The Lib Dems Are at it Again

We all know that the Lib Dems have a well deserved reputation for dodgy bar charts and only a passing acquaintance with the truth, well my colleague Cllr Dave Luckett has two interesting articles highlighting the point on his blog.

The first relates to one of the dodgiest Lib Dem bar charts (see below) I have ever seen. Not only is the bar chart dodgy but as he points out, it is based on some very out of date Reading Borough electoral statistics. Just look at the height of the respective bars and the percentages they purport to represent.

The second article exposes a Lib Dem master-class of deliberate inaccuracy. The headline in the Lib Dem newsletter talks about Kings Meadow being under threat due to a “Tory U-turn”, when in fact it was Labour that did the U-turn. They did this under pressure from a Conservative call in of their original decision at the CCEA Scrutiny Panel, at which the “heroic” Lib Dems abstained. Had the Conservatives not pressed the call-in the original Labour decision would have stood and we would be several steps closer to a huge hotel and overdevelopment of the Kings Meadow site.

It is reminiscent of their shambolic performance at the recent full Council meeting when the Lib Dems condemned having an extra Council meeting on 1^st December to discuss the options for replacing the existing Civic Offices, despite one of their reps on the Civic Board, Cllr Warren Swaine, having agreed to the meeting and the other rep failing to turn up at all. They condemned the time taken to reach this point and then advocated delaying any further discussion to a later scheduled Council meeting.

As anyone who attends a Reading Borough Council meeting can see, the Lib Dems are divided and chaotic, and incapable of articulating a coherent position from one meeting to the next. The only place where they appear credible and coherent is through the artistic license used in their own literature. Despite voting with the minority Labour administration whenever budgetary matters are discussed, the Lib Dems are the object of repeated scorn from the Labour benches.