Heard the one about the nanny who had nothing to do with her employer's wrongdoing but got blamed anyway? Last month David Blunkett resigned as home secretary after it appeared that he had taken advantage of his position to fast-track a visa application for his mistress's immigrant nanny, Leoncia Casalme. At the same time, in America, the man appointed as new homeland security head by President Bush had to stand down when those vetting him found he hadn't paid his nanny's taxes. And in a sensational US trial, the murderer of a Wall Street financier was convicted with the testimony of the British nanny, Kathryn Mayne, employed by the dead man's wife and killer's lover. But how are nannies seen in all this? In the Daily Telegraph, Cassandra Jardine wrote, 'After this week, anyone thinking of employing a nanny could be forgiven for having very cold feet. Nannies have an unusual knack of dominating the headlines and derailing lives.'
Heard the one about the nanny who had nothing to do with her employer's wrongdoing but got blamed anyway? Last month David Blunkett resigned as home secretary after it appeared that he had taken advantage of his position to fast-track a visa application for his mistress's immigrant nanny, Leoncia Casalme. At the same time, in America, the man appointed as new homeland security head by President Bush had to stand down when those vetting him found he hadn't paid his nanny's taxes. And in a sensational US trial, the murderer of a Wall Street financier was convicted with the testimony of the British nanny, Kathryn Mayne, employed by the dead man's wife and killer's lover.
But how are nannies seen in all this? In the Daily Telegraph, Cassandra Jardine wrote, 'After this week, anyone thinking of employing a nanny could be forgiven for having very cold feet. Nannies have an unusual knack of dominating the headlines and derailing lives.'
Pardon us, but nobody forced Blunkett or his mistress to queue-jump, and the evidence came from his own e-mails. In the New York case, the murderer had bragged about the killing to the nanny and threatened to kill her too.
How tight-lipped do they want a nanny to be?
