Curly's Corner Shop, the blog!

Will South Shields’ MP be riding off into the (Clinton) sunset?
Well it would certainly keep him out of mischief in the Parliamentary Labour Party, it would please half of South Shields’ Labour Party and spark a by election in the constituency (now that would be an interesting bun fight for the nomination), and of course Mrs. Clinton would be absolutely delighted!

Of course, it might all be a bit of mischief making while he’s away in California for the Christmas holidays.

Would you miss him?

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ConLibs failing to get to grips, hard enough, fast enough, and early enough.

Sets of economic figures released over the past few days can leave us in no doubt at all that the coalition government has so far failed in its mission to reversed the economic malaise left behind by Brown, Balls, the Milibands et al. Inflation is on the rise, destroying savings which gather no interest, interest rates are due to rise soon to add to inflationary pressures, then a second wave of wage/price demands could be on the way to spell disaster for our frail economy, and I don’t see Miliband Minor stepping in to warn the unions off.

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……it’s because walking on a pavement can be hazardous.

That is, according to South Tyneside Council.

Residents who were due for a collection today are asked to leave their bins out, and those bins that are missed due to the weather conditions will be collected when it is safe to do so. Our drivers and crews are experienced and can cope with conditions on gritted roads, but side streets and pavements can be far more difficult. Walking on a pavement can be hazardous and handling wheeled bin and containers poses additional challenges.

Which does beg the question – how do the street sweeping teams manage to walk the pavements with those nice little wheeled grit bins? How does the postman get up and down my street with his heavy laden wheeled trolley?

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The good (two faced) Doctor could kill the coalition!

How very odd of Doctor Cable to pronounce that he could bring down the government, I guess many a Tory and Lib-Dem supporter will now be seeing him as a two faced opportunist prepared to say whatever mollifies his listeners in any given situation – he is a politician after all.

Of course having had those lengthy discussions at the beginning of May, he would have known exactly what he was getting into, and had a very good idea of the areas of policy that were tugging at his heart strings, one must assume, therefore, that Cable decided to forego all of his inner tensions in order to enjoy life as a Cabinet minister. It must be difficult now for anyone in the Westminster Village to imagine a less trustworthy colleague, surely?

If he does decide to amputate himself from Whitehall, at least we can be reassured that the good Doctor has a conscience, however, considering the breadth of the tie in arrangements for this five year fixed term Parliament, which make the removal of a government in the House of Commons that much more difficult, a ministerial resignation can hardly be described as a “nuclear option”.

A 3 volt spark will not start a revolution!

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What do our “Independent” councillors believe in – peace or violence?

I am really not sure what the South Tyneside Independent Alliance councillor George Waddle is calling for here, the Fellgate councillor on the one hand he says he supports democracy and condemns mayhem and destruction:

…..I am a strong believer in democracy, I support the right of the individual to vote for their choice of candidate.

I applaud and endorse the right of our students to protest peacefully whilst condemning those who caused mayhem and destruction during that protest.

Yet on the other he appears to make a revolutionary call to arms imploring us all to take to the streets and rid ourselves of a government which we democratically elected a mere eight months ago:

…..instead take to the streets, each and everyone of us, and behead the Hydra that was born out of a Con-Dem coalition.

Just to remind him – we, the people, could not decide to give any party a majority in Parliament in May, we, the people, decided that we could no longer support Labour in sufficient numbers, we, the people, decided that we could support the Conservative Party in greater numbers, but not sufficiently to form a government on their own. Hence we, the people, effectively decided that coalition politics was what we wanted. That is democracy George, that is what you proclaimed to support, and although we, the people, did not returned quite the amount of Conservative MPs that some of us might have wished , and instead returned some Liberal Democrats in their place, you cannot as a believer in democracy then proclaim that the people’s choice does not enjoy a comfortable relationship with democracy, accountability, and social cohesion! You do concede, however, that you support the right of the individual to vote for their choice of candidate.

Good.

We made our choice, and we’ll make another choice at the end of this Parliament, and NOT BEFORE!

I’ll look forward to ridiculing your revolution in the mean time George. Will you follow your colleague Cllr Khan and call the kids out from school? Go on, send them an email, do it now (oh I forgot they’re closed). Perhaps you might want to kick it all off when you debate a motion of confidence in the Leader of South Tyneside Council, that is the Indies style George isn’t it, the big dramatic grand gesture? I’ll gladly come and photograph you burning the barricades in Westoe Road George.

Let us be clear here, there can be no place for muddle headed politicians, local or otherwise, who on the one hand proclaim their support for democracy whilst willing people to take to the streets to overturn a democratically elected government, – that is exactly what you meant George, isn’t it?

……instead take to the streets, each and everyone of us, and behead the Hydra that was born out of a Con-Dem coalition.

Thankfully, people in South Tyneside will get a chance to have a say on the likes of Cllr. Waddle and his equally intellectually challenged and strategically inept policy lite bunch of revolutionary independent socialist colleagues long before May 2015.

We won’t get fooled again.

Viva la revolution brother!

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Curiosity is getting the better of me

Normally a safe haven for those of right of centre views, the Coffee House at The Spectator appears to have a cuckoo in it’s nest.

Have a look through the comments in this post and see if your curiosity leads you to ask who the South Tyneside politico known as “Cabbie” might be?

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“Tropical ” conditions return to South Shields

“Sunny Shields” is back in smiling mood today, the Arctic conditions melted away in one of the fastest thaws in living memory over the last 24 hours – the snow has gone.

Whilst the rest of us somehow managed to get around town, out of town, into town, thanks to the help of gritters who have used half of the winter stocks in two weeks, South Tyneside Council’s refuse collection teams found it far too difficult to negotiate the roads and side streets.

So, perhaps they’ll stand a better chance now that sub-tropical conditions have returned, my bins have not been emptied since 22nd. November!

It’s a good job we didn’t have any deep snow such as that seen in North Yorkshire or Central Scotland.

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Charlie Floyd is a “Crazy Diamond”

The son of the millionaire Pink Floyd guitarist is a satirist’s dream come true, just too good to miss!

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South Tyneside copes with snow better than its neighbours

I’m not sure that our councillors really need to hold a special meeting to discuss the weather situation they might as well chat about the sunshine on the Veldt for what good it might do, yes we have a lot of snow on top of hard packed ice on our roads, but as temperatures plummeted to below -8 Celsius overnight our main roads were not too bad at all.

I’ve been out of the borough a few times this week, and when travelling through Hebburn to Bill Quay and Pelaw there is a marked difference in the road conditions as soon as one gets into Gateshead Council’s area of responsibility.  The Felling by-pass was treacherous on Monday and not much better on Wednesday, Sunderland’s efforts to keep the roads clear have not been a lot better and certainly not as good as ours. So let’s give some credit where it is due, those four gritters have been doing a tremendous job whilst we sleep snug and warm in our beds!

At least we haven’t faced main routes reduced to single lanes with a three foot deluge in the outside lane! On top  of that I’ve witnessed teams gritting footpaths (well they can hardly sweep up litter) and they’ve also deposited small stocks of rock salt in the estates to allow local people to do their own bit to keep paths and driveways clear. Our main shopping centres are largely cleared of snow within a couple of days too, so perhaps the only point worth discussing is stocks, availability, and whether or not we have enough to last for the rest of the winter. Admittedly, this spell of freezing weather has arrived much earlier than we would normally expect, but who is to say that January and February might not produce the normal quota of snow and ice?

I have nothing but praise for the way that South Tyneside Council has handled the current situation, but there will always be a few who might complain, they need to see the bigger picture and realise the importance of the priority routes which have been kept in really good condition under the circumstances.

Another interesting thing to note is, at the times of the heaviest snow falls, (yesterday evening and last Friday evening) before the gritters had hit the roads one could not tell where the road ended and the pavement started. Yet traffic was moving along quite nicely, slowly of course, and with large gaps between vehicles. I don’t think there were any huge accidents to note. It just proved to me that without gritted roads, the vast majority of drivers suddenly find some common sense and drive at the speed appropriate for the conditions, they appear to be much more wary of the possible dangers and many just stayed off the roads completely! Start gritting and they all start to speed up again – doh! (As with all rules, there were one or two exceptions.)

Now we just need to get some consistency between head teachers and the way in which they decide to open or close schools. Let me give you an example (without giving away names) ; yesterday the weather was a lot better than today, public transport was running fine, snow was soft and melting, yet one South Shields primary school decided to close because of transport difficulties. It’s neighbour, a community college stayed open under exactly the same conditions. Today, the situation is reversed, the college closed citing transport difficulties, but the primary school re-opened under far worse weather conditions than yesterday. Neither of them managed to get this information to the Town Hall in a timely fashion or to each other or to local news outlets where parents keep a close eye for information. Both of them made their decisions after children had set off for the school journey, which adds to parents’ difficulties in finding child minders or other supervision at short notice.

So perhaps head teachers need some coordination and clarification on their role as educators and informers, now that would be something more worthwhile for our councillors to discuss.

Oh, and the picture above was taken in the West Park, South Shields.

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