So you and your team were in the area flyposting your own posters at exactly the same time the Lib Dem posters went down? Are you trying to suggest the Lib Dems took down their own posters, to try and frame you?

Come off it, Craig, you have been rumbled in your hypocritical quest for honest politics – you’re fighting as dirty as the rest of them.

As a volunteer with Craig’s team, I can only assess the people I worked with, and the people I met at the HQ and the campaign house. And without exception it felt that people were genuinely excited to be part of something that felt like good, solid political change; cheating was just not on the agenda. I am genuinely concerned if some Lib Dem posters went missing – locals deserve to see the full range of leaflets and posters before they go to the ballot box. It could be dirty tricks by a political party, though equally it could be the work of council officials, or locals annoyed with the leaflet/poster blizzard.

Just as I can’t prove that the CM campaign was not involved, neither can you prove that they were. Since we’re both of liberal/progressive instincts, I’d suggest that you give Craig’s campaign the benefit of the enormous doubt.

It is true to say that the playing field was not even for all the parties, especially in terms of resources and media coverage. But if you prefer the Lib Dem candidate, then you’ve little to complain about in terms of either, I would have thought )

“you’re fighting as dirty as the rest of them.”– Sam Hunt

Looks like an apology might be in order. (And one from eddie would be no harm either.)

Dear Craig

It is a big day tomorrow, win lose or draw, I think you did the right thing in standing.

I wish you all the best.

Regardless of the result, take time at the platform to thank everyone for their contribution in the by-election and maintain a sense of humour.

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

It shows how desperate they are to be playing such dirty tricks. Broon is having a month off (sedation? – he looked like Boris Karloff today) so Mandelslime will be running the country with the war criminal Straw and Harperson. I heard yesterday that Mandelslime is on 38 out of 45 government committees.

I second George Laird’s comment.

Be proud of “Team Murray”, i know I am. At the very least, enduring ‘voter wake-up’ has occued and better: a brave and honest man will enter parliament, in spite of the apallingly (but expected) bad way the BBC has discriminated against your campaign, what with all this ‘history of support in that area’ baloney, by which standard means the tory machinedroid should have got virtually no coverage, and excluded from the laughably called ‘debate’

I really hope you win. You and your ilk are DESPARATENLY needed in parliament, to stop the ship of pirates from wreaking more self-rewarding-general-population-harming.

he sinking ship will sink further more rapidly.

I’ve been silently reading and following the campaigm and thought I had nothing

All the best Craig & Team.

I’ve been silently reading and following the campaigm and thought I had nothing +to say that would advance the cause, so I refrained from commenting+

Good luck Craig,

I’m sorry I couldn’t offer you any help – 200 miles away with small child makes it tricky – but I’m rooting for you.

There is a comment piece on the Guardian cif about Norwich North by election by Cath Elliott,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/22/norwich-north-byelection-candidates

she can’t make up her mind who to vote for, the Greens or Craig.

Looks as though Nulab do not play the game, whereas “Put an honest man into parliament” does. No surprise to your sympathisers. Good luck tomorrow.

May the force be with you.

Craig

http://tinyurl.com/nyb7js

@george

Scarey or what?

“Scarey or what?”

http://tinyurl.com/pz8p49

“Craig cannot do budget air travel, for medical reasons”

HONEST MAN???

Sam Hunt

If you have access to Craig’s medical files, say so.

If not, sod off with your pathetic innuendo.

Best of luck tomorrow, Craig.

Dear Sam Hunt

Since Craig has a documented medical history of serious illness, how does being ill not make him honest?

Sam Hunt, intelligent????

What he can’t take away from Craig Murray and his campaigners is that they had the guts to stand up and be counted.

That is a victory in itself.

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

As George says above, you had “the guts to stand up and be counted”. Good on yer Craig.

Wha’s like you? Too damm few…

Respect to you & the volunteers (some congregated by this blog) who have made a good effort.

God speed to your efforts tomorrow & those who choose to vote for you.

If you can get above 2812 votes, I’d say it was a bloody good result

I just want to make my disgust known at such dirty tricks played, we refute any of the allegations of flyposting aimed at us, all posters put out by the Craig Murray campaign were intended to be removed within 14 days after the election, something we discussed at lenght, thats the law in the United Kingdom and we have not broken its rubberoid interpretations.

I would like to thank the honest firemen of Norwich, I personally still support and believe in their ‘yes’campaing for a fair wage in pointing to this clear breach of electoral law.

Ian, get a grip of yourself.

The firecrews are the first to attend in any of hundreds of different accidents, they are not liars and we thank them for their vigilance and observancy. Thank you.

We will make sure that these pathetic’s will be found, won’t we Norwich Ciuty council?, the whole of NoLabours CCTV controlled City of Norwich will want to expose the culprits, will they not?

Deja vu Blackburn?

Norwich City purchased a CCTV system from Israel, one that was approved by the IDF against Palestinians, so what better than to look for that car, to have a look at it and identify the culprits who defaced legit posters.

I know Chris Ostrowski is ill with the swine flue, I hope he pulls through. After all he is a fellow allumni from UEA and we had to make do with Bob Blizzards second rate performance tonight at the Baptist church in Duke Street Norwich.

Once again it was clear that the honest man campaign presented the more experienced candidate, had the longest, loudest claps.

But I would say that would I not, i’m his election agent. Thankfully, you don’t have to take my word for it, just ask the Baptists of Norwich North and those attending their meeting.

I would like to thank them again for the most appropriate venue tonight, our sincere thanks.

PS : we will investigate the incident reported to us by a Norwich firecrew and take appropriate action, its about time the message gets through to all, you mess with Independents at your own expense.

Best wishes Craig, I hope you get elected.

Respect to all the volunteers; I wish I could have joined you.

I was honoured today to meet a number of Craig’s hugely impressive campaign team. Thanks to everyone on the team who has worked so hard.

Craig was the clear winner of tonight’s hustings at Norwich Central Baptist Church by a country mile, from a strong field including the intense & academic Rupert Read (Green) and the working class girl made good April Pond (Lib Dem). Bob Blizzard MP, standing in for Chris Ostrowski (Lab) simply looked weary – weary of defending the government line, and proof of the democratic necessity of changing the ruling party every once in a while.

And, without question, the least convincing candidate was tomorrow’s probable winner Chloe Smith (Con) who is very young and tried her very best to come across as sweet and reasonable, but who really came across as a standard issue party hack who has been paid for to go on a course in “the common touch for wannabe politicians” and just about scraped the pass mark.

Which is probably what she will do tomorrow as the left of Tory vote is split four ways.

The most telling comment about Chloe Smith is in her own leaflet, the testimony of “Transparent Dave” Cameron himself [not an exact quote]: “Chloe is exactly the sort of person I want to be on the Tory benches when I form the next Government”. Which she most certainly is, dutiful rather thick lobby fodder who won’t rock the boat or do anything whatsoever to challenge the rich elite on behalf of the people.

She’s just about good enough for amateur dramatics, but not the West End stage. I do hope the voters of Norwich North will see sense tomorrow and send the rest of the country a message of real hope that change is possible, not the depressing news that the English public is happy to simply switch from one brand of junk to another.

Genuinely scaring the status quo is as important as winning.

Having said that, I bloody hope you do!

Gordon Brown has ensured the people of Glasgow North East get no by-election until the winter months, showing how he only values working class people when they’re on his side.

I don’t fully support you Craig, but anything to scare this disastorous Government would be fantastic.

Good luck today and no matter what the outcome well done and dont let the bastards grind you down. If you do win I would just love to see the Nu Labour ie Nu Tory reaction

Best of luck Craig.

I see that ‘Unusually for a by-election, counting will not begin until Friday morning with a result due at about 1200 BST’.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8163769.stm

Sam Hunt

What on earth are you talking about? I suffer from “Sticky Blood Syndrome” (look it up) with a history of pulmonary hypertension. Any prolonged cramped position can be quite quickly disastrous, even fatal.

Thanks for that. I thought that was something to do with the newspaper but realize that it is the title of the play.

http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/45522/productions/the-observer.html

Sounds good.

Best of luck for tonight Craig and team.

I take that back. Sir Richard Eyre has been hobnobbing with Brown along with all the other stooges, freeloaders and media trash.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jul/16/chequers-hospitality-gordon-brown

Scottish media not afraid to give Craig a mention – despite long way from NN

http://tinyurl.com/mxhmw8

Hope it went well today at the polls & good luck at the count tomorrow, from many in Scotland.

Good luck Craig! Unlike the majority of the others standing, you’re in it for the right reasons, so you stand head and shoulders above them from the start.

Elections can be a depressing place for a progressive candidate, as everything is stacked against you from the off, as you have experienced only too well. On the other hand, it means that every single vote gained is one TRULY gained, and comes straight from the heart and mind of the voter.

I always consider it a small miracle that anyone on the progressive end of the spectrum gets any votes or support whatsoever considering all the establishment propaganda around us 24/7. We should all be nicely conditioned to the nth degree when you think of all the time, money and effort spent trying to do just that.

Just think of the recent European elections when the BBC tried to convince us all that a perfectly reasonable ‘protest vote’ was a vote for the BNP and that we were all about to flock to the polls and vote Nazi in our millions… the cynic in me would suggest that this is just what the suits that run the BBC was hoping would happen. They love nothing more than a good excuse to move the agenda ever more rightwards, ever more dumbed down and ever more reactionary.

Why has the count been changed to Friday?

I don’t think this has happened before.

Dear All

Any news on turn out and how the voting is going?

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

Craig,

If I were you I’d find out where the ballot boxes are being kept overnight and watch them every minute until the count starts.

The last thing the Establishment/permanent unelected government want is an MP who can’t be bought or molded to their desire.

Even id you don’t get enough votes to win they would still want the number of your votes reduced to put you off standing again.

Just a quick note to wish you the very best for this evening’s voting! I hope NN come out in force for this one.

The only info I could find is

at ukpollingreport.co.uk site here:

http://tinyurl.com/mp2drc

Strange that they are not counting the votes until Friday…

I hope that the ballot boxes are being kept safely overnight & that checks on the postal vote system are rigorous…

“I hope that the ballot boxes are being kept safely overnight & that checks on the postal vote system are rigorous…”

So do I. Of course we can totally trust our election process, can’t we?

The boxes could either be swapped or tampered with. The intelligence services obviously have the ability to do either without detection.

To me this is quite likely given the way Craig’s campaign has been manipulated.

The boxes are being kept under guard at the Costessy showground.

I do not expect any interference or manipulation in the result, as much as it would suit some.

Although Labours antics have been outrageous desperation this last three weeks, and we have the evidence, their candidates swine flu will probably be blamed for his defeat, would not surprise me.

The emergence of more rightwing attitudes throughout society, fostered by noLabour and its simple slogans, is a worrying development. In the European election they could not even be bothered to launch their election campaign on Radio 4′s today programme, their members and supporters abandodned the polls en masse and the result was that Nick Griffin got elected, thanks Lancs.,

The Conservatives have the gaul to say that their European goals are to lead and change the goalposts of the Lisbon treaty.

But how? by sloganising and sitting down with Gypsy haters and homophobes?

not to speak of hardline racists, also vying for his attention, soon the BNP will sit with them as well, their natural home.

Thats the party Cloe has joined and sits with, whatever happens tommorrow. If she gets groomed/touted as an insider already, we can expect to see many more spectacular u turns by her.

Count tommorrow morning, can’t wait.

But who’s guarding them?

eddie?

“Strange that they are not counting the votes until Friday”

http://tinyurl.com/kjf2yc

Good luck later today, Craig. Despite the dirty tricks used against you, you managed to connect with the people of Norwich North. If you don’t win this time, there will be a general election shortly and you’ll have more time to circumvent the media blackout imposed on you.

I know from the last general election that I was monitoring that some of the ballot boxes were not sealed. Please check all the boxes before the count to ensure that they are sealed and if any are not inform the presiding officer and the police immediately I trust this labour lot as far as I can throw them.

Ingo – Chloe has ‘worked’ in the offices of Gillian Shephard (now Baroness) and James Clappison. Both are members of the Conservative Friends of Israel lobby group as is Cameron who is also a Patron of the Jewish National Fund, as is Brown and as Blair was before him.

Is anyone able to say what the turnout was yesterday? I listened to QT last night and got the distinct impression that the audience were totally disillusioned with politicians and with Labour in particular. Hoon was on automatic pilot with his answers and it is no surprise that Hoon has become a slang word for a four letter word beginning with ‘c’.

Best of luck Craig. We’re wishing you all the best from Australia.

The BBC have just reported yesterday’s turnout at 45%. The 2005 general election turnout was 61.1%.

From Al JaBeeb:

“UKIP are still basking in the aftermath of their June euro election success in beating Labour.

However they start from a low base in Norwich North with only 2% of the vote at the last general election and no councillors. They’ll hope to pick up some support from unhappy Labour votes but may suffer if euro sceptic voters opt to vote Tory instead.

Norwich North would not appear to be fertile territory for the BNP and a far cry from the North West where they have managed to gain some support. Indeed the BNP didn’t put up a candidate here at the last election.

Among the others standing are the Libertarian Party, the Monster Raving Loony Party and Britain’s former Ambassador to Uzbekistan who’s standing as an anti-sleaze candidate.

Most will be grateful simply for an opportunity to air their views and gain some limited publicity.”

Hmmm… If Craig is to be grateful for limited Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation publicity, then the BNP should be wanking themselves to dust!

Good live coverage of the count on Guardian Political Blogg

http://tinyurl.com/mmyxwo

As part of its drive to cut costs as part of prudent management of the economy, as well as encourage free enterprise, the party has decided to deliver into private hands the forging of ballot papaers and thr bribing of electio officials, in turn for immunity from prosecution, immunity which is in the public interest, that is, the broader interests of voters. By this public-private partnership, led by a party supporter of long standing who has voluntarily agreed not to increase her £1 million salary this year, we hope to win back the confidence of the public. We also hope by this to convince voters that the Tories do not have a monopoly on encouraging free enterprise.

Well – you beat the BNP!!!!

Well – you beat the BNP!!!!

Results appear in detail in The Independent:

Chloe Smith (C) 13,591 (39.54%, +6.29%)

Chris Ostrowski (Lab) 6,243 (18.16%, -26.70%)

April Pond (LD) 4,803 (13.97%, -2.22%)

Glenn Tingle (UKIP) 4,068 (11.83%, +9.45%)

Rupert Read (Green) 3,350 (9.74%, +7.08%)

Craig Murray (Honest) 953 (2.77%)

Robert West (BNP) 941 (2.74%)

Bill Holden (Ind) 166 (0.48%, -0.17%)

Howling Laud (Loony) 144 (0.42%)

Anne Fryatt (NOTA) 59 (0.17%)

Thomas Burridge (Libertarian) 36 (0.10%)

Peter Baggs (Ind) 23 (0.07%)

C maj 7,348 (21.37%)

16.49% swing Lab to C

Electorate 75,124; Turnout 34,377 (45.76%, -15.33%)

2005: Lab maj 5,459 (11.61%) – Turnout 47,033 (61.09%)

Gibson (Lab) 21,097 (44.86%); Tumbridge (C) 15,638 (33.25%); Whitmore (LD) 7,616 (16.19%); Holmes (Green) 1,252 (2.66%); Youles (UKIP) 1,122 (2.39%); Holden (Ind) 308 (0.65%)

Commiserations. But at least there will probably be another election for the seat in a year’s time, which you can fight if you want to.

How frustrating. Beating the BNP is something to be cheerful about, I suppose, but I had hoped the vote for CM would hit the critical 5% mark. Meanwhile we are faced with some depressing reminders: (a) that some people still have faith in the Labour Party, or that they will vote for them on the basis that they think the Tories would be worse; (b) people are prepared to vote alternately for the Big Two ad infinitum, in the vain hope that right-wing populism holds the answer.

== sigh ==

Notwithstanding, well done Craig and team. A bloody good effort all round. When the donations address is published, I will send a cheque to help with expenses.

I am very sorry Craig. You must be devastated and also knackered. Have a rest and have some time with Nadira and the babe.

When you are ready, I hope you can make some sort of legal challenge about the BBC’s almost total airbrushing of your candidacy and campaign. Their omission of your name contributed greatly to the result and had the effect of diminishing you in the voters’ minds. You were the only candidate who speaks out against the Axos of Evil’s illegal wars, present and past and that is what they couldn’t tolerate.

That should have been Axis of Evil.

I hope the trolls do not visit to gloat.

Dear Craig

I am sorry that you didn’t win; I am disappointed for you and the members of your team.

You have my respect for having tried your best.

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

Even those who voted for the BNP, were voting for something; but what on earth were 6,243 people voting for, a herd of unicorns to fly out of Gordon Brown’s arse?

You may have lost an election Craig, but you maintain your integrity simply by 6,243 people NOT voting for you.

Commiserations, Craig. By-elections are capricious animals, and this one occurred too soon for your forthright message to resonate with the voters. But I’m sure a good many admired you and agreed with you while thinking you would be a ‘wasted vote’.

If you seriously intend to stand again at the general election you need to build upon the local roots you have laid, and shadow Chloe relentlessly for the next ten months, using the local media for all you’re worth.

As the song says, “pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again”. But have a well-deserved rest and family holiday first.

Perhaps the Groucho Marx quote about not wishing to belong to a club that would have you as a member applies in this case.

Commiserations Craig, but you have time to regroup and go for it again, next time with a better idea of who your enemies are and what tricks they will employ. The Establishment has opened its smiling mouth to reveal its hidden fangs.

Mary 1.53: One hates to gloat, or to say “I told you so”. But…..

I am instinctively sympathetic to independents with genuine ideas of reforming politics, but this always looked like a big ego-trip, and I also find sanctimoniousness loathsome.

This was found in spades in the campaigns of both Murray, and the Greens. It is hard wired in both of their DNAs. Shame they didn’t both lose their deposits.

It was matched by hypocrisy when he was called up for fly-posting and bleated that it was “in the rules – somewhere – in Scotland” [I paraphrase].

Also galling is the knowledge that Murray will now clear back off to Dundee and his smug preachy “radical dissident” high horse. His campaign was a sham visited on Norwich and it’s just as well it’s over now.

Craig

You have done well to get nearly one thousand people in Norwich to vote for you. The Tory or Labour candidates wouldn’t have got that many votes without the banner of their parties behind them. You did better than any of the independent candidates by a very large margin.

You did better than the BNP, despite the BBC’s efforts giving the BNP more coverage than yourself. “… the BNP have some support in at least parts of the constituency and they will also, proportionately, be given an appropriate level of coverage by programmes covering the by-election.”.

Shame on you BBC

Honestly, I think your result was pretty amazing. Almost 1000 people turned out to vote for something progressive and inspiring rather than for something stale and destructive (Tory, Labour) or racist (BNP).

They try to manipulate and trick us day in and day out, and granted, a lot of people are easily manipulated and tricked. But a hell of a lot aren’t. There was a total blackout on you Craig, and still a sizeable number of people heard about you and turned out to actively support you, in addition to the sizeable number that voted Green. And believe me, that will send chills of fear down the spines of many who sit in their ivory towers. And so it should.

Your votes came directly from people desperate for POSITIVE change. Despite the endless number of obstacles deliberately placed in your way, those voters heard about you and agreed with you. And THAT is scary to the establishment.

I hope you will see this as just the beginning Craig and be willing to sit down with others on the progressive end of the political spectrum to seriously discuss a united campaign of fighting back together.

This ready prepared puff is on the top of the main UK page of the ZBC website.

There are just a few omissions!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8166769.stm

M at July 24, 2009 3:32 PM:

Well said, I totally agree.

Craig – you lost your deposit but beat the BNP – some kind of comfort. But going from essentially a standard start in an election like this, with the media we have, was not going to be particularly easy.

Boundary changes alter Norwich North for the next election, maybe there’s something in the new seat – or the new Broadland constituency – for you?

“I also find sanctimoniousness loathsome” strikes me as an extremely sanctimonious remark.

Parasite, is your real name Uriah Heep by any chance?

The significant figure in the Norwich North by-election is the 15,000 drop in the Labour vote from approximately 21,000 in the 2005 general election to 6,000 yesterday. This should be sending shivers down the spine of every Labour party worker. And the Tories didn’t do all that well either – they achieved their comfortable win with 2,000 votes fewer than those cast for them at the general election. The LibDems lost about one-third of their general election vote. The only parties who improved on their 2005 result were the Greens and UKIP. So despite the Tory victory whoops, none of the three major parties has any real cause to congratulate themselves.

True to form, Harriet Harman blames the voters for an “appalling” low turnout. Just wait till next year, Hattie dear.

I agree with Anticant’s advice to take a rest. You’ve had a genuine disappointment and must be tired. So take it easy for a bit with your family, till you’re refreshed and better able to think about what to do next.

Craig Murray didn’t lose,the people of Norwich North are the losers.

“that will send chills of fear down the spines of many who sit in their ivory towers. ”

Dream on, losers!!!

“the people of Norwich North are the losers. ”

That just shows how much regard you have for ordinary people and their right to vote.

They have the right to vote, but less than half of them exercised it. Why do you think that is, Sam? Could it be to do with deep disillusionment at a clapped-out self-deluding government, a mediocre opposition, and a rotten system?

I thought not.

Following on from anticant’s comment, it is impressive that the three strongest “minor party” candidates – the Greens, UKIP and Put an Honest Man – got 24.3% of the vote between them, well above Labour’s second-placed 18.2%. This still shows a massive degree of discontent with all the major parties. So Craig, it wasn’t a triumph, but in all the circumstances, it was a pretty creditable result.

As others have said, now you should have a well-earned rest and take some time with your family. Don’t rush to decide what comes next.

We had a superb candidate, who would have made a far far better MP than Chloe Smith, or Ostrowski, or Pond. We also had a cause that was just, and which did “resonate” with the voters. So why did we not do better?

Well, I speak as a lifelong Lib Dem who worked to support Craig in this election – because all the big parties, mine included, really need to be harried by PAHMIP into cleaning up what they are doing.

I was very impressed by many of the innovative campaign ideas which Craig brought in. However, I also saw what I felt were major, and harmful, mistakes in our campaign strategy. Mistakes which, I fear, any big party candidate would have long ago learned by experience not to make. Unfortunately, I didn’t myself get properly involved with PAHMIP until it was really too late for anyone to think about changing the strategy.

Until late in the campaign, we did not really manage to tell the voters in simple terms what “Put an Honest Man into Parliament” really stood for. Our final leaflet and DVD were good, but by the time they hit the doorstep, the voters were punch-drunk, and had pretty much stopped listening to anybody.

Yes, the subtle bias of much of the media is difficult to combat. But it is also going to be virtually impossible to get it significantly changed. We have to cope despite the bias.

Unless someone from outside the two largest parties can overcome these problems and find an effective campaign strategy, we shall shortly be electing a team of slash-and-burn Etonian thugs into government. And then, I predict, an astonished nation will soon discover that it is actually possible to be even worse than Gordon Brown!

Nearly 1000 votes is not a bad starting point at all…and winners are those who know how deal with what might seem like defeat.

It’ll be nice to see Craig fighting on for Norwich during the next election.

Wishing you a long and fruitful time of it Craig. Until the next time then!

@Sam – I do hope you are not trying to be unpleasant. Craig was quite right, and perfectly within his rights, to stand.

Ordinary people have the right to vote as they choose, I agree. But most people – even the “ordinary people” for whom you claim to have high regard – would agree that the media should be scrupulously unbiased, and that each candidate deserves a decent shot at putting their case to the electorate. Craig’s campaign was hampered by a substantial media blackout, precisely as was his evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights. I think, if you were even-handed about it, you’d not disagree with either assertion there.

I’d suggest perhaps it is you who has the dim view of the public, if you specifically support elections in which people are encouraged to vote on brand rather than policy, and on establishment priorities rather than societal ones.

Another popular position, in my view, would be that candidates should win partly based on their hustings performance, and yet no serious observer would suggest that the Labour and Conservative candidates did well in public meetings. NO2ID’s recording – as shaky as it was! – demonstrated a terrible performance from Labour’s Ostrowski (though he had the unenviable task of supporting ID cards, which no other speaker supported – and he was extremely unconvincing).

Across several public meetings, the Conservative fared OK, but was not particularly convincing as a public speaker. Ostrowski was even less so, but he is hampered by substantial public distaste for the incumbent, which to be fair is not his fault! Meanwhile it was generally the Greens and Murray who either had something interesting to say, and whose speaking was best received.

Sadly the public meetings failed to make a substantial dent in voting patterns, though they may well have been a factor in Craig’s support, especially given how unpopular leaflets from all parties were becoming.

Opponents of Craig gathered here are welcome to prefer the Tory if they so choose, but Team Murray and their supporters believe that the public deserves much better than that. I am sure that Chloe Smith is perfectly nice, and fully intends to work hard for the people of NN. But her loyalty to the Conservative party will mean, I fear, that on issues like Afghanistan, the privatisation of health and education, the provision of a strong welfare safety net, and the control of the crazy banking sector, she will vote directly *against* the interests of the people who most need her help.

Which, peculiarly, will include some of the people who on Thursday voted for her. That paradox brings me back to the start of my response – people deserve better and fairer coverage of the candidates and their policies.

I hope genuinely progressive people, like Craig and his team, will keep on trying. To be fair, a Green win would have been good too. The odds are stacked against them, but it is a prize substantially worth winning.

“That just shows how much regard you have for ordinary people and their right to vote.”

eddie

I was stating a fact. There have been VERY few real winners since 1979. A LOT more losers to come in the next few years…Time will tell.

Parasite – Slavery was once legal. Legal does not always mean morally right and illegal does not always mean morally wrong.

Why does some fly-posting of posters make you so angry? Who does it actually harm?

Why are you trying to make so much out of so little?

“I was stating a fact. There have been VERY few real winners since 1979. A LOT more losers to come in the next few years…Time will tell.”…

http://tinyurl.com/lc9w3o