George Monbiot socks it to Hazel Blears and New Labour

9 Replies, 2977 Views

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/...ge-monbiot

Grin Brilliant
Keep JUMPin ya Bastids
slaughtered her LOL
Quote:The minister claims to have political guts, but the only principle her voting record shows is slavish obedience

exactly so
she's a total stooge
I enjoy reading the comments.
almost everyone said "bravo"

which was quite an eye-opener
I never realized everyone felt the same way about hazel blears

Hahaha
Sir Loris Of Crowthorne Wrote:I enjoy reading the comments.

i enjoy reading your commince.
There are some superbly withering comments on this one it must be said Grin
Keep JUMPin ya Bastids
Sir Loris Of Crowthorne Wrote:I enjoy reading the comments.




Ralph
Keep JUMPin ya Bastids
George Monbiot writes that the "government introduced the minimum wage but blocked employment rights for temporary and agency workers" (Comment, 10 February). This isn't entirely correct.

The government legislated at the beginning of this decade to bring the pay and holidays of temporary and part-time employees into line with those of their full-time permanent colleagues. The issue now is agency staff - because they are not employees of the firm where they work, they don't get the same pay and holidays as the people who work alongside them. Our government has discouraged the passing of EU legislation to extend these rights to agency workers.

Monbiot's article points to a range of areas in which history may well judge this government to have made poor decisions - Iraq, Uzbekistan, Trident, a third runway at Heathrow, connivance with torture. But I think that the minimum wage was a landmark change, and brought great credit to the government's record on employment legislation.
Anthony Stanton
St Ives, Cambridgeshire

Although the Campaign to Protect Rural England does not sign up to all of the views George Monbiot expressed, we were surprised that he neglected to mention the government's record on planning reform.

Only last year the government's controversial Planning Act, steered through parliament by Blears's department, removed final decision-making powers on major infrastructure projects from directly elected ministers and passed responsibility to members of an appointed Infrastructure Planning Commission. This was despite overwhelming public opposition.

Further reform is now being proposed by the local democracy, economic development and construction bill. However, we fear that these reforms may simply add to the confusion of people trying to engage in the planning system.

If the government truly wants people to engage, it must encourage them to do so by listening to what they say.
Fiona Howie
Senior regional policy officer, CPRE

Hazel Blears seems to think that only those who have been elected to sit in parliament have a right to speak out publicly or to criticise MPs. What a warped view of democracy. She, and her complacent cabinet colleagues, might do well to consider that it was "people waving placards" that recently brought down the Icelandic government - a government that also failed to listen to its people.
Simon Pickering
Coughton, Warwickshire

So Hazel Blears thinks there's no evidence of "rigged consultations and faked citizen's juries" (Response, 6 February)? How about the 89% of respondents to a government consultation who said they didn't want a third runway at Heathrow, but the government gave it the thumbs-up anyway? Or the high court ruling in 2007 that the government's consultation on a new generation of nuclear power stations was "misleading", "seriously flawed" and "procedurally unfair". I could go on.
Jamie Woolley
London

Is this the best Hazel Blears can manage - to engage in a gutter-slanging match with George Monbiot (Letters 11 February)? I could not imagine her predecessors as Salford MPs, Stan Orme or Frank Allaun, presenting such a feeble response. But of course they were real Labour MPs, who knew what they believed in, and did not slavishly follow the party line.
David Dearden
Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire

There was a time when this newspaper stood out against the deeply personalised, offensive and ill-informed journalism which was ascribed to tabloid publications.

George Monbiot's scurrilous, unjustified and pathetically spiteful diatribe against Hazel Blears is the kind of lowest form of journalism that is dragging this country into the gutter. What has happened to the standards of journalism, the informed and researched commentary, on which the Guardian once proudly built its name?
David Blunkett MP
Lab, Sheffield, Brightside

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/...ge-monbiot
droid Wrote:George Monbiot's scurrilous, unjustified and pathetically spiteful diatribe against Hazel Blears is the kind of lowest form of journalism that is dragging this country into the gutter. What has happened to the standards of journalism, the informed and researched commentary, on which the Guardian once proudly built its name?
David Blunkett MP
Lab, Sheffield, Brightside

Hahaha

Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Vote Labour on December 12th Statto 34 10,904 17th December 2019, 10:14
Last Post: Statto
  NEWS RIP George A. Romero firefinga 1 2,002 18th July 2017, 06:35
Last Post: widzhit
  George Monbiot - Captive State subvert 5 5,142 1st July 2014, 07:56
Last Post: Statto
  George Duke R.I.P. stemface 2 2,406 29th August 2013, 13:35
Last Post: cycom
  George Osborne booed at Paralympics Statto 5 2,851 5th September 2012, 21:48
Last Post: Phokus