How tall is hazel blears

This is where she was born and raised, the daughter of a trade unionist who worked in a bakery with a brother who, as she is fond of reminding people, is now a bus driver.

If you go back to her maiden speech in the Commons, it is all there, in a portrait of home pitched somewhere between Keir Hardie and Gracie Fields: "The qualities of Salford men and women shine through the adversity of their everyday lives. They were, and still are, people with courage, determination, wit and compassion, and they have an unrivalled ability to see through falseness and to expose insincerity.

She seemed as composed and self-confident as ever: friendly at first, though when my serial misgivings about the Blair government came out, things got rather testy. On the tape, there is a lovely moment when I mention Iraq for the second time, and one of her aides instantly pops her head round the door and tells me to wind things up.

I wondered whether her passage from apparent leftwing orthodoxy to enthusiastic New Labourism had caused her any moments of unease, but apparently not: "I don't think I've ever had to really swallow hard and sort of grit my teeth and think, 'I'm going to accept this policy even though I really don't like it'," she said. And then there was Salford, usually used as a means of shutting down the conversation.

When we argued about the unpopular introduction of tuition fees, for example, she kept nudging the conversation back to her home turf.

She had no time for those rebellious Labour MPs who quite reasonably worried about such issues as skyrocketing student debt: "If those people thought about it properly, and were really rooted in communities like mine, they would see that the whole argument about tuition fees is a complete sham. Rather masochistically, I eventually went back to Salford for more when I reprised a handful of encounters from the book for an item screened on BBC2's Newsnight.

I was relatively new to political interviewing and this time I came armed with a bagful of stuff, including a copy of the Butler report into the use of intelligence in the build-up to the invasion of Iraq. We spent an hour playing a pretty futile kind of interview tennis, with her growing ever more irate, and me getting increasingly frustrated.

When I pushed her on the government's love of the private sector, she eventually accused me of being "obsessive-compulsive", which was perhaps not the cleverest thing to say on camera. When the film was broadcast on Newsnight, they put that bit at the top of the programme, accompanied by the inevitable look of camped-up concern from Jeremy Paxman.

Two years ago, sensing that Blair was on his way out, and a meaningful conversation about the Labour party's future might be back on, I decided to rejoin, something I included in a comment piece for the Guardian. In double-quick time, Blears wrote a piece for the Guardian's Comment is Free website, which was headlined " On the side of the angels ". It was a funny old read, to say the least. I remember him as a keen Young Socialist, in distinctly un-socialist Tatton, when I was Labour's candidate against Neil Hamilton in Now that he is a celebrity author and cultural commentator, I am even more pleased to see him back in the fold.

With an awful prescience, she went on: "Our parents' generation saw political activity as something to benefit the community. Today, people see politics as something to benefit politicians.

This is a travesty. Earlier this week, I got hold of one of Blears's aides and asked if the minister would speak to me. As it turned out, she insisted on responding to a handful of questions via email, though that hardly dimmed the impact of her answers. Sebastien Bellin Basketball Player. Alexandra Ledermann Show Jumper. Sukiyuu TikTok Star. Isaac Dikgale Cricketer. Anna Vergelskaya Pageant Contestant.

Steve Ramsey YouTube Star. Report Post « » Your Name:. Your Email:. Tell us why do you think this post is inappropriate and shouldn't be here:. Cancel Report. May 14 , Her resignation was one of several from the Labour cabinet that summer, with the government's difficulties compounded by poor results in the European elections and poor opinion poll results which were largely blamed on the recession and rising unemployment.

In May , The Telegraph reported that Blears had claimed the maximum allowable expenses, within one pound, for three properties, as well as for stays in hotels. Further, Blears had not paid capital gains tax on profit from the sale of a London flat. The property was registered as her main residence with HM Revenue and Customs, but Blears had been claiming MPs' second home expenses relating to the flat.

In May Blears mistakenly commented on BBC's Question Time that there were 3 million people unemployed in the United Kingdom when Labour came to power in the official figure was 1,, In April it was rumoured that Brown was planning a summer reshuffle in which Blears would be demoted. However, when the reshuffle occurred in the autumn, it was confirmed she was to retain her position.

On 24 February she announced her candidacy for the election for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, making her one of six candidates for the job formerly held by John Prescott. She came last out of six candidates. Harriet Harman won the election on 24 June She served in the Cabinet as Minister without Portfolio and Chairman of the Labour Party between and , and Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government from to , when she resigned. In Blears joined in protests against the closure of hospital departments in her constituency, even though these closures were consistent with the policies of the government of which she was a senior member.

Health Emergency's head of campaigns Geoff Martin said, "there are 29 hospitals up and down the country facing the immediate threat of cuts and closure to key services in Will Hazel Blears be joining demonstrators on the streets in each of those areas or is this just a classic case of 'not in my back yard'"? Blears was promoted in to Minister of State at the Home Office, with responsibilities for policing, crime reduction and counter terrorism.

In March , while Home Office minister with responsibility for counter-terrorism, Blears implied that section 44 of the Terrorism Act would disproportionally affect Muslims. In response to this and to her seeming endorsement of it, Ray Powell, President of the National Black Police Association, described the minister's language as "intemperate and inconsiderate".

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