Obviously 11 newsletters in a week did not appear on John Leech's election expenses return of which I have a copy (which anyone can get hold off from the Electoral Services Unit in the Town Hall, Rm 118 I think). The claim was riddled with problems in my view. I don't know why the Electoral Commission are not clamping down on what looks like such gross overspending. They even burnt every copy of one of their leaflets. The example that leaps out of course is the £17 for phone calls when Leech's hard working campaign included phoning hundreds and hundreds of constituents - during the election period. there were I understand at least three landlines in his HQ. The Central candidate nonsensically paid half the rent there. And for a third of student leaflets which were not it seems distributed in any city centre halls. the Gorton candidate also. His mummy was on the 'phone to Tories on the day. There's hard working and there's cheating. And ignoring the spending limits to put out 11 leaflets in a week or ring thousands of people for £17 is BOTH. Cheating hard that's what.
Anyway this strand is supposed to be about Lib Dem hypocrisy in respect of the arms industry. The A160s that strafed (word = punished) people in Somali were most likely loaded with munitions from Raytheon. Which incidentally appears to be connected to Texas Instruments, who have moved on somewhat from scientific calculators. Rennie is apparently still a shareholder and director of a PR firm lobbying for cluster bomb makers while also campaigning against them. The warlord/jailbird who is interim pres in Somalia said Bush had the RIGHT to kill SUSPECTS by aerial bombardment. If Saddam's end was gross and a sectarian lynching we can at least say this was precise. No one else got killed. Once again the Might Makes Right brigade have bombed innocents to possibly get a criminal or two. Leech meanwhile is standing with this Lib Dem arms industry gross hypocrite. He should not be. He is very weak and very foolish in my opinion.
Going back to 2005 John Hollicker. The Lib Dems were clever and Labour complacent. Myself and many others were working hard in countless other constituencies, including Rochdale that we also lost but also various safer seats. Clearly if there had been better information we would have been able to pile bodies into Withington during the last week and perhaps saved the day. We could not however have printed 10 times as many leaflets or even 2 times and stayed within the rules. These doubts about Leech's honesty on expenses go beyond 'insinuations'. It was as clear as the dreck in your bin.
