Why vote for the monkey when you can elect the organ-grinder?

Raymond Joseph Douglas

Just give us the best man, or woman for the job eh ? Is that to much to ask for dave ?

John Backhouse

How does this square with open primaries then?

Original Tony

Sounds to me like gender affirmative action; it's disgusting and all positive discrimination should end if we are to succeed as a nation. Only the best should get to the top,whatever the post, whether they are male or female, black or white.

Mark Rowley

Cameron's announcement only serves to show what a complete plank he is, and how the modern Conservative party is totally unsuited to govern. I truly despair for the country's future.

Merlyn

Good grief, is there a party worth voting for?

Ray

So instead of Blair's Babes we'll have Cameron's Chicks.

Tony Gee

Cameron continues to disappoint us grey once Tories. This is another indication of the demise of FPTP and the general paucity of candidates. Maybe more women see through the bootlicking required of career MPs and get on with more rewarding lives.

david skinner

With the huge rise in divorce, gambling and the lottery, the numbers of parents with serious addictions, the rise in homelessness, rising poverty, serious debt, children taken in care, a huge rise in teenage abortions; teenage pregnancies; sexually transmitted diseases; pornography, child abuse, teenage mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse, crimes of violence being perpetrated by feral children that were rare even amongst adults, the sheer nihilism and hopelessness of many of our children, children running away from home, and of course the rising prison population, it comes as no surprise that according to UNICEF Britain comes bottom of a league table for child well -being across 21 industrialised countries.

This is the reality that David Cameron thinks that government should reflect? Maybe it does already.

But on the question of quotas for parliamentary candidates; it is not only women but those of other sexual orientations (of which the American Psychiatric Association has recognised at least thirty - quite apart heterosexuality and homosexuality) that will have to be proportionately represented. But what about ethnic minorities, the height and weight challenged, the ginger- haired, bald and left handed? Would a thin, short, black, lesbian, left- legged, Muslim, ginger- haired MP be entitled to seven seats? Finally what happens to MPs who have sex changes or hair implants?

How long will the British people put up with this madness? Bring on the BNP, Islam or even Kim Il-sung.

Oflife (formerly Vision Aforethought)

Having lived in Northern California for 10 years (and two liberal cities in the UK too), I can confirm that most entities that apply affirmative action like concepts are often flawed, ripe with bias and more about ego and position than achievement and serving the people. As with any position in an organisation, qualifications and ability should be ALL that count. This is very worrying because some of us hoped the Tories would offer a way out of the current mess.

EDDIE

Expanding on Melanie’s logical argument, surely any positive discrimination is deeply offensive and patronising. You need the best person for the job and any discrimination is an act of destruction. At the same time, negative discrimination should be rigorously stamped out because that is where the real trouble lies.

stanley Jerusalem

Oflife (formerly Vision Aforethought)
October 20th, 2009 4:50pm wrote: " This is very worrying because some of us hoped the Tories would offer a way out of the current mess."
They do. It's to their own particular well-thought-out new brand of mess, as this article clearly demonstrates. NuLab was a mass reaction against years and years of Tory misrule, corruption and mismanagement.
Why would anyone, no matter how desperate, believe that Cameron's lot have anything fresh, clean and unsullied to offer us now?
New faces but the same script.

C. Gee

Britain will never escape from identity politics. That is how people think now. The Marxists have won. Thatcher was the best man for the job, but at a time when the job needed a man. Now leadership-work requires a person to fill the space on the basis of which Marxian category it fits. Party does not matter, Policies do not matter, except to the extent that new identities demand to be included in the taxonomy.
The "white, native-descent" identity is having trouble getting itself admitted. But it will.

C. Gee

Oflife:

Boxer, Feinstein and Pelosi.
Three women who'll do, and who'll do and who'll do.

TomTom

Year 3 will be Cameron's nemesis as the full catastrophe unwinds...they have not faced up to the magnitude of the task and continue to frolick on chocolate orange themes

blue_&_white_avenger

Well done again, Melanie, in this current expose. The more I hear of call_me_Dave, the more I think he's unsuited to lead a party let alone offer himself for PM. IDS or Michael Howard were better & presentation / charisma are not the be-all_&-end-all of a leader.
I'm afraid in 7-months time, I'm going to be hard put to find anyone worth voting for ...

David Williams

Hi Melanie
The reason that the Conservative party doesn't reflect society is that no effort has ever been put into increasing membership,it is far easier for the party to raise £50k from one individual than £10 each from 5000 individuals,great things are planned whilst in opposition and then nothing is done when power arrives.
I

Norm

I love to read Melanie and Peter Hitchens and Richard Littlejohn. Each in their own way makes me stop and think about everything that's right and wrong in today's Britain. They're very clever and interesting and incisive. But today I've had an epifany. Perhaps I can exclude Peter Hitchens because he advises me to vote for no one (very helpful Peter) but Littlejohn and Melanie think the way that I do. I find myself in agreement with 99.9% of what they say. Yet today both have attacked Nick Griffen for no other reason than he's a supposed racist. I think that I must be a racist too because the more I read about Griffin the less I'm convinced by what the media say about him. He speaks my language like Melanie and Littlejohn. Perhaps if I suggested to Melanie that the English are becoming the Palestinians of Europe (think about it) or perhaps we are becoming the Jews of Europe, denied our own state because we do not exist as a race according to the EU. Britain has always accepted immmigration, India, Pakistan, Uganda, West Indies and so on. Before that Romans, Vikings, Danes, Saxons, French. But this immigration took place over hundreds of years, not one generation. So what am I to do? Let them lead me to somewhere I don't want to go? Fight back? Do nothing? Look what happened to the Jews who did all these things and then tell me why I shouldn't vote for Nick Griffin Melanie. I doubt that you or Littlejohn have the stomach to go up against Griffin in a debate because you secretley agree with most of his policies. If that's not true then you must confront him in open debate, otherwise he wins and you lose.

David

This is a certain vote loser. Only someone who has hardly worked in a normal work place, and experienced working with really competent women, would come up with a half baked policy like this. Good women candidates do not need positive discrimination, they are out there to be found and encouraged to enter politics. Worthwile candidates would be insulted to be patronised in this pathetic way. If good women candidates cannot make it without positive discrimination it tells us more about the selection panels and the Conservative party than it does about the candidates. (From a Father of two bright daughters who both vote conservative).

David Skinner

The most dangerous thing a political party can do is to take any one policy of its manifesto (such as the demand for equality) and set it up as the thing it ought to follow at all costs. There is not one policy which will not turn its leaders in devils if it sets it up as an absolute guide. It might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it is not. If it leaves out justice and truth it will find itself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials for the sake of human rights and become in the end a cruel and treacherous party

I do not know if people realise it but the mere declaration of the truth now, if it is unpalatable or horrible, is of itself deemed to be threatening, intentionally stirring up hatred, extreme, fundamentalist, dangerous and criminal. Policies now are only acceptable if they are tolerant, equality added value, inclusive, non -discriminatory, diverse and above all possess the feel good factor.

Returning again to the question of women only selection; has the Conservative party not learnt anything from gazing across to the labour party that is packed with hellish women - Angela and Maria Eagle, Hazel Blears, Harriet Harman, Jacqui Smith, Tessa Jowel, Dawn Primarolo, Caroline Flint, to name just a few.

In the Wilderness in America

The Tories are now taking a page from what we call "quotas" in America. This is a systematic approach to eliminate achievement in society by attempting to rectify discrimination. All it does is make those who got the job based on race or gender ashamed of getting it and make those who were qualified without the extra credit mad as hell for not getting it.

The Supreme Court recently ruled on just such a situation in favor of achievement and not racial quotas. But the society here is steeped in redress of grievences, and thus it will continue to sin the other way until the Supreme Court sees it their way.

As a decent society, we are supposed to make people equal under the law not equal as human beings. It is a legacy from the Civil Rights movement where good intentions got horrendously distorted to the detriment of everyone.

If David Cameron wants to make the short list "reflective of society", does that mean that he should have 5% Asian, 10% Muslim, 38% Protestant, 12% Catholic, 9% Black, and, oh, 50% women?

GeoffM

So, the voters choice is either New Labour or Nu Labour Lite.

Kill me now.

The BNP is looking ever more attractive.

Tancred

No State funding and a maximum of £500 pa from donors.

No donations from corporates, unions, special interest groups etc - just individual registered voters.

That one change in party funding would bring them to heel and ensure that the voters got the Party, and the policies, they want.

It would stop corruption and restore democracy overnight.

Devil's Advocate

Peter Hain: "It is wrong for the BNP to choose their membership on the basis of the colour of someone's skin".

Nick Griffin: "So are the other parties right to choose their MPs on the basis of what's dangling (or not) between someone's legs?"

david skinner

I believe that there are many Conservative MPs who have integrity, who are hard working and who listen to the views of their constituents; but Cameron has surrounded himself with New Conservative spivs like Alan Duncan (albeit temporarily put into the sin bin for ten minutes). The packaging and labelling might look familiar but the contents have been replaced by a product from Obamaland. Three times I have phone the Conservative Headquarters on 0207222 9000 and each time I felt that I was talking to an answering machine. May I recommend that folks phone them in order to get the full flavour of just how inconsistent, confused, ignorant and over- confident the party has become.

The purpose of government is not to reflect currant reality but to give a hope and vision to its people. Proverbs chapter 29 verse 18; ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish.’ Unless Cameron has some sort of “on the road to Damascus” experience and has the Hegelian blinkers taken off his eyes, we too will undoubtedly perish, especially as the economic climate is forecast to get considerably worse.

Roy

Cameron wants the party to look good like swallows on the lines, streamlined, twittering, preened with radiance ready for the journey. Like genders in nature they would like to be roughly equal in number. But when we read into it we find it is all a pompous act; a dressing up to appear like a party of equality able to make decisions all the better if it had an array of pretty faces, shapely figures, and hopefully, intellect to suit. Nothing though, can replace good national policy seemingly the two main parties lack. They are dull and uninspiring. The conservatives could be a reincarnation of life in Britain, but they stand for nothing. Freedoms and free enterprise have gone out the window and they stand now for more of the same. They are jittery of doing the wrong thing when all is so obvious. The opportunity is here but they all sit looking nice and resplendent in their sparkling plumage chirping out small talk.

david skinner

If governments ever want to shut people up, they the often elevate them to higher positions. I believe that the only man who might save Britain from extinction has himself, unwittingly, allowed himself to become both a prisoner of the Tower and London and the House of Lords. He needs to be released from both museums. We need leaders like him with moral courage , martial vigour and Christian vision.
At the present moment , General Sir Richard Dannatt’s mobile phone and email are obtainable from his personal assistant at the Tower of London. Call or write to him and urge him to throw his hat into the ring.

DaveP

Why stop at women only lists? If group rights depend on group outcomes, then every group that can posbibly form, must also have parliamentary lists that only they can be on. So we must have transgender only lists, bisexual only lists, gays only lists. Then we must have all the religions represented. When combined with sexual preferences list, we will then have bi-sexual Sunni Islamic list etc.

The whole proposal is totally ridiculous, and is an indication of immature thinking. As on immigration or referendum on the EU, the major parties show no indication of having understood what is required of them from the public.

If telling pollsters one's intention of voting BNP is the price to get the major parties to sit up and take note, it is a small price to pay. We can get rid of the BNP after it has done its job, responding on the EU or the runaway Islamisation of the UK. What we cannot reverse easily is if Britain becomes Islamic.

david skinner

Four times now I have phoned the Conservative party, the last time, in the wake of the public baiting of Nick Griffin. I really do recommend that people do this to discover the depth to which the Conservative party has sunk in terms of intellectual debate. Facts and evidence count for nothing; they are driven only by consensus of opinion. Whether something is true of not is of no account; what is important is whether a policy is 21st century, progressive, compassionate, tolerant , diverse, inclusive, non- discriminatory - in fact, nothing less than the re -heated horse manure that the labour party has been shovelling down our throats for the last twelve years. The great sin is to state nasty truth as opposed to nice truth. Only inoffensive and non -threatening truths are permitted . “That is really horrible” is a signal that further discussion is about to be terminated.