Calder Valley was the constituency that provided the most signatures for my e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting. In fact it produced 871 (out of 123,077) signatures. The rival e-petition, supporting grouse shooting, accumulated just 31 signatures in Calder Valley (and only 25,322 overall). And yet Conservative MP for the Calder Valley, Craig Whittaker, spoke in the Westminster Hall debate in favour of grouse shooting. He chose to snub his constituents – why vote for him?
Mr Whittaker clearly doesn’t have much time for his constituents’ views. Maybe he is more influenced by the millionaire grouse moor owner Richard Bannister who owns the ultra-controversial Walshaw Moor (see over 50 posts about Walshaw Moor on this blog – search for Wuthering Moors and start here) which sheds its water into the Calder Valley? Before he spoke in Westminster Hall Mr Whittaker scurried up to Walshaw Moor to get his lines from the estate there rather than to look at the science.
Calder Valley is a marginal seat – it was Labour from 1997-2010 and it’s time that it was again. The Labour candidate, Josh Fenton-Glynn, looks pretty good on paper and was within 5000 votes of Whittaker last time around. This seat is winnable for Labour – particularly if LibDems and Greens (I’m sorry guys) gang up on this Tory.
Vote for Josh Fenton-Glynn on 8 June.
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Calder Valley is 36th on the list of Labour target seats, ie it’s not very winnable. So I don’t know why you say it’s winnable. Much as I wish Whittaker gone, barring a miracle it’s not going to happen in 2017. Labour needs to persuade people who didn’t vote (the biggest share of the electorate) to vote for them, and also to persuade Tory and UKIP voters that Labour offers better solutions to their problems. Those are the people who can change Labour’s fortunes in this constituency, if they can be persuaded that it’s in their interests to do so. It is unrealistic and unhelpful for you to suggest the few Greens and LibDems can do anything to change the situation. But even though it wouldn’t have helped much, the Green Party did offer the Labour Party an electoral pact which they refused. Also it is very annoying that you don’t know the constituency – apart from the fact that it gave good support to your petition, but you you are telling people how to vote in it. People can decide for themselves how to vote without having to be told.
Jenny – thanks for your comment. I suspect I know more about the constituency than you know about what I know about the constituency.
Jenny – well, I was right wasn’t I? It was winnable and Josh Fenton-Glynn came within c650 votes of winning it. If a quarter of the combined votes for Greens and LibDems had gone to Labour Craig Whittaker would now be an ex-MP. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/constituencies/E14000614
Jenny seems very annoyed for some reason, i’d like to know what those reasons are, I suspect she’s a closet Tory. She says the seat isn’t winnable, but it used to be Labour and will be again, hopefully on Thursday. Regrettably issues such as Grouse shooting and hunting with dogs mostly run along party lines, so anyone who supports the Tories really needs to take a long hard look in the mirror.