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Anorak News | Having Maria

Having Maria

by | 8th, March 2005

‘DEVOID of an identifiable personality, the Tories have taken to borrowing the more voter-friendly appeal of they who do.

”Vote Tory or my son dies”

Margaret Dixon may not be Steven Fry dressed in a fright wig and sling, but she and her shoulder have touched a chord with the British voters.

And now she’s been joined on the Tories’ campaign trail by Maria Hutchings, the Essex mother of an autistic son, who, as the Guardian says, “savaged” Tony Blair on Channel Five’s The Wright Stuff last month.

Yesterday, Hutchings told her story at a Conservative Party conference, highlighting her son’s special education needs and, as the Tories hope, the Government’s insensitivity to her plight.

Such tactics may not be savoury but they have clearly unsettled the Labour Party, whose election co-ordinator, the oily and creepy Alan Milburn, is aghast in the Times.

“Politics is all about real people,” he tells the paper. “That’s why we are in it, to make like better for real people.” As opposed to what other type of people he does not say.

“What’s clear now about these past few days is that the Conservative strategy is to highlight any one individual in order to try to run down the state of our public series.”

Full marks there to Millburn, who may or not be a real person but something altogether more contrived and robotic.

But Mrs Hutchings is bothered at being branded something other than “real”. “I feel totally disgusted that you should think that I’m here as a political pawn,” says she.

“The election is about people like Margaret Dixon and me…now I have found a party willing to listen.”

And one all too happy to let her talk…’



Posted: 8th, March 2005 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink