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News and Comment December 2015

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13 December (Part 2) - Oh no. Not another set of election leaflets

TweetSomebody who should know about these things told me while at the 2014 election count that there would be an election every year until 2022 and promptly reeled them off. I can only think of GLA next year, European Referendum in 2017, council in 2018 and 2022 and General Election in 2020. Presumably if we vote to leave the EU in 2017 all the subsequent gap years can be used for a rerun by the EU to try to get the right answer.

2016 and the GLA business must however lead to a revision to the BiB election pages. In fact there is already some to accommodate the Conservative leaflet that came through the letter box yesterday while I was getting wet taking Crossrail pictures.

Anna Firth’s 2015 campaign in Erith & Thamesmead was appealing in several ways. She didn’t seem to like the European Union and gave no indication of being a fan of David Cameron. Maybe she just tells voters what they want to hear but I have moved on and I doubt she could keep up with me now. I used to think Cameron was a weak and useless Prime Minister and now I have seen him without the Lib Dems to blame I can only despise the bastard.

In 2010 I tried not to mention the election on BiB and in 2014 and 2015 I set out to sit on the fence politically and probably failed miserably. Currently I’m not sure I shall make any attempt to sit on the fence in the lead up to the GLA elections on 4th May 2016.

Untruthful political leaflets really get up my nose. Not just those that lie outright because usually they don’t, but carefully worded deceptions and misinformation are perhaps worse.


BarbecueAnna Firth is claiming credit in the E&T leaflet for bringing more trains to Southeastern. I’ll believe it when I see it but it is David Evenett and Teresa Pearce who lobbied the Transport Secretary at an official meeting. I don’t see Anna Firth in the picture that proves it. Inviting ministers to barbecues doesn’t really count.

Read Anna Firth is also keen to perpetuate the North Heath Numpty’s misinformation that “Labour wants you to pay more tax”. It’s one of Philip Read’s least well disguised lies. I know he likes to doze off in the council chamber but I have heard Labour leader Alan Deadman very directly say he doesn’t want to see council tax go up.

The reason that the opposition has to vote against a budget is not necessarily because they want to see taxes go up but because the budget is presented as a single entity. You are either fully for it or you’re against it.

Along with the leaflet, E&T Tories were distributing a news sheet called The Greater Londoner. In it they called the Labour contender for Mayor of London a “machine politician who has always put his party first”. The news sheet says he called Conservative voters bastards too. Makes no difference to me, I won’t be voting for him.

Neither will I be voting for someone who doesn’t even put his party first, namely Zac Goldsmith. He wants to extend the London congestion Zone, I heard him say so on LBC and it will only be a matter of time before avarice like that gets it extended to everywhere within the M25. Who in any case would want to vote for a man who puts himself before not only his party but before the economic well being of the entire country by threatening to resign if he doesn’t get his small minded petulant way with Heathrow? I can’t put it better than today’s Sunday Telegraph, “self-righteous posturing’.

BiB won’t declare war on any one side but sitting on the fence is too much like hard work. Sounding off occasionally is far more fun.

 

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