According to Sam Coates (The Times):
@SamCoatesTimes

"The person who phoned Mark Pritchard is Edward Llewellyn, Cameron's chief of staff...."

God help us ...

Llewellyn left Eton in 1983 and shortly afterwards worked at Conservative Central Office, before going to Oxford where he was active in student politics. After leaving Oxford he worked as an aide to former Governor Chris Patten in Hong Kong and then to Paddy Ashdown in his Bosnian work.

Well, hang on a second; to the original two options of stupid or dishonest, we can now add a third option of misinformed. (Yes, it is probably a subset of the "stupid" option, but we are where we are.)

If someone has told this guy that it is definitely not EU-related, and he then finds out that it is EU-related, then - however thick he may be - there is at least some chance that he will be even more annoyed, both about the underlying issue and about the incompetence/dishonesty of whoever so informed him.
Both of these would be worthwhile outcomes, I would have thought.

More generally ...
Richard, you have to accept that you probably score above average both on general IQ, and on specific knowledge of how the EU is taking over ( /has taken over) our parliament. Hence, if you want to do anything about it, then it is pretty much inevitable that you will have to find a way to deal with people who score lower than you on both these measures (and doubtless a host of others).
In particular, you need to be able to deal with people whose only relevance to the universe is that they are better than you at getting elected to parliament. (Don't worry, you can always wash your hands afterwards.)

I can quite understand that it must be bloody depressing writing ten letters and getting nowhere. You have to hope that the eleventh letter manages to do some good. ( Or one hundred letters before the hundred-and-first, or whatever.)

It just seems to me that if this guy is beating his chest about this subject, there is a better than usual chance that a letter on this might fall on fertile ground.

(Insert jokes about bovine fertiliser here ...)

Come to think of it, are there any readers here who are from this Pritchard fellow's constituency ?

I believe Dr North when he say's Pritchard is stupid but couldn't resist writin to him and including the links DN put up.

I ended with, it was commendable standing up for the elephants but the one big elephant in the room which all politicans avoid, at all costs, is the EU.

I received an automated reply stating he only replies to his constituents.

To that I sent another in which I said the matter he was debating was of interest to the wider public and not just his constituents.

I won't hold my breath though.

Send an e-mail.....he can't tell where that comes from...... signed as yr loving constituent Muhammad Pattel

I know this is seriously off topic but couldn't resist this new one, just shows the lies they tell and lengths they'll go to for their own agendas of personal hatred of smoking/smokers.

Ban the fcuking stuff and be done with it, stop the lies & propaganda once and for all.

"Labour MP Alex Cunningham demanded action to protect young people from the harmful effects of tobacco. He called on ministers to 'look seriously' at the issue, saying that more that 300,000 children visit GPs with passive smoking-related illnesses every year."

I hate these people, really, really hate them.


Sorry for the rant.

Camoron gazes at the darkest glass of all time, and he sees only his own reflection.

His reflection is surrounded by the darkness - as of an abyss, into which money pours, but wherein there is no truth. The absurdity is ineluctable: which is presumably why he doesn't even try to run a circus in a roundabout - and doesn't think anyone else should either.

I share your contempt for them.

If it is any comfort, these people are not a new phenomenon. According to Thomas Sowell, who explains what makes them tick in his "Intellectuals and Society", they have been with us for centuries.

They just get more air time nowadays.

Speaking as a long-time ex-smoker, I feel that no-one should be allowed to pontificate on any smoking-related subject unless he has smoked thirty a day for at least a decade.

And even then he'd better be a good runner.

Hmm.

1. Take another look at the 'abuse' video that kick-started the campaign of 'Animal Aid'... you will note that:

a) The elephant takes it's beating and isn't aware that it's molested -- meaning it's not usually abused (or it would be vicious, they are quite evil when riled) Plus, it's an *elephant*, so nothing what he does actually 'hits home'. It looks impressive though.

b) The guy is beating up the animal 'safely', he knows what he can do and what will get him into trouble with the creature. He is beating the elephant so that it actually doesn't notice it as a beating.

c) Amazing that the camera angle is just right, always.

d) He beats the animal without emotion, context or the 'normal' behaviour of an abuser. This is a contract beating!

e) The old elephant died soon after she went onto the sanctuary -- of a broken heart. Not surprising for an elephant who spent all her life travelling and who misses her old life. Elephants travel all their lives in the wild, and they get terribly bored in zoos. Go figure.

The entire thing looks to be a deliberate set-up.

And it's utterly pointless, all it did was victimise an old elephant, and the fate of the other animals will either be sale, mindless jail time in zoos (where no-one has the time to work with them as they are used to) or getting put down (the most likely fate alas)

Time to add Animal Aid and it's backers (Paul McCartney etc) to the knitted quilt...

Authorative - impressive, without peers on the internet.

The reason why I only read two blogs, Euref and WUWT.

Richard, I think it is a worthwhile exercise on your and your colleagues part to bring these issues to our attention and explain them in terms that people like me can understand. In my opinion, it only needs one such issue to chime with public opinion and it could be the beginning of the end for our enslavement by the EU. Unfortunately, I doubt the wild animals in circuses is that issue. But there must be one, eventually.

Drops of water on a stone ... the problems here, with this one, are three-fold ... first the complexity, second the reluctance of the media to do its homework, and the third is the ineffable superficiality of the media. This is the Spectator's "take": http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/ ... fice.thtml

However, this isn't going to go away ... sooner rather than later, this issue is going to be back in the news, and eventually it is going to dawn on even the media that this is an EU issue. This piece will then serve as a reference, with which to beat them over the head. The Boy is very much between a rock and a hard place ...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 02556.html

Interesting how there is absolutely no reference to the EU ... just "legal problems".

Damn it, why do you persist in insulting potential allies ?
What are you trying to achieve here ? Do you want to be the only person who has been right all along, sitting surrounded by the smoking rubble of our country and saying, "I told you so" ?
Wouldn't you rather use your talents and diligence and hard work to try and move the country in a better direction ?
Calling people thick is only motivating if they are the sort of people who place a lot of their self-worth in their own intelligence. I don't know this Pritchard fellow from Adam, but the strong balance of probabilities is that he is not such a person. Calling him thick is just going to put up an unnecessary barrier - even if he does see the fruits of your research, he will probably dismiss it out of hand because he thinks you are an offensive arse. What the hell good is that ?
However thick he may be, and whatever other distasteful qualities he may have, the fact remains that he has a voice in parliament and you don't. A really intelligent person would devote his energies to finding a way to use that for some worthwhile purpose.
How to do this ? Well, that's a puzzle ... Are you smart enough to solve it ?