Ben's Blog
New Statesman website editor Ben Davies's weekly ramblings plus feedback on hot online topics
Ted Heath goes everywhere
- Posted by Ben Davies
- 26 April 2007
How a newstatesman.com exclusive by Tory Brian Coleman about Ted Heath cottaging got picked up everywhere ...
A few days ago a US Magazine decided to out a couple of well known Americans. Outing's been a contentious issue for a number of years now here in Britain so I asked Peter Tatchell of Outrage and Conservative politician Brian Coleman to put their views.
Tatchell is well known for his stance on queer rights and has, in the past, outed people whom he feels have been hypocritical. You can read his case by clicking here.
Openly gay politician Coleman meanwhile was to argue that people in the public eye were entitled to a private life. In the course of making his case he outed a couple of former colleagues (deleted for legal reasons), dropped in a tiny aside about George Michael (ditto) and then went on to say that former Tory PM Ted Heath used to go cruising.
It was one of those stories that got picked up everywhere - which as you can imagine was quite pleasing from where I sit.
It's only right therefore that I thank Brian for deciding to launch his bid to become the Tory candidate for London Mayor on this website. More from him later I suspect...
There's been plenty of other stuff going on here at Terminal House - where newstatesman.com is based. We've had articles from Kate Hudson, the chairwoman of CND and from Elijah Zarwan of Human Rights Watch.
We've had children from all over the world writing about Global Education Action Week
Plus incisive commentary on the French elections on Le Blog and our British version, Election 2007, is up now too. It's written by journalists, politicians, academics and New Statesman readers from across the UK. It's a comprehensive guide to the key battles on 3 May and we'll have multiple daily updates from Scotland, Wales and the English regions.
You can't have missed coverage of Boris Yeltsin's passing but you may have missed this quote:
The dead president's former prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin apparently said: "We hoped for the best, but things turned out as usual."
Well Viktor let's face it, you don't get immortal on that quantity of vodka...
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