Lib Dem City Centre Round Up: The Clayton Strangler?

Cllr Kenny Dobson aka Dobbo (right) has been a member of most of the running clubs in Manchester down recent years. Starting at the YMCA with what amounted to prescribed exercise and certainly taking in Salford HAC and Sale HAC along the way. After that he started founding his own clubs. Yes, that's plural as he was apparently thrown out of the first of these - East Manchester Athletic Club - and had to form another, East Manchester Harriers.

Basically Kenny is a more-or-less unemployable corner boy who was refused membership of the Labour and WM Club (i.e. the drinking club) as a spotty youth and huffed off and joined the Liberal Party (i.e. another drinking club) instead. Later he became a councillor (basically for him another drinking club) before being drummed out in disgrace by his neighbours over various unpleasant incidents, heavy suspicions and collossal failures.

Now, I like Kenny alright, and will chat to him about anything but politics when I occasionally see him. So I didn't hesitate to cover the plot to oust him as a candidate in the City Centre sympathetically.

Even though I must say I think he is highly unsuitable to "represent" this ward and is on record muttering about how much he "hates the bastards" etc. Proper anti-capitalist nihilism really. Not a man to help sort a parking problem for your 4x4. Nevermind impersonate a Culture spokesman, an enthusiast for recycling, or a purple prose newsletter editor.

Kenny defeated the Lib Dem group leadership 4-3 5-4 as the massed ranks of two wards turned out for a close run selection.

The reason given for this attempt to throw him out was that he had pointed the finger at another candidate being up to his eyeballs in debt (c £40,000) and involved in dealing class A drugs. This was deemed uncomradely.

This fellow - who was in fact Chair of Manchester Lib Dems according to this Lib Dem Youth page - had apparently approached the newly Westminstered Cllr John Leech MP at the Town Hall for help with his £40,000 debt, even enquiring about details of Leech's repeated Chugging of a certain South Manchester pensioner for all his own sponney.

Kenny had warned the pensioner of that risk. He was allegedly put up to his reporting of the alleged nefarious activities by senior members of the group who then turned on him and chose to protect the other fellow - the alleged drug dealer - who was immediately back on their list of candidates, though disappearing (electorally only) without trace.

Anyhow, I digress. Kenny couldn't organise a proverbial in a proverbial.

In one of his rare "speeches" in Council he demanded new lights at the junction of two roads which do not meet. He rolls in late and out early from official meetings in running gear. Like Dave Cameron he cycles the wrong way down One Way streets. He is never exposed to community meetings or advice sessions solo. And generally he keeps schtum.

His total written reports in one recent council year comprised 24 scribbled words. All but six of them the names of meetings. I have a copy. There ought to have been five two page reports. And obviously he is forever getting into trouble with the running community for his half-arsed attempts at putting on races. Most recently last weekend at Clayton Vale.

A particularly troubling anecdote concerns a meeting a year or two back when our hero was supposed to represent his club at a committee meeting concerning the users of the Athletics Stadium at East Manchester. Kenny was unfashionably extraordinarily late, even by his standards, and excused himself by saying he had been shopping.

This did not go down well with the other representatives. At the end of the meeting it is alleged that he grabbed one ex-Great Britain International by the throat, saying: "Don't ever speak to me like that again". By my calculations this hot-headedness was just a few months before he was re-elected to represent the residents of City Centre ward.


In fact the Lib Dems City centre team are a right lot. There's Kenny the Clayton strangler (right). There's a woman called Elaine Boyes who has a comparable record - before being slid into what is probably the most middle class, professional ward in the city - of early hours drunken open air cat fights on the Openshaw Village Estate. She works in the NHS (centre).

Not quite as bad as "Peter" one of her Lib Dem ex-councilloring neighbours who was taken away in handcuffs at least once.

Oh and there's Marc Ramsbottom (left) (the Rambo archive), the one who is up this time round. A right old hypocrite on flyposting. Suspended on full pay for more than a year over allegations of financial irregularity. Eventually resigned in mysterious circumstances.

Yet still the Lib Dems have him as their Finance spokesman! He's the one that reassured Council in his alternative Powerpoint Budget that there'd still be £90 in reserves after he was done.

Actually believable given what the Audit Commission found (or did not find) in the coffers of Lib Dem Liverpool. "£90? Chance would be a fine thing", commented Mike Storey's puppet Fireman Bradley.

On May 2 Rambo should be gone. Dobbo and Boyesy will soon follow.

I'll be back to add the links and possibly a full P&P. Can anyone tell me whether that is necessary? Me, here, supporting Labour.

UPDATE: The allegedly offending candidate no longer has a place in the run down at Rambo's pages. Perhaps he is in jail? Or sleeping with the fishes? Luckily I have some screen grabs of the shady character in previous incarnations. No candidates are mentioned for Bradford Ward, Hulme Ward, Ancoats and Clayton Ward, or Moston Ward which are part of the constituency that Rambo is "parliamentary spokesman" for.

Don't think he's been selected for that just yet, actually.