Terrific, Baroness Ashton has made a dreadful start

Moraymint

Remind me again please of her salary, expenses and other employment benefits?

Colin

Lovely!

This is panning out better that I expected...

Verity

What a shame the Master is dead. Noel Coward could have written a side-cracking song about her. Over to you, James Delingpole ...

Fearless Frank

Well perhaps she spends her evenings at home in front of the fire, hard at work dreaming up Europe's Foreign Policy.
Well, someone's got to do it and you wouldn't want to leave it to some elected person, now would you.

mongoose

She rose without trace
Not making a wave
In ermine and lace
In ev'ry conclave.

Andrew Taylor

We want to hear the organ donor, not the monkey

J H Holloway

Henry Kissinger famously asked “Who do I call if I want to call Europe?

Well done Gordon. The EU project finally gets its foreign minister and she's a Whitehall drone who knocks off before supper.

Still, this is what we should expect from the a British 'Enarque'.

I know somebody who started working as a consultant on a high-profile Department of Education project.

He told me that a combination of flexitime, job sharing and refusing to leave mobile phones on meant that nothing could get done. The senior drones you needed to talk (and who needed to talk to each other) to rarely overlapped in the DfE offices.

A real insight into the world of the liberal establishment and the complete uselessness of the quango-class. My mother may be a simple Northern housewife, but she has more organisational skill than the whole of New Labour put together. And she asked me, a political obsessive, a question i couldn't answer.

'What qualifications do these people have for doing these jobs?'

Truth is, we are being run by people intellectually barely out of the student union.

Edward Palmer

Why won't she spit out that mouthwash?
What with her dismal performance so far and the Greek finances jeopardising the Euro, the EU project should fail very soon - good!

Verity

Mongoose, I hadn't seen your clever little rhyme when I wrote to James Delingpole.

Victor Southern

I grew so rich that I was sent
By a pocket borough into Parliament.
I always voted at my party's call,
And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.
I thought so little, they rewarded me
By making me the EU emissar-y

toco

I bet this dreadful woman also gets airmiles or Eurostar frequent traveller points credited to her personal account.It would be wonderful to find out so perhaps a patriotic employee of one of the carriers can let us know.Pretty please someone.

Watt Tyler

No. This is what the EU is for - to pay for the luxurious lifestyle of a bunch of criminals who think that they know better than us. The downside for them is that in return they have to pretend to govern us.

One of these days there will be a reckoning.

Nicholas

Mediocrity and arrogance. The New Labour way.

Verity

Pat - Tee hee.

lola

Another new labour no good who needs a serious slapping.

Sterence

I do not wish to support this woman in any way; still less those who overpromoted her to her present role.
But can anyone say what actual good it would have done for her to have gone to Haiti immediately after the disaster? If the newspapers are to be believed, many aircraft containing essential supplies were turned away because the airport could not function. Does a nation in such a state benefit from Western grandees showing up for a photo-opportunity? Or is there a real benefit to such missions that I am unaware of?
Thanks

Gawain

Having watched that well known alternative comedy programme Newsnight on Wednesday night this is hardly a surprise. They did a sort of dry run of the election "debates" at the end. It consisted of an intelligent, well informed and respectful audience of students from English universities asking questions on Afghanistan to two politicians. One plitician came across as a rational, calm and articulate member of the human race. The other was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. I never thought that I would be impressed by Karzai, but, Brown actually managed to make him seem like a more substantial figure than he is ! Is it any surprise that someone of Brown's unfathomable lack of talent should discover a soulmate like Ashton ? Still, it lightens the gloom !

DeeJay

Seems to me that contrary to my earliest fears she is ideally suited to this job. How could you possible claim to represent 'EU foreign policy' when it simply doesn't exist in any form. Get off early and read a good book seems a very sensible course of action. The French will always do their own thing whilst the Germans remain reluctant to get involved. There is no cohesive EU foreign policy neither is their likely to be.

Major Plonquer

I think its an absolute disgrace that people on this site berate this woman just because she is ugly. In these days of political correctness it is simply not on to pick on someone simply because they scare the fish every time they go to the aquarium.

We must take the feelings of these people into consideration. How would you feel if every time you entered a room children screamed and ran away?

This is simply not on. Many very ugly people went on to make something of themselves. John Prescott's sexual exploits are legendary.

If you must put someone down then please put them down for an acceptable reason. This particular woman is also extremely thick. Its perfectly acceptable to state that she' so dumb that she thinks a booty call is when you stick your mobile phone where the sun doesn't shine.

It is not acceptable however to claim that when she goes to the beauty salon they give her an estimate.

Do grow up.

Mike and Walter

Moraymint. EU Civil servants (for she is one) and politicinas do not pay income tax. They are expected to contirbutw some of their wage to the EU project and this typically goes at between 5 and 15% of their wage. They are diplomats so have special plates on their cars (often scratched by frustrated Belgians) and can park in many specially allocated CD slots around Brussels. Their children are normally bought private schooling in Brussels. Their pensions are amasing and they retire when the rest of us are looking for our final twienty years of work. Travel is business class, of course.

porkbelly

What is that dark claw-like shape emerging from her decolletage? Is it the hand of Beelzebub himself?

JohnAnt

Look, sending her to Haiti would just have made everything more dangerous. Imagine if you'd been pulled from under the rubble and dust, after drinking the bathwater in the airless darkness for a week, and the first thing you saw was the grinning Baroness's fizzog - what would your reaction be?
Mine would be to crawl back under the rubble and hide.

Kevyn Bodman

Like Sterence at 11.33pm I do not want to defend Baroness Ashton.

But I do want to attack the photo-op hungry poseur pols who went to Haiti after the earthquake.
What good did they do for the victims of Haiti?

On the other hand, what good did they do for their own image, as they thought?

This sort of posturing grandstanding is another of the reasons I despise politicians.

And they hinder real,effective work.

Peter Briffa

Sorry, but you've got this the wrong way round. If all politicians followed her lead and only worked a nine to five the world would be a far better place than it is now. Fewer laws, fewer photocalls, fewer buffoons speaking on the radio car at 6.48 a.m. and all the rest of it.
Who on earth would want to speak to Hilary Clinton at one minute past eight in the evening, anyway?

Sally Chatterjee

The French are getting briefing against Ashton, it seems Agnes Poirier is a stooge for the hapless Michel Barnier. Read more at http://www.economist.com/blogs/charlemagne/2010/01/france_about_turn_catherine_ashton

2trueblue

Was there any expectation that it would be different?

Mark

Where was she when an EU citizen was executed at the end of last year? Did she even notice?

Rory the Deplorable

It just gets worse and worse. Monty Python could not script it better!

Dirty Euro

What an awful bunch of people tory trolls are..

Dorothy Wilson

And is the so-called "President of Europe" doing any better?

David Burns

It's all part of Gordon's plan to leave the UK in the worst possible state for Cameron after the election.

anthony rayner

when will you people realise that Labour does not appoint people to jobs according to ability? Details of this ghastly woman's 'qualifications' & past have already been printed so we knew she was a prat from the outset.

Cathy's Clown

Dirty EuroI What an awful bunch of people tory trolls are..
I don't think she's a Tory, DE!

Lee Matthews

Many people in the UK are sceptical about the bigger plans for the EU, so rather than rock the boat immediatly, they put two "unknowns" in place untill the positions are etablished, then when we've all forgotten and it's too late they will come in trumpets sounding with a full on President and sidekick.

alkan kizildel

Her appearence, accent and dress perfectly
epitomizes modern Briton...

That's News

Yes, that's just what Haiti needs. An influx of useless mouths to feed. I think she might have been right on this one.

PAUL GILBOY

On reflection I think you could be right, what appears on the surface as random acts of madness, could be, a master plan by Mr Brown, to destroy the left liberal axis that has held sway over Europe.

He has seen evil up close and unbeknownst to everyone else he has decided to destroy it. Mr Brown has been the greatest gift to conservatism we could ever wish to have. Who else would set up the Chilcot enquiry months before an election, Who else would choose baroness Ashton, who else would stand in front of parliament looking like a demented lunatic; It would be churlish of us after putting the labour party to the sword, not to acknowledge the crucial role of Mr Brown has played in this.

His portray should hang in a place of pride in the Carlton club, so every future conservative PM can acknowledge our great debt to this great man.

A. MacAulay

I remember, from schooldays, the somewhat sententious saying, "It is cruel to mock the afflicted". The baroness is "aestheitcally challenged" and therefore deserving of special consideration, parking place near the exist, special lifts, etc.

Michael

How is her security vetting doing?