You’re So Hain
Mixing Memory And Desire | Backword home | The People’s Prime Minister
Tuesday, 08 August 2006
Hurriedly scribbled by Dave Weeden @ 4:05 pmI bet you think this blog is about you, don’t you, don’t you ...
Peter Black considers his first-namesake and constituent Peter Hain. I like this bit (you can find tehgrauniad link yourself):
The Guardian says that he "has often caused controversy by frank speaking, including an admission that the government had lost support among traditional supporters. Three years ago while Commons leader, he was slapped down by Tony Blair after suggesting that high earners should pay more tax." What it does not say is that there is a view that these incursions were part of a calculated attempt to create an image within the Labour Party.
I can’t imagine Tony Blair "slapping" anyone down. It’s not his style. There have been plenty of ministerial cock-ups more deserving of a "slapping down" than suggesting that the rich pay a bit more tax (poor dears). Blair hasn’t done so; he’s not confrontational like, say, Thatcher.
Via Peter (Black, not Hain, obviously), Iain Dale on Peter Hain’s freebies as reported in the Belfast Telegraph (behind a pay wall).
But woah, stop there a moment. Surely Peter Hain should fly to Ulster, he is Secretary of State for Northern Ireland after all. And via Justin, what a cracking job Peter Hain makes of it.
Secretary of State Peter Hain dozed off during a meeting last week with the father of a loyalist murder victim and a local MP!
Exclamation mark in original, I’m afraid.
Angry Raymond McCord - whose son Raymond Jnr was battered to death by UVF informers - said Mr Hain started to nod off three times during the Stormont meeting last Tuesday.
Embarrassed Ulster Unionist MP Lady Hermon confirmed Mr Hain had begun to doze off and said Mr McCord had "every right to feel furious" at the way he was treated.
Mr McCord, who vowed never to meet Mr Hain again, accused the Ulster supremo of "tarnishing" his son’s memory.
The campaigning father, who believes his son’s killers were led by a police agent inside the UVF, was accompanied to his first meeting with Mr Hain by Lady Sylvia, MP for North Down and wife of Sir Jack Hermon, the former RUC Chief Constable.
Said the north Belfast man: "If I had been a paramilitary I would not have been treated this way. I couldn’t believe it when he started to doze off.
See, the paramilitaries are undemocratic thugs without scruple or morality who are only out for power and Peter Hain is -- ah, I see Mr McCord’s point.
A spokesman for the NIO [Norther Ireland Office presumably, though in addition to unneeded exclamation marks, the article doesn’t give needed acronyms] refused to comment on the sleeping claims, adding: "Mr Hain listened very carefully to what Mr McCord had to say. ..."
Another one for the New Labour dictionary:
listen very carefully vb to fall asleep, doze off, look out of the window, pay no attention, ignore
480 words
