Talk:Oxford City Council election, 2006

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[edit] Charlie Steel controversy

First, thanks to Newprogressive for reverting the deletion of the Charlie Steel controversy section. It is both notable and relevant to the article to cover a suspected case of fraud. However, the same controversy is also dealt with in a section of Oxford University Conservative Association. Each section has information the other section hasn't; should we reduce one to a summary and give a link to the other (and if so which one?), or should we try to keep both as complete narratives? Tamino 16:01, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

The details regarding Simon Clarke and his cheque fraud aren't really relevant to the Oxford Council elections (other than a chronological proximity to them and their controversy), so anything beyond a passing reference here wouldn't make sense. At the same time, telling the story of Simon Clarke without including how it interacted with Steel's controversy would decontextualise the matter too much.

Removing Steel's controversy from this page wouldn't be correct either, I feel. Steel's actions had a much wider effect than the reverbarations within OUCA - it substantially affected the election, so referring to another page might well suggest a lesser impact than there was. Certainly more could be mentioned in the OUCA article, though I'm not sure how much more of relevance could be included in this article.

As a note, the previous vandalism comes from an Oxford Uni IP. --New Progressive 14:45, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes. The IP has contributed a lot about the OUCA (have a look here), and so presumably knows a lot about it. However, I wouldn't call the removal of the section here vandalism as he/she/it did not remove the section from the OUCA article. The said person presumably thought that it was redundant to cover it twice, but I agree that it should stay here because of its relevance.

You say it affected the election. As I wasn't there (although I voted by proxy) I didn't hear anything, but I was struck when recording the results by the big drop in support for the Conservatives (when with Cameron etc. one would think they would be forging ahead - sorry, bad choice of words!). I noticed that they didn't field candidates in some wards that they had contested last time. Was that the reason, or did they lose out on the scandal? Tamino 17:28, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Charlie Steel stopped campaigning in his last week because of the scandal, which I should imagine caused his support to fall (this was mentioned in the press). Supposedly his reasoning went something like this: If he got more votes than the majority that the Lib Dems or Greens had in the seat, then the loser would go to the electoral court and ask them to throw the election result out on the basis of an unlawful candidate. Essentially he wanted as few votes as possible so as to avoid the need for more legal proceedings which would inevitably cause more attention to be paid to him by the Police. I also know that several "regular" Tory voters declined to vote for him as a result of his scandal.

The lack of Tory candidates in certain wards was the result of an administrative failure - quite simply, the Tories didn't submit nomination forms in good time. I only know this unofficially, I'm not sure to what degree it is verifiable. --New Progressive 09:13, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Interesting. I don't suppose there's any chance of finding a verifiable source for this? Might be good to put in a note explaining that the Tories' lack of candidates was not the result of a crisis of support but instead caused by an administrative foul-up. (Don't you just love bureaucracy...). Tamino 19:09, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion about which article should have the main section

This discussion has been copied from User talk:Tamino#Oxford election 2006 and User talk:129.67.53.94

Hello - Probably I didn't go about it the right way: I think the article on the controversy should be merged with that on OUCA, which it affected much more than the council elections. I see the view that it may be considered relevant to the elections, but it didn't seem so at all at the time. Also, similar contorversies in Tower Hamlets & Birmingham are not mentioned on those pages (principally though because the pages don't exist!).

Thirdly (changing topic a bit), I was a bit concerned that it was labelled as it was: no charges have as yet been brought, so perhaps it might be renamed "Nomination form controversy" or something to avoid the candidate being considered complicit in something perhaps not his fault. 129.67.53.94 16:25, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I understand your point. To start with your last point, I will change the title to what you suggested. I agree that the controversy affects the OUCA (Charlie Steel being President-elect), but I don't think we should delete the section from Oxford Council election 2006. Perhaps a good compromise would be to designate either the section in the election article or the section in the OUCA article as the main section on the controversy (and the one to be updated if anything develops), and have the other just as a briefer summary and link to the main section. Which section should be the main section can be discussed here, with the discussion copied to Talk:Oxford University Conservative Association. I personally lean towards the Oxford election article for having the main section. Tamino 18:11, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

End of copied discussion

I hardly call copying this here (after making the relevant edits) as a discussion in which I had any chance to make input and thus affect the consensus that has been generated and used to edit the article.

For the record, the nomination form is Steel's - that much is at least not in dispute - and it is a matter of course that what is on it is his responsibility. The controversy is about him, every media report has reflected that and the suggestion of the anon IP address that since no charges have been brought, we should somehow edit to protect Steel is not reflected in any media coverage. --New Progressive 10:11, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I didn't mean to bypass you in any way and apologise if I offended you, because that was not the intention. I made the edit (singular) to the title of the section, but you are always welcome to revert it if you feel it is unnecessary (that's how Wikipedia works, after all).

On the subject of what we should do about the double coverage of the controversy I have not made any edits to the content of either article, because I am awaiting consensus on that matter, which is why I copied the discussion here. Again, sorry if I offended you. Tamino 10:01, 9 July 2006 (UTC)