Police Force
Afternoon - get South Manchester Reporter. This carries letter I submitted on the bias of the paper. Though it has been mauled making the last para a non sequitor. Will probably pen a riposte.
Also carries news of a hitherto 'secret' Lib Dem organised meeting with police representatives, less than 200 metres from my home, and tonight at 7.30pm.
Immediately text Tony Lloyd MP the details. He is on the train coming back from London and initially thinks he cannot make it. But hurrah he is able to change his appointments and get along. Only find this out at 7.20pm. I am already committed to being there but have had no joy in finding reinforcements.
Although this meeting is of general interest as well as focusing on a recent spate of jewelry burglaries this is a fairly cherry picked audience, plus a few fill ins who read the local rag. There are 60 or 70 people there.
This is the most successful action the Lib Dems have managed since the elections themselves. However as Tony is able to be there for an hour and makes several contributions, and is able to demonstrate that he has access to the chief constable and not just the local inspector or superintendent this is at worst a score draw and we may have edged it.
Cllr Faroz Bhatti who organised the meeting greets me on the way in, looks a bit sheepish that Tony and his assistant arrive soon after, and I shake his hand again on the way out. He says it is good to see me depite the difference in our politics.
I genuinely wonder what his politics actually consist of. Are they different to mine? Does he actually have any to speak of? He has been a councillor for less than 12 months. After one month he was included in their shadow Executive though this is nominal. He has written a curious defence of the Lib Dems' selection debacle in Manchester Withington, including the idea that latter day Libs are not crazy mavericks, that they are serious politicians.
I wrote into the paper at that asking whether that means he is calling the old school in his own party crazy mavericks, that they were and are not serious.
Faroz also stars in a full page advert in Aatish a local Urdu paper and perhaps elsewhere calling for a vote on communalist lines. As the selection debacle continues to rumble along in the papers I expose that nonsense too. Nonsense it must be said which was also typical of the Lib Dem Euro campaign.
Anyway, now it turns out that he is the Lib Dem candidate in Stretford and Urmston. I tell Tony's assistant who is a Trafford Councillor that the local Respect group have chosen to fight there - against Beverley Hughes MP - and that their candidate Mark Krantz, much involved with us over the anti-war effort and immigration matters and so on, has attacked the Lib Dems roundly on their war record.
No-one really knows what if any politics Faroz Bhatti has. None are evident from local Focus newsletters. Yet in less that a year of any political activity he is being put forward as a propsective MP. He has leap frogged over a good number of more established politicians, not least those active in Stretford. Perhaps there is another Lib Dem selection debacle in that seat?
But I digress. The strangest thing about the Lib Dems' burglary meeting, attended by five of their councillors including at least two PPCs, and by six or seven middle ranking police officers -> how does this tally with their weak lines locally and nationally on crime and disorder? On anti-social behaviour? On drugs? Not to mention their shameless and scurrilous claims about police numbers being cut - in the face of an increase of some 800 plus Community Support Officers in Greater Manchester?
The Lib Dems unfortunately waver between weak and very weak when it comes to crime and disorder.
Also carries news of a hitherto 'secret' Lib Dem organised meeting with police representatives, less than 200 metres from my home, and tonight at 7.30pm.
Immediately text Tony Lloyd MP the details. He is on the train coming back from London and initially thinks he cannot make it. But hurrah he is able to change his appointments and get along. Only find this out at 7.20pm. I am already committed to being there but have had no joy in finding reinforcements.
Although this meeting is of general interest as well as focusing on a recent spate of jewelry burglaries this is a fairly cherry picked audience, plus a few fill ins who read the local rag. There are 60 or 70 people there.
This is the most successful action the Lib Dems have managed since the elections themselves. However as Tony is able to be there for an hour and makes several contributions, and is able to demonstrate that he has access to the chief constable and not just the local inspector or superintendent this is at worst a score draw and we may have edged it.
Cllr Faroz Bhatti who organised the meeting greets me on the way in, looks a bit sheepish that Tony and his assistant arrive soon after, and I shake his hand again on the way out. He says it is good to see me depite the difference in our politics.
I genuinely wonder what his politics actually consist of. Are they different to mine? Does he actually have any to speak of? He has been a councillor for less than 12 months. After one month he was included in their shadow Executive though this is nominal. He has written a curious defence of the Lib Dems' selection debacle in Manchester Withington, including the idea that latter day Libs are not crazy mavericks, that they are serious politicians.
I wrote into the paper at that asking whether that means he is calling the old school in his own party crazy mavericks, that they were and are not serious.
Faroz also stars in a full page advert in Aatish a local Urdu paper and perhaps elsewhere calling for a vote on communalist lines. As the selection debacle continues to rumble along in the papers I expose that nonsense too. Nonsense it must be said which was also typical of the Lib Dem Euro campaign.
Anyway, now it turns out that he is the Lib Dem candidate in Stretford and Urmston. I tell Tony's assistant who is a Trafford Councillor that the local Respect group have chosen to fight there - against Beverley Hughes MP - and that their candidate Mark Krantz, much involved with us over the anti-war effort and immigration matters and so on, has attacked the Lib Dems roundly on their war record.
No-one really knows what if any politics Faroz Bhatti has. None are evident from local Focus newsletters. Yet in less that a year of any political activity he is being put forward as a propsective MP. He has leap frogged over a good number of more established politicians, not least those active in Stretford. Perhaps there is another Lib Dem selection debacle in that seat?
But I digress. The strangest thing about the Lib Dems' burglary meeting, attended by five of their councillors including at least two PPCs, and by six or seven middle ranking police officers -> how does this tally with their weak lines locally and nationally on crime and disorder? On anti-social behaviour? On drugs? Not to mention their shameless and scurrilous claims about police numbers being cut - in the face of an increase of some 800 plus Community Support Officers in Greater Manchester?
The Lib Dems unfortunately waver between weak and very weak when it comes to crime and disorder.
posted by Chris Paul at 9:28 PM
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