Wednesday, 30 April 2008
No flowers, please
Your scribe is sometimes criticised for "negativism"; for engendering (in my own tiny way) an atmosphere of cynicism and distrust in politics and politicians. This unremitting abuse is damaging politics, they say. Not everyone is a crook, you know; not every initiative is a hollow gimmick. Or so they say.
But then something like this comes along - from the late Gwyneth Dunwoody's local Labour Party website - and even I just have to shake my head in wonder:
A close study of the data capture process reveals that it includes a sophisticated software routine designed to look-up and verify the postcode and collect the data for Labour HQ in London. This is not a spontaneous local initiative - it was designed by Tangent Labs, the Labour Party's national e-campaigns software contractors. Don't forget to include this work in your election expenses chaps....
The data will no doubt be used to help with e-campaigning in what could be a closely fought battle.
Gwyneth Dunwoody will be buried tomorrow. In December I paid tribute to her for a blistering attack on Hazel Blears, given in the House of Commons, and deploring the cynicism of the government towards its citizens. Who can doubt, as her body waits to go in the ground, that she was right - that we all are right - to hope for the best of those who govern us, but believe the worst?
I wouldn't have voted for her, but with her passing we have clearly lost someone who believed passionately in what she was doing. These people, by contrast, are simply scum.
It is a shame to see her name being used for cheap data capture tricks.
By the way I was under the impression the law had changed and that you now had to opt in to mailing lists, not opt out as they're still doing.
No doubt someone will say who's right.
It is a pretty vile trick.
And that's bad, is it?
Trust is earned. Each of us is now "represented" by more professional politicians than ever before. At least five, if you live in Scotland. These people turn up, campaign for a few weeks (supposedly - this usually amounts to a minion stuffing a cod-newspaper through the letterbox... actually, scratch that: most of the time they're just dumped on the doortstep), I vote against them, then they have power over me, spending money like water, and doing stuff I don't want done. Of course I don't bloody trust them. I barely know them. Actually, I don't know some of them at all.
Is anybody actually surprised by the phishing "tribute"?
Mr E, a condolence book for the death of the Labour Party could be hosted on your site... though it's probably about 14 years too late.
Add to that you are automatically subscribed and then you have to return to the site to unsubscribe and and it's hard not to be awe-struck by their brazenness
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