Just been listening to some women MPs on a really interesting prog on radio 4 (I figured it was a better use of my time than watching repeats of Come Dine With Me on More4). It included interviews with Caroline Flint, Estelle Morris and others, and was about women in politics, particularly focusing on Gordon Brown and some of his actions since becoming Prime Minister.
This subject is crucial, because it’s still such a problem. Not only women becoming MPs in the first place, but also how they are treated by certain quarters when they’re there. I do hope the lamentable number of women Lib Dem MPs changes radically after the next general election. It can’t, after all, get much worse than nine out of 63 as it currently stands.
But back to the radio 4 programme, and in particular the comments Caroline Flint was making about ‘window dressing’ when she was a minister. She may or may not have a point, but she lost me many weeks back when she posed for a fashion shoot for the Observer magazine.
She complains that Gordon put her there as being mere window dressing, but thinks it’s okay to pose for a magazine fashion shoot, and those two actions are not a teeny bit contradictory?
I dunno. Politicians… you gotta love their chutzpah 🙂
Keith's take 
5 August 2009 at 2:47 pm |
It’s not contradictory anymore than a certain former Transport minister posing for a shoot with motorcycles. I’m surprised that chap didn’t wangle an invitation to Top Gear. MPs have their interests – and if Caroline Flint has an interest in fashion, there’s no reason she shouldn’t be permitted to indulge in it however she wants. We may call it cynical, but it is a job of politicians to reach out to people: Boris and HIGNFY is the outstanding example but you’ll find that most constituency MPs do exactly the same thing in a smaller way.
Would that all of them coupled reaching out with actually making a political point, but the fact that they don’t has no bearing on whether or not they are competent to do their job or whether or not they deserve to be taken seriously. Being a New Labour flunkey on the other hand…