Jacqui Smith: a third spot of bother
Written by Mark Pack on 22nd January 2008 – 8:55 amFirst she told us that no real people are ever to be found walking in Hackney after midnight. (On reflection, I’m quite pleased that this means I’m not a real person. After all, surely only real people would be covered by the Government’s ID cards scheme? I think we may have found a loophole here folks…).
Then she told us that she never walks anywhere she hasn’t been before. (Don’t try to work out how she goes anywhere for the first time. Your head will just hurt.)
And now, dramatic drum roll please … it turns out that her defence of, ‘hey, look, I’m really a normal person after all, I mean, I’ve been out and bought a kebab at night in Peckham, I really do understand how normal people who walk around now and again actually live’ is slightly undermined by one tiny fact.
It wasn’t at night at all when said kebab was purchased. It was teatime.
Good thing I guess that giving misleading information about kebab-purchasing habits isn’t one of the 3,000 new offences introduced under Labour so far.
Posted in News, Opposition watch


22nd January 2008 at 9:18 am
Who buys a kebab at tea time? Now we really know she’s deranged.
22nd January 2008 at 9:27 am
If she bought a kebab at teatime, then it suggests she got hammered at lunchtime. I’m not sure that is a particularly good trait in a home secretary.
22nd January 2008 at 9:34 am
Don’t forget that she was accompanied by a minder, like all normal people. Or George Cole anyway…
22nd January 2008 at 10:10 am
New Labour is always more out of touch with reality than seems possible. When my wife and I moved to Hackney in 1982, we were warned against walking out after midnight. We soon concluded that the reason very few people did go out late in the Hackney of those days was that there was very little going on at those hours. I think that I last heard, and laughed gently at that warning, in the early 1990s. Or is Jaqui Smith saying that successive New Labour Home Secretaries have, at last, succeeded in making Hackney dangerous? If so, the claim is merely like most New Labour success stories, both wrong and wrong-headed.
22nd January 2008 at 10:41 am
Well, Tony Blair, when he lived in Hackney in the 1980’s, tried to launch his political career there, but was rejected as potential councillor because he was deemed too right wing by the local party. He quickly moved out to Islington.
Had he been elected to Hackney Council, perhaps he could have made it a safer place by being tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime….
22nd January 2008 at 11:49 am
Did she have chilli sauce?
22nd January 2008 at 12:06 pm
No, garlic mayo.
22nd January 2008 at 1:20 pm
Doesn’t garlic cause Labour home secretarys to crumble to dust
22nd January 2008 at 1:36 pm
Hywel, if that were the case she wouldn’t have a problem wandering the streets at night, would she?
22nd January 2008 at 1:40 pm
That’s an insult to decent Liberal Vampires everywhere (and Michael Howard ;)), Hywel, and I demand that you retract it!
22nd January 2008 at 5:01 pm
I know I shouldn’t confess this about an opponent, but I have to say I do actually quite fancy Jacqui Smith. Anyone else agree?