Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Lord Tony Greaves: Greaving Rotten About Sajjad Kareer



Lib Dem Voice is my most regular Lib Dem blog visit. Utterly on message. Yet with an open approach to gainsaying.

Sometimes I will join in the comments banter and I have every reason to believe that this is highly appreciated by the yellow hordes.

Sometimes one or two of them appreciate my wisdom. But in general they call me names, or smear me, or John Leech assumes a false identity and says I'm obsessed with him, as if, and/or they treat me as if I'm a hugely important part of the Labour machine.

Alas, that's not quite true. (There'd have been no electile dysfunction if I were.) But then again neither are many of their stories. Quite true.

But Lord Greaves is a different kettle of fish. He does not stoop to the modern Lib Dem standard of cut and thrust. He was old school when the foundation stone was laid.

He is however most definitely grieving about the defection of young Sajjad Karim. His protegé really. Someone he has recruited. From teenage Tory - son of his father, a Tory councillor - and a card-carrying Young Conservative. To shiny young Lib Dem councillor and super-fast-tracked MEP candidate.

Here's our little exchange from Lib Dem Voice:

November 28th, 2007 at 2:47 pm Comment 109: Tony Greaves Says:
Someone a long way up this thread said: “Sajjad Karim was a conviction Tory before he was a Lib Dem councillor or MEP.”
Not true. He delivered leaflets for John Lee (then Tory MP now LD peer - “we have now both seen the light” - SK) at the age of seven - his father was a Tory member. He decided he was not a Tory once he started to think about things in his teens. He was a LD councillor in his early 20s. If he is now a conviction Tory (we all wait to find out) it is a very recent conversion.

So grieving Greaves would like to think. I am not sure whether it was Tony Greaves or the ruthlessly maverick Chris Davies MEP who decided how Sajjad Karim should be used in the 2004 campaign, but we'll come to that later.

November 28th, 2007 at 3:38 pm Comment 110 Chris Paul Says:
Lord Greaves: Is it not a fact that as well as the instance of child labour - presumably for sweets as recommended in “Effective Opposition”? - Sajjad was for a time a member of the Young Conservatives?
My analysis is that he became a Lib Dem partly because as in many areas of the NW your party has become the opposition to Labour and signing up to his dad’s dying party was not a good career move.
Your squeeze “Tories can’t win here” works on Tory voters, but activists too. There has certainly been little going for political life with the Tories in Manchester until very recently and even now where they do have some activity again it is not for the faint-hearted.
If you can show us results from Pendle at this time that showed Sajjad could look forward to representation and a political career as a Tory I’d be interested. I might even change my mind.

Lord Greaves was fingered early in the thread as a guilty party who prioritised BME over gender:

November 26th, 2007 at 11:40 am Comments 36 Dafs Says:
Egg on face for Lord Greaves I fear who fast-tracked Saj through the selection process last time, to the extent that he shamefully got the rules overturned which originally had male and female occupying the first two places on a list. Greaves got the party to agree that the highest placed woman candidate could be as low as three so that his boy could get number two in the NW. Shame that he never asked him if he was a Liberal Democrat.

But this was my tiddler of a post that got Greaves' goatee:

November 26th, 2007 at 11:18 am Comment 33 Chris Paul Says:

Sajjad Karim was a conviction Tory before he was a Lib Dem councillor or MEP. The Lib Dem campaign with him was communalist in my opinion and pretty disgraceful. He’s gone home.
This is not to say that the quotes about Cameron etc are not highly amusing and useful. Presumably the LD party have the keys to his website and he cannot take down all the incrimination therein?

And they did take down his site very soon afterward. There was also a bit of a PS to link with the mother lode and that communalist campaign rap which will surely come back to haunt them, good style:

November 26th, 2007 at 11:19 am Comment 34 Chris Paul Says:

http://chrispaul-labouroflove.blogspot.com/2007/11/sajjad-karim-mep-goes-home-to-tories.html

PHOTO CAPTION: Councillor Lord Greaves presides over a load of old cobblers; here in Whitefield.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

The story today is about your man taking a terrible kicking.

Gettit?

Just when are you going to decide to do the honourable thing - and save your miserable party - and join in?

Anonymous said...

I've noticed too, Chris, that you have been spending a lot of your considerable blogging time over the last few weeks attacking the Libems. Most of it is incomprehensible to even an avid anonymous reader like me but it seems to give you some sort of pleasure.

But we haven't heard much from you on the disastrous events that have befallen your glorious leader and your beloved Labour Party over the last few weeks - apart from some vacuous comments on other blogs.

If you want to be taken seriously - like David Boothroyd, for example - why not stop all this rubbish about "Libdemologists" and address the real issues?

Just trying to be helpful.

Chris Paul said...

Thanks guys

I've not had much time to blog the last few days but I have in fact covered this story a couple or three times.

It is being done to death elsewhere.

Chearly Watt had to go. Clearly there have to be at least two inquiries. Clearly Labour had a go at making things more transparent in 2000. Clearly other parties also have problems.

Clearly Lord Offshore giving millions including through hooky UK and distant offshore companies is a very serious matter that could and should come back to bite Dave.

Clearly Lib Dem and Tory bloggers are falling over themselves to crow and cheer - often in the wrong places. Like Guido's faux exclusives nicked without credit from the MSM.

But the defection of the Lib Dems' only BME parliamentarian, elected through a communalist campaign centred on the fact he was a BME candidate, is a story in which I'm more interested and on which I have more to say.

And it is my blog.

As anonymous nitpickers you don't say where you blog which is a shame as that way no one can check the extent to which you are covering to death your own party's trials and tribulations.

Probably you are not doing. Though if you want to tell us where you blog and prove otherwise that'll be grand.

tory boys never grow up said...

Good grief - is the old nutter still alive. Nice to see his dress sense hasn't improved. A throwback to the good old days when Liberals were just naive and didn't feel that they could say different things for different audiences.

tory boys never grow up said...

PS I blame David Owen for the Liberals losing their souls.

tory boys never grow up said...

And at least 5 extra years of the Tories

Chris Paul said...

He's got a lot to answer for, that Lord DO! for that is his name.