At Jack Straw’s gathering last night it was announced food would not be served as it would be against electoral law. This is something of a victory. About a quarter of the audience left immediately and most of the rest wandered out less obviously during the next half hour!
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Excellent result, Craig. It must be gratifying to actually win the occassional skirmish in your personal Quixotic war of attrition with the mighty Jack Straw, who may not be so high and mighty within a few days.
Result! Well done! Such wonderful irony that it’s the Jack Straw, the Minister for *Justice* who has been behaving corruptly. Just like George Orwell’s 1984, it is. You are a star.
An implicit admission of wrongdoing the first time?
It is now obvious that the electoral process had been skewd here, but I’m still expecting more heat during the last two days.
Its all very knackering and sometimes I wish i was digging my garden instead, lets hope we have made an impact somehow and will get some satisfaction on 6th.May.
The same day Dr. Aafia Siddique will brought in front of the courts and tried for basically being married to a suspected terrorist.
Some 500 people were invited and expected to come last night, some 80 only turned up and left halfway through.
I hope you will continue to press the IPCC to investigate the Blackburn Police
I posted this over at Phil Riley’s blog (where it’s awaiting moderation, and it looks like many comments don’t get through, so who knows if it’ll appear):
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Today (4th May), Craig Murray writes (link to this page):
“At Jack Straw’s gathering last night it was announced food would not be served as it would be against electoral law. This is something of a victory. About a quarter of the audience left immediately and most of the rest wandered out less obviously during the next half hour!”
Is this correct?
What was different about last night’s gathering compared to the others where you say giving food was okay?
Why, if Craig’s description is accurate, was everyone expecting to be given food, and disappointed when they found out they were not getting any, when such practices are illegal?
Could you also please explain the relevance of pointing out the age of the treating laws? Laws do not perish with age like a bottle of milk, and nor do we get to ignore laws because we think they are anachronistic. (If the law is bad it should be changed, but until then it is still the law.) Plus, if you were not breaking the law in the first place then there would be no reason to protest so much about the law itself.
Well said everyone.
‘Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins,….’
John Locke – Treatise On Tyranny
Chap XVIII Sect 202
http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr18.htm
A quarter left immediately? Tut, just there for the freebies!
Well done, Craig.
Craig
I’m sure that although Jack Straw may be embarrassed he isn’t worried.
After all, he can rely on the postal votes…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/election/article-1271457/General-Election-2010-Postal-vote-fraud-amid-fears-bogus-voters-swing-election.html
Don’t be too hard on the Muslims. When I was looking for a Muslim wife, they offered me a lady from Gujurat a few years older than myself who was badly in need of a passport. She was quite nice and she brought us some rice pudding which my Muslim friend refused to eat. Why I asked him later, after I had enjoyed the rice pudding heartily.
Because she had explained that she had dedicated the food to Abdul Qadir, a pious scholar from the past, who she believed would expedite her needs, flying around in the sky like a Divine sub-contractor, dealing with the tiresome tasks that Allah can’t be bothered to deal with Himself.
Later we protested about the dedication. She said ‘You can’t change me. My mother and grand-mother have been doing this for centuries. You can’t change me to your bida’a or innovations to Islam. So the Gujuratis of Blackburn have this excuse, that they know nothing about the religion of Islam. Just they know that this country has the stupidity to run on trust, in matters of claiming insurance, and postal ballots, and claiming benefits. So why not get a few perks from the likes of Jack Straw? I am very relieved to hear that, in this matter of ‘treating’, the common sense of English Law has prevailed over their extraordinary ignorance.
Jack Straw remains in my mind just straw. He could not have conceived of this strategy from his own mind without the pundits of the Muslim community coming up with the idea. He is just a very old and hardened prostitute. No worse than all the other tired politicians being paraded like models in this election. No better than Nick Clegg will be, if he gets into power.
If you can prove he had discussed serving food or any of his supporters did then you have a stone bonker conspiracy to commit treating????
writerman wrote:
“It must be gratifying to actually win the occassional skirmish in your personal Quixotic war of attrition with the mighty Jack Straw,”
But the undeniable win proves there’s nothing Quixotic about this struggle – which is not to say Straw doesn’t flap in the wind! Also, it seems potential votes are being lost in significant numbers so the victory might be a game changer!
Nice work, Craig. I have a suspicion that not even this large-scale electoral corruption would have saved his seat anyway.
Congratulations on your victory. But what a waste, all that food! I hope they distributed it to poor or homeless people.
Great result. It’s a pity our mainstream media haven’t picked up on this.
Nonetheless, I have bought plenty of 100% arabica for Thursday night – here’s hoping Blackburn will be one of many highlights.
I submitted a comment at the Phil Riley blog, pointing out that, contrary to the article there, Craig *had* mentioned that Bushra Irfan had also offered food, but had withdrawn the offer after being reported to the police by the Returning Officer, and linking to Craig’s post:
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/04/jack_straw_trea.html
My comment was not published.
Interesting that lots of the revellers walked out when they heard there was going to be no nosh – how predictable and typical! What did they do with the food, btw? Did Uncle Jack eat it all himself? Not that I’m a glutton…
Anno, what an intriguing account. Actually, you’re right. I find it (the ‘trust’ issue and convoluted patriarchal dyanmics that go on) very frustrating and irritating at times; it drives me up the wall, in fact and makes me want to play ‘The House At Pooneil Corners’ very loudly, backwards.
ScouseBilly, good idea! Best avoid Turkish coffee, which will keep one awake for 10,000 years. In fact, if one is a Divine sub-contractor…
Craig,
there are a couple of articles on the BBC News site today, about how professional the opinion pollisters are. This one specifically mentions YouGov and bloggers:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8650282.stm
I’ve e-mailed you a link.
Yes, it would be nice if Jack lost by pecisely the number of people who left his aborted junket.
And there could be something in what anno says. I once visited the home of a fellow activist, a lady, with my sister. My sister believed that this woman had intentions towards me which were not entirely honourable, and (she’s a bit superstitious) said that I should refuse any food offered. However I couldn’t resist a home-made scone. I ended up eating a lot of those bloody scones in the next few years.
Suhayl Saadi: “What did they do with the food, btw?”
This sort of occasion is where Prescott comes into his own. Rest assured, there’ll be not a scrap of evidence left.
Who is Phil Riley?
I remember reading some years ago that Jack Straw was considered by colleagues the master political calculator, so much so that had he fallen under a bus some would ask, “now why did he do that”.
So why did he treat his constituents to free food?
Why did he stop treating them to free food?
Why do the police ignore criminality?
Why is Britain so corrupt?
Cui Bono, here are the snwers to your questions.
1. So they’d feel obligated by their cultural customs to vote for me.
2. It wasn’t my idea – my spin drs insisted that it wouldn’t look good. But look what happened, a mass walk-out. Heads will roll for this!
3. Don’t blame them, they’re just following my orders to look the other way.
4. How dare anyone say that! The BBC had better not be responsible if they know what’s good for them. We’ll get our spin doctors to put out a repudiation immediately.
Another blow for the NuLabour war criminals in the Binyam Mohamed case.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/04/government-secret-evidence-guantanamo-torture
The updated BBC report on electoral fraud police investigations.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8659864.stm
Vronsky, was the scone-woman (and was it ‘sconn’ or ‘scoan’?!) a witch or a mezzo-soprano, by any chance? Your story makes you sound a little like Persephone in the Underworld. Persephone and her pomegranate seeds. Though in your case, Eurydice might be more appropriate! Still, as long as you retain your head, that’s the main thing – as Orpheus might’ve said to Antoine Lavoisier.
Nice to see that the campaign has had some effect, even though the police still refuse to prosecute him despite flouting the first warning.
I’ll feed again, You don’t know where, you don’t know when.
But I’ll feed again some election day!!!
Will you be feasting on Iraqi corpses Jack ?