Tag: campaign

  • Theresa’s Trumped

    Theresa’s Trumped

    Blundering bin bag Theresa May will form a minority government today, but it won’t last; the nation want her and her nasty party gone

     

    From the moment Theresa May awkwardly held Donald Trump’s hand in Washington back in January, it was all but over. Cursed by appearing a poodle to the worst POTUS in history, Britain’s then unelected Prime Minister showed herself as a kowtowing coward and a mandateless moron.

     

    May – a self-declared “goody two shoes” whose outfits are supposedly chosen with the help of her ‘charitable’ chum Lady Meyer and whose “most naughty moment ever” was supposedly “golly gosh, running through fields of wheat” – had not needed to call an election but doing so has rightly cost her dear. When the contest was announced back in May, the public, represented best by ‘Brenda from Bristol’, told her: “Not another [election]. Oh for God’s sake, I can’t honestly… I can’t stand this”, but on this Lady Macbeth-like harridan blundered.

     

    Theresa’s Trumped – Theresa Trump got it so wrong and should go – Blundering bin bag Conservative leader Theresa May will form a minority government today, but it won’t last; the nation want her and her nasty party gone
    Philip and Theresa May – a bumbling ‘Wallace & Gromit-like’ duo unsuitable for the task of steering our nation through Brexit and beyond

     

    Appearing on the BBC’s One Show with her garden gnome-like husband, Philip, foolish Mrs May car-crashingly joked about whose responsibility it was to take the bins out – there are, after all, “boys jobs” and “girls jobs” – and kept repeating her mantra of “Strong and Stable”. It was no longer about parties, it was “Theresa’s Team” but what the nation rightly came to understand her as was as one of the worst Home Secretary’s in modern history. Here, indeed, was a woman who’d closed our police stations and here was one who’d shut our fire stations; here was a woman whose friendship with the McCanns had resulted in them getting £11 million for their pointless search and here was a woman whose inquiry into historic abuse cost £100 million, yet, again achieved nothing for victims.

     

    Though, surprisingly, for once, former UKIP’s former leader Nigel Farage got it right in stating: “The vicar’s daughter came across as insincere and establishment… Jeremy Corbyn fought and an amazing campaign and came across well”, it took Labour’s Tom Watson to sum up the mood of the nation when he remarked: “She said she was strong and stable. The public saw she was weak and wobbly”.

     

    The Tory leader shot herself in the foot yesterday and as Paddy Ashdown concluded: “Mrs May: Enough is enough”. Let’s now put the rubbish out and let’s consign Theresa May to the bin bag of history.

     

  • Messy Mackinlay

    Messy Mackinlay

    As the CPS charge Tory candidate Craig Mackinlay, Theresa May’s poor judgment is yet again illustrated

     

    Yesterday, in spite of Craig Mackinlay, the Conservative candidate for South Thanet, being charged with offences under the Representation of the People Act 1983, Theresa May strangely leapt to his defence.

     

    Mackinlay, a businessman, Tory MP for the constituency from 2015 and leader of the deputy leader of UKIP from 1997 to 2000, defeated then UKIP leader Nigel Farage at the last election by 2,812 votes. Allegations relating to his election spending returns that campaign are cause of his current woes and if convicted, the one-time Conservative Member of Parliament could face up to a year in jail for corruption.

     

    In a statement, issued on his Facebook page on Friday, Mackinlay remarked:

     

    My candidature in South Thanet is entirely unaffected and my campaign continues as before. I will not let this decision affect the hard work I do for my constituents and the hard work I hope to do for them after 8th June.

     

    Our justice system is underpinned by the presumption of innocence and I am confident that I will be acquitted as I have done nothing wrong and acted honestly and properly whilst a candidate in 2015, and as all candidates do, acted upon advice throughout.

     

    Clearly this is a shocking decision by the CPS, given that I’ve done nothing wrong and I am confident that this will be made very clear as the matter progresses.

     

    I am very disappointed with the way this has been handled by the CPS and Kent Police, and I must question the timing of this decision given that Kent Police confirmed on 18th April that their file had been sent to the CPS to review and make their decision: why leave this until a few days before the election?

     

    In response, Nigel Farage – a man, if Mackinlay is indeed convicted, plainly robbed in 2015 – commented:

     

    Once again, it is bad judgment from Theresa May. Why on earth would you allow someone to go ahead as General Election candidate when this cloud was clearly hanging over him?

     

    I’m pleased that somebody’s been charged. My only regret is that there aren’t quite a lot more of them. I personally believe that the law was being broken wholesale in by-elections and in the general election.

     

    What does it mean? Well, effectively what it means in that constituency is that, whilst his name will stay on the ballot paper, I think the chances of people voting for him are now very slim.

     

    So, I think that constituency will be a straight fight, now, between UKIP and the Labour Party, and I will be there [on Saturday] afternoon giving a speech at 5 o’clock to support our candidate.

     

    Illustrating her dumbfounded loyalty, Theresa May, however, added:

     

    The Conservative Party continues to believe that these allegations are unfounded. Craig Mackinlay is innocent until proven guilty and he remains our candidate.

     

    Shame on Mrs May: She should have, whether innocent or guilty, put a stop to Craig Mackinlay again running for election months ago.

     

     
     

  • Annabel Mullin – What’s on your mantelpiece?

    Annabel Mullin – What’s on your mantelpiece?

    A 20-question interview with criminal justice expert, former police officer and Liberal Democrat candidate for Kensington Annabel Mullin

     

    The Steeple Times shares “wit and wisdom”. What’s your guiding force?

    To live every moment to the fullest and make the biggest difference to people’s lives that I can.

     

    “Don’t get even, get medieval” is, in our humble opinion, a great motto. What’s yours?

    I love the motto ‘carpe diem’ (seize the day). When I was younger, Dead Poets Society was one of my favourite films.

     

    Kerry Katona was considered unacceptable in 2007. Who or what is unacceptable in 2017?

    Brexit.

     

    Tony Blair misses being Prime Minister. What do you miss most in your life?

    Currently I’m missing not seeing my children much because I am campaigning so hard.

     

    What might you swap all your wealth for?

    Knowing that my children will have a great future.

     

    Donald Trump was once a case of: “If you owe the bank a thousand, they close you down; but if you owe the bank a billion, you own the bank”. What’s your view on the state of the financial system?

    One of the things I would like to see in Kensington is more support for small businesses and local shop owners that help to create our community. We are currently facing threats to our local services from business rates and that is something that needs to be addressed.

     

    What phrase or word do you most loathe?

    I loathe it when people say things they don’t mean. ‘Strong and Stable’ is currently high up there.

     

    In the UK, some people consider charity to “begin at home”. What’s your view and what causes do you personally support?

    I agree. I support that concept. Having worked at Crisis, I continue to support homeless charities. I also love shopping in our fabulous Kensington charity shops.

     

    The judge in Law Abiding Citizen states: “I can pretty much do whatever I want” before being blown up whilst answering her mobile phone. What’s your view on the appropriate use of such devices?

    Mobiles are amazingly useful and I’m a bit of an addict to my device. However, there is a time and a place for them.

     

    If you could fill a carriage on The Orient Express, who would be your fellow passengers?

    George Orwell, Harriet Harmen, Lawrence of Arabia, Margaret Thatcher, Winston Churchill, Sophie in’t Veld, Hercule Poirot, Hilary Clinton, Charlie Chaplin, Shirley Williams, Paula Radcliffe, Prince and Laura Kuenssberg.

     

    If you were unfortunate enough to end up on death row, what would be your last meal and where would you eat it?

    My meal would be steak, chips and red wine followed by tiramisu. I’d rather like to eat it high up in Petra overlooking the wondrous landscape.

     

    What time is it acceptable to consume the first drink of the day?

    That depends entirely on which time zone you are going by.

     

    A Negroni, a martini or a cup of tea?

    A martini, preferably an espresso martini.

     

    Whose parties do you enjoy the most and why?

    Now, dinner parties with close friends but when I was younger, more partying.

     

    Who is the most positive person you know?

    My husband.

     

    What’s your most guilty pleasure?

    The ‘Archers Appreciation’ group on Facebook… With wine.

     

    If a tattoo were to sum you up, what would it be of?

    A dragon.

     

    If you were a car, what marque would you be?

    A Mercedes-Benz Gullwing.

     

    Cilla Black presented Surprise, Surprise. Tell us the most surprising thing about you.

    That I was an ultra-marathon runner and completed the Marathon Des Sables in 2008.

     

    What’s currently sitting on your mantelpiece?

    An elephant – the house is littered with them, candlesticks and birthday cards for my eldest’ fifth birthday.

     

    Annabel Mullin was born and brought up in Kensington and Chelsea. She is mother of three young children, a keen environmentalist and a cyclist. She is a criminal justice expert and has spent most of her life working in London as an analyst, a Metropolitan Police officer in Soho and Mayfair and as an assistant psychologist with prisoners with mental illness. Recently she has worked as a PhD researcher at UCL.

     

    Follow her on Twitter at @annabelmullin and @KCLibDems.

     

  • Free Raif Badawi

    Free Raif Badawi

    Saudi Arabia should free Raif Badawi; we urge readers to support a message calling for his release

     

    With rights come responsibilities and with freedom of speech and freedom of expression comes a responsibility to avoid making hateful and false comments. The blogger Raif Badawi is a man who understood that but shockingly in Saudi Arabia, simply for blogging about human rights he was sentenced to 10 years in jail and 1,000 lashes in 2014.

     

    The only “crime” committed by Badawi, in reality, was to enable social debate online. In any other domain, this would be regarded as something to be lauded and though Saudi Arabia has rejected international condemnation of criticism of its treatment of this 32-year old as “interference in its internal affairs”, we join those speaking out against this unnecessarily harsh sentence.

     

    Today, at 12 noon EST, a one-time message will be released on social media calling on Saudi Arabia to “do the right thing” and “release the imprisoned blogger Raif Badawi to his family in Canada”.

     

    We urge all our readers to support this campaign by clicking here.

     

    #BackLash #FreeRaif #JeSusisRaif

     

    Free Raif Badawi – Saudi Arabia should free blogger Raif Badawi; we urge readers to support a message calling for his release – #BackLash #FreeRaif #JeSusisRaif

  • The Times They are a-Changin’ (and All it Takes is a Tweet)

    The Times They are a-Changin’ (and All it Takes is a Tweet)

    Matthew Steeples highlights the workings and truths behind the changed political landscape of 2016

     

    2016 will be remembered as the year when the world flipped convention on its head. With the brutal monster Fidel Castro finally gone, Donald Trump headed for The White House and Brexit in Britain, comes a new era but it is not one that is actually as clear-cut as many make out.

     

    Unlike in previous eras, social media undoubtedly has had more influence than the traditional media and pollsters have taken a bashing. In spite, for example, of the fact that “Hillary Clinton [is] currently beating Donald Trump by 64.2 million votes to 62.2 million in the popular vote” and thus “winning the election by 3.1%”, according to Kevin Chesters, chief strategy officer at Ogilvy & Mather Group UK, “as usual the historical narrative will swallow the bulls**t myths instead”. He rightly points out “the polls nailed it” as they predicted “all gave Hillary between a 2-5% lead nationally with a +/- 3% margin of error” but the likes of Breitbart, unsurprisingly instead, spread a myth that ‘The Donald’s’ victory was epic. It was just that, in the sense that he achieved a win in spite of being mocked as an extremist joker who’d fail at the beginning, but the true margin of support for him is indicated by the fact that nationwide turnout fell from 61.6% in 2008 to 57.9% in 2016.

     

    The Times They are a-Changin’ (and All it Takes is a Tweet) – Matthew Steeples highlights the workings and truths behind the changed political landscape of 2016 – Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Jared Kushner, Eric Schmidt, Peter Thiel, Dan Hodges, Kevin Chesters, Nicola Sturgeon, Hillary Clinton, Katy Perry, Fidel Castro, Brexit, Trump in The White HouseThe Times They are a-Changin’ (and All it Takes is a Tweet) – Matthew Steeples highlights the workings and truths behind the changed political landscape of 2016 – Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Jared Kushner, Eric Schmidt, Peter Thiel, Dan Hodges, Kevin Chesters, Nicola Sturgeon, Hillary Clinton, Katy Perry, Fidel Castro, Brexit, Trump in The White HouseThe Times They are a-Changin’ (and All it Takes is a Tweet) – Matthew Steeples highlights the workings and truths behind the changed political landscape of 2016 – Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Jared Kushner, Eric Schmidt, Peter Thiel, Dan Hodges, Kevin Chesters, Nicola Sturgeon, Hillary Clinton, Katy Perry, Fidel Castro, Brexit, Trump in The White House

     

    In Britain, equally, the Brexit vote was “won” by just 2.2% and thus both results can be described as being far less significant than the right-wing media make out. Nigel Farage is lauded as a “hero”, yet, despite standing seven times, has never won a seat in the House of Commons; Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP failed to get independence for Scotland yet she dominates our screens daily.

     

    Trump and Farage have clearly both been clever in their respective strategies and just as Castro opted to ignore convention and ruled Cuba with a rod of iron, these two ditched the politics we know and played an entirely different game. Hillary Clinton’s decision to stand with self-serving billionaires and loudmouth celebrities truly backfired and instead, in Jared Kushner, his 35-year old businessman son-in-law, and the tech tycoon Peter Thiel, Trump was led to a strategy that trounced traditional political convention.

     

    A truly revealing analysis of Kushner’s genius appeared in Forbes this week when he was interviewed by for the first time since Trump’s victory. In the feature article, Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google and designer of the Clinton campaign’s technology system, stated:

     

    “Best I can tell, [Kushner] actually ran the campaign and did it with essentially no resources… Jared understood the online world in a way the traditional media folks didn’t. He managed to assemble a presidential campaign on a shoestring using new technology and won. That’s a big deal”.

     

    Kushner himself added:

     

    “I helped facilitate a lot of relationships that wouldn’t have happened otherwise… People were being told in Washington that if they did any work for the Trump campaign, they would never be able to work in Republican politics again. I hired a great tax-policy expert who joined under two conditions: We couldn’t tell anybody he worked for the campaign, and he was going to charge us double”.

     

    “People really saw hope in [Donald Trump’s] message. They wanted the things that wouldn’t have been obvious to a lot of people I would meet in the New York media world, the Upper East Side or at Robin Hood [Foundation] dinners”.

     

    “I called some of my friends from Silicon Valley, some of the best digital marketers in the world, and asked how you scale this stuff. They gave me their subcontractors… Our best people were mostly the ones who volunteered for me pro bono. People from the business world, people from non-traditional backgrounds”.

     

    “We weren’t afraid to make changes. We weren’t afraid to fail. We tried to do things very cheaply, very quickly. And if it wasn’t working, we would kill it quickly… It meant making quick decisions, fixing things that were broken and scaling things that worked”.

     

    As Dan Hodges concluded in an editorial in today’s Mail Online:

     

    “Once, we used to send a gunboat. In the post-Brexit era, all it takes is a tweet”.

     

  • Hustling Trump

    Hustling Trump

    Owner of Hustler magazine, Larry Flynt, urges Donald Trump to come clean about the size of his manhood (more…)

  • Hero of the Hour: Kerry Needham

    Hero of the Hour: Kerry Needham

    Kerry Needham speaks for the nation in calling for more help for parents of missing children (other than just Madeleine McCann) (more…)

  • Another blow for Trump

    Another blow for Trump

    Lieutenant Governor of California Gavin Newsom takes to Facebook to describe Donald Trump as “offensive and dangerous” (more…)

  • Trumping Macy’s

    Trumping Macy’s

    Will Donald Trump destroy every business relationship he has as part of his bid to become President of the United States of America? (more…)

  • Supporting Sol

    Supporting Sol

    ‘The Steeple Times’ backs Sol Campbell for Mayor of London (more…)