Sunday 13 December 2009

Legrande stretches our credulity again

The recent selection of Jenny Chapman to be the Labour Party's candidate in Darlington means that there are now two truely local candidates for the seat, Jenny and myself. Conscious of his unwanted tag as the outsider, Edward Elgar, the Conservative Candidate, has this weekend been furiously delivering a glossy, full-coloured leaflet (even to Rise Carr, not known as a hot bed of Tory voters) in which he twice describes himself as "Local Conservative Edward Legard".

Well, if you live in Malton, North Yorkshire, I guess that might be true, but if there's one thing Capt Legrande is not, it's a local Conservative in Darlington.

Thankfully the Tories use such a small font, in an attempt to get as much mind-numbingly boring stuff as possible down on their glossy paper, that it is quite difficult for anyone to read this with anything less than the Hubble telescope. With their income in 2008 being almost £35,000, and no doubt rising even higher as their General Election appeal hots up, despite their tumbling membership, we can expect a blizzard of literature from the local Conservative Association over the next few months.

Remember on their last leaflet, Edward was described as a "local Councillor", which again is only true if you live in Ryedale. By the time of the election he'll probably be slumming it on Charles's floor, so he can claim to be living in the constituency. Well, he wouldn't want to anything naughty like deliberately trying to mislead the voters, would he?

As always, the leaflet is titled "intouch". Sadly, this isn't possible, since the candidate's contact details cunningly omit any telephone number on which to contact him. And when they invite us to meet Eddie at one of his famous Q&A sessions in the town, they fail to tell us where any of them will be.

Still, never mind, for the blue rinse brigade the leaflet contains the usual photo of Edward in his favourite blue jumper taking a relaxing break from campaigning on a High Row seat (that's right, a seat on the pedestrianised High Row which the local Conservatives wanted still to be a road).

3 comments:

Unknown said...

It's a shame I didn't get one. It would have given me something to laugh about, and to line the cat's litter tray with...

Still, seeing as I'm more interested in policies - perhaps you would like to outline policy differences between your good self and the other candidates?

Are there any differences between yourself and fellow local candidate Jenny Chapman... in policy terms, obviously!

I mean, we can be pretty sure that if Jenny Chapman is elected, she will not be taking part in a coalition government with the Tories, for example...

Anonymous said...

I use the Town Crier to line my cat's litter tray with the picture of the Great Leader pointing upwards.

Unknown said...

I'm beginning to wonder, Anonymous - just who are you?