Ms Tracy Stockwell OAM,
President - Swimming Australia
Dear Ms Stockwell,
Commonwealth Games 2022
Open Letter
I appreciate that athletes are some of the most selfish people on earth - obsessed only with the adrenaline rush of competition without a thought for wider society, but I would just like to comment on the forthcoming arrival of the Swimming Australia team for the z-list Birmingham Commonwealth Games. I hope that you will appraise your young charges of the wider implications of the Games whilst they are having their fun for a week at colossal public expense.
Games - The National Background
You will be well aware that no city in the entire Commonwealth [sic] was prepared to host the 2022 loss-maker. Eventually, near bankrupt Birmingham Council (run by the nominally socialist Labour Party) decided it wanted to be the one to lose multi-millions of taxpayers’ money on this non-event. Naturally, locals had no say in the matter.
As with all these loss-making ventures there is almost total secrecy surrounding the funding arrangements for this affair. Why? Probably because Labour don’t want folk to know just how much they have blown of THEIR money.
There has been major disruption in the Birmingham area for months - to people and businesses and the costs of this is not factored into such sparse information as is available on the losses to date. And as ever with these con jobs, we are promised some sort of “legacy” from the Games which is always opaque and unquantifiable. At present the “legacy” is invisible.
And what legacy? Yes we will have a new athletics arena and that is no bad thing but it could have been funded differently in any event without all the rest of the hoopla. Birmingham has massive problems with poverty and homelessness - had the multi-millions of public money been spent on housing instead of a downmarket sporting event would this not constitute a real “legacy”?
Socialists love spending other people’s money, of course, and it is noteworthy that these clowns made no attempt to plan for even this poundshop frolic. In recent times, new “aquatic centres” were built in Coventry and at Birmingham University which could have served- with proper design - for the 2022 Games. Alas both new-builds did not “meet competition standards”.
When you lot disappear after your two-week jolly we will have to return to shocking infrastructure, dire housing (both Council and private “houses of multiple occupation”), struggling/failing businesses, squalour, and general deprivation.
Games - The Sandwell Background
If Birmingham is the “body” of the West Midlands conurbation, Sandwell is its arse. This urban dystopia is where your swimmers will be competing in the brand new pool.
Sandwell is a post-industrial sh*thole which has been a Labour (nominally socialist) Dictatorship for 48 years - during which time the area has become one of the most deprived in the whole country. After 48 years of total control the Labour Party boasts, yes boasts, how local children are starving on the streets (a curious claim from the Dictatorship when, statistically, Sandwell has a major child obesity problem). Surely these hopeless people need bread, not circuses?
A few years ago, the bent Labour Council controversially decided to almost totally destroy arts and cultural provision in the hellhole. The (then) Labour “leader” (a thuggish wife-beater who may have fitted in well “down under” given your country’s own penchant for that particular form of brutality) infamously stated in his ignorant fashion, “the Arts are sh*t”. Meanwhile, the comrades poured public money into sport with new leisure centres springing up run by what was supposed to be an arms-length charity, Sandwell Leisure Trust (SLT). Multi-millions were diverted from the relief of poverty for these debt-fuelled new facilities.
When their socialist “comrades” in Birmingham offered the moronic Dictatorship the poison pill of hosting the “aquatic events” for 2022 (i.e. sharing the costs) they jumped at the chance with NO PLANNING WHATSOEVER and with NO local consultation at all.
The first problem was where the hell to build the new paddling pool “at a cost of £15m”. Hilariously (if you have that sort of sense of humour) the Dictatorship actually drew up a list of any patch of green space where they could quickly build a pool. Some of the sites were not actually owned by the Council and discounted. One was the famous Warley Woods but this was too politically sensitive and so Labour simply decided to destroy Londonderry Fields, a green space hemmed in entirely by houses and with rotten transport infrastructure for the development.
The Dictatorship rushed the decision to destroy the Fields through the Council ignoring the objections of locals. The Council then granted planning permission to itself and more or less started building immediately so as to finish for the Games deadline. Despite the £15m price tag the Labour Leader boasted that the project was “on budget” at £73m in this horrendously deprived area. Labour forced the construction workers to keep going through various Covid lockdowns so as to finish on time.
There was no planning WHATSOVER for this major project. Instead the socialists tried to sell this t*rd to the Sandwell public (who are, admittedly, as thick as pig sh*t) as a “legacy” for the Borough. It is true that locals will, if they can get to it, have a shiny new pool at horrendous cost but you should note that the comrades are CLOSING TWO POOLS to pay for this one!
One of the pools being closed is an art deco Grade II listed heritage asset, but when asked what would happen to it when the new pool is open to the public, a particularly absurd Labour Councillor imagined that the dirt poor area could spend even more public money so that it could be put to “some sort of community use”. Even now, just a short time before the Games there is no plan for this site. Noting the high crime rate in Sandwell perhaps one “legacy” of this madness will be the deserted building burning down in the middle of the night?
(On the subject of crime, I imagine that your team are probably staying in a desirable hotel in Birmingham or beyond and being bussed in and out through the narrow streets to the paddling pool. If your team members are planning a night out in Sandwell be sure to remind them of the local lawlessness and that some areas are “no go”. Also, the streets of Sandwell are infamous for being smeared with dog excrement so be warned - if they venture into Sadders they will spend more time in the poo than in the pool.)
The hapless Labour Councillors wanted SLT to run the new pool when it actually opens to the plebs in 2023 but they engineered a dispute with the charity and “sacked them” from the contract. At present, it is unknown who will actually run the “legacy” paddling pool. So much for “socialist planning”!
In passing, there is only one Labour MP left in Sandwell now after others were routed in the 2019 election and he is the MP for Smethwick, home of the new pool. John Spellar (aka The Gnome of Bromley) is a pathetic greaser who actually lives 100+ miles away in South London. He is notorious for travelling the world on parliamentary freebies including to your own colonial outpost. But your Australian dollars have been well spent as The Gnome frequently raises matters antipodean in our own Mother of Parliaments.
Many of your competitors will be youngsters and not much older that the large number of local children physically, sexually and mentally abused during the Labour Dictatorship to such an extent that our national Government had to step in and stop Labour from running local Children’s Services. Earlier this year, the Labour corruption, cronyism and incompetence in Sandwell became so bad, the Government was forced to put the whole Council in special measures for two years.
The Royals
I will not bend the knee to our grotesque monarchy and it always amazes me that you colonials still feel the need to do so.
When Sandwell Labour decided to destroy the vital green space at Londonderry Fields there was one small problem. Part of the site was supposedly held in trust as playing fields for the people of Sandwell in perpetuity. Unfortunately for those deprived people, the trust is administered by a so-called charity, Fields in Trust. This is in fact, a royal family front-organisation (formed by Royal Charter) whose President is “Prince” William, the Duke of Cambridge. Fields in Trust is an important part of their propaganda machine.
The “Commonwealth” and its Games are highly-important to our monarchy and these spongers will be out in force at the Birmingham Durbar to accept the plaudits of grovellers from former slave states, penal colonies etc. No doubt your swimmers will be expected to parade before them at some point and pay their obeisance.
Naturally, Fields in Trust were only too happy to alter the Trust (again with no consultation with locals) and remove the playing field status of Londonderry Fields elsewhere so that the green lung could be choked with concrete and chlorine for your convenience.
The Black Country
Sh*thole Sandwell is part of an area known as “The Black Country”. I doubt your swimmers will see much of it as their air-conditioned coaches get in and out as quickly as possible.
No-one knows where Sandwell actually is (it was a made-up name for 6 grotty towns in a 1970’s local government reorganisation). The locals are astonishingly parochial and insular. There are folk in Tipton who would no more travel to Birmingham than they would to the moon.
After 48 years of Labour Dictatorship, Sandwell has a dire educational record, so that it is not surprising that so many locals are thick and ignorant. Like uneducated people around the globe, Sandwell folk cling to “the old ways” and revel in their own ignorance - in particular, talking in a comical local patois. As above, it is unlikely that your teams will be meet these yam-yams (as Brummies call them) - although some of the ghastly Labour Councillors will no doubt force themselves on your administrators and managers. (Just in case any of your party are Jewish you should also note that there are a number of people in Sandwell Labour who are rabidly antisemitic.)
To greet your teams the socialists have spent loads of public money putting up signs using Black Country dialect to propagate the lie that the fool’s paradise is “bostin” (very good). Perhaps some of your lads and wenches will spot some of these as they speed in and out of Sandwell under police escort every morning and evening? (Oh, and by the way, the local cops are bent too!)
The Environment
Your present Government seems to be taking green issues more seriously than its predecessors. We have watched from afar as your Great Barrier Reef bleaches out, while floods and firestorms scourge your land. Meanwhile you carry on mining fossil fuels and undertaking carbon unfriendly activities. We are told here that you Aussies are frequently climate change deniers.
Normally, young people are quite switched on to green issues but your team will no doubt ignore that the pool was built at the expense of the rapidly diminishing green space still left by the socialists (and tomorrow they plan to give the go ahead for yet more green space destruction).They presumably won’t care about the air miles clocked up, the greenhouse effects caused by concrete production, the traffic pollution during the Games and a myriad other environmental issues surrounding this circus. Still, as long as they get a week in the pool all will be well with them. They can put their fingers in their ears and sing “la, la,la”.
Accordingly, perhaps I can invite them for a swim in some of the other local “pools” - though I wouldn’t recommend it. My friend Ian Carroll (The Gooseman) writes a great blog, “What Lies Beneath the Rattlechain Lagoon” which describes the industrial poisoning of Rattlechain Lagoon and other water pools and courses in the area*. I enclose pictures or two local pools if the Dolphins fancy a dip. Right now birds and wildlife are being poisoned within spitting distance of the aquatic centre. What a legacy it would have been to clean all this horrendous mess up with public money instead of blowing it in a rubbishy competition!
Not so long ago Sandwell Labour decided they didn’t like geese defecating in parks like West Smethwick (very close to your venue) and just set about killing them, until Mr Carroll finally put a stop to it.
This is the reality of the Socialist Dictatorship of Sandwell. I hope one day your competitors will come back and see how horrible it really is. Maybe they may even try to do something to help the vile local area and its chronically enfeebled population. Now that would be a legacy.
* see also http://www.saveoursandwellcanadageese.org.uk
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