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Labour councillor's call to 'scrap shirt and tie' through fear of 'offence' branded 'nonsense'
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May 29, 2025
A Labour Party councillor has been blasted by Reform UK's Oliver Freeston after calling to "revise" their council's shirt and tie dress code.The councillor sparked controversy after urging North Lincolnshire Council to revise it's dress code for public meetings, arguing that requiring a shirt and tie could be "offensive" to certain ethnic and religious groups.FULL STORY HERE.
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Honestly, it makes you want to rip your hair out
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Now imagine having the misfortune of having to sit through a council meeting and listen to this absolute nonsense
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Although I suppose it's true, if they're going to govern like clowns, then why wouldn't they dress like them
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It's embarrassing. You know, we've got a white man being offended on behalf of different ethnicities
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But when you actually speak to them and you say, is there any reason you couldn't wear a shirt and tie
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They go, absolutely not. So actually, I would say that it's quite offensive to say
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that certain ethnicities can't wear a shirt and tie. Absolute nonsense. Of course it is
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I mean, it's a standard dress code. It's a code of conduct
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It's a code of decorum. It's a code to show that you're ready for work and businesslike
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And we happen to be in the United Kingdom. What's his plan be
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You dress in a sari? You tell me I don't know what they're going to turn up in next
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What I can tell you, if I was the chair of the meeting, because it's at the chair's discretion, if anybody turned up without good reason
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I would tell them to leave the meeting. End of story. Because we've been elected by our constituents
0:58
If you can be bothered to put a shirt and tie on and show the respect to the people who put you there then don bother coming Now of course there are exceptions There people who an emergency has come up or they got back from work later than they expected Fair enough we make exceptions as one
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But to make it a blanket rule of dressing however you like, absolutely ridiculous and shameful
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Yeah, I mean, you could be like Justin Trudeau. You could wear a pair of green Adidas trainers to meet the king
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I mean, there is a certain contagion to this lack of dress code, but on a serious point
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You know, nobody is saying that it should be mandatory to wear, you know, to strip out your cultural origins, to comply
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It isn't that. This isn't this idea of like a French style, no wearing of any religious attire
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This is a straightforward him taking offence on behalf of somebody else
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I mean, has anybody ever complained about this in the past in this council
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and that's the exact thing that was discussed on the night nobody had ever made a problem over it
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but the sad thing is i was the lone voice in the chamber to say this is absolute rubbish
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so afterwards they said okay we take a vote on whether to send this back to a working group to review uh the wording to see if it is offensive and whether it fit for purpose I said well let make it a recorded vote I was the sole councillor out of all of them that said nonsense let play our head
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The Tories joined forces with them, and that's why they're currently unelectable, both parties
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And what is that about? Is it just a total fear, a total lack of a backbone
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They just want to keep their heads down. But, see, the problem with that is that as soon as you just keep silent
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this becomes the new norm. How long before anybody could turn up in anything they want to work
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And that is not the way we conduct business in this country
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Exactly that. People are scared of being offensive. And that's why I love being part of reform
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I make no qualms about it. I used to be a conservative. I joined reform when we were polling 8%, 9% in the party
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because I believed in the party's principles and the convictions and I had the courage to join
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But we've certainly got to stand up and we've got to fight back this nonsense. The fact that reform are polling so well now shows that actually we've got the majority or a good
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swathe of the country behind us What I would say though is I don think the majority of the public are actually aware of the conduct of their elected members Most people don know who the
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local councillor is. And so they don't know what's being said. Although I suspect if people
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if the electorate were aware of the comments that were made by this certain councillor
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he would be getting booted out of office and it wouldn't be too soon. And the interesting thing is
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he's actually a ward colleague of mine. He's another councillor. I can tell you next year
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I'm up for election. We're going to really work hard and we're going to be delivering the message
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that reform is the serious party. Well, I'll tell you what, I think one of the things we're going
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to see now about so many reform councillors out there, so many reform councils being taken over
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by reform, more and more of these kind of stories coming out. And I think maybe that's what the
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general public needs, just to sort of have the sunlight, the bleach of sunlight to show us what's
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going on. That's what I did when the European Union just exposed their cocktail parties, their
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foreign jaunts, the wastage, the £5,000 leather armchairs. That's your job. Thanks for joining us
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Oliver Freeson, thanks for joining us on the show. Now, we contacted the Labour
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Councillor in question for a comment and we haven't received one yet
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