Quote of the day 30th May 2015

"It would help Labour if it had leaders who talked to the voters as if they came from the same human species — or if that is too much to ask, from close relatives among the higher primates."

(Nick Cohen, in an article in Standpoint titled "Labour doesn't get why the Tories won.")

Comments

Jim said…
It would help if all people from all all parties done more of this, and I have to say that the attack on Carswell has not helped, its hindered this approach.

All it done is sent a message that the political class should be segregated from every one else.
8:16 am
Chris Whiteside said…
Fair comment, and you are absolutely right about the fallout of the attack on Carswell.

The last incumbent Prime Minister who was willing to meet ordinary people in an environment where nothing was scripted or controlled was John Major (literally on a soapbox in town centres) and that is nearly 20 years ago now.

David Cameron did hold "Cameron Direct" meetings around the country which were genuinely unscripted and at which many of the people present and asking questions were not Conservative activists when he was leader of the opposition.

But to the best of my knowledge he's not done anything that unscripted as Prime Minister. I am convinced this is for security reasons rather than because he's personally afraid of difficult questions from the public - if the "Cameron Direct" event I attended in Cumbria is anything to go by he did not have the slightest difficulty dealing with such questions.
1:38 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the...
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more