Fake-personalised ‘letter’ is Jane Dodds latest electioneering trick
Mrs Mike would like to put Jane Dodds on notice that if another piece of electioneering drivel comes through our letterbox, she’ll happily shove it as far down the Liberal Democrat’s throat as she can reach.
“I’m just sick and tired of it,” she’s telling me right now. “It’s constant. Why waste so much money on this when it doesn’t say anything [I’m paraphrasing here; the actual language was much less diplomatic] about helping people who need it – the sick, the disabled, people who’ve had everything taken from them by the dratted [more paraphrasing] Tories.”
The correspondence that caused so much ire was another leaflet – this time disguised as a personal and handwritten letter, delivered direct to the recipient. In fact it is another Fib Dem leaflet, printed by a company in Bristol (another snub against this constituency, which has perfectly decent printers of its own).
“Dear Neighbour,” the leaflet says – another giveaway that it isn’t personal at all, and another lie; Ms Dodds lives in Welshpool, which isn’t even in the constituency.
There’s a bit of flannel about the “wonderfully warm reception” she’s had across “our” community. “Our” community? You have to live in it first!
Then she tells us “Westminster politics has failed people across Powys” – showing she doesn’t recognise the difference between Brecon and Radnorshire constituency and the county that contains it. And if Westminster politics has failed us, aren’t the Liberal Democrats partly to blame – they let the Tories into power and propped them up for five years, enthusiastically supporting every bit of legislation that stole from ordinary people and gave to the super-rich.
The Liberal Democrats’ supreme achievement during those five years, it seems, was to apply a 5p tax to plastic bags – bought at the cost of inflicting deep cuts in benefits for the sick and disabled. You see, Mrs Mike was right to be angry.
“We shouldn’t suffer in silence while essential local services like buses, shops and cashpoints disappear from our communities,” she writes, even though – if she becomes MP – she won’t be suffering at all; she’ll have £70,000 a year of our money to cushion the impact.
“We shouldn’t settle for patients having to endure long waiting times and journeys to get essential health treatment.” As I grow tired of continually pointing out, health is a devolved matter – on which I am told the incumbent Liberal Democrat AM has not fared well (see today’s article about Chris Davies). In any case, the Labour-led Welsh Assembly Government is already pouring nearly £2 million extra cash into Powys teaching Health Board, so there will be little for an elected Jane Dodds to do about it but sit back and count the zeroes on the paycheque that she hasn’t earned.
“We shouldn’t stay quiet while our farming industry is under threat or when working parents have to rely on foodbanks to feed their children. The hypocrisy here really is unbearable. The only reason anybody here has to rely on foodbanks is that the Liberal Democrats joined forces with the Tories to force them.
That’s the point you need to remember. Never mind the rest – it’s a waste of time reading it.
Mrs Mike is still talking: “These Lib Dems were in coalition with the Conservatives – that’s when they caused all the problems.
“They screwed everybody over.
“People are starving, losing their homes because they can’t pay their rent.
“School kids are going hungry – and that’s not on. All down to what the Liberal Democats did with the Conservatives.”
And she said: “They’re on our doorsteps now but they never come round after they’ve been elected. They don’t want to know you then.
“If Jane bloody Dodds gets elected we won’t hear from her again until the next election. That’s not representation.”
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I’ve been living in Scotland, since the early 70s anyway. The Scottish Government had already imposed the plastic bag tax so the Lib Dems have done nothing except enable Tory austerity plans. I’m old enough to remember the Tories from the 70s, 80s and 90s and all we ever knew them for was cuts. ‘Tory Cuts’ is what I think of rather than the ‘Conservative Party’
I’m not sure that anyone will ever trust the LibDems again after they dropped every single manifesto promise and joined with the Tories in government. I wonder how those older, ex right wing Labour voters, who joined with their SDP counterparts feel about this? That was a battle fought and lost in the 80s, the right wingers who despise Corbyn should join the LibDems as Chuka Umuna has. I admire him for being truthful to his real feelings, at least.
But I will pick you up on one small point. Whilst health may be devolved and the Welsh Government may be seen as failing in comparison to other devolved administrations we should remember that the funding allocated is by Westminster. They set the funding level per patient and give it to the devolved governments. it’s then up to those governments to spend the money as they decide. So they could spend less on policing and more on health, for example. In Scotland they decided to give workers a higher pay rise (1% instead of zero) than elsewhere in the UK even though Westminster didn’t allocate for this.
Of course money and funding isn’t the only reason that NHS in Wales is underperforming, it’s much more complicated than that. But it doesn’t stop all and sundry from criticising Labour in Wales for failing on that and for making decisions, such as raising the age for eligibility for bus passes which they are trying to make out that the Scottish Government is about to do (it isn’t) and criticising them heavily for it.
Either Labour needs to actually become separate parties in England, Wales & Scotland or it needs to get its act together and sing from the same hymn sheet. A difficult task when constantly under attack from within…
On your health point: I have made that very point today to a commenter, albeit on Twitter. I’m not criticising the Welsh Government over health because my own experience of healthcare here is very good indeed.
I’m sure it must be frustrating to get all this Lib Dem stuff after all the damage they did in coalition with the Tories. But it raises an important question for us all.
To what extent do we enhance our chances of election in a close race by making sure that the voters get loads of leaflets and cards from us.? So that they can’t ignore us or think we aren’t even standing.
We all know that the Tory-controlled Press will do us no favours and the BBC is positively hostile.
So how do we counter the barrage of Tory propaganda, except with lots of (admittedly) “old tech” leaflets etc through the door.
I assume that that is the Lib Dem strategy. Just bombard voters with the same message.”Candidate name recognition” etc.
As a Labour activist in a small southern English town, I know that our recent electoral success depends on making sure that the voters actually realise that we exist, we are around, there are (genuinely) lots of us and we are serious. So we end up putting round lots of literature.
Round here , the majority of political literature at any stage will be Labour stuff. The Tories hardly bother as , until now, they “always get elected”.
If I could think of an alternative to slogging round the houses stuffing paper through the letterboxes, I would jump at it. But, even with excellent blogging like this site, Mike, I can’t think of anything any better.
Would you really put something through voters’ letterboxes every single day, though – or as close to it as makes no difference?
People in Brecon and Radnorshire are utterly sick to the back teeth of this woman and her propaganda sheets begging for their votes despite the fact that she has no workable policies and couldn’t do anything about them even if they were.