Bob Piper has been a Labour Councillor for the Abbey
Ward in Sandwell, West Midlands, for 10 years. He is a lifelong supporter of Aston Villa Football Club and a follower of Yorkshire County Cricket Club.
The views expressed here are mine in a personal capacity, not those of the Labour Party, Sandwell MBC, Aston Villa or Yorkshire County Cricket Club. Get it! Mine... just mine!
Promoted by Bob Piper of 115 Barclay Rd, B67 5JZ on behalf of the Labour Party, care of 39 Victoria Street London, SW1H 0HA . Hosted (printed) by Swaithe Internet Solutions who are not responsible for any of the contents of these posts.
Please note however, that The Labour Party is not responsible for the content of this website or individual posts as, unless specifically stated, I am writing solely in a personal and individual capacity.
Promoted by Bob Piper of 115 Barclay Rd, B67 5JZ on behalf of the Labour Party, care of 39 Victoria Street London, SW1H 0HA . Hosted (printed) by Swaithe Internet Solutions who are not responsible for any of the contents of these posts.
Please note however, that The Labour Party is not responsible for the content of this website or individual posts as, unless specifically stated, I am writing solely in a personal and individual capacity.
As more revelations about Lord Ashcroft and the Conservative party surface, it is clear that all his actions have been legal and obey all the rules, even if by modern politics' somewhat lax standards their morality may be questionable. Can David Cameron tell us why those unfortunate MPs whose expense claims were completely legal and followed all the rules, but which may have been somewhat morally suspect, have been so ruthlessly dealt with, while rather similar behaviour by a huge donor to the party attracts no word of censure?
Colin Harrison
Chesterfield
Easy, mate, Ashcroft hasn't got to get re-elected. If Labour had introduced a proper, democratic reform of the House of Lords there wouldn't have been the baubles to be handed around in the first place. And if the non-dom tax dodger had needed to be elected to get his place in the second chamber, we would have been able to kick his arse all the way back to Belieze. (Oh, and his cash might have had something to do with it I guess).
I'm very sorry to read of the death of former Birmingham councillor and Lord Mayor, Mike Nangle. Mike was a great character and a fierce fighter on behalf of Birmingham's Irish Community and was one of the driving forces behind Birmingham's Irish Centre and the revival of the St. Patrick's Day Parade in the city. I once had the pleasure of spending a few days supping Guinness in Dublin with Mike, and it really was a pleasure. He was a former bus conductor and a chair of the shop stewards committee at Lucas' in Birmingham and loved to talk about his trade union background. The only thing we ever argued about was his devotion to Manchester United, he was a leading light in the Birmingham Manchester United Supporters Club... but then again, he was from Portadown!
Mike had been suffering with cancer of the pancreas for some time and his loss will be mourned across the political spectrum in his adopted city and beyond. A real, true gentleman.
The Tories said it was “fiction” to suggest that non-white candidates had been left off deliberately and said there was plenty of material showing these candidates. They forwarded different material to the Observer with photographs of the non-white candidates prominently displayed. But it appeared that these images had been superimposed onto the new material so that they were next to their white colleagues. They were not original, group photos.
Bill Bryson writes with great passion and anger about the English countryside, (which usually only makes it on to the political radar when some red-coated, red-faced herberts are demanding their natural born civil liberty to carry out acts of barbarism on animals). He is particularly exercised about one of my pet hates, litter:
Meanwhile, the most encouraging thing the Prime Minister says, to my mind, is to do with litter and fly-tipping – a matter that seems to concern him sincerely (as it ought, frankly). “We are considering whether we could confiscate lorries where fly-tipping is identified,” he says.
That would be wonderful – but hardly before time. Every week, an estimated 50,000 people drive into the countryside and dump vanloads of waste, usually to avoid commercial tipping charges, knowing that they will never be caught or punished.
You stand more chance of being struck by lightning than of being caught fly-tipping in Britain, and even less chance of being fined or punished for littering.
Not just the countryside, Bill, nor just commercial waste disposal. Our inner cities are blighted by selfish, brainless morons who drop their black plastic bags full of crap anywhere and everywhere that suits them. Of course, catching the offenders without CCTV cameras is virtually impossible (cue entry stage write of civil libertarians quoting Orwell and droning on about the Big Brother state filming them scratching their arses).
Whilst I have some sympathy with David Cameron's Duffy-like aside in the Bryson interview ("cut their hands off") I suspect in the long run the answer is a combination of punishment, education and cleaning up the rubbish before it becomes something people just accept. Here in Sandwell we have a massive campaign every Springtime to get the community to show a bit of pride and clean up their own neighbourhoods. Schools get involved in great numbers, and hopefully that will be one of the lasting benefits; once kids have been out with their prongs, gloves and litter bags picking up crisp packets and chocolate wrappers, they may actually think twice before chucking away their own. And then maybe they will start telling their parents just exactly how brainless they are when they go to chuck their KFC wrappers out of the car window.
Over at the excellent Hagley Road to Ladywood various people from across the political spectrum are being asked to write up to 300 words in support of why you should vote for a their party in the general election.
It kicks off today with Neil Robertson who explains why not he's not voting for any of them in support of prisoners who have been denied the opportunity to vote.
A SUN investigation (Woodward and Bernstein eat your hearts out) has unearthed an alarming BBC bias against the Tories in the run up to the Election.
THE Basil Brush Show featured a school election with a cheat called Dave wearing a blue rosette.
It is one thing Murdoch insulting the intelligence of the readers of his comic with the drivel they turn out every day, but it's a bit below the belt to assume that potential Tory voters are so thick they are going to have their voting intention determined by the Basil Brush show.
"In a Cotswold village he stood out like a sore thumb, in the biting wind wearing his city slicker grey overcoat. He was chased down the lane on the three mile walk back to the main road with his leather briefcase between his legs."
I get a pitiful handful of readers every day... and now one of them cannot log on to this site. Is there anyone out there who may have sufficient techie skills who would be in a position to help Bob the Black Country Blogger access his daily diet of left-wing ramblings?
Although if you are also unable to log on here, it will be a bit of a wasted plea I suppose.
Sometimes you hear of the death of someone you have never met, but you feel you know them so well that it hits you with a hammer blow, as if you had just heard a close relative had died. I feel that way this morning.
The death has been announced of radio music presenter Charlie Gillett. It seems facile to describe a man who brought such a depth of knowledge of his subject to the world as a DJ, but I guess Charlie wouldn't mind that much. His love of music from across the globe was legendary, and a typical programme would include Portugese Faro music, West African music from Senegal or Mali, German rockers, French rappers, Cuban salsa and US country or blues music. To Charlie, it was all just... music, and he loved it and conveyed it with a passion and a warmth to his audiences. Whether that was playing Radio ping pong with his guests on Radio London (followed by tens of thousands every week on the internet) or in more recent years on Radio 3 at some absurd time the BBC schedulers decided was fit for 'World Music' audiences.
Charlie was a scholar of his subject, he wrote an excellent history of rock n' roll, he compiled an annual double cd release of some of the best music from his programmes, and maintained a website with recommendations and playlists. He was a real enthusiast. But the overriding memory of Charlie was that of listening to a knowledge mate playing his record collection for you, and sharing that pleasure. And as I said at the start, I feel like I did when heard Peel had died, not just that a 'radio personality' had died, but that I have lost a mate. RIP Charlie. I'll have one for you tonight.
Update: Someone has just said that listening to Charlie was like eating a box of luxury chocolates; you never quite knew what was coming next, but you knew that whatever it was it would invariably be a treat. I like that.
Hot on the heels of Labour has links with union shocker! we are today treated with the less than devastating news that Frank Field would like to be a Minister in a Conservative Government (or a Lib Dem/UKIP/BNP?Green administration, for that matter... he just wants a bloody job!).
If that is the case, I wonder why Frank is actually standing for Labour in the election? Surely he could stand as the 'Honest Frank - I'll work for anybody Party'. A true Independent, Martin Bell without the grubby white suit.
Of course, the real inspiration for Frank's headline grabbing could be much more related to the bit at the bottom of the article which plug's his forthcoming book. His publisher's say... "Concerned with our Christian understanding of fairness and religious motivations in politics, this is a fascinating insight to what spurs Frank on in his fearless pursuit of justice." Pass the sick bucket.
I see a strange, mousy little woman on my TV screen this morning denouncing UNITE for having the temerity to receive a message of solidarity from another trade union. It turns out to be Theresa Villiers, the Shadow Transport Secretary. Now I know David Cameron wanted to "woo the trade unions" during his charm offensive a couple of years ago (although there was a suggestion in some smug quarters that this was not so much a new attitude to industrial relations but a cynical attempt to get votes). Don't worry though, Chameleon Dave has moved on... he's found some other people to woo.
Anyway, back to the mousy one. I thought I would google search for Theresa Villliers condemnation of BA management as the Tories attempt to show solidarity with the brothers and sisters as part of the wooing process.
Sadly, I couldn't find anything. It obviously doesn't matter to Villiers that it was the bullying BA chief executive Willie Walsh who had broken off negotiations - which staggeringly also included a union offer to reduce wages (bloody commies) - and had been busy with a bit of secondary action of his own by recruiting an alternative workforce. That was just, apparently, "the huge effort being made by BA management to minimise the inconvenience" according to Villiers.
Not that the Labour Leadership have shown any greater backbone. Adonis and Brown showing that when the chips are down, New Labour know which side they are on, as Seamus Milne wrote in The Guardian:
But what is truly preposterous is the Tory and media insistence that the dispute confirms the grip trade unions, and the Labour-affiliated Unite in particular, have on the government. As the last couple of days have amply demonstrated, nothing could be further from the truth.
Not only have ministers once again backed the employer in an industrial dispute and denounced the union – as in every other significant national dispute over the past decade – they have resolutely refused to repeal any substantive part of the Thatcher government's anti-union legislation, which would have almost certainly allowed the BA dispute to be settled last week, if not in December when the courts ruled the first round of strikes unlawful.
As anyone who has followed the twists and turns of New Labour in power over the past 13 years knows perfectly well, it is bankers and businessmen, not trade unionists, who have called the shots – with disastrous consequences for all of us.
And what to do but admire whoever it was spotted close to Mildenhall US air base in Suffolk, driving a nice Mercedes bearing the private number-plate WMD 1? Could it have been Mr Tony, inquires reader Mitch Mitchell? Well Mitch, he did say WMD was out there. And he did promise to find it.
I share his surprise at this "news". The Labour Party has apparently got close links with the organised working class in the trade union movement, whose members willingly and openly donate to a fund to support the Labour Party. The loathsome swine!
And I bet these individual contributors are not only resident and domiciled in this country... but they also work and pay tax here. If the Tories want to make an issue about the unions funding Labour as opposed to the millionaires who fund their campaigns... bring it on!
It is not often that I agree with Dominic Lawson, but his piece today in The Indy about the crystal-ball and tea leaf readers who masquerade as opinion pollsters is absolutely spot on. The pollsters and their ardent followers are just political trainspotters, and should be treated with the same disdain. Although the connection between opinion polls showing the Tory lead dwindling and a Tory rubbishing opinion polls may not be entirely unrelated:
If you see someone with a smug grin on his face the chances are he's an opinion pollster. Over the next month-and-a-half he will be raking in enough money to make a banker jealous. Some newspapers are promising to publish an opinion poll every day from the moment the date of the general election is confirmed: at a charging rate of thousands of pounds per poll, that is seriously good business. No wonder Bob Worcester, founder of the polling organisation MORI, has been able to afford an estate on the Caribbean island of Mustique, more widely known as the favoured holiday home of the world's richest rock stars and fashion moguls....
....On the other hand, there would be something marvellous about an election campaign free of opinion polls. First of all, it would be good for the politicians: they would resemble less the sort of businessmen who are so obsessed with tracking their share price daily that they forget about the long-term needs of their company...
...Above all, think of the benefit of the likely increase in the uncertainty about the outcome: it would surely lead to a sharp rise in voter turn-out, something which all parties purport to desire. On the downside, there might be fewer pollsters with Caribbean estates. Somehow, we would all just have to live with that.
Nick Griffin's publicist suggests that if Labour lose the General Election, the Party may not get rid of Gordon Brown....
Although if they run true to form they'd wimp out of getting rid of him and let him lead them to the next disaster.
How nice to receive advice from the experts. Perhaps if the Party were to lose they could look around for an inexperience little chap who thinks wearing a baseball cap backwards appeals to the 'yoof'.
And if that doesn't work out they could stab him in the back and select a complete mumbling nonentity... a sort of "quiet man who could turn up the volume". And if that goes pear-shaped, we could scan the horizon for a shadowy figure with "something of the night" about him, with all the charisma of a squashed orange. And then, when he gets a thrashing, we could scour around for a baby-faced twerp with a.... (errrm, that's enough people who have led political parties to disaster - ed).
Hey, thanks for the advice. It's always nice to learn from people with experience.
Popular wisdom has it that Nick Clegg and the majority of his free market liberals in the Parliamentary Party would be much happier propping up a minority Tory Party in a coalition than they would with Labour. However, there is some suggestion that any such coalition would upset a substantial proportion of the sandal-wearers who regard the Tories as totally unacceptable.
Personally, I don't believe a word of it. The Tory-Liberal coalition in Birmingham and local authorities show that they can happily co-exist without any major fracturing of their membership. People who think otherwise have a romantic view of the Liberals as a party of principle, as opposed to a party who have been so far isolated from power they will jump in to bed with the first person that offers them a peck on the cheek. A deal with the Liberals will also get David Cameron off a hook he has been caught on from the time he appealed to his own Party's backwoodsmen to defeat David Davis in the leadership election. Buddying up with the Liberals will give Cameron an excuse to ignore his Eurosceptics and continue his Party's usual direction of entrenching us further into the EU club.
Incidentally, I loved the David Steel moment at the Lib Dem Conference when Danny Alexander told them to prepare for power.... I know we are ready to lead this country. In fact, I believe we are the only party with a clear plan that can lead the country out of the mess we are in. Lol.
I don't say this very often... but, I thought Andrew Neil made a good point last night on This Week. Talking about the involvement of the Party leaders' spouses in the run up to the election he said he thought it was something David Cameron should avoid. Gordon Brown has an image which, putting it kindly, needs softening up, and an appearance on Piers Morgan's show, with Sarah wiping away the tears, or the doting wife holding hands with him on the platform at Party Conference may be a positive. Cameron's problem is the opposite. Whether it is right or not, he is perceived as a lightweight, a pretty boy from a privileged background who lacks the gravitas to be the leader of his country. Parading Samantha Cameron, a pretty woman from an even more privileged background, just reinforces that image. Daft as it may seem, Cameron needs more photo opportunities with serious ugly heavyweight politicians than he does with other young wealthy pretty people.
Enter Ken Clarke... who ticks all the boxes I would have thought.
The good folk at When Cowards Flinch have decided that they will boycott the annual Iain Dale blog beauty parade because Dale is giving over the organ to the odious racist Nick Griffin. Dale, who previously interviewed former Nazi sympathiser Kaminski for the magazine, excuses his decision to given the oxygen of publicity to fascists on the grounds that he will try to show Griffin up for what he is. Dizzy, of course, runs to defend his master by claiming double standards on the grounds that there wasn't a boycott of Channel 4 News when Tony Benn "interviewed" Saddam Hussein, who.... "had happily thrown around chemical weapons on his own people and ordered the murder of thousands." (Actually, I don't know how dizzy knows whether people boycotted it or not, but there was one hell of a lot of noise in the media from commentators complaining about Benn's visit - many of a right wing persuasion).
However, the main issue is the one of boycotting the beauty contest. Dizzy claims to be a libertarian (although most of his illiberal spoutings just sound like a tame Tory Guido) and then calls people who make a decision not to participate in a popularity contest "silly". Very bloody liberal.
I don't actually participate in the '100 blogs' stuff anyway, and after many, many months of struggle I seem to have got the message through to Total Politics that I don't want their unsolicited junk mail. But if I did either, I think I would drop out anyway because of the decision to give space to the odious racist. Not because I think anyone who reads this coffee table junk is likely to be persuaded to vote BNP, but because it gives Griffin and his cronies an air of respectability, an endorsement from those who like to think of themselves as the political establishment. How you can trot around the Polish death camps one week and sip coffee with a man who denied their existence the next, without vomiting all over him, is just beyond me.
As if David Cameron's alliances with various dodgy East European parties wasn't weird enough, his pact with the Ulster Unionist Party is completely barking. The hilariously named "Ulster Conservatives and Unionists - New Force" is anything but a "force". At least the dodgy Poles give an impression of being part of some sort of wider European grouping, but what on earth do the UUP bring to the table in the "New Force"? A single MP (who is not even a legend in her own living room), a single MEP, and an isolated handful of Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly who surely showed yesterday that they are out of touch with the political mood and the electorate. And when David Cameron attempts to use the "New Force" alliance to influence his new partners, they completely ignore him.
Not just the countryside, Bill, nor just commercial waste disposal. Our inner cities are blighted by selfish, brainless morons who drop their black plastic bags full of crap anywhere and everywhere that suits them. Of course, catching the offenders without CCTV cameras is virtually impossible (cue entry stage write of civil libertarians quoting Orwell and droning on about the Big Brother state filming them scratching their arses).
The death has been announced of radio music presenter 
