Boringate-sorry once more!

I'd hoped that 'Astragate' was behind us, that the due process would take its 'due process 'course and Tony Woods would end up wishing he had done what he should have done in the first place.

On Tuesday morning I popped into my favourite little Italian cafe on Fish Street for my usual coffee.Sitting in a huddle by the counter the traditional conspirators of the Lib-Dem firmament-Cllrs Meredith,Church and the man of the moment-Woodsy!
"Morning Dennis,Morning Richard " and as Woods refused to acknowledge me " and morning to your friend!"
With that jaunty little greeting I went on to place my order.At that point Woods got up and rushed out of the cafe at an unusually fast pace-leaving his coffee.
"Something upset your friend!" I ventured a small piece of drollery.
At which point that nice Mr Church unleased a very nasty and very public piece of invective against me.I really didn't listen too carefully but the word 'shit' appeared to be his favourite word.
Let me make it clear once and for all.I do not like Tony Woods,I think he is a bully and an inept local politician(I'm sure those feelings are mutual)-but that's politics!
However when I reported his actions to the Standards Board it was on the request of NBC employees who felt they were not able to complain themselves.Subsequently it would appear that not even the Chief Executive was able to persuade Woods to do the right thing.

Political motivation? Probably that could be argued, but the fact that he was in the wrong and he knew it seems to me adequate justification.He could have ended this saga before it ever got started.
By the way for local Lib-Dem activist to argue in the letters column tonight(25th August) that he was doing his neigbours a favour by not parking in the street is a somewhat pathetic defence as the vehicle was untaxed.
Politics is not about being liked, or even about being popular, its about making judgements and hoping you've got it right.
Tony Woods made the wrong judgement and made the life of a number of NBC employees difficult.
Richard Church,in his abusive defence of the indefensible simply demonstrated how shallow and insecure the administration at the Guildhall appears to be.
A number of Lib-Dem supporters and putative Lib-Dem supporters have asked to keep personalities out of politics.
Well I may be a scruffy little muppet but I have yet to call an opponent a shit in a public cafe!
Mind you there is still time I suppose, or I could even invoke the John Prescott response.

Is Tony Woods a bona fide Councillor?

After months of waiting the 'Astragate' report is now a public document and at last i can comment on it without fear of being thrown in the jug!
Astonishingly after having led a blameless and law abiding life for decades I have been threatened twice with legal action in the past six weeks.
The first is widely known, former Labour Councillor Les Marriott and almost but not quite County Councillor Tess Scott tried to get CC&BC TCexMPexPC and myself incarcerated for forgetting to put my address on an election letter.
It would appear that we have beaten that rap.
But then Francis Fernandez,NBC head honcho Borough Solicitor threatened me with all sorts of punishments(imprisonment,huge fines,losing my status as a bona fide citizen,having to listen to Tony Woods deone on...)if I released details of the Astragate complaint to the press.
As it happens I didn't need to, they already had a copy when they telephoned to confirm a detail.

I made the complaint to the Standards Board some time ago, alongside a former NCC member.In his response Cllr Woods claimed that it was not a 'bona fide complaint and was politically motivated'.
As to being 'bona fide', well I've been a tax paying citizen in this Borough for over 40 years!-Tony Woods I believe came in or around 2002-Get your bona fides out Tony!!
For the record I was asked to assist by long serving employees of NBC who knew I was both a former Council Leader(a decade of bona fides there Tony!) and an Honary Alderman(bit more bona fides Tone?) and that they had little confidence in the direct approach.

Given that Tony Woods ignored the Chief Executive three times, the Town Hall manager once and his own Chief Whip,Dennis Meredith it would seem that their lack of confidence in the supreme leader was well placed.

His other complaint that it was politically motivated is somewhat bizarre given that he is..er ..a local 'politician' but chimes in with his general world view.
Remember when there was a packed public meeting in the Guildhall some months ago and the same Cllr Woods refused to attend(even though he was in the building) because it was 'political'.
I understand that Woods likes to appear the hard man of local politics, and likes the fact that some of his group call him 'Stalin'- well Tony, lrts make it clear,your no JVS!
Indeed if you had any of his qualities half your group would be in a gulag near Daventry by now and the other half would be too!
By the way if you really think of yourself as Stalin-who in your group is your Beria?

I was wondering why you were looking so glum at the Pig concert and wondering around like 'little Billy no mates', you had obviously read the final report of Philip Mears.

Is it too late for NewLabour?

Norwich North may well be the end of Newlabour as we know it.
Dozens of Labour MP's are tainted with the expenses scandal.Some very senior members,like Geoff Hoon,hazel Blears and Jacqui Smith are all deeply involved.
Brown promises to clean up, and the NEC create a 'star chamber' to root out the bad'uns.
Astonishingly only three NEC members make up the quasi judicial panel and the names of the accused are put forward by Nick Brown the Choef Whip and Ray Collins,the Party's General Secretary.
Si far a magnificent 5 members have appeared before the 'star chamber' and all have been instructed to stand down at the next election.
One of them Dr Ian Gibson, a well liked an competent local MP appeared before only 2 members according to press reports.
His offence was frankly on the lighter end of the scandal, but he was chopped, and as a decent 'sort of guy' resigned his seat.
Nothing has been said about serial house flippers such as Hoon and Blears, and I suspect most people were outraged when the grinning muppet flashed a huge cheque when she went to pay back! Contrition, embarassment,humility-Naw! Just her trademark inane grin!
So Gibson was sacrificed and the labour Party lost a good if somewhat radical member, and they then lost the by election in humiliating style.
A great deal of humbug has dominated the airwaves since last Thursday but there were two significant factors:
1.Traditional Labour voters didn't troll out and vote for alternatives,70% of former Labour supporters stayed at home.
2.The party had troble getting enough enthusiastic volunteers to leaflet the whole constituency.
Wonder where that vast cohort of MP's were during the election campaign?
Charles ClarkeMp for Norwich South described the defenestration of Ian Gibson as "arbitary,unfair,incompetent and unjust".
Absolutely right-but why didn't Clarke speak up ages ago and challenge the careerists who now run the Party/
If he had made his views known, and threatened to resign with Gibson in an act of solidarity-then things might well have been very different.
Trouble is most MP's would rather moan about Big Gordon than realise that the problem is not just a poor leadership.It is a problem of a party that he longer has a political vision and a party that has lost,one way or another,most of its active footsoldiers.
The ieony of Norwich North is that the Tory winner,Chloe Smith,looks and sounds like your average Blair Babe circa.1997.
In the papers today there are hints that other Labour MP's might quit to force other by elections,their purpose is to force Brown out.
A forlorn hope-they had their chance to show solidarity with Ian Gibson months ago, but they fancy hanging on to their parliamentary salaries for a few more months.
NewLabour has done more that simply weakened the ideological base of a once genuinely radical party,it has destroyed the real enthusiasm for socialist ideas and filled its upper echlons with a bunch of careerist numpties.
Truth to tell the next very small PLP will resemble a few dozen Chloe Smith's and not much else!

Sewing the Mailbags

Regular readers to Tony's blog on NIV website will now be familiar with the saga of the Castle ward Two.Indeed someone appears to think that we are both inside at the moment sewing mailbags and pretending that we are Lord Archer and Jonathan Aitken.
No such luck, and I know that will upset some of our fans in the darker reaches of New Labour!

But what the story reveals is the poverty of political nous that sections of New Labour in Northampton demonstrate.
Les Marriott, onetime Labour Councillor and soulmate of Terry Wire was the agent at the County Council elections for Tess Scott.Once again the imposed candidate on Castle Ward Labour Party.

Strangely Marriott appears to enjoy his role in masterminding Calamity Scott's bids for power,last time he was so keen on ensuring she slipped into her Borough seat that he managed to lose his own in St.James.(On the last saturday before the Borough elections he was shoring up his own vote by chaperoning Ms.Scott in Spring Boroughs)
Marriott has been boasting that he was the one who reported our omission on the postal vote letter to all and sundry.his explaination appears to be that if he hadn't drawn attention to our malfeasance then someone else would

So it's now New labour policy to make their political mark by worrying about a letter that we sent to individual named electors in Castle Ward, with Tony's name, address, telephone number and signature all on prominent display.

A serious criminal act or someone wasting Police time?

But then what are the New Labour heroes doing?
Supporting NBC tenants in warden controlled accomodation who are at the sharp end of the cutbacks?
Well there was a demonstration lasr week with a rally addressed by Tony and Ron Mendel of the Trades Council.Binners was there,David Palethorpe was there, and even Malcolm Mildren of the Lib-Dems put in an appearance.
But the magnificent five New Labour Councillors? Not even a message of support from Leader Davies.
Equally important is the issue of privatisation of public services,delightfully described by Tony Woods as 'a market testing exercise'.
With the prospect of many job losses on the Borough and a reduction of services to residents,one might have thought that the issue was tailor made for a resurgent Labour Party looking to take on the Lib-Dems.
Tony Clarke has suggested a call in to examine the process, it would appear that Sally Keeble would welcome such a call in, as indeed would Joy Capstick and the Labour Party Local Government Commitee. Leader Davies is opposed such call in,I understand on the grounds that
1.He thought market testing was not such a bad idea and
2.The Lib-Dems have offered him a place on the committee reviewing the proposals.

So next week it seems highly probable that the local Tories will outflank Labour, anf it is even possible that some Lib-Dems will see the dangers ahead and will support call in.

But then Northampton New Labour have much more important issues to address-like our letter to postal voters in Castle Ward.

And what was the result M & S ?

A New Beginning

It is a widely held view that the BNP won their two miserable seats in the European Parliament by taking votes from Labour.
Now it is true that the Labour vote declined dramatically and that the BNP picked up seats because of the lower turnout.That much is true and it is largely the result of the Labour Government fixing the threshold for seats at too low a level.

Could that simply be a result of an extremely generous impulse to assist minority views get an airing or a cynical view that maube Labour itself would need a lower threshold to keep itself in business?
Too cynical a view even for me to contemplate.

But Channel4 research reveals that whilst the large Labour abstentions helped the fascists reach the % points necessary,there was no widespread evidence that large numbers of voters were attracted to the fascist fold.

Firstly their actual vote was down on last time,despite the vast sums that they have claimed to have been able to spend on the election.

Secondly and perhaps more interestingly is the evidence that they attracted that section of the white working class,the manual workers who read the Sun and the Star and were working class Tory voters.
The simple and obvious fact is that the BNP have attracted exactly who has always been likely to vote extreme right anywhere in Europe.
Working class semi-skilled and lower middle class 'aspirational' have always been the targets of xenaphobic bigots and hatemongers.

Think redneck-the sort of mediocrity that always needs someone else to blame for their own failure.
You can bet your life that the average BNP voter blames everone and everything for what's gone wrong in their lives-only happy when they can point the finger and blame someone else.
Preferably of course an immigrant with a dark skin who will have taken "their job,their house,their hospital bed,the food out of their children's mouth,their wife,their children and probably even their pet"

Nick Griffin blames 'red thugs' for lobbing an egg at him, will he also condemn 'red,white and blue' thugs who intimidated a Labour counting agent at a polling station in Northampton on Thursday?
Why do I expect the ill named 'Northampton patriot' to bleat about needing proof and citing lack of Police involvement as proof that nothing happened?

But of course few people are willing to risk fascist intimidation-it has a long and ugly history!

The BNP did badly in Northampton, almost as badly as the Christian People's Alliance,keen defenders of the BNP's right to spew racist ideology, but as long as their is a white underclass determined to plead victimhood,then there is a leechlike political ideology willing to feed their paranoia.

Where did it all go wrong?

I've canvassed for the Labour Party for about 40 years.I canvassed in the good times and in the bad times and in the very bad times.
In the early seventies,when parts of Duston were in Castle Ward I remember a leading trade union official who lived there sort of secretly pledged support but wouldn't put a poster up-in case the neighbours would be offended!
Times changed of course and that trade union official went on to be a prominent Borough and County Councillor.
When times were good everyone wanted to show that they were part of 'New Labour'-millionaires and TV personalities and honest fresh faced property developers and bankers all flashed their party affiliation like it was going out of fashion.

Of course New Labour lost some of the features that made the Labour party distinctive.Socialism was an early casualty, and not long afterwards even Social Democracy took a bit of a tumble-but what the hell! After 18 years of Tory misrule we were winning and it didn't much matter how we won.
Old lefties were derided and hounded into either silence or exile.The New Labour project was always about winning regardless of what we were winning.
And that's the rub, a Parliamentary Party consisting largely of chancers and opportunists.
Principles-that's Old Labour-policies-who cares as long as we win-ideology-that's even older than Old Labour.
So what you are left with is a hollowed out shell of an organisation and what is happening in Westminster today os the result of the destruction of the values of the Labour party.
The nepotism and cronyism is endemic in the Labour party because all it has been about over the last few years is winning
Lets win Mondeo man,lets win suburban middleclass,lets win businessmen,lets win the high rollers.
Parachute our gfavoured sons and daughters into 'safe' seats and get rid of the awkward squad-those who thought the Labour Party was a political Party that cared about social justice and equality.
The events two years ago in my own ward of Castle here in Northampton should have been warning enough.The regional Labour party,that once had some real power and influence in deciding policy and even had annual regional conferences is an invisible bunch of forelock tuggers.
Did you know it is impossible to get a list of members of the East Midland Regional Executive!
Invisible little grey apparachniks.

the Regional Director(no less) decided on some very flimsy evidence that Castle Ward was not fit to select its own candidate-and imposed a useless creature from outside(but luckily a friend of S.Keeble MP,friend of tumble driers everywhere)
Imposing candidates on Castle wardhas become a habit of the Regional Director and she has done it again for the County Council(same candidate)


Two years ago the Regional party ,without telling the local branch or constituency spent over £800 of members money getting this woman trailing home a very poor second.

This time round,with no ward organisation and over 70 other candidates facing meltdown,they intend to spend over £800 again to try and get this pathetic candidate back!

This is the evidence of a Party without purpose or principle,simply perpetuating their own clique because there is nothing left to do.

What they are doing in our ward is replicated up and down the country and reaches its apex in the ugliness that is the PLP saving its own bacon!

There is now no purpose in the presently constructed Labour Party.
Forty years of effort and the end result is Sally Keeble and Tess Scott!!
and an authoritarian right wing political machine that leaves great swathes of social reform untouched.
Socialism anyone?

Now is the time to come to the aid of the County

No,I don't mean the County Cricket Club-too early in the season for that but rather the County Council.
June 4th sees the County Council elections and already the turn out predictions are dire.Some commentators are talking about a 20% turnout, and something similar for the European elections.

This is the anti-politics nation and we are caught in a national consensus of 'I can't be bothered'.

Anyone who has canvassed over the past twenty(or in my case forty) years has seen the decline in interest in political ideas and activism.In fact canvassers are as rare as hen's teeth these days and for a number of reasons:
1.the reluctance of people to open their front doors because of television/fear/indolence/or a simple lack of interest in anyone from outside!

It is frequently argued that the rejection of the political process represents a healthy cynicism-that frankly is bollocks!
What the rejection of the political process represents is a fear of getting involved in thinking about ideas and consequences.It is interesting to observe how many people say that they are not interested in politics and then come out with an astonishing dribble of half baked opinions and second hand anecdotal evidence that consists of hand me downs from the popular press.

Too many people talk and think scribble,and they of course are the raw material on which the bottom feeders of politics thrive.
The BNP and their ilk,UKIP and the Christian Peoples Allianceall exist in the shadowy world of anti ideological politics-the politics of hate,envy and bigotry.

Trouble is they exist in a vacuum that the major parties have created.Most particularly the Labour party,that over the past couple of decades have abandoned the social democratic/socialist principles it once stood for and become a party with no roots and no vision.

The labour party will evolve into radical party once again,but there may be a great deal of pain involved in that evolution and there will be casualties on the way.
But only a strong socialist party with a collective vision for the future will be able to resist the anti politics of the far right.
Part of that process will be the rebuilding of strong roots in the communities that need to work as communities,as local people organising together in the interests of all their neighbours.
The labour party was founded by trade unions who saw the need to combine together to improve the lives of everyone.
Right now we are back at the earliest stage of building such combinations and communities again.
That's why it may be necessary to create local centres to organise and fight on local issues and to encourage people to come from behind their front doors and forget whats on the TV-to hope again!
That's why the sort of campaign that Tony Clarke is fighting in Castle Ward is worth supporting!

And despite all the bluster and bravado the nazis of the BNP,with all the big bucks rolling into their coffers can only manage three miserable candidates in Northampton.