Monday, April 30, 2007

Tales from the campaign trail no 4: when in a hole, stop digging

Labour are attempting to spin a message in Whickham, a town that is represented by 9 Lib Dem Councillors on Gateshead Council, that the old buildings of the local comprehensive school are to be replaced this year. The story is simply one of their ridiculous claims that barely resembles the actual facts.

So Labour, having launched a first strike against us with their fantasy claims, were then subjected to a counterattack by us in our literature, in which we pointed out the actual situation at the school (kitchens being refurbished and a small classroom block is being built to replace some mobile classrooms - hardly the new school they claim). We also pointed out that "Labour will say anything to try to get elected here." (An actual quote from our leaflet.)

Labour would be well advised to move on from the issue and not try to defend claims that new cookers amount to a new school. But they are suffering from a serious dose of common sense deficiency syndrome and have rushed our a rather shabbily produced leaflet that attempts to justify their absurb spin.

All it has done of course is focus attention on the fact that Labour tried to mislead people and their well spun story is coming unspun.

But what made me fall off my seat laughing was the absurd attempt to steal a line from our leaflet and hamfistedly attempt to turn it against us. Labour claim that as a result of what we said about the school, Lib Dems are accused of saying "anything to try to get your vote"!!!!!!!

And just to prove that the only contest Labour are going to win here is the "Hypocrit of the Year" competition, their leaflet then goes on to proclaim that Labour "remain opposed to [parking] charges here" - just a few months after having voted to introduce them.

It seems as though Labour's plan to gett out of the hole they are in is to continue digging.

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