Cherie Blair (or rather the Labour Party) spent £275 per DAY on her hair ...?!

[roisin]

\link{http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4929026.stm\is this for real?}

Gawd, iron knickers and the queen's knickers - where is this thread heading?

Ha
Wouldn't you like to tell Cherie that the £275 she's spent has brought Shirley Williams to mind?

My main point is that she's not a polititian yet we expect her to live by those standards.

We sneered when she answered the door looking rough, yet how many of us look any better first thing in the morning after such a big party the night before?

And, if my husband's firm were asking me to give up 6wks of paid employment to ensure he picked up the clients they wanted, I'd be expecting them to pick up my tabs too!

Or the underwear of two old ladies!

Right, enough from me. DS has been tugging at my leg, starving for 1/2hour now. MN has a lot to answer for!

Someone said earlier that no-one complains about the Queen spending loads of money on knickers etc.
Yes they jolly well do. I complain about the queen almost every day, though I'm laying off her today because it's her bday

yes, happy birthday ma'am. we don't really mind where you get your knickers. it's YOUR day (as my mum would say)

I don't want to dwell on this, but what happens to the queen's knickers?

I can't help having disturbing visions of thousands of once-worn knickers in a dusty corner of Buckingham Palace.

I really want to get rid of that image. Someone help me.

And also, I now want to calculate how many pairs of knickers she must have worn since becoming queen in 1952. I am stopping myself from doing this arithmetic.

OK 365 days per year x 54 years....

it's 19,710 pairs, altho' a lot must have been destroyed at Windsor

That could turn out to be an incredibly important historical underwear collection some day.
Imagine if we had one like that for Queen Victoria - think what a lot of questions it could answer.

I can't believe that someone who is so cost conscious (turning off lights/re-using string) would only wear knickers once.

Urban fairytale I fear!

I don't really care what Cherie has spent, as my money hasn't gone towards it, but i. Did she look £275 per day better than she would have done without the hairdresser, and ii. Doesn't she recognise a rip-off?!!

as a closet Antiques Roadshow fan, I happen to know that several of Queen V's bloomers have survived and v virginal looking they were too!

Cherie Blair does represent our country and I think her conduct is frequently undignified and inappropriate - needless to say the same can't really be said about the queen.

Just came back on to add that DH has just told me that the consultancy he use to work for were the ones brought in by the tories to revamp John Major's image when he became PM.
They did 3 days work and charged 7.5k! The party picked up the tab. So nothing new it seems.

Cherie Blair is so intelligent she is clueless.
She should use my hairdresser-a cut is a fiver

Agree with Mommie, they spend so much time hanging out with multi-millionaires they have lost the plot. And with Caligula about Keir Hardie turning in his grave. A lot of ordinary people give up their time and their money to help the party because they believe in its values - or at least the values it had before Blair ripped the heart out of it. And then Cherie, who really should know better, pisses all their contributions away on her personal hairdresser.

FWIW I thought the shot of her opening the door the day after the '97election was really sweet. Made her seem normal. Hah!

it's over between me and Tony forever now.
This is SO ridiculous.
What a sinful waste of money.

She can't win - she gets criticised because of the way she looks then criticised for paying the going rate for personal hairdressers. She's hardly in a position to pop into Hair Express now is she?

AND can I just add that if the papers spent more time on the politics instead of '1st ladee head garden rubbish' then I'm positive she wouldn't bother with a hairdresser anyway. I remember when she never used to bother and was absolutely savaged in the papers for not being media savvy enough about her 'image'. So she got a stylist. And we all know what happened there. The media are just impossible to please!

But MT she didn't pay the going rate. Certainly not the going rate of your average Labour party member, worker or voter.

It simply does not cost £275 for a hairstylist to come in and do your hair.

If it were a genuine expense, fair enough, she could have filed an expense claim for £30 a day. Although I very much doubt if my employer would accept my personal grooming costs as a genuine expense - and it is genuine, because I wouldn't necessarily get my hair done if I wasn't working. I still don't think I'd get that past my employer or the Inland Revenue though.

But £275? This is not about her relationship with the media imo, it's about those creep's relationship with the party. And where they are psychologically, socially and politically in relation to the people who work and vote for them.

I think the hairdresser would have been on a retainer, or on call if you like, even traveling with them around the country. There be no other work available in that scenario, so they'd demand a daily fee for work lost, IYSWIM. I'm really ambivalent about this, it costs money to be in the public eye, she's damned if she does and damned if she doesn't and is regularly. I'm very glad I don't have to negotiate such traps. At least she doesn't get facelifts and nosejobs gratis like the US first ladies do.

I wonder if she'll declare it to the taxman?!

Undoubtedly she uses a high end, prestigious person to do her hair - probably the same sort of person that does hair for movie stars, models and pop stars. That price will be based on the fact that whoever does her hair must travel with her (or at least to wherever she is), and therefore is unavailable to do other clients when dealing with Cherie. I agree it is an outrageous amount, but it's nothing compared to the hair/makeup people who travel with people like Madonna, Mariah Carey, Sharon Stone, etc. They get in the region of £1000 per day. But as I said before, that means they travel with the "star" and do no one else but that person.

no none cares if Cherie wants to spend £275 each day on her hair if she pays herself as she can well afford to do. I think gives herself the image of an undignified blagger and freeloader by filing this as an expense claim