The picture shows Cllr Knowles, left with Cllrs John Salter (centre) and Adrian Jones. Since then he has defected from Labour and he's been suspended from the Tories. Now rumour has it he's courting the Liberals! But will they have him?

Since yesterday’s entry, below, our attention has been drawn to the small print in the latest Wallasey Tory propaganda sheet.  How can it be that well into the prescribed election period suspended Cllr Knowles can still promote the Tory candidate?  Perhaps the Wallasey Tories will tell us how this fits in with their (all Wirral) leader, Cllr Jeff Green, having announced Cllr Knowles’s suspension in such unequivocal terms?  

Yet the latest  news-shy Tory ‘Newsline’ has been popping through letterboxes during the past couple of days with a picture of suspended Tory Cllr Knowles and an alleged Tory activist,  together, seemingly photographed no later than 19^th March – yet published in the past few days during Cllr Knowles’s suspension from the Tory Party.  

Liscard’s local Councillor Fraser, who has been  one of Knowles’s most regular Tory leafleting companions, also features prominently.   

The official imprint declares:    

Promoted by Ian Lewis on behalf of Leah Fraser and promoted by Denis Knowles on behalf of Tony Cox, all at 46 Seaview Road, Wallasey, CH45 4LA.  Printed by Townsend Print, Block B1, East Terrace, Euxton Lane, Chorley, PR7 6TE   

So there we have it -  

SAME OLD TORIES?    

THEY SAY ‘WE’VE CHANGED’   

BUT THEIR ‘SUSPENDED’ COUNCILLOR IS STILL PROMOTING THEIR PROPAGANDA   

STOP PRESS!  A regular reader has just sent us this additional weblink to a prominent Tory:  

Hi,  

You probably know but here is a link for yet another Tory - this time in the shadow cabinet, Chris Grayling.  None of them have changed one iota.  

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8602371.stm  

——————————————————————————————————-    

3rd April 2010      

Commenting only a few  days ago on his decision to suspend Denis Knowles Wirral Tory Leader Jeff Green also announced in the press, with a fanfare of righteousness, that the Conservatives have ‘changed’.       

Have they?         

Tory councillor Denis Knowles is allegedly 'suspended' by the Tories. So why are they still pushing him in their current leaflets?

Yesterday they were busily putting out leaflets in which allegedly ’suspended’ Denis is pictured with their Seacombe candidate – at a charity fund raising event – which, by the way, they didn’t lift a finger to organise!  Liscard Tory Councillor Leah Fraser, who welcomed defector Denis with open arms as a great catch, also figures prominently in the same leaflets. What seems to be missing is any word to dissociate the local Tories from his comments.  What an opportunity missed!     

So what has changed?        

Tory Cllr Knowles not only continues to be published in Seacombe Tory leaflets, distributed since his alleged ’suspension’, but their expensively funded glossy propaganda  contains not a word of apology for the allegedly offensive public comments for which they say they suspended him.      

And what are the ‘defected from Labour - suspended by the Tories’ councillor’s plans?        

Our readers are commenting on the colourful way Denis has approached politics since his defection from Labour.         

“First he was the very deepest hue of Labour Red; then he went to deepest Tory Blue; now it seems he fancies becoming Liberal Yellow – and he’s accusing other people of ‘blackening’ his character.  It’s certainly been a colorful political journey so far, but where else is there for him to go?  I can’t imagine the Liberals having him.”       

Well, it seems he’s still published in the Seacombe Tory publicity leaflets together with Leah Fraser and his other New Tory chums.  Haven’t they rather missed a golden opportunity to distance themselves publicly from his remarks?      

SAME OLD TORIES, SAME OLD PROPAGANDA?  DOES NOTHING CHANGE IN THE TORY CAMP?      

Here are some links for more information and opinion.  Please note that these links are the responsibility of their authors and do not necessarily reflect Labour views.      

http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2010/03/31/wirral-councillor-suspended-after-anti-gay-remark-on-facebook-92534-26144312/      

http://www.wirralnews.co.uk/wirral-news/local-wirral-news/2010/01/27/sister-mary-blog-electrifies-wirral-political-scene-80491-25688633/      

http://www.sistermarysblog.blogspot.com/      

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/8595606.stm      

In a devastating news story the ‘Liverpool Daily Post’ reports that Wallasey Tories have allegedly received £50,000 from a local debt collector.          

TO READ MORE ABOUT THE ‘DAILY POST’S’ REVELATIONS ABOUT TORY PARTY FUNDING IN THIS CONSTITUENCY, AND TO SEE THE TORIES’ FRANTIC WRIGGLING, FOLLOW THE LINK BELOW       

Adrian says: "Oily Tory words on glossy paper are less than people are entitled to expect. I think people will understand that distortions even on the prettiest paper are still distortions. We may use local printers and plain paper but our postbag tells us that people like plain words on plain paper. The Tories may slide along on gloss but that's not our way."

 

 http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2010/03/26/wirral-conservatives-hit-by-debt-collector-smear-92534-26113025/     

 

 

Tories have 'lotsa cash' for glossy leaflets

 

When Seacombe residents see the HUGELY expensive glossy leaflets the Tories have been able to afford for a long time they may have wondered why Seacombe Labour Party does not reply with a constant stream of similar costly glossies.          

 The answer is simple.  We represent the working people who live in Seacombe, Poulton, Somerville and Egremont.  We get most of our funding from the people who live in our ward.  We have taken no money from debt collecters or from big businesses!          

And before the Tory propaganda machine alleges differently, Seacombe Labour Party has not asked for, nor received, a single penny from any trade union.  Every penny we have for leaflets comes from individual members and from our own fund raising evenings. Our (mostly plain black and white) newsletters are either produced ourselves or, mostly, by a local printer.    We may produce a glossy at the end of the campaign - if we can afford it – but we do not share the Tories’ ways of getting funded.      

But we do believe the words on the paper are more important than the glossiness of the paper they are printed on.        

So what is the Trade union link with LABOUR?         

The Tories do their best to give the impression that there are two equal sides in which trade unions are comparable to the big businesses that support their party.  Their subtle propaganda leaves the impression that trade unions are themselves akin to businesses.          

They are not; the unions are organisations set up to defend working conditions for ordinary people and to secure representation for them.  Their link with LABOUR is quite simply that they helped create the Labour Party.        

But Tory propaganda still tries to suggest that trade unions in some way bank-roll Labour in the way millionaire business men bank-roll the Conservative party.  The trade unions established the Labour Party precisely because there was no other party to represent working people.  The Tories and Liberals had always supported and represented the interests of big business and land owners.  Has anything changed?         

When the vast majority of the population had no party to support them, in Parliament or on local Councils,  it was the trade unions, co-operative societies, Christian organisations, and Socialist societies that gradually became the foundation from which the Labour Party was born.    When individual trade union members contribute to their union’s political fund they do so because the Labour Party, that they created, is theirs.          

No trade unionist pays a penny who does not want to – any member can opt out. But as well as trade unionists we have huge numbers of ordinary people who are not in trade unions (eg retired people, small business owners, students, etc)  but join because they want to be a part of the Party that created the National Health Service; the minimum wage; Sure Start; and most of the progressive legislation that still exists.          

Those with memories of the Thatcher and Major Tory governments never want to go back to the dark days of mass unemployment under the Tory Party that opposed all of this.  The very word ‘Conservative’ suggests the politics of fossils ’to stay the same’.    

They say they want change, but they do not say what the changes would be.  We suspect that turning the clock back to the dreadful conditions under previous Tory Governments is what they would like to ’conserve’.         And when their leader David Cameron already has fourteen millionaires in his shadow cabinet do the working people of Seacombe have any doubts about whose interests the Tory Party will champion?   

If YOU might wish to join the Labour Party why not get in touch?        

9th January 2010

‘Light hearted’?  Well, let’s face it, when a bunch of people as previously conventional as the Wallasey Tory Ladies figure in pictures of themselves, and of the Cuban Communists, in an article describing Wirral Tory politics and Fidel Castro’s Cuba in the same breath, can you do anything else but laugh?  It’s not something you’d be able to take seriously – were it not that their spokesperson who’s putting this stuff about (presumably with their blessing) actually speaks and writes as though they really mean it. 

Meanwhile the attached link will take you to a story by veteran news reporter Liam Murphy. 

http://blogs.wirralnews.co.uk/hamiltonsquared/

Red/Blue Tories?

It shows a picture of Cuban revolutionaries, recently published on a Wallasey Tory blog. 

Just below that, there is also a recent picture of Wallasey’s Tory Team, led by Cllr Mrs Leslie Rennie; and a local Liscard Tory Councillor who would like to be a Member of Parliament, with some others.  

They don’t actually look at all revolutionary - quite the opposite, they look rather primly conservative.  But that’s only our impression; the Tories know their own political party better than we do so it’s not for us to challenge their spoksman’s belief that the Tories are revolting revolutionary.

So make no mistake, we don’t dismiss these Tory publications lightly.   Their spokesman has been on so many lone visits to Cuba that we suspect he’s developed a real grasp of revolutionary methodology.   After all he’d previously accumulated a lot of leadership experience over here, as well.  Wasn’t he the Cabinet member who so eloquently advocated the closure of Wirral’s public lavatories?   More recently wasn’t he the Chairman of  ’Merseytram’?  And don’t we all know how difficult it is to avoid being knocked down by all the trams that are swarming about? 

But how real is the threat?  With Tory Cllr Knowles increasingly their most popular spokesman, and clearly able to lead Wirral Tories ideologically, will they now re-group (Perhaps even build a base among the dense tropical forests and duck ponds of Central Park?) to spearhead a Cuban style take over of Wirral?   

Their article (perhaps unwittingly) draws attention to the fact that it took Fidel only a couple of years to achieve his revolution whereas the Tories haven’t managed anything like it in the UK even after thirteen years.  OK, everyone knows ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’.   But we’re told the author of their new Wallasey ideology wasn’t the foreman on that job.

Are cuckoos ever truly safe in another bird's nest?

Meanwhile we can’t help wondering what happens when their spokesmen talk of revolutionary Tories and Cuban communism in the same breath.   

We await further reports on this great epic - with mild interest.