Daily archives: September 4, 2014

Perhaps Tory MPs should just keep their mouths shut

This entry was posted in Conservative on by

Oh look, another Tory MP has said something stupid.

A Tory MP told an autistic man not to comment on public affairs due to his mental health issues.

Insensitive Guto Bebb also dismissed Dylan Barlow’s Asperger’s syndrome as a “sob story” in a series of emails after his constituent raised questions on foreign matters.

The MP for Aberconwy, North Wales, wrote: “If you have mental health issues then you should possibly refrain from commenting in the public domain since it might create problems for you.”

Mr Barlow, 27, later said the MP was living “in the dark ages” and fumed: “We live in an age of free speech and for a politician to believe otherwise, goes to show the problems we face in our daily struggles.”

Mary Wimbury, Labour’s general election candidate for Aberconwy, urged her rival to “think long and hard about his future behaviour”.

But Mr Bebb denied his comments were derogatory and insisted he was giving “a generous piece of advice”.

Tory MP tells autistic man not to comment on public affairs due to his mental health issues – Mirror Online.

Charities should be seen and not heard

This entry was posted in Charity politics on by

Politicians so often have remarkably thin skins to go with their privileged backgrounds and lack of empathy. The new “minister for civil society”, Brooks Newmark looks like another non-entity who we’ll only hear of again if he keeps on coming out with stupid comments about like this.

“The important thing charities should be doing is sticking to their knitting and doing the best they can to promote their agenda, which should be about helping others.”

This sounds like a man whose sole interaction with charity is occasionally tossing a few pounds into a bucket and then telling himself he’s solved whatever problem the collection was for. He doesn’t understand that the money must then be used in the most effective way possible. Medicines have to be bought, research funded, or, no matter how little he wants to hear about the problems his party is causing, politicians have to be lobbied and statements drafted then released to the press. It’s typical that he wouldn’t understand that causing a fuss and getting a bad decision reversed would be more effective, and cheaper in the long run, than shutting up and picking up the broken people it leaves behind.

via Charities should stick to knitting and keep out of politics, says MP | Society | The Guardian.