Author Archives: Mark Pack

Now I know the people at the Guardian don’t always think that much of bloggers, so perhaps they should be ordering in some extra-large quantities of humble pie today, for the Guardian says:

He campaigned hard in the Dunfermline West byelection on his doorstep, and Labour lost the seat to the SNP.

Yes well. That must be news to the Liberal Democrat MP and the defeated SNP candidate, for – as the rest of the world knows (including every blog I’ve looked on that talks about that election) – it was the Liberal Democrats who won the seat.

Eleven Conservative councillors have quit the party in North Essex (continuing the pattern of a steady flow of councillors – and others – out of the Conservative party, including in David Cameron‘s own patch), whilst in Bolton the Liberal Democrats have pulled out of the local town council elections.

Meanwhile, I’ve spotted a fifth and a sixth council where the Liberal Democrats have retained control of without any votes needing to be cast (see here for the other four).

UPDATE: As pointed out in the comments, two Conservative councillors in Coventy have …

Chipping Norton town councillor Keith Greenwell has resigned as deputy chairman of the Chipping Norton and District branch of the West Oxfordshire Conservative Association, the Tory leader’s constituency group … He alleges his integrity had been compromised after he was fed misleading or false information from the party which he later relayed to voters.

See the rest of the story on Liberal Review.

Municipal waste I mean of course. At least it would keep them out of trouble on immigration and Europe.

The headline from The Mirror says it all really.

In these environmentally conscious times, the best thing to do with your computer when you are not using it is to turn it off. However, even if you do turn off the computer at the end of the day, there are often patches of time when it is not being fully utilised. Add up that unused computing power across many people’s computers and you have a huge resource of unused computing power.

There is where projects such as the World Community Grid come in. They allow you to download a piece of software that sits in the background and, when you …

Calderdale politics seem to be as lively as ever this year with Chris O’Connor, a former Conservative Mayor, standing as an independent against a Conservative councillor (Hipperholme and Lightcliffe ward) whilst Shakir Saghir is standing for the English Democrats in Park ward, where he used to be a Conservative councillor (as was his father, whilst his brother this year is standing in another ward for the Conservatives).

Liberal Democrats Ming Campbell and Nick Clegg come out as two of the top three in this survey.

More interesting news from Northampton: two of the independent candidates this year are Peter Evans, a sitting Labour councillor and their current Chief Whip (!), and Tony Clarke, who was MP for Northampton South 1997-2005 (when he was defeated). The local paper has more on this very odd tale.

As Northampton is also the site of the Conservative telephone poll rigging scandal the Liberal Democrat prospects in the city seems to be getting better and better.

As pointed out in the comments on a previous posting, the Liberal Democrats have retained control of two parish councils this week: Bradfield in South Yorkshire and Kidlington in Oxfordshire.

Why “unfortunate”? Well, these two electoral triumphs are due to the hard working local Focus team delivering numerous leaflets with bar charts failure of other parties to put up enough candidates. Right results, but a pair of contested elections would probably have been the better route to it.

UPDATE: Ther are some more councils to add to the list – Abbots Langley Parish Council and also, curiously, Hedge End Town Council. Given that …

The latest poll (in today’s Scotsman) would give the SNP 44 seats (+17), Labour 39 (-11), Liberal Democrats 24 (+7) and Conservatives 15 (-3). (There aren’t complete figures for the other parties).

These figures are not nearly as good for the SNP as previous polls, causing the Scotsman to write:

Voters bring high-flying SNP back down to earth … the findings are likely to be a blow to Nationalist morale, which was boosted by other polls which suggested they could win up to 50 seats at Holyrood.

Robin Harris:

(a) Worked for the Conservative party, and
(b) Was David Cameron’s boss

So you might expect him to have nice things to say about how his former employee has come so far etc.

But no.

His verdict on Cameron? He is an “out and out opportunist” and “I don’t believe David Cameron believes anything” (except presumably the vote appeal of regularly changing your clothes).

Hat tip: Matthew Pearce

Colin Ross has the story about Mike Dolman in Newcastle-under-Lyme.

It’s a common complaint that when phone polls run by newspapers produce odd results the papers often publish them anyway. So full credit to one local paper for taking a rather close look at the results of its phone poll over whether the pay-off given to Northampton Council’s (now former) Chief Executive should be made public: 

THE CONSERVATIVES have been accused of trying to rig a Chronicle & Echo phone poll by deluging the newspaper’s vote line with multiple calls … An amazing 46 per cent of the “no” votes came from two phones owned by the deputy leader of the council, Councillor

…

As Jonathan Wallace points out, there’s one slight flaw in the Conservative Party’s excitement at the number of Liberal Democrat councillors who have switched to them. More have actually switched from the Conservatives to the Liberal Democrats (11 to 10) than have gone the other way since the end of Michael Howard’s leadership.

And I don’t think his figures include the latest switch from Conservative to Liberal Democrat (via independent) by Bev Brennan.

A little light relief for the weekend. I’ve been reading David Steel’s party conference speech from 1976, as you do:

I have been leader of the Party for less than three months. During this short period I have not lacked advice on what I should do … These submissions have ranged from the useful through the exotic – such as the plea that I could end the nation’s drought by advocating the selected dropping of atomic bombs in Greenland – to the downright byzantine, such as that from the lady who was convinced that I could be sitting in Number 10 within

…

Only got one of the three results so far: a Conservative hold in Basingstoke, but with their majority cut from 99 to 34 and an 8% swing to the Liberal Democrats.

The result in Rooksdown ward, Basingstoke & Deane Council, was:

Conservative  156  (53%, -11%)
Liberal Democrat  122  (41%, +5%)
Labour  18  (6%, +6%)

Conservative hold
8% swing from Conservative to Liberal Democrat
34% turnout

I only ask because of this apparent outbreak of existential angst.

Francis Rook (apologies for getting his name wrong initially!), a Parish Councillor in Tunbridge Wells, has switched from the Conservatives to the Liberal Democrats.

His switch was triggered by Conservative plans to shut the council offices in Cranbrook, plans which the Tories tried to push through without any public consultation until there was a huge public outcry.

Looking to the Liberal Democrats, he found that our party actually matches his own beliefs much better than the Conservatives, so he switched.

The Mail on Sunday had an exclusive about the ruling due this week on the use by David Cameron and other Conservative MPs of Parliamentary facilities to raise funds for their campaigns.

In short – the Tories broke the rules, but so many of them broke the rules they won’t all have to apologise individually:

David Cameron will this week face embarrassment as the Commons sleaze watchdog bans controversial fund-raising banquets which net the Tories up to £1million a year.

Standards commissioner Sir Philip Mawer will criticise the Conservatives for exploiting Parliament as a venue for dozens of dinners with the aim

…

If you say you’re concerned about the environment and your name is David Cameron, the answer is here. (Green travel tips for Birmingham to Warwick also included).

Half of the Conservatives in Stoke-on-Trent South have resigned from the party in a bitter row with former political allies.The split involves allegations of mismanagement of city council funds. Authority managers, the police and the Standards Board for England have been asked to launch inquiries.

From This Is Staffordshire, which has more details. “Half” means seventeen members, which says rather a lot about the state of the Conservative Party in Britain’s cities.

Apparently not, given his wrong answer to Ming Campbell at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions.

Hats off to David Laws – the Liberal Democrats’ very own “two brains” – for seeing through Gordon Brown’s tax promises today. It was Mr Laws’ sharp eyes that allowed the Lib Dem Budget team to trump the Tories in the Commons today, I’m told. The Lib Dem work and pensions spokesman spotted that the Chancellor, even as he promised to reduce the basic income tax rate from 22p to 20p, was abolishing the 10p starting rate he himself introduced in 1999…

The story continues at The Telegraph.