li l

In a Skipton Armchair

An armchair activist's view of the political campaigns to the left (Skipton) and to the right (Keighley). From a LibDem supporter who really should get out of this armchair and help them out. I wasn't planning to update this, but then there's as much reason as ever to continue the tales on the build up to the 2009/2010 election.

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Dispatches

Now that all the excitement (ironic face) of the election has died down, we have the dispatches programme on labour's victory

An undercover reporter was part of the machine that convinced the country to vote labour, and exposed their tactics. It clearly showed how, in the era of manufactured consent, democracy is a loose term in modern britain.

Then I started to reflect. Some of the tricks that labour pulled I had seen with the LibDems. Such as the letters.

There was a critism of labour, Party HQ would write letters indicating the party's view of the conservatives or libdems and then send it to party workers to send to their local papers. Only the letters wouldn't say they were labour supporters, they would say "as a former libdem supporter" or "as someone who previously voted conservative" and then launch into labour policy.

I was asked to send such letters, as written by libdem HQ to my local paper. They weren't as bad as the labour ones by any means; but the same tactic was in play.

As a wise man once wrote - if this is reality, I'm so sorry dear; to be a spoil-sport personality for another year.

This will be my last post to this blog, it was intended merely to cover the election campaign, in two seats that didn't really matter. I suppose I have to reflect on Winston Churchill's infamous quote that democracy is the worst of all political systems, except for all the other ones.

Thanks for reading.