Bridport Chamber of Trade and Commerce are putting on a ‘networking brunch’ with Oliver Letwin M.P. On Saturday 8th November, 10 a.m. – 12 noon, at: Avenue, West Street, Bridport, Dorset, DT6 3QW Map
“Oliver Letwin, Member of Parliament for West Dorset will be hosting a Q & A session. West Dorset District Council will also be speaking. Our networking brunch is only open to businesses* and early booking is advisable.” Mr Letwin is considered a world-class authority on flogging off the fruits of our labour and pissing off with the money.
A warm welcome is assured for the old etonian author of ‘Privatising the World’ who will be delighted to answer questions about how he has made a career out of selling us things we already own.
In addition there will be speakers from West Dorset District Council. – what more could you ask?
Bridport is a bastard to get to as the train only goes to Dorchester, then you have to get the X31 bus, which has itself fallen victim to cuts. Timetable.
*We will award prizes for the most imaginative business names and the most pertinent questions, as determined by our panel (whoever comes down the pub on the night).
Some highlights of Letwin’s career you might want to ask him about.
When asked about his membership of the Cambridge University Liberal club he explained: “I was also a member of the Fabian Society. But I am sorry to have to tell you that this was because I was interested in the thoughts of Liberals and Fabians … rather than because I was ever a Liberal Democrat or a Fabian.” – The technical term is ‘hypocrite’.
In 1988, with John Redwood he published a pamphlet entitled Britain’s biggest enterprise; his blueprint for selling the NHS. Both of these MPs were directors of NM Rothschild Corporate Finance Ltd‘s international privatisation unit. Letwin remained a director until December 2009, being paid £60,000 a year for an eight-hour week whilst he devised Tory party policies in line with their corporate agenda.
In 2001 Letwin failed to live up to his name when he ballsed up Hague’s election campaign by telling the Financial Times that the party would slash public spending by £20 billion a year. They hid him until after the election
Later in 2001, as Shadow Home Secretary he was credited with forcing the Home Secretary to withdraw his proposal to introduce an offence of incitement to religious hatred.
In 2004 Letwin told a group of economists that it would be “irrational” to tell voters by how much he wanted to cut public spending. He later astonished a gathering of construction industry representatives in his constituency by saying that within five years of a Conservative election victory “the NHS will not exist anymore”, according to one of those who were present.
Between 2004-2009 Letwin claimed claimed more than £80,000 in parliamentary expenses for a cottage in Somerset.
In 2009, according to the daily Telegraph, he was induced to repay a bill for £2,145 for replacing a leaking pipe under his tennis court.
In October 2011, the arrogant twat dumped a pile of his constituents’ personal letters in public bins in St. James’s Park – how fucking rude! If he was going to breach their confidentiality he could at least have done it in Dorset.
In 2012 by e-mail to Terry Stewart, president of the Dorset branch of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England Letwin said:
“I anticipate that subsidies for both solar photovoltaic and onshore wind will come down to zero over the next few years and should have disappeared by 2020”
Along with his colleague, Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax M.P. for South Dorset, whose family introduced slavery to the Caribbean and made their fortune from brutal sugar plantations, he is a vociferous opponent of wind farms, mainly on cosmetic grounds. Despite campaigning for the abolition of renewable energy subsidies, Drax will now cash in on a 174 acre solar installation on his vast estate, over the heads of 500 local objectors. If ever a piece of land was paid for by the blood of the working class, it is the 7,000-acre Charborough house, surrounded by what is known locally as ‘the Great Wall of Dorset’
In July 2014 he told a meeting of right-wing think-tank Politeia that an improvement in the economy would open the way for a flat tax rate, so that preposterously wealthy toffs like him (and most of the cabinet) would pay the same rate as us.
Here are some of Ollie’s replies to e-mails, on his own website, in which he supports fracking, foxhunting, raising the pension age for fire-fighters and the transport of live animals for slaughter. He also expresses the opinion that legal controls on dog breeding are adequate (he says he hasn’t got time to attend the debate, sorry) and implies that the education secretary Michael Gove knows what he’s doing!
The Collective
More info:
Journal of the Royal College of Physicians: Opening the oyster: the 2010–11 NHS reforms in England
Recipe for Ruin: TTIP the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
Why do politicians tell us Debt/Deficit myths which they must know to be untrue?
