Tag Archives: iain dale

A lovely and cheery good evening to you Iain. I hope you are having a lovely birthday.

I thought it might be helpful to point out that, as you’ve run a story about how awful the Liberal Democrats were for using a photo, you should perhaps check out your own blog posting of July 3rd.

I’m afraid Duncan Borrowman has already noticed that you’ve used a photograph yourself from a Liberal Democrat leaflet without getting permission, but I’m sure it’s not too late to put matters right. I’d do something quite quickly if I were you though, because it does rather …

As I’ve already pointed out, Iain Dale should really have asked a question or two before printing the story he was fed yesterday by the Conservative Party about horrible Lib Dem deeds involving the use of photos.

Perhaps something along the lines of, “Look, this horrible thing you want me to write about the Liberal Democrats doing in Ealing. Could you just reassure me that as we speak the Conservatives in Ealing aren’t doing exactly the same thing? Because you know, if they are, that might make me look a bit silly?”

On a whim though I’ve just looked at …

Time for a quick leaf through my leaflet files this morning and what do I find from the Conservative leaflets in the Cheadle Parliamentary by-election?

Well, let’s just say that I don’t think the CCHQ staffer who fed Iain the line about how awful it is for parties to use photos of other party’s candidates in their leaflets remembered to tell Iain what photo the Conservatives used in their Cheadle by-election literature or where it came from…

In summary:

(a) The Conservatives regularly do something in election campaigns

(b) They then try to whip up a story about how awful it is if …

After the all-round rubbishing of the Grant Shapps “but my password was set to 1234” story which Iain Dale published (and is pretty much the only person to say they believe) you’d have thought Iain would be a bit more careful about stories he is fed in future.

But it would seem not … for his latest outburst about the Liberal Democrats using a photo of the Conservative candidate and thereby breaching the law, leaving themselves open to massive legal costs (and probably being guilty of eating babies too) is left looking really rather odd by one small fact.

Can you …

By my watch, Sky beat the BBC to reporting the result of the Labour Deputy Leadership election by 32 minutes (and possibly longer – Iain Dale says an hour, but I wasn’t watching Sky for that long, so possibly their “breaking” news was just recycled news).

Only one slight problem. They were reporting the wrong winner for those 32 minutes. But hey, what’s a bit of accuracy between friends?

After all, it’s hard to take this post seriously.

His “rebuttal” to Ming Campbell saying “I am shocked that the Labour and Conservative front benches in the Commons have joined forces to vote for a special exemption for MPs from the Freedom of Information Act” is to say, “If you look at the 24 Conservatives who disgracefully voted for the Bill on Friday, only 9 hold front bench positions.”

Crikey, what a rebuttal hey?

And then they were mostly found again; thanks to the person who pointed out the reason for the bulk of the difference in the comments. I think the few who are still missing are best not fussed over 🙂

A little while back the Conservatives boasted about the number of candidates they were standing in the local elections. This story is no longer on their website as this link shows though thanks to Iain Dale we can all still read the numbers.

Why might you want to read the numbers? Well, the (independent) Press Association has now added up the …

Paul Newman is Vice-Chair (North) of Islington Conservatives and had this to say recently on Iain Dale‘s blog:

“I have to confess that the denizens of Mildmay are almost bestially stupid . There is not a lot you can do with them…they live from road kill and sleep under Newspaper.”

Ah bless, aren’t they a lovely party?

It’s here, here, here, here, here and even self-referentially here. It’s got politics. It’s got David Cameron. And it’s on a topic that features regularly on Iain’s blog. But he’s not written a blog posting about it.

How curious.

The verdict’s in, and it’s a grim one for David Cameron: he broke Parliament’s rules, he raised money wrongly, he’s had to apologise “unreservedly” and he has had to make multiple promises about his future behaviour.

If a Labour minister had been so severely rebuked, do you think Conservative bloggers and MPs would by any chance be spitting blood and calling for his or her resignation? But now that it is someone in their own party, let’s see …

On, and twenty-six Conservative MPs have also been told to stop using Parliamentary …

Exhibit A from the nice, new, hug-a-hoodie Cameron party:

Trevor Ivory has been selected as the Conservative candidate in North Norfolk. This is the man who was described by the Samaritans as “beyond the pale” for making “inexcusable” comments about suicide. (He made a “joke” about Tony Blair commiting suicide and the country cheering up as a result).

Exhibit B from the nice, new, hug-a-hoodie Cameron party:

Richard Bell has been ousted as the Conservative candidate in Westmorland and Lonsdale.

There’s a less than flattering account of the proceedings in several comments on Iain Dale’s blog, though reasons seem to be thin on …