I started writing this post with the intention of responding to the daft comments Salford MP Hazel Blears has made about blogging, but truth be told I’m still dumbstruck by the sheer gall of it that I’m not entirely sure what to say.
This is the same Hazel Blears who supported the closure of Hope Hospital Maternity Unit in Parliament while claiming to oppose it on the streets of Salford. This is the same Hazel Blears who voted in favour of closing Post Offices in Parliament but protested against their closure to local residents in her constituency. This is the same Hazel Blears who lectures on the lack of ethnic minority representation in local government despite her own CLP having an absymal track record. This is the same Hazel Blears who tries to take the moral high ground but sends her minions out to play childish stunts on other politicians. This is the same Hazel Blears who lectures us on political cynicism and yet patronising tries to bribe her own voters with doughnuts.
Hazel, you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. For someone with your track record to be getting on a high horse about encouraging cynicism is breathtaking hypocrisy of the very highest order.
This website isn’t perfect - far from it - but I hope that it manages to inform and engage local residents in Walkden and across Salford in the political process. I hope it gives the local community some of the information which will allow local people to actually make a difference in their area. Sure, I make comments on national issues and I don’t shy away from making critical posts - like this one - when I feel they are justified, but on the whole blogs like this one are here to engage the public with the political process, not to detach them from it.
UPDATE: Cllr Steve Cooke has made an excellent post on the same subject.
I think Hazel must believe the best form of defense is attack. When Salford Council in her own constituency has does little to make politics open to those who work, when the vast majority are on a local level career politicians, the same people making the same decisions for decades, her comments make little sense,.
Maybe you should take the stance of the Salford Labour party and leave your blog/website blank for how many months, maybe that will increase political interest…..
Anyway keep up the good work, I may not agree with everything you say (yes Tom its true). but I will always fight for the right to argue the point with you…