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

benood

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

Its like comparing apples and oranges to someone who tells a pack of lies because they feel strongly that they are right and that the end justifies the means.

I'm sure that it's been said somewhere already that this feeling is exactly what empowered McBride to send his emails.

benood

tomterm8 wrote: »

No, it is entirely legitimate to say that the two smear camapigns are of a completely different nature, it is not legitimate to say "You do seem to have the minutiae of political smears at your fingertips RP, very useful when it comes to rapid rebuttal I'm sure" after there have been a large number of posts in the thread asking for precisely that information.

OK if you like, my sense that RP has been coming up with examples of lesser Tory smears unprompted is probably wrong. How does it go - concede and move on.

Rochdale_Pioneers

benood wrote: »

I'm sure that it's been said somewhere already that this feeling is exactly what empowered McBride to send his emails.

Thats exactly the point I was making. In his world the end justified the means. he couldn't have been more wrong.

Rochdale_Pioneers

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Again, smearing professional reputations, and smearing personal reputations and family life. Completely and utterly different.

SNIP

You keep banging on and on about the tories dsoing professional smearing, and then comparing it to downright personal abuse and lies.

Yes completely and totally different - one is a politically motivated lie aimed at damaging someone's reputation, the other is a politically motivated lie aimed at damaging someone's reputation. One personal, one professional. Professional people have no personal interest in their careers so don't feel any personal involvement when their professional reputation is smeared.

You miss the point - should someone who has been the author of a smear campaign be objecting so huffily to being the proposed victim of a smear campaign? I do find your blue glasses amusing BTW. How interesting the world must look through them.

Graham_Devon

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

Yes completely and totally different - one is a politically motivated lie aimed at damaging someone's reputation, the other is a politically motivated lie aimed at damaging someone's reputation. One personal, one professional. Professional people have no personal interest in their careers so don't feel any personal involvement when their professional reputation is smeared.

You miss the point - should someone who has been the author of a smear campaign be objecting so huffily to being the proposed victim of a smear campaign? I do find your blue glasses amusing BTW. How interesting the world must look through them.

I found the bold bit amusing.

Again, you try and compare them side by side and tell me I miss the point when you go on to whether she should be objecting to a smear campaign as she herself has smeared.

To tell me I miss the point after all these pages, Rochdale, is humbling.

You carry on spit shining that turd and claiming it to be something it quite clearly to everyone else, isnt.

Glad you find my "blue" glasses amusing. I'm begining to feel sorry for you that thats all you have to come back with, and everytime I tell you the same thing. I will not, and never have, voted tory....yet it never ever seems to get through and you use the blue glasses thing again and again.

Rochdale_Pioneers

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Again, you try and compare them side by side and tell me I miss the point when you go on to whether she should be objecting to a smear campaign as she herself has smeared.

Go on then - how do we deal with it? The smear proposed against her was reprehensible and noone has suggested for a second that it isn't or that there is any place for it in politics. Now, does that mean that any smears above that are OK? That there is a position in the gutter thats acceptable because its not sat on the floor with McBride? that its OK to smear people as long as its not personal?

Surely the point rightly being made across the spectrum is that smear campaigns are fundamentally wrong. I was asked to show an example of a Tory smear campaign and that is what I have done - she was bang out of order at the time and refused to retract it or apologise or even take any criticism. Do we let this behaviour pass in future, and accept any and all smears at a level below that McBride proposed to publish? Or do we condemn politicians lying about others to score cheap points no matter who they are?

nickmason

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/alice_miles/article6094124.ece

This is an excellent article. I think. I'm left with a slight suspicion that it might be Tory briefing against Ed Balls. But it shows the impossibility of politics once this behaviour is accepted.

Rochdale_Pioneers

nickmason wrote: »

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/alice_miles/article6094124.ece

This is an excellent article. I think. I'm left with a slight suspicion that it might be Tory briefing against Ed Balls. But it shows the impossibility of politics once this behaviour is accepted.

Because Ed Balls was on the radio this morning rubbishing the suggestion that Brown is at the heart of the smear culture? Naah - not a Tory briefing against him, its just the truth. Balls had to go on and defend his friend but he knows like the rest of us what is going on - and Brownites developed their savaging skills in their long decade "in opposition".

But as I said in my original response in this thread - what is new? Politicians giving unattributable gossip to journalists hungry for sources - or journalists who take whatever gossip is doing the rounds and attribute it to "senior sources" without having a clue where its come from or whether its true. None of this is remotely new. House of Cards was so briliant because it captured the backstabbing inside the Tory party of the 80s as the wets vs dries battle raged. Labour reformers helped frame the miners, the militants and the trots during the same period.

If we are to truly reform politics we need a compact between all the parties and the media not to engage in such behaviour. And therein lies the problem - its an impossible ask. Politics is a business that recruits ideologues and professional liars to battle - the idea that things won't get personal and people won't brief against others to do them damage is admirable but unlikely.

whathavewedone

I've been over on LabourList and reading what labour supporters have been saying about this and I can't help feeling that if you were posting your views amongst your own Rochdale you would not be saying what you are saying.

There is a general feeling that Damien McBride and Derek Draper have put the final nail in labour's coffin. In fact some people are even wondering if DD is in fact employed by the tories as he has done them such a favour.

I think you would be better off letting this thread die out than continually banging on about how the tories are just as bad.

The fact is that there is nothing recently that remotely compares to this. And yes, that has a lot to do with the fact that the tories are not in office but hey ho that's the way it goes.

The business with Nadine Dorries:

I'm sorry but I think that the emotive nature of late term abortions is a mitigating factor. It is the same in that she may have thought that the end justified the means - but it is different in that Mcbride's end was "destabilising the tories" in order to win the election whereas hers was in order to prevent something from happening which she strongly believed was wrong. The tactics may have been just as dirty but somehow it doesn't seem so dirty.

Irrespective of this story about the hand, doctors are divided over whether or not fetuses of 20 weeks plus gestation can feel pain and a lot of doctors and nurses are uncomfortable about performing abortions at this stage when on another floor of the hospital they are battling to save the life of a premature baby.

I just think: give it up. Your party have had their day for now. Time for someone else to have a turn. Right now they are incompetent and sleazy. Let them regroup and who knows maybe ten years from now they'll make a better job of things.