No wriggle room for Martin Terry

I have very little desire to spend much time commenting further on Martin Terry’s increasingly surreal blogs. He responds to my previous post by claiming I failed to provide context.

Well I posted not only Martin’s comments, but the entire article from the Echo so that there could be no question of misrepresenting the context.

Besides how much wriggle room is there in the words ‘ I agree with EVERYTHING (Anna Waite) said or ‘What she said was entirely right’

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Independent leader damns himself with his dishonest and fake comments (with evidence).

I suspected when I posted about Martin Terry on Saturday that he lacked the self awareness to stop incoherently ranting about me, ‘bilge pumps’ and whatever other phantom evils invest his mind.

What Martin Terry didn’t realise is that to an extent I was counting on his response as a basis of bringing something rather interesting to light.

Martin Terry has made great play of the offense he takes from my ‘supposed’ comments about single mothers. Never mind that he regularly misquotes or misunderstands what I said, he describes my comments as a disgusting attack, blighting single mothers, as spiteful, nasty, shameful and disgraceful. He also repeatedly calls for my resignation.

So why would I repeat all these accusations? Well let us take a look at the Southend Echo newspaper of February 29th. This was the Echo’s second story on this topic.

As part of this piece the Newspaper gives a comment to the opposition. A whole box set aside so we can read the views of the opposition councillors, and who did they pick to give this comment? Why none other than the fulminating Martin Terry, leader of the Independent party.

And what did Mr Martin Terry have to say about my comments? Why, he said that he totally agreed with them.

Expanded and unedted section from article in Southend Echo from 29th February 2012 showing Martin Terry’s comments. See below for context.

Not that I should resign, or that he was appalled or even that he agreed only in part.

No, he stated that he TOTALLY AGREED with them. Let me quote him again where he says “what [Anna Waite] said was ENTIRELY RIGHT“.

There is more than enough  hyperbole in politics and I have no wish to add to it by making exaggerated comments or personally insulting the guy, especially when his rants say more about him than I could. But who, in all honesty, can respect Martin Terry, or have him as their party leader, when he carries on like this?

You can read my comments on Southend Town Centre here

Independents- A New Dawn? Hardly- they can barely hold a conversation, let alone run a council.

It might seem an odd choice of website to promote, but I would urge anyone thinking of voting independent to visit Martin Terry’s blog. He seems to have a rather creepy case of ‘mentionitis’ about me (8 highlighted references to someones name in a single post does come across as slightly obsessive). It’s not how normal adults generally conduct themselves. He’s sort of a ‘real world’ internet troll.

Anyway his central theme that I am somehow controlling the local conservative party is (perhaps sadly from my point of view!) as entirely false as the rest of the innuendo on his blog. The post of chairman is mainly concerned with administrative and organisational issues. It can certainly be a busy job at times but it doesn’t involve setting or determining ‘policy’.

I genuinely find it quite sad that the residents of Westbourough have to be represented by someone like this. What do you think officers of the council make of his ranting and raving? I think his behaviour on council was embarrassingly poor at times. I have huge respect for the professionalism and independence of Council staff  but someone as aggressive and unpleasant as Martin Terry is an almost totally ineffective advocate for his residents.

He talks on occasion about some sort of post-parties collaborative council, but at a very fundamental level the man is not capable of collaboration because he is so fixated with attacking anyone who disagrees with him – no matter how trivially obvious it is to everyone else that he doesn’t have a clue what he is talking about. I remember as a portfolio holder him shouting at me in full council because of some comment in a report and when I later read the report I realised he had completely misunderstood it, and I do mean completely.

I think that’s what bothers me about the independents. I was a councillor for a long while before the ‘independents’ started to win any seats and for that time disputes between local politicians were about policy and principles. However, a lot of what the independents say is – and I don’t know whether it’s dishonesty, or that they don’t understand, or don’t want to understand – so far removed from the reality of what is going on that discussion become impossible.

Instead they run very personal campaigns which seem to primarily work by making as many outrageous claims as possible and relying on enough people currently mistrusting politicians that some of it sticks. In national politics there is a competitive media and plenty of rescources to ensure that overtly cynical politics gets exposed. In the local arena we’re far more reliant on a deal of goodwill, honesty and integrity from candidates. Sadly if there were three words that don’t generally characterise independant campaigning they would be these.

How can anyone have a debate with someone who can’t go two minutes without spitting something about ‘Anna Waites Tory boys’ (sic). If a conservative candidate put up blogs like that about a labour or liberal democrat I would personally ask them to take it down and  point out that politicians, as public servants, should conduct themselves with a greater degree of professionalism. I would expect the Labour and LibDem parties to take the same approach.

Anyway, I don’t generally complain about what people have to say about me – it’s not nice but if you’re in politics it comes with the territory – however, I feel this kind behaviour almost reinforces the idea that somehow places like Southend can’t do ‘grown up’ politics. If you were sat in Whitehall or Westminster reading a blog like that would you be persuaded of the benefits of localism and greater autonomy for local authorities? I wouldn’t.