One day left!
Tempus Fugit. The pitch has risen to shrieking now, as the campaigns reach their climax. The national press, which is ran by a bunch of non-doms, bigots and tax-shirkers, is in full force. Anything goes. So desperate are they to keep Miliband 
out, even that old scare-mongering classic, the Evil Jews, has been employed by The Sun, who keep blasting away on the ‘North London Intellectual, eh? Eh? Eating bacon? Eh? EH?’ dog whistle till they are Tory-blue in the face.
Even The Independent, once the bastion of centrist journalism, has come out in a tortuously written editorial for the coalition (not explicitly the Tories, I best add). Why? Is there any connection with the fact it’s proprietors, the father and son duo Alexander and Ebgeny Lebedev, Russian Oligarchs who are desperate to cosy up to Boris Johnson: even flying him out to their palace in Italy’s Umbrian hills. The newsroom at the Indy are unsurprisingly livid at being forced to take this line. Traditional media’s takes another lurch towards the void of outright propaganda.
The polls hold strong though. Whether this is the result of the way social media has become as important as print since the last election, or just that people can see through these attacks and smears for what they are, I don’t know. The misjudgment the Tories have made is that the public aren’t like them, they aren’t bullies, they aren’t nasty, Christ, they don’t even find chasing foxes around on horses and ripping cubs from vixens wombs appealing, the weirdos! The Tories have a huge problem in that they can’t win elections anymore: their last majority was 1992. Their core membership is dying off, and not being repopulated from the young. These nasty attacks further alienate themselves from the electorate.
Here in Broxtowe, desperation takes other guises. A flood of claims gush on a torrent of leaflets, and it looks like some people haven’t let truth stand in the way of a claim.
Politicians lie: that’s a given. Yet it’s a little known fact that during election time, it’s illegal to do so. Not against regulations: illegal, a criminal matter. I’ve been hearing of several cases where the police have been called in. Over in Stapleford, a group of Lib Dems pretending to not be Lib Dems have formed a party called ‘Stapleford Alliance’, and after not correctly including imprints on their posters, seem to have committed offence. My sources in Stapleford inform me that the police are already involved.
Closer to home, a prominent Lib Dem is falsely claiming in his leaflets that his wife is a sitting councillor. This is demonstrably untrue, and he too looks like having his collar felt soon. The Lib Dems themselves have been hit by a Tory smear, David Watts reporting in his newsletter today that he has seen
a leaflet this week from the Tories containing a very strong and nasty attack against me personally. Let me assure you that it is a lie. (It’s also a criminal offence under the Representation of the People Act but I won’t get bogged down with that at the moment.) What they are purporting to quote was a comment on an internal council email (so they are riding a coach and horses through the councillors code of conduct by doing that as well)
It looks like the police are going to be having a busy week once the dust has settled.
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Soubry HATES tactical voting, and makes great huffs about voting for the party you believe in. Except when it suits her, of
course. Unfortunately, UKIP can’t stand the Soubz, after she bollocked Farage on Question Time, and claimed on tv that Farage was a man who enjoyed having a finger up his arse.
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Anna Soubry decided that rather than chat policy on Twitter, she’d talk about my family. I’m not quite sure to what end, but it’s very odd and quite unsavoury. Seems to have sunk like a stone with the electorate as well, with people responding in disgust at her. Frothing Tory activist (and partner of Broxtowe Tory leader, Richard Jackson) waded in, claiming somethign about ‘threatening to sue me’. Could this be the last time I hear that before I retire from politics? Or would any other Tories like to wade in to take the accolade? Maybe make it look official, a solicitors letter or something? Possibly sue me for ‘liable’ (thanks for that, Steve Carr)? You have just a couple of days left, or I retire after seven years of writing without a single threat being carried out, or a single word retracted. Perhaps best to stick to endorsing the bullying of ‘frail ladies’, Sally. Softer targets.
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Anna stuck out her final communique today, and included a rather interesting list of why you should vote for Anna. I’ve made a few notes:
1. I give a straight answer to a straight question, have worked hard as your MP and have got things done. You certainly do. You told the Royal Mail to ‘fuck off’ when they asked you not to sell them off to Osborne and Cables mates. You called a constituent a ‘liar’ in public. There are numerous times when serious issues put to you have been either
(Soubry later admitted that she had failed to reply, but refused to retract the insult)
outright ignored, or responded to with a terse email refusing to help / stock response. You have got little done here. A couple of PR heavy cases, but loads ignored, or done with such a half-heart you might not have bothered. You have, however, ‘got things done’ in the Conservative Party: sacrificing proper constituency representation for a nice ministerial job and the perks that come with that.
2. I have and will continue to campaign to defend our Green Belt land.
Broxtowe Coat of Arms before Anna took power…
Demonstrably untrue: although creating a lot of bluster about this, you were pro selling off the nation’s forests, and a recent independent legal case found that your challenge to Broxtowe Borough Council was utterly groundless, and that the plans they had made did the least amount of harm. The government that foisted these plans on Broxtowe? Err, the one you’re part of Anna. Your meetings with Eric Pickles, how come you left empty handed? Any connection to the promotion you got soon after? Or the rumours of your elevation to the House of Lords? Your defence of Toton’s greenbelt is amazingly duplicitous: rather than save the greenbelt, you want it to be saved so a huge industrial
…and five years on. Bears! Beware!
estate serving HS2 can be built instead. Maybe they’ll paint the chimneys green. Your voting record on green issues, such as voting for the failed badger cull; and voting against joining with Europe in banning bee-killing neonictonids is also telling. Green you ain’t.
3. I have stood up for residents, commuters and businesses badly affected by the tram works and I have won compensation for traders. Demonstrable bollocks. The County Council Tories, endorsed by Anna, rejected a compensation scheme for those affected by the tram in a 2008 motion. When the Council changed to Labour, she demanded that they pay up: despite the fact that, errr, they already were setting up a scheme. Anna probably has got the issue on the table a couple of times, after all that’s what she’s paid to do, but her actual usefulness compared to her claims is striking.
4. I am a passionate supporter of our great town centres and want to continue the job of rejuvenating them. Again, bollocks, at least in Beeston. She has refused to attend any of the Beeston Continuum / Civic Society public meetings on the future of the town, where she could have been of genuine help. Instead, she moaned about them from the sidelines, claiming she ‘wasn’t invited’ to meetings. Public meetings. Clue in the name Anna. Open to the public. I know it demeans you to think of yourself as one of us, but technically, you are. Instead, she has chosen to use the Ranting Rooms to talk 
about Beeston: the same rooms that don’t take dissent, and rip apart anyone who steps out of line, banning them then wallowing in a group hate once they can’t answer back. A group that has done more to try and divide this town than a tram line could ever do. Unsurprisingly, she recruited a bunch of her paper candidates from here, including that lovely chap who was reported to the police for threatening to bring a rifle to a council meeting. Anna hates Broxtowe. That’s why she only moved here when she absolutely had to…despite promising us it was the first thing she’d do when elected.
5. I have supported the Coalition Government that has laid down the foundations of a sound economy, creating hundreds of jobs locally and a record number of apprenticeships. Another five years will enable us to continue the recovery – so we have the great public services, like the NHS. Again, bollocks. We have an economy that is hugely vulnerable: George Osborne has borrowed more in five years than Labour did in 13, and the National debt is now well past a trillion – up from that they inherited. Growth has been stagnant, compared to strong green shoots in 2010, and the promise to ‘pay down the deficit’ wasn’t honored: only a third of it has been paid back, an appalling record. As for public services, prepare to see them all but disappear. Broxtowe received the worst local government settlement in the country, and will see horrific cuts on local services. We have people in this country queuing for foodbanks, despite being in work: the standard of living has fell for everyone but the most wealthy. To spare her banker friends responsible for the 2008 financial crash, Soubry has been complicit in the demonisation and rabidly nasty pauperisation of the most vulnerable. We have a society with the greatest among of inequality since before the war.
As for the NHS, it is in intensive care itself right now. The Tories are doing a classic trick to soften it being sold off,
copyright Steve Bell, The Guardian.
piecemeal: running it down by starving funding (not always directly: by cutting local authority funding for social services, the NHS has no choice but to become a glorified care home); then selling off chunks claiming only private money can save it. As a former health minister, Anna will no doubt be soon sitting on the board of one of the profit-driven firms looking to steal what is ours.
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Keep the tips, gossip and pics coming in (mattgoold23@hotmail.com) as we head deep into the endgame….
Beestonia 