Women’s Question Time: Whatever next?

The “Impartial BBC" will once again show just how impartial they really are this week in the so called 'Week of women' with the ever impartial Question Time inviting a women only audience.

I think the BBC are unforgivable, especially as they are supposed to represent all licence payers including men, for going over the top on this politically correct nonsense.

What are they going to announce next…… a QT program dedicated to those that are Muslim? Black? Gay?

You must agree that this is wholly outrageous. We must ALL fight against this sort of political correctness.

I ask you all; will you be joining me in protesting against this, by not watching QT this week? :)

CCHQ approves strong immigration message

Over at ConservativeHome, Tim Montgomerie notes the new arrangements at CCHQ: The ability for Parliamentary Candidates to be able to write about Immigration on their literature.

Check it out HERE

CCHQ was being over-cautious to ensure that Immigration did not swamp the Conservative messages on health, taxes, policing and so on – like it did in 2005.

The Conservative party should talk about immigration – but not shout about it/make it a no.1 campaign theme.

I wrote a post only in January to express the need for Cameron’s team to do better on Immigration, following his interview with Andrew Marr.

In 2004 a YouGov poll for the Economist found that 44% of respondents said they would be more likely to vote Conservative if they had “a harder policy on immigration”, compared to only 6% who said they would be less likely – almost exactly the same figures as the YouGov polling for Migrationwatch In January.

The British electorate clearly want a return to the kind of tough immigration controls last seen in the days of Margaret Thatcher.

Ashcroft's Tax Status: The nasty left-wing campaign

So the Electoral Commission has said £5.1m of donations to the Tories from a firm belonging to Lord Ashcroft were legal.

The gigantic quango has ruled that the donations by Bearwood Corporate Services were "legal and permissible", after a 14-month investigation.

Ashcroft has become central in the battle being waged by the left against the Conservative Party, but the problem is the hypocrisy detracts from the message.

Hypocrisy

How can we ever reform the system, so that political Parties can only collect loans from UK tax payers- when the Party doing the most criticising is also the one with the biggest questions to answer?

Given that there are plenty of Labour Peers funding the Brown leadership, and Labour Party, who also enjoy non-domiciled tax status.

Let’s look at the facts regarding how the labour party is being funded.

• Labour became even more reliant on trade unions for its funding during 2009, taking £9,784,232.43 from them, equivalent to 60.3% (up from 52.2% in 2008).
• £3,642,919.06 of those donations during 2009 came from Unite, the union behind the planned BA strike - equal to 22.5% of the party's total funding last year.
• Since donations started being recorded by the Electoral Commission in 2001, unions have donated a total of £86,503,718.41 to Labour - equal to 60% of all the donations the party has received over that nine-year period.

What’s outrageous  is that - the government are still giving the unions millions of pounds of taxpayers money under the guise of the Union Modernisation fund. Is this a money laundering scam for the Unions in return to donate millions of pounds to the Labour Party?

Nigel Farage Should Not Have Been Fined

No such thing as free speech in the European Parliament. Nigel Farage has been fined just under 3,000 euros (£2,700) after refusing to apologise for a tirade in the European Parliament......

Mr Farage used Herman Van Rompuy's maiden speech to the European Parliament last week to describe him as having the "charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low grade bank clerk".

He was summoned in by EU officials to explain his comments but said his only apology would be to bank clerks.

So, Farage’s comments were rude and dishonourable. However, to then turn around and levy a fine against him of almost three thousand euros for his poor behaviour is even greater madness!

There has to be respect and order in any political system, this is true, but at the same time politicians need to be free to attack their political opponents.

Democracy hardly exists within the European Union.

EU decisions are made or shaped by the EU Commission which is led by unelected Commissioners and run by an appointed bureaucracy. While, The EU Parliament is widely recognised as toothless – rubber-stamping legislation that is put before it with no informed debate on these new laws.

The EU Parliament has the appearance of democracy, but upon closer inspection, the truth is very different.

We are represented by a fundamentally unaccountable, undemocratic, and corrupt quango.

No-one under the age of fifty two - including the current Foreign Secretary - has had a say on Britain’s membership of the European Union. I believe an in-out referendum would give people a proper and honest debate about the future of Britain’s relationship with the EU.

UK can't afford 5 more Labour years

Five more years remember. If you don't vote intelligently, then you get five more years of this damaged oddball.

We can’t go on like this.

Ashcroft's Tax Status: Labour's Hypocrisy

Lord Ashcroft has issued a statement on his personal website disclosing the fact the he is a non-dom for tax purposes.

He also highlights the fact that two of Labour’s biggest donors also enjoy the same tax status.

I’ve said it before and I say it again, the Conservatives need to attack Labour’s hypocrisy when it comes to the issue of senior party member’s having non-dom statues. CCHQ has been willing to take the attacks on the chin for too long.

It’s been a nasty and ludicrous campaign from the left for some time. I have come across Michael several times and have always seen him as a great man who wants what’s best for his country.

Iain Dale has done an excellent job of summerising Labour’s very own non-dons, who between them have given the party £10 million since 2001.

Will they all follow Lord Ashcroft’s lead and clarify their positions for now and the future?

He is not, as Iain Dale pointed out earlier, and actually responsible for the bulk of the funding which comes from the constituency associations themselves.

Iain also points out that Ashcroft is not responsible for the bulk of the funding. In fact only about 5% since Cameron has been Leader.

The vast bulk of the "Ashcroft money" is actually raised by the local grassroots within the constituencies themselves. Far from relying sole on Michael, local parties are doing it for themselves.

It is also worth comparing the decentralisation of Conservative funding with the Labour party who receive about 60% of their fundings from the unions and 75% of the value of their Q4 2009 registered individual donations came from just three people.

This really ought to kill this story once and for all.

But surely the time is ripe for Brown to take the gamble and call a snap election? If he doesn’t, won’t he look back at this week and see it as an opportunity lost? Such a move would be daring and decisive which of itself could give him a poll boost. Will he do it? Let’s hope not.

David Cameron's vision for Britain

Yet again Cameron managed to produce a full speech without need for notes.

The atmosphere in the hall was electric.

If Mr Cameron’s speech goes down well outside the hall and galvanises Tory fortunes, as he hopes it will, then Mr Brown may live to regret not going to the country when he had the chance.

At the moment, though, the election is far too close to call. A hung parliament? Two elections this year? It could all be possible.

For Mr Cameron, however, he has made his last big conference speech. All he can do now is go out and campaign.

The Conservative Party is ready for the fight ahead, and David Cameron is the right person to lead us to victory.

conservatives on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

David Cameron, PMQs – “Any closer and they’ll start kissing” – (Brown/Darling)

A rowdy Prime Minister's Questions, so noisy that the Speaker John Bercow threatened to suspend it at one point. An open goal for David Cameron, who didn't miss. It might have been hard for him to raise the "Bullygate" affair --allegations by the journalist Andrew Rawnsley that Gordon Brown bullied his staff-- but the Chancellor Alistair Darling made the Tory leader's task a whole lot easier last night by admitting on Sky News that the "forces of hell" were unleashed against him in 2008, by Brown's spin doctors as well as the Tories, when he said Britain faced arguably the worst economic crisis for 60 years.

The best line was most definitely from Cameron, who commented on the closeness of the Chancellor and the PM, saying “if they sat any closer they’d start kissing.” The PM has an odd way of pursing his lips, which might’ve sparked Cameron’s comments.

Brown, as ever, was in denial - shouty, condescending, dismissive and evasive. He stumbled over many of his words and the slicing, chopping, stabbing and clawing actions were back in full swing. He doesn't like to be challenged, and it showed within the half an hour.

VERDICT: Cameron didn't really tear Brown to shreds – but, then, he didn't need to in order to score a comfortable victory today.

Bully Boy Brown

The allegations of bullying by Gordon Brown, is the top news story this morning. It would be wrong to let the events of the past 24 hours regarding the latest Brown shitstorm to pass without comment, so here goes.

First of all, Andrew Rawnsley is probably one of Britain’s best political journalists. His contacts within Labour especially are second to none. He has always been known as having his finger on the pulse of the New Labour movement, and has always written with tremendous insight into the Blair years in power.

Secondly, the Brown administrations defence of the situation seems to be rather curious. “I have never hit anyone,” said Brown. Well, that’s funny, because Rawnsley never actually accused him of doing so. That’s what we call a straw-man, Gordon. Brown’s spokesman also denied that there had been any inquiry regarding the allegations. Rawnsley never suggested there had been. Merely the Cabinet Secretary asking a few informal questions to find out what was going on.

Thirdly, you have the spectacle of Mandelson denying anything and everything. Except that Brown has a bit of a temper, and has an “impatience to get on with the job” (paraphrased, but broadly right). Classic media management. Try to turn a negative story into a positive one that Brown is frustrated that he isn’t delivering quickly enough. Make out that the system is against him, but by gosh, he’s trying his damndest!

We all realise that Gordon Brown is a nasty, obsessive, power-crazed bully. We guessed that long ago.

The real question of all this is: Will it cause him harm politically?

Only the polls over the next few weeks will tell us that.

Eric Pickles demands answers over ’scum-sucking’ Twitter

A tweet by Labour MP David Wright, which he insists was tampered with in a Twitter hacking situation. This quote, minus the scum-sucking prefix, was first used by Barack Obama in regards to Sarah Palin during his presidential campaign.

I do not go as far as David Cameron in wanting an end to Punch and Judy Politics, but I do think a general level of professionalism is required and name calling does no-one any good at all. Politicians need to set a good example.

For a minister to behave like this is totally unacceptable.

The letter below is from Eric Pickles (Party Chairman) to Mr Wright.

16 February 2010

Dear David,

I am writing to you regarding comments you appear to have made on Twitter yesterday about the Conservative Party.

On your Twitter feed, you posted a comment in the afternoon responding to a Conservative advertising campaign featuring people who have never voted Tory before. You wrote: ‘Because you can put lipstick on a scum-sucking pig, but it’s still a scum-sucking pig. And cos [sic] they would ruin Britain.’

This is the sort of offensive behaviour that turns people off voting. However, instead of apologising for language that demeans the office of a minister of the Crown, you chose this morning to defend it, describing it as ‘legitimate comment’.

Moreover, rather than owning up to your actions you seem to be trying to claim that your ‘Twitter feed’ was hacked into. This explanation is simply not credible:

• The ‘Tweet’ was made under your name.

• You have used similar language in the past on Twitter, including describing David Cameron as a ‘horrible opportunistic scumbag.’

• Immediately after the ‘Tweet’, you posted again to say that you ‘must’ve hit a nerve,’ and then again that Conservatives ‘do get riled very easily.’

• You then decided to apologise for the ‘Tweet’

Only after all of this did you then claim that your Twitter account had been ‘tinkered’ with.

I would be grateful if you could now stop treating people like fools and answer the following questions:

• If you did not make the comments, who did?

• How did the person hack into your account and have you reported the matter to Twitter?

• When did you first know about this? Is this the first time your account has been hacked into?

• When did you regain control of your account?

• Why did you make comments, which you have not disputed making, saying ‘They do get very riled easily don’t they,’ and ‘Oh dear, upsetting Tories again. Must’ve hit a nerve’? If these were not references to the offensive post, what were they in reference to?

• Why did you make these comments after your account was allegedly hacked into and not offer an apology once discovering your account had been hacked into?

The Ministerial Code states that ‘Ministers of the Crown are expected to behave in a way that upholds the highest standards of propriety.’ (Ministerial Code, June 2007; section 1.1)

You are clearly not currently abiding with either the letter or spirit of the Code. I would therefore be grateful if, as a matter of public interest, you could respond to me as soon as possible both to clarify your explanation and to apologise unreservedly.

Yours sincerely,

Eric Pickles

Chairman, The Conservative Party

Member of Parliament for Brentwood and Ongar

I have not been able to blog as much as I would have liked due to campaigning in West Yorkshire.In Election mode though!

Gordon Brown's death tax

Yesterday in PMQ’S David Cameron challenged Brown three times to deny that the Labour Government was actively considering the shock option of charging people a compulsory £20,000 death tax, for costly social care plans.

The Prime Minister said no decision had been taken and refused to rule anything out during the PMQs clash.

As a Conservative, I want to see people who work hard for themselves and their families rewarded by allowing their property to pass down the generations and not punished by taxes to pay for Labour’s incompetence.

Taxing people on their Death is unfair and immoral.

Hopefully a swift  Tory poster campaign can force this Labour government to row back from this potentially catastrophc proposal; which has been compared by MPs with the scare tactics about pension privatisation used by Labour to help Tony Blair win power in 1997.

Lib Dem MP Sarah Teather is a thief

Brent East Lib Dem MP Sarah Teather - who snatched her seat from Labour in a 2003 by-election is a bloody awful Member of Parliament.

Tory Bear a couple of weeks ago visited Brent to doorstep Sarah Teather at her rent-free (to the LibDems) constituency office paid for out of expenses.

Brent Liberal Democrats and the local party made no payment in rent for five years which resulted in the taxpayer footing the bill.

Harry (Tory Bear) is now being threatened with legal action by the diminutive Lib-Dem MP. The reason is that he has called her a thief in his blog.

I am going to back Harry. Sarah is a thief. She should be ashamed of herself. She’s an utter disgrace.

She was one of those MP’s who were appearing on television criticising her fellow colleagues on the green benches.

“I’m frankly astonished that when we’re in the middle of a recession and constituents are coming to us complaining they can’t afford to live, they can’t afford to pay their bills that MPs are still claiming money that they must know is morally unjustified”

Don’t worry People. There is a high chance that Sarah will not be sitting on the green benches after the General Election. Following the review of parliamentary representation in North London, the Boundary Commission for England reduced the number of parliamentary seats in Brent, and Brent East is to be abolished.

At the next general election it will be replaced by parts of two new constituencies: most will form part of a Brent Central seat, while three wards covering Kilburn area will be part of the new Hampstead and Kilburn seat.

Because Sarah Teather chickened out of challenging Ed Fordham for the Liberal Democrat nomination in Hampstead & Kilburn, she will be challenging Dawn Butler MP for the Brent Central constituency instead. Dawn is more than likely going to be elected as Brent Central’s MP.

She does not deserve to be an MP. Let’s hope she isn’t for much longer. I have faith in the people of Brent Central!

So go ahead and threaten legal action agaisnt all us centre-right bloggers Sarah.......

Labour SpAds caught exploiting Civil Service

Following a series of Freedom of Information requests, the Conservatives have unearthed evidence of how Labour Special Advisers have used Civil Service resources to make party political attacks, in breach of Whitehall rules.

The new documents show how civil servants have been instructed by Special Advisers to produce attack material to be used in the media against the Conservative Party.

As you may know, Whitehall probity rules prohibit government resources being used for Party political purposes; that Special Advisers must not ask civil servants to act politically; and that Special Advisers should not act in ways that "might reasonably lead to the criticism that people paid from public funds are being used for party political purposes".

Despite this, new information revealed by Freedom of Information requests shows:

• Treasury Special Advisers demanded material "ASAP" from civil servants to attack the launch of the Conservative Party's Quality of Life policy review.

• With no notice, they demanded immediate costings to smear Iain Duncan Smith's Breakthrough Britain report launched that morning.

• Costings on the Conservative Party's council tax freeze policy were demanded on 20 November 2009 - then to appear in the Labour Party's dossier on 4 January 2010. The work was commissioned at a time of economic turmoil – when Treasury Special Advisers should actually have been dealing with significant developments involving the OECD, CBI and the Bank of England.

It’s not exactly surprising

Anyone with any Political knowledge knows that this Labour Government has several inbuilt advantages: constituency boundaries that make it easier to elect a Labour MP with fewer votes, massive financial aid from the trade unions and a huge army of taxpayer-funded spin doctors.

We can’t go on like this. The British People deserve better.

Legg report costs more than the sums to be repaid

If you were bothered by the parliamentary expenses scandal because it was a waste of taxpayers' money, you may want to look away now.

The cost of running Legg review into MP's expenses is higher than the money reclaimed from MPs.

Total Cost - £1.16 million

Total Re-payments - £1.12million (The figure after successful appeals)

Therefore, the taxpayer is now £40k worse off than if we had simply written off past over-claims and reformed the parliamentary expenses system for future claims.

I'd love to know the breakdown of that £1.14m cost, to see just how they managed to spend so much of taxpayer’s money reading documents. I'm sure there would've been many people willing to offer their time for free to do those jobs!

The Alternative Vote System

Well, the political news is full of the planned Commons vote-on- referendum for electoral reform.

The system to be voted on is a classic – the old ‘AV’ system. This is no surprise. Elements of the Labour party have long preferred the Alternative Vote as the basis for electoral reform (though I suspect that the majority of that parliamentary party has never quite seen the point).

The main two advantages of AV:

• All MPs would have the support of a majority of their constituents,

• It eliminates the need for tactical voting. Electors can vote for their first-choice candidate without fear of wasting their vote.

The main two disadvantages of AV:

• It is prone to a certain amount of 'Donkey voting', where voters rank candidates randomly, not knowing enough about all of them to make an informed decision.

• It would not do anything to end the relentless focus on a handful of key marginal seats.

The political motivations of Labour’s move appear to be twofold. Firstly, they hope to show up the Conservatives as visibly opposed to a reform that, following the whole Adventure of the Abused Expenses, may be viewed as a popular measure to hand stronger accountability to the public.

The other reason boils down to electoral mathematics: by building the mandate for electoral reform now, Labour is eyeing a future election where the Conservatives are still broadly the most popular party nationally, but will be unable to build anything resembling Labour’s 1997-2005 unofficial super majority in the Commons. It’s possible that serious treatment of voting reform could only ever emerge from a vaguely leftist, unpopular government.

Very few Tories support any Proportional representation system. Personally, I would prefer us to slim down parliament, establish larger constituencies which would allow us to use Single Transferable Vote (STV), by far the fairest form of PR which preserves individual votes for individual candidates, and a constituency link - although it would be a much larger constituency.

At present - There is only one reason that I could support this move towards AV would be because it would shut the Lib Dems up. Actually, no matter what happens, they’d have to shut up: if they voted against it, they’d have said no to the change, and if they said yes, they’d have to be satisfied with AV.