Charles Clarke axed from Cabinet - a nation mourns

I know it doesn’t do to speak ill of the recently departed, so here’s the nicest thing I could find that I’ve said about him:

“... for Clarke to accuse anyone else of being patronising is startling. He shares with Blair, and, to a degree, Kilroy, the firm conviction that the best way to be seen as an honest politician and a man of the people is to respond to any criticism—indeed, almost any question—with a sigh, a shake of the head, perhaps a smile, and the carefully studied impression that no-one else could conceivably understand the intricate complexities of what the stripling before them is begging them to expound on. It’s an unattractive trait in anyone, but Clarke carries it off least well, coming across like a shifty plumber about to charge you fifty times what the job is worth.” (from this post)

(no subject)

The day the Daily Mail published pictures of John Prescott and the woman with whom he had his two-year affair dancing at a party, one of my colleagues, who shall remain blissfully nameless, motioned me aside. “I entirely failed to get off with her,” he said, “at a Department of the Environment Christmas party in 1997.” He was 25 at the time, she a little older (oh all right, 34) and quite keen, but he said that as soon as she discovered his age she recoiled, as ultra_lilac once put it, like a slapped cock.

Happily for my colleague, that was the night he got home to find an email from a girl he had met and liked saying, essentially, “How's about it?”, and they're still together nine years later. Still, deduct several thousand points for failing where John Prescott succeeded, a state of affairs guaranteed to put a dent in the steeliest of self-esteems.