Letters From A Tory

Dear Nadine Dorries.

Firstly I would like to say that I fully respect your commitment to lobbying for the reduction of the abortion limit from 24 to 20 weeks, as shown HERE and HERE.  You are clearly very passionate about the issue and you are pursuing it through all the right channels.  That said, I’m struggling to get my head round the abortion debate for the simple reason that the scientific evidence keeps pulling in all kinds of strange directions.

When it comes to issues such as climate change and abortion, I’m only interested in the science.  I don’t care how much pressure groups try to guilt-trip me into thinking or behaving in a certain way - I simply ignore them.  You seem to have stuck to the science as much as possible, but the problems arise when science disagrees with itself.  For example, when you read stories about new evidence suggesting that survival rates below 24 weeks are extremely low or how the figures in support of lowering the abortion limit might have been ‘massaged’, I suddenly become more sceptical.  Admittedly, your support for lowering the limit isn’t just focussed on survival rates as you have frequently referred to the ability of a foetus to feel pain before 24 weeks, courtesy of research by Dr Sunny Anand - who you claimed was a world expert in the area of foetal pain, but even this assertion has been questioned.

To be honest, I’m getting more confused by the day.  Above all else I think we should remember that abortion is a horrific act and should be avoided at all costs, but the question of whether the limit needs to be lowered is not so clear cut.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

The entries for the ‘Headline of the year’ award just keep on coming.  The previous nominations (by me) were:

1. UK NAVY TO END GOAT EXPERIMENTS

2. NEW ZEALAND MAN USED HEDGEHOG AS A WEAPON

And now there are two more to add to the list:

3. LYNCHINGS IN CONGO AS PENIS THEFT PANIC HITS CAPITAL

4. GREAT TITS COPE WELL WITH WARMING

The mental images for all of these are truly bizarre.

Dear Jacqui Smith,

Everyone knew it at the time, and just a few days later we have the evidence to prove it.  On the 30th of March this year, you told the BBC that ”it’s fundamentally important that we listen”.  On the 2nd of May, Uncle Gordon said that ”my job is to listen and to lead” following Labour’s double humiliation at the local and mayoral elections, and on the 4th of May he reiterated this by stating ”we’ve got to listen and learn”.  My question to you is this: if listening is so important, why has cannabis been upgraded to a Class B drug?

It is plainly obvious to anyone with a shred of intelligence that the current drug classification system is not fit for purpose.  Last year, a new drug ranking system was created that reflects the level of harm to the individual and society in addition to the degree of addiction.  This seemed perfectly sensible, yet the government did not listen.  You would think that, given a second chance, the government might get it right this time but you blew it again.  The chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs said moving cannabis from Class C to Class B “is neither warranted, nor will it achieve its desired effect”.  Did you listen?  Nope.  Not even the slightest hint that you have listened to the council that advises the government on the dangers of drugs.

I’m not even remotely surprised that you screwed up on this issue.  Everyone knew deep down that your supposed belief in ‘listening’ was a facade and now we have the evidence to back up our assertions.  It would be much appreciated if you didn’t lie to the public in future - we don’t appreciate it.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

Well, it might not be quite as good as the infamous Paxman vs. Howard, but it’s still a classic.  This takes ‘avoiding the question’ to a whole new level.

…but unfortunately for the Democrats Hillary doesn’t think it’s over, even though Obama is almost home and dry.  How much more damage will she do before she loses?

It seems that the entire media has now turned their attention to the Crewe and Nantwich by-election as the next big moment for Gordon Brown, but personally I think that this election next Tuesday represents a much sterner test (click here to vote once you’ve read the story!).

Dear Polly Toynbee,

I almost fell off my chair this morning when I agreed with several consecutive paragraphs of your article in the Guardian today.  Like many other people with a brain, soul and conscience, I often find your leftist politics extremely hard to swallow.  However, you might be onto something with some of your comments today.

I’m not so sure that the Crewe and Nantwich by-election will be won by the Conservatives.  Nevertheless, you have eloquently described why all the Labour briefing notes on ‘Black Friday’ about how the Conservative policies should come under greater scrutiny will ultimately lead to disappointment for Labour.  The Conservatives are rightly going to focus on simple, affordable and crowd-pleasing policies that are unlikely to offend anyone while giving off all the right signals.  If Labour expect anything radical or controversial this side of 2010, it seems we agree that they will be out of luck.  The problem is, as you suggested, that Gordon Brown doesn’t have the guts to really stake his claim for the job of Prime Minister with anything remotely controversial either.  He’s terrified of the City, he’s terrified of the ‘Super Rich’ and he’s terrified of losing the middle-class vote - all of which paralyses him.  Ok, maybe ’social justice’ might be a nice hymn to sing but it’s hardly going to get the voters’ juices flowing. 

Needless to say you still talked rubbish towards the end of your article.  Your claims of Labour success are mostly flawed - childcare is still too expensive and inaccessible, NHS waiting are in fact rising, aid to Africa is not as useful as sorting out EU trade tariffs, schools are underfunded and crumbling to the ground, the number of qualified teachers is actually falling etc.  Even so, I would like to congratulate you for saying something remotely useful today.  Long may it continue.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

Dear readers,

After the recent success and amusement gained from publishing the most bizarre google search engine terms that brought people to my blog to mark the six month anniversary of this blog, I’ve decided to make it a regular feature.  Every search engine term in this list is completely genuine, with my comments in brackets.  Hope you get a few chuckles out of this lot:

alcohol donations labour (that explains a lot)

extra tube carriages obesity (the mental image is hilarious)

psychological issues of lesbian (didn’t realise they had any)

darling is incompetent (glad you noticed)

ed balls so what (a truly memorable moment in British politics)

jeremy clarkson qualifications (presumably he some, yes)

marry abroad jack straw (as long as jack is fine with that)

incompetent idiotic labour government (indeed)

slow painful deaths (not something I normally cover on this blog)

susan ruusunen butt pics (who is susan ruusunen and why is her butt so interesting?)

cctv on buses in havering (no idea)

what is life actually (definitely too deep for me)

browns puppet alistair darling (hard to disagree)

new baby best wishes (from this blog?!)

“wild gay sex” asquith (it’s his private life, I suppose)

jacqui smith contempt court (oh, how I long for the day…)

“do your job properly” royal mail (wouldn’t that be a nice change)

george bush is gay (errr…)

south west trains drivers greedy (yup)

joke ikea job request (cheeky)

mccain zimmer (even more cheeky)

witch hunt letters (an appalling accusation)

scottish marriages (I’m sure they happen?…)

oxfordshire orgies (eeewwww)

jobs for slow people (any suggestions?)

why do train drivers get paid so much (good question)

nazi orgies (again, eeewwww)

ken livingston sex orgies (I think I’m going to spew…)

dentist iain dale (yes, he probably does have one, shock horror)

how to become a train driver (well, with such a high salary…)

livingstone is corrupt and a disgrace to politics (very true - allegedly)

—

This month’s highlight was certainly orgies.  22 people typed “orgies” to get to my blog, 19 typed “nazi orgies” and 7 people typed “roman orgy” - all thanks to Max Mosley.  Well done sir.  Not only am I now number one on google for “tory lesbians” (an improvement from number three at the time I wrote my previous list of google searches) I am also near the top of the google rankings for “nazi orgies” - try it yourself it you don’t believe me.  You can see why I’m REALLY starting to worry about who might be visiting my blog…

I can’t imagine why you might be biting your fingernails - it’s not like you have anything to worry about.

Dear Ken Leavingsoon Leaveinshame,

Sorry for not writing yesterday, but I was far too busy toasting your defeat.  Now that you have been humbled at the polls by this man…

…I can only imagine how hard it must be for you. Let us not forget that the man you told us all was a clown and a racist has somehow managed to destroy your political career. That doesn’t reflect well on you, does it! Anyway, I thought that, being such a charitable soul, I would give you some kinds words of advice to help get you back on your feet. Firstly, I suggest that you go home with all your remaining supporters….

…and think long and hard about how much your campaign sucked and why so many Londoners utterly despise you. This may require a lot of soul searching but I reckon you will eventually reach the conclusion that scandals, cronyism, taking huge amounts of our council tax in return for nothing, hiking prices on the congestion charge and aligning yourself with unsavoury characters both at home and abroad doesn’t go done too well with us Londoners. When this epiphany finally takes hold, you might feel a little down…

…but don’t worry, it will soon pass. However bad you might feel about the disgraceful way you have run London for the past eight years or how much London has turned against you, this anguish will pale into insignificance compared to the pain you will undoubtedly feel when you think back to the day you stood side by side with this man…

Best wishes,

A.Tory 

Dear readers,

As I sit here at my laptop this morning, I just can’t decide which of these three things amuses me more:

(a) The local elections results being the worst for the Labour Party since the 1960’s

(b) The utter humiliation the Labour Party must be feeling after coming third to the Lib Dems

(c) These hilarious and desperate quotes from top members of the Labour Party over the last few hours:

“The results are not great” - Geoff Hoon

“There’s no crisis. This isn’t something that’s going to affect the fundamental stability of the government.” - also Geoff Hoon

“We will come back from this and we will win next general election.” - John Denham

“I don’t think the results are sending any one message.” - Andy Burnham

“What we hear tonight we will, of course, take extremely seriously” - Hazel Blears

“People are quite concerned about the financial background and the 10p tax ratre has not helped.” - Harriet Harman

(and my personal favourite…)

“Despite all the warnings from Labour MPs and Labour Party activists on the ground, New Labour’s policies have brought us close to a potentially irretrievable tipping point.” - John McDonnell

Oh, happy days.

UPDATE: here’s some more cracking quotes from the losers…

“I don’t think we need a dramatic change.” - John Denham

“Labour supporters are cross” - Ed Balls

“We have got to get a grip ” - David Blunkett

“My job is to listen and to lead” - Gordon Brown (better late than never!) 

Dear Peter Riddell,

Your words of caution are well-founded.  Anyone who claims to be sure who the next Mayor of London will be is living in a dreamworld, and the local election results are far from certain when you bear in mind the huge gains made by the Conservatives at the last set of elections.

I think that the first and second preference system for the London Mayor sounds good in theory, but like you said many people don’t understand how it works.  If anyone chooses a second preference that is not either Boris or Ken, their second vote is completely wasted - which I suspect will be a common theme as the voting system is widely perceived as requiring you to choose who your two favourite candidates are, which is technically true but would be a pointless mantra to follow.  The BNP are certainly the party to watch as they only need a tiny increase in their share of the vote to get a seat on the London Assembly, an event that would trigger more soul-searching in political circles (with no end result, naturally).  Despite being a bunch of nutters, the BNP are filling a void that no political party dares to challenge them for.  The Conservatives could wipe out UKIP and the BNP if they dared to stand up for conservative values, but that discussion is for another day.

I suspect that when you look through the results of the elections tomorrow, you may find that you were largely correct.  Then again, beyond finding out who won the Mayoral elections and seeing how much of a drubbing Labour got, no-one is going to be paying much attention to the small print.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

“Gordon Brown only faces up to facts and listens to you when he is staring personal political defeat in the face”

- George Osborne, Shadow Chancellor

Dear Alex Salmond,

I doubt you’ll be pleased to read about how little impact you have had in trying to force a referendum on the independence of Scotland.  Even though it has always been blatantly obvious how much the Scots hate the English, you clearly underestimated how much the Scots enjoy financially free-riding off the back of our Parliament.

Scottish voters still trust Westminster more than they trust Holyrood with their money and do not want tax powers to be transferred to Scotland.  What you will also notice in the poll results is that 58% of Scots agreed that they have “the best of both worlds” by having their own Parliament but still remaining part of the UK - what a surprise!  Amazingly enough, the Scots quite like getting a block grant from Westminster using the Barnett Formula which gives them an extra £1,500 per head than English people.  54% of Scots agreed that this current arrangement was the right one, while a mere 20% thought it best for Holyrood to raise its own taxes and spend them.

Allow me to make a suggestion: as you’ll never get independence on your terms, how about you start trying to gain more financial independence by getting Scotland to raise and spend its own revenue?  Sod the poll ratings - if you’re serious about Scottish independence, I’d like to see you fighting for a more distanced relationship from Westminster in political and financial terms.  Anyone who claims to support Scottish independence but is still happy to take handouts from Westminster is a fraud, and I’m beginning to think I should include you in that category.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

“Faced with a ballot paper, it will come home to them that Ken Livingstone has been there too long, Boris Johnson is too much of a risk and they will vote for me. I don’t think it’s over until it’s over.”

- Brian Paddick, the Lib Dem mayoral candidate who obviously hasn’t been reading the polls

Dear David Aaronovitch,

I find it very amusing that you are trying to mount a backlash against the Labour rebels in this way.  Throughout your article in The Times today, you suggest that the “government’s natural supporters are merely whingeing - and forgetting the achievements”.  Oh dear, you really haven’t been paying attention for the last few months.

Let us look at the Labour achievements that you claim have been forgotten by the party supporters:

“mortgages had become cheapo” - yes, they have, thanks to reckless and poorly-judged lending on the part of banks.  This has NOTHING to do with the government and has played a huge part in the record levels of debt and the number of people facing negative equity.

“unemployment was low” - by some measures, perhaps, but the number of economically inactive people in the UK is around 4-5 million thanks to Labour putting people on benefits to stop them being included in the unemployment count.

“crime was, in general, falling” - a contentious statement.  The latest figures show that even though recorded crime might be falling, violent crime is rising and fear of crime is higher than ever.

“the economy was performing better than in most other similar countries” - oh please.  Propping up an economy based on consumer debt and reckless band lending is hardly ‘performing better’.  In fact, house prices are now falling and our currency is very weak compared to the Euro due to the phony growth of the last ten years.  Our service industry growth has been masking serious cracks elsewhere in our economy.

“huge infrastructural improvements, as evidenced in new school buildings and hospitals” - we now have a PFI debt of around £90 billion thanks to Labour’s crackpot building initiatives, where new schools and hospitals are underused and often empty (literally) due to Labour’s mismanagement.

So Mr Aaronovitch, the Labour “rats” may be sinking Brown’s ship as you posited, but they are doing so with good reason.  Labour has been in power for 11 years and has done untold damage to our economy and society.  If I were in their position, I’d be sending out my CV.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

If I had been asked to predict which issue is most likely to trigger an attack or Iran, or possibly World War III, I probably wouldn’t have said Barbie.  Obviously I still have a lot to learn.

Dear Greater London Assembly,

I’m glad that you have realised the potential for fraud in the postal voting system for the Mayoral elections and are trying to rectify this by training officials to spot fake signatures and votes, but I fear that you are climbing an impossibly steep hill.

Postal voting is so open to fraud that I wonder whether we can have any confidence in it whatsover.  The report released today suggests that Pakistani, Kashmiri and Bangladeshi “clans” in areas such as Oldham, Blackburn, Burnley and Birmingham have been responsible for half the postal voting fraud since 2000 as they have clearly mastered the effort of pressuring family members into voting for their chosen candidate.  Ethnic minority women in particular have suffered from the lack of privacy that a ballot box provides.  These ‘clans’ abuse their patriachal roots to force family members to complete their postal votes in a communal area or even hand their voting form over to ‘party representatives’ who completes them.  As one commenter put it on The Times website, “Further evidence of how immigration has enriched our culture”.

Northern Ireland has a far superior system, where voters register individually and provide their signature, national insurance number and date of birth, which are all checked when they vote.  In addition, voters must produce photographic identification before being issued a ballot paper at the polling booth.  In my opinion, moving elections to a weekend would also help to combat this fraud.  In any case, postal voting sounds great in theory but should be consigned to the scrap heap once the Mayoral elections are complete.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

“Sexual addiction is comparable to the other, better known addictions, such as drugs, alcohol and gambling. Many people suffer different types of this disease. …I hope that in time people will be able to understand and forgive me as I fight this difficult, personal battle.”

- Lord Laidlaw, who has admitted to receiving treatment for his ’sex addiction’ and has apparently been fighting this terrible disease for his whole adult life which is ironic, given his surname

Yes he has, if you believe what you read in the Times and the Telegraph this morning.

“I absolutely had total belief in Tony Blair, and I felt it was a privilege to help in any way I could both he and the Labour party.”

- Lord Levy, who did absolutely nothing wrong and was completely innocent in the cash-for-honours investigation

Dear Alice Thomson,

Absolutely spot on.  In amongst the closed schools, the government’s brave face and frustrated parents, you have picked out the core reason why the NUT should indeed attend “a lesson in democracy” themselves.

Trying to blackmail the government yesterday (and now supported with further threats of strike action in today’s papers) is nothing more than childish.  Only one in four of the teaching unions and neither of the headteachers’ unions wanted to go on strike, and only 24% of the one union that did go on strike actually voted in favour of strike action.  As you rightly pointed out, schools have been closed just a couple of weeks before GCSEs and A-levels begin and it is appalling that teachers, who signed on the dotted line saying that they would teach children and support them achieve their educational goals, should walk out like this.  Not only did the strike screw with pupils’ futures, it also messed parents around and caused chaos for many families who had to take the time off work.  Your statistics were also poignant: over the last decade, teachers have received higher pay increases than nurses and the police in addition to being offered a higher pay increase than the police and civil servants this year, so for them to walk out over pay is unacceptable.

As a former teacher, I know teaching can be hard.  We both agree that teachers have a lot of things to justifiably complain about, but we also agree that pay is not one of them.  If teachers showed more of a commitment to teaching, the public would be a lot more willing to listen.  Right now, I wouldn’t even give those who went on strike the time of day.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

I can’t make my mind about whether THIS STORY shows that God doesn’t exist or shows that God just has a cruel sense of humour.  Hmmm.

Dear Justine Greening,

Thank you for pursuing the government over their ‘green taxes’ sham.  I am always happy to see the government taking a serious interest in environmental issues, but slapping massive tax hikes on motorists is designed to raise £2.5 billion of revenue for the empty Treasury coffers instead of trying to help reduce pollution.

This cleverly disguised policy was always a con and you are right to suggest that it will have “virtually no impact on the environment”.  The new showroom tax being introduced in 2010 merely adds insult to injury as any justification on environmental grounds has already been lost through increasing vehicle excise duty for precisely that reason.  However, the Conservatives are going to have to think about this carefully because green taxes are deceitful and ineffective.  Road pricing is without doubt the fairest and most effective way of combatting congestion across the country as people would be taxed on the basis of how much they use their car as opposed to whether they own a car.  In return, vehicle excise duty should be scrapped and the revenue raised from road pricing should be reinvested in improving our transport infrastructure.  Reducing pollution is best left to an emission trading scheme for each individual, similar to the one already used for businesses, so people pay for however much pollution they use or receive money for polluting less than others.

I doubt that you or any other Conservative MP has the will and the desire to make these kind of changes, but like I said in the ‘Why I write these letters’ section of my blog, it’s better to be right and unpopular than wrong and popular.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

“I have absolutely no recollection of that whatsoever”

- Nick Clegg on suggestions he joined a student Conservative Association while at university.