The lady being kissed by the Departing One is Councillor Edith Macauley. She featured prominently in the pictures from Trimdon Labour Club yesterday when Tony Blair made his resignation statement. She was apparently captured on TV enthusiastically waving a placard saying THANK YOU FOR BEING OUR MP. The trouble is, she isn't a constituent of his. She doesn't even live in the North East. She's actually a Labour councillor in leafy Wimbledon.
Were Labour really so desperate that they had to bus in rent-a-crowd?
UPDATE: Little & Large have more on this story...
20 comments:
I must say that I felt the whole thing yesterday was faintly surreal.
Why did Blair go to his constituency? Surely informthe cabinet and the PLP and leave it there.
A short speech to the cameras from Downing street outlining his reasons.
Any account of his premiership should surely come when he actually LEAVES office; rather than just announce he is going to leave.
And all this fails to mention the incredibly egotistical speech he proceeded to make.
The rent-a-mob with their so unnatural placards (do REAL people make such neat and tidy placards of such similar size/shape/format?) illustrates that Blair had some sort of 'vision' that he presumably wanted to act out upon leaving!
Wow.
I must say that I felt the whole thing yesterday was faintly surreal.
Why did Blair go to his constituency? Surely informthe cabinet and the PLP and leave it there.
A short speech to the cameras from Downing street outlining his reasons.
Any account of his premiership should surely come when he actually LEAVES office; rather than just announce he is going to leave.
And all this fails to mention the incredibly egotistical speech he proceeded to make.
The rent-a-mob with their so unnatural placards (do REAL people make such neat and tidy placards of such similar size/shape/format?) illustrates that Blair had some sort of 'vision' that he presumably wanted to act out upon leaving!
Wowie. Deceitful to the end.
The deceit is so casual, so sincere, they haven't missed a beat. The whole program was a political optical illusion courtesy of the BBC.
I thought it looked too managed perhaps behind the camera there were guns and dogs.
The leader of the Labour Group on the council freely admits to being there, and Carlisle is not really local to Sedgefield
Blimey Iain, good catch. I hope the dead tree press follow this up for their retrospectives on Sunday
what was funny, was Radio 5 trying to describe her, they spent about five to ten minutes talking about her, attempting to give us a picture of what she was, and how she looked, describing her clothes, her singing etc, they seemed unable to add her colour as a description.
laughable.
Is anyone actually surprised it was rent-a-crowd? Aren't all uk political rallies like a banana republic one? They bus their supporters in?
Very typical new labour though - make an annoucement (yes another one) that he is going to leave, then he will make another one when he goes... and what's the betting that in the morning he will resign as Labour Party leader (have a rally say the Royal Albert hall??) then in the afternoon resign as PM (he might even hold a downing street conference, with supporters bused in from all regions.....
I'm off to expedia to plan a trip for the end of June, main reguirement no TVs!!
That's quite incredible Iain (but so NuLabour). Hope you don't mind me using the picture to embarass some of our "local" North-East Labour minions?
I wonder if the good people of Trimdon realise that they will never see Blair again in that area when he has left office. Can anyone honestly believe that the ordinary people of the north East are anything other than ballot fodder for Saint Blair. I bet Blair thinks to himself 'thank God I wont have to grovel to this lot ever again, especially now that I can meet alot more interesting and rich folks in the good old USA.
'Bye, Bye suckers'
So let get this right.
A woman has a placard that says thank you for being my MP when he is not her MP. So this women is lying.
Come on Iain these are socialists what do you expect. The whole silly but very dangerous idear/con is based on lies.
Call me old fasioned but, my mummy and daddy told me it was a sin to tell lies, never mind tell them to millions of people written on a big sign.
Can you ask this women if she sleeps well at night?
Total misrepresentation was used to get a group of Harlow people to meet Blair in August 2004 when he visited the town as part of his 'ASBO Crusade'. So I wouldn't be at all surprised if half of those at Trimdon were transported there by Blair's spin team, having been mislead about where they were going and who they were meeting. That's how Blair's shock and awe PR machine seems to operate.
These Harlow people, including one I know, were invited to meet David Blunkett at a community centre in Harlow in order to be congratulated for taking out ASBOs. When they arrived at the centre, the group were bundled into a side room and told, 'Hey guys, we've a surprise for you, we told you a bit of a fib, it's not really Blunkett you're meeting, it's Tony Blair.'
The shocked group were then herded into a hall where Blair was holding court, with lights blazing, cameras whirring and assembled press corps asking questions and snapping photographs. Little wonder they look emotionally overawed in the photograph - they were. The whole set up was designed to make them emotional and overawed, wasn't it?
Who knows what the Trimdon 'migrants' were told.?
Cant remember Thatcher doing any of this stuff when she went. Or if she did the BBC never covered it.
I dont wonder whether the BBC will do a Clinton job on Bush when he leaves and visits Britain afterwards. Because they simply wont.
Does anyone remember the days.
When the BBC used to be accused of "obvious political bias" and the BBC used to say in reply "they were not" and somebody in the country still believed them?
Must be ten years ago at least.
But why hasn't "Dave" questioned the fact that this Labour party briefing was ALL done at the Public EXPENSE?
We are talking Government Jets, Special Plod, a fleet of Limos, entourages, rolling road blocks and needless Carbon footprints here.
Surely a return train Ticket for Blair and Spouse to Trimdon would have sufficed.
i thought she was that big old bird TV AM used to have on doing something resembling cooking - Dusty Bin? Rusty Lee? blimey, that's dated me!
On the drive home I thought how fitting this was for Tony. Thatcher was thrown out, but Tony hires rent-a-crowd for his farewell party. Insincere to the end.
Some Labour students have started uploading "our day out in Trimdon" photographs on Facebook...
Let's give Tone a good send-off when he leaves Downing Street though. Let's all line the streets of London in absolute silence holding a placard bearing a picture of Dr David Kelly.
Not too many ethnics in Trimdon I should think, so they bussed one in for Toni to be photographed with. Where's the surprise? Reality is what he says it is, and truth is a relative concept. New Labour, same two-faced bullshit.
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