COVENTRY MESSAGE BOARD

It was reported that a Tory councillor, Nick Turner, in Holland-on-Sea, Essex, proposed in a leaked e-mail that unless the voters in the town voted Tory in the last by-election, that the money earmarked for the town's sea defences should be axed, saying "Devil take the hindmost."

They voted against him anyway.

I was under the mistaken impression that the 1832 Reform Bill was supposed to outlaw such behaviour....

Only applies to MPs as far as I can tell?

Something similar happened in 1865 when the Tory candidate for Coventry proposed a link between a new railway station in Pool Meadow and the Great Western Railway. In the event he lost the election anyway and nothing was heard of the proposal ever again. I doubt very much it would have been built in any case.

Electoral bribes are the norm now. They kept Labour in power for thirteen years and the Tories have been very careful since not to upset their core voters.

All parties offer some form of inducement; but this wasn't an inducement, it was a threat to cancel a scheme already approved.

Although Most of the Eastern region votes Tory, however, the government has decided that it won't pay for any more sea wall repairs, especially at the (very) weak point of Happisburgh. There, the coast is receding at the rate of around a metre a year, and there is only around 10 metres of the sea wall built after the 1953 floods left. If the sea does come in (sorry, when ) it will flood much of Norfolk, certainly all of the Broads, and potentially it could also send the fens under water. The lowest point is near Cambridge, and is now 33 feet below sea level. Locals who were trying to reinforce the sea wall themselves at their own expense have been banned from doing so with a threat of legal action if they continue. We can only wonder what that's about......