Councillor Bob Piper

Move along the trough….

Council leader Mike Whitby was invited to five Premier League matches and was also given free Test Match and Wimbledon tickets.

During the year, Coun Whitby accepted invitations for more than 100 events, mainly drinks receptions, lunches and dinners hosted by companies including Deutsche Bank, Network Rail, River Levitt Bucknall, Pertemps, KPMG, Argent, Amey, Wilmott Dixon, Mitchells & Butler and Calthorpe Estates.

Martin Kettle, was one of the strongest of The Guardinastias arguing last April for a vote for the Lib Dems, remember this tosh, for instance…

But look at today’s polls again. The Lib Dems are first on 34% in YouGov and second by a single point on 31% in Populus. Does that suggest anything?

To me it suggests that the increasingly real question is not whether the Lib Dems will support a Labour government after 6 May. It is whether Labour will support a Liberal Democrat government.

And Kettle is still banging his drum today… with Labour on 43% and the Lib Dems on a risible 7% he tells us… Labour and the Lib Dems need each other.

Yes… like I need toothache, mate!

The euphoria of the Sydney Test celebrations was tinged with sadness for one member of the victorious touring party. The previous day Paul Collingwood had announced it was to be his last Test match and as he celebrated with the rest of the squad, kissing his cap badge in front of the barmy army he knew this was the last time.

Shep* or Colly was the cricketing equivalent of Kevin Keegan. Not the most naturally gifted batsman nor bowler, but someone who applied himself fully and maximised every ounce of the talent he had to reach the very highest points of the game. Some say he was lucky to be a Test player at all, but the old adage of the harder I practice the luckier I get was particularly apt for Collingwood. The two outstanding qualities Colly brought to the team were his outstanding fielding and his back-to-the-wall fighting qualities.

As a fielder, in the slips or at backward point, Collingwood was absolutely top draw, amongst the finest in the world. That enabled him to stand out in the one-day game, but it also helped to inspire the rest of the Test squad to work on their fielding too. Even Monty was seen diving and sprawling on the outfield in an attempt to keep up, and it is a tribute to Colly that the current Ashes team are so professional in their fielding.

His batting was much maligned, particularly by the likes of Geoff Boycott who constantly bellyached about him being too high up the order. But a quick glance at Collingwood’s Test average in comparison to the more technically gifted Bell who Boycott championed, will show not much difference between the two. He was often at his best when the chips were down, eking out a result with the tailenders to try to save a desperate situation for his side. When England won the Ashes back in 2009 they could look back at Colly’s 6-hour rearguard in Cardiff to earn a draw as a decisive factor in the series win. And a double hundred down under in the disastrous 2005 campaign shouldn’t be forgotten either.

Shep will continue in the one-day side, where his brilliance in the field can be crucial, and hopefully when he helps to bring the World Cup to England for the first time he will get more of the plaudits that he deserves, rather than the fortunate journeyman tag the media have applied to his Test career.

Thanks Colly, show ‘em there’s still some life in the old dog yet!

* After the Blue Peter collie dog

“When it comes to the Government and the banks, surely the public are entitled to ask why the Government talk tough and make promises, but then fail to deliver. As we wait to see bonus payments over the coming months, we will remember the Prime Minister’s promise that the era of the big bonus is over”
- George Osborne to the House of Commons, 26th November 2009.

But Government is just soooo much more difficult eh? Bank bonuses ‘to run into billions in 2011′

The government is resigned to UK banks paying out billions of pounds in bonuses this year, despite its calls to curb the payments, the BBC has learned.

Hat tip: Next Left

I see Stormin’ Norman has come as close as he feels he can without losing the Tory whip to endorsing a vote for UKIP in Oldham and Saddleworth. At the last minute, persuaded by a friendly chat with the Tory candidate, he comes down in favour of a vote for the Tory. However, he takes a less than charitable attitude towards his coalition partners, by hoping the Lib Dems finish fourth!

I wouldn’t expect you to have the patience to struggle through everything Tebbitt writes, but a quick flick down the page to the comments will give you a flavour of just how vile and nasty UKIP’s supporters are when you scratch below the surface.

It was Winston Churchill who famously said: “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried”, and damned right he was too. I always get worried when people who complain about our democratic systems come up with solutions which involve less of it.

The coalition seem to think that part of the answer to some issues around parliamentary expenses is to have less Members of Parliament. Both the last Government (and as far as I can tell the current opposition) and the current coalition seem to think that one way of improving local government is to take away the power from democratically elected local councillors and hand over the authority for decision making to a single elected representative and a bunch of unelected officers. Blair’s solution to reforming local government was to neuter the decision making of ward councillors and vest power in a small cabal of Cabinet members.

The response to those who thought this to be undemocratic was to waffle on about how it made decision making quicker. I can never quite understand why people who think this way, that democracy just slows things down, don’t support the notion of dictators, or possibly reverting to the restoration of the all-powerful monarchy.

I’m prompted in these thoughts today by someone a couple of days ago I was heaping praise on, but hey, that’s the way it goes, you build them up and then you knock ‘em down. Today, the usually excellent Plastic Hippo vents his frustration on his local council by arguing that the solution to a bunch of inept councillors is to abolish democracy altogether!

Suspend council with immediate effect and appoint a non-party technical administration to set a budget based on need and not greed to run this town until the local elections in May. Freed from blinkered political compliance and made up of people who actually know what they are talking about and who actually put the borough before themselves, this executive containing representatives from business, health, social care, education and community groups would do a better job than you.

But Hippo, old comrade, who would choose this panel of the great and the good so blessed to be politically neutral? And to whom would they be accountable? I always find Tony Benn’s five tests of democracy a useful guide when looking at these things… particularly the last one.

I won’t dissect the other element of the Hippo’s proposal to scrap two-thirds of existing councillors, although the principle of reducing democracy appears to be the same, on the grounds that I could obviously stand accused of a bit of enlightened self-interest on that one. But suffice it to say where councillors actually do their jobs properly there is a massive workload which would simply mean transferring many duties to unelected officers who it would be difficult to hold to account.

Having spent about 25 years of my life working in Walsall, frequently in conflict with Councillor Bird and his cohorts, I have to say I do understand the Hippo’s sense of frustration. It is born out of well merited contempt for the individuals concerned. But the answer isn’t to scrap our democratic institution, but to strengthen them and make them more effective and more accountable.

Those of us who are members of political parties have a real responsibility here. We should ensure those who stand are of a sufficient standard to represent the electorate, that they comprehend what is expected of them, and they are properly trained to do so. The electorate also need to wise up. Electing an idiot just because they wear a particular coloured rosette just means you’re represented by an idiot.

And those in a position to criticise, lampoon and expose the frailties of those who are elected, should, like the Plastic Hippo, continue to do so loud and long.

One thing this coalition government is good at is allocating blame. We are all familiar with their refrain of “It’s all Labour’s fault, they created this mess” every time they want to take the axe to our vital public services. And in recent weeks it has been local government to blame for not keeping the roads gritted or clearing away the snow (although strangely only last year the slightly batty Theresa Villiers thought the Labour Government was to blame for failing to do the same thing).

And now we find one of Bunter’s minions blaming local government for not clearing away the backlog of rubbish that has accumulated over the Christmas/New Year break. One of those that stands most accused is Birmingham City Council, where residents can boast of having witnessed a partial eclipse of the sun more often that a refuse collection in the last three weeks… see here.

You may, of course, recall that when they were basking in the glow of their new found friendship, Cameron and Clegg both hailed the success of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition in Birmingham as the model for the success of their new partnership.

Probably not something they would want to boast about today, I guess.

Grant Schapps, the Housing Minister on the World at One today:

We’re not asking the top paid chief executives, there are 129 of them earning more than the prime minister, we’re not asking them to do anything more than we’ve done as ministers. Every minister in this government has taken a 5% cut, and a five-year pay freeze. I think if you are expecting people to take some very difficult decisions throughout a local authority, then it’s right to lead from the top.

From the Guardian live blog at lunchtime today…

If you read the Guardian today, you may have seen an advert from the pressure group 38 Degrees describing George Osborne as a tax dodger. It says Osborne “stands accused of dodging £1.6m of tax” and urges the government to take a stronger stance on tax avoidance and tax evasion. The £1.6m figure came from a Channel 4 investigation which found that Osborne could benefit – entirely legally – from an trust fund that will save him and other members of his family £1.6m in inheritance tax. The same advert is in the Independent. But 38 Degrees tell me that Metro and the Daily Telegraph refused to carry it.

It must be so much easier to make that sacrifice to give up your pay rise when you’ve avoided a whopping great tax bill, eh? More details on the Tories leading from the front here.

Come this February this blog will have be chugging along quietly for 7 years, which is quite amazing when I considered jacking it in after a couple of months.

However, Tony Zimmoch at the Bench makes me look a comparative newcomer. Tony’s incredible mixture of family history, music, quirky titbits and odds and end from Hebden Bridge and beyond has been going ten years this week. Unlike those bloggers who strive for popularity and blog about their stat porn, Tony does what Tony wants to do, and bloody well he does it too. In my opinion the best blogs, political or otherwise, tell you something about the person behind the blog, and I don’t just mean in that Iain Dale self publicist way. Nobody does it better than Tony, and although I’ve never met him, I sure as he’ll know I’d enjoy sharing a pint or two with the man

Congratulations Tony, I salute you comrade, and not just for your longevity but also your wonderful originality.

2010 saw the rise of a new blog in the West Midlands that deserves mention amongst the very best around, so in my New Years Honours list I say, “Arise, The Plastic Hippo”.

As so often, the Hippo locates nail, and smacks it firmly on the head… We’ll take a cup of kindness yet. If you don’t already link to the Hippo, do so now, trust me, you will be well rewarded.