Monday, May 12, 2008
Want BNP? Vote Labour
Have you seen Labour’s disgusting leaflets for the Crewe and Nantwich by-election? You might have been glad that the poisonous British National Party aren’t fielding a candidate, but you have to wonder if it’s just because the BNP are satisfied the Labour candidate shares their ‘principles’. Populist class-based personal attacks on other candidates? Check. Whipping up fear about crime? Check. Prejudice against immigrants and special laws to victimise them? Check. To pose as ‘caring’, finish by saying it’s all ‘for the children’? Check. With Labour and BNP campaigns now indistinguishable, did the BNP pull out after signing an electoral pact?
This sort of poisonous excrement has no place in British politics. Even for the Labour Party, with its record of immigrant-bashing, fear-stoking and personal attacks in by-elections, this disgustingly negative leaflet marks a new low. No doubt they’re terrified they’re going to lose and want BNP-inclined voters on side – but in what morally hopeless universe is that an excuse? And as for the hypocrisy of attacking a “Tory toff” when the Labour candidate was only selected because she’s the daughter of the former MP and Labour ‘toffs’ want to make the House of Commons a palace of privilege to which you gain entry by being in the right families…
No doubt they’ve noticed how unpopular their bossy, cock-up-ridden, appallingly expensive ID cards idea has become, but the Labour Government is so addicted to being able to control every aspect of our lives and tell us what to do that they can’t bear to let go of it… So now they say it’s all to attack “foreign nationals”. Well, Labour’s own legislation says every British citizen will have to have one, at a cost of a hundred quid each, fines of thousands if we don’t do as we’re told, and will cost about twenty billion pounds to run. I’d rather have the money spent on police tackling actual crime, but Labour wants it wasted on being able to keep control of us – because they’ve forgotten that they work for all of us, and not the other way round. And they’ve not forgotten but just ignore the fact that they’ve already caused the biggest data disaster in the history of the world, yet are still obsessed with throwing more untold billions of taxpayers’ money down the drain to make it easier for crooks to get their hands on all our personal data in one handy leaky Labour Government database. That all makes it even more cowardly and deceitful that now they’re trying to imply these cards will just be compulsory for immigrants.
But assume for an instant that that was the truth: how would it work, then? Tell every foreign tourist they’ve got to have their fingerprints taken and their eyes zapped by lasers, then pay an extra £100? Great way to destroy the tourist trade and push more of the economy into meltdown. And how do the police enforce every immigrant having to carry an ID card? The only answer can be that the Labour Government wants to waste countless hours of police time by having them harry anyone who doesn’t ‘look British’. Sounds like pure BNP policymaking to me (meaning racially ‘pure’, according to bigoted Labour / BNP thought processes, of course).
No doubt any Labour members reading will want to call me shocking and over the top. I suggest they do three things first.
This sort of poisonous excrement has no place in British politics. Even for the Labour Party, with its record of immigrant-bashing, fear-stoking and personal attacks in by-elections, this disgustingly negative leaflet marks a new low. No doubt they’re terrified they’re going to lose and want BNP-inclined voters on side – but in what morally hopeless universe is that an excuse? And as for the hypocrisy of attacking a “Tory toff” when the Labour candidate was only selected because she’s the daughter of the former MP and Labour ‘toffs’ want to make the House of Commons a palace of privilege to which you gain entry by being in the right families…
“Making Foreign Nationals Carry An ID Card”
No doubt they’ve noticed how unpopular their bossy, cock-up-ridden, appallingly expensive ID cards idea has become, but the Labour Government is so addicted to being able to control every aspect of our lives and tell us what to do that they can’t bear to let go of it… So now they say it’s all to attack “foreign nationals”. Well, Labour’s own legislation says every British citizen will have to have one, at a cost of a hundred quid each, fines of thousands if we don’t do as we’re told, and will cost about twenty billion pounds to run. I’d rather have the money spent on police tackling actual crime, but Labour wants it wasted on being able to keep control of us – because they’ve forgotten that they work for all of us, and not the other way round. And they’ve not forgotten but just ignore the fact that they’ve already caused the biggest data disaster in the history of the world, yet are still obsessed with throwing more untold billions of taxpayers’ money down the drain to make it easier for crooks to get their hands on all our personal data in one handy leaky Labour Government database. That all makes it even more cowardly and deceitful that now they’re trying to imply these cards will just be compulsory for immigrants.
But assume for an instant that that was the truth: how would it work, then? Tell every foreign tourist they’ve got to have their fingerprints taken and their eyes zapped by lasers, then pay an extra £100? Great way to destroy the tourist trade and push more of the economy into meltdown. And how do the police enforce every immigrant having to carry an ID card? The only answer can be that the Labour Government wants to waste countless hours of police time by having them harry anyone who doesn’t ‘look British’. Sounds like pure BNP policymaking to me (meaning racially ‘pure’, according to bigoted Labour / BNP thought processes, of course).
Labour Members Ashamed of Their “Abhorrent” Campaign
No doubt any Labour members reading will want to call me shocking and over the top. I suggest they do three things first.
- First, look up what Dr Freud called “projection”.
- Second, read that Labour / BNP attack and see if there’s any way they can defend it.
- And third? Well, I saw this on John’s blog last night and immediately decided to attack Labour’s disgusting BNP tactics – but to do it more calmly in the morning, rather than straight after I’d seen it and spitting tacks. This morning, I glanced at my e-mails and found a message drawing my attention to some more people who are “horrified” by Labour’s tactics and draw exactly the same explicit Labour-BNP connection about this “inflammatory,” “offensive” and “abhorrent” leaflet. But rather than Liberal Democrats, these are members of the Labour Party.
Labels: Bigotry, British Politics, Labour, Meddling In Things That Are Nobody's Business But Your Own, The Golden Dozen
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Agreed, it's a horrible leaflet, and how stupid as they could easily have put out something nice playing heavily on sympathy for the previous MP with her daughter carrying the flag.
All parties need to pull back from this sort of thing, it's just causing politics to be seen as a bad and dirty profession, and helping the rise of cynicism. By all parties, I mean us too - I was put off doing much in the Bromley and Chislehurst by-election, despite living close to the constituency and having been a councillor in a neighbouring ward across the borough boundary, because I found our literature there over-negative and cynical.
All parties need to pull back from this sort of thing, it's just causing politics to be seen as a bad and dirty profession, and helping the rise of cynicism. By all parties, I mean us too - I was put off doing much in the Bromley and Chislehurst by-election, despite living close to the constituency and having been a councillor in a neighbouring ward across the borough boundary, because I found our literature there over-negative and cynical.
In full agreement with mhuntbach. Including, sadly, the bit about us needing to cut back on the mudslinging as well. I keep saying this on LDV, but it seems to fall on deaf ears...
I'm not sure it is the biggest data disaster in the history of the world any more, since the Italians managed to release the complete tax returns of the entire nation, including bank account details.
The Labour Party has always had its thugs and bullies and have appealed to the same groups that the BNP do (the same people the Tory hang 'em and flog 'em brigade appeal to as well).
FA Hayek noted this in The Road To Serfdom, and it was then demonstrated by Labour MPs criticing the book as being written by a 'foreigner'.
FA Hayek noted this in The Road To Serfdom, and it was then demonstrated by Labour MPs criticing the book as being written by a 'foreigner'.
Blimey - the amount of bloggers who blogged on this after me and didn't link to me was staggering. I was there with the story on the previous friday, beating Guido...
At least James Graham had the decency to...
At least James Graham had the decency to...
Thanks for the points, Matthew, Jennie, Richard (darn! Well, it was the worst at the time) and Tristan.
Jo – just chill, OK? :)
I know it’s irritating when you’re first to spot something or to make a point, in your own blog or on a big thread, then other people come along and make similar points and don’t give you credit for how fast / clever you are – but that’s life, and life’s too short for me to get cross when it happens to me. All you can do is just get on with writing your next one and hope everyone is so bowled over that the link to it. Well, that’s what I do, anyway. But getting so angry that you go round people’s blogs claiming intellectual theft – well, unless you’ve been directly quoted without attribution, or you’ve come up with some blinding insight no-one else could have, it just makes you look a bit silly. There are dozens of online sources carrying the same link to Labour’s BNP-style leaflet, as there are with almost any political attack story. How on Earth could someone go about checking back to the ‘original’ source for every single one? Thank goodness most people who blog aren’t so vituperatively proprietorial as you suddenly seem to be, or we’d all spend far more time doing copyright detective work than writing anything.
There’s nothing ‘decent’ or not about not having seen your post to give you a credit, even if you were first. I didn’t see your story on Friday (nor Guido’s that you mention), but on Liberal Revolution’s blog on Sunday – so I hat-tipped him when, after receiving an e-mail that night with more info, I wrote up my piece Monday morning, still blissfully unaware you’re written a word. And six days later, you’d obviously spent every waking hour trawling through the rest of us 244 active Lib Dem blogs in order to police us all because anyone posting about this must have deliberately conspired to steal from you… Sorry, Jo, but it really doesn’t work like that.
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Jo – just chill, OK? :)
I know it’s irritating when you’re first to spot something or to make a point, in your own blog or on a big thread, then other people come along and make similar points and don’t give you credit for how fast / clever you are – but that’s life, and life’s too short for me to get cross when it happens to me. All you can do is just get on with writing your next one and hope everyone is so bowled over that the link to it. Well, that’s what I do, anyway. But getting so angry that you go round people’s blogs claiming intellectual theft – well, unless you’ve been directly quoted without attribution, or you’ve come up with some blinding insight no-one else could have, it just makes you look a bit silly. There are dozens of online sources carrying the same link to Labour’s BNP-style leaflet, as there are with almost any political attack story. How on Earth could someone go about checking back to the ‘original’ source for every single one? Thank goodness most people who blog aren’t so vituperatively proprietorial as you suddenly seem to be, or we’d all spend far more time doing copyright detective work than writing anything.
There’s nothing ‘decent’ or not about not having seen your post to give you a credit, even if you were first. I didn’t see your story on Friday (nor Guido’s that you mention), but on Liberal Revolution’s blog on Sunday – so I hat-tipped him when, after receiving an e-mail that night with more info, I wrote up my piece Monday morning, still blissfully unaware you’re written a word. And six days later, you’d obviously spent every waking hour trawling through the rest of us 244 active Lib Dem blogs in order to police us all because anyone posting about this must have deliberately conspired to steal from you… Sorry, Jo, but it really doesn’t work like that.
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