Sunday, January 04, 2009

Taking the Waters of Montgomeryshire

I'd been concerned that this blog had become overly righteous during the festive season. Normally, the family would feature quite a lot at this time, but Mrs D tells me that they prefer anonymity. So in general, I've stuck with serious politics. But its difficult to stop a shard of innuendo slipping through. As Stanley Baldwin famously and rather pessimistically said about Britain's air defences in 1936 "The bomber will always get through". Well, one did last week, when I posted about Ffion Hague's splendid book about the women in David Lloyd George's life, The Pain and the Privilege'. Spin Doctor in the Wales on Sunday thinks this failing on my part is something to do with what's in the local water supply.

Today, the good 'Doctor' was much taken by the extracts from Mrs Hague's book, which I'd included on my blog. I have two complaints to make, though I'll not take them further than this reference. Firstly, there was no mention of the book from which I was quoting. Its such a very good book, which I hope my visitors will go out and buy. To know Lloyd George requires that you know what a randy old goat he was. Because communication between the great man and his women was by letter, the evidence of his manipulative charm is there for us all to read. That's why we'll never fully know John Kennedy and Bill Clinton, who were of the same stable, but didn't communicate in the same way. The evidence is not there.

My second complaint is the photograph, at the bottom of the Spin Doctor column. Since the Welsh media have quite understandably put me very much on the back burner of late, I should be grateful for being the dominant forward presence - but behind me in the montage is Lembit Opik, Nick Bourne and the ever- coquettish Kirsty Williams. Good job I'm reading 'Rainbow Six' by Tom Clancy at the moment, where they all where bullet proof vests under their suits for most of the time! Perhaps I should send a consignment of 'Montgomery Spring Water', bottled at Harry Tuffins supermarket to the Wales on Sunday offices in Cardiff though - just to see if we can liven things up a bit.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

" randy old goat " - now who does that remind us of in Liberal circles!
Not that Grope-it Opik has the political gravitas of the original. Reminds me of the letter he wrote to an old lady at the time he so unceremoniously dumped Sian Lloyd. She had sent her membership card back to the Newtown office, as a protest against his dreadful behaviour, and in his response to her, he actually claimed that he was like Kennedy and Lloyd George! Can you believe this man! Now we read he's going to help Obama fight terrorism......He has so lost the plot.

Glyn Davies said...

Anon - I think he said that he wanted to meet Osama bin Laden to ask him something like why he's so beastly, and to ask him to stop it. It did seem a tad ambitious to me.