Curly's Corner Shop, the blog!

Do you know what a “deep dive” is?

I always thought you needed an oxygen cylinder and a decompression chamber before coming back on board, but clearly I don’t have a clue what I’m talking about. But that’s OK, South Tyneside’s Labour Leader Cllr. Iain Malcolm is down in Brighton for Labour’s Conference and he didn’t have a clue either!

It’s Civil Service speak for an in-depth study of a particular social policy area, so there you are.

Don’t you wish that these graduates would stop infusing businesses and administrations with their silly use of the English language? Speak plainly man!

Right I’m back off to do an in-depth study of Manchester United fans.

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Sarah Brown and the meaning of Bodenity

Alix at The Peoples Republic of Mortimer has made a post yesterday which really tickled me.

Perhaps there’s a Glenys Kinnock type of role being made ready for her after Gordon disappears to the G20 as a consultant/advisor after the next election. Stranger things have happened.

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On the day that the government’s new media communications czarina Kerry McCarthy said on Twitter

“We don’t need The Sun, we have Twitter”

What a remarkably dim comment to make, it’s hardly as though you can deliver the message to the broad masses in less than 140 characters, particularly when you protect your updates and expect people to ask to see them! I wonder how many people will get to see The Sun’s message love?

Update

Watched Brown’s interview with Adam Boulton on Sky News this morning when once again he was defensive, evasive, irritated, frustrated, and failed once more to take up the challenge of a live debate with David Cameron and Nick Clegg. Apparently he was just as bad on the BBC and is due to face Paxman on Newsnight BBC2 tonight!

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Speech of his life? Where does he think We think he’s been for the past twelve years?

I watched the Prime Minister’s speech to the gathered faithful in Brighton this afternoon in its entirety feeling as though if the music and video had carried on instead of his droning Caledonian brogue it would have felt just like Magic (that’s the radio and cable TV station that gives you everything from the sixties, seventies, and more.) After the soppy introduction from his wife Sarah, who must have saved someone else the embarrassment, Gordon was straight into the Rebel Yell like Billy Idol on whizz. He won’t give up, he won’t take no for an answer, time to dig deep within yourselves, stand and fight and win, it wasn’t for the nation, it was for the party, the same party that Alistair Darling had declared  had lost it’s will to live!

Then came a mish mash of announcements, many of which had been previously announced by others before him, repackaged to look new, then a series of spending plans that he knows have no hope of reaching the drawing board, and then the attack upon the Tory party that he would like to face at the election rather than the one he actually will face. There was even a sop to the BNP with a policy announcement already being dubbed in many quarters as “gulags for slags” (harsh and cruel, but not my words.)

He kept banging on about change, change, change – and boy do we need it! No mention of the zombie banks, little reference to the biggest national debt that this country has ever faced in it’s history, no reference at all to the fact that we are in the longest recession since the 1930s with growth down for a fifth successive quarter, no reference to the fact that unemployment will once again be higher at the end of a Labour government than it was at the start. It made you wonder where he thinks we think he’s been for the past twelve years.  Yes change is certainly called for and it cannot come soon enough!

He promised a referendum on an alternative voting system to replace first past the post, ah well I remember the last promise that Labour made on giving us a referendum – we are still waiting for it on the EU Constitution Lisbon Treaty. He promised a national care service and a service that would deliver care for the elderly in their own homes, yet failed to set out exactly who would qualify, or who would pay for it, and how.

Having introduced the idea of “light touch regulation” on the banks and the city, he then tore into them and blamed them for our current difficulties, “Markets need morals” he said (but we may as well forget about Chancellors and Prime Ministers having them too.) He even had the nerve to try and link Cameron and Osborne to the ideology of free markets and big capitalism as though the Blair/Brown project of the past twelve years had given it an extremely wide berth! He called the Tories callous and cold and warned of a return to “cardboard cities”, he may as well have accused them of planning to slay the first born in every household for good measure!

When he talked of a National Investment Corporation I was expecting to hear of the Ten Year Plan to go with it, and a National Reconstruction Board, instead he promised 10000 internships for those who like to work for free! He then tells us that young people will have to stay in education until they are eighteen for at least the next five years (err nothing new about that Gordon) at least it keeps a sizeable group of people out of the jobless queue, whilst the few in work can benefit from ever increasing National Minimum Wage levels and greater family tax credits (heaven knows you will be paying for it.)

Then he moves on to anti social behaviour such as getting pregnant when you are no more than a child yourself and getting the keys to a council flat, then going out enjoying that great relaxation in licensing laws that Tony Blair introduced – cafe society and 24 hour drinking. Well its all coming to an end and even local councils will be given powers to revoke the licenses that Labour so cheerily introduced. Bottoms up Gordon!

On health, he plans to eradicate cancer in our society within a generation. Got that? Get rid of cancers which have probably been the most common killers of ageing men and women since the human race began. Boy am I so glad that Gordon wants us all to live for ever in his utopian dream, and all at a stroke!

As he finished, I wanted the music to return, I wanted it really badly, I wanted to sing along with gusto

Those who find they’re touched by madness
Sit down next to me

Sadly, in what seemed like another flashback to the eighties we were entertained by M People “movin’ on up and movin’ on out.” It was all indicative of Labour and Brown’s inability to connect with reality and detect today’s aspirations, the only thing that he got right is the message that we want change, they just don’t realise how much.

There was lots of clapping and applause, but looking around there weren’t many smiles today, perhaps a realisation that they were trying to have a party, trying to have good time, but knowing that they were drinking in the Last Chance Saloon.

Tory Chairman Eric Pickles had this to say:

“This was a speech with no vision and no argument – just a long shopping list with no price tag. Gordon Brown continues to treat people like fools. He didn’t acknowledge the mistakes he has made or that his Government has run out of money.

“He talked about change and a new age – but this speech was full of the same old political attacks and was firmly stuck in the past.”

Oh and this is what their supporters at Labour Home thought of it all.
And so, the show moves to Manchester next week when David Cameron’s Conservatives have to start to “seal the deal” with the nation, they need to appear ready to govern, they need to be prepared to govern in very difficult circumstances (Brown will make sure of that), and they need to able to answer the big questions on the economy, the national debt, education and health, defence and the two campaigns in Irag and Afghanistan, and crucially the one that is off the agenda, the EU.

We’ll see how the polls look in a couple of weeks.

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The assaults on citizen photography continue

This one almost got away from me, I’ve had it hanging around in my bookmarks for a while but I’ve been so busy lately that this blog has had to take a bit of a back seat.

The Manifesto Club’s publication of Pauline Hadaway’s report reveals nothing particularly new but does highlight the need to keep the issue out in the open and in front of our politicians. About 18 months ago, for instance, I was assured by an officer of South Tyneside District Council that small notices were going to be erected at certain venues along South Shields sea front (the South Marine Park, Bents Park, and the covered Promenade and Amphitheatre) advising people that photographers were operating in the area, that it was lawful, and nothing to be wary of. This followed a spate of complaints from some parents that their children had been photographed in public, or that photographers were being denied lawful access to public events in public places by officials who thought they were looking after our safety and well being. Those notices never appeared!

So little joy for citizen photographers, although it is fair to say that I for one have seen less of a threat from council officials, police, PCSOs, or security stewards over the past twelve months in South Shields. The wider problem still exists throughout the UK, and as Pauline’s report illustrates there is a pervasive and sinister attempt to have the cameras put away, the irrational fear is that anyone seen with a large camera in a public place must be viewed as either a child molester or a terrorist. Yet if if you are seen to be taking pictures with a mobile phone nobody will suspect anything out of the ordinary – it really is a quite extraordinary state of affairs when public paranoia spreads to the innocent recording of life which we have done since the invention of the pin hole camera.

Hadaway argues that it is important that people are able to take spontaneous photographs of public life, whether of children or any other contemporary touchy subjects: ‘We need to stop this self-censorship.’

You can download her report (.pdf) – here.

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NO campaigners threaten legal challenge

Campaigners for a “No” vote have threatened a legal challenge after 1.1 million copies of the European Union booklet were distributed, at a cost to the taxpayer of £139,000.

Of course it should not come as a great surprise that the EU Commission has frittered away £139,000 on this “information booklet” to help the Irish come to the right decision, the Commission President José Manuel Barroso has beavered away ensuring that the Irish go to the polls once more in an attempt to cajole them into correcting their earlier “mistake”. It really is quite alarming that after France and Denmark firmly rejected the original proposals for a  new EU Constitution that Barroso and his federalist allies should rebrand the whole thing and have another go at it, then when the Irish scupper the party by voting NO at a referendum they are bullied and pushed into repeating the whole exercise over again. The Lisbon Treaty needs to be ratified by all member states and it seems to me that the Commission will not be happy until it finally has it’s way, regardless of the democratic will of the people in it’s member states.

The great worry now, once we get Gordon Brown’s speech out of the way today, is that next week in Manchester the Conservatives have stage managed their conference agenda to ensure that the elephant in the room is neither seen nor heard, the Lisbon Treaty and Labour’s failure to uphold it’s promise of a referendum will not get a mention. Officially the Tory policy is “wait and see”, if it isn’t ratified by the time of the next election they promise to give us a referendum in the UK which the EU Commission will throw more of our money at , they are hoping that the Czechs become the next hurdle and stumbling block for the Commission to get over – but what if it is ratified by then? It is something that David Cameron and the Conservative Party is too fearful to talk about, they don’t want a huge argument over the EU in advance of the general election, they need a steady ship.

UKIP’s Nigel Farrage doesn’t need those sort of worries, what he needs is a new man at the helm of the EU, and not Tony Blair I hasten to add, Farrage will be standing against Speaker John Bercow in the general election hoping to take his UKIP message into Parliament and get the EU debate going in a more lively fashion than hitherto imagined in the corridors of Westminster.

Watch this video

I’m wishing the Irish luck, if they vote NO on Friday again, you can  guarantee that the EU will find ways and means of either bypassing the Irish or forcing them to go to the polls a third time.

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South Tyneside’s Labour delegates found better things to do

So here we have the Prime Minister Gordon Brown in a question and answer session at Labour’s Conference in Brighton, but where on earth are the party faithful? He cannot even manage to stage manage a half full/half empty hall! While some of our younger Labour delegates from South Tyneside were sleeping rough putting up with £25 a night accommodation they were also enjoying celeb status at The Hilton (far better than listening to Gordon), while South Tyneside Council’s Labour Leader Iain Malcolm was rightly more concerned with airport taxes than listening to the unelected Scot droning on about a fightback.

First lesson in fightbacks – have a bigger army than the other side!

Today everyone is talking about pills and Andrew Marr, see they cannot manage the news anymore!

Image found at Tory Politico

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Auditor’s judgement

Auditors KPMG found staff at South Tyneside Homes, which manages around 19,000 homes on behalf of South Tyneside Council, were able to make transactions without approval from their seniors.

Their report said: ‘There is the risk that journals get posted that have not been properly checked and authorised. The system is open to fraud and potential mis-statement.

Of course it’s all well and good being open and transparent, but if you need KPMG to be finding these details and pointing them out, then surely that indicates that someone within the management team of South Tyneside Homes isn’t exactly covering themselves in glory!

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South Shields MP looking to “the future”

Having read David Miliband’s interview with John Rentoul in The Independent on Sunday you might be excused for thinking that the Foreign Secretary hasn’t gone bananas, but his views illustrate the wider difficulties faced by Labour with Brown at it’s helm. His repeated references to New Labour are coupled with links to “declinism” and unpopular conceptions about the government, Europe, and our attempts to reign in Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

He does not fail to recognise that the debate about the Lisbon Treaty in the country and within the Conservative Party is not one that brings popularity to Labour’s position but he declines to recognise that Brown brought this unpopularity upon “New Labour” by reneging on their manifesto pledge to hold a referendum on the issue of a new European Constitution. Furthermore, as far as the average man in the street is concerned Lisbon is the new Constitution and we weren’t given a chance to have our say by Gordon Brown, it really is as simple as that and David Miliband ought to be big enough to acknowledge it, it was a major signal of New Labour’s “decline” and movement away from “political reform” when the government decided unilaterally that putting a manifesto pledge to one side was the right thing to do.

So we now sit and wait to see what happens in Ireland and how the Czech position plays out, with the hope that in the near “future” a Conservative government will be able to give us the referendum that New Labour failed to execute.

He glossed over the budgetary arithmetic ignoring the fact that our economy is now carrying the weight of more than a few zombie banks as well as the weight of a public debt never before known in the history of this country, higher than that need to finance World Wars! He will know that “the future” includes serious attempts to reign in public spending and attempt to achieve some sort of budgetary balance between tax receipts and services, that future is certain, regardless of whoever wins the general election and no amount of whinnying about when the cuts will take place will change things.

On the world’s nuclear armaments future he denied that the Iranian regime is “playing us for fools”. He said:

“You’ve got real unity and clarity from the international community. And this is the first year of an American administration that wants to be part of an engagement strategy as well as a pressure strategy.”

One suspects that President Obama for all of his attempts at wanting to play a different card to his predecessors will eventually find the pressure building on him from all sides including the US military and more importantly Israel, in short we fools might have to put up with something quite unpalatable.

Miliband’s most important contributions in the interview were the insertions of the words Alan Johnson and Ed Miliband, – yes we can now tell that the Labour Party Conference is upon us and “the future” of New Labour is all about the future of some of it’s component parts, most importantly the ex postman and the two sons of Ralph Miliband the grand old man of Marxist political theory and refugee from the Nazis. It’s as simple as that apparently, and yes even after last year’s preposterous half a bid for the leadership (remember that picture with the banana) the South Shields MP and Foreign Secretary is positioning himself once again for a tilt at the post election leadership campaign to lead Her Majesty’s Opposition against (most likely) his younger brother Ed.

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Despite employing immigrant

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