Bill Olner expenses out.

The expenses forms are now on-line,

They can claim £250 without receipts for each item. His monthly cleaning is £240 for a “tiny bedsit”.

2nd home, food and cleaning

2007/8

2006/7

2005/6

other expenses including tax advice

2007/8

2006/7

2005/6

Find out more on the facebook page Bill Olner - The expenses files

We have made a great start

The 4^th of June was the first election for the Nuneaton Green Party. In the 2007 Abbey By-election and 2008 local elections I stood as a lone green candidate. This year we fielded a full slate of 14 candidates and took a very respectable 13% of the Vote in Nuneaton and Bedworth. To put this in context the Liberal Democrats took under 2%. In the Abbey ward I was few votes behind the Tory.

We need more members so that we can build from here. Both Labour and Tories have rich backers that allow them to run complex marketing systems. The big parties use automatic dialling systems to phone voters in key wards in the days before the elections and hold a database on voters. Sadly such an effort is not used to work in the interests of voters but just to get your vote.

Please make contact if you can help us change the political landscape in Warwickshire. Our profile will rise as we become established as the principal opposition to the two old main parties. If we had a proportional representation system we would have taken around 2 of the 14 seats.

keith Kondakor

Full results

Bill Olner - £120 on trouser press - £1,486 a month rent?

In todays Coventry Telegraph
“WARWICKSHIRE MP Bill Olner made wrong expenses claims for Council Tax for his London flat – and once claimed about £120 for a trouser press, we can reveal.”

The item goes on to tell us he tried to climed £23,682 last year which is more than the £23,083 allowed. His rent has shot up from £875 a month to a shocking £1,408 a month when he moved flats.

The full the text is now on the Cov telegraphs website.

cov telegraph

Greens on 15% overtake Liberal Democrats

A poll to be published the day before the European elections suggests the battle for third place will be between the Green Party, the Liberal Democrats and UKIP.

In the new poll, conducted by ComRes (1), the Greens have overtaken the Lib Dems for the first time since 1989. The poll suggests the Greens may be about to match their historic 1989 Euro-election vote of 15%.

The poll shows support for the different parties as follows:

Conservative: 24%

Labour: 22%

UKIP: 17%

Green: 15%

Lib Dems: 14%

BNP 2%

If the poll proves accurate, the Greens will probably win seats in the North West, Yorkshire and the Humber, West Midlands, East Midlands, South West and Eastern regions plus Scotland, as well as holding existing seats in London and the South East. The Greens may even scoop up a second seat in the South East, with Brighton councillor Keith Taylor joining party leader Caroline Lucas, who was first elected in 1999.

Last Sunday’s Telegraph/ICM poll showed the Greens on 11%, ahead of UKIP nationally for the first time in the campaign. The Sunday Telegraph suggested that “the resurgent Greens” might win eight seats.

And in an earlier Green Party/YouGov poll, 34% of respondents said they would either definitely vote Green or consider voting Green if they knew more about the party.

Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green Party, said: “It’s not all protest vote. I think our manifesto for a million jobs, aimed at tackling the recession and the climate crisis at the same time, has probably struck a chord with a lot of people.”

“In the last few days of the campaign we need to work hard to mobilise the Green vote, because in a proportional election every vote counts. A 15% Green vote would mean a half-dozen or more extra Green MEPs to go and fight for those million jobs in the Green New Deal.”

–

Note to editors:

1. Commissioned by the Green Party. Fieldwork carried out 29-31 May 2009. Sample size 1,005 GB adults, polled by telephone.

Greens could take council seats if you vote Green on Thursday

Most people are not going to bother to vote on Thursday. This is both a shame and a very risky protest. If few people vote then the wrong people can get elected. Vote to clean up politics and make positive changes by voting Green in both the local and County Council elections.

Well before the current scandals broke we made a freedom of information request to get the details of the county councillor travel expenses. We now know the 62 charged over £91,000 in mileage allowances. We asked for details of the most costly councillors trips and have been told that this is being counted as a 2^nd Freedom of Information request. When we find out how Cllr Heatley spent over £8,500 on travel we will make it very public.

When we started planning for the election our hope was to win a seat in each town in Warwickshire. We are now a serious threat to the old parties in many wards. UKIP are not standing in local elections in Nuneaton & Bedworth. The Lib Dems have vanished in the area with just 3 standing in the Borough.  The one Lib Dem who is standing in the Abbey ward is trying to use the trick of “only the Lib Dems can beet the BNP”. In the Abbey ward the BNP do not have a chance. The paper candidate for the BNP is from Bedworth and has done no leafleting. If he is like the BNP candidate last year he will not even show up for the count.

We are also expecting to do especially well in the Whitestone ward.

Green party candidate for whitestone, Laurel Brindley said

“You may have read in recent news that the Tory Councillor for Whitestone claimed more than £8,500 in travel expenses, which came out of our taxes. That‘s enough fuel to take him nearly all the way around the world! Considering that he is the environmental leader for Warwickshire County Council, I think that we can all agree that this extensive claim is unacceptable.”