Monday, June 28, 2010

John Leech MP's Feet To The Fire: Must Vote ConDem Budget Down


This morning I was amazed when I followed a link to this Guardian article to find the born again hospital closure and dentist fixing fibber and expenses gamer John Leech MP uttering all sorts of suck up platitudes towards the outrageously over the top Conservative and Liberal Democrat budget. Even my rocky faith in this schemer's political integrity has been dented.

Desperate times call for desperate measures from this weakest link. On election night I had been amazed to see the slimeball's slimeball (corrected, not slimball, not by any stretch of the imagination) David Hennigan (right) - sacked, by fellow slimebag Paul Rowen, the ex-MP for Con-Dem Rochdale, for being embarrassing - lining up as a key member of John Leech MP's re-election team.

Not peripheral by any means. Delegating tasks to other key team members. Hob-nobbling with senior councillors, though not with the would-be MP who was off drowning his sorrows, or "chilling", or something. Anoraks on both sides thought Leech had Lost. As he certainly deserved to do with his integrity by-pass and his serial failure to get anything REAL done. he claimed plenty. He did next to nothing. Incidentally Hennigan's cousin - newly elected Cllr James Hennigan - appears to also have an official role with John Leech MP's Con-Dem team.

Hennigan D's first hail-fellow-well-met stanza to me on the night included claiming responsibility for fixing it for John to have a really pretty nasty and disreputable smear campaign against the Labour council candidate in Manchester Chorlton where I live. More on which anon. And Hennigan D also naturally featured heavily with Cllr Chamberlain V and Cllr/PPC Eakins M in some highly disreputable drunken loutery and anti-social behaviour. More on that mess soon also.

What follows is what John Leech told the Guardian. I expect that, him being all left-wing and that, not having one of the forty plus government jobs, they expected that he would be an MP who sought to exculpate the Lib Dem grassroots from the stain of association with George GOO Osborne's hateful budget.

But not a bit of it:

John Leech, the MP for Manchester Withington, said the coalition was having to stabilise the public finances and the Lib Dems could not secure a budget which completely reflected their thinking.

"I would have preferred to have seen taxes raised in other areas but as part of a coalition government we don't always get our way. But we don't have a Lib Dem government, we have a Liberal-Conservative coalition. The idea of raising personal [tax] allowances by £1,000 is progressive."

Leech was scathing about Labour which is intensifying its attacks on the Lib Dems. "The budget was not as bad as people were expecting and Labour have got a cheek saying anything about the budget when they had promised cuts and cuts. Harriet Harman's performance was a joke. She had written her speech before the budget was announced.

"They just want to go into opposition and blame the incoming government for the cuts that have to be introduced. No one likes cuts ... but we are in a pretty dire situation."


"Not as bad as people were expecting"? Perhaps John Leech would care to provide in comments some illustrations of how this budget could have been worse than it actually already is? Before we even catch sight of the devastation to Manchester jobs and Manchester services to be wrought by the Departmental spending review.

Don't get me wrong. I welcome this candour from the supposed "left" of the the Lib Dems in parliament. They don't give a flying fig for the working people, the sick, the old, the vulnerable of the UK. And they are providing virtually no checks and balances on what is nothing but an ideological attack on society and our solidarity with those who most need support from us all.

Don't stand helplessly by. Add your signature BEFORE 5PM TODAY to David Miliband's appeal to the more progressive Tories and the whole opportunist cadre of the Lib Dems to wise up, catch themselves on and vote against Osborne's poisonous budget. And retweet @DMiliband's call to action. And contact Mr Leech direct via Write To Them if you are a constituent. Also LEECHJ@parliament.uk or Tel: 0161 434 3334 Fax: 0161 434 3206 or soon-to-be privatised Snail Mail: 8 Gawsworth Avenue, Didsbury, Manchester, M20 5NF and/or House of Commons London SW1A 0AA.

Below's the David Miliband letter. Minor Labour of Love heart murmour: shame he did not share this with all our leadership contenders, it would still be his initiative. Below the text is a harrowing visual representation of the budget John leech proposes to vote through.

The projected total effect on incomes and services of this so called "progressive budget". Courtesy of The Fabians and via The Observer and this rendering of the chart TUC Touchstone blog (or click for PDF download of Fabian report). In essence the poorest families will be bearing SIX TIMES THE BRUNT of the Tory measures than the richest. SIX TIMES.

Hold John Leech's feet to the fire. SIX TIMES THE HURT. Show him what he should be doing to the Tories. SIX TIMES THE HARM. Clearly if it weren't for the fancy jobs and cars and pension and kudos the Lib Dems would have been doing the right thing and holding a minority Tory government to account. SIX TIMES THE SHARE.

GOO would never have got this budget through without the craven buy in of the Lib Dems. And No John, No John, No John, No the £1000 change in the personal tax allowance does not touch the poorest people in Britain. You've failed. You've failed to hold Osborne and Cameron and the right of the Tory party in check. You are a weak and dishonest representative of a weak and muddle-headed franchise.

Make John Leech keep his word and vote against anything not in Manchester people's interests:

Dear Conservative / Lib Dem MP

The CONservative Budget: 5 Big Cons

I am writing to you ahead of the Budget vote (today) to urge you to vote against it.

In the last 24 hours XXX people have co-signed this letter to voice their outrage at the 5 big Cons announced in last week’s Budget.

Con no 1– This budget is “unavoidable”

Yes this Budget was avoidable. Labour set out plans to cut the deficit by half over the course of the next Parliament. The Tories have chosen to cut the whole of the deficit and more to the tune of £32billion of public services and £11billion of welfare cuts. We should not risk jobs and growth by cutting more quickly than is needed.

Con no 2 – This Budget is “fair”

This Budget is not fair. Up-rating benefits more slowly means that those at the very bottom are hit the hardest. £6bn of cuts from benefits by the end of the Parliament means those with the least amount of money are expected to shoulder the most pain. 20,000 more people will lose 90p of every extra pound they earn, in lost benefits and extra taxes. Making the poor pay the price for the sins of the richest is an outrage.

Con no 3 – ‘We’re all in this together’

Not if you’re a family. You’ve chosen to cut taxes to banks but hits families hard – with the Sure Start Maternity Grant cut, the Health in Pregnancy Grant scrapped and the baby element of the Child Tax Credit scrapped. A tax cut for business should not be paid for by penalising hard working families.

Con no 4 – ‘We have no plans to put up VAT’

The Budget raised VAT to 20% - hitting the poorest hardest by cutting into their incomes the most. We have been misled.

Con no 5 – No families earning under £40,000 will lose their Child Tax Credits

The Tories claimed that Labour was “lying” during the General Election when we warned that the Tories would remove Child Tax Credits from families on £30,000 a year. Yet this Budget means that no family with one child over the age of one and income over £30,000 will get a penny in tax credits by 2012/13. This is a betrayal.

Don’t risk the recovery. Vote against the Budget.

Yours sincerely

David Miliband MP


harm to sections of society from Tory cuts - six times worse for the poorestClick to enlarge

11 comments:

benchilltory said...

what utter tosh from yesterdays people, your lot are like some Japanese soldier stranded on a desert island still fighting world war 2. your lot messed up the economy and now the coalition government are setting about sorting out the mess.Things will be much better by 2014 and Saint George Osbourne will be able to give us all big tax cuts just in time for the 2015 election keeping your lot out of government for another 5 years.
The Tories should step aside in seats such as Withington and support good old Mr Leech !

Anonymous said...

benchilltory, go and have a lie down and a cold compress. You will wake up and feel better soon.

Anonymous said...

Chris If you had any remaining doubts as to Dave Hennigan's true political colours (right wing Tory smearer, posing as left wing Liberal) then look at the utter tosh he's been posting on Rochdale Online of late.

Check out a thread he started called Trade Unions at their Worst. Reactionary union bashing bollocks from Hennigan.

Thankfully a decent union official called Pete Hinchcliffe (aka Hinch) has taken sorry Dave to task and given him what for.

Liberal Democrat? Dave is a dyed in the wool Tory muppet.

Chris Paul said...

Thanks ever so much Benchilltory for you incisive analysis. Almost as brilliant as Mr Leech's. The problems with the budget are:

(a) tackling the local results of the global crisis (and Labour's sin of actually building schools and hospitals instead of cutting rich people's taxes) in a manner which is far, far too harsh;

(b) pretending that this harshness which they actually relish is "necessary", it plainly is not;

(c) loading the pain for this so that even those half way up the income spectrum are to feel TWICE as much as those at the top of the pile, and those in the bottom 20% between four and six times as much.

This is a ludicrous and hateful budget and shouting your silly slogans doesn't change that. Will you give your name (or names) and let your neighbours in Benchill know who it is calling down extreme economic violence on their heads?

The chance of the Lib Dems getting their AV or more through is pretty low I'd say but if they were to the correct response from Tories (who may incidentally already amount to half Leech's support) would be to vote for their home party.

In my calculation Tories could then be a comfortable second in the constituency and would only have to wake up about four thousand "sleepers" who don't bother voting anymore but cannot bring themselves to vote for Leech to match Labour.

Then we'd have to see how the rump of the Lib Dems and the Greens and UKIP and so on split in their later preferences.

Take this analysis and apply it to a two member constituency covering Wythenshawe-Sale and Withington and the Tories *might* be in a position to return an MP.

Chris Paul said...

Thanks anonymous 09.16 I may very well take a look at what the ridiculous and hateful Hennigan has been up to in Rochdale. He's a steaming shit. Excuse my directness. And he worked for Leech's re-election. On some basis or other.

jailhouselawyer said...

Glad to see that you have not died, your last post being 10 June!

Shizer Konig said...

Ha ha - spambot trying to direct folks to weird sites.

Anyway, back to the discussion of Mr Heineken and piles of steaming shite...

...or is that one of those weird fetishes best left to those "specialist" usually German websites?

Nice to know Dave H is back to normal, felling more of himself etc.

Anonymous said...

Dave Hennigan might be a shit. But would he have been stupid enough to issue press releases like this for his former boss, Mr Rowen?

http://www.simondanczuk.com/bq-rochdale-welcomes-newly-elected-simon-danczuk-mp

Probably not.

Looks like new depths of total political irrelevance are being plumbed in Rochdale.

Anonymous said...

"Anoraks on both sides thought Leech had Lost."

No. Only delusional people like you and Izzard thought that.

Your missives are becoming more and more incomprehensible by the day. To any sane reader, any valid points you may raise on the Budget are lost in the midst of your growing obsession with Hennigan. It's really rather worrying.

Heywood Pea Dough watch said...

Anon 11.18 - how are those criminal records going John? (sex with minors and whipping funds from old fold - not to mention that very cheeky episode when a councillor car parking pass was sold on...)

As for Dave Hennigan, the amount of shit he has shovelled in his dodgy career will make it an uphill battle for the fallen choirboy to make it to Devon.

When in doubt squat then scarper...eh Dave...?

benchilltory said...

Its a bit rich to float some tittle tattle about cllrs Chamberlain and Eakins when the council is headed by someone who commits domestic violence .
the way you welcomed that creature back into office was shameful.
i cant imagine that Labour women are happy about this,but a misogynist blog is another question