Why do the Lib Dems hate Sandwell? Since 2013 - when this blog - started they have done precisely nothing in the Sh*thole Borough. Recently the Lib Dems have been doing well both in respect of winning Parliamentary seats and many council seats elsewhere. The principal reason for local Sadders failure is that the Party has been under the control of crazed, Labour-rimmer, Mark Smith ("The Fuhrer").
Year after year, the Lib Dems have avoided all Sandwell issues and maintained a vow of silence worthy of Trappist monks. Yet when an election is called they gather a few candidates and expect folk to actually vote for them! Even in Sandwell the outcome is inevitable, and the Party is humiliated.
Smith is so pro-Labour that he cannot bring himself to criticise the corrupt local Dictatorship. His rare, inane, utterances have been foaming-at-the-mouth rants against the, er, Tories even though Labour has been in total control of Sadders for half a century!
As Labour corruption riddled the Council under "Leaders", Cooper and Eling, Smith remained silent. As green space across the Borough has been destroyed by Labour (and more is threatened by the concrete mixer), Smith has remained silent. As the bent Dictatorship led the Council into very costly Government "special measures" (at a cost of £2m +), Smith remained silent.
Campaigns have sprung up to save Londonderry Fields, Brandhall, and Lion Farm, but the Fuhrer has ignored them all. Smith rarely attends Council meetings (and seldom do his selected candidates). Speak to the candidates at election time and they are completely unaware of the myriad issues raised in this blog and elsewhere. In short, they are not serious candidates, and should be an embarrassment to the national Party.
As above, the national Party has done well and last May won a rake of seats taking around 17% of the vote. In Sandwell Lib Dems' latest hilarious newsletter [What that - Ed?] the fantasist Smith boasts of the "progress" made in Sadders in '24 where his rag-tag slate garnered, er, 4% of the vote!!! In the very next paragraph Smith returns to more important matters and describes a curry night at a pub with Walsall "colleagues".
Of course, the supremely arrogant Smith won't accept his part in this shaming degringolade. This was the campaign photo for last May's local election:
If you are sad enough to want to visit the Sandwell Lib Deb website (honestly - don't bother), Smith still has the above photo in pride of place on the header. And so he is still backing the infamous troll. Also, many regular readers will recognise the chap on the right - local campaigner and good egg, Clive Heywood, who reports that he, er, no longer has communications with Smith and the Lib Dems. And so the Skidder is helpfully providing an update of the photo for you:
BUT - great news! In the latest newsletter Smith describes himself as the "outgoing Chair". Good riddance to bad rubbish and perhaps this may herald a new dawn for a genuine Lib Dem opposition in Sandwell. There is plenty of work to be done - particularly as the Tory opposition has imploded so spectacularly - as Labour tightens its stranglehold on the benighted Borough.
And on the subject of the Tories ...
It was hard to believe that Sandwell could have a worse MP than Tom "Twatson" Watson (although Spellar ran the serial shagger close) and there were high hopes for Nicola Richards when she won what was West Brom East for the Conservatives. Alas she proved to be a disaster. Indeed, even many Tories agreed with the popular view of her locally. She also fell out big style with the WBW MP, and their inability to work together was both childish and insulting to local voters.
We still don't know what really happened in Solihull. We do know that although sitting MP, Julian Knight, strongly pleads his innocence in respect of allegations made against him and implies that his own party was involved in a plot to remove him, he was defenestrated. Richards immediately threw her hat into the ring to grab his safe seat having decided to run away from the folk who voted for her in Sadders and who she was doing a p*sspoor job at representing. She was shortlisted (despite her track record) but a strong campaign arose locally where many Tories detested her. When she was finally given the bum's rush by the Blue Silhillians she is said by some local Tories to have stormed out of the meeting, further besmirching her already tarnished reputation.
You will all be happy to note that Richards has been given a job with PR agency, Cratus Group, which seems to have detected a degree of talent and ability in Richards that has passed everyone in Sadders by. Cratus Group boasts that they "manage political and reputational risks" and so Nicola does not seem a natural fit there. They also claim to be able "to influence national policy on some of the most important issues facing the UK" - in other words, something Richards was supposed to be doing as an MP but, er, didn't. Good luck, Cratus!
Meanwhile, readers will know that the Tory MP's locally all lost their seats in '24, and that the Party's number of Councillors fell to just five. At the last full Council meeting only TWO of the five were able to manage their affairs sufficiently for them to be able to show up. You will be glad to note that the TWO who could be arsed specifically voted WITH Labour in respect of the Council Tax base, housing rent increases and, even worse, the reduction in the Local Council Tax Reduction Scheme which will affect the most vulnerable Sandwell residents. YES - this "opposition" actually specifically voted FOR these disastrous Labour policies brought about by the £20m hole in the accounts under the Dictatorship. What an absolute sh*tshow!
And finally - do come shopping in West Brom (if you are wearing body armour)
There is an uprising in West Brom by small traders who are fighting the hated Town BID. This is a crackpot "Business Improvement District" which makes traders pay extra tax (called a levy) whilst providing well-paid jobs to people who are supposedly providing the services which the traders are already paying the bent Labour Council to provide anyway via their business rates. In actual fact, the principal activity of the BID team is to operate as copper's narks.
The big shops like Tesco tend to vote for BID's to destroy small shops and prevent them from providing a modicum of competition. They can afford to pass the extra tax (levy) on, in higher prices to customers, so that ordinary folk end up paying the price. And struggling small traders cannot simply up their prices in difficult market conditions.
Twelve months ago, bent, business-hating, Sandwell Labour heaped more misery on local traders with a crazed campaign exhorting folk not to buy new stuff during January. This year, the new(ish) Labour Government is shafting small retailers/publicans/restaurateurs etc with minimum wage hikes, higher rates and National Insurance increases which will inevitably cause devastation - particularly in deprived sh*tholes like Labour Sandwell.
Please support the small traders in West Bromwich - if you are brave enough to go there. And you need to be brave. Many of you will have seen the horrific scenes of machete-wielding yobs taking to the streets before Christmas - no doubt whilst the local rozzers wo/man "crime prevention" stalls in the warmth of the shopping centre or sit in the office tweeting pro-Labour propaganda:
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