Entries from April 2010 ↓

A high School in Suffolk decided to run a school election. So they wanted to get all the parties represented. The Tories, UKIP and the Raving Loonies all got candidates. Even the Liberal Democrats.

But among all the almost 1,000 pupils not one would stand for Labour.

Even in 1997 kids would stand as Tories in their school elections.

And when you see Labour canvassing (if you ever do) the average age seems to have gone up exactly five years since the last election.

No wonder I'm glum, have you seen my activists?

This particular new cycle has gone, and there’s no subtelty to this, but I thought I’d use it any way as I’m easy to please.

Perhaps we had all misjudged our Gordon, and bigot means something different. We’ll let Gordon Brown’s candidate in Ipswich explain:

Brown Is Gone On Thursday

On the twitter feeds:

Alasdair Ross thinks that Mrs Duffy should be grateful (even as a joke that’s poor taste)

Soo Thomas thinks that she should lap it up like a good soldier

Julian Swainson thinks its their fault for being working class

Ipswich Labour say nothing

Not one “That was awful” or “She was not a bigot”. Was there a condemnation of the Prime Minister’s behaviour and a clear statement that talking about immigration is perfectly legitimate? Was there hell.

This is the real face of Labour, when they are safely in their car and the microphone is turned off. To Labour activists Gordon Brown’s crime was not the hateful thing he said, but being caught.

Whatever you say about the Tories, they don’t hate 80% of the people who vote for them.

My majority was this big before you became leader

Thanks to Ipswich Spy for pointing out that Caroline Spelman was visiting Monmouth Court with Ben Gummer. Being in an in-play ward in a marginal seat is definitely fun, but it’s exhausting. As she’s the Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government you wait ages for a shadow front bench spokesman to turn up and suddenly they’re all bunched together. The East Anglian Daily Times have a piece on this as does the Evening Star.

From Mrs Duffy:

What did I say to be bigoted? What was bigoted in that what I said? I just asked about the national debt?

And you’ve been a Labour supporter all your life?

Yeah. My family before me. Everybody.

I agree with Gordon

12.30 Friday 30th April.

Come along and berate him. In Bridge we’re much more likely to berate our politicians. I was told that it’s something about Old Stoke, but I’ve seen it in the Hayes, on Wherstead Road and the Maidenhall Estate. Wherever you go Bolshie Bridge still lives.

I’ve also had two Labour councillors being quite nice (one by his standards, admittedly) about my blog. I dislike it when Ben Gummer is nice about it, but I’m doing something wrong when Labour councillors are being nice about this.

So here’s something to stop them:

~I would love to be judged by your record, Gordon

Do you prefer this?

Or this?

And for some political balance, this?

Labour’s broadcast is urging people to be violent to canvassers. That’s rather dangerous, for them.

After all Gordon Brown has told everyone in the country what he thinks of them and their “bigoted” concerns on the national debt and immigration. There’s a couple of Labour canvassers on the cusp of thumping someone themselves but do they really want to encourage voters to hit canvassers from the party they hate the most.

This is not 1997. Not for us.

When I heard that Nick Clegg was attacked by the Daily Mail recently it really seemed like a dog bites man story. God bless the Daily Mail, but it’s not the sort of paper that will look kindly on a Liberal Democrat. They may like the Democrat bit, but as far as Liberal bit, oh dear.

But when I heard that Nazis were involved I thought how did they manage that?

The story is actually a lot more damning about Nick Clegg, and the whole British political class, than it looks like from the outside. Essentially Nick Clegg took a case where a couple of German people claimed that they had been hounded out of a work place. However Clegg used it in an insane tirade against the British in general.

We have a “misplaced sense of superiority” due to our role in the Second World War and “delusions of grandeur”. He then said that the as a nation we “we need to be put back in our place”.

This was all said while he was a member of the European Parliament.

Forget about the Nazi stuff, it’s irrelevant. It’s the disgust with the people that he claims to want to represent. A disgust that is certainly not limited to the Liberal Democrats, and something I’ve heard from both Labour and Conservatives.

I think it was Nicholas Soames (not a classic outsider) who said that it shows that Nicholas Clegg had “the European view of Britain rather than the British view”.

Although Clegg was more extreme than many others, he is symptomatic of the contempt that the political class feel towards their employers, the British public. This is where Gordon Brown’s bigot comment comment comes from and that is where Mark Dyson’s comment about Ipswich being a provincial town came from.

They are a different class. They lie to us, they don’t like us and they think we should be grateful that we deem to represent us.

That’s why I think Ben Gummer is genuinely different. God knows I disagree with him on a lot, but he knows that his job is to represent us, not to act like minor nobility.