J'Accuse Dave: "Me Too" Speech Built on Sham and Misdirection

The generally genial Tim Montgomerie of Lord Ashcroft's Conservative Home - who was personally at it with some fairly robust ad hominem and triumphalist tweeting yesterday alongside the @nadinedorriesmp aka #GoNads, @torybear, @toryradio, @theredbox and others - is today claiming that Labour rather than the Cons is the Nasty Party.

Truth is we all have our moments in terms of the cut and thrust. But the Tories, genial and polite or otherwise, are in LOL's view nasty in terms of their social views, economic tenets, world view, and utter unremitting selfishness.

Timbo's arguments look pretty thin. It's as if he been taking logic and evidence lessons from that bastion of good sense and everybody's chum Nadine Dorries MP. Not himself at all. Way off form.

The piece is illustrated with the determinedly non-personality-politics illustration reproduced above and right. Here is my second response, tweaked with web links and the odd extra, building on a bit of a rant from someone rightly pointing out that Cameron's #conman09 speech was all snake oil, smoke and mirrors, feelgood quackery, feelbad misery, and utterly bogus anecdote upon utterly bogus misdirection:

The use of Mr Viv Williams was quite extraordinary. According to this Wales Online report Mr Williams (58) had a note from one doctor grounding him - he had already had THREE HEART ATTACKS to go with the twisted ankle that Cameron hobbled his clunking speech along on:

Last December doctors told him that as a man who has had three mild heart attacks and suffers from blood pressure problems, diabetes, asthma and gout, he should be on sickness benefit.
He said: “I just took that as the norm because I’ve always worked with it and carried on. I didn’t see it as grounds for me to claim disability, but when I saw the doctor he said, ‘You’ve got these things, they’re for life and they’re getting worse’.”

So, er, Mr Charisma, it wasn't the twisted ankle that scuppered his job seeking? Mr Williams actually had FIVE pretty serious limiting health conditions. What a lying, using bastard you are Mr Cameron. And there's a twist:

Weeks later another medic told Mr Williams he was fit to work, before the former businessman mounted an appeal in order to get the full rate of the benefit.
The father-of-three now receives £176 a fortnight in incapacity benefit, but hopes to get this bumped up to the full rate of £230.

So far from being an example of a fit and healthy individual desperate to work but thwarted from doing so it turns out Mr Williams' mission in life at the moment appears to be maxxing his IB, not getting a job.

Strange isn't it that the "sick note" reflecting his three heart attacks, his limiting diabetes and three other conditions, and so on and so forth apparently trumped the "fit note". Conservatives should be ashamed of this kind of sloppy or very likely cynical anecdotery. And why aren't the national Mass Media finding this material and questioning Mr Cameron's judgement, research, gullibility, cynicism and/or honesty?

And don't get me started on the Pilkington/Hardwick immolation story. Cameron's party political use of this tragedy was arguably far worse than wheeling out the terminally confused Mr Williams on the basis of an email. Oh, go on then.

A woolly Barwell Parish Council. Lib Dem ward councillors times three (Barwell ward, Cllr Sandra Franks, Cllr Dr Moore, Cllr David Gould) in Tory run borough council Hinckley and Bosworth who do claim to have helped, this within Tory run County Council (Leicestershire), word document, and this all feeding in to a Tory dominated Police Authority, Chair and Vice Chair are Tories (Byron Rhodes, and Barrie Roper). LPA statement.

Obviously those Lib Dem councillors and that Tory borough and county council and the police force they control have been given powers that could have brought ASBOs and dispersal orders and other instruments to bear. But they did not. They really don't seem to buy into these powers. Follow the links and you may find a letter being written to the odd parent or two. But clearly these Tory politicians, in real life, as opposed to the "me too" Tory sophistry, did not protect Mrs Pilkington and Ms Hardwick.

Obviously all these Tories and Lib Dems have more police at their disposal and also PCSOs, better police infrastructure, and at least some growth in care and support for vulnerable adults. But I am not actually going to be blaming anyone. There has been a thorough enquiry. All concerned need to review their practices and move on.

But I do find it absolutely extraordinary - actually extremely weak and rather callous - that this feelgood charismatic quack Cameron brings up this case, this anecdote to illustrate supposed broken society in a Party Political attack. Don't you?

When we actually know our safety nets are better, more people have been working, there is better childcare, better schools, better health service, there are more police and better powers for those police and for local authorities with the guts and imagination to make use of them.

Guido Fawkes and other supporters of the Tory cause have spent the last couple of years in an extraordinarily nasty serious of personal attacks on Gordon Brown. Disowning this now will not wash. It really has been horrific. Tories who CANNOT win on policy, are playing the man instead. Including yesterday.