19 April (Part 2) - The 2022 Tory Manifesto
As I was writing Part 1 this morning the letterbox rattled and I hoped that
Amazon had managed to deliver me something before bedtime but I hoped in vain,
however it was almost as big a surprise.
A Tory election
manifesto had reached me directly. It claimed that
the 2018 version had been delivered
“in full exactly as promised”. A number of Freedom of Information
requests have shown that to be untrue, 1,000 trees, two hectares of new parks etc. and
at last week’s Council meeting it was admitted that town centre
wi-fi is not due until next year.
They will not repeat that mistake. There is not a single pledge in the 2022
manifesto. No pledges; no broken promises to parade before them in 2026. Clever!
But other than that it is not too bad an effort providing food for thought and
the
accompanying letter provokes equally important questions.
It is probably nit-picking to discredit the claimed 17 years of Bexley being top
recycler in London, it is very nearly true and it would be a bonus if they came
good on the promise to collect more categories of waste. Small electrical
appliances would be my preference. It only needs to be street bins. I think we
used to have a few but the Tories got rid of them.
It may also be nit-picking to remind the Tories that far from “improving public
safety” with CCTV, Bexley Councillors sacked all their monitoring staff to save rather less
money annually than they pay themselves. Quite a lot less actually.
I must admit the manifesto is quite well done. The top tier of Conservative
Councillors in Bexley are indisputably lying bastards but they are not totally
incompetent lying bastards.
One does have to wonder if the opposition is too inexperienced and might go the
way of Croydon (bankruptcy) as is suggested. Whatever are Labour thinking in aiming to get the architect of the
40% Council Tax rise back into cabinet?
On
the other hand the letter accompanying the Tory manifesto is signed by two candidates who are
totally inexperienced and a third who never did a thing while a Councillor.
The unattributed quote shown alongside comes from Margaret Thatcher. She on the right of
Conservative politics cannot be mentioned for fear of upsetting lefty floaters
just as Boris Johnson is persona non-grata in Tory leaflets for deserting real
Conservatism, quick marching his one time supporters (and everyone other than
his friends) into penury and lacking in almost every vestige of common sense thinking.
Teresa O’Neill and her cronies have made a pretty good job of twisting the arms of
luke-warm Tories with their manifesto but in the back of my mind I still have that police
memo that says that it was her who went to Arnsberg Place to get the police to arrest me if I
continued to “criticise Councillors”.
That’s it. Nothing more. I think it will take more than a cleverly written
manifesto to return me to the fold, but you may be are different.
If all the right Labour candidates were elected the party would struggle to find the
experience to fill a Cabinet but on the other hand if all the lying Tories were
kicked out they would have the same problem.
Maybe I should consider abstention more seriously.