Lefties Still Crying

Come on guys and girls on the left. I know you're hurting and can't help whinging like a compo-seeking chav, but isn't it time to start growing up and accepting defeat with some semblance of good grace? You know, take it on the chin and start thinking positively, instead of moaning that everyone else is being unfair.

Idly wandering around the severely deluded areas of the lefty blogosphere, with a rather large beam on my face it has to be said, I came across this amusing contribution from Jane Watkinson. Anyone know her? Like a lot of socialists who always seem to have a disproportionate amount of indolent time on their hands, she also tweets a lot, apparently.

Frank Field and Philippa Stroud have been appointed as part of Ian Duncan Smith’s (the backbone to the ‘Broken Britain’ narrative) Work and Pension department. Wow. This department is becoming increasingly powerfully armed with people who are very controversial when it comes to promoting socially just polices to tackle inequality in society. It will be a deadly cocktail of right-wing, homophobic, traditional and sexist thought, resulting in ineffective and inequality promoting ‘polices’.

So many scary accusations, so little evidence. None less so than this one, outdated even before she wrote it.

And now, [Philippa] Stroud. Well she doesn’t really need an introduction does she? But the reports claiming she was involved in a movement that sought to try and drive ‘demons’ out of homosexuals and transsexuals didn’t seem to put IDS or Cameron/Clegg appointing the Conservative MP to a senior role in the department. So much for equality, hey?

Yep. That's exactly what the reports did 'claim'. One particular report, to be exact, in the Observer on the day that they turned to the Lib Dems, who were coincidentally Stroud's opponent in a tight Tory/LD marginal. Fancy that!

You can read it at this link. Or rather ... you can't read it at this link. Anymore.

I wonder what happened there, eh? The only story which unequivocally asserted that Stroud was a homophobic lunatic has disappeared. Without so much as a by-your-leave. Bloody inconvenient, isn't it?

Lefty twitterers (what's the collective noun for them? A 'tantrum', perhaps?) made a lot of noise at the time about the fact that the press didn't take up the story with gusto while they were still laughing, as we all were, about Brown's iconic moment in history.

Channel 4's Ben Cohen tactfully suggested one possible reason for that on May 3rd.

It’s interesting to look at the number of people reTweeting messages like the ones above using the #philippastroud hastag who have “vote Labour” profile pictures. I’m NOT suggesting there’s a conspiracy theory going on here, that the Labour Party are responsible for a reTweeting army, but there could be political motivation behind some, but clearly not all the Tweets.

Indeed. And considering that the Observer article has now been unceremoniously pulled, I'll bet that Channel 4, and others in the MSM, are mighty relieved that they left it well alone.

I mean, just go with me here, if you will. Imagine, just for a minute or two, that it wasn't true. Eh? Well, could 'appen, couldn't it?

I reckon the Guardian's Andrew Brown, in a particularly observant and astutely suspicious moment, may have smelt the coffee quite early.

[...] a couple of days into the arguments about Philippa Stroud and her church in Bedford two people who knew her or belong to her church turned up. So I am copying them up here, for the perspectives they offer on the question of homosexuality and homelessness.

He quotes one of them thusly.

As one who knows the church that the Strouds established, is a christian, worked on the social action project that supported the rough sleepers of Bedford and is bisexual i can CLARIFY that the church does not / has never cast demons out of gay people - I am loved and accepted in my church. I know 3 of the gay people who are quoted in the article and all 3 are using this 15 min of fame to air their anger and personal issues .

I don't feel the need to public argue against the lies that they are spreading and I imagine that P.Stroud's silence is because these are people that she knows, that she has supported through their chaotic lifestyles ( and no i am not using that term in relationship to their sexuality but addictions, depression, self harm etc etc) people who she wants to see the best in and who she would have promised confidentiality to. Philippa is a women of integrity ...

Hmmm. More than a little doubt there, Jane, doncha think?

But why should Jane care? After all, it's a bit more mud to sling around, in between munching on sour grapes, while the real job of running the country falls to the other two parties (rankles, doesn't it?). If this Observer article turns out to be the lie that got its boots on early, and its abrupt disappearance from the net would tend to suggest there is at least a case to answer, the #philippastroud hash tag becomes nothing more than desperate lefty smearing.

Face it, Jane, apart from people who would vote for a cardboard box if it wore red, your truth-bending and character assassinations were roundly refused by the country. Get over it and try something new.

Labour's poor campaign consisted entirely of 'the others are rubbish, vote for us', yet despite the Tories being incapable of punishing it, and the Lib Dems being their usual wishy-washy selves, you still lost.

It was a failed approach before the election, and just because May 6th has come and gone, it doesn't mean that the same negative scaremongery is all of a sudden going to work now.

Still, I suppose it's your right to continue whining like stuck pigs, so feel free to keep it up if you so wish. Especially when such laughable public hand-wringing is also devoid of the merest glance toward integrity or cursory research.

How long is this puerile collective lefty sulk going to continue? Porridge made us laugh for five years. With any luck this petulant socialist comedy could keep us entertained for the same length of time.