Astley guilty, campaign worker cleared

bristol | media and culture | news report Wednesday September 29, 2004 00:20 by Stella Hender hatton.hack at bristolsatire dot fsnet dot co dot uk

John Astley, former councillor, pleaded Guilty to forging proxy vote application forms yesterday.

On Monday Sept 27th 04 at Exeter Crown Court, all charges relating to the John Astley electoral fraud trial were dropped against former Lib Dem activist STELLA HENDER. Astley coughed to the charges after saying nothing to police or lawyers for over a year, forcing Stella to live under suspicion of the offence, ruining any political career she was ever likely to have. Astley completed his sentence for downloading over 5000 images of the worst kind of child porn from his taxpayer-owned council computer at the end of August.You were not allowed to know about this because all journalists were gagged by a reporting restriction which seemed more designed to protect members of the Liberal Democrat hierarchy in Bristol who repeatedly selected Astley as their candidate, than to protect him - especially since most people living in his ward knew he was banged up in Horfield on the child porn charges. He will be released in 6 weeks time after doing half of the 5 months he recieved for the electoral fraud.
All those wankers who spent the last year hiding behind e mail monikers,libelling Stella on this, BS3, or the Bristolian websites, why not read today's Evening Post, then use it to wipe the egg off your faces.