27 June (Part 2) - Joseph Goebbels would be proud
I couldn’t name a single nationally known politician who I do not look upon
with contempt at the present time. The Conservatives have misjudged practically
everything and the top bods in Labour are beyond contempt. Corbyn at Glastonbury
was far too reminiscent of another country in the 1930s, whipping up hysteria
and adulation in equal measure while planning to lead his country to total
disaster instead of the partial one the Conservatives have created.
The Tories must have noticed that Jeremy Corbyn and his Marxist acolytes achieved their present position in part by a
campaign of misinformation, unaffordable promises and half truths on social media because locally at least, the Conservatives
have adopted exactly the same tactics, mindful that the 2018 local elections are approaching, and I do not like liars of any political hue.
Councillor Peter Craske’s
lying about the number of parks in Bexley has already
been mentioned, ditto his claims on library usage but things have accelerated over the past week.
Following on from the outrageous
suggestion that it was Labour who wanted to switch off Bexley’s street lights and
that the Conservatives were spending more on parks when the truth is that they are spending less than ever before,
they regurgitated the old chestnut about Labour raising Council Tax massively when they were in office.
In four years Labour jacked it up by 40%. 17·5%, 7·5%, 4·9%
and 5·8% which allowing for compound interest is 40%.
I was
pretty annoyed by it and wrote to the then Council Leader Chris Ball to tell him what I thought of him.
What the Conservatives are not now telling us is that they were whacking up
Council Tax before Labour took over. In the eight years to 1999 the increases
took Bexley from within £1 of having the third lowest tax rate in London to 15th
place. In the four years before the Labour takeover, the Conservatives raised
Council Tax by another 25%.
Labour may have been naive to give the Tories such potent ammunition but the Tories
happily spent it all and raised taxes by another 9% in their next three years of office.
Beware of Bexley Conservative’s selective recollections.
Here’s another carefully selected Twitter statement.
For this one
Conservative spin doctors have had to go back six years.
It is true that Labour members voted against the £8 million investment because
local residents had petitioned against it and obtained 2,280 signatures. The
actual figure was kept secret but it was believed that Bexley Council had
sold off the Howbury Centre in Slade Green to Redrow Homes for £14 million and
reinvesting not much more than half of it in the same area was seen as a poor deal.
It was the Conservative Group that was going against the will of the people, not
Labour as they now seek to imply.
Nothing is what it seems in Tory Bexley.