Via Recess Monkey, it appears that a Facebook group has been set up to defend the honour of Arleen Ouzounian, who unwittingly found herself in the Daily Mail after putting her typing fingers into gear without engaging her brain:
Top young Tory hails death of Labour MP
The Tories were today engulfed in a row over a “distasteful website that hailed the death of Labour MP Piara Khabra.
A leading member of Conservative Future, the party’s youth organisation, said the prospect of a by-election in Mr Khabra’s Ealing Southall seat “feels like Christmas has come early”.
The comments were posted by Arleen Ouzounian, deputy chairman of Conservative Future in Ealing.
According to the description on the group’s homepage, which one must assume has been written by its admin, Oliver Cooper, none of this is true and its all a conspiracy by ‘shameless leftist bloggers and faceless political hacks’ – oh, and you’ll need a sickbag for the next bit:
Over the past two weeks, Arleen Ouzounian has come under attack from shameless leftist bloggers and faceless political hacks. Arleen has been subjected to the most torturous abuse and suffered the harshest consequences of others’ actions, none of which the fault of her self.
All those that know her know that the accusations couldn’t be further from the truth. The idea that, as a compassionate Christian and pacifist, Arleen could possibly do anything but mourn the unfortunate and untimely death of an innocent human being is an affront not just to her as an individual, but to all the values on which she bases her actions.
We stand by Arleen in her fight to clear herself of the scandalous and scurrilous accusations levelled at her character.
Oliver is presumably banking on the fact that Google’s cache has now been refreshed, destroying the evidence of Arleen’s gaff, which might be all well and good but for UKPoliblog from which this screenshot was taken a matter of minutes ago – The Regalis Blog belongs to Arleen, btw:
I particularly like the ‘The idea that, as a compassionate Christian and pacifist, Arleen could possibly do anything but mourn the unfortunate and untimely death of an innocent human being‘ line – Khabra was 82 years old, which is what we call round here ‘a good innings’.
Cooper, on the other hand, is evidently what we call round here ‘a snivelling little gobshite‘.
UPDATE:
After a bit of prodding from Recess Monkey, Oliver has issued what he’s laughably calling a ‘statement’ on Ouzounian’s comments:
Since one of those that has attacked Arleen has demanded a statement on the issue, here is one:
Arleen did not describe the death of Piara Khabra as being like Christmas come early. That is a deliberate misquote. Her blog post consisted of two parts, explicitly divided by belonging to two separate paragraphs, and hence to two self-contained ideas:
1) The first addressed the issue of his death, and was appropriately dignified and respectful on that topic.
2) The second addressed the political consequences. The term ‘Christmas has come early’ referred to the opportunity that Conservatives have to prove the party’s development since the last general election. Arleen is a local political activist, the Regalis is a political blog, and, hence, the political consequences of his death are important. Divorced from its cause: the prospect of injecting vitality into local democracy feels to Arleen like a good thing.
One could only misunderstand Arleen’s post in such a manner with deliberate and malicious intent. Either that or not understanding what a paragraph is. It’s really your choice, Alex.
So the situation is exactly what it appears – an empty-headed Tory student had a flux of the mouth and was more concerned with wetting herself at the prospect of a by-election on her patch than on displaying a modicum of decorum – which is exactly what the Daily Mail reported and precisely what’s been said on all the blogs I’ve seen commenting on this.
In which case, the correct response is the Boris defence – bluster a bit, admit you’ve dropped a bollock, take the kicking with a bit of good grace and move on.
People like Boris. Even lefties and faceless political hacks like Boris – why?
Well, in part, because when he fucks up, he takes his lumps with a measure of resigned good humour and then gets on with things rather than whinging like a stuck pig for weeks afterwards, which is altogether a lesson lost on Oliver and his halfwit Tory mates.
It’s called taking responsibility for your actions. You fuck up. You apologise. You take your lumps and you move on – whining like a bunch five year old and posting vomit-inducing eulogies to a half-wit whose ‘crime’ was a bit of crass insensitivity and nothing more only keeps the whole episode going and makes it worse.
What a twat!
