Thursday 16th December 2004
Small Steps
It keeps on getting better. And for once, that’s not sarcasm.
Firstly, my all time least-favourite politician has resigned. Unfortunately, everyone seems to be focussing on trivial visa applications, and not on the gob-smacking authoritarianism that was spewing forth from the Home Office while he was in charge. As I said before, I’d have rather seen him leaving under pressure from his policies rather than some personal issue. There’s a small story to be made from the slight abuse of office that might have occurred, but for all those who think it was a big deal - open your eyes. People who I know get to jump the queue for IT support from me, and if they’re an arse then the go to the end of the queue. Life’s not completely fair, it just has to be reasonably fair. It’s not like Mr Blunkett strong-armed anyone into giving a convicted mass murderer a visa and a million quid mansion after all. But his policies were wrong, wasteful, and avoiding sorting out any real problems, and I don’t think he’ll ever realise why.
In related news, it’s good to see that our courts are more sensible than our politicians. Locking people up for ever without charging them (never mind giving them a fair trial) has been deemed ‘a bad thing’. It’s quite depressing that it’s gone on for so long - I can’t take the moral high ground about Guantanamo bay when we have our very own Belmarsh. After all, the folks across the pond have been told that a military tribuneral is in the offing. Over here? Detention for the rest of their lives, with no charges brought. Disgraceful. I don’t want to see them immediately released, since I’ve no idea about their innocence, but we’ve got well established procedures to find out if somebody is guilty of a crime, and we should damn well use them.
When I’m President of the UK, I think Tony and his cronies might get some indefinite detention, with no charge, trials or suchlike, and see what they think about it.
I think the point is that to keep life being reasonably fair you need to impose the rules all the time not just some of the time. I’m not saying that the Nanny visa thing is necessarily a “sacking-worthy” offense but some level disciplinary action is a must. You have to draw the line somewhere and if that’s to be effective you have to abide by that. The fact that indescretions do go on all the time is not a reason to turn a blind eye when one is uncovered. As I said, I’m not sure the Nanny visa is a crime quite large enough to warrant a dismissal. It looks a lot to me like Mr Blunkett jumped quite hastily, which suggests to me that there’s more that he doesn’t want uncovered.
Comment by Nia — 17/12/2004 @ 12:31 pm
I don’t like his way of dragging kids into the picture when he was ‘resigning for them’, but maybe there isn’t anything else that he doesn’t want discovered. Maybe he realised that he was going to be hounded out of office, and just didn’t want to prolong it any further.
Maybe I’m just being to nice to him.
Comment by Andy — 17/12/2004 @ 1:24 pm
Actually, thinking again. Though the Nanny visa itself may not be worthy of dismissal, lying about his intervention when accused comes a lot closer. It is reasonably clear he was involved, since it seems highly improbably that his office took it upon themselves to take these actions without any prompting.
Comment by Nia — 17/12/2004 @ 1:27 pm
I think there can be a certain amount of falling on your sword if your office is in disrepute, regardless of whether you told someone to bend the rules, or they did it of their own volition.
(You know you could use the URI field to link to your own blog, and increase it’s Google goodness…)
Comment by Andy — 17/12/2004 @ 1:31 pm
Yes, I found the whole “resigning for that little boy” bit a little inaccurate. Perhaps this was freudian for “risking my job for the little boy” referring to his intervention on behalf of the boy’s Nanny.
I felt uncomfortable hearing him say that. Partly my dislike of seeing children dragged into the public eye but partly because he did succeed in appealing to my sympathies and for a moment I felt it was a shame that he had to loose his job over an error driven by such utterly human compulsions.
Comment by Nia — 17/12/2004 @ 1:36 pm
Yes this is true. Greg Dyke style - I backed my staff and they’ve been blamed therefore I shall go. Hehe, perhaps Blair should go for having backed Blunkett then. Of course I’m in fantasy land now. Blair is untouchable.
I hadn’t thought of that wrt blog. (As I’m sure you realise) A cookie makes it default to the I url I gave when I first posted here, pre-livejournal.
Comment by Nia Stevens — 17/12/2004 @ 1:42 pm
Oh crap. I’ll get my url right one day!
Comment by Nia Stevens — 17/12/2004 @ 1:42 pm
From The Times letters page
Sir, So one of the architects of the nanny State is brought down by a nanny.
Yours faithfully,
GEOFFREY SILMAN,
Comment by Nia Stevens — 17/12/2004 @ 1:56 pm
[…] it all before, but this is about the indefinite detention of foreign terrorist suspects I metioned last time. “The real threat to the life of the nation, in th […]
Pingback by Shine » Thought for the day :: GravityStorm — 21/12/2004 @ 11:50 am
re comment 8.
LOL.
Comment by Eddie — 22/12/2004 @ 11:35 am