Political Penguin

It’s interesting to seen how David Cameron has truly changed his party. Nolonger the heartless uncaring breed of Tories that drove our public services to the brink of collapse throughout the 80′s and 90′s. He’s reassured the British people that it’s safe to vote Tory again. That they care about our communities, our elderly, our young and about worker’s welfare and conditions. Gone are the days when people would have to fear for their job or suffer changing working conditions that make them worse off. It’s great to see that Dave has instilled this caring ethic into his party and as someone who happens to live in a local authority (Walsall) controlled by his party that I have to accept as a cynical old leftie that I was wrong about the Tories. They really have changed and one has to look no further than Walsall Council’s budget for this and the forthcoming years to appreciate the focus and dedication that Tories at the local level have towards delivering top notch public services to us residents of all ages and circumstances.

In fact, I thought I’d share a few of the highlights with you, of course with a bit of commentary and interpretation of my own. Enjoy.

Increase of 10% on all leisure facilities activities:

Yep, that’s 10%, no not in line with inflation. After all, in a Borough that has one of the worst obesity rates in the country, forget about encouraging people to exercise or take part in sports activities, nah lets just try and screw some extra money out of them. After all if people stop going to the leisure centres, we can always claim they’re under-used and shut them in the future saving even more money. Everyone’s a winner eh?

Just to let you know as the whole Deputy Leadership is over, that’s led to the removal of the polls and the lovely little picture of Gordon and Jon in the left-hand sidebar. Things are looking blank, me thinks I should come up with something to occupy this space. Perhaps a poll about my favourite politician David Cameron would go down well? Ah, I can see the potental options already.

Another day, another blow for the smiling lightweight leader of the Tories with the news that after U turns and infighting he’s lost one of his MP’s to Labour. Oh well, never mind eh? Keep on smiling.

For anyone of a rightward leaning perspective who believes with unwavering conviction that the private sector is always better than the public, responds to customer demands and offers better quality service, a quick call to Virgin Trains will dispel all these myths.

Here’s the scenario. I want to book a train for Mrs Penguin to go to London for the weekend. This little adventure took place on Wednesday. I wanted to send her off on Thursday and to come back on Sunday so that she could have a well earned break away for a few days, see some old friends and have a bit of fun without worrying about such things as nappies and feeds and all the other mundane daily activities that revolve around looking after Little Penguin.

Not hard one would think to book a train ticket for the following day. I started off on their website that, erm, didn’t work, it was down. OK, it happens to us all from time to time so off to the telephone booking service. The premise is simple, book ticket with my card for Mrs Penguin to pick up tickets at the station the following day.

On to the phoneline, which rather wonderfully starts with an automated service. I personally don’t mind automated services that much, the ones that give you options to press buttons one, two or three but I have an absolute hatred of those voice operated ones because, they are simply crap. After not being understood for a few minutes I get passed to a human being. Sadly this human being seems to have even less a command of the English language than the automated service and insists on repeating back to me exactly what I’ve said and confirming every aspect of the booking three times before we proceed to the next part.

Getting through this was a bit of a job in itself but we get to the last part about paying by card. Is it me taking the journey? No, I’m booking it for someone else, I want them to pick the tickets up at the machine in the train station. Sadly though this isn’t possible, it’s my card and you need the exact card the tickets were booked on to retrieve the tickets on top of the code number they give you. Now strangely enough I couldn’t do without my card for four days as it might come in handy for such things as getting money from a cashpoint so this wasn’t an option. The only other option would be to have the tickets sent but even the special delivery option they have costs

Hmm, well could have been worse, Alan Johnson could have won. However given a difference of 0.8% in the result it was very much a close one. Good on Jon Cruddas to come in third he wasn’t that far off in the end. Hopefully Gordon can fit him into a campaigning role for the party in the future.

Apparently the Bank of England is a bit concerned at the lack of shiny new fivers circulating in the economy. The lack of them that is. There’s plenty hauled up in the nations bank vaults but the ones that get exchanged by us commoners are getting increasingly older and on the worn side.

I heard the bank’s response to this that there’s no demand for them so they don’t put them in cash machines anymore.

I have a slighty different analysis of the situation. Fiver’s aren’t getting into circulation because waiting to get them from the cashier is a waste of time. We are often told by those ignorant little muppets on the right that the private sector runs things better. Been to a bank lately? Following mergers and branch closures the queues are long and indicative not of a competitive market but of one dominated by poor and slow service.

People invariably resort to the cash machine, although these are drying up even in towns like Willenhall. Of course cash machine don’t do fivers, they sometimes don’t even do tenners.

Why is this one wonders? Is it because as the banks state, there’s no demand from the public? No, it’s all about money, if you excuse the pun. There’s no fivers because it’s in the bank’s interest for there to be none. Banks know how much money people take out of machines. This doesn’t change that much in terms of actual value. After all it’s the same regulars taking out pretty much the same amounts of money. If however the banks offered fivers in the machines, they’d run out quicker and need to be restocked on a more regular basis. So what do we have? Consumer’s best interests of money grabbing greedy banks cutting back to save money, sorry, that should be make even more money than the obscene amounts they already make.

There is of course one other possibility. The larger the denomination that is only available encourages people to go overdrawn at the end of the month when they’re down to the last few quid and hey presto even more money in bank charges rolling in, of course all in the interests of the consumer as usual.

Two additions, one deletion. Joining the list are two I’ve been meaning to get round to for ages but forgot so apologies to Tom over at NewerLabour and Neil at Brighton-Regency-Labour. Dropping off the blogroll is Scrybe who seems to have disappeared into the recesses of Coventry. If she pops up again I’m sure she’ll let us all know and she’ll be put back on.

I realised that it is far overdue to introduce Little Penguin to the wonders of crayons and allow him to express his artistic interpretations.

However I am torn on one issue. We have plenty of paper in the house and obviously a desire that he concentrates his energy with crayons on that but what about the walls? Is it right to encourage him to concentrate wholly on paper or surrender the first couple of foot of the walls to crayonial expression?

We don’t have any wallpaper so that’s not an issue and most of the walls are painted white so wholloping them afterwards with white paint when he’s out of that stage isn’t a problem.

Thoughts appreciated.

The last few years have been a bit lean so far as us McLaren supporters go in Formula 1. It’s hard to imagine but it’s been a whole decade since we last won the Constructors Championship and nine years since we last got a Drivers crown.

As a distinctly ‘not football’ sort of person it’s always been a bit of an annoyance when considering the vast amount of media coverage that sport receives compared to my own sporting preference. As far as the British media has been concerned Formula 1 hasn’t really appeared on the radar for almost a decade and a half. Subsequently popular enthusiasm for the sport has been on the wane in the UK but it is curious this season.

With the arrival of Lewis Hamilton and actually the prospect of a British driver winning races and in with a shot at the top prize suddenly the media are jumping all over it. Although admittedly with what can be seen as a reactionary approach in that the quality of reporting is a bit on the poor side. One can only conclude that editors saw fit to drop their F1 correspondents years ago and are now making do with people writing reports who know sod all about the sport.

What it also shows is the rather disappointingly short-sightedness and national bias of their approach. Like a bunch of vultures jumping on the back of success by a new British driver they show their insincerity for reporting. We’ve had close on 15 years of under-reporting on the F1 scene where interest in the sport has dropped. In that time we as a country may well have missed out inspiring some young person to take up the sport and come through to the top level. This accounts for nothing more than a parasitic relationship for which the media has had with Formula 1.

As for the actual coverage on television in the UK through ITV, a similar analogy can be made. This is not to consider that previously under the BBC coverage was any better. Thinking back to 80′s if I recall correctly we were treated to the race and qualifying for the British GP only. ITV did improve on that situation by showing qualifying although over sporadically in this place or the other. Dare the GP be held at a time that clashes with something of far more importance like Coronation Street or some cheap low budget mid-afternoon movie and it gets shunted to the baren wilderness of ITV4. This is hardly a commitment from a broadcaster who paid a rather substantial amount of money for the priviledge of broadcasting Formula 1. Contrast this to RTL (German Commercial Channel) who hold the rights to broadcast in Germany and incidentally who we watch the Formula 1 coverage on. They broadcast everything, race, qualifying, warm-up sessions and extensive analysis. Far too many times have the post race press conference been cut short or not shown at all on ITV because we have to rush off to Corri.

It will be interesting to see the renewed interest of the media has on viewing and interest in the sport by the general public. Will new fans be created, will some of the old fans whose interest has drifted away over the years return to the fold? Probably yes. Will young people take an interest in taking up the sport, quite possibly. How many potential talented drivers could we have missed out on in the past decade and a half because a (British) driver wasn’t up there and the media took little to no interest? It’s sad really but the attention is very welcome now, pity about the quality of reporting though.

Anyway, after a fair few years of frustration with regard to my own team not doing too well it’s turning out to be a quite enjoyable season with us now holding a 35 point lead over Ferrari and both drivers pulling a clear gap away from the rest at the top of the Drivers Championship. Looking forward to France.

Over to Sandwell this time. Bill Archer, via Bob Piper has sought to criticise Labour Councillor Simon Hackett over taking some time out to devote attention to his new-born. Bill, not exactly the model of Dave (I’m a friendly cuddly Tory honest guv) doesn’t seem to think that Councillor Hackett should get any Councillor’s expenses while he’s dealing with nappy changing duties.

We are of course awaiting Bill’s denouncement of his own party leader and his demanding that he forgoes his own salary while he does such pointless things as be there for his wife and their third child.

It is of course nice to know that while Dave pontificates about how the Tories are a bunch of changed huggy cuddly softies, that the real Tory Party reveals itself to be nothing more than the same old heartless uncaring arseholes that they really are.