Posts Tagged ‘Tom Watson’
Snapper and film maker u-turn, what about the rest of them? Tom Watson wants answers
16/11/2010, 01:42:10 PMCabinet Sec goes into bat over vanity snapper – at same time Cameron makes U-turn
16/11/2010, 11:25:15 AMDavid Cameron’s vulgar obsession with image
10/11/2010, 09:02:41 AMby Tom Watson
It was Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov who wrote “complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospective: it has to be shattered before being ascertained”.
When the history of the Cameron-Clegg administration is written, Andy Parsons will be a footnote to the coalition chronicles, a fleeting fact in a wider story of ultra-pragmatism and opportunity. He will feature more prominently on photographic bookplates than amid the text.
And yet, in the last week of the sixth month of this unique political construct, Mr Parsons has come to symbolise something more than the unbounded personal ambition of Messrs Cameron and Clegg.
He is an expression of the super-ego of the Prime Minister. And as any Zen Buddhist will tell you, the ego, unlike an Andy Coulson bad news day, is hard to extinguish. (more…)
Retired and extremely dangerous
03/11/2010, 11:00:16 AMby Tom Watson
I WENT to see RED at the cinema the other night. It wasn’t, on this occasion, a fly on the wall documentary about our new leader, though it is only a matter of time before that satire is penned.
It was a rather impressive Hollywood action movie with a comic theme: old people can do stuff that we expect young good-looking heroes to be doing. So Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich and Morgan Freeman beat the bad guys in the CIA to uncover the plot. RED turns out to be a comedy acronym for “retired and extremely dangerous”.
The film gave me comfort. Being a gnarled up, 43 year old twice-ex-minister takes some getting used to, after all. It is hard for the likes of Tom Harris and me to come to terms with having a leader who is younger than us. (more…)
Cameron’s taxpayer-funded personal photographer. MP writes to Sir Gus O’Donnell for answers
03/11/2010, 08:00:23 AMDavid Cameron has got his priorities right. At a time of national hardship, with the public purse squeezed until the pips beg for mercy, where does our PM elect to splash the cash?
Save a nurse? Reprieve a teacher? Keep a copper?
No. According to yesterday’s Mirror he has decided to bring his personal photographer onto the government payroll. Andrew Parsons, the snapper who gave us the tasteful, moving and entirely non-exploitative photos of Cam in the Westminster poppy garden, will henceforth being receiving his cheque direct from the exchequer.
Across the land, grateful Brits are breathing sighs of relief.
“I may be about to lose my child benefit, but at least the relaxed yet intimate portrait of David and Samantha preparing their Sunday roast is safe”, said one.
“My son in Afghanistan may not get a proper flak jacket. But the black and white shots of the prime minister looking statesmanlike while on the phone to the finance minister of Burundi will be a morale booster”, said another.
The good news doesn’t end there. According to Downing Street, Mr Parsons, “will work for the cabinet office, not just the PM”. The current minister for the cabinet office is Francis Maude. OK! and Hello! wait with bated breath.
Tom Watson MP has written to the cabinet secretary, Sir Gus O’ Donnell, for answers.
(If you can’t see the viewer below, the plain text version is here)
Tom Watson’s anatomy of a Downing St spin day
29/10/2010, 12:05:43 PMYesterday, we were opaquely conned. Downing Street heralded a “forging ahead in the transparency agenda.” We were misled.
“This is the first time any government has proactively published information on special advisers’ gifts and hospitality. All this information is being published quarterly which will mean more regular and up to date information”, said Downing Street.
The rhetoric was soaring; the action was far more subterranean.
What actually happened was a cynical, but well executed spin exercise to kill the story and deflect attention on to the last Labour government – with Downing St spinners taking lobby journalists for patsies.
The statements were delayed – the first to be published was a statement on the cost of government cars for the last financial year of the Labour government. The next statement was not released for three hours.
Then the number 10 spin machine kicked into overdrive. The information about Labour special advisors for the last 12 months of the last Labour government was placed in the House of Commons library – great, transparent, easy to access. What about the statements on Tory and Lib Dem advisers, where were they? Well they were tucked away online, hidden from view, released in dribs and drabs.
PA led with the easy to find Labour information, comparing figures on the number of advisors. Cameron has reduced the number they say, or has he just moved the goal posts? How many lackeys from CCHQ have now found their way on to the civil service payroll?
Tom Watson writes to Eric Pickles over FoI refusal
28/10/2010, 01:27:07 PMKeith Joseph smiles and a baby dies
27/10/2010, 09:48:06 AMby Tom Watson
They’re re-running Boys from the Blackstuff on the BBC. We all remember Yosser Hughes, who struggles to keep his children while unemployment erodes his mental health. And we tell ourselves that this is drama and not real life. And we tell ourselves that it is history. We know what unemployment did to a generation whose skills no longer matched the demands of the market.
But that was then. Those of us from Nick Clegg’s generation (he’s one day older than me) remember kids who left school assuming that work didn’t apply to them. There were no jobs for them to do.
Nick Clegg was 16 years old in 1983. I move in unusual circles but I’ve hardly met a 43 year old who’s a Tory. Even the toffs remember how bad it was in the formative years of their adolescence. Not Clegg though; he’s being “morally challenged” but still propping them up. I don’t know what he was doing in 1983, but he wasn’t living in the same England as me. (more…)
Assistant met police commissioner John Yates tells Tom Watson MP to get lost
25/10/2010, 03:57:28 PMTom Watson says goodbye to Walworth Rd
20/10/2010, 08:43:50 AMSo “Walworth Road”, one of Labour’s triumvirate of famous headquarters, is to be converted into a hostel for London’s visiting back packers. The planning permission was approved last week. Where once journeying ideologues stomped their feet, hedonistic global consumers will now rest their heads.
Little do those weary wanderlusters know what history they will be inhaling as they bunk up for the night. Backpackers should take comfort that many political journeys have started and spectacularly ended in that great building.
Labour’s rose took root in Walworth Road. And the party’s long and jagged march with the command economy ended there on the day that new Labour took its first tentative steps towards Millbank glory.
Political movements and ideas reached their terminus in the tiny roof conversion that doubled as a boardroom. The Militant tendency was filleted in that building. The decision to close the New Socialist magazine was taken there – a brutal response to the editorial team defiantly calling for tactical voting shortly before the 1987 election. And the longest suicide note in history – our 1983 manifesto – was drafted there.
The Walworth Road I first entered in 1984 was very much like a hostel. You were met at the front door by two striking miners and their table full of Davey lamps and buckets of shrapnel. A huge imposing portrait of Clem stared beneficently down at you in the foyer, as you fumbled with the intercom to persuade Lesley, the grand dame of the reception and secret Conservative voter, to let you enter the main building. The famous, the powerful and the pompous could be left in that little room for an eternity if they crossed her. My God, I admired Lesley. (more…)
