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Topic History of: Peter Hain resigns Max. showing the last 5 posts - (Last post first)
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Message
Bumbo
I think this guy says it all.
Solihull Exile
My whole point was that the media can only have a big effect on these matters if there is a genuine public interset in the case..as there was here...either a fool,or a liar...Hain had to be one or the other.
Now as for doing the decent thing and resigning,I remember studying both history and politics at A level,and the only real example of this happenning was the groundnut scandal back in 1949,and he only used it as an excuse as he wanted to go anyway.
Certainly there was perhaps more backroom pressure from the pm to make ministers resign before these things became public...but to believe a senior politician could ever do the 'decent thing'..by choice...it's just not in their nature:)
veritas
In my ignorance it only dawned upon me that this was the same Peter Hain whose career I followed avidly in the late '70s when he was a superb anti-apartheid campaigner.
I particularly remember the dreadful case where he was fitted up for a bank robbery as it happened within one street of where I lived at the time.
He was found innocent and I remember that gave me great faith then in British justice ( somewhat rocked badly lately).
I agree-it's his competance as a minister that should have been judged but this is down to cowardly polies above him who take their cues from newspapers instead of standing strong on principal. Not a good look for Gordon Brown.
In The Know
Solihull Exile wrote: Certainly media pressure led to his resignation,as it has for many others going back to the 50s,
I think you miss the point slightly. People used to do the decent thing and RESIGN - now they simply carry on regardless ! It doesn't matter what the scandel is - selling peerages / having a "bit on the side" / phoney donations (passed through some organisation that no one else has ever heard of) etc etc .... the plan is "deny it all - until they can prove it" (and only then resign when the call is loud enough and there is simply no other option) !
If the baddies won't go when they are caught out - its a good thing that the media are there to "give them a push" !
chrissy
You can't blame the press for this one. If they are reporting indiscrepancies within government then that's how it should be. If they expose sleaze in government then good. I'm not reallly that interested in Pete Doherty, or Prince William's love life, or if Harry has paraded through Picadilly Circus dressed as Hitler in suspenders, but if members of the cabinet cannot or refuse to explain how a large amount of money (perhaps peanuts to some) was apparently swept under the rug, then they should be exposed as incompetents, thrown out and then investigated.
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