Mennear Up Close and Personal
In a particularly depressing twist to a thoroughly dispiriting election campaign, I have received, within a single twenty-four-hour period, an email from John O'Farrell and a leaflet from Andrew Mennear. Andrew, as you may recall, is the Conservative candidate for the constituency of Finchley and Golders Green, and this is the third mailing he has bestowed upon me.
In contrast to the previous instalment of what I devoutly hope is a trilogy, this new leaflet is a normally shaped, normally sized sheet of A4 paper. Possibly this is an effort to reflect the real, normal people Andrew wishes to represent. Under the blue headline "Taxes Hit Middle Classes - Official", I am informed that:
People earning more than 27,000 pounds suffered a one per cent fall in their income last year. A couple with two earners and two children on 60,000 pounds would have lost even more as Labour's tax increases, including the rise in national insurance, freezes on personal allowances and expenditure forced on councils by Gordon Brown began to bite.
Clearly, this is too bad. The Conservatives plan to help these poor unfortunates by increasing government spending by four per cent a year, while at the same time they will "give four billion pounds back to taxpayers, including council tax rebates for over-65s." They will pay for this by efficientiating it out of twelve billion pounds' worth of Government waste which they have identified. A picture of a blond toddler who has either come last in a race, or is racing by himself, completes this conjuring of a Mennearean paradise. The caption to the picture is "It's time for a change", with quotation marks in the original.
Other pieces cover yet further aspects of Labour's iniquity. "Our Pensioners," bluely trumpets another headline, "Betrayed by Tony Blair".
People who have paid their National Insurance over a lifetime now face a retirement of dependent on benefits. Since 1997, Labour has removed five billion pounds a year from private pension funds. A quarter of all pensioners live below the poverty line.
This is certainly cause for concern. A retirement of dependent on benefits must be nearly as awful to live through as it is to read. I am not sure how many of those pensioners who are stuck below the poverty line got there because of Labour's pillaging of private pension funds, but I suppose we may hope that Andrew's researchers are more careful than his proofreaders. Andrew's concern about private pension fund utilisation potential is illustrated by a nightmare picture of Andrew and three old ladies sitting around a table. They all have mugs in front of them, but nobody is drinking. Andrew looks as if he is trying to listen, but unfortunately nobody is speaking, either. Everything in the room - walls, table and tea mugs - is a blinding, terrifying shade of yellow, suggesting a malignant paint-job by incontinent Liberal Democrats. Thankfully, there is no caption, but some very small print at the bottom of this section informs me that the leaflet was printed in Swindon. To his credit, Andrew has never claimed to support local business.
Under the blue headline, "Childcare that suits you, not Tony Blair", I am informed that the Conservatives will make it "easier for grandparents to qualify as childminders". I cannot claim to be well informed about either the childminder situation or the qualifications necessary for grandparenting in the early twenty-first century; but I was not aware that it was possible for grandparents not to qualify as childminders. Indeed, my understanding is that once you become a grandparent, an honorary doctorate in childminding is virtually impossible to avoid.
The Conservatives will also be "involving voluntary and commercial sectors in Children's Centres" - a commercial system for real people's children (see above, 27,000 et seq.) and charity for the rest. Presumably, if one's grandparents qualify as childminders, they will then have the opportunity to enter the commercial sector and beef up their private pension schemes - an opportunity ruthlessly denied under Labour, I have no doubt. The picture here is of a blond child looking at a picture book, interestingly titled The Robot. The caption is "Parents, not Government, know what's best for their children". The quote marks are again present in the original, although it is not made clear whether the quote is from The Robot or from the child.
"Tony Blair said climate change is 'the single most important issue that we face'," fulminates another blueness nearby. To show how far Andrew agrees with this assessment of the issue's importance, the piece is located in the bottom right-hand corner of the page and, counting the eight-word headline ("Just Hot Air From Blair On Climate Change"), is forty-nine words long. One of the words is "incentivise". The Conservatives will "use microgeneration, develop renewable energy and make it cheaper to buy greener cars". The picture shows Andrew's profile, smiling into the ear of someone who is looking into the camera.
There are, in fact, nine pictures on this mailing. Seven of them feature Andrew, and the remaining two are of children, apparently his own. In the section "Fighting For You", Andrew is shown in two pictures, once smiling over a microphone and once laying a wreath outside a post office. In the text it is noted that he has been called "sparky" by the Independent and "a rottweiler" by the Camden New Journal, but it is not clear which incarnation is represented by which picture.
Finally, there is a riveting biographical section, conveniently located next to the pensioners and just above the warming waves of the Tory Torch of Destiny. It is accompanied by a picture of Andrew with his wife and children: just another hard-working family being bravely bled dry by asylum seekers. The caption - like all the rest, an apparent quotation sans discernible source or, for that matter, full stop at the end - is "Government should not control how we live our lives". Not including the headline "Andrew Mennear" or the enclosed campaign promise ("I believe in standing up for the silent majority and will regularly highlight the concerns of Finchley and Golders Green residents at Westminster"), Andrew's biographical snippet is sixty-seven words long. Andrew is thirty-eight and married with two sons under five - definitely a real human being (see above, 27,000 et seq.) - and is an advisor to British Petroleum on "renewable energy issues". Presumably this explains the importance Andrew attaches to the issue of climate change, and his vocation to help a Conservative government stay out of his life.
In contrast to the previous instalment of what I devoutly hope is a trilogy, this new leaflet is a normally shaped, normally sized sheet of A4 paper. Possibly this is an effort to reflect the real, normal people Andrew wishes to represent. Under the blue headline "Taxes Hit Middle Classes - Official", I am informed that:
People earning more than 27,000 pounds suffered a one per cent fall in their income last year. A couple with two earners and two children on 60,000 pounds would have lost even more as Labour's tax increases, including the rise in national insurance, freezes on personal allowances and expenditure forced on councils by Gordon Brown began to bite.
Clearly, this is too bad. The Conservatives plan to help these poor unfortunates by increasing government spending by four per cent a year, while at the same time they will "give four billion pounds back to taxpayers, including council tax rebates for over-65s." They will pay for this by efficientiating it out of twelve billion pounds' worth of Government waste which they have identified. A picture of a blond toddler who has either come last in a race, or is racing by himself, completes this conjuring of a Mennearean paradise. The caption to the picture is "It's time for a change", with quotation marks in the original.
Other pieces cover yet further aspects of Labour's iniquity. "Our Pensioners," bluely trumpets another headline, "Betrayed by Tony Blair".
People who have paid their National Insurance over a lifetime now face a retirement of dependent on benefits. Since 1997, Labour has removed five billion pounds a year from private pension funds. A quarter of all pensioners live below the poverty line.
This is certainly cause for concern. A retirement of dependent on benefits must be nearly as awful to live through as it is to read. I am not sure how many of those pensioners who are stuck below the poverty line got there because of Labour's pillaging of private pension funds, but I suppose we may hope that Andrew's researchers are more careful than his proofreaders. Andrew's concern about private pension fund utilisation potential is illustrated by a nightmare picture of Andrew and three old ladies sitting around a table. They all have mugs in front of them, but nobody is drinking. Andrew looks as if he is trying to listen, but unfortunately nobody is speaking, either. Everything in the room - walls, table and tea mugs - is a blinding, terrifying shade of yellow, suggesting a malignant paint-job by incontinent Liberal Democrats. Thankfully, there is no caption, but some very small print at the bottom of this section informs me that the leaflet was printed in Swindon. To his credit, Andrew has never claimed to support local business.
Under the blue headline, "Childcare that suits you, not Tony Blair", I am informed that the Conservatives will make it "easier for grandparents to qualify as childminders". I cannot claim to be well informed about either the childminder situation or the qualifications necessary for grandparenting in the early twenty-first century; but I was not aware that it was possible for grandparents not to qualify as childminders. Indeed, my understanding is that once you become a grandparent, an honorary doctorate in childminding is virtually impossible to avoid.
The Conservatives will also be "involving voluntary and commercial sectors in Children's Centres" - a commercial system for real people's children (see above, 27,000 et seq.) and charity for the rest. Presumably, if one's grandparents qualify as childminders, they will then have the opportunity to enter the commercial sector and beef up their private pension schemes - an opportunity ruthlessly denied under Labour, I have no doubt. The picture here is of a blond child looking at a picture book, interestingly titled The Robot. The caption is "Parents, not Government, know what's best for their children". The quote marks are again present in the original, although it is not made clear whether the quote is from The Robot or from the child.
"Tony Blair said climate change is 'the single most important issue that we face'," fulminates another blueness nearby. To show how far Andrew agrees with this assessment of the issue's importance, the piece is located in the bottom right-hand corner of the page and, counting the eight-word headline ("Just Hot Air From Blair On Climate Change"), is forty-nine words long. One of the words is "incentivise". The Conservatives will "use microgeneration, develop renewable energy and make it cheaper to buy greener cars". The picture shows Andrew's profile, smiling into the ear of someone who is looking into the camera.
There are, in fact, nine pictures on this mailing. Seven of them feature Andrew, and the remaining two are of children, apparently his own. In the section "Fighting For You", Andrew is shown in two pictures, once smiling over a microphone and once laying a wreath outside a post office. In the text it is noted that he has been called "sparky" by the Independent and "a rottweiler" by the Camden New Journal, but it is not clear which incarnation is represented by which picture.
Finally, there is a riveting biographical section, conveniently located next to the pensioners and just above the warming waves of the Tory Torch of Destiny. It is accompanied by a picture of Andrew with his wife and children: just another hard-working family being bravely bled dry by asylum seekers. The caption - like all the rest, an apparent quotation sans discernible source or, for that matter, full stop at the end - is "Government should not control how we live our lives". Not including the headline "Andrew Mennear" or the enclosed campaign promise ("I believe in standing up for the silent majority and will regularly highlight the concerns of Finchley and Golders Green residents at Westminster"), Andrew's biographical snippet is sixty-seven words long. Andrew is thirty-eight and married with two sons under five - definitely a real human being (see above, 27,000 et seq.) - and is an advisor to British Petroleum on "renewable energy issues". Presumably this explains the importance Andrew attaches to the issue of climate change, and his vocation to help a Conservative government stay out of his life.
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