Sunday 11 April 2010

If All Else Fails ... Terrify

Iain Dale is making a big deal out of the Sunday Times article on leaflets Labour have sent to cancer sufferers, and rightly so.

Cancer patients who received the personalised cards, sent with a message from a breast cancer survivor praising her treatment under Labour, said they were “disgusted and shocked”, and feared that the party may have had access to confidential health data.

Labour sources deny that the party has used any confidential information.
Well, that's all right then ...

... actually, no it damn well isn't. Sorry, Labour, but I'm all out of trust in you.

I don't know why that could be, perhaps it is the refusal to honour 2005 manifesto promises (or the court case undertaken to fight against honouring them), maybe it's the ritual denial of what we all know to be true, or it could be the ignorance shown towards its people by a party which values only its own survival.

Labour's claim that they haven't targeted cancer sufferers is hollow. I simply don't believe it.

In the Labour constituency of Sherwood, Nottinghamshire, two of a group of eight women friends received the breast cancer card. They are the only two to have undergone cancer treatment.

In the marginal east London constituency of Poplar and Limehouse, the card was sent to a 44-year-old television producer who had a potentially cancerous lump that turned out to be a cyst. She appeared to be the only person who received the mailshot among 50 neighbours.
Dizzy explains the supposed method used, but as he implies, it just doesn't wash.

[...] it was done by using anonymous data mashup from Experian to work out roughly where someone with cancer lives. They hold anonymous hospital data with postcodes and medical diagnosis. Think of it like a shotgun being targeted at a door but the pellets spread out and hit many targets in a specific area.
Unless, of course, the shotgun contains cancer-seeking pellets.

In fact, the only way that Labour can possibly be telling the truth is if they are merely naive recipients of an almost 'perfect' list of targets.

The cards are being distributed by Ravensworth, part of Tangent Communications, which has won accounts sending out mail for the Department of Health and Cancer Research UK.

[Damian Bentley, managing director of Tangent] failed to respond to a list of questions on how the addresses of the cancer victims were obtained.
Christ! I think he should bloody well start answering questions sharpish, don't you? Time to get someone like, I dunno, the Information Commissioner, to ask them.

And all this without mentioning what a quite sick electoral tactic it is to use cancer as a political tool.

Labour have bullied the public into submission on a wide array of issues under the veiled threat of harm, paedohysteria, cancer and death before ... but this is a whole new level of evil, self-centred arrogance.

And there was me believing that torching a fat boy effigy in the town square was as low as these maggots could go.

UPDATE: NickM describes it perfectly - "Politics as a protection racket"


7 comments:

JuliaM said...

You really think this is as low as they can go? Really..?

Good lord, this is only the first week!

I'm confidently expecting honey traps, black ops and targeted assassinations by week three...

Simon Cooke said...

Of course they've used a specific list - the Experian data simply can't be that precise in targeting. Indeed, since most cancers have no discernable demographic bias (genetics remains the dominant predictor) the list could not have been created using geodeomographic profiling.

This is an example of the leeching of health data - note also that the agency responsible also work for Cancer Research UK.

Dick Puddlecote said...

I made a very big note of that very {cough} coincidental detail, Simon. ;-)

Unknown said...

This has been on the news all day DP but I first heard about it on another blog. This story is un-fucking believable! How low must a party stoop to garner votes???

I am disgusted in our political system that allows such filth.

I read Dizzy's blog about cancer but couldn't bring myself to comment as his blog about this was distressing.

Antipholus Papps said...

These people will lie in order to plan and wage aggressive war, they will shoot a Brazilian electrician 11 times in the head because he saw something he shouldn't have seen when they blew up the London Underground - do you really think there is any depth they will not stoop to?

Anonymous said...

I got a personalised letter (is it the same piece of mail?) which mentioned the cancer pledge and, yes, I’m a cancer survivor. I’ve been fine for some years but I’d have been incredibly distressed had it appeared during the ten years in which the doctors were still talking about chances of survival.

Brown says in his letter that he looks forward to keeping in contact with me over the forthcoming election (he bloody wouldn’t if he knew what I think of this Government) but doesn’t run to providing a stamp for me to reply with my phone numbers (it’s that famous prudence). I’ll be equally prudent and not waste the price of a stamp.

Jay

Unknown said...

Jay I can't begin to comprehend what you have went through and still going through while you are in remission. I only have one member of my family die of cancer, my father in 1986. For a party, albeit in it's last throws of power, Labour have went beyond the pail.

Cancer, in my day, used to be something you thought about but never mencioned and used euphemistic terms like "the big C." Now it is used to instil fear into the populace to make them complient in their "on PC" message. This is an affront to those who suffer such an illness.

I do hope your remission continues into your old age and you have a fruitful, and pain free, life.