(not satire – it’s the Lib Dems!)
Some people have been a bit surprised as to why local Lib Dems on Sutton Council have been so keen to push through permission for the South London Incinerator to be built – despite massive protests from local residents.
Could it be because the Chairman of the local Lib Dems – and councillor when the permission was granted – is “longstanding personal friends” with the CEO of Viridor, the company that owns the incinerator?
“Longstanding personal friends” are not my words.
Here’s Sutton Lib Dem chair John Drage’s register of interests from 2012 – when he was still a councillor and was forced to declare such things:
Just coincidence, I’m sure.
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Great investigative reporting from Chris Caulfield, chief reporter for the Sutton Guardian:
Now that most of our national media has reduced itself to being a propaganda machine for the major political parties, we have to rely more and more on good investigative reporting from the local press.
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Pride's Purge 
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This reeks of corruption almost as much as the attempt to force an incinerator on King’s Lynn (which we successfully resisted). Good luck to the folk of Sutton as they fight against this – I know from experience that this is a winnable battle.
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Reblogged this on sdbast.
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and yet in our world… http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-32283624?SThisFB&fb_ref=Default
Disabled musician told to demolish Wiltshire recording studio….
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We can’t rely on local reporters in Rotherham it took the Times to uncover the sex abuse here
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Reblogged this on Beastrabban’s Weblog and commented:
This is the kind of reporting that appears in Private Eye in their ‘Rotten Boroughs’ column. Tom Pride here rightly points out that as the main media outlets are now just propaganda pieces for the major parties, it’s left to the local press to pursue these stories. This is true, up to a point. The parts of the press that are still making a profit and seeing increased sales, are the small local presses. They’re subsidizing the national newspapers, and occasionally being culled to save the big newspaper chains money, despite the fact that it’s the nationals which are in trouble.
Unfortunately, as forces for local democracy the power of the local press is mixed. The Bristol Post is part-owned by the Daily Mail, and has always had a very right-wing bias. The Western Daily Press is much the same, and possibly even worse. It’s very Tory indeed, verging on UKIP. There is some good reporting in many of the local papers, as well as some very terrible management.
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Fish swim, Lib Dems…
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Reblogged this on Britain Isn't Eating.
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