FUD? Check wikipedia…

Received the first campaign materials from Team Yellow Gold and Team Red since the elections for local government in May. Sorry for the blue tint on the scans, I think my scanner is broken.

The BELD are thanking people for voting for them in Mapesbury and give people the contact numbers of their new local councillors. I won’t reprint them here though - surely you can get them from Brent Council (after 6 or 7 clicks) or from the BELD website (well actually you can’t find any info about your local councillors or FOCUS TEAM on the BELD website).

The QP Labour people have been distributing their July newsletter which highlighted the power sharing between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives in the new Council Executive. Vote Lib Dems and Get Tories says the headline with the story claiming that the first thing the LDs did when getting voted in was to join forces with the Tories. That’s not wholey true… the first thing the LDs did was to attempt to forge a power sharing agreement with the three parties, leading to coalition. This being rejected by the second largest vote winners (Team Red), the result is a coalition between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives.
If it wasn’t so heavily couched in political sniping I might have draw greater attention to the news on the rear of the QP Labour flyer that the LD/Tory exec plan to cut the publicity budget of the council. Oh, well, go on then… ‘The Knives Are Out!’ leads the back page. QP Labour are concerned the budget cuts will affect campaigns around areas such as knife carrying. Cut the funding as far as I am concerned….stop publications such as the Brent Magazine with the budget cuts but still continue to fund issue specific campaigns. That’s my 2p worth any way…

I was emailed a copy of the Queen’s Park Conservative Action Team campaign materials yesterday. Arwh, they are so smiley! not meanleanbusinessy-looking like some of the candidates in their campaign materials. So friendly looking I almost misstook them for the Greens!

Anyway… The photos, I noticed, were all taken in the Brent Conservatives office on Walm Lane. No ward walking for this lot! Where others have posed mid-reporting-a-local-grot-spot (sorry Sarah), the QPCAT (!) have opted for ‘about the office’ poses.

But….over the weekend my extra-day was interrupted by the Brent East Conservatives BATTLE BUS! ROCK ON! I wish I’d had my camera at the ready to capture the sight: A bright red double decker bus, still with the advertising posters for a film or something, with a brent Tory screaming down a megaphone: VOTE JACK SAYERS! VOTE CONSERVATIVE ON MAY 4TH!. It reminded me of Fridays Greeen Wing - the political ambitions of Dr Alan Statham broadcast from a small car: Come back here! Listen to me! Vote for me! etc etc….. You probably had to have been there…..

I was sitting out my step, enjoying a smoke in the evening air, when Jack Sayers walks up the drive out on the campaign trail delivering leafets. Jack has been a Councillor since 1990 so he is looking to be returned for the fourth time by this ward. The leaflet introduces us to the other two Conservative candidates, Khalid dar and Jennifer Brown.

Speaking of police… The Conservatives leafet compares the size of the Safer Neighbourhood teams in Conservative run Barnet Council to Labour run Brent. Brent’s Safer Neighbourhood teams are “about half” that of Barnets. Now, I’m not sure of this, but I had understood that the deployment of police resources were not a  matter for the council but for that of the Borough Commander for the Met.

The Compassionate Cameron Conservatives have plans for saving £1.2m in Brent Council - savings they think they can make in the machine without impact on service delivery.

Electoral law prevents a council from promoting candidates standing in local elections. Has the spirit of the ‘purdah’ period been broken by Brent Council? The Brent Lib Dems seem to think so. Now, I’ve not yet seen the article in question, my copy of the Brent Magazine has been sitting unread since it arrived and usually only gets a slight glance before being recycled. I’ll get a scan and post it. But until then you’ll just have to talk Lib Dem Council Leader Paul Lorbers’ word for it - the Labour council have spent public money on a publication that features a candidate standing in the local election. So the BELD are asking for the Labour party to reimburse the costs of the publication.

The local Greens have been distributing their literature in the wards. They have also made the literature available online so I don’t have to scan it I can link to it from here.

here you go.

Note that Shahrar Ali, candidate in Queen’s Park, will appear in the the Green Party Election Broadcast on BBC 1 tomorrow (APR24) at 1845.