[Malcolm Armsteen]

In fairness to Gove

What?

[Tubby Isaacs]

I know.

I wouldn't normally say that. I thought it was good here though because I was about to give him more fairness in the next sentence.

[Cyclist]

Once a shit, always a shit. This leopard hasn't changed his shorts:

He used a racial slur to refer to black people and made derogatory comments about gay people.

A source close to Mr Gove said the comments had been made in jest and did not reflect his own views.

In 1987, Mr Gove then president-elect of Oxford University's debating society took part in an inter-university debating competition in Cambridge.

Speaking in favour of the motion "this house believes that the British Empire was lost on the playing fields of Eton", Mr Gove used a racist term to describe black people, which was met with a shout of "shame" from a member of the audience...


...In other comments, Mr Gove spoke about then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, saying: "We are at last experiencing a new empire, an empire where the happy south stamps over the cruel, dirty, toothless face of the northerner. At last Mrs Thatcher is saying I don't give a fig for what half the population is saying, because the richer half will keep me in power. This may be amoral. This may be immoral. But it's politics and it's pragmatism."

And he discussed homosexuality, describing the economist John Maynard Keynes as a "homosexualist" and saying "many of us are familiar with the fact that homosexuals thrive primarily on short-term relations"....


...In one speech he made a sexist joke about Lucy Frazer, then the head of the Cambridge Union who was hosting the debate and who is now the prisons minister, and said she had "done remarkably well coming as she has done from the back streets of the slums of Leeds"...


...In a statement, the Muslim Association of Britain said: "Michael Gove's comments are a window into the real ideology that animates a powerful cross-section of the Conservative political class.

"No wonder the Conservative party is in the state it's in today with regards to Islamophobia when its leading politicians hold such racist views."

Liberal Democrat Chief Whip Wendy Chamberlain said: "Michael Gove should be ashamed that he ever thought these things, let alone said them.

"These inappropriate and racist remarks are not befitting of a government minister, not befitting of a journalist, in fact not befitting of anyone....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-58562820

He and Sarah Vile were made for each other.

[Andy McDandy]

Funny thing about things said in jest that don't reflect the speaker's views at all. If so, then why make them at all? After all, they're very rarely that funny.

[Boiler]

This is the man that's going to save Christmas, you know.

[Bones McCoy]

This is the man that's going to save Christmas, you know.

The Gove of Christmas past.

[Boiler]

Wut?

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2021/0 ... ailty.html

[Cyclist]

I honestly don't understand all this fuss about Gove's sexuality. If it turns out he is gay, so what? It won't make him any more competent or likeable.

[Abernathy]

I honestly don't understand all this fuss about Gove's sexuality. If it turns out he is gay, so what? It won't make him any more competent or likeable.

Well, yes, but that isn't quite the point. It's Gove's rampant hypocrisy that's the issue, and how it reflects on his competency and/or trustworthiness.

[kreuzberger]

It is fair to say that some people are not born consciously gay.

For some, it is a realisation which dawns later, and chiefly after being married to Sarah Vine for a while.

[zuriblue]

[MisterMuncher]

It is fair to say that some people are not born consciously gay.

For some, it is a realisation which dawns later, and chiefly after being married to Sarah Vine for a while.

Ted Cruz no longer has the stupidest beard in politics

[RedSparrows]

Funny thing about things said in jest that don't reflect the speaker's views at all. If so, then why make them at all? After all, they're very rarely that funny.

Yeah, it's as if humour is some thing plucked utterly at random out of the sky, rather than something carefully (or not...) built from the social tone, mores and expectations of one's self and environs.

[Cyclist]

It still won't make him competent or likeable.

[Abernathy]

Did anybody say that it would ?

[Killer Whale]

As part of his new role, Mr Gove has also been handed responsibility for the government's "levelling up" agenda. He will retain responsibility for relations with the UK's devolved administrations.

What's the point of the Welsh and Scottish Secretaries, then? Or is their job, by contrast, to undermine the devolved administrations at every turn? It often feels like it.

[Andy McDandy]

With Johnson acting as "Minister for the Union", it's a hell of a lot of cooks round the pot.

Just hearing "It's your region*" from On The Hour in my head now.

*Chirpy jingle sung in a Richard Stilgoe fashion, going "It's your region, you know where it is, and how to spell its name!"

[Malcolm Armsteen]

As part of his new role, Mr Gove has also been handed responsibility for the government's "levelling up" agenda. He will retain responsibility for relations with the UK's devolved administrations.

What's the point of the Welsh and Scottish Secretaries, then? Or is their job, by contrast, to undermine the devolved administrations at every turn? It often feels like it.

Pretty much. Welcome to The Blob.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Gove is either going to have to abandon the housebuilding target or be forever arguing with "not those housed there" people, with Lib Dems snapping at his heels. Not a great job to get.

[kreuzberger]

I hear the money's pretty good, mind.