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Let’s hear it for insincerity!

Looking forward to welcoming you back to conferenceI have just received another of those marketing emails from Labour:

Hi David,

I’m thrilled to invite you to our annual conference, taking place in Manchester from Sunday 21 to Wednesday 24 September.

As a long-term member, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your ongoing support for Labour. Conference this year is our last before the election, so it’s a great one to come along to if you haven’t been before.

As ever, it will be an exciting chance to meet up with fellow supporters and we’ll be talking about how we can best shape our vision for a better Britain. Register now for this year’s conference — having you there would mean so much to us.

We all have one thing in common: a desire to rebuild that vital link between the wealth of our nation as a whole and the finances of Britain’s working families. So let’s get our heads together at conference to make this happen in 2015.

Reserve your conference place now: with the general election less than a year away, we need your input to ensure we elect a Labour government.

I truly hope you’ll be joining me to make this our most successful conference yet.

Looking forward to seeing you there,

Ed

To which my reply is

Dear Ed,

Thanks for your invitation and for your apparent keenness for my personal participation (what a wonder digital personalisation is).

You say that you appreciate my support for the Labour Conference. I don’t recall every having a twitch of enthusiasm for what has become a TV show rather than a serious political conference. Perhaps you are mixing me up with someone else on your database. (You should have me marked as ‘dissident’ and possibly as ‘unreliable’).

Yes I do have a desire, like you, to make a “link” between the wealth of our nation as a whole and this finances of Britain’s working families (congratulations on missing out the “hard-working” bit). On the other hand the word “link” is incredibly weak and goes nowhere near what I want to see for the country. One could have said, for example that there was a “link” between the income of blacks in South Africa and the wealth generated by the apartheid regime (which is why there was a net migration of blacks into South Africa). But link is far from enough. I want to see a society in which there is an end to the disgusting disparities of wealth which we currently see in the UK. You are not telling me that that is in your sights. I wonder why.

You say “…  let’s get our heads together at conference” to make the changes required happen. You write as if conference were an open discussion between genuinely different points of view with the aim of reaching a reasonable consensus. No sane person could believe that is actually the nature of the ultra stage-managed spectacle that is the Labour Annual Conference. I believe you to be sane and therefore I doubt the genuineness of the sentiments expressed in your invitation.

So, I will not be reserving a place at conference which I believe should be basically for elected delegates from CLPs and affiliated organisations rather than a come as you please spectacle for anyone who can afford the expenses.

I just hope that you occasionally read websites like this and that your view of the world is not entirely circumscribed by the apparatchiks and political careerists who surround you. It would be wonderful to have a reply from you to indicate otherwise.

Frustratedly yours

David Pavett

P.S. John Harris had it about right in this piece in the Guardian.

5 Comments

  1. Rod says:

    I used to reply to my twaddle-laden emails from ‘Ed’ in a similar way. Never had anything back other than silent contempt.

    Perhaps now is the time to organise a parallel ‘Alternative Labour Conference’, taking place in the same town and on the same dates/weekend?

    The movement to remove the inept and unaccountable New Labour numpties who are now in control has to begin somewhere.

    1. David Pavett says:

      No, of course, there is never a reply which is in itself a convincing demonstration of the transparent insincerity of lines like ” I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your ongoing support”. But I think we should carry on highlighting this nonsense in the hope that someone among Labour’s leaders has the decency to be embarrassed by it.

      Beyond that I have found that as a general rule one never gets responses even to direct letters to Leading members asking for information on their policies. They do not want to be bothered with the hoi poloi unless they can be handed to them in bundles of votes.

      I agree with you that some kind of break-out from this machine politics is required.

  2. PoundInYourPocket says:

    “a desire to rebuild that vital link between the wealth of our nation as a whole and the finances of Britain’s working families”.
    is Labour just about “working” , “familes” these-days ? I thought we were fighting for the excluded and dispossessed, the 2.2 million unemployed, the 11.6 million disabled and 2 million lone parents, 185 thousaind homeless and 85,000 in prison. In fact “working-families” are probably a minority. But is that all Labour are prepared to associate with as it’s good for votes. The “deserving” and sanitised section of society.

  3. Dave Roberts says:

    The answer is your spam filter. If you invite this stuff don’t complain when it arrives.

  4. swatantra says:

    Like most junk mail, ithe message is likely to touch 5 out of 1000 recipients, so its not completely useless.

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