Saturday 17 March 2012

Paul Flynn calls candidate a drug pusher,

An old one, but very telling on how my dire MP behaves.

Seems that my local MP the libelist is running his mouth off again. The following is from the blog of Peter Black AM, now to be fair I dont have a lot to say about the Assembly but in this case its nice to see an AM talking sense.

Link to the original article: http://peterblack.blogspot.com/2006/12/lobbyists.html and I have copied it below.

Newport MP, Paul Flynn is renowned for speaking his mind, but even those who know him best may be surprised by his description of Labour's unsuccessful Blaenau Gwent by-election candidate Owen Smith as a "drug pusher". As the Western Mail points out, Mr Smith is a top lobbyist with the pharmaceutical firm Pfizer.

Mr Flynn said, "The lobbyists are a curse, a cancer in the system. It's insidious. One of my main interests in politics is areas in which lobbyists used their wicked wiles to get access to government. One example is the pharmaceutical industry, who are the most greedy and deceitful organisations we have to deal with."

Interviewer Patrick McGuinness then said, "Some of their lobbyists end up as candidates in Welsh Labour. Blaenau Gwent for instance."
Mr Flynn responded, "Indeed - I wasn't too pleased by the fact that we had a drug pusher as a candidate." - considering Mr Flynns liberal views on pushing the poison known as cannibis onto the public that is hardly a statement he should be making.

Mr Flynn also said, "The thing that made me angriest [about the Blaenau Gwent by-election campaign] was when one of my colleagues said that [independent candidate] Dai Davies lacked validity. Well he's got a hell of a lot more validity than Baroness Maggie Jones [the seat's defeated Labour candidate in last year's general election] has got. She's got no validity at all, and it seemed to turn democracy on its head to have a candidate who's been rejected by the people in the safest constituency in Britain and send her to the House of Lords."

I doubt if Mr. Flynn would have been much impressed with the Labour spin-doctor charged with the task of responding to his comments. That anonymous apparatchik claimed that Owen Smith's strong message on crime, antisocial behaviour and jobs struck a chord with local people, and that this led to an 8% swing back to Labour in the parliamentary by-election.

Perhaps, a more honest assessment would be that they got their arse kicked and that they are still smarting over it.

**Well said Peter Black.

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