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Strange Gove: Back to Basic Harmless Misogyny
It's all been a terrible mistake Master Gove tells the Telegraph's Mandrake. He just pulled up outside the newsagents in the red light district after a small, mere ten-mile detour from his usual commute, and the crack whore leapt into the passenger seat unbidden, and she wouldn't get out until she had assaulted him, and how rude she was, and she'd taken £50 to go away. (Sorry wrong sex sleaze mistake that).His constituency's Conservative Association accepted £2,000 from Red Fig, the company that helped set up the channel Nuts TV – an offshoot of the magazine.
Highlights on the channel's schedule for this week include Secret Diary of a Nuts Girl and Sextastic, billed as "a witty and eye-opening late-night romp through the wonderful and wacky world of sex".
Gove's spokesman says: "The donation from Red Fig was accepted more than two years before Nuts TV was launched. Red Fig provides interactive services for television channels and is not responsible for content."
That's alright then. And there you were thinking Master Gove was just the latest in a long line of Conservative sleazebag hypocrites getting back to basics. Money and harmless-after-all misogyny.
10 comments:
And how are the Labour Party's relations with the Labour donor and former publsher of such wholesome titles as:
*Big Ones (presumably a fishing magazine)
*Skinny and Wriggly (a whole publication devoted to fish bait?)
*Forum (tales from the Roman Senate?)
*Posh Housewives (similar to Cheshire Life but with bigger holdings) and;
*Asian Babes (for proud new parents from the Indian subcontinent?)
Nuts indeed.
Is that you anon? Living in the past again. It's funny isn't it, Gove being caught like this?? If Cyril Smith had been about he'd have offered to tan Gove's arse and keep it between themselves. but sadly it'll take him a while to live this one down.
Can I just check whether I've got the rules right?
If anybody mentions the Miranda Grell case after she was convicted but before the result of her appeal, that's wrong because it is prejudging.
If anybody mentions it after the appeal then they are living in the past.
If you want to talk about a donation to the Tory Party from an organisation that later went on the publish semi-pornographic magazines then that's fair comment.
If anybody else wants to bring up the matter of a huge contribution to the Labour Party from somebody who was publishing forest-loads of pornography at the time, that's out of bounds.
And, having had to look up previous posts to understand your references, nobody is allowed to mention a court case from a matter of months ago against a Labour councillor who was found guilty.
But you are totally free to bring up an issue from over 40 years ago that never even went to court.
Or have I missed something?
Call me old fashioned anon but not only do I use my own name and take responsibility for my views and reporting right or wrong but I also try to live in the here and now.
The Grell case is AFAIK over. That was eight months ago. Last year. Certainly not the few weeks ago you were claiming yesterday. You are obsessed with it. It is not comparable with the Islington registrar case except in the most banal characteristics. And you are the only person in the whole universe raising this as a current issue ... or as a riposte to an article you actually agree with.
It is plain and simple. You are using this case as a smear.
Red Fig DID NOT go on to publish semi-pornographic magazines. They didn't even make the tie-in TV programme AFAIK. They provided back room services to handle interactivity for the producers.
Cyril Smith's spanking activity may have been 40 years ago and he may well have avoided court and prison (and also launching any form of defamation action after all as the Lib leader said at the time it was just spanking a few arses and weighing a few bollocks) but he has just been celebrated despite his many and various faults as some great hero of Liberalism.
He was no hero. He was a great bully, would have hanged Stefan Kisko, and defended the asbestos killers Turner and Newall.
What Cyril Smith did 40 years ago is relevant because of how he is being feted now. By yourself, by a few Lib Dems who don't know their history, and by Jimmy Fucking Cricket, and of course by bakers of Cheese and Onion pies everywhere.
On the Desmond donations. I wouldn't accept donations from him myself. And I would not rest from blogging about any politician of any party who did so and then started moralising about his products.
There is a small difference of course. Red Fig gave as a Company. The vile pornographer Desmond gave as an individual. All those years ago.
This wafer thin distinction is reducing the heat on Oily Duncan who took cash from the head of Vitol, but not Vitol as a company - except in his salary as a non-exec - and it also helped the Tories avoid more of a back lash from taking money from an Arms Manufacturing boss, not the company.
Next thing you'll be starting your own blog in your own name. Then you can write as much as you like about dead issues. Or you could perhaps track down the criminal Lib Dem donor Michael Brown who appears to have used other people's money to pay the bills for LD election 2005.
Sorry, I appear to have totally misunderstood you.
I thought you were serious when you said that you were responsible for your own views and that it was an oversight on your behalf that you wouldn't/couldn't point to any examples of you admitting you were wrong (even though you say you have).
When you said that the Islington registrar case wass not comparable with that of Miranda Grll, I stupidly assumed that you meant the former was more serious.
Obviously, we both know that a ccase of a Labour councillor using criminally libellous ststements about a rival that ended up with him having to move if far more serious than some idiot registrar who, actually, is just carrying out her job according to her original contract.
So, it might be over for you but others are still having to live with the consequences.
And then the penny dropped. In relation to the very same Grell case, you state, "You are using this case as a smear."
I realised that you were being ironic all the time.
There was I thinking that you were a semi-literate egomaniac and it was all a literary device.
What a fool I have been!
I agree with you about Michael Brown, though. Had you switched off the irony button by then? I'm confused.
And here’s why the Desmond donations are important. It isn’t just about what sleazeball publishers give to Labour. Much more importantly, it’s about what Labour gives in return.
In 1990, soft porn publisher, David Sullivan, had tried to buy a large regional newspaper company. He was barred from doing so on “public interest grounds”.
Ten years later, Richard Desmond made a bid for Express Newspapers and most decent people hoped and thought that the Sullivan decision would act as a precedent. It didn’t.
Within 10 minutes of the Express deal being finalised on November 22nd, Richard Desmond was telephoned by the Prime Minister’s office and invited to meet Tony Blair. Maybe they discussed the ‘interesting articles’ in the latest edition of Spunk Loving Sluts.
Days later the Labour Party was offered advertising in the Express titles. The ever-grabbing Labour Party asked instead for the readies and promised to spend it on advertising.
In a totally unrelated move, early the following year, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Stephen Byers, decided not to refer Desmond’s takeover to the Competition Commission.
A week later, Desmond’s publishing company (NB: not Desmond himself)wrote a £100,000 cheque to Labour. This was a matter of days before new regulations on the disclosure of political donations came into force. The gift remained a secret until May 2002 and only made into the public light when a former employee grassed up Desmond and the Labour Party.
The Express titles still support Labour.
Only a matter of weeks before all this came to light a £32m smallpox vaccine government contract was awarded to a company owned by a £50,000 Labour donor. The ‘choice’ was made from a shortlist of one.
PS
As for your comment "Red Fig DID NOT go on to publish semi-pornographic magazines. They didn't even make the tie-in TV programme AFAIK. They provided back room services to handle interactivity for the producers."
What's the problem then?
I did not mean that the Islington registrar case was more serious. I meant that the two cases were completely different. Even though both involved black women in positions of responsibility and homosexuals this is not a familiar category in law.
You are using the case as a smear. You're the only onw on the internet currently referring to it. And without any sign of due care. And anonymously to boot.
Obviously the current funding and honours systems and possibly procurement too - though you need to post links to back up what you say - are unsatisfactory. Under whichever political party.
Desmond was not a fit donor. Tory arms man is not a fit donor. Brown is not a fit donor, didn't even have his own money, and has skipped bail (which takes him into the higher echelons of donor sleaze alongside the likes of Maxwell and Ashcroft).
The Gove case meanwhile is obviously a storm in a teacup, a bit of fun, a laugh a minute - Dale also got cash from Red Fig by the way, did you know that? - but at least it is a current and ongoing issue and not water long passed under the bridge.
You wish!
The issue about the Islington and Waltham Forest cases isn't about their superficial similarity. Is is how you condemn one and yet consistently excuse the other.
As for Desmond
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1982087.stm
Read and learn.
I realise that there are some big words* in the link you asked for and I duly supplied, so I'll help you by giving you the salient parts.
You said:
There is a small difference of course. Red Fig gave as a Company. The vile pornographer Desmond gave as an individual.
The BBC reported:
A spokesman for Northern and Shell (Desmond's company) said: "The donation of the money to support the party's advertising spend was done in a fully transparent manner and will appear in Northern and Shell's annual accounts later this year."
So it appears that:
Northern & Shell were going to "fess up" to a donation that they didn't actually make - which does seem tobe the exact reverse of most Labour donations
or
The BBC invented a quote
or
You (as usual) invented an excuse on behalf of yourself and the Labour Party hoping that nobody would check.
I forgot to mention that the Labour donor who was given a huge government contract from a shortlist of one was later made a junior minister in the House of Lords. Gosh!
* they may be big words, but they're not the 'hardest' word, are they, Chris.
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