{"id":1130,"date":"2008-10-06T11:14:31","date_gmt":"2008-10-06T10:14:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=1130"},"modified":"2008-10-06T11:14:31","modified_gmt":"2008-10-06T10:14:31","slug":"my-friend-the-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=1130","title":{"rendered":"My friend, the Minister"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When the Communication Workers Union was created through a merger in 1995, I was asked by the Joint General Secretaries to become the Head of the Research Department for the new union and fulfilled that role for the next seven years before I took early retirement. My two bosses were Alan Johnson and Tony Young, both immensely able and personable individuals with whom I loved working.<br \/>\nIn fact, in 1997, Alan became a Member of Parliament and is now the Secretary of State for Health. Four years ago, Tony became a member of the House of Lords and I was pleased to attend his introduction which I blogged about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.co.uk\/nighthawk-static\/permalink.php?id=861_0_1_0_C\">here<\/a>.<br \/>\nNow, over the weekend, the Prime Minister has been completing his Ministerial reshuffle and I&#8217;m delighted to learn that Tony has been appointed a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Innovation, Universities &#038; Skills as explained <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dius.gov.uk\/\">here<\/a>. Tony has been a good personal friend for 30 years and I know that he will serve the Government and us well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When the Communication Workers Union was created through a merger in 1995, I was asked by the Joint General Secretaries to become the Head of the Research Department for the new union and fulfilled that role for the next seven years before I took early retirement. My two bosses were Alan Johnson and Tony Young, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-british-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}