The Lib Dems held on to Riverside despite an excellent Labour campaign with an excellent candidate.The Council reported the result as follows:
Anood Al-Samerai was elected last night (13 December) as a councillor for the Riverside ward. The results were: • Anood Al-Samerai – Liberal Democrat – 1,114
• Cormac Hollingsworth – Labour – 691
• Rahoul Bhansali – Conservative – 260
• Amanda Penfold – Green – 122
• Fernando Grace – UKIP – 49
Ballot papers counted: 2248 (12 rejected). Turnout was 24.7 per cent. Yesterday's by-election was prompted by the resignation the Paul Baichoo (Liberal Democrat).
The vast majority of Riverside residents who could not be bothered to vote now have another Simon Hughes bag carrying careerist "representing" them instead of a local person like Cormac who would have challenged this entirely rotten Lib Dem/Tory Coalition instead of another insider who will no doubt be rewarded soon with a highly paid Executive position to work for Simon at the Rate Payers expense?
On the Hibs front they are the midst of a real slump losing again against Inverness Caley at the worst time possible with a busy Christmas schedule. They have Falkirk at home tomorow and then I will see them against Rangers and Motherwell and on their curent form I can see myself watching 2 home defeats backk to back! Still good to see Rangers dumped out of the Champions League!
On Sunday I will be at the Emirates to see Arsenal hopefully beat Chelsea and go into the new year at the top of the Premiership! Cant wait!
4 comments:
John, this is possibly the most ungracious concession message I've seen for some time.
What you are nastily calling bag-carrying careerism, i.e. working for an elected politician, also applies to at least two of your colleagues and probably others either now or in the past.
What Ms. Samerai does professionally on a daily basis is respond and take care of items of casework for Simon's constituents. It's highly relevant experience for someone seeking to be a Councillor and she's very good at it.
Evidently the voters agreed, an increase in the Liberal Democrat majority at a time when we're running Council and have had a tough year in the media, must be considered a huge result.
If you experienced hostility on the doorstep perhaps you might stop to consider that it could have had something to do with the type of campaign you ran with everything from this pointless bitchiness, to race-hate smears against your opponents by your Leader.
The only person I have some sympathy for in the result is Cormac. The result reflects more your party and group than him personally. In fact without him your vote would probably have gone down. He will no doubt be elected somewhere one day.
Given Peter John's performance and comments in this by-election perhaps there will be a vacancy for him soon in South Camberwell?
I am sorry that John Friary feels this way about racism in the campaign.
If any candidate was going to be the victim of racism it would surely be someone called Anood Al-Samerai rather than the only white male candidate.
Erlend Watson (Anood's Agent)
Don't know much about the election but I did for regular citizens, we found it hilarious that when running in Camberwell, your Lib Dem candidate talked about 'full funding for the centre of the Borough'. Now she runs up north and accused Labour of 'trying to divert funds to Camberwell and Peckham'. I don't have a lot of time for any of the parties in Southwark because you all are allowing your petty party divide impact our daily lives. LibDem/Conservatives bring home bacon for their bits and punish Camberwell because we're Labour. I doubt it would be any different if Labour were in charge - they'd hit back at you by punishing your wards. It's disgraceful.
To explain to anonymous.
This is about what is called Section 106 money.
When large developments happen in an area the developer in effect puts in a legal sweetener for local residents to compensate them for inconvenience and lack of or loss of amenity. This money is meant to be spent on the residents whose area has been mucked about. So with a lot of developers mucking about Bermondsey residents this money is meant to be spent in Bermondsey (same applies to other areas with development).
Other pots of money are for areas with different problems and are spent fairly in my experience everyone complains there is not enough).
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