I blogged about Labour supporter, Owen Barder, back in October last year (Labour blogger gets top civil service job) when he was still listed as a contributor to the Bloggers4Labour aggregator. At the time he'd just been appointed as the new Director of Global Development Effectiveness at the Department for International Development on a salary of 100k.
Needless to say I wasn't best pleased with yet another example of Labour cronyism. However, in a small victory for transparency, I'm pleased to say the Labour toady removed his feed from the Bloggers4Labour site shortly after my post.
Today I'm even more pleased to say that I'm not the only one to have noticed that Labour supporting civil servants are using their blogs to promote a leftist agenda. The Mail on Sunday has been keeping an eye on Owen's blogging antics and their story today makes for interesting reading:
'Hitler' Bush, by Whitehall's jogging blogger
'PM's former aide breaks Civil Service tradition with astonishing website outburst. A former aide to Tony Blair has posted on his website an attack on the Prime Minister which compares President George Bush to Hitler. The attack, which has shocked Whitehall, appears on the outspoken, sexually explicit, website blog of £100,000-a-year civil servant Owen Barder. The Department for International Development mandarin's personal site, www.owen.org, could hardly be further from the Civil Service's reputation for opaque discretion.'
9 comments:
You might want to remember Niemoller old boy.
Via Tim Worstall: Owen Barder »
He wasn't a patch on Franz Beckenbauer.
I think, Mr Pundit, you may come to regret both that article and that flippant comment about Pastor Niemoller.
Neither, for what little it's worth, impressed me very much.
We're not talking about a mister nobody here. We're talking about a senior civil servant who is also a well known Labour supporter. The very fact that he's taken his blog down should tell you that he realises his mistake. As for Pastor Niemoller, feel free to enlighten me.
Cancel last. Although after reading this about Niemoller I'm not so sure that the comment was flippant. He appears to have been a Nazi. How can that be flippant?
Alex: link removed. But I can't have the language I'm afraid.
As a liberal you may disagree with his views but don't you defend his right to air his views on his own personal blog?
And if this highlights the sophistry of so called civil service neutrality then all the more power to Owen.
Cronyism is no new story though, UKDP, on either side of the fence.
James: You're right. It happens with all the parties. But I don't care whether it's Labour, Tory or Lib Dem - it stinks.
Simon: Of course he can defend his views on his own blog. But as a senior civil servant he would have been well advised to leave politics out of it. He chose not to. Ultimately, it's a question of judgement. And Owen has showed that his judgement is flawed.
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