Political Penguin

Google the phrase ‘grumpy boyfriend’ go on I dare you. No, not page 57 of the search results, thanks to Mrs Penguin I now appear No.1 on page 1 of Google for that wonderful search term.

Bloody marvellous.

Much as I don’t take the world of football too seriously and just for the annoyance of all my Baggie mates, but come on the Wolves!

I only have one thing to say. Bring back Tito.

Right, that’s got your attention. No we’re not talking about Walsall Council elections here, something far more important. Warning, this article contains flippant remarks that are present solely for the purpose of amusement, if you find them in any way offensive or in bad taste as they may refer to issues that I accept are wholly more serious then don’t read on.

Watched with increasing despondency last night the results of the Eurovision semi-final. We really like Eurovision in our house, I know it’s not to everyone’s liking, more outright hatred from some but we enjoy it.

Anyone who follows Eurovision will have noticed the development of a particular axis of power when it comes to voting that has come about over the past decade. That of the ‘Balkan block’. Jon has a nice little graph over at his website that represents this quite well. Put simply, last night quite a lot of crap got through (crap even by Eurovision standards that is) to the final on the back of various little countries who used to be part of one country all voting for each other.

One has to wonder whether all the conflicts these countries have had over various parts of the last 15 years wasn’t just simply a ruse to split up so they could maximise their votes and stitch up Eurovision. What possible other explanation could there be for countries who’s people up to a few years ago were trying to blow each other brains out, suddenly feeling so inclined towards each other to spread the most points to each other?

So there you go, thanks to the expansion of the Former Yugoslav Republic’s of we want our street to be a different country to your street, we have a completely stitched up voting system in Eurovision and the constant presence of crappy south eastern European acts.

However, there is a solution, a way we could bring pride back to our own fair isle, it’s simple. We break up the Union. So let’s think about it, obviously there’s Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, that gives us a combined voting power with England of 48 votes. Still a bit on the short side to really stitch things up. OK, how about Cornwall, its got its own flag and some people can still speak the language, that’s 60 votes, and, erm, the Shetland Isles and Orkney, that’s us up to 84 votes but that still a bit tight for Eurovision domination. Isle of Wight can declare independence as well to boost us up to 96 votes in total. I think we’re running a bit thin on options now. Hang on, there’s always the Falkland Islands, no doubt they’ll argue they’re not in Europe but neither is Israel and they let them into the competition.

Our only option is a complete dissolution of the Union so that we can take 108 votes into Eurovision and break up the power of the Balkan Eurovision empire, and there you go, about the most convincing and coherent argument you’ll ever hear for the breaking up the Union.

On a side note, I’m going to be interested to see how the voting goes between Estonia and Russia this year. Usually you can guarantee a good few votes passed between them but although Russia’s bound to get a fair few from Estonia, hey the Government can stitch things up to disenfranchise a large swath of its own population of Russian ethnic origin but it can’t stop them owning phones. Whether Russia will be so inclined to return them this year is going to be interesting see.

Little Penguin has developed a novel method for combating sock puppets.

With the impending resignation due today of the Leader of the Labour Party I thought it apt to pin my colours to the mast which is plainly obvious by the new little graphic I’ve added below the main site menu.

The choice for leader has always been simple for me. For more reasons than I care to mention I will be supporting Gordon Brown.

For deputy it has been a little more complicated for which I’ve deliberated over before. However I’ve decided to support Jon Cruddas because I both value Peter Hain more for the talents and abilities that he could offer as a Government Minister and that I agree with the separation of the roles of Deputy Leader of the Party and Deputy Prime Minister.

We need a Deputy who isn’t about having a Cabinet brief but about working to revitalise the party and both re-engage and motivate the grass-roots activists to work harder than ever before to ensure that everything we have achieved in Government isn’t wrecked by the election of a Tory administration. Of all the candidates who’ve declared an interest I see him as the most able and dedicated to achieve that so that’s where my vote will be going.

Quick note: Anyone wishing to use the graphic for their own site is quite welcome to it. Feel free to copy and download it or drop me a line and I can mail the original, although it’s no bigger than the one here as I designed it specifically for its current dimensions.

This whole blogging thing is starting to get slightly out of hand in our household. Little Penguin’s at it and now Mrs Penguin’s at it as well. However thankfully I’ve convinced her to have a proper site a ditch that MySpace crap. Duly added to blogroll or I’ll get it in the neck.

Who knows, might even be able to coax her away from her crappy Windows operating system and get her on to Linux. Well, we can live in hope.

Just really a post of sympathy to Jon Worth, who has been duly added to my blogroll for being up there in the higher strata of the political blogosphere, (he talks about serious stuff, not innuendo and tittle tattle crap) not to mention a good open sourcer.

He’s having a few problems with his council tax by his Tory/LibDem run council. I can fully sympathise, we had similar difficulties with our council tax up here at Walsall MBC which also used to be a Tory LibDem coalition, till the Tories took over of course and it’s even worse now. A wait in the OneStopShop is not for the faint hearted when it comes to irate punters getting rather miffed that their landlords are threatening to evict them because the council hasn’t coughed up the money.

One might think the council’s a bit on the skint side with all those payments due to staff it’s unfairly dismissed through poor managerial practices but that would just be cynical. However, it’s nice to know that Tory-Tory/LibDem run councils share such common problems. You never know, they might just share other similarities.

It’s been interesting in Walsall, and I’ll try to say a bit more about the matter than my young fresh faced and chipper mate Paul Mac.

I’ll start with a brief reflection on my own humble predictions that I made in the last post. Not far out but not spot on either which is always annoying as I’m usually quite good at this stuff. However it begs a few questions and perhaps a little more analysis of what was actually going on in specific wards.

I happily got it wrong on the positioning of the parties in Short Heath, the BNP didn’t come second as it seems for some reason their vote across the whole of the West Midlands seems to a petered out and fallen back. Hopefully this is a pattern that will continue ad perhaps the electorate have started to realise what they really are as a party.

I got the jitters on polling day about Blakenall, Darlaston South and Brownhills. Thankfully in the case Brownhills they were uncalled for and an excellent hard working local Labour Councillor was returned. Sadly in the case of Blakenall and Darlaston South those jitters turned out to be well founded.

In Blakenall we lost to the DLP (Democratic Labour Party) by 15 votes. The DLP have been targeting this ward for years. On paper Blakenall should be the safest Labour ward in the Borough, although it vies closely with a couple of other wards who should also be far safer than they actually are. All I can say is if anything it should have been last year that the DLP would have seemed likely to gain this seat, put off by a very good campaign then. Why this year? Well, I wasn’t involved in the campaign this year so I have no clue how well or badly it was run but the margin is of course very slim. I’ve been conveyed two versions of the events at the count, the first that a recount was not allowed because staff were tired and the second that the Labour candidate decided not to have a recount because he thought the staff were tired. If the former then I’m sorry, this is democracy and whether the staff are tired or not is irrelevant. If the second account is true then the Labour candidate is a complete and total tit. If it’s a case of only 15 votes then it’s a recount and tough if the staff are tired or not.

On Darlaston South which rightly did go to a recount the margin was even less at 11 votes where the Independent defeated the sitting local Councillor. It wouldn’t have been for any lack of trying on our part as the campaign there was probably the best run and organised in the Borough which the result shows given how far off the mark we were last year when the Independent was returned. This time it was his wife up and plain and simple, they won. Did they deserve it? Well no and Darlaston South is all the worse off for losing probably their most active and dedicated Councillor for someone who I’d have a good bet will do sod all for the area.

The one I missed was Pleck. This was the only loss by Labour to the Tories in Walsall and in some respects needs a little more explanation.

The Labour candidate was new in that the sitting Labour Councillor was stepping down. That sitting Labour Councillor was the Muslim Councillor who after winning in 2004 crossed the floor from the Tories. He’d got there on a communal vote as a Muslim and simply the Tories put up another Muslim and pulled in enough of that communal vote again to take the seat back. I won’t complain because we won the Palfrey Ward last year from the Tories on pretty much the same basis but from my own personal perspective, I’m not a lover of communal politics and although I could write a dissertation on the subject I’ll just note that I recognise that in so far as building strong local democracy, I believe that communal politics has the potential to do more harm than good.

So there you go, apart from that my predictions were pretty much on the money. It was particularly nice to see the LibDem Nadia Fazel get completely shafted in my own ward even if it was by a much higher margin than even I’d dare to commit to. All in all not really a lot changed in Walsall, we’re still in opposition, we stand next to no chance of winning the council back any soon and despite what a complete and utter shambles the Tories are making of the place they can sit pretty for a fair while yet.

I am thinking of another post regarding this issue, concentrating more on the broader view of strategy and interpretation of how the political dynamics are working in Walsall but I shall desist for now as I’ve been to two counts in the last 24 hours, not slept much, am overly tired to concentrate to the extent that the subject matter requires and simply can’t be bother right now, I’d rather do something not remotely linked to politics for the next few hours.

I’m going to stick my neck out here and do a bit of election result prediction. Feel free to shoot me down should I get things spectacularly wrong but give me credit that at least I’ve got the bottle to put myself up for a potential right drumming.

Just for information I penned this article on April 28th 2007 in the early hours of the morning. I’ll be releasing it around about the close of polls on election day. There may be an hours discrepancy in terms of the time stamp as I can’t be bothered to adjust my sites times to BST but you’ll see it definitely went up before the votes were counted and feel free to save it but I promise not to try and pull a fast one by retro-editing it simply to make myself look good or get out of the shit if I get it spectacularly wrong.

So here’s how I think the make-up of Walsall will look come next Friday.

Tories 32
Labour 21
Independent 1
LibDems 6

Which is actually how it stood before the election.

In fairness it could be anything between:

Tories 34
Labour 18
Independent 2
LibDems 6

and:

Tories 30
Labour 22
Independent 1
LibDems 6

So anyway, for you delectation I give you a quick run down on what’s going to happen in Walsall. It’s by no means exhaustive and of course there’s things I know and factors at work in some cases that I have no wish to put into the public domain for use by other parties against us but just for a bit of fun and for Paul Macmanomy to take the piss out of me when I get it spectacularly wrong here we go:

Birchills Leamore: Lab Hold

This on paper should be one of the safest Labour seats in the borough yet last year the majority over the Tories got down to 80 something (can’t be bothered to look it up). The reason for this was that the Labour Councillor at the time Carol Rose defected to the Tories, strangely enough she did this a week or so after she failed to get selected to stand for Stourbridge in the 2005 General election after she was flaunting her wares as a committed Labour person so she obviously thought the Tories were a better prospect for her future. She’s standing again but against Tim Oliver the current leader of the Labour group she doesn’t stand much of a chance.

Blakenall: Lab Hold

Again another seat that should be one of Labour’s safest in the borough. Complicated by a very active Democratic Labour Party candidate but despite that Labour should hold it. If we don’t then there should be some very serious questions asked.

Bloxwich East: Tory Hold

Labour held this seat last year by seven votes if memory serves me correctly, anyway not more than ten. That was with a local candidate who’s well known. This year, not a chance of picking up this seat, Tories will walk it.

Bloxwich West: Tory Hold

Labour have an excellent local candidate here and former Councillor who works hard in the area. Despite that the Tories have a far superior organisational structure in terms of campaigning in Bloxwich which accounts for them holding five out of the six seats in a town that on paper should be completely Labour and as above, our one seat is very tenuous.

Short Heath: LibDem Hold

I’m going to really stick my neck out here and give the positions of the parties.

1.LibDem
2.BNP
3.Tory
4.Labour

I’m not going to go into the reasons but Labour will get slaughtered in this ward and the BNP will pick up a considerable amount of votes and clearly be second.

Willenhall North: LibDem Hold

Change of candidate for the LibDems here. They’ve put up the bloke who stood in Willenhall South last year who was so committed to us, so much so that he’s buggered off to a nice cushy safe LibDem seat.

Willenhall South: Lab Hold

Much to the contrary of Colin Ross and Paul Macmanomy saying this one’s too close to call I’ll go into numbers and predict at least a 200 Labour majority over the LibDems, Tories coming third and the Democratic Labour Party struggling to get over 100 votes if that. Simple analysis, Labour has the strong local candidate who lives in the ward, works very much on local issues and getting things done for people round here. The LibDems have put up that woman who used to be a member of the Labour Party, then joined Respect and has now ended up with them. Scraping the bottom of the barrel for candidates is putting it mildly.

Aldridge Central South, Aldridge North and Walsall Wood, Streetly, Rushall Shelfield and Pelsall: Tory Hold.

I’ve done these wards together because they make up the constituency of Aldridge Brownhills. It’s plain and simple, the Labour Party is next to non-existent in this bit of the world, we stand no chance of winning anything however you’ll note I left the Brownhills ward out which I’ll do next. The only ward to watch would be Rushall Shelfield, one of the BNP’s two target wards in Walsall. They’ll do well here, almost certainly come second but overturn the Tories? Almost certainly not.

Brownhills: Lab Hold

This one’s very tricky. If I was to play it safe I’d say Tory gain but I think Labour might just hold on. Electorally Brownhills is a funny ward. In the all-up election in 2004 it returned two Tories and one Labour although it was narrow between the second Labour candidate and the second Tory. Labour failed to gain it last year by a very narrow margin despite having an excellent campaign and a hard working candidate. It is also complicated by being one of the two focus wards for the BNP in Walsall that has almost turned it into a three way tie between Tory, Labour and the BNP. The BNP might pick it up but I think that the combination of a well known local Labour candidate who works hard in the ward may just see her through with those extra few ‘personal’ votes that such candidates get.

Pheasey Park Farm: Tory Hold

Nothing much to say, the Tories will win.

Bentley Darlaston North: Lab Hold

A presumed safe Labour seat and with the candidate who both works and campaigns hard in the area there shouldn’t be a problem in winning it.

Darlaston South: Lab Hold

Another ward with a hard working Labour Councillor up for re-election. Probably has the best run campaign of any in the borough. There’s a threat from an Independent, the wife of the current Independent councillor for the ward who won last year for very special reasons but against the Labour candidate combined with her formidable campaigning approach (at least compared to the rest of the Labour campaign in Walsall) this should hopefully be a Labour Hold.

Paddock: Tory Hold

Not much to say. The Tories will hold it.

Palfrey: Tory Hold

Another funny ward. A lot of Muslim community politics goes down in this neck of the woods. Last year it was a Labour gain and potentially could be a gain this year but I doubt it.

Pleck: Labour Hold

Again a bit funny due to some Muslim politics which saw a Muslim Tory elected in the all-up election of 2005 who then defected to Labour and decided not to stand this year so it’s a fresh Labour candidate but someone who’s known very well locally and works hard so he’ll probably get through.

St. Matthews: Tory Hold

I’m biased on this one as the candidate is the one who stood last year in Brownhills. He’s an excellent campaigner and was prior to the 2005 all-up election, the Councillor for this ward. Following the boundary changes this ward changed considerably. To the cries of gerrymandering and such, a large area with a good thousand or so Tory voters got shifted into this ward and effectively wiped Labour out. Is it possible to regain the ward? Sadly probably not and the Labour Group would be all the worse for the lack of the presence of it’s candidate in this ward sitting on the benches.

So there you go. My prediction for Walsall despite all the bad press, investigations, auditors reports (nicely delayed until after the elections), referrals to the Crown Prosecution Service, the background of what amounts to a completely crap Tory run council and I doubt they’ll be any change whatsoever and if anything maybe a Tory gain of one or two.

feel free to take the piss out of me if I get it completely wrong though.

[Update] As it’s polling day I’m going to stick pretty much with the predictions above but with some rather dodgy feelings regarding the Blakenall, Brownhills and Darlaston South wards.