Blogging Resumes

The Conservatives are currently selecting candidates for next year's elections to the European parliament. There will shortly be a ballot of party members in each region to pick and rank those candidates, and from the day of the local elections at the start of May until the end of the ballot period at the end of July, those who have applied to stand and are taking part in the process are under extremely strict limits - known as "purdah" - about what we can do to promote ourselves, what meetings we can go to, and what we can circulate to party members.

The purpose of the rules is to attempt to ensure a level playing field among candidates during the ballot period. As I am one of the people affected by these rules, I have been trying carefully to stay within them and possibly been over-cautious. This is why I have stopped posting tweets, and have not been able to attend a number of Conservative meetings which I would normally have gone to. For the same reason I had suspended putting new blog posts on this website.

Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) have today clarified the advice on what applicants to be European candidates can do during the campaign period. We are not allowed to promote ourselves using facebook or twitter, but the advice issued today is that we ARE allowed to update websites.

Consequently it is no longer necessary for me to suspend blogging.

Comment moderation is still off, but I will turn it on again immediately if any inappropriate posts are made during the period of the membership ballot. I am still planning to formally trial a two month period without comment moderation during the period from the end of July to the end of September.

Comments

Jim said…
Good to see you back Chris.

I had speculated that you had been called for Jury Duty, and wished to remain impartial. Of course that was 100% speculation, though it does serve as a classic example of why 100% speculation is often 100% wrong.
4:22 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
Thanks, Jim.


Yes, that would have been another example of the sort of reason one might have had to stop blogging for a bit, but you're right about how speculation should be indulged only with care !
9:28 pm
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