Dear _____,
On behalf of all of us in the Conservative Party, I congratulate Ed Miliband on his election as Leader of the Labour Party.
He will have many challenges ahead in these next few days, but if he wants to be taken seriously, the first thing he's got to do is own up to his role in creating the mess that Britain is in and tell us what he'd do to fix it.
From advising Gordon Brown in the Treasury in the 90s, to serving in his Cabinet in the 2000s, he must recognise his central role in creating the financial mess we're all paying for.
For the past five months, all we've heard from Labour is knee jerk opposition to our plans to tackle the deficit. Now is the time for Mr Miliband to tell us what he'd do instead. He promised us a Labour spending plan before the spending review, now we'd all like to see it.
The new Labour leader now has a clear choice. He can either serve the national interest by joining with us and the Liberal Democrats and set out how he would cut the deficit, or he can stand on the sidelines and refuse to engage with the biggest challenge facing Britain in decades.
The fact that Ed Miliband owes his position to the votes of the unions does not bode well. At the moment this looks like a great leap backwards for the Labour Party.
After 13 years of Labour failure, we need your help to hold Ed Miliband to account. So please forward this email to your family and friends - and don't forget to follow and share our updates on Facebook and Twitter.
Yours,
Sayeeda Warsi
Co-Chairman of the Conservative Party
Saturday 25 September 2010
Wednesday 8 September 2010
US blind spot? A quick post.
The BBC reports on the plans of Florida pastor Terry Jones and his Dove World Outreach Center to burn copies of the Koran on the 11th of September.
"On Monday, General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Afghanistan, warned troops' lives would be in danger if the church went through with its bonfire. The US Attorney General, Eric Holder, called the idea "idiotic and dangerous"."
Not "bigoted and intolerant"? All they seem to think about is the impact on America... and American soldiers, rather than daring to speak out against what I fear is an attitude shared in whatever form by many more than the fifty Florida churchgoers in question. The safety of American Christians serving in Afghanistan may be put at risk, but what about the safety of American Muslims at home? There doesn't appear to be any indication that this consequence has been considered.
"On Monday, General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Afghanistan, warned troops' lives would be in danger if the church went through with its bonfire. The US Attorney General, Eric Holder, called the idea "idiotic and dangerous"."
Not "bigoted and intolerant"? All they seem to think about is the impact on America... and American soldiers, rather than daring to speak out against what I fear is an attitude shared in whatever form by many more than the fifty Florida churchgoers in question. The safety of American Christians serving in Afghanistan may be put at risk, but what about the safety of American Muslims at home? There doesn't appear to be any indication that this consequence has been considered.
Friday 3 September 2010
The Sad Story of Mr. Hague
I'm always anxious as to how these are read- if they are read at all. They're merely off-the-cuff musings that I should probably take more time to think about, but that if I don't write down immediately will probably fizzle out and never reappear. Maybe I shouldn't even write them at all. With that in mind, do proceed.
Picking up the tail-end of this entirely unimportant non-news story, I feel compelled to write a short piece on my belief that the rumours about Foreign Secretary William Hague's sexuality and following PR disaster-a-thon were not at all worth writing about. Got that?
Already, one coaltion minister has, effectively, been forced from his post after a media storm about homosexuality. And here's the thing- that story wasn't about Chief Secretary to the Treasury David Laws' sexuality at all. It was about his questionable expenses claims, a misdemeanour that happened to coincide with the fact that Laws paid rent to a person who happened to be his long-term partner. The disclosure of his homosexuality was somehow twisted by the press so as to make it seem as though this was about something more sinister, more seedy, than it was- and in fact, it was nothing. We recently saw prisons minister Crispin Blunt express his wish for time to 'come to terms' with his homosexuality- as though he was forced, all of a sudden, to become accustomed to having wheels where his feet once were. I don't mean to suggest that he doesn't need an adjustment period if his life has changed significantly- he has left his wife, and thus possibly his home as well- but the language used to convey this situation still betrays a benign homophobia that colours the way in which these people are portrayed in the media. The hideous result of mixing MPs' private lives and their media representation came to a head with the utter non-story of William Hague's sharing of a room with an aide when campaigning. Now, I'm not the biggest Hague fan, but if his job is now under threat as a result of this shitstorm, then that's not right.
So, it transpired that Hague had indeed shared a room with aide and colleague Chris Myers (who has since quit his job and fled from the intrusions of the media) whilst on the campaign trail for the general election. Teeheehee, he's sharing a room with a man- he's GAY! Many Tories have blasted Bill Hague for this apparent 'error of judgement'- as though we the public are helplessly and interminably compelled to put two and two (read 'man' and 'man') together and get five (read 'deviant/devious homosexuality'). Of course, by no means is this a phenomenon exclusive to the happenstance of two men sharing a room, for if an unmarried (or separately married) man and woman shared a room, people would cry 'foul play' all the same. This is surely a symptom of a collective mindset by which we're driven to suspect, doubt, decry and denounce at every opportunity- where we're all so self-important and yet tragically insecure, where we need to condemn others so that we ourselves are absolved. Gone is the innoncence of companionship, where two men might dare to do something so suggestive as share a hotel room. The nihilist's explanation for this suspicion is of course that people are all morally corrupted and probably guilty of everything with which we charge them. Unfortunately, a few thousand years of inhumanity, death and destruction don't do much to prove them wrong. But morals are an intangible and arbitrary construct, and so don't really have any business guiding our animalistic thrill-seeking pleasure-quest through life, right? Another day, another post.
I've lost my place. Apparently these rumours of homosexuality have dogged Hague for a while, for reasons that The Telegraph un-tongue-in-cheekedly points out (in an editorial, no less) are probably applicable to half of all MPs, let alone Tory ones. The rest of the story, I shan't go in to here- but it's the next part in which Bill, unfortunately, makes a mess of things himself. And I don't mean in the way that Alastair Campbell seems to think- that, by announcing his and his wife's history of miscarriages in a public announcement, he has somehow fuelled yet more speculation about his sexuality. Rather, by putting out an intensely personal statemant about deeply sad family matters, he has further convinced the media that his private life is the property of hacks who have nothing better with which to fill newspaper pages or screen time than affairs of the home. Instead of crushing malicious rumours (and I'm worried that the 'malicious' might refer to an accusation of homosexuality being offensive, rather than the intent behind the accusation) and getting on with his job- which he could stand to do better- he has unbolted the door to the figurative politician's home, and invited the hungry journos in to take photographs onf said politician's figurative underwear drawer. Or something like that. Now Hague's judgement is being questioned- just like David Laws' was. And I fear that Laws' fiscal affairs weren't the only reason.
Picking up the tail-end of this entirely unimportant non-news story, I feel compelled to write a short piece on my belief that the rumours about Foreign Secretary William Hague's sexuality and following PR disaster-a-thon were not at all worth writing about. Got that?
Already, one coaltion minister has, effectively, been forced from his post after a media storm about homosexuality. And here's the thing- that story wasn't about Chief Secretary to the Treasury David Laws' sexuality at all. It was about his questionable expenses claims, a misdemeanour that happened to coincide with the fact that Laws paid rent to a person who happened to be his long-term partner. The disclosure of his homosexuality was somehow twisted by the press so as to make it seem as though this was about something more sinister, more seedy, than it was- and in fact, it was nothing. We recently saw prisons minister Crispin Blunt express his wish for time to 'come to terms' with his homosexuality- as though he was forced, all of a sudden, to become accustomed to having wheels where his feet once were. I don't mean to suggest that he doesn't need an adjustment period if his life has changed significantly- he has left his wife, and thus possibly his home as well- but the language used to convey this situation still betrays a benign homophobia that colours the way in which these people are portrayed in the media. The hideous result of mixing MPs' private lives and their media representation came to a head with the utter non-story of William Hague's sharing of a room with an aide when campaigning. Now, I'm not the biggest Hague fan, but if his job is now under threat as a result of this shitstorm, then that's not right.
So, it transpired that Hague had indeed shared a room with aide and colleague Chris Myers (who has since quit his job and fled from the intrusions of the media) whilst on the campaign trail for the general election. Teeheehee, he's sharing a room with a man- he's GAY! Many Tories have blasted Bill Hague for this apparent 'error of judgement'- as though we the public are helplessly and interminably compelled to put two and two (read 'man' and 'man') together and get five (read 'deviant/devious homosexuality'). Of course, by no means is this a phenomenon exclusive to the happenstance of two men sharing a room, for if an unmarried (or separately married) man and woman shared a room, people would cry 'foul play' all the same. This is surely a symptom of a collective mindset by which we're driven to suspect, doubt, decry and denounce at every opportunity- where we're all so self-important and yet tragically insecure, where we need to condemn others so that we ourselves are absolved. Gone is the innoncence of companionship, where two men might dare to do something so suggestive as share a hotel room. The nihilist's explanation for this suspicion is of course that people are all morally corrupted and probably guilty of everything with which we charge them. Unfortunately, a few thousand years of inhumanity, death and destruction don't do much to prove them wrong. But morals are an intangible and arbitrary construct, and so don't really have any business guiding our animalistic thrill-seeking pleasure-quest through life, right? Another day, another post.
I've lost my place. Apparently these rumours of homosexuality have dogged Hague for a while, for reasons that The Telegraph un-tongue-in-cheekedly points out (in an editorial, no less) are probably applicable to half of all MPs, let alone Tory ones. The rest of the story, I shan't go in to here- but it's the next part in which Bill, unfortunately, makes a mess of things himself. And I don't mean in the way that Alastair Campbell seems to think- that, by announcing his and his wife's history of miscarriages in a public announcement, he has somehow fuelled yet more speculation about his sexuality. Rather, by putting out an intensely personal statemant about deeply sad family matters, he has further convinced the media that his private life is the property of hacks who have nothing better with which to fill newspaper pages or screen time than affairs of the home. Instead of crushing malicious rumours (and I'm worried that the 'malicious' might refer to an accusation of homosexuality being offensive, rather than the intent behind the accusation) and getting on with his job- which he could stand to do better- he has unbolted the door to the figurative politician's home, and invited the hungry journos in to take photographs onf said politician's figurative underwear drawer. Or something like that. Now Hague's judgement is being questioned- just like David Laws' was. And I fear that Laws' fiscal affairs weren't the only reason.
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