Entries Tagged 'Tory Bashing' ↓

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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Maybe it’s the sudden heat but are the British people actually considering trusting someone too thick to lock their bike up properly to run the country. it’s getting scary out there y’know.

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Your humble Penguin is taking a little break to do family things at the moment but those in need of a thoroughly good read should drop by Unity’s place at MoT for a rather good expose of the Centre for Dopey Conservative Future Students, AKA the Centre for Open Politics.

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A bit of linky love for tonight but given all the insinuations about the Smith Institute bandied about on the right of the political blogosphere isn’t it ever so ironic that another Tory front operation should crop up, duly exposed by Unity over at MoT.

I’m sure the forces of light with be whipping themselves into action over this one. Or maybe not.

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The last six months or so have been marked by the constant drip of criticism from the Tories that following Governmental departments having lost various pieces of people’s personal information that this leads directly to the ‘Labour can’t be trusted with your data’ mantra.

How apt then that it should be that on the eve of polling for what’s probably one of the most hotly contested by-elections in years that the Tories should manage to e-mail off the personal data including names, addresses, telephone numbers, voting intentions and socio-economic groups of 8,575 key voters in Crewe and Nantwich to some foreign journalists.

Apart from the obvious breach of data protection legislation of taking such sensitive data outside of the internal political party structure it does beg the question why they would see fit to simply e-mail such information around in th first place? Were they using encrypted e-mails or was it some whipper snapper sitting in front of their Hotmail account?

There will of course be some very serious questions that need answering to the Information Commissioners office tomorrow morning of which I’d just like to add this extra one.

Although not all of the recipients have been named, one that has is the Isle of Man based Manx Radio. Now for those not disposed of the knowledge of the geo-political status of that little island between us and Ireland it has an almost unique status being a rather nice cushy little tax haven for certain individuals.

To achieve this status it has to lie outside of both the EU and the EEA.

Now for those who know their onions regarding data protection registration there are some important clauses (actually they’re called ‘prinicples’) in the registration that is filed with the Information Commissioners office.

We of course need the answer to a question first. Under who’s jurisdiction in terms of the data controller for the Tories is said data?

According to the Information Commissioner’s Office there is no registration for anything like a local Crewe and Nantwich Conservative Association and this being a by-election where national parties step into the breach we can only assume that the national Tory party is in charge and here’s their registration:

Registration Number: Z5909711

CCHQ
25 VICTORIA STREET
LONDON
SW1H 0DL

While we’re at it, here’s the statement of purposes for the use of data under their control, long I know but the important bit is at the end of each statement of purpose:

Purpose 1

None outside the European Economic Area

Yes, that’s right. ‘None outside the EEA’ which is rather a bugger when you send your data to someone in the Isle of Man isn’t it?

I think a nice little e-mail to the Information Commissioner’s Office is in order. Just being helpful like…

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This is actually a political blog so just to remind ourselves, here’s a link to Unity over a MoT with a nice little article involving a Freedom of Information request, little Billy Hague, an executive jet and breaching the regulations to declare donations to the Electoral Commission on time. Enjoy.

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Sometimes in politics, at least for those of us who have been around for a fair time and have long memories, you come across politicians who you can only assume must think people are stupid or inhabit worlds where recollection doesn’t stretch back more than a fortnight.

When I first started becoming involved in politics, nothing more exciting than a bit of leafletting in the 1987 General Election the attack lines of the Tories back then after having been in power for eight years was very much to concentrate on attacking Labour for events in the 1970’s.

That’s a little taster about this post. We’re going to rake up something that one would presume David Cameron should be aware of and if not then here’s a little history lesson to go with his latest publicity stunt, sorry, meant to say informed and well thought through policy initiative.

From the BBC today. Cameron announces how the development of ‘green coal’ or to be more precise systems that allow the capture of carbon emissions from the burning/gasification of coal and subsequent safe storage, yes I know, not quite as catchy as ‘green coal’ but more accurate.

Your humble Penguin takes a keen interest in energy policy, in particular energy related security issues and this announcement by Cameron brought back a few memories from a conversation I had with my father in the early 90’s.

My father and I don’t always agree on every subject but I respect him as a very intelligent man who has an uncanny ability to see things long into the future. He also has an amazing ability to recall conversations and information from decades past, something I myself seem to have inherited.

So back in 1993 when Michael Heseltine as Trade Secretary was announcing what was in effect the death of the British coal industry, my fathers reaction was this:

“The stupid f*ckers! You wait and see, in 20 years time when all the North Sea gas is running out and we’ll have to import it all from bloody Russia they’ll realise they’ve dropped a b*llock. It’s all very well saying these new gas power stations are cleaner than coal but we’ve (as in British) been developing clean coal technology for years and you mark my words if the b*stards don’t pull all the funding on that too. You watch, in 20 years time we’ll have to go back to coal and we’ll pay for it because the mines will have flooded and we’ll have to buy the technology that we started back off some other country because those b*stards (the Tories) are too f*cking stupid to see what’s coming.”

You can probably guess that my father felt quite strongly on the issue and no, he’s not an ex-miner.

OK, it’s now almost 15 years later but apart from the timescale, I think my father pretty much got it right. The Tories through what I can only deduce was a political motivation, brought about the demise of our coal industry. They didn’t foresee what, if it was obvious to my father back then, presumably some expert at the time might have told them. Put simply, policy decision made back in 1993 following on from what occurred in the 1980’s led us into a position where we as a country are in an increasingly difficult position regarding our ability to generate our own energy requirements and more specifically threatens our future energy security.

With this recollection in mind I decided to have a little look around about what happened and came up with some interesting articles well worth a read. First up comes from the archives of the New Scientist in April 1993. That June, this article also appeared in the New Scientist by Ian Fells, professor of energy conversion at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, of which I particularly like the final couple of paragraphs:

” For a country with extensive coal reserves, why isn’t Britain developing its technology by way of a demonstration plant? On the idea of building a clean-coal demonstration plant in Britain, the White Paper points out that such a venture would ‘not materially affect the number of coal mines kept in operation in the UK this decade’ and so could not justify supporting it.

So, Britain watches its initial lead in this vital area slip away to its competitors. Long-term R&D is the major casualty of the ’short termism’ engendered by a market-led energy policy. Britain is in danger of destroying its innovative industrial base and becoming an offshore ‘banana republic’ buying licences for high technology engineering from its European partners. The government will be forced to balance the books by turning UK Ltd into a gigantic theme park with tourists visiting sanitised coal mines and gas works to see how Great Britain was in the old days.”

Couldn’t have put it better myself really.

So what did exactly happen to Britain’s leading edge technological advantage in the area of clean coal? The actual process wasn’t all that new. The original concept dates back to the 1960’s but in the days of the nationalised coal industry there was the Coal Research Establishment which formed part of the National Coal Board then British Coal Corporation. However with passing of the Coal Industry Act in 1995 it became the Coal Authority and was subsequently privatised.

Back in 1993 the research arm, the CRA found itself in difficulty because a substantial amount of its funding came from the industry which with the massive closure of pits led to less income meaning that for a short period the Government injected some funding with the usual reassurances that come before things get closed down.

Questions were asked in Parliament, notably on the 22nd March 1994 where the clearest indications of the level of importance the then Tory Government had regarding the development of coal technology can be seen in the statement by the Rt Hon Patrick McLoughlin MP after the token bit about how much money the Government is putting in:

“Precise funding needs after that will be agreed following the planned review of the programme involving the industry in 1995. We are also establishing the new Advisory Committee on Coal Research, to replace the coal task force and advise on United Kingdom coal research needs across the board.”

For those of a cynical nature you’ll probably all know what happened next. Industry wasn’t interested in the research and development after privatisation. They’d got the assets that they wanted and true to form the CRE (actual research part of it) closed in 1995, I think it still exists in name as some quango but as for actually doing any research it’s long gone, along with the clean coal technology that we had a chance to lead the world in. If you’re interested in a visual representation of what the Tories did to our research into clean coal technology you might want to have a look here. Caution, it’s depressing.

Of course it has been developed by other countries, notably Germany where they implemented the first ‘clean coal’ station but there again, the German’s didn’t have a Government that systematically went about destroying their coal industry like we did. Sad to think that Britain was in a prime position to dominate this emerging technology and now we’re reduced to buying back the fruits of that technology from the development of other countries into an area that we started. Let’s not get on to tilting trains either shall we?

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Sometimes in politics you can completely miss people. Hopi Sen’s cracking bit of investigation revealing Tory photo-fiddling brought up just such a person, Karen Lumley, Conservative PPC for Redditch. Her website is here. Love the piccy with Davey boy Cameron by the way, at least that one doesn’t look like it’s been fiddled with.

While having a little look around I noticed that the black bar at the bottom where it does the published by bit looked funny. There were some white dots along the bottom of it which for anyone in the business the first thing you think about is whether there’s a load of keywords dropped in with the same background colour to boost search engine optimisation. It’s an old rather dodgy trick and despite most search engines being able to spot it and risking getting de-listed if caught it still goes on although not to the extent that it used to.

The easiest way to spot it is to try and highlight the text with the mouse. In this case, no not any dodgy SEO tricks but simply a copyright notice and a created by so-and-so web designer. Strangely though, apart from thinking the web designer must be a bit crap at, well, web design to allow such a misalignment, the name, CCS Coleshill rang a few bells in the old noggin.

So I decided to have a little look at who they are by dropping by their website which apart from being even crapper than Karen’s site suddenly brought it back to me why I’d remembered the name.

CCS Coleshill AKA Coleshill Campaigning Services which is on their contact section cropped up last year. That would be the ones hooked up with the Midlands Industrial Council that the Electoral Commission were investigating. Nice to know they’re still about and doing admittedly not so good website work for Tory PPC’s. Those in need of a refresher can look here, here, here, and here. Anyone want to tell Karen something?

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Quickie for tonight. A link into an excellent bit of research by Hopi Sen who’s caught the Tories photo-fiddling.

Now will we see the synchronised jumping up and down extolling outrage with equally demanding calls for resignations that we say a couple of months back? Nah, I didn’t think so either.

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While the Tories go about their constant attempt to smear the Labour Party by claiming it has used their policy I thought it might be prudent to drop this little one into the mix.

Yesterday David Cameron launched something that as a Cooperator myself appears to be something of a contradiction; the Conservative Cooperative Movement. The problem is that Conservative and Cooperative don’t go together. Putting aside the damage the Tories did to the Cooperative movement when they were in power, putting aside any kind of ideological difference between the collective and mutual perspective of the Cooperative movement and the selfish individualistic doctrine of the Tory Party, it just doesn’t seem right for the leader of the Conservative Party to be talking about Cooperatives.

Of course we’ve been in this territory before. Davey boy turns up to make some speech, tailored to say one thing to those people that day while happily saying something else the next day. We’ve come to expect this kind of duplicitous behaviour. We’ve also come to realise that David Cameron isn’t too hot, or probably more likely, his back room team aren’t too hot on doing prior research.

That is of course an exception in this case because Cameron’s speech which you can read in full here, has some really good examples of how cooperative principles can be enacted within the education sector and good on him too because he cites examples from overseas, specifically Spain and Sweden where there is a longer history of cooperative structures of school management.

There’s only one slight, or to put it more accurately, big problem with this policy that Cameron attributes to Iain Duncan Smith. It’s been nicked, pinched, pilfered, call it what you like because back in September Ed Balls launched the Cooperative Party Education Policy. (Please note, this is a rather large PDF file and may take a while to download).

It’s the Cooperative Party’s proposals for the greater involvement of Cooperative management structures in schools and gives exactly the same proposals that Davey boy is passing off as Tory ideas. Not only that, you know Dave praises how well they’ve done on this in Spain and Sweden? Well guess which countries are highlighted as the examples of this practice from an international perspective in the Cooperative Party document? Yep, that would be Spain and Sweden then. Anyone would think David Cameron, sorry Iain Duncan Smith after all it’s apparently he who is the mastermind behind this new Tory policy had been having a little butchers through the Coop Party’s policy document.

Sorry lads, we were here a long time before you lot when it comes to these policies and incidentally, if you want to be really radical, instead of just proposing that parents can take over the local LEA run school, how about extending it to all schools? If the parents of the local Grammar or private school feel their kids would be better served by cooperatising the school then surely you’d be in favour of enabling them to do so? It is parent choice after all that’s the determining factor here isn’t it? Nah, didn’t think so.

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