Bob Piper has been a Labour Councillor for the Abbey
Ward in Sandwell, West Midlands, for 10 years. He is a lifelong supporter of Aston Villa Football Club and a follower of Yorkshire County Cricket Club.
The views expressed here are mine in a personal capacity, not those of the Labour Party, Sandwell MBC, Aston Villa or Yorkshire County Cricket Club. Get it! Mine... just mine!
Promoted by Bob Piper of 115 Barclay Rd, B67 5JZ on behalf of the Labour Party, care of 39 Victoria Street London, SW1H 0HA . Hosted (printed) by Swaithe Internet Solutions who are not responsible for any of the contents of these posts.
Please note however, that The Labour Party is not responsible for the content of this website or individual posts as, unless specifically stated, I am writing solely in a personal and individual capacity.
Promoted by Bob Piper of 115 Barclay Rd, B67 5JZ on behalf of the Labour Party, care of 39 Victoria Street London, SW1H 0HA . Hosted (printed) by Swaithe Internet Solutions who are not responsible for any of the contents of these posts.
Please note however, that The Labour Party is not responsible for the content of this website or individual posts as, unless specifically stated, I am writing solely in a personal and individual capacity.
I see Wee Willie was slipping and sliding all over the place on Marr's show this morning on the subject of Ashcroft. Time to show the twerp again, head sweating profusely as Paxman tries to get a straight answer out of him. How do you know when William Hague is lying... his lips move! (A special bonus here - Paxman shows the Tories have form).
Thanks to Matt for the tip. Willy Vlautin is in town next week. Not only has he written two of my favourite books in the last couple of years, he is also the singer for US band Richmond Fontaine. And it is in his singing capacity that he will be appearing in Brum on Thursday. Details here. And with a new book out next week, I might just get a signed copy. I'm a fan!
I really don't know enough about the politics of Dagenham and Rainham to know whether the Tory Simon Jones is going to defeat Jon Cruddas as Iain Dale suggests he easily may do. But I do know when Dale is talking complete and utter cobblers.
He says one of the reasons Cruddas will lose is because he 'fails to combat' the BNP. This is the Jon Cruddas who has reputation for being a keen supporter of Searchlight and active in the Hope not Hate campaign.
But don't take my word for it... take a look for yourself. Go to Google and type in 'Jon Cruddas BNP' and look at the references. Well, there's quite a fair bit to go on there.
So... let's look for Simon Jones' anti-bnp activity. Mmmmm, a bit sparce on Google. But, let's be fair, he's not an MP, nor even much known outside of the constituency. Instead, let's narrow it down and go to our Si's website, that Dale so kindly refers us to. Nothing about the BNP in 'campaigns' where you might expect to see it. Nothing under 'News' where we might expect to see Simon's anti-racist activities highlighted. But wait, what's this, ... a search box. Type in BNP... and there it is... the full extent of Jonah's commitment to anti-racism... just one step up from diddly-bloody-squat! Well if combating the BNP is the measure of success Jonah old son, you're in the proverbial brown stuff.
Finally, and just as laughable, Dale tells us that Cruddas doesn't live in the Constituency... but lives about 20 miles away from it. Which might not be quite so risable if Mr Dopey of Tunbridge Wells wasn't trying to squeeze his ample backside into... East Surrey!
Fans of Gil Scott Heron have had to exist on pretty thin gruel over the last decade or so. Gil has drifted between rehab and prison a lot in recent years, but in the 1970's through to the 80's he produced some of the best music to come out of America. Winter in America, Whitey's on the Moon, his scathing criticism of Ronnie Raygun in B Movie, We almost lost Detroit and The Revolution Will Not Be Televised were classics.
Well... the man is back, and in blistering form. His new album, I'm New Here is out on February 8th, but you can listen to the whole damn thing right here on Gil's own website.
My vote was for Geoffrey Howe's resignation speech. Many of the others in the NS list contained much greater oratorical power, but this one did the damage. Oh how we celebrated!
I believe that both the Chancellor and the governor are cricketing enthusiasts, so I hope that there is no monopoly of cricketing metaphors. It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease only for them to find, the moment the first balls are bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain.
Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming is upset that a point he raised about bus deregulation at PMQs resulted in Gordon Brown "taking the piss" out of him.
Now, whilst Hemming sometimes makes it easy to take the piss out of him, and I must confess at this point... I've done a bit of it here too... on this occasion I think he is correct.
PMQs is a farce anyway, with staged managed punch-ups between the Party Leaders interspersed with planted questions from backbenchers. But when a Member attempts to highlight an issue from within their constituency which is causing concern, they deserve a bit of respect.
Left Foot Forward has a piece about Eric Pickles gathering together a bunch of Tory bloggers, plying them with drink and setting up a CCHQ rebuttal mechanism through tame Tory bloggers.
Pretty small beer really, I suppose. let's face it, the political parties have been doing this with the mainstream media for years and no-one gets all knicker-wet about it. I suppose in a way though we are all a bit sceptical about the newspaper hacks and accept that by and large they churn out what they are told by an editorial line anyway, whereas even the biggest Tory mouthpieces are assumed to have some independence and integrity.
Interesting for a piece claiming the establishment of an instant rebuttal service... the Tory blogosphere has rushed to the Left Foot Forward comments columns to.... errrm, rebut the story.
Now there's an interesting point picked up in dizzy's comments whilst dizzy is busy getting splinters in his arse from sitting on the fence trying to decide which of his prejudices causes him most concern. If all Nick Griffin has to do to exempt the BNP from discrimination laws is to declare the BNP to be a religious group who have a deep and meaningful (oh, and racist) faith... bingo! Clearly Big Ben thinks it works for him.
Now, this strikes me as having a limited market. The iTunes App store are currently listing something called MyMP. I say limited because I can't really see the iphone generation sitting on the No.9 bus in the morning desperately trying to find out what John Spellar MP has been up to in the House of Commons. Bejewelled, it's not, but all the same, it seems an interesting concept. More details here from Public Zone.
It's also limited by the fact that in version 1.0, only Derek Wyatt MP is available, but it can't be long before gimmicky buggers like Cameron and techie sods like Tom Watson are grinning out at us from iphones everywhere... and as a method of enabling those with mobile phones to keep in touch with their MPs it certainly has potential.
I was amazed when Julie Walters was cast as Mo Mowlam for last night's biopic, Mo. Julie was born in the Ward I represent (although Birmingham, desperate for celebrities, try to pretend she's one of theirs) and she is a patron of the Warley Woods Community Trust which is a beautiful piece of woodland and park just over the road from where I live. She has also been given the Freedom of the Borough of Sandwell (don't ask, it's something to do with being allowed to drive your sheep through West Bromwich) and I met her at the award ceremony - whereas Iain Dale suggests he has only met Mo.
But Julie is a little sparrow of a woman. Whereas Mo was a larger than life character in many senses, and I just couldn't see her in the part. But whoever was responsible for casting her should take a bow because it was a masterstroke. Her performance was superb, although with the honorable exception of Gary Lewis in the role of Adam Ingram, the rest of the cast were cartoon-like and one-dimensional.
Does anyone seriously believe that if the England World Cup football team found themselves in a situation where their coach came under gunfire, killing two members of the party, and that in that situation they then decided to return to England out of respect for the dead... someone would take a decision as patently absurd and insensitive as this. I think not.
Mrs P. and myself went to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery today to view the excellent Birmingham Seen exhibition, with paintings and photographs of the City over the last couple of hundred years. Looking at some of the beautiful old buildings that were swept aside for some of the monstrosities that sprang up in the 1950's and 60's, it seemed like such an act of vandalism. Talking of vandalism, it also contained images of 'Birmingham Forward' the striking and evocative fibre glass sculpture that stood in Centenary Square before some nutjob set fire to it.
Sadly, the destruction of the City in the name of progress looks set to continue as the revolting Central Library is replaced (on the site of the former 'Forward' statue) by a building which might manage the almost impossible feat by creating something even uglier.
I suppose I'm not really the right person to be writing this, because I never liked the bloke anyway, but over the last week I think we have seen the way Tony Blair will be remembered by history.
Those who did like him will no doubt still be hoping that he will be the man who rescued us from nearly two decades of dark Tory history. The man who chucked out the 'no such thing as society' government and shuffled in the era of 'things can only get better'. They will want him to be remembered for introducing the first national minimum wage in this country, for pouring billions of much needed money into rebuilding the damp, draughty Victorian, or decaying prefabricated post-war school buildings we had inherited from the Tories. For dramatically cutting waiting lists in the NHS, the new hospitals, the additional doctors and nurses in the system. They will also remember the painstaking building of coalitions for an uneasy peace in the North of Ireland to replace the killing and bloodshed of three decades and more. And of course, those 3 landslide victories that once threatened to wipe the Tories off the map forever.
For his enemies the cash for peerages, reliance on targets over outcomes and the spin over substance style of government will feature highly. But nothing, it seems, will dominate Blair's legacy like the decision to tie himself to the coattails of one of the most ridiculous and despised US Presidents in history. It doesn't matter that over 400 Members of Parliament supported his invasion of Iraq without a second UN resolution, (including all but a handful of Tories, although they won't be grilled on their motives by Chilcot) nor that the media joined in the bloodlust and the orgy of congratulations as 'shock and awe' devastated Baghdad. They can move onwards.
But not Anthony Charles Lynton Blair. When historians look back on his legacy, long after John Chilcot and the rest of us are pushing up daisies, he will not be fondly remembered as he hoped for liberating the world from a despot. His legacy will lie in the sort of newspaper headlines we have seen over the last week.
I've said before that one of the problems the Tories have is that outside of their Bullingdon boys, no-one really knows who Cameron's 'team' actually are. Unlike 1997 when the likes of Prezza, Mandelson, Straw, Blunkett, Cook, Beckett and Short joined the Brown/Blair Cabinet, Team Cameron seem to be centred almost exclusively around the Boy Dave and his old school chum. Most would probably be able to identify Wee Wullie, because he has spent the best part of a decade making an arse of himself on our televisions, and Tubby Clarke.... maybe, as a relic of Thatcher's days. But do you think if you walked down your local High Street with photographs of the likes of Grayling, Grieve, Herbert, Lansley and Gove, that actually two people out of a hundred could name more than one of them. In fact, ask yourself honestly, dear reader, could you do it?
Anyway, via Left Foot Forward, we find that the Sky News team even have difficulty with the Bullingdon kids.
I was amazed when Julie Walters was cast as Mo Mowlam for last night's biopic, Mo. Julie was born in the Ward I represent (although Birmingham, desperate for celebrities, try to pretend she's one of theirs) and she is a patron of the Warley Woods Community Trust which is a beautiful piece of woodland and park just over the road from where I live. She has also been given the Freedom of the Borough of Sandwell (don't ask, it's something to do with being allowed to drive your sheep through West Bromwich) and I met her at the award ceremony - whereas 
I suppose I'm not really the right person to be writing this, because I never liked the bloke anyway, but over the last week I think we have seen the way Tony Blair will be remembered by history.
