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Category Archives: Local elections

Stupidity, thy name is HS2Rebellion!

06 Thursday May 2021

Posted by Paul Bigland in Extinction Rebellion, Hs2, Local elections, London, Politics

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Extinction Rebellion, Hs2, Local elections, London

With the anti HS2 campaign continuing to fall apart as more and more activists become ‘slacktivists’ or disappear completely now it’s obvious the game’s up. There’s been little to comment on recently because it’s really all over bar the posturing. Until today, when in one glorious cock-up HS2Rebellion and others who’re linked to the rather ridiculous (but also faintly sinister and rather fascistic) Extinction Rebellion spin-off political party ‘burning pink’ have excelled themselves in utter stupidity and tinfoil-hattery on the day London’s voters go to the polls!

Why? Well, Burning Pink have put up a candidate for London Mayor, one Valerie Brown (who? Ed). You may well ask, as no-one’s ever heard of her before now. Apparently, she’s the co-founder of ‘burning pink’ along with the odious Roger Hallam, who was previously one of the founders of Extinction Rebellion. Frankly, there’s less chance of her winning as there is of finding Lord Lucan.

SkyBet are offering odds of 750-1 on her. To put that into perspective, Count Binface is way ahead of her with odds of 500-1! For someone standing on a supposed environmental ticket her campaign’s been a joke. Money’s been found from somewhere for a campaign ‘battlebus’ which turns out to be a pollution disaster as it’s 17 years old and wouldn’t be allowed on the streets of London any other way.

With her campaign going nowhere Hs2rebellion/Extinction Rebellion activists came up with an idea to attract publicity and make some impossible demands at the same time. Two (one of whom is serial failure Larch Maxey) clambered on to the roof of 1 Eversholt St at Euston and sprayed the building with pink paint, then said they’d only come down if their ridiculous demands were met. They and their hangers-on like ‘Boots on the ground’ (see previous blog) claimed they were spraying the HQ of HS2.

To say these people aren’t playing with a full deck is beautifully illustrated by another of ‘Boots’ tweets from yesterday.

This is tinfoil-hattery of the highest order. Why the Chinese would want inland naval bases miles from the sea would seem to be a logical question, but obviously not if you’ve been sucked into the ‘shocking pink’ orbit where it seems the first thing you’re asked to do is leave your brain at the door.

Now, as Larch Maxey had previously spent 3 weeks holed up in the pointless tunnel under Euston Gardens early in the year, you just might have thought he’d have an idea of who had offices at Euston and where. But no! Needless to say, this stunt backfired in spectacular fashion as people pointed out what should have been blindingly obvious. HS2’s HQ is in Birmingham. Yes, the do have offices at Euston – at the Podium. The offices Maxey and his mate painted are the offices of err…Network Rail, the company that runs the publicly owned rail network, you know – public transport – the sort of thing Greens are meant to like…

Here was the reaction of one person on Twitter who pointed out the obvious.

Of course, the mistake is even harder to make now as buildings 1 and 2 have been demolished so Maxey had a 50-50 chance of getting the correct building – and still failed to get the right one!

Meanwhile, others started doing some digging about that ‘battlebus’…

I sometimes wonder if Extinction Rebellion and ‘Burning Pink’ aren’t actually working for the oil and road lobby as the only thing they’re good for is bringing the UKs green movement into utter disrepute. Whatever these idiots thought they were achieving that would help their cause is a mystery. The reaction on Twitter has been overwhelmingly negative, if anything it’s exposed just how ridiculous, arrogant and unpleasant ‘Shocking pink’ are – with Extinction Rebellion not far behind. Remember, ‘shocking pink’ under their other name ‘beyond politics’ attacked the offices of several political parties (including the Green Party) because they claimed they weren’t ‘radical’ enough.

Still, tomorrow we’ll be able to see the election results. One thing I can confidently predict and that’s the fact Valerie Brown will not be Mayor of London! I’ll update this blog with the results. Anyone care to bet she has less votes than Count Binface?

Of course, this futile act of stupidity does beg one question. Whilst these two and their rag-bag of supporters are poncing around outside Network Rail’s offices, who’s meant to be on the frontline trying to ‘save’ trees and stop HS2?

UPDATE: 9th May.

As promised here’s an update on Brown’s performance in the Mayoral election. She came last! She managed a measly 5305 votes and was trounced by Count Binface who garnered 24775 votes! Worse was to came. ‘Burning Pink’ have reported Brown was arrested at home by the Metropolitan police on Saturday morning for conspiracy to cause criminal damage (of for ‘caring’ as Burning Pink’ claim). She’ll be in good company as Larch Maxey and his co-vandal Xavier Gonzalez Trimmer were also arrested after their stupid stunt.

Meanwhile, in the real world. HS2 construction continues uninterrupted…

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A post-election political blog

04 Friday May 2018

Posted by Paul Bigland in Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn, Local elections, Local elections 2018, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

I woke up this morning to find that nothing I hadn’t expected had occurred in the local elections. To the surprise of no-one (except perhaps, party die-hards), UKIP voters had drifted back to where most of them came from in the first place – the Tory party. meanwhile Labour, the worst opposition in living memory facing the worst Government in living memory, had managed to gain 50 seats. As I type this, the Tories have actually managed to GAIN 11! In fact, all parties bar UKIP (who’ve lost 110) have gained seats! The Lib-Dems have managed to win 33 so far and the Greens just 4. The final numbers will make interesting reading, but not, I think for Labour.

That said, Corbyn supporters are busy on social media, trying to claim this is (somehow) a ‘victory’. Quite how they work that one out is a mystery. It’s like kicking at an open goal, missing, then saying “Yeah, but the ball only missed by a bit”.

Contrast these results with the final ones of the 2014 local elections (before Corbyn became Labour leader), when the Tories lost 236 and Labour gained 324.

2014 election

This was the last year that Labour gained seats. In 2015 they lost 203, a further 18 in 2016 and another 382 in 2017. A grand total of 603 seats.

Here’s another result Corbynistas won’t want to hear. In May 1995, under Tony Blair, Labour won 1,802 seats whilst John Major’s Tories lost 2,018. Paddy Ashdown’s Lib-Dems picked up 487. Yes, it was all downhill from there until 2010 when Gordon Brown picked up 417 seats, but even Ed Miliband  as Labour Leader managed to pick up 857 seats in 2011 and a further 823 in 2012. He then added another 291 in 2013 and 324 in 2014 before losing 203 in 2015, a fact overshadowed by his General election loss.

Here’s all the Labour’s local election results since 2010, showing the percentage of the vote and any swing.

results since 2010

This puts Corbyn’s results into perspective. I, like many others have no enthusiasm for him or his party now. He’s betrayed Labour supporters over Brexit and there’s no sign of that changing. The hard left seem to be in full denial of reality mode, so the charade will continue.

God help us…

UPDATE.

The final results are in and they make interesting reading.

final election results

Despite former UKIP voters heading back to the Tories they still lost 33 seats, but that’s hardly a disaster. In the light of political events that’s not a bad result. Labour are crowing about having won 77 seats, but when you consider they’re up against such a disastrous and shambolic Government, this is underachieving on a grand scale, especially when you consider that the Lib-Dems are only behind them by 2 seats. The Greens will probably be happy gaining 8 as their recent showing in the polls and performance at local elections has been poor.

From these results I’d suggest it’s pretty clear Brexit has played an important part in who people chose to vote for. The Lib-Dems did very well in some places that were heavy Leave areas, again, I’d suggest that this is an obvious sign of ‘Bregret’. Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB on Twitter) has compiled this rather useful chart which demonstrates how opinion has changed recently. Does anyone seriously think this isn’t feeding into who people choose to vote for?

bregret

No bregrets?

02 Friday Feb 2018

Posted by Paul Bigland in Brexit, Local elections, Politics, UKIP

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Brexit, Local elections, Politics, UKIP

As the shambles that is Brexit stumbles on from one train crash to another, more and more evidence is emerging that the British people are starting to wake up to the fact that the promised Brexit unicorns don’t actually exist – and never will.

The latest evidence may come from the result of a local council election in Sunderland’s Pallion ward yesterday, where the Liberal Democrats took the seat from Labour with a very sizeable swing.

bregret

Pallion is on the South bank of the River Wear and used to be known for its shipbuilding but the last yard closed in 1988. There’s still one yard which carries out ship repairs, but that’s all. Nowadays the Pallion’s a mixture of industrial estates and residential, bounded by a road ironically named European Way. It’s known as a very deprived ward with high unemployment. You can learn more about the ward from the ‘Britain Elects’ website.

Of course nowaday’s Sunderland’s known for its Nissan car plant rather than shipbuilding.

In the Brexit referendum Sunderland voted to leave the EU by 61% to 39% remain. UKIP had a strong presence in the area, even if they had no Councillors. In the 2014 local elections UKIP made their first appearance, putting up candidates in almost every ward. The election results left them in 2nd place in the vote after the Labour party  – including in Pallion. UKIP played on Sunderland’s shipbuilding past, pretending that they could somehow recreate those days.

pallion

UKIP also came second in 2015 and 2016. But that was then. This is now…

The fact that the ‘will of the people’ was swinging against Brexit was picked up by the local paper as long ago as December 2016 when they ran a poll that demonstrated people had changed their minds (link). Of course, newspaper polls are notorious for their inaccuracy, most are little better than clickbait. But that’s what makes the Pallion ward vote so interesting as it’s a genuine expression of the democratic vote.  Pallion had the same Labour member since 1997, so for the Lib-Dems to go from last in 2014 , leapfrogging UKIP to snatch the seat is amazing. That UKIP are a car-crash nowadays doesn’t account for the massive swing to the Lib-Dems, as Labour and the Tories have lost vote share too. Could a factor be Brexit? Why did both former UKIP and Tory voters switch to the Lib-Dems?

Is anyone in Conservative Central Office or Labour headquarters listening? Both parties are seemingly hell-bent on pursuing Brexit, whatever the cost, but they would be foolish in the extreme to ignore results like this. This is the Brexit heartlands remember, so where’s their support gone? To the one party that’s made it absolutely clear it opposes Brexit!

I wonder how many more results like this we’ll be seeing as the Brexit shambles continues and the consequences can no longer be ignored or denied?

 

 

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