Monthly Archives: March 2010
Harriet Harman Double Standards On Paedophilia
This story was in yesterday’s Telegraph and also on Conservative Home, at the BBC there is deathly silence.
It’s emerged that a very senior Shadow Cabinet member once said that sexually explicit photographs or films of children should be legalised – unless there was evidence that the child had been harmed.
And at the time (the late 1970s), the spokesman was a senior figure in a libertarian group that wanted the age of consent lowered to 14, and incest decriminalised.
Furthermore, paedophile organisations were affiliated to the group – which said that “childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in, with an adult result in no identifiable damage”.
The story did indeed break yesterday. (The Daily Telegraph had it.) But –
* The politician in question wasn’t a Shadow Cabinet Minister. It was no less senior a Cabinet Minister than Harriet Harman, Leader of the Commons and prospective Labour leadership candidate.
* The organisation wasn’t a libertarian group. It was that establishment body, the National Council for Civil Liberties.
* And although Tim Loughton, our Shadow Children’s Minister, judged our reaction to the story well, there was – guess what? – little BBC reaction, no sign of a right-wing media ring-round, no reaction from the conservative commentariat: no sense of a story gaining momentum. I can’t find anything significant on it in today’s media.My point isn’t that Harriet Harman wants to ease the legal restraints on paedophile activity. (It should go without saying that she doesn’t.) Nor is it that her views during the late 1970s are worth the kind of media rampage that I sketch out above It’s simply this.
Another ghost come back to haunt Labour like Gordon Brown’s go go dancing as a job for women.
More Shame On Labour Kevan Jones Apologises To Joanna Lumley
Gordon Brown and Labour’s record with our armed forces has been nothing short of disgusting.
At Chilcot Brown lied about defence spending, Labour Ministers have conducted smears and lies campaigns against serving General Officers and members of the their families, repeated Freedom Of Information requests have been filed about expense claims for officers by some of the worst Labour troughers in the MPs Expenses scandal.
Then there was shameful case of the Gurkhas and the campaign by Joanna Lumley that caused a U turn by Gordon Brown and much seething resentment and a desire for payback against Joanna Lumley.
Sky News reports today:
The actress hit back at Defence Minister Kevan Jones, who accused her of “deathly silence” over allegations UK-bound Gurkhas were being forced to pay hundreds of pounds in legal advice in Nepal.
Mr Jones apologised to Ms Lumley’s in a statement saying:
“I am sorry if any offence was caused – this was not intended.” Read the rest of this entry
Labour Party Asking Voters To Design Next Campaign Poster
Labour Party HQ is asking their dwindling band of supporters to design the party’s next campaign poster, Aardvark was wondering why tax payers were providing free laptops to Labour voters, now we know why.
Aardvark is confused about the message the ad is supposed to convey, upon reflection it seems to imply that Gordon Brown is building a large structure out of concrete and intends to bury David Cameron in it, a method of removal of rivals popular with organised crime a number of years ago.
Wonder if they might use this? Read the rest of this entry
News of The World Backs Conservatives
As Gordon Brown makes another empty pledge about his mission beginning anew, Brownspeak for yet another recycled relaunch of something or other from 1997, Britain’s biggest selling Sunday newspaper The News of The World has come out in support for David Cameron and the Conservative Party.
Under the headline It’s Time For Change and Hope:
Over the coming weeks we’ll be bombarded with information, propaganda and, no doubt, downright lies. So let us take stock.
When Labour came to power in 1997, with Tony Blair at the helm and Gordon Brown holding the purse strings, we were all told that things could only get better. We are now entitled to judge that pledge against results.
This paper backed New Labour to rid the nation of such a blight.
Now, confronted with a renewed threat from old ways, the modernised Tories can be a force for good.
It is time to give change a chance and move forward with fresh vigour and hope.
Labour Government Advert Is Banned By The ASA Which Undermines Brown’s Policing Pledge
Another Labour Government department has had it’s adverts banned by the Advertising Standards Authority according to Sky News.
This is another blow for the Government propaganda machine that they are wasting tax payers money on, for what are in effect, no more than party political broadcasts for Unite Labour.
A matter of days ago Ed Milibands Church of Climatology department had two adverts banned by the ASA becuase of flawed science and scare mongering about AGW.
The Home Office is the culprit this time, for an advertisment designed to mislead about the amount of time that police officers spend in local communities.
The Home Office’s “policing pledge” campaign says communities can expect their neighbourhood officers to be “on the beat” 80% of the time.
But the Advertising Standards Authority is expected to say it does not make clear that this time includes a range of duties and not just patrolling local streets. Read the rest of this entry
Alistair Darling Labour Will Have To Make Deeper Cuts Than Thatcher
Only a few months ago Gordon Brown was harping on about “Labour Investment vs Tory Cuts”, then the message was “Nice fluffy warm Labour cuts vs Nasty Tory cuts” and now the Chancellor has said that if elected Labour’s cuts would deeper than those Margaret Thatcher was forced to make after Labour screwed up the economy last time their government was over.
Two very different messages from the Prime Minister and his Chancellor.
Asked by the BBC’s Political Editor Nick Robinson to accept the Treasury’s own figures suggest deeper, tougher cuts than those implemented by the Thatcher government in the 1980s, Mr Darling replied: “They will be deeper and tougher – where we make the precise comparison I think is secondary to fact is an acknowledgement that these reductions will be tough”.
He added: “There may be things that we don’t do, that we cut in the future. We will have to decide what precisely we can do within the [spending] envelope I set.”
Shadow Chancellor George Osborne:
“Gordon Brown is basing his election campaign on the claim that Labour can go on spending. That is completely blown apart by Alistair Darling’s admission, under pressure, that Labour’s own Budget numbers imply deep cuts. But why didn’t he admit that yesterday? Twenty four hours on this empty Budget has completely unravelled and Labour’s failure to act will hit families hard.”
Geoff Hoon Sacked From NATO Committee
More bad news for the man who built a property empire from the ill gotten gains of the MP’s expenses scandal, it looks like Hoon’s diary is going to remain empty for April now, and probably at lot longer than that.
The fallout from the Channel 4 Dispatches program continues; earlier in the week Hoon was suspended from the Labour Party, after secret filming showed Hoon and 2 other Labour ministers as avaricious, grasping pond life in the cash for lobbying row. Well know trougher Margaret Moran was also suspended from the Labour Party as a result of the program, which is weird, because she was already suspened becuase of her MP’s expenses, maybe it only counts when you get suspended 3 times?
Anders Fogh Rasmussen chairman of the NATO forward planning committee than Hoon sat on, on hearing that Hoon was suspended from the Labour Party, told Hoon to go. Read the rest of this entry