John Clare is officially The Green Party candidate!

John's General Election blog

I read that John Clare was finally officially selected as The Green Party candidate for Huntingdon. Finally, the Greens have got their candidate up and running. The Green Party website has slightly changed for this reason.

John has also started a blog. Good thing, but the blog is missing on thing - an imprint.

And the General Election passes Huntingdon constituency by!

Thought I would take a look at the political party websites. First off the incumbent.

Jonathan Djanogly and The Conservatives. www.jonathandjanogly.com has a piece on the Djanogly's relief at campaign start. Huntingdon Conservatives have no change. The St Neots Conservatives are still stuck in 2009, though it has been said it should be 1909.


Moving onto the main contender to Djanogly, the Liberal Democrats. Looking at Martin Land's website there is no change. The Huntingdonshire Liberal Democrats are stuck admiring Vince Cable. The Liberal Democrats St Neots page is stuck in 2008.

Onto the next contender UKIP. Again you would be pushed to find a general election going on here.

Of the other contenders, The Green Party is still stuck in 2009. The governing party, Labour, can't be bothered to change their local website. Lord Toby Jug hasn't got a website. The Independent candidate - Jonathan Salt has a fine website, which most of the local parties would be proud.

Local websites updates

And there have been a couple of changes. For all the media talk about this being a blogger or twitter election, the local parties don't seem to agree.

They have had a slight clear up of their website. Dakers has been finally removed from this site months after he resigned from HDC. Catherine Hutton has finally been added to the list 9 months after being elected. The site is still promoted by Peter Brown who resigned as Agents in August 2009. Far into 2010 the diary is still in 2009 mode.

This site has yet to change. So much for the St Neots Conservative Councillors Group who don't seem to be able update their own website.

Whilst the Fenstanton by-election win makes the headlines there hasn't been anything since. The St. Neots page is still looking way back at the 2008.

Nothing happening here.

Nor here.

There is no actual website. 

The site hasn't changed.

Winkball

I recently received the following e-mail:

to snrednek,

Dear Lord Toby Jug

We are planning on coming to central Cambridge this Fri 5th Feb and would like to organise as many interviews as possible from 1pm onwards. Filming will take a max of 5 mins. Please contact us as soon as possible to arrange a time. Many thanks, Rachel

WinkBall.Com, the popular video communication site, is interviewing every prospective parliamentary candidate (PPC) in the build-up to the General Election.

It represents a further opportunity for PPCs to communicate to the electorate.

The process is very simple: WinkBall will give candidates up to 3 minutes “to have their say” – the candidate can decide what he or she wants to cover, the interview will then be posted alongside the other PPCs in each constituency link on the website.

All interviews will be posted online in a non-political, non-partisan way and will be available to everyone.

To give you a feel for the website, please see the following links to the 2009 Labour Party Conference, the Conservative Party Conference, and Faces for the Forces, a campaign to collect 1 million messages of support for our Armed Services:


http://www.winkball.com/walls/news_reporter/Conservative_Party/

http://www.winkball.com/users/faces

http://www.winkball.com/walls/Street_Reporter/MPs_Candidates_and_P/


Yours Faithfully
Rachel

Pamella Bisson
07723 407 724

Rachel Lewis
07903 521 540

Snow excuse! Another month without political literature

Winter is still here. Snow has been on the ground. There was a bit of traffic disruption. But all this made it onto my doormat via people delivering to each house. This month I even got a District Wide.
So what is missing? Not one leaflet from any of the political parties who want me to vote for them. Nor, it seems, has the winter leaflet from Djanogly got through. This cost £2,867.47 and was paid from the taxpayer funded Djanogly's Parliamentary Communications Allowance.

If anyone has had this delivered please e-mail me here: snrednek@rocketmail.com

2009 County and Euro Elections analysis

The 2009 Euro Elections were held in tandem with the County elections. This gave a chance to compare local election results where few parties stand to the Euros where many parties stand. This analysis can show where voters moved from the main parties to minor parties.

The County results were roughly the following: Conservative: 23,950 Liberal Democrat: 14,150 UKIP: 3,900 Labour: 2,984 Green 1,440 Others: 566	At the Euro elections: Conservatives: 16,543: (-7,407) Liberal Democrat: 6,498 (-7,652) Green: 3,332 (+1,892) Labour: 2,421 (-563) UKIP: 10,422 (+6,522) Others: 7,812
The difference between the two elections are as follows: Conservatives: -7407: Liberal Democrat: -7,652 Green: +1,892 Labour: -563 UKIP:  +6,522 Others: +7,246	The others are: BNP: +2,377 ED: +930 UKF: +1,354 Animals Count: +343 Christian Party: +656 Jury Team: +226 No to EU: +482 Libertas: +354 Socialist Labour: +280 Independent: + 332 OMRLP: -566

Conservatives: They lost a large minority of their support between the local elections and the Euros. I would suggest much of this support went to UKIP. But not all. Some went to the Jury Team, Libertas, UK First and the BNP.

Liberal Democrats: A total disaster as their local vote didn't translate into their Euro vote. 54% of their local support went elsewhere at the Euros. Some of the vote went Green but many others must have voted UKIP or even BNP.

Labour: This was a bad election for Labour who were beaten into 5th place in the Euros behind the Greens and not much in front of the BNP. The loss in Labour vote is not explained by a transfer of voters to the BNP. It can be explained by the transfer of votes to other left wing parties.

UKIP: They did very well at both local and Euro elections. With the Euro vote UKIP is the number 2 party behind the Conservatives.

At the Euro elections the Conservatives got 35% of the vote. The Liberal Democrats failed translate their local vote to their national vote. It was UKIP gaining support for both Conservatives and Liberal Democrats which saw its vote rise to become the second party in terms of votes.


In conclusion: At the General Election the electors vote to return a candidate to Parliament. It is obvious that if you vote for Djanogly you vote for this expenses scandal tarnished candidate. Voting for the UKIP candidate you will be voting for change in Parliament. I say vote UKIP.

Profile of John Clare - Green Party parliamentary candidate

NOT JOHN CLARE

Not much on this candidate. He has stood a couple of time in Huntingdon. In 2007 be got 62 votes. At the 2009 County Elections John stood in the Huntingdon Division and gained 606 votes, beating both Labour candidates.

jdwclare@hotmail.com

General Election Candidate Profiles

Over the next week I'm doing a little series on the party candidates for the forthcoming general election. So far they are:

Lord Toby Jug - Official Monster Raving Loony Party
Anthea Cox - Labour Party
Jennifer O'Dell - United Kingdom Independence Party
John Clare - The Green Party
Jonathan Djanogly - Conservative Party
? - Liberal Democrats

As the months roll on and further information becomes available I will republish revised articles. Until then....

All these found on my doormat. So what is missing?

In the lead up to Christmas I saved up what I found on my doormat for one week. The above picture is what I found. Through the cold weather I received 2 local newspapers, 4 leaflets and 1 newsletter. This has been the rough level of literature coming through my door on a weekly basis. What is missing? Well any messages from any of our local political parties. Since the Euro/County election on 4th June 2009 I have received no political literature through my door.

Propaganda rags from Councils, YES. Messages from my political representatives, NO.

The reason why I set up this blog "Why are they being so quiet?" was our political parties and representatives are not communicating with electors. The new year has started off the same.

Local Party Political Websites Update!

Well not so much an update. Rather just saying NOTHING has changed since I last reported on these websites. I have found one more website to be added to the list which is the UKIP site.

Has anyone had any political literature recently?

When it comes to low turnouts at elections the political classes feel it is the electors fault they don't come out to vote. But what have we heard from the political parties since the Euro Elections in June 2009? I've had no leaflets through my door. Nor have the local political parties updated their websites.

With Djanogly expenses, 2 damning SNTC audit reports, HDC in a mess and more, I would have thought I would have received at least a leaflet or even seen the websites being updated. Our local political elites are staying very quiet over these issues.

The next elections are going to be boring. Simply because no one will be campaigning. The turnout will be down and who will the politicians blame? The Voters of course!