CONFIRMED: The general election will be on May 6th 2010
LATEST NEWS: I can confirm that the 2010 UK general election will take place on May 6th 2010
poorest kept secret and subject of constant speculation i know, but after Jack Straw's (labour MP for blackburn) gaff on national television, speaking about geoff hoon's infamous text, stating that "we only have 16 weeks to go before a general election" - which he later tried to backtrack from at the end of the interview, i can confirm another source.
Prospective labour candidate for the Hyndburn and Haslingden seat, Graham Jones, has revealed in a general discussion on his blog, that the date of the general election will be 6th May 2010
"Graham Jones said... Well it takes a few weeks to select, then take off 6 weeks before to get your name on the ballot paper. Add a fortnight to get organised and 2 more weeks to get printed material done. That's 13 weeks and there are 15 weeks before May 6.
That's shambolic in my book.
9 January 2010 12:24"
the date of may 6th was not mentioned in any post or comment on the blog, although the candidate for the conservatives for the general election was being discussed.
in my last post i quoted from greg pope's (labour MP for hyndburn) website/blog, from a post he put on there arguing about gordon brown's manipulation and smearing of opponents within his own party, to secure the leadership for himself.
after the events of the last 24 hours, that i have experienced, i would surmise that its not just the labour leadership that are control freaks!
greg pope's son also posts to his blog, and one such post, on equality, in which he makes the - all too common - sweeping statement "since May 1997 the poorest in society have grown more affluent. to be fair he was specifically refering to people's finances and not material goods, so i posted a comment that pointed out a few inaccuracies with this view and pointed out the vast numbers of people are being subsidised in some form by the taxpayer. i also asked how any increase in wages or money given is often ofset, in the case of the poorest in society, by a reduction in their housing or council tax benefit, so they of course are financially unchanged, but now have to work xx amount of hours per week to do this. i highlighted also other aspects of inequality that are on the increase, such as the way the courts are being manipulated and influenced indirectly by the government he supports, when making decisions that affect thousands of people, such as the supreme court and the overdraft fees ruling. (the new goverment bonus tax came not 2 weeks after the supreme court ruled against all other courts verdicts on oft v banks on overdraft charges, and by an amazing coincidence, raises almost the exact same revenue for the government, that the banks would have had to refund to customers who had been charged incorrectly!)
i posted the comment, it showed up on the blog, then i did something else. today whilst having a quick brew, i log in to the blog to see if there is any reply to my comment, to find it has magically been deleted from the post!
oh well, i thought, why have a blog and post stuff at all, if, when you get an alternative opinion backed up with facts, you simply dont argue with it, but delete it instead? - if you dont want comments, then turn them off!
so off over to the bbc's website and see what the people are talking about there. on my log in i find that despite more than 100 comments being added to the thread "what should political parties focus on?" mine are still held in its "moderating queue" - of course it attacks the broken promises of the labour government, no student loans then brought them in, etc. i check on another post i made 2 days ago, regarding "how should food policy be changed" - again this post attacked the government for putting the onus on the public and not doing anything to reign in supermarkets, who receive preferential treatment to independant retailers, etc. - once again it was held in a moderating queue for days, no doubt to go the way of many other posts against this labour government on a whole variety of issues, only published after the debate has been closed to comments and then disappears off the website within 12 hours!
so we have a labour mp blog that comments arguing a point they themselves have raised, mysteriously vanish, without explanation - then we have the bbc website forums being "moderated" to stop any opinions that oppose the government from being published and voted for.
the labour party must be in trouble, they now wont even debate with facts, any position they state they take on any issue, they have proved they just want to control the uk public.... no wonder the uk public cannot get any answers about whats happening in todays britain!
im guessing that the scenario i am about to describe, is not isolated to my area of the UK.
Much like the farce of the nhs dentist failures that labour mp greg pope described as "an isolated pocket" - which turned out to be country wide and be affecting more than 2 million people - whilst costing the taxpayer record amounts of money to bring about - the following is a clear example of just why the labour party, quite rightly in my view, are seen by some as not having a clue about what they are doing.
in my area the sitting MP greg pope will not be attempting re election at the general election to come, so it was with interest that i received a card through our door, from the prospective labour party candidate, graham jones. graham tells us how he is councillor in our neighbouring town and the county council labour party leader for east lancs, a council they lost control of this year to the conservatives.
all seems fine with that, until i read the short statement from outgoing MP greg pope on the reverse of the information card: "... graham has my full support and i look forward to working with him in the coming months"
a quick look at graham's own blog site and greg pope MP's blog site and its clear that whilst they both portray an image of support for the labour party (which in effect employs them) they are completely at odds with each other about the direction of the party they both represent, they are total opposites when it comes to whom should lead the labour party and make side swiping remarks contradicting each others view, whilst claiming to "understand" the others differing point of view!
on graham's blog, his twitter updates show: "Lab public attacks on GB [gordon brown]. R we establishing the principle that public hostility is good? If u lose in pvte then winning in public is next?" - yes graham, public hostility is good, its called accountability, when an MP faces hostile questioning from the public and the MP that stands for a party has to defend his/her own record and the record of decisions that the party has taken, then hostility is good.
on greg popes blog we have this post: "Labour has been appallingly ill-served by a cabal surrounding Gordon Brown. First they destabilised Tony Blair's leadership, an act of shocking disloyalty to someone who had won us an unprecedented three election victories in a row; then they ensured that Gordon was crowned leader rather than elected (along with others I spent some time in early 2007 seeing if we could get enough Labour MPs to nominate any serious contender to take on Gordon. We got just about the requisite number of names but we couldn't find a member of the cabinet who dared take on Gordon's people for fear of what they would do - is that the kind of leadership that we really want?); which leads us to the next dirty trick of Gordon's cabal: the smearing of opponents. As one Minister said at the time, the really shocking thing about the McBride fiasco wasn't that they were attempting to trash the personality of an opponent but that it was someone of a different party for a change. We deserve better." this is from an MP that works for the labour government at westminster!
whilst labour fanny around in committees and discuss issues on forums and other talking shops, that bare no relevance to the british public, the country crumbles. a far cry from what graham and greg state on graham's labour party information flyer that was pushed through my front door!
why has greg pope Labour MP taken so long to reveal what has been going on at westminster? was he protecting his own job and only revealed what was happening once it became apparent that he would not be returning to westminster after the next general election? he has held his views in secret for years whilst we have been lumbered with an incompetant baffoon of a prime minister and been hung out to dry, greg pope (and no doubt other labour mps) sat on their hands and did absolutely nothing about it!
this begs the question, why on post office closures did greg pope campaign in the local paper with our local post office counter staff, to keep it open, then goto westminster and vote in a policy that he knew would close it down? why is he "looking forward to working with graham" the prospective candidate, at the same time as calling for a different set of policies, different direction and aims and a different leader for the labour party?
and the labour party have the sheer audacity to criticise opposition parties and tell the people of britain that no other party but labour, can be trusted on ever issue under the sun! labour people just do not get it at all..... an MP ( of any party) is there to represent the people of his/her constituency - not as greg pope/graham jones believe and do, to represent the labour party or sit on their hands and keep quiet when something is being forced on the british people that is not in the people's interest!
