Blears smears Oxford estate

A few days ago, Hazel Blears’ spokesman said that she supported “whatever the Prime Minister said”. Who would say that now?

Not everything which pours from Hazel Blears’ mouth is nonsense, and her observation in a recent speech that “brutal, ugly buildings and estates contribute to crime, antisocial behaviour and social exclusion” is quite correct. She made two mistakes.

One is that New Labour has been responsible for plenty of brutal, ugly building, much of it on grass, including former school playing fields. The opposition which it faces to its house-building programme derives largely from the certainty that most of the result will be hideous, as well as badly planned and divorced from the infrastructure which would make the houses work.

Gordon Brown is rather devious

I heard this snippet as I passed an old couple out for a walk this evening. Gordon Brown is rather devious the man said. I have no idea what the context was – perhaps there wasn’t one, maybe she had just said “a penny for your thoughts” and he said the most obvious thing which came into his head.

It is a nice piece of English understatement though, more subtle than the hackneyed ones about the Pope being a Catholic or as to what bears do in the woods. Gordon Brown is rather devious. A host of other examples come to mind.

• Tony Blair is less than honest
• Jade Goody is a little uncultivated
• The Health & Safety officer was fairly cautious
• Caroline Flint is not uninterested in influencing your lifestyle
• The traffic warden was less than understanding
• The Equalities and Diversity officer did not really focus on the opposite viewpoint
• The highways officer was a little slow to grasp the point
• that is not very clever, John Prescott
• Patricia Hewitt did not find it easy to face the challenges of her responsibilities
• Hazel Blears can be a little annoying

And so on. It begins to sound like those tactful obituaries where a wealth of criticism is lightly buried behind a muted phrase, so that “He did not suffer fools gladly” means he was a domineering bully.

Gordon Brown is rather devious. Someone ought to offer a prize for understatement of the year.

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Brown meets the little people

At a party on Saturday, someone was talking about Leona Helmsley, the multi-millionaire American hotelier who went to prison for tax fraud in 1989. She achieved notoriety for her view that “only the little people pay taxes”, an aggravating factor in the lengthy sentences which were handed down.

Gordon Brown is pretty contemptuous about “little people” as well, as we know from his advisers’ views on grannies losing their blouses and the “losers” hit by his pension raid – see Brown tramples on losers and grannies. As Chancellor he could ignore them, skulking in the Treasury whilst Blair faced the cameras.

Gordon Brown Weather

It has rained almost continuously since Tony Blair announced the date for his departure and Gordon Brown’s succession was ensured. An augury, I think, for what we can expect now that this unpleasant man is Prime Minister.

In the days of the late Queen Victoria, fine weather was called “Queen’s Weather” because (according to the 1894 edition of Brewer’s Phrase and Fable) the sun usually shone when Her Majesty appeared in public. It seems wholly apt that the misanthrope Brown should bring down storms, floods and just perpetual greyness on us.

Searching for Ministers’ body parts

Regular readers will know that there is someone out there who makes regular searches for the name of the nagging Health Minister, Caroline Flint, plus some word suggestive of anatomy or mutual pleasure. I discovered this by accident after referring in passing to the wretched woman’s teeth, only to find that someone actually wanted to find such a reference.

To pander (in the literary sense) to this person, I have written a post replete with such terms, and the result Caroline Flint – an object of someone’s desires? now comes at or near the top of Google searches for her name plus breast, bottom, cock or whatever (the article itself, I hasten to say, has no hint of prurience in it; it just so happens that most such words have secondary and perfectly decent meanings).

Not Blears, surely?

I have just watched David Dimbleby parade the six candidates for the post of deputy leader of the Labour party. Distressing to me though it is to have to say this, I think I would vote for Hazel Blears if I had a vote.

She seems the only one willing to accept – and articulate the thought – that New Labour might have made the odd mistake along the line. Admittedly, she expressed this largely in terms of messages not properly communicated rather than actual failures, but what she said, and perhaps more importantly, the way she said it, seemed to imply a genuine wish to do better.