And another thing…

Another U-Turn by Labour as suddenly ‘facts’ are deemed important.

When I posted ‘yawn’ a wee pop up box told me my comment was too short and I should go back and try again.

OK.

Double yawn.

…but, Tom, your mate Tony “I’m a straight kinda guy” Blair used to produce glottal stops to ‘get down with’ sections of the electorate and has been reported as claiming fish and chips as his favourite meal (Trimdon) but a rather complicated pasta dish with ingredients unheard of in Trimdon (Islington).

We’ll just have to agree to disagree, Jay. I believe that someone’s place of birth is an immutable fact, unlike your favourite food, which is a (changeable) matter of taste. You clearly believe there is no difference between the two.

Can’t explain or defend the posters. I imagine the yahoo that created them will be getting a stern word in their shell-like right about now.

(THE REMAINDER OF THIS COMMENT HAS BEEN DELETED BY THE BLOG OWNER BECAUSE IT WAS A PERSONAL ATTACK ON AN INDIVIDUAL AND ALSO SOUGHT TO PERPETUATE A SECTARIAN SMEAR.)

Indy& paul

Ha!Ha!Ha! snp sore losers

Of course there’s a difference and people’s favourite food might change. I just thought it strikingly odd that Tony Blair’s changed in accordance with the perceived dietary preferences of two completely different areas, those of his constituents in the deprived area of Trimdon and those in the affluent area in which he had his London base.

My word Tom this Scottish politics brings out the worst in you.

How can you wind your irregulars up with SNP rascals, Tom?

Is the ‘candidate’ in question a bit Archer?

Obviously worth watching, may be good value.

Place of birth often causes problems….. ask “Borderer” Bubbles Lamnot.

Johnny Norfolk
My word Tom this Scottish politics brings out the worst in you.
*********************************************************

Aw, give him a break, Johnny, Tosh has been campaigning very hard.

All in his own time of course.

The SNP has just lost the Glasgow North East byelection

Mr. Mxyzptlk
So because I choose to call an MP of the government on his blatant hypocrisy rather than continue to slate someone who is obviously too stupid to get elected and have power over me I am an SNP sore loser?

Please do explain how this is so?

I thought pointing out how in the very previous post Tom had said facts were unimportant for ministers and for him now to come out and bash the SNP candidate for ‘liberal’ use of facts was a much better use of my first commenter status than defending or slating a man who will now not get elected.

OT,

Guido Fawkes, Anna Raccoon, Tory Bear, Devil’s Kitchen, Guy TV and Old Holborn plus numerous others, including the Love Police, Channel 4, Sky, the BBC, The Telegraph, The Times and the Sun would like to give a copy of Animal Farm to you on November 5th at Noon. As promised.

See you in the Westminster Arms, Tom. 12.15.

I’m buying.

http://bastardoldholborn.blogspot.com/2009/10/november-5th-walk-details.html

Am I mad for feeling genuinely disappointed that I can’t make it?

Boo.

It’d be so much fun.

STOP PRESS! Kerry McCarthy says she’ll stand in for you as long as no one orders Prawn flavour crisps.

Watch it on the News anyway…..

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8065335.stm

Old Holborn:

You’re not asking Lord Archer to drive Paul Staines & the rest of you home on his intergalactic carpet then?

Quitzapple

You haven’t quite got the hang of this humour thing, have you?

Trust me, it’s the future.

As a chemist I perked up when I read your latest posting, but no it’s some dreary list of placenames. (Methil has an ‘I’.)

I hadn’t fancied the SNP much to win Glasgow East but I think Labour must be getting desperate to be making way to much out of this.

Ironic that I seem to recollect Tony Blair as regarding himself as English in spite of the “immutable fact” that he was born in Scotland-not that I want to claim him as Scottish, particularly, I am sure you will understand.

(aside) Poor old stokie, he’s all smoked out . . .

Has Tony Blair stretched the truth? Oh, yes. Has Tony Blair told blatent, verifiable lies? Prove it. Has Tom slavishly supported Blair on the former. Mebbe.

What does all that have to do with Kerr? Nothing.

This is one of the most throat-catchingly, toe-curlingly, breath-stoppingly, ball-shrinkingly dismal attempts by the Snuppies to deflect attention. They really don’t like it up them.

>> When I posted ‘yawn’ a wee pop up box told me my comment was too short and I should go back and try again.

>> Double yawn.

But Indy really takes the biscuit. Quite disgraceful from a so-called human being a believer in democratic processes.

Odd how candidate confusion over their birthplace is newsworthy when it’s a Labour candidate (say Kathleen Walker Shaw for an example) but not when it’s someone opposing Labour.

Funny you should say that Kathleen Walker Shaw’s travails on that issue were not newsworthy, because I remember them beings splashed all over the media to a much greater extent than Mr Kerr’s geographical inactitudes have been. And Walker Shaw did lose that by-election, I seem to recall.

Quite disgraceful from a so-called human being?

Goodness me.

I didn’t realise being bored by a political campaign made you less than human.

Hate to break it to you but that makes the vast majority of your fellow citizens less than human!

You need a crash course in the philosophy of blogging, Indy. Individual blogs are not news feeds, and reflect the will and opinions of the maintainers.

This is Tom’s personal blog, and he’s a Labour MP.

You were under no obligation to post your initial remark. Would you go to a gardening blog and complain that they’re talking too much about compost?

Tom’s posts on this subject are quite boring though.

In contrast, the Labour campaign paper in the NE is quite exciting – I was particularly taken with the claim that the SNP want to release 650 dangerous knife criminals from prison onto the streets.

That’s a sensational claim, if true, and we could have a good debate about it so I am surprised that none of the Labour bloggers have mentioned it and are chuntering on about where people live or were born.

>> That’s a sensational claim, if true, and we could have a good debate about it

Indeed we should.

>> so I am surprised that none of the Labour bloggers have mentioned it and are chuntering on about where people live or were born.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what is known as a “whatabout”. Unable to address the actual topic in hand – namely Kerr’s trustworthyness – Indy tries to change the subject to something which already is being discussed elsewhere on the Internet.

Such sore loosing and sheer bad grace makes it all the more easy to laugh at Kerr.

It;s lose not loose. David Kerr is certainly nota loose type ho ho.

Let’s boil this issue down to its essentials.

In 2000 David Kerr stood against Eric Joyce in the Falkirk by-election, His leaflet at the time said he was born and educated in Cumbernauld. That wasn’t true because he was born in Glasgow and spent the first few years of his life in Duke Street before his mum and dad moved to Cumbernauld.

Then in this by-election his lealfet says that he is Dennistoun born. That is again not true because he was not literally born in Dennistoun as he was born, as most babies are, in a hospital rather than at home. So while his parents at that time lived in Duke Street he was not actually born in Duke Street but in a hospital. Since Tom keeps going on about Govan I assume that David Kerr was born in the St Francis maternity hospital that is now a care home in Merryland Street run by the Catholic Church.

So there you have it.

1. His Falkirk leaflet said he was born and educated in Cumbernauld when he was actually born in Glasgow.

2. He was born in a maternity hospital in Govan rather than in his parents home in Dennistoun.

3. Most electors in Glasgow North East don’t give a friar tuck either way.

>> In 2000 David Kerr stood against Eric Joyce in the Falkirk by-election, His leaflet at the time said he was born and educated in Cumbernauld. That wasn’t true [...]

So, he told an Aitken.

>> Then in this by-election his lealfet says that he is Dennistoun born. That is again not true because he was not literally born in Dennistoun as he was born, as most babies are, in a hospital rather than at home.

That is fair enough, and had it not been for his Aitkening in 2000, I would have been quite happy to dismiss any complaints. I consider myself to be from Bonhill, even though I lived in Alexandria until I was ten (I’m also proud of knowing the correct pronounciation of Haldane).

But his leaflet in 2000 always has been an integral part of this story.

>> Most electors in Glasgow North East don’t give a friar tuck either way.

Quite a contemptuous view of the constituency.

Do birthplaces matter? Well, they do, up to a point; the bonkers ‘Birthers’ in the US are clearly fruitcakes obsessed with showing that Obama is not a ‘real’ American, but I have seen Gordon Brown attacked for not being a ‘real’ Fife lad as he was born in the Southern General; on the other hand, Labour in Fife has seemed keen to elide the Govan birth .

Being born in Govan doesn’t really make you a Glaswegian, nor should any of us this guff matter. But Mr Kerr’s blaming of an ‘over-eager’ leaflet writer is just another sign that the SNP candidate is not up to much really and the most interesting about this by election is how the minority parties do. My feeling is that Scotland is becoming more fractured, and the by election will demonstrate that increasingly uncomfortable fact.

If he doesn’t check his leaflets’ text and layout before they go to the printers he is a rather over managed candidate imho.

I was only ever an agent in local elections, though I was agent for a PPC for a year or two, but all my candidates, even the most ingenue, read what was being put out.

The whole business stinks of manipulation and couldn’t care less for democracy to me.

Salmond, you say?