Dave's Speech

[AtW]

So Trade Union gits are worse than Tory gits because everyone expects a Tory to be a git?

It's certainly more hypocritical - someone blaming the rich only wishing to become one and seeing the path through politics - take Bliar for example or his mate Mandelson who is allegedly buying £8 mln house, how many Tory MPs own such houses!?!?!

[TimCaprica]

I can understand that some rich toffs don't really give a tulip about workers, however it's total bollox when someone from trade unions becomes a Lord

Maybe he felt that after his "complete and far reaching" House of Lords reforms it was now fit for trade unionists.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

It's certainly more hypocritical - someone blaming the rich only wishing to become one and seeing the path through politics - take Bliar for example or his mate Mandelson who is allegedly buying £8 mln house, how many Tory MPs own such houses!?!?!

Plenty, but that's not the point really. If being a Tory is all about being a rich git who doesn't care about anyone else, and you can't be a wealthy Labourite, then you can't have poor Tories. In order to be a Tory, you'd have a cut-off point for wealth where if you fell below it, you have to be Labour.

We all know that is tosh because politics is about ideas - and although it really upsets some people because it doesn't chime with their world view, it is possible to hold a view that doesn't accord with your personal circumstances. I have already accepted that Prezza is a hypocrite - although not necessarily for the same reasons as you, but I don't accept your "logic" that he's a worse one than a Tory - it's just nonsense.

[Doggy Styles]

He wasn't that bad was he? The word mangling was always funny and still is. I'm sure he had some successes as DPM. No idea what they were though.

Nor have I. But I remember these:

• John Prescott's regional fire control project was a calamitous failure (the guardian said that) - Abandoned (half a billion)
• He introduced bus lanes on the busy stretch of the M4 in London. - Abandoned
• He signed up to the Kyoto protocol, which hardly anybody adhered to.
• He was tasked in introduce regional assemblies in the UK. - Abandoned
• In 1997, he said: "I will have failed if in five years time there are not far fewer journeys by car. It's a tall order but I urge you to hold me to it." - Five years later car traffic was up by 7%
• His answer to the housing shortage was to approve the demolition of 200,000 homes that were judged to be in "failing areas", rather than the much cheaper option of renovating them
• He was finally relieved of almost all his policy responsibilities, but retained his full ministerial salary and pension entitlements, along with both his grace-and-favour homes.
• He always said that Labour were "always better fighting class", that is, until he accepted a seat in with the Lords.

He was/is funny, unless you are on the receiving end of his buffoonery, and until you realise that this man was somehow at the head of government.