It was announced today that my wonderful Tory run local authority, Walsall MBC had spent
Is Walsall Council running a bin cartel?
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Category Archives: Tory Bashing
The Tories on marriage
The other month the Tories were playing to their more traditional audience by beefing up their position on marriage. More specifically on finally finding a policy of reintroducing the married couples tax allowance.
You see it’s all gone pear-shaped since Labour came to power. Their hellbent policies of trying to focus money towards people who actually need it, like young working couples with things like childcare costs and ever spiralling costs of getting on the property ladder has led to a breakdown in of morality in our society meaning that all these kids being raised by unmarried couples are going to turn out as hooligans, drug addicts and thugs.
The Tories are right, this could all be fixed by getting people to walk up the aisle together, don a couple of rings and erstwhile bad parents would miraculously be transformed into model members of society raising well-adjusted good children.
What the Tories are doing is making a value judgement on the circumstances in which people should raise their children. Personally I happen to disagree. I don’t think children are best raised by married couples, nor unmarried couples nor single parents for that matter. Children are best raised by good parents.
Myself and Mrs Penguin despite my referring to her in those terms aren’t married. We’d like to think we’re good parents. We take lots of time out to play with Little Penguin, do educational activities with him and give him a good healthy diet. We’re people of modest means, we don’t have sufficient resources to afford lots of field trips or toys but we do what we can within our means.
That’s not to say we wouldn’t like to at some point get married. We have no problems with our long-term commitment to each other, it’s just nasty horrible things like paying a mortgage, affording toys for the little one, travelling back and forth a couple of times a year to Mrs Penguin’s homeland to keep up with family get in the way.
Whatever criticisms might be placed at it, the tax credit system helps people like us out a lot. The Tories policy of abolishing tax credits and introducing a married couples tax allowance would not only not help us but would knock us back on a rough reckoning over a
So where was the 33,33,26% split on the votes then?
I’m a bit confused. Isaby ran that story that he’d been given the split of the votes from the postals that would give Labour and the Tories 33% each and the LibDems 26%. One can only judge from the actual result now it’s in that these figures were either made up, deliberately spun to try and squeeze out as many Tory votes as possible to save them from an embarrassing third place for Cameron’s Conservatives or if as he claimed the figures came from someone in the Tory campaign that their tellers are complete and utter rubbish.
Exclusive – Electoral Law broken in Ealing Southall
I just picked up on this blog post over at the Telegraph:
For legal reasons I am not linking directly to it as it contains information that breaches electoral law. You will also see that the specific information has been smudged out so as not to open myself up to legal procedures.
What this article in the Telegraph claims is that someone from the Tories has provided information pertaining to the initial validating of the postal votes in the Ealing Southall by-election. All political parties are allowed representatives to oversee the validation process however any release of an indication as to how the votes are going for each party is strictly prohibited as such a release could influence or be prejudicial to the outcome of the ballot.
Anyone in any doubt of the seriousness of releasing such information should consider schedule 6 of the 2000 amendments to the 1983 Representation of the People’s Act which clearly states:
“66A. – (1) No person shall, in the case of an election to which this section applies, publish before the poll is closed-
(a) any statement relating to the way in which voters have voted at the election where that statement is (or might reasonably be taken to be) based on information given by voters after they have voted, or
(b) any forecast as to the result of the election which is (or might reasonably be taken to be) based on information so given.
(2) This section applies to-
(a) any parliamentary election; and
(b) any local government election in England or Wales.
(3) If a person acts in contravention of subsection (1) above, he shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months.”
This is of course a very serious issue for the Telegraph in releasing this information but as the article specifically identifies the source as being from the Tories they may have some serious questions to answer – to the police.
[Update] The page on the Telegraph’s website has now been pulled.
Hi, my name’s Tony Lit and my company was a Labour Party Donor
I’m Tony, this is me with Tony, he used to be the Prime Minister. We got together at a Labour Party fundraiser back on the 20th of June. 7 days later I joined the Conservative Party and the next day my new bestest friend Davey Cameron imposed me as the David Cameron’s Conservatives candidate for the Ealing Southall by-election.
On the 15th of June just before I met Tony at the Labour Party bash, my company issued this cheque for
What Gurcharan Singh actually said
In the interest of honesty and openness for which I’m sure all in political blogging circles would agree is important. Here’s what Gurcharan Singh actually had to say on his blog before it got stripped by those who seem to think it might make someone appear a little disingenuous to say one thing less than a fortnight ago and another now.
We’ll just start with what’s there now and no commentary much as it’s very tempting, I’ll leave it entirely up to readers as to the interpretations they conclude from it:
Then there’s the blog how it used to look before the post deletions kicked in.
It’s over to you to judge for yourselves what you think about Gurcharan Singh now.
Gurcharan Singh and the amazing disappearing blog
Gurcharan Singh, David Cameron’s latest recruit has a website with a blog on it. Well, used to that is, sort of. You could find it at:
Sadly though it appears the Tories top techie monkeys have been on to the case and all you get now is a redirect to the Tories homepage. Strangely enough the URL is now entitled ‘The Conservative Party’ and meta tagged ‘The official website of the UK Conservative Party’. Strange that isn’t it?
One might deduce from this that following his switching this morning the Tory spin-meisters have descended to cut off access to anything dear old Gurcharan might have said that could be embarrassing to his new master.
Sadly though, not being particularly competent techies it would seem, his entire blog is still available at:
What could there possibly be to hide? Not that it matters, (entire website safely copied). Well, how about Gurcharan’s views less than a fortnight ago regarding Gordon Brown taking over as Premier?
“I am full of hope for the future as this to me signals the beginning of an era where the Labour party can consolidate its leanings over the last few years and move forward with a new outlook based upon positive change. We progress.
On behalf of myself and those who are kind enough to consider me their representative, I would like to wish PM Gordon Brown all the best.”
Or how about his praise for outgoing Premier Tony Blair:
“I would like to believe that the majority of people will like me, have a genuine appreciation for the fact that up until the last moment, he remained dignified, astute, forever able to deliver a suitable response to a unique situation and of course, a pleasure to observe.
I have met Mr Blair in person on numerous occasions over the last few years. From those interactions the impression I took away was that he was a man committed to doing what he believed to be right at the time. Unwaveringly.
Despite all the spin, internal innuendos within the party and of course Iraq, he remained staunchly dedicated to the people of Great Britain and for this he has my firm admiration.
I do not want to use this space to write Tony Blair’s political obituary or provide comment and analysis on each of his many political milestones nonetheless, I would be hard pushed not to draw attention to his following achievements:
* Peace in Northern Ireland;
* Minimum Wage; and
* Work time regulations.
The very fact that he was given a standing ovation from most quarters within the House of Commons, friend and foe, was testament to the impact he made during his tenure as Prime Minister. If I were to call upon my limited vocabulary to sum up his feats in one word it would be remarkable.”
What I find most interesting though is that despite him expressing such praise for Tony Blair and Gordon Brown less than a fortnight ago and now suddenly deciding his true beliefs lie with David Cameron, is the timing of this blog’s launch.
15th of June to be precise. Strangely only five days before the death of Piara Khabra. Now only a cynic might suggest that this rather convenient timing might be a bit of getting in quick to launch a bid for the Labour ticket in the by-election. Something of course Gurcharan Singh did but was ultimately unsuccessful.
That such a change of position in a short time is possible makes one wonder about his motivations. Not of course that this is anything new. Reminds me of a certain former Labour Councillor in Walsall who on not getting selected for a Parliamentary seat a week later ran off to join the Tories. Personally if that’s the kind of people who are attracted to “David Cameron’s Conservatives” then good luck, he’s welcome to them.
By the way, what is it with this David Cameron’s Conservatives? They must not like Davey boy so much up north, their candidate in Sedgefiled is just down as ‘Conservative’.
[Update] Gurcharan’s site has now turned a distinctly blue colour and grown one of those daft little trees. What’s very interesting is the post praising Gordon Brown has been completely removed. I think I’ll ask why.
The opportunist strikes again
I’m starting to warm to David Cameron. He’s single-handedly doing more to boost the prospects of the Labour Party through his flagrant opportunism and lack of background research than any amount of work we could do on our own side.
Hat tip to Sunny over at Pickled Politics for this one as he was obviously up later last night than I was. News that Labour Councillor Gurcharan Singh is due to defect to the Tories and you can bet Davey boy has lined up a big media event to welcome him into their ranks.
Sadly though, at least for Cameron is that he may well have jumped before looking, asking some questions and doing his research on his new found recruit. Gurcharan Singh was unsuccessful in obtaining the nomination to be the Labour candidate in the by-election which begs the question of his own opportunism? Perhaps, just perhaps there’s a reason that the Labour Party didn’t select him to stand as our candidate in the Ealing Southall by-election?
I don’t normally do speculation as you know, but according to some good friends from down that neck of the woods, they’ll be very glad to get shot of him and you never know, he may just take a few others with him. Good old Davey boy, you’ve done us all a favour.
[Update] The post over at Pickled Politics seems to have disappeared for some reason. Good job I saved it just in case.
[Update] post back up on Pickled Politics.
David Cameron’s plan to introduce a police state and fund it through stealth taxes
OK, the headline is very mischievous but were this to be the Daily Mail then I’m sure it would pass as being wholly legitemate piece of journalism. That said, it’s not necessarily that far from the truth and here’s how.
This stems from his speech to the British Phonographic Industry the other day in which he had this to say regarding the issue of illegal downloads of music.
”
We need you in the music industry itself to continue to innovate and make the sort of technological progress that makes pirating CDs more and more difficult.
We need businesses and individuals to report the sale of pirate CDs or the existence of illegal file-sharing websites whenever they see them.
Let me also speak about one final responsibility too: that of Internet Service Providers.
They are the gatekeepers of the internet.
Some ISPs claim there is nothing they can do to stop illegal downloading of music.
But last month alone, there were eight sites that hosted more than 25,000 illegal downloads.
That is clear and visible internet traffic.
You should know.
In 2006, the BPI took down 60,000 illegal files from some 720 websites.
Since 2004, you have brought 139 actions against peer-to-peer filesharing.
But we cannot expect you to do all the work.
ISPs can block access and indeed close down offending file-sharing sites.
They have already established the Internet Watch Foundation to monitor child abuse and incitement to racial hatred on the internet.
They should be doing the same when it comes to digital piracy.”
Dave’s not too good on this whole internet thing as we’ve all sort of picked up on by now but as someone with a desire to take over the reigns of power it would be nice to think he either one, has people with credible enough knowledge of the subject he’s talking on to advice him and two, he knows a little bit about the way the current legal structure works.
First up, let’s deal with Dave’s lack of knowledge on the old technology front and pin him down to something he believes in, yes I know it’s hard but there’s at least one thing we can gather from his speech.
Dave’s a supporter of DRM (digital rights management), which makes him a bit of a divvy in my book purely for that but fundamentally what it reveals is that Davey boy believes that the music industry should continue to waste substantial amounts of money investing in systems that by their very nature are doomed to failure. It does not matter what encoding is placed on media, it’s crackable. There is of course a trade off on performance as well. The more complex the encoding, the longer the decoding takes by whatever legitimate hardware is being used to play back the media which is crap for the end user as well.
However it’s when Mr Cameron moves on to ISP, the internet and filesharing P2P networks that he really drops his pants and deserves a good spanking.
He claims that ISP’s are the ‘gatekeepers’ of the internet. Sorry Dave, no they’re not and quite frankly they have no desire to be either. Thankfully though, those lovely people over at the EU have a nice little directive that covers this one if he’d like to go and look it up, it’s here, the European Directive on Electronic Commerce and it says:
“Article 12
Just when you thought it was safe to dip your toe into the blue again
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?