Momentous times in Sadders! Following the demise of the dictatorial creep "Squealing" Eling and the short-term reign of Steve "Luvvie" Trow, the crown has been passed to new Leader Cllr Yvonne Davies - a tough streetfighter beholden to no c*cksuckers especially not the evil Tom Watson who has done so much damage within SMBC. A short-lived rebellion by the Eling/Spellar/Watson camp seems to have petered out almost as soon as it began. But Cllr Davies still has many enemies and needs to watch her back!
The even better news is that the likes of Moore, Hackett, Gavan and Zorro Hughes are also in the wilderness and a new, younger, team face the difficult times ahead.....
(I need a better photo.....)
[The Skidder is likely to be off air for around 10 days and so this is a fairly long read to help you get off to sleep over the next few nights. Please keep sending info during this period though preferably by email or post rather than phone. And, of course, donations are always welcome if you have a couple of quid spare.]
The good, the bad and the ugly in reverse order......
THE UGLY
Yvonne has a reputation for being confrontational stretching back to her working days. This has landed her in hot water more than once.
The problem these days is that being forthright and direct can be seen by the "snowflake" generation as "bullying" or "harassment" - just look at my recent post "Piper, Zorro and much Moore...." and see how Peter "Alberich" Hughes p*ssed his pants when I emailed him with a question!
Being strong is not always seen as a good thing. This blog has referred several times to "that" infamous Labour Group meeting where Yvonne had the temerity to stand up and tell the craven comrades the truth about Eling's sidekick, Richard "Tricky Dicky" Marshall. Virtually the whole group ganged up against her and forced her out of the meeting with the crazed "Squealer" leading chanting of "out, out, out!" Of course Yvonne was right (in fact she did not go nearly far enough with her revelations) and she has shown commendable resilience to come back from such hateful conduct by so-called "socialist" comrades!
But like his wife-beater predecessor, Eling went in for the kill whilst the victim was down. Thus pathetic, weak, councillors and Squealer rimmers piled in with other complaints of alleged misconduct against Yvonne to finish her off. I sh*t ye not but one of them was Saint Ann of Shackleton. This po-faced Eling-ite complained that she had accidentally walked into a private meeting involving Yvonne who shouted at Shackers to get out. Apparently this was all too much for this insipid nonentity from Cradley and she farcically used this incredibly minor incident to do the Dictator's bidding and try to destroy Yvonne's political future in the heart of darkness.
At least staff at SMBC should be OK with a more forthright style having had to endure Eling's infamous temper tantrums... But Cllr Davies needs to be careful and maybe turn the volume down a notch or two? At the end of the day if she is to be the catalyst for real change in the benighted Borough she has has to be a team player albeit wearing the captain's armband.
Before moving onto "the bad" we come to the all important "nickname" for the new Leader. I have to say that I have been a little devoid of inspiration here and welcome suggestions from you, dear readers. After the infamous outburst from ex-cllr Dave "I believed Eling" Hosell when he called Yvonne a "lid-mouthed gutter wench" I had considered "The Langley Lid" but discounted it as being too obscure. As time goes by I think a suitable name will emerge Excalibur-like from the polluted Sandwell cesspool. Thus the bully-boy Cooper became "The Turdmeister" due to his unhealthy obsession with dog sh*t. Everyone was comfortable with "The Milkman" for the dreary Eling until his hysterical ranting emails to the Police became public knowledge and he simply had to become "Squealing Eling." For the time being I am going to use a name used for tough folk in boxing and footie - "the Razor". Other suggestions on a postcard please...
THE BAD
Unfortunate folks like druggies and alcoholics have to admit to themselves that they have a problem before embarking on a recovery process. The woman-bullying thug Darren Cooper (who admittedly only had sh*t for brains) believed that he (and his pals at the Wolvo c*cksuckers aka The Express and Star) could simply keep repeating the lie that Sandwell was somehow "great" and that this would magically become reality. The snivelling, whining, sh*t that followed him may have an encyclopaedic knowledge of local government rules and regulations but he had no ability nor vision. He thought he could improve things by forcing everyone to bend to his tyrannical will. And if he f*cked-up he could just blame someone else eg Kellas in the CTB disaster or Marshall in the Sp*nkgate affair.
In Oldbury Council chamber at her "launch" The Razor was honest and direct (as I personally have always found her to be.) She pointed out that Sandwell was one of the most deprived authorities in the country and so serious endeavour was needed to turn things around. This was an incredibly refreshing thing to say after 40 years plus of total bullsh*t about the fantastic job Labour was doing when you only have to look around the Borough (as I do) to see that is not true. At least the new Leader has recognised the problem and that is a very good starting place.
But it is going to be hard job for all of the Council. Some may take the panglossian view that if you are at the bottom then the only way is "up"! Unfortunately deprivation and poverty feed off each other and it is incredibly difficult to break out of this vicious circle of degradation. There is no imminent sign of the magic-money tree sprouting again in Oldbury (and when it did during the Blair years Labour just wasted the dosh.) Local people have voted decisively with Brexit to make themselves poorer (although London-based Watson in particular is ignoring his nominal constituents). Yvonne and the comrades have just saddled taxpayers with a multi-million pound bill for the stupid Commonwealth Games paddling pool - just imagine if that money was used instead for job and wealth creation instead of wasted on an onanistic fantasy?
There are hundreds of intelligent and inspiring people in Sandwell. They are ignored by Labour (unless they are Party members.) Yvonne needs to reach out to these good folk and embrace their ideas and enthusiasm to make Sadders a better place. Until now the Dictatorship has ruled by fiat - we are going to do this or that and if you don't like it - tough. Now there must be genuine openness and transparency and REAL consultation with the people. What have Labour got to lose? There are no Council elections in 2021 and Labour currently holds 69 of the 72 seats. It is hard to see how being more "user-friendly" could actually lose votes but even if Labour lost every seat in the 2020 elections it still has complete control until 2022. Now is the time to be radical and bold!
To that end The Skidder is starting a "suggestion box" scheme. If you have ideas email them to me and we will put them up for discussion and send the results to Yvonne and her Cabinet. Big or small ideas welcome - and tall oaks can grow from acorns.
Let me start the ball-rolling:
1 The Leader should get out of OCH and visit all major local employers who will agree to see her. This should be a proper listening exercise. She should meet the directors and managers actually doing the work rather than p*ss around the prawn-cocktail circuits of local business clubs and faux "awards" ceremonies a la Ninder Johal et al.
2 When ever there are to be rows of ticky-tacky boxes put up as housing Sandwell Labour blather about "Garden Cities" and similar tripe. Folk remember tower blocks etc but municipal planners did some amazing work with social housing in the 50's and 60's in London and elsewhere. Where there is to be a development why not open part of it to an architectural competition? This could be done cheaply with co-operation from national organisations. There is an upcoming plan to build 27 houses on a plot at Rowley. Just imagine if that, for example, was a bespoke plan with the latest housing technology and design that could be a showcase for innovative thinking in the Borough?
More ideas please!
Unfortunately the paid service is in a shambolic state after years of Jan Britton supposedly in charge and he has to go. But there is not enough talent around and that will have to be addressed. It is no good bringing in people who have dismally failed before - even in Sandwell itself. That will all take time. Much as I loathe them I think that outside consultants will need to be hired to give professionally-sound views on the way out of the woods. (Again the Pool money could have been put towards those costs rather than being wasted.)
What worries me most about Yvonne is that she not only spouts but actually believes left-wing claptrap and the nonsensical b*llocks of an economic imbecile like Jeremy Corbyn. As above, Sandwell is in sh*t creek. Technology and globalisation will bring unprecedented challenges in the years ahead with automation, artificial intelligence and more radically changing how we live and work. After 40 years of fantastic [sic] "Labour" policy Sandwell is cursed with legions of uneducated, untrained and unhealthy folk and as employers increasingly want graduates and educated workers there is a very obvious problem looming large. Whoever is in power needs to increase the size of the overall economic pie before distributing slices of it and the bigger the pie the bigger the slices.
Corbyn and Yvonne have this incredibly naive view that all will be well if "the rich" are squeezed. Thus it was very disappointing recently to see The Razor retweeting this utter garbage.
Why would employers want to even talk to her if she endorses such absurd nonsense?
But the new Cabinet have a "plan" [what could possibly go wrong?] and, to be fair, they seem energised by it. They are anxious to adopt "The Preston Model" of new municipalism sometimes described as "Corbynomics" though it predates the terrorist-loving Labour "leader's" rise from obscurity to obscurity and presupposes that he even knows which hand to wipe his arse with. You are going to hear a lot about the "P" word from the comrades. I do not want to rain of the parade of the new guys and gals but great care needs to be taken here.
In short the Preston model - adopted in 2011 by a left-wing Labour Council in that northern city - is (a) trying to increase local procurement; (b) encouraging suppliers etc to pay the living wage; (c) promoting workers co-ops, credit unions and the like - plus much more.
A while ago I was in the Museum of the South Wales Borderers reading the regimental records of the first day on the Battle of The Somme. This was a terrifying lesson in the futility of sticking rigidly to a "plan". Thus when the planned gains of territory were not achieved the officers stuck to the plan regardless sending wave upon wave of men to their deaths. Thus it is important that Yvonne and people like Chris Worsey (another Preston enthusiast) must be careful to cherry-pick the parts suitable for Sadders rather than try and force a "system" upon the local populace that may not suit.
Preston itself is geographically isolated and a distance from the economic centres of Liverpool and Manchester whereas Sadders is slap bang in the middle of a large conurbation. As part of the horrendous West Midlands Combined Authority it would be odd for the benighted Borough to embrace protectionism (which is what the Preston model actually is.) In Preston the Council will pay more for goods and services delivered by local firms (subject to EU regulations) the idea being that this money will somehow enhance the whole local community. But as with tariffs the outcome of protectionism is not always beneficial. Furthermore, Jan Britton has made Sandwell a by-word for fraud and corruption. Can you imagine this thoroughly bent Council suddenly being able to ignore normal tendering considerations to give valuable contracts to whomsoever they like? Perhaps if Britton is here for much longer he can reintroduce his famous bent "sealed [sic] bids" processes which were such a disaster in various land sales etc.
Preston rather lost faith in searching for inward investment but, arguably, that is absolutely vital to the much larger economy of the West Midlands. Yvonne should be more like Birmingham's ex-leader, Labour's Albert Bore (and should have a chat with him), since whatever one thinks about him he was excellent at banging the drum for Birmingham businesses and for inward investment.
Preston has also been involved with energy schemes favoured by some Labour Councils. I am not sure about the one up there but some of these have been very expensive and spectacular failures!!!
Bizarrely though, The Razor, has been seduced by Eling and Co's bent Lion Farm deal. I hope she will mount a full investigation into what went on here in 2014 and again in 2017 before making any pronouncements of support for this stinking transaction. It is also vital that a full report is obtained into the job losses it would cause locally if it ever goes ahead before praising mythical job gains.
As it happens it now transpires that far from being the "designer shopping outlet" trumpeted by SMBC Director "Dr"Alison Knight and The Wolvo C*suckers the Tory donor property developer, Jeremy Knight-Adams, has been planning a more prosaic supermarket and factory outlet shops (you know the ones where the allegedly sell off "cheap" the stuff retailers cannot shift.)
Curiously Knight-Adams has ties with Sainsbury's and until recently they were planning to merge with Asda. I recently wrote to their CEO Mike Coupe (the one caught on TV singing "We're in the money...") to ask him if the plan had been to close the Oldbury Asda and Sainsbury's and build a mega one on the open green space at Lion Farm. Answer came there none.
Perhaps Yvonne should heed the wise words of Michael Brown. Who he? The Leader of Preston Council and principal architect of, er, the Preston Model who cited research recently which concluded that "big supermarkets COST jobs." Think on please Leader!
THE GOOD
When Jan Britton tried to please The Squealer and pressurised the bent Blues of WMP to prosecute me for the use of the word "c*cksucker" in a private conversation that became a little "public" he brought yet more shame and humiliation on Sandwell MBC. Not everyone knows that a number of Councillors were absolutely appalled at Britton's conduct and supplied me with letters to hand into the Court. That was brave and a thoroughly decent thing to do. As Britton would inevitably report back to Squealing Eling they also faced censure from that nasty spanner.
These guys know who they are and I thank them again.
Two Councillors actually gave formal statements on my behalf and attended Court to give live evidence ie Cllr Jo Hadley and, yes you guessed it, Yvonne. They have sometimes had a hard time from me yet were furious at this injustice and absurdity and put themselves on the line to say so. As it happened they were not required when the video evidence exonerated me but, again, the absolute integrity of all these councillors shone through. Given the criminality of the wife-beater Cooper and the evil viciousness of Eling this is a very welcome change and a good sign for the future.
The very fact that Yvonne is female should, I hope, bring a change to the "big swinging dick thuggery" of Tom Watson and his acolytes.
Yvonne has intelligence and a hinterland. Unlike the moronic dullards of recent times she appreciates travel and the arts. She is interested in things and people and, again, I hope she will be a lively ambassador for Sandwell and local businesses.
She has promised "openness and transparency" but then so did Eling yet he, Britton and Tour built a fence around OCH - physically and metaphorically - to withdraw into a state of increasing paranoid secrecy.
I was talking to Peoples Momentum recently. They expressed one word in particular about Yvonne, "incorruptible". My own dealings with her support that sentiment and, strewth, that is word we need to hear more often in Sadders after the disasters of the Jan Britton era.
Subject to a few easily surmountable data protection issues there are three things that Yvonne could do straight away:
1 Publish her SMBC diary each week so that people can see what she has been doing. Genuinely secret meetings must be very few and far between and a form of words could be used about those if some sort of explanation was given eg I met x of business x to discuss inward investment in Sandwell. I think for the reasons above that we can trust Yvonne to use any secrecy sparsely and only where absolutely necessary. For data protection reasons people meeting her must be told that their presence will be published in an open diary unless there are compelling reasons why this should not be the case).
2 The Council already has a grading system for the secrecy of documents etc - IP1 to IP3. But sometimes things are kept secret for no good reason (particularly under The Squealer) and large parts of certain meetings eg asset management are routinely held in camera. Yvonne needs to cultivate a culture of transparency with the new Chief Executive (when he or she has been appointed) really pushing staff to think about these issues and to only keep matters secret (eg genuine contractual negotiations, security issues) that should be secret. Instead of having the public excluded from large parts of meetings each chair should ask staff precisely why exclusion is necessary and, where, applicable, be prepared to overrule them. The general presumption must be in favour of transparency at all times.
3 By incompetence or design Jan Britton has facilitated fraud by permitting secret un-minuted meetings to take place INCLUDING SMBC STAFF - paid for by you and I. There are a host of FOI requests where Britton's bent paid service say they can produce no documents because the meetings were secret and staff made no records - even as to who attended. Not only is this pisspoor management (hardly unusual for Britton) but is dangerous for all parties concerned. But there is no justification - apart from facilitating fraud or other wrongdoing - why such meetings are held. If there is a real reason then the minutes should still be kept and marked IP3 as the top level of secrecy. If, say, there was a meeting which genuinely dealt with commercially sensitive issues it is unlikely that SMBC would have to disclose details via the FOIA system as they could claim a proper exemption. But Britton has abused the system which is another reason why he should be interviewed in a police station under caution about what he actually knew about various matters. Just by way of example, the bent ice rink deal started with Lynda Waltho's partner brokering a secret un-minuted meeting with a businessman. The bent Public deal started with such meetings which were also kept secret by Jan Britton from the very College Board he now sits upon. The corrupt Lion Farm deal started with un-minuted meetings actually involving Britton's staff. Surjit Tour, the highly controversial Monitoring Officer (and, hopefully, another departee soon) admits in writing that his top secret and highly irregular meeting with the Standards Committee BEFORE a hearing also involved other staff and was un-minuted (a really serious issue as Tour is a solicitor and subject also to professional conduct rules. He admits that he did not inform the "Independent Person" of the secret meeting and, of course, when his little ruse was blown this led to the unlawful suspension of seven secretaries rather than his own.)
I am aware that Yvonne has had some significant health issues and an concerned for her own well-being. I think she and the new top team need all the help they can get and this blog will try and provide helpful suggestions and comments whilst holding the regime to the usual degree of scrutiny (in the absence of an opposition.) You have the benefit of any doubt at the moment Cllr Davies (except on Lion Farm!) Good luck!
Dare we dream that this team will start to tackle the ills in Sandwell and improve the lot of thousands of folk there? I hope so but we have had false dawns before.......
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