Would we be better off with a hung parliament?

I’ve done quite a bit of work leafleting for Conservative candidates in marginal seats. Also, I have delivered leaflets for someone I have known for over 25 years, who goes to my family church and who belongs to my Orange Lodge, Gregory Campbell MP (DUP, East Londonderry), to defend his seat against the highly discredited ‘Trimbleite’ (and now ‘Empeyite’) Ulster Unionist Party. Though, as an excellent MP and without much serious opposition, Gregory will be okay and will hold his seat, particularly with an 8,000 majority. In Northern Ireland the only party for unionists to vote for is the DUP, who I warmly endorse, and I’ve certainly enjoyed tramping the streets of Castlerock and the working-class housing estates of Coleraine delivering leaflets.

Peter Hitchens has recently called for a hung parliament. I don’t agree – I think we need a decisive result, one way or the other, a Conservative or Labour Government. Though I’m not a Tory, but am a unionist, (as I’m fond of saying, it’s the Conservative and Unionist Party), I would rather see a government of the blue persuasion.

But I can understand why many voters are yet unconvinced by the Tories and why the polls are narrowing ever so slightly in Labour’s favour.

But in these tough socio-economic times it would not be right to have a lily-livered, gutless hung parliament, minority government, or coalition-of-convenience delivered by a lily-livered, gutless electorate.

They just can’t make up their mind, being so zombified by the X Factor. Why not have a 90% tax levy on the proceeds that have been accrued by the likes of Cowell et al? Why stop at the bankers? But, in cases of mindnumbing TV, the electorate is as much zombies as the bankers, mortgagers, and mortgagees that caused the economic crisis. Or the equally morally bankrupt people who are destroying society.

So let’s have a clear result. But if you apply game theory to this situation, i.e. the election, people don’t know what way to vote. So it might be chaos, ending in a complete mess, with a BNP gain here and there, Lib Dems holding seats they should lose, etc.

In conclusion, the last thing we need is a hung parliament. Let’s get real, people, and kick Labour out once and for all.

++ Child abuse lobbying: Disturbing allegations about Harman’s past ++

First, may I ask, why isn’t this a front page story and why isn’t it leading the BBC News 24 and Sky News?

According to p8 of the Telegraph, a despicable and unforgivable episode from Harman’s past was that she allegedly advocated certain types of child pornography and the reduction of the age of consent to FOURTEEN (14- or 15-year-old boys or girls are kids, are in no way capable of consenting, and should be protected from sexual exploitation). I find the passage below highly disturbing and also I am amazed that Harman is an MP at all and has risen so far in her Party:

The Leader of the House of Commons and Minister for Women and Equality, who is now being touted as a possible successor to Gordon Brown, sits on a Cabinet committee on young people’s welfare.

But her political judgement and ambitions are now in question after The Daily Telegraph obtained documents showing that she called on ministers to make sexually explicit photographs or films of children legal unless there was evidence that the subject had been harmed.

At the time she made the official submission, she was a senior figure in a civil liberties organisation that wanted the age of consent to be lowered to 14 and incest decriminalised. It also defended self-confessed paedophiles in the press and allowed them to attend its meetings.

….

Miss Harman, 58, was a newly qualified solicitor when she became legal officer for the National Council for Civil Liberties, now known as Liberty, in 1978. At the time its general secretary was Patricia Hewitt, who went on to become health secretary under Tony Blair.

Among the groups affiliated to NCCL were the Paedophile Information Exchange and Paedophile Action for Liberation, whose members argued openly for the abolition of the age of consent. NCCL complained to the press watchdog about their treatment by tabloid newspapers and said in one article: “We support any organisation that seeks to campaign for anything it wants within the law. They have that right.”

In NCCL’s official response to the Government’s plans to reform sex laws, dubbed a “Lolita’s Charter”, it suggested reducing the age of consent and argued that “childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in, with an adult result in no identifiable damage”. It claimed that children can suffer more from having to retell their experiences in court or the press.

Amid growing public concern about adults preying on children, the Protection of Children Bill was put before Parliament in order to tighten the laws on child pornography by banning indecent images of under-16s.

I was not aware Harman’s alleged past connections with various paedophile lobbying groups but this is all very disturbing, considering the nature of these pro-child-abuse campaigns. The BMLCTA [Battered Moms Lose Children To Abusers] site has commented that:

All citizens need to be aware of what the politicians are promoting. It seems all too common that people get into positions of power and authority in deliberate efforts to undermine the group they are supposed to be advocating for, such as defending women or children’s rights. In this case, there appears to be a serious conflict over the fact that Harriet Harmen appeared to be promoting de-criminalization of child sexual abuse (CSA), pedophilia, incest, and child pornography, and she is the Leader of the House of Commons and Minister for Women and Equality and holds a position on a Cabinet committee on young people’s welfare.

Now that she is a mother, what does she think of her past work for such a campaign and such extreme libertarians that advocated child abuse?

Today, in the UK, child abuse of all kinds is at an epidemic scale  and we do need a new Crimes Against Children Act – and to give child abusers (and those who fuel the demand by viewing abominable web images) life sentences without parole. 

We should support the human rights and liberty of ‘at risk’ and vulnerable kids – and not take the ultra-libertarian view of letting their abusers loose to destroy more kids’ lives – after all, the victims’ genuine human rights are more important than the imagined human rights of paedophiles.

As for Harman, there should be a public inquiry and if these allegations are proven, she should never be forgiven for her alleged collusion with such evil child abusers.

“A weak currency arises from a weak economy which in turn is the result of a weak Government” – Gordon Brown.

Edmund Conway, on p 21 of today’s Telegraph, quotes Brown when he criticised the Tories in 1992 at the time of the disastrous Major/Clarke/Lament era…

Brown was right to say this then, and the quote is even more apposite today.

It’s just a pity he didn’t live by it, and has made even bigger mistakes than the Tories did then.

Today we are officially Recessionary

The official figures released today show two consecutive quarters of economic decline or contraction.

Which will stop the ‘downturn’ lie …

… But also remind us what a sorry state Brown has got us in.

It will be working-class Northern women who do for Brown

The great Kathy Staff has sadly died.  We never found out the politics of her character on Last of the Summer Wine, but I’m willing to hazard a guess that Nora Batty (the fictional character, not the actress) was  a Tory and that she would have had none of Gordon Brown’s financial & economic nonsense – and that she would have seen our hapless PM with one swoop of her broom.

Ms Yvette Cooper isn’t a Northerner herself: she’s a public schoolgirl who neither understands economics (despite – or because of – being Chief Secretary to the Treasury Numbskulls), nor has any of the financial nous that characterise tough Northern ladies like Mrs Batty.

Labour is doing very badly with women in the opinion polls (around 10 – 12 points (or more) behind the Tories).  In particular, Labour’s advantage in the North is not as good as it should be, and the explanation is quite simple.

In earlier posts, I highlighted (a) how Northern & Scots men aged 35-55 and on benefits were flocking back to Labour; and (b) why the Tories need a Northern strategy.  I managed to offend Kerron Cross (and no doubt other people) with my Rab analogy, but I was just trying to make a point and I apologise if anyone else was offended.

More recent opinion polls have generally confirmed the trend, and though there are no specific figures, it’s fair to say that in the North (whether we are talking about Sunderland, Darlington, parts of Yorkshire, Cheshire, Lancashire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester, or wherever) Labour will not have as easy a time electorally as one would expect.  Particularly in Greater Manchester, given plans to ignore the congestion charge referendum and press ahead with the scheme.

Once the Tories get their economic strategy – and their Northern strategy, just as importantly together – they will be able to pick off a number of key Northern marginal seats largely on the back of working-class Northern women. Let me empahasise that I’m not characterising Northern women as Nora Batty, but my point above is that she would have seen off Brown with her broom.

And when it comes to the next general election, it will be working-class Northern women who do see off Brown – with one swoop of their metaphorical broom, the vote that women fought so hard to win – and they can make a difference to all our futures by ousting this dreadful Labour Government.

While some sections of the electorate have fallen for the Labour tax con and the apparent “Save the World” reincarnation of Brown, working-class Northern women have not.  It was they (and particularly Catholic women) who, more than any other group, gave Labour the boot in Crewe & Nantwich by switching to the brilliant Tory candidate Edward Timpson.  I remember one such lady on the doorstep in Crewe who told how Brown’s economic policy, including rising food and petrol prices and the abolition of the 10p tax rate, were affecting her and her family – and why she was voting Tory for the first time.

One key element of the Tory Northern Strategy (and their broader economic strategy), therefore, has to be to connect with working-class Northern women in such a way as to reassure them that, while Brownian economic policy means debt and disaster, the Tories’ means prosperity and plenty.

Why the Tories need a “Northern Strategy”

The latest Populus poll for the Times has Con 39%, Lab 35%, LD 17%.

But, as the detailed figures show, amongst men it’s Con 38%, Lab 35% but women are Con 41%, Lab 32% – with the Tories around 20 points ahead in the South, Wales/SW, and the Midlands, and Labour well ahead in the North and Scotland.  As a writer in the Salisbury Review observed a few years back, the Conservatives need a “Northern Strategy” (á la Nixon’s phenomenally successful Southern Strategy).

I’ve argued before that it’s less a Brown bounce, than an Osborne bust.  The Osborne effect, but also worryingly more widely the malaise that has fallen the Tories on matters economic (and especially fiscal), has allowed Labour to claw back a considerable portion of its former support.

Whenever the General Election comes, and Brown must surely be weighing up his chances next spring with this latest ‘vindication’ (or vindictive?) poll, the Labour Party is going to offer 4-5 years of the same as we’ve had over the last 11.  And that is not good for Britain – a surefire way of breeding more Karen Matthewses and more tragedies like the death of Baby P.

Ed Balls (with Mandy spinning away in the background, doing more damage than even he did in Brussels) has carefully transferred the blame to the hapless Sharon Shoesmith.  Yes, it happened on Ms Shoesmith’s watch – and, whilst it was the murderers who killed Baby P, it wasn’t social workers (who are being increasingly demonised in the name of political expediency, exacerbating the recruitment and retention crisis in the profession).

It’s partly ideological, but it’s also systemic, and it’s a polical failure (as Camila of Kids Company has argued), which means that many Social Services departments are rotten to the core.  But, at the end of the day, the buck stops with the even more hapless Government and the clearly out-of-his depth Mr Balls. 

At the same time, Labour looks in a better position in the polls when it has overseen 11 years of economic (eventually after the apparent but false ‘boom’) and social (drip-drip-drip) collapse. 

It’s time for a change but a large part of the population doesn’t yet realise it.  But then, whatever happens, as they used to say in the States, the “welfare checks [sic] will keep comin’.”

One way that the Tories could kickstart a “Northern Strategy”, which is doable as they won the otherwise inpregnable Labour stronghold of Crewe & Nantwich in May this year, is to bring back David Davis who appeals to Northerners like the Oxbridge boys don’t.  The next step, just as they did beautifully in Crewe, would be to tell the people of the North what the Tories can do for them economically and socially.  Voilá.