The Bracknell Open Primary is now underway and today I launched my campaign website. I wanted it to be simple, light, welcoming and airy. All seven of us have no real campaign template to work from so it will be interesting to see what innovative ideas we all come up with in order to mobilise support.
33 comments:
Not bad!
Good luck.
On your website, you write: “All I can promise is a straight answer to a straight question.” In an attack piece on Gordon Brown’s interview earlier today, you wrote: “He called Boulton a "political propagandist". Even if he thought it, he shouldn't have said it.”
Incongruous? Yes, I think so.
O Iain, I sorta hope you don't get in, cos if you do, you might not have time to blog on my favourite blog???? Then what would I do?
you've got a typo in the the third q and a question/answer.
great website. hope you win! one of my chums lives in bracknell and is a bit of a local celebrity.
So, if I vote for the BNP you will not represent me?
Nobody who uses the word 'innovative' gets my vote - it is the most overused trendy, meaningless corporate cliché, which overdue for retirement.
Good luck.
Very good and clear website, I would say.
One very little thing, on te navigation, it should be 'about me' not 'about iain', in order to fit with the rest!
All the best.
I'll be following your progress - good luck!
"A new strong voice for Bracknell". LOL.
Third time lucky, eh?
This is parachuting in. Just because you pass the Bracknell Services in your Audi does not mean you have a connection with the area.
Now that's the type of website I like. Not too much to distract the eye and clean lines.
I do hope it was all your own work Iain. :)
Only read the headline, "A New, Strong Voice...".
Hmmm. Once worked for an advertising spiv who said the weakness of words is revealed by turning them to the opposite - so let's have a go at that!
"An Old, Weak Voice for...". Oh dear! Well you see? ;-)
Broadmoor is in your constituency.
How about a campaign to get Gordon Brown assessed by qualified psychiatric professionals.
Good luck, Iain.
"if I vote for the BNP you will not represent me?"
I would certainly hope not.
Iain. FYI Bracknell Forest council has an excellent record with its website - led by Paul Bettison. It would be GREAT to see you talk this up as an example of good egovernment in action (and you know my politics, this stuff cuts across affiliations).
Look at the new logo for the (ha! ha!) supreme court. it's another sodding swastika just like gordon brown's one in february 2008.
no one's noticed.
is the eu a nazi party offshoot?
or merely a paedophile mafia?
or both?
I reckon this is a huge plot to help Waitrose (HQ in Bracknell), to open a store in Tunbridge Wells!
They've been trying for years...
Good luck anyway!
Disappointing manifesto Iain. Utterly predictable appeal to the prejudices of the ignorant. Courageous politicians don't play facile populist cards in this way but take positions evev though they are unpopular. You seek to hit every narrow-minded bias that there (almost - you are not homophobic!). It is an undistinguished and patterned set of beliefs that you offer the good Burghers of Bracknell - it deserves to be dismissed out of hand.
Based on the Woking primary last night you may need a good answer on the need for a tax payer funded second home. (Although of course Woking's rail links are excellent, so the view may be different here.)
PS Jonathan Lord was elected by over 50% of the packed audience.
"This is parachuting in. Just because you pass the Bracknell Services in your Audi does not mean you have a connection with the area."
If only local candidates were chosen it would be a pretty rotten time for Tories living in Labour safe seats and vice versa.
'Back in the mid 1980s I spent two very happy summers teaching English to foreign kids at Wellington College'
Pretty tenuous link - what were the other 7 seats you didn't apply for? Was Bracknell the safest Tory seat?
Now would I think be the right time to make a confession - my family and I all come from Bracknell and I retain a seat there!
We will be joining in the open campaigning enthusiastically. There are 17 of us who are voters, so that should slightly tip things, but more importantly, we know quite a lot more.
I think the starting point will be to produce a well-designed campaign leaflet and website pointing out Iain Dale's many merits. As you know, this will be interesting reading for those of us who have followed his charming antics for some time.
What a truly high profile fellow he is! It will be fascinating to see what comments everyone comes up with about him. There is no finer human being in this great nation of ours, nor none more worthy to enter the Haise. Ere ere.
@ Andrew F
How is it incongruous for Brown (or anyone) to think something and not say it? And where is the question in Brown's assertion? He's not asking Boulton is he? He's telling him.
Iain can speak for himself, but I'd suggest that his point was that Brown was making a very bad political move by (falsely) accusing his interviewer. Then again, we've come to expect little else from Brown but false accusations, prevarications, obfuscations, lies, calumny, smears etc etc. What evidence did Brown have for his statement?
"a new, strong voice for Bracknell"
political speak. what is a strong voice anyway? my father is tenor does that mean he would make a good MP?
@ Despairing Liberal
One can sympathise with your circumstances, but did you really wish to reveal such deeply personal information to the world? One would have thought it was something you might prefer to keep hidden. Still, so many denizens of Bracknell are 'coming out' these days. But hope is not entirely lost, apparently they are working on an antidote.
This is the email I have sent to McKay. I am afraid it is no more or less than I expect from him and the paper. I doubt your complaint will change much.
"I was disappointed to read the Ephraim Hardcastle piece about Iain Dale. I am not sure what "overtly gay" means or why it even needs to be mentioned. If you look at me it is pretty obvious that I am a woman - does that make me "overtly female"? Does it impede my ability to do my job?
The comment about homosexuals rallying like-minded chaps is also offensive - just like assuming that I would vote for a woman because she is a woman.
I have to believe that you find Dale's success as a political columnist and the country's leading political blogger threatening to try and trivialise him in this way. I have followed him for some time and he has proved to be a person of great integrity and honesty - just a pity that you don't think this is a valuable quality in politics today."
Nice clean site but ease of reading could be better - body text point size needs to be the same size as your blog - it is currently a tad small.
"A new strong voice for Bracknell"
Not sure about this as has been said above
Best of luck
Iain
Can you answer a question about the process?
Can someone who has just moved to the constituency and will be added to the register in december, (having registered to vote by being picked up through the annual canvass), come to the Primary and vote?
Matthew, I suspect not, but you have a good case to make. Ring the Conservative office in Bracknell and ask. 01344 868894. Good luck!
Iain
Just confirmed it with the local Agent who does indeed say No.
This seems a great shame! As people have to pre-register to attend all the party have to do is send a list of names to the local ERO confirming that they have been registered on the new roll.
This scenario is a highly plausible one at this time of year and would seem to discourage those new voters which this type of event seeks to attract.
Just proves the party still have kinks in the system to sort out. Can commonsense not apply here if such people do turn up on the night? (FYI I do not live the area, though used to)
Good luck.
The website looks good, but you fall down in two important respects: you have no connection with the constituency, and you've done nothing much in the way of voluntary work / community involvement. Are you driven to help ordinary people improve their lives, or do you just want the glamour and status of being an MP?
Any Postal Votes available in this primary?
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