On a day where an opinion poll in Scotland puts the Greens ahead of the Liberal Democrats for the first time, it's worth noting that not all of the Lib Dem problems are due to their national government.
We've had the well publicised Paul Twigger apology to our Green councillors, and I've just come across another grudging apology forced out of a Lib Dem Cabinet member in Birmingham, who accused a fellow councillor of being a Muslim extremist.
Given that another Midlands Lib Dem, this time a Parliamentary candidate in 2010, beat to death his family cat, they seem to be having a run of extremely anti-social behaviour.
The pressure is on ahead of May 5th. The only question now is how bad the level of Lib Dem losses will be.
30 March 2011
23 March 2011
London ComRes Results
Voting intention in an Evening Standard/ITV London poll by ComRes shows the following General Election voting intention (P11):
Labour 48%
Tories 31%
Lib Dems 9%
Greens 7%
UKIP 4%
Very good news indeed for our Assembly list candidates next year.
Labour 48%
Tories 31%
Lib Dems 9%
Greens 7%
UKIP 4%
Very good news indeed for our Assembly list candidates next year.
16 March 2011
Falling in with the wrong crowd
I remember Paul Twigger as a young enthusiastic student on a CVS day. He was clearly passionate about local issues and angry at Labour at a time when they had taken us to war in Iraq under false pretexts. I encouraged him to join the Greens, but he was already involved in the Lib Dems. He missed out on election in 2004 in Princes Park, but a couple of years later he became a councillor and soon became Warren Bradley's right hand man.
So it with some sadness that I report here on what is likely to be the end of his political career, in Liverpool at least. He was a Lib Dem Parliamentary candidate in 2010 but his own party now say they are reviewing his candidacy and recent events will be "taken into account". He is up for re-election in his Knotty Ash ward where Labour are likely to take his seat. On his record is a previous misdemeanour that involved some franked mail from his then employer (John Moores University) being used for political purposes.
People want elected representatives that are of good character. Paul clearly works hard and is committed to the party he represents. On a person to person basis, he has always been perfectly decent to me, going as far as to say he hoped that I would beat Nick Griffin in the Euro Elections. So all that he needed to do was to man up, apologise for what was clearly a slur on two very hardworking and ethical Green councillors who would never have done what he reported they did. He was offered opportunity after opportunity to do so. He failed to do it and he got that profoundly wrong.
I had to apologise for something I wrote on a blogpost and leaflet last year that was inaccurate. I believed that a particular candidate had previously overclaimed on mileage, with genuine evidence for that particular view. I was wrong. There was a reasonable explanation for it. We were challenged. We apologised on our next leaflet.
On a couple of comments on David Bartlett's blog, the suggestion is made that actually Paul Twigger is simply carrying out the bidding of Warren Bradley, with one poster suggesting that, "...didn't even write it, or co-wrote it, but is having to take all the blame whilst bradley and others get off scot free!!! Didn't this happen before...........?". The latter point is probably a reference to Steve Hurst, another Lib Dem councillor who was caught delivering defamatory leaflets in the guise of another party.
If that is the case, there is a way out for Paul at some point in the future, which is under new Lib Dem leadership and with a genuine clean slate, coming clean about who did what in the last five years of Lib Dem sleaze in Liverpool. Maybe, just maybe, in that case, he might have a future political career to pursue.
It is a shame. He was a promising young activist who fell in with the wrong crowd.
So it with some sadness that I report here on what is likely to be the end of his political career, in Liverpool at least. He was a Lib Dem Parliamentary candidate in 2010 but his own party now say they are reviewing his candidacy and recent events will be "taken into account". He is up for re-election in his Knotty Ash ward where Labour are likely to take his seat. On his record is a previous misdemeanour that involved some franked mail from his then employer (John Moores University) being used for political purposes.
People want elected representatives that are of good character. Paul clearly works hard and is committed to the party he represents. On a person to person basis, he has always been perfectly decent to me, going as far as to say he hoped that I would beat Nick Griffin in the Euro Elections. So all that he needed to do was to man up, apologise for what was clearly a slur on two very hardworking and ethical Green councillors who would never have done what he reported they did. He was offered opportunity after opportunity to do so. He failed to do it and he got that profoundly wrong.
I had to apologise for something I wrote on a blogpost and leaflet last year that was inaccurate. I believed that a particular candidate had previously overclaimed on mileage, with genuine evidence for that particular view. I was wrong. There was a reasonable explanation for it. We were challenged. We apologised on our next leaflet.
On a couple of comments on David Bartlett's blog, the suggestion is made that actually Paul Twigger is simply carrying out the bidding of Warren Bradley, with one poster suggesting that, "...didn't even write it, or co-wrote it, but is having to take all the blame whilst bradley and others get off scot free!!! Didn't this happen before...........?". The latter point is probably a reference to Steve Hurst, another Lib Dem councillor who was caught delivering defamatory leaflets in the guise of another party.
If that is the case, there is a way out for Paul at some point in the future, which is under new Lib Dem leadership and with a genuine clean slate, coming clean about who did what in the last five years of Lib Dem sleaze in Liverpool. Maybe, just maybe, in that case, he might have a future political career to pursue.
It is a shame. He was a promising young activist who fell in with the wrong crowd.
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