"the crisis means that celebrity opportunists are floating up like flotsam, grabbing headlines but not offering any real policies. Is it enough to say, "Vote for me, I'm honest"?"


www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentato...-esther-1687678.html

well she's lousy at everything else

I seem to recall Tony Blair saying "Vote for me I'm honest." And people did.

My first thought was, straight away, that hillarious Not The Nine O'Clock News 'Points Of View' sketch... when they have a rant about "that bloody 'Nationwide' programme, and then "if you thought that was bad, you wanna see that That's bloody Life.... that bleedin' bloody Esther bloody Rantzen woman" "There's only one thing worse than Esther bleedin' Rantzen.... and that's that bloody Janet Street bloody Porter.... don't these people use dentists???"

Sniping comments from JSP are nothing new. Rantzen is surely the lesser of 2 evils here?

Ester started a lot of this pedo scare thing.
Possibly well intentioned,but has she ever admitted the ideas she helped create have been abused,and innocents jailed because of it?
An honest person gives an honest answer.That's far more important than fiddling expenses really.In fact? Those that wouldn't could fit into a phonebox.
I'd be tempted to vote for a quality independant candidate if one was put forward,as a student of politics I appreciate the independant traditions we had before the war.But voting for someone who's probally going to be useless like Ester won't happen.
Be nice to see more like Martin Bell,a quality performer with a proven track record.....or a Royalist candidate a la King;)

I think that Esther would make a good mp, she is intelligent, caring, and hard working. I know a lot of people here are against her because of her work with childline.

It says that she is going against Margaret Moran of Labour, but surely there must be other candidates for the tories and lib dems too.

a friend of mine had dealings withe Ms Rantzen when she was setting up Childline. When she spoke to Ms Rantzen about her own horrific abuse at the hands of family members and clergy, she said that ms R came across as very uncaring, rather arrogant and ignorant of the issues involved.

That's what my friend said, I have no real opinion of her either way.

It's hardly fair to say that Esther is guilty of sending innocent people to prison, that is the responsible of the courts. What she has done is create an organisation that makes it easy for children who have been abused to get help. Many who formally suffered in silence for fear that nobody would believe them now had a voice. Its not her fault that the fear of paedophiles has been exagerated that is more the fault of the media with words like monster and evil littered across the front pages.

just to clarify, it was my friend who had the history of abuse not Ms Rantzen, my language was a bit ambiguous in the post above.

robbiex wrote:
It's hardly fair to say that Esther is guilty of sending innocent people to prison, that is the responsible of the courts. What she has done is create an organisation that makes it easy for children who have been abused to get help. Many who formally suffered in silence for fear that nobody would believe them now had a voice. Its not her fault that the fear of paedophiles has been exagerated that is more the fault of the media with words like monster and evil littered across the front pages.

She was quick enough to champion this idea,and to some degree it has helped.But she has not yet mentioned the bad side to come out of it,the many proven,and yet to be proven false allegations.
Also the laws have been changed to make it harder to obtain info about your accuser,still a deafening Ester silence.A good politician should be able to judge both sides,she obviously has yet to prove she can.

It reminds me of 'That's Life' and the uncomfortable way they used to have a very short pause between 'sad and happy' articles. After a harrowing story of child abuse or pensioners dying, ER used to hand straight over to Doc Cox with his pictures of 'nob-shaped' vegetables.