Thursday, September 02, 2010

So Why Did He Hire Him Then?

Over at ATW, David Vance has the best line on the whole William Vague thing.

Personally, I was sceptical about the whole gay thing, until I saw how the usual suspects have railed round him. It says a lot about where the Tory Party is at right now that Dave's Drones are shocked - shocked! - that the guy who harried Prezza and Jackie Smith is now hunting down Tory crooks. What kind of game is that Guido guy playing anyway?

Inevitably, the winner of 'Best in Show' was the Reverend Dale, with his trademark mix of passive-aggressive bitchiness and humbug. He concludes one post with the following phrase:
I said on Radio 4's PM that there was part of me tonight that is ashamed to call myself a political blogger this evening, and I meant it. That may sound a bit holier than thou, but it is how I feel.

I hope Mr Fawkes can look himself in the mirror tonight. Because I sure as hell couldn't.
Holy Sickbag, Batman!

But what's this? In his other post, he moves seamlessly from whining about 'lies, smears and innuendo' to this:
Guido Fawkes is not a homophobe, but the way he is writing about this allows those who think he is homophobic to confirm their own prejudices.
Uh...OK. And at this point, I'd just like to note that while I have no, actual, 'proof' that Iain Dale dresses up as Wonder Woman and molests farm animals, I can see how some people could think that he might, IYKWIMAITYD.

More to the point, wasn't the Reverend Dale one of the leading lights in the cyber lynch mob that targeted Philip Lardner? Ah yes: let's hear it again:
Sometimes, you just hold your head in your hands and think 'how on earth did people like this get through the candidate selection procedure?'....

[David Cameron] called Lardner to account and I hope any Conservative does the same if they encounter people in the Government who hold similar... views. They should be chucked out of Parliament for good - not just suspended.
Hey, I'm sure glad the Rev doesn't go in for 'petty and spiteful vilification', but let's check the scorecard on this: comments made by a Tory candidate speaking in a personal capacity in defence of religious liberty demand burning at the stake. Meanwhile, a senior politician appears to be using taxpayer's money to provide a full employment service for marginally-qualified youths, but investigating that is a gross intrusion on his privacy? Really?

But let's not let the individual humbuggery of the Reverend Dale distract from the collective humbuggery of the Nu Tories in general. At risk of stating the obvious, this case exposes the utter fraud of all this talk about 'diversity'. Nothing could lead to less diversity than entry-level government posts being handed out like baubles to well-connected young men and women. Indeed, it's to prevent this that the government has objective hiring standards in the first place.

But it's even bigger than that. What is blindingly obvious from this case is that Hague is the perfect example of what Mark Steyn called 'the Emirs of Incumbistan', using the Treasury as his own personal piggy bank to provide non-jobs for cronies.

Hey, let's accept the Hague's defence at face value: he still hired a marginally-qualified youth to do a non-job on the taxpayer's dime. Hague may, or may not, have got laid, but the rest of us surely got screwed.

2 comments:

JuliaM said...

"Hey, let's accept the Hague's defence at face value: he still hired a marginally-qualified youth to do a non-job on the taxpayer's dime. Hague may, or may not, have got laid, but the rest of us surely got screwed."

This is the rub, isn't it? It's going to get lost in the outrage and counter-smears, but it's at the heart of it.

It proves what we suspected - meet the new boss, not one iota of difference from the old boss....

Nick said...

And the was I just was holding onto those old Jeremy Thorpe/Norman Scott jokes to keep me warm in my old age as the Liberal Zombie Holocaust emptied Britain's Streets of anything truly Tory and the last surviving conservatives flitted from burnt-out-house to looted camping shop in the hope of finding something - anything! - that could save us all (however briefly) from the grey-Green pinko hordes.

Damn.
Just damn.