Ministers are usually wheeled out only in marginal constutuencies this late in an election period. So why was the Transport Minister in East Devon (admittedly only a “flying” visit to the airport to sing its praises) and why did Hugo Swire feel it worth both a Twitter entry AND a picture ? It’s not a marginal seat after all ….
Category Archives: Hugo Swire
Spotlight on Claire Wright
Sincerity, determination, and smiles from the public, were the key impressions from tonight’s BBC Spotlight feature on East Devon’s Independent Prospective Parliamentary Candidate (PPC), as she knocked on constituents’ doors. Claire spoke of the role of Independents able to act “without a Party Whip breathing down their neck”. In these times of diminished Party loyalty, that could be a vote winner….
Safe seats: today’s Rotten Boroughs
Hugo Swire sent a rather whining letter to the Express and Echo complaining that the Electoral Reform Society had made a mistake and so East Devon is NOT a marginal seat but a safe seat and it is HIS safe seat, so there!
Had he read on further in that post he would have seen them say this about safe seats:
“Safe seats are the 21st Century’s rotten boroughs. The average constituency last changed hands between parties in the 1960s, with some super safe seats having remained firmly in one-party control since the time of Queen Victoria.
The majority of seats can be predicted because of Westminster’s broken First Past the Post electoral system.
As consituencies are small and only elect one MP, rival parties often don’t stand a chance of winning in hundreds of seats across the UK. Even if they have significant support it counts of nothing if they lose. As the loss of safe seats is rare, parties target their resources on a small number of floating voters in marginal seats – meaning they give up on millions of voters across the country.
You can find out how much parties spent on your vote here.“
http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/safe-seats
TONIGHT: Spotlight to feature East Devon’s Independent Candidate for Parliament
The spotlight will again be on Claire Wright and her bid for Parliament in the May 7th election. See her on BBC TV this evening, on the local ‘Spotlight’ news.
Conservative Cupcakes
“CONSERVATIVE CUPCAKE CASES
David Cameron has previously revealed that he has watched The Great British Bake Off, which might explain these rather pricey cupcake cases. The pack of 36 patriotic cases, in Tory blue with a Union Jack design, comes in at £5 a pop.”
Or, possibly £50,000 if auctioned for Conservative Party funds by our own Hugo Swire (see comment), or, you could get 250 mixed colours for £4 postage free from Amazon (though their tax position of not paying very much because no-one makes them might put you off).
That, ladies and gentlemen, is today’s lesson on the free market economy!
Devon’s answer to One Direction
Source:
Oh dear, when you have to bring in George Osborne, things are getting bad …..
Naughty, naughty Zorro!
Hugo says East Devon is a safe seat for him
Oh dear, Hugo, best not rely on the Electoral Reform Society – if it made one mistake, it can make another!
At last – we find something Hugo Swire does on the cheap!
This
http://www.parliamentary-standards.org.uk/ViewAggregateData2014.aspx?mcode=0167&year=2013
is a summary of Hugo Swire’s expenses claimed in the 2013-14 Parliamentary year. It can be seen that he has claimed near to the maximum amount allowed for staff payroll costs, including the salary he pays his wife (up to £35,000).
What is striking is how little he paid for office costs “the costs of renting, equipping and running an MPs office and surgeries” in his constituency. Allowed a maximum of £22,750 he had spent only £7,011.52.
Is his office particularly cheap to run – or is it that he spends so little time here he doesn’t need much in the way of office or local surgery expenses?
and speaking of paying wives (which is allowed but which few MPs choose to do) the arch-Conservative blogger Guido Fawkes had this to say about the practice:
Keeping “IT”* in the family
MPs will protest that they pay their spouse / son / daughter / sibling a pittance and they work extra long hours and suchlike. The truth is they deny someone more competent the chance of a job won in open competition. Many MPs really use the staff allowance as a subsidy to family members. Who can forget Derek Conway’s lavish family staffing arrangements, with payments to offspring at university? Peter Hain’s employment of his octogenarian mother despite having a staff of civil servants, special advisers, private secretaries, secretaries and case workers. Bob Spink famously employed his former wife, his lover and her daughter.
Many MPs now employ their wives / partners in their maiden names to disguise the dodge. For example Elaina Cohen is Khalid Mahmood’s partner – he dumped his wife for her – but contrary to the rules of the House he doesn’t declare the relationship. No doubt some of the above will have innocent explanations for why – against best private sector practise – they issue staff passes to family members. They shouldn’t do it, it is nepotism.
*The ‘it’ being our taxes.
http://order-order.com/2010/08/25/keeping-it-in-the-family/#_@/as_aAd6GhnIn/Q
Poor old Hugo
He’s having to pound the pavements of East Devon for hours and hours, something rather new to him – he must be seeing a good few places he never knew existed and we gather that he is hearing some quite uncomfortable home truths about district matters – which he didn’t bother with until very recently.
It’s hard to know whether EDDC is a liability for him or vice- versa.
He must be getting home to Mid- Devon or London quite exhausted! Well he isn’t getting any younger.
Hugo Swire predicted in 2010: “We will go back to the bad old days when MPs went back to their constituencies once every five years just before elections”!
Daily Mail – July 2010 – NOTE PARTICULARLY THE LAST SENTENCE BELOW!
“Two Tory Ministers have accused Commons expenses chiefs of wrecking their right to have a family house in their constituencies by slashing their second-home allowances.
Solicitor General Edward Garnier and Northern Ireland Minister Hugo Swire each charged around £24,000 a year expenses to cover the costs of renting elegant country homes in their constituencies, while living most of the year in private houses they own in London.
Mr Garnier claimed the maximum allowance of £24,006 last year for his beautiful house, Little Dalby Hall, which is on a 5,600-acre estate in Leicestershire.
His allowance this year to cover the rent has been slashed to £8,366.
Mr Swire’s claim for £23,103 to cover the cost of renting a large farmhouse in Devon has been reduced to £9,756.
Both have protested to IPSA, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, after they were told they can only claim for the equivalent of a one-bedroom flat.
Mr Garnier is said to have accused IPSA of turning MPs into ‘visiting country squires’.
He was backed by Mr Swire, who said the new system threatened to take politics back to pre-Victorian times when some MPs rarely visited their constituencies. …
… They deny they are trying to ‘have their cake and eat it’ by demanding the right to live like gents with two full-sized family homes – one in London and one in the country – with the second funded by the taxpayer. …
.. Mr Swire, 50, the MP for East Devon, is a close friend of David Cameron and related to the Swire Hong Kong trading dynasty.
Last year, he received £1,400 a month in second-home allowance to rent the pretty Lincombe Farmhouse near the Devon resort of Sidmouth. It has been cut to £812 a month, with extra for council tax and bills. He too complained the
ruling was unfair.
Mr Swire and wife Sascha and their two young children live in a £1 million house in the heart of affluent Fulham, West London. The property is owned by Mrs Swire.
Educated at Eton and St Andrews University, Mr Swire served with the Grenadier Guards before becoming a director of Sotheby’s auction house.
In his bachelor days, he dated Jerry Hall before she married Mick Jagger. The late Joe Strummer, singer with the punk band The Clash, was his brother-in-law.
A friend of Mr Swire said: ‘Hugo is not whingeing. If he is forced to give up his Devon house for a one-bedroom flat he could not take his children down there and so obviously would spend less time there. His constituents would lose out.
‘We will go back to the bad old days when MPs went to their constituencies once every five years before election time.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1291791/Youre-turning-MPs-visiting-squires.html
East Devon constituency far from safe seat
according to the East Devon graphic and remarks here:
Next East Devon hustings tomorrow Exmouth 7.30 pm
Exmouth: Friday 17 April
Glenorchy Church Hall. Organised by Exmouth Christians Together
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.”
“True Blue” East Devon going very pale round the gills….
New kid on the block making the Tories very worried …..
‘Peoples’ Voice on Planning’ event has support from all but one Party!
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
Daily Telegraph shows East Devon as a marginal seat
(note: this link takes a long time to load on slow broadband)
Parliamentary candidates
Our Labour candidate gives his address as London N1.
Our Conservative candidate gives “Address in the CENTRAL DEVON constituency”. The only candidate not to provide a full postal address.
He doesn’t even have a second home in East Devon let alone a first!
Perhaps he couldn’t afford East Devon prices, or maybe Central Devon is a cleaner and greener place to live …
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?
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/
East Devon Watch 