As a service to our absentee MP and to the New Labour Party in Hounslow, I reproduce below without amendment a posting which appeared on the party's local webpage a couple of days ago. To those who will accuse me of tactical naivete by needlessly giving a plug to our opponents, my response would be that the importance of empowering people in an age of dictatorship by spin cannot be stressed enough:
"Local people will be able to petition the council to take action on issues such as traffic calming, moving dumped cars, or cleaning up fly-tipping under new rights proposed by the Labour Government.
"Local Labour MP Ann Keen has challenged local people to take up the new powers and force action from the council.
"Ann said: ‘Most people Brentford and Isleworth have signed a petition. But soon, petitions will have real bite, and the council will have to sit up and take notice of local people’s concerns. I want people to tell me what they want fixing, and if the council won’t act, we will work together to launch a petition. Petitions will give our communities real clout.’
"Labour’s Communities in Control white paper also suggests that local people should be able to decide how the council spends money, how criminals should be punished as part of their ‘community payback’, how more young people should be involved, and how local groups should own and run assets such as parks and community centres.
"Ann Keen MP will be giving out a new pocket-sized card called What Can I Do? to local groups in coming weeks. The card sets out how people can have their say, get involved, and make changes locally."
I promise I am not making this up, this really is on the Brentford and Isleworth Labour Party's website.
If there is any sincerity at all in this new approach beyond its obvious Hounslow Council-bashing then this new initiative has to be applauded. But taking into account the track record of its authors, I hope I will be forgiven for not getting myself all worked up just now.
3 comments:
So your saying that you stand for all these things but when Labour says it stands for these things you have a go at them right? Dont this make you everything you say your against in other words a political party that just wants power and stands against the other political partys that get in your way?
Wrong Anonymous. I am not having a go at anybody. If political convenience was my priority I wouldn't have posted this item in the first place.
What I am saying is that to travel from a position where everything is controlled through one means or another by The Party to one in which the community is given real power is a volte face of such extraordinary magnitude that it requires some explanation.
When I left the National Front and embraced multi-racial and democratic ideals I considered I had an obligation to renounce the views which I had once held and to do so publicly. I renounce them still, and often.
Whilst I am not suggesting that there is any kind of moral equivalent between the two, there is certainly a logical equivalent.
New Labour, to my knowledge, has said nothing to suggest that it acknowledges the error of its old ways yet it wants us to believe, without expecting to be subject to any form of scrutiny, that it has now embraced an entirely antithetical principle.
In the absence of any explanation for its having done so I believe I am entitled to be sceptical, although as always I would be entirely happy were my scepticism to prove unfounded.
Is it true Phils joined the Torys hahaha
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