ITV are plugging this like crazy so the chances are you have seen the build up to it, but yes our hallowed Prime Minister will be blubbing on TV tomorrow night.
Don’t get me wrong, the death of his child is very sad. But why has this man – who has kept his private life separate from politics for his entire political career – decided to suddenly come out with a candid prime time interview with former tabloid editor Piers Morgan?
Is this the sign of a desperate man who will do anything to score political points and win the female vote that Tony Blair won with his youthful looks and whiter-than-white smile?
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Well its obvious; the childish pathetic socialist snobbery of the ‘class war’ failed, the turning over a new leaf ‘I am proud to be middle class’ Labour is the party of aspiration (still makes my sides split!) failed, so now the old X Factor sob story. I am sorry to hear his child died but I agree with the article this is just cheap electioneering and political pointscoring. LABOUR OUT 2010!!!!!!
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Since when, as working as a dogsbody at BVH made one middle class ?
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I don’t think TB was suggesting that he is middle class. He states that he does aspire to be such, though.
Not like a fully paid up elected Labour representative to slag off nurses, Dolly. Or is it your daughter posting again? After all, your party is the one that has pumped so much money into the NHS black hole that it doesn’t know what to do with it all. Saying that, only the Conservatives have committed to maintaining NHS funding.
I also find it quite ironic that you’re using that name, but note that you don’t disagree that your messiah Gordon Brown is whoring his dead baby for votes whilst his wife holds back crocodile tears.
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I see myself as a middle class person, I am NOT a ‘dogsbody’ I am a qualifed health professional, don’t ypu dare speak to me like that. If you want to insult people then go away because is a friendly forum.
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I would say I am from a middle class background anyway, I live in a middle class area and I have a good job with a university education. Phil is right, that comment was referring to Brown the Clown with his faux pas ‘I am proud to be middle class’. Phil is right when I say I have middle class aspirations I want a bigger house, a nicer car and a better salary and I don’t believe in a million years Liebour will give me that. Nurses are treated like shit under Labour, party of the NHS my arse. LABOUR OUT 2010!!!!
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We must be doing something right on here to wind dolly up. Keep it up
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Too right, we must have hit an achille’s heel somehwere
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Thats a strange statement. I am a nurse myself and I have seen massive improvements in the NHS since Labour came to power including decent increases in pay.
No doubt you will be looking forward to our two year pay freeze if the CONservatives can get the people of Brittain to take a chance on them.
It will possibly take two terms in Government for the CONservatives to ruin the NHS but you can be sure they will, maybe even because they want to ruin it so that their sponsers in the private sector can screw us all.
Suggest you wake up before its too late.
PS see you in the Job Centre in a couple of years time.
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I don’t need to wake up, the NHS has not improved. The NHS should be run by the professionals NOT politicians forcing targets and red tape on staff. The NHS and the country have suffered under Labour. LABOUR 2010!!!!
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PS; Pay freezes and cuts are NECESSARY you can’t keep spending when there is no money why can’t Liebour supporters understand simple economics. Liebour has dug this country so deep into debt the recovery will take years or even decades.
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Typical blinkered Labour garbage.
In case you haven’t heard, your beloved Gordon Brown has blown all the country’s money and the UK economy is snowballing towards Greek oblivion.
If anyone can be slated for supporting the private sector it’s Labour: they’ve almost bankrupted the UK to pump money into banks.
As True Blackpudlian has stated, public sector pay freezes are essential and I look forward to seeing many public sector jobs axed. What you don’t seem to realise is that Labour will be cutting public sector jobs as well, it’s just the Conservatives have been honest about their cuts whereas Labour have never been honest about the financial implications of their policy.
The stealth taxation disease was engineered by New Labour: income tax and VAT were kept around the same, but pensions and benefits were robbed and replaced with “tax credits”, “free” TV licenses and other gimmicks. Gordon Brown created the deferred budget so that by the time the bad stuff took effect, we’d all forgotten about it. Deliberately misleading and dishonest.
Don’t you remember the 10% Cuts debacle, where the Conservatives had admitted they’d cut public spending by 10% and Gordon Brown lambasted them for it in the Commons only to reveal a few days later that they were also planning to make 10% cuts?
I guess you don’t care about any of this as long as Labour keep your public sector pension pot topped up, it’s just soon there wont be enough private sector dogsbodies to pay the tax to keep it going.
It is fundamentally wrong for the NHS to be so overstaffed and badly managed that it requires so much public spending. Whilst you are happy that you have your trickle of public money giving you your guaranteed pay rise it is a disgrace that so many staff are stood around gassing and doing very little for the bumper money that they can easily get without breaking a sweat. It is about time a government took on the challenge that is the NHS, and to be honest I think the reason you don’t like the idea of the Conservatives getting in is that you’d have to actually work for your money.
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Very well said Phil, I totally agree. Its like I said in my article ‘Socialism and Aspiration’, it makes me laugh and makes me sick at the same time hearing Brown banging on about ‘A fair society where everyone should achieve their dreams and aspirations with hard work’. A very noble and amiable vision it sounds but after 13 years of LIEbour I don’t believe it will happen under a Labour Government. I want to retrain as a doctor eventually and it is going to be very expensive under Margaret Thatcher I could have retrained as a doctor with a FREE education. Then on graduation I will be saddled with massive debts that will take years to pay off unless I win Who Wants to be A Millionaire (could happen!). Then when I get paid a good salary as a doctor I will be hammered by stealth taxes. Labour does not stand for aspiration.
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I think the Labour party has failed the UK in so many ways it would be hard to list them all. However I have been a nurse since 1986 until present and between 1986 and 2006 I worked within the NHS. This I feel gives me a good perspective on how the conservatives and labour have ran the NHS. Today the NHS is far from perfect it is top heavy with managers and the managers they do have (particularly at a senior level within hospitals) are not the best. Having said this the NHS is a better service now (at present) then it’s ever been. Examples I can quote are in the 80s and 90s people died of breast cancer (and cancer in general) because they spent to long on a waiting list, this doesn’t happen today, the private sector had so much work it didn’t have enough hours in the day to do it all. This was because it took so long to see a consultant in the NHS they would sell their homes, get loans on their homes, get family and friends to loan them money to see doctors and have procedures done in the private sector. Now this is not the case private healthcare is still big but not a third of what it was in the 80s and early 90s.
As for TBs plea that the NHS should be run by professionals (and by this he means doctors and nurses for he has said this in the past) its so pathetic it’s laughable. In the 80s and 90s the consultants did run their own teams and wards and therefore the hospitals. This led to private patients being on NHS wards and being on NHS operating lists (you have to know that in the NHS a operating day is 8 hours long if 4 hours are taken up by private patients the surgeon wouldn’t add 4 hours onto his list). Money spent on departments wasn’t organised by where it was needed but by how many consultants were in it therefore departments like A&E with only one or two consultants were cash starved (no matter what people say this is not the case now). I could go on and point out things like in a private hospital a ophthalmic surgeon could do 8 cataracts in a 4 hour list in a NHS hospital they would only manage 6 this is not the case now. Taking power away from doctors was and is not a bad thing a lot of the nurse managers are not much better in my experience.
So you can say what you like about the labour party (and in most I would agree) the NHS is better now then at any other time in my working life.
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Any system will improve if in receipt of the amount of extra money the NHS received. Furthermore, the levels of irresponsible spending have contributed to the dire straits in which the economy now lies (hindsight rules, OK!)
As with so many Labour projects, they know the cost of everything but the value of nothing.
As you will be aware in your own job, you have to get the most out of your facilities and your staff in order to meet your targets.
There’s no incentive to do this in the NHS and as a result it doesn’t happen. It can be said that the money pumped into the NHS does not provide value for money, but then a large proportion of the money that does go into the NHS goes on pay rises for already underworked staff.
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This is the thing, it makes me laugh when people say ‘NHS spending has trebled under Labour’, so what? Spending more doesn’t automatically mean improvements, the money is just being squandered. They claim it is spent on more doctors and nurses, is that why wards I have worked on are chronically understaffed? That money is being wasted on rubbish like managers bonuses and huge salaries.
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Is that really the case though or just Daily Fail headlining?
From my personal experience of the NHS, it’s massively overstaffed with a lot of jobsworths.
My girlfriend was saying that her department at BVH was understaffed by 10 people due to maternity leave, career breaks and so on. But the department carried on running fine. My argument would be to question why an additional 10 staff are needed and being actively recruited.
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It depends where you go, I have worked on some very overstaffed areas and some critically understaffed wards. But like most things Labour has touched there are too many jobsworths.
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I do agree with what you say phil about spending on the NHS (the NHS trying to be all things to all people its not going to work) and to a large extent I do feel the NHS is over staff. Also returns to investment are bound to diminish basic economics there. TB is too blinkered to be objective about this because the answer is clearly yes. The idea that doctors and nurses automatically make better managers is also ridiculous. I worked in the NHS when this was the case and to take BVH as an example it was very bad.
Example 1 the ENT department in the late 80 early 90s got 4 million pounds worth of investment to insert bone anchor hearing aids. This was driven by the head of ENT services at the time and in the four years this was running 5 procedures was done. There was no need for this in the BVH catchment area the 4 million should have been spent on elderly care (ophthalmic or orthopaedics). This could not happen now.
Example 2 consultant orthopaedic surgeons as part of their NHS contract were meant to attended NHS trauma sessions the set in the 80s and 90s never did. This is unimaginable now surgeons are managed by a non clinical manager and failing to meet their contract would mean the surgeons being sacked.
I could go on about the bad investments made because consultants could stamp their feet harder then what should have been happening. I could go on about abuse that was happening with contracts by consultants (all this adds to a colossal waste of money) but it would take all year writing up the NHS is being better managed and is far better dynamical to met needs of local population.
Is it giving value for money arguable, if it trying to do much yes, does it still need overhauling yes, is money being wasted yes but far less then what was going to waste in the conservative days.
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It’s the same with the story about how many Banana’s Brown eats every day, it’s all an attempt at the imposible to humanise him and make him appear “just like the one of us”. How thick do they think we are.
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Shame on anyone who uses the sad and tragic death of a child in their attempt to gain votes!
Politicians and their marketing/PR gurus’ have sunk so low!, they are little more than sleaze bags and unworthy of representing us.
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He would sell his soul to have his party hang in ‘there’, as Bruiser states shame on him.
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I wonder whether it’s about saving his party or saving himself?
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Pitiful! and I suspect it is more about saving himself. The even more annoying thing is that it will probably work. Labour are just beginning to fight back and I am pretty sure they will be fighting to win. I don’t see Cameron and his cronies being able to stay the course.
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Worrying isn’t it? The Conservatives are descending into tit for tat in-fighting whilst Labour have all hands to the pump, trying to re-float Gordon as an electable PM.
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Well it’s on in 30 minutes so I’m off to get comfy in front of the TV.
Theres a rumour that when he talked about it dying in his arms he was actually referring to New Labour once he became PM rather than his child…
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The death of any child is not a matter for levity.
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Am I imagining it or did not David Cameron lose a child as well?
Mrs F was splitting her sides at Gordon’s claim to have had lots of girlfriends before deciding Sarah was the one (they haven’t been married all that long – Aug 2000).
It was a pitiful GMTV sofa crap interview – Gordon a man of the people whilst the truth is he’s a bully that wants people to remain and become poor so that he and his cronies stay in power. It’s ok Mandy saying politicians shouldn’t be greasy PR men but be good at their jobs (sic) but the problem is Gordon is neither good at his job nor charismatic.
And I think the class structure needs updating for modern society – those that work for money and those bone idle dole scroungers that think getting washed in the morning is too much or that motherhood is a full time occupation.
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You are right, Call me Dave has also lost a child. It was his son, Ivan, who died at the age of 6.
I thought it was quite poignant that Mandy was the first character witness to be called on the show. I’m sure he had a lot to do with it being filmed. Everyone else that proffered sound bites was clearly spoon fed by a Labour spin guru.
Also highly ironic was when Mandy said politicians were not greasy PR men, when he is the epitome of that (although is actually a good politician).
The interview was just a case of portraying Gordon as the normal family man that goes through the things that normal people go through – humanizing him as Zim Flyer said – and I thought it was quite effective in doing that.
I think the Conservative offices will be reeling because it’s pretty certain that this interview will have a positive effect on the polls for Labour.
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That is a shame that it came over well, I want politicians to talk about policy not which one is the cuddliest.
Will future political debate now be about how many tears a candidate can shed like some pathetic individual on Xfactor or the Apprentice.
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I agree Phil it will probably have a positive effect on the polls for Liebour because typical Labour supporters lap this sappy stuff up. Personally I don’t care if Brown was the nicest guy in the world I wouldn’t vote for his party.
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Shouldn’t we be judging these slimy politicians on what they actually do and not the distorted image some spin doctor/pr firm present to the gullible public.
I wouldn’t waste my time watching the TV Muppet shows.
Its What They Do That Counts not what they say, everybody knows they tell lies.
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That’s what I try to do. It makes me laugh when people call Brown the Clown ‘an unelected PM’ saying ‘I never voted for Brown’ nobody voted for him except the people in his home constituency. When I vote in Blackpool South this year I will be basing my vote on what I see the candidates have to offer and in the case of Marsden what he has done (or more not done) in his 13 years. So on that basis I have ruled out UKIP and Liebour already. Any other parties are in the running for my vote.
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I agree, that’s why I’m judging Gordon on his landmark TV appearance as well as his policies.
It shows that there are no depths that Labour will not go to in order to remain in power.
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The only one of their usual underhand tactics I haven’t seen yet but I am expecting in the coming months is Labour’s usual negative campaigning and scaremongering. The tired old ‘Don’t vote Tory because of what they did last time before we got in and invented the wheel’. I couldn’t give half a toss what the last Government who haven’t been in power for 13 years did or didn’t do, I look at the present and the future.
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I don’t know how long they expect that argument to last – TB – 100 years ago the Tories were in power and look what happened. How about look at the election that got the Tories into power in 1979 -and the winter of discontent when Labour restricted public sector rises to 5% to counteract inflation (running at 26%) – we had gravediggers and binmen striking as well as some NHS workers which led to non-emergency patients being turned away. The rubbish was piled up in parks (and famously Leicester Square) and there was a massive boom in the rat population as a result. The gravediggers were only strking on Merseyside and Tameside – with filled coffins being stored in a factory in Speke. Compulsory burial at sea was talked about until a climbdown to allow a 14% rise broke the strike.
Now we’ve had bad times since – but never anything as bad as that.
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Very well said Frustrated. Labour supporters seem to have very very selective memories. They happily bang on about how ‘Thatcher brought the country to its knees’ and all this tired old selective mantra but they always seem to forget the 70s under Labour. Margaret Thatcher inherited the country in a terrible state in 1979, she did not ‘destory’ the country as Labour supporters claim.
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Who sold of the silver then?
Who set about destroying the mining communities?
Who privatised everything in sight?
Who had a bank rate of about 15%?
Who left 3,000,000+ unemployed?
Who gave £5,500,000 to the Vietnamese boat people in her first week of office but would not give £23,000 to keep a ward in a children’s hospital open?
Its not just Labour supporters with selective memories.
Margaret Thatcher may have inherited the country in a terrible state!
And she surely left it in a worse one.
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Bruiser you are right about that I do remember the comments by the then government of 3 million people unemployed was a good price to pay to keep the interest rate down. If you were one of the 3 million I think you would give a good argument that it wasn’t.
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Not far off 3 million unemployed now though, and the only reason it’s suppressed is because the Government keeps creating non-jobs.
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Precisely Phil; Labour has ‘lowered’ the unemployment numbers by creating pointless non-jobs and shoving more people on benefits.
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Who set about destroying the mining communities?
Well, I dunno – it could be everybody who lived from the 1950s onwards, when the coal industry started its downward descent (what, with the 1956 Clean Air Act and diminishing natural resources available to be mined and a reduction in demand as energy supply diversified), shortly after being nationalised.
Still, I suppose it’s just easier to blame an old lady armed with a handbag and an icy stare.
Who sold of the silver then?
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest Robert Banks Jenkinson.
Who privatised everything in sight?
Not Thatcher, unfortunately. Although she did set the ball rolling… Ohh, how we lament the days of having to wait 3 months for a telephone line to be installed!
Now, I’m no fan of hers, but setting up straw men left, right and centre probably isn’t the best way to highlight other people’s ‘selective memories’.
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It strikes me your memory is failing.
Heres another one for tired memory:- who was introduced the laws to control the striking miners which allowed the police to stop coaches on the motorways and was this not one great step against our civil liberties.
What about her involvement in the common market (EU).
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Nevermind the past, this all happened nearly 30 years ago. I wish people would move on. Labour have been in power for 13 years and everybody overlooks the damage they have done. To be quite honest I think trade unions are far too powerful anyway. The miners that are around today are very very well paid, some earn double my salary as a nurse. I am fed up of unions holding the country to ransom for undeserved payrises. Nurses would never do it, we care about the people we serve and we are underpaid.
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Don`t forget the POLL TAX
Keep them Baaaastard Tories out
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Lets be honest there are no difference between the conservatives and the labour parties they are both lying thieving scheming cheats,the only difference is the majority of the british people have long forgotten what the the last conservative government where like.
No matter which party gets elected , severe cuts in the public sector will have to be made in order to put our house back in order, failure to do so may result in any recovery taking much longer,I prefer to take the medcine now even though it’s not of my making but as we all know our so call politicians are SPINELESS.
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I think people shouldn’t dwell on the past. I don’t care what the past Government did. I look at the damage Liebour has done and base my vote on that. I would love to back an alternative party but the choices in Blackpool South are grim; I won’t vote UKIP/BNP because they oppose the smoking ban and that muppet Hamish Howitt is standing (no way in hell will I vote for him) I don’t know who the Lib Dems are fielding and there are no other alternative parties. So I plan to vote tactically for Ron Bell to get Labour out.
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“People shouldn`t dwell on the past” of course that is unless it supports your efforts to con us into voting Tory.
Why don`t you go for a SUPERB frozen meal at Witherspoons. you know the ones you believe are excellent. good grief middle class, more like no class
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Not many pubs serve food that isn’t pre-packed frozen crap!
Anyway, you Labour lot always harp back to the Tories, but why not go back further to previous Labour Governments that blew the country’s cash coffers just like the current one has.
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Don’t you speak to me like that. If you want to insult people then go away because you are not welcome here. I am not ‘conning’ anybody, I am entitled to an opinion and I respect people’s decision to vote for who they want. I just can’t understand why anyone in their right mind would vote Liebour after 13 years of lies spin and empty promises.
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Now theres a surprise
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