S.R.M

[mk1]

You/we should all work together to achieve the common goal of eradicating the Labour dominance and cronyism in this town.

How is that possible when the Local Tory Party supports every Labour move?

We  might also reflect that Wells runs the Tory Party the same way The Fa*tty Belchers run Labour-as a vehicle for  their personal interest.
Wells loves being in total control of planning issues in Hartlepool and it has nothing to do with politics.
Until Shane  attacks Wells for his backroom deals with the fa*tty Belchers then he is putting  Party before  people.

[steveL]

Any discussion on this matter is utterly pointless unless and until the local Tories are prepared to admit that they have a cuckoo in their midst. What is the point in going on about what Shane did or did not do when his own group leader routinely sticks two-fingers up both at him and well publicised national Tory policy?

It's not rocket science, Wells has sold out the local Tories in order to get each of his whole group a seat on the Planning Committee for his own personal reasons. As a result, the three Tory councillors are regarded by PHF and everyone else on the council as simply being three 'extra' Labour votes.

Who'd have thought it - Rural West being the supplier of three solid Labour votes? That's quite a coup for the A-Bs.

Don't you think it's a little ironic to be talking about Tories and PHF 'working together' to act as opposition to Labour when you can't even persuade the 3 councillors that you have to do the same? 

[DRiddle]

Whataboutthisthen, let me rewind a little a make you aware of how I met Shane, and basically how I came to get involved in local politics at all.

Back in April 2012 I was working at a local college/school.

It was approaching the May elections which happened to be an 'all out' due to the boundary changes.

Anyway, as someone who is very aware that our town is politically very apathetic, I tried, in a very small but hopefully significant way, to do my bit to address that. I contacted various local councillors/would be councillors and organised a 'hustings' where the candidates were able to talk to around 250 students of voting age and tell them why they deserved the students first ever vote in a local election.

From memory, the people who responded to my request were as follows:

Jonathan Brash (Labour at the time)
Stephen Akers-Belcher (Labour, apparently)
Jim Tighe (Liberal Democrats, I initially asked Arthur Preece but he was annoyed at the short notice of the invitation)
Steve Latimer (Putting Hartlepool First, who I didn't know from Adam at the time, as I think i'd initially contacted Geoff Lilley)
Christine Blakey (an independent at the time who i'd seen in the paper a lot about local political issues)
David Ninn (as above) and ................
Shane Robert Moore (Conservative, although initially I had invited one of their actual councillors, Ray Wells I think, but it ended up with Shane coming along instead).

Various people declined my invitation including two councillors who were, at the time, Manor House councillors.

Each of the people named above addressed the audience of young people to talk to them about why they should vote (in a general sense), and why in particular they should vote for THEM.

In some respect I admire ALL of the people above, as they are actually THERE, in the arena, getting involved in local politics. Although obviously my views vary widely as to the suitability of each of them as councillors.

Later, Shane, Steve L, Jonathan Brash, Pamela Hargreaves, Cath Hill and Eric Wilson (UKIP) amongst others participated in a 'Question Time' style event I organised for similar reasons as to why I organised the hustings in May 2012.

Again, in many respects I admire all of the people above in so far as they are amongst a VERY SMALL minority of people actively involved in trying to make a difference via politics in Hartlepool.

Shane has my number, my twitter, we talk face to face from time to time, he KNOWS my beef is NOT with him. Likewise, i'm confident he has no personal issue with me.

However, my genuine opinion is that he is doing himself a disservice as long as he mentions the words 'Ray Wells' and the word 'conservative' in the same sentence.

Mr Wells is, in my opinion, not a true Conservative.

His voting patterns, public statements, political decisions, media sound bites and so forth could not BE more  juxtaposed to those which one would expect from a true Conservative.

The frustration expressed toward Shane by people who use this site stems from that.

Nothing more.

I have no problem with Shane, he knows that. However, until he's willing to acknowledge that Mr Wells is no closer to being a Conservative than Karl Marx, Frederich Engels, Che Guevera, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky or Fidel Castro I don't really see how this situation goes meaningfully forward.

[ARC86]

It will be interesting to see who gets a seat at the table first Shane or SteveL.. even more interesting if they both fight for the same seat