Dale and Tory Home: Hoodwinking on "Press Release"?

Mr Iain Dale's ramblings often have a rather loose association with logic, statistics, arithmetic and science. He is a linguist ready to put a gloss on things; not a seeker of knowledge as such. But today his disassociations extend to the truth itself with a ridiculous aggrandisement of back bencher remarks.

Mr Dale is very much mistaken if he thinks some alleged remarks from Jim Hood MP, an obscure Scottish back bencher, constitute "(the Labour Party's) first Henley by-election campaign press release".

Iain presumably got the story from Conservative Home which ran it 45 minutes before he did, though he does not credit them. They however DID NOT claim Mr Hood's words were in a press release or indeed provide any reference to where, when or how the MP is supposed to have uttered them.

The only other pages returned from Google are from former MP Jane Griffiths' feisty Reading/Strasbourg blog and comments on these three mentions, including my own at all three.

Here's the words Conservative Home provided and Iain copied without hat tip:

Jim Hood, Labour MP for Lanark & Hamilton East has criticised the Conservatives' choice of accountant John Howell, a former partner at City accountant Ernst and Young, to fight the Henley by-election.
Mr Hood said, " Is the Tory Party not running out of super rich male lawyers and accountants yet. What happened to David Cameron's, 'I want the Tory Party to be more representative of the whole country and select more women in winnable seats' pledge?
"Tut, tut, this will not do Mr Cameron."

Clearly the point Mr Hood was making was firstly about the new political class - across party divides - but mostly about Camerwrong's lack of action on selecting women for safe Tory seats. On this Jim Hood is absolutely and spectacularly correct. But of course Tory Boy Bloggers ignore that point completely. This was a prime opportunity for that with Ann Ducker. And the Libs missed their opportunity too with Susan Cooper, this possibly the trigger to sack Ducker.

Glyn Davies AM is wondering why the Lib Dems have selected a man based in Plymouth with work in Shrewsbury to be their candidate in Henley, many miles away. Have the Lib Dems forgotten all they used to know about local-ness? Or has Kearney bid the most money, or both? To disambiguate the man's geographical ties, he is not the Medway Lib Dem of the same name.

Both Tory ("Dave's Dolls") and Lib Dem ("Ming's Molls") leaderships have promised action to get more women candidates. Ming even posing (right) with his erstwhile parliamentarian Sajjad Karim. Proving hard to airbrush out of the archives.