Thursday, May 01, 2008

Minimum Rage

There's a debate taking place right now in the Commons on child poverty in Scotland. I fully expect everyone to declare themselves to be very much against it. However, Anne MacGuire has just claimed, yet again, that the SNP didn't vote for the National Minimum Wage.

This didn't tally with my recollection, so I went back to check. And lo and behold, would you Adam and Eve it, she's not being entirely straight with us! When it came to the 3rd reading on 9 March 1998, where the bill was due to be rubber stamped, it would seem that it wasn't only the SNP MPs who were elsewhere - according to the list for the division, the following were absent also:

Let's see... in no particular order, there was no Anne Begg, Jimmy Hood, Tony Worthington, Tom Clarke, Rosemary MacKenna, Brian Wilson, Russell Browne, Ernie Ross, Adam Ingram, Gavin Strang, Malcolm Chisholm, Linda Clark, Nigel Griffiths, Michael Connarty, Mohammed Sarwar, Maria Fyfe... right, that's enough - I'm getting bored now.

But not so bored so as to miss the following. There was no Donald Dewar, and no Robin Cook, Foreign Secretary of the day either. Nor was there any sign of present Chancellor Alastair Darling. Or for that matter, a couple of characters by the name of Tony Blair and, er, Gordon Brown. Let alone the newly elected MP for Stirling, one [ahem] Anne McGuire!

Now, I'm sure they all had good reasons for not being there. In that spirit, can Labour people please stop using this exceptionally silly jibe to try and damage the SNP? If I was a parent of one of the 20% of Scottish children currently living in povery, I'm not sure I'd be very impressed by such a transparent and ludicrous attempt to point-score as we've just heard from the Minister.
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"However, Anne MacGuire has just claimed, yet again, that the SNP didn't vote for the National Minimum Wage." This must represent one of their favorite claims, along with the 'you lot put Thatcher into Downing Street' rubbish. They simply repeat it over and over again. I reckon some of them even believe it.

I notice that they are now doing the same thing by constantly just claiming that a "majority" of Scots don't want independence. I even read one recent report with a quote by "a spokeswoman" claiming that "the vast majority of Scots have constantly rejected independence". Constantly!? Hold the referendum then, Ms Baillie!

I know where they adopted this propaganda strategy from and that is even more frightening than the claims themselves.

5/01/2008 6:11 pm
dandydowser said...

Sadly as you say Willie it is worrying. Labour are following these principles of spin:

"Propaganda must be planned and executed by only one authority."

"Credibility alone must determine whether propaganda output should be true or false."

"Propaganda must label events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans. "

"Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred. "

"Black rather than white propaganda may be employed when the latter is less credible or produces undesirable effects. "

"To be perceived, propaganda must evoke the interest of an audience and must be transmitted through an attention-getting communications medium. "

"Propaganda to the home front must create an optimum anxiety level"

But perhaps the author of those quotes where he alive today (and thankfully he isn't) would probably say about Labour:

"Labour follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous."

At least we know what happened to JG and his cronies in the end!

5/01/2008 9:59 pm
Jeff said...

Top blogging Richard!

Any article that involves Anne MacGuire tends to be a whopper...

5/01/2008 10:40 pm
Anonymous said...

It appears that it's not only Anne MacGuire that lives in cloud cuckoo land:

S3M-01497.1 John Park (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Scottish Labour): National Minimum Wage— As an amendment to motion S3M-1497 in the name of John Wilson (National Minimum Wage), leave out from “expresses” to end and insert “notes the increase of the National Minimum Wage to £5.73 per hour in October 2008; further notes this will be an increase of nearly 60% since its introduction on 1 April 1999; recognises that the introduction of the National Minimum Wage had a huge impact on thousands of low-paid workers, many of whom were women; applauds the introduction of such legislation for its focus on the rights of working people and not the profits of big business; further notes the failure of the SNP MPs to turn up to vote in the House of Commons for the National Minimum Wage in 1998, and expresses disappointment that the current First Minister and the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth were among those who did not participate in the vote to introduce the National Minimum Wage.” 7 March 2008

You have to hand it to them that they are expert in manipulating the historical record. Last week I read a newsletter from a Labour MP (paid for from her parliamentary allowance) noting that she had campaigned "during the consultation period" to save a local post office. That is certainly true - during the consultation period she did campaign to save the local post office. What she omitted to mention was that before the consultation period opened she had voted for the closures in the House of Commons and was then absent from another vote that called for an end to the closures!

Are these people born with a brass neck or does it come with a Labour seat in a legislature?

5/02/2008 11:56 am

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