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? £170,000 extra in the kitty there, k’ching.

Increase the price of meals on wheels to the elderly by 10%:

Hey, why not hit the elderly, after all they’re rolling in money from all those pension credits and winter fuel payments that the Labour Government is handing out. It’s about time Walsall Council clawed back some of that money to cover all the costs of the service, after all Walsall Council isn’t a charity you know, why should it subsidise the cost of services to some of the most vulnerable in our community. Extra £30,000 coming in from that one, lovely.

Increase staff car parking charges by 20%:

Hey, come on, these Walsall Council staff already get massive salaries so why shouldn’t we rake back some of it off them by upping the amount they have to pay to actually work here by 20% and look at how much it should bring in for us! A whopping £148,000 a year, that should cover us for some legal bills for other staff that we unfairly dismiss shouldn’t it?

Bereavement services:

Proposed fees and charges to take effect from 1.1.07. Not quite sure how this one works out as this budget is for the 2007 budget onwards and was only agreed by the council on 26th February. Presumably customers as I’m sure they’re referred to of the bereavement service between 1.1.07 and when it was passed will have to pay any arrears. Strangely enough it doesn’t lay out what charges or fees but the simple message is, it’ll cost you more to die in Walsall than it used to.

Fairer charging movements:

You could miss exactly what this one is about, it’s such a vague description and even the description lacks any real clarity but what it amounts to is the removal of subsidy to people who receive home care so that instead of paying 58% of the costs at present, those in need of care will have to pay the whole 100% of costs themselves. Caring Conservatism in action there then. Mind you it does save Walsall MBC £97,631 so that can’t be bad can it?

Additional charges for scaffolding licenses:

Where there’s a few bob going you can always be sure there’s an entrepreneurial Tory looking to cash in. Yes, want to put some scaffoling up in Walsall, if you’re a commercial property then yep, you’re going to have to cough up too. £10,000 in the kitty.

Increase landscaping fees by 15%

It’s another one of those above inflation increases in fees but yep, another £30,000 per annum into the council coffers, lovely.

Car parking charges for Norfolk Place:

Forget free parking, if there’s a few quid to be made we’re in there, £10,000 thank you very much.

15% increase in charges for Bryntysilio places:

Those not familiar with Walsall will probably never have heard of the place but it’s one of those outward bounds centres where kids go on school trips. I never got the chance to go when I was a kid, we were too poor and there weren’t any grants available but suffice to say Walsall MBC is going to screw some more money out of the schools or more precisely the parents of the kids who go there, hey those parents only pay the highest rate of Council Tax in the West Midlands anyway, they’ve got plenty more spare cash for the Council to cream off them. £21,144 thank you.

Increase fees to cricket and bowling clubs:

Fancy indulging in one of our nations favourite sports or a relaxing game of bowls, well, it’ll cost you more in Walsall now. Another £4,000, not that much but it all helps.

Increase to residents parking permits by 100% £10-£20 per year:

Hey, if people want to park their cars outside their house and don’t have a drive, why not hit them, after all there’s not much they can do about it can they? £4,500 in the bank from that one.

Exploring sponsorship for large floral planters and all floral barrier baskets:

Advertise on a flower pot, go on you know you want to, just the thing to give your company the profile it needs. More on this later but it’s interesting to see that Walsall Council tried this idea with advertising on islands, there’s plenty of signs on the Borough’s islands saying advertise your business here. Haven’t spotted any that have so the assumed income of £30,000 per annum from this is a bit on the dodgy side.

20% increase in car parking charges:

Someone remind me what the inflation rate is again? So park your car in a Walsall car park and expect to pay a lot more for it. Another £123,000 a year coming in from that one.

Increased charge for replacing a wheelie bin:

Up from £16.50 to £18.50. Increase of £2 to eliminate the subsidy that Walsall Council pays, bless them, I really appreciated how caring they were to subsidise the cost of buying a bin off them when I moved into my house. £2,000 for that one.

Increase of collection charge for bulky items to £12.50:

It doesn’t say what the previous charge was but I have it stuck in my head somewhere that it was £10 so that’s a 25% increase in charges that effects primarily the elderly and poor who don’t have transport to take such items to the tip. Another winner in Compassionate Conservatism there then. £23,000 that one will net Walsall Council.

10% increase in charges to collect trade waste:

Running a business in Walsall? The council wants more of your money, above inflation? You wouldn’t expect anything else from Walsall MBC would you? £23,000 extra for that one.

Charging for transport within adult services:

Six little words you could easily miss but how much they mean. Are you an adult with a special needs? Need to get to a day or care centre that the lovely old Council used to transport you to? Well, sorry, Walsall MBC isn’t a charity you know, no you’re going to have to pay for it now and hey look at how much money we can make out of some of the most vulnerable people in our society! £468,000, that’s nearly half a million quideroonies! It’s almost enough to pay off former employees who have taken us to tribunal for unfair dismissal and bullying and generally being a crap employer. (Not that any case actually got to tribunal if any lawyers drop by, the Council prefer to settle these things quietly and out of the public eye).

Reconfiguration of management:

Nice way to say we’re going to sack some people and save £64,168.

Business process re-engineering:

An even more convoluted way to say sacking people but they’re only agency staff so we don’t have to pay redundancy or anything like that. £83,405 saved there and a few more families without an income but who cares.

Implementation of SX3 releases:

More sackings, only agency staff again so don’t worry, not important. £40,544 saved there.

Increase in vacancy management for School Crossing Patrol Wardens:

I’m a bit confused as to what this one means. I can only surmise that the £20,000 saving comes from not appointing people to the posts as Lollipop ladies or gentlemen thus saving a few quid on general turnover of staff. I can only draw this conclusion from a story recounted to me regarding someone who had applied, been assessed and accepted for the job but waited over three months without being taken up. Of course this is hearsay and I usually don’t go into that realm so take it with a pinch of salt. What one has to question though is that if the Council spends money assessing people then keeps them hanging on, presumably in that time they might go off and do something else which would work out to be a false economy, not to mention putting the lives of our little ones at risk by not covering crossings outside of schools.

Cleaning and school crossings efficiencies:

This is cutting back on supplies so presumably the Lollipop people will have to provide their own bits of chalk and the cleaners will have to make do with a bit of spit and polish. Saves £4,000 though.

Out of hours team (mental health):

This is a big saving, a whole £240,000 of a saving. What it actually means is sacking six members of staff. So now any mental health services provision need in Walsall over the weekend, evenings or bank holiday will have to come from Wolverhampton as Walsall has decided to outsource the service to them. This does of course beg the question at why it is cheaper to outsource the service if the same cover is needed then Wolverhampton are going to have to employ extra staff to undertake this work which is tacit admittance that super efficient Tories in Walsall can’t run things as well as those clunking old Commie Labourites up in Wolverhampton.

Senior Management restructure - Learning disabilities and young people:

More sackings, 2.5 posts this time saving £155,000 although no one actually has the one post so it’s just a reduction in potential service delivery but hey, it’s only young people and those with learning disabilities after all.

Sport development - realignment of work:

The actual description of this policy is to concentrate on revenue generation meaning that sports in Walsall isn’t anything about the good of the community, helping improve people’s health in an area with shocking obesity and heart disease rates, no it’s about making money. Oh and a ‘review’ of resource intensive activities like narrowboat trips and one to one coaching so the clear message here is that if you think your kid might be a sporting genius move the hell out of Walsall because the council sure as hell isn’t going to encourage them, unless of course you’re rich and can afford private lessons that is. All for a saving of a pitiful £24,000 a year.

Restructure of all finance areas:

More redundancies, £112,759 and a few more poor sods without a paypacket to take home.

Closure of Norfolk Place depot:

Another two ‘potential’ redundancies. £47,000 of cuts there then.

Restructure of Corporate performance team:

More sackings saving £50,000.

Reduction in Art Conservation:

Not many people may be aware but Walsall actually has quite a good collection of fine art housed in the New Art Gallery in the town centre. Well, if they start falling apart or looking a bit tatty then you can be rest assured that in the pursuance of saving £1,350 it’s been money well saved. After all, it’s not like any of the stuff is really worth anything, just a bit of paint on a canvass really, who cares about that?

Reduction on the use of agency and temporary staff:

This refers to greenspaces which one can only presume means parks and our various wooded areas. More specifically it relates to seasonal security staff so if the little buggers decide to burn down Rough Wood in Short Heath or generally cause a nuisance and make ours parks a hell hole for people to enjoy with their kids then we can be safe in the knowledge that it’s all been worth it to save £30,000.

Deletion of Community Sports Worker post:

Another poor sod without a job and hey, it’s only sports stuff again, we’re not interested in that rubbish in Walsall are we? Well, unless it makes a nice bit of wonga for the council that is. £18,964 saved to boot.

Deletion of part-time duty manager post:

Another one bites the dust saving a whopping £11,260.

Deletion of part-time golf attendant post:

Another person without an income although I have to admit I am curious as to why a part-time golf attendant was on £17,387 in the first place.

Cease funding for Walsall in Bloom:

Back to the flowers thing that we mentioned before. Over the last few years all these flower boxes appeared across Walsall and they actually look quite pleasant although whichever muppet decided on the location of the one’s in Willenhall this year needs shooting but this cut appears to be saving £8,000 which in my mind seems a bit on the cheap side for all these flower and is curious because as the other section mentioned, they’re looking to raise £30,000 in income from sponsorship so where exactly is that extra potential money going?

Maintenance of building:

Relating specifically to the New Art Gallery and meaning that preventative work will be stopped. So if the New Art Gallery starts to fall down you know why and of course as all sensible people know it’s far cheaper to do the work when it’s almost delapadated than it is to keep things in check every year and it saves a massive £6,000 too.

Repairs and maintenance - supported housing:

Saving £107,000 which amounts to a cut in spending of 46% so if you just happen to live in supported housing as many vulnerable and elderly people do, don’t expect to get things replaced very quickly, you can join a nice long waiting list instead.

Delete post in Physical Regeneration:

Yep, you know what this means by now. £40,000 saved there.

Delete two planning enforcement posts:

Get the picture? £55,000 saved and two more poor sods on the dole.

Schools catering service:

This one’s particularly interesting as it’s an issue that reached national headlines with the whole Jamie Oliver thing. I know I’ve said it before but lets just remind ourselves. Walsall is an area with depressingly high levels of obesity, chronic heart disease rates and generally the kind of place that needs serious investment and change to address these issues that blight many people’s lives. However, this policy, instead of encouraging children to eat a more varied diet actively specifies that there should be reduced choice on the menu. So is it back to the days of my youth when you could have anything you liked as long as it was chips? Thankfully I never ate the sodding things. Oh, almost forgot, £150,000 saved and who knows how many millions it will cost the NHS to sort the problems out in the future.

Restructuring of One Stop Shop:

Another redundany, £17,000 saved, lovely for that person.

Delete post of Children’s residential training co-ordinator:

Only something to do with children, not important, £18,000 saved, lovely.

Stop the opening/closing of football changing facilities:

This one perplexes me as is says stop the opening/closing of these facilities. Does it mean they’re going to be shut up completely in which case there will be nowhere for the kids to change before or after a game of footie? Or does it mean completely leaving them open for all time but unsupervised in which case the heroin addicts will be quite happy to know they’ve got somewhere to go and shoot up. Saves £18,000 though.

Discontinue grants to non-Walsall Council run museums:

This one’s close to my heart so I apologise for any strong feelings that I may express but to be more precise this means the Lock Museum in Willenhall. 5 years ago Walsall Council slashed the funding to the museum leaving it in a position where it had to close. To see it through it had to sell off assets and was eventually taken over by the Black Country Living Museum as an outreach centre. It’s a cracking little place and a homage to the industry that built Willenhall making it the lock making capital of the world, but who cares about that when you’re a bunch of money grabbing scabby Tories who don’t give a toss about heritage, that meaning the heritage of normal working class people who’s industries they systematically destroyed in the 80’s. Still, that wonderment of pride in our heritage nets a saving of £13,650 so it’s really worth it. Let’s just hope the Black Country Living Museum can keep things going.

Stop providing ornamental annual bedding across all areas:

Back to flowers and stuff now. There’s a junction in Darlaston, sadly I can’t remember the name of the road but there’s an excellent chippy on the corner of it that does those orange coloured chips. Outside of it is an area that obviously once had a bedded area for plants. It’s now just compacted dirt from all the kids running over it and quite frankly looks really crappy. Well, coming to every town centre soon it would apear the same. Walsall’s starting to look decidedly grotty under the Tories. Mind you some kindly business people might step in to help out. I remember a few years back, the raised bed area in the town centre outside the Weatherspoons pub was looking absolutely awful so the pub said to the council they’d be happy to pay for it to be done. As the story goes Walsall Council agreed but being the money grabbing gits that they are, whacked in a charge for planning permission to allow the pub to replace the plants that had been neglected by the council for all those years. So perhaps it’s just a scheme to raise some money out of local businesses for planning permission to do a job the council should be doing in the first place. Who knows? Saves £38,000 by the way.

Reduction in development funding:

When in doubt, hit the youth services, it’s only the young, they can’t vote and it’s the police and everyone elses problem to sort out when the kids ain’t got nothing better to do than cause a nuisance. £25,000 saved by the coucil though.

Forest Arts Centre:

Stop events on the weekend. Just remind me when people partake in leisure activities? When they’re not at work perhaps? Very sensible move, but hey, it’s only that arts nonsense, not important and saves £24,500 a year.

Rationalisation of parks service:

Sacking one of the rangers in plain English. Saves £23,000.

Playground fitting service:

Don’t worry if that swing breaks and cracks your child’s skull open we’re saving money on repairs here, a whole £7,500 as well.

Reduced opening hours for libraries:

Feel like immersing yourself in a bit Chaucer, Mary Shelley or Oscar Wilde? Well if you live in Walsall forget doing that after 6.00pm because every single library will be shut because saving £45,000 is far more important than that weird culture thing, anyway, libraries only encourage the plebs to get ideas above their station, we can’t have that can we?

Reduced opening hours - Leather Museum:

Fancy going to the Leather Museum in Walsall on a Sunday, you know, that day of the week you haven’t got a clue what to do with the kids apart from drag them round garden centres? Well forget a trip to the Leather Museum, it’s shut to save £10,000.

Discontinue grants for non-council run museums:

The Jerome K Jerome birthplace museum now. Oh well, never mind, who’s interested in the bloke who wrote Three Men in a Boat and counts among the very few people who’ve ever been heard of who come from Walsall all for £2,200. It is only heritage after all.

Discontinue ‘right to read’ project:

If one were ever to lay the accusation of completely uncaring and backward thinking at the door of the Tories then I don’t think a more adroit example could be found. This scheme was to help and encourage ‘looked after’ children to read. Often a group that fall behind academically, who need all the extra encouragement they can get to prevent them going off the rails or ending up with mental illnesses, lack of opportunity, no qualifications or just simply dropping out all together. It is so nice to know that the Tories in Walsall value £25,000 over the myriad of lost opportunity and social ills that they will potentially create by this action. They should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

Reduce the frequency of highway herbicide spraying:

If you’re starting to get the picture that Walsall is looking decidedly like a town in some Western movie with the flowers swepts away then it’s nice to know that the greenery will be replaced by weeds along the roadside, what next, tumble-weeds rolling down the main road in Bloxwich? Saves £48,000 though.

Reduce gully cleansing to a reactive service:

The devil’s in the detail with this one. Reduce the number of crews from 3 to 1. I’m reliably informed a crew is two people as in the job of cleaning out drains is a two man job. This begs the question, apart from it involving yet more people, four this time getting the push. If there is only one crew to cover the whole of Walsall then what happens when one of them goes on holiday as presumably they will be allowed to at some point? I wouldn’t fancy a blocked drain that week. Saves £45,000 (next year)

Reduce highways maintenance to a reactive service:

Same as the last one, unspecified redundancies of staff and basically forget the idea that someone out there is making sure potholes are filled in and kerbs are in a good state of repair, unless you report it yourself, it ain’t going to get fixed. Saves £100,000 though.

Staffing restructure:

This time social services. Forget that these people work with the most vulnerable people in our society, that they have highly stressful jobs and experience truly horrendous things in their pursuance of making life better for others. Forget all of that and remember that Walsall doesn’t really care about the vulnerable because 10 of these people are up for the chop saving £320,000. It’s only social services after all, who uses them?

Reduction in project funding:

£86,000 cut out of youth project funding. Hey, it’s not like we want to give the kids all these free things to do in community centres is it? We want them all down the leisure centres paying the newly hiked prices so we can made a bit of money out of them and if they can’t afford it well who cares about the less well off in our society anyway.

Reduction of hospital social work team - older people’s services:

Well at least it’s being fair, the Tories in Walsall have shown they don’t care about the young so why not cut back on the services for the elderly as well. This will save £300,811 a year although it says it won’t make people redundant, merely stop the service and redeploy them. However this does beg the question of what importance the Tories put on the social value of the work that is currently being done, obviously none whatsoever.

Road safety education within schools:

All to save £11,000. One would think that Walsall Council has something against children. Not only is there a lack of Lollipop people, what looks like a bad recruitment setup for them but on top of that obvious safety concern they’re cutting back on teaching the kids the Green Cross Code (Is it still called that these days?)

Decrease in purchases:

Cut back on buying books and other media for libraries. After all who’s going to be in them anyway as we’re cutting back on the opening hours. Saves £10,000.

Negotiation of a saving on post morem and mortuary services:

Are the bodies going to start piling up in the streets? Well no because the wonderfully Tory run Walsall Council seems to need the support of those Commies across the border in Wolverhampton again as it looks like they want to outsource this too to save £30,000.

So there you go. A few of the wonderful things to expect in a Tory run area. I think what it highlights is that despite the best efforts of Davey boy to present his party as caring, compassionate and changed from the heartless money obsessed Tories that became so despised is that he’s either failed, failing or got a hell of a lot more work to do. We only have to look at what happens when Tories get into power, thankfully not nationally but at a local level like here in Walsall.

It’s the services of the young, the elderly and the most vulnerable people that get hit first. The culture of greed, of making money out of people instead of providing service that benefits all, not just those in a position to pay for it. It’s about allowing opportunity for all, based on their talents, not their ability to pay that sets Labour apart from the Tories. In that sense the Tories haven’t changed and it’s truly sad to think about the amount of lost opportunity, particularly to the young people of Walsall that will be the result of these misguided policies.

Anyway. I highlighted many of the issues here but there is actually a sum total of 83 areas where the Tories are cutting into funding. Take a look at it here and then wonder to yourself if the Tories really have changed?

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 £6 and only says they can get the tickets by 3pm the following day. Strangely enough the Royal Mail can get letters to you by 11am at the latest on Special Delivery and it doesn’t cost £6 either. (At least the last time I sent one anyway).

A friend of mine told me that they were talking rubbish, he’d booked it that way before online and didn’t need to take the card to retrieve the ticket so I turned back to their website which by now was running again, if not very slowly. After registering setting up this and that, going through a pretty poorly thoughtout booking system, getting what trains I wanted I got to the same situation, I needed the card to retrieve the tickets. So I bit the bullet, decided to go completely out of my way, make a special journey that day to the train station to get the tickets and went through to the final confirmation form on their system.

I was greated with a blank form with no possibility of entering any information and a lovely little warning that if I clicked back or refresh it could bugger things up. Well as there was not other option I had to click back which timed out the system and had to go through it all again only to get back to the blank form.

Frustrated I headed back to the phoneline booking service, if indeed service could be considered a correct term in this case. Not being overly keen on another conversation with our automated friend I decided an old trick was in order and here’s a tip for anyone ever confronted with one of those voice recognition systems. They are afterall just a system and phone systems are conparatively simple to say a web interface and they’re usually easy to bypass. By repeatedly pressing 9 on our keypad, (sometimes it’s 1) I went straight throuh to an actual person.

Side note to all companies that run call centres. Stop sodding outsourcing them to India or wherever. I honestly don’t know where Virgin Trains call centre is but if it is in the UK then neither of the people I encountered have the requisite knowledge or comprehension of the English language to do the job. You will annoy the hell out of and lose far more customers by such practices than you will save in labour costs. Of course with other companies that might be the case, if my bank or mobile operator tries it I can leave them for someone else. Not really much of an option is one wants a train from Wolverhampton to Euston which is why the private sector should never be trusted in running what is a geospecific monopoly public service.

After having everything I say repeated back to me over and over again we finally make it through to the payment section. Everything goes well until I inquire as to when I can pick the tickets up. Ah, no, the wonders of modern organisation don’t mean that I can book on the phone, get a code and tootle off to the train station to pick up a ticket. No, I have to wait two hours before I can do that which would have been far too long, although probably not as I had wasted the two hours previously trying to get through their other systems if I’d started off doing it that way in the first place. At which point I conveyed my displeasure in the efficiencies of his companies services and hung up.

The sum total of this is that I wasted near on two and a half hours of my life talking to idiots and interfacing with crap web systems and still didn’t get what I wanted which was pretty simple to start with, a train ticket for Mrs Penguin.

In the end she didn’t go to London, wasn’t very happy and I didn’t get to do the things I wanted to do this weekend while she was out of the way. All in all Virgin Trains buggered up both mine and Mrs Penguin’s weekend. Rant over.

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.