On Friday the new and traditional media were full of the tale of Stuart MacLennan, whose foul tirades led to his removal as the Labour parliamentary candidate for Moray. Amongst those leading the calls for his removal were the head on the Conservative’s press office, Henry Macrory and the Conservative Party leader David Cameron, who described the remarks as “pretty appalling“.
So you might wonder what the Conservative hierarchy might think of a candidate who posted this:
The blog is the work of Watford Conservative campaigner and council candidate, Chris Hawes. Not that Chris Hawes has the greatest judgement: he also described Watford’s disgraced former parliamentary candidate Ian Oakley as “fantastic and hilarious”. I am sure that most people who have had their homes and cars vandalised, been sent foul abuse and hard core porn in the post and had leaflets accusing them of violence and child abuse find it hilarious too.
So what do Messrs Cameron and Macrory think of these comments? Pretty appalling, I’d say. Should he step down? Certainly.
Before Stuart MacLennan stepped down as a Labour candidate, Conservative blogger Iain Dale condemned Labour’s inaction, saying “I suspect if [MacLennan] had been a Tory candidate Labour would have led the calls for his dismissal”. So Iain, will you lead the calls for Chris Hawes’ removal?
UPDATE: Chris Hawes has stepped down as a Conservative candidate.
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27 Comments
There’s a substantive difference between using an obscenity about Nick Clegg’s behvaiour – he does, after all, periodically evidences authoritarian tendencies at odds with his claims to be a liberal – and insulting your own constituents en bloc.
As for your attempts to stir up trouble about Ian Oakley – don’t be so silly. The comments of Chris Hawes’ you criticise predate Oakley’s arrest by nine months, and his conviction by a full year, and do not relate to his criminal acts.
If you’re trying to give weight to Hawes’ “FibDem” comments, you succeeded all too well.
He’s not ‘using an obscenity about Nick Clegg’s behaviour’, he is calling him personally ‘an authoritarian c**t’. That’s just what MacLennan did.
I don’t think I’ve heard of a single thing more laughable yet in this election than the moron Cameron’s reported quote: “People who followed MacClennan on Twitter and did nothing have got some explaining to do.” They shit themselves with joy over some tiny short-term advantage that only exists in the minds of thirty-odd journalists in the first place, and then wonder why nobody votes.
Amusingly, Cameron has also called for a ban on the loss leading of alcohol sales. It is official Tory policy. Presumably Horrid Henry believes Dave is an authoritarian, um, person too.
@Nick: Personally I draw a clear distinction between being offensive about your opponents – which, yes, both did – and insulting your constituents. Read the original Sun article for details of what he thought about his constituents.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/news/election2010scotland/2925549/Twitter-ranting-Labour-hopeful-Stuart-MacLennan-is-blasted.html
@Helen: The Tory proposals were part of a programme of measures designed to address problems people have raised with the licensing regime introduced by the 2003 Act. Whereas Clegg was just talking about putting price floors in, to grab a quick headline. No difference there, of course…
You know, I have called opponents names, and so have lots of other people. Are we seriously suggesting that people should be kicked out of the party they are member of for this? Because I suspect that no party would have very many candidates left if we did.
Is this really a road that we, as liberals, want to go down?
Matthew might like to remind us which government it was that enacted the Town & Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1987, which created a single A3 use class, thereby enabling breweries to convert town centre cafes into mega-pubs without the need for planning permission. Well, he doesn’t have to, really, because the date is a giveaway. The T&CP(UC)O was the mechanism that allowed town centres to be swamped by licensed premises, greatly to the profits of the big breweries, all or almost all of whom are enthusiastic supporters of the Conservative Partyy – the party that exists for no other reason than to promote the interests of the mega-rich.
So basically the idea of limiting alcohol sales is only acceptable to you if it comes from a Tory, and not from their opponents.
I think that’s pretty informative.
@Sesenco: Thank you – you just triggered a flashback to three days I once spent checking alcohol use clauses in hundreds of lease documents.
You actually don’t challenge my point: that problems people are identifying today, and to address which the Conservative party has put forward a programme of proposals, arise from the 2003 Licensing Act.
I think you want to have a debate about something else entirely!
@Andrew: No, and I’d challenge you to show how you get that from what I said. I made a clear distinction between offering a coherent programme intended to address problems people have identified arising from the 2003 Licensing Act, and grabbing a cheap headline by telling a licensing conference you’d fix minimum prices.
What others have said. Furthermore, this is Hawe’s personal blog and not official campaign tool,
Matthew, on the contrary, I have pointed to the fact that it was the 1987 Thatcher government that facilitated the swamping of town centres with licensed premises, as part of its so-called deregulation drive (which also included the City). Whether or not drunken rowdyism in town centres was an intended consequnece, I am not in a position to say. The motive, clearly, was to boost the profits of the Tories’ friends in the brewing industry, or to increase low-paid unskilled employment in that sector, however one wishes to look at it. I have omitted to respond to your attribution of a noble motive to a Tory and a base motive to a Liberal Democrat for taking similar actions, because I don’t really need to point to the fact that you are speaking from a narrowly partisan position. That should be obvious to everyone.
Before you get your knickers too much in a twist for someone using a rude word word on the internet 18 months ago, could you kindly indicate which ward in Watford Hawes is standing for? I’ve just been through the nominations and I can’t find him. It is going to be very difficult to get him to stand down, if he’s not standing in the first place.
@Sesenco: Are you arguing that the cause of drunken rowdiness in town centres was changes to the planning laws in 1987? If so, perhaps you’d care to comment on why the consensus is that the problems people identify today arise from the changes to the licensing regime in 2003? I’ve have heard a few comments about planning issues, but far more about problems with the licensing regime.
As to my “narrowly partisan position”, I’m sure it’s obvious to everyone now you’ve pointed it out.
Or omitted to point it out.
Or both.
Or neither.
Shrodinger's debating techniqueI said “I made a clear distinction between offering a coherent programme intended to address problems people have identified arising from the 2003 Licensing Act, and grabbing a cheap headline by telling a licensing conference you’d fix minimum prices.” and stand by that. I’ve yet to hear Clegg articulate a programme on this issue – which Cameron and Dominic Grieve have done. Perhaps you could try offering some evidence that LDs have done so, rather than trying to shoot the messenger>
@Martin Chris Hawes is standing for the Leavesden ward of Three Rivers Council, which is part of the Watford constituency.
Matthew, here is another debating technique with which you may be familiar – it is known colloquially as “putting words in one’s opponents mouth” (see, you don’t have to be an intellectual to know it).
(1) I didn’t say that the Town & Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1987 was the cause of drunken rowdiness in town centres. I said it was the mechanism that facilitated the swamping of town centres with licensed premises.
(2) Which “consensus” are you talking about? A “consensus” is merely an opinion held by a class of people. Can you identify these people? Or are you hoping that readers will be too dim to spot another familiar debating technique?
(3) My own experience, both in local government, and as a member of the public, is that drunken rowdiness was very much an issue prior to 2003. Maybe you are too young to recall the summer of 1988 when tabloids screamed headlines to the effect that British town centres were awash with booze on Saturday nights, that the nation’s youth was out-of-control, that Aylesbury was the epicentre of alcoholic iniquity, and that curfews and conscription were required to deal with the problem. Similar moral panics have filled summer column inches in the intervening years, most of them before 2003. Like the late Mervyn Griffiths-Jones QC, I cannot claim to have added up correctly the number of times planning chiefs have told residents they are powerless to stop a harmless town centre cafe being turned into a super-pub, but all of them all of them were before 2003.
Sorry to put the dampers on a nice little propaganda trick. Actually, I’m not sorry at all.
Which is just a thinly disguised claim that exactly the same action should be interpreted differently depending on who did it. That’s special pleading.
You then attempted to excuse this by handwaving about some unspecified “programme” in response to some unspecified problems, and claiming that you have heard one from Cameron but not from Clegg – as if which policies you have personally seen, in regards to whatever issue this is, somehow changes the meaning of their actions.
The way that you have, in four posts, failed to explain what issue you are handwaving about – well, that makes it obvious that your purpose here is to campaign for the Tories, truth be damned.
It’s not even a very well thought out attempt. I could simply pick a random article – http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6802633.ece – and claim that since I haven’t read any Tory policies on alcohol licensing (which I haven’t, not having the slightest interest in the subject), by your logic Cameron is just “grabbing a cheap headline”. Of course, that’s just reductio ad absurdum.
For those who are more interested in reality: Clegg is simply repeating his backing for the recommendation of Sir Liam Donaldson (Chief Medical Officer for England) that there should be a minimum price for alcohol by volume, in order to block supermarkets from using it as a loss leader (and effectively people with alcohol problems via higher prices elsewhere in the store). And it took me about five minutes to find that out.
@Sesenco: Not sure what being an intellectual (or not) has to do with anything, but I recognise someone avoiding a question – as you do when you ignore the last sentence of mine (“Perhaps you could try offering some evidence that LDs have done so, rather than trying to shoot the messenger.“) in preference for, well, trying to shoot the messenger a little bit more.
Your point (1) is a bizarre. You introduced the 87 Order into this discussion at comment 7 above. You did so in apparent response to my comment to Helen about Cameron’s comments being in response to the problems people have identified with the 2003 Act regime. You then went on (at 11 above) to say “Whether or not drunken rowdyism in town centres was an intended consequnece, I am not in a position to say.” You seem to be trying to make a distinction without a difference, but I’m not clear why.
As to (3), you should perhaps liaise with Andrew Suffield, who’d like to characterise these as “unspecified”. I’m not clear how we ended up in some zero sum game where problems with licensed premises stem from either the 1987 changes or the 2003 changes. I’m entirely open to the possibility that both contribute, but my experience has been that the latter are generally cited as having caused problems, whereas – as I said earlier – I’ve far less frequently heard people talk about the planning issues.
As to the rest, you seem to have some issue around debating techniques, but if you want to have an argument about them you’ll need to look elsewhere. If you can’t spot a joke (Schrodinger’s debating technique) I can’t help you.
@Andrew Suffield: My original purpose here was to point out the glaring flaws in Ryan Cullen’s article – which seem to have been accepted by and large.
The debate about alcohol licensing, and the origins of anti-social behaviour arose somewhat further down the chain. No doubt I’ll be accused of putting words in your mouth, but the impression you have given me is of anger that anyone should criticise the Liberal Democrats on LD Voice.
Contrary to what you say, I’m not saying that my personal knowledge of the policies or their announcements changes their purpose. Rather, I have said I perceive Clegg’s statements as headline grabbing because I haven’t seen anything like a coherent programme from the LDs on this, and I asked Sesenco to give me examples of the LDs offering a programme – rather than just that one proposal – to convince me otherwise.
As for unspecified problems, I suggest you speak to Sesenco, who sets out his perception of specified problems which he says predate the 2003 Act.
As to unspecified programmes, the link you provide dispatches your own argument, setting out, as it does, a series of policies in this area, what you might almost…a programme. They look suspiciously like the relevant section from the Conservative Draft Manifesto, in fact:
Re the article (rather than the below-the-line argument):
This ‘Miss! Miss! He said a naughty word Miss!’ whining is a whole lot more disagreeable than the original comment.
Matthew:
“generally cited” by WHOM? And HOW OFTEN is”far less frequently”?
“Under Labour’s lax licensing regime, drink fuelled violence and disorder are out of control.” (Conservative Manifesto)
Naughty Mr Cameron, who (apparently) suffers from short memory syndrome.
The Murdoch and Rothermere press were screaming just this kind of lazy, hyperbolic, emotionally charged rhetorical bunkum as long ago as 1988, though it is only recently that they have been dishonest and partisan enough to blame it on Labour (previoulsy it was the moral failings of young people, long hair, sex on TV, the ending of National Service, etc). People have more disposable income than they did 30 years ago, and a binge drinking culture, which has always been with us (inside the Bullingdon Club and out), has focused on town centre super-pubs, where varying numbers of people get (very visibly) blotto on Saturday nights. I baulk at having to defend the Labour Party, but Cameron’s attack is scurrilous – and attention-misdirecting.
I am amused to be told that I won’t allow anyone to attack Liberal Democrats on this site (as though I have the power to stop them). This will bring smiles to those who have felt the wrong end of my pen over the years.
Seems like the Conservatives are suffering from the same kind of amnesia on deregulating licensing as they have about the effects of deregulating building societies and allowing them to demutualise. Northern Rock, Halifax, Bradford & Bingley: not a pretty roll call.
The fact is, the Conservatives bow down and worship the free and untrammelled market but then fail to see the consequences of their idolatry.
So you do not, in fact, have a point to make of your own. Instead you vaguely talk around the subject, and when somebody else says something relevant, you claim that is your point.
You are, in short, a troll.
Moderators?
Is this and the MacLennan Twitter story news, or isn’t it? If it is, I’m sure some of you would be interested in the constant abusive comments on one forum that I (and a few of you) frequent, coming from a Conservative election agent and directed chiefly at his candidate’s high-profile Labour opponent. Sadly, I’m not sure that the Conservatives would be too bothered, given the amount of Ashcroft money that continues to be thrown at that particular campaign.
@Sesenco: If you go back and look, it was Andrew Suffield who I said “…the impression you have given me is of anger that anyone should criticise the Liberal Democrats on LD Voice” (I’m bound to say his subsequent response rather made the point). You’ve actually bothered to put forward a position, and articulate it, and I’m not suggesting you “…won’t allow anyone to attack Liberal Democrats on this site”.
As to frequency: I can recall a handful of specific occasions where people (mostly politically involved individuals) talked about issues with planning, usually in the context of opposing specific developments. By contrast, I would say that almost every canvass I’ve been involved in, whether telephone or doorstep, together with just about every recent article I’ve seen which dealt with anti-social behaviour and alcohol, mentioned either “24 hour drinking” or the Licensing Act 2003. If you want me to give you lists, I’m afraid I can’t. It is necessarily a personal statement (just like yours about previous public concerns, expressed in the media, about alcohol related disorder).
I’m not clear whether your arguing we’ve always had the same problems with alcohol abuse, which have merely moved into the public arena due to the ’87 planning change allowing “town centre super-pubs” (your term), or whether you’re arguing that those changes created the problem.
@Andrew Suffield: I lol’d, I really did. If I was a LibDem, I’d be hoping they don’t let you near voters on the party’s behalf. As it is…
@Matthew Taylor (MTPT)
Nonsense. Cameron made some noise about banning promotions and taxing alcopops during a photo opportunity in front of a police station in the North East.
The Liberal Democrats have had a policy paper for some years now.
You are either misinformed or willfully ignoring the facts.
@Helen: Well, maybe you could point me to it?
I certainly can’t find it anywhere (and yes, I looked when this started yesterday – for starters, here: http://www.libdems.org.uk/policy_papers.aspx and here: http://www.libdems.org.uk/what_we_stand_for.aspx).
Searching the site produces a variety of comments for publication on crime statistics or the same comment on minimum pricing. There are far more details of the live music PMB. There is this:
http://www.libdems.org.uk/latest_news_detail.aspx?title=Huhne:_People_caught_selling_alcohol_to_children_let_off_lightly&pPK=aed39465-e428-48ca-90a0-9a8a297177e3
but when you try to follow the link at the bottom it 404s.
It’s hard to be informed about a party’s policy if you actively look for it on the party’s own site, and can’t find it.
Matthew, I sat on two planning committees for four years. This was in the 1990s, when breweries, seeing their sector contract, were abandoning low-throughput neighbourhood pubs and swamping town centres with “super-pubs” (that is what they were called). Every time a planning application was submitted to turn a cafe into a super-pub, planning officers’ advice was that permission for change of use was not required, but it was possible to refuse if we didn’t like the proposed shopfront, but the Planning Inspector would take the view that noise and disturbance is something inherent to an A3 use. This doesn’t happen so much these days, because the licensed premises are already there and have been since the early 1990s. I fail to see how longer opening hours make much difference, but I am willing to be persuaded by evidence to the contrary.
I don’t allow my friends on Facebook to use the language Chris Hawes used and delete them as friends if they continue. I thought is was only immature young people who used such language. And him a scout master as well. Unbelievable Geoff!