In response to Dave’s comment:
Hey, don’t get me wrong Dave, I don’t disagree with a word you say. The only thing I would say is that better a pro-EU Tory Government than a pro-EU leftist government.
I do think we need to hold judgement on Cameron a little longer, but he is making some serious errors of judgement. I went canvassing this morning and all of us agreed that there’s nothing wrong with Grammar schools… Cameron’s alone in the party but that doesn’t help matters.
On whether we need to show we have changed, I think we do. We are (previously rightly) thought of as bigots and fools. Of course there are Tories who are homophobic or racist — there are in all parties — but what Cameron has grasped is that we need to show people that that is not what Conservatives are about.
Some of the “don’t vote”-ers don’t follow politics, but then neither do many voters. Consider Blair:
In 1997 he said that Labour wouldn’t increase spending because Major had proved that money alone wasn’t enough. And when he was elected, on the face of it, that wasn’t a terrible plan. But when he didn’t do that he should not have won in 2001 or 2005.
That he did shows that people don’t follow politics.
If Cameron is pulling the wool over people’s eyes and, if elected, will make radical Tory policies then I will be pleasantly surprised.
April 9th, 2006 at 1:55 am
I was gonna give Cameron a chance after he first won, but then he called himself green, liberal and progressive..
I don’t think it was any more right to call Conservatives bigots and fools than any other party, it just sticks more against Conservatives because the MSM is against you.
People continued voting Labour in 2001 & 2005 because there was no realistic alternative, and that is still the problem, Cameron is not offering an alternative he is offering more of mostly the same but with different personalities in charge, and that is my main complaint.
Unlike you I would not be happy at all if Cameron won the election on a centre-left platform and then made a sudden hard right turn, all that would do is piss people off and they would trust Conservatives even less in the future.
If the Conservatives win I want them to do it in a genuine centre-right platform, they have to take on the debate and win it, and stop being so cowardly. And to do that they need a real Conservative as a leader.
The Conservatives lack of balls is already costing them massively, UKIP came out of nowhere to be having a significant effect, the BNP is gaining ground all the time, I know you don’t want to attract racists but the point is if there are 3 main parties basically saying the same thing people are forced to look else where even if they ideally would not, or just not vote at all.
(I know someone who claimed he was voting BNP last election who has a black wife)
Party membership is falling, election turnout is falling, it is political parties core base who vote for them, if Conservatives want to win they must not go for Labour and Lib Dems core voters… they need to target people who are sick with the system and want a real alternative.
Do they not?
Sorry, I don’t mean to sound arrogant, its just so frustrating listening to Cameron speaches where he is sounding like a weird combination of Lib Dem and Labour leader.
April 9th, 2006 at 11:05 am
I agree almost entirely.
The reason I think it is fair to call the Tories of Thatcher’s reign bigots is because of Section 28. I think the poll tax and the signing of Maastricht also betrayed breathtaking arrogance.
The LibDems (in the guise of Simon Hughes) used homophobia to help their campaign but, because they weren’t in power, they failed to get labelled with it. And, of course, because of the mainstream media…
The one thing Cameron has got, right now at least, is guarded MSM support.
I’m rambling: What I mean is that people should vote Tory locally and at county level wherever they live. If they have a non-Cameron-esque candidate they should also vote Tory at the next General Election.
But wherever a female or black candidate is standing because of quotas… I don’t know — maybe someone should stand as an independent for the Conservative voters.
April 9th, 2006 at 4:02 pm
Section 28 is the thing that banned promotion of homosexuality in schools, right?, what is wrong with that?
I’ve no problem with adults doing what they want, but I think there should be limits on what the government can expose kids too, particularly very young kids.
–
Thats the problem with affirmative action, rather than giving help to females and non-whites it actually helps to discredit them.
I would have been very happy to vote for Conservative blacks and women etc, but now with affirmative action I would feel suspicious.
I have a disability, if I was given help to raise me to a higher position I would feel quite pissed off. #1 I would feel bad for the person who I displaced, #2 its insulting, #3 it stops people striving to be the best and makes them more likely to play identity politics,
You don’t seem to make much of a job of defending Cameron. All I got is he has the MSM on his side and we should give him longer.
Guess you can’t stand him either?
I don’t think having the MSM on your side means anything, its years before the next main election, when its a choice between Labour and Conservatives the MSM will turn against Conservatives, many of them are actually members of the Labour party or have been.
But look at George Bush, all the MSM in the US was against him and he got a record number of votes by appealing to the heartland. MSM don’t rule this country but they are good at pretending they do.
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Take for example Camerons green posturing, in reality you can’t have green policies in this country without talking about reduced immigration but ofcourse Cameron doesn’t have the balls to make that clear.
This country is predicted to rise from 65 or so million people now, to 90 million by around 2100 because of immigration not natural birthrates. The effect of that immigration is going to be more water shortages in the south (unless you start pumping out of the Sea), vastly reduced greenbelt around cities especially in the south of England, and a large increase in the need for energy ie more of those ‘evil’ carbon emissions…, etc.
In other words Camerons green turn is not real, he’s just trying to say what the MSM want to hear, I hate this kind of fakeness from people who are supposed to be ‘leaders’.
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Conservatives used to be a party of law and order, but these days we barely hear a peep out of them when Police women are getting killed by illegal immigrants and asylum seekers.
We have people getting murdered by criminals on early release, but where are the Tories? I hear nothing.
We have the case this last week when a pedophile on early release kidnapped a ‘”’3′”’ year old…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4891052.stm
People should be so shocked by this they are looking for an alternative but the Conservatives are not offering that. Personally I think its because they are afraid of being called racists, because a lot of the gun and knife crime is non-white.
If the Conservatives wanted one easy way of getting cheap votes they should offer “honesty in sentencing” as they have in one US state I forget which it was, so the public can have confidence that the criminal will serve what they are given instead of this crazy situation now where people get 10 years and can be out in 4-5…
There is a lot of anger about this.
Its frustrating the way no party seems to be offering any answers to the major problems of the day.
April 9th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Again, I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said!
Cameron’s not a ‘traditional’ Conservative and, in many ways, that makes him indefensible. If I were to support Cameron’s leftist posturing, I would be as bad as the likes of Charles Clarke (former Communist) who pretend to support Blair presumably just for power.
On Section 28, there’s no sense in outlawing something unless it has a purpose. ‘Promoting’ homosexuality is like ‘promoting’ breathing or ‘promoting’ holding your breath.
When Thatcher made the law there were some mad left-wing councils but it is better that those Councils (who were elected, let’s not forget) do what they must in my humble opinion.
What the law actually achieved was a state-sanctioned silence on the question of homosexuality and an implied suggestion that if you were gay you should be ashamed of it. Thankfully we’re past that and the party is past it too.
The party’s problems are clearly shown by your comment above. We could make massive headway by saying the obvious (and not-so-obvious) things but for some reason the party is scared of the media. They are scared of being branded with the ‘Daily Mail’ brush of responding to “shocking” stories.
The strength of Thatcher was that she recognised that the people of Britain want to be led by people who understand what concerns them. Thatcher was strong and that was respected by the people. Cameron’s playing halo-wearer for the media but showing the public that he is completely out-of-touch.
Something that really strikes me is the BBC’s Have Your Say. Since the ‘Recommend this comment’ buttons were added, the highly recommended comments have largely been Conservative points of view. There could be three reasons for this:
1. People with internet access are overwhelmingly Conservative
2. People who bother to access Have Your Say are overwhelmingly Conservative
3. People in general are overwhelmingly Conservative but don’t have a party they feel they can vote for.
I believe it is the third of these that is truest.
Take a look at the Cameron Leadership blog if you think I’m a Cameroon!
April 9th, 2006 at 5:53 pm
You don’t disagree with anything I say, wow, maybe you should be the next Conservative leader!
I also noticed the BBC’s Have Your Say became distinctly conservative when they added the recommended button, and it just goes to show how they manipulated the comments previously.
yes I agree with #3, people don’t believe the Conservative party is really a conservative party.
I must say I don’t agree on Section 28, I have seen the propaganda, posters like “spot the straight man”. Let adults make their own decisions, but if I had a kid (which I don’t atm) I don’t want the government to have unlimited control over what they expose my children too. Parents should remain the most important in guiding young children.
If there was 2 schools, #1 a Christian School with traditional values, and #2 A community progressive social school etc..
I would much rather send my kid to #1, even though I am not religious. Its because I don’t want my kids exposed to various government progressive bullshit, like condoms for 11 year olds, abortion free for all without even telling parents, the pill without parents consent, and yes also gay propaganda, etc.
Let kids be kids.
(note, i am talking about young kids here, not 15-16 year olds)
April 9th, 2006 at 6:39 pm
Much to the annoyance of Christians around here there are people who start attending church just when they need to to get access to the local Christian school.
It’s just pragmatic to want the best for your child!
All that ‘progressive’ stuff really is nonsense!
As I say, what bothers me about Section 28 is the way teacher reacted to it and the implication of what it suggested. The fact that it outlawed the ‘promotion’ per se should have meant no change whatsoever. But from more-than-anecdotal evidence I know that it instead meant that children who asked what being gay was or whether it was okay to be gay were answered with:
“I’m not allowed to talk about that.”
which gives entirely the wrong impression.
The free-for-all that you talk about makes it almost impossible to be a good parent if your child takes advantage of said ’services’.
April 9th, 2006 at 7:50 pm
I don’t see why it should annoy Christians really, surely they would welcome the fact that people are attracted to the Christian values, why don’t they see it has an opportunity to promote the “holy truth”?
Well perhaps Section 28 is not the best answer to the situation but anyway I do think government should maintain certain standards so the parents can have confidence in the system, and so that ultra liberals can’t get in charge and start doing some things that undermine the role of parents and expose young kids to adult ideas and material.
Probably there is a way of doing that which doesn’t appear to unfairly target gays.
So you are against the abortion & pill free-for-all, why do we hear so little from the Conservative party about these issues?
I am not a parent, but if I was I would be very very very worried about what these social engineers are doing behind my back, it was one thing when they were doing it with 16 year olds who are on the verge of adulthood, but 12-13-14, its totally outrageous.
People need the Conservative party for this very reason, because the Lib Dems and New Labour are never going change this bs, but what do Conservatives say about it?
Cameron keeps talking about “change”, but some how I don’t think this is the top of his list.
April 9th, 2006 at 8:06 pm
Trouble is, for him, these traditional values are the disliked old-fashioned way of doing things.
What confuses me most, though, is that his children will be going to a state school (let’s face it, they’re not as good as state schools so why?). Also, as a parent, surely he has as much as the rest of us to lose from this “bs” as you rightly put it
April 10th, 2006 at 4:37 pm
Well, tbh, when the Conservative party stitch up the leadership and place a bad guy as leader I was not so bothered cause I had some faith that the grassroots still believed in Conservativism, but now after Cameron was voted for by members I am a bit confused.
Do you think people were fooled by the MSM support, or that there is a lot of support for his policies within the party? He did get double Davis’s vote..
Whats going on?
The membership of Conservative party is quite old, is this a case of grandma trying to give the young generation a cool present and getting it totally wrong?
April 10th, 2006 at 6:55 pm
No — it is to do with Cameron genuinely having much more chance than Davis with the electorate.
We didn’t know he was a Ken-Clarke-a-like.
April 10th, 2006 at 8:03 pm
Do you really think he has more chance with the main electorate than Davis, or are you just saying that was just the perception?
I’ve heard people talking about this no chance with the electorate before, but I know of at least 2 people who were definately going to vote Conservative at last election when IDS was leader but definately not after Howard became leader. They were former labour supporters that hated M Howard nearly as much as they despised T Blair.