fond as I am of the formerly independent Tony Jones, I thought I should remind my grateful readers of his previous activities re deselections. I was inspired to do so by reading his blogpost below (thanks for the chocolate teapot image Tony, that is bound to come in handy)
I take great care to avoid these blogs being labelled "misleading and inaccurate" so I feel duty bound to pass on the fact that I have received several urgent and urging messages insisting that Richard Willis will not be the next leader of the Conservatives on Reading Council.
I'm told that "Chocolate Teapot" Cumpsty (their description, not mine) is to be dumped in favour of Mark Ralph, Peppard Tory colleague of Willis and the recently axed Jamie Chowdhary.
Other Tory councillors must now start to look nervously over their shoulders and wonder who will be next.
The return of the nasty party? It never really went away.
Now, where to begin? Tony Jones has represented several wards in Reading, one of which at least selected him as a candidate when they deselected the sitting councillor, a scheme in which present councillor Jan Gavin was active. In 2004 when Reading Labour succeeded, at the third attempt, in deselecting yours truly, Tony Jones had been putatively Martin Salter's preferred candidate for the role of Replacement. (The then leader David Sutton's preferred candidate had been Jon Hartley, whose bid was scuppered by having it leaked to His Master's Voice by Salter: HMV journalists confirm this). Prior to the actual deselection, in November 2003, a Reading Labour soiree was arranged at a Caversham curry house. Here it was that Tony Jones, having understood, or been informed, that he could not get the votes in the party to deselect me, planned to make the announcement that he would not be a candidate, and here it was that Martin Salter turned up, prepared speech in hand, to anoint Tony Page (who was there with his partner) as the Man To Save Us All From The Evil Griffiths Who Wins Elections. Unfortunately for all concerned I got wind of this event and turned up myself. The look on Mr Salter's face when he walked into the room and saw me there was worth it all. Hugely entertaining stuff.
Just so we know...
Nasty party, hein?
4 comments:
Winning elections is SO last century, after all..............
Natch.
Do tell us who was the sitting councillor de-selected and which ward and whether Tony Jones provoked this, or was just the lucky beneficiary of a planned de-selection?
No, it was largely the nasty Gavins manoeuvring, Tony Jones just happened to benefit, especially as the message to members there was that a woman was required as that ward had always had male councillors - so they selected Tony. Go figure. But thrrrp, it was a long time ago, nobody much cares any more, I just like to remind of previous track record...
I believe it also happened in another Reading ward where he became a councillor (when he lived outside Reading).
As a union official, he negotiated on behalf of his members employed by the council.
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