During Parliamentary Elections there are often Hustings events. These are often organised by schools, churches or local media. All candidates are often invited but sometimes the organisers are selective about whom they invite - not always fairly.
Wherever we have been the victim of unfair selection I am urging people to protest about selective invitations to hustings. Here is my correspondence:-
Dear All
Please find below a letter that I have written to my Returning Officer regarding electoral expenses, together with a letter that I wrote to Brentwood County High School regarding one of the hustings that I was not invited to.
Please adapt these letters to write to your Returning Officer regarding any hustings that you know that you were not invited to and to the person organising the hustings.
Letter to Returning Officer
Re: General Election 2015 - Candidates Expenses Returns - Hustings
I am writing to put you on notice that there were, I believe, at least three hustings (there may well have been more) in the recent General Election in the Brentwood and Ongar constituency where I was not invited to take part. The Electoral Commission’s Husting Events Rule 8, as enclosed, has made it clear that in the circumstances that not all the candidates were invited to take part in any hustings that the candidates who were invited have to make declaration of the cost of that hustings as part of their electoral expenses.
I am therefore giving notice that I do require this cost to be included in the other candidates expenses forms and require you to reject any of the other candidates’ expenses forms if they do not include these items.
I would confirm that I was only invited to one hustings, which was the Radio Phoenix FM hustings. The other candidates I believe were invited to all other hustings and therefore the cost of each of those hustings should be included in their returns. I am aware that I was not invited to either the Brentwood High School hustings, or Brentwood School hustings or the Anglo-European School hustings. All three of these hustings should therefore appear in all the other candidates’ expenses returns.
Please confirm receipt of this letter.
Yours faithfully
R C W Tilbrook
Chairman
The Headmaster
Dear Sir
Re: General Election Hustings
As you may know, I was one of the six candidates in the recent General Election for Brentwood and Ongar.
I note that you did not invite me to take part in the hustings which your school organised but which the other candidates were invited to.
Perhaps you had not read the enclosed explanation of the rules on hustings prepared by the Electoral Commission, as you did not send me any explanation for my exclusion, let alone the “objective reasons” specified in Rule 6.
Be that as it may, I would now ask you to let me have details of the cost of the hustings and also to confirm that you have notified the other candidates of that cost, which must be included in their election expenses returns as a donation which your school has made to their campaigning.
Yours faithfully
R C W Tilbrook
Returning Officer
B Borough Council
Dear Madam
Re: General Election 2015 - Candidates Expenses Returns - Hustings
Thank you your telephone message regarding my letter to the Council dated the 20th May. I have written letters to the organisers of the hustings, and enclose copies for your information.
Yours sincerely
R C W Tilbrook
Robin,
ReplyDeleteWhat's wrong? Your choice of subject matter to include this and the previous article on Charles Kennedy present to me at least as evidence of contrition,doubt,pathos and worse hopelessness!
The hustings issue,while important, should not become as a convenient subject of grievance that seeks to make it the explanation for ED's appalling electoral results in Brentwood/Ongar.
The stark TRUTH is that the English Democrats in it's current form is unalectable, to include by the way the coming (2016) election's for Police Commissioner's.
So serious do I class ED's current "political" position, it's ' raison d'etre ' if you like,I suggest a full two year moratorium to enable a very serious discussion to take place to try to find out what is wrong with a view to putting things right?
As an Essex boy myself (lived in Harold Hill,schooled in Brentwood, St Helen's and later Dagenham) I am incandescent at your treatment Re; the hustings in Brentwood/Ongar but not surprised given British State (socialist left) instigated Anglophobia.
How the powers that be justify the deliberate imposition of anti-Englishness is beyond me given the political FACT that your Englishness is concessionary, that is Inclusive rather than Exclusive!
What the hell is going on here? How much more do these counter colonialist's want?
Maybe a lesson can be learned from NASTY David Cameron,rather than the NICE Charles Kennedy (RIP). Question? Is English politeness/niceness a vote winner or not? Let the much needed debate begin!
Ukip is going into meltdown. It is near to being completely broke after throwing everything at the general election campaign. Ukip is now in the process of moving from its Mayfair office and downsizing to a much smaller location in Westminster. This explains why the party was so keen to get its hands on the best part of £1 million of "Short" money which Douglas Carswell was entitled to, but refused to claim.
ReplyDeleteUkip is now riven with infighting following its failed "Red Ukip" General election strategy, identified with Patrick Flynn and Suzanne Evans, which cost it seats in the South which it should have won, most spectacularly Thanet South which would have been won by Nigel Farage, had he been on form and not suffering from a bad back, brought on in pursuit of the strategy of targeting the Northern Labour vote. The strategy was successful in terms of votes in the North, but it cost the party those vital seats in the South.
While it took votes in the North by presenting itself as English nationalist, it alienated its traditional supporters in the South by moving to the left.
The English Democrats need to learn the lesson from Ukip of the dangers of overreaching themselves by attempting to move outside of the parts of the country where their support lies before they have firmly secured the ground, i.e., before they have half a dozen MPs and taken control of several councils.
For the EDs, that area is South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, North Lincolnshire and Greater Manchester.
One in three of England’s primary school children is from an ethnic minority — the highest level yet, figures show.
ReplyDeleteThe growth in the number migrants, is putting unprecedented pressure on primary schools. A growing number of schools are having to supersize to cope with the increase.
Pupils from ethnic minorities made up 71 per cent of the increase in primary school numbers