There we have it, following the trend started by UKIP (Paul Perrin, male, 14 and three quarters), Labour (Nigel Jenner, male, 50’s), the Conservatives (Supercop Graham Cox, male, 50’s), and the Lib Dems (Gareth Jones, male, seems mid 50’s), the Greens have followed suit by selecting a candidate who is male, 50’s.
But wouldn’t you believe it, the pesky Green candidate is masquerading as a female, in her 30’s, going by the name Louisa Greenbaum. And slyly, she actually lives in the ward, stood there in May in the local elections, is not just now discovering an interest in education but has two children in a local school where (it is rumoured) she is a governor. Now it is clear that I am showing my bias, putting a green gloss on this candidate because of the hostility I have for Labour that has been evident since I was in the womb.
I hear that Louisa has been the front-runner in the selection, possibly the sole candidate from the outset. Without wanting to provoke the displeasure of my Labour friends, it is clear that on so many levels, Louisa is different from the Identi-kit candidates of the other parties. Last week, immediately after the resignation of the Bishop, I suggested that Labour’s Caroline Penn (female, 30’s) would have made a strong candidate. But on this and many other things, Labour did not listen to me. But never mind. I do look forward to an exciting election campaign, and I genuinely wish all five candidates well. But on the basis of candidates selected, the Greens, followed by the Tories, have made the best start.
Filed under: By-election | Tagged: Bishop, Brian Oxley, by-election, Caroline Penn, Gareth Jones, Graham Cox, Louisa Greenbaum, Nigel Jenner, Paul Perrin, Supercop, Westbourne |
Brighton Politics Blog 
Again a party employee running for office – I shudder for democracy.
P.S. I notice that Louisa was the Green ‘first’ candidate last time – but their second candidate looks distinctly ‘while male and 50 ish’ – by coincidence both candidates live in the ward and have two daughters – however while she lives with her husband, the green second candidate with a partner, not a wife.
http://www.brightonhovegreens.org/localsites/bh/elections/Candidate-teams/westbourne.html
OMG Paul, are there people in Hove who live ‘over the broom’ as we used to call ‘unmarried’ couples? Bet that lowers the property prices! Glad I live in Brighton, where everyone is married (but not all to each other – LOL!) (That’s enough saying ‘LOL!’ now – Ed)
Quit shuddering – 10 hours a week and proves she is good at getting things done, plenty of time available for councillor duties.
Who needs a whip when your candidates are on your pay roll?
I see what you’re getting at but that would imply centralised control from national party, which isn’t our structure.
BPB – re “14 and three quarters” – don’t forget it was you who introduced age as a factor.
If you find age a laughable issue, maybe you shouldn’t have raised it?
The lack of whipping in the ‘Green Party’ does keep me awake at night (now, now – I’m talking about politics here) – how can the good people of Westbourne be confident that Ms Greenbaum would actually implement the ‘Green Party’ ‘manifesto’ if she isn’t politically obliged to? Oh sorry, I’ve just remembered – they’ve chucked most of it out the window! LOL!
When you say LOL for some reason I hear CACKLE…
You can keep tabs on manifesto implementation via the council’s website http://corporateplan.brighton-hove.gov.uk – it’s all out in the open
If by that you are implying that I’m an old witch, you are SPOT ON! Be afraid, very afraid..I’ve got a broomstick and I’m not afraid to use it (to annoy ‘Green Party’ supporters wherever possible and to support Nigel4Westbourne) Oh and LOL! or even better LOLZ! Night night all..zzzzz
I don’t want to unduly worry people in Westbourne, (no – I do actually want to worry them, so forget that bit) but according to her FB profile, the ‘Green Party’ candidate’s activities and interests include “Shouting at Children”, “Drinking”, ‘Morris Dancing’ and ‘Skydiving’. Ooh-er! Wouldn’t vote for her! Vote for Nigel instead. BTW – she’s practically 50 (well,41..) (Bets now being taken on how long before she is ‘whipped’ into editing her FB profile and making it ‘Friends eyes only – LOL!)
Love it haha
Glad to have been of amusement! Now really must get of this laptop (and give it back to the bloke next to me on the train) zzzz
I I know it’s a bit ‘weird’ replying to one of your own posts, but I am new to this..
Anyway, the LL has taken “Drinking” off her FB list of interests and activities! But, Good People of Westbourne, she still shouts at children, and, quite unexpectedly, bathes them.
Oh dear BPB – you really have lost it.
In your excitement to push the green candidate, you not only pushed me up a decade, but you have pulled your beloved Louisa down a decade too…
Not 30’s … but 40’s …
http://www.brightonhovegreens.org/localsites/bh/news/greens-select-westbourne-parent-louisa-for-council-by-election.html
I fear you are squandering whatever good will you have had in the past…
Like trust, good will is hard won, but easily lost, and unlikely to return.
And over a by-election that won’t change the control of the council?
What are you thinking of?
zzz ooh just woke up. So, Paul, if the by-election won’t change the control of the council…(you know what’s coming..) why are you bothering to stand?? (and SOZ Steamie – but LOL!) zzzzzz
It won’t change the control of the council, and an extra green, labour or conservative won’t change what is said or done in the council.
However the addition of someone committed to the interest of the people of the city – particularly those of the ward, of course – from the private sector, who is not bogged down with council, public sector nor political baggage will be in a position to bring forward new, irresistible arguments for change and improvements to the council as the citizens servant.
I care about people, I care about the people of Brighton which is why I blog and tweet and do ‘good deeds’ – all the time, not just at election time…
Actually, the election of a Green is the one result that DOES make a difference to the running of the council. True it doesn’t change overall control, of course, but when a minority administration is running a council, an extra voice and an extra presence for committees etc. can improve the quality of council management and decision-making.
Louisa Greenbaum, another Green who attended one of the foremost girls’ public schools in the country: Leeds Girls’ High School. She wouldn’t be anti academy/free school (which is also mentioned on her FB) if she’d had some experience in having attended a bog standard comprehensive.
There’s Ms Lucas who went to Malvern, Jason Kitcat to Belmont Prep then Worth Abbey. Then there’s the Labour candidate, Nigel Jenner, who went to Brighton College.
Finally the aspirational Tory candidate, Graham Cox, who I believe attended a comprehensive school and managed to become head of Sussex CID.
Hmmm, makes me wonder…!
What makes me wonder is a) how a seemingly nice young man has been duped into being a LibDem Patsy – poor lamb will be well and truly slaughtered; b) how anyone would even consider voting Tory at all, ever (really, I just don’t get that); c) how anyone could be arsed to vote for a joke party (sorry PP) and finally d) how anyone would vote for the ‘Green Party’ when they have done nothing except plan to shaft the City’s economy by doubling parking for traders and visitors and to stick portacabins in school playgrounds and pretend they are dealing with the school place shortage in Hove. You’ve got me all cross now.
Suggest you lie down in a darkened room for a while then it will all become much clearer! Labour certainly don’t have the answers. Think their economic record is a bit tarnished nationally….Traders permits are being opened up so they wont be confined just to the lucky few who had them before. Seems sound economic and fiscal sense for council?
Whats that about licencing Simon?
I had a tweet exchange with Mr Kitcat telling him where the greens had it all wrong – particularly with ‘incumbents advantage’.
Are the Greens poaching UKIP policies already?
Gloria, sweetie, I’m told by one of the Council’s Strategic Directors (Terry Parkin) that a brand new school building would cost £13m. And all they have is £9m which needs to be used on all the schools – and out of which extra school places must be financed.
The previous Conservative and Labour Administrations both failed to sort out an actual whole new school – Connaught apart (after a hugely successful saveHOVE/Action4Kids petition and support from Mike Weatherley. And it took that push to get it too. Connaught had been removed from the Conservative Administration’s short-list!
And Connaught only needed a refurb. Building a whole new school is to be financed how?
So was it a bog standard comprehensive that Mr Cox attended, Linda?
I went to a pretty bog standard comp, and my reaction to that experience is to want standards raised fairly and across the board, not to privilege a lucky few. Then again, I’m not a Tory.
That said, I agree that there are too many public school educated people in positions of responsibility (and aspiring to them, by the look of it). The kind of people boundless confidence with not a lot to back it up – the names Cameron and Clegg spring unbidden to the lips.
That is, of course, a stereotype – albeit one with some truth in it. The obvious counter-point is that people don’t choose where they go to school – it is forced on them by their parents, recalling the words of Philip Larkin…
I believe Graham didn’t even attend a comp’, I hear it was a Secondary Modern school, which did not include the brightest and the best, who were in the Grammar schools.
I agree Clive. Standards have to be raised in state schools, but I believe this has to be done away from local authority control i.e academies and preferably free school academies.
Give parents more choice; let them start their own schools in their area with no selection.
What kind of parents will have the time and resources to exercise this choice? That’s right – middle-class ones. Everyone else will have to bugger off to the underfunded schools that choose not to opt out.
Academies and (worse still) free schools thus deepen inequality while costing the taxpayer millions. Worse still, a tiny amount of private sponsorship confers the right to interfere in an academy’s curriculum – witness the creationist nonsense taught in Vardy-sponsored schools in the north east.
What is wrong with local authority control, exactly? Without it a disproportionate amount of power is concentrated with the (unelected!) headteacher. This power has been abused in several well publicised instances – eg lucrative sinecure posts created for spouses and so on.
If Graham Cox did go to a sec mod then it says something for him – and shows, actually, that selecting pupils at 11 and packing them off to different schools is an absolute nonsense.
My comp experience also means I want standards raised across the board – but faffing around, holding everything back until it can be rolled out nationally, equally, ‘fairly’ etc just betrays those already in the system.
One of Blairs first education ministers said “we need to do blah blah, and we need to start now, we are already failing those in the system” – nothing came of it of course, but I totally agreed with the sense of urgency.
Failing everyone just because its ‘fair’ and ‘equal’ is deeply, deeply flawed — decades on, still waiting for the improvements…
But the point is that the current system doesn’t fail everyone — some state schools are very good (mine was pretty much OK as it goes, way back in the 80s). And some are very bad — and if you are a pupil at a failing school, right here and right now, this inequality is a massive issue, rather than some socialist utopian distraction as you seem to imply.
There was some interesting stuff on C4 news about this tonight, about academies in Lincolnshire hoovering up all the money. Great for them, bad for everyone else.
Brighton Council have actively set up Longhill to fail (presumably through incompetence, carelessness and conceit rather than malice).
And the manipulative, brain-dead lottery+catchment process is an
affront to anyone with a brain – ‘most people get one of their choices’ but only because to choose a school *other* than those the council want you to choose will ensure you end up with the worst possible outcome.
Success in schools will be a free choice to all parents – but them happily choosing their local school all the same.
Wise old Green Machine- Second on the Ballot Paper and the fact that Women tend to vote for Women into the mix as well as a profile in the ward already…We need Hoves answer to Bill Bratton!
That is so patronising to women Nobby. I certainly don’t vote for a women because I’m a woman. I vote for the best person, whatever their gender, age or background!
Not meaning to be patronising- it’s a fact Linda.
Dear Simon N Williams (why do people do that – put their middle initial in their title? It only makes us try and guess what it stands for – my guess here is NUMPTY). Anyway, thanks for your advice about darkened room etc – funnily enough, just after I posted that, I did EXACTLY that! And having spookily taken your advice before you even gave it to me…NO – I haven’t changed my mind. Yeah – Labour got it wrong sometimes – but I doubt even Her Divine-ness Dr Lucas could have sorted out the world banking crisis (which was the real problem – a fact that you and the Torys seem to have conveniently forgotten). Actually, I’m kind of glad that the ‘Green Party’ has released this news just before an election – and can’t wait for that budget! LOL!
Oh and – 05.53?? couldn’t you sleep????
Numpty, giggle
Hi – why do you find early AM posts so strange?
Don’t Labour activists work shifts too? Another sign of your party’s growing disconnect from working people’s issues, maybe?
Putting banter aside, do you agree it’s better to have an open traders’ permit system or the one that existed where a few lucky people got all the spoils?
Please will you / Labour put on public record the way they would resolve this rather than trying to score easy points without solutions.
It seems so ‘opposition’ for your party – and am v glad you’re doing it so well 😉
Look forward to your answer.
Simon N Williams
(Re initials, there are too many of us Simon Williamss, so please allow us a little indulgent initial here and there ;-()
Looking forward to some full on door knocking this weekend with the Labour crew and garnering support.
Parking charges are being massively increased and irresponsible Council tax rises will hit locals hard (especially the less well off). Easy access to hard drugs and legalised
brothels if they have their way. At
last we can start to hold the Greens to account.
account.
Please explain your point the hard drugs and the brothels for the uninitiated (me, in this case). Genuine question.
Working shifts? You a coal miner or something?
I’m still laughing at ‘Gloria’s’ numpty comment!
Dear Mr Simon N Willams (not to be confused with Simon Williams the actor from Upstairs, Downstairs, or Simon Williams the Grand Chess Master or even Simon Williams Estate Agent in Clevedon Bristol).
Gawd, I’ve forgotten what I was going to say….
Clive sweetie – look at the “Green” Manalishi, sorry, Manifesto. It’s in there somewhere..
Hard drug possession decriminalised under Green plans. It sends the wrong messages to Society. I don’t want my kids to grow up thinking it’s ok to legitimise Class A’s and for drugs to be even more accessible, especially in Brighton where our problem is big.
Dear Mr Ghost of Nobby Clarke (I bet those Border Control staff have a right old snigger when you go through passport control….LOL!).
Please can you point me and Linda and no doubt lots of other readers of this Blog to your evidence that women vote for women. I agree with Linda – I vote for the best candidates regardless of gender. Dammit, if offered the choice between a female ‘Green’ candidate and, say, a block of wood I would vote for…..you can guess the rest
Now here’s ANOTHER thing that makes me wonder.. the ‘Green Party’ selected the Lovely Louisa on 23rd November. Less than 24 hours later, the lucky residents of Westbourne receive a personally addressed printed shiny A5 leaflet urging them to “Go Green” – with nice pictures of LL and her “vision” for Westbourne. I found a copy in a recycling bin.
That was flippin’ quick! There are 3 possible explanations:
a) The ‘Green Party’ have got a special machine that stops time and they used it between electing the LL and Thursday afternoon to get the leaflet drafted, approved, printed, dispatched and delivered by Thursday afternoon (hope that machine has got an A+ energy rating LOL!);
b) The ‘Green Party’ had an identical leaflet for each contender printed in advance of the selection meeting and have recycled the leaflets of unsuccessful candidates;
c) There was no selection meeting – the LL was already primed and ready to go and the leaflet was printed earlier in the week, so that the ‘Green Party’ could make a huge splash by being the last to announce at the last minute.
Now, I discount b) because the ‘Green Party’ would never waste paper and money like that. Nobody would. I also discount c) because the ”Green Party’ would never do anything that manipulative and cynical.
In the words of the the late great Sherlock Holmes, once you have discounted the possible, look to the impossible (or it might have been Columbo, I’m so old, I can’t remember). So, ergo, a) is the ONLY explanation. Someone call that nice Mr Cox. (That’s Brian Cox the physicist, not Mr Graham Cox the Conservative candidate -unless he is a physicist as well).
You must have sleepless nights Gloria..
Dear Pepperpot Person,I am tortured by my art – thanks for caring. (sighs, wipes away a tear)
Was the leaflet dated? Louisa was Green first candidate for westbourne in the last election – if not dated, then maybe recycled?
Good point Mr Paul Perrin – that is option d). But TBH, I prefer option a) still.
I mentioned this to another youngster who must remain nameless…
They said “of course the Greens have a time machine – how else could the think communism is a fresh new idea that might work?”
Gloria, I agree with your hypothesis and I love the way you say it. Better than the humourless ‘Divine- ness’ and her followers could ever put it.
Gawd, they’re (Greens) so sanctimoneous!
Well someone’s got to bring some humour to the table. ‘ave a good larf as me old mum used to say..
“… when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth/” Sherlock.
it’s a conundrum, isn’t it!
a) is closest to the truth – our special machine does have A+ energy rating because it’s powered by soup. Quickest turnaround of a publication from printing to dispatch we’ve ever done as far as I am aware.
I see the doorstep training programs have started….
lol….Love Python, haven’t seen such good comedy since…
We need a bit more light heartedness all round right now. Things couild be worse!
An excellent campaigning session today with lots of support for Labour and a large turn out of activists. I do enjoy it.
Many local parents worried about the schools issue. I then managed to rush off to The Prescott, I mean Amex, and see Brighton win.
A good day.