Tory Bear Pop Psychiatry Gone Political

First he said he was able to spot paedophiles by sight.

Now the omnipotent Tory Bear is able to diagnose from London just what is wrong with Steven Purcell* who stepped down as leader of Glasgow City Council today. If I wasn't hearing that he was hospitalised this evening at the same time that Tory Bear decided to be post his trash it probably wouldn't have got my attention.

His claim that Purcell being "happy as larry on Friday morning yet mysteriously cleared his diary by the afternoon and went into crisis meetings before bringing out the "stress" press release last night." is pop psychiatry of the worst kind.

A mental break down can happen in many ways. You can slowly slide into slowly, seeing the warning lights, or it can come upon suddenly like a car breaking down at 70 on the motorway. Hence the appropriateness of the name.

Harry Cole didn't graduate from Edinburgh in psychiatry but in Politics and Economics I believe (I am prepared to be corrected). Therefore he is merely playing politics with a Labour politician's mental health. Nice to see the Tories playing the ball not the man.

Tory Bear is also saying his is sniffing around for a story. You wonder what story a man who ended his five year marriage to admit that he was gay could possibly less survivable than that news in 2006. If Tory is being homophobic in his digging maybe he should apply for a job with the Daily Fail he seems ideally suited for that rag.

Even Alex Salmond put aside party differences to say:

"We would pay tribute to the contribution he has made to Glasgow, particularly the partnership that the Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council have been involved in to secure the Commonwealth Games, and to plan for a fantastic legacy from the games for Glasgow and the whole of Scotland."

As Steven is seeking help for his illness on medical advise I would like to wish him a full recovery.

* By the way I notice that for all his alleged research Mr Cole hasn't managed to give Steven the correct spelling of his name.

So Tory Bear Describe a Typical Paedophile?

The disgusting and thoroughly uncuddly Tory Bear has made a tweet too far. During the Gordon Brown interview with Piers Morgan he tweeted. "Brown looks like paedo".

(I see that Tory Bear has deleted the post put I'd taken a sceen print in case he deleted without apology, no apology so here it is)



Of course of those involved in acts of child abuse 30% are as likely to be family members not just the strangers you'd meet on the street. Up to 20% of offences may be perpetrated by women rather than men.

Maybe in light of this Tory Bear would like to tell us what sort of new detection process, maybe facial profiling, he has come up with that would help the police, or is that Dave's SS, to round up all the paedophiles in the country by sight alone?

Indeed this is the blogger who wants to take the Tory spotlight and push their agenda front and centre but with such language and reaction he's really just a low life and he's proven it again.

However, if this is the level of Conservative Future, maybe it isn't that much of a surprise that Dave doesn't want actually Tory students behind him when he's making a speech. But then the Conservative Future Scotland Chair thinks it's OK to lie about their provenance "it's called PR". Oh dear the young Tories seem to not understand when the people don't trust politicians to start PR needs to be truthful, honest and decent.

PS I wonder if the same action from un high in Conservative Central Office will befall Tory Bear's use of language. Which IMHO is actually worse as it is in a political sense that that which brought the heavy hand down on Cardiff Blogger last November.



Update 19:00 I see that Harry Cole is trying to excuse his tweet on drink and twitter mixing. Only problem is that even sober he still keeps putting into writing his thoughts and they haven't changed.

Pickles Says Call For a General Election

Wasting no time with Labour, or at least if seems Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt, in turmoil Eric Pickles calls for an immediate General Election. Admittedly we are weeks away from one being called but this is opportunism and also a very badly timed call for such action.

There is talk of the freeze lasting another three weeks, parts of Scotland have been cut off for three weeks and may well be for another 3. So campaigning, voting and counting the ballots in some of the more remote Scottish areas would be impossible for a 3 or 4 week campaign at this time.

Harry Cole (aka Tory Bear) has repeated this call just now on Sky News calling for Gordon to go to the Palace in the morning. Pickles has been saying call an election now for ages. But now is just not the right time, just yet not when large sections of the country are merely knuckled down to survive the winter. Many of us are constantly watching the weather and getting away as soon as we can, or sooner if we need to from work. I have friends all over the place who are working from home because they cannot get into work. Every screen in my office has the BBC local weather open on a number of windows along with the traffic reports.

So yes while I want to see the back of illiberal Labour I don't want an election to be fought when people's safety and livelihoods is at risk in some of our remotest areas. So in the bleak mid-winter is not the time for such opportunism from Pickles or the Tories. Maybe they;ve realised after 4 days of bloopers that 4 months may well do a lot of harm, bring that on.

N is for Negative

"Let's make this the year for change – the year when the positive defeats the negative"

Thus spake Dave on Saturday.


But on Monday Tory Bear et al launch their internet campaign to get Labour MP for Kerry McCarthy Bristol East out. As Liberal Vision point out it isn't a campaign with reasons to get Adeela Shafi (her Tory Opponent) in.

The fact that one of the main thrust appears to be Ms McCarthy's expenses maybe these Tories should look at the plank in their own eyes. Or wait until Dave manages to sor out this issue within his own party, both with expenses and non-dom status of peers or Parliamentary candidates.

It is blatantly negative campaigning in the year that their leader is hoping for the positive to defeat the negative.

So I guess David Cameron is hoping that this campaign fails then to fit in with his bright optimistic message of the weekend. Well done Kerry you've just earned the endorsement of David Cameron no less.

I Think Tory Bear Owes me an Apology

I'm not sure what lessons one recent graduate picked up at his time at Edinburgh University, but he appears to have not attending any lesson on democracy. Yes, folks it would appear that Mr Harry Cole either thinks that the elected dictatorship or politburo approach that the conservative party deal with policy and manifesto writing is the way these things get done.

Earlier this week Mr Cole who blogs as Tory Bear, and doesn't like his readers to remember that, posted an article called Liberal Lies. In it he quoted Nick Clegg saying:

"Ending tuition fees would cost billions of pounds every year. We need to be certain we can afford it before we make any promises."

He carried on accusing Liberal Youth of lying saying:

"Liberal Youth built their entire freshers recruitment campaign around this issue. Proudly boasting that they were the only party who would fight for free education...

"Too bad for Elaine Bagshaw and Liberal Youth that their postcards full of lies and false promises have already been handed out across every university in the country."

He even demanded that instead of going about the business of policy discussion and decision at Lib Dem conference I should apologise to him for calling him as liar after he suggested that the pledge to scrap tuition fees was to be dropped.

What I did know, that Harry didn't, was the composition of the Federal Policy Committee. This is the democratically elected body that formulates the parties policies into a coherent manifesto. Having voted on a number of occasions for some of the members who sit on that committee I know where their Liberal hearts lie and how they would feel on this issue. Actually yesterday during the Fresh Start for Britain: Choosing a Different, Better Future debate some of them took to the podium to speak against certain lines in their own motion.

In fact we don't all need to guess at most of their views because this morning a majority of them have signed a letter in the Grauniad. In it they say:

"Not all our policies make it into the manifesto, which contains a carefully costed programme for a full parliamentary term. The manifesto will shortly be produced by the 29-strong federal policy committee (FPC), after an open and vigorous debate about the priority we attach to different spending commitments balanced against the savings we have identified to pay for them.

"We have yet to have that discussion but, as a clear majority of members of the FPC, we think it would be valuable to clarify now that we predict that our commitment to scrap tuition fees, as part of our plans to create a fairer society, will indeed be included in the manifesto and that the party will be united in strongly campaigning on this in the run-up to and at next year's general election."

So I think that Mr Cole owes me, Elaine Bagshaw and Liberal Youth an apology, not the other way round. We, and others, have been in Bournemouth going about the business of manifesto forming.

The same offer you offered me erroneously will suffice please feel free to apologise, even a Tweet will do.

Fibbing Tory Bears in the Hood Today

I see that Tory Bear is up to his normal scare mongering, telling half truths and well.....fibbing about what the Lib Dems are up to.

He is taking issue with this article published last year prior to Autumn conference which said:

"The leaders of the Liberal Democrats plan to abandon the party's opposition to student tuition fees."

But went on to say:

"[Stephen] Williams acknowledged that he and Mr Clegg were likely to face strong opposition from many in the party who felt that its stance at the 2005 election, as the only mainstream party supporting free higher education, was an important distinguishing factor."

Well guess what Tory Bear before you accuse the Lib Dems lying about the policy you should check how the vote went to ammend the policy or look at policy on the party website.

You see Harry unlike at Tory Party conference the head doesn't move and the body follows. The head may suggest something but the delegates get their say, their vote to take action as the party decides. Not only do we not just want to keep up our opposition to Tuition fees we expanded the scope of that in March of this year.

Who's the fibber now?

It appears that the above advise may also be something that Irfan Ahmed needs to take on board.

Well Tory Bear Some Reasons Why #WelovetheNHS

Last night Tory Bear posted two tweets the first:

The NHS is not free. You end up paying far more than you ever take out. Free
healthcare can be achieved without 500,000 bureaucrats. ARGH

Followed by this:

In America you get far more than you ever pay for. Here you get taxed to shit
and then die on a trolly.

Now there is some truth in the first point are 500,000 bureaucrats really needed in the NHS, but he ignores that tdue to the legal mitication nature of America that there Health Care Provision employs a larger army of lawyers to protect their practitioners than we do here.

The thing is that in the US as he points out you do have to pay for it. As at the moment under a recession where you health insurance contributions may have been paid for by an employer finding yourself out of work can lead to a sudden reduction or end in that provision. The tax we pay in the UK goes towards an all incompassioning welfare system, which Mr Cole after just qualifying from University has yet to actually need to experience the full benefit off.

I'd hate for him should he ever live in an American style system of healthcare to be out of work or even between jobs when he needs emergency life saving surgery. While he is lying on the gourney they check his insurance cover and then debate what provision they can make for him when they find out he has none.

Tory Bear Doesn't Get Humour or Copyright

When you post a picture to Facebook you are asked if you have to right to do so. However, that doesn't mean that just anybody can come an lift them. Tory Bear actually known as Harry Cole seems to take a different view and will happily lift stuff he finds on sites that demand the poster has the right to it, rename it and use it for his own purposes. Not even using the netiquette courtesy of a link back to the source. He proudly brandishes the following statement at the foot of his blog:

For a start this is 2008 and second claiming all rights when not referencing sources not your right to give away is a breach of copyright.

Second let's look at the thrust of his 'point' in the 'article' he considers 'newsworthy'*. In a workshop at a training weekend held by Liberal Youth which looked at layout of leaflets. Some of that smart youth, and I know that one of them has designed winning literature in his mid-teens, has decided to name their candidate after the leader and finance spokesperson of the party. An amalgam of two great men. They've name the candidate in a fictitious publication after two people.

Thirdly it is obvious that Conservative Future clearly can't have a good laugh at themselves. Something I'm glad Lib Dems everywhere are more than able to (roll on the Glee Club at Bournemouth). Indeed I was considering writing myself up as the 'Scottish By Election mountain goat' for the Liberal Democrat who's who. I may well do that in the revision for next year. Harry clearly had a humour by pass long before he took up his blue, furry persona. Maybe young Hague is to blame for the seriousness of young Tories, if only it had been Boris making that conference speech in front of Maggie.

However, there is a Tory trait of naming Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem Leader, Chris Clegg including by another anonymous blogger, as recently as last week, who I could name if I were so inclined Scottish Tory Boy.

So let's get this straight a large proposition of leading Tory bloggers shroud themselves in a penetrable shroud of anonymity. Take swipes at a fictitious naming of somebody in a workshop, yet themselves cannot be bothered when blogging news stories to get the actual names right. Claim to have all rights (note only for 2008) while lifting without citing source other people intellectual property.

Wow talk about turning a non-story into a story. One that highlights the hypocrisy of the Conservatives Future, present and past all too well.

* I make no apology for putting three words in inverted commas there the point, article and newsworthiness are very much conjecture.