Hustings tonight (& why Dan Thomas won't get my vote)

Do go along and ask some questions about anything at all affecting the borough of Barnet (potholes, parking, outsourcing, depot relocation, rubbish collection, shrinking libraries, broken computer systems, missing backups, anything you fancy).

Mr Mustard doesn't get much involved in politics, per se, but thought he would tell you why he won't be voting for John Dan Thomas (apart from the obvious reason that Andrew Dismore works really hard) and no-one has yet knocked on his door to canvas his vote, or phoned him, and this tweet about Mr Mustard is the reason

Mr Mustard does not vote for candidates who display a lack of maturity (and he was trying to shield Gabriel who always has perfectly civil conversations with Mr Mustard which both parties enjoy, he doesn't need his hand holding)(and this attempted insult from the council which brought us the soi-disant graph of doom which wasn't factually accurate).

You vote for whoever you like or don't dislike!.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Hospital Parking - Pay & Dismay (Credit: Andrew Boff AM)

Pay and Dismay

What a pleasant surprise for Mr Mustard to stumble over. A well written short report on hospital parking which Mr Mustard is pleased to reproduce, with due credit to Andrew Boff AM, to a slightly wider audience.

Mr Mustard completely agrees that pay on exit is the fairest method of payment and that reliance on pay-by-phone excludes certain sections of society.

Barnet Hospital doesn't come out very well in this report and Mr Mustard ponders as to what the GLA can actually do to improve the situation (and they might as well bear down on Local Authority parking at the same time as Barnet Council subsidise council tax by issuing tens of thousands of PCN).

The perennial problem is that hospitals usually want more money and parking is an easy source to tap.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Mr Mustard's wise counsel

Mr Mustard doesn't only criticise from the sidelines after the event although there is nothing wrong with that and one can't stop the council making their own mistakes in secret which is where all the big decisions get taken. After Brian Coleman lost his GLA seat Mr Mustard had a think. Brian is a great loss to the blogging community simple in the light of the sheer amount of material he produces (has anyone else had a blog which listed 101 reasons not to vote for them?) but it would be better if he showed the sort of behaviour becoming of the pillar of a community that councillors are supposed to be (and we do have some in Barnet) and so Mr Mustard decided to write to Brian suggesting a change of image, and this is what he sent from his mrmustard@zoho.com email address which Brian is not very keen on as Mr Mustard isn't real (although there was a real name and address included):

4 May 2012

Dear Mr Coleman

Today has been a bad day for you. You have managed to turn a majority of, in round numbers, 20000 into a deficit of the same quantum.

This is, in my view, because you have taken so many unpopular decisions and not listened to anyone, least of all the residents and because you are too direct with people (some would say rude). You might recall that you threatened me with the police which rather guaranteed a vote for your opponent. I wouldn't have voted for you if you had been the only candidate on the paper.

I am looking ahead to 2014 and you might think that Totteridge is a safe Conservative seat on Barnet Council but if you carry on the same as you have done recently there is the possibility that you could also lose that. Mr Cornelius is also pursuing some unpopular policies but he is scrupulously polite and affable and that will save him.

If you want to be more certain of getting re-elected in 2014 in Totteridge (assuming you decide to stand and not start a new career of some sort) then I think you need a new approach.

It would involve:-

listening to others
treating them with respect
carefully considering their opinions
not forcing your own opinions on them
accepting that bloggers are part of the political landscape in 2012
reversing most of the decisions you have taken recently ( i.e. reduce CPZ charges and install parking meters, keeping public parks public and so on).

You need a complete change of mentality and image. You need to become Brian "Cuddly" Coleman or some other more people friendly image.

Please don't reply straightaway. Please think about this for a few days and then respond, or simply delete this message unanswered.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Mr Mustard didn't put a read receipt on this email and so doesn't know if it was ever opened (too many councillors - labour and conservative but not lib-dems - delete unread messages that Mr Mustard and/or his alter ego send - you are going to be outed soon) and an email reply was not received.

Mr Mustard has noted however from this recent local newspaper report that if the message did get read by Brian it did not get through. Oh well, at least Mr Mustard tried.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

The Ascent of (one) Man

Mr Mustard hopes that you like history as he is going to delve into GLA elections back to their first year, the year 2000.

Party	Candidate	Votes
Conservative	Coleman	41,583
Labour	Gordon	41,032
Lib Dems	Davies	22,295
Green	Dunn	14,768
London Socialist	Udwin	3,488
UKIP	Nielsen	2,115
Maharishi N.P.	Derksen	1,081
Total		126,362
Turnout	136,384	35%

The number of people who vote for the local candidate can be less than the number who turn out and vote for the mayor.

Look, Brian only won in the year 2000 by 551 votes (if only 551 people had not done this...). That was when hardly anyone knew who he was. Surely after 12 years of going his own way and making many decisions that have proven to be very unpopular enough people will vote against him to send him on his way?

Here are the results for 2004.

  

Party	Candidate	Votes
Conservative	Coleman	47,640
Labour	Anderson	36,121
Lib Dems	Simpson	23,603
Green	Dunn	11,921
UKIP	Nielsen	8,685
Respect	Wheatley	5,150
Total		133,120
Turnout	135,034	38.4%

There you see the effect of about 5,000 previous labour voters who switched to the conservatives, a majority of 11,521. Turnout up a little but not a significant turnout.

On to 2008

Party	Candidate	Votes
Conservative	Coleman	72,659
Labour	Gavron	52,966
Liberal Democrats	Russell	22,213
Green	Dunn	16,782
UKIP	Nielsen	3,678
Christian	Adebayo	3,536
English Dems	Stevens	2,146
Left List	Hoefing	2,074
Veritas	Dare	510
Total		176,564
Turnout	180,007	47.8%

There has been activity on Twitter suggesting that low turnout is favoured so that Coleman still gets re-elected but given that with a much increased turnout in 2008 a doubled majority perhaps a lower turnout would be preferable. Naturally, one needs the right people to turn out and the right ones to stop at home.

You can see from the above that voting for any candidate other than the Conservative or Labour one is unlikely to lead to your first choice vote winning. Much better to vote tactically in the Anyone But Coleman method to try and make sure we free ourselves of his tyrannical yoke. The five candidates this year are

Coleman - Conservative

Dismore - Labour

Richards - Lib Dem

Poppy - Green

Corby - UKIP

Only the first two have a serious prospect of winning and a recent ComRes poll had Dismore 1% ahead but that poll was based on a small number of electors.

We have had enough of Brian Coleman, please vote Dismore.

Please ask your neighbours and if they ask 2 friends each and so on ( remember the story about the sage who asked for grains of rice from the king with 1 one the first square of a chess board then 2 on the second and then 4 on the third and so on ) by the time20 consecutive requests have been asked by everybody then 1million people will have been asked which is mote than the size of the electorate.

We need this sort of exponential growth to get rid of Brian. If would be great if the effects of blogs and twitter could be measured and maybe they will be one day.

For now, this is Mr Mustard doing his bit to say please let's not suffer Brian and his little ways any longer.

Please hold your nose and Vote for Andrew Dismore (whatever your party allegiance. You can still vote for Ken or Boris and against Brian).

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard