Geraldine Smith MP – Coward or Bully?

Gregg being out of the country at the moment, and unable to access the North West Libertarians blog, he called me up to ask me to copy this post across from his personal blog. Frankly, I was stunned when he told me what had happened - whatever else is wrong with our elected politicians, we do generally expect them to at least keep to a civilised standard of behaviour. The full text of Gregg's post follows below:

Tonight, Tuesday 10 November, I was sat with my wife having a quiet drink in the centre of Brugge. Then my mobile rang, so I felt I should answer it, I was extremely concerned as it was my elderly father, and something was obviously wrong. My parents were distraught and I had to calm them down, they are both elderly and quite vulnerable and not in the best of health.

So what had happened? Well tonight they received an extremely unpleasant, threatening phone call from my local Member of Parliament, Geraldine Smith. She apparently "ranted and raved" about their only son, threatening to sue me, take me to court etc. because of some comments on my blog. I think I have soothed them without the need to return home early, I hope so, even though they were both obviously badly shaken.

It seems that a post of mine in June quoted a House of Commons library source that was wrong, she (Smith) had not, it seems, been on a women only shortlist in 1997. In effect, I had been misled by the House of Commons. Nothing new there then! Sorry about that and I will perhaps seek an apology myself.

Now then, to matters now. With all her allowances it took the genius team of Geraldine Smith nearly 6 months to pick that up. As they said nothing to my parents, or another blog I write for, anything about her expenses claims, which I also wrote about in June, I assume she is happy with that piece.

You can visit both posts if you track back, using the side bar, to my June 2009 blog posts.

So next time you want to throw your weight around Geraldine, pick on me, not my elderly parents.

That's that. I would now like you to apologise to my parents. If you haven't when I return then I will take matters further.

It looks like we've got more readers than we thought.

Apparently as a result of Gregg Beaman's excellent post about the grasping, money-grubbing MP Geraldine Smith, we've received the following email:

Dear Sir,

It has come to our attention that there is a link to one of our Standard Notes, about all women shortlists, on your blog site. Regrettably the table erroneously listed Geraldine Smith as being selected as a candidate at the 1997 general election as a result of being on an all women shortlist. I gather that this mistake has caused Ms Smith some embarrassment and we are very sorry that this has happened; the corrected note is now available at http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/briefings/snpc-05057.pdf.

Yours sincerely,

Isobel White

Isobel White
Parliament and Constitution Centre
House of Commons Library
1 Derby Gate
London
SW1A 2DG

.............................

Fair enough. On behalf of the North West Branch of the Libertarian Party, I would like to withdraw the allegation that the grasping, money-grubbing MP Geraldine Smith got her job as a result of being on an all-women shortlist, and apologise if this has caused any offence or embarrassment to the greedy Ms Smith.

Of course you have to admit that it's an easy mistake for anyone to make, as the Labour Party do still make a habit of selecting some of their candidates on the basis of what's between their legs instead of what's between their ears - as demonstrated by current events in Wigan.

In the Libertarian Party, we're more interested in brains than plumbing, and we select our candidates accordingly. The Labour Party apparently see things differently.