Political Penguin

I did mention as I got caught up in all this Tory attack nonsense that I was planning on writing an article that was critical of my own side. It’s a bit long-winded and requires some explanation, particularly that of a techie nature but bear with me there’s some interesting and important points to be made.

The genesis of this topic started when I received an e-mail encouraging me to sign a petition on No.10′s website. I don’t sign petitions as a rule and in all fairness this particular petition was poorly worded. However the good intention was there, it was something dear to my heart and I thought very valid to be raised.

Basically it was to encourage the Government to use Linux operating systems in Departments and the public sector in general.

Here’s why it wasn’t a particularly well phrased petition. It pretty much only mentioned Linux which to be fair is only one part of a wider use of Open Source Software (OSS) and I would agree that if the objective is to encourage the use of OSS in the public sector then there are far better places to start than simply trying to adopt Linux as an operating system.

Anyway as I’ve never signed one of these Downing Street petitions before I wasn’t aware that they send out responses but I was interested by the one that I got. Here it is:

“Government policy on Open Source Software (OSS) is available in the document “Open Source Software, Use within UK Government, Version 2.0, 28 October 2004″. This is available from www.govtalk.gov.uk. The policy is set out on page 4 of the document. In particular the Government will:

The UK Government champions open standards and interoperability through the e-government interoperability framework (e-gif). This framework is available from the ‘govtalk’ web site. The ability to substitute one component for another removes the dependency on a single supplier and encourages competition – an essential for Transformational Government. Many authors of software embrace open standards and interoperability but do not wish to make their source code freely available; they should not be penalised.”

Me being the curious Penguin that I am decided to read through all the various documentation referred to and a few others as well.

Now on to a side issue where this becomes less an administrative issue and more a political issue.

The other day I was browsing through my site stats and picked up a referral from Technorati which looked interesting. Can’t remember what it was but I came up on the same page as Guido AKA Paul Delaire Staines.

As I don’t read his site I wouldn’t normally have picked up on it but had a little look. It was an interesting piece about George Osbourne talking up the benefits of OSS and to go with it Guido provided nice little graphical representations implying that the Labour Party was in some way in league with the evil empire of Microsoft compared of course to the open and wonderfully modern and forward thinking Tories.

Another side issue. I wanted to link to that post so dropped back the Paul Delaire Staine’s site tonight but couldn’t find it. There’s a simple reason. His site is complete and utter shite from a design/functional perspective. No category listings that aren’t present in posts on the front page, no hierarchical archives section to search by date and I didn’t spot a search function either. Purely from the perspective of a techie who designs websites with functionality as the core objective, I would be ashamed to put such a shoddy pisspoor site on the net but hey ho, back to the issue.

So Paul Delaire Staines did a piece talking up the Tories and doing down Labour, no surprise there then. However and this is why the ‘sort of…’ bit appears in the title of this post. I’d originally planned on giving my own side a bit of a drumming on this issue but it’s a bit more complicated than a straight fight against the evil empire of Microsoft, not that I would expect such a complex issue to be handled on Paul Delaire Staines site, he does afterall appeal to the Janet and John end of the political spectrum.

I’ve touched on a lot of the various issues before in this post so please refer to it if there’s any concepts you’re not familiar with.

Let’s run with the Tories good on OSS and Labour bad and we’ll split this into two categories. Use by the parties and use in Government when in power.

Use in Government first, that’s the easiest. Now OSS has been around for many years but it’s only been the last 5 or so years that it’s been hitting the mainstream for regular users. Prior to this any use of OSS has been determined by the techie bods behind the scenes and uses have been more concentrated on various server structures, e-mail systems etc, not your average desktop application that people actually use from day to day. Now because of this it’s hard to criticise the Tories for not implementing it when they were in power.

However, this was the period when a lot of the civil service used a particular Word Processor called WordPerfect which was systematically replaced by the Microsoft Office package throughout virtually every level of government departments so with all due respect to Paul Delaire Staines on this one, it’s a bit rich to accuse Labour as being under the power of the evil Microsoft when it’s those same Tories who he’s now espousing as the radical proponents of OSS who stuck the shit in the public sector to start with when there were perfectly acceptable and as most techies would probably agree, a far superior product being used to start with although it too was not OSS.

Labour have been in power for almost a decade and in fairness have done very little to either alter the situation as regards implementation of OSS solutions or promote it. However in October 2004 at least the Government published a paper on it’s use which is far more than the Tories ever did. Has anything been done about it, well I haven’t spotted anything particular from national level but there is some shift in local services. The most interesting is implementations in schools which as far as I can tell is being driven less from actual policy by individual local authorities and more from simple practical cost/benefit perspectives of individual schools where the onus on the change often comes down to the particular techie in question who’s been tasked with the implementation of IT systems.

The irony of this is that implementation in the public sector isn’t coming from top-down diktat but more from grassroots practical implementation on a local level to deal with the specific challenges and needs of the services in question.

The problem with implementation in the public sector is twofold. Firstly, large organisations invariably tend towards slow change over time, radical overhauls, particularly IT systems in the public sector tend not to be a good thing. People are happy with what they’ve been using for years, were trained on and have a suspicion of using new systems. Secondly what exactly are we talking about when we refer to using OSS in the public sector?

It’s not about sticking Linux on every desktop in every government department and local authority. There are a plethora of OSS applications out there that happily sit on Windows operating systems and I would be more inclined to agree that change there is where it is needed.

There’s only a few applications required for use in most aspects of the public sector, an office suite, e-mail client and web browser, not really that hard. Of these well the web browser isn’t of great significance from a cost perspective because it comes bundled with the operating system. However e-mail client and office suites are. A simple switch to openoffice.org and say Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail client would save millions and unlike many switches of software, retraining costs are negligible. To be honest if any member of staff in the public sector can’t work out how to use openoffice.org after having used Microsoft Office then they have serious problems. The functionality, layout, style of the two applications are near on identical. Same is true for Thunderbird compared to Microsoft Outlook, looks a bit different but how hard is it to send an e-mail?

So there you go, a bit of criticism of the Labour Government for not pushing implementation where it could easily be done, but equally the Tories are to blame for many of the problems in the first place and I haven’t spotted a single Tory controlled local authority in the country about to embark down the road to IT enlightenment so we’ll put the George Osbourne thing down to a crap publicity stunt.

On to the parties actual usage then. After all if you’re going to espouse the use of OSS then one would assume you use it yourself. It’s a bit like telling people not to fly and then taking short haul trips that could easily be done by road. Or banging on about energy saving while burning shitloads of halogen bulb spots in your kitchen, that sort of thing.

Now one thing that came out of that Webcameron thing last week was a few hits from Tory Party HQ and please note, I’m going to say something complimentary about the Tories here. They use Firefox, an OSS web browser. Actually, all I know is that maybe one person in Tory HQ uses it but at least that’s one so for the record they get a tick box of approval on that one. Not sure what Labour or the LibDems use so can’t really offer an opinion there. Equally when it comes to operating systems and e-mail clients I really don’t know either but I’m going to hazard a guess they all use Windows with the odd Mac lying around for specific graphical and publishing work.

Here’s where we can get a picture of things though. Websites. Now I have no time to check out every single MP’s/Cllr’s/MEP’s website but from a bit of sampling here’s my conclusions. As regards elected members higher than Councillors I didn’t find a single one from the Tories or LibDems using an open source web system. I could be wrong, I’ll be happy to accept examples but from my mouch around the net I didn’t pick up on any. I found a fair few being used by Labour members, mainly it has to be said WordPress blogs although Harriet Harman has a Typo 3 front end with a WordPress blog tagged on to the back. When we get down to the Councillor level there’s a lot more Tories using open source stuff, again mainly WordPress but I didn’t spot a LibDem as they seem to often use some strange system that I’m assuming the party nationally set up for them.

On to the three main parties home websites. LibDems, looks like a bespoke system as does the Tories. Now of course I can only surmise from my own knowledge of scripting by looking at their source code but one usually finds that if a generator of some sort has been used it appears in the code. If however they have used OSS solutions or the companies they’ve employed to do their sites for them have and deliberately omitted it then that’s a big no no in the techiquette book. Labour on the other hand use a system called Typo 3 which is OSS, it clearly states it in the source code of the site and although I’m personally of the opinion that if you use OSS web solutions then you should also put it somewhere on your site, I won’t be too critical as it’s not a set requirement.

So there you go, Labour not so bad after all when it comes to the old OSS. I will qualify my statements above by saying that I used sample to derive these conclusions. I could quite easily have picked the wrong sites out and I’m happy to receive corrections or pointers in the direction of examples. I’m also really interested as I get a fair few hits from those working in the public sector of what you’re using at work. I’d like to do a bit more on this if I get enough responses to derive some serious data from so here’s what I would like to know. Here’s a few likely examples but please add others:
What operating system you’re using? Windows, Mac OS, Linux
What office package do you use? Microsoft, openoffice.org, Corel, Lotus
What web browser do you use? Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Netscape
What e-mail client do you use? Outlook, Thunderbird, Lotus

Feel free to post in the comments section although I know that people from political parties or the public sector might not wish to be identified then feel free to use the contact section and mail me. On this occasion all messages will be treated in strictest confidence and I won’t reveal anyone’s identity. If you could give indications like which party, which governmental department/local authority then that would help immensely. This for me isn’t really a party political issue, it’s more a personal campaign for better use of software in the public sector so I shan’t be using any of the data to have a pop at any party.

A good result.

Well if we are to believe Gerry Sutcliffe in this article in the Times then it would appear so.

Hat tip to Tom Watson for this one. A nice little idea for anyone to get their name up in lights in Brum or indeed anyone else you think deserves it.

Nah… He wouldn’t be that stupid would he?

I have a confession. I love Eurovision. I know many love it and many hate it, it’s the musical equivalent of Marmite.

However, with absolute despair I watched the contest to pick our entry this year. In fairness I hardly ever watch it because our propensity for picking absolute shite is renown.

Enter this years lambs, sorry cutting edge pop group who are going to bring back the glory to Britain with a collection of dodgy air steward/hostess costumes and implied references to oral sex and taking it up the arse.

Perhaps it’s a British thing that we don’t take European matters seriously but others do and while we continue to troop out halfwitted banal crap like this then quite frankly we deserve the pitiful amount of votes that we receive year after year.

Anyway, if you want to know what we’re up against go here. The Penguin household’s votes will be going to Finland again this year. Perhaps a few sad sods in Ireland might give us a couple, who knows, but we don’t deserve them.

Yep, the Formula 1 season is upon us. I’ll be up all night watching the qualifying for the Australian GP and tomorrow for the race.

I will be very happy if this year we (as in McLaren) can actually win a race, which I’m sure we will and hopefully a few with Lewis Hamilton.

Mrs Penguin has gone out for the night. Leaving myself and Little Penguin all alone in the house.

Little Penguin’s cousin who’s 3 years older still listens to fairy tales and lullaby music. We tried this initially but he didn’t seem to take to it. No, the Little Penguin is definitely a rocker, first up Paradise City then on to Paranoid and a back collection of heavy Finnish rock.

The kid has taste.

No, not the post I meant to write which is critical of my own Government but something that’s come up in the last few days.

Now just for the record, it seems I have to put disclaimers before posts now, this isn’t having a go at the Tories although I will file it in the Tory Bashing section. I’m interested in the issue and the practicalities of implementation.

Right, on Sunday the Tories release some plans for environmental issues which would have been an exclusive with the Observer but hey, shit happens and it got leaked. I was a bit disappointed in the sense that they didn’t seem too well thought through.

Haven’t got a problem with higher fuel duty on domestic flights apart from the obvious problems it’s going to cause carriers in terms of competitiveness against foreign firms but hey, we do seriously need to do something about the environment and global warming so I won’t criticise that the good intention isn’t there.

However I’m not too convinced on two other proposals. Flight tax linked to carbon emissions and a tax on ‘frequent’ fliers. Here’s why:

If taxes are linked towards carbon emissions then by and large it’s the firms with the older planes that are going to get hit worst. Those carriers with newer fleets with more efficient planes won’t. Good if you’re EasyJet or Ryanair with sparkly new planes less than a decade old ironically the carriers that are being blamed because of their business approach. Not so good if you’re BA and other carriers with planes approaching 30 years old. Turnover of fleets is slow in the aviation industry, 50 years is a regular lifespan of a plane and as much as I might wish to see the Tories cause themselves problems, someone might have suggested this proposal will annoy quite a lot of business people who normally have a predisposition to supporting them.

However it’s this idea about taxing frequent fliers that I’m more interested in. Apart from frequent fliers generally being business people, a pillar of Tory support and people they might not want to annoy if they intend getting back into power any time soon, it’s the implementation and practicalities of the issue that I’m more concerned about.

Recently there was a bit of bandwaggon jumping by the Tories regarding the issue of road pricing, tracking cars and making people pay by the mile, personally I think it’s a bit of a crap idea too but for a start this is effectively the same thing, it’s just in the air instead of on the ground. What it does require is the ability to track every single man woman and child in the country to see where they’re flying to and keep a record of that so as to tax them appropriately. This of course poses a big challenge for anyone wishing to implement such a policy as the only feasible way would be through a logging system and hey presto we’re back to the idea of ID cards and there being some Government department somewhere tracking exactly where you’re going. Not wishing to be rude but the Tories have said they’ll scrap ID cards and have played up their concerns on how it will restrict individual liberty. By proposing such a scheme this does make them sound rather hypocritical.

Anyway, today comes an announcement by Gordon Brown. Where the tact on meeting the challenges of reducing our countries carbon emissions is focused not on aviation but on households and, party politics aside as regular readers will know I’m quite keen on environmental issues, I think Gordon’s got it right or at least more right than the Tories.

Aviation is a very small proportion of carbon emissions yet it receives vastly more attention than it deserves. Yes it is an area of growth but even in the context of transport carbon emissions it’s nothing compared to cars, an issue the Tories have diligently steered away from.

Homes and businesses on the other hand are where we can make a real impact with probably the minimum level of investment and change to both lifestyle and living standards. If we accept that we may not be able to achieve complete carbon zero housing but address the inefficiencies in our nations housing stock then we can make a massive dent in the carbon footprint of our country. Some of these can be by incentive in terms of grants for insulation and others can be by diktat by regulating out the use of standby buttons on consumer electricals and how about banning the sale of incandescent light bulbs. If memory serves me correctly Australia or New Zealand has, pretty sure it’s Australia. The amount of energy and therefore both our countries carbon footprint and it’s reliance on outside power sources can be dramatically reduced.

It doesn’t take some complicated scheme of tracking everyone’s movements. It’s relatively easy to achieve change and not only will it be beneficial to the environment but also to our pockets in the long run.

So on that basis, and as there’s been a bit of a media circus focussing on who’s the greenest; Brown or Cameron then I think on balance Brown is attending to a more serious problem and in a much more straight forward and easier to achieve way than Cameron at the moment. However I will concur with Tom Watson on this one. I know how he feels having been digging this weekend and getting ready to plant my crops to feed the family, this being green ain’t arf painful at times.

Wasn’t exactly sure how to approach this one. The temptation as always when people turn up and make stupid comments and have a go at you is to give them a good slap down. Especially when they are from your political opponents.

I’m still tempted but I am minded that despite the fact that I am openly partisan I also consider myself to be a fair person. I am also tempted to include copious amounts of profanity in this particular post but have decided not to on the basis of having done my fair share of it lately although a little may slip in.

Now just for the record, I’ve said it before, in fact it was included in the first post of this blog that I welcome informed and polite commenting, even if people disagree with me. I fully accept that we live in a society where many people’s views can differ and within our party dominated political structure it is the case that those who take particularly strong interest or views of a certain persuasion often end up supporting one party or another.

I have no problem with that. I also believe that an enlightened political discourse is to be encouraged in a democratic society and if my site can be a small vehicle through which people can discuss things in an informed and appropriate manner then I positively encourage it.

I’m also aware that like any community of people there are rules albeit unwritten, and etiquettes that must be followed. Those that step outside of these rules and etiquettes are quite often and justifiably so chastised. This is as relevant to the online community as much as it is to any other. This is why I’m going to deal with a comment raised in this post.

Danny Havering wishes to imply that in some way I may be envious of the way a young person like Cllr. Rachel Walker has risen to be a Councillor because the Tories are such an enlightened party in Walsall and give young people a chance and my party has in some way conspired to keep both me and other young people out of winnable seats. He’s also rather naughty in through his comment sending out the guarded inference that he knows my identity.

Let’s deal with these issues one at a time. My anonymity for a start. Again, please refer back to my first post on this site and the response I gave to my old mate Paul Macmanomy on the issue. I do not choose to emblazon my site with my name nor do I (as of course I could) choose to run it in a way that ensures my anonymity. In fact I even give instructions on how to find out who I am and openly acknowledge my first name. What have we learned from this? Danny is either clever enough to use a whois tool on a URL in which case I bow in absolute awe of his supreme tech knowledge or he’s been put up by someone who has or someone who’s having a good guess at my identity from what I’ve written. Either that or it’s a deliberate inference inspired by someone not capable of doing this but has a good idea who I am and wishes me to fall into the trap of ‘outing’ myself. Either way, my identity is no secret and if they’ve been so stupid as to have not either worked it out by now after 4 months or try to trap me into revealing it then I truly feel sorry for them.

Second point. Again refer back to my first ever post in relation to how I conduct myself in terms of having a go at parties other than my own. I won’t attack other parties or particular representatives of them purely on the basis of party politics. Sometimes a bit of fun but if we’re talking serious criticism then it’s the issues that are important to me. I will however admit to not being equal in my treatment of different parties. This is based purely on my personal experience in dealing with them and the extent to which I either view their perspective on the world or their actions.

So just for the record I actually am not predisposed to be particularly venomous towards Tories. I do actually respect the long history of the Tory Party and in the fact that although I may personally despise the principals and ideology behind it I do recognise that those people who support or join it do believe in something. Anyone who does know me will also know that without doubt the party for which I purely despise simply because it believes in nothing and stands for nothing is the Liberal Democrats. In which case it can be seen in my writing that I do reserve a rather harder line against this party than I do for the Tories.

Now on to Walsall politics. Danny Havering correctly identified that I stood for election in the Short Heath ward. A big round of applause for that one. Should I be in some way envious of Cllr. Rachel Walker’s rise at a young age to being given a winnable seat, getting on to the council and becoming a cabinet member, no. Here’s why.

Firstly he implies by his assertion that there is in some way a pecking order by which the Tories pick their candidates in Walsall. The Labour Party is democratic in it’s nature and just to put your mind at ease, we don’t pick candidates in line with ‘that person’s done their apprenticeship in a crap un-winnable ward and we can move them up to standing in a safe ward so they can be a councillor.’ Not that it is any of Danny Havering’s business but just to put him right on this one. I have sought to be selected as the Labour Party candidate on four occasions. In three instances I was selected and stood and in one I wasn’t, I will be the first to admit that the candidate in that case who was chosen was the right choice there, and in case he was wondering, no it wasn’t the Willenhall South by-election in 2005 for which I did not attend the selection meeting as a potential candidate.

If this means that the Labour Party in Walsall somehow discriminates against young people then Danny Havering should really make sure that he has some foundation before he expresses such views. In the case of Waheed and Aqeel there are equally good reason for why they did not seek to stand and he really should not comment on issues that he knows nothing about.

Danny is probably young, a bit naive and dreams of one day becoming a Councillor in Walsall (Christ knows why). If his views on UKPollingReport are anything to go by then he needs to spend a bit more time in the classroom. Just who are these floating voters that have come into Walsall South from Walsall North? The only movement was a small area of the Birchills Leamore Ward into Pleck and it shows he doesn’t get out canvassing much if he thinks that area is stacked with floating voters. They might also be a bit miffed after Walsall Council screwed up the 2004 election and disenfranchised them.

As for my own political aspirations when it comes to Walsall Council I simply have none. I can categorically say that I will never seek election to Walsall Council. I simply do not intend to live in the Walsall Borough for the rest of my life. I love my home town of Willenhall, but it is done a great disservice by being part of the Walsall Borough and like many of it’s residents we associate ourselves with Wolverhampton more than we will ever do with Walsall. As I get older I realise that I only have one life, it’s slowly getting shorter, there’s a world out there to discover and I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend the rest of it in the confines of the Walsall Borough.

In relation to the particular post regarding Cllr. Rachel Walker I would point out that rather than attacking her purely on the basis that she is a Tory Councillor there is a very valid point. She went on record, across the front page of the Walsall Advertiser (I only mention that because I know the journo’s from the Walsall Advertiser drop by my site) and said that it’s OK for shopkeepers to put out wares on the pavement when in fact to do this contravenes both council policy and legislation.

If a Councillor and indeed a Cabinet member who is responsible for the relevant department is stating publicly that it is OK to commit an offence then I do believe that on that basis she should be due for a bit of criticism. I have sought only to criticise her on the basis of misinforming the public and I think that is pretty much in line with the policy that I keep on my site.

The internet is a nasty place at times. I try to do my bit to uphold a certain degree of responsibility in my writings. I don’t go in for personal attacks in relation to what people might look like, make assertions as to how people may have got to where they are, I try to concentrate wholly on issues and policy. There is too much in terms of personality politics in Britain and I’ll be damned if I’m going to contribute to it. There are plenty of blogs out there who do that but for me personally I try my best to stick to the issues. So just to give you two examples. Bob Piper has affectionately referred to Colin Ross, that’s the LibDem organiser who also works for Ian Shires the leader of the LibDems in Walsall and who’s job is paid for by Walsall MBC as ‘fat Colin’. No disrespect to Bob, he’s entitled to refer to him in that way as far as I’m concerned but for me I will not mention Colin’s weight as it is irrelevant to me, I am far more interested in what he does or doesn’t say and what he gets up to in a political/professional context.

In the same way I’m sure and there’s a disclaimer in here that I do not personally believe this nor would I use such a description but as an example, someone who wished to criticise Cllr. Rachel Walker could refer to the size of her stature or infer that she got to where she is on the basis of her relationship with fellow Tory Cabinet member Adrian Andrews. That in my book would be a wholly unjustified and irrelevant in the context of the issue that is being discussed as it is the issue that is important, not the individual. The mere fact that it was Cllr. Rachel Walker who made the statement is purely incidental, if Tom Ansell had made it, if Melvin Pitt had made it then the criticism would have been the same. Neither of which people I have ever stood against in an election.

I do refer to Cllr. Rachel Walker’s experience in the article and in no way is this in relation to her age. She is simply someone who has been on the council for less than three years and I think it is fair to say that anyone who becomes a Councillor from whatever party they come from takes time to learn the processes, understand the practices and learn the ins and outs whether they’re a Councillor when they’re 21 or 51. Whether Cllr. Rachel Walker is competent to undertake her role as a cabinet member is entirely up to the Tory group and its leadership on Walsall council. My own personal view is that she may have shown her lack of knowledge of her brief and subsequently not only embarrassed herself but also put shopkeepers in the position where they may be prosecuted in the process.

On to Walsall Council itself. Danny Havering makes the point that Labour have also run Walsall Council at times in the last 27 years and therefore are equally to blame for the lack of implementation of a policy relating to legislation passed in 1980. Yes, I completely agree. As Danny has had a good look through my Walsall MBC section he will no doubt have noticed that I do reserve it for some criticism. In some cases this might be in relation to it being run by the Tories, in others it’s purely that I do not think Walsall Council is particularly good and no amount of Audit Commission star ratings is going to change my mind on the matter. I purely judge it on my personal experience and in comparison to my experience with other local authorities that I have dealt with in the past.

Equally if I think there’s something positive to say about it then I will and in fact I have on two occasions. I’ve dealt with many different departments in Walsall Council over the years and I’m sorry to say that I’ve been disappointed with the service and competency at a number of times. I will however say that I think the election unit is on the whole quite good, apart from the complete mess of the 2004 election count when I spent a full 15 hours of my life stuck in the town hall while votes were counted using a completely crap system devised by the then new head of the unit from New Zealand, and I will also say that although I have only had one dealing with the Planning Office, I thought they were bloody excellent.

This goes for what I may wish to write about political parties as well. I will make positive comments about the Tories if I think they deserve it. I was planning to write something rather complimentary about two of the Tory Councillors in Walsall but if these are the kind of antics Tories wish to play at I may well desist from trying to be fair and even handed. Equally, you never know, one day I might even write something nice about the Liberal Democrats but I highly doubt it.

Finally a few links that Danny Havering might like to follow when it comes to discourse and etiquette on the old interwebnet where he might find some useful advice. Here’s a nice piece by Tyger, I’d pay particular attention to the bit about picking fights with people who could well have considerably more tech knowledge than yourself. Here where Unity gives a friendly warning to a Tory who’s too big for his boots and here where Unity takes to pieces a Tory who doesn’t take heed of warnings.

Oh, and Danny, if you haven’t realised, you’re at the warning stage, if you’ve taken offence by anything disparaging I’ve written I apologise, but in all honesty if these couple of jibes get you then you’re not going to last long in politics mate. You may have a bright future ahead of you and aspirations to become a Councillor in Walsall, maybe even more for which I applaud you. What you really do not want is a vindictive techie with a grudge against you at this stage in your political career.

Anyway, happy hunting for information on my old mate Paul Macmanomy and if you were thinking about trying to find anything on the internet about me then I’ll give you a hint. I am only mentioned on the net in three places. One’s the various election results on Walsall Council’s website and I’ll give you the challenge of finding the other two. However if you’re looking for something exciting, you may well be very disappointed if you actually find them.

Right, now for a serious post about important issues.