There is something that stinks at Tameside Tories and it is the vulgar smell of hypocrisy. The Tameside Conservative group led by John Bell is campaigning to end the council's propaganda which has won an "excellent" rating by the Audit Commission. In a recent article on the Tameside Tories website Councillor Bell states:
"We will not support ‘propaganda on the rates’. At best, the publicity coming out of Tameside Council has been brazen, and at worst – as we saw with the information about the EU Treaty on the website 18 months ago – illegal"
So what does Councillor Bell have to say over his political assistant, Richard Ashton illegally producing election material for the Stalybridge & Hyde and the Denton & Reddish constituencies? He is also the sole editor of the TamesideTories.com website and the Tameside Tories Twitter account. Richard Ashton also writes letters to the press on behalf of Councillor John Bell which local journalists should be able to confirm as Richard emails them out to the editors of the Tameside Advertiser and Reporter.
Richard also takes a lot of time off work to perform his political activity, but states to the Head of Democratic Services, Robert Landon that he is "working from home". He recently took three weeks off to manage the disastrous Denton North East by-election. The irony is that Richard Ashton is holding a fringe meeting at next weeks Conservative Party Conference in Manchester on "how to win a by-election" as part of his role as chair of the Conservative Political Officers Network.
The tip of the iceberg has to be this article on the Tameside Tories website attacking Denton & Reddish MP, Andrew Gwynne for not attending yesterdays speech made by Gordon Brown.
The image above is claimed to have come from "an anonymous Labour delegate" leaked to Tameside Tories! Laughably the faces have been blocked out - for what reason is unknown.
It's funny because the picture was posted by Ed Balls according to Andrew Gwynne's Twitter status three days ago - way before Brown's speech to Labour conference. You can see the original above which includes other senior delegates including Tom Watson, Ed Balls and Kerry McCarthy. I really doubt that a cabinet minister is going to miss the PM's speech.
As part of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 the law explicitly states that politically restricted officers like Richard Ashton are not allowed to have a political role in or outside the workplace.
What Richard Ashton has done is a lie and is an attempt to deceive voters into thinking that Andrew Gwynne is against Gordon Brown. This is disgraceful coming from a paid officer of the council. Richard Ashton is paid a whopping £28,000 a year as a political assistant to the leader of the opposition. It is Tameside council taxpayers' who are funding Tory propaganda and for that Tameside Tories have a lot to answer for.
