Stupid things Alasdair Ross has said this Week

I know it’s been a while since Alasdair had a Stupid Things post and I was planning on doing one for the usually sensible James Spencer due to the fact that James is completely wrong about the High Speed rail project. But Alasdair has returned to an old chestnut.

The first stupid thing Alasdair said was this.

Not so good news is that Greene King have put in a second planning application to turn the Golden Key on Woodbridge Road into a shop, other than a couple of extra windows there seems little change to the original plan that was thrown out last year. No thought seems to have been put into solving the congestion problems that a store would produce.

This is stupid because the real reason Ipswich Labour hadn’t opposed it the first time is because one of their funders has a shop just down the road. They also opposed it because they are opposed to enterprise.

Today Alasdair has returned to an old Chestnut. On the dRoss Blog is a post called “Libraries still under threat” here.

This is stupid because as Judy Terry said

Last May’s campaign was purely focused on County issues, because they couldn’t criticise the Conservatives in Ipswich, with a particular emphasis on ‘save our libraries’. Yet, apart from the vitriolic rhetoric and highly personal attacks, they did nothing other than to offer £95,000 against a £2m budget ‘should they be elected’. Of course, they were elected to run Ipswich Borough Council, but did nothing constructive to engage in the process of ‘saving libraries’ either before or since!
Instead, it is the Conservatives who have created an Industrial and Provident Society into which all libraries will be transferred, to be run’ by the people, for the people, whilst also making significant savings.

The author of the dRoss Blog claims

But there are still many concerns about how our libraries in Ipswich will survive,

This is stupid because it is mere scare tactics. Ipswich Labour have nothing to offer so they have to resort to scare tactics. Because the Conservatives have created an Industrial and Provident Society into which all libraries will be transferred, to be run’ by the people, for the people, there is nothing to be concerned about.

Alasdair continues

the Tory County Council have pushed through their plans to run the service as an Industrial Provident Service. Now you would think as a Labour member, I would be right behind a co-operative type movement running the service.

This is stupid because Alasdair is Labour because he is Labour because he is Labour because he is Labour and because he is Labour he is against anything the Conservatives do. What he really dislikes about the Industrial and Provident Society is the fact that it was set up by Conservatives.

Alasdair then says

. But there are so many un-answered questions about how exactly they will run.

This is a very old trick used by politicians to put doubt in the minds of the electorate. As it is clear that the service shall be run as an Industrial Provident society, all the questions have been answered and to claim otherwise is stupid.

Alasdair then launches an ad hoc attack on individuals

The appointment of Clive Fox and other board members by Judy Terry will not help as Fox and others have been very critical of the groups that were set up to help save the library service.

This is stupid because it is a pointless personal attack and demonstrates that Alasdair can’t attack the actual policy. Alasdair then says

But is is not just in Suffolk that we have problems,

This is stupid because when it comes to libraries in Suffolk, the only problem we have is Ipswich Labour using libraries and lying about them for political purposes while in reality not giving a damn about them.

Alasdair says

it seems the Tories nationally are running down every library service. This has led to The children’s laureate’s Julia Donaldson writing a poem protesting against planned library closures across the UK.

The Gruffalo author wrote a 22-line rhyming couplet which includes the lines like “Read that book, and if you’re bitten, you can borrow all the other ones the author’s written”.

This is stupid and someone at the BBC has also written the same stupid thing here Stupid because a couplet by definition is two lines meaning that a couplet can not be 22 lines. You would expect somebody at the BBC to know that but even someone who teaches at the rather posh Ipswich School doesn’t know it.

“If we lose libraries, we would lose readers and we would become a less literate country,” she said.

As so many people don’t know what a couplet is, we’re not a very literate country now. I won’t mention about anyone’s spelling.

To top it off Alasdair tweeted this

AlasdairRoss Alasdair Ross
@saverosehill , Libraries still under threat from Suffolk Tories, will the Gruffalo save us? > alasdairross.blogspot.com/2012/02/librar…

This is stupid because it has been established that libraries are not under threat.