Originally from: brentns
                        
Beckett calls crisis a small triumph for government

Margaret Beckett, the environment secretary, last night described the government's handling of the foot and mouth crisis as "a small triumph" in comments that are sure to anger farmers' leaders and rural communities still coming to terms with the effects of the disease. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,652126,00.html

How to survive in politics without being trying
Jackie Ashley meets Margaret Beckett

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But she has made one recent gaffe. She incurred the wrath of this paper, and of many other onlookers, by describing the handling of the horrendous experience of the foot and mouth affair as "a small sort of triumph". This despite the fact that Defra's predecessor, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, is thought to have done so badly that the old department was taken out and shot.

snip

"Most of the senior management were despatched into the field. The army say that this was the biggest logistic exercise since the Gulf. So to all those people who say, 'oh, you screwed it up', it was just me saying, if you look at the scale of the problem it was a small triumph to have done as well as we did." http://politics.guardian.co.uk/interviews/story/0,11660,661341,00.html

A triumph for Labour...
.. and for rose-tinted spectacles

Ignore the wasteful slaughter of 6m farm animals and turn your mind away from the flaming pyres that consumed so many of their carcasses. According to Margaret Beckett, the brass-necked minister now responsible, the government's handling of the foot and mouth crisis was nothing like a failure – in fact she sees it as "a sort of small triumph".
Interviewed to mark the first anniversary of the detection of the disease that delayed a general election and knocked the stuffing out of rural Britain, Mrs Beckett suggested that the crisis be seen less in terms of dead sheep and more in terms of the bureaucrats who so ably arranged their killing.
For chutzpah this matches her own description, last year, of the foot and mouth episode as "a howling success" and suggests a new role for Mrs Beckett, recasting New Labour's dark times in a brighter light. http://www.guardian.co.uk/footandmouth/story/0,7369,652561,00.html

Feb 18 ~ Peter Ainsworth says: Farmers' court action should not be necessary "This is a court hearing born out of sheer frustration at the Government's cowardly refusal to submit to public scrutiny. IConngratulate those who have brought the case, and wish them well, but it is appalling that it has become necessary to force the Government to defend the indefensible in this way. "There are too many unanswered questions about the Government's handling of the Foot and Mouth tragedy. Why were Ministers so slow to get a grip on the outbreak? Why was there no contingency plan? Why was vaccination ruled out? What was the legal basis of contiguous culling? Were Labour's eyes so transfixed by the date of the General Election that they couldn't see the disaster unfolding before them? "The public demand answers, and they demand a public inquiry. The extreme lengths to which Ministers have gone to avoid being held publicly accountable only reinforce the impression that they have something serious to hide."Far from being a "small triumph", in Margaret Beckett's staggeringly complacent words, The Government's handling of the foot and mouth crisis was chaotic and shameful. http://www.enteuropa.nl/news%20internat.htm

http://www.warmwell.com/02feb20.html

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