Lies

There used to be a saying about statistics which went 'lies, damned lies and statistics', presumably coined by someone who couldn't be bothered to read all the small print. Today I offer the variation 'lies, damned lies and Liberal Democrats'.

There also used to be a custom here in Epsom that proper political parties distributed regular newsletters which were clearly identified as such by bold banners on the front page: red for labour, blue for the conservatives and a sort of yellow-orange for the Liberal Democrats. The residents' associations which we have here in Epsom also have newsletters, without such banners, but still reasonably clearly identified up-front.

So I was rather annoyed yesterday to get a newsletter from the Liberal Democrats masquerading as a free newspaper. OK, so if you bothered to read it, you could deduce that this was what it was, but it did not come clean. It did not tell you what it was up-front, and to that extent it was a lie, it was dishonest.

Further annoyed by it banging on inside about Surrey County spending a few hundred thousand pounds promoting a proposal to make Surrey a unitary authority and strip even more functions out of the district tier. A proposal which you might or might not agree with - as the unitary authority would be strongly Conservative and all the other parties would be more or less squashed - but which is an entirely reasonable thing for the County to promote. It is not as if the County has the power to unilaterally declare itself to be a unitary authority; for that it needs something from the centre. The Liberal Democrats should fight the proposal on its merits, not try to have the proposal ruled out of order.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/12/dumplings.html. The last outing for the Liberal Democrats and unification. Note the presence there of a yellow-orange banner.