11 April - Election propaganda
Where have you been?
A 36 hour trip to Bournemouth for the sixth funeral attendance since August made me miss the
Nominations announcement and last night’s Cabinet meeting. (If I lose many more friends I won’t have anyone to attend mine!)
Persons Nominated
The Bexley Council Statement of Persons Nominated reveals more than 60 names
that are familiar to me. If the sitting Councillors and those who have stood for
election before are excluded it still leaves half a dozen names. And why are they familiar?
Because they have been occasional, in some cases regular, correspondents with
me via BiB; all of them critical of Bexley Council.
And what is surprising about that? Well two are Conservatives and one with a
reasonably good chance of being elected. Will the leopard change its spots?
I
am disappointed that in my ward, Belvedere, I have a choice only of Labour or Conservative.
Whilst Bexley is run by a small band of ruthless cheats and liars
there is no way I can vote for a party which I used to regard as ‘home’ and
whilst Bexley Labour appears to be for the most part benign with their hearts in
the right place they occasionally do things designed to be a total turn off for the
political fence sitters like me. (See Tweet alongside.)
One might put it down to the youthful exuberance of London Young Labour but
the Red Flag was Retweeted by Bexley Labour. Leader approved? I suspect not.
Propaganda dissected
It’s not often something like this drops on to my door mat. The last time
I received a communication originated by Our Dear Leader (OBE) it was a warning from Bexley Police to
stop being critical of Councillors or face arrest.
This time it was the official Conservative propaganda sheet. Not all lies but
far from being entirely truthful. It begins in the way it intends to carry on by
referring to Labour Councillors as Comrades with all the connotations that
implies and then repeating it where possible.
It claims that Bexley Conservatives choose to live in the borough
and implies Labour Councillors do not. The reverse is true. I know
of four Tories who have lived elsewhere for all or most of the past four years.
The Tories lie that Labour can only fall back on slogans and spin which
ignores that facts. Everyone who follows @bexleynews on Twitter knows that the
Conservatives do little else but spin. It was the Conservatives who could only sloganise,
march and spin about the proposed police station closure while the Labour Group
was busy taking more effective action.
Labour’s letter to
the Home Secretary.
Labour’s letter to the Deputy Head of the Mayor’s Office for Policing
(MOPAC) with attachments.
Labour welcomes the police station’s reprieve.
The Tories even went as far as
maliciously
re-editing a video to ‘prove’ their point.
The Conservatives repeat their claim to be a low tax Council but despite the
frequent references to Labour, when last in office, raising it to unacceptable levels. The truth is that
compared to other London Councils Bexley has increased Council Tax at an even greater rate.
“Bexley’s schools are rated as some of the best in the UK” is a nice slogan but
it is not the whole truth. Several are still rated “In need of Improvement”.
Bexley is not “THE
CLEAN BOROUGH”. It has a worsening fly tipping problem, a
worsening bin collection failure rate and the streets are no cleaner than when
the Conservatives took control. They have cut the cleaning budget.
Road maintenance is increased “THREEFOLD” only because
Bexley Tories cut it to the bone
over three years in order to cynically spend all the saving in an election year. And have you
ever seen the roads in a worse state than they are now? “THE CARING BOROUGH” is still spending
less on Adult Care but more efficiently, so they say.
“THE GREEN BOROUGH” is still intent on building over parks and the tree planting
programme is hitting the headlines only because until this election year all tree
planting was halted.
Bexley Council is looking forward to the opening of the Elizabeth Line and its
possible extension to Ebbsfleet. If Bexley Conservatives had been forward
thinking when it came into office in 2006 they could have campaigned for it then
but at that time they were against everything that might have dragged Bexley
away from its backwater status.
The Conservatives are belatedly pushing for fast broadband across the borough
neatly overlooking the fact that
they put obstacles in front of BT’s expansion
plans for several years.
The Tories rightly criticise Sadiq Khan for his proposals for more and more
concrete and extol the benefits of social housing, but they have built none.
Very little affordable either
Ridiculing Labour and Jeremy Corbyn for his “Kinder Gentler” politics may be
fair enough, he and his ilk are beyond the pale but so is Councillor Philip Read who Tweets
abuse almost daily.