A spineless party...

As some of you may know three years ago Boris Johnson stood for Rector of Edinburgh University. All was looking good until Labour Students and the People and Planet trots who controlled the student council broke with the 200 years tradition and charity laws by using student union funds to campaign against Boris to the tune of thousands of pounds for the "Don't wake up with a dumb blonde campaign." These funds were justified apparently because of Boris's pro top up fees stance. Fast forward to this years campaign and last night's student council meeting where the idea of funding a campaign was rejected. Details can be found

here

but what really tickled TB was who was leading the charge against using union funds? Labour Students of course!

Their candidate this year is Lord George Foulkes famous for being in various parliaments for twenty five years yet seemingly unable to hold down a front bench job despite having one of the most loyal party voting records ever. Punching people didn't do John Prescott any harm but seems Foulkes was forced to fall on his sword after his little

hiccup

. He has voted in favour of top up fees on more than one occasion and yet despite their seemingly unwavering devotion to NUS and apparent anti top up fees stance Labour Students have decided to throw the full weight of their once very effective election machine behind Foulkes. They used the student council for financial gain against Boris and they used it last night to make sure the same treatment wasn't given to them. The levels of their opportunism is staggering and they have as much spine as the government they represent.

Now don't get TB wrong, he doesn't think that student unions should be spending students money on such matters but he chose to abstain last night because as much as he would have liked to see LS left with mud on their faces when the union conducted an anti-Foulkes campaign, he is not a hypocrite and has been one of the most vocal opponents to such action being taken. Labour Students are not the force they once were on campus and after 12 years of this rotten government the brand is very tainted. TB gets on personally rather well with some members, especially some of the more right-wing ones, but it's times like these where their true political colours come through and their unwavering tribal devotion that really irritates him. Even in the face of moral dilemmas and looking like hypocrites they will still always go with the option that apparently best helps their party.

They are the perfect microcosm of the higher echelons of the Labour Party and seemingly have no shame...

Make some noise...

It's rare that TB and his blogging flatmate end up sharing a story but

Noise Porn

, an underground repetative beat mongering site has an interesting call to arms today:

"It has been brought to our attention that the UK government wants to make it a legal requirement in the new tax year to introduce laws insisting anyone applying or re-applying for an entertainment license must have a noise control device fitted to their venue. This will be the final nail in the coffin for clubs (and live music venues too), as the level at which these devices cut off is pretty low, suspected to be 93dB.

If you like to hear music the way it’s meant to be heard and you believe that the government has now place to tell us otherwise, sign this petition now!"

Get involved.

Freedom isn't free...

He's a long way from the Scilly Isles now! CF deputy Chairman and YBF operator Christian May was yesterday awarded the Freedom of the City of London. Entitled now to herd his goats across London Bridge and be put in a taxi by an officer of the law if he is caught drunk in town amongst other things, Mr May looks rather pleased with himself:

Talk the talk...

Thanks to the brilliant website blogtalkradio, which enables you to basically host your own radio shows and podcasts, Donal Blaney now has a US style conservative talk radio show every night at eight. Though TB has been a busy bear these past few evenings he has managed to have catch up and have a listen this afternoon.

It's good stuff

and especially like the music!

Piss off.

Whoever it is that is signing up Tory Bear's personal email address to gay dating sites and darker subservient sex clubs pack it in.

Not very subtle to threaten someone one day and then take steps to smear them the next now is it?

Ridiculously busy day sorting out life at university and assorted hackery but back to normal tomorrow.

London ladies...

They may be the official face of the glamorous party but now Serene Richards (right) and Liza Chantelle(above) are rapidly working their way up the ladder. They have both been appointed to the new London CF committee, Serene responsible for universities and Liza as the social action officer.

London CF is launching on the 15th with some mystery big guest speakers and with chairman Clare Hilley just being selected to fight a safe council seat, it's going to be a double celebration...

Lunatic Left put up Galloway

Tory Bear got wind of the rumour this morning that George Galloway was planning on a bid for the Rector of Edinburgh University and now

HackWatch

(an Edinburgh student politics gossip blog run by a Labour PPC,) got the story first.

This could get interesting.

TB is looking forward to what will no doubt become a pitched campus battle...

Dolly and friends...

TB has been taking a look at the new

Labourlist website

that has launched in a preview mode. It's the brainchild of Derek Draper and represents Labour's top down attempt to fight the grassroots movement that ConservativeHome represents, an almost perfect analogy of the Lab/Con view on how the country should be run. It lists who it's contributors will be and he was rather surprised to see

Sarah Mulholland

included. She is the Chairman of Labour Students and generic Unite drone but doesn't exactly strike it big on the blogosphere...

Indeed she hasn't even updated her riveting

Labour Student's blog

for over six months... The CF online presence is updated multiple times a week.

Dolly is going have to try harder than this...

Seems Adrian McMenamin's bosses at the CBI have got the better of his not so secret alliances though. He is very absent from the list.

Let the games begin...

Tory Bear is about to get on a plane back up to Scotland (sorry Lily,) so will follow this up later but it according to

The Guardian

it seems Dolly Draper is about to launch his much anticipated attack on the right wing blogosphere:

"Now Labour is fighting back in the battle of the blogs, with a new website to be launched this week aimed at sparking an online debate among what it calls "Labour-minded" people over thinking inside the movement. It forms part of Labour plans to "take the fight to the web", with ministers fielding questions in online forums, such as the price comparison website moneysupermarket.com and "virals" - internet spoofs designed to be emailed between friends - increasingly sitting alongside conventional party political broadcasts.

LabourList.org was controversial even before it was born, with established Labour bloggers complaining at being left out, and Tory bloggers warning that it would be so heavily censored as to be little more than party propaganda."

Load... Aim...

Tory Bear silenced... well sort of.

Talking to a friend who is spending a year in China Tory Bear was asked about how his day had been. When he replied "busy!" and sent her the link to today's fun and games, did it load?

Hell no... seems the esteemed communist internet censors have deemed Tory Bear's musings to be too much for the Chinese audience. He is officially banned...

He would be insulted if it was any other way!

The last word...

So it's been quite a day and Tory Bear expected to take some flak for his actions in effectively blowing the whistle on the inappropriate behaviour of certain people. 98% of CF members and readers of this blog so far seem to be reasonable people who, like TB, have been repulsed by anyone who would dress up as Madeleine McCann or Baby P. However there are those that would rather shoot the messenger. Tory Bear firmly believes that although today has given those that already hate the Tories a excuse to have a go at us, the actions of the Party have proven TB's original point and reasons behind publishing - that sick people like this are not welcome in out tent. Readers of this blog will know that TB isn't one of these molly coddling social conservatives who believes in preaching right and wrong but a line was very very much crossed here.

Not only was the actions of Matt Lewis and co hugely inappropriate they were also extremely foolish. TB believes that it is best in the long run that they were outed now, rather than allowing people who can show such lack of compassion and intelligence to progress up the greasy pole. This story isn't Tory Bear attacking the Conservatives as some of you have suggested, it is in fact a blessing in disguise. Members like this shouldn't be brushed away under the carpet or covered up but tackled head on. The Party really has changed and those elements that earned us the reputation as the nasty party are no longer welcome.

As TB said earlier, it takes a lot to have a crack at your own side and the decision wasn't taken lightly, however if we want to create the Britain that the Conservative Party says it can and wants to see, then there will be causalities on the way. The lack of respect for other people and base humour this incident has shown is symptomatic of the broken society that we live in.

CF has today lost one of it's new Regional Coordinators in Richard Lowe, a branch Chairman (Keele CF) Flick Cox and a former Area Chairman Matt Lewis. Matt has apologised and now it's time to move on. To defend the actions of these people and blame the media (and/or TB,) will only drag this out further. The right course of action has been taken and let's get back to work in changing this country for the better.

An apology from Matt Lewis

The Matt Lewis story has gone nuclear and the BBC Six O'Clock news and Sky have both featured it. Third biggest story on the BBC, no doubt because it contains the word Tory:

The PA wire is thankfully now carrying this apology from Matt Lewis:

"I unreservedly apologise to Mr and Mrs McCann for my actions. I completely regret my behaviour that night and since, and cannot express how sorry I am for the incredible hurt I have caused. Whilst my actions were not meant to be malicious, I fully understand the pain they have brought."

UPDATE:

This statement from CF Chairman Michael Rock has just been 

released

:

"As you may know, a young member of Conservative Future has been expelled from the party today. We have also seen two other people expelled due to association with this incident.

The person concerned made a serious error of judgement, behaving in a completely unacceptable manner that was both shocking and offensive. There is clearly no place for this in the Party. We should all remember that actions have consequences. Representing the Party, at any level, is a privilege and a great responsibility. I know that he deeply regrets his behaviour, and especially regrets any hurt he has caused the McCann family.

It is important for us to remember, though, that the vast, vast majority of CF members give up their time and effort because they want to change this country for the better. The vital thing is for all of us to learn from this, draw a line under it and refocus our efforts on representing the values and ideas of our Party."

+++PA: Statement from the McCann Family+++

The PA wire has a statement from the McCann Family:

Clarence Mitchell, the spokesman for Madeleine's parents Kate and Gerry McCann, demanded an apology from Mr Lewis.

He said: "The offensiveness of this activist's actions is almost beyond belief.

"I know Gerry and Kate will be grateful that the Tory Party has taken swift and appropriate action by ejecting him from the party.

"His actions are not only disgraceful in themselves, they will also cause great hurt to Kate and Gerry. I feel it is appropriate that he now apologises both privately and publicly to them.

"It is a complete disgrace that Madeleine's name and image should be made fun of in this way."

The swift action by the Party was exactly the right thing to do.

More on this from the

BBC

and

Sky

.

+++Matt Lewis booted out of CF+++

According to a

The Sun

Matt Lewis has been expelled from the Conservative Party. They have picked up on TB's story from yesterday...

It is always a tough decision to attack your own side but TB firmly believes that over the last three years the party has done an fantastic job at cleaning up it's image, not just superficially but really making sure people such as this know that they are not welcome. Tory Bear was set up to hold Conservative Future to account, as well as inject a little bit of humour but this sort of behaviour is anything but funny.

UPDATE 15.24:

The Independent

and the

Mail

are also going with the story.

15.34: As is

The Guardian

16.08:

Sky News

just featured the story in their News on the Hour.

Lily not locked up.

It seems that Lily Kember and her bunch of nut-job climate-change public school hippies have avoided the prison sentence they deserved. The Evening Standard is

reporting tonight

that the Plane Stupid climate protesters have got a slap on the wrist from the law for the chaos they caused when they invaded Stansted Airport in last month. Tory Bear wonders what would have happened if a group of Muslim men had stormed an airport in this fashion - no doubt they would still be locked up in Paddington Green Police station desperately seeking a trial.

The community service that these idiots got is not good enough and they even had the audacity to suggest that the punishment was too severe. So now for the good news...Apparently RyanAir is considering suing the protesters for £2million in the civil courts. Tory Bear hopes they really go for it and teach these jumped up morons a lesson.

People need to learn that they are responsible for their actions and the perfect irony of making this lot pay back the millions they owe RyanAir would be glorious!

Sick.

Matt Lewis resigned on Boxing Day as the Conservative Future Area Chairman for Staffordshire. Having clearly spent Christmas drafting his resignation letter that cited the Rock reforms as the reason for quitting, it was his behaviour over the New Year that has made TB glad to see the back of Mr Lewis:

On his Facebook page Lewis has divulged the sickening details of dressing up for a party as Madeleine McCann. What sort of sick bastards would find this funny?

To add insult to injury Lewis then went on to proudly boast about these antics to fellow CFers:

Have these people lost their minds as well as developed abysmal poor taste? If he hadn't already quit Tory Bear would be calling for resignations over this. The Conservative Party has no room for this sort of appalling behaviour and warped individuals.

TB wonders how Matt can be 100% sure there are no photos...

Campus Tories choose to fight real election...

Edinburgh University Conservative Association

will not be fielding a candidate for this year's Rectorial Elections at Edinburgh University. Speaking to Tory Bear their Chairman Harry Cole said "EdConservatives have decided the best way they can help the students of Edinburgh University is to see a Conservative Member of Parliament elected in the Edinburgh South constituency. Our candidate Neil Hudson is a member of staff at the university and instead of wasting resources engaging in internal elections EdConservatives will focus on seeing Neil and the other local candidates returned to Westminster where they can represent our student population much more effectively than chairing the University Court"

Guess Boris won't be avenged after all! He hasn't done too badly since he lost three years ago though...

Guess who's back...

After two weeks of rum and lobsters Tory Bear has returned from his factfinding trip to Cuba. TB had a wicked time and although he is mourning the loss of his BB Storm (don't ask,) there is lots to catch up on and normal service will resume tomorrow.

In the meantime TB is out on the town

tonight

getting his now daily fix of state sanctioned entertainment.

See you there...

So long... Farewell...

Tory Bear is off for two weeks of sunshine, rum and cigars on a beach in Cuba. The phone will be off and email checking will be sporadic to non-existent. It will take a pretty massive story to get TB to blog again until the 6th of Jan.

TB hopes to see lots of you at the YBF Russian New Year bash upon his return but in the mean time Merry Christmas to everyone and thank you so much for making this blog so successful in just six months.

Has Mrs Cameron been reading Tory Bear?

Tory Bear was taking his annual stroll down Bond Street, shopping for Mummy and Sister Bears. He decided to pop into

Smythson

to see what

Creative Director

Sam Cam had on offer this Christmas...

He couldn't help but wonder if he had inspired this year's blue bear stationery collection?