Here's the sort of thing that upsets me

[LeftishBrit]

I pm'd a couple of people about this when it came out, because I was pretty devastated to be honest. I do NOT need people attempting to smear and threaten pro-choice MPs in my country. I'm far from a rah-rah-rah nationalist, but I do have a certain pride in my country's relative (recent) religious tolerance and lack of Moral Majority social conservativism.

If only we weren't rushing headlong into a vile and dangerous form of *economic* conservativism and profound resulting social injustice - but that's for another forum. For lots of other forums, in fact! And Odone shows this vile strand, and for example attacked the Archbishop of Canterbury quite viciously for criticizing the government on its economic policies.

In any case, a British version of Palinism is NOT what we need. And this article upsets me all the more, because it is using my constituency as a base:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/cristinaodone/100103496/abortion-vote-the-fate-of-dr-evan-harris-should-be-a-warning-to-mps-who-ignore-their-christian-voters/

This article is inaccurate on such basic issues as the name of our current MP (Blackwood not Blackman). The Christian Right campaigns were certainly not the sole cause of the result, but may have contributed and were utterly vile. Smear-leaflets calling our MP 'Dr Death' distributed by someone who is the local representative of the anti-abortion 'Life' charity, but who did NOT present herself as such, and instead presented herself as acting spontaneously as a 'concerned citizen'. I was actually relieved to find out that she was affiliated with a known organization, and that some version of the Tea Party was not starting on my doorstep! AND to top it all off, someone from the Animal Liberation Front started his own anti-animal-research party and glommed onto the smear campaign.

As you'll know, the LibDem party has since essentially gone down the drain anyway, as a result of coalition with stupid Cameron and his stupider Tory party. But that does not excuse this sort of vileness, or its endorsement by the likes of Widdecombe and Odone.

At least, Dorries' bill was VERY soundly defeated, and serve her and her supporters right!

As I say, 'It can't happen in England - except when it does'. And this is the sort of thing that makes my blood run colder, when people imply that atheists are politically dangerous, than might have been the case 2 years ago.