Missing inaction

As Curly has already reported, it looks like Allen Branley has dropped off his electoral perch and stood down as a councillor. This came after criticism that Branley was visible by his absence.

Now Allen Branley has been cut from the list of South Tyneside councillors on the council website (despite his name is mentioned on a council press release about a surgery on Saturday) which supports Curly's hot news.

Aiming high

Ah, the art of spin. A super new school is ahead of schedule - despite the fact that the old school is still standing and the local residents who will be impacted by the works haven't been informed of the changed timetable.

But more worryingly, why will the new school have a frickin hair salon? Is this some new policy where students will be encouraged to keep their career expectations low? Will the economy need hairdressers and beauticians?

And I thought Mortimer's enforced dance curriculum was bloody stupid.

As long as our kids can do a jig and do their highlights then the future must be bright. I suppose we should all thank Labour and South Tyneside Council for the next generation of X Factor hopefuls.

Flying off the handle

Reactionaries of all colours will be spewing self righteous rage after it has been revealed that the Foreign Office has asked for tenders for a contract to provide charter flights for the Foreign Secretary. Some of the perennially offended will play the environment hypocrisy card, hand-wringing over the damage to David Miliband's climate karma by choosing to fly instead of sending a hemp-powered email. Others will agonise over the expenditure.

And as if by magic, Matthew Elliott of Tory black ops propaganda front group the TaxPayers' Alliance, said:

"David Miliband would do a better job if he remembered he is there to serve the people, not live a life of luxury at our expense."

This cynical approach illustrates the utterly partisan position of the Taxpayers Alliance. By the time such a contract comes on stream there's a fair chance that David Miliband may not be Foreign Secretary, either through reshuffle or change of government. Perhaps the Taxpayers Alliance think the Foreign Secretary would better represent our country by arriving on a cheapoflights.com flight after being packed in with drunken stag and hen bender tourists?

It's no fun working away from home and family for any length of time, and a job like Foreign Secretary will no doubt require a lot of hours in hotels, airports and on planes. No matter how luxurious the trolls at the Taxpayers Alliance think it is, being away from your family for extended periods can be soul crushing.

I'm no fan of David Miliband. His role so far as Foreign Secretary has proven to be one of ethical corruption and dishonesty. To be fair though, I doubt we have ever had an honest and moral Foreign Secretary, which suggests that the role could be something of a poisoned chalice.

But he's our Foreign Secretary with a job to do for a nation which has always punched above it's weight, no matter how much we disagree with his moral vacuum. I don't begrudge flying our representative around if it means he is fit to fight in the shark tank of foreign politics, and can quickly get back home to his family afterwards.

Supermarket weep

Years ago I worked for ASDA, at the flagship store in Boldon, when it was still part of Associated Dairies. Staff were part of the organisation, sharing in its success with annual dividend bonus payments. The union recognised by ASDA, the GMB, was generally respected and staff felt safe in their jobs.

Shortly after I left ASDA however, things changed. There was a management cull, where all middle managers had to reapply for their jobs. Those who had a history of sick leave, were in disciplinary measures, or were considered to be difficult could say goodbye to their jobs. The atmosphere had changed and the feeling of family and mutual respect had gone.

Friday night I was with some ASDA employees from the current South Shields store who were worried that they weren't guaranteed a job at the new Coronation Street store opening in the summer; victims of the same technique used all those years ago.

South Tyneside Council has been very close to ASDA. The Boldon store has been permitted to expand to the point that it's the company's biggest store. The new store in Coronation Street is the Council's retail jewel in the crown, with a lot of hopes resting on the store's success. And political reputations.

Forcing employees to reapply for their jobs is unjust. Don't expect the Council to worry about this - as long as councillors can share in the glory and get their mugs in the Gazette they're unlikely to demand that ASDA respect their employees and guarantee each of them their jobs in the new store.

Gazette photographer strikes again

The Gazette's photographers have an expert knack of getting pictures of people from unusual angles or timed to snap just at an inopportune moment for the subject. Some photographs or images have a habit of following people around for years. Remember Neil Kinnock's dash in to the sea?

Hopefully, Gazette reporter Angela Reed won't suffer too much gyp from tonight's feature photograph... but a few teas must have been spluttered in South Tyneside tonight.

WOT a copout

South Shields MP David Miliband says that it was rather bad show to use the old 'War on Terror' brand. Anyone reading this blog in August 2007 will know that the brand was dumped some time ago.

Few Tories will be in a position to criticise Miliband's about-turn without a severe bout of hypocrititis. Most Tory MPs voted for the war in Iraq and even Conservative Home still uses the 'War on Terror' tag, so they've clearly bought in to the whole paradigm.

Yet the relentless erosion of our liberties with so-called anti-terror laws continues, with police officers down to litter enforcement officers given powers to harass ordinary folk whose only crime is going about their lawful business. Peaceful demonstrators, photographers and even an OAP at a Labour conference have all felt the cold hand of Labour's anti liberty laws.

But it's not just the brand that needs dropping, but the real harm caused by attaching our nation to this morally corrupt philosophy: the rendition flights, the torture, the killing of innocents, the anti-terror legislation, the breeding of hate.

But most of all, will Miliband call for a real reckoning for the architects of the War on Terror, Bush and Blair in front of a war crimes court?

Justice? That's too much for Labour.

Opening shots

After her letter in the Gazette last night, it looks like Tory Karen Allen is positioning herself as Tory candidate for South Shields (or elsewhere in Tyneside) for the next general election.

The letter is the usual Tory tosh - build more roads, Labour useless, yada yada yada. She earnestly even tries the jobs joker card while blissfully forgetting which party ruthlessly destroyed the region's industries.

It's interesting that in the letter she gives her address as The Kingsway. Although being Shields born, her blog gives her location as Stepney Green in London. A Lloyds broker presumably working in London, why would she mislead readers about her home address, if not to give the impression of being a local? Is she ashamed to use her London address? And why didn't she mention she is a Tory?

Pitifully, despite this looking like a first move to gain local exposure and garner notice from local Tories, she doesn't really say much different from Hepburn and Miliband; there is little ideological difference between the Labour and the Tories. In fact there is nothing of substance. Even the 'give a man a fish' proverb is just space filling, devoid of any context.

Looking at her blog, the Gazette letter was originally posted as a blog entry back in November. It looks like the blog is going to be used as a campaign tool, given that despite blogging since 2006, she only started blogging (ie giving a shit) about North East issues last month. Expect more.

Oddly, the South Shields Conservative website doesn't mention Karen Allen or her letter, and other bloggers haven't picked it up either.

Phew!

There's a saying in Middlesbrough: "What smell?"

However, for the last couple of days there's been a distinctly poo smell in my little corner of Shields, which has been tugging at the nostrils without respite. Whiteleas, Cleadon Park, the Nook and Harton have been fairly mingin'. Despite a fairly warm night last night, windows stayed closed. It only just now seems to be dissipating.

Or "Middlesbrough Syndrome" is kicking in.

It happens a couple of times a year when farmland bordering Cleadon and Whiteleas gets mucked with pig shit. I know its got to be done, but begads it honks.

David's soul

In what's been tagged as an opening move for the top job in Britain, South Shields MP David Miliband wrote this missive in the Guardian, positioning himself and the Labour Party. It could be summarised as "We're Not Tories". It's more of the same oldskool NuLab tosh. I loved this bit:

"Every member of the Labour party carries with them a simple guiding mission on the membership card: to put power, wealth and opportunity in the hands of the many, not the few."

Labour have privatised and off-balance sheeted beyond even the most ardent Thatcherite's free market wet dreams. Much of our public services are being run now for private profit at a higher cost than if it had been run by the public sector. More is being prepped to go into private hands. Those membership cards must be so buried behind wads of cash that the "guiding mission" has been suffocated.

Anyhow, it's already been covered by Curly, but what has really interested me is the local angle.

First is the Gazette's coverage of the story. A massive front page splash reporting the article written for, hold on, it doesn't say where! Even the Gazette editorial could only just manage to strain itself so far to describe the source of the piece as "a national newspaper". If you're going to lift whole blocks of text from another newspaper then you should at least have the courtesy to give it credit. It's really bad show chaps.

Also in the Gazette, Alliance newbie councillor and former chairman of the South Shields Labour Party and former Labour councillor Geraldine White was quoted as saying:

"He doesn't promise anything unless he can deliver."

Whoa! Way to be opposition there Geraldine! But that's not all. On the Gazette website there's a fuller account, getting positively all moist over our own 'I'm David'. She swooned:

"David is a man of honour, and that is a quality which is highly prized in politics. He doesn't promise anything unless he can deliver. I endorsed him when he came to South Shields as MP in 2001, because he was open, honest and frank. On a personal level, he's very funny, he was [sic] a great sense of humour, and he adores his family."

It's kind of her to remind us that she endorsed the guy: friend and confidant of Tony Blair, who was parachuted into a safe Labour seat, and so close to former MP and waste of space David Clark's mysteriously timely ennoblement. Yay cronyism! And now she endorses DM for PM. Awww. It makes yer feel all warm don't it?

With enemies like Geraldine, Labour don't need too many friends. I think that's how it goes. Surely it can't be long before she's welcomed back into the Labour fold?

Cheeky blighter 2: behind the boss' back

The government is battling to keep to its CO2 reduction target to 60% (of 1990 CO2 levels) by 2050, whilst campaign groups like Friends of the Earth responded to the science and moved on from the 60% figure and are pushing for a more realistic 80% reduction by 2050 through their Big Ask campaign. When the Climate Change Bill eventually hits the books, we may be looking at something more like 100%.

The Climate Bill was taken up by South Shields MP David Miliband during his tenure as Secretary of State for the Environment, and could possibly be the only concrete contribution this government has made towards battling with climate change. Since the Bill started discussions, the government has dragged its feet over key issues, including the 2050 target, annual targets, ministerial accountability and 'carbon budget' reporting.

But in South Africa, David Miliband agreed to a target "in the range of 80% to 95% by 2050". He definitely played a blinder.

I find it hard to say this.

I like it.

We went to war on lies

If there's anyone due for eternity with a rectally administered red hot poker it's Iraq war cheerleader John Bolton. Even though Monbiot's attempted arrest was a doomed stunt, it's important to continue to provoke debate, and never let those who backed this war think it's been forgotten about. That includes our local MP, David Miliband.

Writing the wrongs

I've been away for a few days in Edinburgh and it looks like I've missed all the fun on Curly's blog, where I've become an opprobrium magnet for daring to criticise a spook book written by Mike Hallowell and Darren Ritson. Presumably the posters are the book's authors Hallowell and Ritson, or maybe it's a mischievous poltergeist. You never know on t'internet.

I could respond on Curly's blog, but I don't want to further damage my welcome there - and I wish to avoid being slapped with another 'use your own blog' yellow card.

However, I wasn't sure how to respond, or if I should. Would a response feed their apparent self-righteous indignation or would a challenge provide them with a sense of credibility they don't deserve? Or both?

The whole episode is a bit odd. A couple of short tongue-in-cheek critical comments lit the touch-paper and attracted such fury and lengthy, pained replies. Imagine the phone call between the "two battle-hardened paranormal investigators" (seriously, that's what they call themselves):

"Darren? Yeah, it's Mike. We got trouble on the internet."

"What's up Mike?"

"Some guy has posted on Curly's Corner Shop. He says our book is shit."

"He did? Let's get spooky on his ass. I'll post with awful grammar just so no one thinks I'm a poltergeist."

"Good stuff Darren. I'll try and look outraged, and I'll rope Dave in to blow off his usual anti-blogger angst."

"What about BA Baracus?"

"He won't let no fool get him on no plane."

"Pity. But it's still a good plan."

"Go team paranormal!"

I know I should have gone for a Scooby/Shaggy thing, but the A-Team is way cooler.

Anyhow, I resolved I shouldn't go for a full blow by blow response to their desperate attempts to avoid looking like complete tits, and decided to just concentrate on one whopping howler. Ritson provided a classic and quaintly amusing example of fatuous ignorance in this misconception:

"Did’nt [sic] people once mock and ridicule Christopher Columbus after telling people the world was in fact round and not flat?"

No Darren, they didn't, but chances are that if there were such people, those doing the mocking would have believed in the supernatural too.

However, a conscientious and objective researcher (or a history head like me) would know that during Columbus' time most scholars and navigators worked on the basis that the world was spherical. It wasn't a new concept: the ancient Greeks had provided observational and mathematical proofs and even local boy Bede described the characteristics of a spherical world at least 750 years before Columbus. The main contention with Columbus' adventure was over his estimation of the planet's circumference, and over that, Columbus was wrong. This isn't to take anything from Columbus' achievements: history is made by such risk-takers.

Even without referencing Ritson's historical inaccuracy, his argument is based on a creaking non sequitur fallacy - mockery or ridicule has no value in establishing the truth or otherwise of the statements being mocked. And yes, I am aware of the faint irony.

Fair due to Ritson, the 'Columbus was mocked' assertion is a common misconception, fed by reliance on poor source material. Perhaps next time though, before accusing someone of knowing nothing, Ritson could employ some intellectual rigour first and check his facts before making himself look like a complete numb-nuts.

Columbus should have texted to put him straight.

Ethical bombs

A morally vacant cockweasel. It reminds me of BAE Systems' press release last year about lead-free bullets and low emissions grenades.

Whilst MPs publicly wring their hands over the ethical dilemmas in abortion and human genetic research, these same MPs let loons like Codner casually walk the corridors of government, lobbying for the arms industry - with nary a blink.

Foreign Secretary and South Shields MP David Miliband, who has managed to avoid showing his colours at the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill votes, has a chance to stake out the ethical high ground at the Dublin conference.

Will he be listening to arms establishment goons like Codner, or to the 30,000 people who signed up to stop the UK using cluster bombs?

Less well off language

An issue which almost slipped under the radar on David Miliband's 'keep the poor making the rich richer' Gazette article was his use of language.

Poverty is bad news, and the Labour spinners know it. So discussions of poverty have become clouded by obscurantist language. The phrase "less well off" is a classic example of an Orwellian euphemism, recognising that terms like "poor" or "low income" are taboo words which don't score enough happy voter points on the spin-o-meter. Grinding poverty gets a kind of 'glass half full' re-branding exercise.

It's all very doubleplusungood.

Party posers

Some shameless Labour electioneering over in Biddick & All Saints in today's Gazette on the back of an important issue. Labour councillor Olive Punchion rightly condemned the racist graffiti attacks in the Stanhope Road area.

One could have expected her to be similarly critical of the BNP, given that the racist party has stood a candidate in the ward in the last few elections. It's not too much of stretch to make the connection that such extreme anti-social behaviour is fed by the extreme ideology of the BNP.

But attacking racism isn't what this piece was all about. In the photograph accompanying the article in the Gazette, Labour managed to get a nice photo op for their candidate in the forthcoming local election, Anne Walsh. Funny though how the Gazette failed to mention this, referring to her as a "West Park resident". Perhaps the Gazette should be told.

Choices

I'm furious. In fact I'm livid - in disbelief at a council which studiously follows stupid and arbitrary bureaucratic rules. Logic and common sense have been abandoned.

I'm angry at a government to which 'parental choice' is fiction.

Bitter about a schools building programme which has caused a reduction in school places to a point where schools are so 'heavily oversubscribed' that people can't send their children to their school of choice.

Anyway, you get the message - I'm pissed off.

My son has been denied a place at our secondary school of choice - because we live outside the school's catchment area.

However, we live less than 400m from the school. That's about a 6-8 minute walk. That's also despite the fact that my son is leaving a primary school that is further away than our secondary school of choice and the primary school is a feeder to that secondary school. My son's best friend manages to be in the catchment area despite living over a kilometre away from the school.

The school he has been allocated, the second 'choice' on the application, is three times the distance and requires the crossing of a dual carriageway. So much for the safe routes to school concept.

It's concerning that dogmatic adherence to policy comes before an objective risk assessment of child safety.

The almost religious devotion to arbitrary lines on a map is council bureaucracy at it's most Kafkaesque. What is the point of making choices on an application form if they are just going to be ignored anyway?

Choice? Don't make me laugh.

Tremors on Tyneside

Bloody hell! Just before 1.05am I was woken by the house shaking. Not a short burst like a strong gust of wind or what you sometimes feel when they used to blast at Marsden Quarry. A consistent shaking lasting for about 10-15 seconds - long and strong enough to wake me. The radiators rattled on the walls and when I stood up the whole movement was quite disorienting. I can imagine the terror a full blown earthquake must instil.

Now Sky News are reporting tremors felt across central and southern England - Bedfordshire, Norfolk and Leicestershire.

They can add Tyneside to that too.

It's a funny old game (2)

It's been a long run in to the local council elections 2008, which started the day after the 2007 elections with recriminations over the rejected ballots. Over the past few weeks the BNP carpet-bombing of the letters page of the Gazette and the Independent Alliance stunts in the council chamber illustrated that things were heating up.

However, election season doesn't really start until we start seeing election leaflets hitting doormats. Well, I got my first one today, from the Labour candidate for the Harton Ward Neil Maxwell. It seems Maxwell is following Rob Dix's successful campaign tactic from last year: "slag off the Progressives".

The leaflet slams the Progressives as "lazy", and accuses them of refusing to support Rob Dix. Perhaps this is an example of the "Punch and Judy politics" that David Potts finds so distasteful.

I've some disagreements with Progressive Jim Capstick, but his work output hasn't been one of them.

I only hope that the Progressives don't stoop to Maxwell's level.

Snow day

After a minor family medical panic early this morning I retired to Café Nero on King Street for a chill-out coffee. It had just started snowing (again) and I managed to get this shot. By the time I had finished my Latté the snow had already melted.

Planning is boring

My previous post may have given the impression that there's little point in getting involved in consultations and planning. Despite my cynicism, I think they are an important way to try and influence development.

The Gypsies' Green campaigners would be in with a better chance if they had responded en masse to the South Shields and Town Centre Action Plan, outlining their preferences for the type of development on both the Gypsies' Green site. As it was, the action plan respondents were close to 50-50 between a hotel or recreational facilities for the site. A concerted campaign during that consultation could have clearly earmarked the Gypsies' Green site for public recreational facilities. The site is now designated as 'mixed use'.

Since the consultation fed into the Core Strategy, which forms the backbone of local planning guidance, you've got to find a pretty good reason, and strictly in planning terms, to stop a project which fits the criteria laid down in the Core Strategy.

Unless the Gypsies' Green campaigners can find a killer planning objection, coherently challenge the economic benefit claims or gain an unassailable level of public support that worries councillors, the development is likely to go ahead. However, Northumbrian Water's concerns about handling the additional sewerage requirements for all the new developments planned in the Action Plan may provide some faint possibilities.

Realistically though, planning is stuffy, boring and filled with terminology seemingly designed to put off the average citizen. Even councillors are put off - few councillors (sitting or prospective) have written responses to any of the Local Development Framework consultations.

It looks like the planning laws are going to be weakened by an increasingly neo-liberal government - taking power away from local people to put in the hands of the developers - so it's more important than ever to watch what's happening in planning terms and shout out if you don't like what you see.