Letters From A Tory

1. Grumpy Optimist suggests a new secret weapon for David Cameron.

2. Laban Tall thinks Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is a self-centred hysteric.

3. Real Street is annoyed at the bastardisation of the word ‘equality’.

4. John Ward cannot believe the degree of self-interest shown by the trade unions.

5. The Last Ditch discusses the political exploitation of the Jon Venables case.

“Many workers – particularly in the public sector – are facing pay freezes, compulsory redundancies and even, in the case of Unite members at British Airways, the prospect of pay cuts.  We feel that the proposed deal for our Royal Mail members compares extremely well.”

- a spokesman from the Communication Workers Union, after it was announced that Royal Mail staff will receive a 6.9% pay rise over three years and will work shorter hours – down from 40 to 39 hours a week.  In addition, Royal Mail has agreed to keep 75% of the workforce as full-time rather than part-time staff, and full-time workers will get extra payments worth up to £1,400 when all the agreed changes to working practices have been made. (full story HERE)

Dear Lindsey German and Nina Power,

I hope you enjoyed your International Women’s Day.  Now that the likes of Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman have been put back in their box, temporarily at least, following their crass remarks yesterday, I thought it was only fair to give your manifesto for “21st-century feminism” a bit of blog airtime.  Mind you, as soon as I read that it aimed to ”begin to organise for real equality”, I knew I was in for a fun ride.  Here is your manifesto in full, along with my *ahem* observations:

• Globalisation and neo liberalism have had a profound effect on the lives of millions of women. Capitalism itself has created new forms and manifestations of women’s oppression. – globalisation has indeed had a profound effect on the lives of millions of women.  Better wages, better healthcare, better education systems, better life expectancy, better access to medicine… need I go on?
• Women’s oppression is a product of class society which has existed for thousands of years. It was only with the development of capitalism that large numbers of women developed a consciousness of their position and the ability to do something about it. – Wait a minute, I thought you just said that capitalism was the problem, not the solution?! And what evidence do you have about women’s “oppression” being a direct result of class?  I would say that religion could be just as relevant, as could a few biological inconveniences, like having children, which has inevitably had a huge impact on human civilisation throughout the ages.
• Women have been drawn into the workforce in millions but working in factories, offices and shops has not led to an improvement in women’s lives far less to liberation. Women suffer exploitation at work as well as still shouldering the double burden of family and childcare as well as paid work. – Not led to an improvement in women’s lives?!  Tell me, have you spent anytime in a Third World or developing nation recently?  How unbelievably stupid of you to suggest that women going into the workforce has been a bad thing, and since when were women confined to “factories, offices and shops”?  What century are you living in?  I’m fairly confident you’ll also find women in schools, hospitals and goodness knows how many other places.  Where is your evidence of exploitation at work?  Since when did men not contribute to childcare costs and bringing up their family? 
• Women’s traditional role as wives and mothers has not disappeared but has been reinvented to fit in with the needs of exploitation. They are now expected to juggle all aspects of their lives and are blamed as individuals for any failings in family or work life. – What the hell does “the needs of exploitation” mean?  Everyone has to juggle different parts of their lives, but I’m sorry to say that men can’t (yet) have children so there are some things that men can’t help with.  To suggest that women are blamed for problems in the family or at work is unbelievably warped.
• The talk of glass ceilings and unfairly low bonuses for women bankers miss the point about liberation, which is that liberation has to be for all working women and not just a tiny number of privileged women. – I never said women got paid unfairly low bonuses.  I think you’ll find that most bonuses are paid on the basis of performance, so maybe men justified their higher bonuses by performing better?  Is that really so far beyond the realms of possibility?
• Although all women suffer oppression and face discrimination, their life experiences are radically different. Women are not united as a sex but are divided on the basis of class. Middle and upper class women share in the profits from the exploitative system in which we live and use this benefit to alleviate their own oppression. Working class women are usually the people who cook, clean and provide personal services for these women, receiving low wages and often neglecting their own families to do so. – Since when is cooking, cleaning and providing services restricted to working class women?  I think you’ll find that men perform these tasks in huge numbers, certainly in London.  Your suggestion that middle and upper class women share in the profits of exploitation is just bizarre, as it’s more than likely that some of these women have successfully juggled bringing up a family and having a job, which is precisely what you were suggesting led to exploitation of the women in question.  This is just confused nonsense.  Presumably using profits to “alleviate their own oppression” can be translated as ‘women spending the money that they have earned’?
• Women are more than ever regarded as objects defined by their sexuality. The commercialisation of sexuality with its lad and ladette culture, its pole dancing clubs and its post-modern Miss World contests keeps women being judged as sex objects as if nothing has changed since the 1950s. – yes, because women would never ever ever objectify men or stare at them in magazines or go and watch a show where men take their clothes off….
• This objectification, alongside women’s role as supposedly the property of men, leads to domestic violence, rape and sexual abuse. This abuse is under recognised and under reported. It was only in the 1960s and 70s that these issues began to be viewed as political. – I think you’ll find that domestic violence, rape and sexual abuse have existed since the dawn of mankind.  Where is your evidence that there is a causal link between objectification and these acts?  If you want to talk about under recognised and under reported abuse, shouldn’t you be discussing domestic violence against men as well?
• To control their own lives, women must control their own bodies and sexuality. – women already do have control, it’s just that some women choose to flaunt their bodies on a Saturday night down the local high street rather than stand up for your faltering cause.
• Capitalist ideology prioritises the family and the subordinate role of women and children within it, while at the same time forcing individual members of the family to sacrifice ‘family life’ because of the pressures of work and migration. – ah yes, the classic ‘women are forced to stay at home and look after the children’ argument.  With all due respect, every survey that I have seen in the last few years shows beyond any doubt that many women want to stay at home rather than return to work after having children.  Capitalism has nothing to do with it. 
• The priorities of the profit system and the existence of the privatised family means that women’s oppression is structured into capitalism. Any genuine liberation has to be connected to a wider movement for human emancipation and for working people to control the wealth that they produce. That’s why women and men have to fight for liberation. Socialism and women’s liberation are inextricably connected. – I love that, a “privatised family”.  You mean a family who don’t want you telling them how to live their lives, right?  Working people controlling the wealth they produce also has hints of Marxism about it, which is not exactly encouraging.
• We will not win without a fight. Every great social movement raises the question of women. In the 19th century the movement for women’s emancipation took its name from the movement to abolish slavery. In the 20th century women’s liberation took its name from the movements against colonialism around the world. 21st century women’s liberation has to fight to change the world and to end the class society which created oppression and exploitation in the first place. – *roll eyes* so even though capitalism and freedom has presented women with more opportunities than ever before in the history of women’s rights, you want to destroy it?  Oppression and exploitation are such wonderfully loaded words, as if women are forced into work, forced into having children, forced into sacrificing everything for men, forced into jobs they don’t want etc etc.  Maybe you come and chat to the women that I work with and tell them that they are exploited?

It is people like you who do far more harm to women’s rights than men ever could.  Your obsession with grossly unfair stereotypes, your failure to provide any concrete evidence to support your assertions (otherwise known as ‘Harmanism’), your appalling vindictive view of men, your disgraceful attempts to ‘play the victim’ at every opportunity and your shocking lack of understanding of freedom and liberty all combines into this confused, naive and generally dreadful manifesto.  The sad truth is that, as always, you have taken an issue that does need discussing and morphed it into a man-hating freedom-hating spiel that totally undermines your own credibility and ultimately undermines the very cause that you are fighting for.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

1. Diary of a Geek discovers that Afghan war reporting is to be banned.

2. The Appalling Strangeness discusses (the lack of) neutrality at the Guardian.

3. Quiet Man finds that some people just cannot let go of the past.

4. Moments of Clarity thinks he has a rare example of a Government minister being correct.

5. Adam Collyer finds Labour in disarray over education spending cuts.

“A belief need not include faith or worship of a god or gods, but must affect how a person lives their life or perceives the world.”

- guidance on Harriet Harman’s new Equality Bill, explaining why vegans and teetotallers amongst others are to be given the same protection against discrimination as religious groups.  The Bill makes it a legal requirement for public authorities, including schools, to consider the impact of all their policies on minority groups, but these groups include Scientologists and pacifists as well as vegans, teetotallers and many others.  The guidance has already caused controversy after warning that schools which force girls to wear skirts may be breaking the law because the policy apparently discriminates against transsexuals by breaching the rights of girls who feel compelled to live as boys.  Religious leaders have also condemned Harman’s equality laws for sideling religion to promote a false idea of ‘tolerance’.  (full story HERE)

*yawn*

Yes, it’s still going.  Last night, Mandelson said that David Cameron’s failure to confront his billionaire deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft over his tax status exposes the “fundamental weakness” of the Conservative leader and undermines his claim to be a moderniser.  In an interview with the Guardian, he said that Ashcroft had Cameron “by the balls”, the affair showed Cameron was “too weak to pick a fight with his own party” and the Tories were “fundamentally unchanged”.

Ok, let’s run through that attack again but this time remove any reference to a particular party:

‘The leader of a party has failed to confront their wealthy donors, which exposes the “fundamental weakness” of the party leader and undermines their claim to be a moderniser.  Critics claim that the wealthy donors have the leader “by the balls”, the incident showed that the leader was “too weak to pick a fight with his own party” and that the party remains “fundamentally unchanged”.’

Pray, Mandelson, tell us lesser beings, how exactly did your old mate Tony manage the finances when he was in charge?  Hmmm?  From what I remember, he jumped into bed with any rich donor he could find and handed out peerages for fun when someone passed him a sizeable cheque.  Blair never picked a fight with his own party because he always knew he would lose – reforming public sector pensions and reforming public services being classic examples.  The Left of the Labour Party always hated his love of big business and rich donors, but the party itself never really changed its spots and has ended up back in bed with the unions now that most of the wealthy donors have fled.  The Labour Party has never truly modernised, Tony just put on a different mask for a little while, but it’s all gone full circle now.  Add to that Harriet Harman’s epic fail on TV yesterday when she said did not know whether Labour donors Lord Paul, Sir Ronald Cohen and William Bollinger were non-doms, and Labour have themselves one fine attempt at deception.  Pickles said: “For a week, she and other cabinet ministers have been bleating about accepting donations from them. Yet when confronted with Labour’s £10m -plus of non dom donations, she could only obfuscate. When will she learn that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones?”

Labour’s desperation to continue flogging the non-dom horse signifies two things: first, their desperation to make the public think that the Conservatives are less than savoury; and second, their desperation not to talk about their own policies because they don’t have any.  Even if the public have given up on this story (which I’m fairly sure they have), Labour need to keep it going as long as possible to fill the gaping policy void that their failure over the last 13 years has left behind.  Make no mistake – this non-dom flogging is about as deliberate and calculated as you can get.

“The sort of people you see in TV advertisements for deodorants”

- Tory peer Norman Tebbit on the new breed of Conservative parliamentary candidates

From the Telegraph:

MPs have demanded the right to first class train travel in a move that threatens to reignite the expenses row. They say they need the perk in order to be able to work during journeys to and from Parliament. One MP even said he needed a first class seat because of his height.  Their pleas are included in nearly 50 submissions made by MPs to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), the body charged with drawing up a new system of allowances to replace the discredited expenses system. Documents published by the organisation show that many MPs also resent proposals by its chairman, Sir Ian Kennedy to ban them from employing relatives, scrap the payment of a ‘Golden Goodbye’ when they lose their seat and limit the amount they spend on running their office.

The attempt by some MPs to retain some of the most controversial aspects of the expenses system is likely to provoke further anger among voters and accusations that politicians are engaging in special pleading.  Sir Ian’s proposal that MPs should only be allowed to travel first class in “exceptional circumstances” – such as a journey of more than two and a half hours – met with particularly strong opposition by parliamentarians.  Ann Widdecombe, the Conservative MP for Maidstone and the Weald, accused him of being guided by media “spite” rather than value to the taxpayer, and pointed out she had written two books while travelling first class.  She said: “If I travel first class, I can plug in my computer, not a facility that is universally available in second class. I can therefore work throughout the journey. The ‘at seat’ service means that I do not have to interrupt the work to go and queue in the train’s buffet bar. Second class being more of a thoroughfare, interruption and engagement in conversation is a great deal more frequent.”  Tom Levitt, the Labour backbencher for High Peak, said: “I invariably work on the train, something I can only do in a first class carriage for three reasons: that I have a table, space and privacy to work there; that I have a seat (as the standard class carriages between Manchester and London are often standing room only); and that (as I am over six feet tall) I have the leg room for comfort.”  Sandra Gidley, Lib Dem MP for Romsey, said: “I find I can usually do some useful work which is not always possible in standard class. Also, as a woman travelling alone late at night I feel safer in first, particularly on the later trains when there are often a number of people who have been drinking.” 

Anyone else have a sense of deja vu about this and those awful ’second class’ citizens on our trains?  MPs want first-class travel because it is more comfortable (I’m sure it is), they want first-class travel because it’s nice and quiet (how very rude of people to have conversations in second class), they want first-class travel so that they don’t have to go to the buffet car and can instead sit on their arse and get served (unbelievably lazy), they want first-class travel to let them write books (is that really relevant for carrying out their duties as an MP?), they want first-class travel because it gives them a table (even though this is clearly available in the vast majority of second class trains as well) and they want first-class travel because, apparently, it is too dangerous to sit in second-class carriages (I have survived thus far).

Hello, this is The Real World calling MPs – is there anybody there?

1. Subrosa discusses Gordon Brown’s ‘planned’ visit to Afghanistan.

2. Laban Tall thinks Labour are finally giving up on Britishness and Englishness.

3. Tim Worstall finds something that probably won’t be appearing in the Guardian.

4. Prodicus reminds us that Gordon Brown’s public debt is our debt.

5. Counting Cats says Labour are doing Osama Bin Laden a huge favour.

“The truth is that [Gordon Brown] is to reforming public services what Nero was to fire safety; or Tiger Woods to marital fidelity.”

- David Cameron, speaking at the Welsh Conservatives’ annual conference

From the BBC and Telegraph:

The Met Office is to stop publishing seasonal forecasts, after receiving criticism over its repeated failures to predict long-term weather prospects. The national weather service has until now published an outlook for the country’s weather three months in advance. But after predicting a “barbecue summer”, before a wet July, and a “mild winter”, before heavy snowfall and the coldest winter temperatures in 30 years, the seasonal forecast has been quietly ditched. Instead the Met Office will give a monthly outlook that is updated every week.

Dave Britton, of the Met Office, admitted last night that it was just too difficult to give an accurate forecast for the seasons using the current science. ”By their nature, forecasts become less accurate the further out we look. Although we can identify general patterns of weather, the science does not exist to allow an exact forecast beyond five days, or to absolutely promise a certain type of weather. As a result, ’seasonal forecasts’ cannot be as precise as our short-term forecasts,” he said.

The Met Office said it decided to change its forecasting approach after carrying out customer research.  It said the UK is one of the hardest places to provide forecasts for due to its “size and location”, making it “very hard to forecast much beyond a week”. However, it claimed its short-term forecasts are “extremely accurate”. The Met Office, based at Exeter in Devon, added that it would work towards developing the science of long range forecasting.

Now let’s just pause for a moment and consider what the Met Office are saying.  First and foremost, the Met Office is one of – if not the – primary source of weather data used by the University of East Anglia and the IPCC when producing their climate change ‘predictions’.  Keeping that in mind, here is the quote again from the Met Office: “By their nature, forecasts become less accurate the further out we look. Although we can identify general patterns of weather, the science does not exist to allow an exact forecast beyond five days, or to absolutely promise a certain type of weather. As a result, ’seasonal forecasts’ cannot be as precise as our short-term forecasts.”  Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t this come across as slightly contradictory?  On the one hand, the Met Office and the pro-climate change lobby spend a lot of time preaching to us about exactly what will happen in terms of temperature changes, sea ice levels, food production, sea level rises and a host of other variables over the next 100 years or so, yet the Met Office freely admit that they have no idea what the weather is going to be like next week.

I do not consider myself knowledgable enough on climate science to make any kind of affirmative statement either way on climate change and what is causing it and what will happen in future, but surely anyone with a shred of common sense can see why the entire notion of climate change is rapidly becoming an absolute farce?  If the people who have access to the entire global temperature data record can’t tell us whether it will be warmer or colder next week or next month or next year, what possible justification do they have in asking me to change my lifestyle or spend more money or attempt to single-handedly save the planet?

1. Newgate News has found a new way of getting the vermin out of Parliament.

2. The Tap says we should beware of false good news about the economy.

3. 13th Spitfire captures the essence of Labour’s attitude towards us.

4. Raedwald tells David Cameron to spend his Easter break wrestling crocodiles.

5. A Tangled Web is starting to question the value of the ’special relationship’ with America.

“The prime minister is clear that we need to strengthen public confidence in the political system and reduce the cost of politics.”

- a Downing Street spokeswoman, responding to the news that MPs will get a rise of nearly £1,000 in their basic salary from 1st April 2010, taking their pay to £65,737 a year.   The 1.5% increase follows uproar at the MPs’ expenses scandal and anger among public sector unions at pay freezes.

…well, if you’re Dutch, that is. 

From the Telegraph:

The far-right politician Geert Wilders is poised to become the next Dutch prime minister after making major gains in regional elections.  Municipal results announced yesterday put his party in first place in Almere, a region near Amsterdam, and second in The Hague, one the country’s largest cities and the seat of the Dutch government.  If repeated in national elections on June 9, the Freedom Party could win 27 out of 150 seats, becoming the largest single party and putting him in line to become Prime Minister and form a new government. “We are going to conquer the entire country we are going to be the biggest party in the country,” he said after the vote. “The leftist elite still believes in multiculturalism, coddling criminals, a European superstate and high taxes. But the rest of the Netherlands thinks differently. That silent majority now has a voice.”

The Freedom Party currently has nine of the 150 seats in the Dutch parliament, and five of the country’s 25 European parliament seats. But some polls suggest it is now the most popular party in Holland, traditionally seen as a bastion of tolerance.  The Dutch political mainstream yesterday made clear its outrage at the election results. NRC Handelsblad, the Dutch newspaper of record, observing: “The Dutch political system, based on consensus and co-operation, is coming apart at the seams.” 

Muslims in Almere, where one third of the 190,000 population is of immigrant origin, reacted with shock and anger to his party’s success, fearing his victory would fan animosity. “It is terrible,” said computer sciences student Kadriye Kacar, 35, who was born in Holland but is of Turkish descent. “People are looking at us in a new way today as if they are thinking – ‘We won and you are leaving’. I don’t wear a headscarf normally but I have decided to start doing so now out of protest. Other people in my community are planning to do the same. We will protest until Wilders is gone.”

Intruiging.  Opinion polls show him vying for the national lead with the Christian Democrats, whose coalition Government collapsed last month after the Labour Party walked out in a row over keeping Dutch troops in Afghanistan.  “Today Almere and The Hague, tomorrow the whole of the Netherlands. This is our springboard for success in parliamentary elections,” said Wilders, who campaigned in Almere for a ban on the wearing of headscarves in public. “We are going to take the Netherlands back from the leftist elite that comforts criminals and supports Islamisation.”  What an incredible thought: a far-right leader elected on an anti-EU anti-open immigration platform in a traditionally moderate nation in just three months time - and there was us thinking that our election was going to be interesting…

1. Longrider does not recommend throwing people you don’t like onto railway lines.

2. Going Fast Getting Nowhere discovers that injuring police officers isn’t so bad after all.

3. The Adam Smith Institute says it is time to scrap the cap on university tuition fees.

4. Ranting Stan is seriously unhappy with ‘the youth of today’.

5. Capitalists at Work would like some protection from the ‘Brown Devaluation’.

“You may not recognise marriage in a tax system, but you sure do in a political system”

- William Hague taunts Harriet Harman over the fact that her husband, Jack Dromey, is to fight a reputedly safe Labour seat at the general election.

Dear Ben Lewis,

Everyone loves suing big companies these days but sometimes I wonder whether their claims should even make it to the courtroom.  You are considering suing McDonald’s after being left with horrific burns from a cup of tea when it spilled over your right leg.  You cannot work, drive, or shower easily due to the burns – which may scar you for life – and you are thinking of taking legal action against the fast food giant.  Yet again, the issue of personal responsibility comes to the fore, even if the law doesn’t give it anywhere near enough recognition in such cases. 

The story goes that you needed urgent hospital treatment after the lid came off the cup when the car you were in went over a 5 mph speed bump as you and your girlfriend left a McDonald’s drive-thru in Newtown, Powys, on Friday last week.  The car was being driven by your girlfriend, who then drove you straight to her house for a cold shower to calm the wound, but you were screaming in pain so she took you to hospital where you received treatment for burns. Your leg is now covered in blisters and you are left unable to drive and cannot even take a shower without wrapping the painful burn in bandages.  You have also had to take at least two weeks off work. You said: “It’s so dangerous, it could have been a baby or a young child that was burnt, and that would have been so much worse. Obviously the lid wasn’t properly put on the tea. It only took going over a speedbump to get tea all over me. It was incredibly painful, I screamed when it happened and yanked my trousers down to stop them sticking to me. I went immediately to my girlfriend’s house, where I had a cold shower and had to go to the hospital that night. I took some powerful painkillers, and had my leg wrapped in clingfilm, to protect the burns. I’m going to have to go back to hospital at some point. The blisters have gone down a bit now, but it’s still so painful and sore. I’ve been worried about bursting the blisters and causing scarring. I’ve been told that the blisters won’t go for another month or so and who knows what my leg will look like after that. It’s scary that they serve tea at that temperature with lids that aren’t put on right.”

Sounds horrific, undoubtedly, but who is responsible for this?  Your dad said: “I think we should sue them. McDonald’s shouldn’t be able to get away with this. What happened was absolutely horrific and he can’t even walk at the moment. The tea must have exceeded the maximum heat that it’s meant to be served at. They shouldn’t be able to get away with it, and they won’t get away with it I hope.”  Errrr, get away with what exactly?  And how can the tea have exceeded the heat at which tea is served?  Surely you understand that tea is ridiculously hot?  Even if the lid is not on properly, whose fault is it that you did not check before setting off in the car?  Are McDonalds really responsible for you choosing to drive over speed bumps?  Do they need speed-bump-proof cups to keep you happy?  How can you be sure that it wasn’t you who knocked the lid out of place when you were handed the cup at the drive-thru?

I would not want to diminish the physical pain that you suffered because it must have been excrutiating, but I am not entirely convinced that someone else should be responsible for the fact that you drove over an extremely violent road surface without checking that everything was safe beforehand.  If you went offroading or starting charging down the outside lane of a motorway when the tea spilled, would you still blame McDonalds?  McDonalds have said they will launch an urgent investigation into this incident and it’s clearly a bit of a PR blunder for them, but legally this issue is a very serious one – at what point do we say that you need protection from the actions of others (e.g. McDonalds putting the lid on the cup) versus you needing to take responsibility for your own safety (e.g. you checking that the lid is firmly secured)?  My worry is that, as with everything else under Labour, personal responsibility gets trampled on by the belief that the responsibility and/or blame always lies with someone else.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

1. Obselete thinks the BBC has always put ‘quality’ at the bottom of their priority list.

2. The Daily Maybe says farewell to Michael Foot.

3. Blue Idea demands that an English Parliament is included in any devolution debates.

4. Adam Collyer says we need support from Europe to keep the Falklands issue under control.

5. Dick Puddlecote discovers that society has gone off the rails under Labour yet again.

“Kremlinologists of the party have talked of various pygmies and teenagers in the closed circle around Mr Cameron having catfights with each other, or being reassigned duties within the nascent campaign, as panic starts to seep up the creeks and fill the shallows of what was once the dry land of self-assurance. A summit was, we are told, held in Notting Hill a fortnight ago to try to restore order. Yet it can hardly matter whether Steve Hilton is in charge of strategy before or after the election, or whether Andy Coulson is doing big picture, small picture, or no picture at all. The damage is done. The closed circle was, and still is, out of touch with natural Tories. The reason why the lead is footling when it should be vast is that the Notting Hill Project, to which the rest of the Tory party has entrusted its fortunes for the past four years or so, has failed. Many activists know it; so do many MPs.”

- Simon Heffer in today’s Telegraph (full article HERE)

Dear Nigel Farage,

I know that you consider yourself to be a bit of a maverick when it comes to speeches in the European Parliament.  Unfortunately for you, your latest one-man show has landed you with a £2,700 fine.  I freely admit to agreeing with some of the things that you and UKIP say, but this time you really debased politics itself and did yourself no favours in the proces.  First of all, here is a reminder of what happened:

You were summoned yesterday to see the European parliament’s president, Jerzy Buzek, who demanded that you apologise to Belgium, its people and its former prime minister for his remarks.  When you refused, Buzek said he was considering sanctions, including possible suspension from the chamber, against him. You later used Twitter to declare: “Sentence passed, letter from parliament. President: Maximum allowable fine 2,980 euros. Free speech is expensive in Brussels.” He said he would appeal against the fine, later adding that: “I am not going to apologise to Mr Van Rompuy, and I am not going to apologise to the people of Belgium. Surely I am entitled to have a dig at a man representing 500 million people, who is paid more than the US president and who has not been elected by us? As for apologising to the Belgian people – look, I’m not going to do that for what I said about their country, which doesn’t have proper political parties.”  Asked whether you had been blunt with Buzek during their 15-minute meeting, you said: “No, I was very polite. But I did explain that perhaps his definition of democracy and freedom of speech is different from mine.”

The thought that you have declared yourself some kind of martyr for free speech is genuinely laughable.  Of course you can say what you want, but what part of your brain makes you think it is appropriate and constructive to starting personally insulting the appearance and demeanour of a fellow politician instead of attacking their views, their actions and their record?  As Buzek said, your behaviour towards Mr Rompuy was “inappropriate, unparliamentary and insulting to the dignity of the house.”  So what if Rompuy has “the charisma of a damp rag”, so what if he has the appearance of a “low-grade bank clerk” and so what if you think Belgium is “pretty much a non-country”?  You should judge politicians on what they say and do, not on how they look.  By all means criticise the lack of democracy within the EU and get angry that the President of the European Council has little or no reputation abroad – these are perfectly legitimate complaints.  Furthermore, I would even encourage you to slate the abysmal performance and diplomacy skills of Baroness Ashton, who has caused nothing but unrest and dismay since she was appointed – something which bodes extremely badly for the EU as a whole.  However, to debase politics by taking shots at someone’s appearance reflects extremely badly on you and, more importantly, it reflects extremely badly on our country. 

Can you imagine the uproar if Gordon Brown started attacking David Cameron on the basis of his looks?  There would be absolute outrage from the Conservative Party, from the media and from MPs.  It is childish, it undermines respectable political debate and it suggests that you have nothing to offer other than personal insults.  If all we can offer as a nation is petty remarks and verbal sniping then why should anyone listen to our MPs, our MEPs or even our Prime Minister?  You can paint yourself as the victim all you want, but the fact of the matter is that your actions were shameful and you have no right to claim that you speak for this country when you behave in such a manner.  Although I have a lot of sympathy for UKIP’s stance on many issues, I have no wish to associate myself with what you have done and nor, I suspect, do many other voters.

Yours in frustration,

A.Tory