Plans for Evening Cancer editor, Mike Norton, to marry a British Toggenburg goat in a private ceremony this week have come under fire from VEGANS and environmental campaigners.
One opponent of Norton’s goat nuptials claims it would be “a disgrace likely to bring humiliation upon the poor goat”.
VEGANS eat no animal products, including milk and eggs.
Bristol VEGAN Doris Bonkers, 45, of Sea Mills, condemned Norton’s nuptials as environmentally unfriendly and unhealthy.
She said: “British Toggenburgs usually have sound dairy conformation as well as being strong and robust, having good longevity. The breed is one of the most popular breeds in the UK and is used on commercial goat farms where cheese is the main product. They are not suited to marriage to Group Editors of regional newspaper titles.”
But lecturer and Green campaigner Glenn Vowles, 46, of Knowle, said: “While I’m, of course, against the principle of goat weddings, there are serious questions as to whether The Bristol Blogger is making this up.”
Bristol East MP Kerry McCarthy (Labour), who is also a VEGAN, has never raised the issue – yet – of goat marriage in Parliament.
And she also had some concerns about the truth of what the Blogger was saying. She claimed we were just phoning around various people trying to find people prepared to condemn a fabricated story in order to use a witty headline.
The council’s only Green Party councillor Charlie Bolton (Southville) said: “I think you’re talking bollocks.”
Haha! Nice.
Vegans.
Remind me – are they the ones with pointy ears who think that everything’s “Illogical, Captain”; or are they the ones who write the worst poetry in the universe and want to demolish the Earth to build a hyperspace by-pass (using cycling city funding).
Or am I getting them totally muddled with a certain local authority?
Here we go again, our elected representitives, Kerry McCarthy and Charlie Bolton turning a blind eye to moral corruption. And that Glenn Vowles, he won’t even give a straight answer, hedging about and all WHAT IS HE HIDING? I’ve seen him in East Street and he looks pretty shifty to me. I bet he’s got a goat at home.
Think of the children!
I have been monitoring your blog and this is not the first time to have made offensive comments about goats – how about more balance on this blog?
“Bristol East MP Kerry McCarthy (Labour), who is also a VEGAN, has never raised the issue – yet – of goat marriage in Parliament.”
I did however once write to a Government minister on behalf of the ‘Save the Hyperbaric Goats’ campaign. But this sounds far more serious.
http://www.savethegoats.com – looking for a new campaign.
Oh look, it’s Kerry £148,175 McCarthy.
£148,175?!?!
You could make a porn movie for that.
“You could make a porn movie for that.”
Not with me mate, I have standards – I don’t have sex with politicians!
If you need the best part of a hundred and fifty grand to make a porn flick, then you’re doing it wrong.
£150k would:
Pay my parents’ rent for the next 30 years.
“then you’re doing it wrong” … or employing council officers …
Kerry £90,000 in “staff goats”
Always thought there was something funny about that Northern Lights chappie. Bit of a heavy hoof on the keyboard there. Still, Kerry assured the public that he is not being paid. Maybe he receives other goat-appropriate emoluments? We’re gagging to know!
Emoluments eh? I just looked that up – something to do with “grinding”… the mind boggles.
Are people who persist in counting staff wages as money going to line MPs’ pockets just wilfully misinterpreting the facts, or are they all a bit dense? My staff work incredibly hard, and do a very good job, as witnessed by the number of thank you cards and emails we get each week. My constituency office in particular on a daily basis does things which materially affect people’s lives – whether it’s fighting deportations, trying to get people re-housed, challenging utility companies who have over-charged customers, helping people secure crisis loans or sort out problems with tax credits/ incapacity benefit/ Child Support Agency. Etc, etc. Might not make much difference to the smug well-fed bloggerati, but it does to the real people I represent. And it may come as a shock to some of you, but staff need an office and PCs and printer cartidges and there are electricity and phone bills to be paid. For the equivalent of a couple of quid per year per constituent I think they get a bloody good service.
As for Northern Lights, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked whether he works for me; he doesn’t. Unless he’s really a woman.
Oh do shut up Kerry
If it’s costing ME £90K a year for the party faithful to open thank you letters in Somalian from illegal immigrants then I want my money back.
Your constituents don’t pay anything. They don’t pay council tax, rent or income tax. All they do is grab as many millions in benefits as the rest of us can pay in income tax from actually working.
Despite what you think Kerry, you are not the solution, you are the problem.
http://www.bastardoldholborn.blogspot.com/
I think the citizens of this city get extremely good value from the bloggerati, who probably invest a lot of their own time, spending their own money on their own electricity and computers so the people of this city get to learn the truth about things.
p.s. All the assistance Kerry mentions (tax credits/incapacity benefit/child support) can be provided through the East Bristol Advice Centre, so MPs should really be focusing upon the more important local issues which they can raise at parliamentary level, like the Railway Path.
See here for details:
http://www.eastbristoladvice.org.uk/
Kerry McCarthy is Patron of East Bristol Advice Services, runs surgeries from our offices, refers constituents to us, as well as taking clients referred from us. She’s very supportive of what we do, & it’s not as if there’s not plenty of work to go around.
It’s also up to people to decide what’s most important to them. For some people it’s the cyclepath. To others, it whether or not they can keep a roof over their heads.
You can take your pick, but don’t be suprised if other people, not fully paid up members of the bloggeratti, decide to chose something different.
Robin – so, you mean she gets paid by the tax payer to make referrals to your organisation. It’s alright for some, isn’t it.
p.s. Yes Robin, apologies, I meant East Bristol Advice Services (ebas.org.uk).
“Fully paid up”?
“Well fed”?
Is the state funding this blog?
Was I at the Love Food Festival with local MPs and newspaper editors celebrating your local food “heroes”?
Kerry McCarthy
Voted against a transparent Parliament
Voted for ID Cards
Voted for draconian “terrorist” laws
Voted to waste billions on a Trident replacement
Voted against an investigation on th Iraq war
New Labour lobby fodder!
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/kerry_mccarthy/bristol_east
It’s a sad fact, but a fact nonetheless that our excellent local advice agencies can spend a considerable amount of time trying to get cases sorted but then when a local MP gets involved, the powers-that-be miraculously swing into action. It’s because they think MPs will go to the press, I suspect. This is particularly true of the utility companies.
And I’ve done a hell of a lot on the Railway Path issue – but you’re wrong in saying it’s an issue for Parliament; it’s primarily an issue for Bristol and South Gloucs Councils. Whereas issues such as tax credits, child support, immigration etc, although they can be dealt with on an individual basis by local advice workers, are ultimately issues that MPs should be involved with, because we’re responsible for the legislation and scrutiny – and in my opinion you can’t do that properly unless you know the impact Govt policies and civil service processes are having on real people, in the real world.
And if we’re quoting theyworkforyou, how about the ‘well above average’ ratings in terms of speaking in Parliament? Or how about being chosen as the Child Poverty Action Group’s MP of the Year, and mobilising 110 Labour MPs to publicly lobby the Treasury for more action on child poverty (see front page story of the Observer this week). Or doesn’t that count for anything?
In the anti-BRT campaign you lot appeared at the last minute bearing a bloody great Labour Party banner – after everyone had agreed not to bring party banners in order to keep the whole event non-party political, and also that the BRT plan was championed by Mark Bradshaw – what party is he in again, please remind me? Granted, you raised the matter with the Minister of State for Transport – one suspects though that this was probably to warn that Labour might lose votes if BCC carried on with their madcap scheme. I haven’t noticed a great deal of action from you over the Red Trousergate events – in fact I seem to remember that you played it all down on your blog (and removed some comments made by campaigners – typical ZanuLiebour rewriting of history).
“And if we’re quoting theyworkforyou, how about the ‘well above average’ ratings in terms of speaking in Parliament?”
It doesn’t really matter about your ‘well above average’ ratings for speaking in parliament, if that speaking consists of “would the minister agree that he is wonderful, and that the Tories eat babies”, or, of the slavishly following the party line that we are so used to from ZanuLiebour MPs. Renaming (sorry, I forgot, in the Labour Party you use management speak, so that should be “rebranding”) your blog “Shot by Both Sides” does not make you independent, it just makes it look as if you’re cynically trying to keep your seat in these dying days of New Labour.
I’m sure that your mobilising 110 Labour MPs is rather ironic – being as your party have increased inequality in this country.
Oh well, never mind, once old bottler Brown gets the balls to call an election we’ll probably be rid of you and you’ll have to learn how to get by without parliamentary allowances all over again.
I hear that some MPs find themselves close to nervous breakdown after they loose their seats!
Holly wrote: “I think the citizens of this city get extremely good value from the bloggerati, who probably invest a lot of their own time, spending their own money on their own electricity and computers so the people of this city get to learn the truth about things.”
Well said, Holly.
You can tell that “the smug well-fed” (quote) ruling class managers like Kerry and Mark (Bradshaw) are getting very scared about losing the cushy livings and status they get off the back of the rest of us, when they start spraying abuse around at us ordinary folk, when all we’re doing is trying to have our voices heard against the bloated state/corporate machine that they are in charge of.
The so-called “bloggerati” are just ordinary people participating in democratic debate, or as some doutbless call it rather pompously in well-heeled areas “doing our civic duty”. But, as you say, Holly, unlike the well-paid (or remunerated as they like to call it) journalists, executives, quangocrats and ngocrats, the overwhelming majority of bloggers and activists receive no financial reward whatever and can be completely independent of vested interests.
So you can see why bloggers are so hated and feared by the top knobs.
This abuse we have read from Kerry and Mark here, is abuse directed from on high by the powerful and down onto us, the powerless, for daring to speak out. It is intended to put us back in our place and shut us up.
It won’t work.
Kerry wrote: “fighting deportations, trying to get people re-housed, challenging utility companies who have over-charged customers, helping people secure crisis loans or sort out problems with tax credits/ incapacity benefit/ Child Support Agency.”
These mostly seem to be instances where the social, economic and executive infrastructure is failing, Kerry. This is the same social, economic and executive infrastructure that your Party has been micro-managing for the last 12 years! It is a terrible shame that you have to spend your time running around patching up the casualties of your own mis-government, isn’t it.
We live in a broken Britain, Kerry, and your party – New Labour – has played a great part in breaking it.
Oh, and by the way, Robin. Impressive how it took you only half an hour, and out of office hours too, to scuttle in and parrot the the increasingly tired party line about “bloggerati” and Kerry’s noble deeds.
If campaigners in this city had the luxury of the social position you have eeked out for yourself then there would be real change in this city and no doubt the country as a whole. Its you bloody politicians who undo a lot of good work, especially at the local level. Just because you pop along to the odd protest here and there to get yourself in the media doesn’t constitute any achievement.
Oh yeah, I nearly forgot “the smug well-fed bloggerati” – you haven’t figured that it’s not a good idea to abuse your constituents yet then you fucking fabian food faddist?
And Robin, I agree with Dona Kebab’s point – such rapid reaction sycophancy as yours hasn’t been seen in this country since the royal parasite fawned around the king in a dark ages court.
What is is with these politicians? They moan when we don’t get involved, then they moan when we do. Oh but of course, what they really mean is, they do want us to speak, but only if we agree with them and say what they want us to say. Dream on darlings.
Anyway, bugger the bloggerati – it’s the twitterati that would worry me!
And if we’re quoting theyworkforyou, how about the ‘well above average’ ratings in terms of speaking in Parliament? Or how about being chosen as the Child Poverty Action Group’s MP of the Year, and mobilising 110 Labour MPs to publicly lobby the Treasury for more action on child poverty (see front page story of the Observer this week). Or doesn’t that count for anything?” -Kerray
No, it doesn’t. You couldn’t be bothered to turn up for that vote on the Fuel Poverty bill, could you? You slimey idiot. You voted in favour of the Welfare Reform bill (something I can see has a clear human rights challenge in it) despite outcry from Poverty action groups and similar organisations. Still bragging? You are a common weed of an MP, imported from nowhere to do nothing for your new area but choke it. You represent no one but yourself and your own desperation to achieve a Cabinet place that will never materialise.
Kerry ‘Mandy’s poodle’ McCarthy is the ultimate New Labour lobby fodder. Her disgraceful attitude to the Post Office and the government’s privatisation plans are a case in point. No wonder so many Labour people in Bristol can’t stand her.
Also, probably the only vegan in history who would have voted for replacement of Trident….
Now she wants us to leave her alone
http://bastardoldholborn.blogspot.com/2009/04/physician-heal-thyself.html
Thing is, she claims to do so much great work with immigrants and claimants, but she voted for the self-same anti-immigrant laws and claimant-bashing welfare system that she now fights in her surgeries… I’m confused.
How can a person pass laws against poor people one day and then run a surgery to help poor people deal with the exact same laws the next? How can you be a vegan yet vote for more nuclear weapons?
We’re through the looking glass here, people…
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Kerry McCarthy… the MP who appears to believe that if a Somali has a cousin who does a bit of piracy against British shipping in the gulf, then this constitutes a longstanding link to this country…
…but who believes that if you happen to be a Gurkha, whose family has served the Crown for five generations, and, whose father is a VC, this doesn’t constitute a good enough link?!?!?!
At this point, I’d like to agree with Rosso, and say that Kerry is “New Labour lobby fodder”. However, to call her that is to pay her a compliment. Kerry’s voting record is, “loyal, loyal, loyal, loyal, loyal… loyal, loyal, loyal.” This is not just loyalty, this is “my wife drunk or sober” loyalty. This is not the voting record of an MP, but of a sheep… now I know why Kerry doesn’t eat sheep… in her case it would constitute canibalism!
http://tiny.cc/bbrSd
I suspect Kerry believes that this is the route to a job for life… prove her wrong and re-establish my faith in human nature!