It appears the Tories are a little jumpy, feeling the need to respond to criticisms of Chloe Smith on the back page of their leaflet.I note that they are still failing to admit that she was working for the Tory party, on loan from her employers. This blatant attempt to mislead could look silly if last minute opposition leaflets highlight that her website says something different from her leaflets.
There is also a covering letter (hand written style) which I'll add to this posting later. It contains one blatant lie, referring to polls showing it is neck and neck (despite their only being one poll and that was from about 3 weeks ago).
34 comments:
A blatant lie? The polls this weekend backed the result to be neck and neck.
Another Tory lie. There was no local poll this weekend. The News of the World reported the previous poll (from three weeks ago) but there have been no other local polls. The Tories themselves are talking up the idea of a 3-5000 majority.
The natioanl polls this weekend were in no way neck and neck.
So why not grow a pair, stop posting anonymously and put your head above the parapet and quote a source for these weekend polls ?
Like I said before,the information that she was working for the Conservatives is available on her website,and has been for some time,so to make out that a lie is being told here is really mendacious.
Almost a textbook example how not to rebut attacks!
It is mendacious for the tories to say one thing on leaflets and another on her website.
The design is good; layout excellent. Much better than the poor Lib Dem effort. Though you have to ask the question; do the parties really think the electorate are fooled by these 'independent' newspapers? When will they realise that people actually resent being treated like idiots? Do they really believe that more people will find it more credible because it has a made up name rather than Focus or In Touch? Any marketing man will tell them to stick to their brand image. I can understand the LD's getting stuck in this morass as part of the hidden war between Cowley Street and the ALDC tendency, but I would have thought the Tories could see it!
Yes, I'd call it disengenuous to say one thin gon this leaflet that contradicts what is on her website.
Still, why did she remove the links to the Tory MP she has a pass from ?
Come on Benji, speak up.
There is no contradiction and you know it. Stop stretching the facts
Website says one thing, leaflets say something else.
You don't call that a contradiction ?
I tell you what Benji, why don't you "unhide" your ID so we know who you really are. Your IP is certainly a pointer to it. Do you want me to reveal ?
Tory staffer ?
Chloe worked for Deloittes. Unless you are suggesting that that is a lie,then there is nothing wrong with the information supplied on that leaflet.
and the rest ... come on ...
"She is on secondment to the Conservative Party working with Tory MPs in Westminster, with a House of Commons pass."
Is this clear ? Has she stated that she is working for the Tory Party ?
Working late tonight Benji ? Still lots to do at the Tory office ?
Sorry,still not seeing any contradiction here. And please grow up,you're being the partisan one here.
Well that speaks volumes. You see no contradiction in saying
"I work for a company seeking best value for government departments"
and
"I am on secondment to the Conservative Party".
So, there's a by-election imminent and all we get is page after page of attacks about who's from where and who works where and she said, he said ad nauseum
Oh and a count of leaflets. Wouldn't want to miss that.
I haven't heard any of the candiates say anything of substance about local issues that are affecting most of us. Unemployment for example hasn't been mentioned. Politics is no longer interested in the increasingly marginalised section of our society. And guess what, they've stopped voting. And with good reason.
This website has been the epitome of everything wrong with politics today. Party knockabout, personalities and lack of content. And then you blame the populace for turning their backs.
Wise up, we're heading for trouble.
Sorry if you find this blog (not a website) of a Lib Dem member and former councillor slightly biased. What the hell did you expect ?
You seem to have confused me with Reuters !
You can be biased all you like
but please address the issues
And I expected your curt response that again totally avoids anything of substance.
I've been writing about the issues for three years. You suddenly start reading my blog and take offence at the fact that I do not go over the issues again. This is not a blog set up for this election only so I suggest you look in to my blog archive and you will see that these issues were discussed long before you arrived.
Okay fair enough,
that Chloe Smith, is it a bloke?
looks like Ant McPartlin in a wig to hide the TEFAL head.
better?
If Chloë Smith was seconded, Deloittes will have released their employee for a preagreed term and their client, here the Tory Party (or an individual Tory MP), will then either employ her directly or pay her indirectly through Deloittes.
Given that Chloë Smith was selected to fight Norwich North in early 2008, this would have been a sensible arrangement for all parties to the agreement.
It should be remembered that NN is a very marginal seat - 163 on the Tory target list - and there was no expectation of a by-election being called at the time the secondment was made. The realistic presumption was that Dr Gibson would have retained his seat at the GE.
Secondment meant that if Chloë was not elected she would then have had the option of continuing her career with Deloittes without the loss of accrued employment benefits. Deloittes would not have had to fund her for the two years in which she was preparing her campaign in NN. As campaigning is not a full time job, the Tory Party would both benefit from and meet the cost of her work during the two year period.
All seems very sensible and businesslike to me. And not disingenous at all for Chloë and the Tories to state she is a business consultant campaigning to become an MP. Had she been a qualified surgeon seconded by the NHS, would you have challenged her claim to be a doctor?
Ok,now I'm really confused. She works for Deloittes,and gets a glowing character reference(what you'd expect from a party political leaflet). Her own website tells us she has transferred to work for the Conservatives,and yet somehow she is accused of misleading people-I just don't get what the big misdemeanour is meant to be here.
All the candidates have information they'd rather the public was unaware of,whether it be moats,membership of the Tory party or crass statements in response to the 7/7 bombings. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous.
And lets have no cant about misleading leaflets. Some of us still remember Simon Hughes claiming to be the "straight choice" for Bermondsey.
Norfolk Blogger
Scandalous a Tory candidate working for the Tory party,whatever next?
By the way has Lord Rennard repaid the taxpayer the £41,000 he claimed for his second home?
Angry voter
Oh this is such desperate stuff.
1) Norwich North was not a marginal seat and was not even on Ashcroft target list so that reduces all your pther argument to dust if you cannot get this right.
2) Angry Voter - You realy want to discuss expenses fraud ? What about the Two Tory MPs Chloe Smith was working for ? Have they repaid their money ? Shouldn't they have done the decent thing like Iain Gibson ?
Overall this late night (co-ordinated ?) defence of Ms Smith seems like I have hit a nerve. Very encouraging.
Oh do us a favour over the Simon Hughes thing ! IT WAS 1983 ! Whatever next, quoting the South Sea bubble as evidence of Liberal economic incompetence ?
If we want to see the very lowest of campaign lows what about the Tory leaflet from Cheadle that implied the Lib Dem candidate was a rapist.
That was 2005, not 1983.
I don't care if it was 1983,no self-respecting Liberal should have ever been party to such a leaflet.
But I guess political oppurtunism will trump principle every time.
And it was only in 2006 that the true hypocrisy of his position was revealed.
Don't worry, Nich. Coming to terms with Thursday's Tory win is likely to be an ongoing process.
So if I say it was wrong 26 years ago to use a common phrase like 'straight choice' how about you admitting the tory leaflet in Cheadle was a new electoral low ?
Nich, you are quite right to correct me: NN was not a marginal seat at the time the secondment decision was made. This is what I originally meant, but I omitted the word "not" by mistake, as is clear from the flow of argument.
The attack on the secondment arrangements is silly. To paraphrase Shakespeare: "Some are born to be elected, some achieve election and some have election thrust upon them". You can't blame Chloë for having the by-election opportunity thrust upon her. A young loyal Tory girl just got lucky.
Benji: the big misdemeanour is having anything, just anything, that the Lib/Dems can latch their nasty personal "ooh but what are they hiding?" innuendo and behind-the-hand whispered smears onto. In this instance where the candidate works. In Crewe it was a pretence the Tory wasn't local. In Bromley it was the fact their opponent was a London Assembly member so was "three jobs".
The damn thing drags everyone else down into the mud - "when will the Tories rebut these allegations?" etc etc etc. At every stage the politics of the constituency are debased and when it's over the Lib/Dems survey the wreckage, pack up and salivate for the bext by-election to come along.
So much for positive campaigning, though no doubt Liberals will mendaciously call it "highlighting inconsistencies".
In this case Chloe Smith works for Deloittes and has been seconded to the Tory Party. So what? Are the people of Norwich North interested in who a candidate works for, ahead of the whole gamut of issues which the Liberals are ignoring?
Don't worry, come Friday April "From Norwich" Pond will have cleared off to Shelton and the people of Norwich will get ignored again by the Lib/Dems until the next by-election.
I played an active part in the 1983 by-election which Simon Hughes won. I guess most people posting here didn't and are relying on the usual miswritten history of politics at that time.
The homophobia in the campaign came from an Independent Labour candidate who until the last week of it was written up by the press as the main challenger to Labour. He did so badly that he has been forgotten, and so people wrongly assume the homophobia used in the by-election came from the Hughes campaign.
The phrase "straight choice" is a common one, like "it's a two horse race", used when we are trying to point out there are two main candidates and the electoral system means if you vote for anyone else it may mean you "split the vote" and let in the one of the two main one you like less. The actual wording used in the leaflet in question was "it's a straight choice", there was no wording used in which the word "straight" was applied to Hughes as opposed to Tatchell - the suggestion that the wording was "Simon Hughes, the straight choice" is a lie, or, to be charitable, part of the rewriting of history so repeated by people who weren't there and believe what they read (mostly written by people hostile to us).
I do not recall at the time anyone involved in distributing it supposing the leaflet was a knowing dig at Tatchell's sexuality. I do not believe it was intended as such.
I concur with this. The Tatchell Book "the Battle for Bermondsey" barely mentions the Liberals/Alliance.
A friend of mine, a Tory activist (David Allen) told me many years ago that he lived in Bermondsey during the campaign and his story matches yours.
Anonymous - I should add that we know lots about being "ignored". We ahve Tory Councillor here and they deliver one leaflet every four years, always before election. So we take no lectures on being ignored.
From the moment Gibson stood aside Norwich North was always going to become marginal. Remember, this was a seat the Tories won in 1992 (without Taverham & Drayton included). In a by election with a healthy national lead I would say anything less than a 6000 majority is a poor Tory result.
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