Sarah how could you?
Apparently the bear behind her criticised Madam VPILF on his blog...
TB is watching his step...
Friday, 5 September 2008
Apparently the bear behind her criticised Madam VPILF on his blog...
TB is watching his step...
Busy little bear
Another busy weekend for TB so blogging will be light to non-existant...
Will get the the NME ratings index up in the next few days if you're lucky...
Seems it all got a little heated in the last 24 hours if the amount of emails and texts TB got last night are anything to go by. Here's a little song to lighten up your Friday...
If that doesn't calm things down nothing will!
Thursday, 4 September 2008
Air Jonah
Remember
when that plane fell out of the sky above Heathrow in January?
Well today the official report blames ice in the fuel
. A previously unheard of problem...blah blah... Tory Bear can reveal that the real reasons this happened was because Gordon Brown was on the way to China and his motorcade drove under the approach path of BA038. TB has it good authority that his car had recently been installed with a brand new security system which utilised a RF transmitter to block out any mobile phone triggered bombs. These systems can have up to a two mile range and it apparently caused the Boeing 777 EEC’s (electronic engine controls) to sense a “over-boost” situation, thereby commanding a reduced-thrust situation for the engines.
Ben Brogan
said at the time"This gets weirder. The PM's motorcade was coming up the A4 as the plane approached and at one point his detectives grew alarmed. The suggestion is the stricken Airbus misjudged its approach and nearly took out the PM..."
Coincidence? TB thinks not...
Having originally been sceptical about this story TB commented that it could have been a bird flying into the engine. His contact had this option covered though -
"Yeah but there were no feathers"
And so it continues...
| CCF Reforms | |
| Ffrom: | Adele Douglas (adele.n.douglas@hotmail.co.uk) |
| Ssent: | |
| Tto: | Christian May (christianjmay@googlemail.com); Cllr Steve Ricketts (steven.ricketts@plymouth.gov.uk); Michael Rock (michael@rock4cf.com); Patrick Sullivan (patricksullivan21@hotmail.com); Anastasia Beaumont-Bott (anastasiabeaumontbott@yahoo.co.uk); Richard Jackson (rngjackson@googlemail.com) |
Hi Guys,
With regards to the publicity that the proposed reforming of CF has had today, I would like to make clear my position.
I expect that there will be a vote within the NME on the 13th - I fully intend to vote against the reforms being put to the Board.
I don't believe that the idea of Regional Chairmen is a bad one; they exist within the main voluntary Party. However, I do not believe that an RC could perform the function that a CF AC performs - due to constraints of time, travel and it simply being harder to be familiar with a whole region of the UK than one county. I believe that organisation in the remote parts of
I am aware that we do not currently have every Area Chairman position filled, but, as I have said many times previously, the key to achieving this is further engagement with groups of young people who are "small c" conservatives, and having a more positive approach to campaigning. We will not attract new members by re-writing the constitution but by being proactive, visible and approachable. Similar projects have been tried in the past, and have failed - mainly due to opposition in the North - the exact people you claim this will further include.
I would also urge you to remember that CF is first and foremost a voluntary organisation, and if members are not happy they will vote with their feet and leave. I think turnout at recent events has shown that this is already beginning to happen. Any proposed reforms to the organisation to which they give their time and effort to should be put first and foremost to the membership, as I believe we can only act legitimately as an executive with the member's consent. I will also say that the handling of this situation has been appalling and the membership are beginning to think that the NME hold them in contempt.
The Conservative Future that I joined was a fair and democratic organisation (unlike many other youth political organisations), and, as long as this is still true, the member's stake in the running of CF cannot be removed. Fairly or not, this is what these reforms are perceived to be doing, and I cannot stand by and watch while CF factionalises and tears itself apart.
This should not be taken as personally by anyone, it is an email I have been contemplating sending for a long time and expresses simply my opinions on what I believe to be right for the organisation.
See you all on the 13th.
ADx
Well that should liven things up a bit...
Rock's support dips as the reforms are chewed over...
Based on a survey of 13% of the CF electorate there is clearly a feeling that something needs to be done to reinvigorate and restructure the organisation but the reforms put forward by Michael Rock are clearly not seen as the answer:
TB isn't surprised by these developments and has voiced his concerns about this matter on many occasion. This poll proves his analysis that it was not necessarily reforms people were anti - it's being kept in the dark they object to.
It's not too late to salvage this. TB is receiving word that an email from Michael will go out to the Area Chairman sometime this afternoon...
Looks like this could be the announcement they've all been waiting for...
It's not too late to salvage this. TB is receiving word that an email from Michael will go out to the Area Chairman sometime this afternoon...
Looks like this could be the announcement they've all been waiting for...
What has TB unleashed?
TB thought there would be a response to that last letter, but not this quickly... Luckily still up waiting for darling Sarah to begin her speech so caught this one early and can get this next letter up straight away:
Once again this has been reproduced at the request of the author:
I felt it was about time to give my views on the proposed plans to change CF. I am emailing Tory Bear, as I believe we need to have an open debate and am happy to have my views made public.
I feel at best, the suggestions you have made would be counter-productive.
Firstly, however, I must echo the sentiments of Alex Agius. The manner in
which I first became aware of this plans was simply unacceptable. For such
drastic reforms to have been announced through a series of blog posts on
third party sites, rather than direct attempts to communicate with the
Branch and Area chairs, is disgraceful. Although everyone accepts that CF
needs to change, the lack of communication in establishing change merely
reflects a continuation of the culture which created the present dire
state CF is in.
You, as a guest author on Tory Bear, described the replacement of area
chairs with regional coordinators, as being intended to make CF “more
effective at a local level and to increase its accountability.” This
simply will not work. A Regional Chairman would inevitably become
detached, due to simple geographical reasons, from much of their region;
focusing their attention on their locality or on a few big CF groups which
are easy to visit. How much attention would a regional chair for the East
of England, who combines a job with his CF duties, have to spend helping
out the Great Yarmouth CF? This already occurs within the current area
system. It is in practice impossible to be a good area chair for both
Norfolk and Suffolk. What is needed is a breaking up of the area; not
further centralisation. In the context of Student life regions make sense
simply due to the fact that we are dealing with a small number of
institutions, it does not make sense when one considers that in Norfolk
alone there are around 25 CF groups.
With this in mind regional elections would rapidly become polarising
events, with each county having their own candidate and the results having
everything to do with location not ability. In the East of England region,
a UEA/Norfolk candidate would fight an Essex, and possibly a Cambridge
one. Each election would become a messy and bloody affair with the
effective regional support being the prize. Communication and cooperation
would become increasingly difficult, with tribalism becoming even more
prevalent. As we are nearing a general election, the idea that we should
unleash the hounds of war upon ourselves rather than labour is pure
madness. CF is already too focused on internal politicking rather than
winning elections, (real ones that is, a lot of work goes into internal
elections.)
I will concede that a regional organiser supporting the efforts of a
larger team of area chairs could possibly work. As would the creation of
them as a professional paid position. Having only a regional chairman
however, would leave the majority of branches on their own. If you wanted
to destroy CF as nation wide institution, leaving only localised fiefdoms
around the CF groups big enough to survive without regional support, then
this policy would achieve your aim.
CF needs reform, but rather than grand structural reforms what we need
first is genuine effectiveness in communication, a centralised resource
website, regular events held across the nation and crucially the injection
of funding required allowing us to professionalise. I am not in favour of
the status quo, but I fail to see how this would improve the situation.
Yours
Paul Wells
University of East Anglia CF Chairman
CF Student Life Elections Officer
Dear Christian/Tory Bear,
I felt it was about time to give my views on the proposed plans to change CF. I am emailing Tory Bear, as I believe we need to have an open debate and am happy to have my views made public.
I feel at best, the suggestions you have made would be counter-productive.
Firstly, however, I must echo the sentiments of Alex Agius. The manner in
which I first became aware of this plans was simply unacceptable. For such
drastic reforms to have been announced through a series of blog posts on
third party sites, rather than direct attempts to communicate with the
Branch and Area chairs, is disgraceful. Although everyone accepts that CF
needs to change, the lack of communication in establishing change merely
reflects a continuation of the culture which created the present dire
state CF is in.
You, as a guest author on Tory Bear, described the replacement of area
chairs with regional coordinators, as being intended to make CF “more
effective at a local level and to increase its accountability.” This
simply will not work. A Regional Chairman would inevitably become
detached, due to simple geographical reasons, from much of their region;
focusing their attention on their locality or on a few big CF groups which
are easy to visit. How much attention would a regional chair for the East
of England, who combines a job with his CF duties, have to spend helping
out the Great Yarmouth CF? This already occurs within the current area
system. It is in practice impossible to be a good area chair for both
Norfolk and Suffolk. What is needed is a breaking up of the area; not
further centralisation. In the context of Student life regions make sense
simply due to the fact that we are dealing with a small number of
institutions, it does not make sense when one considers that in Norfolk
alone there are around 25 CF groups.
With this in mind regional elections would rapidly become polarising
events, with each county having their own candidate and the results having
everything to do with location not ability. In the East of England region,
a UEA/Norfolk candidate would fight an Essex, and possibly a Cambridge
one. Each election would become a messy and bloody affair with the
effective regional support being the prize. Communication and cooperation
would become increasingly difficult, with tribalism becoming even more
prevalent. As we are nearing a general election, the idea that we should
unleash the hounds of war upon ourselves rather than labour is pure
madness. CF is already too focused on internal politicking rather than
winning elections, (real ones that is, a lot of work goes into internal
elections.)
I will concede that a regional organiser supporting the efforts of a
larger team of area chairs could possibly work. As would the creation of
them as a professional paid position. Having only a regional chairman
however, would leave the majority of branches on their own. If you wanted
to destroy CF as nation wide institution, leaving only localised fiefdoms
around the CF groups big enough to survive without regional support, then
this policy would achieve your aim.
CF needs reform, but rather than grand structural reforms what we need
first is genuine effectiveness in communication, a centralised resource
website, regular events held across the nation and crucially the injection
of funding required allowing us to professionalise. I am not in favour of
the status quo, but I fail to see how this would improve the situation.
Yours
Paul Wells
University of East Anglia CF Chairman
CF Student Life Elections Officer
And so it begins...
TB has been looking at the survey results that are coming in and it is no surprise that the much talked about reforms play a big role in shaping members' opinions of those in charge of Conservative Future. TB will do the number crunching tomorrow and release the results over the next few days, but in the mean time this letter could well be the beginning of an onslaught of opposition to not necessarily the reforms, but they way in which they are being put through...
This was received late last night and is reproduced in full with the authors permission:
Dear Christian/Tory Bear,
I am writing to you about the blog post you wrote/published on the tory bear blog on the 22nd of August 2008.
You started your article by saying that the NME have been watching lots of comments and conjecture from Conservative Future members flying around recently about big changes to the structure of our organisation. Changes you acknowledge are in your plans later in your article i.e. the introduction of Regional Coordinators and the abolition of the NME and Area Chairmen. You go on to ask members to provide feedback on these ideas to the NME (a request fellow NME member Patrick Sullivan repeats in the same blog post in the comments section).
I am interested to hear your full proposals and would like to ask when you intend to publish them so that the members you represent and are requesting feedback from can see all the plans in full and gain a true understanding of what you are proposing? You appear to criticise those who are speculating about the full details of your plans but you do not seem to appreciate that you have greatly added to this speculation by your blog post and failing to publish your proposals in full. Publishing your proposals in full would very quickly kill off this speculation you seem to find unwelcome. Not only would this end the speculation you talk about but it is necessary if you are to carry the majority of the membership. It has been a little while (13 days) since you began this speculation and brought your proposed changes to a wider audience by your blog post but yet the members are still waiting to see your full plans. When do you intend to publish them? My understanding is that you do not have long (a few days) to do this if you are to do so and allow time for the members to digest and provide the feedback you requested before the next NME meeting.
After reading your blog post and despite the fact that it is the NME who are making these proposals I felt it unfair to expect the NME to do all the work to communicate these changes and reach out to every member to explain your plans. So to do my bit and make it as easy as possible to allow this flow of information I contacted another NME member who I will not name (the NME member who I felt most comfortable with discussing these plans). She refused point blank to discuss the matter with me when I raised the topic and told me that this was due to the NME making a group decision not to discuss the matter or talk to the members they profess to represent about these changes. As I am sure you will agree this is unacceptable, the NME are there to represent the organisations members who elected them, in fact many of the current NME members promised to do just that while seeking election to the NME not that long ago. However now it would appear (if my friend on the NME is correct) they are now involved in actively withholding information and are not interested in representing the members who elected them while trying to bring about large organisational changes. It also seems a crazy position that my friend on the NME cannot talk to me about this matter but you can publicly write blog posts contributing to the speculation.
As for the substance to your proposals I have not yet come to form an opinion (How can I? You have yet to publish your proposals) but the way this matter has been handled has already put me off before I have even seen the details. I will be interested to see your thought on my criticisms of how this matter has been handled, the behaviour of the NME in actively and deliberately withholding information from its members & refusing to discuss this matter with them and look forward to seeing your proposals in full.
Many thanks,
Alex Agius.
Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire Conservative Future Area Chairman.
Wednesday, 3 September 2008
Beige vs. Scurvy Steve
This email from the enigmatically named "Hidden Pride" pinged into TB's inbox a couple of hours ago:
Your survey has a flaw. It can be taken over and over again from the same computer/IP so Steve "For Britain" Rickets can big himself up an awful lot!
HP
HP
OK so nothing new in TB receiving a bitchy email about one of the elected Conservative Future officials or the like, but something about this one made TB check out the finer details of the IP address of the sender...
Surely not?
Would that be owenlmeredith@googlemail.com?
Isn't that the host email account for owen@owenmeredith.com?
Owen "
Delivering
for Everyone, Aspiration for All
" Meredith how could you?Shamelessly slagging off your fellow elected officials... tut tut.
Young, fun and... Republican?
If you think young Tories in this country get a bit of stick for the old YC memories, spare a moment's thought for the young Republicans who are battling the fact that Obama has brainwashed their entire generation... Well almost all of them:
Huffington Post, it isn’t likely to be the most balanced of views on the young Republican movement, but the rest of the article is well worth a read.
Classic line at the end of this video:
Seems they have some hotties...
If you have half an hour....
amazing interview
with Shaun Bailey that was on Radio4 this morning.Inspirational stuff...
Cheers
Thank you very much to everyone who, after just three months, voted Tory Bear to the giddy heights of 35th in
Iain Dale's 2008 Top 100 Right of Centre Blogs
.TB is looking forward to meeting lots of you in Birmingham.
Tuesday, 2 September 2008
If you go down to the Brum today...
(More infomation here)
Pay now with PayPal:
(Please email editor@torybear.com to confirm your payment is received)
(Please email editor@torybear.com to confirm your payment is received)
wtf?
Why the hell is The Times spending money on GoogleAds spreading unsubstantiated, tainted and poorly sourced gossip?
Are things really that desperate for the dead tree lot?
Pre-Conference Ratings
It's that time again already... Please click the link below and take a moment to fill out the ten questions here. Just did it and it takes less than a minute!
Cheers
Monday, 1 September 2008
Enjoying this election a little too much...
Americans take their elections to a whole new level. This years DNC was smashed all viewing records and had more people watching Obama than the Oscars. Our conference season is going to be tiny in the face of the grand conventions- party conference struggles to get decent coverage from the rolling news channels, let alone the "prime-time."
Bare with TB if he gets more than a little excited from time to time over the next eight weeks. The combination of a fascinating primary season and the fact the race is still wide open and likely to get bloody could make this the most exciting election in a very long time... or McCain or Palin will do something fucking stupid and BO will storm it... but only time will tell!
At this rate TB is very, very tempted to fly out in November... Who's coming?
In the meantime here's a little tune for y'all.
Give it a minute to get going...
True Love Waits...
This from CNN:
In a 2006 Eagle Forum questionnaire, Palin indicated that she supported funding abstinence-until-marriage education programs instead of teaching sex-education programs.
"Explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support," Palin wrote in the conservative group’s questionnaire."
Hmmmm whoopsy daisy... seems the message didn't quite resonate at home.
This won't do her any damage, if anything it will dog-whistle the middle-America Republican base. Palin doesn't just talk the talk about being pro-life she walks the walk too and will do everything to help her daughter. This would have broken at some point and the sooner the better really. Especially as this can be used to help kill the
These developments prove two things about this election:
1. The Democrats are running very scared about Palin.
Obama may be feigning his disgust but the left have woken up. After the battering that Kerry got, going from war-hero to fraud in 2 months has not been forgotten and the left have learnt how to fight dirty.
2. This really is the year of the blogger.
But with power comes responsibility... The left truly are the nasty ones these days the DK lies aren't something to be celebrated but demonstrate how powerful the blogs have become.
the speculation
that her youngest son was actually her daughters has been blown out of all proportion. The photos of the supposed "bump" under Bristol's jumper do not warrant the attention this story got and the lovely Sarah looks pretty damn pregnant here
.These developments prove two things about this election:
1. The Democrats are running very scared about Palin.
Obama may be feigning his disgust but the left have woken up. After the battering that Kerry got, going from war-hero to fraud in 2 months has not been forgotten and the left have learnt how to fight dirty.
2. This really is the year of the blogger.
The fake pregnancy attack on the Daily Kos
went from being an obnoxious smear by some bearded little lefty to hitting the networks and international newspapers in just 24 hours. Just four years ago the MSM treated the blogsphere with slight disdain and now every single network and every single newspaper in both the USA and UK has a full staff of bloggers and strong internet presence. The bloggers break the "news", true or not and the old guard follow. The prominence of the blogs in USA2008 bodes extremely well for the UK whenever our miserable, cynical and negative government finally comes to a grind halt and we get out turn on the stump...But with power comes responsibility... The left truly are the nasty ones these days the DK lies aren't something to be celebrated but demonstrate how powerful the blogs have become.
More on Scotland
Further to his rant and musings about the state of the Scottish Conservative Party and subsequently Scottish Conservative Future, TB had a wee chat with ABB. It was interesting to hear what a former Scottish CF player thought, having experienced both the inner workings of the two organisations.
Well firstly
CFS is arguably in a pretty poor state, what are the main problems?
The Scottish Conservative Party need to recognise who and where their next generation of voters and supporters are coming from, and start utilising that. It is my firm belief that if CFS was given more support from the central party up there, we would see more gains – much in the same way Conservative Future works down here in
How do you feel the problems in CFS reflect the larger scale problems the Conservative party in
One of the things I have always admired about the Scottish Conservative Party is how they never give up. In
Surely it should just be bought under central CFUK control?
As much as I believe this to be a unionist party, I appreciate that in order to engage the Scottish electorate at the highest possible level, it is necessary to have two separate party boards; one for
I have a great deal of time and respect for Murdo Fraser.
People say
Because this is a unionist party and in a general election
Idiot spotting...
Spotting this pillock certainly made 5 hours on the M4 slightly more amusing.
Thank you to the person who emailed
this site
over... very funny and very true.Number 15 is TB's favourite.
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