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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