What's in a name, Ms Pratt?

Now, we all know I'm no longer Gordon Brown's biggest fan. But for heaven's sake, let's draw a line somewhere.

1. In a book, Andrew Rawnsley makes some vague, unsubstantiated comments about goings-on in No 10 and serialises them in the Observer, a newspaper of which he is an associate editor.
2. Mandy denies the allegations.
3. Ms Christine Pratt, co-founder of the National Bullying Helpline, contacts the BBC claiming that No 10 staff have called her helpline.
4. Story kicks off again, but there is widespread condemnation of Pratt's breach of confidentiality in making the phone calls public. (In a small office, it all but identifies the person who rang.)
5. Numerous patrons of the charity resign over Pratt's behaviour.
6. Pratt has the audacity to claim that she feels "slightly intimidated" by responses to her totally inappropriate decision to go public.
7. She persists with her deluded logic.
8. Oh, and, as it turns out, there are publicly available narratives of Ms Pratt's own extensive (and rather unhinged) bullying behaviour, as recorded both by an employment tribunal, and by a panel considering her totally unsuccessful appeal of its decision.

In short, the woman has a persecution complex. Possibly not the best person to be running a bullying helpline. Hopefully it will shut up shop now, and be replaced by one which is run by people with fewer psychological problems than its clients, and which will not take its clients' stories to the papers for entirely political ends.

Update

John Prescott gave a combative interview with Newsnight yesterday. You can always tell the difference between an authentically angry politician and one who's parroting a party line.

Labels: politics