Wednesday 1 October 2008

Oh, another thing Mr Smarmeron

Bit after the Lord Mayor's show of you jumping onto the Gurkha Justice campaign bandwagon AFTER the High Court had ruled in their favour. Many more principled politician's have been supporting their cause for years. Peter Carroll was the first politician I was aware of raising the issue. My own employer, Elspeth Attwooll MEP first campaigned on the issue when the Lib Dem's last had Federal Conference in Bournemouth 4 years ago and I'm sure that Sharon Bowles and the rest of the Lib Dem MEPs have backed the Gurkhas. Our Leader Nick Clegg MP* has also been a high profile supporter.

Why do you think that the Gurkha Justice campaign had a reception and stall at Lib Dem conference this year and not at Labour or Tory one? And which party does Britain's only councillor who served in the ranks of the Gurkha's belong to?

If there has been high profile and public support (before the court result was known) from politicians of other political hues then I will be glad to report it if it's brought to my attention.

* I might not have voted for Nick in the leadership contest but his speech at this year's Federal Conference certainly won me over!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

All the Lib Dems backed the Gurkhas - I know Willie Rennie was an enthusiastic supporter of their campaign. It is just sickening that they had to go to these lengths to get justice.

Anonymous said...

I don't buy the argument that as one ex Gurkha serves as a Lib Dem councillor that only the Lib Dems care about them, if that argument goes there are far more ex service men serving as tory councillors, MPs, MEPs etc than Lib Dems, by your argument your party therefore does not support the armed forces. Of course in reality it does support our forces but your argument does seem to make an alternate point. In Bury we allow all service personel (including Gurkhas) free use of lesuire facilities something more than in neighbouring Lib Dem Rochdale.
Just to make it clear I and I think most politicians of all sides support the Gurkhas. In Bury we are looking at a motion to pass to express our support for the Gurhkas, just a pity a tribal politician like you has to say oh my lot said it first. In fact wasn't it John Major who made sure they got a got more money, shocker you forgot that bit didn't you.

Iain Rubie Dale said...

I never argued that as the Lib ems have a Gurkha Councillor we are the only party which backed them. I did argue that Cameron was pretty quiet on the issue until AFTER the court judgement. Typical of a Tory only to read what they want to.

Michael Howard was the local MP so where was his public backing for the campaign?