Blackpool North leaflet roundup

I have in my possession the latest election communications from BNP candidate James “Pretty Boy” Clayton, Labour candidate Penny “Skeletor” Martin and Liberal Democrat candidate Bill “Don’t Judge the Candidate” Greene.

I’ll start with the BNP one which is a double sided A5 sheet. The front page has a picture of Nick Griffin alongside Winston Churchill, with the slogan “Get even – vote British National Party”. Their main three policies are to;

• Bring our troops home
• Close immigration “floodgates”
• Raise the pension to £150 by scrapping £18bn of foreign aid

That’s all there really is on the front page. The back has a white-on-red header stating, “Support our Troops”, with some rhetoric about the BNP being a peaceful party compared with the warmongering LibLabCon group. Their words not mine, of course.

Then you’ve got two soundbites: one from a youngish looking girl who says she’s voting for James Clayton because she’s sick of asylum seekers being sent to the front of the queue for everything, and the other from a man who states that the BNP want British jobs for British workers and that jobs are moving abroad. That’s about it. It’s not inspiring. I thought Clayton might have put something together himself but this leaflet just feeds the BNP stereotype. Nothing local is mentioned.

Now we’ve got Penny Martin. An A5 booklet, opening up giving her three double sided A5 pages, one of which is a donations form. The front is a full page portrait of her, and to be honest I don’t know what planet Harold’s on when he talks about wanting to give her one!

Inside the front cover you have Martin posing with a couple of geriatrics. The caption for this picture states that she is “talking to voters on the door step about local issues that matter to them”. That perhaps explains why the old lady is pointing at Martin’s frizzy mop. A fucking serious issue.

The bullshit continues with her pledges on page 3. Apparently she will hold regular surgeries. My goodness, don’t push the boat out Penny.

She says she will campaign for more public sector jobs (and private sector, but we know Labour aren’t interested in that) to be brought into Blackpool North & Cleveleys. How she can deliver this I do not know, given that Labour have only identified an eighth of the £51bn of cuts they will need to make to reduce the national deficit. Where will the rest come Penny? Oh yeah, the public sector.

She highlights that she’s going to crack down on crime in another meaningless statement. I’ve never seen an MP do anything to tackle crime: all they do is spin the figures to make themselves look good. It’s so bad now that people don’t even report crime because there’s no prospect of the perpetrators being caught or receiving appropriate punishment. Penny will “fight this menace”, apparently. Bet you don’t.

She says she’s going to clean up the streets, both repairing roads and clearing litter. She says she will challenge local councils to deal with it. But Penny, does that not make you part of the problem right now?

Her main bullet points finish by saying that she will protect local services, such as health, schools, police and so on. But then there’s a rather amusing little snippet at the bottom of this page.

The headline says, “Blackpool & Cleveleys at risk under the Tories”, so you would have thought the subsequent text would be a punishing takedown of Tory policy. Not so. In Penny’s attempt to appeal to younger voters, this section stars a couple stood in front of a blue Toyota Yaris. Apparently they have seen huge investment and support under Labour! Really! Where where where?

“..like the car scrappage scheme which we took advantage of”

Hang on a sec. You mean the car scrappage scheme that Labour desperately dredged out of the policy bin in order to provide a small temporary boost to the economy that they systematically fucked up over the last 13 years?

Page 4 contains a list of how Martin believes Labour to have delivered in Blackpool and Cleveleys, including Victoria Hospital’s Cardiac Centre, A&E, and various other bits. All schools in Blackpool and Cleveleys have received “huge investment” with six pointless Surestart centres providing yet more needless public sector jobs. Apparently further investment is promised, but we have heard that before haven’t we?

Labour are improving the lives of pensioners, apparently. Not what “bigot” Gillian Duffy thought yesterday. She mentions the free bus pass which has benefited pensioners (but crippled local transport companies causing route cuts and job losses).

Labour then take the credit for the new £26m promenade in Cleveleys, the £100m promenade in Blackpool, the £100m tram update and the acquisition of the Tower and the Winter Gardens by the council. What Labour had to do with the latter I do not know. As far as I have read, the government isn’t contributing. And they’re only contributing 60% of the tram project.

On page 5, you have an example of why Penny Martin has no interest in pensioners at all. There’s a wall of text that is so small that I can’t be bothered to read it fully. For those unfortunate enough to have poor eyesight, it it generic Labour garbage mentioning really important local issues such as the Olympics and climate change, and says the Tories don’t understand aspiration.

Finishing this page there’s a quote from an old man who says we need someone that was brought up locally and that’s why he’s voting for Martin. No, it’s because you’re a lifelong Labourite and you’d vote for a turd if it had a Labour rosette on it.

The Liberal Democrats leaflet enters the fray with an A5 booklet of 2 double sided pages. The front page had a highly pixelated picture of Nick Clegg, Vince Cable and that posh bird with a big nose that turns up on Question Time quite a lot. The slogan is “creating jobs and providing more family homes”.

The bottom of the page features Nick Clegg and some statements about their £10,000 tax free allowance (but what about the NI increase?)

The significant absentee at this point is candidate Bill Greene himself, but as he says, policy above person so perhaps it’s just national rhetoric with no local issues in this booklet.

Page 2 tells us that Bill Greene is a local man. I hadn’t actually realised, I thought he was from East Lancashire. The theme on this page is fairness with lots of vague statements about Greene believing everyone should be treated equally.

Across the bottom of page 2 and 3 is an attack on the Tories trying to scare people that they will scrap the NHS. Having actually read the Conservative manifesto and listened to endless speeches from Dave, it’s crystal clear that this is not the case: he promises to increase real terms spending on the NHS. The Liberal Democrats don’t promise this, so arguably they are the ones putting the NHS in danger.

Page 2 and 3 also features a rather odd picture of Bill Greene sat in front of a large computer monitor with some sort of headset on.

Page 4 is similar to Doreen Holt’s leaflet, talking about how strong the Liberal support is and how they run Liverpool, Bristol and Sheffield.

So there you go.