Responsibilty-dodger extraordinaire

fulcanelli

Another Labour toad, trying to squirm his way out of a problem situation. How many more times must we listen to the excuses of these people!!

David C

I'm sorry but did you expect anything else?
The whole idea behind farming out processes to private firms was to put a firewall between the power and the responsibility.
The state of the private prison in Doncaster is another piece of evidence. Prisoners are using toilet rooms for accomodation. Surely this is a resigning matter?
The state has decreed these people locked away. They must be wholly the responsibility of the state, yet they live in appalling conditions, but not by design.
It is intolerable that power moves to the centre but responsibility is disseminated to the lowest levels.

John Page

The House was surprisingly empty but even on TV I seemed to feel the atmosphere change as Gove got going. Mr Ballsup was unable to rebut him and Laws was very good too. There were no supportive questions at all. If anything, Labour backbenchers were more concerned than Conservatives. I don't think anyone bought the line that he couldn't say anything because of confidentiality.

KB

Sounds like a gift to me. Balls will forever more be known as the arms length minister.

Chris

I watched it, but it was rather a damp squib. Half-empty chamber, Gove talked too long for my liking. As for Balls, he talked a lot about being at arms length from proceedings and refusing to go into details on anything due to commercial sensitivity. I suppose it was a novel way to polish a turd.

Liz Brown

"So What@ happens next - how can we get rid of this piece of brown stuff - who, it is being reported is positioning himself as the next (even more) dismal Leader of the Labour Party. Is his seat one of the more vulnerable ones, or was he again parachuted into a safe one when his former one was abolished?

The Laughing Cavalier

So weak, so weak!

Ed

So what?©

mitch

Arms length from his job but up to his neck in the trough.The man is a useless parasite.

Silent Hunter

How bad does the country have to get before we decide to evict this government and corrupt Labour party by force?

Just a thought. ;O)

paul hill

Gove............. utterly useless.Just let Balls amble out of the killing zone whilst he sputtered on ineffectually.

Time for David "Dave" to stock up on P45's

Ken Clarke would have turned Balls into toast in 30 seconds

Nicholas

And of course there was absolutely nothing about this on the BBC news at 3 p.m.

Colin McQuade

He's not at arms length from our money, in the shape of a ministerial salary and an outrageously creative interpretation of the expenses policy...

Thomas Cussans

There is one key element of Balls's oddly Mekon-like personality that is consistently ignored.

He has a stammer. Properly so.

I speak with some authority as a life-long stammerer myself.

It was strikingly obvious during his performance in the House of Commons this afternoon.

You notice words rushed into to get them out of the way, others crept up to in an attempt to sneak past them, hesitations that you earnestly hope will be thought evidence of the search for the mot juste – and moments of pure panic as, all the above devices failing, you are confronted with the reality of a word you cannot avoid but know you cannot say.

The way he attempted to deal with 'cocktail ... er ... pause ... look serious ... sudden rush ... WAITresses' was wholly typical of the experienced stammerer confronted with a word he/she knows has the capacity to produce profound humiliation.

Yet this is all very odd. I know of no stammerer who would willingly subject themselves to regular public speaking. The strain is relentless. Unlike almost any other handicap, stammering, still not understood, has a near unique capacity to embarrass speaker and listener alike.

Does this mean that Balls should be admired for persisting in the face of so persistently debilitating a problem? On the whole, yes. Does it make you wonder why he should so persistently pretend to someone he so obviously isn't? Yes and yes again.

It begs an obvious question. Is his ambition such as to make him determined to overcome even so crippling a short-coming, one you know is eating him from within?

You wonder if he thinks it worth it. As Brown's most loyal acolyte, his hopes are clearly crumbling alongside his master's. Let them drag each other, screaching and clawing, into electoral oblivion.

Yet if he were to confront the stammerer's hardest task – to admit that he stammers – he would surely be guaranteed public sympathy. And he would, I promise, vastly reduce the pressure on himself: to acknowledge a stammer is almost instantly to lance it.

He won't of course. It would be an admission of failure. And Balls doesn't 'do' failure any more than Gordo does.

More tongue-tied clumsiness is the best we can hope for from him.

He is not helping himself.

Tankus

shameful turnout of MP's

hysteria

Thomas - what an interesting and rather sad analysis.

cuffleyburgers

S-s-s-s-s-o w-w-w-what?

Of course he could do us all a favour and shut up

John

Gove 'useless' ... yes ... If he's 'useless', what does that make PH - useless to the power of googleplex?
Gove is knowledgeable, competent and incisive.

Balls is an extraordanirly slimy turd even by ZanuLab standards. Silent and David C are right.

Thomas: I do sympathise with an honest person who has a stammer. This turd is anything but honest, so I hope it is eating him up to the bone.

CS

Maturbation is conducted at arms length too. But it's still you doing it (er...I've heard).

Roger Thornhill

Churchill stammered.

You see people like Balls in every corporation. Useless, parasitcal careerists regularly stopping to preen their feathers to ensure an even coating of teflon.