London’s Evening Standard says Jessica Ennis as BBC Sports Personality of the Year would be ‘scraping the barrel’

Passing through London today for several meeting before heading home on the train yesterday evening, I picked up the London Evening Standard which apparently now is free.

Matthew Norman’s piece in the paper on the  BBC Sports Personality of the Year is generally pretty sniffy but then comes down in favour of the ‘amazing’ Jenson Button having suggested that awarding the prize to Jessica Ennis would be ‘scraping the bottom of the barrel’. No objective rationale as to what this would be. Silly man! And they wonder why people in the North remain sceptical about the London Olympics? 

You can only vote for who is on the list and, come Sunday evening I will vote for Jessica as many times as modern telephony will allow. And why not? She’s young, dedicated, charming, female, did not need the use of sophisticated machinery to become the champion of her discipline and, of course, is from Yorkshire. I am fairly hard pushed to remember the last winner of BBC SPOTY from Yorkshire. I am guessing Anita Lonsbrough in 1962 but am willing to be corrected. (There have been several runners-up of course, not least Roger Taylor and Geoffrey Boycott but Yorkshire is long overdue some success in the main award)

Finally in Jessica Ennis’ own words as reported by the Yorkshire Post:

 “This is so important to me. It really would be the icing on the cake. It’s been a brilliant year for me and to be nominated is a huge honour. To win it in my home city of Sheffield would be an absolutely amazing achievement.”

UKIP is in no position to lecture the EU on democracy

Letter seen in the Yorkshire Post the other day. Couldn’t agree more with Craig Harrison!

 From: Craig Harrison, Tadcaster Road, York.

AFTER the election of the non-entity Lord Pearson as their leader, UKIP can have no moral authority to argue the EU lacks a democratic mandate.

After all, UKIP’s new leader has never been elected to any parliament and barely one in three UKIP members endorsed him. Some democracy that.

‘We are all in this together’ Watch

My irregular watch on the Conservative party to see to what extent they are upholding the statement by George Osborne when reflecting on the current recession at the Tories’ Conference in October he said that ‘we are all in this together’.

On a recent flight from Paris to Manchester following the Strasbourg plenary session of the European Parliament just TWO passengers were enjoying business class hospitality. They were Tory MEPs Jackie Foster and Saj Karim (yes I know!). Beyond the curtain, in economy class with all the other passengers on that flight, was Liberal Democrat MEP Chris Davies. The flight time is a little over an hour. Just enough time to uncork the champagne for Business Class passengers as they clink glasses and say ‘we are all in this together’.

Estate agents are the only people to benefit as MPs’ stock diminishes

By some extraordinary coincidence I happened to be campaigning in Scunthorpe yesterday and in Dewsbury today just as the stories relating to those town’s respective MPs were breaking. The Elliot Morley story broke it the morning and as I arrived in Dewsbury it had been just announced that Shahid Malik had resigned as Justice Minister. The anger of people in both communities was palpable and sadly was directed at ALL MPs of ALL parties. I have no doubt that this anger is seen by candidates up and down the country. I share that anger and I am so annoyed with MPs who still fail to see the seriousness of the situation. If only we could have kept out of this then the electoral dividends would have been massive. We have to be much firmer on the reform message and if that means a few heads on poles then so be it. Small parties may benefit, but in the longer term we may see the emergence of Independent candidates and coincidentally in Dewsbury that hs happened already albeit for unconnected reasons: www.dewsburyreporter.co.uk/news/Councillor-resigns-from-party-to.5269961.jp Having said that the YouGov poll in The Sun today looks encouraging and others may be reading the situation in an equally positive way as I am starting to get letters from people wanting work as my Parliamentary Assistant when I am elected!

There was a scene on the ‘sweary chef in America’ programme where he took a restaurant owner up to the hills behind Los Angeles in order for him to get his frustration with his employees out of his system. To do that he was encouraged, miles away from people, to scream as loudly as he could. I feel I want to do just that. I am sure the last few days have been enormously demoralising for people seeking election to office. An estate agent I met yesterday said he was delighted with the recent events as for the first time in living memory his was no longer the most hated profession. He felt he could hold his head up high in polite society. Somebody else said that rather than become an elected politician he might go and sell cigarettes to Third World countries and then his friends might speak to him again.

Winning here – in Yorkshire & the Humber

Winning here!

Out canvassing over the weekend with Liberal Democrat candidate, Ian Dowling, in the Temple Newsam ward in Leeds. In a couple of weeks time, the voters there face a by-election caused by the well-publicised resignation of one of the Labour councillors in the ward. The demographics of the community in the ward suggest no reason why the Liberal Democrats could not do well there. The party picked up over 500 votes last time with a pretty minimal campaign. 

There have been several local council by-elections on principal local authorities since last summer and I thought it would be useful to do an analysis of the results. Over 20,000 votes were cast in total, in a range of wards from inner city Leeds to rural North Yorkshire. Interestingly, the Liberal Democrats, along with the Conservatives were the only party to field a candidate in each of the seats. The Liberal Democrats quite comfortably held the three seats they were defending but perhaps most importantly the Liberal Democrats won the overall popular share of the vote: (Liberal Democrat: 6260; Con: 5120, Lab: 5069, BNP: 1948; Green 1416). As an indication of the way the 6 seats in this region would split in June’s European Parliament elections, the results suggest: Liberal Democrat 2, Conservative 2, Labour 2. Overall this would mean that Liberal Democrats would gain a seat from UKIP compared to 2004. I’ll drink to that Nigel!

Another by-election success in the region

Following on the succesful by-election defence of the Liberal Democrats’ seat in Hull a couple of weeks ago, news reaches me of further success, this time from across the Humber estuary. In a by-election on Haxey parish council, which lies in the Axholme South ward of North Lincolnshire District Council, Liberal Democrat Don Lange ‘romped home’ (to use the words of the agent) 569 to 444 in a straight fight with an Independent. For those of you know the area this was a pretty sensational result and is further evidence of the great strides the local party is making there.

Iceland edges a little closer to the EU as the Liberal Democrats’ sister party says yes to membership

The Liberal Democrats’ sister party in Iceland, the Progressive Party, (or Framsóknarflokkurinn if you prefer it in the vernacular) at a special conference yesterday voted strongly in favour of supporting Iceland’s entry into membership talks with the European Union.

Largely representative of the agrarian community and fishermen it has traditionally opposed Iceland’s entry to the EU. But after a four hour debate the Progressives become the second party in Iceland, after the Social Democrats, to publicly support EU membership. The ruling Independence Party (for which read ‘Conservative’) intends to hold a similar vote at its conference beginning on the 29th January.

In a statement, the Progressive Party explained that it would support Icelandic entry into the European Union if personal and business rights were protected, especially in regard to fishing and agriculture; and if the accession talks were open and democratic. Icelandic would also have to become one of the EU’s official languages.

If the Independence Party votes to change their policy too (which in some ways woukd be even more likely than the Progressive Party given the latter’s voting base) then Icelandic application to the EU is a done deal I would think. Olli Rehn, the Commissioner responsible for EU Enlargement, says membership for Iceland could be achieved in months rather than years (after all they sign up to most EU legislation already given their membership of the EEA Agreement). It is even conceivable that Icelanders could be voting with the other 27 EU countries in the European Parliament elections in June this year.

Of course, the shift in opinion amongst Iceland’s political parties is a reflection on just how bad the economy is there. After all many have been agitating for Euro membership already, but the Commission quite rightly said this is not feasible without full membership. What is interesting of course now is what will happen to Norway. Don’t be surprised if the Norwegians themselves start to look at membership again. After all, without Iceland the EEA and EFTA are effectively dead and besides, the last thing the Norwegians would want down the track in any membership negotiations is to be faced across the table by an Icelandic Commissioner for Fisheries!

By way of a note, currently, the Progressive Party has slipped in support but is traditionally one of Iceland’s bigger political parties holding the post of Prime Minister as recently as 2006.

Liberal Democrats gain Conservative seat in Hull

As I anticipated, the Conservatives were heavily beaten in yesteday’s by-election in Drypool in Hull. In fact in a seat they held they were beaten into 4th place behind the National Front candidate as Linda Chambers for the Liberal Democrats stormed to victory. It shows two things to me: one, that the people of Hull are comfortable with the changes that the Liberal Democrats are bringing to the city and, two, that the Conservatives remain a long way from mounting any sort of recovery to their fortunes in the North. As I’ve said in  the blog before ,this was a difficult seat for the Conservatives to hold but nevertheless to put in such a poor result was surely a humiliation.

This is what the Hull Daily Mail is saying in its online version:

The Liberal Democrats have won the city council by-election in Drypool.

Lib Dem candidate Linda Chambers polled 1,306 votes to secure the seat vacated by Conservative Andy Sloan who resigned before Christmas because of work commitments.

Labour’s Gary Wareing finished second with 891 votes while the National Front’s Mike Cooper came third on 184 votes. Conservative Andrew Allison polled 117 votes. The turnout was 26.7 per cent.

The result increases the overall Lib Dem majority at the Guildhall to 15.

Lid Dem leader Carl Minns said: “I am very pleased because it shows the public are still backing the way we are trying to reform the council.”

http://www.thisishullandeastriding.co.uk/news/Lib-Dems-win-Drypool-election/article-598866-detail/article.html

The crime rate in Brussels might make people rethink the single site of the European Parliament

There is a considerable majority of MEPs and staff who support the idea of a single site for the European Parliament. Doing away with the monthly trek between Brussels and Strasbourg would be eminently sensible at various levels, not least economic and environmental. There has always been the assumption that the single site for the parliament would be Brussels, after all that is where the majority of the other institutions are already. However, whilst Brussels, against most measures. is a pleasant place to live, the thing that drags it down is the low-level street crime which can make living there unpleasant.

 

News reached me that a Brussels based journalist who I had been speaking to just earlier in the afternoon had pepper spray squirted in her face and her bag snatched in a park near to the European Parliament building. Once people started to talk about this incident then others come forward with similar stories about walking through the poorly lit Parc Leopold which it seems has been the scene of many similar crimes.

 

But not just there because we also learnt that one Lib Dem MEP had his briefcase stolen while he was waiting for a train and another MEP had her suitcase snatched from the luggage racks at the end of the carriage as the train was stopped at a station

between Brussels and Antwerp.

 

I’ve had my wallet lifted in Brussels (the only city this has ever happened to me). One of my colleagues had a bag snatched from her car as she waited at traffic lights. The passenger door was locked and the thief smashed the window. This in broad daylight and is not an unusual occurrence as theft from vehicles, both moving and parked in Brussels, is common. And so it goes on.

 

As I say Brussels is otherwise a pretty decent place to live but this low-level crime is actually rather off-putting. I am not sure what the answer is, after all Belgian police are fairly efficient and CCTV is in place after all cameras were used to convict a Polish guy who had stabbed a teenager to death in Brussels Central station when he refused to hand over his MP3 player. However, unless there is a real attempt to reduce this low-level crime I think people will start to think that the single site for the European Parliament will would be better placed in Strasbourg.

Conservatives losing here albeit in somewhat unusual circumstances

I am reasonably confident that come Friday Drypool will appear as a Conservative loss in the  previous night’s local by-elections. The by-election in Hull comes about because of the resignation of a former Liberal Democrat councillor who switched to the Tories and was found to be living and working in Guernsey yet still claiming his Councillor’s allowance. (See previous blog on the subject: Hull Tory councillor who works in Guernsey forced to resign)

 

Delivering in the ward today and chatting to people as I went round, I found little evidence that the Conservatives would hold this seat. Interestingly the outgoing Tory councillor doesn’t even get a mention on their leaflet such, I guess, is the complete lack of impact he made in the ward. So the fight, as is usually the case in Hull, will be between the Liberal Democrats and Labour (the Tories got less than 9% in Drypool in 2008). Probably too close to call but if Linda Chambers does win for the Liberal Democrats it will be the party’s first gain from the Conservatives in Hull since the early 1970s. So Thursday could be quite historic in that sense albeit in somewhat unusual circumstances.