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News and Comment May 2015

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6 May (Part 1) - No shelter for Anderson

Time constraints dictate that long and complicated blogs cannot appear on consecutive days. Yesterday’s involved checking facts with a number of people and took six hours to complete. Today may produce a number of ‘quickies’.

It must be the inevitable result of tight budgets and the need to compete with the internet but I really do think the News Shopper is a shadow of its former self. Gone are the days when Linda Piper would sit grandly before assembled councillors and have their inanities plastered across the following Wednesday’s front page.

Now their reporters have no time to do other than regurgitate press releases and what they have read on the web - and live off Brian Barnett’s photos.

I may be nit picking and I accept that given the state of investigative journalism in Bexley I should not be surprised, but I was disappointed to see that the News Shopper’s web report on the cancelled Erith & Thamesmead hustings included a reference to “restraint in the face of some very personal attacks”.

I still don’t know how the comment is justified. I asked to see the evidence and if a Labour supporter or councillor had been obnoxious you would have read about it here. No one has a Get out of Jail Free card here.

However the only comment forthcoming has been “I can’t remember exactly what was said and by whom” and that from the horse’s mouth - or rather keyboard. It looks increasingly likely that the attacks didn’t happen or the word attack has been redefined.

Anna Firth the Conservative candidate for Erith & Thamesmead didn’t see any abuse and hasn’t - probably wouldn’t - put below the belt and potentially misleading stuff on her website. But Bexley’s own Conservatives have no scruples whatsoever. They rushed to publish something that implies that someone on the Labour side has been up to no good. It’s still on the E & T Conservative Association website and has been since last Saturday - but for some inexplicable reason dated for tomorrow.

I can understand politicians making merry at the opposition’s expense in the heat of an election campaign but not leaving it there for five days when the criticism they are so eager to promote is totally discredited. That is not the mark of an honest party and once more tells you what you need to know about the special breed of Conservatives that infest Bexley.

The E & T Conservative Association webpage is the work of Elizabeth Anderson, the Lesnes Abbey ward wannabee at last year’s local election. Obviously birds of a feather and all that, she has joined the right party for her. Not an ounce of decency in any of them. Ok, if you must quibble, most of them.

There is a postscript to this blog.

‘No Shelter for Anderson’. Please excuse dreadful pun. You need to be more than 70 years old.

 

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