So long, David

From the BBC News Site –

“Work and Pensions Secretary David Blunkett has resigned after a meeting with Tony Blair in Downing Street.
Mr Blunkett had been under pressure after breaking the ministerial code of conduct over paid work he took while he was out of Cabinet.”

Oh well, see ya David – will we miss you? Er, no. Blunkett has for a long while been one of the scarier members of a particularly scary cabinet. His track record as home secretary put him closer to Michael Howard as Tory home secretary than it did any Labour predecessor. His draconian pronouncements about immigration, asylum and the like were horrific to anyone with any sense of compassion for the people fleeing persecution or destitution in their country of origin. ‘Lock ’em up in camps’ says David. Er, thanks.

And now he’s gone – the catalogue of screw-ups over this ministerial code thing is a pretty huge. The scariest one was him accepting the directorship of a DNA testing company – a company that was in the line to apply for contracts with both his previous department, the home office, and his current one, the departkment of work and pensions. No conflict of interests there then. And he bought 15 grand’s worth of shares in the company… but clearly his professional conduct as a cabinet minister would never have been compromised by that. No siree.

Daft bastard – he’s screwed up (again), and is out of the cabinet (again). And I’m rather glad to see the back of him. His appt. in the early years of the Blair government was seen by most as a good thing – he had a fab leftie track record, and being blind, it meant that there was now at least some disability representation on the front bench. No enough, but there was some. But he turned out to be a mad dictator, ranting about law and order and passing all manner of laws designed to turn Britain into a police state.

It remains to be seen who takes his place at Work and Pensions – Charles Clark hasn’t done a great job at Home Secretary; again, we were hoping he’d back pedal on some of Blunkett’s more fascistic pronouncements, but sadly not… Clark was doing a better job in Education…

Soundtrack – Ralph Towner with Glen Moore, ‘Trios Solos’.

© 2008 Steve Lawson and developed by Pretentia. | login

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