Yes, he really said that. London Tonight, the news programme on ITV, this week carried a piece on the Battle of the Bush and featured each of the three main candidates - Shaun Bailey, Andy Slaughter and Merlene Emerson.
But it was Bailey who was the real focus of the piece, and hardly surprising when he came out with phrases like that. The piece is quite funny in places, as the commentator mocks the Tories leaving their campaign HQ for being "all mwah mwah" and then the woman who confronts Andy Slaughter saying at first "I've got a bone to pick with you", then in response to Andy's "please, not in front of the camera!" saying he was the best thing since sliced bread.
Andy goes on to make the point that he is the only local candidate standing for the constituency, and that Bailey is an outsider, while Emerson urges people to choose neither Lab nor Con but Lib.
Bailey himself talks about black politics to a far greater extent than I am aware he has done before, at least publicly. Which is all fair enough but I wonder whether he went a bit far with the slavery comment. And anyway, where were his advisers - metallic shades in front of the camera?!
Pity they didn't ask Bailey about his charity expenses as featured in today's Times.
ReplyDeleteOuch. You mean this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7100347.ece
"The independent examiner said that the charity’s accounts showed that £15,952 worth of payments were made from a budget of £201,859 “without any supporting records"."
According to Bailey, "What you are dealing with is a kid from the estate who had a good idea to do this and never had a wider view of accountants and lawyers. We have raised this money, spent it on the kids. We just didn’t know."
Um. So apparently, he's the charity's Chief Executive. Shouldn't he have known? Even that you have to keep receipts?
It would be probably be more forgivable if he hadn't been so full of righteous anger about Slaughter's expense claim for a £90 pen nib - and how clean he himself was in comparison.
Worse, he sent a letter to his supporters specifically attacking for charging £100-250 petty cash each month *without receipts*, saying:
"[Slaughter] said, 'I believe the expenses system needs complete reform to ensure no MP can profit from it,' yet expense records show he claimed between £100 and £250 of petty cash each month - cash given without the need for a receipt. Still, he claims to have some of the cleanest expenses in parliament!"
And the charity of which he's CEO didn't know it had to keep receipts for £16k?
Oops?
If any politician has to have different voices for different people it says to me that this person knows how to play the game, which is exactly what seems to be happening here and lets face it, the Tories do not seem to have enamoured people from Shepherds Bush recently, nor the general public from Hammersmith. People should be thinking about who has helped them in the past to get where they are today and not choose any party who benefits them just because they have managed to move up the ladder with the help of another party. I think when we start having polo events for the rich in our local parks it is giving a clear message as to who is welcome in the Borough and who is not, along with the gerrymandering which is defined many times on the net, and the meetings with property speculators which has again been shown to be admitted on videos posted on the net, sends me, I am sure, among others, a clear message as to what is really going on.
ReplyDelete