LGBT voters switch from Cameron's Conservatives to Clegg's Liberal Democrats

Finally, the LGBT voters of Britain, well the ones that read Pink News anyway are starting to see that perhaps the Conservatives and David Cameron are not quite what they thought they were.

The recent Pink News poll shows that David Cameron's recent Gay Times interview and Chris Graylings comments about bed & breakfast owners having the right to turn away gay customers are having an effect on the views of LGBT voters.

The Conservative record on supporting gay rights is nothing short of shameful. David Cameron cannot pretend a quick apology for Section 28 will make up for the entrenched and often bigoted views of his hand-picked frontbench colleagues in the House of Commons.

David Cameron and the Conservatives like to pretend that they have changed but they remain the same old Tories.

The Liberal Democrats are now the most popular political party among the LGBT community.
Last month, 25% of the LGBT community said that they would vote Conservative at the upcoming general election, 25% said they'd back the Liberal Democrats and 28% said they'd vote Labour.

However, this month, just a day before a general election is expected to be called, counting only the votes of those that had taken part in the March poll, 20% of the LGBT community have said that they will back the Conservatives, a fall of 5%. Support for Labour remains unchanged at 28%, while support for the Liberal Democrats has increased by 5% to 29%.

The Conservatives still remain the most popular party among those aged 23 and under, but at 35% this month, this is 5% down on our poll a month ago. 32% of those too young to vote at the last election said they would vote Liberal Democrat and just 13% said they'd vote Labour.

Labour's record over the last thirteen years has not convinced that particular group.

PinkNews.co.uk found that 30% of LGBT people felt less favourably of Mr Cameron following an interview broadcast on Channel 4 News, where Mr Cameron was unable to answer questions about votes in the European parliament and the decision to give MPs and peers a free vote issues relating to gay rights.

Last month, 25% of Pink News readers said they'd like to see David Cameron become Prime Minister, ahead of Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg. This month, just 20% of our readers backed David Cameron, 29% backed Gordon Brown and 28% backed Nick Clegg. An increase of 5% for both Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg.

57% of respondents said that the economy is the most important policy issue they will consider when casting their vote, 16% LGBT rights, 9% healthcare, 6% education, 5% foreign policy, 4% immigration and 2% crime.

The PinkNews.co.uk poll had already begun prior to The Observers story of comments by the Conservative MP Chris Grayling where he backed the rights of bed and breakfast owners to ban gay couples.

But the swing from Conservative to Liberal Democrat did increase markedly in the early hours of Sunday.

The voting records of current Conservative MPs who are standing in the coming general election show that:

• One in six, voted in favour of Section 28 in 1988. A sixth voted against its repeal in 2003 including David Cameron and a third of the Shadow Cabinet
• One in ten voted against dropping the age of consent for gay men from 21 to 18 in 1994
• Almost one in five, voted against the Sexual Offences Amendment Bill in 1999 which aimed to reduce the age at which anal sex was legal from 18 to 16
• One in three voted to allow only heterosexual, married couples to adopt in 2002 including seven members of the Shadow Cabinet
• One in three voted against the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations in March 2007 which allows the Secretary of State to make regulations defining discrimination and harassment on grounds of sexual orientation. This included thirty-three, or a third of frontbenchers and four of the Shadow Cabinet
• The Conservative Party opposed The Equality Bill 2008-09. Nineteen members of the Shadow Cabinet joined attempts to block the bill which will introduce a single 'public duty' requiring all publicly-funded bodies to pro-actively promote equality across the board and remove barriers to fair service provision

More stories you can read about the Conservatives and their LGBT record, or lack of it;

Tory LGB group in turmoil over Cameron's catastrophic gay times interview
Cameron crashes as Popplewell asks about Conservative Gay Rights record
Cameron slips up on gay equality - Channel 4 News
Cameron's Conservatives tells Republicans in USA to embrace gay rights
Gay friendly Tories are just wolves in sheep's clothing

Cameron's Glasgow South West candidate, Heather MacLeod quits over party’s ‘nest of vipers’

Only the day after David Cameron admitted he does not expect the Conservatives to do well in Scotland, one of his leading candidates has quit the Conservative Party.

In today's Sunday Herald Heather MacLeod, who has resigned after a “bitter and bloody” feud with fellow Conservatives, said she felt “complete and utter disgust” with a section of the Scottish Conservatives.

She also accused the Scottish party of failing to match leader David Cameron’s progress and said she had concerns about an allegedly inappropriate relationship between two senior Tories.

Heather MacLeod’s problems with a group of fellow party members started last year when she and another Conservative candidate, Fiona Houston, set up the Social Justice Scotland think tank.


The pair then fell out over the organisation’s direction, and the row was made even worse when some fellow Conservatives raised questions about Heather MacLeod’s financial background.

According to Companies House, Mrs MacLeod has been a director of companies that have gone into liquidation.

However, Mrs MacLeod has told the Sunday Herald that a “nest of vipers” in the party had tried to “discredit” her to seize control of Social Justice Scotland.

The row is a blow for a party whose senior strategists expect to win only a handful of Scottish seats at the election.

One senior Conservative source said he feared Mr Cameron could be deprived of an overall majority due to the under-peformance of the Scottish Conservatives.

As I said yesterday though, when the leader, David Cameron and senior Conservatives like Tim Montgomerie don't believe in you, then it doesn't leave many who do and certainly the Scottish voters may well just turn their back on the Scottish Conservatives.

The Liberal Democrats have more MPs in Scotland than the Conservatives and SNP combined.

With just one MP in Scotland (who is at risk anyhow from David Steel's daughter, Catriona Bhatia for the Liberal Democrats), Cameron's Conservatives are in fact the fourth party in Scottish Westminster politics and their boss, David Cameron has finally admitted that he doesn't actually think they will win many more seats in this election.
 
With daily catastrophies such as this story hitting the Scottish Conservatives it is hardly surprising they won't win many seats here in Scotland.

I will leave the final word to Heather MacLeod;

“The Scottish party really needs to look at itself. It needs to understand why it is not electable. It is becoming more reactionary, rather than learning about how to become more successful.


“The party down south has moved on, but the Scottish Tories have not.”

Conservative Chris Grayling MP in homophobic comments interview

Only two months ago Sir Michael Scholar warned Chris Grayling MP that the way he used the figures for violent crime were "likely to mislead the public".

Well, now Chris Grayling is embroiled in a homophobic row.

Last month a gay couple were turned away from a B&B run by a Christian couple as reported in the Guardian, well now Conservative MP Chris Grayling has defended this and is in fact urging other B& B owners to do exactly the same, but not hotel owners!

From today's Observer;

The row will alarm David Cameron as he prepares for a general election that looks certain to be called on Tuesday. The Tory leader has gone out of his way to win over gay and lesbian voters by stressing his new-look party's liberal credentials. Last year, he apologised for section 28, the law passed by Margaret Thatcher's Tory government in the late 1980s that bans the promotion of homosexuality in schools. Cameron has also voted in favour of civil partnerships.

However, his progress in attracting the gay vote has been halted by a series of disputes involving his own MPs and MEPs. Tory MEPs last year refused to support a motion that condemned a new homophobic law in Lithuania.

Cameron was also left embarrassed during a recent interview with Gay Times, broadcast by Channel 4 News, in which he admitted he did not know his party's position on a series of votes involving gay rights issues in the UK and European parliaments.

Chris Grayling said in the interview to the Centre for Policy Studies;

I think we need to allow people to have their own consciences," he said. "I personally always took the view that, if you look at the case of should a Christian hotel owner have the right to exclude a gay couple from a hotel, I took the view that if it's a question of somebody who's doing a B&B in their own home, that individual should have the right to decide who does and who doesn't come into their own home."

Sorry Chris, it really doesn't work like that, irrespective if it is their home or not, once they decide to open a business, in this case as a bed and breakfast they have to comply with the law.

And being homophobic is clearly against the law!

This is clearly yet another example proving that the Conservatives are not gay friendly, they are still the same old Tories, Section 28 and homophobia is in their genes I'm afraid.  Whatever rhetoric David Cameron comes out with, they are still the same old Tories with their old and out of touch views.

It is time for David Cameron to act, sack Chris Grayling for his outdated homophobic views.

Cameron admits defeat in Scotland

Last November top Tory blogger Tim Montgomerie, of ConservativeHome fame said: "The Cameron effect has not reached Scotland like it has in Wales or the north of England. If the progress in Scotland is as limited as it looks like it might be, we should revisit the idea of creating a Scottish party with its own identity. It would help them break free from the Thatcher years."

You can read the story here.

 

Well, now David Cameron has admitted himself that the Conservatives will not do well in Scotland.

 

 

He told a caller during a radio show call in that “in Scotland, however well the Conservatives do, we're unlikely to get a very large number of seats”.

You can read the full sory in the Press and Journal.

Mr Cameron, however, refused to predict how many seats the Tories – who hold only one precarious Scottish seat – would win.

David Cameron then went on to show his ignorance of Scottish politics, or was he just confirming what Tim Montgomerie was saying about a breakaway party in Scotland, when he appeared to come close to equating the United Kingdom with England after making it clear the Scots are entitled to chose the Scottish Parliament and first minister they want.

He said: “We can now see it’s perfectly possible to have a different government in Scotland, an SNP government, and the government in Engla . . . in the United Kingdom, which is a Labour government.”

Well, David Cameron has admitted what we already know in Scotland, that the forthcoming general election is not a fight between Labour and the Conservatives, but in fact between the Liberal Democrats and Labour, who have the most Scottish MPs between them.

The Liberal Democrats have more MPs in Scotland than the Conservatives and SNP combined.

With just one MP in Scotland (who is at risk anyhow), Cameron's Conservatives are in fact the fourth party in Scottish Westminster politics and their boss, David Cameron has finally admitted that he doesn't actually think they will win many more seats in this election.

Should pupils be on the interview panel for teachers?

The Teachers' Union, the NASUWT are meeting this weekend in Birmingham for their annual conference.

One of the main concerns of the Union this weekend is the involvement of students or pupils in the running of the school, in fact they are so concerned that they are considering industrial action!

A dossier being discussed at the NASUWT conference suggests steps to improve the student voice within some schools have gone too far and have over 200 cases to prove it.
The paper reveals that schools are using pupils to answer questions about teachers' competence and to help interview them for promotions, which the NASUWT says is completely unacceptable.
NASUWT general secretary Chris Keates told the BBC;

The dossier was "littered with examples of demeaning, embarrassing and humiliating practice".

Many were grossly unprofessional and stripped teachers of their professional dignity, she said.

"To be effective in their roles teachers need to feel confident and empowered to act with authority.

"Involving pupils directly in making judgments about the suitability for posts and competence in the classroom places these considerations in jeopardy."

Ms Keates added: "It is clear that too many schools are engaging not in student voice but in the manipulation of children and young people to serve the interests of school management and its perspective."

So readers, what do you think?  Personally, I think if the sudents have a professional and active student body then they should be involved in the running of the school, to be honest we were back in my day (cough), yes I know that's some time back now.

The student body ran the tuck shop, had input on menus and played a major part on the schools annual Summer and Christmas Fayre's - that was when I got involved.

Would or should I have been involved in interviewing staff, if I had some staff would not have had a job and I certainly would have objected to their selfish calls for strike action and work to rule sessions back in the 1980's affecting many students one to one tuition and then finally affecting their exam results.

However, was I at 15 and 16 really qualified to interview a 25 year old student teacher?

This latest aspect of students being involved in the interviewing of staff is not a new thing, pupils at the George Mitchell school in Leyton, London have been doing this since 2003, read more here.

Personally I have never had a great deal of time for teaching unions given my experiences at Rushcliffe Secondary school in West Bridgford, where year after year the teachers went on strike for one reason or another.  I still believe that the management of unions are out of touch and are often so blinkered to what they they want themselves that they forget why they are in the job in the first place.

So, is this the NASUWT overreacting or is this a much bigger issue?

The Reeves review of the stat porn for March 2010

I am going to continue the monthly summary of my visitor stats according to google analytics now I have mended the broken link, so preventing me for the last two months doing so.  So here are the results for March 2010.

The busiest day on my blog last month was in fact Tuesday 30th March when the story about Aberdeen South Conservative candidate Mark Jones resigning broke.

Last month I had 2,702 absolute unique visitors, up from 2,549 in October and way up from 1,311 in September. They made 4,010 visits and 5,327 page views.

So, my top 10 referring sites for the last month (with previous position in brackets) were;
 
1. Facebook (4)
2. Twitter (3)
3. SNP Tactical Voting (7)
4. Lib Dem Blogs (2)
5. Lib Dem Voice (5)
6. Conservative Home (new entry)
7. Blogger (6)
8. BBC.co.uk (37)
9. Planet-Politics Blogspot (19)
10. Caron's-Musings blogspot (11)

Last month I wrote 39 blog posts.

The top 10 stories by direct page views that you've read most were;


1. Aberdeen South Conservative candidate Mark Jones quits
2. East Lothian Labour Party in complete disarray as Anne Moffat MP deselected
3. Exclusive: ‘Stressed’ city leader Councillor Steven Purcell to stand down
4. Labour MP Roberta Blackman-Woods in email gaffe
5. SNP candidate for Glasgow North East David Kerr quits
6. Tory LGB group in turmoil over Cameron's catastrophic gay times interview
7. Conservative election campaign is too complicated admit the Conservatives
=8. Labour seek new MP for East Lothian as Anne Moffat MP's appeal fails
=8. Labour select Ian Murray to replace Nigel Griffiths MP as their candidate
10. Jack McConnell MSP applies for job with Cameron's Conservatives
 
So this month's mixed bag is about resigning candidates, many many problems with Anne Moffat MP and East Lothian Labour party, the Tory LGB groups defence of David Cameron's car crash interview & the complicated Conservative campaign amongst others.
 
The visitors to my little blog came from 45 countries this month, down from 52 last time, the top ten were as follows;
1. United Kingdom (1)
2. United States (2)
3. Canada (3)
4. Germany (9)
5. France (6)
6. Ireland (5)
7. Netherlands (10)
=8. Australia (7)
=8. Belgium (4)
10. India (8)