Tory PPC for Watford on brink of jail sentence

I have just picked up on this story and this story about a Tory PPC in Watford who has now resigned after being found guilty of harassing his political opponents with poison pen letters, tyre slashing, vandalism, graffiti, silent phone calls etc. He is facing a custodial sentence.

A charming man.

How unlike the home life of our own dear Queen.

But it is perhaps not as shocking as we would like it to be as a story. There are far too many incidents of this sort of thing in local politics. I see on a couple of other blogs that people are saying this is rare, that the guy might be mentally ill, that it is atypical behaviour, but I am afraid I do not agree. I can think of lots of incidents of this type, from all the main parties.

Over the years I have received hate mail and hate blog posts too, come to that. I have had my car tyres slashed (not in Liverpool), my car window put in on another occasion. I have seen other people suffer the same. In 1997 one of the opposition parties put a couple of windows through which were displaying our posters in Colne Valley. We have a councillor facing trial in Liverpool for distributing a nasty leaflet about a councillor in another party. Miranda Grell is by no means the only politician to have accused a fellow candidate of being a child-abuser either.

I can think of lots of incidents between parties and indeed within parties of all sorts of criminal and hateful behaviour directed at members, candidates and elected representatives.

They do say that power corrupts, or perhaps it should be the pursuit of power in this case?

All very depressing stuff really, no wonder the voters have given up engaging with us.