Day: November 3, 2003

Classic Newsnight: Did You Threaten To Overrule Him? (links to Real Player video)

Tom Watson has more on Michael Howard here. It’s worth a read, in case you need your memory jogging about the nasty little man who will be leader of the opposition (but, god help us, hopefully never the country). The man introduced the poll tax and clause 28. He’s pro-war, anti-abortion, against a woman’s right to statutory maternity leave, opposes the Human Rights Act…

“AND – remember Michael Howard sat through 14 years of Tory Government (from his election in 1983) loyally voting to privatise the railways, water, electricity and gas, sell off School Playing Fields, cut benefits, install the internal market into the NHS, run down public services and destroy local democracy not to mention presiding over the worst recession for decades, the spectacular failures over economic policy starting with Sterling’s ejection from the ERM and the spectre of negative equity… And in opposition this is the man who has voted against the London Mayor, National Minimum Wage, the New Deal, against devolution to Scotland and Wales, against all of Labour’s budgets and against paid holidays for all workers, full time rights for all workers and the vast majority of all the Government’s achievements over the last 6 years.”

Oh, and he also said last year that he’d never stand for Tory leader again.

Enfield Mormons: Missed blog opportunity

It was only after I’d said “Sorry mate, no thanks” and started walking away, that I realised I should have stopped and listened to what the man had to say, if only for its comedy blog entry potential. Unfortunately, when a young, smartly-dressed, American chap approached me in the street this lunchtime with the opening gambit: “excuse me, we’re from the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day…”, I didn’t even let him get out the rest of the name before I’d, in retrospect possibly rather rudely, stopped him and walked away. It was so utterly unexpected, though, that it rather threw me off. I’ll try to do better next time so I have some amusing anecdote to relate.

Then again, it’s rather arrogant of me, I suppose, to assume he wanted to save me. Maybe he was just asking directions. Sadly, I’ll never know.

I often wonder why I don’t see as many famous people as you’d really expect, what with living in London and all. I wonder if maybe it’s just that I’m either not really paying attention to the people around me, or don’t think that anyone I might have seen is really who I think they might be. I can claim to have spotted Richard E. Grant in Richmond, for example, only because someone I was with shouted “look! there’s Richard E. Grant!” [I think maybe he heard us, because he promptly turned down a side street and skipped off into the distance. Then again, maybe he’s just a bit odd.]

The only “famous” person I can guarantee having seen without someone else’s assistance wasn’t actually very famous at all [that would be Lauren out of Neighbours, who was on the same Picadilly line train as me one day shortly after I moved to London–I can only say for certain that it was her because she was talking loudly on her mobile about the shabby British student “comedy” film she had just been in. Don’t worry, you won’t have heard of that either.]

So I can only tell you that we shared a bar at Heathrow airport on Saturday evening with former Olympic runner Cathy Freeman (and her boyfriend, Joel Edgerton), because Sal (who’s flight we were waiting for) said: “oh did you see Cathy Freeman over there?”. Even then, I didn’t believe her at first, but given that they were watching the Aussie Rules exhibition match at the Oval the other week, it’s probably a fairly safe bet.

Maybe in the future I should have someone with me at all times to point out things that I would otherwise miss.