Sour Grapes When Scorned

It's always instructive to see the reactions of those who are thwarted in their ambitions. If they say little & get on with life, it's to their credit. If, however, they later make snide or juvenile comments about the object of their failed ambitions, well, you know the rest.

The Recess Monkey political blog is run by one Alex Hilton (above). Normally, I don't pay much attention to it, seeing as it mainly concerns itself with Westminster minutiae; file under "political anoraks".

However, in a post on Tuesday, Hilton commented on the government finding that Liverpool accounts for half the total number of fly-tipping incidents in the UK. Needless to say, it's not a statistic to take civic pride in. However Hilton couldn't help adding, "Capital of culture? Not a culture I'd want to be associated with myself." (http://www.recessmonkey.com/2007/10/16/what-a-load-of-rubbish/ ).

I decided to contribute a few thoughts of my own in the comments section of the post:

"I realise you have to pad out your, ahem, blog from time to time, but this lazy jibe is just a little too obvious, wouldn't you say? I appreciate that living in the Westminster bubble leads to an unwarranted sense of self-importance as well as a relation to reality which could be best described as tenuous. However, the anti-Liverpool stuff is so 20th century. If you're really stuck for something to post, look at yourself and your Westminster cohorts. There's plenty of easy humour there. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to comb my perm and don my shellsuit before going down to the pub where I'll drink myself senseless."

I then decided to see what a fairly superficial web search on Hilton would produce. I was pleasantly surprised to find so much which anyone can sink their teeth into.

Recess Monkey's finest hour was back on March 5th this year when it mistakenly claimed that Thatcher had died; if only, if only! (http://www.recessmonkey.com/2007/03/05/stop-press-maggie-dead/ ).

Wikipedia has some useful information on Hilton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Hilton ):

Hilton is "a distant cousin of heiress Paris Hilton through his American grandfather", which accounts for the guy's gargantuan intellect. There's also his stellar track record as a Labour Party Parliamentary candidate & his role as Web Strategy Manager for Hillary Benn during his unsuccessful attempt to secure Labour's deputy leadership this summer.

I've saved the real meat till the end. Hilton unsuccessfully sought the nomination for the Liverpool West Derby seat recently when Bob Wareing was deselected. He even penned a post on the Guardian's Comment Is Free blog during the summer (http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/alex_hilton/2007/07/the_merseyside_breadline.html ), in which he shamelessly used the region's economic woes as a springboard for his own personal ambitions.

I can't help quoting a passage from the post, seeing as it strikes me as a deluded, distorted version of Terry Fields' example 20 years back in Broadgreen: "You know, an MP's salary of £60,000 is beyond the reach of the average resident in West Derby. Even someone on half that salary would be among the top 10% earners in the constituency. And so this is what I would pledge as the MP for West Derby; to forego half the salary of an MP until real movement has been achieved in average incomes in the constituency-it's no more than a gesture, but this way I could make that challenge personal."

Ah, now isn't that noble & principled?

Sadly for Hilton, he wasn't able to put into practice this pledge, as Stephen Twigg, the guy who famously saw off Portillo in 97, got the gig.

There's a word for the likes of Hilton & I think we all know what it is.