West Mids: 1,794,464 reject "Tory" bullsh*tter

The turnout for the West Midlands Mayoral election on 2nd May, 2024 was a pathetic 29.8%. Now read on ...

A few years ago I was having a drink in The Queen's, Newhall Street, Brum with a co-volunteer on the much-loved "Hidden Spaces" series of events. The bright young person asked me for my thoughts on the (then) proposed formation of a "West Midlands Combined Authority" (WMCA). Cue a rant of epic proportions on the failure of the disastrous West Midlands County Council and its unlamented demise. Needless to say I went on to be vocal in opposition to the new talk shop, and I pride myself upon being the ONLY protester to actually attend the inaugural meetings at the ICC to, er, protest. Oh, and Birmingham didn't want a WM Mayor and in 2012 voted AGAINST having one. But by 2016 a "mare" was forced upon the people regardless - so much for listening to the public. The first was elected in 2017.

There is a school of thought that as much government as possible should be "devolved", and this nonsense - like the laughable "levelling-up agenda" - seems to have been accepted by the political commentariat as gospel. But why? In these high-tech times, and with AI about to transform our lives still further, clever people know instantly if I even think of buying a new washing machine. Why is decision making not centralised and, more particularly, efficiency-driven? If I want a repair done to my Council house, to report a pothole or require a dog-turd to be cleared why can't I contact a national organisation as efficient as, say, Amazon rather than bureaucrats "shirking from home" who may not even live in my Council area? (Take deeply corrupt Sandwell as an example. Most top management - and even some Labour Councillors - wouldn't dream of living in such a sh*thole themselves, and so how is their supposed "local knowledge" any better than others who don't live in the area?) And when the quality of West Mids councillors is so appalling do you trust them to run a whelk stall, let alone a City or Borough?

The Tory levelling-up agenda - insofar as it is it actually exists - is pure "socialist" dirigiste drivel motivated by an apparently doomed attempt to prevent the reconstruction of Labour's "red wall". The sound economic policy would be to use available funds to improve infrastructure, housing etc. in successful areas like London and South-East rather than waste taxpayers' money on open cesspits like Rochdale or "Donny". Large parts of the north and places like Sandwell should simply be abandoned like former pit villages, and rewilded. This is part of the reason the Tories - yes, the Tories - are now taxing us all until the pips squeak.

The real winners from "levelling-up" have been the consultancy firms. As there is no sensible planning, they devise the "bids" for pots of money to be "won" by local authorities whether there is a sound economic case or not. Take Sandwell again. Wednesbury is an horrific, deprived, area but millions have been blown on the most pathetic project ever - to "improve" the "historic centre" of the troubled town, whatever that is, and build a laughable new market there. The Tories stumped-up for this inevitable fiasco with OUR money having won the local Parliamentary seat in 2019.

The WMCA is a totally artificial political construct with the only nexus between its constituent parts being geographical proximity. Compare and contrast Solihull and Sandwell  - only a few miles apart on the map, but worlds apart. Solihull is full of attractive, healthy, achievers whereas Sandwell has a diseased, uneducated, population of knuckle-draggers. Solihull has more in common with leafy Warwickshire (from whence it was begat) and Sandwell with the neighbouring urban dystopia of ghost-City, Wolverhampton. Solihull may be possibly the most boring place in England but at least it's not a ghastly midden.

There was no logical realignment of the political structure when the new talk shop was created. The disparate local councils retain most of their powers, their bloated bureaucracies and a surfeit of elected councillors. Once again, the Dictatorship of Sandwell had 72 councillors before the formation of the WMCA (three per ward) and now has, er, 72 councillors. Why? Why does each Council retain its own legal department, housing section, public health service etc. if a strong WM region is really the answer to our woes. The answer, of course, is all to do with turkeys and their aversion to Christmas. No politician wants to cede his/her limited powers to someone else.

Our first, unwanted, "Metro Mayor" was the Trumpian Tory braggart, Andy Street, whom the Conservative Government showered with our money. This was then blown on nonsense like the z-list Commonwealth [sic] Games. (Meanwhile, Labour has bankrupted Birmingham!) The security for the meaningless event alone cost over £90 m. Yes, you read that right - 90 million pounds which was NOT used to create jobs and wealth in our region - and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Hundreds of millions have been wasted on a variety of vanity projects. And those perennial Tory donors, property developers and house-builders have also done very well under Street courtesy of the taxpayer forking our for land remediation and the political easing of any nasty planning issues.

For seven years Street subjected us to a torrent of bullsh*t about his alleged achievements, and he is a past master - like Trump - at claiming for himself the kudos for projects which would have happened in any event. But anyone who spends a few minutes on X/Twitter will see the legion of people who ignore the parlous state of our region and constantly big-up how marvellous Birmingham is (there are fewer advocates for the Greater Birmingham area). Needless to say they are the loudest empty vessels in bemoaning his ignominious defeat.

Anyone who remembers Edwina Currie will know that she was adept at inserting the name of her South Derbyshire constituency into every public utterance she made, and Street also thought that if he boasted about Greater Brum often enough people would actually believe his El Dorado fantasy. And some did. Compare and contrast Street with another flawed individual, Albert Bore, a man who did genuinely transform the (former?) Second City - at least temporarily - for the better.

Rishi Sunak promised (though failed) to "Stop the Boats" but the national Tory collapse has at least stopped Street's boasts - at least for a short while. Although he is blue-blooded Street disowned his own Party in a desperate attempt to save his own skin and created the meaningless - and now tarnished - "Brand Andy". But all to no avail for the show-off Non-Con Conman.

There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth at Street's defeat, not just from Tories but from many in Brum who should know better. I pointed out in my post:

https://crowmultimedia.blogspot.com/2024/04/ozymandias-birminghams-bullshtting-mayor.html

that foolish local Conservative councillors were so blinded by his braggadocio that they spent hours campaigning for him instead of trying to hold on to their own seats. Happily, many of these buffoons lost out.

On social media celebrity chefs, some business folk and even a ragbag of greasers from the "third sector" have placed an onion beneath their eyes and bemoaned The Brand's defeat. But when asked to list his actual achievements there has been a marked silence. Often these characters have simply fallen back on the mantra that he was a fine "ambassador" for the region. Ambassador to whom exactly? For all his dishing-out of the Ferrero Rocher he did not - as The Economist put it - "even move the dial" over seven years. But as with Trump there are those who are susceptible to a load of old b*lls and blind to reality. Most people in other parts of the country do not see Greater Brum as some sort of economic powerhouse despite the propaganda.

The actual fact is that most of us couldn't care less about the Mayoralty and the vast majority of locals absolutely didn't want any more of Street. Nearly 1.8 m voters could not face any more of his own trumpet-blowing. Yes folks only 11.1% of the electorate believed the hard sell from, well, a salesman. 88.9% couldn't face any more of him.

It is hard to see the collapse of the WMCA anytime soon or any meaningful local government reform in our region. We can only hope (!) that our new Mayor will have a more strategic plan and work with the local councils to implement it. The problems ahead are immense and our streets will remain caked in dog-sh*t rather than paved with gold for some years to come.

Meanwhile there is talk of The Brand being elevated to the unelected House of Lords when Sunak departs, or being selected for the Party he turned his back on in Solihull or Sutton Coldfield. But as some sections of the media have pointed out, Andy's giant ego is unlikely to suit a life on the green benches, especially in opposition.  With the Party of Brexit about to face humiliating defeat he would be a very small fish in a very small pond. Whatever - at least he won't be doing any more damage to our backward and enfeebled region. Don't shed any tears - he is a very rich man owning at least three and a half properties and won't be suffering the consequences of the multi millions or our money he has p*ssed up the wall.

Crow Multimedia

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Ian Crow Multimedia Limited

Ozymandias: West Mid's Bullsh*tting Mayor

There is a popular misconception in Greater Birmingham that the mechanical bull plonked on the concourse of nasty New Street Station is named after a Brummie notorious for having been a drug-addled p*sshead (although this would be about the level of persons of note in our failing city).

In fact, "Ozzie" is named for Brum's very own Ozymandias, our bullsh*tter-in-chief, Andrew "Andy" John Street. Many of you will be familiar with Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem, "Ozymandias", described thus in Wikipedia:

The poem explores the worldly fate of history and the ravages of time: even the greatest men and the empires they forge are impermanent, their legacies fated to decay into oblivion. "Look on my Works, ye Mighty and despair!" exemplifies the arrogance and hubris of a leader who believed his dominion would endure indefinitely.

New Street Station already hosts one of the hubristic Street's decaying monuments - the monstrous failed John Lewis store from the time when Street ran the bourgeois soft-furnishings etc. empire. It lasted all of 5 minutes before failing.

Street may be diminutive (which will seemingly make him fair game for vicious attacks from Angela Rayner) but he has a giant-size ego. The Master Blagger (as someone recently described him on social media) boasts daily of his supposed accomplishments, but the respected Economist magazine recently pointed out that despite the millions the Tory Government has given him to blow, "he has barely shifted the dial". This is a man who put the "V" and "P" in "Vanity Project".

When he became Mayor an early promise was that he would tackle homelessness. At the time, Street owned at least three and a half properties. His pad in London, a house in rural Northants, his penthouse in The Cube, in Brum, and a half share in a cottage in Wales (co-owned by his very close friend - but NOT partner - Michael Fabricant). He would not need to venture far from his Brum penthouse to begin learning about homelessness, but that wouldn't be flash enough for this poseur. He decided the taxpayer would be better served by him going on an in-depth, er, 18-hour trip to (wait for it ...) Finland. This obscene farce cost us £2,216.88p of which £500 was for chauffer-driven "luxury" transport from Brum to Heathrow and back.

Of course, homelessness is still yet another dire problem which Mr Three and a Half Homes has not solved. Labour are currently pointing out that the bullsh*tter promised 1,700 "social homes" for the West Mids whereas only a pathetic 46 have actually been built. Promises, promises ...

Toryism is in Street's blood but such is the personality cult he has tried to create around himself that he has tried to distance himself from the Party on more than one occasion. But don't be fooled by that. Look instead at him simpering in the audience at Tory Conferences when Party leaders [sic] big him up.

In his first election he faced Labour's moronic Sion Simon, but spent liberally to keep the Nuneaton neanderthal squatting in his North Warwickshire cave. Next time-up the pathetic Labour liar, Liam Byrne, still managed a close contest despite a dramatic imbalance in finances. The Conservatives put up a stonking £1.7m for Street's campaign  (against Byrne's £332,000) but "Andy" turned round and sh*t upon them. He had Jasper Carrott [Who he? - Ed] urge voters to elect the man, and not the Party. Sound familiar? Street is trying the same stunt this time when the Tory Party nationally is in meltdown. 

One thing that IS certain in politics is that everyone loves a winner no matter how appalling the person is. Witness the love (yes, love) of Labour politicians at national and local level for the late Darren Cooper in Sandwell despite the fact that he was a well-known wifebeater. Electoral success trumps moral considerations. And so it is with local Tories and Street. They see him as electoral viagra, and pray they may benefit by hanging on to his coat tails. And whilst Street is pretending to distance himself from the failing Party, local Tories tell me he is assiduously courting every councillor and candidate promising their areas good things if HE gets elected again. However, they must work for HIS election campaign - and many are. Hope springs eternal even in the face of the forthcoming Tory rout. And if I was a Conservative candidate I would be pissed off by someone denigrating their Party whilst shrieking, "Just vote for me. For me!"

He influence in local Tory politics has been pernicious with the formation of cliques to back his interests whilst warring with other Party members. There are wild rumours that he was involved in the appalling decision to move the disastrous Nicola Richards MP out of her West Brom constituency and into the supposedly safe seat at Solihull - a massive two fingers up to the voters who brought the "Red Wall" crashing down in 2019. Whatever the truth of this, the pariah Richards has been out campaigning for him this week and must still be hoping he uses his influence to get her the Solihull gig.

Every single job that has been created in our area in recent years is claimed by Street as his doing. There is no bandwagon that rolls by where he does not hitch a lift eg. his absurd claim to have been involved in West Bromwich Albion FC being "saved". Meanwhile, as the Economist points out, his many years in office have achieved almost nothing.

In the early days of his underperforming mayoralty Street could not open his mouth without saying the words, "Midlands Engine". This is a mythical slumbering manufacturing machine which only needs a quick smearing of Street's bullsh*t to lubricate it into an industrial leviathan driving the local economy. Eat your hearts out, Beijing and Berlin - the Black Country is coming!

Of course this is all, well yes, a myth. Some advanced manufacturing firms have done well but the region's industrial powerhouse remains well and truly in the doldrums. And, in any event, Britain moved from an industrial economy to a service-based one a long-time ago. In services there have been some bright-spots locally - HSBC, Goldman Sachs and even the ailing Deutsche Bank, but nothing much to write home about. Education standards are low in many areas (usually Labour ones) and young folk are seemingly incapable of meeting the employment demands of a high-tech future. The productivity of the Birmingham area is a colossal 14% below the national average despite Street's braggadocio. Economic inactivity is higher than almost anywhere in the country [the Economist]. Areas of severe deprivation, like corrupt Labour Sandwell, pockmark the region.

"Andy" is hardly ever seen without a hard hat and high-vis jacket standing on a building site. Yet even where housing is being built, such as on poisoned land at Friar Park, Wednesbury, the process is being rushed to provide kudos for Street whereas little thought is given to wider infrastructure difficulties which arise with large new developments. With Street it's all icing, and no cake.

Despite his meaningless boasts of "brownfield first" for development his Tory acolytes in Sandwell shafted the lovely green space at Brandhall where 86% of locals polled were against development. And Street is close to developers like his friend "Jeremy" (Jeremy Knight Adams - pictured) who has fallen out big-style with Dudley Tories over a large development project and who wants to destroy a whopping 19 ha in the urban dystopia of Oldbury to build a shopping centre in a bent deal with Labour. Did I forget to mention that his pal, Jeremy, is a big donor to the Tory Party?

It is not clear where Street imagines new industry will actually spring-up. In a bizarre twist he wants to destroy an industrial site in Sandwell and backs a housing development there on the wholly unsuitable site under the ruse that this is a "heritage" project. Ironically, given Street's burgeoning reputation as a pathetic chancer, the site was formerly occupied by Chance Glass!

Greater Birmingham has a wonderfully diverse population and it is a sad indictment of local politics that the real contest next Thursday is between two rich, white, blokes. The Tories have been jumping-up and down claiming that Labour's Richard Parker (formerly of that bastion of socialism, PricewaterhouseCoopers, the rapacious accountancy firm) has his main residence in wealthy Barnt Green but, as above, Street too has multiple properties. Those in penthouses shouldn't throw stones ...

Labour has driven Birmingham into the local government version of bankruptcy with a disastrous record of appalling decisions, not least that to host the Z-List Commonwealth [sic] Games when no other city would touch the loss-making imperial durbar. Huge sums have been lost on the pointless extragavanza and even Street's [false] claim that the event somehow generated wealth is tempered by his qualification that it boosted the "UK economy" rather than the local one. We have asked Street via social media to back-up some of his claims but still await a response. 

Out of hundreds of millions of pounds blown on the Games - much of it to firms based in London - we did at least get a mechanical bull. (This could, of course, have been commissioned as a stand alone art project if Brum felt it really needed ANOTHER bull statue - there's one already by The Rotunda - at a fraction of the cost.) It is always an indication that a politician fears electoral defeat when s/he starts putting pathetic pictures of kids on his/her propaganda. Step forward Andrew John Street who recently used sick pictures of kids supposedly thanking him for saving "Ozymandias". Vomit-inducing!

Street boasted that he would bring Channel 4 to Brum but that failed, and we still await his much vaunted "battery gigafactory". In fact, Indian-owned JLR (Jaguar Land Rover) who are based on Street's patch decided to build their battery facility in, er, Somerset.

Addendum 29/04/24: We forgot to mention that Street was humiliated by his own Party in 2023 when Rishi Sunak axed the proposed high-speed rail line to Manchester. As the Guardian reported at the time, Street bravely decided NOT to leave the Conservative Party despite his claimed outrage at the decision.

There are many such failures despite "Andy's" crowing about himself. His political judgement is suspect as we have seen above - setting up divisive cliques within local associations and also publicly distancing himself from the official Party in an attempt to save his own skin. A rat pretending to leave the sinking ship but hoping for the lifebelt of a peerage to be thrown to him? 

Of course, Street's finest political hour came with his support for the magnificent Liz Truss. Oh dear, oh dear.

Street is very close to - although not the partner of - Michael Fabricant, the Westminster Tory "class clown". Fabricant put this absolutely vile post on social media (curiously choosing an image of an EgyptAir plane):

We wrote to Street asking if this post also represented his own views. A minion of the Great Man emailed so set a time for Street's press officer to phone. When he did the response was a curt "No Comment"! Make of that what you will.

What a shame for the West Midlands we didn't get Andy Burnham as Mayor and the Mancs got Street. Whatever happens we need to get rid of this guy on Thursday next and get someone in who will get to grips with grassroots issues rather than pushing self-aggrandising grands projets. We need a Mayor committed to intergrating our region in the physical sense of transport infrastructure as well as economically and socially, rather than a showboating braggart.

A full list of candidates is available here:

https://www.wmcaelects.co.uk/notice-of-poll/

iancrowmultimedia@gmail.com

Crow Multimedia Limited

All Four Dorset Tory Cllrs in Jan Britton scandal up for election

Tory Councillors Spencer Flower, Ray Bryan, Jill Haynes, Andrew Parry and the Lib Dem's Nick Ireland were all involved in some way in the scandal whereby Dorset Council employed the disgraced former Chief Executive (CE) of Sandwell Council, Jan Britton, on a 12-month £150,000 contract. The Council then threatened the journalist who broke the story in an attempt to cover it up.

The full story is available in two posts in our associated blog, In The Public Domain?, also known as The Sandwell Skidder. Sandwell Council was recently in special measures following widespread corruption and incompetence - much of which occurred whilst Britton was the hapless CE. Unusually for local government he was kicked out without any compensation other than his contractual entitlement.

Just some of the Britton horror story was set out in The Skidder's post, Desperate Dorset Council employs Jan Britton:

https://thesandwellskidder.blogspot.com/2023/12/desperate-dorset-council-employ-jan.html

Despite his shocking track record, Britton moved on to a Company running some small Councils in the Cotswolds at the behest of a Lib Dem Councillor called Joe Harris, who was mysteriously prepared to overlook the appalling history (even though this was publicly documented by The Skidder and others). This Company was recently wound up and Britton has now been given the Dorset job in highly controversial circumstances.

In 2023 the Dorset Echo reported that Tory Dorset Council had a contract with a company called Commensura ro supplying agency staff and consultants, although the Conservatives were authorising very large payments outside the main Commensura contract. The reasons for this are opaque. A Report to the Council claimed that the Council was looking to reduce temporary hires which were costing taxpayers a £1m a month.

When the Director of Place decided to leave Dorset Council the Tory Leader, Spencer Flower (Verwood ward), inexplicably decided with Dorset's Chief Executive (CE) to recruit a replacement on a temporary contract despite the "plan" to reduce temporary hires. The Council is currently refusing to supply further information with regard to this and the matter had now been referred to the Information Commissioner. Perhaps Councillors don't want the details to come out before the election on 2nd May?

Dorset's CE, Matthew Prosser (currently on a cool pay and pension package of £191,000 a year according to the Taxpayers' Alliance), decided to employ Britton via a jobs for the boys and girls organisation called Solace, of which he just happens to be the President. Again the appointment was outside the Commensura Contract. The documents produced to date by Dorset Council present a curious picture with the appointment of the disgraced Britton seemingly having being rigged (although the Council denies this). The appalling story so far is set out in another Skidder blogpost, Four (Tories) Go Mad in Dorset!:

https://thesandwellskidder.blogspot.com/2024/02/four-tories-go-mad-in-dorset.html

As above, the Tory Council is refusing to deal with further aspects of a Freedom of Information request. We don't know why Prosser and Flower made the decision they did. We also don't know whether the three Tory Councillors who briefly interviewed Britton before making the expensive appointment were made aware by Prosser of Britton's behaviour at Sandwell. The three Councillors refused to communicate with The Skidder. They are Ray Bryan (St Leonards and St Ives), Jill Haynes (Chalk Valley) and Andrew Parry (West Parley). They, with Flower, are all up for election and Dorset voters might want to ask them how this shocking appointment came about.

The Tories have become the Party of very high taxation - the highest rates since the 1940's - but don't seem to be averse to reckless spending. A few days ago the Dorset Echo also wrote up a story based on research done by the Taxpayers' Alliance showing that 17 employees at Dorset are paid over £100,000 (and, presumably, Britton can now be added to that list).

You might imagine that the opposition parties would be all over the Britton scandal, but when The Skidder contacted Cllr Nick Ireland (Lib Dem "Leader" - Crossways ward) he just didn't want to know! How strange then that in the run-up to the election he found time to whinge to the Dorset Echo (full link below):

"We just think people get paid too much at the top and get an awful lot of money for what they do".

Ireland recommended getting rid of one Director-level post and other streamlining. How curious he should think this at election time but doesn't want to investigate how the Tories gave a disgraced local government employee a £150k temporary deal. Once again, he won't speak to the press and perhaps voters in Dorset will ask Lib Dems why they support this terrible, misconceived, and possibly rigged appointment.

Dorset Echo Link: https://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/24238841.taxpayers-alliance-rich-list-dorset-council-top-earners/

iancrowmultimedia@gmail.com

Crow Multimedia Limited

 

To all Political Parties - a simple fundraising scam approved by The King!

As elections approach all UK political parties will be splashing the cash and searching for the funds to do so. Here's a scam that Labour has used in a deeply corrupt West Midlands Borough.

The Borough in question is a Labour stronghold. Most seats were "safe" in 2014 and the party devised a simple scam. A crony of a Labour MP was selected for a Council seat. Upon his inevitable victory he would receive the usual annual allowances and the Party promised to immediately place him in committee positions so that he would also receive additional "special responsibility payments" from us taxpayers. In return, the candidate, when elected, made a £5,000 donation to Labour Party funds.

As so it came to pass. The taxpayer "paid back" the Councillor for his "gift" and Labour were £5k up. In any normal Council area this would be considered to be fraud but, happily, the local Police were in the pocket of Labour and declined to even investigate this scam. Most forces around the country are similarly disinclined to investigate such matters and so the odds of getting away with this scam are very favourable!

Notwithstanding all this having been placed in the public domain for some considerable time, "The King" has recently honoured the Councillor concerned with an M.B.E., giving royal sanction to the scam. Perhaps it should have been an OBE - the Order of the Brown Envelope!

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A Crow Multimedia Blog

Loadsamoney for the Cops!

There is always money down the back of the sofa when daft politicians want to screw us taxpayers. Read on and be shocked ...

The daily news is often terrifically boring with a succession of special interest groups taking to the media, begging bowls in hand, insisting that "The Government" gives them more and yet more of OUR money. One such outfit is the police who already spend a fortune on endless "community engagement events" rather than crime-fighting. (In high crime Sandwell the local Blues have so little to do they have been going out litter-picking to save Serco a few bob on their multi-million pound contract - nice!)

A few years ago no city in our white supremacist empire would touch the loss-making z-list Commonwealth [sic] Games with a barge pole, but up stepped two Labour Councils determined to shaft their constituents - Bankrupt Birmingham and Corrupt Sandwell in the English West Midlands.

You will have read recently that Birmingham Council was hurtling towards the local government equivalent of bankruptcy yet Labour decided to pile Pelion upon Ossa and blow millions on the parochial, royalist, egg and spoon races etc. The Council has now been placed in Government "Special Measures" and is making swingeing cuts to the vital public services which it has a statutory duty to provide. Birmingham Labour will cause immeasurable harm and suffering to local folk due to its profligacy and ineptitude.

Across the Black Country frontier Labour has made urban dystopia Sandwell synonymous with corruption, cronyism and incompetence. This rotten Council too has been placed in "special measures". The Borough is one of the poorest and most deprived in the whole Country but decided to build what is almost certainly Britain's most expensive leisure centre up a back road in the arse of end of God knows where, whilst moaning about "austerity". The corrupt comrades were so desperate to host the even more recherche swimming and diving events at the ragtag competition they stuck a pin in a map and decided to destroy a precious greenfield site to build the Sandwell Aquatic Centre (aka the "sac" or "scrotum"). More bizarrely still, the building was erected on Londonderry Fields to comply with international sporting requirements and then another small fortune has been spent converting it for leisure centre use. It could still accommodate - yawn - international diving competitions but not swimming ones! There has been chaos already concerning the management and running costs of The Scrotum which is destined to lose huge sums. Oh, and two much used local pools were shut for the benefit of the weirdly-located SAC and Labour are desperately trying to flog one (which is Grade II listed) via blue-blooded estate agents, Savills. 

Don't think this is simply an anti-Labour rant since many Tories joined in this absurdity with central Government also having our pants down for colossal sums, and the former soft-furnishing salesman and hype-supremo, West Midlands Mayor Andy Street, going into paroxysms of delight as millions of pounds vanished down the drain.

Some of us fought against this nonsense from day one, but the combined forces of our two main political parties and our grotesque "royal" family crushed us - ably assisted throughout by the BBC and other mainstream media.

Our friend @eldiablo0786 on X (formerly Twitter) frequently describes the tsunami of criminality in Birmingham generally and Lozells in particular. Anyone following social media in awful Sandwell will be shocked at the litany of heart-rending stories as the victims of crime cry out - usually adding that they have received little or, more usually, no help whatsoever from West Midlands Police (WMP). (Of course, WMP has always been able to find cash to torment those they don't like such as the Justice 4 the 21 campaign group.)

Off I went last year with my banner to the Games Baton Relay to protest at this obscene spectacle only to be confronted with an entire car park rammed with WMP cars, motorcyclists and officers. It was as if a major emergency had occurred such was the astonishing display of Blue wo/manpower and materiel. Ever since I have been trying to find out how much this farcical circus cost us. And now I know - although I was so shocked at the figures I had to go back to WMP and check them.

Drum roll please - Labour and the Tories p*ssed £46.6 MILLION up the wall on the Games policing alone. This was part of an overall security splurge of £97 MILLION when including dosh for private contractors and the military. Local cops had to stop colleagues in other forces from fighting crime on their manors too, and bring them in to help. Happily us taxpayers paid thousands for them all to receive "branded rucksacks and water bottles". Pass the sick bag, Alice!

This is, quite simply, absolutely outrageous - and, of course, this £100 million was only a fraction of the overall cost of the feeble Games. Remember that when you are metaphorically (or perhaps surreptitiously) masturbating in front of the bull at New Street Station whilst waiting for the train strikes to end - although maybe it is periodically snorting at the idiocy of our political representatives?

Photo courtesy of Dave Harrison, Alcester

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Why Socialism is sh*t in a single sentence ...

One surprise of 2023 has been the appearance on TV and radio of a succession of trade union boot boys and (less frequently) girls. For those of us who are getting on a bit, this brings back uncomfortable memories of the '70's, and earlier, when these yobs ruled the roost and the Country was held hostage by their ransom demands.

Recently the top echelons of the legal professional have been making a fortune preparing reports on a succession of unions following multiple complaints of alleged misconduct ranging from bullying, sexism, racism and misogyny by the comrades right through to the sordid claim that a top official at Sir Keir Starmer's GMB paymasters raped a female Labour MP*.

When these shaven-headed mafiosi talk to the media about their "members" we are no longer sure, given the gruesome details provided by the top lawyers, whether they are talking about the poor dupes who stump up their dues for these roughs to p*ss up the wall, or to the insertion of their engorged penises into sundry orifices of their union "sisters".

Back in the day we thought we had an elected Government, but a ghastly galere ranging from the alliterative Jack Jones to the noisome Scargill attempted a putsch. Of course, many sectors of the economy were nationalised at the time giving these hoodlums the power to bring the economy to its knees (something folk should remember when hankering for a return to this mythical 'golden age').

There is a trite saying, "don't wait for your boat to come in - row out and meet it!". But socialism (and its fraternal bastard, trade unionism) is anti-growth, opposed to entrepreneurship and against freedom in all its forms. The adherents of these twin monsters are not the creators but the takers. They expect other people to take risks to create wealth but then demand a share of it like gangsters throughout the ages. They cannot operate in a global marketplace but expect taxpayers to mollycoddle them and their (often failing) industries. They want the state to provide for their every whim.

And so we come to a pathetic grunt called Rodney Bickerstaffe [1947 - 2017], the General Secretary of the Unison trade union which supposedly represented many in the public sector shirkforce. In any other walk of life this guy would have been outed as a boring non-entity, but such was his power in the bad old days that he was frequently described as a "titan" of the trade union movement [sic].

Margaret Thatcher put the likes of this oik back in their boxes. No more beer and sandwiches at 10 Downing Street but lashings of cold tongue pie. When her heir took power - and I mean Blair rather than Major - he too was unprepared to cede power back to the block-voting mob. Indeed, he took steps to reduce union power within his own Party and saved the nation from another nightmare on Great Russell Street [home of the Trade Union Congress, m'lud].

Of course, this came as something of a shock to Bickerstaffe and Co., who anticipated a seat back at the high table after the wilderness years. But at the Labour Party Conference in 1998, a year after Blair's landslide election victory, this supposed "shining wit" showed his true colours as a whining sh*t, pleading to be thrown morsels of influence. He begged Gordon Brown (supposedly Blair's Iron Chancellor who turned out to be a leaking galvanised bucket):

"Don't just give us a vision of the promised land, give us a place in it."

This cipher managed to use the word "give" twice in a single sentence. And that is the word which defines socialism. The left cannot build a block of public lavatories let alone a New Jerusalem. It cannot motivate its adherents to provide the promised land for themselves and their families, but demands that it is "given" to them by the state. Rodney didn't even want folk to struggle onto the mountaintop to see this earthly paradise, but believed that leftists were simply entitled to enjoy its plentiful fruits: "give us a place in it".

The left anticipates another Labour landslide next year and is gearing-up to expand trade unionism and increase its power to dominate (and wreck) the UK economy. Does Sir Woodenarse have the strength of Blair to face down the racketeers (his financial backers)? I somehow doubt it and seem to see the River Thames foaming with much sh*t.

[Did you know that UK taxpayers have to PAY the wages of many union reps under an old scam called "Facility Time". This needs to be stopped asap - contact your MP today!]

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Grand-uncle Jack - the deserter

Most things about my grand-uncle John Pugh, known as Jack, remain a mystery. He was a black sheep of the family, but why did his brothers and sisters refuse to talk about his life - and death - and take that knowledge to their own graves? How did he end up on the killing fields of the Somme? Now, with some help from experts, I know some of the answers.

The Postcard

Many years ago my father (born in Little Hereford) showed me this slightly crumpled postcard and told me that it was his "uncle Jack who was killed on the Somme":

And that was it - no more information was forthcoming. Later in life, I was told by other family members that Jack "deserted" from the army in the First World War yet was, indeed, killed in action. How could this be?

A family of farm workers

There is a tendency to romanticise the past. But the lot of agricultural workers in Victorian times was usually nasty, brutish and short rather than some bucolic idyll of sunny days and cider-fuelled country dances. Agricultural depressions were frequent and new technology began to reduce the need for workers and - actual - horse power. Having said that, this branch of the Pugh diaspora was a sturdy one (for the most part).

Into this hard world came Thomas Pugh. Born at Burford (Tenbury Wells) in 1868 he became, like his father before him, a farm labourer and cowman. He was illiterate - to the extent of being unable to write his name. In 1887 he married the redoubtable Sarah Phillips. They had 12 live children including my grandmother Mary, Gert (a nurse in France during WW1) and, of course, John (Jack). The daughter of one of these siblings describes Sarah as "fearsome" and opines that Thomas must have been "a brave man to impregnate her so many times"!

From a 1905 Birth Certificate

As with most things about Jack's life, even his birthday is a mystery. Various websites say he was born in Whitchurch, Shropshire, in 1894 but this seems to be incorrect. There are documents which clearly show that he was born in Little Hereford - in "about 1893" or "about 1894". When he joined the army in 1915 he did not provide a date of birth but gave his age as "21 years and 279 days" (which would have been either the 3rd or 4th of April, 1893 noting there are two different dates on the 1915 army Attestation Record).

Thomas and Sarah moved around various farms in the Teme Valley including ones at Boraston Dale, Nash, Berrington, Little Hereford, Greete and Rochford. But Jack was gone from the household by the time of the 1911 census. In a couple of documents he is described as either a groom or a horse dealer. At some point he voluntarily joined a Territorial  army force, the 7th Worcester Regiment. But the lamps were going out all over Europe ...

As more and more records became available online, I was eventually able to locate Jack's - frustratingly incomplete - military records. The Attestation Record shows that he gave a pub as his address, The New Inn at Knighton Common, Tenbury Wells, when he enlisted in January, 1915. He was posted to Aldershot where he joined the Horse Transport section of the Army Service Corps (ASC).

On 23rd September, 1915 Jack deserted. This was confirmed by a military court on 19th October. What happened next is unclear but the only record which post-dates the desertion is an army medical record dated 4th December, 1915 following an examination at Tenbury Wells. His ASC service number has been handwritten on the document. This seems to indicate that the authorities had caught up with him. 

But with no more extant records I had run into a brick wall.

Covid Lockdowns

Like thousands of other people during the pandemic I used the lockdowns to have a sort-out. Looking through old family photos I discovered an uncropped copy of the photo from which the above postcard was made. This now showed his military cap. The badge is not that of the Army Service Corps, but that of the Kings Shropshire Light Infantry (KSLI):

Armed with this clue I contacted Tony Abrahams of the Royal Logistic Corps (successors to the ASC) archive. He kindly put me in touch with the incredible Richard Joyner of the RLC Museum. And Richard cracked the puzzle!

By using records from the Register of Soldier's Effects he located a "James Reece alias Pugh" of the 5th Battalion KSLI. More particularly, "James" had named his parents as Thomas and Sarah Pugh of The Barns, Underley, Tenbury Wells - a known address of my ancestors.

What remained for for me to do now was to find out how James/Jack met his end.

From Tenbury to Thiepval

I am indebted to Richard Gough for providing me with a warm welcome in a cold turret of Shrewsbury Castle - home of the Soldiers of Shropshire Museum where I reviewed further records.

It is still not clear where and when Jack enlisted with the KSLI. One record suggests that it was in Ludlow in "early to mid-July, 1915 but that cannot be right as that was before the date he deserted from the ASC. That part of the story remains a mystery but we do know that he was in the 5th Batallion which, for part of 1915, were training at Blackdown Camp, Aldershot. Is it fanciful to suggest that Jack, also in Aldershot, met up with mates from the Tenbury area now in the KSLI, and decided to throw in his lot with them rather than spending his life with horseflesh? The December, 1915 medical after he had gone "awol" suggests he made no immediate move but, in any event, he made the jump at some point.

We can't say when Jack joined the 5th KSLI or when he embarked for France but, of course, we know that he was there in July, 2016. The 5th missed the horrors of the first day of the Battle of the Somme (1st July) but moved up to the front on the 27th (marching much of the way in very hot weather). Meanwhile, a British advance on 15th July had left an exposed salient (or bulge) in the line at Delville Wood near Longueval. The "Devil's Wood", as the soldiers came to call it, became another of the First World War's notorious killing grounds. (There is a major memorial there now to the South Africans who sustained horrendous casualties trying to defend the Wood.)

The 5th Batallion moved into trenches at the edge of the Wood on 21st August. There followed an "intense bombardment" of the Germans before a British attack on the 24th by the 14th Light Division, with the 5th KSLI in the centre of the line. They cleared some of the enemy from the Wood but became exposed and had to withdraw to a second line of trenches. Seven Officers and 197 other ranks were lost from the 5th Batallion in this one fight alone.

On the 28th, the 5th was back in the front line but struggled to defend their trenches due to "incessant rain and continuous heavy shelling". The military diary describes the 28th as being "particularly onerous" which, in normal English, means it was hellish.  The 5th were relieved on the 31st and rested for 11 days, returning to the "battle area" on 11th September.

In another of the main assaults of the Somme battle, two divisions advanced in a combined attack on 15th September. The Battle of Flers-Courcelette had begun. And Jack and his comrades would have witnessed a moment of military history on the opening day when the British first introduced tanks in warfare. Four tanks set off but three were "knocked out" straight away. The curiously-named Tank "Dolphin" reached Flers (see map below) before succumbing to a shell. Incredibly, the reports say that the tank was "carrying spare petrol in tins on the roof" which, one assumes, didn't give the occupants any chance of survival!

The 5th started the Battle of Flers-Courcelette from "York Alley" in the British trench system and skirted around Delville Wood (blue arrow) heading for Flers and Geudecourt. At first everything went well and they advanced two miles (quite something given the history of the Western Front). But they were held up north-east of Flers by a line of field guns and snipers. The Batallion dug-in at "Bulls Road" which turned out to be the limit of the advance. In the understated military writing-style of the official report the chronicler states that the hour before midday was "a very hectic one for the 5th KSLI".

The problem was that the troops on the 5th's right flank (white arrow on map), The Kings Royal Rifle Corps, were held up at Lesboeufs and "lost direction". The commanders were later criticised for not using the cavalry to break through towards Guedecourt where the Germans had not yet taken up positions. The whole attack stalled.

On 16th September, 2016 the 5th began to withdraw. On that day one officer and two other ranks were killed whilst leaving the battlefield. One of them was Jack. None of the three have identifiable graves and their sacrifice is recorded with the many thousands of others in that sad situation on the Thiepval Memorial. In Jack's case he is named as "J Reece".

The 4th Army Commander, General Rawlinson, sent a formal message:

Both in Delville Wood and in the attacks of 15th and 16th September the 14th Division displayed a fighting spirit and a dash which was worthy of the best traditions of the British Army whilst their discipline and self-sacrifice has been beyond praise.

When two daughters of one of Jack's brothers said they wanted to find out Jack's story their father became very angry and told them to desist. His one comment was that Jack was "no coward". Quite.

Coda

Earlier this year Linda and I stayed in Albert and visited some of the battlefield sites. As with other places on the Western Front it is hard to imagine the scale of the industrial carnage in this now peaceful farmland. 

There are some SHORT (!) videos to accompany this post (links below) where you can watch me cowering from the rain and mangling the pronunciation of the above villages.

We walked through the replanted Delville Wood to the edge to get as close to where Jack died as we could. The birdlife was in full throat and every now and again a deer would break cover and leap away through the undergrowth. No longer hell on earth - nature had won through and life had returned. 

Our thanks to the many people in Albert who made our stay so memorable.

Julian & Linda Saunders

YouTube Links:

Delville Wood, Somme: Part 1

Delville Wood, Somme: Part 2

Delville Wood, Somme: Part 3

From Tenbury to Thiepval

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