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Post by timrollpickering on Jun 27, 2018 14:24:42 GMT
I really feel if the world has become that dangerous then a lot of people would indeed be put off standing for office. When elected, would you hold surgeries (that to my knowledge carries the biggest risk of encountering "nutters with weapons")? Would you even dare to go out canvassing and actually encounter real people, after all you might meet a nutter or two there? I have seen councillors physically attacked by nutters while actually addressing council - (usually members of the public, though fellow councillors not unknown)- better stay away from council, or at least sit mum and not attract attention to yourself. Where does this stop? Or are we just exaggerating a risk just a tiny bit? I take the point about collateral damage involving your loved ones, but even so...... Canvassing is usually done by teams so there's rarely nobody watching out for you. In general doors don't get answered by people wielding weapons. And some activists in some areas are reluctant to go out on their own. You are right that there are other risks as well but they are often in places where there are usually decent safeguards in place. Yes people have been attacked at surgeries - I'm just down the road from Stephen Timms's constituency - but that doesn't mean we should keep homes unsafe as well. Finally this is an especial problem for recruiting paper candidates who often do not have to worry about the other points you raise but are still concerned about having their address publicised. In a recent election in another London borough the council sent out the mayoral booklet including a sample ballot paper that had candidates' addresses on. The same day it landed one of the candidates had their house attacked. |
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Post by catking on Jun 27, 2018 15:18:12 GMT
So my suggestion would be that election candidates (and persons submitting to the BCE) should have their home addresses published only down to ward level (or perhaps only the outward part of the postcode).
My issue with just posting a constituency or ward name is that they can be very misleading especially when ward/seat names are abstract or not based on geography.
I think having town and postcode district is much much better.
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Post by greatkingrat on Jun 27, 2018 15:28:10 GMT
Depends on the area. Simply putting Birmingham or London as the town doesn't really give any useful information, and even adding B24 or N16 won't mean much to many people.
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Post by John Chanin on Jun 27, 2018 15:39:08 GMT
Depends on the area. Simply putting Birmingham or London as the town doesn't really give any useful information, and even adding B24 or N16 won't mean much to many people. I'm not voting for anyone from Erdington....  |
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islington
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Post by islington on Jun 27, 2018 15:45:53 GMT
Depends on the area. Simply putting Birmingham or London as the town doesn't really give any useful information, and even adding B24 or N16 won't mean much to many people. Really? I agree that B24 means little to me but I'm not local to the area. But N16 screams 'Stoke Newington' to a north Londoner like me. |
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Post by gwynthegriff on Jun 27, 2018 16:47:02 GMT
During my 20+ years as a councillor I had one unwelcome visitor at the door. Not threatening, just an obsessive. (About the issue, not about me.)
Two colleagues had bad experiences. One (female) councillor had a (male) constituent who thought she should have been doing more about his legal problems (which involved American company law and his obsession that his councillor, MP, solicitor, Chief Constable etc etc had failed in their duties) and resorted to attempting a forced entry to her home. Another had handled resident complaints about a (commercial) planning application and woke one morning at 3am to the sound of his car being smashed up by - perhaps - associates of the applicant. Both resigned from the Council. Both were a loss to the Council.
BUT in both cases I doubt the miscreants used the SOPN to track down their victims.
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Post by thirdchill on Jun 27, 2018 17:44:54 GMT
Full address, no compromise. It is ludicrous that parliamentary candidates have the opportunity to hide their address and it creates an utter double standard. Politicians are public servants, representatives of their electorate and people have a right to know in which community they live in and how they are going to be able to represent them. It's about open and transparent politics ultimately. That's all well and good if you are elected and are a councillor (and even then I disagree, would prefer to do all constituency business away from home as I do not wish to bother my partner with it). But as a candidate I am not elected at that point, I don't hold office, I don't have these obligations and don't receive an allowance for doing so. |
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Post by AdminSTB on Jun 27, 2018 18:50:55 GMT
Depends on the area. Simply putting Birmingham or London as the town doesn't really give any useful information, and even adding B24 or N16 won't mean much to many people. I'd disagree on the postcode - at least in Birmingham. There is even a fairly close identification with some postcodes. |
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Jun 27, 2018 18:57:03 GMT
In most large cities, certainly in the north, the postcode district is how most people identify their home part of the city.
At the time of the riots in Liverpool lots of Liverpool local people didn't quite understand what everyone was going on about when they talked about Toxteth. They only knew the area as Liverpool 8.
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Post by AdminSTB on Jun 27, 2018 18:58:16 GMT
During my 20+ years as a councillor I had one unwelcome visitor at the door. Not threatening, just an obsessive. (About the issue, not about me.) As was the way for most councillors when I was elected, I had my home address and home phone number on the council web site. During my 8 year reign of terror, I noticed an increasing trend for the address to become ℅ The Council House and the phone number to become the group office and by the time I finished, I would guess that it had swung from ⅔ to ¼ showing their details. I never heard directly of anyone being threatened, but there were rumours, certainly there were a couple of occasions when I was glad there was security at my advice bureau. I only ever had one person come to the door, a rather nice Romanian chap (well, Moldovan actually) in my last month in office. It did take a year or so for the phone calls to stop and I still very, very occasionally get a message on the machine. I would still be happy to disclose my address on a SOPN, but I think there should be the option to have it redacted to "ward name" or do as one council did recently and remove addresses from the web copy and just display it on official noticeboards. |
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Khunanup
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Portsmouth Liberal Democrats
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Post by Khunanup on Jun 27, 2018 19:09:23 GMT
Full address, no compromise. It is ludicrous that parliamentary candidates have the opportunity to hide their address and it creates an utter double standard. Politicians are public servants, representatives of their electorate and people have a right to know in which community they live in and how they are going to be able to represent them. It's about open and transparent politics ultimately. That's all well and good if you are elected and are a councillor (and even then I disagree, would prefer to do all constituency business away from home as I do not wish to bother my partner with it). But as a candidate I am not elected at that point, I don't hold office, I don't have these obligations and don't receive an allowance for doing so. If you are a candidate you are a politician which is the point I was making. I get paid nothing for standing in an unwinnable parliamentary seat (and paid nothing for standing in any election) but I respect the political freedom of the electorate to know where their candidates live. |
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Post by greatkingrat on Jun 27, 2018 19:19:42 GMT
That's all well and good if you are elected and are a councillor (and even then I disagree, would prefer to do all constituency business away from home as I do not wish to bother my partner with it). But as a candidate I am not elected at that point, I don't hold office, I don't have these obligations and don't receive an allowance for doing so. Has there ever actually been a case of an unsuccessful candidate being harassed based on the SOPN details? |
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Post by thirdchill on Jun 27, 2018 19:58:29 GMT
That's all well and good if you are elected and are a councillor (and even then I disagree, would prefer to do all constituency business away from home as I do not wish to bother my partner with it). But as a candidate I am not elected at that point, I don't hold office, I don't have these obligations and don't receive an allowance for doing so. If you are a candidate you are a politician which is the point I was making. I get paid nothing for standing in an unwinnable parliamentary seat (and paid nothing for standing in any election) but I respect the political freedom of the electorate to know where their candidates live. We are never going to agree on this point. I do not see why someone knowing your EXACT home address has to do with making you a better councillor, or somehow making you more transparent and accountable. Going out and meeting constituents, helping to solve any issues they have, attending and participating in council meetings, being out and about in the community and attending the events, all of these things are being open and transparent. That is what being open and transparent is, not saying 'oh here's my home address'. I am going the opposite way to you on this argument and actually think that unless agreed by the councillor themselves, there should be an assumption of partial address only, not the full home address. Councillors may have family situations that may mean that constituents calling at their home is not a good thing, for example they are involved in nursing an elderly relative. Some people (a couple of bolton councillors from labour) had their home addresses removed from the SoPN due to their particular occupations and the risk that was involved with their home address being known more widely. |
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Post by gwynthegriff on Jun 27, 2018 20:14:39 GMT
That's all well and good if you are elected and are a councillor (and even then I disagree, would prefer to do all constituency business away from home as I do not wish to bother my partner with it). But as a candidate I am not elected at that point, I don't hold office, I don't have these obligations and don't receive an allowance for doing so. Has there ever actually been a case of an unsuccessful candidate being harassed based on the SOPN details? An unsuccessful Conservative candidate in Crewe suggested that his car was vandalised because of his candidature. There were, I fear, many other reasons why it may have been vandalised. |
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Post by AdminSTB on Jun 27, 2018 20:15:43 GMT
Has there ever actually been a case of an unsuccessful candidate being harassed based on the SOPN details? An unsuccessful Conservative candidate in Crewe suggested that his car was vandalised because of his candidature. There were, I fear, many other reasons why it may have been vandalised. Was it who I think it was? |
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Post by gwynthegriff on Jun 27, 2018 20:17:04 GMT
An unsuccessful Conservative candidate in Crewe suggested that his car was vandalised because of his candidature. There were, I fear, many other reasons why it may have been vandalised. Was it who I think it was? He never became a councillor, so probably not. |
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Post by thirdchill on Jun 27, 2018 20:23:03 GMT
My view is that times have changed, and for a variety of reasons people are much more sensitive than they used to be about putting their personal details in the public domain - hence the disappearance of the telephone directories and street directories that used to be such a familiar feature of everyday life (and does anyone else remember when electoral registers were simply left lying about in public libraries and post offices for anyone to take a look at?). When did the electoral registers become more restricted viewing? |
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Jun 27, 2018 20:28:53 GMT
My view is that times have changed, and for a variety of reasons people are much more sensitive than they used to be about putting their personal details in the public domain - hence the disappearance of the telephone directories and street directories that used to be such a familiar feature of everyday life (and does anyone else remember when electoral registers were simply left lying about in public libraries and post offices for anyone to take a look at?). When did the electoral registers become more restricted viewing? Representation of the People Act 2000. |
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Post by johnloony on Jun 28, 2018 2:50:42 GMT
Has there ever actually been a case of an unsuccessful candidate being harassed based on the SOPN details? Not harassment, but in about 1998, just after I had stood as a candidate in a council by-election, I got a long rambling latter from a mad person in Penge (when I say mad, I mean mad) who wrote at great length about how he was "on the run" from some sort of institution, how the police had been plotting to kill him, and so on. I sent the letter to his MP Jacqui Lait, and she wrote back saying that she was sorry he had bothered me, that he had been writing to lots of people, and that she had tried to help him. It was only one letter, and I got the impression that he was basically harmless, albeit obviously very disturbed. |
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Post by yellowperil on Jun 28, 2018 11:57:41 GMT
Has there ever actually been a case of an unsuccessful candidate being harassed based on the SOPN details? Not harassment, but in about 1998, just after I had stood as a candidate in a council by-election, I got a long rambling latter from a mad person in Penge (when I say mad, I mean mad) who wrote at great length about how he was "on the run" from some sort of institution, how the police had been plotting to kill him, and so on. I sent the letter to his MP Jacqui Lait, and she wrote back saying that she was sorry he had bothered me, that he had been writing to lots of people, and that she had tried to help him. It was only one letter, and I got the impression that he was basically harmless, albeit obviously very disturbed. I think that's what's usually called a green ink letter, regardless of the coloured ink actually used, and I think we all get them if in office as a matter of course. As you say, Mostly Harmless. |
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