Monday 15 October 2007

If all this talk of a Conservative revival is getting you down...

Election Results: Thursday 11th October 2007.

Horsham DC, Holbrook West
LD Belinda Walters 602 (43.9; +11.1), Con 554 (40.4; -6.5), BNP 163 (11.9; +11.9), Lab 52 (3.8; +0.2), [Ind (0.0; -16.6)].
Majority 48. Turnout 32.2%. LD gain from Con. Last fought 2007.

Chippenham TC, Pewsham
LD Mark Packard 493 (58.8), Con 346 (41.2).
Majority 147. Turnout 19.5%. LD gain from Con.

I think these speak for themselves :o)

5 comments:

Peter Hartwell said...

Why do so many people, even Prime Ministers, look upon Opinion Polls as if they were "The Word of the Lord"? If it goes on like this the Bible will have to be amended with an eleventh commandment:- "Thou shallt not question the findings of Opinion Polls".
Please look at the real votes in real ballot boxes.
There have been 15 council by-elections over the last three weeks right across England and Scotland.
Ten seats were held by the incumbent Party BUT five seats changed resulting in a net gain of THREE seats for the Lib Dems a net LOSS of one seat for the Tories a net LOSS of two seats for the Indies and +/- 0 for Labour.
There were huge swings to us in some of the seats that we did not take this time but surely will next time. The biggest losers were the Tories. They did gain one seat from Labour but that was mainly because the BNP did not stand in that seat this time. You may recall them crowing about their wonderful local election successes at their Party conference. Those successes (sic)were the one seat they gained but they forgot to mention that we had taken two seats from them the week before.
One of the seats we gained with a huge 58.8% share was in one of our winnable seats - Chippenham.
So please look at the real votes in future.
Let's get on with the job, stop rocking the boat and make sure that we prove the pollsters very wrong in next years elections.
Naturally the media has jumped on this story in the hope of creating a split in our Party.
Why no mention of the good news of Michael Meadowcroft returning to the fold?
I think we need to be stricter with invoking that part of the Constitution which says that a member can be expelled for bringing the Party into disrepute!

Peter Hartwell
Fulham

Anonymous said...

The problem is that we are squeamish, or rather the senior people in the Party, are about urging broadcasters to give equal time to the three parties.

For instance, say an issue is reported on in a South West seat where we are a clear second - that broadcaster should give second refusal to us not Labour.

The reporting should reflect voting patterns.

If it's a national issue we should get equal billing not this labour/tory ding dong battle. If it is such a battle (such as the Draper/Dale exchange after QT this week) then NO mention should be made of the Lib Dems unless positive or we should have a right to reply.

Trouble is - who's going to the barricades?

Anonymous said...

I understand the anger but surely this is an issue of the freedom of the press, any moves to restrict how the news agenda is made, or enforce certain quotas or standards of behavious is surely illiberal! I'm afraid all that is left is to change opinions by persuasion!

Now, the state funded BBC are a different matter :)

Anonymous said...

Peter Hartwell's very good at dictating what our members should think and say. More votes were lost because he antagonised so many members and supporters.
He's the opposition's greatest ASSet.

Bob said...

Peter Hartwell is just a joke. He needs to grow up.
Our party is struggling to survive thanks to people like Hartwell who make it a laughing stock with their crass comments.
Expel our members indeed! Our Lib Dems are deserting us because of loonies who cannot keep quiet and have to open their mouths at every opportunity, even when they have nothing intelligent to say.