[doing the hack] and sinking the boot

The other face of Eve

Grauniad [H/T Chris Dillow]:

Former MP Oona King ... accused Flint of exploiting her sexuality: "She shocked a lot of women in the party by often posing in a fashion that implies she's more interested in the way she looks than the policies she presents."

Mail:

‘There was a spontaneous reaction in the FCO Press office when the news broke that she was off,’ said one official. ‘There was a loud cheer and applause. You could say Caroline was not the most popular of Ministers. They didn’t really respect her.’

Officials say fiery Ms Flint fell out of favour at the Foreign Office only weeks after arriving because of her ban on biscuits.

‘Serving some biscuits with coffee is the default setting at the FCO for meetings and gatherings,’ said the official. ‘But with Caroline, instead of tea or coffee and biscuits, it was just tea or coffee.

‘The staff were just bemused by it. She would fly off the handle if it was ignored and someone smuggled a few biscuits in. I don’t think she had anything against any particular biscuits such as ginger snaps or Bourbons. It was all biscuits, full stop.

‘To be honest, people thought she was vain and assumed she was just watching her figure and didn’t want to be tempted. That is no reason to stop the rest of us having a harmless treat. After all, there are precious few treats in the Civil Service.’

A spokesman for Ms Flint confirmed that she had ordered officials to stop serving biscuits at her meetings – but denied it was anything to do with weight-watching.

‘They used to bring up all these biscuits every time you had a cup of tea and nobody used to eat them. So Caroline said, “Can we cut the biscuits?”

‘She also thought they were being charged internally for them so she was saving the taxpayers’ money, but she wasn’t being tight-fisted.’