The Mushroom

IMI, Alumwell and Walsall Council ..the half truths continue

2012-02-10T03:56:00.000-08:00

As Advantage West Midlands goes to court over the pollution on the former IMI James Bridge site, Walsall council finally managed to meet an invited group of residents last night.

The meeting was addressed by three local government officers who told the small group that the authority wasn’t trying to hide anything, but in answer to a series of questions on levels of pollution on site kept replying that they couldn’t say because they didn’t have a copy of the report. They did say, though, that when the data was available to them it would be accessible for scrutiny. They said this would happen once an interpretive report on the data was completed. This will come about when a planning application is made by Parkhill Estates Ltd, which will only happen when the company has bought the land from the Homes and Communities Agency; the governmental body which took over ownership of the site from Advantage West Midlands

What the residents weren’t told is that AWM are going to the Information Tribunal to prevent them having access to the data. It claims that if that data is released it may lead to company pulling out of the deal. If AWM is successful residents will have to rely on the interpretive report as their only source of information. As with any such report, it is an analysis which is open to challenge but only if the original data is available to those wanting to question it.

The officers also told the residents that when a planning application is made anyone wishing to make their views or objections known will have 21 days to do so. So even if the data is released, residents will have only three weeks to find an expert who can understand the data and give an alternative analysis; if they can afford to hire one. Furthermore, the officers said the public consultation will ask various agencies and residents in the vicinity for their responses. That suggests that other interested parties, such as the parents of children at Alumwell School which borders the land that will be mined and reclaimed, will not be informed.
In addition the council believes that any on-going consultation should be with ‘invited’ representatives of the community; so no wide ranging consultation then.Lastly, public meeting scheduled for next week, may now not go ahead.

The council has known about these plans for this site for over 18 months yet it is only now that choose to inform a small group of residents of those plans. Previous to this it has engaged pushing out statements that omitted important facts and presented half truths. It seems nothing has changed.

Don't feed the animals Cllr Andrew..they bite!!!

2012-02-10T01:23:00.000-08:00

The Plastic Hippo is a blogger whose observations of Walsall life are always interesting and informative even if, as I do, you don’t agree with his conclusions or opinions. But his latest piece on the botched spin doctoring of Walsall council can’t be faulted.

After a recent spate of placed ‘positive’ stories in the local media on the regeneration and economic health of the borough, a pesky research company put their foot in the council communications’ department cake by releasing data showing that one in four shops in Walsall town centre are empty.

Cllr Andrew and the press office rushed out a pres release attacking the figures by claiming that if you count in warehousing and office space, the real figure was only one in five!

Far from proving that Walsall is on the up these figures show that the government’s economic policy and this inept council are hammering all areas of commercial real estate, while failing to counter the original research.

Maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on the press office. It’s well known that with the exception of fluffy stories (garden fetes, etc) any press release coming out of the council is scrutinised and signed off by the relevant senior councillor on the cabinet. So the blame for debacle has to lie with the man who wants to lead the Conservatives after the next round of elections in May, Cllr Adrian Andrew

Mining for the truth in Alumwell.

2012-02-06T13:00:00.000-08:00

The announcement by a leading Councillor that coal mining is planned for the former James Bridge Engineering site in Alumwell is a welcomed departure from the obfuscation and refusal by Walsall Council to consult over its plans for the site.

Since January last year when the proposals to carry out open casting coal mining were leaked, the Council has avoided or simply ignored calls for it to confirm mining is planned for the site. Instead it has issued a number of carefully worded press releases which downplayed as much as possible any ‘negative’ perception of the proposals. These press releases instead emphasised that the site is heavily contaminated, often referring to it as the one of the most contaminated sites in Europe and that its remediation would create up to 4000 jobs. These ‘key messages’ by the Council has been repeated again and again. The argument is in short that it must be cleaned up and these jobs have to be created. This on the face of it is a complying argument particularly in a period of high unemployed it has been its justification for, and the defence of, its proposals.

But with the latest comments by Adrian Andrew, the cabinet member for regeneration, the Council has now admitted that people living next to the 11 hectare site will have to suffer one of the most intrusive and environmentally damaging industrial processes allowed by planning laws. The fact that the site is heavily poisoned by decades of metal working that has resulted in truly frightening levels of lead copper, arsenic, zinc and various acids in the soil only magnifies the problems it poses for nearby residents whose homes back onto the land. But although it is located in a residential area, local people have complained that they have not been consulted, either officially or unofficially, in anyway.

This unwillingness by the Council to come clean about its plans runs contrary with established best practice on community involvement.

For many years councils across the country have been working at making communities safer, more cohesive, active and engaged about decisions affecting them. So much so that a small industry has been created to meet the need to tell people what is going on. There are literally thousands of communications, public engagement, community support and development officers employed to do just that job; not just in local councils but also the NHS, government agencies, etc. ‘Consultation and transparency’ has entered the everyday language of politicians and public servants. This has been given legislative backing in a host of clauses to local government acts, and extra weight with the Freedom of Information Act; all of which were designed to make public bodies more accountable and responsive to the public.

This opening up of the decision making process was in part a response to calls to end the excessive secrecy of governmental departments, both local and national, and a recognition that the paternalistic, ‘we know what’s good for you,’ culture so prevalent in pubic bodies ran contrary to democracy. The idea that experts and politicians should make decisions on behalf of the public, however well meaning , without involving the public found its zenith in a meritocracy that designed, planned and executed the 60s’ high rise villages to replace inner city slums, only for them to turn into the slums in the skies by the 70’s,

But in the case of the James Bridge site, Walsall Council has returned to the old practice of limiting access to information which would allow residents to make informed decisions on the proposals, raise concerns , propose adjustments or if they choose, organise opposition to those plans.

The ‘cat’ slipped out of the bag about Walsall Council’s plans when the then owners of the land, the regional development agency Advantage West Midlands (AWM), published a property portfolio in January 2011 of land it was being forced to sell because it was being wound up by the government along with other regional development agencies. Referring to James Bridge, it revealed,

‘A preferred purchaser has been identified to acquire the site through a limited selection process and the liabilities contained within it. It is likely that an element of open cast mining will be undertaken and then the site will be reclaimed and restored allowing the redevelopment proposals to proceed in line with the vision for the site.'

The wording suggests that the primary purpose of the preferred bidder was to exploit the site’s minerals, then reclaim and then redevelop it. This would run contrary to the subsequent Council’s strategy which claimed that mining was merely a by-product of the redevelopment; a spin off rather than the motivating commercial interest of the preferred bidder. The name of the bidder was not revealed.

In February that year Walsall Council announced it was working with Parkhill Estates Ltd and AWM in a joint £18 million partnership to clean up the site beginning with a comprehensive survey of the land.
In the release Cllr Andrews was at pains to say that Council wanted to ‘keep residents fully informed about what is taking place’ but made no mention of open cast mining.
This despite the fact that Parkhill Estates is owned by Colin Cornes, a major shareholder in SRG – one of largest operators of open cast mines in the country.

The first public mention of the coal mining came in this hyperlocal blog. Either Walsall Council either didn’t read it, hard to believe as it was quickly reproduced on other popular local sites, or it decided to ignore it, counting on the blog’s limited readership to minimise any adverse effects publication might have had. It is a fact that one of the unspoken functions of communications departments, whether in the private or public sector, is to ‘kill’ bad stories.

This can be done in a number of ways. One of the most common is to go on the offensive. Sending out press releases to establish and determine the nature of a story and importantly how it is reported. Another is to simply ignore it. This is a risky option. Not responding might suggest that there is no answer to the story and it is therefore accurate, but if the original outlet is small and the readership limited, rather than rebut the story, you can deny it legitimacy by refusing to comment. The media also relies on a discourse, an exchange of new information, opinions and comment. In short, the more they say, the more potential copy journalists have. One side in a story not commenting can stymie this process. This approach is particularly useful in dealing with bloggers. The nature of the internet is such that online sites rely on users sharing information and pointing others users to articles or items of interest. As with the mainstream media the lack of new content limits that process.

Unfortunately for the Council the editor of the Birmingham Post, an influential regional paper, had read the blog. The resulting news story forced the Council to admit that coal mining was on the agenda. But in its press release and in keeping with its media strategy, its response was to emphasise the need to clean up the site, create jobs and downplay mining as merely a by-product of those aims. Again, Councillor Andrews stated the local community would be kept informed, claiming that local people had been already informed of test drilling on the site but, importantly, he failed to mention if residents had been informed of the mining aspects of the proposals. It later emerged that they hadn’t.

But this commitment to ‘openness,’ seemingly wasn’t shared by AWM. In April, it denied a Freedom of Information request to reveal the level of contamination on the land saying its disclosure would harm the public purse. How that was possible given the fact the agency bought the land in 2007 for £1 wasn’t explained. Given that one of the main justifications for the proposals was the site is so heavily polluted, releasing this information would seem to strengthen AWM, Parkhill Estates and the Council’s case. So AWM refusal would seem to be self-defeating. Although AWM’s decision was entirely its own to make, anyone who has any knowledge of publically funded bodies work knows there is a constant exchange of information between organisations, no more so than when it comes to communications and what information is disclosed So it is difficult to believe that AWM didn’t make Walsall Council and Parkhill Estates aware of the FOI request or their opinions on the release of the information were not sought. Whatever the Council’s private view, given the assurances to keep local people informed it would have been fair to assume the Council should have logically been in favour of disclosure?

AMW’s reasoning though became clearer when an appeal to the Information Commissioners’ Officer was upheld and the agency was ordered to release the requested data. In outlying its reasons for finding there was a public interest in releasing the data the ICO summarised AWM’s arguments against disclosure. One of its objections was:

'The agency submitted that disclosure of the site information risked others seeking to undermine or challenge the potential purchaser’s commercial proposals before they were brought through the planning system.'

Who these ‘others’ are was not expanded on in the commission’s decision but given that open cast mining is one of the most controversial industrial processes resulting in numerous opposition campaigns by residents and environmentalists, its not unreasonable to assume that AWM feared disclosure might led Alumwell people to launch their own campaign once they were aware of the hazards the site contained.

Since that decision AWM has decided to appeal the ICO decision in favour of disclosure to the Information Tribunal. Until a decision on that appeal, the data remains withheld.
AWM's choice to go to law so it can continue to withhold the information is curious given that during 2011 it transferred all its land holdings to the Homes and Communities agency (HCA). At that point it had no further commercial interest in the James Bridge site. Furthermore by the time it decided to appeal the ICO’s decsion, it was winding up its operations in readiness for its closure in April this year. So for AWM, as one of its lasts acts, to launch a legal challenge in regards land it no longer has financial share raises the question of ‘Why spend pubic money pursuing a legal case it can gain no benefit from’?

In August the Black Country Enterprise Partnership announced the government had given the go-ahead for two enterprise zones in the region which included the James Bridge site. Walsall Council’s communications department went into overdrive and was happy to provide information to journalists emphasising job creation but again made no reference to coal mining or its consequences to local people.

Despite the Council’s promises to tell local people what was happening, throughout 2011 it made no attempt to hold any form of public consultation. At a community event in August, run by the local church and residents association, no one had any knowledge of the Council’s and Parkhiils Estates' plans. There were shocked to hear mining was proposed and very few had any idea of the level or nature of contamination on the site. In September Cllr Andrew defended this failure by the Council to keep its promises to inform residents in an interview on BBC RadioWW. Answering a call by the chair of Alumwell Residents Association for the Council to consult with local people on the plans for the site, he replied that no consultation had taken place because no planning application had been made, consequently there was nothing to consult on. When it was put to him that there were rumours that Parkhill Estates wanted to carry out mining on the site, he replied that that ‘nothing could be ruled in or ruled out’ but he added when a planning application was made the local people would be consulted. ‘But at this pint there is nothing to consult on.’ He went onto say: ‘Until a planning application comes in there is absolutely no detail on this.’

These comments suggest that that he and the Council had little or no knowledge of the plans of a company they had agreed an £18 million partnership with! Despite the chair of the residents’ association stating the community group was not opposed to job creation or the cleaning up of the site, Cllr Andrew then attacked the call of local people to be consulted saying it was ‘pouring cold water on plans to create jobs’.

This argument that there is nothing to discuss fails to hold water, and becomes even more leaky when you take into account that shortly after Cllr Andrew's comments the Council’s cabinet passed a confidential report in closed session authorising the sale to Parkhill Estates land it owns next to site. The authorisation was in readiness for when the company buys the James Bridge land from the HCA. It is inconceivable that the cabinet which, Cllr Andrew sits on, won’t be aware of what the company were proposing to do with the land particularly as it is so close to a large school and residents’ houses.

This refusal to engage with local people at an early stage in the proposals is even more worrying given the potential hazards the site poses aside from the serious disruption which would be caused by mining.
While AWM were refusing to reveal data on the levels of pollution, the Environment Agency published figures showing contaminants far exceeded acceptable levels. Environmental Quality Standards or EQS are 28 ug/l for copper, 200 for nickel, 500 for zinc and 50 for arsenic.
On the James Bridge site typical background readings ranged from clean up to 2000 ug/l for copper, 4000 for nickel, 3,500 for zinc and a mere 40 for arsenic. But the environment agency added that the highest levels were not at surface level but blow ground in the many old mine shafts that riddle the site, where the coal Parkhill Estates wants to mine is found. At 25 metres they are; 65,000 ug/l for copper, 76,000 for nickel, 15,000 for zinc and 7,000 for arsenic. Put another way, the levels of contamination exceeded EQSs by 2321 times the benchmark for copper, 380 for nickel, 30 for zinc and 140 for arsenic. This information amounts to a mere snapshot of the problems on the site; whether the fuller picture is revealed now depends on a judge’s ruling.

In last week’s Birmingham Post, Cllr Andrew finally stated unequivocally that mining would happen but threatened that if it doesn’t go ahead, neither would the clean up of the site or its redevelopment and the subsequent jobs would be lost.
Presumably this is the line he and his officers will take when they meet invited residents for the first time on February 9th. That private meeting is before a public meeting on February 15th at St John’s church hall in Alumwell. Both meetings sre likely to come after the Council has announced a multi-million pound planning application to improve the road system around the site, a press release that will no doubt again emphasis job creation. It has taken a Council supposedly committed to openness and transparency, over 12 months to meet with the people most affected by its plans.During that time it has hidden facts, refused to consult with residents and portrayed those who asked for information as putting their own interests before the wider community.
It has also stood by as its partner organisation AWM has refused to reveal information because residents may exercise their democratic rights to oppose the plans or demand that their views are incorporated into the development of site; not from a position of ignorance or reliance on experts employed by the very organisations which have kept in the dark, but from having access to information held by all the other parties in this project.

Walsall Council has decided it knows better than the people it is supposed to serve. It has been undemocratic in it has stifled debate, mislead by withholding relevant information and manipulative in its public statements.

Quick pass me a RSS fix..I'm rattling

2012-01-12T01:01:00.000-08:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16505521

‘You do have WiFi,’ he asked anxiously. His fingers, which had been twitching and flicking furiously throughout his time in the queue suddenly stopped their nervous animation, and with his palms, spread into a pleading gesture as a beseeching note exposed his fears.

A pair of blue eyes looked back at the middle aged man never flickering, saying kindly: ‘No. You understand why, don’t you?’ Crestfallen, the questioner replied: “Yes, yes, of course.” His fingers rolled into fists as he tried to retain some control. Finally, he said: “Look, I don’t think I’m ready yet, maybe tomorrow.’ The owner of the kind eyes looked back and his words were as gentle as his gaze, as he whispered. ‘We’ll be here whenever you’re ready.’ Adding in what was clearly a well rehearsed phrase, ‘Look, take our card and write to us when you feel strong enough.’
But it was too late, the middle aged man had already turned and headed back for the door he come through only five minutes before. I didn’t look back for fear of following him, but I could hear the fanatic retrieval of his smart phone from the ‘safe box’ everyone had been ordered to put electronic equipment into.

The kind eyes watched as the man made his hasty escape into the night, a hint of sadness in their look. Finally, they turned to me and with a smile said: “How can I help you?” Suddenly words escaped me. They disappeared as so often before, leaving me struggling to describe emotions, thoughts, precipitations. I was literally at a lost and it was that realisation that saved me as I recognised a symptom of my problem. After taking a deep breath, they came out slowly in a shaky timber and echoed around the corridor of the church hall, as I confessed: “I’m a blogger and I need help.’

As the teenage owner of the kind eyes said, ‘Well done, you just taken the first step. Welcome to Bloggers Anonymous,’ a longed for hope that I might beat this terrible addiction seemed to come into view

No, don't read this ..it will only encourage me.

2012-01-05T19:34:00.000-08:00

Years ago I remember reading a column by that wonderful writer Keith Waterhouse. It was about giving up, giving up smoking. In it he wrote how every day he intended to return to smoking but the difficulties of everyday life always got in the way and he ended each day going to bed promising that tomorrow would be the day he would start again. It was very funny and of course a parody of all those smokers who have always got a reason not to quit.

Of course Keith Waterhouse was a brilliant writer and he could take a daft idea or the plain mundane and make it funny. Whereas me? Well me, I’m not brilliant but I enjoy writing, which brings me to my point. I’m trying desperately to give up blogging. The trouble is that I’m crap at it. Not only that but most of the bloggers I read are crap at it, but like them, I keep pounding away at a keyboard in an uncoordinated way in the hope of producing something good. See it didn’t happen, did it. Nor will it.

To date I’ve produced some self centred ramblings which appear here and a lot of rubbish that even I don’t have the nerve to publish. One particular joint venture resulted in an updated version of Hamlet set in a bingo hall in Aldridge. My co-writers are demanding I release it to the world but as long as I can keep throwing bananas at them, it will never see the light of day.

My difficult is that, whenever my resolve is strong enough to stop two things happen. Either, something comes along and makes my blood boil so I have to assault the keyboard to get it off my chest or, some kid starts up a blog that gets a million hits in a evening and I stupidly think; “Well if he can do it why not me?’

The reason he can do it is because he has got talent. Something I don’t have and neither do 99.99% of my fellow bloggers. Worse still I’m a hyperlocal blogger. Now that sounds like something you get prescribed Ritalin for but it is in reality a blog focused on a small geographical area. Can you imagine anything more useless or more boring? What’s the point about writing for your neighbours about, say walking through your local park. They know its there. It’s not as if they failed to see 300 acres of green space just across the road from their house or they’ve never strolled through its gates. And that’s what most hyperlocal bloggers write about, the stuff around the corner; and not even the interesting stuff. Successful bloggers have a broad appeal, that’s why they get a thousands of hits a day and, of course, because they can write well.

With me, it just addictive. Most of the time I can’t help myself, that’s why I’m here at 2 am bashing this keyboard into submission, mangling words and cocking up sentences. I could go on and on and on but as I prepare to go to bed, I know that tomorrow, yes definitely tomorrow, I will give up.

Tory/Lib Dem's housing collateral damage

2012-01-04T10:48:00.000-08:00

One of the most painful consequences of unemployment, losing your home, is rarely depicted. Not surprising really. No one is likely to ring up the local press and invite them to come round and record you being turned out into the streets. Truth is, for those who have their homes repossessed by banks or mortgage lenders, there is an abiding sense of shame and of personal failure. No understanding or rationalisation that you are a victim of an economy you have no control over can ease seeing your family standing outside the home you worked so hard for and have now lost.

The Express and Star’s story that over 400 families in Walsall in the nine months from January to September went through that terrible experience is shocking and painful to read. Any decent person reading it should give thanks it hasn’t come to them and think ‘There by the grace of God..’

Councils are doing all they can to help families and prevent home repossessions. In Walsall the homeless team give advice and support to those facing losing their homes. They have some success but the figures in the E&S article suggest Walsall families are suffering more than others in the Black Country. Maybe that’s because of the heavy reliance on public sector jobs in the borough, or maybe because it never really recovered from the 80s recession engineered by Thatcher.

As then, today we have a government that puts political and economic dogma before people. If anyone should feel shame, like then, it’s those who support those parties who dismiss the unemployed as the unfortunate collateral damage of economic necessity.

"Ghost of the Future," he exclaimed, "I fear you more than any spectre I have seen

2011-12-26T20:11:00.000-08:00

'Your right darling ..everytime a bell rings Nick Clegg loses another vote.'

Xmas 2011, time to celebrate before we reflect on the past and the forthcoming New Year. Eat, drink and be merry. Take heart from your loved ones; because the hangover on January 2nd promises to be as big as the national debt.

At the beginning of 2011 the government took a partial recovery in the economy and by faith in a neon-con economic theory nosedived it into zero growth, raising unemployment and creeping inflation. Oblivious to reality, by the end of the year, it looked across the channel at a threatening depression and said: ‘Nothing to do with us’. While this played well with his backbenchers and an eurosceptic public, it amounted to Cameron standing on the shore, certain that the waves of a Eurozone meltdown won’t wash over us. Like, Cantu he is just as deluded but that doesn’t matter because, if that storm does crash over us, Cameron will be standing on the shoulders of Nick Clegg; who has of late realised he has no lifejacket of his own and, more, the sand beneath him is sinking.
Clegg’s recent public attempts to stem the tide of Tory back woodmen calling for a withdrawal from Europe the likes of which haven’t been seen since Dunkirk, have the tone of a man spitting out water as he proclaims he’s not drowning, just waving.

Locally, Walsall has seen the reality of the depressing figures which make the headlines; public sector workers sacked, factories closing, shops standing empty and unemployment queues lengthening. Behind those cold sats which occupy so many column inches are real people who this Christmas will be juggling bills to give kids presents and whose only wish for themselves is a minimum wage job In the New Year.
During the year, Walsall saw little in the way of comfort or cheer. Save for the May elections when Labour bucked national trends and took seats straight from the ruling Tories, the Conservatives ploughed on regardless. Regardless of the closing shops and factories, regardless of the crumbling schools and certainly having no regard for those they sacked. Instead we had missive after missive flowing from the civic centre on how Walsall is on the ‘up’ poured out by a Comms team whose practice defines communications as talking to the people but not listening to them. Of course the only ‘up’ was the numbers on benefits and deprivation indicators like free school meals but these facts were neither in the utterances of Mike Bird or Adrian Andrew nor in the comms team’s 24 hour twitter

After the election, for a brief time there was a phoney engagement period when, with Labour and the Tories tied with no overall control, the Lib Dems looked for suitors.But the truth was clear to anyone with even a passing knowledge of the civic centre, that Ian Shires and co were never going to get hitched to either party. Truth is Labour won’t touch the Lib Dems even if they had came with a dowry as big as George Osborne’s revised borrowing requirements. While Ian Shires would have had a hard time supporting a party he and fellow Lib Dems blame for everything since the outbreak of the Black Death. On the other hand Shires didn’t really want to hold hands with the Tories who have done more to make his party unelectable on national level since the 1950s when they on only six seats in the House of Commons. So Walsall council struggled on under a Tory leadership as short of ideas and vision as it is of numbers.

During the summer we had riots that seemed to leap from nowhere but spread across the country. Fortunately they didn’t reach Walsall but maybe that was because, there are so few shops left to loot in the borough.

The newspapers made the headlines in a different way, with corruption and sleaze not on the pages but in the newsroom. As the country’s gaze was fixed on the street of shame, local newspapers continued to close and shed jobs. Local democracy has suffered because of this. Public authorities of different hues know that local hacks don’t have time to read public documents or attend meetings and couple that with the bizarre decision by such as the Express and Star to refuse to cover politics during local elections and voters and readers were left with even less opportunities of learning what is actually being done with their ‘consent’.

In November 2010 I wrote that I hoped that in November 2011 we won’t be remembering any members of the Staffordshire Regiment (third battalion the Royal Mercian) after their return from Afghanistan. Unfortunately that was not to be. Private Gareth Bellingham, from Clayton was killed in action in June. The 22 year-old was the 374th member of the armed forces killed since the 2001 invasion. Since his death another 16 have died including (23 December) an, as yet, unnamed member of the RAF. Whatever the rights and the wrongs of the 2001 invasion what is clear is the despite the simple bravery and skill of our armed forces we are not winning, either militarily or politically

That point was brought home by a documentary showing the lives of an army helicopter unit. Amongst the real time footage recorded by the crew of an Apache attack helicopter, was the video of a Hellfire missile killing an Afghan insurgent. A Hellfire missile costing, at today’s rate of exchange, £37,141 fired from £10 million aircraft to kill an illiterate peasant who’s AK47 was probably bought from a Pakistan market for as little as £250.

It may seem cold and heartless to discuss money as people die but given these figures, as long as the Taliban can recruit new members they can continue this war indefinitely. It will be argued that if it saves troops or civilian lives the financial cost is money well spent and there is not question of that, we should spend it, but it should also be remembered that we are a nation that has the dubious honour of having two aircraft carriers but can’t afford the planes to fly from them. So the best option is an agreed political settlement which includes the Taliban but there is no sight of that. When we do withdraw from Afghanistan, it won’t be because the sacrifices of those 390 men and women have won a victory. Instead as the colours are hauled down and the bugles sound Sunset, you will see the British Government walking away counting the loose change in its pockets.

So what would I like to see in 2012? Well nationally we are, to a large extent stuck with we what we got. Clegg and the Lib Dems may be fed up with being the Tories’ whipping boys but they have nowhere else to go. Pulling out of the coalition will lead to a general election which would be a disaster for them. So however much Clegg is humiliated by Cameron he has to stay, a political battered partner in a dysfunctional relationship.

Locally though we have a chance for change in May’s elections, but any new administration will inherit the budget determined by the government. Maybe the only thing any new administration can do is try to change the culture within the council, from one of ‘We know what is best for you and we will be tell you what it is’ to one of ‘You know what is best for you, now tell us how you think it should be delivered.’ That though requires a lot more openness and honesty than we have seen in the last 11 years.

Whoever you are I hope you have a Happy New Year.

The guards on social media

2011-12-09T04:06:00.000-08:00

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes.

Loose translation.. ‘Who guards the guards’? The phase comes to mind after a rather unsuccessful attempt to get @walsallcouncil comms team to answer some questions . Back in November I asked Walsall’s comms team this question on twitter

‘if a planning application is made by parkhill estates will tories have to declare its donations to their party?’

This relates to controversial plans for the old IMI site. To date there has been no reply

On the 3rd December, I asked ‘okay..even easier question. What is the budget for walsall communications unit this year’? To date, no reply.

This morning I asked in reply to the comms team twitter message about winter flu ‘Is this part of the council's 'health and wellbeing board functions'? That question relates to the shifting of public health functions from the old PCTs to local councils. Okay, it’s early doors, but frankly I don’t expect any answer to that one either.

This is a little annoying but beyond my irritation there is serious point here. Who decides what questions are legitimate and should be answered? Well it seems the people who will answer them.

Now there should be a determination of whether a question is legitimate. If I were to ask for the address of a council employee, the answer should be along the lines of ‘bugger off.’ Or if I was to ask ‘There’s a kid in a council home who keeps overturning my bins ..what’s his name? The reply should be: ‘The council will look into this but we don’t release children’s names.’ The council and its comms department have a duty of care which at times prevents them releasing information.

But none of the questions I’ve asked fall into that area. So, why the silence? It seems the council can decided that certain questions are malicious and they simply don’t have to answer them. This determination is in itself political; either with a capital P or lowercase p. In regards to my first question it seems they determined that its, with a capital P. It is party political, but then again I merely asking a question on the procedures of planning permission. My second question is more lowercase p. The politics here being, they don’t want to reply to a question where the answer may put their own department in a bad light. As for the third question, really I don’t know why they won’t answer that. Is because they decided not to answer any of my questions?

The comms department is funded to the tune of £350,000 (can’t be sure, they haven’t answered my question) and its job is, funnily enough, to communicate the council’s messages. This it says it will do with honesty and integrity. They use other words like ‘accountability and transparency.’ Well you’d expect to see them in any public authority media protocol. Nowhere though do they say,’but if it’s awkward we will totally ignore you,’ but that it seems is what they have decided to do.

The newest toy in the council’s comms box is social media. Twitter, facebook, etc and we are told that its wonderful tool for reaching out directly to communities and residents. The council’s twitter account has over 4,000 followers. And here is where truth and legitimacy, honesty and accountability get swept aside by simple maths.
A questioner on twitter might have only 20 followers or like me just 100. But if the council replies to an embarrassing question, it’s not just the person who asked the question and his followers who see it, it’s also the council’s 4,000 followers. So rather than hold to their responsibility to the individual council tax payer, better just ignore him; accountability in social media in action.

Truth is that comms departments are the guards of the council’s information. Try asking an FOI question and you can bet any answer will be run past the comms department first. So we come to the question ‘who guards the guards.’ Well self regulation doesn’t seem to work does it? Look at the Police and the need to set up the police complaints commission, or the present state the national media is in.

Can we afford to trust the guards? It will be interesting to see what happens after May when that budget, which they refuse to reveal, comes up for consideration.

A cover up

2011-12-02T00:46:00.000-08:00

I know I said I wasn't going to do this again but I've got to air some questions and twitter just won't do it.
Anyone who has read this blog will know that I've been banging on about the old IMI site for near on a year now. The latest twist in the tale can be found here with the decision by the Information Commissioner's Office that Advantage West Midlands must release environmental data on the polluted site.

That decision was made on the 24 October and AWM were given 25 days to appeal the decision to a tribunal or, failing that, 35 days to publish the information. Given that AM did not appeal by the deadline; it was expected that they would hand over the information requested this week. But it now seems that the agency, which will cease to exist in April, has applied for and won an extension to December 12 to appeal the ICO's order.

The questions that follow are.

1) What can an agency, which doesn’t even own the land anymore, (it was transferred to another pubic body earlier this year) gain from this move?

2) What legal grounds does it think it has for such a move and how much is it going to cost the tax-payer to fund a legal challenge?

3) Why does any agency which is to all intents and purposes no longer a party to this project and which will soon cease to exist, choose as one of its last acts to try to keep this information secret?

And lastly

4) What is so dangerous about this information that the people living next door to the land it concerns are not allowed to see that data?

I don't have the answers, maybe AWM would like to answer them, or maybe their strategic partners, Walsall Council , or the Black Country Enterprise Partnership or Parkhill Estates Ltd who want to buy the land and mine coal there as part of cleaning it up. It is inconceivable that they, unlike the person who originally requested the information, where not told of this move to appeal by AWM and not asked for their opinions and agreement.
Over the months all these groups have done whatever they could to play down the potential hazards and dangers of this site and the proposals to mine it.
The mushroom believes more in cock-ups than conspiracy but in this case the term cover-up is not out of place.

for more on this please read and here , here, here, here and finaly the piece that kicked it all off

I'm off

2011-08-31T20:53:00.000-07:00

Writing for the sake of writing is pointless. Blogging for the sake of blogging is just as meaningless. Of late I find no enjoyment or purpose to this blog or indeed many of the blogs I read. The last thing I wrote which really meant something to me, was the tribute to my late dear friend Tina Mackay. So, to the satisfaction of the poor sods who for some strange reason regularly read this, I’m chucking it in. I leave you with a favourite piece of music . Bye.

Residents to be told ‘Rejoice, you will have an open cast mine, whether you like it or not’?

2011-08-20T10:44:00.000-07:00

News this week that the Black Country Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) has been awarded business enterprise zones by the government raises hopes for the creation of new jobs. Local politicians, business leaders, local journalists and the odd sock puppet have emptied press officers, ‘superlative’ bag in their reactions to the announcement. ‘Fantastic’, ‘brilliant’, etc, etc and in a week when unemployment, inflation, train fares, gas and electricity prices, crime and disorder were all up and retail sales and share prices were down, well we could all do with some good news.

The advantage of a enterprise zone in on the old IMI 35-acre site in Darlaston, Walsall ,for many years the home of copper refining foundry, are we are told the creation of up to 4000 jobs through discounts on business rates, tax breaks, new superfast broadband and simplified planning rules.
Critics say that enterprise zones are nothing new, having been first tried by Thatcher in the 80s, only to fail because rather than create new jobs they simply imported jobs that would have located elsewhere anyway. When the special advantages on the zones ended, businesses just upped stakes and the jobs disappeared.
Therefore, aside from the broadband, what are new about regeneration zones are the simplified planning rules. They take the shape of Local Development Orders (LDOs).

First introduced by the Labour Government in 2004 they proved so potentially controversial they were hardly used. Not surprising given that, once granted, they effectively take away the right of local people to oppose any proposed development through the normal planning process. Despite this, earlier this year in it’s guidance to on enterprise zones the coalition government made it very clear zone status will require the use off LDOs and the curtailing of local peoples’ rights to oppose any proposed developments. In the Department for Communities and Local Government’s prospectus it states; “Local planning authorities will need to start to establish local development orders, once the specific sites are agreed, to create a simplified planning zone.”

In the case of Walsall, the use of a LDO is tempting given the council, working with a private sector partner, intends to carry out opencast coal mining on what it describes as one of the most contaminated sites in Western Europe.

The Government’s intention to reform planning regulations has meet with serious concerns from many and some unusual, quarters about the erosion of residents’ rights.These concerns have been summed up by Shaun Spiers, Chief Executive of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England

Responding to an extraordinary outburst by Planning minister Bob Neill who described opposition to the reforms as ‘a carefully choreographed smear campaign by Left-wingers based within the national headquarters of pressure groups’, said:
‘CPRE shares the Government’s aspirations for a more localised and less complex planning system. But it has got its proposals badly wrong. They will not result in economic growth, just more countryside erosion and less say for local communities, in towns and cities as well as in the countryside. Ministers are making a bad mistake in putting economic interests before people or the environment.’

Another concern comes because of the speed LDOs are expected to be agreed and implemented. Local planning authorities are expected to drawn up a LDO, put it out to public consultation and then submit it to the Secretary of State for final approval. The Government wants it to be fast tracked says this can be done in as little as two months. Such a limited timescale means residents have very little time to organise any effective opposition to the granting of the order.

These concerns are particularly apposite in Walsall’s case.Walsall council only admitted to its plan for an opencast mine after it was confronted by evidence by the local regional paper, the Birmingham Post.
In its defence the council says coal mining on the site is merely a by-product of cleaning up the land and preparing it for redevelopment. It claims it has kept residents who only live a matter of a few yards from the site aware of its reclamation plans. But previous to the Birmingham Post story, press releases and public statements by Walsall council, the owners of the land, the regional regeneration body Advantage West Midlands and the private sector partner, Parkhill Estates Ltd, carefully omitted any mention of open cast mining. In addition, Advantage West Midlands, have refused a Freedom of Information request to reveal the levels of contamination on the site because it claims, it would harm the possible sale of the land to Parkhill Estates and thereby harm the public purse. Though, in refusing the request, it failed to mention the fact that it bought the site for only £1 in 2007. Again, when the enterprise zones were announced, amongst the hyperbole from local politicians and business leaders, there was no mention of open cast mining.

Walsall council has said it has yet to decide whether it will apply for a LDO but there is clearly an expectation by the Government that it will. If the council do go down that route it can choose if it wants to incorporate any proposal for open cast mine in the order or, instead, deal with such a proposal within normal planning regulations thereby giving greater opportunities to local residents to have their say.

Given Walsall’s track record so far, residents next to the site have a lot to fear.

Tina Mackay... a life well lived

2011-08-08T06:06:00.000-07:00

On Thursday July 28th my oldest and dearest friend, Tina Mackay, died in a hit and run incident.
Only 54, Tina has been described by many as a wonderful, warm hearted, generous woman with a strong sense of social justice, having a passion for life and love of sharing that passion with others.
A committed socialist she was as a regional officer for the Unite union, active in the defence of the NHS.
Though her life was cut short, the countless positive things she gave to the trade union movement and her family and friends, are still with us and continue to grow.
At her memorial service held in London on Saturday , among the many tributes , her sister Fiona read out these lyrics. They are perfect for Tina because she would dance at a drop of a hat, once jiving with her partner John in a street in Pargue as a jazz band played, but they also reflect her approach to life.

So here's to you, my dear friend, Tina . There are few like you, and none can replace you.

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder,
You get your fill to eat but always keep that hunger,
May you never take one single breath for granted,
God forbid love ever leave you empty handed,
I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.

I hope you dance....I hope you dance.

I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance,
Never settle for the path of least resistance,
Livin' might mean takin' chances but they're worth takin',
Lovin' might be a mistake but it's worth makin',
Don't let some hell bent heart leave you bitter,
When you come close to sellin' out reconsider,
Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.

I hope you dance....I hope you dance.

Time is a wheel in constant motion always rolling us along,

Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder where those years have gone.

I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.

Dance..

Serco..where now? Discuss.

2011-07-29T04:25:00.000-07:00

Serco has gone, or has it? The contract with Walsall council requires a two year notice period so it will be around for some time yet. What might be interesting question for some bright journalist over the next few weeks is ‘Does the contract have penalty fees in case of either side prematurely ending it’? Just a thought but many such contracts do have such clauses and if this one does, then it means that Serco will walk off with more than the £59 million they would normally expect to have been paid over the next two years.

Next question? Where do we go from here? This move was forced on Mike Bird and local Tories by changes in government policy which saw local secondary schools running for the door to get out from under local Conservatives control of education.
Two factors influenced this in particular. One, the scrapping of the former Labour government’s Building Schools for the Future programme left schools needing substantial capital investment, like Joseph Leckie, with only one route to get the cash; academy status. A move that makes school accountable not to the local authority and parents, but the Department of Education in London Second, the changes in the way schools are funded from September which means the fast majority of money will go directly to schools who will then decided where they buy their support services from. The council must have felt that a lot of head teachers would choose someone, anyone, else rather than Tory/Serco run Walsall education.

So what now? What plan has the council got to move education forward? In answer to that question Cllr Rachael Andrew, the portfolio holder for education, in a radio interview said it was ‘up in the air’.’ A statement that any year 11 child could tell you is a euphemism for ‘don’t know.’

What ever replaces it, can it be worse than what has gone before? It is true that the contract was imposed on Walsall by the Labour government in 2001 after two damning Ofsted reports on the council’s LEA but it is also true it was on the local Tories’ watch that this contract turned into a joke. In the ten years since Serco signed its first contract, Walsall’s Tories have had the responsibility of seeing it succeed or fail. A measure of their record is that at the beginning of the contract in 2001, the borough was in the bottom quarter of league tables for A level and GCSE exam results. Ten years later it is still there. Throughout that time the Tories were in charge in Walsall and, let’s remember that it was the Tories who renewed the contract in 2008 despite opposition from other parties. So in sacking Serco, Mike Bird, might be trying to switching the focus for Walsall’s poor attainment record away for his administration but he can’t shake off responsibility.

The Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, in the space of 14 months has rushed forward education policies that means the fate of children’s education in Walsall will now be decided by a civil servant in London. The complete reverse of the Tories’ flagship policy of localism. This civil servant is likely to have to look Walsall up on a map and he or she’s chances of understanding the varied problems and distinct needs of different parts of the borough are, well let’s be honest, highly suspect.

So what next with a council leadership that admits it has no Plan B and a coalition government whose education policy, if thought out at all, is determined by ideological confusion?

Shouting into the gale...a reply to Brownhills Bob

2011-07-25T04:22:00.000-07:00

Blogging about issues that motivate you, angry you, concern you, is bit like standing in the face of a force ten gale and shouting out your thoughts. In the howl of some many voices on the internet you’re lucky if someone gets to hear what you are saying. If you’re very lucky, they may comment on it, if you’re extremely lucky, they may act on it.

Even more so when you views run contrary to the ‘great and the good,’ they being the people who have say over others’ day to day lives; whether that be in government or in business. Usually they just ignore you. Particularly, if you telling a home truth. Especially if that home truth runs contrary to their wants and wishes. The ‘just ignore him’ tactic is an effort to kill the story.
A lot of the time the officers and spin doctors of these organisations are helped by the fact that the blogger either has incomplete information or fails to get over their essential point. I must admit that I have on occasion been guilty of that.
Evidence of that is Brownhills Bob’s latest post which seems to have been written in reply to my concerns over the former IMI site in Darlaston. Bob writes of, and gives space to another contributor, on the benefits of reclamation projects highlighting the example of Reedswood. It’s an apposite example because the developers in that case were Parkhill Estates, the same company in the present Darlaston case.
Bob writes about what a good project Reedswood turned out to be, implying that Darlaston will be a similar success. Well that may be true. I wasn’t around when Reedswood was redeveloped . I don’t know its history. But, and I blame myself here, Bob has missed my essential point. It’s not the outcome I am concerned about in regards the former IMI site, it is the process the process is taking and in particular the right of people who will be effected by it to know what is going on.

Walsall council and its partners Advantage West Midlands and Parkhill Estates were quick to praise the proposed redevelopment of the site in press releases which waxed on about jobs that could be created and investment that could be attracted but they deliberately excluded important information. That is, that central to this redevelopment is a proposal to carry out open cast mining on the site. A site only yards from people’s homes, businesses and a major school. That amounted to lying by omission. Not telling people the entire truth for fear they might stand up and question whether the development should go ahead. Furthermore, Advantage West Midlands refused a freedom of information request on the nature and extent of hazardous materials on this site, the most contaminated in Europe according to Mike Bird the council leader, because it might harm the public purse. Given AWM bought the site for £1, they seem to think a hundred pence is more important than telling local people what poisons are just yards from their homes. If and when an open cast mine begins operations those hazardous materials will literally come to the surface.
Remember, two of the organisations involved in this proposal are tax payer funded bodies. They are supposed to be answerable to us, the public. But instead of being open and accountable they have lied and obstructed the publication of the facts.

They have decided they know what is best for us and will tell us what is happening only if they think it is relevant and when they think the time is right. To them, we are the children, they are the adults.

I think that is wrong. So often in the past public bodies have made decisions about what is good for the public, only for their hopes and dreams to become the bitter reality of ordinary people’s lives. An example is the slum clearances of the 60s. The old neighbourhoods, which did need to go, where swept away in favour of the architects and town planners’ dreams of communities in the skies. People living in the slums were happy to be force fed the ‘advantages’ of such developments by people who would never live on such estates. They were happy to get out of the back-to-backs with their one cold water tap and outdoor toilets. The town planners didn’t conspire or misled, they honestly thought that it was for the best. But we now know what a disaster those estates became but no one questioned it at the time. They simply believed what the great and the good told them was right.

We do know better now, we do question now but we can only raise those questions if we are told the truth, not half lies or conveniently covered up facts. That’s my point Bob. It’s simple and not driven by political or party interest but by the belief that we are not children, that we shouldn’t be lied to and that we have a right to know all the facts that affect our everyday lives. The former IMI site does need to be cleaned up. What end purpose it is put to another question. But it shouldn’t be done on our behalf , by people who think they have some higher ‘understanding’ or ‘moral right’ to determine other people’s lives. I do hope that explains why I’m shouting into the gale.

Pressing Times for Serco and Walsall Council

2011-07-24T07:04:00.000-07:00

The news of the possible demise of Serco has shown a few flaws in Walsall Council’s communications department’s control of the news agenda.

For some weeks rumours have been flying around the council and schools of a visit to Serco’s London offices where the company were told their services would no longer be required.

The management services company, who are happy to make a buck out of the tax payer anyway it can from running defence bases to prisons, were not pleased by the news particularly as it prides itself on 90 per cent of contracts being renewed. But in a period of major cuts in public spending there have been calls for management service companies like Serco to share the pain and surrender some of those contracts signed in more prosperous times. Not an argument that goes down well with the shareholders but even Serco has to bend with the wind and it had already agreed £7 million ‘savings’ with the loss of 90 jobs.

But to lose the entire £345 million contract with Walsall was the last thing it wanted to hear and negotiations, as they say, were fraught. In particular the company wanted to make sure any announcement on the contract didn’t harm its brand reputation. Now Serco’s reputation in Walsall might not be good but it is its wider standing the company is keen to protect. A perception, whether true or false, that after ten years in control of Walsall schools with no significant improvement in the borough’s education outcomes the contract was terminated, is not something it wants to get around.

So, with vows of silence on both sides, Walsall council and Serco took the next step and consulted the lawyers.

Unfortunately, the cat was already heading out the bag. Not surprising really as earlier this year the leader of the council Mike Bird had publically flipped in his love/ hate relationship with Serco and mutterings of the his ‘disappointment’ with the contract appeared in the local press. Along with changes in the government’s education policy, those of us who try to interpret the hieroglyphics that is local government speak, could see a distinct picture emerging which didn’t look good for Serco.

About three weeks ago though, and the rumours of Walsall’s wanting to ended the contract started to get real mileage. So much so that a teachers’ union representative was seen in a local bar drinking to Serco’s going. By that time local reporters had cottoned on and enquires to Walsall council’s press office about the future of the contract were being stonewalled with a reply that effectively neither confirmed or denied the rumours

If left at that, the story would have stayed there before, no doubt, a joint press release vetted by the respective legal departments of both parties which would have spun the best possible line for Serco and the council. Then on Monday Mike Bird seems to have taken things into his on hands and this story appeared in the Express and Star. Whether or not the press office at the council had been consulted is questionable. It certainly isn’t quoted and Mike seems to be the only source but the effect was clear. Mike had grabbed the pussy by the scurf of the neck, and ifnow not entirely out the bag, only its tail was left hidden.

In response the Labour Party issued its on press release which was quoted in the Birmingham Post’s take on the story published on Thursday morning. Then it seems Mike, in an attempt to regain the news agenda, rushed to the Express and Star on the same day and gave them the whole ‘cat’, while throwing in a caboodle for good measure.

The Express and Star duly obliged by omitting any reference to the Labour Party press release on its following front page story. But the story did have one significant clause which may be lost on some. That was the council’s press office continuing refusal to officially comment. Either way it is now in the public domain that Walsall council wants rid of Serco. What Serco’s response to this will be is difficult to gauge as it certainly doesn’t want a public row which would only draw more attention but we can be sure of one thing, Mike is unlikely to be on their Christmas card list and neither will Walsall council’s press office. The fear is, after being publically slighted in the press Serco will dig its heels in harder. Negotiations will be tougher, lawyers will work overtime and meanwhile the council’s press office will be desperately looking for a lid big enough to contain Mike’s comments.

what price truth.. £1

2011-07-21T05:27:00.000-07:00

If I was to offer you a glass of water saying; “Incidentally it’s poisoned but I can’t tell you with what or how much because if I do I will lose a £1 million, but don’t worry because I’ve got your best interests at heart.’ Would you drink it?

No. Okay, what if I said it was £10 million or £100 million at stake? As I push the glass towards you I smile and say: ‘After all, it’s just a question of money, isn’t it’!

You might answer that the question isn’t money at all. You might say it has everything to do with you rolling about on the floor, foaming at the mouth. Alarmist that you are!
But let’s concentrate on the price, not your feared demise, because so much of what the great and the good refuse to tell us is excused by that catch all, cover up, ‘commercial confidentiality.’
So what’s the true price? Well about £1, if AWM’s perception of public interest is anything to go by. Back in April I blogged that the regional regeneration agency, Advantage West Midlands, had refused a freedom of information request for data on levels of contamination on land it owns, on the grounds it could harm the public purse. The land in question is the former IMI site in Darlaston and I have blogged on it’s future and ‘secret’ plans to turn it into an open cast mine on a number of occasions, starting here. Despite my wittering, Walsall council finally admitted to the open cast element of its plans after the Birmingham Post got on its case. (See, not all journalists are Satan’s minions.)

AWM’s refusal is now being appealed to the Information Commission in London; a process that, despite the best intentions of the commission’s officers, can take months if not years. But there are more ways to skin a cat and more people with that information than just AWM.

The Environment Agency, is a government body set up to protect you and me, and the country we live in. Now the data I obtained, first off, only related to heavy metals on the land. That is copper, nickel, zinc and the housewife’s favourite, arsenic.
Given that it is the site of a former copper works though, it’s a good place to start. Second, the information said that contamination at surface levels was, on the whole, no threat to people and residents in the nearby area. Important that and useful information to have, if you want to make an informed choice. But it went on to reveal that the site has literally hundreds of former mine workings and shafts on it. And contamination at the bottom of these shafts, 25 metres or so, is frankly astronomic.

To explain, contamination levels are measured in ug/ls or micrograms per litre.
Now the EA has set basic benchmarks for ug/l’s in surface water, called Environmental Quality Standards or EQSs. When it comes these metals they are; 28 ug/l for copper, 200 for nickel, 500 for zinc and 50 for arsenic.

On the former IMI site, typical background readings range from clean up (whatever that is?) to 2000 ug/l for copper, 4000 for nickel, 3,500 for zinc and a mere 40 for arsenic. But at 25 metres, the levels are, certainly to this untrained eye, frightening. In order again, they are; 65,000 ug/l for copper, 76,000 for nickel, 15,000 for zinc and 7,000 for arsenic. Or put another way, the levels of contamination exceeded EQSs by 2321 times the benchmark for copper, 380 for nickel, 30 for zinc and 140 for arsenic.

‘Well that’s okay,’ you might say. ‘After all they are 25 metres down. No harm to people.’

Little problem here, AWM, Walsall council and their business partner, Parkhill Estates want to turn the site into an open cast mine as ‘part’ of cleaning it up. How deep will that mining go? We don’t know. What effect will it have on exposing this contamination? We are not being told. And the next question is can we trust these organisations to tell us in the future? Well Walsall Council, wasn’t very forthcoming when the question of mining was first raised, was it!

Lastly, that £1. Since first blogging about this story, the mushroom has learned that AWM bought the site for all of £1 in 2007. Given the cost of cleaning up the site (estimated in millions) and the fact that the price of land overall has dropped in recent years, the chances of AWM selling the site for much more than it bought it for are highly unlikely. So, it’s refusal to reveal the information asked for on the grounds of protecting the public purse is incomprehensible.

The clean up of this site is clearly needed but the coal mining is another question but we won’t get to know the full picture until people in AWM stop treating us like children. We are not, though many of us have children, children we want to remain safe. To be bulldozed into a situation by either being lied to by omission or being denied information, amounts to an attack on our rights and the rights of our kids.

The baby, the bathwater and the reporter

2011-07-10T06:06:00.000-07:00

As the News of the Screws closes and politicians celebrate their victory over the fourth estate there is a danger that, amongst the righteous indignation over the hacking of murder victims’ phones and the gross invasion of private lives, we are chucking the baby out with the bath water.

As overpaid and, lets be honest, some ruthless reporters clear their desks there is a general feeling that hacks are being brought to heel and direct regulation is needed to bring the remainder into line.
I am in no way defending the actions of the News of the World or indeed the way that senior executives at News International encouraged a culture of the story comes first and last while turning a blind eye to how reporters got those stories but the calls of more legally enforced regulation threatens to tie the hands of those journalists who believe people come first and the story second.

Over the last five years the standard of journalism in the UK has declined dramatically for a variety of reasons. Not least, because of greater competition. In an industry where being first was your very raison d'etre, getting what is ‘new’ and printing before your rivals allows you to call yourself a newspaper. In the past the only opponents hacks had was broadcast and other newspapers. The first job of a journalist coming into work was to check the rivals’ editions and at appropriate times, listen to the broadcast news. Now competition is 24 hours, 7 days a week, mainly because of the internet or constant news programmes which never end. Mix in the emergence of bloggers and tweeters and the reporter, the ‘guy in the know’, becomes the guy who knows along with 20 million other people.

Yet the hack is paid to be their first.

At the same time the explosion in media outlets has meant that the advertising revenue that pays for the hack’s wages is being spread very thin. News maybe the unique selling point of newspapers but, strange as it may seem, journalists are not seen as the generators of income. That position is held by the marketing and sales teams, and when times are hard it’s the newsroom that gets the chop. What that has meant in real terms is there are fewer and fewer journalists chasing stories. The result of that is we have three camps of newspaper journalists in this country.

At the bottom is the local and regionally papers, who are increasing relying on the easy to hand story. Who, so often, don’t have the time to check the press release or balance it with opposing views and often wouldn’t know here to get those different angles even if they did. Then there are the tabloids, and not just the redtops, who increasingly cut corners of good journalism or directly engage in criminal activity i.e. bunging coppers, or other questionably activities. (A Fleet Street hack once told me of one red top who outbid a rival for a story by verbally agreeing £5,000 more for a story to the mother of a child who had been killed. When it was published they only paid her £5,000 in total, saying it she didn’t like it she could sue.)

Then we have the broadsheets, the likes of the Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph and yes even News International’s, The Times, who still strive to bring in stories which are overall balanced, fair and objective. They do that by the old school method of getting out there and working their sources face to face. If that means talking to people directly or pouring through public reports or sources of information for the detail rather than rely on summaries or the accompanying press release then you make time to do that. They are the reporters that are still bringing in stories such as, well, the Guardian’s News of the World phone hacking scandal. Stories that we should know, stories we have to know.

And to that do that they have to jump through more hoops than you can image; the libel laws, confidentiality laws, contempt laws, copyright laws, increasingly injunctions and super injunctions, etc. Aside from that there is the phalanx of spin doctors, lawyers and media consultants who are there to protect the ‘good character’ of their clients. Don’t believe me! Ask Mid-Staffordshire hospital how much it spent on media consultants in the wake of the A&E scandal? More laws will prevent good reporters from doing their jobs

At time to time, journalists have used tactics that are seen as underhand or aggressive, and let’s not forget the old cheque book, but if the story is in the public interest and not just interesting to the public, that can be justified. Example; an employee copies the personal details of senior members of an organisation and sells them to someone who passes them on to the press.
Unacceptable! Shouldn’t be allowed! Let’s bring in legislation to outlaw it!

Okay, but let’s change that sentence. A civil servant copies the personal allowances of members of parliament and sells them to someone who passes them on to the press.

So let’s not chuck the baby out with the bathwater.

Schools, Serco and Mr Goves

2011-06-18T03:44:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month, I blogged about the on/off relationship between Walsall council and the private company Serco as their enforced marriage prepared to celebrate its 10th ‘wedding’ anniversary. At that time I questioned whether the unwanted son-in-law who runs education in the borough had kept to its vows to improve schools. I think it would be fair to say that my comments could be summarised by the old saying ‘could do better.’ But only days later, in a speech to head teachers the Sectary of State for Education, Michael Goves, might have consigned the private company’s role in Walsall's education system to the classroom wastepaper basket.

Goves told head teachers the worst performing 200 primary schools in England would be taken out of local authority control and be turned into academies. After telling heads they now sat under the shadow of closure Mr Goves refused to name the schools, but a quick check of last year’s key stage 2 results show 12 schools in the Birmingham and Black Country fall into this category, two in Walsall. I’m not going to name them because, as I said, this was a quick check and I therefore might be wrong; particularly as the government has not spelt out its criteria for selecting such schools.

In addition Mr Goves said the bar for GCSE results in secondary schools would be raised to 40% by next year and 50% by 2015. Schools failing to hit that mark would be classified as underperforming and also faced the prospect of being taken out of local authority control. Using last year’s GSCE results three secondary schools in Walsall would have failed to reach the 40% target, while nine would have failed to reach the 50% target; including two existing academies. Given a number of schools in the borough have already said they want to go down the academy route voluntarily, not least because after the government scraped the Building Schools for the Future programme it’s the only way to get capital investment for crumbling buildings, if you add in under Goves’ proposals almost all the secondary schools in Walsall would no longer be under local authority control.
Tie in the fact that many primaries, as feeders to their local secondary schools, are coming together to combine resources and act as what are called ‘virtual academies’ the role of the local education authority is becoming less and less relevant. So what does that mean for Serco whose contract is to run the LEA?

What does the future hold when, after ten years, the borough’s rating for GSCE results has stubbornly stuck at 130 in the league table of 149 local authorities? And let’s not forget that when the council renewed its contract with Serco in 2008, the company promised lots of additional benefits like a new office build on Littleton Street which would create 200 jobs. Three years later no build and Serco is making people redundant.
As every a change in governmental policy is throwing the future of education in the borough, and by association Serco’s, into doubt. It would be ironic that the first major victim of a governement that puts so much store in the 'benefits' the private sector brings, would be a private sector company

“I’d liked to be remembered for not dying.”

2011-06-16T08:03:00.000-07:00

I know that in the past I have been described as a muck raking, alarmist but I’ve got to tell you this for your own sake. If you go to Walsall Manor Hospital, you might die.
There I’ve said it. I know it’s shocking and it may comes as news to some, almost entirely journalists, but let’s not allow the truth to be hidden in the sad illusion that the NHS is staffed by miracle workers and angels who can halt death in its tracks. It’s not.
Of course it’s not likely that you will die if you go to the Manor, even if you are just popping in to visit a friend, but the reality is people do die in hospitals; even in Walsall.

Now accepting this unpalatably fact let’s go to the story in the local press entitled ‘hospitals in deaths cover-up.’ The story quotes Professor Sir Brian Jarman, of the Dr Foster group, who claims that for a six month period in 2008, the Manor hospital hid an increase in deaths by registering patients as terminally ill.

Now I’m no expert but I will go so far as to suggest that patients that died in hospital of their medical conditions were indeed terminally ill, unless of course the staff deliberately ‘did ‘em in’.

As far as I know, no-one has suggested that there are murderers roaming the wards of the Manor but hell, who knows! Professor Jarman’s comments, made as he gave evidence at the enquiry into Mid Staffordshire Hospital, suggest that the Manor had fiddled its figures to hid poor patient care that had contributed to these deaths. He went further and suggested that almost all the acute hospitals in the West Midlands had doctored statistics for mortality.
This is not the first time Dr Foster has criticised the Manor. Back in 2001, the group said the Manor had one of the highest morality rates in the country compared to a leading London based teaching hospital. The Manor responded by saying that comparing a regional acute hospital against a major teaching hospital was a little unfair and ignored the high deprivation factors in the borough that means the life expectancy is lower than the national average. At the time, Walsall had no palliative care unit for adults and out-patients suffering from terminally ill conditions were admitted to the so they could as comfortable as possible in the last days. Other hospitals have also questioned Dr Foster’s approach over the years, in particular its focusing on mortality rates as the primary indicator of whether a hospital was up to scratch.

However, over the years the press has ignored any faults or criticisms of Dr Foster’s methodology, either because printing all the facts would get in the way of a good story or because it didn’t suit editors with an axe to grind on such a politically sensitive issue as the NHS. This has helped Dr Foster gain a reputation as an authoritative, independent watchdog pushing up standards in the NHS. So much so, it has even gone into partnership with the Department of Health in a joint venture to provide information and ratings for hospitals.

By 2009, shortly after the period professor Jarman complained of in his comments to the Mid- Staffordshire inquiry Dr Foster was praising the Manor for its efforts in reducing mortality at the hospital, so much so that the hospital was able to quote in its 2009/10 annual report.
“The independent ‘Dr Foster’ Hospital Guide found Walsall Manor to be one of the most improved hospitals in the country for the steps it takes to keep mortality to a minimum. Also in the ‘Dr Foster’ guide, we have the fourth best score for patient safety among 17 hospitals in the West Midlands and we are in demand at conferences internationally to give presentations about our approach to driving down mortality rates.”

The contrast between Professor Jarman’s recent comments at the Mid-Staffs inquiry even more perplexing when you learn that, before the Healthcare Commission ordered an investigation into the hospital, Dr Foster’s 2009 good hospital guide said that Mid-Staffs was as among the five “most improved hospitals” in the past three years and in the top ten for quality of care. Much of the debate about whether or not a hospital is good or bad is based on codings given to patients as they enter hospital, how these are applied and assessed. Dr Foster has been instrumental in developing this method of collecting and systemising data. So important are these that one hospital, after getting a bad review from Dr Foster, instead of hiring more clinical staff hired more encoders instead. Professor Jarman has effectively said that hospitals are fiddling the figurers. In response, hospitals say that Dr Foster does not take into account important data.

The debate rages between clinicians academics and health managers but where does that leave Joe Public? Should we be afraid of going to the Manor?
Or should we give some much weight to an orgainsation like Dr Foster, which in the case of Mid Staffs clearly got it wrong, and as a private company is answerable to no-one. Far from helping improve healthcare is Dr Foster, through the shock horror headlines it hands the press, harming health?

Disabled and profitable.

2011-06-14T04:58:00.000-07:00

The demand by the council that one of the most vulnerable groups in our community pay the cost their care is deplorable in a society which supposedly prides itself on not letting its poorer members fall by the wayside. After all, what is progressive taxation if not the wealthier members of a community supporting those who through no fault of their own have hit hard times, particularly hard times they can no longer effect or change?

The increases in charges for social care in the present economic circumstances, it can be argued, are unavoidable if you accept the government’s view that cutting the national deficit in five years must take priority over all else if the economy is to recover. Of course others argue that such savings in such a short space of time is itself harming the economy and will in itself slow down the recovery and may indeed reverse it. But if increasing social care charges is distasteful, how then would you describe the actions of a council which wants to make a profit out of the service?

Walsall North MP David Winnick was angered by the case of one of his constituents who, although aged 84 and in poor health herself, is a full time carer for her disabled son, Ian, aged 60.
Mrs Henderson looks after her son following a series of strokes following a knife attack as he walked to his job as a porter.
Walsall council have sent her a yearly bill of over £4,700 for the ten hours home help Ian gets each week. A sum they will struggle to meet.
Mr Winnick raised their case in the House of Commons last Thursday to highlight how changes in social care charges are hitting the most vulnerable in our communities. The government, of course, denied this was the case.But only days after raising this case Mr Winnick met with another constituent whose case shows the council is making a profit for the home help it provides him.

Mr McLoughin, is paralysed down his right side following a series of strokes. He also received a yearly bill of £4790, which amounts to £92 a week for four hours home help. But, purely by chance, he learnt that the private company that Walsall council pays to provide the service only charges £34 a week. When he contacted the firm they offered to provide his home help at that price if he paid them directly. So, in short, Walsall council were seeking to make £58 profit a week from a disable man with no savings whose total income is £212.

As I write this I just can’t see the justification of asking vulnerable people to pay over and above the true cost of their care, let alone make a profit from it. It could be argued that Mr McLoughin is helping to pay the cost of other disabled people’s care. But I come back to my point, isn’t that what council tax, VAT and income tax are for? Isn’t it the duty of those who are healthy and earning to support those who can’t earn because of ill health? Certainly it can’t be the duty of the poor to support the poor!

Mr Winnick believes that our Tory/Lib Dem coalition government is pushing through attacks on vulnerable people, while willing support by Walsall’s Tory council who have also decided to take the opportunity to make a profit out of the disabled. But does the council’s policy make sensible, if unpalatable, economic sense.

Well let’s remember that in January this year the Labour Party tabled a motion to the council arguing that giving social workers a decent pay rise would in the long term save money. The increase would mean that the authority didn’t have to rely on expensive agency staff to fill in the vacancies in this essential frontline service. To illustrate their point Labour pointed to nearby Conservative run Staffordshire County council who are paying almost 30 per cent more to their staff.
What did the Tories do? Well they voted the motion down on the grounds that the Government had ordered a pay freeze for public sector staff. So Walsall council continues to pay over the odds for agency staff because qualified social workers just won’t work for the rates the council is offering.

This epitomises Conservative thinking, or lacking of thinking to be accurate. Instead of making services more efficient, their answer is an ideology that argues public sector spending by its very nature is bad and therefore cutting services is good and hang the long term social and economic consequences. But the Tories have shown entrepreneurial skill and mean-spiritedness which even surpasses Dickens' grasping and greedy fictional character Scourge, let’s make the poor profitable.

Happy Anniversary Serco

2011-06-10T08:50:00.000-07:00

I know I’m a bit early with this but for those of who may have forgotten I thought I should mention it in time for you to get a card, if you so wish.

Ten years ago next month, Serco was awarded its first contract to run education in Walsall. It would be nice to say that this joining of the private sector company, better known at the time for running prisons and Aldermaston Atomic Weapons Research Centre and the public sector was a union made in heaven. But if it was a wedding at all it was more the shotgun variety.
It was a forced joining brought about by the government who had lost patience with Walsall Council’s local education authority after Ofsted had attacked it in nearly every category of performance. In 2000 Walsall LEA was bottom of the league table for authorities when it cam to passes in GCSE results.

Then still in love with the concept that the private sector could bring management solutions the public sector was incapable of, the Labour government ordered that the running of LEA was put out to contract. Importantly, it ruled out any other LEA bidding to run Walsall in partnership with the council; the government had decided this was going to be a private affair and the public sector wasn’t invited to the wedding.
Not that this was accepted wholeheartedly at the time. Mike Bird, then as now, was leader of the council, and as the father of the reluctant bride he wanted none of it but unlike normal shotgun weddings, in this case it was the government sitting in the front pew nursing a firearm. So Mike through the pages of the local press said something along the lines of ‘over my dead body’ and then dutifully gave the bride away to an unwanted son-in-law.
The strange thing was that the groom in this union, to quote Madonna, was like a virgin. Previous to bid for the contract Serco had no experience of running education. This was its first venture into the sector. To overcome this it had jointly bid for the contract with QAA, a firm of educational consultants who had ‘been round the block’; a bit like the groom bringing his girlfriend to the wedding so she could tell him what to do on the honeymoon. But no-one seemed to mind because, as everyone mentioned at every opportunity, it was the kids that mattered.
And there were so many children! Thousands, no, tens of thousands. During the reception speeches the kids were the topic everybody talked about, from the armed best man in the shape of the government, to the reluctant bride’s father. There were promises that the children would be given the best start in life, their futures and successes would be the mark of this union’s success. Funny thing was the real parents of the children were not invited to the festivities, neither were school governors, nor the head teachers and as for the teachers’ unions, well there was a bloody big bouncer on the door forcibly saying, ‘Your name’s not on the list, you’re not coming in!’

But the marriage seemed to take off; well at least it did as far as the government was concerned. When a year later, Ofsted slagged off those few LEA areas which had remained under control of the council, most notably special needs education, the wedding vows were redrawn and Serco took complete control of education in the borough in 2003. The transfer of special education was not what it had wanted. Previously, Serco had viewed taking on the funny looking kid with a limp as a step too far and had left him in the local authority’s hands. Now though, for better or worse, special education was part of the big happy family that had become to be called Walsall Serco; QAA having being bought out by Serco, who must have thought that they’d now, got the hang of this education malarkey.

To be fair to Serco, when it came into this marriage the appalling education standards in the borough, there is no other words to concisely describe them, were not of its making. It had, with the a few exceptions, schools which were simply failing to deliver the education children deserved.
It set itself a number of major targets, improvements in delivering services from the local authority to schools, and most importantly, racking up the pass rates for GCSEs at year 11 (16 year-olds for those of us who were educated under the old forms system) and obtaining higher marks at key stage 2 for pupils in their last year of primary education.

These pass rate targets were like or not, and many teachers certainly didn’t like it, were the benchmarks of success set by the government not just for Walsall but for the country as a whole. To achieve this the council and Serco agreed their own targets, which although supposedly open to scrutiny, where sometimes so well hidden form public view, a parent with a gieger counter would have had difficult finding them..
Serco was criticised for failing to meet some of those targets and, in accordance with its contract was fined but by the time its contract came up for renewal in 2008, the council , publicly at least, was saying what a good job they were doing. Though Serco, who pride themselves on 90 per cent contract renewal rate across the spectrum of services it delivers, wasn’t taking things for granted. In its bid to Walsall council, it had thrown in a number of sweeteners to win the contract, more of which later. Serco’s ‘success’ was based a slow, a very slow, gradual improvement. Outwardly it, and the council, had taken a decision that the main area of improvement should be in primary education. The reasoning being, pupils entering secondary schools had a much better chance of higher marks at GCSE level if they had the basic tools already in hand. I use the term outwardly, because the terms and clauses of the contract with Serco have never been transparent, commercial confidentiality and fear of that parent with a Geiger counter making for a cosy arrangement where it was difficult to see whether it and the council were delivering on the vows they had made when they got hitched.

But in 2008 the council must thought that its originally unwanted better half had turned into a ‘good ‘un’ because it awarded it 12 year-old contract worth £345 million to the company. Okay Serco had chucked in some sweeteners like a promise to build new headquarters in the Walsall creating hundreds of jobs and adding to the Gigaport project but the award of a 12 year contract when the original bids were discussing five or seven year terms must have seemed like a ringing endorsement.

After 2008, controversial decisions seemed to have been made in private regarding secondary education. First the underperforming Sneyd school was earmarked for closure, then Darlaston School was set to become an academy run by the controversial evangelical Christian, multi millionaire and major Conservative party donor Robert Edminston. Frankly both these decisions, when they came to light, were forced down the throats of governors, head teachers, staff and parents in a shocking disregard of the wishes of the local communities. Serco and the council argued they had no choice and in the case of Darlaston that might be true but the decisions also benefited them both because they no longer had responsibility of the failure to improve pass rates at GSCE level at either school

Since then, the national picture has changed and impacted on education in the borough. The recession and subsequent election of a Conservative led coalition government put paid to a £100 million Building Schools for the Future programme. This has spurred other schools in the borough to go down the academy route in the hope of getting funds to rebuild crumbling buildings; a route that takes them out of the control of the council and Serco. The recession also seems to have hit Serco’s own investment plans for the borough, certainly that new headquarters and its promised jobs has disappeared off the radar. in addition the governments demands that local authorities to cut spending has led the council to try and claw back some of the massive fees it promised to Serco when it renewed its contract. This has led the company to announce up to 120 job losses in the borough. At the same time this was happening Ofsted reappeared on the scene, rating the company as adequate for two years running. Anyone that knows anything about Ofsted’s rating system understands that this amounts to being just above ‘piss poor.’

That has caused Mike Bird to reverse his view on his son-in-law. Early this year he said: “If they cannot improve themselves, how can they improve education in Walsall? They need to justify where they are and what they are doing. We are having tough talks with them, and will continue to do so. I want to know how they will improve the quality of education in Walsall – they need to improve.” Seems Mike’s initial distrust has returned and the marriage is rocky once more.

As Serco and Walsall council get ready to celebrate their ‘tin’ anniversary, those pesky league tables can demonstrate the proof of whether this marriage has been successful.Last year’s GSCE results placed Walsall 131 in the national tables by borough. Five secondary schools in the borough were in the bottom 200 in the country for GCSE and A-level results. So, in ten years the borough has failed to get out of the bottom quarter of education authorities in the country, most of which are still run by their own LEAs, not private companies. In its defence, Serco points to slow but steady improvement above the national average. It also points to the improvements in the pass rates at key stage 2, which it claims now puts the borough on a par with the national average for English and Maths. If, as it hopes, this leads to children being better equipped to handle the requirements of secondary education, then in five years time we should see a marked increase in the GSCE pass rates.
But ten years on, most of the children that entered in the education systems as Serco took control are now preparing to leave with education attainments that fall short of the promises made to them and their parents at the wedding. So what message should youngsters leaving Walsall schools send to the ‘happy’ couple along with flowers and card? Knowing the bluntness of teenagers, they might run

‘Thanks for everything and nothing.’

‘What was the point of that, I can’t afford the tuition fees and there are no jobs anyway!’

Or maybe: ‘I was robbed.’

The cowboys circling the NHS

2011-06-03T05:35:00.000-07:00

So the government has ‘listened’ on its health service reforms and we now wait to hear how Andrew Lansley reforms are to be reformed and how far David Cameron will stand by his Conservative colleague. Well if this was a boat and I was Andrew, I’d be putting on my life jacket and calling the coast guard.

The shameful aspect of this whole episode, apart from the fact that both Lib Dems and Tories promised the voters last year that they wouldn’t play politics with the NHS and instigated wholesale reforms, promises they went back on in a matter of weeks, is the fact that the Lib Dems have suddenly ‘woken up’ to the fact that nobody wants this.

Up until the recent local elections and the referendum on AV the Lib Dems were in total support of this major restructuring of the health service. A series of reforms one private health company described as the ‘denationalisation of the health service’ or put another way, the privatisation of the primary care.

The health service bill is at its third stage. Now if I remember rightly the passage of a bill in parliament goes like this. First a green paper to allow for discussion and consultation, then a white paper outlining the policy of a proposed bill, then the actual bill itself is introduced to the House of Commons in the first reading, a formal introduction, followed by the second reading where the principles and objectives of the bill are debated. Then the committee stage when the bill is scrutinised in detail and changes and amendments can be made. Lastly the third reading when last minute amendments can be made and the amended bill as a whole is either passed or rejected. After that it’s off the House of Lords for its scrutiny and debate.

In short, these reforms are already two thirds of the way to becoming law.

And it’s now that the Lib Dems suddenly find they have ‘problems’ with Lansley’s proposals and come riding over the hill like the Seventh Cavalry as the savages of private enterprise circle the helpless nurses and patients.

Well, Nick Clegg as General Custer has its attractions but only because we know what happened to the Seventh Cavalry.

In reality the Lib Dems have played a disgraceful role for they could have thrown out this unwanted and uncalled reform at stage one, but they now expect us to accept them as the saviours of the day! Their opposition is motivated not by principle but by political expediency. The voters hammered them for their role on such issues as tuition fees and they don’t want to take a kicking on the NHS.

When the bill was first introduced local MP Valerie Vaz asked a very good question in the House. Would GPS have the option of opting out of the reforms? The answer, a firm, No. And so determined was the intention of the Tories and the Lib Dems to push through this policy that PCTs were ordered to begin the process of introducing the reforms even before they became law.

In Walsall, that has meant that the local PCT, NHS Walsall, has spent much of its time coordinating the setting up of two GP consortiums to take over its role.

The NHS Walsall GP Commissioning Consortium (WGPCC) which covers roughly 80 per cent of the population and the Trans Walsall Independent Commissioning Consortium (TWICC).

As of this month the consortium will take the lead on the Department of Health’s Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention (QIPP) program.

QIPP, according to the Department of Health, is ‘working at a national, regional and local level to support clinical teams and NHS organisations to improve the quality of care they deliver while making efficiency savings that can be reinvested in the service to deliver year on year quality improvements’.

So, before the reforms are passed by parliament and the consortiums have legal status, the GPs are taking on an important role in the developing the future of our local health service. Anyone got a problem with that? Well if you have, you are going to have to lump it because there seems to be no mechanism in the consortiums to make them accountable to local people.

The boards of the consortium have only one place for an appointed public representative; note appointed not elected. The only other ‘local’ rep will be Mr Paul Davis, Walsall council’s director of Social Care and Inclusion, an employee of the council not an elected member.

So how does the public have a say in how these consortiums work, well to answer that the PCT has kindly provided a diagram and I hope they don’t mind my breaching copyright in reproducing it here.

Cant' see it, don't worry because it's as clear as mud even even the image is reproduced .

So what now? The Lib Dems in parliament will say they saved the NHS from the Tories. Together, as a government they will pass the bill and hope it’s passage through the House of Lords won’t be too torrid. Meanwhile we the public get stuck with something we didn’t ask for don’t want and have no control over. The people who are going to win which everyway with go with these reforms are the management services companies who are ticking off the days until the government denationalises the NHS and they can fill their pockets.

Muscular liberalism or wanting your cake and eating it.

2011-05-16T02:46:00.000-07:00

Well what has happened in Walsall’s political scene since 6th May and the local elections ..err, not a lot. The results of an election which left the borough in no–overall control were fairly predictable. Though it seems some had not read the writing on the wall. One journalist at the count, bemoaning the fact there was only him and a photographer from his paper to cover 20 seats, said that for the first time in many years something had actually happened and now he was left with the job of trying to pull together all the significant results on his own. But if you can forgive the press for getting it wrong you can’t do the same for the politicians.

Despite all the indicators, locally and nationally the Lib Dems in Walsall walked out of the election count with a bemused look on their face as if to say: ‘Well , that wasn’t in the game plan.’ Thankfully for them, with so few seats to start with, they didn’t really suffer from the national squeeze on their vote; losing one seat of their two seats that were being contested. But the ‘shock’ result seemed to leave them stunned for a period of time. It was not till five days later they met to decide who their leader would be, another outcome that bookies won’t have given you odds on.

So far, so predictable. Not the next step because Shires decides that in any coalition the Lib Dems won’t take any cabinet seats. What’s the motivation for this decision has not quite been explained but a look at how the Lib Dems nationally have been the fall guy for the coalition might show the reasoning behind this decision. Nationally the Lib Dems went into coalition on the basis of a document that rather quickly became a milestone around their necks. It tied them into a series of polices that have blown up in their face. Tuition fees is often quoted, the reforms of the NHS is yet another, and of course AV which the referendum showed had no popular support at all.

All of these had the Lib Dems’ fingerprints all over them and the voters saw the evidence and passed their judgement. They were almost wiped out all over the country, while the Tories stood behind them and let Clegg take the blame. A bit unfair really. Like the case of Craig and Bentley. An infamous case, where 16 year-old Craig, the instigator of the murder, was sentenced to life imprisonment while Bentley - an easily led, below average intelligence 19 year-old - was hanged.

Shires doesn’t want to be the fall guy for any local coalition.

The fact that he is up for re-election next year in the Willenhall North ward where the Lib Dems lost their seat this time round must also have had an influence on his reasoning. So a coalition based on support not partnership offers the opportunity to put distance between the Lid Dems and the party which takes control.
Behind the scenes they could twist arms, while publically in the press and council chamber, they would be allowed to thrown punches at the ruling administration. Is this the ‘muscular liberalism’ Clegg has spoken of?

Along side this he has outlined various options for the future running of the council of which only two make any sense; a coalition with the Tories or Labour. In addition he published the Lib Dems' priorities which are frankly so vague as to make reading tea leaves a better indicator of what his party wants. In response, Labour has given a more detailed outline of their priorities and motivations. Publically the Tories are playing the cards close to their chest and have made no public announcement of their reasoning. Shires though has since said that both Labour and the Tories have asked for more clarification on what he and his party want out of any coalition.
Not surprising, given the Lib Dems’ present position could be agreed to by any party you could name, bar the BNP. On his blog site Shires has said that he met with the Tories on Friday and that he is to meet with Labour today. Maybe, after these meetings have concluded, we will know exactly what he wants because so far it seems to be his cake and eating it.

Love, and votes, for sale

2011-05-11T09:31:00.000-07:00

Ian Shires seems to be setting out his stall for support in any possible coalition after Walsall council was left in no overall control following last week’s local elections. But it seems he seems to have very little to offer save his five votes. I suspect that Ian’s real hope is the other two parties will rush to him offering him concessions, like love sick suitors offering bridewealth but far from fawning over him as if he was the Willenhall Carnival Queen, he might just find that the two suitors prefer to remain single!

Dante’s First Circle and body armour.

2011-05-07T06:52:00.000-07:00

On Thursday I tweeted ‘Ian Shire's toying with a rainbow coalition in Walsall.. lab/dem/con pact, ‘ this before the results of the local election had been counted on Friday. It seemed Ian had seen the looming iceberg and was building his lifeboat before it struck and he and his party where thrown into the water.

Well Thursday's election came and although the Lid Dem ship in Walsall wasn’t sunk it was badly holed below the waterline. I should explain that I’ve been working away from home and have had little time to focus on the local elections, but back on Saturday morning I logged on the web for the latest local news before going to bed with a smile on my face after checking the results for the borough.

Two hours later the radio alarm goes off and in those half worlds of sleep and consciousness I hear Walsall’s Tory leader Mike Bird telling me why the election on Thursday wasn’t a catastrophe for the Conservatives. For those of you who don’t know Labour won 12 out of 20 seats holding their own while taking five from the Tories, one from the Lid Dems and two from independents.
A great result for Walsall Labour because although it doesn’t put them in control it gives them 26 seats in a 60 seat council its an important stepping stone to possibly taking control next year. It’s a disaster for the Tories who over the last 11 years had begun to think they were the natural masters of this borough.
But back to this morning, in that half world of dreams and waking I asked myself what did I do to deserve a seat in Dante's first circle condemned to listen to Mike’s excuses for eternity? Once over this horrible hallucination, though I heard the radio presenter say that Ian Shires had been suggesting that all three parties should join in an across the board alliance to run the borough and what did Mike think? Seeing an opportunity to keep his hands on the levels of power Mike agreed that it good be ‘the best thing for the borough.’
What a gift for him. What a way out of taking responsibility for the cuts and attacks on frontline services which his coalition government had decreed must happen and which he and his Tory councillors had pushed through in the council’s budget for 2011-12 without a moment’s hesitation.
A budget that even the Lib Dems voted against it, and it’s their party leadership who are the co-architects of this attack on services!

Publically the Tory led coalition talks of the necessity of and its reluctance about this attack on the private sector, while privately many Tories are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of completing Thatcher’s unfinished monetarist revolution. The cuts for those Tories is an opportunity to take an ideological axe to the welfare state, to put lower taxes before hospitals, social workers and police officers. The difference between this May’s election and last year’s is, 12 months ago the voters didn’t know that the Lib Dems and Tories’ plans was to sack nurses, home helps, police officers, to close libraries, sure start centres and to let school buildings rot. A year on and the voters now know this, and on Thursday in giving their votes to the Labour Party, said: “We don’t want this, we want you to fight it at every turn.”

Another fact that has emerged over the 12 last months is the Tories nationally have utilised their Lib Dem partners like body armour; always close at hand to take the flak when the voters start firing bullets. Ian Shires understands this and his scheme for a local rainbow coalition is nothing short of asking the Labour Party to ignore the instructions of their voters and hold his and the Tories’ hand as they push through the cuts, regardless of the wishes of the electors.

Well, if Labour did that, no amount of Kevlar would save them from the justifiably rage of the people and although his support of Wrexham FC has shown that Tim Oliver can endure long, painful events, I very much doubt he is up for an eternity with Mike Bird as payment for agreeing to such an obvious and shabby pact.

It's only a wedding!!!

2011-04-29T04:11:00.000-07:00

Sitting in the pub last night and the question of ‘where are you going to watch the royal wedding’ came up.
I explained that as a republican I won’t be watching it at all but I did wish the couple a nice day.
A shaven headed man beside me holding a Morrisons’ bag of vol au vons and a bottle of white wine almost exploded at the mention of republicans and loudly stated ‘I’m not a royalist , I’m a loyalist , this is my country, my Queen.’

He then went into a mini rant about the country being too full up with immigrants before ordering another pint from the Asian owner of the pub as he want on to say he would consume the contents his shopping bag as he watched the wedding on the telly, at home, alone. It would have been funny but for the fact that the last time I heard such sentiments being expounded by a ‘loyalist’ it was on the Short Strand in Belfast and men in ski masks carrying AK47s were voicing them.
Never was I so grateful for my Brummie accent because it hid my Irish catholic heritage. Fuck those guys scared the shit out of me.

I thought of explaining to the shaven headed loyalist in the pub that he had got Irish republicanism, based as it is on a out of date 19th century political movement centred on nationalism confused with my republicanism which is just about wanting to cut the Queen’s head off.

Well no. I don’t really want to cut the Queen’s head off, because I have to admit that if you have to have a monarchy then Liz (if I can call her that?) is probably the best one you could have, because she keeps out of politics and lets the democratically elected government get on with running the country. The one exception to that is King Juan Carlos of Spain who as head of state in 1991 ordered the Spanish army to support the constitutionally elected government and put down an attempted coup by supporters of the long dead fascist, Franco. A political decision that avoided another civil war. Now that’s the sort of king you want around, but back to Liz.

Nice woman but I didn’t get a choice about whether she is my head of state. In what is supposed to be a democratic state, I think that is rather basic right.

But I didn’t explain to this to the shaven headed ‘loyalist’ because I thought that it might be lost on him. Still I was glad when he left the pub. So to all of you who are royalists celebrating the wedding today. Have a nice time, even the guy with his cheap wine and vol au vons watching the telly on his own but for fuck sakes calm down. It’s only a wedding after all , even if I’m paying for it.

IMI.. the mushroom was wrong

2011-04-26T01:26:00.000-07:00

When you’re wrong ..you’re wrong . And The Mushroom isn’t always happy to admit it but for the sake of fairness, will.
I have said here that the Former IMI site in Darlaston was rumoured to have been bought by Advantage West Midlands for £1 million and there is speculation that the 35 acre site was to be sold to a preferred bidder for as little as £1.
Well I got it wrong . AWM, who have recently refused to say how polluted this land is because it may harm its ability to sell it, bought it for .. £1

Given the price of commercial land has fallen due to the recession and since it bought the land there has been no improvements made to it, can AWM continue to claim that commercial factors and the possible loss of public monies, prevent it from revealing the level of contamination?

Of cabbages and kings

2011-04-24T23:21:00.000-07:00

There is another poison that hangs around the former IMI foundry in Walsall, and that is the deliberate decision to mislead the public. In the public announcements on the future of one Europe’s most poisoned sites, public bodies such as AWM and Walsall council have behaved like con men on a street corner running a shell game. The shell game saw a dealer con punters out of their cash by a mixture of slight of hand and misdirection. With promises of easy money, the con men took those stupid enough to play for a ride which usually ended with scam artists legging it up the road with the unfortunate punter’s hard earned.

In the same way Walsall council has ‘disclosed’ its plans for this land by diverting the public’s attention to the possibility of thousands of jobs while with its other hand, hiding the real story such as that the first stage of its grand design was to open an open cast mine right on people’s doorsteps. Remember this land is publically owned, bought with taxes of those being misled.

At present, most of our country’s media is obsessed with two things. The royal wedding and whether it can report the sexual shenanigans of celebrities.Frankly, neither interests me. As regular readers of this blog will know I have for the last few weeks been banging on about what is happening just down the road from me. You will have to read my other postings on this for the full story for it too complicated to go into right now but in short the leader of my local council tells me the land is so poisoned that containments have ended up in the North Sea but we, the public, are not allowed to know the full story. I have been writing about this because I think it’s important, because I think that, unlike the sexual attics of pop stars or the romance of actual or soon to be royals, there is a genuine public interest issue at the heart of this story.

It’s easy to rummage among the laundry of the famous and many news outlets spend a fortune on such stories; even to the point of hiring private detectives to bug people’s phones.Meanwhile at the other end of the ‘communications industry’, public bodies spend a fortune on spin doctors and media consultants to make sure their dirty linen stays in the laundry basket until its too late for its publication to harm them. The two ends of the spectrum are very profitable. One, publishing the inconsequential while the other, gets paid to hide the potentially harmful and dangerous.

In regards the IMI site, the public body, AWM, holds information on the level, nature and extent of contaminates but it refuses to reveal it for reasons which frankly don’t hold water. We therefore don’t know how, or if, those poisons harm people. Nor can we begin to ask questions on how they affect the large secondary school nearby or even if the vegetables grown in local gardens are safe to eat! In many ways it’s easier to write about the future of the King of England because there are enough people falling over each to tell you what the prince will have for breakfast on the morning of the big day.
But I would rather write about a cabbage grown in Walsall; even if it's only to say 'It's safe to eat.'

If it must be a question of choosing between speaking of cabbages and kings? I choose the cabbage.

Europe's most contaiminated site to be sold for £1? Meanwhile residents told you're you can't know how dangerous it is.

2011-04-24T14:13:00.000-07:00

Advantage West Midlands (AWM) has refused to reveal information on the extent and nature of pollutants on the former IMI site, because it might harm its bargaining position in a sale that could earn the tax payer as little as £1.
The agency is saying its commercial interest comes before the right of local people to know what hazards exist on what has been decribed as one of Europe's most contaiminated brownfield sites.

AWM, Walsall Council and Parkhill Estates, the preferred bidder for the 35 acre site, in recent weeks have played a public relations game where they have only emphasised the possible benefits of any development while studiously will making no reference to any disadvantages, whatever their nature.

Plans to start open cast mining on the former copper foundry were only admitted to when Walsall council were confronted with evidence which showed exactly that, saying in a press release that it had briefed local councillors on the plans and therefore it hadn’t tried to hide the proposals. A simple check with a local councillor though showed the briefing had come only after reporters started asking questions aboy the proposals.

Following this, AWM’s decision to put its interest before those of local people is stunning. This site is described as one of the most containment in Europe. Pollutants from the site have been found in the North Sea after they sepped in to the water table. That makesit not just an issue for the people of Pleck or Darlaston or indeed the people of Walsall but an environmental problem with national implications.
The refusal to release the level of contamination under the Freedom of Information Act came only two days after AWM announced it had been given permission by the government to sell the site.
When asked by the BBC to comment on its reasons for turning down the FOI request, AWM referred the broadcaster to a month old press release by Walsall council which made no reference to the FOI request or the nature of pollution on the land.

AWM’s refusal to reveal the problems on publically owned land is nothing short of contemptuous; contempt for local people and the tax payer who bought the land and funds AWM, particualry given that any potential buyer as a matter of course will be told the liabilities that come with this land. So disclosure to the public could not have any serious impact on the agency’s bargaining position.

AWM was said to have paid approximately £1 million for the site in 2006 but it is now rumoured that it is ready to sell the land for as little as a pound

Are AWM putting £1 before people?

Election runners and riders ..

2011-04-21T06:07:00.000-07:00

Predicting the results of local council elections is a mix of maths, wetting your finger and sticking it in the air and, my least favourite part, disembowelling a chicken, throwing its guts in the air and then running away to avoid the falling entrails.

Polls and predictions are not a science, more an art that keeps reminding politicos and fellow travellers how wrong they can be. In Walsall that’s even truer. In the case of next month’s local election the nearest comparable year was 2007. Then a deeply unpopular Labour government was given a kicking across the country but in Walsall Labour only lost two seats, both to independent candidates not to Tories or Lib Dems.

Even then in Pleck, Palfrey and St Matthews it was close run thing with the Tories just holding all three seats. So to just impose national polls on Walsall is often a waste of time. That said, Walsall is not immune to national trends and swings as seen in last year’s general election, when both labour Mps David Winnick and Valerie Vaz were elected, but what had been safe Labour seats became marginal overnight.

In Walsall we have 12 Tories defending their seats, four Labour, two Lib Dems and two Independents. The situation is simplified and cleaned up a bit by the lack of BNP candidates who have almost fallen on the face of the map, much to the delight of anyone that thinks Hitler was a ‘bad ‘un.’ That will tend to favour Labour.

This puts the Tories on the back foot as they have to spend so much time and effort on holding on to what they have got. The Lib Dems will fight tooth and nail for their two seats, frankly the rest of their candidates are in the election in name only. So in a very real way, the pressure is on Labour not only to win seats but win well.

So which seats in Walsall are likely to turn their coats and change their colours?

Bloxwich East is an area Labour hope to build on its success in last year’s by-election which saw Fred Westley take it from the Tories. Labour was aided by a good campaign on the future of a local GP surgery and they hope to repeat their success this year.

Across the road , they are also pinning their hopes on taking Bloxwich West In 2007 the Tory candidate Des Pitt managed to hang on to his seat but by only 200 votes in what was a good year for the Tories. Labour is hoping to reverse that result.

The two most tightly fought wards are going to be Palfrey and Pleck. The Tories held Palfrey with majority of 90 while in Pleck it was even tighter; with the conservative Mohammed Ahmed hanging on by the skin of his teeth with a majority of only 36.

In you take in to consideration last year’s local elections results when Labour’s Mohammad Nazir hammered his Tory opponent in Palfrey by over 1200 votes and Labour’s Harbans Sarohi, took Pleck with majority of 550 these two seats look very, very winnable for Labour. Yes both had high turnouts because the local elections were run at the same time as the general election but you must remember that 2010 nationally was a bad year for Labour.

So on to where we could see some real upsets. St Matthews ward has already been the scene of some controversy as the Tory sitting councillor from the 2007, Barbra McCracken, has legged it to the safe seat of Paddock, after unseating her popular fellow Tory, Barry Sanders, who is now standing as an independent.
Mrs McCraken has bequeathed her seat to her husband Gerry who now faces the very real prospect of being rejected by the voters. In 2007 Mrs McCraken hung on by under 200 votes, in 2010, on the face of it the Tories increased their majority but the share of the vote narrowed. Mrs McCraken legging it across the Birmingham road separating St Matthews and Paddock unfavorably highlights the Conservatives hopes of holding the seat.

Paddock. For all the reasons above, this is not going to be a good result for the Tories. Barry Sanders leaflets boast an impressive record of achievements he has won for the ward, while the recently decamped Mrs McCraken has to rely on national and borough messages in her campaign literature. Even if she wins, it is likely Barry Sanders will take votes off her. Could Labour slip through the middle? Possible, but unlikely.

Rushall-Shelfield. In 2007, the Tories won comfortably here with more than a 600 vote majority but in November last year, Labour’s Richard Worrall missed out by only 18 votes in a by-election This time round he will be helped by the fact that the BNP, which tend to take Labour votes, are not standing. If the ward conforms to any of the national indicators, this could be the big upset.

Blakenall. In 2007, Pete Smith for the Democratic Labour Party won this seat from Labour by a mere 15 votes. Since then he has been successful in gaining a high profile in the borough but his party still keeps standing candidates in wards it has no hope of winning. Rather than concentrate their efforts on the one seat they do have, they are dissipating their resources. Meanwhile Ann Young for Labour has been conducting a vigorous local issues campaign. This election could see Pete, one of the most colorful members of the council, leaving the chamber.

Darlaston South: On the face of it, Labour has a very good chance here. In 2007 independent, Christine Bott won with 1127, only 11 votes in front of Labour’s Rose Burley, but if any ward proves that Walsall voters buck trends, it’s this. Labour can win but it will be a hard fight.

Brownhills. Here it’s Labour who defending a seat where the voters in the past have shown they care little for pundits predictions. In 2007, Barbra Cassidy held the seat by only 95 votes. A good ward councillor and recognised across the council chamber as hard working and knowledgeable, the Tories would love to win this seat.

So to the Lib Dems.
The local Lib Dems are hoping that unlikely their national colleagues they don’t become the fall guys for the Tories.

Short Heath and Willenahall North are their safe seats and frankly, the only seats they really put work into. In 2007, the result for Short Heath was E Pitt (Lib Dem) 1,220, C Pitt (Con) 741, M Moore (BNP) 486, A Nawaz (Lab) 335. Since then, Eileen Pitt, the popular Lib Dem has stood down and the party has had to choose a new candidate. On the face of it if the Lib Dems lose here, it should go Tory but in 2007 the resident ‘nasty-Nazi’ was Malcolm Moore, this year standing as an independent. The lack of the recognisable BNP banner this time round could mean he loses support, and given the BNP usually takes Labour votes that works well for the party, even though it came last in 2007.

In Willenhall North. The share of the votes in 2007 was 1125, A Ault (Con) 583, D Coughlan (Lab) 519. This time round Labour are highlighting the Lib Dems national support for highly unpopular polices on tuition fees and the NHS. They are not helped by the fact that a senior Lib Dem members has defected to Labour on these issues. Of late, the local Lib Dems have done as much as they can to distance themselves from these toxic polices.

As for the AV vote. Well from what I can see the only way you could get some heat into the AV debate in Walsall is to drench it in petrol and take a flame thrower to it. No one seems interested. Well that’s it. If I didn’t mention your ward, please feel free to add your views in the comments section.

The only one thing I will bet on this election is that Walsall voters will tell all of us who try to second guess them, where to go, making predications just our views and nothing more,. Well I would bet on it but I doubt if I could get a bookie to take my money.

The Express and Star draws the veil on local politics

2011-04-15T06:22:00.000-07:00

Which one's the Tory candidate?

I ran into a councillor last night (not a Labour Party member) who is standing for re-election. We got chatting and over a pint we discussed the likely outcome of the local elections (He thinks Labour will win four seats from the Tories and possibly two from the Lib Dems) but we also chatted about Purda.

Purda, in local elections is the period when public bodies refrain from any announcements or actions that may be seen to benefit a particular political party or candidate in the election period.

The councillor was concerned because he had been told by a council officer that information he wanted to help solve a constituent’s problem was not available because of Purda. He argued that as he wasn’t going to use the information for party political purposes, he should be able to access it; not least because he wanted to finish up any outstanding work just in case he wasn’t re-elected. Fair enough, but he went on to say that the Express and Star are now using the excuse of Purda not to publish any stories of his election campaign. Basically, he was told putting in stories about candidates during the election might breach Purda, suggesting that it applies to newspapers in same way as to local authorities and public bodies.

Now that did surprise me because that night’s edition of the Express and Star’s lead political story was the Prime Minister’s speech on immigration. Anyone with a childlike grasp of politics knows that race in elections is controversial and very party political but low and behold, the paper’s editorial effectively endorsed Cameron position. In addition, on page seven, we had three stories all of which could be described as positive spin for the Conservatives. The lead story quoted Conservative council leader Mike Bird, a candidate in this year’s elections, as saying that council plans to give traffic wardens the power to issue fixed penalty points to motorists was not an attack on motorists; not very convincingly, I might add. The second story also quoted Mike Bird, this time saying that the demolish the Mellish Road church was a good thing and that he was pleased that (his) council had pushed the owners so hard that it come down in ‘days.’

No mention in the story that local residents had been fighting to keep the (see link) church and opposed demolition plans! The third story concerned the council’s plan to sell off centres it owns to raise £7 million.

In this piece there was no mention that other politicians were concerned that the services run in these centres would disappear. To be fair, on page 39 was a general piece on the May elections across the Black Country. Although buried on the very last news page, it did make some attempt at balance and fair reporting but frankly it was so badly written you would have learned more about local politics by watching the teletubbies, and it did nothing to offset the favourably reporting of the Conservatives elsewhere in the paper.

So what about other political stories the E&S have known about but not covered e.g the opposition by Lib Dem Ian Shires to the sell off of council centres mentioned earlier. Has it covered that? Has it covered the defection of a GP and senior Lib Dem in Walsall to the Labour Party over the coalition government’s plans for the NHS? Did it give any serious coverage to the spilt in the Tory ranks which saw Barry Sanders standing as a independent, threatening a safe Tory seat? No, no and no.

It’s clear the E&S wants to apply the veil of Purda to all political parties with the exception of the Conservatives but does the E&S have to apply Purda? No. There are no laws preventing newspapers publishing any political story during elections and nor should there be. But there is a moral obligation on papers to report in a fair and balanced way and that can cause difficulties for reporters. For instance there are seven political parties standing in Walsall this year and three independent candidates. It is not possible that every one is mentioned in a political story, particularly when the story only relates to one ward.

In truth many of those parties, like the BNP and Greens, are in effect ‘also rans’ whose views will have no impact on what happens in the election and the resulting council administration. So reporters have to make editorial decisions as they write their copy? Who do you choose to approach for a comment, how do you write the story and what do you keep in and what and who, do you leave out? In that process some parties will inevitably feel they are not getting their fair share of coverage but fair and balanced reporting is a world of away from censoring political views because they don’t conform to the paper’s editorial stance.

So I’ve proved the E&S is a rightwing rag, so what? Those of you, who didn’t know that, hold up your hand. Okay, the bloke in Outer Mongolia, you’re forgiven.

You might ask, well what about the Walsall Advertiser. Sorry but the Advertiser, which used to win awards for its writing and journalism, has given up on serious reporting. So where am I going with all this? Frankly the same place I go with all my rants and missives.

My blog is called the Mushroom because I honestly believe that ordnary people are kept in the dark and feed bullshit, often by organisations that claim they are open and accountable. Without good, reliable information we can’t keep those bodies to account and frankly, whatever legislation you pass, many of those organisations will go out of their way to deny people that.

In these circumstances the local press has a very important role to play in a democratic society. It can get access and it can obtain information denied to the rest of us. When it speaks up on behalf of local communities, politicians and officials take notice. My recent blogs on coal mining in Darlaston I think prove this (See link).
There is no better argument for the local press, because local politics is the last, and I mean the last, area of political life where the voter can keep our political lords and masters in check. Millions can march against a war and the government goes to war anyway. Why, because we are so distant and removed from national politicians that can ignore us but you local councillor lives up the road, he or she shops in the same area as you. They are, in short, at arms reach and you can make them accountable by just asking questions (Try doing that with the Prime Minister) but without good, reliable information such proximity is worthless.

The local press is one of the very few ways you can get that information. So when newspapers, like the E&S, step over the divide between promoting an editorial stance into censorship of views they don’t like, they harm the communities they claim to serve and from whom they obtain their income.

Now some readers of this blog will say , "Well clearly you just a Labour party supporter whose complaining of lack of coverage for your party." Well to an extent that's true, but I don't believe that just changing the political colour of a newspaper results in good journalism. Not if you continue to censor opposing views. It's not party politics I am arguing for, it's good political journalism.

The E&S have failed to report another story recently. It’s decision to sack 90 employees. Many of who will be the frontline reporting staff. I‘ve argued long and hard that we need more hacks, not less. This, at a time, when the paper has announced it will charge readers for using its online content. Why should I pay for a service which clearly doesn’t provide good journalism? If I had one wish, no reporter on the E&S will lose their job, but senior editors who deny the voice of others, well, that’s another story.

Heir up or down?

2011-04-14T01:39:00.000-07:00

On April the 29th I will be wearing my hair up. Getting up early, I will dress, (fell walking trousers, matching boots, a grey wicker t-shirt and jacket). With the intention of meeting the love of my life , I will paraded down the streets, lead by my official dog. A lovely black and white collie whose heritage dates over hundreds of years of sheep worrying optimising this island breed. He will have been specially groomed for the day, and like me , will be wearing his hair up. During the long ceremonial walk, with an imperial packed lunch of cheese sandwiches and coffee held in a glittering flask and packed away in royal blue rucksack and consumed among the green fields of England , I will wave and acknowledge the birds which will be crowding the hedgerows as I pass by. After stopping at Rushall Parish Church where I will swear a lot, mostly at the dog and at the lesser spotted woodpecker who turned down my special invitation, before returning home along the same route.

Once at home and in the company of my loved one, I will read a book. I will then sit at the computer writing a few tweets or maybe a blog. The whole cost of the day will be borne by my household apart from the security arrangements ( the dog is doing an intensive green cross code, road crossing course) which will be paid for by the taxpayers.

Strangely others have different plans for the day; one woman for instance will be wearing her hair down according to special, highly paid, investigative, undercover reporters.
Frankly I want nothing to do with such deviants!

Would Sister Dora go on Strike?

2011-04-13T05:56:00.000-07:00

My sister has one of the most demanding jobs in the world. She’s a nurse. Not a general nurse but a forensic, psychiatric nurse. Her patients range from the suicidal and self harming, to extremely violent individuals who have committed crimes which we, the public, have a dread of and puerile fascination with, but only at a distance… a very long, safe distance. It’s a job she is good at. Which is why, after retiring, her bosses asked her to come back part time; even though she is a bolshie bugger. Not bolshie in the sense of a card carrying, communist ready to bring down Western civilisation but as someone who as always been prepared to stand up for herself and fight her corner.
She maybe 5ft nothing and a shirt button, she is only 140lbs soaking wet with rocks in her pockets but she has piercing eyes and commanding presence which means that when she stands inches from a 6ft, 18 stone, homicidal sociopath half her age and tells him, ‘sit down and eat your tea,’ he sits down and eats his tea. Not that it all comes down to a strong will and a loud voice.

Thirty years experience means she knows how to approach those suffering terrible, emotional and frightening pain, giving hope and comfort, and when to tell another patient to stop ‘messing about.’ She knows how to protect those who are vulnerable and calm those who are in danger of harming themselves or others, which can include herself and other members of staff. And it’s all backed up by a wealth of medical knowledge I don’t even begin to understand.
But my mild mannered sis now looks at the reforms in the health service, the cuts in NHS funding, the attacks on pensions, the freeze on pay, the job cuts and considers something she has always fiercely rejected before; she is thinking about going on strike.

Back in the eighties she was a member of National Union of Public Employees (NUPE). In response to Maggie Thatcher’s cuts to the health service, NUPE members voted for strike action but, overwhelming, the nurses in NUPE voted against. They understood the reasons why non-clinical staff wanted to take industrial action but they put their patients first and stayed at their posts. Shortly after nurses left NUPE in droves and joined the Royal College of Nursing which had a no strike policy. The RCN became, and still is, the leading union for nursing staff in the UK.
So why after 30 years of putting patients first, are members of the RCN looking at taking industrial action?
Is it because over the last thirty years clinical staff have become self-centred, money grubbing and have abandoned their commitment to their patients? In answer to the last question my sister’s pension is a good one but only because for over thirty years she and thousands like her were never paid their true value.

Or is it because we have a reorganisation of the NHS which was never put before the voters? Is it because, despite this Tory-led government’s promises of no cuts, thousands of clinical staff now face the sack and patients will therefore suffer?

This article begins with the question of would Sister Dora go on strike? For those readers who don’t know Sister Dora, she was a contemporary of Florence Nightingale who began working as a nurse at the borough’s cottage hospital in 1865. Her dedication ensured the death rate among victims of serious accidents in Walsall’s industries was kept lower than that at London's teaching hospitals. In particular she helped railway workers in the town and in return they adored her. She was pivotally in fighting an epidemic of small pox. At her funeral in 1878 the town of Walsall turned out to see her coffin borne by eighteen railwaymen, engine drivers, porters and guards. In 1886, a statue paid for by public subscription was erected in her memory; the first public statue to a woman not of royal blood in Britain. It still stands in the centre of Walsall town Centre and each year a wreath laying ceremony takes place in her memory.

Well would she have gone on strike? No and neither will my sister or the members of the RCN but here’s a thought. Back in the 80s some nurses didn’t actually strike themselves. What they did was, off duty, picket large scale factories and got other people to strike for them. Just a one day strike but it sent a message of support for the nurses and the NHS. Now if we did that today, I think you’d find my sister and Sister Dora, in spirit, on the picket line. Isn’t time we got bolshie and stood up and fought our corner for our NHS?

lies damn, lies and ..part two

2011-04-10T06:21:00.000-07:00

A little item almost from Walsall council almost slipped underneath the radar last week. The authority announced 20 council centres were to be closed saying it would mean a cost saving of around a £1 million. Nothing to trouble me until my daughter told me that at least one of these properties in Aldridge houses a youth club.

I then noticed that Pleck NOC was one of the 20. It is a meeting place for local community groups and voluntary organisations such as the Scouts. So what had been presented as a ‘zero effect’ move amounts to a cut in services to local communities.
Ian Shires was quick to pick this up but, being just concerned with what affects his chances in the local election, he only focused n the New Invention Centre. The council press release made no mention of where local organisations where expected to go after the offices were closed. This is typical tactic of communications departments across the country. Only tell half the story because if you tell the whole truth, it will come back and bite you on the bum.

The recent case about open cast mining in Darlaston is another example of what amounts to lying by omitting important facts. A practice that, if committed in court , would lead to a charge of perjury as it is clearly meant to mislead.

Here is the council original press release with the list of offices affected, maybe you can say which community groups and activities will suffer in your area

USA why?

2011-04-08T04:11:00.000-07:00

Checking on my sats from this site , I find that roughly 10 per cent of visitors are from the USA ..
Can I ask why are you reading a hyperlocal blogger over 3,000 miles away?
Maybe it's just because you're lost, in which case, nice to have you here and as you log out, turn left and keep going until you hit the eastern seaboard. If you're not lost, please leave a comment

They’re off .. and some smell worse than others.

2011-04-07T05:24:00.000-07:00

Yes folks the May 5th handicap is up and running with the favourites and the also rans in a mad dash for the finishing post. Shooting off before the starter’s gun was young Mike Flower, a little too old to be called a colt nowadays but well fancied in his particular chase. He shoot off with this blatant self congratulatory post
Close behind him is Marco Longhi who had the decency to wait until the race official started to launch his campaign for a better play area in his Pelsall ward. He forgets to mention though that that his council has wasted tens of thousands on play areas in other parts of the borough, ripping them out after only putting them in just a few short months earlier. Marco has said he is not playing politics on this issue. Bad pun, Marco

Tim Oliver for Labour has kicked off with a warning that a vote of the Lib Dems could mean that, although they will probably come in third, they will share the winner’s enclosure with the Tories after a hasty deal behind the stewards' backs. Well Tim, that particular tip has been flying back and forth among the tic-tac men for so long they are desperately looking for a new hand signal for evens.

As for the Lib Dems , their only real chances are in the Willenhall and Short Heath stakes having only put up three legged runners elsewhere.

A later entrant is Barry Sanders in the Paddock steeple chase. Barry lost his Tory party ride to Cllr Barbara McCraken who ousted him from one of the Tories' favourites in order , it is said, that Mike Bird would still be the head trainer in the Conservative stables. This came about after the bookies put his odds of retaining overall control of the council on the same par as Shergar entering this year's Derby being ridden by Lord Lucan.
The outsiders have thrown up some rather dodgy riders. Entrants the Jockey Club won’t give a licence even if they could prove they were descended from Red Rum. (Though this hasn’t stopped a few from trying to do so having forgotten the three times winner of the Grand National was a gelding.)

These include EX-BNP member, Malcolm Moore who is standing as independent in Short Heath, Walsall. Well if he was trying to keep his past political membership quiet, it didn't work.

In Pheasey we have an English Democrat. This bunch come with the dubious endorsement of the BNP who nationally, fear they will take votes from their party. That’s like gonorrhea slagging off syphilis.

And lastly in Aldridge, and I do hope they are last, we have the BNP itself in the shape of Terence Majorowicz, a man so stupid that he can’t read his own name and find out that he is from immigrant stock.

If anyone feels like quoting odds please do because we can be sure the politicians will.

'Dance with me'

2011-03-31T07:44:00.000-07:00

The recent de-selection of Barry Sanders, the popular Tory councillor for Paddock, might just blow up in the face of the Mike Bird loyalists who engineered his demise.

The mushroom has learned that third parties have approached the former cabinet member for leisure; who was so publically slapped down by Mike Bird last year after he let slip the Illuminations were for the chop.
Sanders is believed to have rejected their advances but not like a shy girl at her first dance but more like a seasoned slapper who thinks she can see better offers across the dance floor.
This impression is strengthened by Cllrs Sanders’ letter to the Advertiser this week where he flirts with Paddock voters, first telling them of the wonderful things he claims he has done for them and then whispering the possible sweet nothing that he could be ‘theirs, and theirs alone’. In short, vote for me as an independent.

If that does happen the Tories are left in an awkward situation. They can hardly attack him as useless because they have been singing his praise as a ward councillor for years, and the very improvements in the ward they will no doubt play on, were on his watch. So what will the official Tory candidate, Cllr Barbara McCraken recently of he marginally St Matthews ward, do?
Meanwhile, her old constituents have the choice of their recently departed councillors’ husband or a Tory Asian as their new Conservative candidate. The Asians in Tory party can rightly claim that it has been them who has delivered the ward up to the Conservatives, securing three important seats in the council chamber and so ensuring Tory control; so they want another member of their community on the team. But that doesn’t work for Mike bird loyalists who want a candidate who can be told what to do, if not by the party, then at least by his wife.

Time will only tell as we await the publication of the candidates.

Beer, Politics and Testosterone

2011-03-28T04:15:00.000-07:00

Thirty years ago if you said: ‘Let’s go for a curry’. The conversation was likely to go along the lines of; “Let’s go to the curry house on the corner of the high street. It does a chicken vindaloo that is so hot that you have to six pints of lager to stop it burning a hole in you stomach. I had one last week and my bum was on fire for five days after. It’s fucking brilliant!” And if you asked if they did something a little milder, the response on a good night would be: “You big girl’s blouse”

Later in life as your tastes changed and you moved off piss water lager to something with a bit more taste, asking someone what their favourite real ale was could ended up with a recommendation that started with a tweed jacketed accountant saying: “Well I got to say The Old West Highland Thunder is mine. Warm chocolate mixed with a bitter after taste of coconut and wood alcohol, it marvellous, and you know it’s the real thing because you still have bits of hops and twigs floating on the top.”

“Mind you, it’s very strong! Know what I mean? Not for the unseasoned drinker. Oh no, definitely not! I drank two pints once and I hade a stroke all down my left side and was blind for six weeks. But, that said it has it advantages, when the Inland Revenue was going to audit me and I was a little embarrassed, I nipped down to the my local, drank six pints and was in a coma for six months until the cash flow picked up. It’s fucking brilliant.” Ask if there was a drink that didn’t put you in the local ICU, the sniffy reply would be: “Wimp!”

The problem with men is they can be very competitive. Now that’s not a bad thing but even the most benign of activities can end up in a race to be the Alpha dog. As bird watcher I have noticed that if you mentioned you just seen a spices of rare bird, the reply from your fellow male birders, is as often as not. “Oh that’s nice. Of course I had that one many years ago. My life list is 833, you know, and I was the first birder to spot the Lesser Mexican Little Plover in a car park in Luton.”

All that ‘out doing each other’ got me to thinking how our almost all male cabinet operates?
Did the present government’s present economic policy start out with someone asking the question, how do we survive the world wide recession?
David Cameron says: “Tell you what, we’ll cut the entire budget deficit in five years, we will reduce taxation on businesses, whack up VAT, slash public spending, increases tuition fees, scrap EMA, double unemployment and ride the storm by saying unpaid, untrained volunteers can do the work instead and there is no alternative.”
Not to be outdone Andrew Lansley, pipes up: “We’ll privatise primary health care while underfunding the NHS!”
Liam Fox: “And we can scrap the Fleet Air Arm and give the Navy catapults instead, while we engage in more conflicts, Libya is nice at this time of year.” Wanting the last word, the PM jumps in again: “Why not? It worked for Maggie. It’s fucking brilliant!”

Vice Cable, lifts his hand and says. “Is there any chance of a policy that doesn’t threaten large scale misery, destroying whole communities?” The Tory members of the cabinet link arms and sing: “Who’s the wimp in the big girl’s blouse, who’s the wimp in the big girl’s blouse?"
As Nick Clegg motions to a cabinet office flunky for another round of The Old West Highland Thunder, he whispers in Vince’s ear: “Remember AV.”

At first Vince looks at him, quizzically, and then as the light of recognition enters his eyes, he replies: “Oh Avery! Oh I had her years ago. She is the 944th notch on my bed post, you know.”

Unwanted rubbish.... I'm your man

2011-03-23T04:02:00.000-07:00

You have to feel sorry for Dan Slee. If it wasn’t for the fact that Walsall’s leading spin doctor shaves his head, he’d be pulling his hair out with frustration every time Mike Bird opens his mouth.

In Tuesday’s Express and Star the borough’s glorious leader showed yet again how tenuous his grip on reality, and basic maths, is. The man who told us that he works 49 hours a day, 365 days a year, on behalf of the people of Walsall, now says he can do what every national and regional newspaper has failed to do… make a website pay for itself. The leader of the council has stated that the council’s website can generate up to a £1 million a year in advertising!

He claims that charging £10 a week for an advert on the borough’s website will bring the cash rolling in. No problem. Of course, he forgets to add that means you have to get win attract 10,000 clients wanting to advertise with you. Well I’m no expert but that does seem a tad ambitious, especially when you know that News International’s flagship Times website is now charging a subscriber’s fee to pay for its on-line presence. Almost all the country’s newspaper groups have given up on the idea of earning any real money from websites. But Mike is not to be put off by mere economic realities; or any other sort of reality.

Which make you wonder what sort of advertising campaign Mike has in mind. Will he go for more aggressive marketing ploys?
Such as the council doing do a Bogof offer (buy one get one free) ‘Yes here at Walsall council when we close one old people’s home ..we close another one, absolutely free!!! Yes you heard me right, close one and get another one closed for free. Just ring….’

And why stop at the website? Walsall council bin lorries could be sponsored by Cash Convertors, with a smiling picture of Mike on the side of each vehicle, saying: ‘When it comes to unwanted rubbish ..I ‘m your man.’
You know this might just work!
In the meanwhile can we get a sponsor to buy Dan a wig, so he has some hair to pull out!

bird stuffing?

2011-03-21T02:54:00.000-07:00

In this post I didn't so much as speculate, more looked forward to, the end of leader of Walsall council Cllr Bird's political career.
Boy, did I get it wrong!!
Instead it seems that it was Cllr Sanders of Paddock ward who has been put to the sword..again!

The former leisure cabinet member who was publicly slapped down after he let the cat out of the bag about the future of Walsall Illuminations last year, has been deselected as a Tory candidate for the May elections.
His Paddock seat will instead been fought for by social care and inclusion cabinet member, Cllr Barbara McCracken, who jumps ship from the marginal St Matthews ward.

Cllr McCracken, who I always think of fondly of as 'the kraken,' started here political career here in The Butts. Her political highlights so far are, she was chair of the education committe when Ofsted ordered the local education authority to been taken over by the private company Serco, because Walsall council was doing such a bad job of running schools, and, when deputy mayor, she added her name to promoting a private housing development.. Trouble was, the housing development was not in Walsall but in Sandwell!
Who will fight her St Matthews seat for the Tories has yet to be revealed

Well what will Cllr Sanders do? Will he look for another Tory seat or stand as an independent in Paddock and take votes from the party which, let's be blunt, has given him the bum's rush? We wait to see
but it seems fair to say that Cllr Sanders like his namesake's , Colonel Sanders' chickens, has bee stuffed but in a bizarre twist, some are specualting that it was a bird that did the stuffing.

Just getting it off my chest

2011-03-20T09:20:00.000-07:00

The Mushroom is a depressing old git. No I’m not joking. I don’t speak about it openly very often … there is still a lot of intolerance and stigma attached to mental illness. Even when I do, it’s usually under the cover of anonymity. But something recently happened that affected my condition and it triggered a need to make a plea to a specific group of people.

Back in the 80s the Mushroom was working in London. I’d moved to find work and the only work I could find was labouring on construction sites. Not my first career choice but hey, it was work and I brought home a wage. I remember working on one site, where the foreman referred to the labourers as ‘skins’ A derogatory term for workers he thought of as of the least value.The labourers, as you can image, didn’t like it.
“Alright gaffer, I’ll put a couple of skins on that,’ or ‘the skins are having their break.” We were to him, just strong backs and hands. Basics, didn’t apply to us. Health and safety was a joke. In those days anyone could just walk on a site and get a job, with no knowledge and frankly with some, no sense. Hence, the two young men, I found one day demolishing an internal brick wall from the bottom up. I pointed out the real danger of the wall collapsing on them. They just laughed and ignored me. They didn’t laugh when they went to hospital. In a period of high unemployment there were enough willing people to take their place and they were cheap, but it is easier to discard them if you don’t even think of them as people, just ‘skins.’

Now don’t get me wrong. That attitude was prevalent in a small number of employers, not the majority. And as for the construction industry if wanted a job on a building site today, I couldn’t get one because of the training requirements, not least in health and safety. The construction industry has made massive steps in improving its health and safety record in the last 30 years. So well done to the builders..

Recently though, The Mushroom was made redundant. I miss my old job, it was fun and, at times, I got to help some people which just added to the satisfaction my work gave me and my sense of self. By that time I was a ‘suit’ and occasionally a tie; when I could remember to put it on.

Since losing my job I‘ve been doing anything and everything to earn money while I try to get back into fulltime work , My income has dropped dramatically and I fear for paying the mortgage and all the other bills I use to take for granted.
And it’s now that in a minority of cases, I’ve seen the re-emergence of that belittling attitude; at times, in the most unlikely set of employers.

One of my very first job interviews after being made redundant saw me apply for a post with a charitable organisation. I was told that I would be informed whether I’d been successful by the end of the week.. Four weeks later I finally got a rejection letter. Of course, by then, I’d counted it out. ‘Not to worry,’ I thought, ‘with my skills and experience I’ll find work soon.’ Well that hasn’t happened. I‘ve had a number of interviews since, all of them, I’m afraid unsuccessful. So I’ve gone back to my strong back and set of willing hands and I’m doing anything to pay those bills.

Meanwhile I keep going for job interviews. Most employers are fair and decent but what I’ve find depressing, and insulting, are those who have little if any regard for you beyond your suitability for the role. May times they won’t give you the respect of telling you if you have been successful. They don’t send out letters, emails or make calls to unsuccessful candidates. What does that say about them and how they see us, the job hunters?

As time goes on, and the pressures on those looking for jobs mount , when employers don’t contact you start to think ‘well maybe there’s a problem, maybe it’s just delayed, maybe they will ring and say ‘you’ve got the job,’ maybe. Maybe.’

That is hoping against hope and that sort of hope is very painful, when you realise finally ‘No, I’ve haven’t got the job.’

A recent situation made that so much worse. I’d got an interview and thought I had a very real chance here. I attended and was told I would be notified by the end of next week .When nothing happened I feared the worst but rang to ask if there had been a delay, I was told that a message would be given to the person who interviewed me and they would get back to me.Guess what! Three weeks later I was doing a voluntary job, keeping the hand in, trying to have some positive to put on the CV.

I met the person who I interviewed me, she asked, straight away: ‘Did you get the phone messages I left?’ No I replied. “Well I did,” she said, rather sheepishly. “I rang the numbers on your CV, they are right?”
“Well they always have been,” I said, thinking, ‘Are you trying to say that you not contacting me is somehow my fault?’
Anyway, I asked her, “So what have you decided?”
“Erm, I’ve appointed someone.” Walking the other way, she added: ”I’ll talk to you about it more if you want? Later?” “No, I’ve got to pick up some kit,” I lied.

I was so terribly, terribly disappointed. I knew deep down I hadn’t got it but hope isn’t logical.
And as so often before I rang my family and heard the their disappointment when I said, yet again, “Sorry, I didn’t get it.”

But by the time I got home I was very angry. I didn’t deserve to be treated this way. I didn’t deserve to be left hanging with no contact, no letter, no email. To be dismissed in a passing conversation and I shouted and ranted and raved.But my angry came out the wrong way. It seemed to be directed at my family, not my intention but depression isn’t logical either.
I am so sorry for that. I‘ve apologised so much since to those people who love and support me so much.

Since then I have had two other interviews, one hasn’t bothered telling me, despite a phone call asking about the outcome. I’ve written it off. Another has contacted me though and although I didn’t get the job I was treated with respect and courtesy, and they, I have to say, behaved like the majority of employers.

So here’s my plea. For all of you who are employers or who are involved in recruitment, please remember we are not skins or suits or even job hunters. We are people, so please treat us they way you would like to be treated.

Sorry for that, but i needed to get it off my chest

Walsall council breaks law on former IMI site?

2011-03-19T12:08:00.000-07:00

I was interested to see Adrian Andrew comments about the IMI site in the Express and Star. It was, of course, the usually spin but there was one or two matters that I found amusing. Firstly, Adrian said the local councillors had been informed about the proposed open cast mining. What he left out was they were only informed two to three weeks ago, when local reporters started asking questions.

Second, he says that the council has written to local residents about the proposals. Well according to one of those councillors, so hurriedly briefed as the story threatened to break, his only contacts from constituents about the proposal came after Adrian’s comments appeared in the E&S and as far as he knows none of his residents have been written to or informed.

What hasn’t appeared in the E&S is this . Its the sell off list for properties owned by AWM. On pages 121-22 it gives a breakdown on the IMI site, saying very clearly that a preferred bidder is only interested in the site if they can do opencast mining. Now the preferred bidder is Parkhill Estates, their interest in buying the land with that proviso is perfectly legal.

After all if AWM says to a company, ‘Are you are you interested in buying this land?’ And it replies, ‘Only if we can mine it.’, then that is fine. But AWM can’t say in response ‘of course you can’ because that permission is the remit of Walsall council. It’s the local planning authority in these circumstances.

But what if Walsall council says, ‘You will get planning permission,’ what then?

Then we have stepped into a very grey area. It is my understanding than it is not in the power of any council official or councillor to give assurances before a planning application has been sent to the relevant committee, before any meaningful consultation has been undertaken.

So the question is, has the land already been sold to Parkhill Estates?
If so has the company been given any assurance or indication on whether a planning application from the company will be successful?
In short, has the council broken the law?

One last point, in the Walsall unity development plan published in 2005 and incorporated into the existing Local Development Framework, in regards the IMI site it states that no development will ‘adverse impact on the amenities of users of land nearby, including residential areas, the schools and the open space.’

Now I don’t know about you Adrain but having an opencast mine on your doorstep might be seen as having an ‘adverse impact’

Here's to the Fourth Estate

2011-03-17T06:45:00.000-07:00

I'd like to blow my own trumpet but can’t. The editor of the Birmingham Post, Alune Thorne, kindly mentions this blog in his story on the former IMI site. Birmingham Post

Some might think that getting this story out is a victory for the citizen journalist but in truth it’s his paper that forced Walsall council to come clean about the negotiations on allowing open cast mining on one of the most contaminated sites in Europe in the heart of a major urban area.

The proposal, until now, was behind closed doors; out of the sight of local councillors and residents. Although I have been banging on about it for some weeks, here and on Twitter, it effectively took a newspaper to force the authority into coming clean about its plans. Walsall council’s role in this affair is rather shabby. It knows that such plans could lead to a great deal of protest, and that’s why the coal mining element was not mentioned in its previous press releases. It misled local residents and lied by omission.

Okay, a mad blogger with his one reader in the upper regions of the Amazon finding out about it is a tad embarrassing when your partner, Parkhill Estates, asks why that confidential element has been ‘leaked.’ But the council could afford to ignore me and my witterings. But the minute a trained hack with access to a regional newspaper rings up they shit themselves and rush out a press release saying in effecti, ‘We always intended to tell you about the coal mining, honest!’
Well, I don’t have to spell out my opinion of that.

My story on the former IMI site is just that, my ‘story.’ My opinions are relevant but they are not a news story. Blogs might have a strong news element but only that. A news story, on the other hand, has to be balanced and fair and conform to the laws of defamation, etc. The stuff hacks on newspapers file everyday. And because they work that way, the ‘great and the good’ take notice.
That’s the difference between citizen journalists and hacks on a newsdesk.

And it also why we need more hacks in newsrooms, not less.

Meanwhile, Walsall council has said that residents will now have a ‘say’ when the proposal to comes to planning committee . All I can say to that is, ‘How big of you.'

Here's to the fourth estate.

Twitter ye not...

2011-03-16T02:50:00.000-07:00

Lo and it came to pass that the council made great play of how successful it communicates with the hamlet of Walsall by the art of twittering … no dear, I said 'twittering'.
No, I said 'TWITTER!'
Oh Gawd, she’s as deaf as a lamp post, you know. Shame really, never the same since she rode in to the Valley of Death, cannons to the left of her, cannons to the right… and a thumping great lancer on her back.
Still, not her fault that a short sighted cavalryman threw a saddle on her, is it?

Where were we before we were so rudely interrupted? Oh yes.
But some naysays said that Walsall council has been, well how do I put this politely, telling fibs about the numbers that follow it pronouncements but that’s not the point here.
Yes dear, ‘point’ as in lance. Oh, don’t cry! Yes I know it was painful. Yes the Russians were horrible. No please. Yes that’s it, have a boiled sweet. That better? Good. Now can I carry on? Thank you!

For the question was, whether just spouting at the good people of the borough non-stop really counts as communication?
For it came to pass brethren, that some of the good people of that fair hamlet wanted to ask questions. Yes, you know who I mean …awkward buggers. These naysayers and prophets of doom conspired to point out that just spouting messages and nothing more, amounted to propaganda.

No dear, not like Goebbels, nothing that bad. Just propaganda. Not out and out lying and censorship designed to support a dying political party bent on the destruction of all humanity.
Oh, because you were in that war too, were you .. Well I can well believe that. By the look of you, you’ve been in every punch up from the Norman invasion to the fight behind the Dirty Duck!
No don’t laugh. You at the back stop tittering, titter ye not. You’ll only encourage the old …dear!

Where was I? Oh yes. And these naysays illustrated this by asking simple questions and asked for simple answers, to which they had none.‘Nay’, said the council. ‘Nay, nay and thrice nay.’ (Actually it was lot more than thrice.)
But the naysays pointed out that calling your self a communications department while ignoring questions is tantamount to an oxymoron; if not a breach of the Trading Standards Act.

No dear, I didn’t call you a ‘moron’. No, no, you don’t understand. An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines contradictory terms. Like.. Well yes, you could say like a ‘catholic virgin’ but I won’t! It’s hard enough making jokes nowadays without dragging in the Pope.
No I don't mean the Pope dresses in drag - although have you seen his costume?

Now dear, please keep up or shut up. No, I don’t mean to be cruel but this is my first gig since I died.
I’ve spent the last 19 years arguing at the Pearly Gates, the first six about how you spell my name; he might be the creator of all things but he can’t accept you can spell Howerd with an ‘e’.And when he finally finds my name in the big book I ended up spending the next 13 years arguing about homosexuality; and that with a bloke with in a long white dress.
I won’t mind but I could see Danny La Rue on the other side of the gate tarted up as if he was going to an Elton John fancy dress party. And, frankly dear, if you keep interrupting, I‘m going to die again.

Now where was I? Oh ,yes, And the moral of the story is if you can’t answer a question put through a communications system like social media … twitter ye not!!
Get it? “Twitter ye not’.
What do you mean, ‘Is that it?’ Well I’d like to see you do better, particular with an old ‘war horse’ from the Crimea War heckling you every 30 seconds?
What do you mean, I ‘m not going to get paid? I might be dead but I’m still a member of Equity. Cough up or you’ll have a line of thespians picketing you.

No dear, I said ‘THESPIANS.’

Oh, I give up .. I really do.

Wanted: A champion or a ticket out of town

2011-03-13T07:47:00.000-07:00

The proposal by London Midland Railway Company to withdraw staff from Walsall train station is just the latest of a series that has seen rail services in the borough decline. The ending of the rail link from Tame Bridge Parkway to London, the loss of a service to Wolverhampton and the decline in the service to Rugeley are all recent cuts. The loss of ticket staff is just the latest step in a deliberate rundown of services to the borough.
I can’t think of another town of Walsall’s size that has an unmanned railway service. Maybe others can name them but I can’t. Let’s remember Walsall’s population is the same as that of Wolverhampton, bigger that Stafford or Stoke-on-Trent and not far behind Coventry. Would anyone consider making their stations unmanned?

But hey, why get hot under the collar about what could only amount to only ten or so staff? Because the decision seems to me, to mirror a decline in the borough, Walsall is seen as a backwater not important enough to warrant a similar service enjoyed by other boroughs. Walsall is going backwards, not forwards.

And many of these cuts to our community go unreported or are quickly ignored and forgotten as if they are of no consequence. We seem to be suffering the death of a thousand cuts, and I’m not just referring to the public sector. On this blog a few weeks ago I reported that Urban Splash are downsizing their, at one time, much hyped redevelopment of Walsall Waterfront by scrapping the Oyster buildings. Response in the media or from the local council and the business community in the form of the Chamber of Commerce, absolute silence! Why? Could it be because the Mushroom got it wrong? Well unlike some, I will admit to have getting things wrong on occasion. But I know I am right so, why no response to the news that a major investment is being downscaled? And I’m not so arrogant to believe that reading The Mushroom is on the daily ‘must do’ list of the great and good of the borough. But if I know of this surely so do the great and good, so why are they silent?

And other events seem to warrant little in the way of debate. Walsall illuminations have been canned with little or no comment. Promised redevelopments of St Matthew’s quarter and the Gigaport have failed to materialise. Walsall town centre has the second highest number of empty retail units in the country; a fact that emerged and disappeared almost on the same day. The borough’s continuing appalling record for educational achievement is worthy of a book not a blog!

Of course there have been some improvements and quite important ones, the rebuild of the Manor hospital, a new college building, and even the new Tesco has created more jobs. But those are the exceptions in a downward spiral that seems unstoppable.

When I moved to Walsall, I fell in love with the place. Why? Well I like its strong sense of community. All those little town centres with their real sense of place and pride in their histories. Walsall folk (and I count all the town centres in that description, knowing it will raise some hackles) are a strange breed of stubborn buggers who constantly champion their corners, sometimes in a parochial way, but always with a rye wit and humour. Bloggers like brownhillsbob and The Plastic Hippo are just the 21st century version of what I suspect is a very old tradition of Black Country self reliance combined with a strong sense of responsibility to one’s community. The borough is full of good people and that’s why I choose to stay

But when it comes to the borough as a whole we have no champion, no vision, no ambition, no-one looking to its future and really, I mean really, fighting for it. It’s as if the borough is happy at always being third best with the occasional diamond standing out amongst the acceptance of mediocrity; the acceptance of ‘this is all we deserve.’

Let’s take for example the recent cuts in council spending. Tory controlled councils across the country went to the government and argued for a better deal quoting special circumstances. Ours did nothing of the sort and accepted a settlement that even they agreed saw £7.5 million being diverted from Walsall with all its problems, to wealthier areas like Surrey.

The recent announcement on making Walsall train station unmanned, should be having our lords and masters shouting from the rooftops about how the borough won’t accept the dirty end of the stick anymore. But instead we have silence.
In Sandwell when the government scrapped the building for schools for the future programme, they fought back and won. Not because they though it would solve their problems but because it was right to fight for the people that elected them. In Walsall on the other hand, there is an abdication of responsibility and a lack of courage and leadership. We are lead by little men with small ambitions, whose vision goes no further than hanging on to power.

To finish, my kids, who I was happy to bring here to grow up, I now want to leave because life chances and opportunities for them are so much better almost anywhere else. That’s the truest thing I’ve blogged…and certainly the saddest.

Darlaston open cast mine and Parkhill Estates

2011-03-04T15:33:00.000-08:00

The story behind the former IMI site is becoming a bit of a quagmire in terms of nailing down details of the major player in plans to turn the site into an open cast mine.

Parkhill Estates registered offices are in Newport. The company does land reclamation, landfill and opencast mining, it also runs at least one quarry. A major shareholder is Colin Cornes, who is also a major shareholder in Scottish Coal; a company with massive holdings in mining in the UK. Mr Cornes regularly pops in The Times rich list. In its 2009 rankings he was described as being worth: £35m down from £78 million in 2008.
The company owns a a number of sites in Walsall including Ryders Hayes Mere in Pelsall, site of a former open cast mine.

Getting information on Parkhill Estates is difficult. It has no website and journalists tell me it is very tight lipped. A search of the internet shows it has no hard and fast political opinions though it does argue aginst the presumption against open cast mining in planning laws and calls for greater reliance on coal mined in this country, which the rest of the coal minning industry argues for. There is only one excepton to that which dates way back to 2002 when it donated £2,500 to Walsall South Conservative Party, but that's the only donation it has made and it is so far back to be of no consquence.
But the company’s low public profile, given the fact that the plans for open cast mining on the IMI site (prefectly legal plans) are being discussed behind closed doors, leaves the question hanging. Why hasn’t Walsall council and Parkhill Estates been open about their intentions?
Could it been because open casting mining proposals are fought tooth and nail by local communities?

Lights out for Birdy?

2011-03-03T09:09:00.000-08:00

A year after Cllr Sanders fell on his sword and resigned to spend more time with his ‘business’ after revealing that Walsall Illuminations were to close. Mike Bird – who said Sanders was wrong- now, admits they are to go.

Well Mike, I’m sharpening the blade right now. Could you do it in the Arboretum? That’s bound to attract a lot of visitors.

Mining and Minors.

2011-02-28T04:25:00.000-08:00

The more you look at the proposed, but secret, deal to start open cast mining on the old IMI site in Darlaston, the more you get to thinking that whoever thought it up but must be on something that, if not illegal, should be.
Not content with the problems of mining what has been described as one of the most polluted sites in Europe, besides the country’s busiest road junction; with problems for the M6’s structure and any driver unlucky enough to be passing with their car window open, the mine would also be next door to Alumwell secondary school. The potential dangers are obvious but wait, the school grounds are, I am told, the proposed site for a short-stay residential home for children with disabilities.

So apart from the residents in the area , the motorists driving past, the Highways Agency concerns for the motorway, the kids going to their local school, we have the prospect of disabled children being affected
That’s a long list of potential objectors to the plan. Is that why the deal is being negotiated behind closed doors?

Mine to undermine M6

2011-02-25T07:14:00.000-08:00

The above pic shows the IMI site. The straight thing running from left to right and right through the site is the M6, some 40 foot up in the air. If you live on a spacecraft, you might have missed it, but for those of us a bit closer to the ground, well it does stick out a bit.
Now Walsall council is thinking of letting a company dig an opencast mine of around 12 acres and some 240 feet deep, right beside it.
I was just wondering how much of the cost of this massive hole, some £20 million, is going to be used to shore up the busiest stretch of motorway in Britain?

Just a thought.

Lies, damn lies and Walsall council

2011-02-23T09:55:00.000-08:00

The secret deal Walsall Council and Advantage West Midlands (AWM) are negotiating to allow open cast mining in Darlaston is designed to deny local people an effective say in what happens in their area or plan opposition to what could prove to be controversial plans.

What else can be inferred by the actions of a council that continues to hide the truth from the people they are supposed to serve? The deal being done for the former IMI site clearly rests on a company being able to capitalise on the coal seam that runs underneath it.

The land will be sold to a company by AWM with the proviso the buyer can carry out open cast mining on it. But the permission for that does not rest with AWM but with Walsall council. It is the council who would give planning permission. Planning consent can only be granted on the merits of individual applications, yet the council is deeply involved in negotiations on the future of the site and has given its full support for the plans now being done behind closed doors. Plans the council are only drip feeding us bit by bit.

council spin

So can we trust the authority to apply the planning laws fairly and without favour?
Behind the scenes, the council is not only giving the effective go-ahead for open cast mining on the IMI site, in clear breach of planning law, but also it is discussing the extension of the mine to surrounding areas when the coal reserves run out.

But why am I so het up about this. I don’t live in Darlaston. I won’t have to put up with the noise and dust pollution, the traffic congestion or any of the other problems. And it has to be said that maybe, the plans are for the best.
It’s the fact that the people who will effected by these plans are not being told the truth, are being lied to by the council by omission. It’s that, that makes me angry. The council that says there will be no library closures, when we know there will be. The council that refuses to spell out the scale of the cuts it is now planning.
The council that treats the people of the borough like infants unable to make decisions for themselves so it deliberately misleads the people it is supposed to serve. If it will lie to the people of Darlaston, it won’t stop short to lying to all of us.

May elections are coming. Can we trust this council and its leaders that puts its plans before the people they are supposed to serve?

coal not oysters

2011-02-20T18:07:00.000-08:00

"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.

Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872, Lewis Carroll

The above came to mind when I recently had it confirmed that the Waterfront oyster buildings had been swallowed up by the recession.The poor oysters in Carroll’s surreal poem met a grisly end after believing the utterances of the Walrus and Carpenter.

The proposed Will Alsop designed convex buildings were to comprise 166 private flats, with 30000 sq ft of shops and restaurants, and face each other across the canal basin close to Walsall New Art Gallery. They were to be built by Manchester based developers, Urban Splash
Their loss is a blow to regeneration plans, which made much of their iconic design and promised to challenge the borough’s stereotype as a drab industrial town. But the collapse of the housing market during 2008 brought Urban Splash’s plans to a halt. Since then the only construction that has gone ahead is the more modest second phase; which was able to win funding for social housing.

Urban Splash did announce the Waterfront development would go forward after securing a deal with a major leisure chain to build a hotel on the site but mentioned nothing about its scraping of the two landmark structures.

The site’s future now is the subject of speculation after the Conservative lead collation government announced it was to scrap the regional development authority, Advantage West Midlands, which owns much of land. This decision means AWM has to sell off or transfer the enormous land bank it had purchased to encourage and subsidise regeneration projects in the region.
A private buyer believed to be Urban Splash is now in negotiations to purchase the Waterfront site but officially, like the demise of the oyster buildings, no one is speaking publicly.

Meanwhile AWM is also seeking to sell off its interest in another proposed major redevelopment, this time in Darlaston. The former James Bridge Copper Works is part of Darlaston Strategic Development Area (DSDA), 26 hectares of largely derelict land on both sides of the M6. AWM bought the land in 2007 from IMI for a reputed knock down price of £1 million.

The site was earmarked as a potential major distribution hub with up to 2,000 jobs because of its close proximity to the motorway. It was bought so cheaply because after years of industry, it was heavily contaminated and an estimated £18 million of remedial work was needed before any development could begin; work the public sector was expected to fund. With cuts in government spending and the scrapping of AWM, this never happened

Now it seems the land will be sold back to the private sector for a similar knock down price with the proviso that the new owners carry out a large part of the remedial work. This they have promised to do but only after exhausting the sites’ coal reserves through opencast mining.
The problems with open casting mining are numerous; the destruction of the land, noise and dust pollution, and traffic congestion on local roads and, unlike traditional mining, it is not labour intensive so local people won’t see much in the way of jobs.

There has been no public announcement on timescales and markedly, no mention of opencast mining

Walsall council also mentioned none of this when it recently announced it was asking for a £6 million grant from the government to begin the remedial work.

Instead Coun Adrian Andrew, Walsall Council deputy leader, limited himself to saying several steps must be negotiated before the scheme could progress.
He did said: “There is still some way to go but we would like to keep residents and partners in the picture.”

Now why do I feel like I’m being eyed up by a walrus?

P.S. Walsall council annouced a step forward in a £30 million scheme to rebuild key roads through Darlaston and Pleck. Would that be for the lorries then?

When is a u-turn not a u-turn?

2011-02-11T03:15:00.000-08:00

The recent announcement by Walsall’s Tories that they are not going to close six libraries came, so to speak, as a bit of a bolt out of the blue.
Only weeks ago Cllr Anthony Harris, head of leisure and culture, let slip in a council meeting that six libraries were to go.
Now we have Mike Bird, leader of the council, saying none are scheduled for closure. Mike is quick to say that his political opponents are going to claim that this amounts to a political u-turn, but the truth is, it’s not.
And on this occasion I agree with him

Not that Mike isn’t beyond doing an about face and slapping down his political colleagues at the same time. Remember poor old Barry Sanders, the then leisure chief, who last year said the Illuminations were to go.
Within hours Mike flatly and publically contradicted this statement and in the end, it was Barry Sanders whowent as he resigned to ‘concentrate on his business activities.’

And only a few weeks ago, as Rachael Andrews was praising the success of Serco, Mike said of the private company that runs education in Walsall: “I keep saying this — I can’t believe Serco are doing a good job”.

But back to libraries, Mike wants volunteers or schools to take over the running of those libraries Cllr Harris had, inadvertently, earmarked for closure.

Okay, let’s ask another question. When is a library just a pile of books? Answer, when it doesn’t have a librarian.

Modern libraries are more than just books as anyone who has visited one lately can tell you, and all the information held in the computers, trade directories, magazines, etc, is made available to you by the trained members of staff behind the counter. Without them, frankly a library is just a building, whose contents are inaccessible. And it’s the staff Mike wants to get rid off.

The attack on libraries is an attack on the wage bill. The side effect is the loss of educational provision, community facilities and cultural assets.

So Mike’s plan is to take the key element that makes the library service work, the staff, out of the equation. Instead he says volunteers and already overstretched schools will run those six libraries

Is that a viable plan to protect the service? In truth the library service has had a stay of execution. Instead of closing libraries the council will let them rundown, and then close them.

No Mike, hasn’t done a u-turn, he is merely marking time.

Mike's rediscovered hot air

2011-01-23T07:52:00.000-08:00

At a neighbour’s party for their youngest daughter I was parted with my money by an almost professional pair of entrepreneurs The birthday girl, then all of eight, and her equally young, ‘professional’, badgered me into paying 50p for a ‘can’t fail’ solution to all my troubles.

“Just blow into this balloon and as you do,” the young, would be sales director told me, “all your troubles will fill it up with it, and when you let it go, they will fly away.”
I didn’t believe a word of it, but to satisfy her on her birthday (and to get her to go away) I paid over my half a pound and blew up the balloon. She took it from my lips and let the air out. I did what I expected it to do, it whizzed around emitting a loud farting sound, climbed, at then fell…. right back at my feet!

Her father burst out laughing at the sight of this adapt metaphor for easy cures, and while I had been watching the balloon do it’s brief aerobatics, the two youngsters had legged it to the house, shouting something about a ‘no money back guarantee’ over their shoulders as they ran.
For some reason this incident came to mind as Mike Bird laid into Serco last week.

As he lambasted the private company that has run education in Walsall for the last ten years, his fellow cabinet member for education Cllr Rachael Andrews was quoted in the annual press release from Walsall council saying what a great job the partnership between the council and Serco was doing in improving education in the borough.

Now Mike never has been a big fan of Serco, surprising really because as an old fashioned Thacterite he has been quick enough to parcel off council services to the private sector.

But Mike has never been consistent on this issue. He shared Cllr Andrews views as recently as August 2010.

And his former concerns didn’t stop him supporting the Conservatives decision in 2008 to reward the company with an extension on their contract to run education in the borough for another 12 years at a cost of £345 million to local taxpayers.

Mike has supported some of Serco’s most controversial policies such as the scandalous frog marching of Darlaston School into the hands of a multimillionaire Conservative donor. Mike argued against rerunning a consultation process that had all the hallmarks of an Imelda Marcos run election.

And the local Tories recent record on Walsall education is nothing to be proud of; defending the Government’s cut of a £100 million to the borough to rebuild schools and the scrapping of EMA to poor students in further education.
And Mike, a central and important figure in the local Conservative party, has never criticised Serco publically during the last ten years for what can only be described as its failure to lift Walsall out of the bottom quarter of local authorities when it comes to GCSE exam results, despite having spent hundreds of millions of pounds?

Why do I hear a whizzing fart?

So, why the suddenly rediscovered concerns? Is it because education cuts by the Tory led collation government are set to cut swathes through schools in the borough? Is a scapegoat needed for the May elections? A case of ‘it’s not our fault gov’!

Mike’s complaints are like hot air escaping for a balloon. As a senior Tory, Leader of the Council and chair of Walsall Strategic Partnership, he has been central to all the decisions on education in the borough. Only when it comes elections and the very real possibility of the Tories losing control of the borough in May does he find voice to the appalling educational standards in Walsall. No matter that his comments leaves Cllr Andrews looking like the last discredited defence of a company that has failed and has shown the tories no longer have a plan for education
But Mike’s inaction over ten years will land at his feet. That contract signed back in 2008 - the one he was party to as a Tory councillor – is watertight.

And like children giggling as they run into the house, Serco’s lawyers will ensure the company can smile all the way to the bank, leaving Mike and his fellow Tories with the deflated hopes of schools and pupils resting at their feet.

Less is more ..more kids without social workers , more kids without further education, more kids without books.

2011-01-19T05:37:00.000-08:00

The mantra less is more seems to be taken up with gusto by Walsall’s ruling Conservatives,
In the last few weeks we have now seen the Tories defend cuts in frontline services with the argument that spending less on them makes sense.

Firstly, the Tories voted down a motion by Labour councillors who highlighted the fact that vulnerable children and adults in the borough don’t have permanent t social workers because the council pays one of the lowest salaries in the West Midlands.
This has meant that in the last three years Walsall has only been able to recruit on full time qualified social worker. Instead the council relies on agency staffs, which are by their very nature, interim and more expensive.
At the last full council meeting we saw poor old Councillor Eddie Hughes having to make excuses, saying pay wasn’t a significant factor in the recruitment of staff.
Is that so Eddie, so is a pay cut for the senior officers pay is on the cards? Come on, Mr Sheena doesn’t need that £200,000

The next motion on defending EMA was also voted down by Tories who claimed it had no significant impact on young people attending further education. The argument that taking away grants to poor families to help their children achieve better educational qualifications would have no significant impact came from Adrian Andrew, standing in for the absent leader, who he told us that he worked his way through college, cue Monty Pythonesque moment “when I ‘ere a lad.”
During that full council meeting leisure chief Councillor Anthony Harris let slip that six libraries were to be closed, an announcement that forced dear old Dan to push out a press release the very next day claiming that fewer services would be better services
“This is not about buildings. It’s about the service. We want an improved service and I’m giving a pledge that this review will see an improved library service that is ready to meet the needs of the 21st century,” Cllr Harris is quoted
He refused to say which Libraries were for the chop but that hasn’t stopped fellow Conservative Marco Longi proclaiming loud and long that his local library in his safe Tory ward of Pelsall is safe.
Again Tories are telling us ‘less is more.’ Well let’s try cutting Cllr Harris allowances and see if he is more efficient.

Students are revolting.

2010-12-11T04:00:00.000-08:00

Where I used to live in Birmingham, our description of students was a tad harsher.

As a youngster, I lived not that far from the University of Birmingham, on an estate where no one went to university. Are dislike of students was born out of what we saw as privilege. Many of the youngsters on our estate simply couldn’t afford to spend another two years in education getting the qualifications to go to university.

It was simple, you got a job and you contributed to the household income. Even though you got a student grant once you got to higher education. And so for us, the ‘easy’ life of the junior common room and lectures was unattainable. Your life was predetermined. It was the factory, the shop or a junior in an office.
At that time only ten percent of population went into higher education. As I grew a little older and actually meet some students I realised they weren’t a bunch of self-obsessed middle class kids; they were almost to a man, middle class, but not self-obsessed. (Well not all). Many cared passionately about the wider society and the inequalities inherent in it. I used to drink in the Prince of Wales in Moseley. A gathering place for student parties on Saturday night and I happily drank their beer. A blow for the working class!
My envy of students disappeared with the ale and finding out that they were human after all. And I learnt a lot; particularly at the hands of a blonde sociology student who I still have fond memories of.
Three of my step-children have now gone to university. I seen first hand not only the benefits of study in terms of their employment prospects but also how it has helped hem becomes more rounded individuals. But would any of them have gone if they faced a debt of £27,000 just for tuition fess, let only the costs of books, accommodation, living expenses, etc?
I don’t know. I hope, we as a family, might have been able to manage it but in truth I very much doubt it.

But the government say, ‘you don’t have to pay until you leave university. But if you are a kid from Leamore, the prospect of such huge debt before you even have a job is simply frightening and limits choice. But the row over university tuition fees as overshadowed an even more life limiting attack on our kids. The abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance which pays youngsters from poorer backgrounds £30 a week to study until their 18 years-old will mean we revert back to the days when 16 year-olds had to ask hard pressed moms and dads, ‘Can you support me for another two years?’ If the answer is no, university fees becomes a non-issue.

In Walsall, 3700 youngsters presently receive EMA, they will be the last to do so. After that, well if they can get a job, it’s the factory, the shop, the clerk in the office. We have stepped back over 40 years.

Vote rigging. Blame the Martians

2010-12-03T02:12:00.000-08:00

So it’s the fault of the 'Others.'

That’s the verdict of Mike Bird on electoral fraud by Conservative Party members in Walsall.
Mikes amazing conclusion was aired on the BBC WM’s Drivetime programme yesterday. Walsall council leader’s attempt to side step a Labour call for David Cameron to investigate a number of suspected, and actual, vote rigging cases lead to a claim that there was a problem.
But faced with the fact the Ali Munir, son of Conservative Councillor Mohammed Munir, had pleaded guilty to vote rigging Mike’s response was shift the blame onto an entire community.

During a head to head debate with the Labour leader on Walsall council, Tim Oliver, Mike said: 'These are things imported from other parts of the world.’ Pressed, he went on to say: ' It's only one section of the community.’
Given that all three men arrested in connection with these allegations come from the Muslim community, one could be forgiven for thinking that Mike, rather than take responsibility of the workings of his own party machinery, decided to play that cheap political trick of pointing the finger at the ‘outsider.’
Mike’s other defence was it was only one man. He was at pains to point out that Cllr Munir, originally jointly charged with his son, had been cleared by a court in September. Mike though made no reference to a Conservative candidate at May’s election who was arrested and is on bail in connection with alleged vote rigging in May this year.

If that man is convicted, maybe wiser heads will intervene and Mike will change his line. The fault can then lie with little green men from Mars. Better that than blame an entire law abiding community; particular one on whom you rely on for votes in at least three wards.

Vote rigging. Will Cameron Act?

2010-12-01T12:50:00.000-08:00

The conviction of Ali Munir, businessman and Tory Party member, for electoral fraud is very worrying.

He is the son of Palfrey councillor Mohammed Munir, who was cleared of similar charges in September after telling the court that he had unknowingly filled in forms for 11 illegal immigrants to register them as voters. He was found not guilty and Cllr Munir is innocent.

Not so his son whose crimes relates back to the May 2008 election when his father was elected.

Ali Munir pleaded guilty to trying to obtain proxy votes which would have allowed him to have cast other people’s vote at a polling station.

But yet a third Tory was arrested in other allegations of vote rigging

The Conservative party has known of these allegations for sometime, indeed the Labour Party called for investigation, but they seem to have done nothing about it.

Although Ali Munir was only sentenced to three months his crime has greater significance.

People fought for our right to democratic control of our politicians. Many millions more died in defence of these fundamental rights. Those who try to corrupt the democratic process are taking away those rights.

Many of the decent Conservatives in Walsall must be thinking: “What the hell is happening to my party?”

A great deal more in Walsall are asking the question, when will David Cameron act?

The stupidity of the children is only outdone by the adults

2010-11-26T09:44:00.000-08:00

The actions of a 15 year-old school girl arrested for allegedly burning a copy of the Koran could be forgiven given her young age but the calls of some adults can't be so easily brushed off.
The morons in the EDL seem to have decided to try to turn this young woman into some kind of hero and there are fears they will now target her school with demonstrations.
This only two weeks after police said the actions of the EDL, who say they oppose radical Islam, actually acts as a recuriting sergeant for Muslim extremists
Childhood mistakes turned into potential civil disorder. One wonders who is more stupid ..and more dangerous.

Where have the hacks gone?

2010-11-22T04:07:00.000-08:00

The Plastic Hippo's excellent piece on Bob Edimiston got me thinking. Why is it that the news of the elevation of a chair of governors of a Walsall school to the House of Lords fails to appear in any of the local papers, especially when that individual is so controversial for so many reasons?

Mr Edimiston's views on education and Christianity are easy enough to find on the web. His history of donations or loans to the Conservative Party lead to him being questioned by the police, though there was no question of him being charged. The transfer of Darlaston School to his Christian Grace Academy Trust caused more than a little in the way of waves at the time.
So why is left to a local blogger to report the story? Well it can't be because it's not newsworthy; many of the nationals covered it.

At one time in Walsall there were close to 20 reporters covering the town, all of them based in the borough.
Now, on a good day, there are six. None of whom are based in Walsall.
The weekly Advertiser fled to Tamworth many years ago and at present has only one full time journalist covering the borough. The Observer has folded completely and the Express and Star's hacks number five but based in Sandwell. As for The Chronicle, it stopped printing original stories many moons ago and now just reprints copy from the Express and Star only a week later.
Compare that to the similarly sized town of Stoke on Trent which has an award winning daily paper of its own, with a circulation of around 60,000.

Well so what? What if we just get hand me down reporting?
Look at the stories in your local paper and tick of the ones that are clearly press releases from the local council, police or NHS. Do you think they are telling the whole story? Shouldn't journalists give a balanced view, cover the other side, get opposing opinions? Have a look and see how many do print that alongside the latest missive from well funded press offices. Too often it simply doesn't happen.

Remember Mike Bird's claim that he was underpaid? Why was it that it took Brownhills Bob to get out a calculator to prove this was complete rubbish? Or my own little case in the Butts when the council had the gall to say it was working smarter!! The cut in the numbers of journalists may make papers profitable but it also means less time to find original stories, less time to get the opposing views; more reliance on press releases and rehashing national stories to fill pages.

Citizens journalists can't replace trained hacks. One reason being we don't have the access they do. Try ringing up the West Midlands Police press office for some information and a quote and tell them you're a blogger! So what can we do? Well for one, how about emailing blogs to the editor of you local paper. It might just show them how much news they are missing, and if they follow up, demand a fee.

cuts

2010-11-18T07:35:00.000-08:00

Walsall council are to consult about the cuts in jobs and services, a bit like the butcher asking “Which leg do you want me to take off?”

The Last Post

2010-11-13T09:25:00.000-08:00

I can't but cry every time I hear this

The Last Post by Carol Ann Duffy

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If poetry could tell it backwards, true, begin

that moment shrapnel scythed you to the stinking mud…

but you get up, amazed, watch bled bad blood

run upwards from the slime into its wounds;

see lines and lines of British boys rewind

back to their trenches, kiss the photographs from home-

mothers, sweethearts, sisters, younger brothers

not entering the story now

to die and die and die.

Dulce- No- Decorum- No- Pro patria mori.

You walk away.

You walk away; drop your gun (fixed bayonet)

like all your mates do too-

Harry, Tommy, Wilfred, Edward, Bert-

and light a cigarette.

There's coffee in the square,

warm French bread

and all those thousands dead

are shaking dried mud from their hair

and queuing up for home. Freshly alive,

a lad plays Tipperary to the crowd, released

from History; the glistening, healthy horses fit for heroes, kings.

You lean against a wall,

your several million lives still possible

and crammed with love, work, children, talent, English beer, good food.

You see the poet tuck away his pocket-book and smile.

If poetry could truly tell it backwards,

then it would.

Rushall voters ..ungrateful *******

2010-11-13T06:55:00.000-08:00

The term ‘shellecking’ is one of those Americanisms I quite like. It's a good, round sound, very nearly onomatopoeia in its usage.You can almost hear the varnish being slapped on the object of the process.
Big swinging, sloshing, satisfying smacks landing on the surface of the woodwork which is to be protected
I like such terms. They mean what they say. My father often used the term ‘gobshite for someone he fervently disagreed with. Not a pleasant word but when you saw the object of his disgust, it always seemed very apposite.

In American shellacking is mostly used to describe a drubbing or as we would say in the UK, a pasting. Although I knew of its usage before President Obama used it to describe the beating the voters gave his party in the recent mid-term elections, it did bring it back to mind and in some small way it was satisfying to hear a politician being honest about election results for once. I doubt any senior British politician would say: “The voters have given us a good kicking.”

On Thursday night, from my little dugout in the Butts, you could almost hear the voters in Rushall-Shelfield slapping the Conservatives around. Big whooshing, smacks of disgust at the Tory run council’s record.
Of course, the Conservative candidate did get in but only by a mere 28 votes. Even with a turnout of only 15 percent, the Tories would have expected to hold that seat with relative easy. As it was the most of the voters handed out their punishment in a very British way, by simply doing nothing.
They decided not to vote for the party- a clear sign of ‘we don’t like what you are doing’ - that has held the seat and the control of the borough for so many years. Even the Lichfield Road , that bulwark of true blue Conservatism, said ‘not bloody likely’ and stayed in and watched Autumnwatch instead ( nice to see British twitchers’ favourite bird of paradise, Kate Humble, back on the show).

So it was the Labour supporters who did vote, who were landing the punches. Slapping about the poor-old conservative candidate, Lorna Rattigan, like a punch bag in a gym. Still she survived, a bit bruised and battered but none the worse of her ordeal. I hope she makes a conscientious councillor. But only until May

In truth though, the target of voters’ disgust were those Conservative councillors who have been running the authority for over ten years now. For all that time, they have blamed the Labour government for all the ills that have fallen on the borough and for all the unpopular decisions local Tories have taken. Such as, the axing of the highly successful community wardens scheme.

The government frontload the funding while warning councils it would run out in three years when it would have to be funded locally. Walsall Tories took all the credit for the project but then refused to pay for it, instead blaming the government for not giving them the money.

No such option now, even though the coalition government’s answer to everything is 'It’s the fault of the former Labour government.’ A tactic which is copied up and down the country by local Tories and Lib Dems, but that phase is already wearing thin. Voters do not vote on the record of a past administration but on the record of the one that is in power.
The recent actions of the Tories both nationally and in Walsall are beginning to rebound on them. The scrapping of £100 million BSF fund for rebuilding schools in the borough has not gone down well, and this before the cuts in the council budget comes into force, with its accompanying losses in services and jobs in both the public and private sector.
That proposed improvement in schools was much heralded by local Tories before the general elections as evidence of what a good job they were doing to improve the borough, but the coalition government’s decision to scrap it has left them searching for an excuse for why schools will be left to rot, one they haven’t as yet worked out.

So at the recent full council meeting we had Conservative Rachael Andrews Portfolio holder, Children's services, saying BSF, although good in its intentions, was slow and bureaucratic, while Zahid Ali, Portfolio holder, Communities and Partnerships, said it never existed in the first place and was only a false Labour party election pledge. Well either it did exist or it didn’t, and out of the two Tories, as portfolio holder for children’s service and as someone who actually thinks before opening her mouth, Rachael is better informed than Zahid

But you can’t blame Zahid too much. He'd just been forced to forgo a nice big payrise for the next four years. Seems council staff and the people of Walsall thought the prospect of Tories living high on the hog (another nice Americanism) was a bit too much to swallow while they were losing their services, jobs and having to suffer pay freezes. Even the thoughts of the Great Leader Mike Bird in the local press on how he and his cabinet colleagues were worth every penny, couldn't save them from an embarrassing u-turn. Simply, such a move would have been political suicide and had one senior Tory back bencher muttering my father’s favourite term ‘gobshite,’ or at least words to that effect.

Voters on Thursday night may not have had schools or pay hikes at the front of their minds but they were certainly an influence. That result, along with the Bloxwich-West Labour victory offers the prospect of May’s full council elections- with it decision by voters on the cuts and polices of the coalition government and a local political leadership that has too high an opinion of itself and worse, keeps telling the electors so -, of returning no overall control.

Some Tories are already positioning themselves by the lifeboats as they see the iceberg coming over the horizon. When, and if, it strikes the call will not be ‘women and children first’ but instead I suspect one or two of our senior male councillors will find themselves first in the water but without the aid of a raft or lifebelt, as they are unceremoniously tossed overboard by their remaining colleagues.

The possibility of no overall control will see the Lib Dems back in the driving seat; Ian Shires’ favourite position. A Lib-Dem / Labour run council? Highly unlikely, even though Tim Oliver and Ian Shires are on good terms. Labour councillors won’t hold hands with the same party who on a national level are pushing through the cuts and pursuing a policy of high unemployment.

So it’s back to a Lib Dem/ Tory coalition in Walsall and Ian Shires having a big say in who is council leader and who is in the cabinet. Before then there will be many Tories lashing together deckchairs in order to save themselves and their allowances. If that happens quite a few Conservatives who presently sit on the front bench in the council chamber could find themselves having to park near to John Rochelle again.

It would be ironic if the Lib Dems, who didn’t stand in Rushall-Shelfield, ended up giving a ‘shellecking’ to our present leaderships’ political careers.

Remember

2010-11-11T05:55:00.000-08:00

The men of 10 Platoon, 'A' Company of the 6th Battalion South Staffordshire regiment, in the trenches at Armentieres in 1915.

A member of A company The Staffordshire Regiment , Basra ,Iraq, 2005.

The equipment and the uniforms have changed but the men haven't . Guys from around the corner, kids who went to the local school.
Next February the Stafford battalion of the Royal Mercian Regiment will deploy to Afghanistan.

Let's hope we are not 'remembering' any of them this time next year

Tales from the Lubyanka: Part Two

2010-11-09T18:05:00.000-08:00

Their new room in the Lubyanka was more to their liking. It had a nice view of the nearby church with its elderly congregation and just beyond, a fried food outlet. A prefect combination which kept the boss staring out the window for ages

This gave them time to think. The fools in the group had voted down the plan to give them more cash, forcing a public u-turn, an ungainly interview on the wireless and a wholly unbelievable performance in the chamber. But at least they been able to stop it being put off indefinitely, ‘Next year, next year,’ they consoled themselves.

But now the big worry was Pheasey. The sleepy little village at the end of a long and dangerous journey on the 33 bus was the boss’s domain! And those fools in Central office were proposing plans that might take it away from him. Even Streetly, his second home when he was not here - 49 hours a day, 365 days of their year - might slip from their grasp.

If that happened the empire would fall. All they had strived, the fame, the adulation, the power, could be gone. Their political standing in the community, almost as great as that little girl who’d sang on the television and who lived just round the corner from the boss, the one with the CDs, the DVDs- ‘and the delicious granny’ the boss shouted over his shoulder still staring out the window - would be lost as well.
They collectively struggled for the child’s name, only stopping when they realised they couldn’t even afford to pay her to switch on the Christmas lights.

How were they going to stop those bastards in Central office redrawing the boundaries?
They had a serious disadvantage. They had no friends in London, they had no friends in the regional party, nor indeed in Walsall. They were up against the state and the party, they need something radical, something different to force concessions from the ungainly, overbearing political machinery
A small, slight man whose name no-one could remember but who had special responsibility for paper clips, put his hand up and said; “Couldn’t we just invited the two Daves round for cakes , a cup of tea, a nice chat and explain our problems?”
Andrew, the only one who read beyond cartoons, asked as a germ of an idea formed in his mind: “Like a tea party?”

At that moment and from across the room, the boss shouted joyfully, “Brilliant, fucking brilliant.”
Everyone stiffened, the jacket stopped the boss’s arms flailing about but even when jumping up and down in pure ecstasy, he was still dangerous. The paper clip counter was prodded unwillingly to find what had excited the leader so. Moving cautiously and keeping his distance, he did a quick check and scurried back to the safety of the group.
“It’s okay,” he announced smiling. “An OAP just walked into the fast food joint.”

Bird stuck up a tree

2010-11-06T15:02:00.000-07:00

I know that things are bad in the world of local journalism but this takes some beating as an example of 'cant' be arsed' to find a real story.
Now I'm no naturalist but even I can see that is not a panther , it's a moggie
The Express and Star, along with other papers, have made rewriting press releases and passing them off as proper stories into an art form as they slash the numbers of hacks. They love the FOI Act and from some reason hold it up as investigative journalism, when it truth the stories they 'break' are hardly Watergate.
But this is dreadful.

So what next 'Bird stuck up a tree in Pelsall' ?

(No that Bird)

Mike Bird eats crow

2010-11-06T05:57:00.000-07:00

Listened to Radio WM this morning and had the pleasure of hearing Mike Bird eat crow over the pay rise to cabinet members he was so enthusiastically supporting last week.

Mike had to admit the proposal had been thrown out by his group at a closed meeting on Friday evening of Tory councillors.

Well it amazing, I've never seen it before, Mike Bird having to publically back down and however he cuts it, it is a U-turn and an embarrassing one at that.

But Mike is never very good at admitting he is wrong, apart from turning his contribution into a personal attack on Labour leader Tim Oliver, who was only saying the same thing as the rest of us, he then came up with the stupid claim that after tax, he is only paid 50 pence an hour!!!! But then he went on to say that the decision is only suspend until next year so presumably he and his mates will get their pay hike then, while council staff are suffering a pay freeze.

But a victory is a victory so congrats to all who made their voices heard on this in particular brownhills bob and The Hippo

But I'm worth it!!!

2010-11-05T08:57:00.000-07:00

Mike Bird is to defend his proposed pay rise on Radio WM tomorrow morning (10am on I believe) , a feat of black flips propelled by blasts of hot air.

I can hear it now 'but everyone else is paid more than us, it's not fair. '

What's not fair is losing your job, your council services and if you are lucky enough not to be sent to the dole,queue seeing your 'boss' take year-on-year pay rises for the next four years while you are told there is no money.

Will record it and see if i can post it here

Earning your money or Make a killing ..do nothing

2010-11-04T11:54:00.000-07:00

For years, the residents of the Butts in Walsall tried to get Walsall council to do something about the appalling state of the Mellish Road Methodist Church.

Community meetings were held, proposals that the council buy it from the private owners and turn it into a community centre came and went.

Enforcement orders to bring the listed building up to standard were granted by the planning committee but were never acted on.

In the meantime it just decayed. Then a fire caused enormous damage to the property. This time the council did find the owners and told them to make the site secure. A little while after the owners asked for permission to demolish it and put up flats in its place.

Now with the contact details for the owners , for some reason the council didn’t act on its enforcement orders and make the owners restore the building.

In 2009, English Heritage joined with residents in demands to preserve and protect the church. Nothing happened.

Now Walsall council has announced they have got the all clear to demolish the building.

On the front page of the Advertiser this week , Deputy leaders of the council and cabinet member for regeneration , Adrian Andrews said: “It’s disappointing we haven’t been able to save this building, but I am please that that this final hurdle has been cleared so that they can press ahead with the demolition.”

Okay another piece of the borough’s history falls to the wrecker’s ball.

The lesson is easy to see. If you’re a developer buy a prime site in Walsall, doesn’t mind if it’s a listed building. Let the building run down, if you have a fire, all the better and then just wait and wait and wait, and with this mealy-mouthed council, you will get what you want.

Oh, Adrian Andrew and the rest of Walsall cabinet think they deserve a pay rise.

Tales from Lubyanka

2010-11-02T07:35:00.000-07:00

He paced his office in the Lubyanka. His footsteps echoing on the floor, He was deep in thought... Why couldn't they understand? What was it about them they made them so selfish and self-absorbed? Hadn't he explained, hadn't he told them only a few months ago how hard he was working on their behalf ...for less than £1.70 an hour!!!

They had laughed at him, but he had borne it well. They had said he was getting nearly £30,000 while other inmates were getting less than half that. But he'd stood his ground, he knew they went home at night; they had weekends off, while he worked 49 hours a day, 365 days a year. He hadn't been out of this barren room in years, not even for the Masonic lodge’s OAP Christmas dinner. Oh, how he missed the taste of pensioner.

Nor had he seen his wife or family for so long; his only comfort now was the rubber coating on the walls of the office that had become his self-imposed prison. Now as he prepared to free hundreds of others with the help of redundancy notices, the request for a slight increase, a minor uplift to give him some succour, was meet with cries of outrage.

A deep cry of pain came down the hall from the direction of the communications department. It dragged him from his thoughts for a moment. Yes, he guessed, it was Dan; either reading the story he’d smuggled out to the local press or receiving his dismissal notice.

He needed that cash, he told himself, his three cars were almost two years old but he really needed it for his peace of mind. The cost of ear plugs to block out the calls of sacked workers and council tax payers losing their services had gone through the roof. "Ungrateful bastards”, he muttered.

Hearing him speak, Barbara reacted instinctively; she scurried to the safety of the nearest corner and said: “Yes boss, yes boss.” The other cabinet members reacted as quickly, each trying to crowd into the corner.
Some of them, were forced to run the gauntlet to the other corners .None though, risked directly passing him, instead hugging the walls while keeping their eyes on him at all times.

He looked at them in disgust, yes they would benefit as well but it would be him that suffered. This time he addressed his comments to his timid ‘friends'.

"Ungrateful bastards", he shouted.

He walked to the window. Desperate to scratch an itch on his shoulder, he rubbed himself against the barred frame. The jacket the monitoring officer insisted he wore was warm but stopped him moving his hands. Still, he thought if I can get those fools in the group room to vote it through, we will be alright.
The image of his colleagues took him away again to a pleasant place and licking the window pane, he dreamed of flambéed OAP.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGrBVZD7sVw

one of the good guys has gone

2010-09-07T07:20:00.000-07:00

Obits usually start off with 'It was with great sadness that ... It's a cliché but it was with great sadness that I heard that Walsall's director of public health, Dr. Sam Ramaiah, died last night.

Only 62, it is believed he suffered a heart attack.
Simply, Sam was one of the good guys. Passionate about his job, he in particular was determined to address the issues of health inequality within Walsall; doing his utmost to tackle the link between poor health and low incomes.
He was known as a likable, compassionate man who fought his corner with tact, diplomacy and more than a little grace.
An outstanding public servant, he was at heart simply a good human being.
Everyone he came into contact with, from clinicians, politicians and even the hacks on the local press, liked him and trusted him.
The people of Walsall may not have known him, he didn't court publicity, but they have lost a true friend.

Stop digging Mike

2010-07-29T10:46:00.000-07:00

After Brownhills Bob did an excellent job on showing that council leader Mike Bird has difficult with maths , http://brownhillsbob.wordpress.com/2010/07/22/bumbledom-humbug/
one would have thought that his Conservative colleagues would have got together and had a quiet word...or at least bought him a gag.
Mike's arrogance in claiming he is worth 'twice' his £29,000 a year allowance while only being paid £1.64 an hour (that would mean he works a 49 hour day, 365 days a year) was bad enough particularly when he and his fellow cabinet members are looking to sack council workers, many of whom earn a lot less than his allowance.

But it seems that Mike can't help speaking the truth.
At the last council meeting Mike attacked West Brom MP Tom Watson for having the nerve to reproduce a hamfisted Tory election leaflet on his blog site http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/2010/07/is-this-the-most-counter-productive-leaflet-in-by-election-history/#comments
Mike assured councillors that Conservative central office were firing off a letter to the the unfortunate MP demanding he take down the leaflet or face a writ for breach of copyright.
Well so far, Tom is still waiting for the letter.
Which kinda proves Mike's mouth has a life of its own.

Otherwise everything in the Tory camp is coming up roses .. .
Oh except for the fact that Ali Munir, son of Conservative councillor Mohammed Munir , is up at Birmingham Crown Court tomorrow on electoral fraud charges .
Ali is not expected to make a personal appearance as he is on remand on separate charges of conspiracy to produce cannabis, and frankly he just can't get away.
Dad, on the other hand is expected to appear at Birmingham Magistrates court on August 17 to answer for his part in the alleged vote fixing when he won his Palfrey ward seat in 2008.
Both men have pleaded not guilty

Now strangely Mike hasn't said anything about that, even though Cllr Munir was readmitted to the Conservative Group after this May's elections, despite being suspended from the party!

Saying Sorry

2010-07-16T00:40:00.000-07:00

In my little area of Walsall, we kinda get looked over by Walsall council.
So it I was surprised when in February the council started to build a playarea for the kids on land it owns and which had been left to decay for sometime.
That came out of the blue, with no local consultation, but 'Well done' I thought, 'They're not totally useless.'

It opened in March with a piece in the local press saying what a great job the council are doing.

At the beginning of July there was another story in the local papers saying the the playarea was to be closed because it attracted 'yobs' who used the equipment until two inthe morning leaving the residents on the streets facing it , very angry.
This press release was reproduced without any question by local reporters http://www.walsall.gov.uk/news/new_init%20...%20m_site.htm

The Tory councillor for the ward said the decision was part of a 'working smarter initiative.'
So in the space of four months the council wasted God knows how much money, up to a £100,000, maybe?
Given that Walsall council is lining up local authority workers for the sack, with the inevitable impact on frontline services, don't people agree with me that someone in the political leadership of Walsal council should answer for this?

If only to say sorry!

Well Mike Bird is known for the fact that he never admits getting anything wrong, so instead of an apology the people of Walsall , and the council workers who will lose their jobs, will just have to make do with this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh-0fOLTx4Q

The BNP inside out

2010-05-02T02:33:00.000-07:00

The real face of the BNP, vile racism, anti-semitism and allowance swindles
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/05/02/bnp-star-quits-to-expose-racist-party-115875-22227237/

Anyone not surprised!

BNP discriminate against Whites

2010-05-01T05:13:00.000-07:00

In many ways the General Election has failed to fire my interest.

Maybe it’s because everyone’s message is so spun nowadays, maybe it’s because I made my mind up on who I am going to vote for sometime ago, but nothing that has been said by the three major parties so far is unexpected. Therefore, my level of interest has waned.

That was until yesterday when I heard the BNP leader Nick Griffin on the radio. At first, what this deeply racist man said just washed over me. His attempts to sound reasonable were predictable, just a fat man and his racist bile with his generalisations and evasion

But asked by the interviewer about his polices he actually came up with some figures.

He said a future BNP government would give grants of £50,000 per person to leave the country.

Now the criteria of those people eligible for this money was defined as those who where not ‘Indigenous British.’

Pressed about what that meant he said that the French and the Irish would be welcomed to stay in a BNP run England but others could apply for a grant to go home to their original country or the country of their parents, grandparents. etc

Pressed about who exactly would be offered this Griffin skipped about avoiding saying who would be encouraged to leave but you didn’t to be Einstein to work out that most of them would be black.

He went on to say that he expected around 180,000 people would leave Britain each year.

Now a quick calculation shows that Nick was offering to spend £9 billion a year to get people to leave Britain.

What he didn’t say was how much that would cost the Treasury in future years in terms of lost income or how much it would cost to replace all the skills and expertise going out the door.

What got me was that he won’t give money to the Irish or their descendants to go back claiming that ‘as far as we are concerned they are part of Britain and fully entitled to come here.’

Of course that totally ignores the fact that for the last 800 years the Irish have at times (the 1916 rebellion, The 1918 -21 Tan Wars, The 1949 Declaration of the Irish Republic) been at pains to prove that they are not part of Britain but are separate nation state.

Now I come from an Irish family and in the unlikely event that the BNP ever came to power I’d want to leave Britain and I would break Nick Griffin’s arm in the rush to grab my £50,000 off him.

But no, I can’t get it because I’m white!!! For God shakes, is there nobody these morons won’t discriminate against?

Gold and them thar votes.

2010-04-11T10:19:00.000-07:00

The site of the £3.5 million Staffordshire Hoard is said to be revealed in a documentary to be aired on Channel 4.

But the exact location of the largest hoard of Anglo Saxon gold ever found in the UK is still being kept a secret because archaeologists are still fearful it could be the target of treasure hunters not as honest as metal detectorist who discovered it in July last year.
The secret though has been well kept in the Brownhills district of Walsall where everyone knows the field it was found, just 1.5 miles from the town centre.
But the find and its location is becoming a heated topic in a borough which says it doesn’t have the cash to invest in a truly historic discovery.

The programme Saxon Gold: Finding the Hoard, is the first of four documentaries commissioned by National Geographic scheduled for production and world wide distribution over the next two years.
A spokesman for the company described the 1,500 items, many made of gold and inlaid with semi precious stones, as being on a par with the discovery of Tutankhamen’s Tomb.
Public relations hype, maybe, but the find has certainly excited the academic world.
Leslie Webster, Former Keeper, Department of Prehistory and Europe, British Museum, said the hoard would change the perceptions of Anglo-Saxon England…

“As radically, if not more so, as the Sutton Hoo discoveries. Absolutely the equivalent of finding a new Lindisfarne Gospels or Book of Kells”.

And the level of public interest was shown with its first exhibition at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery which attracted some 65,000 visitors.
But in Brownhills there is a feeling their connection to the find has been ignored, even to the point of it being called the Staffordshire, rather than the, Brownhills Hoard.
More importantly locals feel the benefits it could bring to a hard pressed area are passing them by because the borough is too poor to invest in the discovery.

Brownhills’ High Street is dominated by ‘The Digger’ a 40 foot steel statue of a miner. The area has long been associated coal, mining, brick making and manufacturing but with the decline of these industries the town has suffered greatly. Unemployment is high after the recent recession hit manufacturing. Many of its shops are permanently shuttered and all of its market’s stalls stand unused after traders deserted it.
So the discovery of the hoard was literally seen as a ‘golden’ opportunity to attract visitors to the hard pressed local economy.
Locals looked to the Sutton Hoo discovery which attracts 200,000 visitors a year to purpose built centre.

But rather than joining with Birmingham and Stoke on Trent councils, Walsall has said its museum services don’t have the expertise or security needed to house the Hoard.
It has taken a junior role in a partnership of local authorities which will determine its future and how it is exploited.
But another simpler reason has emerged.
Tapping into local resentment, the Labour Party accused the Conservative run council of letting the town fall into decay.

Former mayor and Labour candidate for the ward, Richard Worrall, said:“Anyone can see that the Tories offer no hope or vision for the town when they even ignore the discovery of the Staffordshire Hoard, found on our doorstep, as an opportunity to benefit Brownhills,” it said.
“It’s a matter of shame that, while other see the potential of this internationally historic find, Walsall’s Tory run council found excuses to ignore this wonderful opportunity to promote Brownhills and the borough as a whole.
“It speaks volumes about them.”

This earned a sharp rebuke from the council’s Deputy Leader Adrian Andrews, whose party is looking to cut £11.5 million from the authority’s budget this year.
He said: “Mr Worrall continues to bring up the issue of the Hoard, which has been saved for the West Midlands.”
Breaking from the official line that Walsall’s museum service lacks the expertise to house the discovery, he added: “What does he expect the council to do, build a venue to house the Hoard and raise council tax by 20 per cent?
“Can you image people’s reactions to that?”
The row, to an extent, mirrors the national debate between the two parties over public services and taxation.

Meanwhile in Brownhills residents are still keeping mum over the Hoard’s finding place. That said, any motorist travelling along the M6 Toll Motorway in the last few weeks could have found out easily enough by just looking out for the archaeologists in their high viz vests, digging up a non-descript field.

Not that they would have, for as the people of Brownhills would explain, they were all to busy travelling somewhere more interesting.

There's gold in them thar hills

2010-03-18T03:39:00.000-07:00

I have only two things to say to the people of Brownhills. Firstly, why is your town called Brownhills when it is not brown and lacks hills?

Secondly, I’m sorry but I don’t think that the Staffordshire Hoard should stay in your town.

I know that the last point will angry those in your community who are doing their best to improve an area which over the years has been ignored and let run down, but it’s not because you can’t be trusted, its we can’t trust those who would have control over it.

Much to the annoyance of Mike Bird, Walsall council’s Conservative leader, the Staffordshire Hoard is threatening to become a political issue in the up-coming local elections, particularly in the marginal Brownhills’ ward.

To the disappointment of local people, Walsall council seems to have turned its back on the opportunities of one of the most significant archaeological finds in British history.

The discovery of the Anglo-Saxon hoard comprising 1,500 complete artefacts and fragments, many made of gold and inlaid with semi precious stones, has set the world of archaeology alight.

The rush to ‘claim’ this treasure has been just as immediate and exciting as the find itself.

Birmingham, Staffordshire and Stoke-on–Trent councils, seeing the benefits to leisure and tourism immediately launched an appeal to buy the Hoard and save it from disappearing down the M1 to London and the British Museum, meanwhile academics at local universities drooled at the prospect of researching a truly historic find.

But Walsall council seems to have decided that an event of international impact is of little consequence, even though it literally occurred on its doorstep

In opposing calls for the borough to house the Hoard, Mike Bird was quick to say that Walsall simply wasn’t capable of doing the job.

He cited the ‘facts’ that our museum and Art Gallery don’t have the expertise or security to house such a find.

Well Mike is right in the first instance.

The borough does lack the experts. But on that basis only the British Museum has the facilities to house the Hoard, so if we follow Mike’s logic, let’s stop the talking, pack it all up and send it down to the Smoke!

Other authorities though have realised that the region’s many universities would kill to do that research and conservation work.

As for security, well Mike seems to have forgotten Walsall Gallery has one of the finest art collections to be seen outside London.

Which is surprising given he claimed a lot of credit for bulding the New Art Gallery at its recent 10th brithday party

So just to remind him, the Garman Ryan Collection, comprises works by Degas, Whistler, Picasso and Monet. There is even a little known Van Gogh on its walls.

You don’t get insurance for that if your security comprises a locked filing cabinet in the basement with a big sign saying “Beware the Tiger!!”

So, with good partnership working, the borough could be the home to at least part of the find…. but I’m still against the idea.

Why? Well because of Walsall’s other history; the political history of a borough lacking imagination or vision and always seeking simple answers to complex questions.

Frankly local Tories’ response to everything is either sell it off or get rid of it.

If the Tories on Walsall Council had a say on the future of the Hoard I’d shudder at what would happen when the next budget crisis strikes.

The prospect of the entire cabinet stuffing Anglo-Saxon treasure into envelopes before posting them off to scrap gold companies haunts me.

No it’s not the case we can’t trust the people of Brownhills. It’s a case of we can’t trust them!

Progress.. Not In My Backyard

2010-02-18T07:36:00.000-08:00

The news MPs have backed a metro link from Wednesbury to Stourbridge raises the question of what happened to the planned route from Wolverhampton to Walsall and on to Wednesbury? When I moved to the Walsall one of the first pieces of mail through the letterbox was a consultation document on this 'exciting' proposal which claimed construction would begin in 2010.
I was interested because the route would run close to my home and I was a little concerned about noise pollution. On the whole though I was in favour because it would help create jobs and improve public transport so I put my nimbyism to one side and ticked the little box adding my support.
Had I have know it t I should have thrown the document in the bin and forgotten about it because that's exactly what Walsall council seems to have done.
Here we are in 2010 and as I sit looking out the window at the proposed route the only movement is buzzards circling over ahead looking for carrion to feed on.
Can birds eat empty promises?

Unfortunately the demise of the Metro link epitomises the state of Walsall.

Many high flying ideas that never get off the drawing board.

Remember the council's promise to provide 'great schools' by 2008. That promise was made in 2004, trouble is that by 2008 the only great schools the council could point too, were exactly the same schools as in 2004. Earlier this year the borough slipped back in the league table for GCSEs results in England.

And the groundbreaking Walsall Waterfront? Well work started this month , only two years late, but not on Urban Splash's first stage which was to be the flagship of urban renewal in the borough but on the much more modest second stage. And for those of you who are too young or whose memories have faded, the Waterfront is only part of an overall development, the first phase of which is the Crown Wharf Retail Park which opened 11 years ago!! God knows when , or if, Urban Splash's development will actually happen.

The other major opening at that time was the £21 million New Walsall Art Gallery.

Greeted with a great deal of praise it was a major step in the borough's attempts to reinvented itself.
But when the director resigned a year later, it took Walsall council three and a half years to appoint his successor.
Why so long ? Why leave it leaderless and waste the opportunity the gallery offered?
It is easy to nit pick but what I'm really want to get at is the lack of vision or real leadership in the borough.
Walsall's long haul back from the economic disaster of the 80s has been marked not by vision, but by feet dragging inepititude and fear which suggests our civic leaders look out and say 'Progress...not in my backyard.'
In May we go to the local elections again, when the Tories running Walsall council will trumpet their 'successes' and make more pledges on how they will move the borough forward.
Birds can't eat empty promises but it seems the voters will be expected to swallow them.

2010-02-10T04:26:00.000-08:00

Best practice

A changing mirage, claimed and disowned, in equal disorder.

Best practice is promoted as the answer to improving service provision across the public sector.
It is one of the myriad ‘tick boxes’ statutory bodies are expected to meet during the regular inspections by various agencies.
The simple idea is to share the most effective processes and methods of improving outcome between different bodies.
In Walsall, best practice is either embraced or ignored dependent on wind direction; or more accurately – when it best suits political convenience.
Politics in local authorities doesn’t just come with a capital ‘P’ accorded to political parties. The internal in-fights of officers and departments defending policy, budgets and individual careers is just as political, and indeed more vicious, than any debate in a public forum.
In these internal wars, public service is the first casualty quickly followed by the truth, which usually disappears in the smoke of the first volley.
Both sides (‘both sides’ is used in this definition not to denote the number of opposing views but merely for convince. In many of these battles, the number of participants is only outdone in the saloon brawls beloved of Westerns) will equally claim best practice as their aim and their primary weapon.
This requires attacking your opponents’ use of the term by changing its definition; after all, they can’t be allowed to own it.
This mean that best practice is about as fixed point as a cork bobbing on the ocean.
For example, when a voluntary sector group helping dug users overcome their addiction can claim a 75 per cent success rate delivered on a shoe string budget, their political opponents are forced redraw the landscape.
In this case, it required ignoring outcomes and focusing on ‘service delivery.’
Service delivery has less to do with results and more to do with how the process meshes with existing mechanisms and entranced self interest.
So the needs of structures take precedence over helping the end users.
In this case, this resulted in the existing provider losing its funding in favour of another who could neither claim the same success rate or the ability to delivery the service within the same time frame.

It's been a long time

2010-02-01T06:31:00.000-08:00

This blog has stood unused for a long time for reasons too complicated to go into but the other night the need to get some things off my chest returned to me.
But how to make this wee blog more than another rant in cyberspace?
How to make it relevant to the readers?
Lacking any originality of mine own I decided, like many before me, to nick a good idea off someone else.
So with a big hat tip to Ambrose Bierce's classic work The Devil's Dictionary I decided to give alternative definitions of many of the words and terms that our lords and masters in local councils and other public bodies use every day to prove that 'if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.'

I wish to stress that this project isn't solely aimed at Walsall council but with such a rich seam right on my doorstep I will give them the credit they are due.

Anyone who wishes to contribute to this project will, after editing , also be credited.

So to begin..

Accountability.

‘A principle smothered by paucity of practice.’

The lack of accountability in local statutory bodies is so woeful as to be a national disgrace…. if only you could get someone who would own up to it.
While avoiding stating any reasons why the proposals under discussion may be flawed, ‘accountability’ is quoted in every meeting, policy document, briefing and report as good practice and essential to local democracy in a manner that resembles wife beaters telling their spouses they love them while still throwing punches.
Supposed to be the rasion-d’eter of local democracy, once we have voted in our elected representatives, accountability is the process whereby we can see they do what they said they would do and to pressurise them when they don’t deliver.
This of course requires free access to information, a concept foreign to local bodies.
Hence the introduction of the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) designed to allow citizens access to the material and data they would help them make statutory bodies and their elected members accountable.
But such is the reluctance to answer people who the nerve to question whether they are being told the truth, that public bodies have taken up to two years to answer requests that the Act recommends should normally be handled in 20 working days.
Other tactics include engaging in semantic debates on the exact meaning of words so obscure they would give a lexicographer a migraine; denying information without quoting exemptions under the Act (of which there are many) forcing a lengthy appeal procedure, releasing the bare minimum of requested material and invoking every possible legal barrier up to, and including, the Magna Carte to deny publication.
Such are the hurdles and hoops that users of the Act have come across that many believe that local authorities have renamed FOI as ‘F**k Off Ingrate,’ while other users are asking the ruling body of the Olympics, the IOC, to make ‘accountability’ an one-off event for 2012 London Games incorporating marathon stamina with fencing’s feints and parries.

knuckle draggers

2008-09-23T12:28:00.000-07:00

Spinning can be an art form. The ability to persuade people that black is white or white is black at times requires a slight of hand which can take reality, stand it on its head and steal your wallet all at the same time. But the real stupid in the field of spinning just make it up, or lie. Take for example the recent BNP demonstration in Stoke. The day of action, called to cash in on the death of a BNP activist in a row with his Muslim neighbour, turned into a joke.
The BNP says it has nearly 10,000 members. How many turned up? Well if you believe the BBC, 200. If you accept the police’s number, 300. But the BNP’s deputy leader and national press officer, Cannock’s very own Simon Darby, posted this on his blog site

“A ten rendez-vous point coordination of some 500-600 activists from all over the country delivering over 50k specially designed leaflets throughout a city of 250,000 people. That ladies and gents is a serious hit and as I stated in my speech heralds the return with a vengeance of the BNP to major street activity. Get your maps out.”

Clearly Simon didn’t fancy telling the supposedly 9,700 members who couldn’t be bothered to get off their arses that they were missed.
But frankly the BNP's spinning is not top notch. Even when everything goes their way, Simon and his buddies manage to stuff it up.
You might not remember the Upper Beeding by-election earlier this year. Why would you? It was for a parish council, the lowest rung on the ladder of politics. So low most political parties can’t be bothered to contest seats because they have no power. So when a BNP candidate standing on a platform of swings for the park, got a full two page spread in the Daily Mail, Simon must have wet himself. What’s more she was pretty, blond and blue eyed, not your normally tattooed, skinhead. Unfortunately, despite having all of Simon’s skills behind her, she lost. Leading to this little video which frankly, kills me every time I see it. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=RNhQFRfPzlo

The Mighty Mekon

2008-09-18T23:52:00.000-07:00

As the future of Darlaston school seems to be turning into an appeal hearing on the Tennessee Monkey Trail, could I suggest an alternative sponsor for academy status that might avoid the contentious issue of whether teaching Darwinian Theory makes children devolve into Apes.
Can I suggest the Do Ron Ron Trust? A faith based charitable organisation that believes the teachings of the Mighty Mekon and his disciple, Dan Dare, are the perfect guiding light for young people in the celestial turmoil that is life.
The trust is well endowed having 14 zillion intergalactic dollars in the tax haven that is Alpha Centauri. At current exchange rates this comes to exactly £2 million, the figure suggested by government minister for schools, Lord Adonis, to turn your local school over to just about anyone who fancies that they can teach. The Do Ron Ron’s benefactor and Mighty Mekon follower, Flash ‘The charges were dropped!’ Gordon promises not to interfere with the curriculum, beyond a few lessons on the life and teachings of the Green God.
Mr Gordon can be trusted to keep his word because for the next hundred years or so as he is living with the fairies on the third star to the left and straight on, for tax purposes.
This faith based trust would avoid the present unpleasantness while allowing Walsall council and Serco to continue to abandon all their responsibilities to, and for, the children and parents of Darlaston.
It will also allow them to continue to blame the school governors for the situation, and quite rightly so, because we all know that parents governors are not educationalists or experts just volunteers doing their best for local children. The experts are the council and ..err.. Serco.
Ah well, the Mighty Mekon forgives all.

Monkey see, Monkey do

2008-09-13T01:29:00.000-07:00

Interesting article in the Advertiser http://tinyurl.com/4o8ss5 as compared to the Walsall Observer who obviously missed the point or weren't even at the meeting. http://tinyurl.com/4cxnfb. A sad state of affairs for a once great paper.
I wonder why no reporters have asked the question why has Serco - who are paid millions to improve schools in Walsall - failed to improve Darlaston? What other schools will it abandon to the next businessman who, because he has a spare £2 million, thinks he is an educationalist and therefore can mess with children's minds. But it looks like Sneyd Community School doesn't even have the hope that a barmy millionaire will come by and buy it. Closure seems to be inevitable.
When that happens the only question is, who is councillor Zahid Ali going to blame rather than accept responsibility as the cabinet member for children services?

Wicked, bad reporters

2008-09-05T05:10:00.000-07:00

Seems the Express and Star hacks still haven't learnt the difference between 'post' and 'job'.

http://tinyurl.com/5k6xwv

Ohhh it's big in here!!

2008-09-05T00:54:00.000-07:00

Oh my first time in cyberspace.. It's not quite what I thought.
I expected something and somewhere between the film 'Tron' and a doggers' convention at Aldridge Airport. You know what I mean, technology and sad sex. But it's not like that. Not that it's nice either but it isn't all chips and and complicated programmes and vidoes of people doing things your mother would be ashamed to admit that she is still doing.
But it is big, even infinite, you might say. Not that I am going swaning all over the world wide web! No I'm quite happy to stay here in my little corner of it and focus on those things that make me laugh, cry, annoy me, make me happy or sad, angry or at peace.
I hail from Walsall in the West Midlands and this blog will mostly, but not entirely, be about that little run down town and the, on the whole, good people who live in it. (Okay now is the time the saddos can leave and google Aldridge Airport).
It will also be about the people who run our lives in that small town, or should I say, the people who think they have a God given right to treat the good people of the borough like mushrooms - keeping them in the dark and feeding them bullshit.
People like the press officer at the Manor Hospital who, after the Express & Star revealed that 400 jobs were to be lost at the hospital to help pay for a £12 million a year PFI scheme, kept using the word 'posts' instead of jobs
Why? Well maybe it was because when we think of jobs, we think of the people who occupy them. The people who will now lose their income and the fact their families will suffer.
We also think of the services those people provide to patients; services that now will not be available to patients from Walsall in Walsall. Hence the press officer's insistence on the word 'post.' They seem to think that we, the mushrooms, won't notice that 'posts' are occupied by people.
A case of 'It's not as bad as you think. It's 'posts' not peoples lives.'
The irony of the situation is the hospital created three communications 'posts' only months before the news that 400 jobs were to go was made public. One wonders if the idiot who came up with the idea that hiring three expensive press officers will somehow help towards the saving of £12 million a year will lose his 'post'. I'm just guessing but I don't think he will be one of the 400.
So anyway,from time to time, I will pop up with my own view of Wonderous Walsall and some, if not all, of its works.