Jack Straw loses it with BBC interviewer

[muriel_volestrangler]

Unfortunately, it wasn't live, and so unbroadcast:

Only Private Eye readers know that the other day the Foreign Secretary told a World Service interviewer who was asking him too many questions about Iraq to 'fuck off'.

According to the Eye the interviewer, Mr Bennett Jones, persisted in asking Straw about the way in which certain caveats, ie reservations, expressed about the intelligence on Iraq had been edited out in the final version of that famous dossier. To which Her Britannic Majesty's Foreign Secretary could only reply in the four-letter fashion described above.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1278705,00.html

[aquart]

1. Cheney set a terrible precedent for his peers.

It's just sad, this decline in standards of behavior.

[D-Notice]

2. What you expect?

He's from Blackburn! ;-)

Bloody Northerners!

[sweetheart]

3. the new labour project is breaking up

It has moved beyond goodwill, to a ring of blairists figting for
their political survival against the british people and against
the BBC and their own party.

At least mandelson gets a nice flat in Bruxelles. ;-)

The irony is that house prices in the north are booming more than
in the south, as people seek to get away from blair's london (read:
london is everything in britain south of leeds) to
a dying semblance of old-britain in the north.

I guess that straw and the blair media controllers are in such a
position of power, that they no longer have to tolerate inquisitive
intrusion... ? methinks they might be wrong about that... to
charles kennedy's glee.

[T_i_B]

4. "london is everything in britain south of leeds"

Is it? I thought London ended at the M25 but you obviously have a different map of Britain to the rest of us sweetheart. You are getting rather parochial of late.

Plus those of us from Sheffield are going to HAVE to take umbrage at that statement.

[D-Notice]

5. Yeah...

I'd've said "Darn Sarf" is anywhere south of Stoke

[sweetheart]

6. 2 speed britain is the fact

The M4, M1 and M6 have opened up vast new swathes of britain for
londoner's disenchanted with inside the M25. A recent newspaper
(guardian?) had a fascinating picture of this, and indeed it
extended in a rough line from lands end to far north, it (london)
seemed to me as far as leeds... leaving out some parts of the west
coast that london'ers abstain from, like liverpool.

Ok, a thought experiment, TIB, plot on a map, the second homes of all
people in london, and i'm calling that region "london". With fast
transport and work at home days, this is has creeped, perhaps not
as far as sheffield, but certainly farther than the M25.

That region is the extended "london salary belt" where the low pay
northern economy is overturned for the mythical south east.

Yes, you're right that i've become more parochial, getting to know
the rural britain and seeing how different this other country is from
commuter-london; that these two are at odds with each other... all
in my view related to this banal fixation at making london the
center of all things british when in fact, it is just another city
however charming the queen finds it.

If london disappeared, and the M25 ring road suddently had border
checkpoints to enter "foreign britain", the rest of britain would
be better for it, as the groupthink of the place is undermining the
economic development of the whole... IMO.

The challenge is to find a photograph of a british main street that
an innocent viewer would not think was london. I've met a fair number
here in north scotland of english folks who've left london for
north england 20 years ago to avoid "londonization", and now they've
abandoned yorkshire/north wales as well to avoid creeping londonization again... that finally they've reached john o'groats
and the only next step away from london they can take is orkney
and shetland.

Come visit us, up here in the north, TIB, and see where london ends,
without preconception. Its like finding the end of los angeles..
you know when you reach barstow, the mexican border or santa barbara
that you've left... until then, without a map, it all looks like LA.

[T_i_B]

7. BWAHAHAHAHA!

Ok, a thought experiment, TIB, plot on a map, the second homes of all people in london, and i'm calling that region "london". With fast
transport and work at home days, this is has creeped, perhaps not
as far as Sheffield, but certainly farther than the M25.

Now since when did all people in London have second homes? It's hard enough trying to afford 1 place down in t'smoke.

I really think you need to forget about the McChipOnYourShoulderAboutTheEnglish and see the big picture. And yes, I do visit the north regularly as I grew up in Yorkshire myself! I know where the commuter belt is and I don't need to indulge in "thought experiments" to realize things that I can see for myself on a map.

[sweetheart]

8. Yorkshire is no longer north

North is Wick, Thurso, Durness. :-)

Its a legitimate criticism that overconcerntration on london and
the southeast has undermined the whole. It has nothing to do with
chips on shoulders, and your using the stereotype is a broad sweep
to undermine the legitimate question.

A simple solution would be to relocate the houses of parliament
to the north, like manchester, or a new-city airport that is
specially designed like milton keynes for a secure anti-terrorist
place where government can run, and this would free up london from
being too concentrated, like when american shifted the national
capital from new york away so that it was not the same as the
economic capital.

The smoke is too expensive and too underhoused because of this
concentration, not because of immigration or housing... why suddenly
does all of britain have to be down there? Bad government. That
is my point. Call it a McChipOn... or address the real issue.

[T_i_B]

9. All I shall say

is that just about everyone down south considers Yorkshire north, and just about everyone in Yorkshire considers Yorkshire to be north. And looking on a map I can see that Yorkshire is the North of England.

May I reccomend buying a map of Britain before indulging in overblown and ultimatly empty rhetoric? You are getting as daft as those who try to claim that Haggis is an English dish!

[sweetheart]

10. you know what i'm getting at

I know where yorkshire is. You avoid the point. It is the creeping
"south". In this regard, i'm using this "north" "south" term as a
metaphorical approach to capture something you don't want to discuss,
as you've ignored the point.

I know quite a few people from yorkshire who've moved up to the far
north to get away from "bradford'ism" and to raise their children in
an environment that is closer to what they remember of their yorkshire
before it "evolved".

The groupthink of the south is that the north must be pleased to pay
taxes into, and totally support a nation that gives them second level
citizenship status. I'm sure there is a better term, if you can give
a name to the 2 parts of 2 speed britain. Then i'm referring to the
strange anomaly that because all the government and economic offices
are centered in one of these parts, the other part gets the shaft.

Example, what is your petrol price? Mine is 87 pence per litre.
Average incomes are less up here, why screw people more?... because
they can.

[T_i_B]

11. "bradfordism"?

I know quite a few people from yorkshire who've moved up to the far
north to get away from "bradford'ism" and to raise their children in
an environment that is closer to what they remember of their yorkshire
before it "evolved".

That sounds quite sinister to me. Bradford has a huge muslim population ands the chances are that they were not moving out to get away from poncy southerners but to be in a less multi-cultural enviroment shall we say.

I see the same thing in Essex and all too often I see similar excuses.

[bulbpacker]

13. Bradford, people leaving.

>>>>>>>>> That sounds quite sinister to me. Bradford has a huge muslim population ands the chances are that they were not moving out to get away from poncy southerners but to be in a less multi-cultural enviroment shall we say.

What would you have said to Palestinians who moved away in the 1920s, fearful of what the newcomers had planned?

[T_i_B]

14. I'd say back to the I/P forum thou silly troll!

Is that meant to be anti-semitic, islamophobic or both?

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. That still looks like a chip on your shoulder

You claim the nation gives you 'second level citizenship status', and what do you use as an example? Petrol prices. Well, those aren't set by the government. You pay more for them because there's a lack of people to deliver and sell it to the sparsely populated Highlands. Conversely, people in London pay more for their houses because there's a lack of land there. It's private sector economics, not discrimination.

And what is 'bradfordism'?

[peach720]

19. I am a South Londoner.. and I consider Birmingham north.!!!!

Yorkshire is definatly north to me.

[Guy_Montag]

12. London allowance

Perhaps we could begin by removing the London allowance from all civil service jobs & forcing those businesses that have locations throughout the land to pay all their employees the same regardless of location.

When I worked for the Govt. in Cambridge I could no more a house than I could have in London & rents were the same. Now I work in NE England, I still can't afford a house (I could have 2 years ago - fuckers) & the rents are now about the same as Cambridge & London.

[muriel_volestrangler]

16. It's up to private businesses to set their own pay rates

but I would say that if any public sector employees are given a London allowance (or any other region), the cost should come out of local business rates and council taxes, rather than from central government funds. That should provide an incentive to move businesses out.

[Guy_Montag]

17. What I was trying to say is

where I work they are going through a big "equal pay for equal work" kick. There's around 3,500 employees and apparently under current laws people within an organisation should be paid the same if they do the same job. Fair enough, but that should be geographically independant.

[Guy_Montag]

18. Anyone work at the Beeb?

I would love to hear it.