The more I think about Meg Hillier the less I like her, that's nothing to do with her attitude to foxes mind. Nothing personal, I'm sure she loves kittens and can make a crying baby sleep at fifty paces but, as the main person responsible for holding the Coalition to account on climate change she is the just the wrong choice.
Yesterday I posted a link to the new shadow Minister of Energy and Climate Change's Public Whip account which shows her woeful voting record. Stuart has summarised it here.
To summarise Stuart's summary it appears that she's voted against improvements in housing energy use efficiency, she's voted against limiting civil aviation pollution, was for Heathrow's expansion, in fact according to Public Whip she has a poor voting record on the issue for a Labour MP, let alone compared to the Tories, et al.
Don't worry though, she's 100% for nuclear power. That will sort things out.
Today the Guardian summed up her record so far like this;
As for the real Meg Hillier, she's not known to have had a deep interest in climate change. A former journalist (like climate secretary, Chris Huhne) and privately educated (like Huhne), she was elected for the first time in 2005 as MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch, having been mayor of Islington and a member of the London assembly. Probably most useful for her new job among her interests are the work she has done on housing and transport (well, bus routes). In government, she spent a year working for Ruth Kelly at the Department of Communities and Local Government, then three as a Home Office minister juggling the identity card hot potato.Just checking to see if she has any interest in climate change...
Yup. That checks out then.
So we've been told that Ed Miliband was the best candidate on climate change, but if that's the case why has he appointed someone who has no interest in climate change to shadow the issue? What possible justification could there be for appointing someone who votes against climate change measures to spearhead your approach to climate change?
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She's a heartless, contemptible fool, to boot. We dealt with her a lot at NO2ID when she was a Home Office minister; she earned herself a reputation for getting out of difficult questions but just making something up. The horrified faces of her civil servants during interviews were a regular joy for us. She even tried the whole 'ID cards could be used to protect your child from on line pedophiles, when our National Co-ordinator asked her a question she didn't understand about data linking. That's right Meg, hit all those reactionary, fear-mongering bases at once.
Her finest hour though had to be during the hunger strikes at Yarls Wood where her response to abuse of female detainees by guards was to deny they were really refusing food and condemn them for 'frightening the other women in the centre'. She is human slime.
Some details here of Meg Hillier's lies regarding Yarl's Wood: http://www.tenpercent.org.uk/2010/03/01/meg-hillier-wins-the-thatcher-award-for-abusing-hunger-strikers/
And here regarding how she believes that locking children up decreases child trafficking: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/clare-sambrook/has-meg-hillier-gone-mad
Sorry, that's getting out of difficult questions *by* just making something up. Doh.
A shadow Chancellor knowing next-to-nothing about economics; a shadow Minister for Energy and Climate Change who demonstrates a negative interest in climate change: is a pattern emerging here?
"So we've been told that Ed Miliband was the best candidate on climate change, but if that's the case [...]"
Because he's marginally the best of a pretty poor bunch. (Except that he wasn't, really.) And because Labour's most principled MPs don't want to become tainted goods by being associated with the shadow cabinet, and therefore don't bother to stand.
What exactly is the point of the Labour Party these days, except to try and make the Tories look good?
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Without entering into any kind of broader political debate about the issues raised by other posters, the biggest element of discussion in the coming months will be about Housing and energy efficiency.
Meg Hillier is well versed in these areas from her time as Mayor and as a Councillor. Do you not think this may be part of the reason for her appointment?
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