Cons' "New Poster": Ashcroft's Tumescence Puffs Con Conceit

The creepy tax avoider and vulture capitalist Lord Michael Ashcroft of Belize now has a tumescence of throbbing organs. Including Total Politics, and Conservative Home, and Politics Home too. Don't know whether the money he's putting into these during the long campaign counts towards the Tory expenditure tally. But perhaps it should?

Total Politics' Question Time in Manchester was horribly biased. Tweeted by myself with the tag #TPQT. [Twitter is not serving these, you could search chrisplol + tpqt]

Tories have not had a councillor elected in the city for 15 years or so. And the one they picked up as a Lib Dem defective, Cllr Faraz Bhatti, is a disaster area to rival Andy Coulson. There are questions about his credentials. His protege Fawad Hussain had campaign workers who were not only arsey but who also worked with Hizb_ut-Tahrir material. That being an organisation Cameron says he would ban. And FB's personal carryings on have scandalised the community.

There are signs, for example in Manchester Withington that a new generation of Tories are looking finally to rebuild. Adding to John "Hospital Hoax" Leech's fears of oblivion. Yet Shane Greer off the Telly, standing in for the increasingly ridiculous Iain Dale, should not have allowed most of the minority of Tories in the TPQT audience to ask their silly Tory questions. Or to make silly speeches in several cases. Not even sure it was pre-meditated. He just couldn't help himself.

Conservative Home is of course a wall-to-wall promotion of Conservative candidates and causes. And at a cost - funded by Ashcroft - that massively outstrips anything Labour equivalents are currently able to apply.


Now yet another of Ashcroft's organs is giving the Tories a lift. The claim is that the above twattery is in fact the latest Conservative Party hoarding poster. What I'd say it is is yet another mediocre communications idea, badly realised, as a jpeg file on someone's PC. Not a poster we're going to actually see anywhere. But a kite, searching for the winds and hot air of mass media coverage. Here's the Politics Home conceit. It's not a poster, it's a poster-shaped jpeg.

More than this. It's silly. Yet again the Coulson-Hilton-Cameron-Osborne unpopular beat combo get things way wrong. "Division of Labour" was and is a boon, certainly for capitalists if less so for de-skilled labour, though arguably good for the common wealth. Say Adam Smith.

If every member of the cabinet were a clone of GB and a yes person, then we might as well not have 'em. And have no doubt; the Conservative message manglers would be having a go at the Chancellor for not being his own man. Good for Darling that he is standing up for his views and what else would Brown expect? He certainly stood up for his views against Blair. As we may read in tomorrow's Observer.

Also, and obviously, to "get" the Division of Labour line (which doesn't really work anyway) you need to have A Level plus Economics. Otherwise this not-a-poster is utterly meaningless. The idiom is not in common use. And, if you do get it? It's just an irritating abuse of language.

To be honest I don't think My David Cameron will need to bother with this one. Though here's a couple to start them off if they do. Only the image has been changed.





FOOTNOTE: Labour Matters has tweeted that this Tory effort is a response to the more coherent and substantial Labour's latest non-Poster themed "Chancer not Chancellor" and supported by deep and wide factual analysis. Osborne is a chancer. End of.