Matt Hancock on I'm a Celebrity

[ditchdwellers]

Now I've never watched I'm a Celebrity before but I'm finding myself sorely tempted by the appearance of Matt Hancock! 


Of all the people!!


Will he be the first one voted off? Will he win?


Will he gag on kangaroo testicles? Who wants to watch him in his budgie smugglers?


Discuss......


(Without vomiting please)

[Monic1511]

What makes him think he is a celebrity. He’s a waste of space.
I’ve never watched the show and have no intention of even with him being on.
I want to know how he can claim salary when obviously not doing his job

[KizzyKazaer]

I want to know how he can claim salary when obviously not doing his job

That is really not on, is it, especially when he will receive a fee from ITV for doing 'I'm A Celeb' - which I do watch, and have done since the beginning, and I shall enjoy seeing Mr Hancock put through any number of ordeals....'Of all the people' indeed!!

[Sunny Clouds]

I don't think that sort of politician sees being a politician as a job.  I think they see it as a status. 

That being said, I wouldn't say all politicians are the same.

[ditchdwellers]

I reckon it's a big promo job for the publication of his book about how he single handedly tackled the pandemic!


Apparently he's donating money equivalent to his salary to charity. No mention of the big fat £400k appearance fee though. 

[JLR2]

I agree with you Sunny, for many politicians it is status. We witness in so many TV interviews MPs failing to answer the questions put to them as their first thought before answering is to their future prospects and enhancement of their perceived status. I would like to see there being brought in a rule whereby politicians would be barred from changing constituencies in order to preserve their electoral chances such as was being talked about regarding Johnson's likely loss of his present seat in the HoC. The idea that any MP can simply be parachuted into a constituency with a remotely safe constituency label attached to it is way out of order. Would be MPs need to be limited to the area they live.


The other change I would like to see, something I've said before, is any secretary of state would be barred from holding another government department position at the same level before the following general election. Put another way, cabinet reshuffles would be ended with only such positions becoming vacant through the sitting secretary of state leaving government, politics or having died. When a government has so many MPs sitting on the back benches there should be no need to carry out reshuffles.

[Sunny Clouds]

Could the flip side of stopping reshuffles be an incompetent person not being replaced where we have a future government that tries to appoint on the basis of competence? 

Something I'm certain we won't get but wish we would is a system where to be a minister with portfolio you have to have some relevant qualification or specific experience. 

But then (using this thread to grumble about a different politician), we have a shadow health secretary (Streeting), who thinks it's ok to use 'senile' as an insult.  Out of curiosity, I looked him up on Wikipedia to see what his 'health' background is, i.e. whether he's worked or significantly campaigned in relation to health issues in general.  Whilst he's had health problems himself, I can't find anything relevant in terms of his CV.

I don't know what the answer is and I struggle when I'm feeling so negative about politics these days.   

[JLR2]

Good morning Sunny, an incompetent secretary of state would be sacked and someone from the government's back benches put into the position. Any failure of the government to find within their number of elected back benchers would be made all the more clearer to the voting public demonstrating the lack of quality of the party's MPs. Many's the time governments go through these reshuffles to protect one of their members and cause distraction from either bad news that'll have some impact come the next general election on their party's election to government or to avoid having to sack and remove offending secretary of state to the back benches.

[Sunny Clouds]

That's logical.

That being said, I'm just ruminating on a cultural issue that makes our political structure scarily vulnerable to being exploited in a way far nastier than it has been, or rather nastier for people in mainland Britain as opposed to those 'colonised' or whatever than it has been for a while. 

I think the 'British' way of doing things, in an everyday sense is bending or stretching the rules.  We don't expect a 20mph speed limit to be interpreted as that, we take the margin of error used by the authorities to be licence to go faster.

I once saw a table someone had compiled using info derived from oodles of polls, research etc. showing that the number 1 stressor in what I recall as 'this country' (England?  UK?) being problems with neighbours.  No surprise.  We rely heavily on a hotch-potch of old laws and customs, all with arguable 'speed limits'.

Think how in the pandemic, whilst various more obedient countries set a safe distance of 1.5m, the UK set one of 2m, or rather set a safe distance of 1.5m which was described in the official rules as 2m to allow for British culture.

A culture like that is terribly vulnerable to exploitation.  We can't even decide what structure of governance to have around the country, with at least four different structures in England alone.  I can think of one city that has a (city) lord mayor, a (city) mayor and a (region) mayor.  Just how many mayors do we need and who the hell is responsible for what?  And how come where I live, we don't have parish councils?  Please, Jackie Weaver, come and get a grip of our political entities and our politicians!

Yet a thought following a conversation I had with someone recently.  We'd been discussing, amongst other things, the 'troubles' in Northern Ireland and after I put the phone down, I wondered why we haven't we had total all-out war there since Ireland was partitioned.  Yes, we've had murders and oppression etc., but there must be loads of people who somehow, however hurt they are by the situation that the politics of the past and present have put them in, somehow manage to live alongside their neighbours without trying to kill them, and amongst them are people that helped to facilitate the Good Friday Agreement before we left the EU, Schengen etc. thus leaving us needing an update. That's the sort of hope I cling onto in this world.

Because looking at the sort of government we've got, the sort of ministers we've got, I need that hope.