Paul Dale, formerly a leading journalist on the Birmingham Mail, is quite right in highlighting the hopeless nature of the ‘No to a Birmingham Mayor’ campaign. There can be little doubt that the ‘No’ campaign has been truly hopeless, although the ‘Yes’ fanatics hardly seem to have much to commend them other than a series of pie-in-the-sky promises and the fact that they seem to endlessly repeat the mantra that a Mayor is a ‘new form of leadership’ as if that in itself trumps the argument. Like those late 90′s Blairites who thought they only had to use the word ‘modernisation’ to get everyone to adopt any bloody daft idea that came into their heads. You could discover a ‘new form of genital warts’, but I doubt many people would rush to acclaim them as truly beneficial.
The comparisons Paul Dale makes with a London Mayor are simply fatuous. The Mayor of Greater London is elected by people from 32 different boroughs, all of which have their own local authorities. The absence of a strategic leadership in London was a clear anomaly from the time Thatcher abolished the GLC in a fit of pique over Ken Livingstone. A Greater London Assembly with the Mayor as its leader bears no sensible comparison to Birmingham or the other cities where a Mayor is being proposed. Birmingham is one Council, and despite the assorted candidates claiming a leadership role across the region, they will have no authority and no powers beyond the Birmingham borders. Politicians and voters from across the West Midlands region will quite rightly point out that the Birmingham Mayor has no democratic legitimacy outside Birmingham.
Dale takes much delight over the fact that 53% of people surveyed support an elected Mayor. 53% of people (out of 59% who knew or cared) in favour of an elected Mayor, despite a 10 year ear bashing by Paul Dale and his former colleagues in the media, and despite a hopeless ‘no’ campaign is, frankly, pathetic.
What I resent more than anything, and I think it will have a resonance with many people, is the absolute self-righteous holier-than-thou-ism of the ‘Yes to a Mayor’ campaigners. That are not just claiming their view is the correct position to take, they proclaim it with a moral certitude of the religious zealot. Anyone with the temerity to adopt an alternative view is ‘a political dinosaur’ or ‘frightened of giving power to the people’. Hence Paul Dale’s comparison between 720,000 electors making an informed choice to ’30-odd councillors in a secret meeting’ some of which may have been promised jobs.
But hang about! Who is likely to choose the Mayoral candidates? Well, it is likely to be one of two categories. There will be those chosen by the media, or those chosen by political parties. In a few instancies it may be the former, and Birmingham has had its share of ‘celebrity’ candidates with not the slightest clue about running a Municipal authority – a local radio presenter, a TV evening news bloke, and Digby Jones, Gawd help us all, and they are the media darlings. Always a quip, quote or ready word for desperate journos with copy to file. In London Boris and Ken make everybody happy by combining the comedian with the political.
On the other hand, in by far the most instancies, the candidates are likely to be chosen by the political parties, with all of the arm twisting, closed room shenanigans and job offers that Paul Dale so easily distances the concept of elected Mayors from. The quaint notion that 720,000 will all club together and come up with some political superhero to turn Birmingham, Bristol or Bradford from dreary provincial cities into bustling international metropolis’ is pure bloody fantasy. Candidates from all quarters may try to persuade us that because they have the absolute power the world’s top financial institutions will be beating down their door with offers of regeneration and future glory… but even they must occasionally wake up in a cold sweat and know they are talking tripe.
The ‘No’ campaign has been truly useless. They should probably just have stuck with a ‘better the devil you know’ campaign. But I’d rather have them than the ‘Yes’ preachers who remind me of the same fundamentalists behind the ‘Yes to AV’ campaign, constantly asserting the same moralistic arrogance that theirs was the true and only path to political enlightenment… only to slink off into the sunset bathing their wounds after those they claimed to speak for gave them a good kicking.
As a democrat, and not a dinosaur, I really do hope the voters do it again.
You are right about the No campaign I havent seen anything that I can remember coming from them. The contradiction which is being sold is that the more that local power is concentrated in the hands of a few then this is more democratic. Let’s hope the voters of Brummagem dont buy it. Digby Jones Nooooooooooo!!!
Hi Bob; Been looking for something on your blog to comment on this last couple of weeks, but apart from the amusing little piece about May and the curry house(how come Duffers never rode to one of his heroine’s rescue? with his sword of truth tucked into his tights, or whatever he calls it) doesn’t seem to be much about, apart from Gary and his pearls of wisdom, and I just couldn’t be a***d to even bother with him these days.
With regards to your main article today about the campaign for an elected Mayor in Birmingham, if it’s any use to you or guide of what an elected Mayor means in practice, tell the No campaign to concentrate on Doncaster if they want to find an example to warn against having an elected mayor. In the 1st vote for mayor the electorate returned a labour councillor(Martin Winter) and won the following term, it turned out to be an unmitigated disaster(personally I was all for the idea in the 1st place) he renaged on the agreement to stand down after 2 terms, and it caused a real split in the local Labour Group/Party, plus developing a cult of the personality in the incumbent. As is well known now ,Doncaster elected Peter ” Chopper” Davis(so called because the only significant thing he has done, apart from taking a big axe to services and council employees wages with great enthusiasm, like the Tory he is, he chopped a load of trees down on Doncaster race course, against great opposition from local environmental activists, so his racegoing pals would have a better view from the restaraunts and bars) the 1st publicly elected mayor, or councillor in the U.K. from the English Democrats( they have 2 more councillors throughout the U.K. since) Since the 2010 local elections the labour party have become the controlling group on Doncaster Metropolitan Council, 43 out of 63 councillors, during meetings over the last couple of weeks to set budgets, Labour opposed all Davis’s proposals( along with his cabinet of Tory councillors) for the council budget for the coming year, Davis went on local t.v. and radio and stated that it didn’t matter what the labour group decided, even though they are the majority, he would decide on the spending plans and policy, which he is perfectly entitled to do, without any regard for democracy(another great legacy from Blair and New Labour). So Bob, I hope that this little tale of democracy in action from Doncaster will be of some use to the campaign of the No to a Mayor for Birmingham; imho you will be far better served by kicking the Yes for Mayor in Birmingham into touch, particularly if they are daft enough to selct that horse’s RECTUM, Digby Jones as a candidate.
See Birminham’s 2nd team look like they are going to be heading for the exit gate in the Premier League if they dont do something about the mediocrity they are serving up to their supporters, in the guise of football. PMSL at the possibility of Birmingham’s 2nd team passing Birminghams 1st team on their way to the championship, while the 1st team are on their way up to the Premier League. If that happens I hope that you have got a satnav for Barnsley,Sheffield ,Leicester, Middlesborough, Hull etc.
gerald, I know you have been bought up on that bunch of farm labourers and shitkickers in ‘dirty’ Leeds – and God, what a bunch of ponderous plodders they have bequeathed to Warnock the Cheat who is ideally suited to manage them – but if you could take a moment or two out of your ramblings to look at the league tables you would see that there is as little chance of Aston Villa been relegated than there is of Leeds United winning anything.
Having said that, I did see a bunch of hooligans in what looked like football kit running around on the TV news last week with a funny shaped ball which they picked up and ran with in between kicking lumps off the opposition. There seemed to be a few thousand people cheering them on but then when the news reader said it was Leeds, I thought, heaven forbid, gerald’s shower have lost it altogether. They always kicked the crap out of everybody, but their handball used to be more subtle than that! Turns out to be some other sort of game – perhaps its like American Football – that is quite popular in areas where people are too useless to kick the ball so they pick it up and run with it instead.
Are you still running the ant democratic chestnut that the BNP would hold all the power?
Groooooooaaaan.
Unlike you, I’m afraid I haven’t studied the democracy of ants, so I have no idea what you are raving about now (nothing new there then) but frankly, on the subject of the BNP from what I’ve seen of your jabberings that even a half-wit fascist beat you easily.
(oooh, I forgot… no-one gave old Gary any money to buy votes with)
Bob, because you don’t actually own up to anything anymore, prefering to run the “Labour is the only cause to beat Tories” line, I won’t embarass you into recalling your only case of anti AV.
I won’t remind you that the BNP would ‘hold all the power’ (In Sandwell, presumably) and you laid it out quite heavily in this blog.
You just don’t have a clue at all Bob and you live in a world oblivious to what is really going on (via sandwell).
Check out the Sandwell friendship club (George st. photocopy boys and girls promoted beyond their capabilities in Stoke via ‘all female shortlists and candidate denials etc..) and see how they are putting a non councillor before the ‘standards board’.
Our loyal soldier put a sick note in.
They are ripping their hair out and jumping up and down while everyone is laughing at them.
You’re dribbling again, so I’ll ignore most of the second part because I can’t be bothered to translate it in to English, but what on earth is this first point? I have raised dozens of objections to AV on here, many in reply to poor Gerald who edges towards the Lib Dems on this one, but I really can’t recall making ‘my only case’ as being about the BNP. Perhaps you will enlighten us.
My chief point about AV was that it gives undue weight to losers, which could certainly include the BNP (unless they are up against Gary Elsby… who has proved himself to be an even bigger loser than the BNP).
Bob; Just caught your comment to poor, deluded, Gary Elsby on 14/03/ 2012 @1-07p.m. Yes he certainly has a selective memory or a very short one, the poor ‘creatur; surely the ding dongs you and I had over A.V. last year are the stuff of legend, and your sly, sleekit, Mandelsonian trick of trying to brand me as a Lib/Dem, recently repeated last week ,were the highlights of your blog for weeks. As you say Gary does take a bit of following, but inso far as I/we can follow him, does he seem to be saying that things aren’t quite kosher in the borough of Sandwell? we know he has been waging a campaign in his own inimitable style on certain practces in his home town of Stoke(glad to see Liverpools style of football, played as football should be played, and not in the West Midlands style of hammerthrowing, clugging, so expertly practiced by Stoke, and many others in that neck of the woods) But please Bob, don’t ban him from your blog, you will lose one of the best sources of light entertainment, a commodity sadly lacking on this blog.
Any road Bob, just in case you might be thinking I will be leaning towards the Lib/Dems, and their nauseating attempts to justify their support to get Landsley’s Health and Social Care Bill on to the statute book, which will be successful over the next couple of days/weeks ,and their pathetic handwringing in the weekend press over their failure to stop Osbourne’s alleged reduction of the 50% tax rate; I thought I’d let you know that after mulling it over in my mind for the last few days, and after reading his Monday column in the Daily Record, Iv’e decided to give a bit of support to George Galloway’s campaign in the Bradford West by-election. It will be a financial decision at the very least, seeing as I’m only about an hour down the road from Bradford.
With regards to your comment on Tendulka, glad to see he got his century, but to be perfectly honest Bob, other than an occasional glance at Australia, India and Pakistan, and the very occasional good display of those gentlemen from Trinity College who play cricket for the Republic of Ireland, the only time I bother with cricket is when I can’t sleep, I have a d.v.d.of some old cricket match my son gave me, and 10 minutes viewing of that and hey presto, I’m off into the Land of Nod in seconds, and get as good a nights sleep as I will ever get, or have had.
I think you will find, Gerald, that the idiot Elsby blames the Labour Party Regional Office in West Bromwich for the fact that he wasn’t given the chance to jump on the parliamentary pay wagon. Now, far be it for me to defend full time Labour Party bureaucrats against allegations of skulldudgery… but frankly, I wouldn’t short list the bloke to stack shelves in a supermarket, let alone make laws to run the country.
It isn’t so much a case of banning him, but his comments are so childish and banal but I am expected to plough my way through them to make sure he isn’t making racist comments or worse before they are posted. Also, I’m getting e-mails and comments from people moaning about the twaddle he writes. The interesting thing is, you think it is entertaining.mperhaps I could pass his email address to you and you could moan about he Labour Party to each other to your heart’s content and cut out the middle man.
With an added bonus. He’s from Stoke shitkickers and you’re a supporter of dirty Leeds so you could rabbit on about the ability to throw the ball a long way to each other whilst we enjoyed the finer appreciation of the game of Test cricket.
Oh dear the Sandwell selective memory loss syndrome strikes again.
Yes Bob, so called losers have another say and somehow come to a compromise that that the minority winners may not hold the common ground of public opinion, just a minority winning first past the minority post. They emerge as minority view winners.
And yes, the BNP are allowed a say in our democracy.
Undue weight to losers is the current situation we have now (but not for an elected Mayor) where undue weight is given equally to a winner.
Somehow, you see no progress in giving actual weight to a common ground winner, regardless of who decides that winner.
The Tories (and Norman) ran with undue weighted winners and the fight for the common view was left to us Socialist and Labour colleagues.
Tut tut, once again Bob disagrees with Labour but supports Norman and his mates.
Sure you haven’t a clue of what is going on but still they come.
Taking a non Councillor to the standards board for exposing their ‘interests’ in a private business (Sandwell club Labour Councillors/Tories and wags).
They are livid but only because of undue exposure.
He put a sick note in.
How we are all falling about laughing at them and we laugh very loudly in a scornful, condescending and ridiculing way.
Elsby, you are such an idiot it is a wonder you can even breath at all.
Once again, I ask you for evidence and you reply with a stream on incoherent gibberish, such as… Sure you haven’t a clue of what is going on but still they come. It is simply impossible to have a sensible discussion with you, and I’ve even got bored with pointing out what an idiot and sad loser you are, so, farewell you muppet. Go back to your mates at Guido, cos I’m not going to inflict your rubbish on people any more.