Oh dear, poor Caroline Spelman. Observant readers of this blog will know that I heard her speak at a conference earlier in the year and was impressed by her normality and directness!
Many years ago I was a constituency secretary for a MP who happened also to be a Cabinet Minister. (it was the Heath Government so a very long time ago!) Although I wasn’t asked to do any child care, I did do quite a lot of domestic chores including walking the dog ( a Bassett Hound), and making tea for the special branch detectives who always accompanied us after the bombing of Robert Carr’s flat by the IRA. I can’t judge in the case of Ms. Spelman’s nanny, but I have to say that any role in which one helps someone like an MP can be very ‘fluid’ due to the fact that one has to work around their busy schedule, and be prepared to generally help out in whatever way one can. No one in those days was concerned about the fact that my boss was drawing his secretarial allowance for someone who at times worked as a general factotum and dog minder.
I can’t help thinking that this is something of a storm in a teacup, and says more about the problems that working mothers have in organising their lives than about corruption in high places. It is also in the view of many commentators, a sign of how desperate the BBC is to find unsavoury stories about the Conservative Party.
The blogs are alive with the story, which has now slipped off the BBC’s radar screen (I wonder why). Alpha Mummy at the Times and Guido Fawkes (order-order.com) illustrate both ends of the spectrum of opinion. On the whole the ladies from the Times are much more supportive of Ms. Spelman than the ‘lads’ who tend to contribute to the latter blog. In fact the ‘scandal’ seems to be turning into something of a feminist issue.
