Monday 3 May 2010

Dodgy Leaflet; is a hung parliament scary?

ybf

ybf 2

Today I got a sort of an election leaflet, it doesn't name a political party though. It is from the Young Britons Foundation.
YBF believes that the UK can only recover from its current woes if a strong and decisive government is elected on May 6th. That’s why we’ve launched a national campaign to highlight the risks of a hung parliament. You’ll see our adverts in newspapers. You might be one of the 500,000 people to receive a leaflet through your door. You should also watch this video to see exactly what kind of country Britain could become if we hang our parliament.

So is this leaflet supporting a single party? In policy terms it appears to support the Tories, they are the ones who are saying a hung parliament is going to lead to meltdown! What rubbish, most of the democratic world has coalition government, even we have had one more than once. 'Of the 16 countries worldwide who currently have the top triple-A financial stability rating, 10 are run by coalition governments. The 1949 and 1967 devaluations both took place when Labour had a clear majority.'


* Would Tories describe Churchills Cabinet as weak on defence?
* Who would say Finland had a poor education system, when they have the highest average results in science and reading in the whole of the developed world. And a coalition government.
* Would anyone describe Germany as weak on economic recovery? They are out of recession long before us.

Finland's educational success was said to be built on the idea of less can be more. There is an emphasis on relaxed schools, free from political prescriptions. This combination, they believe, means that no child is left behind.

YBF say they clear leadership, a strong government and a strong country. Perhaps they intend a Green government?

According to wikipedia its Chief Executive is Donal Blaney, a former leader of Conservative Future, and its Chairman is Patrick Nicholls, former Conservative MP for Teignbridge. Blaney has described the YBF as "a Conservative madrasa" that radicalises young Tories. Frederick Forsyth is a patron of YBF. As of March 2010, YBF's "advisory board" includes Matthew Elliott, founder of the UK TaxPayers' Alliance.

It reminds me of the swift boat veterans attack on Democrat John Kerry, with close ties to Republicans. Apparently the word for this sort of attack is called 'swiftboating'.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If a hung parliament is going to be such a disaster, maybe the YBF should persuade the Tories to pull out the election!

Anonymous said...

President of the YBF is one Daniel Hannan, the conservative who went to America to tell everyone how terrible the NHS was.

I like the bit on their webpage: "The ‘Special Relationship’ has never been more important between the USA and Great Britain". Err... "Great Britain"? only an American could've written that. http://www.ybf.org.uk/

Mark Curry said...

This needs to be reported to the returning officer in area where it has been received and also to the Electoral Commission

Not only is daniel Hannan Tory MEp on their board so is

Andrew Griffiths - Chief Financial Officer of BSkyB plc and Tory PC in Corby in both 2001 and 2005 Heneral election