Saturday, January 20, 2007

Tory activist in row over 'cripple and reptile' slur...

David Cameron's attempt yesterday to persuade northerners that Tories are no longer the nasty party disintegrated when a horribly offensive e-mail written by one of his own party activists came to light.

As the Tory leader visited Keighley with his parliamentary hopeful for the area, Councillor Kris Hopkins, it emerged that a Tory activist in Bradford had described a disabled Labour rival as 'the cripple' and 'a reptile' in an email to Mr Hopkins.

The offensive e-mail about the chairman of the city's Labour Party Mark Taylor was sent by Tory activist John Hawkesworth to Cllr Hopkins, in his capacity as Leader of Bradford Council.

John Hawkesworth is husband of Bradford Tory councillor Anne Hawkesworth, executive member for environment and culture.

The full story is in the Bradford Telegraph and Argus and at the BBC website.

Clearly David Cameron has a long way to go to change the Tory diehards.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

As I said over at my site, the problem is really going to be that the Hawkesworth's are major power brokers in this constituency (indeed, most of us think Mrs H. is the only chance the Tories have of defeating the egregious Cryer), so any slapped wrist can't be too hard.

As John H. is a regular on the web and blogs, perhaps he's simply slipped into blog-speak at the wrong time?

fairdealphil said...

ilkley rocks:

interesting that the email appears to be three or four months old and its leaking - presumably from within Tory ranks - was timed to coincide with Cameron's visit...

infighting or what...?

Anonymous said...

Yes s chief aide to the PM is arrested for the most breathtaking corruption imaginable, and Phil devotes an article to some poxy email a two bit councillor sent that has offended a few do-gooding busybodies.

You aren't fooling anyone Phil. Not even yourself.

fairdealphil said...

Michael:

Well, let's not wait to see if there are any charges/convictions/jail sentences before we rush to judgement eh?

I hear the 'A' list is back in the news...do they mean jailbirds Archer and Aitken??

Anonymous said...

If harking back to history is your way of distracting people from the corruption at the very heart of the current Government, then I doubt it will fool the public. Face it, you're toast.