Tom Watson is Labour MP or West Bromwich and general scourge of the Murdoch empire, which is no bad thing. He’s pretty much with us when he talks about the need to tackle politicians’ deference to the media.
He’s an old friend and university sparring partner of long-standing Liberal Democrat Federal Executive and Federal Conference Committee member James Gurling and this weekend became godfather to Gurling’s incredibly cute 9 month old son.
Watson tweeted a picture with father and son on Sunday:
Here’s my newly baptised Godson and his dad. Very proud. pic.twitter.com/SUzfdEWs8j
— tom_watson (@tom_watson) November 23, 2014
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8 Comments
What a small world the Westminster Bubble is.
Only the other day I learned that during the Blair years the head of MI6 was exactly the same age and had been to the same school as the “Independent” Reviewer of Terrorism also appointed by Blair.
Perhaps there was something in the water at Epsom College in the 1960s when both Sir John Scarlett and Lord Carlile were there. Handy that they should wind up in top terrorism jobs at exactly the same time, working for the same government. I magine that there will not be many Jihadis at Epsom College today.
The Labour Party put out a statement of policy on schools for the rich and privileged today. I was hoping that LDV might make some reference to it.
There might be a lot that Liberal Democrats and Labourites might agree on.
Perhaps James Gurling and Tom Watson have a view?
Notwithstanding everything I said under the Charlotte Henry thread, which gives me little wriggle room here, I am personally somewhat surprised that our editors chose this as newsworthy, but I may be in a minority and I do not have a veto, naturally.
Bit of a surprise.
I live in West Brom East.
Oh don’t be miserable it’s a lovely picture.
A nice break from all those filler articles on this site about how Lynne Featherstone invented feminism, saved world, is the 21st century answer to the suffragettes etc etc.
John Tilley
‘The Labour Party put out a statement of policy on schools for the rich and privileged today. I was hoping that LDV might make some reference to it. There might be a lot that Liberal Democrats and Labourites might agree on. ‘
I’m not so keen on Tristram Hunt’s policy. It reveals a lot about Labour’s approach to state education. They accept the Gove line that state education is uniformly inadequate (not true of course) and need the benign help of the public/private schools to set up debating clubs, sports fixtures etc…
Labour have given up on even trying to aspire to providing a broad and balanced curriculum of high standards across the system – it’s now about throwing patronising baubles to the state sector – most of which goes on anyway. For example, at a state school I used to teach in, we set up a debating club and played the local public school at football a full decade before Dr. Hunt even thought of it.
It did not raise standards for the many though – only a few academic students got involved in the debating and going to the public school to play football did not lead to a revolution is aspirations of working class children – they just thought – these public school types with their high teas after the game and fantastic facilities on campus (paid for by rich donors and parents) – are on a different planet to the rest of us.
They look very similar. Are they by any chance related?
Shurely shome mishtake.
Helen Tedcastle 26th Nov ’14 – 1:12pm
Helen, as usual what you say in your comment makes sense.
I too can see a lot of holes in the Tristram Hunt approach.
But wouldn’t it have been nice if LDV had featured this Labour Party statement as a good subject for discussion and given it slightly more coverage than photos of white vans with football flags or cute christening pictures?
I still hope that some discussion of private education might emerge in LDV. But maybe Mr Marshall who seems to run thebparty nowadays has forbidden any such discussion because of his own commercial interest.
John Tilley
Yes it it surprising that no article has appeared on LDV regarding Hunt’s ‘big idea’ for education. Elite private school-educated Hunt clearly has little faith in state schools, which bodes ill if he becomes Secretary of State.
It comes as no surprise that Michael Gove has just endorsed Hunt’s approach to education, especially the Labour party’s other policy idea of instilling ‘character’ in state pupils, as public schools do with their children (especially boarding schools).
I find it it hard to believe that such conservative ideas are coming from the Labour Party . It is more like an idea from the annals of Policy Exchange.
Whatever happened to the idea of investing resources in the state system so that state schools can compete on a level playing field with private schools…