Here is some plain speaking from Cllr Richard Kemp, Lib Dim Leader-in-waiting.(Taken from his speech at www.togetherwecan.info-files)
Thank you very much indeed for inviting me here today.I was delighted to hear so many people laughing before, I actually come from the city of Liverpool, I am sure that many of you have been there.
We have a saying in Liverpool which means that we actually like comedians.
We have a saying that 'the good comedians get on the clubs, the very good comedians like Arthur Askie, Jimmy Tarbuck and Ken Dodd get on the telly - but the real comedians get on the council'.
I have been a councillor for a long, long time in different parts of Liverpool, and that means some of the most deprived parts of the country.
They didn’t go wrong because people failed to be involved, they didn’t go wrong because there wasn’t a sense of community down the Dingle or in Granby.
They went wrong because people like me fundamentally failed the people in those areas.
They failed in the type of policies that they promoted, the planning policies, the housing policies which split communities up.
And they failed because they allowed a difference in delivery between rich areas and poor areas.
So in the context of Liverpool we allowed things to happen in Liverpool 8 which is a working class area, which we would never allowed to happen in Liverpool 18 which is a middle class area.…
...the fundamental challenge must be to convert the rhetoric of people like me - and I can do rhetoric because we have big mouths in Liverpool, we can do that quite well - but we need to convert the rhetoric into reality, in Liverpool 8, in Balshall Health and Sparkbrook, in Hackney, in places like that.
For too long people like me have messed around with the lives of people like you.
Thank you.
How refreshingly direct, Councillor Kemp. Best if you sod off then and stop messing with peoples lives. Hypocrite.
