to thank Emily Thornberry profusely

[longfingernails]

She has just shown how much Labour detest the aspirational working class, the swingiest of swing voters. Labour will be hit with this again and again and again; ever denial and denunciation will just bring Labour's true views to a wider audience. Fundamentally, it will only reinforce the undeniable fact that Miliband's centre of gravity is firmly ensconced in Islington.

She has made a Tory/UKIP coalition, perhaps the best possible electoral outcome, much more likely. Thank you Emily!

The guy has a white van, which means he works. It was parked up in the daytime which means he works nights. That means he is a hard worker, probably struggling so he can buy his daughter a hamster or a cat for Christmas, something she has always dreamt of. Labour dont like that which means labour want to kill kittens.

Thats what this is all about. the scumbags

Emotionsecho "Even if she wasn't sneering, it is incredibly crass to put up a picture of someone else's property it is inviting others to sneer, deride and make fun of the image and the person/people who live there all without their permission or knowledge. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence or common sense and awareness of social media would be well aware of that possibility and for a sitting MP to blithely subject a member of the public to that says a lot about her disconnect from the public she seeks to serve."

Agree with this 100%.

I don't care which party she represents, anyone so stupid shouldn't be helping to run the country.

i'm not shifting ground or defending, but i do feel sorry for her.
I'd take the evidence from both tweets to suggest there was nothing malicious in either. But i can see how others might view the last tweet and feel that this is further evidence of what you term a 'disconnect'. I don't think personally that there is such a disconnect, but i am sure that the media and other right-wingers want to exploit any Labour mistakes to show a disconnect.
Maybe, and being brutally honest, i sympathise because i hate the kind of flag waving patriotism/nationalism that three flags on your house would seem to suggest. But that's just me (and probably a whole other thread!).

Why didn't she just take loads more photos of different houses and say, having a look around this lovely town?

Or say: sorry my son nicked my phone?

Clearly, I missed my calling.

I saw her on the news. What a dreadful snob she sounds. Labour just don't get it do they. It's why voters are leaving in droves.

Am I being dopey, I've seen the picture... What did she actually say? What was the tweet?

Surely people left Labour when they left the country in financial ruin. I'll not go back til the two Eds has gone.

gellicleCat

A picture paints a thousand words gellicle!

bakewellslice of COURSE I can see that the two pics and their captions are not identical! That's the point; if they were identical the first wouldn't be as illuminating as it is, and there would be no point referring to it would there.

The first pic suggest's she's in the habit of tweeting pics like this in a positive and non-sneery way. And that's backed up by the fact that no one was upset by that 2012 tweet at all.

Why would she do something similar two years later with entirely different, much nastier motives?

This is no more convincing than Paleo. Years apart , different political context I'm not feeling Emily T's love for the Strood house.

I don't think she's nasty, just clueless.

If she's a "collector" of house fronts in a pinterest kind of way why didn't she say so? Or was bodhranbae's interpretation more likely?

Who knows as she hasn't explained it..

I think the point surely is that she hasnt tweeted a picture of a random house. She has tweeted a picture of a house in a consituency which was (then) about to vote UKIP.
The picture shows a house covered in England flags (and a West Ham flag. By posting this picture she is showing that is what she thinks people who vote UKIP are like and since the majority of those who voted last night voted UKIP then that is what the town is like.

Many labour voters have concerns about the level of immigration into the country and the knock on effect on wages and jobs. Labour has the attitude of just ignore them , they'll vote for us anyway or just call them racist and they'll go away.

Johnny I think you have perhaps decoded the tweet a bit more realistically than Vogages!

But what's wrong with the house? I could understand the problem if it were a rat-infested hovel, with a dead sofa in the garden and a couple of drunks lounging on it. But... it's not.

What does it show "people who vote UKIP are like"?

Disclaimer: this sort of property is completely normal to me. Ditto being a tradesman, owning a van, flying football flags (happily no longer the preserve of BNP types), etc etc.

They're not things I sneer at. So it doesn't leap to the front of my mind that other people are sneering at them.

I put to you PaleoDad's response to flags. That is how I and it seems a lot of others suspect ET thinks of flags. Disclaimer: I know I could be totally wrong!

But you still can't tell me what's wrong with the house? Or the street, or whatever?

I agree with the PP that people who leapt to the conclusion that ET was sneering or mocking, must themselves have seen something to sneer at or mock in that pic.

And that may have been her unspoken meaning, for all I know.

But this thread is clearly full of people who DO think there's something to sneer about there. Which is a bit .

See, I thought Gordon Brown's comment of "bigot" was well out of order, and a highly inaccurate characterisation of the woman who'd spoken to him.

But this... "We imagine she might have been thinking X, but we don't know. Never mind, there's a vacuum so we'll fill it with our own projections."

Like a PP said, politician posts picture of house => Labour want to kill kittens.

happily no longer the preserve of BNP types

Since when?
Perhaps I lived for too long near the BNP HQ at Welling and spent too many years on anti-NF & anti-BNP rallies over the decades but draping your house in 3 St George flags during an election where those crypto fascists UKIP are making the running is making a massive statement.

People who do this are the same sort of berks who think chucking pigs heads into mosques is an expression of national pride.
And to prove it they have just voted that UKIP cunt into Westminster.

As Nick Robinson has said - Thornberry has handed the Tory press an absolute gift - a whole different narrative for the right wing media to focus on instead of the Tories getting stuffed in Rochester.

That is why Miliband is angry and why she had to resign.

And I say "settee" and "bog roll".

Ah, well happily I've seen loads of England flags during sporting events and Royal events over the last decade or so.

So certainly where I live they are no longer what they were a couple of decades ago, ie the sure sign of a racist twat.

I'm quite pleased about that. Sure, the twats still use them. But they no longer own them.

What national sporting events and royal events are currently on?

None.

But there is a crucial election involving a political party with deeply racist views.

Cameron's a liar, claiming he'd have sacked a minister who tweeted anything like this - he's held on to every idiot he's eventually had to sack until the pressure gets too much. Worse, he kept the welfare minister who wanted disabled people's wages to be cut to £2 an hour. Far more offensive.