I think one of my biggest claims to fame in politics is to have invented
the internet the nickname of "The chipmunk" for Hazel Blears. I looked back in my blog archive and I first used the expression in a
blogpost on 28 December 2005. I was doing my end of year awards...
LABOUR POLITICIAN OF THE YEAR
Hazel Blears - can she really be as cheerful as she always looks? She's like a little chipmunk at the Despatch Box. I love her!
Recently, Fraser Nelson added the word 'Iron' and she became the Iron Chipmunk. Events have proved him right.
28 comments:
Do not forget: http://is.gd/NT0X
I thought it was T Bliar who coined the name ... my favourite little Chipmunk?
I wondered where that originated! So much was in place by the time I started reading (and commenting on) 'blogs.
Another unknown to me is "Itchy and Scratchy" — Andrew Neil's names for Portillo and Abbott. Fine, but which is which?
Thanks to the wonderful world of Google I have learned that chipmunks are of the genus 'tamias', a name taken from the Greek word for 'storer'. The creature is noted for storing, collecting and hoarding for later use.
Not unlike Blears' apparent behaviour with expenses, then.
Itchy and Scratchy are characters on the cartoon within a cartoon on The Simpsons, a cat and mouse who kill each other in horrible ways to the amusement of the Simpson children.
As to who's the cat and who's the mouse with Abbott and Portillo, couldn't possibly say.
It wasn't you Iain. I heard it some years ago - I suspect it was one of her colleagues and you heard it from someone and then forgot that you heard it.
The Iron Chipmunk is very funny though.
I'm not sure its a good idea to give cuddly nicknames to ones opponents.
And I don't believe she is as cheerful as she always looks. That forced grin has long grated on me.
Quite apt really: BBC's "In Our Time" is on right now on this election day morning and it is discussing the destruction of another scotch anti-democratic unelected tyrant who almost ruined England, namely King Charles I.
Links here:
MP3 download (after 11:0am): http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/iot/
Main In Our Time web page: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl
respectfully, she is a bloody terrible politician - a jack-in-the-box of insincerity and ideological vacuity. She has also been coining it in at our expense.
A profound misjudgement.
Anon 9:47, I totally agree - she is unbelievably over-rated. God only knows how she made it into a British cabinet. Then again, what the heck is the loathsome Hoon doing there?? And whilst we're on the subject, whatever happened to David Mellor? John Major? And a range of other vacuous nonentities of former Tory governments?
Oh yes, they are all living very splendidly.
I would love to see her cheery little face with a tight noose round it and her blackened toungue lolling to the side. She is without peer as being the most ANNOYING person on the planet.
This is an interesting analysis of the letters between the Chipmunk and Pa Broon:
http://extras.timesonline.co.uk//pdfs/blears.pdf
Crackpot, it really is...
Emmanuel - that is not fair. Right or wrong, Charles I was at least a man of courage and principle (and no less democratic than his enemies). Gordon Brown, on the other hand...
And just like the real thing she pinches (and occasionally crushes) nuts. What is interesting though is that while with chipmunks the greys devour the reds with this political specimen it is a red who is munching on a very grey rat.
From what I have seen of her CGT affairs, it appears to me she is nothing more than a crook and a shyster....the fact that she plays the bluff straight-talking working class northerner card makes it even more offensive quite frankly.
Can't understand your liking for her.
I've always thought of Blears as the Bonnie Langford of politics. Both deserving of a quick and blessedly silencing end!
I think I prefer "Squirrel Nutkin"
Really at a loss to understand why Portillo has this media career. He is the opposite to charismatic, everytime he opens his mouth he proves again what appalling judgement he has, he is well out of touch, and he is just as terminally weird as Brown.
Thank God he never made it to Tory leader (or far worse, PM !)
I just prefer politics without Hazel Blears.
Iain, why are you claiming this when TB thought of it first?
Acadman
You clearly don't much about CGT - the HMRC guidance and rules clearly allow those with two homes a choice regarding which they nominate as their main home and hence entitled to the CGT exemption. What Blears may have done may not have been moral but you would find it very difficult to ptove that it was crooked (i.e broke the law).
If Iain really did delete libellous comments he should be delteing yours shortly!
She is someone willing to blatantly lie if she thinks (1) she can get away with it and (2) it will score a cheap point. One small example. I quote from her charmingly positive Wikipedia page.
"In May 2008, Blears was criticised for a statement on BBC's Question Time where she informed the panel and its viewers that there were 3 million people unemployed in the United Kingdom when Labour came to power in 1997 (the official figure was 1,602,500).[23]"
I prefer Red Dwarf
Looking through her entry on wikipedia, I noticed that there is no mention whatsoever of the word chipmunk.
I therefore saw it as my humble duty to add a brief word on this and can only hope that a fellow editor will not get too serious and delete it...... ;-)
Totally evil woman - the smile tells it all.
She may have developed some balls of late, but her entire career otherwise has been toeing th eparty line and pushing through dreadful legislation while enriching herself at the public purse.
Don't forget the pensioner hounded to death for daring to try and challenge her stupid decision.
The Penguin
Thought Fraser Nelson was referring to you when he wrote 'iron'
Thatcher was brought down by a dead sheep. Will Brown be brought down by a wounded chipmunk?
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