Tag Archives: campaigning

If I happened across a blog written by a moron….

Posted on by • Posted in District council stuff, Everyday life, Spalding, Spalding Wygate ward • Tagged , , , , , , • Leave a comment

If I happened across a blog written by a moron, that contained a personal attack on me, I’d probably respond to it something like this.

I’d suggest that they didn’t ramble on and on, like somebody just back from a binge drin20130922-232829.jpgking session and lacking the brains to go to bed and sleep it off instead of scrawling on their blog page. I’d also suggest that they read more carefully what they are ranting about before going off half cocked, like a spoilt child that’s just been told they can’t have a sweetie.

Finally, I’d tell them that, if they want to keep banging on about something written months ago, all of the above applies and that they shouldn’t think themselves so important that everything that was written all those months ago, was only about them.

Oh, and if I happened to try to find out a bit more about the writer of the blog and took a look at their profile, I’d be very suspicious if I found that it actually contained 1010754.largeabsolutely nothing about them, or anything else come to that. I’d also have to wonder what they had to hide and ask how they expect to be taken seriously, when they hide themselves from their readership.

Of course I’d only respond like this if I happened to come across such a blog entry.

E20130922-232534.jpgven then, I might think twice about bothering, especially if the site was saturated with tacky adverts, designed to make money and not really communicate with local people at all.

Likewise, if the site was just a regurgitation (vomit for short) of other people’s stuff, this would clearly show that the owner had a lack of original thought, so it wouldn’t be worth reading in the first place, so I’d probably never bother reading it and wouldn’t have to respond like this after all.

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I want access to this database too

Posted on by • Posted in District council stuff, Government, public sector, South Holland • Tagged , , , , , • Leave a comment

I gather the government intends to offer free access to the postal address database, for small businesses and charities. Having just fought, unsuccessfully, in county council elections, I believe there is a good case for extending the same access to local government election candidates.

Two of the many challenges for any candidate, are time management and workforce. Despite being a district councillor for 14 years, nothing can prepared me for the workload involved in fighting a single-handed campaign, across an area twice the size of my two member district council ward.

Treading the streets, pushing a leaflet thorough every letterbox in sight is hard work, but at least this doesn’t require you to search for an individual address, so can be done on autopilot to some extent. However, when it comes to targeted campaigning, such as in the case of postal voter (PV) letters, the printed list, in PDF format, provided by the council, with streets listed alphabetically, as opposed geographically, is less than helpful.

The major benefit of being able to access the postal address database for your division, would be the ability to reorganise the PV list by postcode, which are of course organised geographically. Armed with this list, one of the more time consuming jobs for any candidate, would become less of a chore.

As a Conservative candidate, it’s not really my job to make life easier for the opposition. However, if we want a more diverse, less Politically focussed range of candidates to stand in future elections, we should be seeking ways to make it a less daunting and labour intensive task. This is especially the case when the candidate is standing as an independent and unlikely to have any sort of Party campaign team to support them.

Mischievous ramblings, or dangerous mis-information?

Posted on by • Posted in District council stuff, Everyday life, planning, public sector, South Holland, Spalding • Tagged , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

It’s always good to see local people getting involved and willing to do their bit to try to make our things better for their community. One of these local people has now decided to stand for the county council, having been a commentator on local issues for sometime now, both via occasional letters to the local press and an active blog site.

I say commentator, because he does not seem to of done anything that could classify him as an activist. My understanding of an activist, is somebody who feels strongly about something and then takes steps to get things changed, generally for the better. Those who do things for the worst, would of course be more akin to extremists, or maybe even terrorists.

To date, this particular individual has made plenty of comments – mostly rambling and almost always negative – but has done little, or rather nothing, to actually improve anything.

The reason that I’m suggesting that his blog site statements might be more akin to dangerous mis-information than simply mischievous ramblings, is because his comments include factual errors that could lead others to draw the wrong conclusions and possibly form completely the wrong opinions about an important issue.

He is not alone in this lazy approach to not getting the facts right before making his thoughts public, as another newly declared county council candidate, standing under a different political banner, is doing exactly the same thing. However, in this case, his comments are directed at me. This is going to be an interesting and I fear, potentially unpleasant election campaign.