Open Letter to Lib Dem Liar David Watts

Lib Dem Liar David Watts has been up to his old tricks again. Obviously having too much time on his hands standing as the PPC for Skegness, he’s launched a broadside against me claiming I’m a Labour Activist AND somehow singlehandedly wanted to bring in ID cards for the UK.

David has a history of lying for political gain. In 2010, he fed me a load of false info in the pretence of a leak. I saw it for what it was, and didn’t publish, yet Watts assumed I did, and ran an article about ‘The truth, contrary to rumours put about by Beestonia…’. When I asked for an explanation, none came.

Watts is a desperate man. After achieving the splendid accolade of becoming the worst Lib Dem by-election candidate in post-war history, he has led a negative campaign of half-truths, misrepresentations and cynical claims, entirely contrary to the polite, mannered and positive PPC, and fellow Lib Dem Bramcote councillor, Stan Heptinstall. He’s now clinging onto his political life, and will probably pay for his negativity with a welcome shunt into oblivion come the election.

I have sent him a response to explain his slur, and in the name of transparency, have printed it in full. I await a response….

Mr Watts

I noticed that you have publicly stated on the Bramcote Today forum that I am ‘A Labour Party activist’. 

This is slanderous, and, I suspect a little bit sexist. I have never worked, volunteered, or in anyway aided the Labour Party. 

My wife is, however, a member and activist. We have a strict rule in the house that I do not even fold a leaflet for her. Certain rules in my employment mean that I cannot support any party. By having yourself as a public figure in a position of authority state this mistruth is both libelous and malicious. While never making any pretence of neutrality, I am proudly, and necessarily independent. 

I suspect that a rather misogynistic attitude towards my wife has driven this accusation, that somehow she cannot have independent thought and must be being controlled by me. My wife is a successful bio-chemist researcher, researching ways to combat cancer and other diseases. I can assure you she is no hand-puppet of mine. This is a dreadful slur to make.

You also allege that I am somehow responsible for the introduction of ID cards. This outrageous claim has absolutely no grounding in reality, and thoroughly misrepresents my position on ID cards: I was heavily involved in the NO2ID campaign for many years, and still to this day am very anti their introduction. To suggest that in some way I condone them is wholly untrue, and damaging to my long-term work as a campaigner. 

I realise that their is an election on, and that things get hotheaded. I am aware your style of campaigning is pugnacious. I’ve met you many times in person, and I have never doubted you are a nice guy. Yet to make these slurs, from a position of power, is a disgrace, and brings the council you represent into disrepute.

I request that you remove the statement from the forum and instead put up an apology, in line with electoral practice policy and general politeness. I have copied the the Chief Executive and the Legal Exec of Broxtowe Borough Council for full visibility and accountability purposes. 

I await your expedient response

I’d send this to the Skeggy media too, but since Watts seems set to get a vote so small electron microscopes are being delivered to the Returning Officer right now, I won’t bother.

SNIPPETS / ANNA SOUBRY AND HER FAKE LOVE OF THE GREENBELT.

Nine days to go, and tons to get through, hence why this will drop into your inbox at 9am, and why I’m presently blinking through over-dry contact lenses at 1am in the morning while I type the latest Broxtowe shenanigans. There will be another portion served up later today, so stay tuned. The last couple of weeks has seen the stats for this blog jump hugely; it’s nice to end my writing on politics with people actually reading the bloody stuff.

So, what’s been happening?

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Broxtowe’s Green PPC has revealed in an interview that he has AIDS. David Kirwan gave a brave and thoughtful interview to Buzzfeed about how it has affected him: it’s well worth a read and you can do so here.

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Beeston Today website have sent a reply to a query I made regarding the increasingly politicised content of their website, and the link between them and the Lib Dems through discretionary funding. While their reply shod some light on matters, it failed to clear up a couple of key areas. I’ve read far too many things on Divisional Funding, and sent to many detailed questions to People Who Know About This Stuff, and will be sending a couple of questions over to the people running the site. This is in no way an attack on Bramcote Today, a site I’ve long admired for it’s community-focused work, and how it’s become a great asset to Bramcote, so hopefully we can mop up these issues.

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Buy the Nottingham Post today: not only has it got a pull out on the I Love Beeston Awards I helped to judge, but I should also have a column in there about the election, which also dwells on a particularly toe -curling, hair-curling, episode of my life. I’ll stick a link up later. It’s 1.26 am, and I can’t be arsed.

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SOUBZ AND THE GREEN BELT MYTH

Elections, eh? Truth goes out the window, and we enter a fantasyland of the Tories suddenly finding £8 billion behind their Chesterfield sofa to spend on the NHS; The Telegraph runs a piece of ‘news’ on small business owners that comes diret from CCHQ and is instantly seen as a huge pile of horse-crap in this excellent bit of journalism; and Theresa May claiming that Scotland voting in a democratic way for a fully legitimate party would lead to Britain catching fire, being over-ran by giant marauding ants and haggis force-fed down your throat, untill your stomachs swell like bagpipes that Alex Salmond can tootle on.

Larger lies, that have been told so much they move up a division into false narratives are trotted out again. Chief among these is that Labour profligacy caused the 2008 GLOBAL financial crisis. Spending money on SureStart, social care and the NHS was to blame, rather than, y’know, those casino bankers who still remain unpunished and happily splashing with cash.

One of these false narratives is being ceaselessly pedaled by that politician who is extremely economical with the actulie is our own Anna Soubry, and her concern for the Greenbelt.

The narrative runs thus. The Lib Dem / Labour ran Broxtowe Borough Council decided, out of the blue, to concrete over a couple of sites in Broxtowe and stick houses atop for, well, just a laugh. Because they could. Because they are shitty haters of all things green and probably strangle wrens for kicks.

FEAR NOT! SOUBZ IS HERE! Yes, she swooped down to save the Greenbelt from the evil councillors. A mighty battle was fought, where she threw herself under bulldozers, shielded helpless voles from baseball bat wielding Labour types and tied herself to a tree that a rabid Lib Dem was attempting to fell so he could stomp on a nest of  dainty speckled powder blue eggs.

Alas, she failed. She tried, spending hours camping outside the offices of the relevant ministers, she really did. But she won’t go quietly: she’ll use her last dying breath exposing the callous haters of all things verdant for the bastards they are. Like Boudicca, she fought, she lost, but she has the glory.

Well. That didn’t happen . Anna wants you to believe that, and she’s trotted out the lie so many times it starts to become fact. I’ve had people comment to me ‘Well, don’t like Soubry, but she protects the greenbelt, so she can’t be all bad’.

Let’s take apart this narrative, forensically.

**MYTH ONE: BROXTOWE BOROUGH COUNCIL MALICIOUSLY CHOSE THE SITES TO BUILD FOR NO REASON**

Without bogging you down with too much detail, the central government, y’know, that one Anna was part of, demands that all councils set out a coherent and workable plan to build houses, and try and alleviate the chronic lack of affordable homes on the market. They send this plan off to an independent adjudicator, who rules if it is sound. In drawing up the plan, sites have to be found, and in doing so marginal land has to be considered. Field Farm was one of these. It was found to be the least destructive of any other marginal site (I’m not a fan, btw. I grew up, and still reguarly walk there. Though I understand why it was chosen).

***MYTH TWO: SOUBRY EXERCISED ALL HER POWERS TO STOP FIELD FARM BEING EARMARKED FOR DEVELOPMENT***

The real work to challenge the decision was done by STRAG, the protect group formed to protect Field Farm. Anna saw this was an emotive issue to define herself by, so jumped on the bandwagon.

She made representations to Eric Pickles, the Minister responsible for overseeing development / local government issues. She went away empty handed. Why?

Soubry had a fair bit of clout within the government. A favourite of Cameron, she rose through the ministerial ranks smoothly. She also had a strong media profile. She could have used both these to strongly challenge the decision by Pickles to press on with development. She could have threatened to resign.

Instead, she came away with nothing.

Now either she is highly ineffective as a negotiator, and thus. ‘Broxtowe’s Voice in Westminster’. This is severe, damaging incompetence.

Or she got something else. Perhaps a bit of money for the local area via the local government settlement? Errr, no. We actually got the WORST settlement in the whole of the UK.

So what? As I have revealed here before, it seems Soubry is being lined up for a cosy little appointment in the Lords, donning the ermine for the rest of her career as a thank you for voting with the government consistently, and not kicking up a fuss about that whole ‘Field Farm’ thing. If so, this really nails home her true reason for being in politics: self-advancement over representation.

*** MYTH THREE: FIELD FARM DEVELOPMENT COULD BE JUST SCRAPPED AND THAT WOULD BE THAT ***

Christ, no. If the plans to develop were to be called in, and Broxtowe’s strategy rejected, then it would be open-season on our Green Belt. Developers could bypass local planning altogether, and build when and where they fancied.

This has happened before. A few years back, Canvey island went through this, and vampire squid shonky builders Persimmon marched quickly in. Persimmon and Beestonia have history: a former director of the firm is a Mr Neil Davidson: Soubry’s partner and former Campaign Manager.

When I have previously flagged up this link, the Soubry- Davidsons have been FURIOUS. As reported last year, Davidson’s solicitors sent me a hugely intimidating legal letter demanding I withdraw the blog, make a full apology, pay an unspecified amount to a charity of his choosing; and a payment of at least £1,500+VAT. 

I refused to back down: I did what journalists should do and stood my ground. No further action ensued: though I did refer the threat to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority as a egregious threat.

Is it the case that Soubry actually wants this chaos to happen? To allow planning decisions be taken out of hands of local councils, and let any shonky building firm come roll the bulldozers in?

**** MYTH FOUR: ANNA FOUGHT TO KEEP TOTON’S GREENBELT****

This is possibly the most shocking sleight of hand Soubry is trying to pull on the voters. She has been shouting about this a lot this week: ONLY I CAN KEEP TOTON GREEN!

It’s an utter lie, and she should be ashamed of herself for trying to deceive the public. How so?

I received the following email from a  resident of Cleve Avenue, Toton at the weekend:

We have a dispute in Toton over the proposed development on the green field site opposite the new tram terminus. Broxtowe Council shamelessly are going against the wishes of locals and are proposing a development of at least 550 homes. However, at least they are honest about what they are proposing. Anna Soubry allowed the various groups fighting this to think that she was on their side. I was at the council meeting last year when she attended and spoke for the first time that indeed she was against the green belt land being used for housing because she felt it would undermine the decision to bring HS2 here because she was advocating that the land should be used for the development of an industrial estate! When the penny dropped that the residents had NO ONE on their side the feeling of being let down and betrayed was tangible

In summary: she doesn’t want to protect Toton fields. She wants the land to be developed, but for a sprawling industrial estate for when / if HS2 (which she unequivocally supports ). One wonders who the builders of this industrial estate will be…

Her huffing and faux-anger are there to disguise the sad truth: Soubry doesn’t like the Green Belt. She doesn’t like Broxtowe. She probably doesn’t like you. She likes her job, her lavish MP expenses, and the ease with which her lies are so easily lapped up.

Challenge this. Explain to people the true situation. While truth is getting it’s boots on, Soubry’s BS is already pushed through every letterbox and dropped into every inbox over Broxtowe.

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I’ll be writing more about the Tories hate for nature (Soubry supports badger culling, voted against bee-killing pesticides etc, but right now it’s nearly three in the morning…

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But one last thing: huge thanks to Robert Howard, the man behind the excellent Beeston Week blog, for the gift of a bucket full of tadpoles last week (and cheers to the many offers of the pre-frogs I received: amphibian based socialism in action, there. In these hectic election days, building a pond has been the only thing keeping me sane. Thanks, pond.