Bells apparently started ringing in Patrick Mercer’s head the minute he heard about the Prince Harry’s racism story.
The Notts MP told Lobbydog he immediately steeled himself for a torrent of calls from hacks – his full comments to the Post are here.
Mercer himself was the centre of a racism scandal a couple of years ago when he said that slurs of the sort Harry made were part of army life.
Dominic Lawson laid into Mercer for criticising the Prince today, calling him a hypocrite.
But seeing as Harry directly used a racist term and Mercer was merely saying that such terms are used, I don't think he's justified.
Lobbydog thinks Harry should just make an apology in person to the people involved and put an end to the whole thing.
Tuesday, 13 January 2009
Bad memories
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Firstly, it was Patrick Mercer’s father that trained at Kelham Theological College, and I seriously doubt that Patrick Mercer was ever disadvantage by notions about forgiveness or compassion, hypocrisy and allegiance.
I doubt it was bells ringing in Patrick Mercer’s head the minute he heard about Prince Harry’s misfortune but a calculating conception that condemnation of Harry in line with the thinking of David Cameron would hopefully put him in David Cameron’s good books and prove to Cameron he was ready to be empowered
Patrick Mercer’s racism scandal was much more than, merely saying, that such terms are used there was the matter of his perceived complete indifference to the plight of the black and ethnic minority soldiers suffering racism. Furthermore when asked about an anti-racist trade union, Mr Mercer dismissed their complaints as "absolute nonsense, complete and utter rot", but then he went farther and said suffering racial abuse was common in the Army and to be expected.
There is no comparison between the regrettable rhetoric of Mr Mercer and what Harry said in friendly banter. One was a highly experienced man of the world voicing his distasteful offensive opinions the other but a very young immature man having a bit of innocent fun with a camcorder that fell into traitorous despicable hands.
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