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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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26 March 2008 |
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HOUSE DIARY
AUSTIN MITCHELL MP
These are the times that try men`s socialism. Polls disastrous. Morale low. New chums wondering if ritual suicide might be helpful. Blairites in the ascendant with crazed proposals to force the disabled back to work (assuming the Poles leave any jobs) or proclaiming the virtues of wealth, Mandy announcing that Gordon has forgiven him, and Tony sucking up more jobs in his flibbertigibbet progress to the throne of Charlemagne II.
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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07 January 2008 |
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Misery, gloom, doom, despair and the worst Christmas I remember. Lousy weather. Miserable mood. Low morale. Wife gets Christmas cards from David Cameron and Alex Salmond. I don`t even get one from Tommy McAvoy. Every poll shows us heading for disaster. All economists predict recession, repossessions, rising unemployment, falling house prices, a more miserable mess than even Norman Lamont managed and only Tony Blair`s speech fees keeping the balance of payments from total disaster. I began Christmas feeling things can`t get worse. They do. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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29 June 2007 |
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Doldrum Days. We`re waiting for Gordo. Parliament ticking over. Nothing much to do. Disorientation because we don`t know who to be sycophantic to. A Party of creeps needs to know who to grovel to.
Even Tommy McAvoy has become benign. He tells me, if I feel rigor mortis coming on, I can die at home rather than in the Chamber. Bless him. He’s one of only three Ministers who`ve held the same job from the start of the glorious revolution. Next week he’ll be one of one. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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16 April 2007 |
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It`s wonderful to escape from our febrile Fun Factory. Our non-election-election is killing me. Junior Ministers desert the SS Blair to climb on the Big Brown Boat, Charles Clarke does the dance of the seven veils. The Deputy fight becomes a crowd spectacular with everyone but me standing. I don`t know who to crawl to. I smiled and waved at Gordon who looked straight through me. I never see Tony to ingratiate myself (no change there)and I shouted “Hi Dave” to Miliband but the wrong one. Only Michael Meacher talks to me. Obsessively. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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05 April 2007 |
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European commitments on global warming. All Targets. No bullets. How many Eurocrats does it take to change a light bulb? 25 Heads of State.
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Our lads and lass in Iran brings back Mort Sahl’s Korean War joke. If captures tell them nothing except your name, number and the exact location of your unit. For that now read Sat.Nav position. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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11 December 2006 |
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This is the half year of the two PMs. Tony goes after the May elections. Gordon comes in unopposed. Everything goes on the same as before.
It`s worrying. We need change: a new start. Instead we`ll get the great merging. Gordon becomes Tony: like Animal Farm. Policies weld together seamlessly. We pretend nothing`s happened. Yet something needs to. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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15 August 2006 |
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Not the best of years for my Party or me. It’s slipped in the polls, been clobbered in the councils and torn by a leadership struggle we have to pretend isn’t really happening in case our new Chief Whip suspends both Tony and Gordon from the PLP for bringing the Party into disrepute.
For Old, Mitchell, it’s been the year of the collapsing backbone, pain, crutches and having to speak sat down. Which made fellow MPs think I’m permanently pissed. Along with that went pain killers but these made me feel good about government policies.
Cheer up. Things ain`t so bad. Previous Labour governments have had far worse mid term problems. It will pass as the electorate makes a considered judgement on Labour’s achievement, which is good. Particularly compared to Tory vacuities and Lib-Dem impossibilities. Q.E.D. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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17 July 2006 |
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Life’s moved into parallel universes. In Blairworld Tony leads us on, bravely launching new initiatives and reforms and justifying everything with his brilliant eloquence.
But no one’s listening. Everyone else is in Post-Blair World. There Tony’s history (without a bracelet). People are calculating support for alternative candidates, not just for deputy but for the leadership. Possibles are Alan Johnson, Harriet Harman, Hilary Benn, John Reid, John McDonald. These are for ABGs (Anyone But Gordon) people, but on the precedent of Bryan Gould, others wonder if anyone will stand against Gordon the Invincible. Meanwhile the Chancellor’s own supporters speculate about who he’ll offer what job and try to stop him endorsing every Blair whim. Identity cards are the only thing left which he hasn’t nailed himself to. My question is how long can we straddle these two worlds? |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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24 April 2006 |
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This Intimation of Mortality should provide a laugh a line diary. Three vertebra are crumbling so I shuffle round on two walking sticks. Just like a trainee member of the House of Lords. Indeed one attendant actually addressed me as "My Lord".
I'm allowed to speak sitting down which puzzles constituents, though Elfyn Llwyd tells people it's because I'm now an alcoholic. The consolation prize is that I don't have to stay to vote on some of our dafter legislation. Such as ID Cards and glorification of terrorism. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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19 January 2006 |
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Miserable life. Miserable me. Miserable New Year to you. This is going to be the most exciting political year since 2005 but ushered in by a miserable recess (or rendition, as we now call it): lousy weather, fractious family, mini-flu and awful back pain. The break for renewal and regeneration has been disastrous and debilitating. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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25 October 2005 |
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Happy Days are here again. The Pioneer Corps of socialism re-assembles on the Westminster Parade Ground. Tony triangulates the line of march. The Party Conference retriangulates it back again. No-one’s sure where we’re going, the Tories are all over the place and the Lib Dems apparently asleep. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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18 November 2004 |
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The Story so far...
A loveable but shambolic party with a deep inferiority complex allows itself to be taken over by a dedicated group of meritocratically motivated men. Inspired by Changing Parties by Lawrence Llewellin-Mandelson they transform it into a nicer conservative party, the old association with workers, peasants or naughty trade unions, replaced by a more upmarket, nicer and wealthier friends. Now the dispossessed struggle to take back their party before castration is completed by a “more of the same” manifesto for the 2005 election. Read on:- |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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18 November 2004 |
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Friday 1 October
Cooking competition in Hull. Lawrie Quinn and I are humiliated by a team from Radio Humberside. Our dish, Balti Coeli a la Prescott, was delicious. Unfortunately my chocolate mousse turned out like soup. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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18 November 2004 |
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April isn’t the cruellest month. It`s September. Back to school, university, new job, or, in our case, back to the Fun Factory, holiday over, duty beginning. Fortunately it`s an exciting prospect: election eight months away: the end of the Blair hegemony: both oppositions becalmed: Kilroy Silk rampant: Europe stalled. This is going to be fun. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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18 November 2004 |
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Politics is now like a mystery charra tour. Off you go singing while the driver extols the joys to come. Later you wake up feeling sick, it’s getting dark and you’ve not arrived anywhere. The driver still burbles on. But you’re lost and there’s nothing the passengers can do about it. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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18 November 2004 |
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Monday 3 May
A glorious sunny day but me glued to the television watching the 1979 election night coverage from start to finish. Marvellous. We all looked younger, hairier, and more serious. The passage of time makes it absolutely clear that people I’d vaguely suspected of being wrong at the time but not dared to say so were in fact raving lunatics. Yet no-one really expected the cataclysmic assault on the unions, the working class and the post-war settlement that Mrs. Thatcher embarked on. I myself got several mentions. The last time I made any impact on politics. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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18 November 2004 |
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After seven years in Fairyland it’s back to normal and the politics of déjà vu. The old press line up against us has re-emerged. Except for the Sun. Old Tory drums beat the old calls about Labour being the Party of high taxation, over regulation, flooding the country with foreigners who have designs on our jobs, women and houses. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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05 January 2004 |
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Happy New Year to both of our readers. No prophecies for the coming year. After 27 years in Parliament I am not yet omniscient. But I do have several suggestions:-
Tony’s done a magnificent job. We should all be grateful but now he’s nothing new to offer. His technique of leadership is to take on the party not the problem by jumping over a cliff and demanding that we catch him. Its bunny jumping not leadership. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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19 December 2003 |
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The Dog Star rages. Something funny is going on. I’m not sure what, but everything seems to be moving towards some kind of climax as life gets more frantic. It`s not just the Christmas party build up. The new hours make every day frenetic. Everything has to be crammed in before seven. Tony is a driven man, desperate to get his flagship follies through by his classic leadership technique of throwing himself off a cliff to force the party to catch him.
So life has the air of some kind of end game compounded by the huge new signs at the end of Victoria St telling me, and Patricia Hewitt opposite, that 270,000 people have a heart attack every year, 33,000 die of lung cancer and l6 000 of colon cancer. Cheerful thoughts to start the day with. |
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House Magazine Diary
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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24 October 2003 |
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It’s odd to come back to the madhouse after two months of sanity (forgetting the silly mess of the September session). Political addicts have been glued to Hutton. He`s showered out more information about what creeps civil servants and intelligence agencies are and about how the politicians lie and pass the buck; the kind of stuff we’ve always suspected but never had proved. Yet it`s really a Whodunnit, remote from the main issue of why we went to war. So it`s a waste of time to get obsessed by it. |
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