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Cameron raises eyebrows with mock German accent

Tuesday, 16 June 2009

Conservative leader David Cameron tonight raised eyebrows when he adopted a German accent to underline his opposition to identity cards.

Mr Cameron pledged to scrap identity cards during a question and answer session with voters in Norwich.

Explaining his concern about identity cards he pretended to be a German speaking English and said: "Where are your papers?"

A woman in the audience raised her hand and asked him: "I wonder about the wisdom of you adopting a German accent?"

Mr Cameron told her: "It was meant to be light-hearted."

Earlier one questioner had criticised Mr Cameron's decision to align the Conservatives with a right-wing Polish party in the European Union.

Mr Cameron defended his decision and said he wanted the Conservatives to join forces with parties who spoke with the same voice on the European Union.

He was speaking at the Hewett School in the latest of a series of question and answer sessions with voters.

He arrived in Norwich as the city prepared for a by-election triggered by the resignation of Norwich North Labour MP Ian Gibson.

This article is from The Belfast Telegraph

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I get it
[info]kuma2000 wrote:
Tuesday, 16 June 2009 at 09:53 am (UTC)
He is pretending to be a Nazi officer. Very funny mate, I wouldn't expect Brown Gordon to be able to do something like that. Any more funny accents up your sleeve?
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Cameron
[info]piddle1 wrote:
Tuesday, 16 June 2009 at 09:58 am (UTC)
Right wing public schoolboy humour - just what the country needs!!
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[info]arg1272 wrote:
Tuesday, 16 June 2009 at 10:13 am (UTC)
David cameron is close to the mark with his comparision of ID cards with Nazi Germany. On a visit to Kracow recently I went to the excellent Eagle Pharmacy memorial to the Getto. It is amazing how many photographs of Nazi persecution in the memorial's database involve the checking of ID papers. I don't think his comments are that light-heated though, these jokes have a place in 1970's comedy, but not in serious politics.
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David Cameron's Freudian slip
[info]sjkillman wrote:
Tuesday, 16 June 2009 at 10:24 am (UTC)
I am sure it was meant to be light-hearted, however, it was also a Freudian slip. Whatever you think of Gordon Brown, Cameron and Osborne will be much more right wing and cut public spending more severely than Labour would have done. Osborne is an amateur when it comes to financial/economic policy - read Hansard where he wanted less financial regulation, no propping up of the banks and would have let Northern Rock go to the wall and all its customers with it. Tory soundbites (I would not give them the dignity of the title 'policy') so far mean anyone who cannot afford private education or private health (both subsidised by the previous Tory Govt) will suffer. It is no good telling the electorate they will make efficiency savings - every Government since the last World War has said the same, but not achieved it without hardship to the middle and lower income earners. Labour has been successful in a number of public spending areas, but has also made some very costly mistakes and wasted tax payers' money - they need to admit these and show clearly what they have learned from them.
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[info]we_r_notanumber wrote:
Tuesday, 16 June 2009 at 10:25 am (UTC)
I have no interest in the Conservatives or Labour or any of the others come to that and you can mock Cameron for his sense of humour but the point is that re 'id' cards, the system is too expensive, we have been told of little evidence to back up their benefit in that they will protect anyone, it definitley smacks of big brother (hence Cameron's accent), the technology will be broken by hackers at some point and before then the Govt will probably lose all the details anyway!!

Mock Cameron if you like but his underlying point/objection remains the same: if 'id' cards go ahead we may just as well be tattooed at birth with an 'id' number - God forbid we go back to those days again as some people have already experienced - therefore, they should be scrapped.
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Proportion
[info]bobbellinhell wrote:
Tuesday, 16 June 2009 at 11:11 am (UTC)
A little xenophobia is as nothing compared with the police state that New Labour intend to bring about with identity cards. Any New Labour stooge who still thinks they've got nothing to fear is in for a rude awakening when the Grenzpolizei start demanding people's Reisepasse at the slightest excuse.
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A good point strongly made
[info]pieinthesky2 wrote:
Tuesday, 16 June 2009 at 11:58 am (UTC)
We'll never know how pre-planned this was. I'm guessing it was. It'll certainly stick in peoples minds and maybe work in his favour to convince people of his case so long as people don't take it too serioulsly. Effective but risky!
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Back to the subject
[info]engly_fish wrote:
Tuesday, 16 June 2009 at 11:59 am (UTC)
I think ID cards are a good thing. I know what I am talking about as I am from germany and lived with ID cards all my life.

It makes live easier when you move houses in germany you have to register once you register you have your address on your ID card and it's a valid document for utility providers, banks. etc. (I know you have drivers licence but not everyone has them.)

And it is funny that a german accent is instantly associated with nazi germany. that's a nice generalisation. You are still asked for your ID nowadays in germany and that has nothing to do with Nazis or hitler's germany. Get your facts right.
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[info]franz80 wrote:
Tuesday, 16 June 2009 at 12:05 pm (UTC)
/forwards to acquaintance at a big german broadsheet.
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David's German Accent
[info]hurstgreen wrote:
Tuesday, 16 June 2009 at 12:05 pm (UTC)
For goodness sake, get a life and a sense of humour. I'm of German extraction and the comment he made was not anti-German but anti-Nazi.... which is spot on given the authoritarian state we have at present with the ID cards and cameras. Look, Gordon is an unelected Prime Minister with a raft of unelected Cabinet Ministers who are not even answerable in the House of Commons other than the very occasional select committee. Whatever Osborne believed or did not believe, the fact is that Gordon presided over no regulation in the financial markets, allowed bankers to be paid crazy salaries, destroyed the pension system for one and all, overspent on health and education whilst overseeing a time when children binge drink and the streets are less safe, and people worry in a holier than thou manner that David Cameron made a harmless joke. That bubble-based naive attitude is astonishing and smacks of tribalism rather than an objective view of the facts. Prioritise!
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[info]memberd wrote:
Tuesday, 16 June 2009 at 12:23 pm (UTC)
Cameron's Python-esque humour aside, I also live in a country where ID cards are compulsory and really don't see what the fuss is all about.
if anything it comes in quite handy sometimes
When will the British stop whining on about it?
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"I wonder about the wisdom of you adopting a German accent?"
[info]therajah123 wrote:
Tuesday, 16 June 2009 at 01:51 pm (UTC)
Its precisely the use of using a german accent that got Max Mosley in the newspapers.Whether it is used in fantasy play or light heartedness as David Cameron puts it leaves one very vulnerable.
the raj
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Those opposed to a loss of freedom must be Nazis.!
[info]colin_brown wrote:
Tuesday, 16 June 2009 at 01:57 pm (UTC)
Who spotted the politically orchestrated Marxist-inversion technique by the Labour Party?

Cameron campaigns for freedom by opposing the introduction of the Labours totalitarian I.D. card scheme. For doing so, he is ridiculed and virtually branded a 'Nazi' for raising what is a widespread concern among millions of British voters.

Why is it, that an individual or, a political party that champions (people-freedom) is subjected to an onslaught of soul-staining name-calling for their efforts?

The BNP are well used to it. However, the Tory party isn't. Labour call the Conservatives the "Nasty Party" everytime they try to represent voters properly.

Has anyone one else noticed the pattern? Isn't it time to throw off the shackles of Political Correctness?
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"I wonder about the wisdom of you adopting a German accent?"
[info]therajah123 wrote:
Tuesday, 16 June 2009 at 02:02 pm (UTC)
It was using the german accent that got another right wing lightweight into trouble viz. Max Mosley. David! you must be more careful or you may end up getting your bottom spanked at the next general election.You really should have kept your job as an account executive in advertising.Much more up your street.
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This isn't humour, it's
[info]brumbar wrote:
Tuesday, 16 June 2009 at 03:53 pm (UTC)
just a boring, infantile swipe by a boring, infantile twat at a country which bears no relation in any imaginable way towards Hitlers Germany. The reality is - and I know, I've lived there - is that modern Germany is a far more decentralised and democratic country than poor old Britain with its creakey old electoral system, and its ingrained class prejudice.

Don't bother doing the Basil Fawlty inpersonations Cameron, They are too life-like.

P.S. Identity cards really are no big deal.
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Re: This isn't humour, it's
[info]hurstgreen wrote:
Tuesday, 16 June 2009 at 10:04 pm (UTC)
Brumbar, your comments were far more unpleasant and unnecessary than anything David Cameron said. You need to get a sense of humour. However, you may have to return back to Britain to find it!
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Re: This isn't humour, it's
[info]brumbar wrote:
Thursday, 18 June 2009 at 07:40 pm (UTC)
My comments were probably over the top, but I have no patience left for the 'all Germans are humourless Nazis' tape loop that so many British people have. The accusation of being a Nazi causes real offence, and is not seen as being a joke, much as the claim that all English people are sexual deviants may cause waves of uncontroled laughter in Parisian bars, but not be seen as all that funny in Peckham. No sense of humour, these Peckhamese.
If Cameron really does have pretentions to be Prime Minister, he wants to behave in ways that promote British interests abroad,
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Re: This isn't humour, it's
[info]hurstgreen wrote:
Thursday, 18 June 2009 at 07:53 pm (UTC)
That's funny, saying that it's the English when the French usually make fun of the Belgians. Given the recent history, they probably couldn't accuse the Belgians because it's too close to the truth.
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