Interesting Facts

According to several newspaper reports and blog sites, the Tory party in the UK has deleted all the promises made before the election. (In what must have bee a frenzy of clicking "Del" all pre-election pledges have been removed from their website: Every article, speech and press release. And if you want to hear something even more sinister, they are using a “robot blocker” to ensure the documents are hidden from search engines and removed from the ‘Internet Archive’ an online library that aims to build up a permanent record of web content. A Conservative spokesman said: "We're making sure our website keeps the Conservative Party at the forefront of political campaigning. These changes allow people to quickly and easily access the most important information we provide..." Nice to see how they regard their promises. They went on to say that they are simply making it easier for people to “quickly and easily” access information on the site, but obviously only the...

The Conservative Party in the UK has 150,000 members. (In Margaret Thatcher's day it had 1.2 million members. Maybe they are a dying breed.)

25% of all solved crimes in London escape punishment. (According to figures obtained through a freedom of information request by a Conservative London assembly member, Tony Arbour, they end up in the issue of a caution instead of a prosecution, and nearly 29,000 cautions were handed to criminals by the Metropolitan police in the year to March. Some of these were for minor offences, but not all: 5,843 were given out for violent attacks, 165 for sexual offences and five for rape, while 180 offenders were cautioned for grievous bodily harm or wounding, 131 for robbery and 318 for drug-trafficking.)

According to the GMB trade union, almost a quarter of the richest people in the country are Conservative Party donors,  (Since 2001, the Tories have received donations of around £83m from 248 out of the top 1,000 on the Sunday Times Rich List. Tetra Pak billionaire Hans Rausing and his family were shown to have given £886,000 to the party. Peter Cruddas (great name) and Lord Ashcroft, two significant Tory donors, also made the Rich List. Mr Cruddas gave £1.4m, while Lord Ashcroft gave £6.1m. The Fleming family, a banking dynasty worth £1.5bn, donated £1.4m to the Tories. Well, at least we know who is really running the country.) Source

It took 176 years for the Carlton club (the Conservative private members' club) to admit women as full members. (Funnily it wasn't (as I thought it must be) Maggie who got the honour, it was Ann Widdecomb. I guess that fthey must have been confused for 176 years about the actual meaning of members .)

According to the Tories, nearly two million people in Britain have never had a job. (Seemingly a further three million have not worked since Labour came to power. In the worst unemployment black spots, as many as a quarter of all adults have not held down a job since 1996. Of course the conservatives are the opposition party, and so they are calling it "horrendous". Labour could put a different 'spin' on it by saying "Over 5 million people in Britain haven't had to degrade themselves by working for Tory fat cats!")