25 April - Where has the talent and experience gone?
James Hunt, the Independent candidate for Blackfen & Lamorbey has
sent me his
latest election leaflet and it is really rather nice, but perhaps I am biased
because he sent it as a perfectly formatted attachment to my email address. Far
easier than a What’sApp message to my phone which I have to save to files and from
there email it to the PC on which this blog is written. Not the biggest of
problems and I am grateful for everything received, but James, you go to the top of the class.
News
reaches me that the legal team at Bexley Council has rapped the knuckles of
Conservative candidates for using their Council phone numbers and email
addresses on their election addresses.
Have they lost the services of their usual and vastly experienced agent Andrew Kennedy?
He would not have let that pass.
In the run up to the election I have been perusing Facebook a couple of times a
day instead of maybe once a week.
I really don’t like Facebook primarily because if one does find anything of
interest it becomes impossible to find next day. In Bexley it is largely a
waste of time because the main Facebook groups for Bexleyheath, Sidcup and Welling are
run by Labour activists and supported by people who are full of hatred. Some
even send it to me directly. Who is this Ben Hopton anyway who initiates such a large proportion of posts? I doubt
Ben is his real name.
One of the main Facebook left wing themes is that everyone is a racist apart from them, especially
Nigel Farage. A Reform UK supporter who said something that is basically true; that
militant Islam is a major threat and George Floyd the American criminal was full
of fentanyl and methamphetamine when he died, was roundly condemned, not least by Anashua Davies
the Labour candidate for Longlands Ward. Anashua is a
particularly unpleasant individual about whom I have had conversations with four
different Labour personalities known to everyone who follows politics in Bexley.
I could go on but suffice to say that she had her solicitor send me a threat to
say I must never mention her name here. What is it that she is so desperate to keep hidden?
Another of the Lefty criticisms is that a Reform Council will be inexperienced.
Well not quite, four of them if elected will have been Councillors before and
Independent James Hunt has been a Councillor for 20 years and said he will act as adviser.
And will the remaining Tories be competent anyway? They have lost the Baroness who ran the show for 18
years and they have lost the two most intelligent and hard working Members.
Cheryl Bacon, first elected in 1998 has left to spend more time with her MP husband.
The three from West Heath with about 150 years of experience between them have called it a day.
The most experienced Mayor (two terms) has left the Conservative ranks.
Andy Dourmoush elected as a very successful businessman and
one of the few who understood finance has left to try his luck in Bromley.
So who’s left? Three Cabinet Members one of whom masterminded the diminished
CCCV system. (213 cameras reduced to 70).
One who committed perjury in an attempt to convict a foul-mouthed
critic who was given a good beating as he left from visiting his wife in hospital and another who
appeared to me to be there mainly as Teresa’s protégé.
David Leaf is a good talker and Peter Craske is a good blogger.
Steven Hall and Caroline Newton are fairly low key and Cameron Smith and Frazer
Brooks come across to me as nice blokes.
And that is it. Even if all the existing Tories are re-elected the talent pool
is decimated. And still no one has ever been able to tell me what is better in
Bexley now than it was 20 years ago.
Vote for whoever you prefer but experience and racism is probably not an issue.