Scrambled message; please read this one.

Originally from: chris stockdale
                        
Apolgies for last scrubbed message.Should read, I have found the latter, still looking for the former.

 Addittionally, could anyone refer me to where the sinister Minister described the handling of FMD as a 'minor triumph'.

Won't it be good when this is all over. Only TB, BSE scrapie madness, globalisation and GM left to fix !
 Chris.
                        

Originally from: Duncan
                        
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200102/cmhansrd/cm021
106/debtext/21106–08.htm
6 Nov 2002 : Column 300

Scan down to that column Chris – hope this is what you are meaning.

Coleen

Originally from: Mary Critchley
                        
It must have been about the 18th Feb 2002, Chris. See Guardian fro warmwell archives "small triumph" not "minor" !!

Mary

Feb 19

A triumph for Labour: ... and for rose-tinted spectacles
Guardian
The Guardian – United Kingdom; Feb 19, 2002

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. For if foot and mouth was merely "a small triumph", then the Millennium Dome and the petrol blockades that brought Britain to a standstill in late 2000 were surely much greater ones? With Mrs Beckett's help, too, the public will come to share the government's exultation over the smooth handling of plans for the new Wembley Stadium and the widespread welcome for part- privatisation of the tube. The prime minister's visit to Syria last year was one triumph and his speech to the Women's Institute another. In the general election, Tony Blair's confrontation over the NHS in the streets of Birmingham was only a small success but John Prescott's in the streets of Rhyl was a brilliant coup. More recently, Lord Irvine's handling of the Lords reform has impressed. Now Enron, Jo Moore and "garbagegate" await the Beckett treatment, especially as the Downing Street media machine begins to falter. The prime minister's official spokesman says the Mittal affair is a "yawnathon", but Mrs Beckett, surely, could do better. Over to you, Margaret.

Originally from: brentns
                        
Mr. Peter Ainsworth (East Surrey): May I join my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington) 6 Nov 2002 : Column 300
in welcoming most of what the right hon. Lady has said? Given the criticisms contained in the Anderson report in particular and the flurry of activity that it has engendered, does she still maintain, as she once said, that the Government's response to foot and mouth had been a minor triumph? Or will she take possibly the last opportunity—that I will offer her anyway—to apologise and say sorry for the trauma of foot and mouth? http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200102/cmhansrd/cm021106/debtext/21106–08.htm

Chris.. here's Mr Ainsworth challenging her on that very phrase

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

snip

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

http://www.google.ca/search?as_q=beckett+foot+mouth&num=10&hl=en&ie=ISO-8859–1&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=small+triumph&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=images