Nick Robinson has a present for Ed Balls
Nice bit of a puff for Balls….nothing too rigorous from Robinson….just enough to allow Balls to paint the pretty pictures:
Ed Balls ‘daunted’ by chancellor task
Ed Balls has told me that he is “daunted” at the prospect of becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer, given the scale of cuts a future Labour government may have to make.
“I’m daunted, because it’s going to be such a task with the deficit we’ll inherit.”
“I think David Cameron and George Osborne look so out of touch – they don’t understand what’s going on in Britain. I do. We do. We’ve been there and in the future we’ll sort things out for people.”
Nothing like an easy going journalist in the camp to make getting your message across so much easier.
I take it Nick the prick Preston is doings a Flanders in shagging ed balls, wonder when he is going to do Milliband then?
Ding dong benn is dead. 2 champayne socialists dead in as many days , it appears that god does have a sense of humour and I expect to find him laughing.
I find the BBCs excessive coverage of the life of Tony Benn annoying and it makes me want to turn off the programme, because they always do these things in a one sided way and would not (did not ) do the same for a more right wing politician. However, whilst I really disliked many of the things that Tony Benn (Sir Anthony Wedgewood Been in reality) stood for.
Such as
his inherited wealth combined with his socialism.
His wanting to take from the relatively poor and give to the even poorer while keeping his own inherited wealth.
His knowing how to spend other people’s money better than they did themselves. Etc.
I do not want to be associated with celebrating the death of another human being. He was a man who lived his life telling others the way he thought they ought to live. I do not personally think he followed the same principles but for this he will have to answer to his God when he meets his God not to us or me.
So please do not sink to the levels of the fascist left. Let us commiserate with his friends and family but say that I or you cannot share their sorrow beyond that of the loss of an elderly man.
Well there is one thing to say about Tony Benn that one cannot about Bob Crow. He never wished someone to rot in hell.
On Sky , its well down the pecking order ,after Malaysian 777 ,Ukraine,Pistorius Trial & helicopter crash in Norfolk . On News 24 ,its, you guessed it ,Top of the Pops, & far more time, per hour of `Devotion` . Typical of the Bastards !
I met Tony Benn twice and found him personally very charming.
He was on the wrong side of pretty much every argument, but he did so, particularly in later years, with great aplomb. I was amused to hear on the news earlier that he had a dream in 2007 in which he realised he’d been wrong on everything.
I never regarded him as a devil, but as someone I disgreed with vehemently. As I believe him to have been honest in his opinions I have no problem with saying I shall miss his contributions to public life.
Well said, D of E, as hypocritical as any socialist but not in the same class of lying, devious bastard as the majority of today’s senior Labour politicians.
A national treasure of the highly intelligent but politically barking mad variety and politics will be blander by yet another several degrees with his passing.
Condolences to his family.
It’s rare that I have sympathy for the Devil but today is one of those days …
“Ding dong benn is dead. 2 champayne socialists dead in as many days”
Oh no – Bill has died as well?
Your age is showing.
Blasphemous Rumors
Depeche Mode
Good choice Mr Pounce 🙂
So I see the bBC is pushing out the message that now is the time to have a gay MP and they show clegg and Milliband as endorsing that view point.
Do I see this as a metaphor for labour and the libs into getting into bed with each other. And what does this say about the sexual mores of the liberals about how getting into bed with bed with the other fellow because he is a bigger prick that the bloke you are currently shafting.
Why am I not surprised that the bBC is supporting this angle ,
My main point for the above to the bBC is it doesn’t matter which way the PM turns in bed, but I suppose once in power the faxx plastic Muslims at the bBC will berate him as it is offence to Allah.
Now is the time? You’re probably several decades too late for that one!
Perhaps they could ask Birmingham Mosque if they can suggest any candidates?
Surely an overt homosexual as leader of the Labour Party who campaigned vigorously for gay rights would pose some interesting questions for the Muslim community. If he or she could be persuaded to cross dress and to wear Muslim dress, male or female, it would be really good TV.
Well I would agree that all the know gay MP’s are better than Clegg and Milliband.
But I suppose the reason that they are not leaders of their Parties, is because Clegg and Milliband are refusing to stand down due to homophobia.
The BBC should campaign against heterosexuality at the top of these two political parties.
The fact that both Clegg and Milliband are heterosexual must seem unacceptably right-wing to the BBC mindset.
Well, sadly such moments are inevitable.
Didn’t agree with much he said or did, but don’t recall him lowering himself as far as some colleagues in pushing his beliefs, so condolences to those who held him dear.
What will be telling for the topic of this forum will be who the BBC approaches first and later for comment, and how long they will clear the schedules for them to say it.
And who, or what is consigned to footnoted status in stark comparison to previous occasions.
The BBC can appear rather divisive in its tribal selectivity at such times.
Any man who writes that he “loathed” the EEC; he claimed it was “bureaucratic and centralised” and “of course it is really dominated by Germany. All the Common Market countries except the UK have been occupied by Germany, and they have this mixed feeling of hatred and subservience towards the Germans”
Can’t be all bad (wonder if the BBC will mention this?))
Yep, old Benn was a strange one, with a rather mixed up mind,complaining about centralising and bureaucracy when, as a socialist, that is what you get in a socialist state! As a Bristol MP, my late father told me he travelled down from Westminster in the official car, then swapped it for a battered car when near his ‘visit’, and producing a tea mug for that ‘visit’. I think it was Harold Wilson that said of him when asked about Benn’s record as a minister to date, ” Well, he did give us some nice stamps”. Benn was Postmaster General for a spell. Unfailingly polite and impeccable manners was his hallmark, the mark of a Gent.
After Nick R’s apparent ‘homage’ to the Crow cap, it will be interesting if he is spotted sporting a buttoned cardy and pipe today.
Of course, a handbag would not have been appropriate at a different time (though this is the BBC) so nothing to be read into it, of course.
Will the BBC be telling us how Benn used to mislead and lie about his war record. He was so fond of recounting how he fought the Nazis (a far left political party by the way) even going so far to get hysterical about it in an encounter with John Bolton (On the BBC natch).
The reality? Well his dad fixed it so that the young Pilot Officer, The Viscount Stansgate would spend his entire WWII service gunning his Spitfire around the skies over Rhodesia and South Africa.
A tired old joke I know, but the only Focker he was going to meet there was himself.
Wrong thread – should be elsewhere.
I’ve just done the same thing, although I’m pretty sure I didn’t, if you know what I mean.
Robinson’s free party political broadcast for Labour was very nice of him. Free lunches for him, I would imagine.
I always thought it was Hurricanes he flew in – did they really waste Spitfires that far from the fight?
Still, I suppose the Hurricane was the better plane so maybe they did. (dons flame retardant underwear and retreats to the bunker)
You could be right.
He certainly got his pilot training there, probably on Harvards and didn’t leave Southern Africa until after VE day when he moved to RAF Middle East Command, I’m guessing either Aden or Cairo.
There was definitely both Spits and Hurricanes in Southern Africa as part of the Rhodesian contribution to the air war against Germany, 237 and 266 Rhodesia Squadrons. Nearly 2,500 Rhodesian airmen, of which 500 were killed in action.
Odd isn’t it that so many Rhodesians headed to England in WWII whilst Benn was going in the opposite direction.
Interesting isn’t it?
Both 237 and 266 fought in Europe but Benn didn’t become a pilot until after VE day!
According to Wikipedia he was an erk in 1943 so I suppose he could have served anywhere, flying a desk. Still not quite the impression given is it?
My dad said that Benn’s dad gave a Lysander Aircraft to France.
I saw Robinson’s interview with Balls on the news last night. Whilst not exactly fawning, it was still a long way from the relentless frosty-toned challenging they seem to reserve just for the Tories.
By the end of the interview you were definitely left with the impression:
– Balls was right all along about the recovery
– The Coalition has increased the debt through its own misdeeds, rather than through inheriting a £150 million annual deficit which Balls has fought against cutting every inch of the way
– What Plan B?
– Labour know what needs to be done i.e. make life nice and rosy and prosperous for everybody (though the ‘how’ was deemed not worth discussing).
Feel quite smug on looking up our views on Benn.
We`re as one really-we don`t play the man….but we despise the lickspittles and camp followers at the BBC etc who can`t even let him be placed in his coffin without seeing a free ride on it down Niagara falls or the like.
Desperate opportunist cadavers and no marks who will use a Trayvon , a Millie or a Wedgie-even Baroness Margaret Thatcher-only for their limp, sinister agendas.
I hate the BBC, and the liberal left who trashed Thatcher-and see Benn as just another Nepalese prayer flag for Nassers Dreams of a Socialist Islamic Caliphate.