This is going on all over the Occupied Territories at present. In other places it appears to be the IDF.

At Wadi Fuqeen, one of the eye-witnesses said:

“Whoever was awake ran towards the sound to defend the village. There were a few young settlers with tools destroying some trees close to settlement. When they saw the villagers they began insulting and shouting at us.

The security of the settlement focused the light of their cars towards us.  Luckily, the Israeli soldiers arrived and began to take the settlers away from the fields. But settlers did not stop threatening and saying that it will not be the last one but more attacks will come later and not just on trees. The soldiers tried to calm down the villagers and they understood the anger that they had. They prevented a big incident to happen if they were late.”

This can be seen as a red light because once, a few weeks ago, one of the villagers heard settlers saying at the entrance of the village. “do not worry in two years there will be no village of Wadi Fouqin”.

So the IDF are a bit all over the place.  However, there is some very good pressure being exerted by Lib Dem peer Sal Brinton who has an oral question down in the House of Lords asking what the UK government is doing on this subject, given the change in the Israeli coalition that might exclude at least some far-Right elements.

To read more about the Friends of Wadi Fuqeen visit http://wadifuqeenfriends.com/.  They are one of a number of excellent Friends groups that help Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories.  They deserve your support.

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I am talking about the speculation that the Government is preparing a ‘Plan B’, in the plausible eventuality of Lords reform stalling.

It is right at this time that growing the economy is the absolute priority of Government, though wrong to listen to misleading siren voices arguing for the scrapping of all employment protection in the process. The danger is that an endless squabble about Lords reform will leak Parliamentary time which Lib Dems should put to better use.

If there is to be a Plan B, let it be an attack on vested interests – in the form of party funding reform, rather than a discussion of self-interest of little concern to those outside the Westminster bubble.

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For some reason Wikio can’t or won’t list this as a political blog: a pity as it’s been calculated I may be troubling the outer reaches of its top 100. I’ve emailed them but to no avail; any ideas are welcome!

(Someone used to compile a ranking of Reading-based blogs: this seems to have stopped but it would be interesting to see one.)

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Lib Dems held three seats where experienced and popular councillors Phil Challis, Jenny Lissaman and Stephen Conway stood down. We also won a seat in Winnersh from the Tories, who surprisingly lost Charvil to an Independent.

Last year we lost in Winnersh and the two Woodley seats: this year we won all three on a textbook campaign on local issues.  The Tories coming third in Bulmershe & Whitegates is quite something.

Congratulations to Lesley Hayward and Tom McCann in Woodley: as ever, it was a pleasure to campaign with the Lib Dem team there.

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I shall post in more detail later, but it has to be said that Labour’s behaviour at the count was thuggish and (on one occasion) violent.  The tone was set before most party workers had arrived, where in the ‘election management’ area at the centre of the hall, reserved for staff only, the Labour Agent was holding court in a place he should absolutely not have been.  I pointed this out to a council officer, who had him removed.  The Chronicle happened to overhear this.

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The early stages of the campaign were dominated rightly by the disgraceful dog-whistle pandering to racism of Reading’s Labour Party in Church Ward, which they tried to fob off as being an attack staged by the Tories, but wasn’t.  Many people who understand the context of Labour’s actions from all parties have been absolutely horrified, though Green Party bloggers either through ignorance or allegiance to Labour have disgracefully defended this.  In his hapless visit to Reading last week, characterised by commuters at the Station mistaking him for his brother and one of their candidates falling asleep during his talk, Ed Miliband defended the dog-whistle tactics – yet another error of judgment.  Labour in Reading are known for their lack of scruples or integrity, but their actions this year deserve to be punished right across the town.  It remains to be seen whether this will actually materialise, but it would be a travesty if Labour’s tactics resulted in their candidate in Church (who I suspect knew nothing about the leaflet) ended up winning.

In Abbey ward where I live, campaigning has been relatively quiet until the last few days, when the Common Sense Party has distributed a powerful and hard-hitting leaflet that rightly shows up the appalling record of Labour’s candidate Tony Page. It will be interesting to see whether this has an effect, but Page’s contempt for local residents and support of wasteful traffic schemes and inappropriate development deserves to be punished.

I have mostly been working hard in Katesgrove supporting our excellent candidate Janel Blattler who has approached these elections in exactly the right way – working hard with local people and local communities to get things done.  Having worked hard for Katesgrove it has been great to support Janel who pushed the Council to eventually upgrade the lighting in the Katesgrove Lane underpass – something for which I won the funding as a councillor last year after campaigning for some time.  Janel put the pressure on a useless Labour Council who had sat on actually making the improvements for almost a year.  Labour’s literature in Katesgrove is notably silent on any local issues, which speaks volumes about their laziness and neglect in the ward, and the fact that they have had to parachute in last year’s Tilehurst candidate who lives right on the edge of the borough in Southcote.  With nobody else seriously in the race in Katesgrove, I particularly hope Janel wins – she deserves to.  Labour in Katesgrove has even stopped claiming credit for work done by other people.

On which subject, I have to turn to the contest in Peppard ward, where two hardworking Conservative councillors – a relatively rare phenomenon in that group – have left their party, and where one of them, Jamie Chowdhary, is standing as an Independent in an election that now looks to be a fascinating three-way tussle between Jamie, local Caversham Liberal Democrat Mustafa Chaudhary, and the candidate of the local Conservative rump.  A leaflet has come to my attention from Jamie, which highlights a longstanding battle in Emmer Green – the state of the Budgens precinct, which was an issue since the alst time there were Liberal Democrat councillors in the ward.  The ‘Independents’ website at http://www.peppardward.com/Budgens_precinct_Result!.htm quotes one of the local shopkeepers as amazed that the rump Conservatives are claiming credit for this work, when the final action by the recalcitrant landlords does not seem to have been provoked by them.  Jamie’s leaflet also answers some of the questions about the infighting in Reading East Conservatives, which with its hapless MP left propping up the doomed-looking Jeremy Hunt cannot be a very happy ship right now.  Peppard really could be one to watch.

Outside Reading, but well worth a mention, the Tories in Wokingham are having a very wobbly election having upset a huge number of people by their bizarre waste collection policy of variable-sized blue (naturally…..) bin bags, as very well detailed elsewhere by Lib Dem opposition leader Prue Bray.  With no serious likelihood of any Labour wins in Wokingham anytime soon, the Lib Dem presence in Shute End may well be bolstered this week.

Not picking out every ward, but with a particular word for my excellent Lib Dem candidates Dave Warren in Southcote, Meri O’Connell in Tilehurst and James Moore in Redlands, it has been an interesting election, although not one that reflects well on Labour or the Tories in Reading East.

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Vince Cable had his powers reduced after a disgraceful sting operation.  Hunt has gone further: his department is umbilically linked to the Murdoch Empire.

Liberal Democrats inside and outside Government should be calling for him to be sacked in disgrace, without hesitation or delay.

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Unfortunately, the site – first run extremely well by Oxford Lib Dems Stephen Tall and Richard Huzzey – now has a disjointed and opaque organisation run by what appears to be a clique. Some days it seems solely to comprise self-publicising posts by one individual; but more of a problem is the insistence of its owners of ever more draconian and arbitrary forms of censorship.

(And before any wiseacres start: I tightly moderate comments to my own site, but that’s because it’s my site, not something that purports to be a debating arena for a whole political party; and unlike LDV, I don’t single individuals out because of who they are, tempting though that may be. Similarly, I allow often robust debate.)

I have come to the conclusion that it is no longer worthwhile writing articles for LDV. My most recent experience was that I was prevented from posting timely replies to a piece based on my recent blog about Reading Labour’s dog-whistle politics. The chief reason for this is that I appear to have been singled out as one of a handful of people whom LDV has decided to proactively censor, while letting through comments from Labour trolls and others consisting of nothing more than abuse – political and personal.

No clear reason is ever given for this; the site’s ‘comments moderation policy’ is drawn out in such a way as to let the moderators do whatever they like, be it to follow through any personal vendettas (a favourite of at least one LDV co-editor), prohibit any debate that may go beyond rules written by the Polite Society, or to skew a particular debate. On one occasion a remark was deleted for being a ‘direct and highly derogatory comment about another contributor’ when it mentioned no individual and was not insulting: when challenged repeatedly to publish it, the moderator refused to do so but merely repeated his accusation. Apparently it’s alright to go about making unsubstantiated derogatory remarks about Lib Dem members …. but only if you’re a LDV mod. So not really much point writing for LDV if you are One Of Those People The Moderators Have Decided They Don’t Like (a list that includes some Parliamentarians, from whom one might have thought member interaction would be welcomed and embraced, as well as party staff).

The straw that broke the camel’s back for me came on Monday, when the following comment was deleted by a moderator:-

“Given the censorship to which comments here are subject, why has a comment just been posted (7.47pm) that consists of nothing other than abuse?”

In a subsequent dialogue I was then told there would be [unspecified] ‘consequences’ if I highlighted LDV’s policy.

A colleague sent me this comment: ‘Sadly LDV is fast becoming the mouthpiece of the leadership. How much in contrast to Conservative Home?! My benchmark would be CiF and what is said in their threads would not be allowed on LDV, how ridiculous.’

As another Lib Dem commented: ‘Could I ask you why you leave untouched an untrue posting by a a non-Liberal Democrat, but remove a correction by a Liberal Democrat member?’

I’ve been sent a lengthy dialogue of an exchange between Mark Pack, one of the moderators, and a contributor to recent threads concerning Jenny Tonge who was moderated for similarly benign remarks; he and I noted that while pro-Israeli voices were allowed to comment with impunity, pro-Palestinian commentators were censored for use of the phrase ‘weasel words’ [which according to Pack constitutes 'rudeness']. This at the same time that Pack and his colleagues allowed a post which contained the words ‘hateful’ and ‘hate-filled’ to describe a fellow Liberal Democrat member, in a manner many would judge to be not only insulting but defamatory.

One of the very few Liberal Democrat Parliamentarians to use Lib Dem Voice to comment, my esteemed friend Tony Greaves, recently told LDV that ‘Some people might be more inclined to help you if you didn’t censor perfectly reasonable comments quite so often.’ In Tony’s case, this involved challenging LDV to stop promoting Mark Littlewood, not a Liberal Democrat for many years and yet still wheeled out by various media outlets to criticise the party as a ‘Lib Dem’, thanks in part to the indulgence of LDV.

No wonder LDV is so boring and generally uninteresting and has so little credibility amongst “serious journalists” (If you don’t believe me, ask them); largely because it appears to actively shut down any discussion inconvenient to the leadership. And of course if media within the party will not allow open debate, people will have no alternative but to use the mainstream press.

If I were a senior Liberal Democrat responsible for communication – and I’m glad i’m not – I would be very worried that the party’s main and most-read collaborative website appears to have been handed to a bunch of unaccountable individuals with their own agenda, there to serve themselves more than their party.

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I encountered him on relatively few occasions: in person he was perfectly polite and amenable, despite it being glaringly obvious that we had politically very little in common.  He did appear at a few Federal Policy Committee meetings, and I think it’s fair to say that the disconnect between him and the party’s grassroots was quite cruelly exposed.  For the leader’s Director of Strategy to so obviously have no feel for doorstep politics (I think more than a few invitations were given to him to road-test ‘Alarm Clock Britain’; I certainly remember offering him a wet Tuesday evening in Reading!) pretty much showed up the flaw in the thinking behind his appointment.

Richard is obviously a highly-intelligent man; but his politics are singular and far from an easy match for most Liberal Democrats.  Many of his strategic aims were at socio-economic groups he just did not relate to, which may explain why a number of his initiatives and themes gained no traction either in the party or the wider public.   The ‘mind map’ widely circulated in early 2011, bereft of any mention of Liberal Democrats’ core commitment to tackling inequality, perhaps demonstrated why aswell.  He’s certainly interesting and a blue sky thinker, but was not the answer to any of the questions Lib Dems have been asking.

There are lessons to be learned.  If a Director of Strategy is needed, it is for the Liberal Democrats and its leader, not for the Deputy Prime Minister.  There is enough to do in Government without having the time for blue-sky strategic thinking, especially at this stage in a coalition.  Now is the time to: a) achieve rather more meaningful differentiation, especially when it comes to cutting down ideas unacceptable to Liberal Democrats before they come into the public domain; and b) get an exponentially better grip on managing internal relationships within Westminster and the wider party.

I expect that outside the loop he will be picked up by the media as another non-Party (I doubt he is a member) commentator attacking us from the Right.  The new Mark Littlewood?

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In their latest advertising campaign for the local elections 3 May, Unison have called on people to “Please don’t vote for public service cuts”, and as Labour is committed to public service cuts, albeit lower cuts though for twice as long a period, when Unison says, “Please don’t vote for public service cuts” it is actually saying “Don’t vote Labour”.

Unless of course it is hoping that people don’t realise that Labour supports public service cuts, but that would just be a cynical union dishonestly advertising….. wouldn’t it?

So let’s be fair and take Unison at their word: they don’t want us to vote Labour.

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