From the Conservative Party Archive:
Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
Conservative Party posters of the week 2
Thursday, March 11th, 2010Conservative Party posters of the week 1
Thursday, March 4th, 2010Poetry corner 8
Thursday, March 4th, 2010“Hands All Round!” (1852)
by Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (1809-1892)
from “Tiresias, and Other Poems”
Then drink to England, every guest;
That man’s the best Cosmopolite
Who loves his native country best.
May freedom’s oak for ever live
With stronger life from day to day;
That man’s the true Conservative
Who lops the moulder’d branch away.
Hands all round!
God the traitor’s hope confound!
To this great cause of Freedom drink, my friends,
And the great name of England, round and round.
To all the loyal hearts who long
To keep our English Empire whole!
To all our noble sons, the strong
New England of the Southern Pole!
To England under Indian skies,
To those dark millions of her realm!
To Canada whom we love and prize,
Whatever statesman hold the helm.
Hands all round!
God the traitor’s hope confound!
To this great name of England drink, my friends,
And all her glorious empire, round and round.
To all our statesmen so they be
True leaders of the land’s desire!
To both our Houses, may they see
Beyond the borough and the shire!
We sail’d wherever ship could sail,
We founded many a mighty state;
Pray God our greatness may not fail
Through craven fears of being great.
Hands all round!
God the traitor’s hope confound!
To this great cause of Freedom drink, my friends,
And the great name of England, round and round.
Poetry corner 7
Thursday, February 25th, 2010Sonnet 30
by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste;
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
And weep afresh love’s long-since-cancelled woe,
And moan th’ expense of many a vanished sight;
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.
The Common Agricultural Policy
Thursday, February 25th, 2010May draw all of your attentions to this letter which sums up quite neatly what is wrong with that great socialist policy which so dominates the EU budget.
Rt Hon David Miliband MP
Secretary of State,
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA),
Nobel House
17 Smith Square
London SW1P 3JR
16 May 2007
Dear Secretary of State,
My friend, who is in farming at the moment, recently received a cheque for £3,000 from the Rural Payments Agency for not rearing pigs. I would now like to join the “not rearing pigs” business.
In your opinion, what is the best kind of farm not to rear pigs on, and which is the best breed of pigs not to rear? I want to be sure I approach this endeavour in keeping with all government policies, as dictated by the EU under the Common Agricultural Policy.
I would prefer not to rear bacon pigs, but if this is not the type you want not rearing, I will just as gladly not rear porkers. Are there any advantages in not rearing rare breeds such as Saddlebacks or Gloucester Old Spots, or are there too many people already not rearing these?
As I see it, the hardest part of this programme will be keeping an accurate record of how many pigs I haven’t reared. Are there any Government or Local Authority courses on this?
My friend is very satisfied with this business. He has been rearing pigs for forty years or so, and the best he ever made on them was £1,422 in 1968. That is – until this year, when he received a cheque for not rearing any.
If I get £3,000 for not rearing 50 pigs, will I get £6,000 for not rearing 100?
I plan to operate on a small scale at first, holding myself down to about 4,000 pigs not raised, which will mean about £240,000 for the first year. As I become more expert in not rearing pigs, I plan to be more ambitious, perhaps increasing to, say, 40,000 pigs not reared in my second year, for which I should expect about £2.4 million from your department. Incidentally, I wonder if I would be eligible to receive tradable carbon credits for all these pigs not producing harmful and polluting methane gases?
Another point: These pigs that I plan not to rear will not eat 2,000 tonnes of cereals. I understand that you also pay farmers for not growing crops. Will I qualify for payments for not growing cereals to not feed the pigs I don’t rear?
I am also considering the “not milking cows” business, so please send any information you have on that too. Please could you also include the current Defra advice on set aside fields? Can this be done on an e-commerce basis with virtual fields (of which I seem to have several thousand hectares)?
In view of the above you will realise that I will be totally unemployed, and will therefore qualify for unemployment benefits.
I shall of course be voting for your party at the next general election.
Yours faithfully
Labour’s election strategy
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010While Gordon is in his bunker, apoplectic with rage at the suggestion he has an anger management problem…
The Labour Party have sent a secret leaflet to their candidates, briefing them on electioneering strategy.
Candidates have been told not to campaign on the party’s record in office.
It explains: “Labour need to ensure that the next election is not seen as a referendum on the Government.”
Poetry corner 6
Thursday, February 18th, 2010One plus one leaves two
by Ogden Nash (1902-1971)
She lays eggs for gentlemen.
Gentlemen come every day
To count what my black hen doth lay.
If perchance she lays too many,
They fine my hen a pretty penny;
If perchance she fails to lay,
The gentlemen a bonus pay.
Mumbledy pumbledy, my red cow,
She’s cooperating now.
At first she didn’t understand
That milk production must be planned;
She didn’t understand at first
She either had to plan or burst,
But now the government reports
She’s giving pints instead of quarts.
Fiddle de dee, my next-door neighbors,
They are giggling at their labors.
First they plant the tiny seed,
Then they water, then they weed,
Then they hoe and prune and lop,
They they raise a record crop,
Then they laugh their sides asunder,
And plow the whole caboodle under.
Abracadabra, thus we learn
The more you create, the less you earn.
The less you earn, the more you’re given,
The less you lead, the more you’re driven,
The more destroyed, the more they feed,
The more you pay, the more they need,
The more you earn, the less you keep,
And now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord my soul to take
If the tax-collector hasn’t got it before I wake.
Send a message to Labour
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010They have sent us a message, that they can take whatever they want. Well we will send them a message: that this — this is our land!
Poetry corner 5
Thursday, February 11th, 2010“Sailing at Dawn”
by Sir Henry Newbolt (1862-1938)
from “Songs of the Fleet” in “Poems New and Old”
set to music by Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (1910)
One by one the great ships are stirring from their sleep,
Cables all are rumbling, anchors all a-weigh now,
Now the fleet’s a fleet again, gliding towards the deep.
Now the fleet’s a fleet again, bound upon the old ways,
Splendour of the past comes shining in the spray;
Admirals of old time, bring us on the bold ways!
Souls of all the sea-dogs, lead the line to-day!
Far away behind us town and tower are dwindling,
Home becomes a fair dream faded long ago;
Infinitely glorious the height of heaven is kindling,
Infinitely desolate the shoreless sea below.
Now the fleet’s a fleet again, bound upon the old ways,
Splendour of the past comes shining in the spray;
Admirals of old time, bring us on the bold ways!
Souls of all the sea-dogs, lead the line to-day!
Once again with proud hearts we make the old surrender,
Once again with high hearts serve the age to be,
Not for us the warm life of Earth, secure and tender,
Ours the eternal wandering and warfare of the sea.
Now the fleet’s a fleet again, bound upon the old ways,
Splendour of the past comes shining in the spray;
Admirals of old time, bring us on the bold ways!
Souls of all the sea-dogs, lead the line to-day!
Poetry corner 4
Thursday, February 4th, 2010“Binsey Poplars
felled 1879”
by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89)
from “Poems” (1918)
MY aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.
O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew –
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being só slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc únselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.







