Tuesday, January 19, 2010

The Nasty Party, Or One Bad Apple?

Earlier I cheekily blogged about the LibDems little local difficulties in Plymouth. Tonight, Cathy Newman (who we all call 'scoop' nowadays) has the story that the LibDem candidate for Stoke North has had to fall on his sword after sending racist emails. She says the content of the emails is 'unbroadcastable'.

Every party has its nutters. Every party has the odd racist, or homophobe. And when they are discovered they are kicked out, and quite right too. But just look back at LibDem Voice and look at the vicarious thrill they get when they discover a Labour or Tory candidate or politician who has done something like this. They write the story as if it is somehow representative of the whole party.

David Jack is not representative of the LibDems and I am happy to acknowledge that. But let's please have no more holier than thou stories from them about other parties being 'nasty'.

UPDATE: Here's the email. It is worth pointing out that David Jack denies sending it and is alleging that his email account was hacked into.

"...if I was you I would f*** back off to the hills of tora borro (sic), I have your home address, you are f***** sunshine, we shall see who has got balls now you two faced lying f****** paki... your cards f*****... prison awaits you b** boy. Think your (sic) brave, you don't know the line you have crossed you f*** witt (sic) - keep looking over you shoulder theif! (sic)"

19 comments:

Stephen Glenn said...

Heaven forbid a bad 'apply' [sic]. Don't you just hate how the spell check doesn't cover the title?

Anonymous said...

Iain said: "Every party has its nutters."

Especially Labour. It seems to me that their biggest nutter is running the govt. I wonder what the title of his next book will be Printing Money for Dummies perhaps?

Anonymous said...

and there is lembit and his latest and may be biggest mess up
Just check out some of the Welsh Blogs on that

Tom King said...

I think you'll find the Tories' reputation as the Nasty Party has been built up steadily and consistently over several decades as a result of widespread opinion from Tory members and politicians, as well as several disgusting, oppressive and plain nasty policies, rather than given to them as the result of a couple of bad apples.

richard.blogger said...

Apple

Anonymous said...

The Liberal Democrats say one thing and do another.

It is like Clegg campaigning on 'cleaning up British Politics' - Clegg forgets to mention the £2.4 Million Dodgy Donation, Lib Dem MPs less than clean expenses and of course the man who was the Lib Dem Chief Executive Lord Rennard who also had interesting Expenses claims.

The Lib Dems are doomed - DOOMED to defeat at the next election!

Anonymous said...

I've seen his comments. Surely it's not for real. Or at least not from him. I know we've seen some pretty poor judgement from time to time, but this piece of prose suggests an astonishing example of this. Has he been set up?

Anonymous said...

I've read Mr Jack's email. Surely he's been set up? Could it be for real. We've seen some really bad judgement from politicians of all shades, but this piece of prose takes the biscuit...

Martin S said...

According to their website -viewable using Google cache-
It's about freedom, honesty and justice or perhaps not.

Will somebody please tell them Dave Jack's blog and their entire site has vanished? What's that? They already know?

Unknown said...

This is a poxy blog ferchrissake. Print the damn thing so we can all make a judgment, or are we all so pussy these days we can't make our minds up?

Conand said...

There are bad apples in all parties. The problem for the LDs is that the smell from their bad apples is so often mixed with the stink of rank hypocrisy.

Martin S said...

There could be more to this than meets the eye, Iain.

How 'fortunate' for some that, when David Jack is in the midst of a major court case against alleged loan sharking of millions of pounds that -oops!- this email suddenly appears.

As Harry Hill would say: "What are the chances of that?!"

wv = biled. Yup.

rob's uncle said...

It certainly has the look and feel of a set-up of some kind rather than a genuine email from DJ; the C4 News report is at: http://tinyurl.com/yj6axce

rob's uncle said...

Some interesting comments on this on a local blog:
http://pitsnpots.co.uk/news/2010/01/david-jack-resigns-ppc-stoke-trent-north-and-chair-local-lib-dems

including from Jack himself:

'Thanks guys, your support is overwhelming. No doubt those that i sought to expose for being criminals will soon be posting on here with more lies and filth.

Make no bones of this, what i have exposed is a multy million pound fraud, read about it at the OFT under 'debt sale and transfer' or 'assignment' and you will see what i am exposing as well as a number of companies who are claiming to be able to write off debt. So much of it is scam.

There is a high court case coming up soon in which i have thousands of cases of consumers being ripped off.

I resigned because i need more time and energy to prepare for these cases and the fact that the national party wouldnt support me in this endeavour. I dont want the hard work and efforts of our local party tarnished by someting that i am involved in. By distancing myself from politics i am also removing some of the channels for acusations of these criminals such as i am profiteering from politics or using political influence in closeing them down.

In simple terms, dont believe everything you read on the web and always remember , if it looks too good to be true - it could very well be the next scam.'

Anonymous said...

Slightly scared by how bad his spelling is actually - you'd have thought the champagne socialists in the Lib Dems would be able to afford a spellchecker at least...

Unknown said...

If he doesn't have a track record of terrible spelling, I believe his explanation.

not an economist said...

Instinctively I find it hard to believe that a candidate for a mainstream party would actually put all this in writing and email it.

Gazza's UsefulTips and Blog said...

I would guess you are wasting your time asking for other political bloggers et el to be reasonable. This is what marks out the centre right from the left, centre left. Centre bloggers and commentators are perfectly reasonable; weheras the left can't stomach the possibility that others may have a valid point of view. Forget them.

OldSlaughter said...

Iain, have you really gone as far as to censor the word 'bum' or was that before you got to the quote?

This may be a 'family' blog but come on...