Tag Archives: hyndburn

Defeated council leader so bitter he wouldn’t let successor use “his desk”

2:57pm Mon June 27th

A defeated council leader was apparently so bitter at losing the election that he tried to prevent his successor using his desk, Scrapbook has learned. The former leader of Hyndburn Borough Council, Peter Britcliffe, attempted to instruct bemused staff that a taxpayer-funded bureau was “his desk” and that it should be put in storage “for when he returns”.

After taking several weeks to move out of the office reserved for the council leader, the Tory councillor continued to shock staff at Hyndburn Borough Council with his increasingly bizarre demands. Insistent that he should continue working in the style to which he was accustomed, Britcliffe had his own group of Conservative councillors ejected from their quarters to accommodate his “personal office” after attempts to acquire the office of a council director were rejected.

It is clear that some politicians deal better with defeat than others.

Labour seize Hyndburn despite misspelt “Ladour Party” rosettes

3:25pm Fri May 6th

2 comments

Despite something of an identity crisis ensuing from 60 misspelled rosettes, Labour gained four seats in the Lancashire borough of Hyndburn, taking control of the council from the Conservatives.

“We have won as New Ladour and we will govern as New Ladour.”

Hat-tip: @Lefty_Lisa

Peter Britcliffe and Karen Buckley provide yet more Hyndburn entertainment

10:12am Sat March 20th

166 comments

As a giant fan of Private Eye’s local government column Rotten Boroughs, one of Scrapbook’s absolute favourite blogging perks is bringing provincial foolishness to a wider audience. It was thus most edifying to see this blog’s hatchet job thoughtful critique of Hyndburn Conservative Party gain traction online.

East Lancashire geezer at large and political progeny Conor Pope picked up the baton with this hilarious spoof of Location, Location, Location, which finds Sam Cudworth looking for a suitable property for aspirant Tory MP Karen Buckley. Cudworth’s deadpan delivery of ”This property is available until May the 6th. You probably won’t need it after that” had this blogger rolling in the aisles:

Politico Al Jahom is very welcome to steal posts if his re-titling is as funny as this. Jahom isn’t the first to muse at the intersection between LOLCats and politics so thanks for inspiring this flattering rendering of the Hyndburn Council leader:

A local source been in touch and mentioned that the ever-vain Cllr Britcliffe Googles his own name on a regular basis. A Tory with such awareness of their online profile would be most interested to peruse this blog’s server logs: the “Hyndburn meltdown” post was visited over 20 times from CCHQ IP addresses.

As for Google, there’s nothing like a bit of search engine optimisation:

Hi there, Peter!

Marginal seat left "without functioning Conservative Association" after latest selection disaster

10:24am Mon March 15th

35 comments

The constituency of Hyndburn, Lancashire has been left “without a functioning Conservative Association” after its entire leadership resigned in protest at a selection shortlist forced upon them by Tory high command. The list excluded the Conservative leader of Hyndburn Borough Council, Peter Britcliffe,* who had made no secret of his desire to contest the seat.

With Cameron-loving Karen Buckley barely two days into her role as PPC, Scrapbook can exclusively reveal that the contest has been effectively abandoned by CCHQ after Britcliffe’s supporters threatened to quit the party and fight the election under the banner of “Hyndburn Independent Conservatives”.

The council chief’s attempts to distance himself from the row are most entertaining:

“While I always believe that it is more democratic to allow local party members to have a free hand in the selection of candidates this is not something that I intend to spend time complaining about.”

Quite. Why bother to complain when acolytes are causing a stink on your behalf? Britcliffe’s council deputies Brian Roberts and Peter Clarke were among those to quit their officer positions in the local party along with his sidekick Marlene Haworth.

This is only the latest episode in a string of embarrassing flare-ups involving female Conservative candidates. Liz Truss survived a deselection attempt in South West Norfolk after the Google-hating “Turnip Taliban” finally discovered an affair widely publicised in 2006; Top brass intervened to save candidate Joanne Cash in Westminster North, with an election agent and chairwoman defenestrated in the process.

To the evident frustration of ConservativeHome, Tories in Hyndburn earned the dubious distinction of being the last constituency in England to pick their candidate despite its description in the latest edition of The Almanac of British Politics as a ”classic Labour-Conservative marginal”. It has now emerged that this was the result of convoluted brinkmanship between local members and CCHQ, who were “desperate” to stop Cllr Britcliffe being selected for the third time since 1997.

They’re simply falling over each other to cock things up.

*Those in need of a laugh should head straight to Peter Britcliffe’s personal website, which plays Barry Manilow’s I Write The Songs to all visitors.

Buy some bread, put the cat out, vote Tory

3:21pm Fri July 24th

3 comments

From the looks of this “3 Things To Today [sic]” leaflet, the Conservatives in the borough of Hyndburn obviously know their core voters better than their English grammar.

The following leaflet was Twittered by Labour activists fighting a by-election in quaintly-named Oswaldtwistle yesterday (yes, there really is somewhere called that).

“Buy the Daily Mail” was ommitted, presumably in some form of printing error. Unfortunately this didn’t stop the Conservatives from hanging on to Immanuel ward, which was crucial as a Labour victory would have seen the Tories lose formal control of the council.

With the impending thumping in Norwich North perhaps “Cameron stalls in the North” was the silver lining that never was?