Get on the pink bus

[Gob]

A bright pink minibus of female Labour MPs will tour constituencies to talk to female voters “around the kitchen table” in an effort to win their vote in marginal constituencies, the party has revealed.




Unveiling the campaign, Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman said the pink bus tour was not patronising, as the party recognises that women have different patterns in their working lives which need to be addressed by public policy.

She also defended the choice of colour, saying it was important to make sure the bus was conspicuous.

The tour of 70 constituencies will focus on five areas that Labour has determined are key to women: childcare, social care, domestic violence, equal pay and political representation. Labour said it would engage with women outside the school gates, in shopping centres and in work places, with a particular emphasis on the 9 million who did not vote in the last election.

Lucy Powell, one of the party’s new general election co-ordinators, said Labour was taking its message female voters because they wanted to “have a conversation about the kitchen table, and around the kitchen table” rather than having an “economy that just reaches the boardroom table”.

All parties will be battling hard for the female vote in May’s election after a TNS poll for BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour that found a disproportionate number remained undecided – 35% compared with 25% of men.

However, they will have to make an extra effort to avoid seeming like they are patronising voters after the Better Together campaign advert featuring “the woman who made her mind up”, which was heavily criticised for being condescending.

Asked whether this charge could be levelled at the “Woman to Woman” pink bus tour, Harman said: “I don’t think it’s at all patronising to recognise that women have got different patterns of their working lives, there’s different patterns in families between what women do and what men do. That is to recognise the reality and to say public policy needs to address that.

“One danger there isn’t is that actually people won’t want to talk to us or engage with us and will think we’re patronising. I’m confident that people will think: ‘Well, there’s somebody here interested in my life and listening to me, about how I’ve got to work till I’m 67 and look after a relative and look after a grandchild, and I’m very good at my job but I’m underpaid’.”

The Labour deputy leader also explained the choice of bright pink, while acknowledging there had been some internal debate about the issue.

“There’s been a discussion about size and colour,” she said. “This is actually a One Nation Labour colour. It will attract attention and will be different from the normal thing of people shouting down the megaphone … Is it not magenta? We could have had red but that would look like all the other Labour vehicles, and we wanted to mark that this was something different. Then we looked at a darker red but it looked like a Pret a Manger van. We wanted to it to look conspicuous and therefore a white van wasn’t going to do the job. We were not going to have it blue or any of the other [party] colours. We wanted it to be visible and I think it’s a great colour.”

The campaign was launched as Seema Malhotra, shadow minister for preventing violence against women, prepares to give a speech arguing greater gender equality in politics is necessary because “research shows that in general male lawmakers are less likely to initiate and pass laws that serve women and children’s interests”.

The use of the pink bus was immediately mocked by Labour’s political rivals.

Tory MP Caroline Dinenage said: “The wheels have come off the Labour bus. Getting Harriet Harman to drive around the country in a pink van to try and attract the female vote is as patronising as it gets. This is clearly just another divisive gimmick that the electorate will see through.”

A Lib Dem spokeswoman said: “Women voters won’t forget Labour’s car crash record on the economy just because Harriet Harman turns up in a pink van.”

Pink buses and "chats around the kitchen table"? Labour are the party of gender equality, aren't they? Aren't they?

[Lord Jim]

Who ever came up with this idea must have gone to school riding the short bus...

[Gob]

ETA:

I know where they got the inspiration from!!

[Lord Jim]

If Labour thinks this sort of embarrassing idiocy will create their path to victory in the next election, then the Tories and the UKIP might as well just start ordering the champagne for their victory party now...

[Lord Jim]

Poll gives Cameron's Conservatives small lead before May election

(Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative Party is three percentage points ahead of the Labour Party, an opinion poll showed on Monday, three months before a May 7 national election in Britain.

A three point lead, broadly within the margin of error of most opinion polls, underlines how close the contest, billed as the most unpredictable in modern British history, really is.

Most recent polls have put Labour narrowly in the lead or neck and neck with the Conservatives.

Monday's poll, funded by Michael Ashcroft, a former deputy chairman of the Conservatives, put Cameron's party on 34 percent, Labour on 31 percent, the Lib Dems on 9 percent, the Greens on 6 percent and the UK Independence Party (UKIP) on 14 percent.

Analysts believe Cameron's party would need to open up a lead of up to seven percentage points to have a realistic chance of winning the election outright under Britain's winner takes all voting system. A quirk of the current system means Labour could win a majority with a smaller lead of around five points.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/02/0 ... X320150209

The Tories have no one but themselves to blame for the fact that they're not in a stronger position to win the election outright...

The economy is going well, and Labour has no message, theme or programme to offer as a coherent alternative...(Well, besides "mini-bus Barbie"...)

And the Labourites have a leader who is so wet, he makes David Cameron look like Winston Churchill...

The reason there's even any question about the Conservatives leading the next government is quite simple...

David Cameron has failed to deliver on his promises regarding the EU...

The reason the UKIP draws between 15 and 25 percent in every poll, is because David Cameron has failed to deliver on his promises regarding the EU...

The UKIP is a creature of the fact that David Cameron has failed to deliver on his promises regarding the EU...

Cameron came into office pledging to work out "a better deal" for Britain in the EU, one that would restore more of the UK's national sovereignty, or if he couldn't get that deal, he promised he would put UK membership in the EU up to a referendum vote...

In the event, he has done neither...

After he became Prime Minister, for the first three years he did absolutely nothing to address this; after the UKIP started eating his electoral lunch, he began to make some half-hearted efforts to finally address the simmering anger of his countrymen, and at long last put together a delegation to re-negotiate terms with the EU..

Only to find himself roundly and arrogantly rebuffed by the Burghers of Brussels...

To which he has responded with nothing but rhetoric...(I'll give Cameron this; he's an excellent public speaker...Not quite Tony Blair, but not bad...)

The Tories ought to be looking at a landslide re-election of Margaret Thatcher Post-Falklands dimensions, but because they failed to deliver on their central promises regarding the EU, they have lost the faith and confidence of a substantial portion of their voting base...

And they created the UKIP...(though now, due to the clever management of Nigel Farage, the UKIP also draws support from working class Labour voters)

It's kind of a political mess, but I believe that at the end of the day after the next election, Cameron will manage to cobble together a Conservative, UKIP working majority, (possibly also with the support of the SNP in exchange for more autonomy, and whatever is left of the Liberal Party) but the price will be that he'll finally have to make good on his promises, and give the British people an up or down vote on membership in the EU.

ETA:

BTW, I don't ever want to hear again about how "crazy" and convoluted our political system is...

[oldr_n_wsr]

I always liked Barbie in a Corvette.

[Sue U]

I don't know much about UK political culture (and what I do know I've probably learned here, as frightening as that is), but this seems like an incredibly boneheaded PR campaign.

Unveiling the campaign, Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman said the pink bus tour was not patronising, as the party recognises that women have different patterns in their working lives which need to be addressed by public policy.

She also defended the choice of colour, saying it was important to make sure the bus was conspicuous.

If you have to start off your campaign by defending it as "not patronizing" you're already in the hole. And even if that were true, it's simply too big a target for the other side to hit, repeatedly and joyously.

Have they never heard of focus groups in Britain?

[Big RR]

And painting a bus with pepto bismol is just--wrong.

[MajGenl.Meade]

.... and keep the pink flag flying here. Tums tum tee tums, etc. Put kettle on, luv.

[Gob]

Well said both Jim & Sue. Another major factor in the next UK election will be the inevitable demise of the Lib Dem party, who seem to have been on a rampant campaign of self destruction for four years.

One more EU lunatic event, (letting Greece off it's debt?) or another Islamist atrocity, and UKIP will be No. 2 in the hit parade.

[Gob]

[Lord Jim]

it's simply too big a target for the other side to hit, repeatedly and joyously.

Apparently it didn't take long...

[MajGenl.Meade]

[Lord Jim]

[MajGenl.Meade]

UKIP's on the cutting edge too!

[Gob]

A Tyneside MP who criticised the ‘pinkification’ of girls’ toys has leapt to the defence of Labour’s decision to use a pink bus to win women’s votes.

Newcastle Central MP Chi Onwurah said the colour has been “stolen by the toy industry as a badge of girlhood” but it would have “patronising and defeatist” not to use it for the party’s ‘Woman to Woman’ campaign.

The Labour MP says the colour of the bus is the same as that used by leader Ed Miliband for his ‘One Nation’ conference speech.

She also says it is “ridiculous” for political opponents to link her views on children’s toys to the party’s campaign bus.

She said: “Nine million women did not vote in the 2010 election, almost 400,000 in the North East. Women have been hit hardest by this Conservative Lib Dem Government and the Woman to Woman bus tour is part of putting women’s concerns at the heart of our Election campaign.

“The colour of the bus comes from the One Nation colour scheme – see Ed’s speech at last conference – and it would have been patronising and defeatist to avoid it because it has been stolen by the toy industry as a badge of girlhood.

“That said the controversy has raised the profile so a lot more people know about the bus and that’s great.”

[Econoline]

[MajGenl.Meade]