Political Penguin Blog

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I’m sure I must be missing something here. Alastair Darling does what it’s fair to say the electorate are always saying they want and chokes up the honest appraisal that the economy’s a bit on the buggered side and going to get worse in the next twelve months and up pops the Tories with the whole “he’s let the cat out of the bag” routine.

Apart from my personal distaste for using simplistic phraseology in politics, what exactly are the Tories saying?

That he should have kept quiet about it. Careful, don’t tell the proles, they can’t be trusted with that kind of information now can they?

So are we now to believe that were there to be a Tory Government they’d simply not tell anyone. Keep it quiet like. Mums the word and all that.

Of course were Alastair Darling to take this approach, not say anything and as things do get worse, what’s the betting the same Tories would be jumping up and down saying “sir sir, he’s hiding something, he’s not telling us the truth about the economy”.

It’s a difficult one to call. Of course there’s the strong argument that if the Chancellor of the Exchequer pops up and says, “excuse me, but you know the economy, well, it’s a bit knackered at the mo and it’s probably going to get worse for a while” then it can hit confidence leading to detrimental effects.

However that said, if the combination of an international contraction on the availability of credit (I’m going to avoid the use of the phrase ‘credit crunch’ because it has come to mean bugger all anyway), combined with rapidly increasing energy prices is so fundamentally going to knock us for six then I doubt the words of the great eye-browed will make things any worse.

So for me, I like it, a politician being up front and honest which although I don’t subscribe to the hideously simplistic (and factually incorrect) “they’re all a bunch a lying cheating tossers” mantra that seems to pervade any discussion of politics these days, it is still refreshing to see.

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David Singleton from PR Week. If this kind of rubbish is considered worthy of a broadsheet’s attention then please can I have a job? I can actually do research me.

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Been quiet on the blog as of late. These prolonged silences are starting to get a bit of a habit I know.

There’s a very good reason and it goes something like this.

Been thinking a lot about the direction of the site and where I want it’s future to go as opposed to where it started out nearly two years ago.

Back then it was a bit of a pet project from a technical perspective and a desire to put a few things into the public domain, create a bit of user interaction and generally play around with some new bits and bobs.

It isn’t really like that anymore. I wanted at the time, a stronger ability to do core content presentation centred around a blog.

At the time I’d evaluated Wordpress and found although a great blogging structure, it just didn’t do all the CMS (content management system) things that I wanted and a Joomla! solution seemed more apt. That said the core blog element on the site has always been underlyingly Wordpress-ish, just ported into a larger CMS structure.

A lot can change in 2 years which is why in the not too distant future I’ll be closing down the site for a complete rebuild.

Wordpress has come a long way since then and stands up as a pretty good CMS on it’s own these days.

There is a time element in all of this. 2 years ago the family was smaller, I had more time to do my own scripting and hacking around when things didn’t quite work properly. These days I’ve got more family commitments and a lot more workload to deal with which means I’m more inclined towards a simpler (for me) solution.

There’s still a temptation to just simply be different and use something like Drupal but manually hacking my MySQL database to get it into Wordpress as a test the other night was enough work in itself.

It’ll take a while to do. I’m undecided on an off the shelf template, completely building my own from scratch or somewhere in the middle by cutomising another template.

Not to mention there’s a few HTML errors that have crept into the site that have been annoying me for a while and I’ve simply been too lazy to hack out again.

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The other day I picked up on a post from Tom Watson MP relating to his list of Labour Party MP’s who have some form of web presence, be it site or blog.

He was asking if there was a better way to organise such a list and it got me thinking.

The last few weeks have been a time of reflection for me. I think what sparked it off was attending WordCampUK in Birmingham and running into this chap.

I think it’s easy to get into mired down in the party political confrontational aspects of the blogosphere but that detracts from what is possible. Not that it isn’t a good bit of fun from time to time but like other aspects of our democratic culture in the UK it represents a disproportionate element, both in profile and public perception of the political discourse than it actually does or indeed should.

That is not necessarily to blame politicians directly, our media feeds on conflict. Where great swathes of policy that affect our lives are really beaten out, in the Committee stages, they are next to never featured on the evening news.

They’re not featured because, well, they’re boring and this is where the problem lies. Politics is boring, especially when it’s done right.

Every now and then, usually after a poor turnout in (insert election) you get a raft of politicians of all colours cropping up saying we have to try and inspire the electorate to vote. There’s usually the obligatory reference to ‘young people’ because they just don’t do this whole voting thing and we obviously need to make it sexy and exciting for them.

The problem is, politics isn’t sexy and exciting. To go down that route of trying to make it appeal to people on the basis of preconsidered views of what they want is the wrong approach.

We shouldn’t go about trying to change ‘politics’ to tailor it to a post-ish MTV generation, constantly in need of new fresh ever changing messages because it simply isn’t sustainable in the long term and will contribute even more towards a disillusionment in politics as a whole.

We should be honest, say that yes, politics is boring, it’s not some simplistic sound bite that will make everything better, its policy, all with their pro’s and con’s that need thrashing out to achieve a better outcome. It doesn’t happen the next day or even the next week and guess what, you may not see the benefits for years or even a generation or two down the line but it’s important.

Returning to where this post started.

There’s a lot that can be done, whether it be directly through the body politic, through a political party, as a community, a group with shared interests or simply as an individual that can have a positive impact on society, the local community or another individual’s life as a whole.

That’s what really matters, not who ‘beat’ who at the dispatch box. I ‘do’ politics but if I’ve watched half a dozen PMQ’s in the last 15 years then that’s probably about it because it doesn’t matter and is a distraction from real politics.

Politics can be a strong catalyst for change but the political system falls into the trap of pandering to an agenda not set by itself, or indeed the people who elect our representatives but an agenda set out by those who’s vested interests are a population of willing consumers, cynical of those who seek to improve the lives of others and pandering to the simplest instincts of base selfishness.

There’s a lot that can be done and I’m really excited about how various uses of data manipulation and interaction can bring about positive change and even the littlest things or resources available contribute to that.

So back to that list of MP’s for the Labour Party that’s been doddering around Tom Watson’s site since the year dot. It doesn’t matter how it’s implemented, if it remains nothing more than a simple list of HTML links. If out there somewhere, there’s a few people that find it useful and it helps them to do something or aid a bit of work then it’s fine and worth keeping. Not so sure about the ‘teens’ section though, that probably is past its sell by date.

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I like this idea.

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Ah, the joys of living in Walsall. OK, Walsall’s always had a reputation for being a bit of a rotten borough and even at times when the other workings of our political system sometimes seem lifeless, there’s always the prospect that Walsall will come riding to the rescue and liven things up a bit.

So without further ado, I present you two rather curious pieces of reporting courteous of the last remaining bastion of impartial news reporting, our veritable own region’s favourite newspaper, the Express & Star.

First article here and second here.

At the risk of being accused of having some personal vendetta against Cllr. Rachel Walker as this is now the third time I’ve dared to criticise her/department I think it’s just fair to say I simply don’t like muppets with a propensity for cocking things up.

Here’s the scenario then. The other week local Government workers undertook a nationwide bit of industrial action over pay. Nothing wrong with that but it seems unlike every other local authority in, well the country I think, Walsall seems to have cocked this one up royally.

Unlike the others who seem to have sorted out any bins not collected on the days in question Walsall has ever so wisely decided in true huggy cuddly New Tory fashion to turn this into a nice bit of union bashing.

So up pops Cllr. Rachel Walker with the “we’re not going to pay those oikish filthy trades unionist scum extra money to collect the rubbish mounting in the streets that wasn’t collected while they we’re being filthy lazy sods and just so you hideous little proles out there know, we’re not going to let them pick up any extra bags the following week either so don’t even think about getting the service you’ve already paid for through your council tax either, what do you think this is a public service or something?”

OK, not the exact words but you get the gist of it.

Then, oh hang on, people ain’t happy about this. Bugger bugger the proles are complaining and it’s getting into the meeja, better call in the Walsall Council Communications Unit to sort this one out.

So now we have a new litter ‘hit squad’ with the obligatory “we’re still not going to let those oiksome trades unionist types get any extra money for striking because they’re scum I tell you, scum.”

Except, hang on a moment here. According to Cllr. Walker herself, these ‘Hit Squads’ (sorry have this really perverse image of blokes dressed all in black with balaclava’s on roaming the streets of Walsall SAS style) are made up of “extra teams of binmen”. So here’s a question.

These ain’t binmen on their normal rounds picking up a bit of extra rubbish on top of the normal. They’re dedicated teams that have required additional organisation and presuming that Walsall council doesn’t have an army of binmen sitting around doing nothing to be called in to sort stuff like this out then where did they come from because presumably all the other binmen would be working on their normal rounds.

They’re not by any chance binmen doing a bit of overtime perhaps?

I wonder how much all this extra organisation and staffing is costing the council to sort out a cock-up that could so easily have been managed within normal services at no cost whatsoever.

Incidentally, kudos to the local Tories for managing to get the timing spot on. Let rubbish mount in the streets during the hottest week to date this year, you couldn’t make up this level of incompetence.

Strangely the comments section on the two articles on the E&S’s website are closed. Heaven forbid people might be critical of a Tory council eh? Got to be trailblazers for freedom of speech you know.

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I don’t much go in for nationalist based political parties even if they do have a broadly left of centre agenda but in all fairness it’s heartily encouraging to see the SNP getting something right.

Not like I’ve been banging on about the importance of bottle recycling for ages like but a bit sad to see that it’s the SNP that are the first to promote it’s introduction while south of the border we still seem to be obsessed with sticking microchips in everything and building dopey databases.

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I’ve just had it confirmed that Gordon Brown is to face a leadership challenge from my own neck of the woods.

Apparently the steps are already in motion. I missed the meeting last night but it was decided that our current MP David Winnick intends to step down during summer allowing a by-election to take place.

The meeting agreed that current Labour Group Leader in Walsall Cllr. Tim Oliver will stand to replace him and then will mount a challenge to Gordon Brown’s leadership.

Speaking, Cllr. Oliver said, “I’ve already secured enough support from members of th PLP to mount a challenge and I don’t think we’ll have any problem in winning a by-election in Walsall North.”

Should be reported on Sky News shortly.

*PS, for the hard of reading, this is satire.

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