Maybe I’m getting cynical but I find it hard to believe its a matter of mere coincidence that only three days after the Winchester Lib Dems take a kicking in the local council elections, losing five seats to the Tories who now have control of the council, who should pop up in the Sunday Times but Winchester MP, Mark Oaten, writing about ‘disgrace, forgiveness and his personal demons‘.
Sorry, Mark. Couldn’t give a toss!
No seriously, I really couldn’t give a shit about you, your personal life, your problems, your mid-life crisis – next time, buy a fucking sports car – or your two-page self-pitying mea culpa in the Sunday Times.
I can’t speak for others, but personally I’m not the least bit ‘fascinated’ with you, either as a person or as a politician. I don’t care why you felt the need to shag a male prostitute, how you and your shrink are rationalising the whole business or whether you go on to pull an Aitken and find god – you’re just not that interesting.
Sorry.
Oh, agree completely. Knew it swas coming up (either Iain Dale or a Lib Dem blogger mentioned it) but it’s all personal crap. Unfortunately, sex sells, scandals sell, and some people just have no sense of perspective. He thinks he’s getting rehabilitated, we think he’s making a fool of himself, the Times has another juicy story.Meh. Oh, rich text formatting by default in the comments? Nasty, really don’t like that WP option.Complete aside, livejournal feed subscription for your things down the bottom, I can’t get on with bloglines so I set one up, mine’s got at least 10 regular readers through it.
And it doesn’t format linebreaks properly, same problem Owen used to have 🙁
It’s such a distraction from the many and complex issues faced by Winchester folk.The article’s pure gold: I defy you to read this out at a public meeting and the assembled mass not pick up on his deft wit:"We had not been spotted by the press at the ski resort, but a camera caught me at the airport, trying to steal through incognito behind the Olympic gold medallist Kelly Holmes.""To political observers it might have seemed that over the past few years my career had gone from strength to strength. I had one of the most high-profile posts on the Lib Dem front bench.""This is an important role in any party, but for the Lib Dems our stance on home affairs issues has been crucial in shaping the party’s identity and creating clear water between us and the other two parties.""I did some leafleting in Watford for the old SDP, which led to my joining the local council. It was a bit like a drug, one thing leading to another, and hard to give up.""I was turning 40 and I really felt that I was losing my youth. The problem was undoubtedly compounded by my dramatic loss of hair in my late thirties. This really knocked me for six. I started to look noticeably older."