My thoughts on responsible politics tonight and as a little prelude to local Government costs have reminded me of an instance a while back.
I remember the Leader of Walsall LibDems Ian Shires proposing that Walsall should have it’s own monorail system.
Now on the face of it I’m all in favour of more public transport but it has to be sensible, well thought through, costed and these days more importantly than anything else it has to be integrated.
This proposal was splashed all over the newspapers at the time so yes, lots of lovely headlines for Cllr. Ian Shires, I’m sure he was happy about that. It also said that the matter was due to be discussed at the council.
So I have a couple of questions. Was the matter discussed, what was the outcome and why hasn’t Walsall got a shiny new monorail system to ferry it’s commuters back and forth?
Here’s my guess. It would cost too much, wouldn’t have been feasible and more importantly monorails have a habit of only having one rail. Not much use in linking up to the Metro system that’s being expanded across the area.
So apart from it being a bit of a potty non-starter of an idea which I would have hoped the Council would have simply ignored as being a bit of a publicity stunt, but if it was take seriously and Council Officers time was spent drawing up costings etc, how much did this cost the Council in terms of time and therefore money?
It also begs the question why the LibDems didn’t just do the sensible thing and put their support behind the Metro extension as at the time their own manifesto was committed to supporting light-rail transit systems. I’m not sure if it still is as I haven’t bothered checking but some answers on this one would be very welcome.

I haven’t really commented on the situation surrounding last weeks completely blown out of all proportion fained horror by the oh so sensitive Tories who saw fit to use an image placed on Bob Piper’s website to do a bit of political point scoring.

There were also those out there in the blogosphere who hinted at Bob being a racist although I’m yet to spot one who was actually stupid enough to say so.

That is, until tonight when this dropped my way.

This is Colin. He’s a LibDem. You can find out a lot about him on his website. He likes to travel, he urges you to contibute to the LibDems on his site, he’s a training officer for the LibDems in the West Midlands and he used to work for the RSPB until he took up his current job, but for some reason he doesn’t seem too keen to mention what that job is.

But first, let’s deal with what he wrote. If you can’t be arsed to click the link, here it is:

“Racism is not funny Bob!

Thankfully he has taken it down now, he has also stated that he will be taking a break from blogging. However it’s not enough he should stand down from public office and Labour should have the guts to throw him out of the party. Believe me if this was a Liberal Democrat I would be urging that course of action.”

Now from the title of this article, I’m going to stick my neck out and accuse Mr Ross of calling Bob Piper a racist. What factual evidence he has for this I’m unsure but I’m sure he must have the evidence otherwise he wouldn’t be so stupid to write it. He also states that the post on Bob’s site that caused all the nonsense last week contained a:

“whole load of negative comments about BME people”

Here’s a bit of advice for Colin, as no doubt he’s going to end up at this site very soon. When commenting on things, it’s handy to have read them in the first place. I did read the original post by Bob and there was not one single word mentioned that could possibly be construed as being negative towards BME people.

So here’s the question. Will we be seeing the same kind of furore over a LibDem training officer calling an elected Councillor a racist? We will see.

Oh, yes, almost forgot to mention. Colin’s job. The one he doesn’t seem too keen on mentioning on his website. He’s the assistant to the LibDem group and Ian Shires the Leader of the LibDems on Walsall Council.

You know, it’s funny, because these jobs that by the way are paid for by the council tax payer tend to be politically restricted. Meaning that those employed in these roles by a local authority are not allowed to actively campaign for a political party. However Colin sees fit to fundraise, train and campaign for the LibDems. Word has it he’s been very busy in Tettenhall lately. He was also the LibDem candidate for Wolverhampton South West in the 2005 General Election. Me thinks there should be some questions asked up at the town hall.

I’ll leave on this note and this ones just for Colin when he finds his way to my site. Please don’t try and be a smart arse and delete your article and claim I’m trying to slander you in any way. I’ve got the original screenshot safely stored should you muppets threaten me with legal action. Have a nice day.