Margaret Hodge makes speeches about the unsung virtues of the Nanny State.
She forgets to remind us of her record as leader of Islington council, when a shocking series of terrible abuses against children were covered up…. by the Nanny State.
Unfortunately for people like Hodge, some of us remember the reports of child brothels being run from local government premises, where children were hooked on drugs and rented out for sex by local government employees and bullying older children. I remember the exposures (after years of cover-ups), the harrassment of anyone daring to protest against the paedophile rings operating in Islington and Lambeth, to name only the worst cases in London.
Unfortunate too, the Guardian, not noted for its crusading against the welfare state, details the case neatly, including recent attmpts by Hodge to prevent the BBC from telling the story of one of the abused children who were unsung recipients of Islington’s special care. I was especially impressed with Hodge’s rubbishing of a victim of sexual abuse as “an extremely disturbed person”.
Never mind the unsung virtues of totalitarian welfare statism, how about the unsung victims? Margaret Hodge is a government minister with a nice salary, lifestyle to add to her already considerable wealth before becoming a national politician. Instead of devoting herself to helping the victims of her administration with her own time and money, Hodge wants to tax the rest of us to create more opportunities that would allow ‘public servants’ to destroy even more lives than at present.
What a fine signal she sends to the most vulnerable in our society. And what a fine signal from the present government. I feel sick.
Even by the standards of this present government (clearly, one of the most shamelessly corrupt in decades), Margaret Hodge stands out as a special case.
And it is that shamelessness that sets this sorry bunch apart. No one is ever to blame. No one resigns. Ever.
I was especially impressed with Hodge’s rubbishing of a victim of sexual abuse as “an extremely disturbed person.”
For this alone, any government with any decency would sack her.
In any sane world this hag would be considered to be a liability.
So let’s get this straight: the British gov has disarmed the population, passed laws that make the PATRIOT act look like the Bill of Rights, regularly shits all over every politically incorrect tradition the British isles has, seems hell-bent on subjugating London to Brussels, lacks any support at all amogst roughly 70% of the population, and has now taken to defending officials who operate child prostitution rings.
And yet, there have been no mortar attacks on government buildings.
There is no balance in your country.
Matt
But as we say over here:
(I think) you’re almost correct. I’m sure she didn’t actually run the child prostitution ring, but that she was the Leader of Islington Council when it happened. I DO remember that when the Evening Standard (London daily newspaper) uncovered what had been going on, Hodge’s response was to use Islington’s taxpayer money to attempt a legal block on the newspaper. It took ages before an investigation was set up, something else she was none too keen on.
Blair knew all about what had happened but he still appointed her Children’s Minister. By the way, am I the only one to find this one of the more ludicrous government posts?
As the saying goes, socialism means never having to say you are sorry. And Hodge is worse than most. Quite a few socialist ministers and writers like the awful Polly Toynbee have complained about how the word “nanny” has taken on bad connotations. These power freaks stamp their feet when their arrogance is exposed.
Pete, yes, of course, Children’s Minister is an absolutely ridiculous post. But so is Minister for Women or whatever it’s called. I think the Women’s Minister, whoever it is, who can remember all these third-rate nonentities? – is the one who ordered that in all NHS hospitals, women in the maternity ward for delivery are to be asked whether their spouse or “partner” abuses them. One more reason to dump the NHS.
Whatever happened to Blair’s equally ludicrous notion of setting up a children’s parliament? The man is barking.
When commenting about the dreadful Margaret Hodge we should, of course, bear in mind Stewart Stevens and the Evening Standard’s original investigation (Link)into the Islington abuse scandal, often quoted these days as a model for the investigation of corrupt UK local authorities and referred to by Hodge as “gutter journalism”.
Also bear in mind that Margaret Hodge, as a ‘Children’s Minister’ is on public record as having stated that, “some children need to be abused”.
But as Mr Stevens does say, “Politicians are entitled to and do change their opinions” …
Thanks to Julian Taylor for that excellent link.
In a decent society, people like Margaret Hodge would be in prison. However, in 2004’s Britain she is appointed “Minister for Children” (and yes, Pete_London, it is a ludicrous position). And the political classes wonder why people have lost faith in politicians?
I find it almost beyond belief that my fellow countrymen and women will tolerate some of the things being done by the Blairite cabal. What on earth has happened to make us so supine?
This is an interesting post because Margaret Hodge is the epitome of the kind of interfering, mis-guided policies that this government – and several European ones – are foisting on taxpayers with taxpayers’ money and justifying with a mixture of Orwellian slogans (we are giving you ‘the best for your child’ etc) and authoritarian zeal that ridicules and persecutes those who oppose by mis-use of State machinery.
Clearly, Britain is in the hands of the same kind of thinkers as the left-wing fantasists who govern Belgium. There, the largest party – Vlaams Blok – was recently outlawed for falling foul of the hysterically PC race laws that recently also found a Turkish woman guilty of incitement to racial hatred on the grounds that she had criticized female genital circumcision under Islam.
It was said recently that when the ‘centre ground’ in politics is effectively abolished leaving only a choice between left-wing fantasists and the extreme right, the extreme right start to look appealing to more and more people.
This is what is starting to happen in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany in response to the kind of PC policies – particularly ‘multiculturalism’ – that, like the Blair government – try to socially engineer human nature out of existence.
Hodge is just the Labour tip of the iceberg in this respect – wait until David Blunkett gets into his stride with the ‘incitement to religious hatred’ legislation and the British will see an even darker side to these left-wing ‘denial’ merchants.
David Bruno, I agree with every word you wrote. You summed up in a nutshell the sinister agenda of the Gramscian left in Britain and Europe. The left in America is somewhat differently motivated, although the results are similar, if less intense.
However, one nitpick. Please do not refer to female genital mutiliation as “circumcision”. Cutting off a little girl’s an entire sexual organ for the purposes of ensuring that as a woman she will never stray because she will never experience sexual desire is not circumcision.
Julian Taylor wrote:
“Also bear in mind that Margaret Hodge, as a ‘Children’s Minister’ is on public record as having stated that, ‘some children need to be abused’.”
You know, I always thought of Charles Dickens as more of a fantasist than a realist, and it is true that They-Who-Live-On-The-Continent often accuse us Americans of naiveté. But how could this woman say such a thing and keep her job, let alone get re-appointed?
Obviously I was wrong about Dickens. And maybe it’s good to be naive about some things.
Anthony,
she keeps her job because our ‘brave’ Prime Minister, Tony Blair, is ‘brave’ only when it concerns foreign wars fought by truly brave soldiers thousands of miles from Britain but weak when it comes to doing anything that requires real resolve, leadership and anything more than well-staged and electorate-soothing rhetoric at home.
A Prime Minster with real backbone (ie Margaret Thatcher) who was not afraid of confrontation and assertiveness and knew that such tactics – and the unpopularity from some that resulted from them – would never have given someone like Hodge a chance in the first place and would have fired her as soon as the revelations of her smear tactics – and subsequent cover up – first came to light.
The relentlessly awful Hodge, a sort of poison ivy, was nicely knifed by Professor Graham Zellick when he was VC of the University of London
(Link)
I am particularly fond of the revelation that Zellick is the grandchild of immigrants who could neither read nor write English. You understand of course that until Bleagh came along anyone in the slightest socially disadvantaged was doomed, enslaved by the evil Count Privilij, formerly of Transylvania (my own creation, modest cough).
http://pebpr.blogspot.com