I love it when I hear New Labourists explain why they would never EVER support the Conservative Party.

My personal opinion about David Cameron, is that he is a hard-right demagogic charlatan. When people say that he has no substance, I wholeheartedly disagree. His policies are the very reason why we joined the Labour party in the first place (don't get me started on marriage incentives for instance, is the first thing a mum of two kids who has recently lost her husband to a car bomb in Basra will be hit with, is a tax hike?)

I'm going to answer some of those questions on the Iain Dale meme. But I'm too young for some of them. So I'm going to put my mum's answers for some of them.

JFK's assassination: My mum was watching the TV when BBC interrupted with breaking news that President Kennedy was dead. Her mum, who was a very patriotic American had come back home at that moment,  and my mum didn't understand what was going on, but knew why her mum was crying.

England losing to Germany in 1990: Who cares?

Thatcher resigning: Despite my mum coming from a family of Tories, when she heard the news that Thatcher had gone, she fell to the floor and started crying with happiness.

Ok now to me:

Diana car crash: I was at my grandmother's house. And I had woken up too early, my grandmother came down, and she was a huge Di fan, and was in complete shock. I wasn't a big Di fan. I don't credit her with say, getting rid of landmines. We, and Clinton for that matter, should have given our thanks to Jody Williams. But what I found disgusting, was that the reason why she died was because of a soap opera obsession with the royal family, and how so many mourners went oyut just to see her little sons cry. Anyway, I'll stop ranting now.

9/11: I got home, and my parents were watching the TV in complete silence, and had been for 2 hours. I didn't really understand how serious it was, until it cut to smoke pouring over the whole of Manhatten. I remember the phone networks in this country had completely crashed. And then we started worrying about my uncle, who worked in Wall Street, and whether he could have been in the Trade Center at the time. It turned out he had been trying to drop his mother off at an airport, so wasn't in the district.

Some may point to the misinformationgiven by the BBC about the collapse of the WTC7 as evidence of a conspiracy. Leaving aside the idea, about how rediculous it would be if conspirators told the biggest news organisation in the world about their plans, we have to remember the confusion of that day. Even after the first and second tyowers had collapsed, I remember the news channels saying that 11 planes had been hijacked, that a car bomb had gone off in Philadelfia, Cleveland and Chicago. I also grasped the seriousness of the situation, when the news bulletins said that up to 50,000 people may have died.

So where were you all?

A spectre is haunting Europe; the spectre of Cold War II!

As if you needed any more evidence suggesting that the SNP and the tories are one and the same...

"One of the reasons Scotland didn't take to Lady Thatcher was because of that, we didn't mind the economic side so much. But we didn't like the social side at all." - Alex Salmond.

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/politics/Salmond-calls-radio-phonein-to.4419239.jp (damage limitation....)

We all know salmond favours the rich. LIT anyone?

Nice campaigning material to put on print though..."We didnt mind..." - What is this "We" that he speaks of? - for it wasn't the British People.....

 

 

... people with photoshop skills need to create lots of pictures of David Cameron spliced with Margaret Thatcher, the tagline of which is:

"THE REAL TWO-FACE"

Get to it! 

thatcher state funeral

At first you think it's a strange joke but if today's Daily Mail is anything to go by, Brown is set to agree to giving Thatcher a state funeral when she dies.

Is it meant to be ironic? Have cyber hackers altered the text? Surely, to paraphrase the great John McEnroe, she cannot be serious?

 

To what and whom am I referring? Why the column on the ConservativeHome website from Tory parliamentary hopeful and sometime novelist, Louise Bagshawe, referring to her “hero-worship” (her phrase) of Margaret Thatcher.

The public sector sister trade union to UNISON in France, the CGT and others are in battle with right wing French President Nicolas Sarkozy over pensions. He declared yesterday "We shall not give way, we shall not retreat". Is he having his Maggie Thatcher moment?

While on paper at least, the unions seem up against it, a newly elected President who had reform of public sector pensions in his manifesto and it appears marginal public support for taking a “tough line”.

Hi all! My name's Sunil Prasannan, and I my only claim to fame (so far) is that I went to school with a certain Alex Hilton! Anyway, this is my first political blog ever, so here goes. I think I became politically aware just in time for the 1987 General Election. I had turned 11 the previous year, had done my 11+ (though back then, merely saw it as a daunting exam rather than a political football), and by then I pretty much had an opinion of Margaret Thatcher's government. I do remember specific events from the early and mid '80s, like the Falklands, Brighton and Lebanon, but by 1987 I first took a real interest in politics and elections. I knew that I had socialist leanings and had no real sympathy with Maggie's "share-owning democracy" nor with her treatment of the miners. I also felt some affinity with Mikhail Gorbachev's "new" Soviet government, and remember being not too impressed with that rapid turnover, mostly due to ill-health, of Soviet leaders during the early 80s. I remember being not to impressed with US president Ronald Reagan either, and I felt that the time had come for the Cold War to end.

Anyway, when I was in my final year at primary school (Newbury Park, in Ilford North), during season '86/'87, our year were drafted into "prefect" duties, such as monitoring younger classes if a teacher had to pop out for a few hours, or maybe lead out the younger classes to school assembly. One other duty was watching the staircases leading from ground to upper floor , during break-times and lunch times. We had to make sure everyone kept to their left-hand side of the staircase to avoid any collisions. So every thirty seconds or so, we would call out from our watch-points, "Keep to the left!". And this leads me neatly onto the title of this entry, because during the run-up to the '87 election, when I was on staircase duty I called out, yes, you've guessed it, "Keep to the left - vote Labour!" For a few days I didn't get much feedback either way until Mr. Rowley, who I knew must have been a Labour man (youngish teacher with a beard and all!) walked up the stairs and told me, I think, can't remember his exact words, but must have been something on the lines of, "No party political broadcasts on the stairs, please!"

Anyway, thus endeth my first entry on LabourHome.org.

Sunil 

 

Gordon Brown has welcomed Margaret Thatcher to Downing Street for a chat according to the BBC.

The words that I thought when I saw this I cannot repeat on taste and decency grounds, so I'll content myself with Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh! Gordon, can we have OUR party back, please?

I know some won't like discussing this, but this was an absolute disgrace that should profoundly embarrass Labour bloggers to the core.

You proved your influence, the story apparently flew around the internet, and while it may have been completely innocent, it was a very poor decision to publish such an unsubstantiated rumour. We'll leave that to idiots like 'guido' and co.

I'm sure near enough 100% of Labour members/voters etc are massively opposed to Thatcher and her legacy, but surely that doesn't extened to wishing her death?

Hopefully a lesson will be learned and all can be forgotten and forgiven.