Not so local Troll Paul Brina Brindley (Failed Businessman, Failed Councillor, Hate Merchant, Liar, Rampant Rabid Misinformation Spreader) has taken a view on the Rochdale By-election result. Please before we carry on, remind yourself that Brindley doesn’t live in Tamworth anymore and has not for some time now and yet the man still tries his hardest to make out that he is some sort of authority on Tamworth, the night time economy, local heritage when he has literally failed miserably at all of those things and ran away from the town he professes to have interest in.
So the Rochdale By-election is being compared to potential elections in May. Only Brina is talking out of his posterior again, which is the usual way of things. Barely anyone turned out for this election, just like there was barely anyone out for the Tamworth election. In Labours case, they had to ditch their candidate before the election even happened thanks to his outspoken views. It’s blatantly evident to anyone with half a brain that he would have won in normal circumstances. It’s an anomaly that saw a local businessman grab second place and Labours votes in an area the Tories never had any hope of gaining. Any claims of ‘overturning’ majorities as was said in Tamworths’ by election are absurd, in Tamworth the vote evaporated, it was not overturned.
Let’s get back to the troll. The public “maybe” according to Brina “in majority have woke up to the importance of having people they can trust who have credibility and capability in public serving roles, people over party to affect positive change!”. Other than it being one of his usual mangled hacked up sentences, he asserts the impossible. The public will never know if they can trust a candidate, not ever, not unless they spent a considerable amount of time with them over many years. Quite simply the public most of the time go in blind.
Let’s look at Brina, his reputation in Tamworth is awful, ask around a bit and you’ll find someone who knows the man and hates him, yet he got elected and then quit and caused an expensive By-election due to a tantrum for not getting what he wanted out of it. Look at the Labour party putting up a guy who they knew wouldn’t be able to fulfil a Councillor role before the election. Take a look at our Tory turned ‘Independent’ gaslighting liar of a Councillor Richard Kingstone who engages in election interference just to smugly piss off the group he doesn’t like any more.
You will never know your candidate and they will never get face time with every resident to build any trust. Independent candidates who are truly good people do exist, but they’re an even more unknown quantity than the ones presented by parties who are vetted and formally selected by their peers who are by comparison at least more likely to be decent people. If they aren’t, their party deals with them and holds them accountable, such as Labour in Rochdale. Also real Independent candidates (not the people that quit a party and call themselves Independent Future only to sit as a group) by their very nature tend to not work with a team. Despite their rose tinted promises they will never be able to effect change on their own either.
Anyone with intelligence knows that unless you’re a dictator with military backing, you need other people to work with towards end goals. Those end goals take a long time to get to, if they ever get realised at all, because you can’t just let one person have carte blanche. The idea that these independent people can just charge in and start changing the world themselves is laughable and scary in equal measure, especially when people believe them. If a whole council was made up of independents, would a decision ever get made? Don’t kid yourselves that these people are worth your vote. The only ‘independent’ councillors we have in Tamworth got elected on a party ticket and then reneged on it and let down their voters and colleagues (we might just let Councillor Jan Wadrup off on that one because she had real beef with her party and her position was genuinely untenable).
Kingstone made sure he said all the right things to raise his own profile enough to win on his own the next time he was up, but he’s still a Tory. He, like other ‘independent’ Councillors have the luxury of taking the money, sitting there pretending they’re doing good things for the town, heckling at the incumbent administration safe in the knowledge they’ll never have to make a tough decision or deliver anything worthwhile. Yet people vote for them. You might not like or know everyone in a football team personally, but you still stand by the whole, their ethos, and you hope for good results, if they don’t deliver then they get relegated.
Ultimately, participate in elections knowing what the ethos of a party is when it boils down to it. What type will they revert to when they get in and don’t have to worry for a few years about being booted out. We know how National Socialism winds up when apathy sets in and it’s left to run its course. More luck than judgement has prevented that from happening in this country, because of our lovely floating voters appetite for ‘change’. Oh and Brina, keep your nose out, it’s not ‘your’ election.
