Many speakers including local prospective parliamentary candidates – see links in Dates for Your Diary for more information.
A Good Day Out! And the more placards the better!
Daily Archives: 11 Apr 2015
UKIP says cycle lanes discriminate against older people
… because most of the people using them are young!
They obviously haven’t cycled around East Devon – where many of the cyclists could hardly be described as young! Still, at least they haven’t blamed the EU! And they haven’t blamed people on mobility scooters for traffic jams.
“Meet the public” – no public allowed – or pay to listen!
Claire Wright’s public meetings are open to everyone. She has been visiting people in the constituency for months, she IS out on our streets pretty much every day, true public meetings are frequent, questions are not chosen, no charge is made, though individual donations are welcome. Compare with the following:
“Each of the “public meetings” I have attended have required people’s names to be on a list to get in. I saw a woman showing her passport to those running the door at Tony Blair’s event in Sedgefield.
In Dudley, Ukip were charging their pre-screened audience £5 a ticket, for the privilege of submitting any questions they may wish to ask to a moderator, who selected the ones he liked and declined them even the opportunity of being allowed to read them out themselves.
On a vast deserted building site in Watford, sanitised even of construction workers, we looked at Clegg looking at some architect’s drawings. Then we drove to Cardiff and waited outside a factory test kitchen while he made a pancake. …
… But surely the ultimate positive example of politicians going walkabout somewhere real is last year’s Scottish referendum. I didn’t cover that, but those who did, and friends who were there, tell me the leaders and big beasts were out on the streets and available for interaction. Can it be a coincidence that the campaign invigorated politics in a way many had imagined impossible?
Yet it feels a million miles away from the current electoral offering. At many Tory events, specially selected activists are made to stand behind Boris or Cameron or whoever is speaking, holding aloft campaign slogans. In the still pictures which make the news, it looks as though the politician’s speech is rousing a crowd of supporters to wave placards with riotous approval. In real life, this dynamism is a sham. The supporters are static, posed in bizarre tableaux vivants, their arms presumably getting more and more tired.
The effect of this, and indeed of all the parties’ stagey micromanagement, is to do a terrible disservice to the spectators, who are, after all, the voters. Placed in these ultra-managed situations they cease to really be people. They become people-effect wallpaper. Meanwhile, politicians withdraw from civic spaces in favour of their own kitchens. Unless this way of doing business is radically altered, we are reaching a stage where it would be less embarrassing or absurd to green-screen elections.”
Lies,, damned lies – and Party Manifestos!
Interesting discussion on the Today programme about Party Manifestos and promises.
Three well-known historians agreed that they count for nothing and should be seen at best as aspirational and at worst as fantasies.
Is this aspirational or fantasy?
Is the Party cat going up the the stairs or down or Photoshopped!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/10/cat-upstairs-downstairs-photo_n_7040446.html
If you can’t whip ’em, try seduction! Fifty shades of blue?
Usually well-informed sources tell us that Paul Diviani and Andrew Moulding have been seen together being very, very friendly and obliging to an independent candidate.
Now why should that be, when, as Tory Whip Phil “I’ve never whipped anyone in my life” Twiss memorably said: Independents never do anything useful for their electors?
Is it remotely possible that Paul and Andrew are desperately trying to nobble a few new recruits to make up the Tory losses expected on May 7th?
Sidford business park
Whilst it is true that, at EDDC, it was Councillors Troman (in particular) and Hughes (in general) who helped to get the ridiculous Sidford Fields business park deleted from the draft local plan, it was the constant work of EDA members in Sidford, Sidmouth and beyond, that kept the issue at the forefront of the discussions and publicity that led to the change:
The remarks of CEO Mark Williams about that change are mind- blowingly insulting. He said:
“The inspector has already heard everything we have said and is yet to tell us what his view is on that part of the application. He may recommend that this site is not suitable and should be removed. It’s his decision now, not yours.
“It’s your funeral if you want to take it out.”
What he did not add is that, entirely without consultation or reference to any committee, except the Development Management Committee on the day, FIVE extra business parks, closer to Exeter, had been added to the draft recently.
A massive number of changes have been made to the latest draft, yet this one amendment, made by democratic decision in a transparent way, is the only one Mr Williams was worried about.
The Sidford Fields site was added AFTER public consultation on the first draft local plan, with no explanation whatsoever for its inclusion, as noted in a letter in this week’s Sidmouth Herald.
Councillor Mike Allen, in the same article, laid the blame squarely on Councillor Andrew Moulding:
“Cllr Moulding was accused by Cllr Mike Allen of being the person responsible for the allocation’s original inclusion in the plan.
“Cllr Allen said: “There’s no demand, no economic case and it would damage the tourism industry in Sidmouth. There’s no justification for keeping it. Please could we get rid of this site once and for all.”
Anyone making a Freedom of Information request for correspondence or meetings about inclusion/exclusion of the site?
East Devon Watch 