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David Johnson wrote:


> MP for nearly 40 years, numerous Cabinet posts gave up his
> peerage to carry on at Westminster as an MP, brought in Health
> and Safety Legislation, campaigned against the Iraq war.
>

We've had all this before from you. You oversold Benn then. Alec Douglas-Home "gave up his peerage to carry on at Westminster". Quentin Hogg "gave up his peerage to carry on at Westminster". Benn was hardly unique in that.

He held three minor Cabinet posts and tried to get the Queen's head taken off the stamps until she told Wilson she would not stand for that.

> Great man, great thinker, hero.

In what way was he a hero?

Hero is the most over abused word in English these days. Benn was a communist sympathiser and would have got on his knees and blown the Russians 'til they jizzed. He was deluded beyond belief.

"Benn was hardly unique in that."

Did I state he was?

"In what way was he a hero?"

I will leave you to work it out.

Now, now Argie that is enough of the smutty, schoolboy stuff. You may think it is tough to talk dirty, but you are just a naughty, little boy.

Any more and I will tell ya ma and you will be off to bed without your supper!

"Alec Douglas-Home "gave up his peerage to carry on at Westminster".

Wrong.

Alec Douglas-Home did not CARRY ON in Westminster.

He gave up the peerage because the Queen appointed him as leader of the Conservative Party and therefore Prime Minister.

However, he then had to get himself elected to Parliament because the accepted convention was that the Prime Minister had to be a member of the House of Commons. Having a Prime Minister who was a member of the House of Lords was thought no longer to be acceptable in 20th century Britain.

That took ten days if I remember correctly.

So, in effect the UK had a Prime Minister for those ten days who wasn't either a member of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. He was a man in the street who just happened to hold the post of Prime Minister of the UK for around ten days in the middle of the 20th Century.

This guy gives some of the key points about Benn.

Interesting what you say about the Civil Service exam, I used to be a Civil Servant and as far as I'm aware there were two exams covering two different things. One was for people who had less than 5 GCE's, or GCSE's as they later became, and they could take it and if they passed would get a job there - those with more qualifications didn't have to take it and would get a job if they simply passed the interview. Then there was the exam you took to get on the fast-track promotion thing, where your career would sky-rocket if you passed that particular exam. Hardly anyone passed that exam, it was almost impossible. Something like 1 in 20 people taking it got onto the fast-track.

Tony Benn didn't achieve much in his career. He was briefly a minister in the 1970's, as were hundreds of other people, and you never saw them relentlessly on TV for decades after. Benn wanted to take the Labour leadership from Neil Kinnock in the 1980's, having got that he would have obviously wanted to be Prime Minister. He never became party leader, nor prime minster. The reason Tony Benn got endless coverage throughout his life was because he was from what some might call political royalty - many of his family were senior politicians in their day and young Tony apparently had lunch with prime ministers and politicians as a kid.

It was later arranged for his son Hillary to become an MP (this is easily done, just put them forward for a safe seat) and a minister too. Apparently his granddaughter was going to become, or possibly did become, a Labour politician aswell. I've always found it incredible how some people have ego's so big that they really are of the view that the nation will somehow be worse off if they are not prolific within it. It is borderline narcissism. As for Tony Benn being an MP for donkey's years, this occurred due to him being put forward for a safe seat elsewhere after the seat he first held disappeared due to boundary changes. Like I said, it is not hard to make someone an MP.

Personally, if I had been a member of either the Wilson or Callaghan governments of the 1970's I would have kept quiet about it. Two of the worst adminsitrations this nation has ever seen. Inflation at record levels, people not allowed to take more than a very small amount of money out of the country with them when they went on holiday, all culminating in the 1979 Winter of Discontent where hospitals were cancelling everything apart from emergencies and the nation was six weeks away from food shortages. What a distater.

It was no accident the Labour party was out of office for nearly TWENTY YEARS after all that. So Tony Benn getting relentless coverage and very high-billing subsequent to his brief spell in government in the 1970's would have been ridiculous anyway considering how little he achieved in politics, but it being as a follow-on from having been in THOSE administrations just makes something ridiculous even more so!

I assume that it is an oversight that you forget to mention unemployment rates.



"It was no accident the Labour party was out of office for nearly TWENTY YEARS after all that"

Course, the Tories haven't had an overall majority for TWENTY THREE YEARS, Maximilian. And it seems likely they will get an overall majority in the next election which will make it TWENTY EIGHT YEARS.

"So Tony Benn getting relentless coverage "

You must have had him on repeat.