Daft wee article in the Herald today with mock outrage from assorted Labour people after an unconfirmed number of John Mason's Parliamentary leaflets strayed into Dennistoun.
I stay in the same street at Elaine McDougall, just across the road. I often see her emptying her dogs on the grass outside my flat, ensuring no one can actually use that area without risk of Toxocariasis. Anyway, it seems unlikely that she would get one of John's leaflets and I didn't. And I didn't.
I know of other people who live in Dennistoun who also didn't receive a leaflet, all of which suggests that Labour are (of course!) blowing this whole thing out of proportion. If some leaflets did get get delivered it's simply a mistake on the part of the distribution company, who should have had details on the Parliamentary boundaries. Some boundaries are a bit weird, and the Glasgow East ones are odd in places; they don't work strictly to logic or postcodes and G31 does cover a wide area. It's hardly a big deal, and certainly not the conspiricy Labour's fevered imaginations are leading them to believe.
As mistakes go, it's not even in the same league as Margaret Curran's, which actually did hit her constituents directly in the pocket - her unstamped unsolicited mail cost each constituent who recieved it £1.30. People turning up at the sorting office to pick up this mail were rightly angry that they were having to pay to collect something they never asked for in the first place. At the time, a Labour spokesperson said: "This is a typical SNP smear story." And it's not as if they would ever do the same...
This article did make me think though how jealous residents of Glasgow North East must be to recieve a newsletter from a hard working MP. I have lived here for two years, and have never had a newsletter from Michael Martin. Which leads me on to the real scandal.
It has been reported that the people of Glasgow North East are to be left unrepresented until November. People who vitally need assistance on tax, benefits, asylum and passports, or wish to influence Westminster on issues like Trident renewal, ID cards, welfare reform or the future of the Post Office will have no representative and no voice.
I am disgusted that Labour see fit to use smear tactics to distract from the reality that John is a hardworking MP doing his best for his constituents, while in a neighbouring constituency Labour are too feart to go to the people and ask for their vote. I don't wonder why.
"One of the newsletters was received by Labour councillor Elaine MacDougall, who said: "I couldn't believe it. My whole street had this leaflet delivered."
I stay in the same street at Elaine McDougall, just across the road. I often see her emptying her dogs on the grass outside my flat, ensuring no one can actually use that area without risk of Toxocariasis. Anyway, it seems unlikely that she would get one of John's leaflets and I didn't. And I didn't.
I know of other people who live in Dennistoun who also didn't receive a leaflet, all of which suggests that Labour are (of course!) blowing this whole thing out of proportion. If some leaflets did get get delivered it's simply a mistake on the part of the distribution company, who should have had details on the Parliamentary boundaries. Some boundaries are a bit weird, and the Glasgow East ones are odd in places; they don't work strictly to logic or postcodes and G31 does cover a wide area. It's hardly a big deal, and certainly not the conspiricy Labour's fevered imaginations are leading them to believe.
As mistakes go, it's not even in the same league as Margaret Curran's, which actually did hit her constituents directly in the pocket - her unstamped unsolicited mail cost each constituent who recieved it £1.30. People turning up at the sorting office to pick up this mail were rightly angry that they were having to pay to collect something they never asked for in the first place. At the time, a Labour spokesperson said: "This is a typical SNP smear story." And it's not as if they would ever do the same...
This article did make me think though how jealous residents of Glasgow North East must be to recieve a newsletter from a hard working MP. I have lived here for two years, and have never had a newsletter from Michael Martin. Which leads me on to the real scandal.
It has been reported that the people of Glasgow North East are to be left unrepresented until November. People who vitally need assistance on tax, benefits, asylum and passports, or wish to influence Westminster on issues like Trident renewal, ID cards, welfare reform or the future of the Post Office will have no representative and no voice.
I am disgusted that Labour see fit to use smear tactics to distract from the reality that John is a hardworking MP doing his best for his constituents, while in a neighbouring constituency Labour are too feart to go to the people and ask for their vote. I don't wonder why.
16 comments:
We don't need to wonder why Bell. Once Martin's donned his ermine behind closed doors he'll have no interest in the people he's supposedly 'looked after' all these years.
Their candidate won't have much either during the campaign. You can't work in London all week and campaign at the same time.
Im sure the Labour candidate will be campaigning 7 days a week.
Correct me if i'm wrong but as Mr Bain is a law lecturer at a university and with universities in recess ....
Even if he's on his holidays now anonymous, he won't be in September, October and November.
Here is the latest right-wing tony-bot to fall off the New Labour production line, replete with Blairite Newspeak mechanical phrases borrowed from the advertising and marketing industry -
Miliband urges Labour reinvention
BBC Politics
05 July 2009
Labour must reinvent itself for the 21st Century, Foreign Secretary David Miliband has told the BBC.
In other words,
treat voters and taxpayers as if they were just a bunch of vacuous, passive, docile, bovine consumers.
Sell New Labour to potential customers (ie the electorate) as a product in the same way you would use to sell toothpaste or soap-powder.
Put new packaging on New Labour. Use a new face to sell it, even changing the name of the brand from Labour to New Labour to New Improved New Labour etc etc etc - but you find when you get it home and open it up, its just the same old crap.
Unfortunately, if you do buy 'New Labour' you're stuck with it for the next 5 years and it'll cost you even more money, vastly more, by the time you're able to get rid of it again.
all the best BB
Thanks joe90kane! Can't imagine how they can reinvent themselves yet again...
I think the Labour Party can and will reinvent themselves again.
It's Darwinism - survival of the fittest. Politics parties by their very nature change so they can be elect-able.
New Labour 1997 , Thatcher's Tories in 1979 Atlee's Labour Party in 1945.
The SNP are a different party ideologically from where they were at in October 1974. So to say a party cant reinvent themselves again is ridiculous. Cameron and the Tories have done it.
As for Mr Bain - i don't think the PM has called the election date for Glasgow NE so the Labour candidate could in essence be campaigning full time or take a leave of absence. Will Councillor Dornan do this if he is the SNP Candidate. If so , what are the people who voted for him think ? is he a full time Councillor or a full time Candidate ?
I think the Labour Party can and will reinvent themselves again.
It's Darwinism - survival of the fittest. Politics parties by their very nature change so they can be elect-able.
- Even for New Labour this admission is quite something.
Anonymous is claiming there is no such thing as universal moral values, only what is successful. If it works then fine, if not, try something else until you achieve power for power's sake.
There are more than a few unsavoury regimes who practiced these very same principles, which are no principals at all, and are the ugliest amongst what can be found in humanity.
There is a big difference between what New Labour claims in public and what it carries out in reality. This is the difference between New Labour propaganda (or spin or public relations, or whatever you want to call it) and New Labour policies and actions.
Anonymous seems to be confusing propaganda designed to obscure the reality of New Labour mis-rule, with more simpler presentations of character and public profile.
How appropriate that a New Labour appartchik, from their Claims and Rebuttal Unit no doubt, would try to spin propaganda about New Labour's use of propaganda.
I have always been told that the bond between a Westmidden MP and their constituency is a very important one, hence the reason Proportional Representation would be a bad idea to use to decide UK-wide elections.
It seems the shy Anonymous New Labour apologist doesn't care much for these sacred bonds between Westmidden and the constituences. It seems Anonymous does actually practice what they preach - if the argument works, fine. If not deploy some other obfuscation and lies.
I was going to highlight some of the more obvious New Labour re-inventions such as its 'modernisation' of itself, from a supposedly 'socialist' party to a neoliberal-Washington Consensus party, without ever actually admitting its modernisation was aimed at becoming more Thatcherite than Thatcher ever was.
Of course, New Labour's thatcherite neoliberalism is now all in the past. Financial de-regulation and the values and alleged advantages of a capitalist free-market are no longer de-rigour in a party that no longer calls itself 'New' anymore either.
A recent U-turn by the former iron chancellor (who done so well in that job that he was made Prime Minister) has meant massive intervention in New Labour's de-regulated financial market to ensure that it is no longer allowed to work properly. All UK government interventions are underwritten and subsidised by massive amounts of taxpayers hard-earned money and a vast accummulating public debt which our children and grand-children will be paying off till kingdom come.
I see New Labour has re-invented its war crimes against Afghanistan as important to the safety of the UK, in much the same way it lied about the existence of Iraqi WMD, that it posed a threat to the very existence of the UK as well -
Troops 'fighting for UK's future'
BBC
11 July 2009
Imagine being killed for the lies of Blair and New Labour?
Who cares? Obvioulsy not New Labour. As long as the British electorate believe their re-invention of the truth and continue to vote for them, that's all that matters.
New Labour re-invented itself back to just plain old 'Labour' when it annointed Gordon Brown as UK Prime Minister. No general election needed. Needless to say, more than a few Labour MPs will be re-inventing themselves as unemployed in the forthcoming general election.
I'd like to see former New Labour MPs signing on as unemployed and giving the same sort of fraudulent information to the DWP as they did with their parliamentary expenses - see how it feels to be poor, weak and picked on by government agencies which are meant to help people but are used instead to try to deprive them of their small amounts of welfare money and treat them like outcasts and inmates of an open prison.
sorry for going on BB.
all the best.
Alas Mr Dornan ... Bellegrove Belle knew him well as Leader
I would say gone but not forgotten but who knew who he was anyway .....
Adios
By the way - if you cant get a candidate right arent you in melt down as a political party ?
I do recall the snp saying that last year about labour in glasgow east
David Milliband looks like Dr. No.
http://www.cinemaretro.com/uploads/DRNOCU1.jpg
http://timesonline.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/miliband.jpg
srsly.
Anon said:
"By the way - if you cant get a candidate right arent you in melt down as a political party?"
That'll be the Labour Party at the recent East End Glasgow by-election will it?... Now what happened there again?... oh yes, after several botched attempts (including one Labour Council candidate withdrawing due to - ahem - housing benefit issues)they drafted in that candidate with her big house in the South Side didn't they... and didn't they still lose :-)
Thanks for the reminder Anon
[I deleted my last comment becuase of spelling errors]
Ted Harvey
you ought to be ashamed of yourself for not mentioning the fine endorsement New Labour received by a 93 year old local war hero who turned out to be as fake as a New Labour parliamentary expenses claim, if memory serves me right -
How can Margaret Curran stoop so low?
Indygal in Europe!
15 July 2008
New Labour, being our local pro-american war party, it's important to get these facts about them and put them in their proper perspective - much like the reasons New Labour proclaims as to why it is involved in war crimes aborad. They change more often than their aspiring election candidates.
Anyway
here's the unputdownable Indygal (again) on the matter -
James Dornan - an honourable decision
IndyGal Goes to Holyrood!
12 July 2009
all the best TH and BB
Melt down Ted Harvey !
3rd time lucky for David
http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/news/display.var.2520426.0.Third_time_lucky_for_presenter_in_nomination_race.php
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