Curly's Corner Shop, the blog!

I hate missing a good birthday party

South Shields Town Hall is still, in my opinion, one of the finest public buildings in the north of England, it is a picture of municipal magnificence both externally and internally and nothing would have given me greater pleasure than using it as a photographic backdrop for the Catherine Cookson Parade on Saturday. If we are blessed with good weather gentle sunshine, a few clouds, and gentle breezes) then we could expect good crowds, a festive party atmosphere, good fun, and a celebration. It’s a good opportunity to spot some of your elected South Tyneside councillors letting their hair down – if they have any – and having some fun, although it appears that some have rather less to celebrate than others.

But, alas, for the first time in many years, I will not be there, but I encourage you to get down into South Shields with your cameras and make good use of them . Barring some sort of mini miracle, I am informed that I must be at home on Saturday to play “labourer” to the joiners who are fitting a new kitchen. Pah – who worked out the timing for this project!

So at least Tim Richardson and Alan White won’t be busting a gut to get their pictures ready for Sunday morning ha ha, but here’s an appeal, send me your best carnival pictures to the email address found in the contact page and if there are enough of them by Sunday evening I’ll make up a little slide show for the rest of the readers to see. No prizes, just the sheer fun and kudos of seeing your work on the internet. Pictures showing councillors in a bad light, compromised, or generally just having the mickey taken out of them will go to the front of the queue.

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Bikers do great work for the troops in South Shields

What a fantastic weekend in South Shields, despite the huge disappointment of England’s pathetic World Cup exit to the Germans in such an inglorious fashion, others had a higher calling and spent the weekend raising money for charities that help families of our servicemen and displayed their own public spirit in a quite spectacular fashion.

One sizeable Tyneside community came together last weekend to bring  a great deal of enjoyment and excitement to the people of South Tyneside and our hundreds of visitors, I refer to a group who are often maligned, at times wrongly, Hells Angels, bikers, and “petrol heads” took over a couple of venues to raise cash and to pay tribute to our heroes serving in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The Tyne Phoenix Motorbike Club held a large open air jumble sale at The Lord Clyde in South Shields on Saturday, which was well attended following the service held at St. Michael’s church, Westoe, which honoured the troops on Armed Forces Day. On Sunday the theme was carried to the Bents Park where hundreds of enthusiasts showed their machines including some giant names in the world of biking; Harley Davison, Honda, Suzuki, MotoGuzzi, BMW, Triumph, and Norton to name check just a few. Many had been customised and joined a huge display of “hot rod” motor cars and military vehicles which drew a huge crowd before the infamous match started, it also provided me with some exceptional photo opportunities.

Sunday’s event was organised by the Hells Angels CC and the Badlands MCC with help from South Tyneside Council and a number of sponsors, the sight of so many leather clad bandanna wearing motor cyclists herded together in massive crowd was not threatening or intimidating at all and a carnival atmosphere was most definitely evident. This motoring rally also had a concourse event where prizes were awarded to the best turned out vehicles, paint ball shooting for kids, children’s rides, rockwall climbing, 1940s military displays, marching display,  a visit from the Deputy Mayor Cllr. Jim Sewell, and live rock bands in the afternoon and early evening. The event was scheduled to finish at 8:00 pm on Sunday and the £3 entrance fee was extremely good value (children went free), best of all these redneck bikers used the whole event to raise cash for Support the Troops and Help the Heroes, so their public spirit cannot be faulted and they deserve our praise!

I found it interesting that so many people were prepared to put their hands in their pockets to attend this spectacle, and perhaps there may be a lesson to be learned there by South Tyneside Council, the admission price was sensitively pitched and there were further opportunities to increase the charitable giving (if you wanted to) once inside. It shows that people don’t mind paying a reasonable ticket price to be entertained, perhaps easier if they know that they will be helping out charities at the same time, however my point is this - free concerts are a great attraction during the summer festival, but a well pitched ticket price could provide a subsidy which may attract even bigger names and even larger crowds. Larger crowds mean greater spending power and repeat visits, and if the Jethro Tull concert in Gypsies Green proves to be a success it may be worth thinking about using the venue in some future years for open air concerts as part of the festival, let’s face it a seaward facing stage at the New Crown end of the ground may be a little more palatable for nearby residents than the stage in the Bents Park. Food and beverage franchisees should be well catered for with prime space around the upper perimeter of the stadium.

Worth a thought?

I’ll be featuring pictures from this Sunday’s event in the Bents Park in South Shields Daily Pictures for the rest of this week.

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Sometimes our press and media do go just a little overboard.

Yes I accept that some departmental budgets in Whitehall are going to be reduced, by a tiny fraction in the whole big scheme of things, but after some of the histrionics and excesses seen in the headlines over the past week it is worth digging out Chancellor Osborne’s Budget Speech to see what he actually said about overall public expenditure.

Current expenditure will rise from £637 billion in 2010-11 to £711 billion in 2015-16.

I offer that for all of you who somehow thought that a huge axe had cut swathes of money away from public spending, just imagine what YOU could do with £74bn over a five year period.

Although this is an increase, the House should remember that we inherit a rapidly rising bill for debt interest – a bill that won’t start falling until the debt itself starts to fall.

So there we have it, Osborne announced an increase in spending, much of that increase is of course due to the haemorrhaging debts and associated interest payments that Brown’s government has left us with, but nonetheless public expenditure is to continue increasing over the life of this government. It seems likely that at the end of this current Parliament the coalition government may manage to bring the debt under some tighter control, and they may have to reduce more departmental expenditure to free up money for interest repayments, they may have to increase some tax revenues to keep essential services protected, but at the end of the day they may be seen as another government which failed to halt the growth in public expenditure, or indeed failed to reduce it.

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Again?

Word reaches the Corner Shop that South Tyneside Council may about to be undertaking yet another top level management restructuring exercise, confirmation from any of my esteemed customers would be very welcome (along with evidence of the success of the last three restructuring manoeuvres, it would also be useful to know just who formulates these plans – politicians or executive directors)

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Does Independent councillor have sufficient moral authority to look after YOUR money?

The revelation this week that the business operated by Cllr. Ahmed Khan, the South Tyneside Independent Alliance deputy leader, has suffered a crisis in debt management with numerous creditors chasing Simply Workwear through the County Courts, raises questions about his suitability as someone who we should entrust with the scrutiny and challenging of public expenditure by the Labour Party in South Tyneside, and his effectiveness as a guardian of council tax payers.

Surely there must be times when councillors question his judgement in committees or full council when it comes to opposing or even approving  public budgets or the questioning of further loans or debt repayments by South Tyneside MBC?  It also calls into question the judgement of his party leader and colleagues in entrusting him to take forward these challenges on their behalf. The Fat Councillor has further details on Cllr. Khan’s business problems here.

Of course being a director of a company whose liabilities are limited by articles of association may afford him some protection from Simply Workwear’s creditors, but he cannot be protected from the public scrutiny of his electors in the Beacon and Bents ward of South Shields. We are now witnessing the growing difficulties of a company director to manage the finances of a small shop in Westoe with any great success: if he cannot manage to look after the money of his own small business, then why should you trust him to look after YOUR money and the multi million pound budgets of the council?

Does Cllr. Khan carry the moral authority to truly represent his electors and effectively steward their council taxes?

Click the thumbnail to enlarge (and many thanks to The Skinny Cooncilla for anonymously providing the information).

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David Davis attacks coalition decision

Via Conservative Home

Former Shadow Home Secretary has attacked the new Home Secretary over her decision to renew the 28 day pre-charge detention period:

“Whilst it is welcome that she is having this review of Labour’s heavy-handed legislation, and whilst it is at least welcome that this is a six month rather than one year review, it is wholly unnecessary to extend further. There have been no cases in the last four years where it has been necessary to go beyond 21 days. Even the Heathrow plot, where innocent people were held for 28 days, it has now been proven that those that were charged after this lengthy period could have been charged in less than 14 days.

“This extension is therefore unnecessary and regrettable. It is to be hoped that after the 6 months review we will see an end not just to this unnecessarily authoritarian law, but also to control orders and their regime of house arrest, internal exile, and secret courts, all of which are an anathema of British standards of justice.”

Like Jonathan Isaby I’m a bit miffed that the coalition partners do not appear to be as libertarian as we first hoped, I’m also glad that (a) government backbenchers are not afraid to challenge the government on the issue and (b) that Conservative Home is proudly carrying it’s independent position during a period of government and not just behaving like the party puppy dog. Readers will appreciate that I have supported for a long time moves to remove some of the more draconian elements of legislation passed by the Blair/Brown governments in it’s so called “war against terror”.

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Group wide strike across Johnson Press called off

The Shields Gazette publishers, Johnson Press, are facing troubled times and disaffected journalists have raised a dispute over the implementation of the new Atex content management system. A group wide strike which had been called for 19th. May was abandoned after Johnson Press sought an injunction claiming that it did not directly employ any journalists, and now the dispute will involve smaller chapels and JP’s subsidiary companies.

Union members are unhappy about the rollout of Atex across JP, which has led to a reduction in the number of sub-editors needed and claims of increased workloads for remaining staff.

The original ballot resulted in a 70pc ‘yes’ vote for strike action out of the 346 NUJ members who took part.

Prior to the national strike being called off NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear said:

“Johnston Press ran to the High Court on Friday afternoon to prevent you exercising your democratic right to take industrial action.

“They spent enormous time and effort putting together a 600-page submission to prove that, despite the JP stamp on your pay slips, on your P60, the JP company handbook you are issued, the policies on the Johnston Press plc intranet on grievance, disciplinary, health and safety and much more you are required to abide by, despite their claims in their annual report, in company bulletins and more that they employ 1,900 journalists and more than 7,000 employees, that you do not work for Johnston Press.

“Our dispute is not with local managements but with Johnston Press plc. Managers at any subsidiary cannot lift the pay freeze. They cannot reopen the closed pension scheme. They cannot decide to employ more staff or ditch Atex. Yet the law requires us to have a dispute with them.

“It means we are left with no choice. We will re-ballot members. We will ballot each centre, each chapel. Given the delay the company have forced on it the new ballot will now be bigger. More journalists will take part.”

It remains to be seen whether or not local chapels will react in favour or against industrial action in separate smaller ballots that may include the employees at titles such as The Shields Gazette, a source is quoted as saying chapels now thought to be keen to ballot members included those in Sheffield, Doncaster, Scarborough, Preston, Blackpool and South Shields.

Via – Hold the Front Page

Meanwhile Graham Blake at The Shields Gazette informs me that they have set up a new website where members of the local community can carve out their own niche and make their own news. Graham says:

This site has been introduced to help communities in South Tyneside interact with one another, as well as promoting the club/group, and any events that you may have going on.

This can be a great benefit to you as it can help you reach out to a much wider audience in South Tyneside, and also help introduce yourselves to new people who are interested in taking part or joining you.

This is all completely free, and is being done to promote local communities in South Tyneside. There is also an option to create your own site, blog, create forums, and show the rest of South Tyneside what you are all about.

I’ve noticed that you can also post your own photos to the site!

CommunitySouthTyneside.Com

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Do our politicians set themselves high enough moral standards?

Just a question – if you were asking an elected politician to scrutinise budgets, approve or disapprove expenditure, pay for services, help set the levels of taxation that you or I have to pay, challenge overspending colleagues who might run up unacceptable debts etc. – don’t you think that the same politician ought to have reasonably high standards of competency in financial matters? Would it be fair to say that a person who has a propensity to spend, not pay their bills, and run up large debts in a venture of their own is not really setting the high standards that we require from a person who is elected to steward our money?

If , for sake of argument, you elected me as your councillor, and it was found that I didn’t have the nous to run even a corner shop without creditors chasing me through the courts to recover money that I owed them, would you trust me with your money? Would you tell me to resign? Would you accuse me of lacking moral authority?

I’d welcome your thoughts here in South Shields as I toss up between reading the finer detail of the coalition budget or watching the football.

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Biggest vote loser among Labour leadership hopefuls

Mike Smithson at Political Betting has the numbers.

A couple of comments to Mike’s post suggested that the local Conservatives (and some Labour Party members) in South Shields spent too much time working in Tynemouth during the election campaign. May I say that as far as I know, this was not the case, the Conservative candidate in South Shields Karen Allen fought an energetic and forceful campaign almost exclusively within South Shields aided by an enthusiastic group of volunteer workers (we really don’t giver enough credit here), I also know that many Labour Party members were assiduously at work in the constituency, even if their candidate was not.

But perhaps here’s the rub, David Miliband was facing greater opposition than he had in the past with a larger number of candidates standing against him, additionally he was travelling around the country, ostensibly in support of Gordon Brown, but in reality building his own power base and gave insufficient time or resource to defending his seat here in South Shields.

He was prepared to sacrifice many votes here, taking us for granted once more,  in the knowledge that he’d win a larger prize after the defeat of the awful Gordon Brown who he served slavishly!

There is no guarantee that he will win the Labour leadership battle and many potential supporters will remember the two opportunities that he had to depose Brown in the past, he flunked and shrank away to the shadows of the Foreign Office again.

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When South Tyneside Council grants cash to voluntary organisations, ever wondered how it is looked after?

Just musing here about how accountable certain organisations are when operating under the umbrella of South Tyneside Borough Council (or other such councils for that matter), did you know for instance that:

• South Tyneside Council has no complaints procedure in place after it makes the granting of funds to a voluntary organisation, and that the organisation concerned is expected to have such policies in place to deal with complaints.
• When BT South Tyneside, the council’s strategic partner, makes a payment to a voluntary organisation it is accountable to South Tyneside Council and that the council is then accountable to the electorate.
• Some voluntary organisations’ management teams or committees are attended by an observer of South Tyneside Council, who may not necessarily be required to make a report or record minutes that members of the public may scrutinise.

I offer this purely as news for you to consider and ponder over, seems to me a very odd way to steward the money of council tax payers, especially in times of financial restrain when every penny will count.

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