Letters From A Tory

Dear David Cameron,

Your recent aggression in House of Commons debates is nothing more than a wholly justified and rational response to the deceit and incompetence flowing from the government.  Yesterday’s draft Queen’s speech was yet another example of the total lack of respect that Labour have for the public’s intelligence and your remark about Brown using the speech for his “short-term political survival” is impossible to disagree with.

I started reading through the list of Bills in the papers this morning and felt my blood boil as I read each item, and I’m sure you had the same reaction:

1. Banking reform bill. To protect the public from a future Northern Rock bank failure and encourage greater banking stability by setting up a rescue fund - actually Mr Brown, it was your changes to the regulation of the financial sector in 1997 when you gave the Bank of England independence that led us into this mess in the first place

2. Savings gateway bill. Sets up a special new savings scheme from 2010 for the eight million lower paid where the government will add to people’s savings - the pilot studies of the Savings gateway have been a catastrophe as your policy was designed so poorly.

3. Business rates supplements bill. Gives big metropolitan and county councils the right to levy up to 2p extra business rates for long-term infrastructure projects such as Crossrail and tram systems - talk about kicking a man when he’s down. British business is already on it’s knees with crippling bureaucracy and regulation and now you’re proposing another tax hike?!

4. Marine and coastal access bill. Creates a national coastal footpath round England and a national marine planning strategy - remind me how many years you’ve been in government before deciding this was a good idea?

5. Heritage protection bill. Reforms the listing system for historic buildings and ancient monuments. Outlaws illegal trade in artefacts - see 4!

6. Education and skills bill. Transfers funding back to local councils for 16-18 further education and training and sets up a new national apprenticeship scheme - the Learning and Skills Council was set up in 2001 and was responsible for all post-16 education in the country.  It cost over £10 billion a year.  Now you’re scrapping it.  Good work Gordo.

7. Equality bill. Sets new national standards for equality legislation and legislates for political parties to use all-women shortlists until 2030 - using all women shortlists is discriminatory and should therefore be illegal.  Positive discrimination in this situation is appalling and flies in the face of attempts to make politics more of a meritocracy.

8. Welfare reform bill. Aims to reduce welfare dependency by strengthening law to force absent parents to contribute to their children and simplifying benefit system - yes, because the Child Support Agency has been such a wonderful success in tracking down and communicating with absent parents, and I think Mr Brown will also find that the benefit system was made incredibly complicated by him….

So you see, Mr Cameron, by this point I had to stop reading because if I continued reading I may have raised my blood pressure to dangerous levels.  I know that you’re concentrating on beating Labour in Crewe seven days from now, but I hope that your researchers are busy scurrying around and digging up all the information you need to knock back these Bills if/when they arrive later on this year.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

“Gabri, Nunzia, you look very good sitting there together.  Thank you for sticking around [to listen to my speech] but it is not necessary.  If you have any gallants who have invited you to lunch, I authorise you to go. Many kisses to both of you!!! Your Prime Minister.”

- an allegedly flirtatious note written by Silvio Berlusconi and passed to two of his female MP’s in the Italian Parliament (just imagine the horror of Gordon Brown trying it on with Ruth Kelly and Hazel Blears)

I’m assuming that most people have seen right through the tax changes made by Darling yesterday and accept that the whole exercise was merely a last-ditch attempt to avoid defeat in Crewe next week, but just in case you still need convincing I suggest you read THIS and THIS.

If you thought Alistair Darling was talking a load of bull yesterday, maybe THIS will put it in perspective.

Dear Labour idiots in C&N,

I almost take it as a compliment that you idiots have been so desperate to prevent a Conservative victory in C&N that you have tried to reignite visions of ‘Tory toffs’ in an attempt to turn voters away from delivering a crushing defeat to Labour.  Amazingly, the Lib Dems have also taken a few shots at the Conservative candidate on the grounds of his upbringing, making them look like idiots too.  Sadly for you, this stunt has backfired because it has highlighted the inability of the Labour Party to compete on policy, making them resort to this idiocy instead.  Furthermore, if you dig a little deeper, you find that Labour and the Lib Dems are hardly in a position to accuse the Conservatives of being privileged….

After doing some research on the main party websites, I found some rather revealing statistics.  Many people whinge and moan about David Cameron and George Osborne going to Oxford and therefore being toffs, but they are not the only ones who have enjoyed this level of education.  In the Conservative Party, you will find that 14 out of the 25 Shadow Cabinet members went to either Oxford or Cambridge.  However, if you look at the Lib Dems and Labour you find that 12 people in their Cabinets also went to Oxford or Cambridge - and as all parties had two or three ministers that did not disclose their university on the party website, you have to conclude that there is sod all difference in terms of the educational background of the Cabinet members in each party.  In short, if the Conservatives are toffs, Labour and Lib Dems deserve exactly the same label.  To make you lot look even more idiotic, more Labour Cabinet ministers have been to Oxford than their Conservative counterparts, and more Lib Dem Shadow Cabinet ministers have been to Cambridge than the Conservatives.

I know how hard it must be for you Labour idiots to come to terms with this, but the accusation that the Conservatives are toffs is already consigned to the history books - in the same way that the Labour government will be consigned to the history books in two years time.  By all means continue campaigning in C&N because every time you try to stereotype the Conservatives, the powerful messages we are sending out to the electorate keep getting stronger.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

“Can’t we just set all this true confessions stuff to one side and talk about things that are really important to people?”

- Health Secretary Alan Johnson, eloquently describing why we should leave the biographies to one side and focus on the numerous breaches of trust committed by Labour instead

Dear Janet Daley,

Even though you are almost a year too late with your article in the Telegraph this morning, I largely agree with your analysis.  You rightly ask whether New Labour was “ever anything more than a stupendously successful media operation?”  The answer is yes, but not much.

Although Gordon Brown has made a large number of poor strategic and policy decisions that have led to his current plight, he has helped expose the charade that was Tony Blair’s reign as PM.  Blair’s frequently cited charisma plus the “phenomenal skills of [his] image builders” made him appear to be greater than the sum of his parts, but Gordon Brown’s lack of ‘magic’, style and media savvy has let down New Labour’s guard.  Being a Labour supporter was undoubtedly a matter of class loyalty in the past, but Tony Blair ripped the heart out of the Labour movement in a bid to make them electable and now the lack of principles, philosophy and ideology in the Labour Party is there for all to see.  Blair started the ”open competition for the language of the high ground”, a competition which Cameron is now comfortably winning, but the Conservatives still retain their traditional focus of the last 20 years - the family, deregulation, personal responsibility, opportunity etc.  That’s not to say they haven’t made a lot of mistakes along the way, but at least they can still count on the support of their core voters; a luxury which Labour is currently foregoing.  Tony Blair’s obsession with bringing big business and profit-making into the public sector will have been loathed by traditional Labour voters, but now the party has nowhere left to turn in a bid to kickstart their revival - they can’t go back to the Left as the middle class will desert them, and they can’t go to the Right as their core voters will desert them.

I agree that “politics is now an open contest between conflicting solutions to real problems in which parties must convince individual voters of the force of their arguments”, although I can’t help but feel that with the demise of party loyalty will come a fall in turnout at the polls in future (bar the next election, when the entire country will want to get rid of Labour).  In short, the Conservatives remain a party of principle.  Sadly for Labour, they no longer have a soul.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

Cherie Blair reacts to the news that on one occasion her husband may have gone more than 24 hours as Prime Minister without spinning a news story in an attempt to deceive the British public.

“It would be inconceivable that he really didn’t know what was going on”

- Lord Levy on Gordon Brown’s knowledge over secret loans to the Labour Party

Dear John Hutton,

How long can this keep going on for?  What exactly are you trying to achieve?  The Post Office has already been cut to pieces and now the mail regulator Postcomm is suggesting that we shouldn’t get post on Saturdays and that first-class deliveries don’t have to arrive the next day?  No doubt you are desperate to find any way to save the government a bit of cash, regardless of the consequences.

With the average delivery time already falling and the end of twice-a-day deliveries and post boxes being emptied on Sundays, the postal service in this country has slipped far enough.  Businesses are suffering in what are tough economic conditions without you pushing them deeper in trouble, and the elderly will also be hit by such unhelpful changes.  The insistence on a single price for deliveries, regardless of where people live, is also digging Royal Mail in a deeper hole.  Now that the postal service has been opened up to competition, cutbacks in the Post Office will result in businesses moving over to rival operators, the Post Office losing even more money, leading to more cutbacks in services, leading to more businesses moving to rival operators… you see where I’m coming from here? 

The solution is obvious - get the government’s hands off Royal Mail and open up our postal service to full competition in terms of collection and delivery.  Clinging to the relic of the postal network from years gone by only postpones the inevitable.  The Post Office cannot survive in its current form or anything remotely similar to its current form and it’s about time you realised that.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

“It is impossible for anyone outside the Labour Party - and I think most people in it - to take the Labour Party seriously after the last few days”

- Alex Salmond, Scotland’s First Minister

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