Housing crisis. Number 10 apologises over tory slur e-mail

nickmason

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

I posted links to both of them earlier in the thread. Osborne was roundly criticised for suggesting that Brown was autistic and later "clarified" the remark to say something different. Fox complained loudly to Cameron's team that they had been spreading rumours that he was gay during the 2005 leadership election.

Okay - I thought this might have been what you were referring to.

Osborne and the autism thing - that was, and I am sure you know this, a slip of the tongue, during an interview, following Osborne's admission that he was a political geek with a craving for detail. It was not in any way comparable.

I must be pretty deaf, because I was pretty close to the Cameron team and I didn't hear a thing about Fox being gay. (The normal story is of course about him and Natalie Imbruglia). Or maybe I wasn't told that story because to call someone gay doesn't diminish them in my eyes. :rolleyes:

Now that the past smears are shown not to be comparable - can you please release the forthcoming evidence of Tory smears that you alluded to? Or is this simply a deflection strategy. (By the way I don't doubt your sincerity about how despicable this behaviour is - it's just your attempt to bring down the Tories as well, which I take issue with. Let each be found for their own crimes).

Rochdale_Pioneers

nickmason wrote: »

Now that the past smears are shown not to be comparable - can you please release the forthcoming evidence of Tory smears that you alluded to? Or is this simply a deflection strategy. (By the way I don't doubt your sincerity about how despicable this behaviour is - it's just your attempt to bring down the Tories as well, which I take issue with. Let each be found for their own crimes).

What Tory smear - I didn't say they had happened yet. But they will - politicians smear each other and Cameron has hired someone whose career in newspapers culminated in running the biggest smears and innuendo paper there is to run his communications. All the comments about Damien McPoison were evidently true - has Coulson had a complete change in personality and skill set since being hired?

BTW its not a deflection strategy, its a comparison strategy. Nothing the Tories have done recently has come anywhere near what McBride has done. I don't doubt for a second that stuff is schemed and plotted on all benches, its writing down in such a crass way thats astonishing. After all, if its OK politically and morally to openly lie about economics I find it difficult to believe any politician who having done so claims to be honest and above lying.

Is that me trying to pull all politicians down into the McBride gutter? Perhaps, but frankly I believe almost all of them live down there anyway. I adore politics for its entertainment value, but I find what politicians say and do professionally to be across a line I personally don't want to cross. Its not that Brown or Cameron or Blair or anyone else you want to mention are vindictive liars, its that they have to do it professionally and get desensitised to it. Blair genuinely believes even now that he got it right over Iraq - he has utterly convinced himself that his version of events are right and the facts are wrong. Having read autobiographies of Thatcher and Major they both got into the same mindset. I think virtually all of them do.

Zagu

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

What Tory smear - I didn't say they had happened yet. But they will - politicians smear each other and Cameron has hired someone whose career in newspapers culminated in running the biggest smears and innuendo paper there is to run his communications. All the comments about Damien McPoison were evidently true - has Coulson had a complete change in personality and skill set since being hired?

So we can expect Alister Campbell to revert back to his !!!!!! days too?

whathavewedone

Ummm you said that David Cameron would look like a fool when the tory smear came to light "which it will". Now you say that there is no such smear as far as you know but you imagine that one must be in the pipeline.

Okey dokey.

Rochdale_Pioneers

Zagu wrote: »

So we can expect Alister Campbell to revert back to his !!!!!! days too?

Ewwww! I don't want to see Campbell in !!!!!! films! Was he in one of the ones hired by Jaqui Smith's husband?

Geoffo_M

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

Ewwww! I don't want to see Campbell in !!!!!! films! Was he in one of the ones hired by Jaqui Smith's husband?

Don't know about that, but he was in a horror film about David Kelly

Zagu

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

Ewwww! I don't want to see Campbell in !!!!!! films! Was he in one of the ones hired by Jaqui Smith's husband?

He wrote !!!!!!.

I don't buy the idea that if someone works for a tabloid, they will always maintain a tabloid mindset. Roy Greenslade was the editor of The Mirror, and assistant editor of The Sun. He's now a Professor of Journalism at London’s City University.

yorksrabbit

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

I am a pro-Labour partisan. But I'm also honest and I have always said when my side do or get something wrong. .

Rochdale: do wake up at the back there.

Your user ID speaks to your provenance and your posts to your honesty.

But neither speak to the reality of 'your party' because that died back in 1997, after the music stopped.

And all that's happened since is that so many have for so long continued on under the misconception that ZanuLabour is the party which your forebears -- and mine, and many, many others -- toiled and sweated to bring into being.

Sadly, whatever it is that's in Government nowadays, it isn't Labour.

Nor is it politics when the shared conception of the word "party" extends no further than the notion that it be a rolling festivity, funded at the taxpayers' expense, to which only the most self-serving and sleaze-ridden are invited.

We're all a long, long way from Rochdale now, and we're all the poorer for it.

Rochdale_Pioneers

yorksrabbit wrote: »

Rochdale: do wake up at the back there.

Your user ID speaks to your provenance and your posts to your honesty.

But neither speak to the reality of 'your party' because that died back in 1997, after the music stopped.

And all that's happened since is that so many have for so long continued on under the misconception that ZanuLabour is the party which your forebears -- and mine, and many, many others -- toiled and sweated to bring into being.

Sadly, whatever it is that's in Government nowadays, it isn't Labour.

Nor is it politics when the shared conception of the word "party" extends no further than the notion that it be a rolling festivity, funded at the taxpayers' expense, to which only the most self-serving and sleaze-ridden are invited.

We're all a long, long way from Rochdale now, and we're all the poorer for it.

You have NO idea..... (in the sense that you are bang on)

But what choice do we have? Our idiotic electoral system (I've argued in favour of PR since the mid 90s) only gives us the choice of two governments. I don't want the Tories so Labour - in whatever form - have to be preferable.

The best outcome would be a hung parliament where the LibDems manage to force PR though as their price of entry into government. But I can't see that happening and you can't vote tactically hoping for a hung parliament. Do I want a continuation of the Brown muddle and his self-centred scheming? No - but I want Cameron less.

A._Badger

Zagu wrote: »

He wrote !!!!!!.

I don't buy the idea that if someone works for a tabloid, they will always maintain a tabloid mindset. Roy Greenslade was the editor of The Mirror, and assistant editor of The Sun. He's now a Professor of Journalism at London’s City University.

Maybe. But he still writes and speaks arrant nonsense. Some things don't change.