An interesting piece. I get the feeling that the media are going to pressure him into doing so.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11433642

Wise man. Ex French national football team manager Raymond Domenech decided to propose to his girlfriend on the spur on national TV, she wasn't very impressed.

Jon

He's 41. Only been an MP since 2005. Previously student, Journo, researcher and speechwriter, Uni lecturer in USA.

Not casting aspertions, but how exactly did politics get in the way?

Worked as intern for Tony Benn, so can't be all bad as politicians go. Also claimed very little as expenses.

Good - he has some life experience then.



I don’t think it’s high on his list of things to do.



The Red Tops will no doubt be pushing this one though.

In what? Learning how to be a good politician in the Westminster Village?

He'll be just as bad as the rest of them. He's not got the presence of Blair, and sounds like he needs to give his nose a good blow.

Still, he can't do any worse than any of the others, so let's see how it pans out.

My first impressions are good. I did not feel that way about Tony.

Heard him on the radio yesterday. Seemed to be imitating TB's speech style, but in an almost satirical way, like Jon Coulshaw(??spelling) impressions

David Miliband says he won't join brother Ed's team



Vid here too:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11432762

Hope he buggers off for good

Apparently David's wife is feeling seriously put out. I suspect she is vicariously living through her husband. She know realises that Number 10 will never be on her "We lived here" list. To be honest the right wing of Labour need to go away. I am not suggesting a return to the left but dropping the Neoclassical economist game plan which has failed everywhere.

I couldn't care less whether he is cohabiting/married/gay/straight/purple. If they want to get married then that's their decision.
Quite why people think being married will make a better politician is beyond me, especially in present times. It's like some sort of bizarre box tick they have to have for public life.

It's the self-appointed guardians of morality, the Dailies Fail and Excess. Honestly, I think the majority of right-thinking people out here in the real world don't give a stuff about Milliband Minor's private life.

Interesting reads:
http://www.butireaditinthepaper.co.uk/2 ... t-married/
http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/hollycruise/ ... te_sprogs/

Poor old Ed. I feel sorry for him already. He’ll be hounded by the press to get married, and when, as part of his official duties, he finds himself in a church with the PM and Deputy PM (maybe at some remembrance ceremony), they will be looking at him to see how his atheist leanings cause him to behave, and leap on him as a hypocrite (look - he’s praying, look he’s singing, look - he’s in a chruch....). Of course, they won’t do the same for the other godless heathen - Nick Clegg.

I agree.

1. If he doesn't get married, he'll be (inexplicably) somehow less electable and the moralising right, the right-wing media and the christian conservative evangelicals will turn into howler monkeys.
2. If he does get married against any beliefs he holds, he will be rightly seen as a hypocrite by the secularists and religious liberals.
3. If he really did want to get married but just didn't get chance, he'll merely be accused by both sides of trying to cover up number 2
4. If he tries to make no decision or keep it private, both sides will hound him relentlessly until they get a reaction

To be honest he can't win any way up and he should just do what he wants to do.

The rules for Christians are just that and only that. I do not expect a Buddhist to abide by Christian guidelines any more than I would expect British women to have to wear a burq'ua. The law should be absolutely agnostic and anyone, Christian, Moslem, Pagan or Atheist, who seeks to impose their beliefs on someone else deserves a chuffing slap.

Do you want to get legally joined to another person in the name of love? Good. I'll bring the Hobnobs
Do you want to commit privately to another without ceremony in the name of love? Good. I'll send the Hobnobs.

It's nobody else's bl**dy business and if he told them all to foxtrot oscar I'd support him all the way.

Why should he be a hypocrite? If she wants a church wedding then even if he were an atheist and simply went along because it was her wishes how does that make him a hypocrite?

Because in a church wedding, particularly a CofE one, both bride and groom make vows that explicitly require a belief in God.

From the Church of England website:


You cannot promise anything "before" and "within the love of" a being you don't believe in.