Picked up over the long weekend
Two items from me today:
Here’s a follow-up to my spot of a report in The Independent yesterday about the leak of pages from the highly-secretive and positively disturbing EU/US trade agreement entitled ‘TTIP’ currently being negotiated.
Once again it appears, this time from the pen of John Hilary, on the website of – THE INDEPENDENT
MAINSTREAM POLITICS: A KEY CHARACTERISTIC TO BEAR IN MIND
My other observation today was prompted by a local BBC interview on the BBC’s Sunday Politics Show with Zak Goldsmith, Tory candidate for the post of London Mayor, at the weekend
The one thing that those at the head of the established Westminster political parties – and their advisers – need to bear constantly in mind is the essential ‘people-friendliness’ of their candidates for office.
I know precious little of and about Mr Goldsmith – other than that he is the MP for Richmond Park and North Kingston; the son of the infamous late Jimmy Goldsmith; formerly a leading ‘protection of the environmental’ campaigner; and very wealthy – but what came across to me on Sunday morning was his personal lack of this important factor.
He comes across on the television screen as a man comfortable in his upper class superiority, cerebral, softly-spoken, laid-back, slightly condescending (even to his interviewer) – i.e. the sort of cove who would most in his element seated in a leather chair in the corner of a Cambridge dons’ common room over a cup of tea.
In other words, almost the definitive example of the type that the Tory Party should not have chosen to represent them as a candidate in the contest to decide the new London Mayor.
