Here's another great quote about the press from retiring Sunderland South MP and former Mirror journalist Chris Mullin, who I mentioned yesterday had advised a distressed constituent to stop reading the Daily Mail.In an article called Fear and Loathing in Tabloid Britain for the British Journalism Review last September, Mullin wrote: “THEY’RE ALL AT IT” screamed the Daily Mirror of March 31 over a front page report by one Bob Roberts about MPs expenses. Actually, we’re not. The only place I have ever worked where they were ‘all at it’ was Mirror Group Newspapers in the early 1970s where my first week’s expenses claim was rejected by the man who was supposed to vouch for its accuracy on the grounds that it was so low that it would embarrass my colleagues. "
I used to admire Chris Mullin for his campaign for the Brum Six but Tony Blair's New Labour brought a decent man down, diminished him to being just another New Labour suit angling for some crummy sub-Cabinet job. He wanted to vote for Iraq but his constituency party in Sunderland South wouldn't let him break his pledge to vote against the war. Pathetic. And how he despised the unemployed working class people who kept sending him to Westminster from jobless Sunderland. "Whingers" and "whiners" he called them. He writes of his disgust and contempt for gangs of feral youths in Geordieland, calling them "Thatcher's children." Hang on Chris. This lot wasn't even born when Thatcher left office. They're "Blair's children" so what did you do for them in the eleven years of New Labour governance while jobs crumbled away in Sunderland? Answer: zilch, How did you put it in the diaries in 2005? "Thank goodness I'm in a safe seat. I couldn't bear to be out of work in my fifties with two young children to support." So, now you've decided to stand down, welcome to everyone else's real world in the worst recession since the Thirties. Have a nice day, Chris. Peter Dunn (Reviewing CM's book on Amazon).
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