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.
Yesterday it was the Home Secretary all over the airways telling anyone prepared to listen about proposals for legislation in regard to people forced in to prostitution. Today it is Road Safety Minister Jim Fitzpatrick telling us about proposals that could mean people who had two convictions for speeding possibly being automatically banned from driving.
Why?
They are the bloody government. Get on and govern, for heaven's sake! Bring in legislation, introduce your Green Papers and White Papers, go through the legislative process. That is what Ministers are paid to do, not spending their time trooping around TV studios telling us what they are proposing to do. That is what oppositions do. They have to. They can't introduce legislation so they have to hawk their bodies around the media trying to tell us what they might do if they ever got in to power. Cameron does it all the while, with special task forces and focus groups on all sorts of nonsense, coming out with all kinds of preposterous suggestions... and then the media rip them to bits and they are quietly scrapped. All Ministers are doing is giving the media the same opportunity to rip them to bits too. If your legislation is garbage then you should find out by going through Parliament, not waiting for John Humphrys to tear you another orifice on the Today programme.
So, instead of acting as press and PR officers for the civil service, stop telling me what you are proposing to do sometime in the future, particularly if it is never going to see the light of day anyway... just get on and do it!
They're probably just testing the water to see what reaction they get from the public.
Robert said:
November 20, 2008 10:24 AM | permalink
It's going to stop all those drug addicts from selling themselves for a fix. The bloke who speeds and does not care normally has no driving license insurance or bloody tax, they are either to stupid or to drunk to give a shit.
The fact is we need to deal with the problems to cure the problems, if young girls are so addicted they have to sell themselves we need to make sure they get clean or give them the dam fix.
When your an idiot who drives without a license at 100 mph taking away his license for hundred years will not stop him driving will it.
Bob, you really don't seem to get modern politics at all! It is of course all Thatcher's fault. It was she, and her pal Reagan, who stoked up all this "me, me, me, look at me" individualist nonsense.
Now every politician has to go through the pretence of listening to and consulting with the electorate. Not one of them seems to have the courage to admit that, however many Blackberries or other gizmos you own, it's impossible to listen to 42 million people. Everyone�s apparently forgotten that we elect people to lead.
It's certainly not just a New Labour thing; look at what the Tories are up to on their websites. The daffy lady who is their candidate in Bristol NE has a Guardian blog. Yesterday she was getting over-excited about being able to put her photo in a pub on it and claiming that her party was thus demonstrated to be more in tune with the Obama zeitgeist than Labour is. And look, if you dare, at our would-be leader Michael Meacher's site packed with drivel about listening. (But don't bother to comment unless you agree with him absolutely because he won't use your comment - clearly there's a limit to listening.)
And don't get me started on the media with their blogs and viewers� texts. Sky News seems to think that the instantaneous one-line opinions of Bob from the West Midlands or Brian of Gloucestershire should carry at least as much weight as those of the poor expert, who's dedicated his entire working life to studying the topic, that they've dragged into their studio...
November 20, 2008 10:11 AM | permalink
They're probably just testing the water to see what reaction they get from the public.