Come on Peter, you can do better than that…..
Posted on Friday, March 6, 2009 at 8:39pm
5 responses
Well its taken the best part of a week, but today Peter Hain finally wades into the debate on student funding. However, instead of commenting on whether or not the Tuition Fee Grant should be scrapped in Wales, Peter engages in some cheap political opportunism in his life mission to undermine and destabilise the Government of Wales.
If Peter was consistent in his argument then Peter Mandelson should hang, draw and quarter him for his criticism of the UK Government’s Royal Mail privatisation policy.
For some reason Peter also seems to think that the policy of introducing top up fees is contained in the One Wales Agreement. This is a blatant miss-representation of the agreement, one which is also unfortunately being peddled by WAG.
The reality is that top up fees go against the very spirit of One Wales where policy is supposed to be directed by progressive universalism. The policy that the Education Minister seems intent on pushing through is based on means testing, and equates to the further introduction of market forces into Higher Education. It is no surprise that the biggest supporters of the One Wales Agreement from within my party are the same people concerned about this policy. It is precisely because we feel that this policy is undermining the values at the heart of One Wales that we are willing to oppose the government we fought to set up after the 2007 election.
As Peter is a constituent of mine I don’t want to be too hard on him. However I won’t take any lessons from a man on political behaviour who, despite making his name on the back of the Anti Apartheid movement, willingly accepted cash from a former key supporter of the South African National Party – Sir Isaac Kaye – during his disastrous attempt for the Deputy Leadership of the Labour party.
However I won’t take any lessons from a man on political behaviour who, despite making his name on the back of the Anti Apartheid movement
I’d ask you to reconsider just the sentence above, or at least clarify what you mean. This reads like you are implying that Peter Hain used the anti-apartheid movement to further his own ends.
I hope that’s not what you mean. But I don’t think you mainstream political parties should use aparthaid, BNP etc. to score points over each other. Either we are serious about defeating these facists, or we’re not.
“progressive universalism”, I have not come across this expression within Plaid documents, and did not find it within the “One Wales Agreement”.
What exactly do you mean?
It always amuses me to read about dear Peter, and I always have to quote from Paul Flynn MP’s description of Peter Hain in his book “Dragons lead by poodles”
“…Has been compared to Odo, Star Trek’s shapeshifter who liquifies at the end of the day and sleeps in a bucket, then emerges later in any shape he wishes. Has the capacity of being on all sides – simultaneously”
I notice he has not pointed to exactly where in the One Wales document it allows for scrapping the grant. I have just got it from Plaid’s site, and it’s obviously not the bit that says: “We will provide extra assistance with student debt”, unless they meant increasing it
Anyway, you had several mentions by Hain in the article. So you must be making an impact.
Dilwyn- I don’t imply that at all. I commend Peter for the work that he did in the fight against apartheid, which is why I question his integrity in this instance.
Hi! http://www.ilhn.com/datos/saber/archives/000188.php
blondule Very nice to meet you guys.