h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hip Hip hurray.
Hip Hip hurray.
Hip hip hurray.

Have the conservatives finally lost it?

At the conservative party conference, yesterday, some gormless brain dead politition asked the crowd of gathered idiots for 'three cheers for Tony Martain', a convicted murderer.
Right, so they are now the party that has policy X Y or Z regarding poliecing the country, but congradulate convicted criminals? With that kind of contempt for the legal system... and now of course I'm forgotten teh name of the idiot prat who was making the speech

So have I, but maybe that's just as well. Pretty disgusting, was my verdict. The only positive is that it's nice to watch the Conservatives keep digging that hole.

Talk about being politically incorrect...

Well quite, I didn't put anything up about it yesterday, when I actually listened to this bit of the speech on the radio, as I didn't believe it at the time; I had not long before suffered an extreme shock of having my gas and electric meters in teh house read for teh first time ever (I've had the house over three years), and thought I might be in dilusional shock at the time Its just a pity that when we really seem to need some plausible contenders in UK politcs, (mainly as a consequence of the war against Iraq), the Conservatives keep seeming to dig themselves further and further away from the real world... A healthy democracy requires competetition amongst different political enterties, spawning appropiate debate and discussion of matters of national, and often international importance. I guess we have a rather unhealthy democracy now.

The UK has had a decidedly unhealthy democracy ever since the labour party got voted into office with such a large majority...

On a different note... Am I being completely naive in thinking that the LibDems _could_ actually end up being the second party in British Politics?

I think the libs just about are* the second party now... And, yes, that* huge majority wasn't helpful for democracy, but I didn't think the Conservatives would spend so long just seeming to get worse and worse in reducing the gap to something respectible

Hmm, I don't think the current Conservative party is doing any worse than Labour was in the 1980s, so there is still hope for them yet...

I heard a very interesting snippet from a politician (I believe he was a Labour politician) on the TV the other day...

To paraphrase...
"The only problem with the Conservative party at the moment is that there's a _better_ conservative party in power at the moment"

I will just lurk quietly in the thread, while being a Liberal Democrat.

It's no longer a reason to wear a bag over your head egon






Just!

Egon has other reasons to wear bags.

I think the Tories (and, indeed, the D*ily M*il's) point was that Tony Martin was convicted by the Labour party.

A bit like Saddam, come to think of it.

B

I thought bags over the head were a conservative speciality?

Can't remember the details of the tony Martain case particularly, but I imagine it were a jury that convicted him not a government...

Yesa- Jury convicted Mr. Martin of murder. The conviction was downgraded to maanslaughter on appeal.

An interesting display of multiple ignorance by contributors to this thread, writing untruthful statements that are at least technically libellous. Tony Martin is not a convicted murderer; he was found guilty of manslaughter, by a jury who listened to all the facts of the case and did't just come out with kneejerk reactions based on half-remembered half-baked newspaper accounts of the case which was heard several years ago.

And no, for those who have already jumped to another false conclusion, I am not and never have been a Tory voter, nor have I ever been in favour of that party's hanging and flogging tendency. In this case, a sentence of five years imprisonment, taking into account all the circumstances, seems to me to have been reasonable.

Simon Hoggart (writing in the Guardian) once described the Conservative Party Conference as a "sort of anti-Woodstock, a festival of hate and rancour". Spot on.

Tony Martin *was* convicted of murder by the Jury. That verdict was substituted for one of manslaughter in one of the more cynically political moves from the court of appeal in the last three decades. Spo perhaps comments about serial ignorance are, like ego's, best left at the door.

Quite how the Labour Party convicted him is beyond me. As i never tire of saying, 12 jurors heard *all* the evidence in the case. Your brief summary of the 'available facts' doesn't even cover the length of a police summary of the available facts. What makes you think you are better qualified to decide on his guilt or otherwise thatn they were?

In fairness, the right hon. member (and what an appropriate term that is in these circumstances) didn't ask for three cheers for Tony Martin. He asked for conference to show it's support for Tony Martin. Conference decided the way to do this was to give three cheers. Mad as cheese, the lot of them.

The Tories are sock puppets. Faced with a golden opportunity to stick the boot in the Blairites, they instead resort to internecine warfare amongst themselves. have their policies diominated conference coverage - no, their attempts to stab old baldy Nosferatu in the back have.

And what spooky pictures of baldy Nosferatu and the prince of darkness standing side by side today. I felt my arteries shriek in horror...



Oh and congratulations to the headmaster of the school who thought it was appropriate to ask Mr Martin to come in and make a speech to the kids about crime prevention. Maybe they'd like Peter Sutcliffe to come and lecture on preventing spousal abuse next...

I never heard the speech or cheer that was mentioned at the start of this thread but the topic of the thread seems to have shifted on to the decline of the tories.
Would it be unreasonable to point out that in the last elections the tories won seats and labour lost them?

So you have to wonder which party is really in decline.

Dont know if anyone saw the Conservative conference broadcast on the TV tonight,but i thought it was quite good.

Makes you think.