Category Archives: Claire Wright

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24 Apr 2015

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Claire Wright, East Devon Alliance, General Election

A BBC reporter visited the richest, poorest, oldest and youngest constituencies in England to find out what people thought of the General election and voting.  Results were fairly predictable – confusion about who to vote for in Eastbourne (oldest), a predisposition for Labour in Nottingham (poorest), staunchly Conservative (richest),  apathy and confusion in Blackburn (youngest) but he ended his piece by saying:

“Apart from a Conservative billboard, as we pulled out of Eastbourne, I didn’t see a single election poster on the entire 634-mile trip. No boards in gardens, no party stickers in windows. For large parts of the country it barely feels like there is an election happening at all.”

It just shows how different East Devon is from the rest of the country!  But we knew that anyway!  And we know why:  people such as Claire Wright and the East Devon Alliance are aware that there is a need for REAL change in the district and are prepared to do something about it.

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23 Apr 2015

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Claire Wright, General Election, Hugo Swire

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Safe constituency?

Letter published by Western Morning News:

“So Mr Swire, in defiance of the Electoral Reform Society, regards Devon East as a “safe” Conservative seat? But how would he know when, until recently, he he has little contact with his constituency?

Have his advisers not warned him of the huge popular support for homegrown Independent candidate Claire Wright who is now the only parliamentary candidate who could unseat him? Has he not been told that she has actually listened to the concerns of local people? Is he not aware of her impressive record of public service to her community in combating inappropriate development of East Devon’s precious green spaces, in campaigning for greater local democracy, and in fighting to keep hospital units and other key public services, all of which have been under sustained attack from Mr Swire’s government’s cut-backs? 

And does Mr Swire think that by erecting large expensive blue billboards in fields (often those owned by those who have been exploiting our green and pleasant land) that he can persuade the public to vote  again for a party whose planning set-up has given the green light to such developments?

It is often unguarded comments that show the true nature of a person. Mr Swire’s arrogant joke when acting as auctioneer at the exclusive Mayfair fundraising party in February reveals his  attitude to those less fortunate than himself – he said that anyone on benefits could afford to bid £55,000 to support the Conservative Party.”

Michael Temple (Sidmouth address and contact number)

 

 

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23 Apr 2015

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Claire Wright, General Election, Hugo Swire

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Body language

Great photo of Hugo Swire at the Clyst Vale Community College hustings on the Facebook Page of Claire Wright Independent Parliamentary Candidate page  – his body language says it all!

It can’t have helped that this was one of the local places where Claire Wright received her education.  Maybe she would have been intimidated if she had been at Eton (Hugo’s old school) though we doubt it!

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18 Apr 2015

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Claire Wright, General Election

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Our next MPs husband speaks …

DAVE WRIGHT

Claire Wright, East Devon

“Claire sort of slipped into politics. Fighting to save Honiton Hospital maternity services in 2004 set the ball rolling.

“When she joined Ottery St Mary Town Council around 2007 she said it would be a “few Mondays” every month. Having a busy job myself, I questioned how on earth we were going to fit everything in.

“She has since managed to fit in ousting the then leader of East Devon District Council in 2010, and then become Devon county councillor the following year with the biggest majority in the South West.

Mr Wright has taken on the role of political agent, dealing with the finances and signing forms. He said: “I have had to get used to people saying things like, ‘Will you be Claire’s secretary on £30-35k, like Hugo’s [sitting East Devon MP Hugo Swire] wife?’ ”

He said that standing for MP was something that became inevitable.

“It dawned on me before Claire that it had become her duty to stand.”

They carried out a survey among East Devon residents which formed the backbone of Claire’s manifesto.

“I have been staggered by people’s generosity of time and money,” he said.

“Scores and scores of donors have contributed their own money to the campaign, and there is an army of deliverers – it really is quite humbling.

“My daughter Katie and I will burst with pride if she gets elected, but we will have to ask Nanny and Grandad to help us out even more than they do at the moment.”

http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Meet-husbands-wives-election-trail/story-26353356-detail/story.html#JrbxD8YR0PGiGsZH.99

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17 Apr 2015

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Claire Wright, General Election, Hugo Swire

East Devon constituency far from safe seat

according to the East Devon graphic and remarks here:

http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/pictures/glance-guide-election-live/pictures-26348908-detail/pictures.html

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17 Apr 2015

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Claire Wright, Exmouth, General Election

Why were so many people walking around with Claire Wright placards in Exmouth last night?

Many people seen in the area of Exmouth Rugby Club, talking animatedly and clutching a lot of Parliamentary Candidate Claire Wright’s election literature. …There was standing room only for late arrivals to this latest in the series of Claire’s public meetings.

So tonight’s PPC hustings, also in Exmouth (Fri 17th April), should be interesting! Glenorchy Church at 7.30 pm. Organised by Exmouth Christians together. Come early to get a seat!

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14 Apr 2015

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Claire Wright, EDDC, General Election, Hugo Swire, Independent Councillors

East Devon groundbreaking constituency for Independents for district council AND General Election

Press release from Claire Wright, Independent Parliamentary Candidate

Devon East, where the junior Foreign Office minister Hugo Swire was the local MP and who had a majority of 9,000 in 2010, is now a marginal seat according to the Electoral Reform Society.

Meanwhile Claire Wright, with substantial local government experience, and backed by hundreds of local helpers, is considered by Ladbrokes to be the Independent with the best chance of success in the general election of any Independents in the whole of the UK. The bookies confirm that Claire’s odds have improved further and faster than any genuine, non-local issue Independent for many years. Now considered to be the outstanding challenger to the previous incumbent, Claire continues to garner support and to attract financial contributions from individuals as she will not accept donations from big business.

The backing for Independents in East Devon is not confined to Claire Wright. It also applies at the level of district council. At present, the East Devon District Council is dominated by Conservatives, as it has been for many years.

Two months ago, the East Devon Alliance, previously a successful pressure group, announced that it would form an umbrella group to support candidates wishing to stand at the District council election. Of the 29 wards to be contested, 24 will be fought by Independent candidates. A total of 37 Independent candidates will be standing across the district and 22 will be “Independent East Devon Alliance” on the ballot papers and 15 will be Independent.

Other parties will be fielding 96 candidates but, for the first time ever, the number of Conservatives, at 57, will be overshadowed by the number of non-Conservatives, which is 76.

Paul Arnott, the chairman of the East Devon Alliance said that “taken with the unstoppable rise of the Independent Parliamentary candidate for East Devon, Claire Wright, this phenomenal offer by 37 Independents to the people of the district proves that East Devon better represents the desire for a change in democracy than anywhere else in the United Kingdom.”

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14 Apr 2015

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Claire Wright, General Election, Hugo Swire

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“True Blue” East Devon going very pale round the gills….

http://www.exeterexpressandecho.co.uk/Hugo-Swire-lose-East-Devon-rivals-fight-Tory/story-26324716-detail/story.html

New kid on the block making the Tories very worried …..

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13 Apr 2015

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Claire Wright, Democracy, EDDC, Environment (local), Flooding, General Election, Hugo Swire, Latest news, National Planning Policy Framework, Neil Parish

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‘Peoples’ Voice on Planning’ event has support from all but one Party!

CoVoP crowd
About a hundred people from various parts of East Devon gathered on the lawn terraces at Knowle on Sunday afternoon 12th April to listen to speeches from parliamentary candidates and others about the national planning set-up.

The event was part of a nationwide Day of Action called for by Community Voice on Planning (Covop) and was organised by Covop trustees and Vision Group for Sidmouth.

Parliamentary candidates representing all parties, except the Conservatives ( from both the Honiton and Tiverton and the Devon East constituencies) gave their views on the national planning system and in particular the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF).

All of them promised reforms, mostly involving prioritising brownfield developments, protecting the countryside and building more affordable homes for local people. Conservative candidates were unable to attend and failed to respond to requests to send a written statement.

The first speaker was ex-judge Ian McKintosh, of East Devon Alliance and Covop. After reviewing the situation nationally and locally, he argued that local communities were being ignored in favour of developers.

Caroline Kolek, Labour candidate for Honiton and Tiverton, claimed that Labour would stop land-banking and prioritise brownfield sites. She shared her slot with Henry Brown, district councillor candidate for St Paul’s ward, Honiton,who made the case for more affordables for local young people.

Paul Edwards of the Green party and candidate for Tiverton and Honiton, said the countryside was our greatest resource and should be protected.

John Kelly, standing in for Andrew Chapman, UKIP parliamentary candidate for Devon East, who was indisposed, argued that the planning crisis was caused by EU regulations.

Stuart Mole, Liberal-Democrat candidate for Devon East, contended that the reforms recommended by the recent Communities and Local Government committtee should be immediately instated, for instance the proposal that all planning permissions be counted towards the 5-year land supply.

Claire Wright, Independent candidate for Devon East, put the blame for the massive increase in inappropriate development squarely on the government’s deregulation of the planning system and on the Local Council’s developer-bias and failure to produce a Local Plan.

Robert Crick, for Vision group of Sidmouth, read a litany of some of the inappropriate developments approved in the district in the past three years together with statistics provided by the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England. These included the prospect of about a thousand houses a year in East Devon until 2031.

A Covop petition, to be presented to the new government, was handed out along with a short guide to the planning system and suggested reforms. The petition is available online at https://you.38degrees.org.uk/p/covop2015

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11 Apr 2015

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Claire Wright, General Election

“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.”

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/10/the-great-unvetted-public-locked-out-as-party-leaders-tour-sanitised-britain

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10 Apr 2015

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Claire Wright, General Election, Hugo Swire

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Daily Telegraph shows East Devon as a marginal seat

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11527109/Has-your-constituency-already-been-won-in-the-2015-general-election-Find-our-here.html

(note: this link takes a long time to load on slow broadband)

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10 Apr 2015

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Claire Wright, East Devon Tories, General Election

Is Claire Wright attracting bigger audiences than David Cameron?

http://metro.co.uk/2015/04/09/it-seems-a-lot-of-people-turned-up-for-david-camerons-rally-or-did-they-5142003/

A quick headcount seems to reveal about 80 people (including one assumes some party apparatchiks). Claire Wright had around 120 attendees at her meeting in Sidmouth last week.

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9 Apr 2015

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Claire Wright, General Election, Hugo Swire

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Influence? Who is influencing whom?

An awful lot of Hugo Swire placards appear to have been placed on land belonging to well-known local developers and/or farmers, some of whom were very enthusiastic East Devon Business Forum members. Claire Wright placards appear to be mostly at private residences or small local businesses.

Who is influencing whom, one wonders?

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9 Apr 2015

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Claire Wright, Feniton/ Talaton, Graham Brown, Independent Councillors

Susie Bond (Independent, Feniton) standing again and supports other independent candidates

See her latest blogpost here: https://susiebond.wordpress.com/2015/04/09/and-were-off/

You only have to look at the records of our Independent councillors such as Susie, Claire Wright, Roger Giles and Ben Ingham to see that independent councillors makes the biggest impact on scrutiny of our current majority Conservative council. Now we need them to be the decision-makers.

Recall that before Susie was elected Feniton was in the hands of ex- councillor Graham Brown …

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9 Apr 2015

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Claire Wright, General Election, Hugo Swire, Ottery St Mary

Naughty Hugo Swire “MP” – not

A reader has pointed out to us that, in the poster that has gone up in West Hill (why just West Hill one wonders – surely this “very influential” ex-MP doesn’t feel threatened by Claire Wright!) extolling the “virtues” of Hugo Swire he refers to himself as “Hugo Swire, MP”.

In fact, although he remains a Minister of State at the Foreign Office (so that he can carry on jetting all over the world influencing people and presumamably being influenced by them in turn since this is not usually a one-way street) he is NOT an MP – he is a Parliamentary Candidate, just like all other Parliamentary Candidates in East Devon and everywhere else.

All MPs ceased to be MPs when Parliament was prorogued in March. At that time they had to clear their offices and hand back all their identification and other passes, etc.  If his “team” can’t get this very simple fact right, what else might they be getting wrong?  Time for a slap on the wrist for the election agent who is supposed to be on top of these things.

However, it should be noted that, because many MPs would lose their Google ranking, Facebook links, etc if they had to change their websites, an exception has been made for social media where web addresses may remain the same (at least for now and until the results of the election when former MPs will have a lot of social media reorganisation to do).

Here is the official text from the Parliament website:

“House of Commons

When Parliament is dissolved, every seat in the House of Commons becomes vacant. All business in the House comes to an end. There are no Members of Parliament. MPs revert to being members of the public and lose privileges associated with being a Member of Parliament.

MPs are allowed access to Parliament for just a few days in which to remove papers from their offices. The facilities that the House provides for MPs in Westminster during a Parliament are no longer available to them from 5pm on the day of dissolution.

Until a new Parliament is elected, there are no MPs. Those who wish to be MPs again must stand again as candidates for election.”

http://www.parliament.uk/about/how/elections-and-voting/general/dissolution/

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8 Apr 2015

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Claire Wright, General Election, Hugo Swire

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Do you really want to vote for a candidate who is at the “top level of Government and has influence?

 

One who spends his time with his Big Business buddies all over the world with precious little time for his constituency, who makes tasteless jokes about expensive cars, Greeks and people on benefits at a £15,000 per table fundraiser and who has no idea whatsoever about the devastation being wreaked on East Devon by his government’s planning rules?  If so, feel free to vote for this man:

hugowest

 

Or you might you vote for someone who refuses to be the mouthpiece for big business, instead promises to support the local small to medium businesses, to fight for and protect the NHS in her area and has a solid record of objecting to the most devastating planning policies that this district has ever seen – Claire Wright.

Here she is drawing crowds at Ottery St Mary, Sidmouth, Budleigh Salterton, canvassing in Eastern Exeter

otterypublicmeetingcrowd  sidmouthwoolbrookcrowd_pic  budleighpublicmeetingphilip2  broadfieldsstpetersschoolfeb15  ottery_hosp_protest_oct_14

and there are many more pictures of her at smaller locations and venues on her website, talking to people and basing her Manifesto on what they told her they needed to happen in this district:

See and hear her speak:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZYXMTm1lgmg#t=0

 

 

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7 Apr 2015

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Claire Wright, Democracy, General Election, Transparency

“BIG MONEY” INFLUENCE NEEDS TO BE TAKEN OUT OF UK POLITICS


Commenting on the publication of a new poll by the Committee on Standards in Public Life outlining widespread mistrust amongst the public towards major donors to political parties, Director of Unlock Democracy Peter Facey commented:

“It is clear from the Committee on Standards in Public Life that the public do consider the influence ‘big money’ has on politics is important and that it makes very little distinction between influence from individuals, companies and trade unions.

“This research should make sobering reading for politicians from across the political spectrum. It ought to spur them into action. Let us hope that it does not take another funding scandal before they are prepared to do so. With public confidence in politicians continuing to plummet, urgent action is required.

“Introducing a cap on donations to political parties may be risky but not as risky as doing nothing. It is high time government and opposition parties alike ended the rhetoric and got around the negotiating table.”
Summary of the polls findings:

82% of people considered party funding to be an issue of “some” or “great” importance.

81% of people believed people donated to political parties in the hope of receiving favours, special treatment or special access and influence over the party.

85% of people thought that politicians very often or sometimes do special favours for donors.

76% of people thought that politicians very often or sometimes based decisions on what their donors wished.

52% of people thought that giving special favours to donors was never acceptable.

In a separate poll, the CSPL also found that the percentage of people in England who believe that MPs are dedicated to doing a good job for the public dropped from 46% to 26% between 2008 and 2010.

Both polls can be found here:
http://www.public-standards.org.uk/OurWork/Public_Attitude_Surveys.html

http://unlockdemocracy.org.uk/media/news/entry/big-money-influence-needs-to-be-taken-out-of-uk-politics

The only Parliamentary candidate who does not take donations from Big Business or Unions is Independent Claire Wright.