THE FIRE THAT ENLIGHTENS IS THE SAME FIRE THAT CONSUMES

Some even stranger than normal news coming out from Westbridge depot involving Enterprises hapless management of the Refuse Collection contract for Northampton Borough Council. We already know that the company are failing to deliver on the contract and that the Council are to impose £250,000 penalties against the agreement but now it seems they are having to deal with something altogether hotter and more inflammable as it is discovered that they have a curious and dangerous outbreak of Refuse Vehicle based Spontaneous Combustion!

That's right, their dustbin lorries are going up in smoke! I am told by a reliable source that no less than 7 NEW vehicles have gone up in flames since the contract began in 2011. And so concerned are the private contractors insurance company and also the workers Trade Union (GMB) that they are now seriously concerned as to the safety of continued use of these vehicles for both their operatives and the general public.

So why is this happening? and why does it seem to be restricted to only the new vehicles that the Borough Council lent Enterprise the money for to purchase in the first place? You will remember from an earlier post that operatives were already complaining that these new vehicles which only load from one side were useless in Northampton's terraced streets as some roads have to be driven down twice or operatives have further to carry the waste, but that it seems is just a minor design fault when compared to the whole damn lorry bursting into flames!

Any light that readers can throw onto this strange waste truck flame based phenomenon would be very very welcome. Perhaps there is a strange inner force at work? A Trekkie friend tells me that the original Starship Enterprise was fueled without any need for flames so we can properly rule out Klingon interference.

Meanwhile Enterprise's continued staff reduction programme continues ever apace as more and more senior managers are shown the door. I now understand that 8 operations managers have been relieved of their duties, many for simply pointing out that Enterprise were going about the contract in totally the wrong way. No doubt the removal of so many staff who had run the contract perfectly well in house for NBC for many many years will make it even more difficult for the Council should they take the inevitable decision to take the contract back in house

Part of the missing expertise it seems may also be having a massive detrimental  effect on the amount of income the contractor is achieving from recyclables. It would seem that written into the contract is a clause whereby both Enterprise and NBC/DDC   will suffer heavily financially to the combined possible tune of millions of pounds if they cannot get from the market the right price for  their recycled goods, and the market price is dropping alarmingly on a daily basis. Of course Enterprise have taken their own unique steps to alleviate this problem themselves by scaling down on staff and use of the recycling depot at Westbridge.

From just the above it would seem that the impending fact finding visit to Westbridge and the Town Hall of Cllr Bassam Mahfouz from Ealing Council who want to prevent similar problems arising in their contract with Enterprise in West London may be quite an eyeopener for him!

SHORT SHORTS

Thought I would just catch up on a few stories for purpose of updating Joe Public on all matters local national and international.

EALING COMEDY

Regular readers will be aware of the ongoing teething problems with Northampton Borough Councils's (and DDC's) 14 year contract with Enterprise Services to provide Refuse Collection, Grass Cutting and Street Sweeping Services across Northampton and Daventry. Well the so called "teething problems" are still causing much pain to all concerned and are quickly turning into a a very nasty and prolonged toothache.

With Enterprise now it is suggested losing somewhere between £40,000 and £60,000 a week on the contract they have cut back even further on their workforce numbers, leading to more collections being missed, more grass left uncut and even less streets swept. The problems which we were told initially by the administration at NBC were little more than hiccups have now led to the Council having to look at fining the contractor £250,000 in penalties for not delivering on the service contract.

My contacts at Westbridge tell me it can only get worse in the coming months but meanwhile Northampton's woes with Enterprise as a contractor have now reached the ears of other elected members on Tory controlled Ealing Council  in West London, who are very keen not to fall into the same trap as the Borough having just engaged Enterprise, 4 months ago on a similar 15 year contract!   Enterprise took over the service from previous contractor May Gurney on April 1 2012, after it was awarded the £300 million 15-year collection contract in July 2011


Under the deal Enterprise was meant to operate a kerbside sort system for the collection of dry recyclables and food waste but following familiar  ‘teething problems’ it had to move to a commingled system to work through the backlog of missed collections. All sounding very familiar?

It now seems that after 4 months of missed collections and what letsrecycle.com called a "Fiasco in Ealing" Cllr Bassam Mahfouz, portfolio holder for transport and environment is under pressure from the opposition to resign his post over the services failures. But in an attempt to keep the attack dogs at bay Cllr Mahfouz has come up with a cunning plan, he is sending a crack squad down to see us all here in Northampton as he explains " “What we don’t want is to be a year down the line and then fining them. We are getting the guys to go down to those councils to learn what they did right and wrong.”

I could save Cllr Mahfouz and Ealing Council some money on funding the journey as its very clear what they did wrong, they signed a contract full of holes, put up as a lost leader, at a price no one could ever deliver the service for, they (as in all three political parties) then ignored the two independent members on the Council who warned them that this was bound to happen and banked the savings regardless of the consequences.

What a farce indeed,

ALL SIT DOWN FOR TEAM GB

As the row continues unabashed as to those unused seats at most events for this years London Olympics I was reminded of a conversation some weeks ago on Radio Four when the station was previewing our Gold Medal chances ahead of the Games, and what it all boiled down to was that "Sitting" was what we British do best, not just in watching the varied sporting extravaganzas, but also it seems in competing.

And so it is after an edgy start to the games and a continued wait for team GB's first gold that we must now look to those sat on their back sides to deliver the goods for Blighty. So bring on the brave rowers and the canoeists from Britain's finest public schools. All hail the horsey equestrian set with their jolly jodhpurs and jaunty japes. Cry out loud for the British Cyclists and their two wheeled velodrome heroics.

Britains Gold medal chances it seems rest solely on Britains backsides, on Boats, Bikes and Horses. So how about letting us working class folk also get in on the act? After all it is our games. I suggest the London Olympic Committee therefore immediately introduce more sitting down sports for us to compete in in this years games, we will soon rise up the medal table then.

How about Downhill Soapbox racing? I loved that as a kid, and who's for a go at a Spacehopper marathon! how delightful it would be to see all those large orange or even flag printed spherical objects bouncing up and down along the Mall in unison.

Perhaps even our Lib Dem friends could get involved with qualifiers for Olympic style Fence sitting?

SYRIA LEFT TO SUFFER AS THE WORLD LOOKS THE OTHER WAY

This blog has a very good history of predicting events local, national and even international, but for once I was hoping that I had judged it all wrong when I said that an all out civil war in Syria was probably inevitable http://tonyclarkeindependent.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/why-syrias-tears-are-wasted-on-west.html but as predicted HM Government it seems values the lives of Syrian Civilians far less than they did Libyan Civilians, there have been no cries this time for military intervention, no NATO proposed safe corridor, no NO FLY ZONE.

So what has Libya got that Syria hasn't ? Sympathy? Willpower? Oil? I explained the best I could in my last blog that the rebel army (or armies) in Syria are a diverse, complicated and split force who will probably not be able to wrestle power from the regime no matter how much they believe in their cause, and as a result the blood letting will continue unchecked. Meanwhile William Hague pops up on our screens every few days to tell us how awful it all is and how wicked Bashir Hassad is whilst saying nothing about who may replace him in any successful uprising, and also doing nothing to protect the civilian's caught up in this horrific bloody struggle for Syria's future.

The country's uprising has been played out constantly on the internet website YouTube, but while the brutal images of death remain the same, images of the armed opposition groups as also predicted are ever changing. Some groups now openly say they are affiliated with al-Qaeda, fly its flags, and say they now have training camps inside the country. Phil Rees, filmmaker and author of 'Dining with Terrorists', told Al Jazeera that for Al Qaeda, Syria is "an attractive place to come now." Who is Al Qaeda? Someone coming from Libya who helped overthrow [Muammar] Gaddafi? During Libya, they were considered to be freedom fighters and the British government supported them. Now they travel to Syria where they feel a jihad going on,"

I am sure that if the charge against the British Government of double standards being applied to different countries and different peoples has not already been made clear, then their current silence and inaction on Syria can only make it ever more translucent.

HELLO, HELLO, HELLO IS THAT A GOLDEN HANDSHAKE I SEE

Those who can be bothered to follow the selection and election of a new Police Commissioner for Northamptonshire may just have caught the news that the Tory hopeful has been announced as Adam Simmonds a 35 year old Local Government Officer who lives outside of the County but "rents'  a property nr Daventry. All thoroughly uninteresting so far.  But voices at County Hall both at political and officer levels are starting to make themselves heard as many questions are being asked as to both Adam's "non political" past and his soon to be anointed "very political future"

A fresh faced young Adam started his political career at Westminster in 1998 as a parliamentary assistant to the then Shadow Secretary of State for International Development Gary Streeter MP,  before later arriving at County Hall as a Political Assistant to the Conservative Group on the County Council in June 2000, a political post he held for 5 years including at the time being the Chair of the National Conservative Political Officers Network from 2001 - 2005  but then he moved into a new non political role as a Leadership support manager at NCC in July of 2005 leaving many opposition members questioning how it was that someone with such an open political past could all of a sudden become so apolitical. You see local government rules are very clear in as much as stating that senior officers working for a local authority cannot be politically active, although his new role of course was to offer leadership support to none other than the Conservative Leader of the Council Jim Harker. Adams "non political" engagement certainly didn't hold his career back and within two years of joining the officer ranks he was promoted again to become the council's Head of Democratic services now serving all of the political groups! His CV then informs us of a huge leap in fortune to become briefly the authorities Acting Chief Executive from July 2008 to Oct 2008 before settling down to another new post as Head of Strategy and Business Administration, a post he then held for 3 years, a very long time in Mr Simmonds illustrious local government career and only vacated by him when in June 2011 he achieved the dizzy heights of Assistant Director of Leadership, Support and Democracy capping a golden period at NCC where he had spent 11 years in 6 posts with 5 promotions, 4 of his post being "non political" and yet to many of us his role during the whole period boiled down to simply being Jim Harker's speech maker and general apologist.

So were any of us surprised when in June 2012 the local Conservative Party announced Adam as their candidate for the Police Commissioners elections in November? surprised that this supposedly non politically motivated young man had now decided once more to rejoin the Tory ranks? or were many like me under the general impression that he had in fact never stopped wearing blue underwear throughout the whole of the 12 year period he was at County Hall.

Even the Conservatives though at this stage could now see that his candidature was announced Adam could no longer continue in his £75,000+ per annum non political role and so he announced his speedy exit from County Hall the very day after his selection as candidate was made public.

But the election isn't until November, and although he is probably a shoe in for the post that's another 3 months away and a man has to live after all, and what about the £5000 deposit that has to be found by all candidates at nomination stage, and all of those leaflets that need printing and paying for. Of course the Party should help cover these costs through their fund raising efforts but maybe he should take a summer job the same as Michael Ellis to help pay his way and also for the expense of living both outside the County and still renting a second property nr Daventry let alone travelling around the County of Squires and Spires promoting his candidacy. Poor soul, I almost feel sorry for him.

But I shouldn't have worried for too long  as it seems as if someone at County Hall has stepped in to help Adam out in a  purely non political fashion you understand. You see Adam gave up his post, he left of his own accord, he could not have continued in post as he would have been politically restricted. He forgave his salary and any future entitlement by announcing he was resigning his post forthwith. So why is it that I am now being told that he is being given a golden handshake of 3 months salary of at least £18,750.00 by NCC? How can this possibly be? who authorised this payment? and why has it not been made public? Given his intention to uphold the highest standards of integrity if chosen by the electorate to fulfil his newly hoped for role, perhaps Adam himself would like to justify his payment?

I did entertain for a while standing myself as an Independent in the forthcoming Police Commissioner elections, after all I spent 4 and a half years serving Northamptonshire Police as a Special Constable, can offer the Independent profile preferred by most sitting Chief Constables and even spent a night or two in a cell during my youth making me well placed to see local policing from all angles, but I decided against standing as I simply can't afford to run as a candidate, I can't even afford the £5000 deposit let all the £12,000 per leaflet cost to cover all homes in the County. If only I worked for the County Council as an Assistant Director things could have been so different!

At a time of crippling cut backs being imposed by the Conservative Party at County Hall I ask the people of the County to read the above and make up their own minds as to whether we are all in this together? Or perhaps some of them are up to their necks in it together in a very different manner altogether?

A SUMMER OF DISCONTENT

The confidence we have in ourselves and in the communities in which we live underlies the whole scheme of the life in which we exist. It is born from the confidence that people have in each other, confidence in their integrity, confidence in their honesty, confidence in planning their collective futures. And when we speak of each other or of the place we live in, town or country we talk about "my" friends or colleagues or about "our" town or "my" country we are all naturally possessive in language and also in our souls, it's the reason we feel pride when acknowledging the sporting achievements of those who we see as representing us and why we sometimes without understanding shed a tear for people we have never met before but feel attached to through our common endeavours and community links.

So just what have we got as a nation to feel proud about at present? OK the Jubilee and the Olympics for those so minded offer a maybe welcome diversion from the stark realities of our everyday lives, but they are little more than hollow escape from our real troubles, and these are stacking up by the bucket load.

So let's look at the levels of integrity and honesty of those who impact heavily on our lives and also on the confidence we have in those who rule us or control our economic and material futures. Let us put under the microscope that unholy alliance of MP's, Bankers and Journalists who impose their decisions, views and labours upon us.

Well for a start our MP's are hardly in a fit state to preach to us much at present are they? Soiled and sullied by the expenses scandals with many of their number now doing time for fiddling the books they have diminished our confidence and respect in their profession down to an all time low, and that's saying something given Parliaments already chequered history. Membership of the three political parties is now at an all time low less than 500,000 members nationwide between all three of them down from a high of 5,000,000 50 years ago they now have many time less members than most of our registered charities, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds for example has more members than all three parties put together and the few left to raise their parties standards do so against a background of an untrusting and disinterested electorate who express their opinion in the main by either not voting or voting for none of the above. But still they win access to the corridors of power usually on the support tiny percentages of the constituencies, national or local that they represent. Local Government is now also a farce played out by very poor actors pretending to be all powerful whilst all of their authority and decision making powers have been taken off of them by an officer class truly irritated by their presence. SO LETS NOT LOOK TO OUR POLITICIANS FOR ANY ANSWERS UNLESS THE QUESTIONS ARE OF PERSONAL NATURE OR OF POLITICAL INTEREST TO THEM.

But what about the giants of Britain's media and the journalistic world, surely the press will step up to the plate and be our vanguard for good against evil in these troubled times? Tell us all in heavy print where the country is going wrong and cast an Independent eye over those ruling us, Sorry guys but they are equally and perhaps even deeper in the doghouse. The Levesson enquiry rolls on exposing day by day the darker practices of their craft and more and more of their number are then arrested, bailed and their futures left in abeyance, what's more worrying is that they are taking a large number of Knacker of the Yards boys with them, all intertwined in a bowl of rotten noodle soup made up of illegal activity, back door payments and illicit practices devised to sell tittle tattle gossip at the expense of people's privacy and rights, whilst ignoring the fault lines really dragging Britain down SO DON'T LOOK TO THE NATIONAL MEDIA TO SAVE US THEY ARE TOO BUSY TRYING TO SAVE THEMSELVES AND THE SICKENING WORLD THEY INHABIT.

So if our politicians and our press are as corrupt as each other then we must fall back on the professional classes for comfort and sound advice to see us through the mire. Let's all give three cheers for the Bankers! Then again let's not, a bigger bunch of lying cheating greedy and corrupt individuals you are unlikely to find anywhere in humankind. Having created the Banking crisis which led to the worlds deepest depression since the 1930's they collectively stand outside the worlds government houses with their hands held out asking for the politicians to spare them some loose change in order to save their own skins "if we go down then you will fall just as fast as we do they all say" The politicians in response do what they do best, they look after themselves and throw more and more of our money at them in the hope of salvation. The trouble here though is that this Banking Monster is so greedy that no amount of cash, even if we print it anew will satisfy their greed and desire, so they cheat and they manipulate and they fiddle the figures to make themselves even more money, to wrap themselves up against the cold of the recession cutting deep through the bones of the masses. "The Libor rate", they say, "no one understands that so lets tweak the figures here and there, we can make billions and the home owners and the small businesses can pay the price in higher mortgage and loan costs". So expect another Judge led inquiry and eventually another round of arrests. SO LETS NOT LOOK TO THE CITY TO BRING US ANY RELIEF AS THEY ARE TOO BUSY RELIEVING THEMSELVES ALL OVER US AS WE LAY IN THE GUTTER BENEATH THEM.

With all of the above in deep and deserved trouble of their own making we will soon be in a position when our prisons are populated more by the professional classes than the traditional criminal classes, old lags will soon start moaning that they have to share their cells with individuals far more unpalatable than the murderers and sex offenders that they are used to bunking up with. And meanwhile, we, us, the British people will stop talking of "our" country and "my" nation as a new age of "them and us" returns with a flourish not seen since the 1600's. "We are all in this together" says the Prime Minister wishful thinking on his part I think, and soon exposed as a cruel and wicked lie as the cuts hit hardest at the poor whilst the uberrich count out the sum totals of their tax cuts and find ever more cunning schemes and dodges to avoid paying their fair share of taxes in the first place. Meanwhile a women wearing a £1m hat takes a horse drawn golden carriage ride to Westminster to give a speech about austerity and tell us all how hard times really are and how her government will ensure we all pay for the mess we are now in

I predicted on this blog before prior to the summer riots of 2011 that trouble was ahead of us, I took no comfort from being proven right, and now we have the irresponsible bleatings of County Chief Police Officers across the Country telling the press that they will not be able to police the streets in coming weeks and months in the face of any such disturbances due to their numbers being depleted by both Olympic duty and cuts to police numbers. What an utterly stupid thing to say. Their predictions of unchecked unrest were thankfully only read by an uninterested few and now by the relatively small number of regular readers of this blog (around 2000 worldwide if your interested) but if their self fulfilling prophecies come true then I am sure that they will soon gloss over their previously expressed inflammatory comments.

So think less of an Arab Spring and more of a Summer of the Disenfranchised. I hope as always that they are wrong, it is the weak and the innocent who always suffer at such times and it will make life on our streets far more difficult to live in not less, but when you take away a nations hope, when the governed feel that their government no longer have a mandate, when locally and nationally all you see and hear about is cuts to services whilst at the same time see the rich shoving as much of our cash into their own pockets whilst shirking their own responsibility to pay their share of the bills whilst we are still paying ours, then I am afraid unrest is at some point inevitable.

Britain is now more than ever morally and economically bankrupt and whilst it is hardly a new analogy it has to be said that once more it's the same the whole world over, it's the poor what gets the blame, it's the rich what takes the pleasure, ain't it all a bleeding shame.

WHAT FLASHMAN DID NEXT...............

"Flashman, be it said, was big and strong of his age. He played well at all games where pluck wasn't much wanted, and managed generally to keep appearances where it was; and having a bluff off-hand manner, which passed for heartiness, and considerable powers of being pleasant when he liked, went down with the school in general for a good fellow enough. Even in the School-house, by dint of his command of money, the constant supply of good things which he kept up, and his adroit toadyism, he had managed to make himself not only tolerated but rather popular amongst his own contemporaries; although Young Clegg scarcely spoke to him, and one or two others of the right sort like old Binner's showed their opinions of him whenever a chance offered. But the wrong sort happened to be in the ascendant just now, and so Flashman was a formidable enemy for small boys. This soon became plain enough. Flashman left no slander unspoken, and no deed undone, which could in any way hurt his victims, or isolate them from the rest of the house. One by one most of the other rebels fell away from them, while Flashman's cause prospered, and several other fifth-form boys began to look black at them and ill-treat them as they passed about the house. By keeping out of bounds, or at all events out of the house and quadrangle, all day, and carefully barring themselves in at night, the poorest boys managed to hold on without feeling very miserable; but it was as much as they could do. Greatly were they drawn then towards Old Labour, who, in an uncouth way, began to take a good deal of notice of them, and once or twice came to their study when Flashman was there, who immediately decamped in consequence. The boys thought that Old Labour must have been watching.

David Cameron's apparent uneasiness with comparisons between one public schoolboy and another (him and flashy) have I am told led to some angry exchanges in the House and it is it seems a charactonym far too close to the truth for him to bear. But if this is really so, then why does he continue to try so hard to live up to his Tom Brown Schoolboy soul mate so much in his actions and deeds?

Cameron in recent weeks in an attempt to rid himself of the omnigaffe and u-turn blues has taken once more to the open mouth before engaging brain persona that had troubled him so when first entering number 10, do you still remember his grovelling speech in the States when he referred to the UK being the USA's "Junior Partner" in the Second World war? or his assertion in Turkey that "Iran has a nuclear weapon"?

Well this time he chose his home ground on which to make a fool of himself. Jimmy Carr's Tax avoidance is of course morally repugnant, and I for one have lost a tremendous amount of respect for the comedian now I know how little he cares for paying his taxes, but was it really David Cameron who was preaching to all who would listen as to how wrong all this was? It was a TV spectacle equivalent to watching Dot Cotton launch an anti smoking campaign for the NHS or listening to Jeremy Clarkson in praise of women only shortlists. We just couldn't take it in as believable.

Here was a man whose father and father in law have both been exposed as tax dodgers engaged in siphoning off money overseas, a man whose party is kept afloat by deputy chairman,  Lord Ashcroft who it is reported has avoided paying over £127m in taxes over a ten year period during which he himself donated £11m to the Tory party! And what about his fellow cabinet members who are also allegedly involved in tax avoidance? Just why oh why the PM started throwing rocks and boulders about in such a home owned greenhouse is anybody's guess. Perhaps like Flashman he is simply happy to preach to his fags as to what they should and shouldn't do whilst privately refusing to acknowledge even to himself that his own position as head boy has been bought completely by outside privilege and favour from a wealthy family.

And so having been caught out and found out by an electorate far more astute than Dr Arnold, the schoolmaster from Thomas Hughes's novel,  Flashman "Call me Dave" reverts to type and starts bullying the oiks. And so it is today that we witness another attack on the young and vulnerable,  labeling them all as workshy benefit scroungers undeserving of our care and thus proposing to cut Housing Benefit to all under 25 years olds.

He of course is talking to a specific audience of voters when he speaks, those who want any safety net completely pulled from underneath the have nots, but it is his knee jerk "nasty party" commentary thats leads sensible people to question whether or not his rantings are even partly sensible?

In one fell swoop he is saying that all parents must keep their young at home until they are 25 unless they can afford to move out, and don't think for one minute that his target is just the workshy, of the 210,000 under 25's claiming Housing Benefit a very high number are already in work and claim benefit as a top up to satisfy the ridiculous levels of private rent to private landlords, creaming it in (and probably avoiding paying tax on the profit) due to the failure of successive Governments to provide decent social housing for our young.

Even within the coalition the questions on what is dodgy policy are stacking up

Tim Leunig, chief economist at the Liberal Democrat Centre Forum think tank, poses five questions for Cameron:

• Does this mean all parents have a legal obligation to house their children until they are 25? What sanctions will be placed on parents who refuse to do this?

• If there is no such obligation, where are low income and unemployed under 25s supposed to live? Will the state provide "young adult homes" akin to children's homes for people whose parents refuse? What about those who have no parents? How much will this cost taxpayers?

• Will parents of people aged under 25 be able to claim housing benefit on a bedroom for their under 25, even if the under 25 has moved out, in case they need to move back? How much will this cost taxpayers? Or will there be a legal obligation on social and private renters to move to a different sized house every time their adult children need to move in, or choose to move out?

• Which parents have a legal obligation to house a married couple aged under 25 in low income work? Do the young couple have to split up and live with their own parents? Can they choose? Do they have to alternate?

• Who has a legal obligation to house a couple under 25 with children?

"I say Flashy" said Osbourne the upper fifths swag carrier "Do you not you think the young pups have had enough" "We have taken all their jobs and wages, without having to crash them out of the dorm" "Nonsense" said Flashman "lets roast them, teach them a damn good lesson once and for all, GROWTH and JOBS they ask for, how dare they, they can fag for the rich and have their privileges docked and if they as much as whimper we will thrash them"

Cameron's proposed cut to Housing Benefit for the under 25's will do nothing to slow down the ever growing rise in the welfare bill. only growth and employment will do that. It is a cut which will punish all under 25's even those who are working and put added pressure on the poorest families to keep them at home. It will add as a break to growing up for our young and make them more dependent not less. It will discourage work if the state is not prepared to reward those making an effort. It will disrupt the lives of thousands of young couples with children who if the wage earner is made redundant are then forced to up and move house  and school to return to live with parents.

Like his comments on taxation Cameron's schoolboy recent rants on Housing Benefit were best left unsaid as they are borne out of indifference, insensitivity and class ignorance.

"Well done Flashman old boy" said Boris, "Lets smash the oiks"

A MESSAGE TO THE COUNTY COUNCIL - YOU HAVE NOT BEATEN A MAN JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVE SILENCED HIM

This is for all of you old enough to have walked into an empty room and then forgotten what you went in there for in the first place. It is a tale of personal anxiety and deep inner questioning and also of incredible interference in the democratic process by person or persons unknown. A real shocker!

I begin by apologising to many people who for the last few months have had to put up with my erratic and at times rude behaviour, I now acknowledge that I was becoming a miserable old sod, but perhaps now in light of the truth being revealed it will be seen as all with good reason?. It all stems from my role as a County Councillor and opposition to all things Tory at County Hall. Opposition is never welcomed and I remember myself in Parliament castigating the Tory benches when first elected for seeming to oppose for oppositions sake. This was before I realised that a) they were simply doing their job and b) good opposition aslo makes good government.

So I therefore make no excuses for being a thorn in the side of my political opponents, however for the past few months I had detected a sense of disaffiliation with some officers on the Council and a growing impression that they had simply decided en-masse as a collective group to ignore me. To say "stuff Tony Clarke and his opinionated comments and requests he can go toot"

I found myself arguing more often with officers over them not carrying out the simplest of tasks requested, for repeatedly asking for my opinion on the same matters even if I had already passed judgement on them before. And for ringing me up at all hours of the day enquiring as to matters I had already dealt with. All this coupled with the discovery that at the age of 48 reading glasses were to be the order of the day, it led me to believe I was getting far too old far too quickly. Perhaps I hadn't sent that reply back to whoever it was, and maybe the comments on consultations and reviews which had pondered over stayed inside my own head and were not as I thought shared with others? Constituency case work was also getting harder to deal with, people never got back to me with any answers and I would then have to chase officers  up over every emailed request with a phone call or personal visit to ensure that any action was taken.

So was I losing the plot? or had I overstepped the mark, burnt all my bridges and been ex communicated?

The very  last straw came in the guise of a petty standards board complaint which had been made by a Tory Backbench Cllr who I have never spoken to in person and has in fact as far as I am aware never even spoken himself in the chamber since being elected. He had taken offence as to something written on this blog. I doubt it was even him behind the complaint, he was probably the Tories stool pigeon sent out to fire a warning shot across my bow for repeatedly upsetting the boss. The investigating officer kept asking me to attend for interview, and I kept replying saying I had better things to do with my time and if they really wanted to make a case then they should just go ahead and do it. I did however point them in the direction of precedent and high court rulings which made the complaint non enforceable. I also told them that I looked forward to defending my position in the public realm once concluded

To my anger I got a draft report sent to me a) saying I hadn't bothered to reply to any requests made by the officer and b) finding me in breach of something I couldn't possibly have done. So I fired off a pretty forceful response, which basically asked the investigator to remove the untruths and think again on the judgement in light of the clear evidence. The response? A final report unchanged and still full of holes and wrongful judgements and decisions. Perhaps it was time I called it a day I thought, after all do I really need all this hassle?

But in a final attempt to rescue my sanity I asked the Chief Executive why he hadn't even responded or intervened in the matter having been copied in to all the correspondence. "I never received them" he said? You must of done I replied and I showed him the "delivered" notes in my ipad version of the email sent box. Still no joy. So he sent me a test email, which I received and I sent him a reply back which he didn't receive! So I then forwarded the test email to my NTFC account and replied to him from that different inbox and account and Hey Presto it arrived, and with it the real reason why life has been so difficult for me as a County Councillor for the past 6 months or maybe even longer. You see some kind and thoughtful soul at County Hall had decided off of their own back or with others to blacklist all of my incoming email correspondence to the County Council. Not an IT blip you will understand as emails can only be blocked as either spam, or from a bad IP address or host, or with profanities within the text (This is called the Scunthorpe scenario, for all of you with filthy minds).

As my email account and its posts was being delivered to and sent from various IP addresses, all profanity free and sent to individuals or small groups (not spammed) then the block could only have be ordered and implemented by individual decision and input from within County Hall.

So for months, my requests on behalf of constituents have been totally ignored, leading to me being bad tempered with staff on the phone having wondered why they had failed to make any progress on my query, My considered comments on reviews and consultations over such important matters as the boundary review, future parking powers, changes to the councils constitution, changes to services including social care, have all gone undelivered, requests and forms sent in for empowerment fund monies all sat in a deleted box in the Council not processed. No wonder officers looked at me gone out when I got angry at having to repeat myself verbally when asked for my views on Council issues, and not once did anyone say, "we never received your email Councillor"

So just how am I supposed to feel now? Pleased to discover that I am not losing my marbles after all? No not really, in fact I feel angrier than ever before that an elected member of the Council and the constituents they represent could have been treated in such a fashion, that person or persons unknown have taken it upon themselves to interfere with the democratic process and deny myself and those I serve a voice. I feel embarrassed that my electorate have had to endure poor service and puzzlement as to why their Cllr couldn't get things done for them in the usual and expected fashion. I am furious that the relationship between myself and some officers of the council has been sullied, leading to a mistrust between us as to my opinion or lack of opinion being forthcoming or my insistence that they were not doing their job all because someone decided that Tony Clarke should be silenced.

I will of course deal with what is an  insignificant standards board complaint by a Tory Cllr in a future blog posting, once the truth has outed, and the mistakes in the report corrected, but there is a certain irony that it was this complaint that would eventually be the matter on which a far more serious abuse of local government power has been revealed.

I doubt for one minute if any who know me would think I could ever be silenced, and it is in some ways complimentary to think that some will still try, but I believe that I am owed a full answer to how this could have happened who was responsible and what were the reasons behind the action. Whilst I await the outcome of the inquiry , I must take some solace in discovering that age has not truly caught up with me yet and that if I am still annoying someone to the point of them taking such crass actions then I must still be doing something right along the way.

WHY SYRIAS TEARS ARE WASTED ON THE WEST

The daily heart wrenching images coming out from Syria tear at the very soul of humanity, how can human life and the lives of children be so cheaply discarded, extinguished and violated? Who is to blame?, How can we bring those responsible to justice? and what can we do to stop the bloodshed? These are probably the three most voiced questions asked by those of us taking time out of our busy lives to even care. But we cannot rely on the British Government or even the BBC to provide us with the answers as in their eyes its all far too simple. It's all the fault of the Syrian Government and its head of state Bashar Assad, that's all you need to know, that's the foreign office line and our job as subjects of our own head of state is to believe them. But look again, dare to search for the truth, expose yourself to the horror and you will find a far more complex tale than that told in our newspapers and on our TV screens.

Syria is of course the birth place of the Baathe Party, it's breakaway sect in the early 1960's going on to raise Saddam Hussein into power in Iraq. The group then was split into Marxist (Civilian) and Militarist wings. The Military power which held say in Syria exists as the main power to this very day and its current President Bashar Assad the son of Party founder Hafez Assad rules in name only. I met Bashir in Syria in 2002 and found the most unassuming leader I had ever had the fortune of meeting. He certainly wasn't raised for the role, that honour was reserved for his brother Bassell, whose coronation never arrived due to his playboy tendencies which led to his death in a high speed car crash in 1994. And so it was that a young Bashar, an ophthalmic surgeon at St Marys teaching Hospital in London suddenly became next in line to the top job back in Damascus. Bashar and his British born wife to be Amas Ahkras found their lives completely reordered.

The Military might of Syria however was not about to lose its grip on power and despite many attempts at modernisation by the new president they continued to run Syria with an iron fist rather than take advantage of the new presidents ability to change Syria for the good. And so when the Arab spring finally made its way on the road to Damascus it met with stiff resistance from within the regime. Whether or not the determined reformer I first met fresh in office had long since given up trying to control his military chiefs I do not know, but he seems to be powerless and at times caught like a rabbit in the headlights when challenged on the alleged crimes of his state.

And then to make things even more complicated and far more dangerous the military themselves are losing grip on their own regional regiments as long held tribal differences come to the fore. The recent atrocities of course at first attributed to the Syrian Government were it seems actually carried out by a militia group loyal to the Baathe party called the "Shabia" others blame the FSA (Free Syrian Army) for similar atrocities carried out in villages loyal to the regime. In other words despite the wish of the BBC and the British government to explain away these atrocities as a simple government v the people struggle those on the ground talk of sectarian unrest and almost open civil war between opposing terrorist groups and government supporting militia in the North, and this violence is now spreading across the border into Lebanon.

But despite who is leading who and who is really calling the shots one thing is for sure and that is that the Baath Party of Bashar Assad and his father, Hafiz Assad, are still in absolute control of Syria, and any wish from the west that they are to be toppled as quickly as over regimes in the region is ill advised

This conflict will go on for a long time. There are a lot of supporters of the Baath Party regime. Not just members of the Shiite Alawite community and the Christians and the Druze, but others too, particularly among the Syrian bourgeoisie, the middle classes who support the regime. It will also be bloody. So what happened to the UK governments resolve as expressed over Libya to protect civilians on the ground? Where is the cry for military intervention? Or is Britain's resolve limited to our economic interest and the size of the government army we face?


Or perhaps the advisers in the foreign office are reminding British ministers of what happened in Algeria in the 1990's when the rise of Islamist groups was kept in check by a pro government alliance of tribal groups. In Algerian both sides, the military and the Islamist's, militias, started massacring very large numbers of civilians in terrible ways. The obvious fear is that the same kind of thing could happen in Syria now because we know very little about the rebel forces and the rebel militias that are now emerging across the country.

Robert Fisk, for me the most gifted, open and learned journalist in the Middle East recently told reporters that

"Well it already is happening in Syria. I went to a suburb of Algiers called Bentalha where there was an Islamist attack on villagers who were themselves "Islamist's". Hundreds of people were killed, including babies who had their throats cut.

I was in the village where this happened and saw the corpses of these babies and I saw the parents. And from the roof of their home, I saw the Algerian flag flying from the nearest Algerian Army barracks. From which, apparently, the Algerian Army could not come to the rescue of the villagers.

Of course they could, but they didn't. This is the sort of situation we're now seeing in places like Houla and Hama and I suppose perhaps, horribly speaking, in Aleppo too. We're seeing the same sort of pattern emerge, unfortunately."

The simple fact though is that the Syrian opposition, the armed opposition to Bashar Assad is so divided that it cannot be regarded as a serious threat to the regime. And Britain and the West have no idea who is leading that opposition on a day to day basis

And if we don't know who the opposition is, then the lazy thing to do is to simply blame Bashar Assad and the Syrian Government. But the West in this case cannot be seen to even give support to the opposition, as they undoubtedly contain elements and fighters from Al Qaeda, whose members may indeed perhaps be involved in massacres similar to the Houla massacre aimed at different tribal groups. And of course even if we had a side to back then the UK's economic interest is limited in this case so don't hold your breathe waiting for UK military involvement

Syria, and it's people need a new start, but it will not get that from a prolonged and bloody civil war. Bashar needs to lead a new drive for a democratic nation that actually represents all the people of Syria - the Sunni, the Shiites, which means of course the Alawites of the presidency, Bashar Assad and also the Christians and Druz. It's current bloodletting offers no such vision, just a continence of  sectarianism and continued religious indifference.

Bashar, the eye doctor from London would do well to look for help from the young leaders of Lebanon, as well as from the UN. He should look to develop a new state that rejects a society based on sectarian values and tribal difference. A country proud of its secular ideals rather than one driven into Islamic dominance I don't find Bashar Hassad not guilty of involvement in Syrias painful daily trials and tribulations, in fact it is his weakness at times that has acted as a recruitment centre for the more dangerous elements amongst his regime and following to take matters into their own hands and arm the militia's currently carrying atrocities in a tit for tat fashion with the rebels. But the West will do itself no favours by simply blaming the regime for all Syrias ills and saying how awful these massacres are whist wringing their hands and refusing to take any any part in seeking a solution.

Diplomacy and dialogue with Bashar and with others in the region including leaders in Lebanon is in my view the only way that further disaster can be avoided and all out civil war can be averted, if of course it is not already too late. My hope above in writing this piece is to educate and illustrate, to offer an alternative to the over simplistic view churned out by the mass media at a British and world  audience angry at what is in front of them on their TV screens but feeling powerless to do anything about it and wondering why their own government lack the balls to intervene.

Not all intervention has to be led with the gun, its high time the so widely valued British diplomats did their job in supporting a future for Syria by promoting jaw jaw instead of war war. It's high time that my ex party leader Tony Blair got off of the speaking circuit and his backside and did his job as Middle East peace envoy and Quartet representative of the USA, UN, Russia and the EU,  and engage with Syria, and its high time that the British public were told the truth as to what is really happening in the world around them rather than a sanitised and western influenced version of it.

RECYCLED EXCUSES AND BUCK PASSING WONT DELIVER THE SERVICES

My blog below, highlighting the current plight of staff employed at Enterprise Managed Services (the councils outside environment services contractor) and the impact that this failing privatisation is having on our local services at least is seems stirred some people into action. Ex Independent Cllr Malcolm Mildren and myself of course could be forgiven for saying we told you so, given our single handed attempts last year to prevent NBC from signing such an obviously flawed contract, but the Chronicle and Echo and it now seems the opposition groups at the Guildhall are both belatedly waking up to the story. I am bound to say that it's a pity it has took them so long and that all three parties on the Council would have served the public better by airing their concerns with ourselves last year rather than offering slavish support to the deal and now belatedly deciding that we may just have had a point all the way along.

And so "serious questions" we are told will now be asked?, but is this a solution to the growing problem or simply a way to bide time, will they now accept that the contract is non deliverable or hold out in the hope of rescuing a few red faces by letting the contract limp on? And what will that do to protect local services already failing through a bungled and undeliverable contract? After all the Portfolio Holder responsible for the contract Cllr Jon Caswell (Con) tells us that it has nothing to do with the Council and that these are all issues for Enterprise to sort out!

Well as always, let me tell you my blog readers first, including many Cllrs who I know read the blog to catch up on the news their own Council won't reveal to them, just how bad matters have really become.

First of all it seems (unbelievably) that EMS have now decided that they miscounted the number of properties in Northampton that needed their bins collected when they first quoted for the contract (whose fault is that?) and now they want an additional £800,000 a year more from the local Council Tax payer than they originally quoted for these services alone (next we will no doubt hear that the grass is growing much quicker than anticpiated and that people are throwing far too much rubbish on the streets). This £800,000 they no doubt hope will go towards the £2.5m loss estimated by some as EMS's first years operational loss.

Secondly, on job losses (despite assurances to the contrary at the time) it seems as if the majority of 50+  staff shown the door at Westbridge in the last 12 months have come from the original Council staff who were TUPE'd across from both Councils (TUPE stands for Transfer of Undertakings, and the Protection of Employees, and is a way of protecting staff post any buy out or transfer of contracts) and these "redundancies" are not just limited to the front line, as middle managers are just as expensive in EMS's eyes as workers. Certainly both Waste Managers who transferred from Northampton Borough and Daventry District Councils have now gone, meaning all their local knowledge and expertise has gone with them!. Meanwhile replacement agency staff are still being employed on "daily" basis at Westbridge with workers turning up at 6am with their lunch boxes to hopefully be "hand picked" and told at 7am which of them have secured a days work. The rest are sent home with the Dickension term "No work today" ringing in their ears.

And what about the services themselves? Well we can all see that ourselves clearly by the uncut grass, unswept pavements and uncollected rubbish littering our streets. But to give you a clearer insight, I can "exclusively" (before the local press and politicians tell you they knew this anyway, and repeat it without naming the source) reveal that not only have the number of total refuse rounds been cut, but that all of the emergency and spare vehicles have all now been off hired to save money. This is despite the loan of £750,000 given to EMS by the council last year for new vehicles and site improvements. So now the service is being delivered in the main with an ageing fleet of trucks which are constantly breaking down mid round. And if EMS underestimated the number of homes to collect from, then how are they now collecting it with less lorries and staff than they first started with

And this causes another problem, the refuse contract rounds are now 9.5 hours long (far too long in my view for continued manual work) and the drivers all have to work to a legal limit of  9 hours driving in any one day (4.5hrs +  4.5hrs with a 45 minute break in between) or a maximum of 10 hours on two out of any 5 days if they work with an additional 45 minute  break over a 11.5 hour day. What this means to anyone with even a basic rudimentary knowledge of HGV driving regulations is that if for any reason a lorry breaks down, or the round is delayed, then there are no back up vehicles to replace any of those out of action and the drivers cannot even legally drive their wagons back to the depot without them breaking the law. The above vehicle break downs and round delays it seems are the real reason that rubbish is now left uncollected on the street at the end of every day as drivers are running out of driving time and there are no additional drivers or wagons at Westbridge to relieve them.

Meanwhile as intimated in my last post I can confirm that the Main Recycling Facility at Westbridge has all but closed its doors and rumours abound that Enterprise have plans to knock it down, and also the promised refurbishment of the current recycling facility at Daventry to begin to handle food waste has now been cancelled due to EMS saying they now have no money to afford to implement it.

It doesn't look good, in fact it's a shambles, EMS can't afford to deliver the service for the price they quoted, NBC can't afford to re tender or take the service back in house as they have "banked" the saving from their wider cuts programme, and services are deteriorating by the minute. But don't worry, we are all in this together!

SIMPLY A MATTER OF BINS AND BUGS - TOPICAL SHORTS (3)

There was a time in Local Government when if you had 10 Councillors in a room then you were sure to get a least 15 different opinions. Then somewhere during the mid 1990s all opinions blurred into first of all three camps (Tory/Lab/LibDem) and then into just one, not a Coalition but it seems at local level a Coatrition.

For this reason as an Independent I often found it nearly impossible to promote new ideas or even question the status quo at Council meetings and when I and other Independent colleagues did so our points of view were dismissed by all parties as scaremongering or trouble making we were left out on a limb, our concerns dismissed as negativity, and our comments often ignored in the press.

So thank god for the blogosphere, here we can say as we please within reason, and be judged on not just the opinion we express but also on whether or not we called it right at the time.

Today in the third of my topical shorts we revisit two earlier blogs from the past to give you an update as to how close we called it at the time:

WHAT A LOAD OF OLD RUBBISH

Most of you will remember my posts on "Enterprise Managed Services" the new company that took over all of the Borough Councils refuse, cleansing and groundworks contracts in a 14 year deal. Praise came from all round the Council chamber from the big three, and in my last post on this subject I reminded readers that even Labour's Leader at the time Lee Mason commented that she didn't care who collected her bins as long as they didn't change colour! The Lib Dems agreed the deal, the Tory's trumpeted it as their own when they came to power, even going as far as to hold a re signing photo opportunity for the agreement.

Only two Cllrs at the time, myself and Malcolm Mildren spoke out, We challenged the figures, said that Enterprise had put in a loss leader as a bid and could not afford to deliver the service at anywhere near the price set. We questioned the long term security of the staff who would be transferred, and warned that 14 years was along long time if they made a mistake. We urged the Council to make its own changes to the in house delivery in order to keep control of the service. And we were ignored.

The warning signs were there, at the time Enterprise told the Council that it couldn't raise the funds itself externally to buy new vehicles to run the new contract and asked the Council to lend them the money to do so! Again Malcolm and myself tried to promote caution but our comments were relegated to the wheelie bin

So Enterprise started the contract, to begin with we had the usual teething problems, and as a result some changes were made, some at times seemed to have an effect, but only over time would we be able to judge the outcome.

That time is now approaching, and it is approaching at break neck speed. Let me tell you what my contacts down at Westbridge have been telling me over the last few days. First of all it seems as if Enterprise have lost money on the contract (surprise surprise) the figure I was told was that they have lost £2.5m in the first year. As a result of the above 15 staff were made redundant last week, with more to follow, refuse collectors, street cleaners, groundworkers all being cut back. The emergency clean up team who was successful in clearing up the mess made by their own refuse and recycling officers gone. 5 of the shiny new vehicles which Enterprise borrowed money from the Council to purchase gone. The Councils flagship recycling unit at Westbridge Depot? Closed and the staff laid off and the waste now being diverted by road to other recycling centres in the country expanding further the carbon footprint.

None of the above has hit the ears of Cllrs at NBC yet, and there has not been as much as a sausage in the local press, but when your bins are not collected as often, or you wonder where the street sweepers have all gone, or why the grass is three feet tall again. You can say I read about this on a blog from a bloke who the council said was talking rubbish when he warned them that this would happen. Rubbish indeed!

FOUNTAIN OF ALL KNOWLEDGE

The other criticism I receive is that I must be a real anorak at times to know so much about the most inane of subjects. I hold my hand up to this one, when I get my teeth into something I can't let go, and a number of times on this blog and on the Chronicle and Echos website I have warned about the potential dangers of the Council's next to useless fountain on the market square. If you want all the gory details just click here.  http://tonyclarkeindependent.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/dont-go-chasing-waterfalls.html 

What a load of old tosh they said, its perfectly safe. And yet it seems to have been off more than it is on recently, and anyone who missed in the press the ridiculous exchange between the Chron and the Councils leader over why it was currently turned off will be tickled to hear the story which goes something like this:

Local newspaper contacts Council and says "Is the fountain turned off because of the hose pipe ban"?
The Council responds by saying No not at all and  announcing that  "the fountain would remain on throughout the drought as turning it off would not actually make any difference to the town’s water supply". "So why is it off now then said the Chron two days later"? The Council replied with the following gem

"The water feature on Northampton Market Square will be switched off during the hosepipe ban to avoid causing concern to members of the public who might think it’s wasting water, the fountain was constructed to be very environmentally friendly. It‘s full of water which simply recycles itself over and over again. However, it’s hard to spread that message to everyone who will come into town over the summer, so rather than cause concern, we’ve decided to switch the fountain off until the ban is over.”

The above was all from a spokesperson with not one member of the Councils administration willing to be quoted.

So is this really the reason that the fountain runs dry? or is not everything as it should be? You see following my concerns raised with the council about how all that recycling of water in an area where dogs, pigeons and even humans foul cannot be good for little mites running through the mist ingesting all and sundry the council at least promised to carry out regular testing for a whole range of bugs and nasty's  including TVC, E-coli & Coliforms, Pseudomonas, Legionella and of course Cryptosporidium.

For those who missed my earlier posts, my concern was that the above bugs and their spores are to be found where water has come into contact with animal faecal matter.

The Market Square Fountain is open to pigeon fouling, dog fouling and any organisms transported on the shoes of those walking through the area

These spores where present are easily ingested through the air in mist or through the mouth from contaminated water and attack those with low immune defence such as children and those with HIV

The jets in the Market Square Fountain are of course at just the right height to be ingested by small children playing in the fountain

These tests started in Aug 2010 and took place in Aug/Sept 2010 April/May 2011 June/July 2011and again in Sept 2011.

But no testing has taken place since. More worrying is that the last test for Cryptosporidium was way back in Aug 2010 some 20 months ago!

Of course since September 2011 you can count on one hand the number of times the fountain has been working, but surely nothing untoward was found at that time?

After all Cllr Clarke (as I was told by many) was just scaremongering, the fountain is perfectly safe. And the Council surely would have said something to us if there was any public health risk. And if there was anything untoward we would have read about it in the Chron surely? And Councillors would have been made aware and would have considered it a duty to tell us if there was a problem? So it must be safe.

Safe that is until you discover that the test for TVC, E-coli & Coliforms taken on Sept 2nd 2011 was proven as positive!

VOTE PENGUIN YOU KNOW IT MAKES SENSE

"Hi my name is Professor Pongoo, I am a six foot tall penguin, the cousin of Pingu and I have come from another planet to warn people about Climate Change. I am standing as your candidate for Edinburgh Council and if elected I pledge myself to attend every council meeting as your elected penguin"

An unusual, but not altogether bad platform to fight an election campaign on I guess, and it so nearly worked. Pongoo with 444 votes was well ahead of the Lib Dem candidate 370 and also the Green Party candidate  on first preference votes but in a seat determined by the alternative vote he eventually lost out to the big three in Scotland (well big two and a tiny bit) The SNP, The Labour Party and the Tories.

It was brave attempt for the Independent candidate, and the man inside the suit Mike Ferrigan, and a warning to us all that apathy and a total loss of faith with our current political system is still a leading issue even amongst the minority 30% of the population who can still be bothered to vote.

Pongoo's near miss was for me the highlight of a Local Election night that overall was a predictable and completely mind numbingly boring affair all round. OK the Labour Party won a whole shed load of seats lost in previous elections and in fairness they won more seats than even the Tories who were talking their chances up, had predicted, The Tories lost seats and the Lib Dems flat lined.  And as the local government pendulum swings against the government in situ we should by now be used to such changing fortunes.

Meanwhile down in the smoke Boris held off Ken on a "We know he is a Tory, but we quite like having a Mayor who is as mad as a goose" vote.

Proof positive if you like that even the big three revert to farce when their core vote abandons them. In fact I dare say if Boris had himself taken advise from Pongoo and dressed up in a penguin suit then his vote would have been even higher, but then if Ken had donned a Salamander Lizard outfit? who knows the Labour Party might have took the mayoralty as well?
But a 30% turnout! just where are we all heading? I recently researched party membership of the big three in Britain over the last 60 years and found that the Tory Party can lay claim to the highest ever party membership figures of the three main parties (2.9m in the 1950's) followed by Labour (1.1m again in the 50's) The Lib Dems of course are a modern phenomenon but in their various guises they always struggled to reach such dizzy heights (highest found figure 145,000 1980 SDP)

So how does that all fare against today's party membership statistics, surely given the massive rise in population since the 1950's the number of our citizens actively involved in political life must still be quite high? Not a chance, the last estimated  figures in 2010 have the three party memberships as follows;

                     Conservative: 210,000 Labour: 190,000 Lib Dems: 45,000
That's less than 500,000 members between the lot of them! or an even more alarming way of presenting it just 1.5% of the UK population between all three of them. And if you really want a sense of the size of the decline then look no further than a comparison with UK membership of the three biggest Conservation and Wildlife charities. The National Trust alone has more members than all three of the political parties combined total, and when added to memberships of the Wildlife Trusts and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds then the Big Three nature lovers at 5.5m members trump the party hacks by more than 5m paid up subscriptions. Maybe the RSPB vote explains Professor Pongoo's success?

Coming back to local politics, you also have to remember that we currently have 469 local councils in the UK as well as two parliaments (England and Scotland) and an two Assemblies (Wales and Northern Ireland) so given that you have to be a party member to stand for election then roughly around 30% of those combined party members would be current candidates and 10% (1 in 10) will end up being elected. You should also worry that all three of the parties amongst their membership include a proportionately high number of eccentric individuals (best written about in another blog)

New parties are also not making any in roads into the public interest. Of the most successful in recent years and also the most vile UKIP have only ever reached membership high figure of 26,000 in 2003 (now down to 16,000) and the BNP a high of 9800 in 2008 which most believe has now fallen to well below 4000

So to put it bluntly we have one of the lowest political participation rates in Europe, our political system and its parties are tired, irrelevant to most peoples everyday lives and less attractive to most voters than a six foot man dressed up in a penguin costume. One in ten of those in a party will be elected and three in ten stand for election. These are chosen by the other seven in ten who inevitably include amongst their number the politically naive, the retired and inactive and a small bunch who it is best to simply describe as socially odd, nice to be with but frankly as mad as a box of frogs

I am a socialist, those are my political ideals, I am now after 5 years out in the cold able to rejoin the Labour Party if I so wished, they along with the Greens are currently the only parties I could ever entertain signing any membership form for in the future. But before I took such a massive step I would need to know, what were their parties plans for re-engaging with a British public who are currently completely turned off to UK politics.

I don't want a debate with the 30% of the 30% who bother to vote in Local elections, I want to engage with the 70% who don't bother to vote at Local Elections and or say they never will or never have voted.

And fun as it may seem, I don't want to have to dress up in a penguin suit in order to do it.