Monday 20 September 2010

Betrayed by my own pocket

The Lib Dem guy keeps calling my mobile phone trying to get me to pay £20 to attend the local party "boo-fay with one glass one wine".  On Friday night, he called three times.  I ignored him.  My pocket, however, didn't.  My pocket answered the damn phone on the second of his calls and I had to hang up when I realised we were connected.  

In the meantime, Sarah Teather has ignorantly said that the government "has to be careful not to rush into" ending child immigration detention precisely because it is about dealing with the "safety and wellbeing" of often vulnerable children: http://www.libdems.org.uk/latest_news_detail.aspx?title=Teather%3A_Coalition_is_committed_to_ending_child_detention&pPK=5ad34976-9f39-4956-b77a-4cfb0e38cef4

These are the same children who Nick Clegg was talking about in December when he referred to detention as "state sponsored cruelty": http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8413106.stm

Remind us, Clegg.  Who runs the State now?  Who's sponsoring the cruelty to children?

No... I'm not spending £20 on attending a local party "boo-fay", thanks very much.  If child detention continues in another few months then I'm canceling my membership anyway.

2 comments:

  1. I admired your commitment to joining them in the first place, though a bit fearful for you given that the current Lib Dem leadership (much like the current Labour leadership, the current Tory leadership obviously, etc etc) are a bunch of neoliberal shites who would sell their own mothers for a tiny sniff of power's apron.


    I'm thoroughly amazed at the sheer lengths the Lib Dems have gone to disillusion their base, even by my own standards of pessimism, and can't see the Lib Dems ever being any kind of electoral force again. If Clegg carries on like this it could be total wipeout, Bob Monkhouse style.

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  2. Yeah. It seems he's so determined to prove that coalition governments can work that he's willing to sacrifice a lot of what the party believes in. I can certainly still see that he's in an impossible position (he has to prove that coalitions can work for the future; and the conservatives have everything to gain by showing that they can't). But ultimately a party is nothing without its values. Personally I think he's making a mistake of not saying where the splits are happening - in seeming so determined to maintain a united front. If for example on child detention the Lib Dems would say what the problem is - that the Home Office or Conservatives are blocking it - then that would be something. But instead we just get feeble statements like from Sarah Teather saying that precisely because children can be so vulnerable they have to handle it properly and not rush into things. That's such double-speak bullshit I don't know where to start. I don't think they've got the political maturity for it. or else they are willing to sell out. Either way, it has the same effect.

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