a politician better or worse), but because I quite fancy the woman.
Being an IT contractor, one of the occupations afflicted by IR35 which Dim Prawn supervised in her time at the Treasury, that must make me some kind of masochist.
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