Jock's Place - Never say never again? - Comments

Thnaks for your overview

apartments in edinburgh — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:00:09 +0000

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Patronising sod! In the

Jock — Thu, 15 May 2008 21:28:48 +0000

Patronising sod!

In the real world one expects one's opponents to play the ball not the man. I've seen innumerable complaints to police about election literature far less distorted than they put out against me. If there was the remotest chance that they won by unfair tactics then I should have that tested, which it now has been and ruled "fair play" (though it still breaches my copyright, which I see has become an issue again in Crewe). Such tactics only serve to prevent honest and open debate amongst opinion formers,

I don't particularly care actually. As a libertarian I'm much more enthused by the idea of delivering social and public goods without the dead hand of government at any level.

Greet, greet, greet. What a

Anonymous — Thu, 15 May 2008 18:12:35 +0000

Greet, greet, greet. What a poor loser. If you think the words did you harm you shouldn't have used them. Welcome to the real world.

If I was in your ward, you

Citizen Stuart — Wed, 07 May 2008 19:22:24 +0000

If I was in your ward, you wouldn't have needed to knock on my door - that Labour leaflet would have persuaded me to vote for you! Give it another go next time, either as a Lib Dem or a member of the Libertarian Party. We need more real liberals in political office.

tow = toe. I'm ill today so

Philip Thomas — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:17:13 +0000

tow = toe. I'm ill today so that's my excuse. Betty has none.

A sorry affair

Philip Thomas — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:14:27 +0000

God, I hate the leaflet that was put out against you. Hopefully, some people read it and realised how much sense you were talking. I worried a bit about the same thing during my campaign. It is something any politician that doesn't tow the route of conventional ignorance risks.

Evidence of what? That an

Jock — Wed, 07 May 2008 13:07:00 +0000

Evidence of what? That an offence may have been committed? The leaflet speaks for itself. It is a clear breach of my rights as copyright owner under section 80 of the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act (1988?) which is the civil matter. If I can make the case, however that that makes it a derivative work I will argue that it is therefore a statement of fact misrepresenting me or my position and could then fall under section 106 of RPA 1983.

And the evidence?

Anonymous — Wed, 07 May 2008 12:30:05 +0000

And the evidence?

I suspect the thick skin

Jock — Tue, 06 May 2008 12:54:02 +0000

I suspect the thick skin thing is one of those aspects of psychopathy that I do not share with most politicians,

But you are right - I need to get back onto that book which is now badly delayed. I have to ask a few other contributers still for a start!

Bad luck Jock

Andrew Duffield — Tue, 06 May 2008 12:37:01 +0000

A thick skin is required in politics - as I'm sure you know! At least you now have plenty of time to re-focus your efforts on the assembly and production of the most important book on Liberalism since 1909. Every cloud and all that...

Yup - I'm sure you're right

Jock — Tue, 06 May 2008 10:25:12 +0000

Yup - I'm sure you're right that it happens all over the place. And were it purely a civil matter it would not be worth pursuing, except perhaps as a service to bloggers in general who might feel their words in future coming back to haunt them in a similar way. But if there's any chance of it being an election offense I think it's worth checking because it was clearly done maliciously (despite there being no previous animosity between me and the Labour candidate, now councillor).

Actually, that's a good

Jock — Tue, 06 May 2008 09:22:00 +0000

Actually, that's a good point - I don't think I ever have really and I do get asked what it means.

When I adopted the tag I did a post about the various flavours of individualist-anarchist/libertarian here . But never really developed it further.

However, during the election campaign I was in correspondence with a Labour member who is an academic and who let me have a copy of his latest paper, "Revolutionary Liberalism", in which (though I haven't finished it yet) he talks about the "ownership for all" policies of the post-war Liberals in the UK which made me feel right at home - what he was describing seemed to me to be what I understand by mutualism. So over the next few days I will try and put together a posting on it.

Jock, Have you written

Aaron Heath — Tue, 06 May 2008 08:41:15 +0000

Jock,

Have you written about "geo-mutualism" in a specific post.

I'm very interested in:

I believe sovereignty should lie with the individual and he or she should only cede power upwards to representatives over things that they cannot arrange for themselves or in small groups or local communities.

Can you (have you already) developed this?

That was very illuminating.

Aaron Heath — Tue, 06 May 2008 08:35:01 +0000

That was very illuminating.

Not just your insider narrative of the election, but also your ideas on "geo-mutualism".

Unfortunately the Lib Dems

HF — Tue, 06 May 2008 08:27:35 +0000

Unfortunately the Lib Dems have slid into the gutter with others using similar tactics. It does damage the quality of our politics and drags down the overall regard for politicians.

But Jock just look at Mark Pack your Head of Innovations spinning the fact that the Tory PPC in C&N actually lives 1/2 a mile outside the constituency and runs marathons away from Crewe so "he is not local".

Or when Pack pulled off a quote about the Reading Tory from political betting.com about how he expressed an opinion that Enoch had spoken some sense. Pack is paid to do his job of "Innovations" and not Muck spreading?

Free speech gets suffocated through such activity and we are all the poorer for it.

Never say never again?

Jock — Mon, 05 May 2008 23:08:37 +0000

I feel I've been tagged in a strange sort of a meme for my thoughts on Oxford's recent local election results by Antonia [From Oxford elections round-up]:

We await with bated breath the thoughts of Stephen Tall, no longer Lib Dem councillor for Headington, his colleague David Rundle, and the third-placed Lib Dem candidate for Headington Hill and prolific blogger, Jock Coats.

Well thanks, she just had to rub it in by mentioning that third place. I am embarrassed and humiliated to have come third. There are of course official post mortems to come yet on the campaign, but whatever their verdict, one simple fact is that I am a "bad candidate". Whatever fresh ideas I may have brought to the council (and I doubt my Labour victor will be doing much of that, sad to say), I cannot escape the fact that I hate knocking on strangers to talk politics with them. So for me, the literature and word of mouth amongst people who have met me outside that context is more crucial than for most. Such glad-handing ought to have happened long before the campaign proper started with voter ID canvassing in late March. And been followed up with a leaflet introducing me properly and extolling my virtues before the cross city campaign started with its more party led focus on whole city issues.

Then there was "that leaflet." On the last weekend of the campaign I had the dubious honour of having a Labour leaflet, apparently partly delivered by Mrs Dromey (I rather hope, Antonia, that you were unaware of that leaflet's existence when we exchanged pleasantries on the Friday evening), using quotes from this blog about drugs policy obviously intended to give the impression that if I won I would probably be found standing outside the primary school handing out various narcotics to the year sevens, or perhaps to their parents! Several opponents have commented that they thought it was one of the worst personal attack leaflets they had seen. I suppose I ought to feel flattered that Labour were sufficiently alarmed by my candidacy to feel the need to drag the contest into the gutter.

You can read it for yourself here. By my reckoning, it at least breaches copyright law (my moral right not to have my copyrighted work treated in a derogatory fashion or in a way designed to be prejudicial to the honour or reputation of the author or director), if not possibly electoral law. Enquiries are ongoing. I am not a sore loser, but I was upset by it. I know it cost me both votes and reputation, even amongst my deliverers.

Anyway, enough of the campaign itself. Will I ever try again? I don't know. For many years, since in fact I was last on the council in 2002, I have wondered whether the present system of local government is fit for purpose. As an ideological descendent of the individualist-anarchists and a mutualist, I find the state, in all its guises, terribly coercive. I believe sovereignty should lie with the individual and he or she should only cede power upwards to representatives over things that they cannot arrange for themselves or in small groups or local communities. Local government is so tied down by Whitehall and Westminster that the current arrangements simply cannot be responsive enough to local peoples' needs.

The main reason I wanted to be on the council was to continue to promote, from the inside as it were, my mutualist agenda of hiving local authority functions off onto social, community led partnerships. The more things compete for the crumbs of council budgets within the tight control of Whitehall oversight the less satisfactory the outcome. Leisure services for example cannot hope to compete in quality at least with private providers while it is within the constraints of council budgeting. Similarly, whilst more difficult, I think the solutions to our housing problems are community led, rather than council, landowner and planning led.

Every time I've lost so far I've come out of the contest wanting to do other things that will make a difference one day outside the council structure. Almost as if to prove we can cope without the psychopaths who are so good at saying the right thing at the right time to get themselves elected. This time it is to continue to promote the social enterprise "alternative" for producing social and public goods and to work on promoting local community e-democracy.

It will be interesting to watch Labour finally explain where they think there is a "£5m cash crisis" at the city council - reading the latest annual accounts I cannot see it myself. But there's another argument for local government reform - despite us being the tax payer/employers their finances are even more opaque than any company's I've ever seen.

It will be fun to see Maureen Christian defend the Northway Playing fields from something or other she seems to think threatens them (certainly the only "threat" i heard was my own idea to see if we could fit a cricket square on there by budging up the two football pitches and see if we could get a local cricket team going).

I think it will be a retrograde step if Labour succeed in removing planning decisions from area committees. They were not perfect there, but I have always maintained that was as a result of the bad legal advice that both sides in any disputed application had the right only to speak for five minutes each - where they have open discussion at area committees they manage to get better decisions and more fruitful interplay between applicant and objectors and a better outcome for both.

It will also be interesting to see whether the Tories, who, despite not winning a single seat managed to come in second in many wards, and at least the ones in which they tried to put up a full campaign, will be able to keep up that level of work, for example, next year, when their declining reputation in control of the county is up for defending.

And it will be interesting to see whether this marks the high water point for the IWCA, who lost two of their councillors.

But I also don't really expect the city council, under any party, to set Oxford on fire with bright new ideas that will markedly change the quality of life for its citizens.

Finally, if anyone has any ideas about what little thank you gifts I can get for two teenaged Muslim boys who managed throughout to deliver most of the half of the ward for which we did not have regular deliverers - not a happy situation to be in at the start of a campaign and one of the first things I hope to put right for next time - I'd be very grateful to hear them! Their father has resisted all my requests for his advice so far!