It is a glorious morning. The daffodils are still pretty perky. The tulips are surging away. The birds are a-wooing and a-cooing all over the place, and it seems absolutely criminal on a morning like this – an April morning, when there is frankly nowhere in the universe more lovely than England – that I should be sitting inside and slaving over a computer and brooding about Damian McBride.
I don’t want to talk about McBride. I don’t want to think about him. There is a large part of me that does not want to read another sentence about this lately exploded pustule on the posterior of the British body politic. But as I look at his rubicund face as it leers from the papers, and as I study his ludicrous emails, I feel it is my duty to history to share with readers my own experience of McBride and McBride-ism.
It was a trivial enough episode in itself. And yet it left me convinced that this decaying, clapped-out, paranoid Labour government had finally forfeited the moral authority to rule, for one simple but decisive reason: they were patently more interested in themselves than in the good of the country.
My moment of revelation took place in August last year. It was the Olympic handover party in Beijing, and it had been organised with great panache and economy by the London authorities. It was a terrific, almost euphoric event in the courtyard of one of the old hutongs.
The mood was exalted not so much because London was to be the next host city, but because we were celebrating extraordinary athletic achievements by Team GB. British competitors had not only done well in cycling, sailing and rowing. They had produced some sensational results in boxing and in track and field; and the overall result was the best performance by a British Olympic team for 100 years.
Here, surely, with the eyes of the world upon us, was the moment for the handful of British politicians to put aside party squabbles. It was a moment for maturity. It was a moment to stop spinning and sniping. It was time to salute the athletes and bask in their reflected glory. Or so you might have thought. It must have been sometime after midnight, when the speeches had been made and the athletes cheered for the umpteenth time, that someone came up and whispered some mystifying news. There was a picture of Myra Hindley on display somewhere in the compound.
What? I said. Why on earth would someone be showing a picture of the notorious child-killer? What had she got to do with the Olympics? It turned out that her portrait was indeed briefly visible, for those with sharp eyes, in a tourism promotion video that was being shown on one of the TV screens. The image had been culled from the Royal Academy’s exhibition of Young British Artists, and was presumably designed to show that London was the home of cool, groovy and cutting-edge art and culture of all kinds. In defence of those who made this promo video, Hindley was only on screen for a second, and the video had been used for at least two years, around the world, without any previous complaint. Still, it was an obvious goof. We pulled it at once, and hoped the fuss would die down.
We reckoned without McBride, who was there with his master, Gordon Brown. All night, the media obsession with Myra Hindley seemed to grow. And that was because all night McBride was on the phone trying to crank the story up – demanding investigations, demanding apologies, issuing furious denunciations in the name of the Prime Minister. At one stage, it really looked as though the good feeling engendered by a British sporting triumph would be extinguished by a hoary old controversy about a Myra Hindley painting.
And who was the fly in the ointment? Who was the slug on the milk bottle? Who was the proverbial t— in the punchbowl of Olympic joy?
It was the Prime Minister’s press officer and strategist, Damian McBride. Because, of course, it wasn’t any member of the British team who saw and identified the Hindley portrait. It wasn’t even a member of the press corps. It was a member of Gordon Brown’s party who spotted the fleeting howler, and it was McBride who – with the indulgence of his boss – tried to turn it into a story.
I was left in the end with a feeling of amazement and disgust. Here was a man paid a six-figure sum, by the taxpayer, to present and explain the work of government. He had flown half-way round the world, again at the expense of the taxpayer, to attend a celebration of British Olympic achievement.
But he had walked into that event determined to find fault. He didn’t give a monkey’s about the athletes, and he didn’t give a toss about the way Britain might be perceived by other countries. He simply wanted to find a way – any way – of having a go at the London authorities who had organised the affair, because the people of London had recently had the temerity not to vote for a Labour mayor. He wanted to poison the party, even if it meant embarrassing Britain in a foreign capital. He did not succeed, but I am afraid that in that moment he and his master stood revealed.
Look at these emails, and the nauseating priorities they show. This McBride has been in charge, since September, of government strategy. He is meant to be coming up with ways of helping people through the recession. And what do we have? A load of pathetic and invented smears, with McBride egging on the blogs to mount false attacks not just on MPs but on their wives.
It is contemptible, and it is a function of the bunker-like desperation in which the Prime Minister and his allies now find themselves.
In their relentless, brutal, tribal viciousness they are no longer interested in doing good for the country, but only in doing down their opponents. They have lost their moral case to govern the country. They must go.
[First published in the Daily Telegraph on 14 April, 2009 under the heading: “The night in Beijing when I saw Damian McBride’s true colours.”]
The behaviour of Damian McBride has made me so angry. This country is sick of this sort of behaviour, we want and need something better and it is miserable, depressing and a disgrace that politics be dragged down to this level.
http://aolsearch.aol.co.uk/aol/search?query=The%20PM%20is%20up%20to%20his%20neck%20in%20this%20squalid%20affair%2E%20Peter%20Oborne&invocationType=sb_uk
Peter Oborne has written an article on this horrible state of affairs that expresses everything I feel and started to fear as soon as we heard that Alastair Campbell had been recalled to advise the PM. All that Alastair Campbell has ever done is smear others, including members of his own party. The economic situation is dreadful and the country needs to keep up morale to get out of a hole. Bringing Alastair Campbell back meant one thing, the further rotting of the fabric of political life and the dragging down of decency to the lowest common denominator.
ps. the article about the bees is so beautiful and inspiring. Look at the posts that resulted from the article! They are all so joyous and hopeful.
McBride and the government ought to be bridled and packed off asap
Mel
Is it too soon to start talking of Mr Brown in the past tense? He already feels like an ex-Prime Minister. Can we take a historical view and see him as one of those ‘footnote’ PMs, like, say, Lord Rosebery?
Tiresias, am with you but wonder: if GB is forced out now just as the bulk of the unemployment figures come in, where will the blame be laid for all the mess?
Hospital Consultant until age 70. 1960 hospital 1,500 patients, small management committee only seen for jollies-which were rare. Med.Superintendant, Matron, Sr.House, Sr. Tutor,some admin, all mates. Place ran like clock, all my time available for patients and trainee.
A time remembered with greatest affection.
Retiring, 2003, nice old Gen. hosp. my division 100 patients. A glossy brochure filled with photos of the dozens of happy management/admin staff came annually, gradually increasing in weight. Constant bombardment from same; paper overload, meeting fatigue, no real time for trainee, work over to see all patients-if lucky.
A time remembered with dismay.
In the recent past our hospitals have been wrenched into a nighmarish over administered mess, and the pen and paper pushers have roared out of the cupboards in which we previously restrained them, grabbed the income, rid themselves of tiresome essential staff in order to save their desks, and have taken over our(the nurses and doctors) world as if were safe so to do. Being rather busy people, we have not fought the tendency, and the result is only really apparent to we oldies who remember how it was possible to run a good service for pennies.
Socialism, and it’s urge to control every damned thing has done us in,and I fear my turn in a hospital bed.
Damian McBride resigning?
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer gentleman.
It puts a song in my heart – so I’ve written one especially for Messrs Brown, McBride and Draper.
D
Back stabbing and smearing – just another day in the Labour Party. I thought people went into Politics to make a difference, not to be nasty and bring shame upon our country.
I am so proud of having the Olympics in ’12, I just hope the political ambitions of some people will not embarrass us as a nation.
I think you can trace the demise of Brown from the time he went on a sudden visit to Baghdad in the middle of the Tory conference.
I was surprised by the number of people who rang radio phone ins to express their outrage. Many of them Labour supporters who were saying that enough was enough.
To use the government spin machine in an attempt to outdo your political opponents was not only bad manners, it was a gross misuse of taxpayers’ money.
The lack of decency in that surprise visit is reflected in these tawdry emails.
The utterly unscrupulous nature of this government and its increasing police state mentality leaves me very scared for our country.
Remember, the last world slump to rival this gave birth to National Socialism.
Last time when Alastair Campbell worked as Tony Blair’s spin doctor, he kept a diary which later he sold to a publisher as a book on Blair. In his book, there are several entries refer to Tony Blair’s penchant for standing naked in front him while they were working in Blair’s little office. Very dodgy indeed.
I mean, naked footballers share a communal open shower room together because they have to. But… why did Tony Blair enjoy standing naked in front of Alastair Campbell while they were working in his little office? It was unnecessary. And for Campbell not having the gut to complain directly at the time for fear of losing his job – it just shows what kind of man Campbell really is: a coward. In any other working places, that would amount to sexual harassment. And Cherie Blair, a lawyer, should know that.
Talking about sexual exhibination. New book ” AMERICAN LEGACY ” by #1 New York Times bestseller author C. David Heymann, about JFK Jr.
On JFK Jr’s sexuality, Heymann writes: ” There is no question that he certainly had a predilection toward or an interest in gays and a kind of hyper sexuality, that includes his exhibitionism. He was known to walk around nude at men only gyms in Aspen, Col., and in New York City.”
Of course, I am not implying that Tony Blair is a bisexual man; and we all know that a bisexual man is a man who can have sex with women but is also interested in other men sexually by either having actual sex with other men or sexual exhibition in front of other men. But his frequently unnecessasy sexual exhibition in front of Campbell is questionable.
In his book, Campbell also mentioned a time at a G8 summit, when Clinton, Blair and other world leaders were standing peeing side by side in the toilet. Everybody was quiet, so Clinton joked: ” This is the greastest picture that was never taken !”. And Tony Blair quickly replied with his joke: ” Churchill was standing, peeing in a toilet. Attlee came in and stood next to him. Churchill moved away, Attlee looked hurt. Churchill replied: ” Eveytime you see something big, you want to nationalise it !”. Uncomfortable laughters, wrote Campbell.
This also brings us back to that scandal involving Cherie Blair and her personal life guru Carole Caplin. It said that Cherie shared showers with Carol while letting Carol rub her body off toxins because Carol said so. Mmm… very homoerotic…
When the story broke, Cherie denied. But, I mean, Cherie is a lawyer, surely she should not have used the excuse that she believed in what Carol told her about toxins in your body needs to be rubbed out by another woman in a shower.
Gay Gordon, be warned!
Why all the fuss and feigned surprise at a culture of mis- information and lies from the office of No10?
Remember 9-11- Jo Moore and her boss Martin Sixsmith losing their jobs with Stephen Byers Transport Department for the infamouse -‘This is a good day to bury bad news!’
I seem to remember the phrase from Blair- ‘Lessons will be learnt’
Have they hell!
Hildegarde, do we really care what these idiots do in their spare time? The extracts from Alastair Campbell’s book that I have glanced at as serialisations are so appalling, I made a point of never reading the actual book.
I admired Cherie Blair when she stood up for Carol Caplin, who was her friend, against Alastair Campbell. Some gossip about Carol was circulating in the papers and Alastair was shouting and trying to bully Cherie to dump Carol over the scandal. Cherie replied “Why should I, you used to write a sex column.”
Alastair Campbell, Derek Draper, Damian McBride, they are
“crows who peck at the eagles.” Coriolanus.
Now back to the gutter where he belongs
It would be interesting to know how those emails emerged. McBride apparently had enemies in Labour’s own ranks – perhaps someone just saw an excellent opportunity to knife him in the back?
Boris I remember thinking at the time your “ping pong is coming home” speech completely outclassed the dreary platitudes mouthed by all the Labour politicians in Beijing.
Dungeekin
Absolutely love the song you have written – what a legend!
I have also retweeted it
Melissa, thanks very much for your kind comment here and on the post itself.
Not wishing to hijack, but if your readers liked that then they may also like a spot of Gilbert & Sullivan?
D
“TWO DINNERS TOM WATSON IS BEHIND THIS SICK PLOT”
A sharp article by Fergus Shanahan at The Sun 14 April 09
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/columnists/fergus_shanahan/article2375497.ece
—
“PLAQUI SMTH” The Sun, 14 April 09
Pranksters have fixed an English Heritage styled blue plaque to the “main home” of Labour Home Secretary minister Jacqui Smith to shame her over her vast expenses claims.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2375829.ece
—
“PLIGHT OF THE DOWNSISEZERS” Daily Mail, 14 April 09
Look at the damages Labour Party has done to this country: Record numbers of middle-class homeowners are trying desperately to sell and move to smaller properties. Under Labour, a communism influenced party, having a bit of money is a crime, except the Labour top dogs themselves.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1169774/The-plight-downsizers-Record-number-middle-classes-desperate-sell-homes.html
Mary Martin, wife of Common Labour Speaker Michael Martin is the most travelled woman in the UK. She has NO official role, yet her husband scrounges a ticket for her every time he blags another freebie. She has just enjoyed a holiday in Dubai with him. Her holiday cost us taxpayers £8,000.
(Fergus Shanahan 14/4/09)
—
In Cornwall there is outrage after councill boss Sheila Healy took £500,000 from taxpayers in redundancy money only to pop up 4 weeks later as new £150,000 councill boss in Shropshire. Cornwall councillors claim she deliberately engineered her own redundancy before cashing in with her new job. (Fergus Shanahan 14/4/09)
Gee! This country has really gone to the dogs!
—
Jobless European stay on for UK benefits.
“POLES SEEKING DOLE DOUBLES IN 2 YEARS” The Sun, 14/4/09
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2375831.ece
So, rough schools are hiring bouncers to protect teachers from student yobs! No wonder hypocritical Labour Lefties Harriet Harman, Dianne Abbott and Ruth Kelly send their kids to posh schools.
—
Decent people have to answer 53 questions before Labour let then OUT of Britain. But thousands of Pakistani “students” have been allowed IN no questions asked. Many of them have gone under ground as under cover terrorists waiting for instructions from their masters.
That’s the madness of Labour’s surveillance society. Ordinary folks are treated as the enemy.
We do have powerful anti-terror laws BUT council spies use them to catch babies dropping crisps!
Why not just put up a new channel at airports marked
“Bombers This Way”? (Fergus Shanahan 14/4/09)
Hedgie, somehow the successful Tory blogger Guido, (Paul Staines) got hold of the e-mails. I have no idea how.
Hildegarde, it was extremely amusing about the English Heritage placard. Apparently Jacqui Smith is delighted to have been knocked off the front pages by the latest Labour scandal.
I am absolutely fedup, as you say, that whenever someone wishes to smear a target, they say they are gay. Gordon ought to understand, because they were saying it about him at one stage. And William Hague and Seb Coe, just because they practised judo, and James Purnell and Uncle Tom cobley. All absolutely untrue in every case, but what on earth is wrong with being gay? Now apparently Sir Alan Sugar is the latest gay icon, and good for him!
As for what Alastair Campbell said about Tony Blair, you really don’t need a friend like him, do you?
I totally sympathise with Lord Mandelson when he has a go at people for calling him “Mandy”. There is very little I do agree with Lord Mandelson on, but when he turned on a reporter and said firmly that he disliked the nickname and it was homophobic, I cheered.
Wonders will never cease, Gordon has just apologised for Smeargate! Apologising for GB is like passing a kidney stone. He had to do it, it was all so damaging for the Labour Party, how low can politics sink?
” WHITEWASH! PROBE INTO WHAT PM KNEW OF SCANDAL RULED OUT! ”
Smear gate was in danger of becoming a whitewash last night. The sun, 16/4/09
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/aticle2379733.ece?OTC-RSS&ATTR=News
—
Brown’s letter of ‘apology’ to Tory MP Nadine Dorries does not say much, but his writing reveals a great deal. The Sun showed the note to handwriting analyst Jan Harrison. She said: “Handwriting is body language frozen in ink. The short, clipped letters suggest penning the note through gritted teeth. Its leftward slant suggests the PM is drawing away from the debacle and trying to bring things to a quick conslusion.
He does not want any more fuss and would rather draw a line under the whole affair. Mr. Brown’s letters are very simplified in their information, to the point of being illegible in places. Illegibility always indicates some difficulty in communicating with others.”
Sorry, that link doesn’t work. Try google search:
WHITEWASH GEORGE PASCOE WATSON THE SUN
Kay Burley on SKY is being very gutsy in facing down Shaun Woodward’s protestations that Gordon Brown totally disapproves of Damian McBride’s smears. She pointed out that everyone in Westminster knows that they were joined at the hip and this huge pretence of innocence and expressin of sorrow from Gordon is just that, a pretence.
She has so far only failed to ask one question that I would ask. If Gordon Brown is so outraged at the smear tactics and he believes that they should not be a part of political life, why on earth did he recall Alastair Campbell?
Angela, I agree with you about Brown ordering McBride to make up smears about a discreet gay MP whilst Brown knows very well that he himself has been a subject of gay rumours for years even now that he’s married.
We do have nice gay friends; but not all gay or straight people are nice naturally. And we all know that a bisexual/gay man has some female streaks in him. Being a male; and if it’s in his genes, naturally he wants power. If he has nice female streaks, that makes him a nice man with power. Otherwise, the opposite is a deadly combination. Of course, a straight man with power can be a deadly one, too; but not as bad.
Nice, openly gays: Alan Duncan, Christopher Biggins… Deadly bisexuals/gays: Hitler, Chairman Mao, Lenin, Stalin, Bhrenev, Polpot, Khomeini, Putin, Castro, Peter Mandelson, un-married Damian McBride…
Some “Special Adviser” must have advised Brown that an in-the-closet-bisexual politician who wants the top job ought to get married the stop the gay rumours. But, it never works for any bisexual/gay- look at Rock Hudson and others.
Castro had to invite Italian actress Claudia Cardinale over to Cuba for an “intimate” vacation in order to silence the gay rumours. Poor misguided Cardinale came out of Cuba, never dared say a bad word about her experience.
“Married” Putin can now safely and openly enjoy his vacations in the Siberian wilderness with never-married Albert of Monaco, with only Putin’s lone bodyguard for company. While Chairman Mao enjoyed being massaged by naked young men from his army of totally brain-washed bodyguards. And never-married 4’3″ tall Koo-Kee Jr. is always wearing his Barbara Windsor hairdo, Oversized women Chanel sunglasses and platform shoes in order to look like a 5′ tall fashionable Chinese lady in his starving North Korea country.
How can they clean up the House of Commons when deadly bisexual/gay people like Brown, Mandelson, McBride still lurking in the corridors of Westminster?
Picture of communist North Korea leader Koo-Kee Junior.
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=102654
Apparently his father Koo-Kee Senior passed his power to him before he popped his clogs in order to keep the eternal power in his family. Handy, eh? It saves the cost of election preparations, too. Who can blame them?
Oh Hildegarde, sweetie!
Your nasty little post is too poisonous to be ironic. You seek to attack someone for spreading malicious rumours, and then you try to promulgate some stinking innuendo yourself.
I am reminded of the quotation from, I believe, Oscar Wilde. You are certainly there in the gutter as well, and you certainly aren’t looking at the stars…
Hildegard, I just don’t agree with you. There are nice and unpleasant people of all sexualities and that is not tied in with them being gay or straight or bisexual. It is down to personality, which is an individual thing.
We have no right to intrude into the private life of any politician, it is none of our business and nothing to do with how they do their job, which is all we have a right to be concerned about.
I certainly am not a supporter of Lord Mandelson, but when he is sneered at for his sexuality, I get really angry. Why should he have to put up with that? One of my heroes is Harvey Milk and another one is Peter Tatchell. Peter Tatchell is a very brave man.
Damian Green was threatened by the police with life in prison. That is absolutely disgusting. Are we a police state now, and do the police act like bully boys, threatening people who later are judged not even to deserve being charged? This is one of the worst things ever to happen to an MP. As Damian Green pointed out, it is the first time this has happened to an MP since Britain became a democracy. Appalling.
Oh Angela, sweetie! We were talking about deadly, dangerous bisexual/gay politicians and NOT about nice, open or discreet bisexual/gay politicians.
When I said I agreed with you about Gordon Brown ordering McBride to make up smears about some discreet gay MPs while Brown knows that he himself has been a subject of bisexual/gay rumours himself – that I meant that was how ironic it was for Brown to do such as thing. And how do you know that Brown was not involved in this smear compaign?
You said you admired Peter Mandelson for complaing about the press calling Mandy; but how do you know that Mandelson was not involved in this smear compaign?
You said you admired Cherie Blair for standing up to Campbell when he critised her life guru Carole Caplin’s antics and influence. Cherie and Caplin are 2 rotten apples; Cherie might have paid Caplin with Tony Blair’s cost of running second home expenses allowance, who knows?
This is politics, Angela. Standing up for her dodgy friends doesn’t make Cherie Blair admireable. With her record of dodgy properties dealings using her husband’s PM position, Cherie Blair is not someone for us to admire. When the scandals broke, she was advised ironicly by Campbell, to call an press conference and to cry shamelessly in front of the press cameras claiming she was just a normal housewife -she is not someone for us to admire.
Complaining about the press calling him Mandy doesn’t make Mandelson admireable while Mandelson himself has been doing untold damages to this country and big favours for the Russians. If Mandelson wants to be respected by the press like Alan Duncan, then he should look again at his politics.
As for Gordon Brown; obviously must have been advised by Campbell and Mandelson AND Oprah Winfrey; who knows?!, saying sorry for the smear campaign and that he takes full responsibility for the scandal IN ORDER TO STOP Conservative Party’s demand for a full investigation into this smear scandal – they are not admireable men.
I wonder if Hitler had stood up for some of his soldiers against some German army captains, you would have admired him, too?
Oscar Wild’s quotes are agreeable but not all of them are useable, Angela: Do you think the Tories should just accept Brown’s belated, forced, engineered sorry and drop their demand for a full investigation and forget about it all?
As I have said before on Guido’s blog.
Damien McBride should be arrested under the anti terrorism laws for spreading hate literature which is what he was doing when you think about it.
Oh, another thing, Angela: Now, as Jacqui Smith has told the police not to prosecute Damian Green, should the Tories just gracefully accept her generousity and forget all about it and just move on?
She said: “Someone” called the police to arrest Green, and now she has told them not to prosecute him, and that “it would have been irresponsible of the police if they had not arrested him” !!! Like someone accuses an innocent person of rape and demands the police to arrest that person? If that’s the case, I might accuse Peter Mandelson of raping me then see his name and picture in papers. In real life, false accusation of rape will land you in jail.
The Tories must demand a full investigation into this matter. Not just gracefully accept her generous pardon.
You can see she must have been advised by Mandelson, Campbell: By ending Green’s investigation and Brown’s saying sorry about their smear scandal, Labour believe that it will draw an end to their bad deeds.
WHO IS WHO IN THIS SMEAR CAMPAIGN ( Daily Mail, 14/4/09 )
GORDON BROWN: Employed both Damian McBride and Charlie Whelan as his Special Advisers and did little to rein in their worst excesses. Brought Peter Mandelson back to the cabinet last October; and this is what happened! was visited at home in Scotland by Tom Watson round the time the “curry house plot” was hatched to force Tony Blair from Number 10.
PETER MANDELSON: One-time enemy of Gordon Brown. Sentationally brought back to Cabinet as Business Secretary last year by Brown; and this is what happened! Appeared alongside his former aide Derek Draper and Ray Collins at the launch of the LabourList website. Has provided Brown with crucial PR advice since his return.
CHARLIE WHELAN: Brown’s former spin chief, now political director at the super-union UNITE. He was involved with the creation of “The Red Rag” website, receiving emails from McBride and Draper.
DEREK DRAPER: Ex-Labour spin doctor, married to GMTV’s Kate Garraway presenter. He launched the “independent” LABOURLIST website flanked by Ray Collins and his former boss Lord Peter Mandelson last year. Told McBride his smears ideas for “The Red Rag” website were “absolutely, totally brilliant”, copied Whelan and Andrew Dodgshon into his email replies.
ANDREW DODGSHON: A married 47-year-old Trade Union loyalist, he was to have been the frontman for “The Red Rag” website, according to McBride’s emails. Currently works alongside Whelan in the political office at UNITE and received at least one email from Draper.
DAMIAN MCBRIDE: Special Adviser to Brown since 2005 and previously worked for him at the Treasury. His dirty tricks smears plans were emailed to Draper, Dodgshon and Whelan. McBride, known as Mad Dog ( or McPoison – a nick name first given to him by poisonous Mandelson himself! ), is also very close to Watson, another member of Brown’s inner circle.
TOM WATSON: Cabinet Office Minister. He masterminded the “curry house plot” coup which forced Tony Blair from power! One of Brown’s “ultras”, he has a seat at the heart of the Number 10 operation. Drinking buddy of McBride’s and a key pointman for the Labour grassroots movement.
RAY COLLINS: Labour Party General Secretary. He SANTIONED THE USE OF LABOUR HQ to host the launch of LABOURLIST “independent” website by Draper. Meaning this event and the website might have been and being funded by the taxpayers. The event was also attended by Mandelson. Reports regularly to Brown on party’s issues. Was sent confidential memo from Draper on “new media stragety” at the same time that “The Red Rag” website was being discussed.
———-
There we are. And tell me “Lord” Mandelson is admireable, Brown is admireable and Cherie Blair is admireable.
Well, Jacqui Smith and the whole Labour Party are lefties who specialise in smearing and hate preaching that’s why they will never arrest those Islamic hate preachers, let alone McBride for spreading smears. Jacqui Smith mis-used her power to bar that Dutch MP from entering the UK. Why? Only because he wanted to show the House of Lords his 17 minute long documentary film about the threats of Islam in the west; and he had been invited by the Lords to do this show. Talk about “crows who peck at sparrows”.
Hilde, I do agree with much of what you write, and we can agree to differ on the question of sexuality.
Angela,
We know you have some gay friends. But in your haste, whenever someone used the G word, you tend to blanket-charge that person with homophobic attitude. It seems to me that only you can use the G word here because you have gay friends, so your remark is not homophobic. And that’s not on.
You once told us here that you’d read somewhere that someone walked in on Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson in his little office and there was something going on in there by their awkward, uneasy reactions like the scene of the PM and his gay assistant in his little office off “Little England”. None of us said a word against, as we thought you only repeated something you had read somewhere. Simple as that.
You told someone off for using the word poof. You said the word gay is ok, other slang words were offensive. Who gave you the right to decide which words are acceptable, as we know that ‘gay’ is just a slang word. The official word is homosexual. If people don’t like those offensive words, why don’t they ask this Labour government to make another law banning dictionary firms from putting those words into their dictionaries?
Few weeks ago, someone said Labour, lefties and communists were just the same group. That comment was praised. My comment was also bashing communists, but it was classified as poisonous; just because I had used the G word.
I had pointed out that it was ironic that Mandelson, Brown… who had been subjects of long-term gay rumours themselves yet ordered McBride to make up smears about some discreet gay MPs. I repeated the other gay rumours about those tyrants like Hitler and his likes which I’d read in books, magazines and newspapers over the years. I did not make them up to smear anybody. The press told them first, I just read and repeated; just like you did.
On Campbell writing about Tony Blair’s penchant of standing naked in front of him while they were working in his little office, you said: “Who needs friends like him?”. Campbell only wrote it down because he thought it was dodgy behaviour. Don’t you think it was a dodgy behaviour? Maybe you did not like it because, to you, it is about gay rumours and homophobic?
On Cherie Blair being rubbed down by her life guru Carole Caplin to get rid of the ‘toxins’ from her naked body while sharing a hot, steamy shower together, you said: “I admire Cherie Blair for standing up for her friend Caplin when Campbell critised about Caplin’s (bad) influence over her”. All the press thought it was dodgy behaviour. Don’t you think it was dodgy behaviour? Maybe you did not liked it because, to you, it is about gay rumours and homophobic again?
There are lots of nice gay, straight, bisexual people out there. We were only talking about the evil, calculating, vengeful tyrants and the likes of Mandelson, Brown, and McBride. We have freedom of speech in the West. As long as we do not invent any false accusations.
Anyway, no hard feelings here, Angela. The thing is, we just do not want to live in a society (under Labour!)where everybody, except certain minority groups, is gagged from speaking their mind.
Why all this fuss about talking or repeating stories, scandals or rumours of a gay nature involving bisexual/gay politicians? After all, we all repeat or talk about other scandals or rumours involving straight politicians: MPs having sex with strangers in their Westminster offices, MPs’ outrageous expenses claims… Forbidding people to repeat or to talk about stories, scandals or rumours of a gay nature involving bisexual/gay politicians or even celebrities simply turns homosexuality into a taboo subject; something bad, unmentionable, unacceptable.