Bullying row charity chief 'a prat'
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Independent Minds
The charity boss at the centre of the Gordon Brown bullying row was dismissed today as "this prat of a woman" by a Government minister.
Immigration minister Phil Woolas said claims made by Christine Pratt of the National Bullying Helpline, about receiving complaints from inside No 10, were backfiring on her.
Mr Woolas's comments came as the Prime Minister tried to draw a line under the affair with a business-as-usual speech on education.
The immigration minister told Nick Ferrari on LBC 97.3: "It's a tough business, politics. It's 18, 20 hours a day that people like the Prime Minister work.
"I think this attack on him by this prat of a woman down in - where's she from, Swindon? - I think that's backfiring on her.
"Most people think that Gordon Brown, even if they don't agree with his politics, they think that he's a decent man and I can tell you in my experience, he's a very decent man."
The National Bullying Helpline, based in Swindon, has been thrown into chaos after all its patrons quit in protest at Mrs Pratt going public with her allegations.
Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe, TV presenter Sarah Cawood and stress expert Professor Cary Cooper all severed ties with the National Bullying Helpline after criticising Mrs Pratt for breaching confidentiality. Tory councillor for Hillingdon Mary O'Connor also reportedly resigned.
Mr Brown described accounts of his behaviour in a book by journalist Andrew Rawnsley as "wrong" and said Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell had not admonished him.
Mr Brown's wife Sarah spoke out in his defence, telling GMTV that "what you see is what you get" with her husband.
She said: "Gordon's the man that I know and the man that I love. People have heard me talk about him and they probably know everything that I would have to say about him. I know him as a strong, hard-working, decent man and he isn't anything else. What you see is what you get with him."
Mr Brown's close Cabinet ally, Ed Balls, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "I've known Gordon Brown for 20 years and at no point has it ever occurred to me that Gordon Brown is or would ever be a bully.
"I know it is something which personally he feels very upset about because he knows there is no truth to these allegations. In fact, Andrew Rawnsley's book - despite its narrative truth - turns out on every one of these allegations to be incorrect.
"I don't think it damages him. It hurts him personally.
"If you said to the public 'What do you think of Gordon Brown?', they would say he is tough, they would sometimes be frustrated by the way he speaks on television.
"I have never heard a single constituent say Gordon Brown is a bully. They would say he gets things done, he is tough, he is a leader, and that's what we need."
But Mr Rawnsley said he was standing by his account of Mr Brown's behaviour in No 10.
He told BBC Newsnight last night: "What they have not denied on behalf of the Cabinet Secretary is that he had a conversation with the Prime Minister about his behaviour... one person's idea of a verbal warning could be another person's private word."
Mr Rawnsley's book includes accounts of Mr Brown allegedly pulling a secretary from her chair, "roughly shoving" an aide, and four-letter-word rants that frightened staff.
Mrs Pratt has insisted she did not breach confidentiality by going public with her comments and said she felt "slightly intimidated" by some of the reaction to her allegations.
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Not what is expected from a nations leader, but then Mr Brown does not display leadership skills
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Labour's record on honesty is none existent.
The public have learned after thirteen years of Labour, if their lips are moving, they are lying.
It is literally that simple.
The public have also learned the Labour party brand has been hijacked by these crooks.
Labour shouldn't expect traditional voters support come April/May. Labour no longer have any traditional voters.
Every day Labour are exposed further for what they are and what they are is poison.
Once a thug always a thug.
Those of us who remember Woolas from his student activist days know what a peice of work he is. Putting a bovver boy in a New Labour suit doesn't make him a gentleman.
And the Woolas comments are also typical of wider Labour. In govt they've spent 13 years passing ever increasing volumes of PC, 'human rights', equality and victim legislation, yet they are so high handed, so drunk on power and detached from the reality that they don't believe any of it actually applies to them! No no, in their world view such matters are for the 'little people' not the 'masters of the universe' like the unelected Brown who is apparently free to bully and discriminate at will.
This episode surely reveals the innate nastiness of the macho culture which surrounds Brown and his unionesque boys. Secretaries can be pushed out of chairs, aides can be pulled about by their coats, everyone can be F'ed and blinded at, but if a lady from the National Bullying Helpline dares to criticise them it is her turn to receive a mouthful of abuse from the semi house trained pitbull Woolas.
The NBH does a far more useful job than most of the equality quangos Labour has set up and financed yet perhaps because it is there for everyone rather than specifically for one of Labour's cause celeb special interest groups they deride it.
In fact Woolas's bullying of Christine Pratt simply underlines how much the NBH is needed. People like Gordon Brown, Ed Balls, Damian McBride and Phil Woolas exist. They're , they're bullies, and unfortunately in Britain they're also in power.
We are in Police State.
He is worse than silly, odious is probably nearer the mark. If he was a relative of mine, I would disown him.
I especially enjoyed watching this specimen squirming and wriggling, on camera having been bested on the Ghurka issue by Ms Lumley. To coin a phrase, : he didn't like it up Him !
By the by, this little man cost us 4,800 pounds to feed last year.
Why the hell they can't buy their own food like the rest of us. God knows we pay 'em enough.
heractions have brought her charity into disrepute and deflected attention from those who realy do get bullied it was she not the patron miss widdecombe or thepresident who should have resigned
How are your typing skills ? Also, call me old fashioned - I suppose I am - but I have got used to seeing spaces between words, capitol letters, and so on.
Have another go, and I will see if I can read it. I have given up on this one.
This how ministers behave?
sameeth99200
I bet it really stinks, down in the Bunker.
It will need some serious fumigation when Labour have been finally crow- barred out .
Woolas by name Wooly Arse by nature.
Indeed, Phil Woolarse !
then it's the wanker in charge of the Borders Agency, Fatuous Phil Woolas. The racist thug who arrests students who are in full legal possession of visas (issued by Britain's Embassies abroad after careful assessment) to be in the country). And then - after a Court finds that the gutless moron Woolas has acted illegally in arresting them - he has them deported to prevent them suing him for wrongful arrest.
So if you want to talk about bullying - then just hold the mirror up to Phil Woolas, the most vicious racist arsehole you could wish to find. Makes Nick Griffin look moderate!
Mr Woolas could certainly have argued that, to ensure absolutely the confidentiality of the people who contacted her helpline, Mrs Pratt shouldn't have contacted the BBC and made her observations. On the other hand, you can understand why she did it, when the government spin machine was churning out assurances that bullying was utterly unknown in the high echelons of government, and she knew for a fact that this was a lie!
But Mr Woolas doesn't argue - he just uses contemptuous, bullying abuse. Speaks volumes. What lice these people are ...
But at least we get an indication of what the culture in government really is ....
I'm sorry john-b-ellis, you do lice a disservice.
Lice are innocent beings...
NuLabour will not stand for any criticism
Seems like they were all a bunch of bullies as students. Offensive on both a personal and wider level. Not much change there. Their only saving was the inevitable gullibility of the vast majority of the British electorate, and the crass stupidity of the Labour element of that. Looks like it might be so yet again due to the crass incompetence of the opposition parties also.
Was that back in his dope smoking days tom?
I suspect, being the political pygmy he so evidently is, that he has been waiting for an opportunity to publicly humiliate some unfortunate female after Joanna Lumley gave him such a public kicking over the Gurkha debacle.
You saw that too, she gave this little man a real seeing to!
There's more:
" MP's could claim 400 pounds a month without having to submit receipts, but when Phil Woolas chose to send in his bills, it emerged that he had also bought panty liners, nappies, and a ladies' blouse.
He said the receipts submitted exceeded the sums he had claimed so it could not be proved for what he was being reimbursed". Source : The Daily Telgraph "The complete Expenses Files." p10
If Mandy and co are looking for a hatchet man, they would do better to find someone with less baggage- literally - than this grotesque little chancer, or maybe that's the best his Lordship could do, who knows , or even cares mack ?
But what you see is someone not very good at his job and probably totally unsuited to the role. What you see is someone heading for disaster at the polls and inevitable subsequent resignation.
It is always a bad sign for Labour, when they have to wheel out Brown's bread-knife to stick up for him badboy...
.
Oh dear
by right wing idiots more akin to the mail express,torygraph or murdochs right wing rags