Matt
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Agreed on this, the fact that so many people are independent – adds another layer that lacks transparency to proceeding. Also, as a result of so many people being independent and under-representation of key parties in certain wards now so close to a general election it has created apathy towards the local elections, people are struggling to find the parties they want to get behind on both a local and national level. I also feel with people distracted by the GE the usual council suspects are going to get in on another low voter turnout and we are in for further years of misery and messing about.
On a side note this forum has also been rendered almost unreadable by the sheer number of council electioneering shill accounts, who are posting anonymously (again a lack of transparency) that seem to be dominating conversation and stifling most of the regulars or anyone who is not a political bozo. I can’t wait until it’s all over and they leave the general public to our misery again.
I think Atkinson and the Tories have put themselves in a very weak position if they are to allow him to run for both positions.
If he fails to win the council election then he will be viewed as not even good enough to win over voters in a tiny constituency and therefore not fit enough to win over Wrexham as a whole.
If he wins the council election then continues to gun to be an MP then he will be viewed as someone unreliable who can’t finish what they started. i.e. if he is willing to jump ship from his councillor position, which many view as a privileged to be chosen to serve their local community then what’s to say he won’t jump ship as an MP if something better comes along? This is a huge growing trend with MPs, with David Cameron and George Osborne starting off the motions for Brexit but jumping ship to go and earn privately before seeing it through. Tristram Hunt quitting as an MP to run the V&A museum. It’s all very flaky.
Constituency betting odds actually put the Tories slightly in favour over Labour to take the Wrexham seat, so I thought they’d want to parachute in a stronger candidate to finish Lucas off rather than put Atkinson forward again, especially as he hasn’t won anything yet.
Talking of sound-bites and publicity pictures – already on the right-hand side Twitter feed as we type, I can see 1 photo of Lucas with a series of ham baps as part of a hunger project and then a separate tweet about his proposals to make Wrexham part of a 2022 Commonwealth games bid between North West England and North Wales. Seriously Ian? You are going to need to try a lot harder than that there are so many bigger issues afoot in the local community than trying to get some people to throw a few bloody javelins about in Queensway or frustrate international swimmers with the broken lift at Waterworld.
We cannot afford to allow Wrexham and Clwyd South to fall to the Tories, but unless Lucas pulls his fingers out of his backside and gets real it’s going to happen – even with Atkinson in play. As for Susan Elan Jones, well apart from speaking to the Leader (says it all really) about calling the election a cynical U-Turn there’s been nothing from her. The way she spoke in the paper, it sounded like she was annoyed about Parliament being unsettled and didn’t want to be anything more than opposition – not overly confident here, an MP should be confident that they can potentially be in the party that forms government, but oh no Lucas and Jones were too busy unsettling the Labour Party with the leadership challenge which created more damage to the Labour brand than anything else.
What an interesting time we have ahead of us.
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I met Jeremy Corbyn back in February and I can only say that I have never a more sincere conviction politician in my life.I believe that the reason for his alleged unpopularity is twofold:
The ‘Progress’ faction (formed by Blairites in 1996) within the Labour Party who have abandoned the Socialist values of their forefathers to pursue personal advancement and prosperity and further the aims of the organisations that fund them. Jeremy Corbyn refuses to bend to their influence and thus is rarely supported.
Negative press coverage from particularly the Tories who are in league with big business, who are virtually crapping themselves because of the agenda proposed by Corbyn would cost them dearly. I also believe, although I have no proof of it, that certain Labour backbencher are not averse to adding fuel to the fire.
Corbyn is a very sincere intelligent man who is very much maligned and portrayed as a village idiot.
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It is always interesting to hear the opinions of people who have actually met Corbyn as from what I have experienced when speaking to the average person, Corbyn is distrusted because of his negative image in the media. Most people are too scared to back perceived ‘losers’ and want to vote with the popular crowd, which is why the likes of the Sun has so much influence even though they are an utterly abhorrent organisation. The whole thing that people find attractive about voting for the underdog in sports doesn’t seem to translate to the political arena.
Many people still view Corbyn as the man who apparently lied about not being able to find a seat on a train, just as much so as most people still equate Ed Miliband’s political career to not being able to eat a bacon sandwich.
As much as the hyper-informed people on social media like to think their comments and retweets of things they agree with or arguments with people they disagree with and the debunking of propaganda make an ounce of difference, it doesn’t – it’s a tiny bubble that has little to no impact on elections. I am guilty of these things myself, but it is more out of frustration than anything else these days. People want a platform to try and help drive social change, but whilst mainstream media remains king in helping formulate opinions, there is a long way to go before the change that people want will materialise. There is no silver bullet that will persuade enough people that social change is actually needed. If positive ideals were genuinely believed in this country then the likes of the Liberal Democrats (in their purest form) and the Green Party would have a lot more voters and MPs.
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That is the only salient point you make in your post, the rest does not merit further elucidation on my part.[/quote]
I see that The Works have got yet another thesaurus sale going on in town.
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This general election will take place before the negotiations. The SNP are calling for a referendum during the negotiations.[/quote]
If a major sporting team started messing about and getting distracted in the build up to a big tournament, they would be heavily criticised and on failure of winning, blame would be attributed to the lack of preparations beforehand.
The negotiating process is already underway now that Article 50 has been triggered and to distract now is as bad as distracting at any point. 6 weeks of the PM’s teams working on electioneering is 6 weeks taken away from spending time focusing on getting the best deal for the country. 6 weeks for BoJo to parade around what an utter incompetent f*ckwit he is both nationally and internationally. Fantastic negotiating strategy.
Oh that and someone just reminded me that Theresa May’s excuse to Scotland a few weeks back was that they couldn’t have an independence referendum because she was busy focusing on Brexit negotiations to deal with any voting in the next 2 years, now she’s called a full blown General Election which apparently won’t cause distractions from the same negotiations.
Out to Lunch, Dinner and Supper.
Agree that Ian Lucas has really pushed his luck as Labour MP for Wrexham and I’m not overly enamoured with Susan Elan Jones’ voting with the government to bomb Syria.
However, the fact that the media has Theresa May portrayed as a picture of sanity, she claims that God speaks to her and guides her. If she was any religion other than Christianity, in this now faux Christian state people would be getting the opinion of 2 medical professionals and getting her sectioned or held under terrorist laws if she was muslim.
Yet apparently Jeremy Corbyn is the dangerous lunatic with these incredibly irrational policies:
Now I’m not 100% sold or deluded that Corbyn and Labour could save the country and Wales (will be interesting to see what Welsh policies unfold). However, anyone has to be better than the abysmal performance of the Tories since 2015 and arguably during coalition. David Cameron pledges a Brexit vote with no plan on how to execute Brexit if it happens, lies are heaped on to get people to vote for promises that can’t be kept and then Theresa May comes in and government U-Turn after government U-Turn happens, including a U-Turn where she said that no General Election would occur until 2020 and now here it is coming in 6 weeks.
People are going to complain whoever is running the country, but the current shower are toxic and have turned us against the whole of Europe and alienated Scotland and Northern Ireland and at the same time continuously threaten the NHS and the apparently labelled ‘Just About Managing’ JAM demographic of people, which includes lots of hard working families and young individuals.
People just need to take a reality check and decide whether they want to continue to be punished and treated with disrespect by the Tories for another 5 years or vote for a change. I’m not even fussed who people vote for as long as it is a meaningful vote against the Tories.
Conde thank you for actually taking the time to respond to my scrutiny. It is interesting that other councils have been able to set-up commercial ventures with many others in the process of doing so. The Wirral has dubbed their plan Wirral Council PLC and interestingly Salford Council has a team of 10 specialist software engineers to roll out commercial IT services for profit.
The articles I read lead in with the fact that they were competing directly with the private sector and in the Liverpool / Manchester regions where these councils are situated I think competition is very strong and this is fair game.
However, I think private enterprise in Wrexham needs a leg up to get things going. I would rather see the council working hard to support local start-ups to get things off the ground. Glyndwr Uni has their business incubator set-up but there would be no reason why the council couldn’t go about helping to set-up other incubation or accelerator type initiatives with support from the Welsh Government or other public or private funding sources. I think more could be done to try and attract other high tech firms either in manufacturing (we have huge industrial estates and excellent transport links) or services such as fintech. This type of commercial activity support would boost inward investment and skilled job creation in the area and in turn boost the whole regional economy. I appreciate this sort of undertaking is difficult due to getting financial and assembly backing. But it’s what I would like to see more of.
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What I will say is that I believe an option for the council to engage legislation and create a publicly owned trading company utilising some of the skills held within the council. Quite potentially opening up a revenue stream as well as potentially engaging employment opportunities.
But there will be things being released by myself in good time.
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Several questions about this idea:
1) Is this not just an attempt to privatise some of the council’s already existing offerings? Surely all of the council’s skills and services should be offered to the local community for free (we pay council tax) or on a not-for-profit basis where additional costs justify a nominal charge.
2) Where is the manpower coming from to spend time on private enterprise and commercial activities? When cuts to frontline services already mean it is difficult to get access to existing public services from the council meaning that existing council workers spending time trying to earn revenues away from the council’s core purpose will cause greater strain on the whole system. This hardly seems fair when local council tax payers are paying the wages of these council workers in the first place to do something not necessarily in our direct best interests.
3) If these are in fact viable commercial services then surely the council will be directly competing with and creating unfair competition against local small businesses who offer the same services? Albeit being able to undercut these SMEs as they will be taxpayer subsidised. This will then ironically threaten local jobs and wipe out any gains made by the proposed job creation benefit mentioned.
4) How will generated profits be transparently protected from being either awarded to councillors in the form of numerative and non-numerative benefits (they already awarded themselves iPads) or stopped from being wasted on the likes of expensive consultancy fees elsewhere in less efficient areas of operation that would likely wipe out said profits?
I think we can safely say that the level of Plaid bashing going on that hasn’t existed before, means that they have ruffled a few feathers and are potentially a credible threat. No-one is going after the Tories or LD etc…
A major problem in Wales is that Labour have not satisfied voters in North Wales that they are going to help us out any time soon. We aren’t interesting enough for His Corbs in Chief to give us time of day and the Welsh Assembly are too busy with South Wales as usual. I am a lifelong Labour supporter yet am completely unconvinced that they could form a credible leading council in Wrexham. They haven’t even bothered to field a local candidate in my ward which further alienates me.
Personally, I don’t think a Plaid led council would be strong enough either but I do believe that the fact that they have actually opposed bad decisions last time round and generated debate means it is essential that a few of them get elected this time. Couldn’t even tell you what Labour were up to after the great defection last time round or what they stood for.
I do think there is an issue with all these independents, as someone said in another thread. Some are genuinely independent and vote for what they believe in issue by issue, but others are just closeted Tories and Labour who are too scared to run on the party ticket because trust in the country’s 2 major parties is at an all time low.
