Darren Cooper and the M6 Toll

It is common knowledge that the leader [sic] of the Sandwell Dictatorship, Darren Cooper, was at the back of the queue when the brains were dished out and, once again, his intellectual deficit and chronic naiviety were on display for all to see on Midlands Today (MT) yesterday.

Cooper has ditched his bouncer-chic look again and appeared clean-shaven in an interview outside Birmingham (not "Sadwell") Council House. This blog once exposed that his office had deliberately ordered that his Labour Council's contract and procurement rules should be overridden so that us taxpayers could pay £10,800 to ex- Birmingham Labour Councillor "Super" - as Cooper calls him - Steve Bedser. This was alleged to be for "mission impossible" ie to improve Cooper's communication skills and body language by means of £450 a time executive coaching "sessions". This charade finished when I exposed it and clearly the money was wasted since Cooper remains an inarticulate speaker with a propensity to finish most sentences or points with "yeah?". (One crept into the MT interview despite editing).

(Of course, Cooper cannot write his own blogs and speeches and taxpayers fork out over half a million pounds per annum for the Sadwell Council "press office" to, inter alia, wipe his arse for him. He has tried to clean up his notorious Twitter account - associating with trolls who do all the nasty stuff - but his seemingly erudite tweets are also a con having been lifted from a daily newsletter prepared by local MP, John Spellar).

The above is the actual authorisation direct from Cooper's office to pay his Labour mate £10,800 of OUR money - Bedser is a "bespoke supplier" who was "directly engaged via leader's office". Of course, Jan Britton, the Chief Executive lets Darren do as he pleases and so this was all signed off by SMBC staff Lindsey Rogers and N. Aldridge without question.

The local political establishment has deemed that we should be forced to have an extra tier of expensive governance imposed upon us - the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA). Technically this body is not even in existence yet but Cooper has been an enthusiastic cheerleader for it as he sees it as a vehicle to further his political career now that even Corbyn's Labour can't stomach him as an MP. Despite his manifest personal shortcomings and his close association with vicious social media troll accounts he is, incredibly, the deputy chair of the "shadow" WMCA and was put up yesterday to speak to the media.

We have been led to believe by the establishment that the new WMCA will simply be a body coordinating the transport and economic interests of all the wildly disparate members (from the leafy and affluent avenues of Solihull to the dog-sh*t strewn streets of "Sadwell"). Oh no, the politicians say, this won't be like the old West Midlands County Council frittering away public money on grandiose but hare-brained schemes. Yet before it even exists, Cooper was up yesterday saying they are looking at buying the M6 Toll Road!

The M6 Toll is privately run and global financial giants UBS are apparently considering a two BILLION pound bid. Cooper says that WMCA want to join with some "partners" to buy it and then the idea is to make it FREE to use ie not generating ANY income to actually pay back the 2 billion investment! Quite why any serious investor would want to become involved in such a ludicrous scheme is not explained by The Sage of Smethwick.

The new Corbynista who runs Birmingham City Council, hard-left John Clancy (who has the top job despite despite never having run a tap before) has been muttering about raiding local authority pension funds for "investment"  money and, lo, Cooper mentioned yesterday that "some of the pension funds that have been talked about" may wish to "invest" in this crazy idea. (The Trustees of pension funds have a legal duty to maximise returns for their members and not to give multi-million sums to the likes of Clancy and Cooper).

But to cap it all, Cooper's pathetic naiviety on commercial realities (coloured by his political "views" and the wisdom of his pet troll "#guru", the purportedly mentally-ill Andrew Hipkiss) were there for all to see in his absurd and meaningless peroration which MT put up even though it doesn't actually make sense:

"This is an awful lot of money YEAH that has gone to banks. Maybe the banks owe us a favour on this one?"

This errant nonsense was not questioned by the MT "reporter", Bob Hockenhall, but Cooper has many friends at the BBC in Birmingham and perhaps the editors are responsible for this apparently slack effort?

What is "this" money that has gone into "the banks". What is he talking about? Which banks and what has this got to do with the M6 Toll road?

Does Darren Cooper seriously think the WMCA will survive thanks to "favours" from unspecified banks? What planet is he on? Which banks does he think will ignore the interests of their shareholders to finance yet another Labour vanity project? Come on Cooper - let's have some answers!

No doubt there is plenty more of this horse sh*t to come. YEAH, watch this space.......

The new Metro-Mayor?

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