Sadly, but perhaps predictably, the first comments below focus on the now C-list celebrity Derek Draper. (Less predictably the same name has turned up as a signatory to this sites mailing list. I say name -- is it the real one or a spoof?)
So I intend to take radical action and cauterise this "wound" immediately. This will be the one and only opportunity on this site to discuss DD.
John Erskine makes the following honest confession in the comments box below:
"Mixed feelings on this one, as I wish Derek well on his personal journey. People should be able to put rather embarrassing episodes firmly in the past. We all make mistakes, except most of them aren't in public.
In any case, I'm partly to blame, as I first met young Draper at an NUS training weekend for FE Student Union Officers in Scarborough, and thought that he looked like a likely recruit for the forces of truth and light. Needless to say, I sought to explain the evil nature of various political projects to him. At that stage he was an earnest, clean-cut working class lad from Runshaw College.
The rest is history."
(He makes some further points, similar to those in the front-page article, about finding common cause with Auntie Millie's nieces and nephews).
But as Jane Ashworth points out on the same thread:
"As I remember, we used to be on top of this. Didn't we stop talking about DD because every time we did so, he won?"
So on this blog this is you last chance, knock yourselves out with your DD stories because after this thread all future ones will be deleted.
Derek - if it really is you on the mailing list, thanks for signing up, see you at the do in December. And I never thought I'd find myself saying that!
Posted by SP at September 16, 2005 11:23 AMHuh! Typical Soggie Oggie censorship and the usual nonsense from Erskine. Derek was/is a parasite - and I have told him so to his face. But, and it is a big but, we fought in the same trench against a bunch of lying authoritarians (that is what Leninist entryists are, even if they have now repented!!) - and Derek chasing Simon up the Euston Road shouting "scab, scab" and Simon - supposedly the shoo-in favourite to be National President - running away is only beaten by Derek going up to Jane at the following NUS (Xmas) conference and saying "what's it liked to be *****d by Derek Draper" after Derek blew the trotties away with a really brilliant speech are two top memories. For all his obnoxiousness Derek was right about some really fundamental questions about the Labour Party at a time when our party was facing electoral oblivion.
But he did cross over to the dark side.
Posted by: a at September 28, 2005 09:33 PMI do remember DD making a sound like a horse evertime he saw Michele (cant recall her last name - the one with the handbag) from SSiN - on the basis of her roots of "allegedly" owning some horses or ponies.
DD was however a wizzard on NUS steering committee and knew all the ins and outs of taking a motion in parts...
Good luck to him...
Posted by: Mikey at September 30, 2005 06:48 PM