Peter Reynolds and CLEAR want your money!

By James Collins

Peter Reynolds is running to be a Member of Parliament in the Corby by-election.  That’s a pretty big responsibility.  That’s the big boys club, and they play for keeps.  Peter would be introducing an entirely new party into a social structure where reputation and association mean everything.  Whom you choose to send into Parliament on your behalf could potentially have a massive impact on your life in very fundamental ways.  Infrastructure budgets, grants for development; there is a lot of money to be allocated to different districts, and Peter would be the last guy in line for porridge. 

When the wrangling of party politics in a democratic house begins, the party affiliation of your seat is actually quite important.  If you find that your district is represented by a party who does not enjoy large numbers in the house, you effectively relegate your region to the kiddie table of federal politics.  The other parties have control of the agenda, and one lone voice in the back row of the opposition isn’t going to enjoy a lot of talking time during question period.  In fact, without the backing of other members of Parliament, they will be lucky to introduce or even influence debated legislation whatsoever.  To even begin to make an impact in the interests of their region, an independent or fringe party member would have to align themselves with another major party.

With whom shall Peter Reynolds stand when the chips are down?

It’s kind of a moot question I pose, because Peter Reynolds isn’t any more likely to win an election than he is to win a Nobel Prize.  CLEAR UK is as much a political party as I am a banana.  Any other serious party already has members living in the area, a significant presence on the ground spreading the word with flyers and door-knocking.  There are lawn signs and posters and all the usual rigmarole of an election.

Where is Peter Reynolds?

According to his own “press releases”, which is to say his Facebook posts, he claims that he has gone there twice.  Once to get the lay of the land, by which I imagine he means to drink at the local pub.  More recently he travelled to the distant land of Corby to obtain nomination papers, and then trudge the “cold and windy streets” to obtain nominations.  One might note it is likely unwise to refer to the district you want to run in with negative imagery.  Some people might respond to it less favorably, if they fell through a wormhole into an alternate universe where people in Corby have the foggiest clue who Peter is or what he thinks about anything.  Just who in Corby who have never heard of CLEAR UK or Peter Reynolds is going to nominate the man?  Anybody he can beg to do it.

He likes to frame every effort he makes as heroic.  In this case he is braving the cold and the wind of Corby to beg for signatures in order to begin trying to run for office.  Even casually he must paint himself in a psychotically generous light, as though being reduced to knocking on the doors of strangers to further the illusion that you are a politician is bravery and not mindless obsession.   It still stands that ten year old girl scouts make this same effort, not to forward their own professional and social position, but for charity.  Peter is, in actuality, significantly less brave and productive than a Girl Scout, but he wants voters in Corby to even consider the possibility of voting him to represent them in the wolf den of Parliament?

Unlike a real political party, CLEAR doesn’t actually know ten people in the riding in order to obtain a nomination.  Peter Reynolds must personally walk the streets of Corby, bothering complete strangers in the comfort of their homes, and convince them to nominate him, the 12^th candidate in the by-election, because he likes to spend all his time posting on his own website about pot smoking.  He doesn’t even have a reliable representative to do this for him, or accompany him and create the appearance of an organization.  That’s a pretty hard sell.  Impressively enough, Peter claims to have found eight of those ten people as of the time I am writing this.  I have no doubt he can find ten individuals with a passive enough personality to sign the paper in order that he will leave, rather than simply assert themselves and tell him to get the hell off the property or suffer the consequences.

Will the other parties be going door to door to get nomination signatures?  No, of course they won’t.  They already know ten people in Corby who are eager to do it for them, because they are real political parties.  CLEAR UK is not a party, so much as Peter and his two friends running a website and a Facebook page.  CLEAR UK enjoys a less sophisticated political profile than a candidate in a grammar school class presidency campaign.  In this age the grammar school candidate probably has an iPhone app and ten friends.  Granted, they are working on the same level as Sarah Palin, but in the UK politics is a more serious game; and the BBC doesn’t put you on weekly to discuss your paranoid delusions on that basis.

Peter Reynolds has a “press officer”, who is some guy he recruited off of his Facebook page.  What does this fellow do?  See for yourself.  The “press division” of CLEAR consists of people posting copy/paste comments on every website that posts an article about cannabis.  CLEAR doesn’t have a consistent media profile, other than a couple of brief radio appearances, Peter has pretty much fallen below the radar.  They are forced instead to start arguments in comments boxes all about the internet, pushing a name that has nothing behind it.

Most political parties will give away promotional materials, because it is part of their budget to promote themselves.  Will CLEAR be doing the same?  No, they are not.  You must pay for your own promotional materials from CLEAR in order that you may wage this campaign for Peter.  As you can imagine, the stickers and flyers are not exactly ubiquitous about Corby, or anywhere else but Peter’s squalid living space.

Run for Parliament?  That guy couldn’t make another beer run.

First you have to pay to join the party, and then you have to pay them for materials to promote the party.  What kind of amateur hour is this?  At least the people of Corby will get their mailing for free.  Peter was quite excited at the prospect of sending out mail at low-low prices.  With that kind fiscal sense, he’ll clean up Britain in no time.

Or does he have fiscal sense?  CLEAR has been putting out a lot of begging letters, and they have to sell their promotional materials rather than give them away.  They claimed at one point the son of Sir Richard Branson was going to fund them, although talk of this dropped off rather rapidly.  Whatever happened, Peter isn’t talking about it, at least not to the press (his Facebook page).  So how could it be that Peter can claim 15,000 paid members, at £5 each, and the financial support of a billionaires son, and be unable to give away promotional materials?  That’s seventy five thousand pounds, plus whatever Branson was putting into the pot!  If his claims about his membership are true, he’s got a pretty nice little nest egg built up there.  In truth his claim of quite so many members is somewhere between a lie and gargantuan joke.  The Clear Facebook page has about that many likes, and by that metric of public support, we should expect that Kittens and Beer will have a far stronger showing in this election.

Peter likes to call people liars, mendacious trolls, stoners and scroungers.  In the pursuit of his ridiculous agenda of his, he has made himself all of those things and more.  He lies about his background and his support.  He posts repeatedly on websites where he clearly isn’t welcome, seemingly just to provoke a response.  He drinks and uses cannabis, the same drug he both advocates the legalization of and lambasts his detractors for the use of.  He scrapes and begs at every turn, even sinking to asking people to pay for the privilege of promoting him and his pretend political party.

Peter Reynolds isn’t a politician, he’s a paranoid.  He’s Speakers Corner masquerading as Downing Street.  He’s a con-man selling nothing, on the strength of a nobody’s name, and it’s all going nowhere.