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New Third Sector Minister announced
The former parliamentary private secretary to Gordon Brown, Angela Evans Smith, has become the new minister for the third sector.
She replaces Kevin Brennan, who has moved on to Peter Mandelson's new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.
Smith will become a minister of state rather than a parliamentary under secretary, as Brennan was. She has also been appointed to the Privy Council, though she will not be a full cabinet minister.
Smith, the MP for Basildon, was first elected to parliament at the 1997 general election. She became a government whip in 2001 before becoming Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in 2002. She subsequently moved to the Communities and Local Government department before becoming Gordon Brown's parliamentary private secretary when he became Prime Minister in June 2007.
She lists her interests as home affairs, animal welfare, international development, employment and youth and children's issues, including child protection. She is a patron of several charities, including Basildon Home Start, Basildon Women's Refuge, Basildon Age Concern, the Captive Animals Protection Society and the Burned Children's Club. Smith has been an active supporter of volunteering and the voluntary sector. Angela Smith (photo left) is with longstanding hospital volunteer Mary Fairweather at her leaving celebration at Orsett Hospital.
Her leisure interests include watching Coronation Street and reading political biographies and Oscar Wilde novels and plays.
Last Friday, Tessa Jowell replaced Liam Byrne as Minister for the Cabinet Office, where the Office of the Third Sector is based.
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Given the current climate in respect of MP's ministers, cabinet members etc, how can "we" the third sector or indeed anyone else for that matter "connect" and work with appointed ministers; adjunct to this ill feeling and mistrust, ministers themselves may well be appointed elsewhere in short order, given the fact that ministers are falling like nine pins at the moment.
Historically, Volunteering has generally been a place of honour, virtue, altruism etc; as such how can we feel confident in dealing with the political classes, many of whom are now irripairably morally and ethically bankrupt, and who given public anger and outrage into their behaviour across all parties, will probably not be around in a few months anyway!!
Or, as Wilde would put it:
"Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot, in your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you."