At the risk of being labelled as a Daily Mail Reader (well I do read it, selectively) this piece from Peter Hitchens is posted here as it is about Rotherham and for a change, not particularly about the Labour Party.
“It is quite clear to any thinking person that the Tory Party is now a corpse. Any idea that David Cameron could or would revive it must have died at the Rotherham by-election. This astonishing result must surely be the most humiliating treatment of a major political party in modern history.The ‘Conservative’ candidate came fifth. He was beaten by Labour, which is reasonable. But he was also shoved aside by three other organisations.
The first was UKIP, the Dad’s Army of politics; the second was the BNP, that care home for the incurably stupid and nasty; and the third was George Galloway’s Respect. Their candidate was Yvonne Ridley, a former journalist who converted to Islam after she was held hostage by the Taliban.
I quite like her in a way, but she can hardly be said to be part of the mainstream, especially since she adopted her adventurous version of the hijab. If I were the candidate of a national party beaten by Yvonne in a by- election, I would go into hiding. I don’t think this comical failure can be dismissed as a mid-term blip. I think this is the moment at which it became obvious that, in the North of England, where Tory MPs used to abound, people have noticed what many in the South have yet to see.
The Tory’s humiliating performance in the Rotherham by-election showed David Cameron’s party has decayed They have realised Mr Slippery’s Party has decayed so much that the best place for it is the nearest skip. No amount of paint, glue, sparkle or varnish will ever make it look good again. Tory insiders know this too. They know that the true party membership is falling faster than Jimmy Savile’s reputation, that without cheques from dodgy millionaires it would long ago have gone into receivership. On top of that it has come to stand, in many people’s minds, for concreting over the countryside, unrestrained mass immigration, terrible state schools, being nice to criminals, starting foreign wars in places where we have no business to be, and high taxes.
Of course, there are people who think all these things are wonderful. But they already have two political parties on their side, and so there’s no earthly point in them voting Tory. This is what comes of punishing your friends and rewarding your enemies, year after year after year. In Rotherham, you get fewer votes than Yvonne Ridley and her hijab. You barely get 1,000 votes in the whole of Middlesbrough. And even in Croydon North you get only 16 per cent of the vote. Now, I did tell you all this some time ago, when far too many of you were swooning into the arms of Mr Slippery. Well, look what you got for that. He couldn’t win last time, even aided by the wave of hate he created against Gordon Brown. He certainly can’t win next time. By 2020 Tory candidates in the North will be coming in behind the Monster Raving Loonies.
Face it, the whole thing’s got to go. If the Tory Party ran foreign holidays all its customers would be stranded abroad in unfinished hotels. If the Tory Party were a cruise ship, it would be sinking on a jagged reef because the captain was too busy conducting a gay wedding and not looking where he was going. If it were any kind of consumer item, people who bought it would take it back and ask for a refund. They wouldn’t get one, of course, just a harsh Australian voice telling them to get knotted. But because it’s a political party, for some bizarre reason, the more its voters are betrayed, the more they cling to it. The only result of this is that the honest, productive, thrifty, patriotic people of this country have nobody to protect them from their enemies. Desert the Useless Tories now and for ever. Put them out of their misery. And then build something better before it is too late. It’s not yet compulsory to vote, and why would you vote for people who despise you? “
Sums up the situation in Rotherham very well, Just unfortunate for us here that there doesn’t seem to be any credible group or individual to stand at elections. Perhaps Peter Hitchens has not heard about the Rotherham Labour Party and it’s attitude and behaviour. He may not know of Sarah Champion, the newly elected MP to replace Macshane.
Think it’s time that he did know so that others nationally, including the national newspapers, know about the situation here in our town.
maltbyblogger 
“On top of that it has come to stand, in many people’s minds, for concreting over the countryside, unrestrained mass immigration, terrible state schools, being nice to criminals, starting foreign wars in places where we have no business to be, and high taxes.”
Wow, you’d think he was talking about the Labour Party.