Anne Milton - Guildford MP (and Dipstick)

The silly stuff mentioned in this earlier post is gone and I'm quite pleased about that, but - since the peeps at Anne Milton's office became aware of her entry at Wikipedia - they've found themselves unable to leave it alone.

One thing they appear to be overly-sensitive about is a link to this weblog that - having been in place and left undisturbed for some months - is now subject to repeated deletion.

Quick message for Anne: if you're going to censor and/or vanity-edit your Wikipedia entry, please do it in your own time, not at 2:35pm from inside the Houses of Parliament (when/where you are supposed to be Doing. Your. Job.)

(Oh, and a quick note for the record: I would regard the removal of this picture to be fair enough as it classifies as a factual correction. But I find it quite telling that the factually-incorrect phrase "Anne has been linked to many celebrities during her time in the public eye" was left undisturbed during this same edit. This edit I would also regard to be fair enough, but the IP address used and the edit history of the person involved would suggest that Amme has a close associate who works for the food manufacturers' lobby group the Food & Drink Federation. If the person involved is a really close associate, then perhaps this is something Anne might consider adding to her Register of Members' Interests when she finally gets around to updating it.)

Labels: wikipedia

It's been nearly a month since this blog highlighted this serious conflict of interest. I've been a little busy lately, but the time has finally come for me to check in and let you know what has happened since... and what has not.

(Note - It may seem a bit piecemeal in places, but a big pile of documents beckons, so I've no time for neatness.)

- Most recently, and probably most importantly for a lot of people in the Godalming area, Anne Milton has turned out to be predictably ineffective in the debate over the proposed excavation of Eashing Farm for millions of tonnes of sand and valuable Bargate Stone. She's trying to make the right noises, bless her, but the fact remains that she isn't the bold boat-rocker her supporters make her out to be, and she really can't afford to go head to head with her Conservative councillor colleagues on Guildford Borough Council or Surrey County Council. Especially not after pissing away her first year in such grand style.

- Still, Anne has recently tried to undo some of the damage by Keeping very Busy Indeed before bunking off on holiday. A recent flurry of parliamentary activity is evident, and Anne even took the time to invite herself to the 2006 Bramley Village Fete.

(At the fete, she actually stayed for longer than 15 minutes, and judged the costume parade and the cake competition. She also managed to make her way around every single stall... bar the one I was working on, of course. Oh, and she doesn't know it yet, but she owes me one. Water pistols were a popular item at this particular fete, and she came *this* close to a coordinated soaking. It was me that talked the young folk out of it. Not that I'm Down With The Kids or anything... it's just that I know exactly when to employ the ever-persistent myth that Anne Milton eats children.)

- Onto other photo opportunities... you may recall that a reported resemblance to comedian Julian Clary has been milked by Milton in the past. It even led to a meeting between the two late last year. But this report of their most recent meeting appears to suggest a wary/weary tolerance on Julian's part...

New Statesman - Julian's week: Later I arrived at a bookshop in Guildford to do what is called a "literary event". Because my autobiography has come out in paperback I am obliged to turn up and talk about myself for an hour. Waiting outside were the local press and the Tory MP Anne Milton, puckering up for a photo opportunity. (Identified as lookie-likies in Punch magazine, we go way back.) Coming over all showbizzy, I rather forgot my position as Kate Moss's lover and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Of course, the flashbulbs went off and our innocent clench was captured.

- Back onto conflict-of-interest reactions... I always know when I score a palpable hit, because ardent supporters of Anne Milton (like Dennis Paul and Mike Chambers) always follow up by going more than a little apeshit. Now an anonymous attack site has emerged that (once again) tries to convince people that I'm in the employ of Sue Doughty. It also seeks to interfere with my ongoing income.

So, just to summarise...

1. They're out to prove that I've launched a personal attack with an unspoken political agenda by launching a personal attack with an unspoken political agenda.

2. They state that I work for Sue Doughty while - at the same time - they seek to harass me at what they clearly regard to be my actual place of work.

Sheer genius.

- Tripping back to this link for no reason in particular, I seek to remind Dennis Paul and Mike Chambers that voters probably won't trust them with council budgets if they have a proven history of misusing time and equipment paid for by the taxpayer.

- Housekeeping: On 27 May 2006, Sue Doughty was re-selected as prospective parliamentary candidate for Guildford. The navigation bar has been updated to include a link to her campaign website. I've also added a link to the Wikipedia entry for the constituency of Guildford, but will not be adding the Wikipedia entry for Anne Milton just yet, because it contains much silliness at the moment. (Not guilty. Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.)

- Opinion: On 27 May 2006, Sue Doughty was re-selected as prospective parliamentary candidate for Guildford. That means that she and her imperfect, inadequate and totally inept carbon copy will be going head to head. Again. Unless Milton gets de-selected, of course. The local Lib-Dems may not appreciate my pointing out the obvious, but here goes... A lot of time, money and effort went into passing Milton off as a Tory clone of Doughty, and - even with the magic of potential on her side - she only scraped by with a 347-vote margin. Now that the cold, hard reality has sunk in, do you really think she can pull it off again? Before you answer that, consider that even if Milton makes a concerted effort to lift her game in the coming months/years, she's hamstrung by a dearth of goodwill. This, combined with the impact of recent boundary changes... well, it doesn't take a genius to work out that the Conservatives will need to field a much stronger candidate next time around. Given the farce of the past election, track record is going to be a key issue... so a quiet word in Nick St Aubyn's ear is probably called for.

- Finally, we come to the bit that hasn't happened; almost a month has passed since Anne's major conflict of interest was made public, and she still hasn't updated her Register of Members' Interests. Is she really hoping to sweep this under the carpet?

Labels: conflict of interest, inaction, publicity