a) The Tory MP for Shipley, Philip Davies, is a pretty controversial character, from what I've heard. Very reactionary hard-right-wing by all accounts. People like him are the perfect illustration of all that is wrong with the current Tory party.
Its actually unclear if he will stand again. However I have never yet voted for him, and frankly given his track record probably never will.
b) General elections are for electing the Government, so if you vote for a Tory MP of any description, even a socially-liberal pro-equality pro-EU one, then you are explicitly voting for 5 more years of Sunak, woke-bashing, immigrant-bashing, and little being done for public services.
So a vote for Labour would be a vote for Corbyn....? Just saying...
I KNOW we maintain a fiction that you vote for the candidate but you don't. You vote for the party and thier representative. That representative doesn't stand on his or her own policy agenda. They advocate the national policy platform and so by they should be judged on that.
This is where you and I differ. I do believe we vote for candidate first, and party last. And I do believe in keeping them to their promises, and accountable when they don't.
I would be MORE than happy to move to a local based representative elected on thier own agenda but that would imo be practically difficult for a national government. At least you get to vote for a Metro Mayor ( I think) which is much more locally based. I don't have that luxury.
Oh yes, West Yorkshire Mayor. Whoopie. Chuffing. Do. Don't worry, you're not missing anything.
We are well on our way to getting another shiny map of the proposed tram network that we might see in 50 years time at the current pace. Meanwhile our bus station is falling down and nobody from Bradford Council or West Yorkshire Combined Authority want to talk about what the plan is even after several months. Oh and bus services continue to be dialled back, which is probably a good thing given the lack of somewhere for them all to stop given that the city centre has been pedestrianised and stops are limited to a loop around the edge. And even then not all the stops are ready yet, even though the loop came into being on Sunday. Oh did I also mention some rail services have been dialled back too.... Yay West Yorkshire Mayor...
I could go onto to years of horrific mismanagement of Bradford and the surrounding towns under Labour, loss of business confidence in the area, loss of facilities, shops, pubs, worsening services, rising Council Taxes, worsening roads, threat of bankruptcy, etc etc. Yes some of this can be laid at the door of the Tories, but everything the Labour Council touch seems to turn to crap, or in the case of the bus station concrete dust.
I really have zero reason to believe that a Labour government will do any better, and so I will stick to my strategy for voting.
Incidentally, although the BBC report quoted already is quite thorough it doesn't mention the journalists targeted, of whom two are known by self-declaration, neither having fallen for the trap. The police, however, did initially report a journalist as well as 2 MPs had provided an image of themselves requested by the unknown bluffer. This is almost certainly a journalist involved in the political world, and one has to wonder if it is one connected to the Mail newspapers. Just a thought.
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Come to think of it, he might have been watching Massey-Horners, or something sounding similar.
