Not that it\’s important but it is fun:
One entry in her Conservative Party biography is particularly intriguing. It is for 1984, the year, so the biography states, she was married to Paul Dorries (they’d met in Liverpool when she was 17).
But our research has been unable to unearth any trace of a marriage certificate in this country. Some of Mrs Dorries’s relatives, we have been told, were surprised never to have been shown wedding photographs of the happy couple.
In order to agree to an amicable divorce, you have to be married. But just as we could not find any trace of a marriage certificate using the obvious search terms, we could find no record of their divorce, either, in the Central Index of Decree Absolutes at the Principal Registry of the Family Division in London.
‘The system holds all the details of divorces from across England and Wales,’ explained Paul Jarvis, family administration branch manager. ‘If they were divorced, or had just started the action, it would have come on the system.’
It is rather tee hee, isn\’t it?
Do you mean to say that the filthy cow had sex out of wedlock?
Disgraceful!
It is disgusting.
I am disgusted.
I trust that she will be resigning is disgrace presently.
Oh well, the Mail are only 18 months late on the Worldspreads story – http://www.ministryoftruth.me.uk/2011/05/16/what-has-dorries-got-against-worldspreads/
As for the marriage question, well the facts are that Dorries did marry at 17, but not to Paul Dorries.
There is a first husband and a divorce, which she has scrubbed from her biography. From memory, the marriage took place in North Yorkshire in 1978.
I could give the name of the first husband but, when discreet inquiries were made a few years back, the response was that he was ‘well out of it’ (the marriage) and had no desire to revisit that period of his life – so a decision was made to respect his privacy.
As for Paul Dorries, the usual story is that they married while he was working a mining engineer in Southern Africa. Although he was based in Zimbabwe, its never to knowledge, been made clear as to whether the marriage is supposed to have taken place in that country or in South Africa, where they did jointly own property (a holiday home) up until the point at which they ostensibly divorced.
Sadly, there is no online database of marriage records for either South Africa or Zimbabwe and so the Mail would need to either dispatch one of their own journos or use a local correspondent to do the checking to see if there are any records of either a marriage or a divorce.
On the whole, the best way to think of Dorries is not so much as a self-made woman, more a self-fabricated one.
Footnote to Unity
Paul and Nadine Dorries were in *Zambia* in 1984
The Daily Mail carefully avoids being caught out in a lie by saying there is no record of their being married in England when they were some 10,000 miles away.
For what it’s worth, the wife and I felt absolutely no need to inform the state when we married. In fact, since we didn’t feel such a personal event required other people to be present, there are no photos, either.
John77
Ah yes, quite correct – got my Z’s mixed up there.
Be that as it may, the question of whether Dorries was legally married remains open until such time as someone makes the effort to check the records overseas or Dorries herself provides a marriage certificate.
That said, Dorries has certainly presented herself as being legally married, hence the statement that she would be obtaining a divorce, so the question of whether or not their was indeed a legal marriage does speak to her honesty, or otherwise.
@ Unity
Very easy – I’ve been known to say the wrong one in conversation myself – I wasn’t trying to be clever, just didn’t want someone checking the wrong database.
Unity – “That said, Dorries has certainly presented herself as being legally married, hence the statement that she would be obtaining a divorce, so the question of whether or not their was indeed a legal marriage does speak to her honesty, or otherwise.”
Not really. Whether Bill Clinton lied under oath, that goes to speak to his honesty or otherwise. But of course the Left thought that was outrageous didn’t they? They felt we did not need to know about whatever oral-anal contacts the President may or may not have had. And lied about under oath.
This is one of those things the Left assures us is private and none of anyone else’s business. The Daily Mail may be just muck raking but traditionally British politics has left this sort of thing alone. Except that these days, the Left hates nothing so much as a Right wing woman and so, as we saw with Sarah Palin, they will stop at nothing to destroy her. A shame the Daily Mail seems to have joined the fun.
+1 SMFS
loves to see Unity take another one up the supercilious bunger
Ah yes, Clinton.
Well Clinton didn’t so much lie as dissemble by adopting the rather curious and very American notion that if it’s not vaginal intercourse then it doesn’t really count as ‘sexual relations’, all of which speaks more the odd relationship that many Americans have with sex.
As for Dorries and muck raking, I’m personally much more concerned with the Worldspreads story as a possible abuse of parliamentary privilege, not least because she made a very basic mistake during her speech ascribing the wrong surname to the person her ex-‘husband’ had been dealing with. Oh, not to mention that her ex was seemingly operating as an independent financial advisor without holding a relevant FSA licence.
Nevertheless, the question of whether or not Dorries has misled the public as to her actual marital is relevant in so far as has a pronounced tendancy to make use of supposedly personal anecdotes when arguing, for example, for a reduction in the upper time limit for elective abortions.
I refer, of course, to her claim have witnessed an allegedly ‘botched’ late term abortion at some unspecified point in her relatively short nursing career, a story the detail of which change with each retelling. From memory I have at least three, maybe four, different versions of this story archived, and although each follows the same basic patterns, specific details do vary considerable between each version although perhaps my favourite variation is the one she posted to the Cornerstone blog, in which she professed never to having disclosed the story before, three months after she told the same story to the Daily Mail.
As general rule of thumb. and in the absence of any criminality or corruption, politicians are entitled to a private life, and should not be judged on purely private matters, up until the point they seek to introduce such matters into a public policy debate, at which point it, and they, become fair game.
And, so, if Dorries has indeed misrepresented her marital status then it does speak to her honesty, or lack thereof, which in turn will speak to the veracity of other personal anecdotes she has relied on to promote her arguments.
Unity – “Well Clinton didn’t so much lie as dissemble by adopting the rather curious and very American notion that if it’s not vaginal intercourse then it doesn’t really count as ‘sexual relations’, all of which speaks more the odd relationship that many Americans have with sex.”
Well no. That is a bit of dissembling by his Left Wing supporters. Not from Clinton himself. He was a lawyer enough to know a lie when he told one. And he did. Besides, surely he had some sort of vaginal intercourse. I mean, anyone who is down with the oral-anal contact must have done more normal things first.
“As for Dorries and muck raking, I’m personally much more concerned with the Worldspreads story as a possible abuse of parliamentary privilege”
And yet you are not here telling us about that but instead smearing her over where and when she may or may not have got married. An issue you seem to have done a great deal of research into. That is interesting in itself.
“I refer, of course, to her claim have witnessed an allegedly ‘botched’ late term abortion at some unspecified point in her relatively short nursing career, a story the detail of which change with each retelling.”
All of which is irrelevant. Did anyone care about Blair’s repeated lies about his childhood? I don’t recall you making a big deal of it. Yet when it comes to a Conservative woman, and let me stress that woman bit, you’re foaming at the mouth. Interesting really.
“As general rule of thumb. and in the absence of any criminality or corruption, politicians are entitled to a private life, and should not be judged on purely private matters, up until the point they seek to introduce such matters into a public policy debate, at which point it, and they, become fair game.”
And yet Ms Dorries has never sought to introduce her past marriages into the public policy debate. At least that I am aware. When did she do so? You seem to be claiming that because she said something you did not like about a completely different subject you are free to smear her about her marriage – all the while maintaining a public and very hypocritical stance that you are above such Daily Mail muck racking. Yeah. Interesting.
Oh dear, like a dog with an imaginary bone as usual.
Clinton’s philandering was of no relevance whatsoever to his political activities or his performance as US President save, perhaps, for his decision to sign off on funding for abstinence-only sex ‘education’ programme which, as subsequent research has shown, tend to engender much the say rather curious attitude towards sex as that demonstrated by Clinton.
It became an issue only because the Republican’s failed to tie Clinton in sufficiently with Whitewater to use that as a basis for impeachment and, frankly, no one involved in that whole impeachment farrago came out with any credit.
As for Dorries, the first husband is not the only significant omission from her early biography. There is also a period of employment outside nursing which she has similarly chosen to exclude for her official biography and there is also an open question as to the exact nature of any nursing qualifications she holds – most likely an SEN, although whether that is what she trained for or just the qualification she was given after failing the SRN’s exams is not known.
(Under the system at the time, nurses who trained as an SRN were automatically awarded an SEN after failing the SRN exam three times)
As I’ve already said, this is relevant only to the veracity of personal anecdotes Dorries has used in her political activities and, more generally, to her having traded on her nursing background in order to lend authority to her arguments despite, on certain occasions, demonstrating a noticeable lack of basic medical and biological knowledge in public statements she’s made.
A single omission of biographical information for that period of her life may amount to nothing, particularly as her first marriage is not directly relevant to her nursing career, but as one of number of omissions related to a period that she has traded on, publicly, when making political arguments, it does become relevant as a reflection of the honesty and accuracy, or otherwise, of Dorries’ recollections of that period or her life, not least as she has shown herself to be lacking in verisimilitude on a number of more recent occasions.
Although the matter of her first marriage was not pursued beyond verifying its existence, the general impression I’ve been given – and I have known of the existence of the marriage for at least two years – is that circumstances of its failure might very well make for the kind of prurient story that would, pre-Leveson, have been of some interest to the Sunday red-tops, if only they could find someone from Dorries’ past to talk about it on the record.
Nevertheless, it was perfectly clear that the first husband has moved on and his no desire to reopen that part of his life, so the matter – and any scope for actual muck-raking – was left there.
Marriage is, by design, a matter of public record, so no one is entitled to privacy about the fact of it. And as it happens, the Daily Mail decided, notwithstanding Unity’s scruples, to put the name of Nadine Dorries’ first husband in a sub-head a few weeks ago – according to the Mail she was 20 at the time of the marriage, in Runcorn.
People, including politicians, are however entitled to keep their personal lives private, so long as they don’t lie about them. Clinton’s proper response to questions about his affair with Monica Lewinsky would have been “mind your own business”. It’s not his fault that the question was put to him before a Grand Jury, where he wasn’t able to refuse to answer.
But if a politician chooses to use their family as a prop, that makes it fair to ask questions about it.
I think SMFS is right that unintelligent, self-inventing female politicians get treated more harshly in the media than their male counterparts. But I don’t think the appropriate change would be to go easy on the ISIFPs.
SMFS,
Yet the allegation was a blowjob was it not, not rimming? And the Yanks are strange about oral sex not being ‘real sex’.
The sensation of partially supporting Unity, here, is resulting in slight feelings of vertigo. Nevertheless:
Think you’re showing your age or your Britness re: Slick Willie’s preference of orifice here, SMFS. The ladder for sexual relations amongst white USians (that’s white meaning WASPs & N.Euro Catholic & Jewish heritage but not Latino) has run heavy petting>oral sex>vaginal for several decades. Blow jobs is what Yank girls do when they don’t want to go the whole way. Go look at advice forums, age targeted literature. Asked, an American girl might reply, no I didn’t have sex with the guy, I went down on him. Fine line, but. It’s not an “odd relationship that many Americans have with sex” it’s the American relationship many Americans have with sex. It’s not, for instance, the relationship many American Latinos would have with sex. Where having a ‘bit on the side’ is in the culture. But then, Slick Willie’s not Latino & didn’t stand as a Latino. (but did as first black president, if I remember rightly?!!) And we’re not Yanks.
On the other hand, Unity’s being somewhat disingenuous. In the US debate over the subject, the aspect of Billieboy’s portal of entry was only relevant to his claim “I never had sex with that woman” under oath. A commentator at the time put it something like this: “If a wife comes home & finds her husband’s hand up the babysitters jumper it’s presumed intent but she might settle for slapping his face, he does time on the couch. Her hand in his flies? Proves her intent but she might give him the benefit of the doubt. Head in his lap & she files for divorce. As far as she’s concerned, that’s consensual sex.” It effects his presidency because either he’s deceiving his wife, or she’s unconcerned. Either way, it’s not the bill of goods the voter was sold at the election. The Bill & Hils (+Chelsea) Team was central to the campaign. The La Lewinski aspect compounded. Both Slick Willie & Monica are both employees of the GoodOleUSofA Inc. Similar employee situation in a corporation would have been grounds for termination of contract due to the difference in seniority. Implications of duress. Hell, the liberals have been whining about this sort of thing for long enough. Now it bit ’em. Of course the moves to impeach were political. Doesn’t mean they weren’t justified. Lying under oath by the Head of State & Commander in Chief is pretty fundamental.
Sorry if this lot’s bored all those who remember & understand events much better than I do. But Unity’s showing signs of doing something I’ve obsessed about elsewhere. Feeding a little narrative that ends up being a more persuasive version than the truth.
As for Mad Nads. All politicians lie. It’s expected when their lips move. We’re all quite used to working in a political greyscale where the merest hint of lightness defines black as white. The problem comes when politicians try to anchor their definitions with reference to their personal lives. They lie there, they undermine our relationship with them as people. If they don’t want their personal lives exhumed, don’t try & use them
I wasn’t aware that, even under the Bush/Blair Total Subservience Protocol, that we weren’t allowed to consider the Brethren strange, even when they were being culturally consistent.
Mormons, for example …
“Bush/Blair Total Subservience Protocol” etc
Don’t think it’s extended quite as far as this area, just yet. But. The criticism was “age & Britness”
The heavy petting>oral>vaginal* ladder’s now firmly established this side of the pond, amongst those younger than ourselves, who have to consider such things.
OK. A bit picky on my part. But key to understanding the “I didn’t have..” Slick Willie defence, for us this side.
*Even reflected in the commercial market. Oral was an expensive extra. Now generally regarded as the bargain basement.