Geraldine Dreadful MP Writes ... to Iain Dale

Dear Iain,

I read with delight your decision to give up weblogging. You have been a thorn in the side of the post-Balls third way project ever since it emerged from the second way project in the 1990s, and it will bring a pre-orgasmic yelp of delight to all good socialists in the country today to see you leave the glistening and profitable pantheon of blogging to concentrate on the obscurity and financial ruin of publishing and broadcasting.

When I was informed of your decision to stop writing your disgusting website by my constituency agent, we all decided to converge on the Neil and Glenys Kinnock European Bandstand Coffee Stall to arrange the party, to celebrate your decision. Here is what we've arranged.

The Sickle East Young Socialist Cadets team will host a cake giveaway (far more egalitarian than your tory cake 'sales') in the bandstand next week. The Leonid Brezhnev Memorial Brass Band will be performing showtunes in your honor in the Working Women's Club (Remedy by Little Boots was hard for them to learn but it'll be alright on the night). This will highlight your illiberal homophobia.

The Barbara Castle Women's Body Image Working Group will hold a hilarious stand up comedy evening being honest or rude about Ann Widdecombe.

I just thought you'd like to know how much we're glad you've stopped. Fucker.

Geraldine Dreadful MP

Geraldine Dreadful MP Writes ... Aaron Porter, President of the NUS

Dear Mr. President,

Upon watching the most recent student protests in London, I felt it incumbent on me to write to you and express my deepest and most heartfelt congratulations to you on the way in which you have fearlessly led your members into eminently sensible and well thought through protests against this appalling government's viciously unfair student fees policies (which of course we would have implemented too, if we had won the election).

You are to be congratulated for the way in which you have handled the protests, despite the criticisms of the mainstream media and fascist Liberals, who could never understand the needs of student politics. Sometimes, as you and I know, the best way to deal with student poverty is to burn down a bus shelter.

How would the population know 'One solution: Revolution' unless one of the nation's students was to bravely spray paint that slogan on the pedestal of Nelson's Column? How would the world properly appreciate the true nature of the hell portended by the capitalist scum in the coalition government, if one of your brave and loyal followers was not prepared to liberate fire extinguishers and jettison them at the hated police oppressors for the public greater good?

And finally, how could people understand the intricacies of the coalition's student finance and funding proposals without smashing all the glass in Millbank?

I understand, Mr President, that some small minded people might think that your policy of randomly encouraging students and school children even from places where there actually won't be fees to come to London and smash the shit out of the place is misplaced. But, I remember my days in NUS in the nineteen eighties, and it worked perfectly then, and surely nothing's changed.

Yours sincerely,

Geraldine Dreadful MP

Hattip: Ben Archibald of Nabidana.com

Geraldine Dreadful MP Writes ... to Eric Pickles

Dear Mr Pickles,

Thank you for your response to my letter of last month; it's always nice to receive a cryptic nod across the chamber.

I write to you today following approaches by Sicklethwaite Unitary Authority, an authority area entirely within my constituency boundaries, who have grown concerned that their local authority magazine, 'Public Representatives Advice, Views, Decisions and Announcements' ('Sicklethwaite PRAVDA') may face cuts under your sickening and disgraceful proposals to limit their publication and ensure reduced political bias in them.

As you are no doubt aware, Sicklethwaite is a remarkably diverse borough, and its diversity is reflected in the political makeup of the council.

In addition to my four strong group of Labour Co-op members, there are six Labour, two Socialist Labour, one Socialist Worker, one Worker's Party, one Socialist Women's Workers Party and a Conservative.

It is not the case that Sicklethwaite PRAVDA is a ‘propaganda sheet’ with inherent bias. Tory councillor Graeme Simpkins is actually the only councillor with his own column, called 'the Two Inches' Hate' in between rubbish collection, urban clearways announcements and 'Name and Shame a Paedophile'. In addition, recent stories like 'Tory cuts mean soup kitchens only for the wealthy', ‘Thatcher’s Funeral Street Party – Help us Plan’ and 'Tory plans to destroy our borough - we need your views' were legitimate news stories reflecting real concerns and seeking to engage with the rates payers.

Your proposals, on the face of them, seem to be an attempt to curb freedom of speech; councillors have a right to voice their concerns over government policy, and surely the best place for that is in the glossy pages of Sicklethwaite PRAVDA, paid for by the grateful population of our solidly diverse borough.

As ever, you show how the protofascists in your appalling party know the cost of everything but the value of nothing, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

Sincerely,

Geraldine Dreadful MP.

Geraldine Dreadful MP Writes ... to George Osborne

Dear Chancellor,

Words alone cannot express the deep, festering, fetid anger I feel in the aftermath of the spending review announced this week, which is why the Sickle East Socialist Solidarity Marcel Marceau Appreciation Group is currently engaged in rehearsals for a mass lobby of Parliament through the slightly sinister medium of mime. Indeed, the people are preparing even now to board Unison sponsored buses to London; at this time of social crisis, Labour has much to be silent about!

There is an enormous amount of anger in this constituency, particularly around the deeply socially significant cuts you have made to the Union Modernisation Fund, which I understand were made three weeks ago, but the memo about which from Unison has only been delivered today.

I have lost count of the number of concerned constituents who have visited me to express their concerns about the end of the fund, which as you are no doubt aware was instrumental in supporting Unions' political solidarity and ensuring people like Bob Crow can be refurbished and modernized. The UMF has allowed the Unions to grow in leaps and bounds, to become more relevant and successful, and to become a significant force for the protection of the worker.

Suggestions by people in your party that the UMF was an enormous slush fund, which paid money from the treasury into unions, which was then pumped directly into the Labour party, were so far beneath contempt, we in my party felt Alan Johnson should simply refuse to dignify them with the sort of convincing response he threw down on you in the spending review debate.

The spending review is of course an outrage, but according to your nemesis, the future Chancellor Alan Johnson, we have to remain constructive in opposition and leave it to him to open a can of revolutionary whupass on you. We aim, as ever, to astound you with our innovation, in this case the innovation of silence. If at all possible we will also seek to be aloof and indignant, at least until Tony Woodley self-immolates on the Politics Show.

Yours sincerely,
Geraldine Dreadful MP

Geraldine Dreadful MP Writes ... to George Osborne

Dear Chancellor,

I write incensed, angered, nauseated and engulfed in a bizarre zen-like trance by recent reports in newspapers that you intend to reduce the budget of the Department of Work and Pensions by some £4bn.

As you are no doubt aware, the budget for this country's social welfare system is the crowning glory of the nation's compassionate achievements, almost all undertaken by Labour administrations. The Englishman's house, even when a local-authority provided house, is his castle, and the regular income from social welfare is the tithe paid by an appreciative government for the client state's peoples' loyal decision not to rebel against the governing elite (note to Comms office - can we make sure this is rigidly dogmatic enough- I never got the hang of neo-post-Heseltinite quasi alternativism).

When I spoke to you about this in the tunnel between Portcullis House and the Palace, I thought you had agreed that point. You certainly said 'Yeah, right' and your unblinking smile would have been taken, in the Labour Party, as clear accord.

As unanimously agreed at last night's plenary meeting of the Hammer East Labour Left Anti-Horseriding Fêtes and Gardenparties Subcommittee, reducing social welfare budgets would inevitably reduce the choices open to citizens - the right not to be a slave to the multinational conglomerate dominated 'economy' is one we should value immensely, and it is not your role to question the right of people to repair from the tragedy of the lamentable capitalist Armageddon constantly touted by the hated Conservatives and Lickspittle Democrats (Angela Eagle wants credit for that one if it's used) to their own homes.

As usual, your proposals mask hidden costs. A reduction in those numbers available to watch daytime television would result in reduced advertising revenues, reduced trade for debt consolidation consultants and the possible discontinuation of important socially valuable television programmes such as the trifecta of Cash in the Attic shows and Jeremy Kyle.

In brief, Chancellor, as predicted, you are a thundering disgrace and I look forward to crossing swords with you on the floor of the Commons. Sod the two swordlengths apart.

Yours crossly,

Geraldine Dreadful MP

Geraldine Dreadful MP Writes ... to Tony Blair

Dear Tony

First of all, allow me to congratulate you on the very successful publication of your memoirs; I bought some thirty copies for the various initiatives around the constituency of Sickle and Hammer East which had their genesis in your powerful social democratic vision; parliamentary expenses well spent, I'm sure you'll agree.

Of course, your portrayal of key events has been deeply controversial; just last night the Sickle New Collective of Not-For-Profit-Enterprises Forum debated your unfathomable attacks on Gordon Brown, whom we had always known as a genial, relaxed, well adjusted man. In addition, the children-with-children group at the Hammer East Michael Foot Memorial Sure Start have mandated me to demand you put some facts straight in the second edition of the book.

On page 27, despite your visit to the Midlands having been dominated by a visit to the Hammer East Roy Hattersley Sports Omniplex in August 1998, you do not mention me or the constituency once. I'm sure you can't have forgotten the organic fair trade Raw Chocolate and Oat sandwiches our Men Against Sexism in Catering group created!

On page 64, you don't mention the conversation you and I had outside the Gents' toilets outside the Stranger's Gallery, despite this having come immediately after your important briefing on Northern Ireland. I mentioned to you that I had once been to Belfast.

When you do mention me, finally, on page 104, you refer to me as a 'leftover from the dark days of militant tendency'. I was never a member of Militant Tendency, as I felt their protoreductionist critique of Thatcher's acceptance of S 1 Para 17 subclause 6 of the Exchange Rate Mechanism guidance notes was unnecessarily Trotskyist. I wrote to you about this in 1990.
Finally, the war on Iraq was illegal, whether you like it or not.

Other than that, the book is excellent, and it's refreshing to read the thoughts of a genuine hero of the Labour movement. I hope you will agree to implement the changes in the book, as it would surely be a harsh challenge to natural justice if the contribution of the loyally Marxist constituency of Sickle and Hammer East during your sparkling premiership were to be excised from history.

Yours fraternally,

Geraldine Dreadful

With a nod and a hattip to Ben Archibald of Nabidana.com

Geraldine Dreadful MP Writes ... to Samantha Cameron

Dear Samantha Cameron,

As is traditional at this time, I would like to congratulate you on the birth of your new daughter. However, my colleagues within the Labour Party's Progressive Rationalist Institute Coalition for Solidarity have mandated me to apply classical Social Democratic analysis to your new predicament in order to educate you.

First of all, I hope you won't laugh too hard when I point out, that giving Caesarian birth, you are just one more victim of Tory Cuts!

You, like the majority of the hated upper-class elite have taken the easy option, rather than going through the heroic working class agony of labour and birth. But I suppose the chances of you going into Labour were always pretty slim. (Ed Balls wants credit for that last gag, by the way. When I heard him say it to the Hammer East Wimmins Collective, I swear there wasn't a dry seat in the room)

It is no secret within the Hammer East Working Men's Guacamole Circle that you only had this baby to win the election. By submitting to the stifling patrimony of your husband (a male!!) and becoming pregnant, you allowed him to show his aggressive Tory masculinity and his control over you. This was both a blow to the sisterhood and a galling rejection of the woman's right to choose.

The Sickle and Hammer East CLP point out, too, that your decision to have the baby this week ensured that it would overshadow the report of the Institute for Fiscal Studies' report on your husband's disastrous economic plans to take us back to the horrors of the 1980s. It is clear that you have, in planning so carefully for the birth to take place on the day it did, taken the role of Imelda Marcos, doing the bidding of your hated elite toff Bullingdon Eton tall husband, just like she did, but with fewer pairs of shoes (probably). By offering yourself up as the gorgeous, fertile, loving, happy wife, you do the rest of us a disservice.

Finally, please consider the workers when taking decisions on how to bring up and care for your baby. If you decide to breastfeed, not only do you expose the ideal of the perfect balanced marriage as a sham by taking that responsibility on yourself while your husband runs the country, but you may be condemning the workers at Sickle's baby milk factory to unemployment and the ravages of Tory Cuts.

Anyway, to show there are no hard feelings, and in a gesture of solidarity as one working mother to another, I herewith send you a nice stainless Sheffield Steel photo frame, which may not be as gaudy as the sterling silver type you sell in your hated elite toff royally-endorsed stationery store, but which bears the blood, sweat and tears of the workers so cruelly treated by your husband's predecessors.

Sisterly Yours,

Geraldine Dreadful MP

* With grateful thanks to Ben Archibald of Nabidana.com

Geraldine Dreadful MP Writes... to Iain Duncan Smith

Dear Iain Duncan Smith,

I read with exhilarated wee-coaxing fury the latest disgusting pseudo-fascist outrage from your despicable office, and the migraine headache it has given me has driven me to cancel a Constituency Surgery in beautiful Hammer East Combined Whippet Education and Child Training Centre. For letting down the people of Sickle and Hammer East, you should be ashamed of yourself.

I read with incredulity your proposal, which for all I know may even have received royal assent by this stage, which would result in Social Welfare Claimants receiving one payment each rather than the ‘Gemischteseis’ of payments they have come to expect from successive glorious Labour governments.

First of all, though as a hated Tory you might not know this, these are called Social Welfare for a reason. Claimants spend pleasant mornings or afternoons at DHSS Offices (or whatever they’re called now) exchanging banter with one another and counter staff, and getting to know one another, and one another’s children, and indeed, their children’s children. They begin to value the State through being welcomed into the State’s buildings, and they appreciate the value of loyalty to the State rather than slavery to hated multinational ‘employers’. Their love of the State is percussed in every dull thump of a rubber-stamp onto a welfare payment form.

Your disgusting proposals would limit visits to the Social Welfare office in some cases to one trip per fortnight. I cannot begin to impress upon you the social catastrophe this would represent. Some of my own campaign team for the last election tell me they rely on their thrice-weekly trips to the Sickle Jobs Plus for company. At the recent Sickle Town Hall Public Meeting ‘Nick Clegg: is he the Devil or some sort of Sub-Anti-Christ’, at which I was delighted to be joined on stage by People’s Champion Gerry Robinson, some of the seven people attending expressed a resigned dismay, some of which I can only attribute to depression occasioned by your pulling a stunt like this. It’s all very well for you, a rich Tory. Some of my constituents can’t afford to keep up repayments on their houses, but you run around with two surnames.

A further result of your despicable proposals would be the reduction in the aspirations and education of our young people. How can we begin to instill hope in our young people if they are told they may never receive more than one single payment, when their siblings and parents have had multiple payments to look forward to? Where is the incentive in mathematics, for young people to learn how to add up the value of welfare payments and, for instance, calculate how many weeks they must wait to buy a 3D TV to watch the Olympics on in 2012? How will they learn to fill out forms as deftly as they have learned in the past? And where will the thrill of departmental errors and overpayments come from, when multiple payments are scrapped? I’ll tell you where.

From personning the barricades in fervent revolution to overturn the vile contemptuous lickspittle CONDEM government, in a frenzy to return their birthright of multiple welfare payments. And possibly a council-sponsored street party to welcome them back.

Yours Sincerely,

Geraldine Dreadful MP


* With thanks to Ben Archibald at Nabidana.com

We'll have some more leaked correspondence from Geraldine next Thursday.