Comments on: Sapphire or Steel?

By: Sock Puppet of the Great Satan

Sock Puppet of the Great Satan — Mon, 11 May 2009 22:17:29 +0000

“I’m sorry to say that he beat me in a NOLS election in the mid-1980s at a conference at York (as the ultra-left candidate I didn’t stand a chance against Clause 4 and Militant). ”

Heh. Chris, were you in Socialist Organiser/WSL then? Or the IMG?

By: virgil xenophon

virgil xenophon — Sat, 09 May 2009 17:52:27 +0000

Commenting further on the whole affair, I can’t for the life of me understand the obtuseness of the current government on this matter. Is it really only a politically tone-deaf bureaucratic green eye-shade bean-counter sort of thing that initially caused this obstinant refusal to honor the service (volunteered, btw, and for damned little pay) of these brave souls? Or is it also partially racial and tied up in the larger immigration issues? Whatever the reason, the whole affair from start to finish reeks of callousness and has been an utter disgrace and a black mark on the political party that prides itself on being on the side of the “little man.”

By: virgil xenophon

virgil xenophon — Sat, 09 May 2009 17:40:56 +0000

Zeba/

And she just might be the most level-headed one of the entire lot—current or potential,

By: Zeba

Zeba — Sat, 09 May 2009 17:00:39 +0000

I bet if she stood for PM in next year’s election she’d win by a landslide…

By: Righteous Bubba

Righteous Bubba — Sat, 09 May 2009 15:51:48 +0000

It reminds me of a less pleasant example in which George W. Bush lords it over Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan. I wish I could dig video up of that.

By: engels

engels — Sat, 09 May 2009 15:38:52 +0000

I enjoyed watching it too, but I think you could have swapped titles with the post three places down and called this one ‘knowing your place’. There’s a definite feeling of right of birth being brandished.

By: nick s

nick s — Sat, 09 May 2009 15:20:42 +0000

As John Oliver noted (on the podcast he does with Andy Zaltzman) when you have the Mail pissed off with you about a policy designed to keeps out immigrants, you’re on to a loser.

Woolas is such a sorry sack of shit; where does government keep digging these cretins up, and who is it that keeps voting for them?

It’s a standard downward slope thing, surely? John Major also had a lot of careerist numpties as ministers. The most embarrassing examples today were elected in 1997 or later, and have never known the lean days of opposition. So you get Woolas, Smith, Burnham and a couple of others who are really just the mirror-image of David Mellor and some of the other mid-90s nonentities. One thing that you can say about the people in Blair’s first cabinet: they were keenly aware that being part of a governing majority was a privilege and not a right.

By: harry b

harry b — Sat, 09 May 2009 13:11:07 +0000

Ed, you’re right. Now I’m struggling to figure out who the ULU person was.

BA in Philosophy from Manchester, I see.

By: roy belmont

roy belmont — Sat, 09 May 2009 00:25:33 +0000

Lumley’s not a one-trick pony by a long stretch. She played an eccentric crone sans glamour on Saunders’ post-Ab “Jam and Jerusalem” most brilliantly.

By: harry b

harry b — Fri, 08 May 2009 17:21:48 +0000

My old schoolmate Jo Moore (of burying bad news fame) was another of them in OI. Lovely lot.

I can’t help feeling that in a better world I’d not be so pleased to see Purdey doing so brilliantly. Still, she is, I am, and it isn’t (if you know what I mean).

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:22:33 +0000

I’m sorry to say that he beat me in a NOLS election in the mid-1980s at a conference at York (as the ultra-left candidate I didn’t stand a chance against Clause 4 and Militant). I think Operation Icepick was something C4 did, rather than being a group. He and John Mann were the key players – interesting to see how the Stalinist fellow-travellers of the eighties morph so easily into new Labour suits.

By: Ed

Ed — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:08:40 +0000

He was general secretary of Manchester University union, and then went on to be president of NUS.

By: MR Bill

MR Bill — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:07:57 +0000

Way to go, Pats!!

By: Anji

Anji — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:13:31 +0000

Good old Joanna! They won’t slip anything past her.

By: harry b

harry b — Fri, 08 May 2009 12:17:55 +0000

They dig them up from the NUS. (I remember him as an ineffective president of the University of London Union in the 80s—I seem to remember him being one of the players in Operation Icepick, the group that ballot rigged a NOLS election to prevent Militant from getting a foothold, but I could be mistaken. I vividly remember was wondering why that crowd were involved in petty and unimportant stuff like that when they would be either studying or supporting the miners strike—current Children’s minister Delyth Morgan, who was actually dead nice, was another—now I know!).