h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Now I'm no great fan of Blunkett, but you have to admit that the charges against him are either

1) None of our damn business, he can screw the entire Queens Park Rangers football team for all I care.

2) Things anyone would have done - attempted to speed up his lover's nannie's visa application.

or

3) Pointless - so he gave his lover a free train ticket to Doncaster. When she could have recieved it if she was his spouse.

Humm

I really don't see what all this fuss is meant to be about.

Or 4) not his fault

I strongly suspect that it was not so much a case of him requesting his lover's nanny's visa to be expedited as much as people in his department saying "better get this one through quick - do you realise who this phillipina girl works for?"

Corruption is not necessarily a matter of people in power requesting favours as people who are not in power deciding to do them anyway.

Ben

Apart from Labour going into orbit every time a Tory was caught out anywhere near something approaching "sleaze" and so it's obviously something everyone is going to flog to death when one of Labour's stalwarts gets caught like that.

1. I agree about that one. Nobody should care about that it happens all the time.

2. Well... yes,but as you know the golden rule is "don't get caught" so that's just tough luck. (although if as some commentators have said he just looked it over and it was passed on by his office, that's not as bad as if he's actively tried to speed it up) I'm ambivalent on that one partly because I don't live in the UK, but partly because I know how difficult it is to get childcare organised!

3. If the rules state him or "spouse" - as in legally married - then they just have to put their hands up to it. If it is partner, as in a stable relationship... well, probably it's not meant to include married lovers, but then you never know with politicians.

I think people are so sick of what they see as Labour attempting to control all aspects of our lives, that they get a bit peeved when one of them does what the heck he likes.

He shouldn't get pushed from the party for this.
But he should b epushed from teh party for his policy ideas.

That's a good point, Ben, and often the cause of a lot of problems.

From what I can gather, he may have technically been in breach of something or other but morally he's not really done anything sackable. The clue is in the whole "speeded-up the visa application" thing. It wasn't as though he gave a visa to someone who would otherwise have been refused one so the "corruption" idea looks laughable. It was more of a favour.

The thing is, the public don't seem to really care about this with only the Conservatives and their supporters getting worked up about it (basically because it's a way of attacking the Blair government). I shouldn't think Blunkett has anything to worry about.

A side issue:

Another inquiry.

Another clean bill of health.



Frankly under the circumstances, I'd welcome a bit of corruption.

Gone are the days when politicians would meet prostitutes they had not slept with in railways stations and bung them five grand before getting their friends to lie about it on oath.

Oh, and the utter bliss of Christine Hamilton berating Martin Bell.

At last none of them claimed that hundreds of thousands of dead Iraquis are better off now that Saddam Hussein is out of power.

B

I don't live in England but, since I read the Grauniad on line every morning, I've been seeing all these articles about Blunkett.

My take is - who cares? Especially with the 'having a mistress' thingy. Wasn't Prince Charles recently quoted as saying something like - 'Do you honestly think I am about to be the first ever Prince of Wales who didn't have a mistress?' Anyhow, this is Blunkett's personal life, which has nothing to do with his professional life (which I admit I know nothing about).

As for him personally expiditing the visa for the nanny, as has been pointed out, it may well have been others doing this, or it may have been part and parcel of clearing up a backlog of visa requests (which I also read had been happening at the time). Again - who cares? Is it really important if one Filipino woman gets her visa a bit more quickly than others might have done?

Try living in Spain for five minutes, where it is well accepted that who you know is often quite beneficial to what you get. And no, not in serious ways, but in stuff like visas getting put through, etc. This is hardly *corruption* in my eyes as it ends up simply helping someone personally and doesn't mean that someone else isn't about to get their visa because of this. It isn't about robbing the public of their pension funds or other such-like very corrupt money-grabbing things that *do* go on.

Mountain out of a mole-hill, imho.


az

Interesting that nobody mentions the "Mistresses" husband in all of this, or the fact that he is hounding her through court at a time when she least needs it............

The "Nanny" thing is all just hot air - but his stupid insistence on DNA tests and being hell bent on putting them through a court case is just plain sickening.

Yes Mr Blunket you big stud, we all know that you shagged someones wife so now will you just shut the hell up about it?

If I were the husband and had decided to stick by the wife, I would be doing everything I could behind the scenes to destroy Blunkets reputation and his job for what he is doing.

Any bets on damning evidence coming out when the wife gets into court?

My take on these situations whenever they come up is that if an MP has the attitude that it is quite alright to cheat and deceive people/friends/family in their private life they will have no compunction what so ever in screwing the general populace of the country for whatever they need to do. If a male MP is happy to have an affair behind his wifes back and lie about it (i.e. not Blunkett he was single) then that MP will have no problems in spouting vacuous sound-bites to the faceless scum (me included) that put him in power while screwing them for their cash and keeping them on an ever shorter leash.

In Blunketts case he had an affair with a married woman, allegedly sired a kid with the two-timing bint (who then passed it off as her husbands) and the Blunkett ‘made a mistake’ of giving a train ticket to his mistress who was definitely not his spouse.

Now this is a man who is trying to erode civil liberties in the UK like no-one else has for many years: removing trial by jury and ID cards just two of those things. Now, if he can’t even read the rules about travel tickets and who should be given them then this is a man who should not be reshaping the laws of this land and controlling us more if he does not realise that ‘spouse’ is not another word for ‘Bird you are currently boning behind her husbands back.’

I don't really care that he has a mistress, so long as he doesn't act as though it's one rule for him & a different one for others.

As far as the visa issue is concerned, we don't yet know the full story, & probably never will. If he is found to have expedited it, then I think he should resign/be sacked because he's taken advantage of his position. Sure, we all do favours for family & friends if we can, but it's not always ethical. In this situation I think he should stick to the same rules as everyone else.

Several people on Any Answers on the radio were saying that if they'd been in the same position of taking their mistress on a free train ticket, they'd be severely disciplined, if not sacked.

If rules are broken, then the appropriate penalty should be paid.

<>

I actually wasn't aware of that aspect of the situation. From this morning's Grauniad:


"Sperm does not a father make"

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,1368037,00.html

"David Blunkett should remember that social fatherhood, rather than a biological link, is crucial for a child"

"Why aren't people more shocked by this aspect of Blunkett's behaviour? Perhaps it is because Kimberly Quinn is no innocent. Perhaps we are fascinated to see such a stern man as Blunkett so deeply in - and now so deeply out - of love. Such criticism there has been has focused merely on Blunkett's "insensitive" timing. Insensitive is too mild a word. Quinn's distress poses a risk to her own and her baby's health. Cruelty would be more accurate."



az

"Quinn's distress poses a risk to her own and her baby's health."

Good. Perhaps she should have thought of that before she f**ked another man behind her husband's back then tried to pass off her lover's child as his.

Women have been doing this kind of stuff since the dawn of time, and mostly getting away with it. If she suffers for it - great. She deserves to.

As for Blunkett - he's not married, so he's done nothing morally wrong there. As far as I know, he did nothing specifically corrupt with regard to the visa application - like someone else said, it's not like this woman was not going to get a visa, she just got bumped up the queue a bit. It happens. As far as the train ticket - I've heard people say "If *I* did that in my company, I'd get sacked." True. But you're not an MP. Everyone knows there's a different rule for them.

Oh, and one more thing. An "Archer" is TWO thousand pounds in used notes in a brown envelope to a prostitute you don't know, as any fule kno.

H.

My one additional take on this rather amusing tale is this:

Wasn't Peter Mandelson made to resign (the first time round) for something rather similar to the Nannygate stuff? So does that mean that Mandy has a stronger notion of honour than Blunkett?

sprout

"As for Blunkett - he's not married, so he's done nothing morally wrong there."

Depends on whether you think having sex with a married woman is morally wrong - the woman obviously has but you are an accomplice to the crime. I am sure some people would - would the majority of people think this. If we are talking personal morals then obviously not or if we are talking about ‘general’ socially acceptable morals based on truth and decency and old archaic religious viewpoints then no it is not acceptable and of course he is a politician so these things do not count.

I'm very much of the opinion that personal morals are just that - personal. If you're in a relationship with someone you find attractive, and you have no other emotional commitments and are not betraying anyone, then you're in the clear.

If THEY are betraying someone by having the relationship, then - duh - THEY are betraying someone, not you. Personally, I don't believe I have any obligation to any other man to preserve his marriage. That notion of "brotherhood" is a fantasy.

And I'm very much of the opinion that if they weren't doing it with you, they'd be doing it with someone else, so it might as well be you, right?

H.

He is no hypocrite - discuss...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4073305.stm

I think this is the next part of the saga - his view of personal responsibility juxtapositioned against the nannystate that is bandied about all the time.


<>

Too many times I hear of the story about a husband who wants to beat up the guy that his wife is having an affair with or the woman who wants revenge against the 'bitch' who has 'stolen' her husband. Surely, it is the cheating spouse who should be called to account.

"Surely, it is the cheating spouse who should be called to account."

Rationally, yes, of course, the majority of one's ire should be directed at the person who has betrayed you, rather than the person who facilitated the betrayal.

BUT: the irrational (and understandable) response is to NOT want to do something irreversible to your (most likely soon-to-be erstwhile) partner, because you hope your relationship may be retrievable, while simultaneously wanting to do something irreversible to the person who has p*ssed on your patch.

After all, who is it easier to get angry with? The person who you have loved for years, who you know intimately? Or the person who has invaded your idyll from the outside, a person who you potentially don't know at all?

There's also an element of atavistic territoriality at work, in which the betraying partner is regarded as a piece of property with no will of her own. The male instinct in this case is simply to regard the taking of his wife in the same way as he would regard someone daubing paint on his car or defacing or robbing his house - as a property crime with a perpetrator who needs to be taught respect for other men's property. (I use the pronouns deliberately because it's my experience that women simply don't feel this in the same way or to the same extent).

Men understand this at a deep level from both sides - I suggest that we practically *expect* attack by the husbands of married women we sleep with, because we feel we understand it, even deserve it. Because we'd do (or at the very least feel) the same.

H.