The Thamesmead Grump

In the spirit of my recent promise not to comment on the forthcoming general election, here are some comments on the forthcoming general election.

Five reasons Why you should not vote for the Liberal Democrats.

The Liberal Democrats want the British public to be allowed to vote in a referendum on whether they agree to the Brexit terms negotiated by the government.

Are they totally out of their freaking minds? 

The last time we had a referendum, we voted to leave the EU; which is precicely what happens when you allow ill-informed and gullible members of the public to make important decisions about the nation's future. And now they want to do it again.

Let's make it absolutely clear, the terms of Britain's relationship with the rest of Europe, and indeed the world should be decided by government ministers and government ministers alone. The British people should not, under any circumstances have any say in what those terms are.

A vote for the Lib-Dems would hand ordinary people the right to a say in their future: this must not be allowed to happen. The only way to prevent this is to vote for the Torylabour party.

However, don't anyone say I'm not even-handed when it comes to passing on information about our local candidates so, in alphabetical order we have:-

Tory Government record
speaking for itself

Edward Baxter (Conservative). I don't know anything about Edward Baxter that can't be obtained from a standard Google search so there's not much point in repeating what readers can easily obtain for themselves. As to Tory policy generally, their record speaks for itself (as Amber Rudd rather foolishly said on Question Time). I'm not a fox so at least they don't seem to want to actually kill me although if my Wife still has her disability benefit by the end of the year, I'll be surprised. One thing they have promised to do is implement the Naylor Report which will result in all the assets currently owned by the NHS on behalf of the people being sold off to private businesses; the majority of which are foreign based so they won't have to pay any of those pesky taxes that you and I are burdened with.

Ronie Johnson (UKIP). Ronie has been trying to get elected in Erith & Thamesmead for some time now. To be honest, it doesn't really matter what he stands for personally as he is never going to be elected and even if he was, UKIP are as disorganised a bunch of half-wits as they have ever been and trying to get a cohesive policy out of them about anything at all is pretty unlikely. Apart from still chanting "Out, Out Out" they don't have much else to say. I think a lot of them have run away; they're really like a bunch of naughty schoolboys who thought it would be a good prank to set fire to the science lab and are now watching the whole school burn down. Much of their support came from disenchanted BNP supporters and I wonder if we might see a resurgence of support for them now that UKIP is disappearing up it's own fundament. According to the Bexley Times, which I'm shamelessly plagerising to write this post, "he's campaigning for Australian-style boarder controls" although I don't think he's talking about lodgers.

Candidate 105950

Claudine Letsae (Green Party). Claudine is a "Woman of Mystery"; no-one seems to know anything about her. The Green Party website doesn't even seem to know anything about her either other that she appears to be candidate No. 105950, and I am reduced to stealing what information I can from a Bexley is Bonkers article written by Malcolm Knight who actually took the trouble to go to the local hustings meeting on 28th May; I might have attended if I had known it was happening but then again, maybe I wouldn't. In any case, it's just general "let's do good" stuff so not really worth bothering with. Click the BiB link if you're interested. The trouble is, saying anything nasty about the Green Party is a bit like kicking a kitten. They do, in truth, have about as much political savvy as a kitten, but it still seems cruel so I'm not even going to mention Unicor..............

Doro Oddiri (Independent). Describing himself as "easy going, with liberal political views", one has to wonder why he isn't a member of the Liberal Democrats. Doing a Google search produced a News Shopper and other news accounts of him suffering serious injuries in a road accident in 2010 but there is nothing else about him.  Again, with no other sources of information, I am going to steal from my favourite, previously mentioned sources. Not only have his liberal views not endeared him to the Lib-Dems, he is actually quite scathing about them: they must have done something that has seriously upset him. Other than that, his rather simplistic approach to most of the world's problems, quaint though they are, will not be enough to cause me to vote for him.

Temi Olodu (Christian People's Alliance). A unilateral disarmer and anti-abortionist. As he wasn't at the hustings meeting attended by Malcolm Knight, I can't steal any of his copy so, doing my own research, I can't find much about his political opinions. Having said that, I really don't like the Christian People's Alliance. They seem to attract all that is worst in religious bigotry although it was the UKIP candidate David Sylvester who claimed that UK storms were caused by Gay Marriage.

Teresa Pearce (Labour). I can't really think of anything bad to say about Teresa. I have met her once or twice, generally at Royal British Legion Remembrance events but I've never had any other dealings with her. She seems to take an interest in local affairs which goes beyond the usual requirement of an MP. As far as The Labour Party generally goes, I support most of their policies but still remember the last time they were in power. Tony Blair's slavish support of reckless American foreign policy strategies, the Toryesque unwillingness to tackle tax avoidance by large corporations or it's desperate attempts to be anything other than a Tory party with a conscience still makes me highly suspicious of them. Although, to be fair, I don't see Jeremy Corbyn suffering those sort of policies much.

Simon Waddington (Liberal Democrat). Simon's election leaflet has just arrived as I am writing this although I can't say I'm much better informed as a consequence. First, they want to legalise drugs. This is never going to happen; not only is any chances of legislation going to be blocked by an unholy coalition of religionists, do-gooders and of course, all the crooked individuals in government and law enforcement agencies who do very nicely on the bribes paid to them to look the other way. There is also the huge lobby against de-regulation from all the vested interests that need the drugs trade to be illegal. Vast amounts of money are spent by law enforcement agencies trying to combat the trade. The amount they spend on equipment and materials, premises and the like is estimated to be around $100 billion a year worldwide according to "Count the Costs", a pressure group dedicated to de-regulation. How accurate this figure is may be open to question but it cannot be far wrong. Plus the hundreds of thousands of people who would be out of a job. I used to be a member of the Lib-Dems as I have recounted in earlier posts but finally lost patience with them when they refused to support a House of Commons vote which would have given the public a vote on the new terms of our EU membership. Ironic, that they seem to have changed their minds about that.