The Liberal Democrats have confirmed their general election candidates in Hove and Brighton Kemptown and are consulting members in Brighton Pavilion on whether to stand aside in favour of the Greens.
Carrie Hynds, 29, is the party’s candidate for Hove. She lives in the constituency with her partner Dr Duncan Moore. She works as an editor and proofreader and enjoys working with self-publishing fiction authors.
In her spare time, she enjoys running, reading and helping out with amateur theatre. She is an active member of Hove Library, Brighton Little Theatre and the New Venture Theatre.
Miss Hynds said that she was “firmly pro-EU, having seen first-hand their excellent peace and reconciliation work growing up in Northern Ireland”.
She said that she wanted to see “real long-term solutions to the housing crisis” and leads the local Brighton and Hove Lib Dem housing campaign.
The party’s candidate in Brighton Kemptown is Emily Tester, a former student at Brighton, Hove and Sussex VI Form College (BHASVIC).
Miss Tester is a town councillor in Littlehampton and a member of Liberal Youth who is currently in the second year of her degree in government at the London School of Economics.
She is passionate about education policy and also pro-European Union.
As a councillor in West Sussex she has helped save local facilities including a theatre and swimming pool from council cuts.
Former Brighton Pavilion candidate Chris Bowers told a rally at the weekend that the party was asking members whether should stand aside in the constituency.
They had chosen Paul Chandler, who stood in Kemptown in 2015, but he may forgo the nomination if the membership favours supporting the Green MP Caroline Lucas.
A decision is expected within days.
It is very interesting to see here that Hove’s Carnegie Library is becoming an increasing Election issue.
Says who? All the article says is that Carrie Hynds is an active member of Hove Library!
It does NOT say she is obsessed, like you, with keeping library services delivered from the ancient Carnegie building that is no longer fit for purpose for delivering such services in the 21st century.
She MIGHT also feel that moving library services 400 yds down the road to a new purpose built facility would be a more cost effective way of providing improved services.
You must stop putting your own thoughts and beliefs into other people mouths.
As a former Liberal Democrat candidate in the local elections I know that standing a LibDem in Kemptown will rob votes from Labour and Greens. Indeed it is nearly guaranteed that the undeserving Kirby will be re-elected because the left vote will be so spread over 3 parties (Green, Labour, LibDem). That is clearly a shame. Greens and LibDems should stand aside to let Labour go after Kirby in Kemptown.
Having a working MP is important. Kemptown deserves that and does not have it in Kirby. Hell, he isn’t even useful to the Tories who dumped him off a job he could not do.
There is no tangible Labour candidate in Kemp Town as yet. Just rag-taggle hopefuls.
And it is the place where Labour’s Nicky Easton – its Deputy Chair – launched her notorious tirade against the campaign for Hove’s Carnegie Library.
Kemp Town would have been different now with Simon Burgess or Nancy Platts, but they have declined it. Looks as if national Labour will parachute in somebody there.
The LibDems could have won Kemp Town this time with Bowers there. He was a good fellow with whom to discuss Pavilion matters in 2015. I said to him, “I think you’re in the wrong Party.” He replied, “you’re not the first to say that!”
Paul Chambers is affable but I’d say Bowers is several notches higher. Both have my respect – unlike whoever it was that stood in Hove for the LibDems and never turned up as he was standing as a Councillor somewhere else on the same day.
Same applies to the lack of tangible Green Party candidates where they are trying to use the same candidate who only just saved his deposit in Kemp Town, and for some unearthly reason they are putting forward council convenor Phelim McCafferty (friend of the travellers) in Hove.
But it’s surprising that you, yet again, bring up the subject of the Carnegie! You’d think this was the only subject on the lips of every voter in the GE. Let me give you a hint – it’s all about BRexit and the economy.
You must really learn to come out of your literary shell and meet with some other people in the city to find out what they think are the real issues for the country.
It is a General Election, and hence about every subject, otherwise these subjects would be set aside for another five years. Across the country people are discussing libraries. There was a march to Trafalgar Square about them. It drew a contingent from France with whom I spoke.
The European negotiations are underway. I do not see what an Election has to do with them. How can Britain reveal its hand before it hears what Europe says? That would be like saying how much you would accept for your house before you hear any offers. In any case, this whole “Brexit” thing is likely to collapse as unworkable. Each subject raises ten more, and so it goes. For example, what about the children of those duly born to those allowed to stay here? Will the children be allowed to stay? And for how long? Will VAT stay? So many questions, and only two years in which to discuss them. The whole thing is absurd.
It is perfectly reasonable to posit the Library system as an example of what is happening to Britain. As for your crass description of the Carnegie building as “ancient”, the building into which you proposed to squash it is older.
A great part of the problem is that at the Council neither Sally McMahon nor Kate Rous is qualified in librarianship. Both of these were managerial re-deployees from other sections of the Council. Had these positions been advertised nationally, then the situation could have been rather better. More to follow on that front now that you have raised it.
You really are irrationally obsessed with libraries and totally out of touch with the real world. Could you possibly be a green party activist? ?
You are not in command of language. What does “irrationally obsessed” mean? That is, can one be “rationally obsessed”? And what does “the real world” mean? Philiosophers have debated that for a long time. Each person fashions this brief span in his/her own way – different interests, habits – and a library is a great way to broaden habit: the Dewey system covers everything. The shame is that library stocks have been so terribly reduced the past years across the country. Locally, this is owing to a Head of Libraries with no library qualification of background but working in a time-serving environment with an eye on not upsetting those above so that she risks her pension. Your comments have the effect of releasing so much information.
It means you are obsessed for some irrational reason with libraries and do not seem to understand the issues affecting people in the real world where how libraries are run is not one of the major issues they consider.
That you seem to only be able to discuss libraries and have to turn round every discussion to something relating to libraries just shows the problem you have. That you view libraries with such admiration that you want to preserve them as they were in the 19th century, and are unable to see that what libraries need to provide, over and above the Dewey classification system designed for storing information as wood pulp and ink, shows the problem you have.
Yet again you are bringing up your mortality and your desperate desire to have done something to be remembered by after your passing.
Perhaps you need to get out more and mix with others in the real world and accept that they might have different views to your close circle of literary friends.
But please keep on plugging the case for keeping library services in the archaic, unfit for purpose, Carnegy – I will in return keep on making sure I counter any misinformation you supply (actual or implied).
You are floundering.
“19th Century”? The point is that local authorities abnegated the Parliamentary decree that they provide libraries, and so Carnegie had to step in during the early 20th Century.
“Wood pulp and ink”? I wish you all the best with trying to insert a floppy disk into whatever computer whose screen bears your ever-outraged splutterings.
You keep using the weird-out phrase “the real world” (twice in that post) without saying what you mean by it. And what dialogue do you have to suggest that you are in touch with it.
I am happy to reflect upon the – literally – thousands of talks I have had with people. Time and again, people stop me in Hove to discuss all this.
As for “close circle of literary friends”, I just chortle at your presumption to claim to know whom I know. People at my residents’ parties during my time on the Council delighted to meet such an array of other residents until the early hours.
Poor old Christopher!
You just don’t get it – do you. When I talk about the “real world” I mean the world where normal reside – where people don’t go to libraries because the reasons they existed for back in the 19th century don’t exist anymore. Where reference libraries have been replaced by results from search engines. Where people can download music rather than play on their pianos. A world where there is video streaming rather than having to read books. The role of the library, if it does exist now, is totally different to that when Carnegie gave the town his building.
You are living in a “dream world” (remember the first episode of Father Ted and Father Dougal and the spider baby?) where libraries are everything and everything relates to the world of libraries and in particular to that cursed Carnegie building.
I imagine your “resident’s parties” many years ago when you were a councillor did involve other people, but I imagine now you have totally retreated into your literary “dream world”.
Now are you absolutely sure you have talked thousand of times to people, and if so do they always seem to want to get away from you?
And why do you have to use pretentious terms like “abnegate” – I looked it up and found it meant “refused to accept”, so I can’t work out why you used such a strange term – again an indication that you don’t live in the same world as others.
I refer you to my first comment yesterday evening where I questioned how the Carnegie Library had become a General Election issue (it is not except in your mind!) and you have not responded, but instead you have gone back to defending your irrational obsession with libraries instead.
BTW granddad – computers don’t use floppy disks anymore…
Exactly. Computers no longer use floppy disks. But one can read a book published in the Eighties and Nineties.
I have just heard on a news feed that in the past year sales of books have risen while those of e-books fallen by 8%.
You keep laying down the law about life and making assertions about others’ private lives prefaced by “I imagine”. By your logic, you will soon be advocating something else on the technological horizon – sex with robots – as preferable to the dusty old analogue world of human flesh.
I have data from the 80s and 90s that I still have access to as it has migrated to more modern technologies. In fact it is more accessible now than it was back then as I store it in “the cloud” and can access it from my phone, tablet, PC and TV and print it out if I need it. I have books that I read when I am in the bath or on the loo. So what point are you actually making?
So book sales are up – great! What about people taking physical books out of libraries.
I am not “laying down the law” (which is what the Greens did when they ran the council) but pointing out that you should consider the views of others who might not have the same focus on books and libraries as you seem to do.
Perhaps you should consider looking at what is happening with technology and learn to embrace change rather fighting it and wanting to stick with the old ways. Do you by any chance use a quill pen and light your house with gas lamps?
But anyway, good to see that the Greens are standing down your friend Dave Jones in Kemp Town, and I assume Phelim Mac Cafferty will do the same in your old stomping ground of Hove & Portslade. It’s scary to think we won’t need elections soon as the parties decide between themselves who will win the seats – so much for democracy.