Full Council last night. Not many there and those that were made me wonder why they bother given their total silence. I suppose that is the price of dumb loyalty, but it must get a little tiresome to have to put up with speeches from the same people in and close to the leadership and the small group of opposition councillors (including me) who contribute. No wonder the Full Council barely gets 10 members of the public present - we always get 15-20 at Newport Parish Council...........
Anyway the biggest debate was on the sudden expulsion from the Council of 'Win Laden' after she hadn't attended meetings for over 6 months. I don't condone that sort of absenteeism, but I do think you should at least get a warning from officers, especially when you are the carer of a sick partner and haven't kept track. However, that cuts no mustard if you aren't in the Tory sheepfold and her expulsion was confirmed by 20 votes to 11, with just 2 of her erstwhile colleagues abstaining (Ward & Arnold).
I was then the only person to argue against the Council's revised plan of polling districts and polling stations for the revised ward boundaries, as I feel they missed an opportunity to make voting more accessible, and preferably away from schools (all of which I had suggested for my own ward). I got the support of 2 Liberals and 1 ex-Liberal, but as so often the sheep voted withouta bleat. Funny how their electoral addresses are full of how they will speak up for their communities until they get into County Hall......
Later on I had my usual enjoyable exchange with the Tory bovver-boy from Kite Hill over how he demands more public funding from central government for things like concessionary fares, when his own party's national 'leadership' has just performed a U-turn and announced it will reduce the current levels of public expenditure should the horror of a Tory government ever befall this country again. Thankfully, I think the people of the UK are waking up to that particular nightmare (cue for anonymous Tory-blog-comments).
27 comments:
Win Laden's treatment appears awful, but! Has she been taking her allowances? If she has she deserves to be booted out and is a greedy old cow. If she hasn't her treatment at the hands of her old pals in the Tory group is despicable. Can we be told Geoff? Seems very much like revenge to me. No wonder Posh Vanessa and Pat Joyce walked out. Can't wait to read Hofton's view.
Does this silly woman just think you need not turn up for 6 months and no-one will notice? At the very least you expect some communication, she must've talked to someone at County Hall about her problem?
Mind you many of these councillors do nothing, except take our money of course. £100 a week minimum. Pugh and the cabinet on £600 plus. Hardly shocking that those who do the work oust them if they can, especially when they're disloyal as well as lazy. Labour do this all the time at Westminster. When you go against the leadership you're an outcast.
If any conservative councillor just toes the party line without question then they are NOT representing the residents of their ward. This is local government for heaven's sake, this is a crap system and many councillors are a waste of space.
So you don't feel hard done by, I have to add that even a crap Tory government could not be worse than what we have at the moment and will continue to get if Labour have managed to bribe enough people to get them back in again.
Still, you will be happy councillor Lumley as the latest wheeze is the plan to turn this into a secular country. Makes you proud when you think of all the sacrifices made by our armed forces over the last 100 years. No it doesn't, it makes me want to weep.
Just listening to the PM on radio2. Vine: 'What did you mean when you kept saying and end to boom and bust over and over?'
PM 'I meant an end to The Tory boom and bust, this isn't the normal boom and bust cycle, this is a global recession caused by bankers'
Not his fault then, clearly PM's aren't responsible for banking or giving us the highest levels of personal debt in the world. This man is a jerk, bring on the Tories. As alwys they'll have to force everyone to behave prudently not just claim they are.
Ye Gods - it's like the lunch bell went off and all the children came out into the playground!
Anon 11.15 - even a crap Tory government couldn't be worse than this one. Really? Have to go some to be cappier than Ted (3 day week) Heath or Maggie (3 million unemployed) Thatcher eh? Inflation at 14%, interest rates at 15% - how bad do you think it could get?
As for a secular society - bring it on! My grandfather fought at Dunkirk and on D Day and he didn't do it so a bunch of men in frocks could go around abusing small boys and spreading superstition. What are the clergy doing in the House of Lords anyway? I didn't vote for them. Don't pesume that those brave men and women fought to keep the Bishops in their palaces.
Anon 1.26 - did you have a good evening boyo? Banking is an international trade dimwit - Thatcher and her ilk deregulated it in the 1980's. It's GLOBAL and nothing we can do here can stop the mis-selling of financial instruments around the world which is the root cause of this debacle.
Just imagine if this government had tried to control personal debt by banning credit cards? Re-introducing controls on HP? I thought Tories beleived in the free market and personal responsibility?
Thought you didn't like the 'nanny state'. Now you're all sounding like little socialists. It just shows how the Master has got you all in a spin - you don't even know what philosophy or economic model you're folling anymore! The boy David and the toe-rag George (although I understand that the word used to describe him at University was something more colourful begining with the letter C) are in a complete flap. You can see it in their eyes - like rabbits in the headlights of a car.
Brown has come into his own and the children in the Tory party need to go back to school. On the Island that should have a ring to it no?
Oh, and spare me the usual loud noises of protests to this post - you're out of ideas, out of time and out of place. Move over and let the adults take charge.
If the polls are anywhere near accurate, then the best/worst we're going to get next time is either a minority Labour or Tory government, ie one forced to make deals with other parties. Cameron and Osborne have been flat-footed in this crisis, and have just ripped up the only policy they had, ie to stand by Labour's spending plans. In so doing, they've contradicted themselves (again); on the one hand they claim they can't give budget commitments now "without seeing the books"; and on the other, they assume (still without seeing the books) that they can predict what they CAN'T spend when or if they get back into power, leaving no one knowing what their plans are, on the sound basis that they haven't got any. This isn't policy, it's panic: and you don't have to be the greatest admirer of the present government to understand it as such.
Incidentally, Win McRobert is not the sharpest tool in the box, but she's going through one hell of a time at the moment, and her ex-colleagues, who ratted on their manifesto commitments and thus forced out those who believed in them, have treated her with a cynicism that defies belief. Not only that, but they got a council officer to do their dirty work for them, not even having the decency to speak to her themselves. Give me a secular society any day if this is how avowed Christians behave.
My oh my, you lefties have got your underpants in a twist.
Shall we look forward to seeing all our historic churches turned into mosques complete with wailing towers then? Secular means NO religion, so that will go down like a lead balloon.
As far as the economy goes, unfortunately we do not have a Margaret Thatcher this time round to get the country out of the mess that Labour have made of it. Wonder what will happen? Wish I'd worked in the public sector, at least I'd have a pension to look forward to.
For all I care you can turn the bloody things into the local branch of Starbucks. At least then they would be doing something useful. Long live the secular state.
By the way, how many people on the Island were on the BNP list - did anyone look?
Are youi planning to start harrassing them then?
About 12 BNP members here. Only one that's ever claimed to be (on iw radio so was proud and stupid) is a cab driver from Shanklin. A female. Kind of.
What a nasty piece of work you are anon at 9.53. It's people like you who are proving to be the fascists as we wave goodbye to freedom and democracy.
You are obviously proud of how your party is ruining this country so I assume you are in a position to gain from it. Nasty, nasty, nasty.
Anonymous at 11.58, I should be obliged if you would leave my underpants alone.
Thanks to Margaret Thatcher, the public sector is one of the few things we have left; she let manufacturing go hang, and now we have virtually none left. I am quite happy to disagree with you about that, but I find your remarks about churches into mosques, and "wailing towers", a bit hard to take. Not exactly a picture I recognize of present-day reality, at least so far as most of the country is concerned. As the alternative in the case of those churches which have been converted to mosques (and many other things) was to let them fall down through lack of use, I don't quite see your point. Unless you think that "you lefties" have a soft spot for Islam, which, so far as I'm concerned, is quite untrue - but perhaps in looking for any meaning in your remarks, other than having a general pop at the left, I am missing the point because there isn't one? I mean, I come here in all good faith, hoping for a good argument, and all I get is the rude boy at the back of the class throwing ink-bombs.....
No, I'm not planning to harass anyone, just a passing interest.
I leave the harassment to those from other political parties who, despite their strictures to their members to wear suits, are simply knuckle dragging, xenophobic, racist twats - I err on the side of caution in giving them the benefit of the doubt here. Can you guess who they are yet?
Frankly, just to be named as a member of the BNP is shame enough. And Teressa May thought the Tories were the nasty party!
The proof is in the hissy fit that some BNP members have had since the list came out. If there was no shame in being a member, they wouldn't care, but they do. Seems odd to be ashamed to be named as a member of a political party? What could be the cause?
If I were a member of any party I'd be proud to be. Why would you be bovvered if your membership of the BNP were made public if you really support their aims?
People are proud to members of the Labour party, they have no shame either.
We need a smaller public sector, some big cuts in numbers and a new government brave enough to axe the index linked pensions before they make the uk bankrupt. It's a fact the 3 has lost 25% of its value in the past three months. The rest of the world knows we're borrowing too much. So far the left wing media seems happy to let Gordon get away with it.
Sigh...not sure if it's the dropping of 'h's' in the text, or the economic illiteracy that I find more depressing mate...
The £ has been at an artificially high figure for some 12 - 18 months. Before that it was at the range it currently is at and it was there for nearly 10 years - bobbing around the £1 = $1.55 - $1.65 as anyone that has been to the states in the last 10 years could tell you.
The recent high value of the £ was a short term glitch caused by low US interest rates which made US bonds not so attractive, so other currencies become inflated as investors rushed tobuy them. The £ has dropped to around its historic levels as all interst rates have dropped and all currencies are regarded as high risk at the moment; can't think why!
There is no set rate for the £ and people like George ('What are you?' 'I'm a ****!') Osoborne treat it as if it's some kind of phallic symbol. When the rate increases, it helps us shop in New York, but not export and vice versa.
The current world economic downturn is more than one middle ranking curency exchange rate. Get your nose out of the daily mail and read something more mind enhancing eh?
Anon at 5.26 are you able to confront real people or can you just do it on the web? Presumably you read the Daily Mail to know what's in it?
I confront people every day - what a stupid question.
Confronting people on the Web is just a hobby.
Sadly, I do read the Daily Mail so that I know the tosh it's spreading. I need to do this for my job - satisfied?
Any other damn fool questions boyo?
And I always thought it was only Guardian readers who were brainwashed.
If you want to read some real twaddle try Polly Townbee, or choose from the wide selection on offer in the afore-mentioned rag (which purports to be a newspaper but is actually the mouthpiece of the Labour party.
I hear the conservative group met and voted to sack Win McRobert as a councillor. Why did one of them not say 'why don't we warn her first' Why did they get the officers to do it?
This tells you all you need to know about the people running the council. They appear vindictive, petty and nasty. To do this to a woman whose husband is dying is almost beyond belief. That none of them apparently stood up to be counted and objected tells you a lot about the grip the leadership must have on what must be a spineless group of individuals. They should be ashamed.
I have heard that Pugh is a string puppet but is it possible that he is another Rasputin?
The plot thickens but, whichever it is (or neither), anon at 10.42 is right about the rest of the remaining Conservative sheeple at County Hall. The electorate must be told in no uncertain terms before next June.
Friday, September 12, 2003 ::
Cheating Bastards
What do the Young Tories have in common with Scotland's Christian Dailly? Via Nick Barlow
'VOTE RIGGING' ROW ROCKS YOUNG TORIES : - Daily Mirror, 11/9/03, p.20
The Tory party's youth wing is in crisis after allegations of vote rigging led to chaos at its conference.
Eight candidates for top posts resigned as outraged rivals called each other "cheating bastards" on stage.
A BBC documentary crew was asked to leave the floor in a bid to stop news of Sunday's row getting out...
One who those who quit, Andre Walker , said in an angry speech "We can now prove head of youth policy David Pugh is a cheating bastard. The system is so corrupt we must act."
Members of the Tory youth - known as Conservative Future - now plan a breakaway organisation.
Last night Central Office said: "We have faith in our senior officials who oversee internal elections".
David Pugh said yesterday he had no comment on claims he was a "cheating bastard". He added: "I'm not going to respond to that".
Obviously leopards don't change their spots.
I think the word 'cheating' is going a bit far, what? Bad show I say.
And I thought it was just labour that manipulated votes according to one of the Tory Boys who posts on this Blog. A reality check is in order me thinks.....
Bet they're agog at the local Lodge.
Do we not all know by now that standards are what Tories apply to people in other parties? They have a right to rule, the rest of us are just oiks (used to be called counter-jumpers in my distant youth), and if we do what our rulers do horror and shock reign supreme. They think themselves virtuous only because they won't accept that standards of decency they enjoin on others should apply also to them. The appalling treatment of Win McRobert is just the latest local example.
If a previous correspondent can find Polly Toynbee ever being consistent from one month to another (Private Eye has revealed the seismic shits in her opinionizing) perhaps he/she would let us know. The Guardian only looks like a Labour-leaning organ to those who aren't Labour; it used to be the Liberals' mouthpiece, but now it veers between those generally leftish/liberal readers whom it thinks likely to continue reading it, and rarely pursues a consistent idea. I think it's called market research, one of the many curses of present-day politics. Anyone remember a time when parties, and once crusading newspapers, said what they meant? Now all freedom of the press seems to mean to some editors is the right to poke about in people's private lives and doing their best to wreck them. There's a continuum of furtive deceit, lies, manipulation and spin between our lousy national press and our increasingly brain-meltingly shallow politicians: and we let 'em get away with it because most of us have become inured to it and expect no better.
Here endeth the Rant of the day.
Oh dear. Oh woe. Oh how embarrassing.
Seismic SHIFTS, was what I meant to say. Tragic that I didn't, really.
I now understand why you're nearly all anonymous.
Indeed Mr Jones. It was knowing that it was a typo which made it funnier than it would have been anyway. Thanks for the larf.
Spineless Tory group. Why do these people not realise it's they who gave Pugh his power? He didn't get elected as leader at the election, he took the leadership from Sutton.
These same spineless councillors should now wake up and get rid of Pugh before the election. Surely someone in that group has the will and ability?
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