Where is the CF Best Practice Officer?

Has anyone seen Ben Corbridge? No seriously, where is the Best Practice Officer for CF?

This struck me when I saw the results for Lord Mocroft's poll yesterday. Ben got a very low weighted mean approval score of 2.09 (just ahead of Sarah Jane Sewell on 2.01) and he got the lowest amount of responses of all the CF Exec members, suggesting many don't know who he is.

Where is Ben?

Unlike Colonel Cooper, stand by your Manning and Sarah Jane I haven't seen or heard anything to do with Ben Corbridge since early this year, maybe even before his election. This is odd considering he has a top 4 role in the running of CF and should be coming out with ideas and promoting CF policies. At the very least he should be going to a few events across the country like all the other exec members have managed to do. What has he been doing?

Well a little digging shows what's been going on. Ben is now living in Dubai and 'Providing financial security & investment advise to expatriates across the Middle East' (according to his LinkedIn). Personally I wish him good luck in his career which has taken him to another country. But do you think he should have told CFers that he was essentially putting his CF role permanently on the back burner? It must be very hard to help run CF thousands of miles away, especially with all that sand.

As Ben said himself, to my good friend DASHPolitiek*, "the role of ‘Best Practice’ is to have an understanding and empathy with the members, you can’t sit in an ivory tower and make directives, you have to be both in the board room and on the streets". Indeed you're right Ben; it's just a shame you haven't been 'in the board room and on the streets' since August according to #ThingsElliottSays sources.

"You have to be both in the board room and in the streets" and not take an unannounced leaves of absence.  

But you might say, if playing Ben's advocate here, so long as he is doing CF work from Dubai what's the problem? Well #ThingsElliottSays' reliable sources say Ben hasn't done anyway work at all. When I asked one source 'Has he done any work then since August?' the source replied 'Did he do any work before August?'. Which really sums it up. What on Earth, let alone moving to Dubai, has the CF Best Practice Officer been doing? Not CF work that's for sure.

It makes me wonder why Ben even bothered signing 'A Conservative and Unionist Pledge to ...' in January in a bid to get elected. In the Pledge Ben promised to 'promote transparency, openness and accountability' and 'offer campaign support' and also 'assist members with organising social and training events'. These are all pretty hard to do when in another country and not doing any work at all (even before moving to the UAE).

Ben signing a commitment essentially to do a good job as Best Practice Officer.

What a sorry state of affairs it is when one of the 4 head honchos of CF, elected to move forward the Tory youth movement, departs, without telling CFers, for a far away country and whilst there does absolutely nothing in his role. Perhaps Ben should reconsider being Best Practice Officer if he isn't doing anything? I bet 215 CFers are regretting casting their votes for Lord Lucan Corbridge.

Who has the better facial hair, Lord Lucan or Ben Corbridge? Answers in the comment section.

*Who is currently trying to reverse 100 years of socialism in the Liberal Democrats.