 |
| the body language is hilarious |
The former Labour MP, who stepped down and then tried to un-step-down when he realised the seat was not necessarily lost for Labour despite his having spent most of his time in Reading East while an MP before the last General Election in 2010 in which Conservative Alok Sharma won the seat, has written to his former constituents what, all 70K plus of them? with a second-class stamp at - oh, you do the math. The Angling Trust must be paying him better than their website indicates if he's got around 40K to spend on postage saying: “I fought long and hard for my constituents and you recognised that with your support at three General Elections for which I’m profoundly grateful.
“I had hoped that my Conservative successor, Alok Sharma, would do as he promised and put local people before his party interests and his own career.
“Sadly, he has turned out to be a big disappointment and has spent five years toeing the party line so he can occupy a minor role in government as a bag carrier for a junior minister. Pots and kettles, again. At least Alok Sharma has kept the job. When Salter got his first taste of life as a ministerial bag-carrier, he lasted five weeks before being sacked
“ Reading West deserves better than this and I know that Vicky Victoria Groulef, a business woman who seems to be a sound candidate. She ought to stop having her picture taken with Salter if she knows what's good for her will be an MP that puts you and your families first and who will fight day and night for the best deal for her constituency irrespective of party politics.” She won't, you know, for the simple reason that she would be deselected if she did
Mr Salter went on: “When I stepped down as MP five years ago, I had hoped my Conservative successor would continue the tradition hollow laugh of putting the people of Reading West before the wishes of the party whips which Mr Salter did not do, voting precisely as the whips instructed him to do on Iraq, which was not to vote at all. Yep, a noble tradition of abstention and cowardice. Don't go there Victoria
Mr Salter still lives in Reading West, was a Reading Borough councillor and deputy leader of the council before becoming an MP, and currently works for the Angling Trust as campaigns co-ordinator. gushes the Post. How about coming up with a reason for publishing this muck produced by a nobody and a has-been, or better still, investigating who paid for the 70,000 letters we are informed have been sent to people in Reading West?
update: the Reading Chronicle says (so it must be true), the following:
Martin Salter, Reading West MP from 1997 to 2010, launched the scathing attack in a letter which is to be sent out to all 73,000 constituents.
So, tell us, who's paying for this bilious self-serving pyramid of piffle to be mailed on behalf of a clapped-out former politician whose career ended in ignominious failure? Huh?
4 comments:
It's in the "long campaign" and promoting a candidate, in which case it will need to be declared in the election expenses. Now I know I'm the only one who usually checks them at the civic offices, but I think it's nice of Salter to give everyone else advance warning that it might also be in their interests to do so.
Of course, he could just be a big fat hairy liar.
Have to disagree that Groulef seems to be a sound candidate. Anyone cuddling up to MS in this way is most decidedly unsound if not positively shaky.
The blancmanges have it.
The letter does contain the line at the bottom "Printed by ... and promoted on behalf of Victoria Groulef ...".
It was followed a couple of days later by a letter from Alok Sharma attacking Labour.
Well, Alok Sharma is entitled to attack Labour. What no one is entitled to do is attack any person on spurious and untrue grounds. Such an attack becomes all the more invidious if the person doing the attacking is guilty of the imputed offences himself - and worse, in Salter's case. What makes this even more contemptible is that Salter is piggybacking on election expenses, when he is not standing for election himself, to publicise, not the candidate he putatively supports (who is not even named in full in the text of the letter), but himself and his personal and financial ambitions.
Post a Comment