Monday – 13 January, 4pm – Culture Portfolio meting
6pm – Labour Group meeting
Tuesday – 14 January, 5pm – Sidegate Primary School, Steering committee
Wednesday – 15 January, 9am – Ipswich Borough Council Planning Committee
Thursday – 16 January, 6pm – Scrutiny Committee
Friday – 17 January, 7pm – IFT screening of Mandela film – ‘Long Walk to Freedom’
Saturday 11 January, 10am – Labour campaigning – South West Ipswich
Christmas holidays seems ages ago now as I have a meeting or campaigning every day this week, but with the long aim of returning a Labour Government in 2015 as the ultimate prize the hard work, I am not complaining about the busy agenda.
This week we have seen the local politics blog, Ipswich Spy shed itself of its last coat of neutrality with an attack on a respected Labour Councillor.
To be fair it has been hard for ‘Spy’ to remain neutral as it has almost become a ‘one man ‘show and as that lone writer is a former Conservative councillor it has always been obvious where his loyalties would lie.
But as we get closer to 2015 he may see that he has to lead for the Tories on the social media front with Ben Gummer having one of the most outdated websites of any MP in the country but even his site his more up to date than the local Tory site which seems to have given up the ghost of providing any information to Ipswich residents.
On twitter the writer is now using his own account as well as the ‘Spy’ one, he might as well change the handle to ‘Ben4Ben’ .
Recent examples of the Pro Tory stance has been his post about travel Ipswich, Spy mentions that we did not mention any meetings with Graham Newman, forgetting he attended an area committee where Newman had been invited the Labour Chair and that also the now monthly meeting that Graham Newman is holding where all IBC councillors are invited was because of the pressure put on Mr Newman and SCC by Labour transport spokesperson, Sandra Gage.
The attack by ‘Spy’ was on one of the most respected councillors in Ipswich, John Mowles. When I was seeking to be elected, John was the person who helped me the most and since I have been a councillor he has continued to mentor me. If I could just be as half as good as John at sorting issues for residents, I would be one of the top four councillors in Ipswich if not the whole county. So why suddenly the attack on John? Why has ‘Spy’ just become another means for Cllr Terry to continue her attacks on anything Labour attempts to do – joining the ‘Flyer’ in printing anything she wants without checking the facts – prefabs and Ransomes just been two examples where we only get the ‘Terry’ version of events?
The answer is on ‘Spy’ itself. When the ‘Spy’ one man show attended the opening of new Council Houses, it seems he was not invited into the Council House this lead to Mr Redsell writing this comment: “If he thought he got a tough time before, he ain’t seen nothing yet!”
Nothing more dangerous than an angry partner or an ignored journalist!
Good news is at least we now have an Ipswich Conservative website that is updated! Conservative Spy!
Wonder if Tim Yeo sent ‘Tory Spy’ a Christmas Card?
FOOTNOTE
Just to make this clear, it is just my opinion that Ipswich Spy has become less neutral over the last few months, only having one real contrubuter being the main reason for this. That is my opinion and by looking at the posts on 'Spy' you can formulate your own opinion.
The world is about opinions, the Mail today (again) accused the BBC of being left wing after the last episode of Sherlock! Again just an opinion.
Ipswich Spy refutes my claims, and I for one hope he adds to his contributers as the blog certainly needs a voice from the left within its team.
Showing posts with label Ben Redsell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ben Redsell. Show all posts
Sunday, 12 January 2014
Sunday, 6 October 2013
What is regular? - Yet another 'pop' at Ben Gummer! (Not John)
Recently, Ipswich Spy has started a regular Saturday Diary column- I say regular because as the name of the column indicates it comes out each Saturday - you could call that regular.
In this weeks column, Ben Redsell mentions that I do not have the best working relationship with our local MP, the Tory Ben Gummer. That point I can't or would not want to argue with but where I will be critical of Ipswich Spy is their comment which seemed to wish to compare my criticism of Mr Gummer with some of the attacks the daily Mail has made on Ed Miliband in the last week.
Ipswich Spy wrote: "Cllr Ross used to regularly target his father, Lord Deben, in an attempt to get at his son. He doesn't do that anymore, which is just as well given recent events."
Now I know I have mentioned John Gummer in the past but was certain that I had not made a regular habit of targeting Lord Deben.
Now Ipswich Spy is not the first to accuse me of this act this week, Tory Councillor Nadia Cenci, used twitter to say that I had attacked John Gummer to get at Ben, this tweet was in a conversation about the attacks on Ed by the Daily Mail - which Nadia Cenci seemed to be defending.
I did email Ipswich Spy, as I thought they would have checked all my blog posts to see how many comments I had made about Gummer Senior. No answer so I decided to check myself.
I first mentioned John Gummer in a blog post in 2007 and since then have mentioned him another 3 times, so that is 4 posts that John Gummer is mentioned in, the same period has seen me post 530 blog posts - so is 4 out of 530 regular? Two of those mentions were in 2007, one in 20010 and I repeated a 2007 post in 2012!
Now did Ipswich Spy just take Cllr Cenci's tweet and think there had been a series of posts about John Gummer? Now I have not checked all my 18,000 tweets or comments on other blogs but I would think you will find that even on twitter the number of tweets mentioning John Gummer would be less than 20 (out of 18,000)
The other point on the blog posts the four posts were not all attacks on John Gummer. One did show a picture of him feeding a burger to his daughter and in another post it mentions that Ben Gummer was one of the few Tory candidates attempting to get elected for the first time who did not mention the expenses scandal- I indicated this maybe was because Chris Mole was never accused of mis-using his expenses whilst John Gummer did seem to spend considerable amounts on looking after his garden, including a claim for removing Jackdaw nests!
So I think the comment from Ipswich Spy is wrong- and to try and link it to the attacks by the Mail on the Labour leader is just in poor taste. So the only real link with the Daily Mail is the poor research that has taken place with the original Ipswich Spy post, something the Mail might be proud of!
Looking back through all the posts that mentioned Ben Gummer there had been critical posts, and even apologies plus a well done (for getting Chantry school back on the rebuilding programme.) The attacks on Ben had been on various subjects, from his silence on NHS matters, use of interns and his own attacks on the capabilities of councillors. But there was one recurring theme and that was the poor quality of his MP website. Now in his defence it is not paid for by public money but I for one would be happy if it was - as long as it provided Ipswich residents with a service and source of information.
In the past I have criticised him for the website being so out of date, when I mentioned that his performance data was over a year out of date this then caused Cllr Cenci to attack me, claiming it was due to all information being wiped clean at the start of the year, not for the first time she was wrong. We were then told that his campaign manager was going to take the role on and we did suddenly see the data on casework updated but she never did get round to updating the information on 'Ben in Westminster'. But since August they now seemed to have again stopped updating the performance data on the website, maybe his campaign manager is now spending time campaigning?
But maybe it is time for Ben Gummer to either tell his staff to update the website, or remove the sections that have not been updated, or even inform people reading his website that it is not up to date as he saving public money by not spending on it. Ben can be congratulated for not using any public money on his website but I am sure many residents would be happy to see public money used as long as it is correctly claimed for and the website provides a service to Ipswich constituents - something it current does not - and I can't even blame John Gummer Senior for that!
In this weeks column, Ben Redsell mentions that I do not have the best working relationship with our local MP, the Tory Ben Gummer. That point I can't or would not want to argue with but where I will be critical of Ipswich Spy is their comment which seemed to wish to compare my criticism of Mr Gummer with some of the attacks the daily Mail has made on Ed Miliband in the last week.
Ipswich Spy wrote: "Cllr Ross used to regularly target his father, Lord Deben, in an attempt to get at his son. He doesn't do that anymore, which is just as well given recent events."
Now I know I have mentioned John Gummer in the past but was certain that I had not made a regular habit of targeting Lord Deben.
Now Ipswich Spy is not the first to accuse me of this act this week, Tory Councillor Nadia Cenci, used twitter to say that I had attacked John Gummer to get at Ben, this tweet was in a conversation about the attacks on Ed by the Daily Mail - which Nadia Cenci seemed to be defending.
I did email Ipswich Spy, as I thought they would have checked all my blog posts to see how many comments I had made about Gummer Senior. No answer so I decided to check myself.
I first mentioned John Gummer in a blog post in 2007 and since then have mentioned him another 3 times, so that is 4 posts that John Gummer is mentioned in, the same period has seen me post 530 blog posts - so is 4 out of 530 regular? Two of those mentions were in 2007, one in 20010 and I repeated a 2007 post in 2012!
Now did Ipswich Spy just take Cllr Cenci's tweet and think there had been a series of posts about John Gummer? Now I have not checked all my 18,000 tweets or comments on other blogs but I would think you will find that even on twitter the number of tweets mentioning John Gummer would be less than 20 (out of 18,000)
The other point on the blog posts the four posts were not all attacks on John Gummer. One did show a picture of him feeding a burger to his daughter and in another post it mentions that Ben Gummer was one of the few Tory candidates attempting to get elected for the first time who did not mention the expenses scandal- I indicated this maybe was because Chris Mole was never accused of mis-using his expenses whilst John Gummer did seem to spend considerable amounts on looking after his garden, including a claim for removing Jackdaw nests!
So I think the comment from Ipswich Spy is wrong- and to try and link it to the attacks by the Mail on the Labour leader is just in poor taste. So the only real link with the Daily Mail is the poor research that has taken place with the original Ipswich Spy post, something the Mail might be proud of!
Looking back through all the posts that mentioned Ben Gummer there had been critical posts, and even apologies plus a well done (for getting Chantry school back on the rebuilding programme.) The attacks on Ben had been on various subjects, from his silence on NHS matters, use of interns and his own attacks on the capabilities of councillors. But there was one recurring theme and that was the poor quality of his MP website. Now in his defence it is not paid for by public money but I for one would be happy if it was - as long as it provided Ipswich residents with a service and source of information.
In the past I have criticised him for the website being so out of date, when I mentioned that his performance data was over a year out of date this then caused Cllr Cenci to attack me, claiming it was due to all information being wiped clean at the start of the year, not for the first time she was wrong. We were then told that his campaign manager was going to take the role on and we did suddenly see the data on casework updated but she never did get round to updating the information on 'Ben in Westminster'. But since August they now seemed to have again stopped updating the performance data on the website, maybe his campaign manager is now spending time campaigning?
But maybe it is time for Ben Gummer to either tell his staff to update the website, or remove the sections that have not been updated, or even inform people reading his website that it is not up to date as he saving public money by not spending on it. Ben can be congratulated for not using any public money on his website but I am sure many residents would be happy to see public money used as long as it is correctly claimed for and the website provides a service to Ipswich constituents - something it current does not - and I can't even blame John Gummer Senior for that!
Sunday, 13 May 2012
Why Labour won the Election in Ipswich
The election now seems ages ago but it was just 10 days ago that the people of Ipswich put their trust in a Labour run administration in the town.
A number of other local websites have already posted and debated why Labour did so well or as in most of their blogs – how bad the Tories and Lib Dems did!
There is no doubt that the national political picture helped Labour in Ipswich and the Ipswich Tory website is already blaming their defeat on the economy and other Tory bloggers on ‘mid-term blues’. But even after 12 years of a Labour Government, we were still holding our own in Ipswich. The Tories have only been in (shared) power for 2 years.
It can be quite amusing for us to watch the other political groups tear each other apart as they look at someone to blame. We have the former Ipswich Tory Chair blaming Cameron and closer to home Cllr Terry, we have the Tory Gipping candidate blaming the wet day and then launching a very personal attack on the former Tory activist who writes for Ipswich Spy and then to top it off we have the independent candidate blaming the mother of the Lib Dem candidate.
The Lib Dems got their excuses in before polling day, blaming the heavy rain for their lack of door knocking – nothing to do with a lack of members then?
As I said before there is no doubt the weak budget and the poor leadership of Cameron did cause the Tory vote to stay at home and many will now believe in Ipswich that the Lib Dem vote will never recover from joining the Tories in a coalition. In most of the Borough they now find themselves in fourth place behind the Greens.
But the success of Labour in Ipswich can also be put down to the hard work we put in, not just in the 5 week ‘short’ campaign but every week since 2010, in fact we had increased our work and started more focusing campaign in 2004.
We had an increase in members and activists after the General Election defeat in 2010 and it was good to see a number of those who joined IN 2010 elected to the Borough Council last week. But I would also put down our success to our discipline, we do not agree on everything but our arguments/discussions are kept within the Labour Group room, compare that to the latest Tory in fighting and the reported in-fighting over the Bixley candidate selection.
That loyalty and feeling of being a united group helps create a great campaigning team- each day of the campaign (even in the rain) we had up to 20 members out all over the Borough, and on a number of occasions we had over 35 members out. The national party also helped with the visits of two ministers and our MEP. We saw the Tories out on the doorstep but obviously short in numbers (and morale). The most I ever saw was 7, and they looked very disorganised. There may be more Tory supporting blogs but even on the Social Media front we were way ahead, the Lib Dem website only re-launched a few weeks before the campaign and the Tory website never had any mention of the election or candidates – it still has Tanya Maclure down as a councillor.
On twitter- we kept our supporters updated on local news and on how the campaign was going. We even had twitter followers join us out on the doorstep.
I do not want to give the Tories (and Lib Dems) advice on how to campaign and win elections but maybe they just have to see what we were doing yesterday- 20 of us out in South West Ipswich delivering leaflets- just 9 days after the election and the Lib Dems can’t even use the ‘heavy rain’ excuse this weekend for their lack of activity.
So why we may amuse ourselves smiling at the Tory in-fighting we will continue to campaign hard with the Suffolk County Council elections and the 2015 General Election as our next two key targets.
A number of other local websites have already posted and debated why Labour did so well or as in most of their blogs – how bad the Tories and Lib Dems did!
There is no doubt that the national political picture helped Labour in Ipswich and the Ipswich Tory website is already blaming their defeat on the economy and other Tory bloggers on ‘mid-term blues’. But even after 12 years of a Labour Government, we were still holding our own in Ipswich. The Tories have only been in (shared) power for 2 years.
It can be quite amusing for us to watch the other political groups tear each other apart as they look at someone to blame. We have the former Ipswich Tory Chair blaming Cameron and closer to home Cllr Terry, we have the Tory Gipping candidate blaming the wet day and then launching a very personal attack on the former Tory activist who writes for Ipswich Spy and then to top it off we have the independent candidate blaming the mother of the Lib Dem candidate.
The Lib Dems got their excuses in before polling day, blaming the heavy rain for their lack of door knocking – nothing to do with a lack of members then?
As I said before there is no doubt the weak budget and the poor leadership of Cameron did cause the Tory vote to stay at home and many will now believe in Ipswich that the Lib Dem vote will never recover from joining the Tories in a coalition. In most of the Borough they now find themselves in fourth place behind the Greens.
But the success of Labour in Ipswich can also be put down to the hard work we put in, not just in the 5 week ‘short’ campaign but every week since 2010, in fact we had increased our work and started more focusing campaign in 2004.
We had an increase in members and activists after the General Election defeat in 2010 and it was good to see a number of those who joined IN 2010 elected to the Borough Council last week. But I would also put down our success to our discipline, we do not agree on everything but our arguments/discussions are kept within the Labour Group room, compare that to the latest Tory in fighting and the reported in-fighting over the Bixley candidate selection.
That loyalty and feeling of being a united group helps create a great campaigning team- each day of the campaign (even in the rain) we had up to 20 members out all over the Borough, and on a number of occasions we had over 35 members out. The national party also helped with the visits of two ministers and our MEP. We saw the Tories out on the doorstep but obviously short in numbers (and morale). The most I ever saw was 7, and they looked very disorganised. There may be more Tory supporting blogs but even on the Social Media front we were way ahead, the Lib Dem website only re-launched a few weeks before the campaign and the Tory website never had any mention of the election or candidates – it still has Tanya Maclure down as a councillor.
On twitter- we kept our supporters updated on local news and on how the campaign was going. We even had twitter followers join us out on the doorstep.
I do not want to give the Tories (and Lib Dems) advice on how to campaign and win elections but maybe they just have to see what we were doing yesterday- 20 of us out in South West Ipswich delivering leaflets- just 9 days after the election and the Lib Dems can’t even use the ‘heavy rain’ excuse this weekend for their lack of activity.
So why we may amuse ourselves smiling at the Tory in-fighting we will continue to campaign hard with the Suffolk County Council elections and the 2015 General Election as our next two key targets.
Wednesday, 17 September 2008
Vote for Roy Burgon
Tomorrow will see a by election held in Woodbridge, Suffolk. The election is for Town, District and Suffolk County seats. The election was caused by the Tory, Ben Redsell having to resign after being found guilty of serious sexual offences.
On Monday myself and a large group of Ipswich Labour Party members joined our comrades from Woodbridge and Felixstowe in campaigning for the Labour candidate, Roy Burgon.
It made a nice change from trampling the streets of Ipswich and we were treated to a beer and some lovely food afterwards- so it was not all work!
It is also important that even in an area that would be seen as Tory- we are sending out a Labour message and not just giving up on places like Woodbridge, that is the sort of policy that has led to the Tory Party still totally missing from area's like Liverpool and large parts of Scotland. After reading the Tory leaflet it makes one even more determined that we should continue to fight all seats in Suffolk. It was a leaflet that on one side made no sense with what looked like an attack on the Lib Dems but making no mention that it was the behaviour of the Tory Councillor that had caused this election. More strange is that the Tories have a different candidate for each different council. On arriving in Woodbridge it was nice to see a Labour poster up in a house opposite Notcutts Nursery.
A good night but one did go away feeling that it is the party members in Woodbridge who are being let down by the behaviour of some of our parliamentary members- I am not asking for MP's to just always toe the party line, but it does seem that once the going gets tough there is little loyalty shown by many MP's.
Maybe instead of going to conference, they should be sent out to campaign in seats like Woodbridge and actually listen to what the voting public and Party members want rather than be panicked by the (a Tory run) press.
Woodbridge- not known as a Labour heartland?
On Monday myself and a large group of Ipswich Labour Party members joined our comrades from Woodbridge and Felixstowe in campaigning for the Labour candidate, Roy Burgon.
It made a nice change from trampling the streets of Ipswich and we were treated to a beer and some lovely food afterwards- so it was not all work!
It is also important that even in an area that would be seen as Tory- we are sending out a Labour message and not just giving up on places like Woodbridge, that is the sort of policy that has led to the Tory Party still totally missing from area's like Liverpool and large parts of Scotland. After reading the Tory leaflet it makes one even more determined that we should continue to fight all seats in Suffolk. It was a leaflet that on one side made no sense with what looked like an attack on the Lib Dems but making no mention that it was the behaviour of the Tory Councillor that had caused this election. More strange is that the Tories have a different candidate for each different council. On arriving in Woodbridge it was nice to see a Labour poster up in a house opposite Notcutts Nursery.
A good night but one did go away feeling that it is the party members in Woodbridge who are being let down by the behaviour of some of our parliamentary members- I am not asking for MP's to just always toe the party line, but it does seem that once the going gets tough there is little loyalty shown by many MP's.
Maybe instead of going to conference, they should be sent out to campaign in seats like Woodbridge and actually listen to what the voting public and Party members want rather than be panicked by the (a Tory run) press.
Woodbridge- not known as a Labour heartland?
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