Well today’s most ridiculous piece of spin has to be this from Alan Johnson, as reported by the BBC. This makes their Number 1 story. Haha!
Health Secretary Alan Johnson has defended Gordon Brown’s leadership, saying he is “better than me or anyone else” as prime minister.
Better than anyone else? In the whole country? There’s not a single person alive that could do a better job than Gordon Brown? Oh, it’s laugh out loud funny – no wonder the BBC bumped it up. Labour will be relieved. The real big story of the day is that several MPs have been put on ‘suicide watch’ because the expenses data is going to reveal they’ve been having affairs, and, no doubt, a lot worse. Membergeddon is coming…
Niklas Smith said...
3 May 09 at 5:32 pm
I’m a bit uncertain about whether it is actually so awful for MPs to have affairs. When Boris Johnson’s affair was exposed I remember thinking “why is it all right for him to lie to his wife but not his party leader” (Michael Howard sacked him from the front bench because he had initially denied having an affair when Howard asked him). And I suppose it may say something about how trustworthy someone is.
But surely misappropriating taxpayers’ money is more serious? In other countries people aren’t bothered by their politicians’ sexual morality (or lack thereof). But someone can be forced to resign from cabinet for paying for private expenses with a work card (even if she always paid it back), as Mona Sahlin found out in Sweden.
This obsession with sex is a curious and not very attractive Anglo-Saxon phenomenon. Let’s just hope it doesn’t get to the point it did in Ireland, where for a long time “public morality” only meant sexual morality and politicians took bribes and evade tax left, right and centre.
Darrell said...
3 May 09 at 5:50 pm
Sex isn’t the governments weakness…no ill-advised ‘Back to Basics’ campaign….money is….
DavidNcl said...
3 May 09 at 7:45 pm
The sexual stuff is of more than purient interest because it’s about crucial values stuff – men who betray their wives and familes for a fuck aren’t going to think twice about selling me or the country out. I do realise that politicians are human and that it is possible to fall in love with someone else etc – but that’s not what were talking about.
Darrell said...
3 May 09 at 8:01 pm
Dave,
Be that as it may; and I dont disagree with your judgement on cheating as being bad and wrong here, the point is that the Major government launched a major (no pun intended) campaign which allegedly wanted to promote family values. This is why the press leapt all over Tory sex-scandals like a rash and there was such a climate of popular outrage; where as this government have done nothing of a kind and I really don’t think many people care who a particular Labour MP is frackin…
The source of peoples outrage this time around is the national debt, not having a job etc…hence my comment this governments weakness is money not sex…