From Mark Birkett further to Les May's article:

WHILST it's important that everyone in Rochdale hold their respective ward councillors to account for their WHOLESALE lack of oversight regarding Rochdale MBC Chief Executive Steve Rumbelow's pay abuse, it's important NOT to end up in cul-de-sac arguments about whether he Mr Rumbelow 'worth it' or not. Though public-sector pay at the higher echelons of Rochdale Council and elsewhere in the UK is pretty clearly out of control, that is a SEPARATE and ultimately distracting argument.

The TRULY SALIENT points regarding Mr Rumbelow's paypacket in Rochdale are:

1) NO-ONE can do two full-time jobs at once, not even Mr Rumbelow. Yet that is PRECISELY what Mr Rumbelow is being paid for. TWO full-time jobs.

2) Yet on July 18th 2018, the entire Labour and Tory councillor groups VOTED IN FAVOUR of Mr Rumbelow doing these two FULL-time jobs without giving the slightest consideration to the real ramifications of the sheer impossibility of such. Rumbelow is paid £140,000 per year as a FULL-TIME CEO, and a further £45-50,000 / year as a FULL-TIME 'Accountable Officer' in the NHS.

3) That Mr Rumbelow refuses to answer what PROPORTION of his working day is now spent working for the NHS (and thus demonstrably NOT spent on his full-time role as RMBC Chief Executive). That is a TRAVESTY of democratic accountability

.

4) Most damaging of all for Rochdale Council's tattered reputation, is that we now know that Rochdale MBC's 60 x councillors have been TOLD by the Borough Solicitor "not to respond" to constituent queries about the matter. Instead of the Borough's most senior legal advisor keeping his advice within a LEGAL remit, he has interfered with DUE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS. No explanation has been provided for him singling out THIS issue for councillors 'not to respond' to, nor even what time limit might apply to this absurd advice to them all, despite him being asked (twice).

This advice to Rochdale MBC councillors is one the key reasons no-one can get any straight answers from ANY councillor regarding their failure to scrutinise this executive pay package and associated dual duties properly, and is perhaps also why Mr Rumbelow feels ZERO obligation to tell taxpayers what he does all day long. Let's be clear: neither the NHS nor Rochdale MBC are benefiting from the so-called 'efficiencies' due to the integration of health care commissioning and social care. The ONLY person benefiting here is Mr Rumbelow.

To add insult to injury, Mr Rumbelow just received a WHOPPING 25% pay rise to the NHS element of his vast income, yet as we speak Rochdale Council is seriously proposing that care home fees to the vulnerable elderly in the Borugh be hiked by 5% next year ... all in order to 'save' the Council £80,000 per year -ironically almost exactly the same sum Mr Rumbelow has trousered since July 2018 for this impossible second role at the NHS.

It MUST be stopped.

The Budget Council meetings on 3rd and 10th March 2021 are where this appalling abuse of the public purse COULD be called into question and reviewed from scratch. But that will only happen IF councillors are all pressured to do so.

By you. Today.

And they WILL listen to you. After all, the local elections are coming soon enough (vaccines permitting). So it is VITAL for Rochdalians to threaten not to vote for ANY councillor who refuses to stop this pay abuse, or who refuses to call a motion to review Mr Rumbelow's ridiculous dual role, or who continues to take part in refusing to provide answers to legtimate queries form constituents on this matter.

Remember:

This is YOUR money at stake here. Thousands in Rochdale have lost their jobs, their businesses and their incomes due to COVID. And old people do NOT want to be forced to pay even more for their care in care homes to save the council money whilst the Chief Executive waltzes off with an eye watering pay packet AND a 25% pay rise in one year to boot .

And this is YOUR democracy at stake here too. Councillors must be FORCED to answer legitimate constituent queries, or be removed from office.

It's up to ALL of us to deal with this.

Mark Birkett, Resident, Kingsway, Rochdale

There’s No Pockets In A Shroud

by Les May

WHEN Theresa May called a General Election in 2017 one proposal in the Tory Manifesto was immediately dubbed a ‘Dementia Tax’.   At present councils pay for all or part of a person’s social care if they have less than £23,250 in capital. This applies if a person is in a residential home or nursing home. The cost is then recouped from their estate after their death.  May also wanted to recover from their estate the costs of care given to people in their own home, to raise the protected sum to £100,000 and axe the Winter Fuel Allowance for more affluent pensioners.

These proposals went down like the proverbial ‘lead balloon’.  They were attacked by both Labour and the Liberal Democrats.  The Tories could reasonably argue that this was a better deal for relatively poorer people who needed residential care and would mean that the costs of care given in the home would be recouped only from the more wealthy.  Strictly speaking of course that’s not quite true.  Until someone finds a foolproof, (and fire proof?) way of putting ‘pockets in a shroud’ it will be the beneficiaries of the estate who will have their inheritance reduced.

Social care today is in the same state as health care was in the 1930s, a hodgepodge of partly national and partly local provision, and funded partly by those who have the misfortune to need long term care, often with pressure applied to their spouse or family, and partly from the public purse.   Unlike the NHS which is ‘free at the point of delivery’ social care is not built around a ‘shared risk model’.

Such a model would recognise that throughout our life we all run a small risk of requiring social and residential care due to age, infirmity or accident, hence we should all make a contribution to funding that care for those who need it.

The simplest and most effective way of doing this is via the tax system.  But here we have a choice we can either raise the money through a tax on income or through a tax on wealth, specifically a tax on inherited wealth.  When the costs of care are recouped after someone’s death the burden falls on the estate not the deceased individual.   If you doubt this you might like to consider that a dead person does not own their own body, so how can they be said to own property or other assets?

Switching to such a funding model would go much further than Labour’s 2010 proposal for a ‘National Care Service’.  Labour shied away from a fully tax funded system as being too costly to be a sustainable model on the basis that it would put too high a financial burden on the decreasing proportion of the population that is of working age (p126 below).  I fail to see that a tax based upon inherited wealth would not be sustainable.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/238441/7854.pdf

The distinction between social (or personal) care and medically required care is an artificial one.  Dementia is a chronic medical condition; it results in sufferers requiring social care in their own home.  Why should the necessary care for both the condition and its side effects not come from the same source?

May’s ‘crime’ was to try to have an adult conversation with people who prefer not to think about the problem of funding care for older people and send to parliament people who are similarly reluctant to talk about it.  In 2019 the lesson was learned, no one wanted a caning for talking out of turn.  The Tories pledged an extra £1bn, the Lib Dems £3bn and Labour £10bn by 2024 to fund in home social care for all who needed it and to ensure that carers were paid at least £10 an hour with no ‘zero hours contracts’.

These are significant sums of money, but even Labour’s proposals leave the question of funding residential care for those who need it unresolved.  This matters because the available funding has an impact on the quality of care which is provided.   Nothing illustrates this more sharply than the spectacle of the owners of ‘run for profit’ residential homes asking to be provided with kit to protect staff and residents against coronavirus, and being told it is their responsibility.

We need a politician with vision and determination to keep fighting for a universal and comprehensive care model for those who need it due to age or a chronic medical condition funded by a tax on inherited wealth, in the face of short sighted claims that it is a ‘death tax’ or a ‘tax on the sick’.  As I said earlier, ‘there’s no pockets in a shroud’.  Even though I am unlikely to be the recipient of inherited wealth it seems to me it would be better to have the certainty 80% of something rather than run the risk of 100% of nothing!

http://www.renewal.org.uk/articles/death-and-taxes

https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/blog/2017/03/death-tax-social-care

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Johnson And The Guinea Pigs

by Les May

EARLIER this afternoon I watched the Minister for Care, Helen Whately, trying to give a reassuring message that the government had an effective strategy for dealing with the SARS-02 virus which when it infects humans causes the disease now known as Covid19.  What she did not explain is why the UK is following a strategy which differs from that being followed in Spain and Ireland, recommended as good practice by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and vigorously pursued by China.  That it works is evidenced by the massive decline in new cases in China in recent days and the fact that the it is now advising Italy about the measures to be taken to defeat the outbreak.

Following WHO guidance other countries affected by the disease are pursuing a policy of ‘contain the disease and eliminate the virus’.  That’s not easy and it is expensive.  As well as hospitalising and treating those who are suffering from the disease you have to find the people they have been in contact with and isolate them until they either show signs of the disease or you can be sure that the incubation period is over.

Boris Johnson and his government prefer the cheapskate option of letting the virus infect at least 60% of the us so that the survivors will no longer be at risk from infection and so transmission of the virus will come to an end and it will disappear. It has the grandiose title of ‘herd immunity’ which makes it sound a medically respectable strategy.

A more honest appraisal of it is that Johnson and his government are proposing to use the UK population as guinea pigs and are quite prepared to see a lot of people die as ‘collateral damage’. This is a purely political decision. If it really is ‘science based’ as is claimed then that evidence needs to be placed in the public domain so that it can be independently evaluated by people who are less close to government than Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Patrick Valance and Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty. These two seem happy to provide cover for the political decisions being made by Johnson.

As I pointed out in an earlier article if 60% of a UK population of 60 million people become infected with the virus causing the disease Covid19 that is 36 million people. The mortality rate for those infected is 1%, that translates to 360,000 deaths. Not everyone infected with the virus will show symptoms, but as the mortality rate for those who do show symptoms is about 4% we can estimate that the total number of people who will be infected and show symptoms, will be about 9 million people. Of these 80% will recover without hospitalisation, 15% will require oxygen and 5% will require to be artificially ventilated. In other words 1.8 million of those 36 million it is assumed will be infected, will need hospitalisation.

If we assume that the virus is with us for 18 weeks of the summer and the infection curve is fairly flat that means there will be a requirement for space for a 100,000 patients of which 75,000 will need oxygen and 25,000 will need to be artificially ventilated EACH WEEK. If the infection curve is not flat and is sharply peaked these figures will be much higher for a short time.

I have based these figures on the information provided by the WHO and UK government assumptions about the proportion of the population who need to be infected to produce ‘herd immunity’. If you don’t like the message don’t shoot the messenger.

If you are sceptical about whether the NHS will be able to cope with 100,000 high maintenance patients a week for much of the summer you are not alone.

When the weekly death toll starts to move into four figures Tory MPs will get jittery: when granny and grandad die gasping for breath, Johnson’s ‘Red Wall’ will be rubble.

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Derek Pattison on class & delusion

I THINK both Wallace and David Selbourne would do well to read Orwell's 'Politics and the English language'.  Much of what Wallace has written here along with the quotes from Selbourne, would be barely comprehensible to most people. It is pretentious academic verbiage that doesn't illuminate at all.

The cloth cap Tory or the Tory in clogs, is a well known archetype within the English working class and I meet them frequently. We've always known there were plenty of Tory voters who lived in council houses and why do you think the Irish socialist, Robert Tressell called his famous book the 'Ragged-Trousered Philanthropist'? You can't read Tressell's book without being fully aware that his socialist character, Owen, (Tressell himself), is largely contemptuous of many of his fellow workers for their political ignorance and apathy, their conservative outlook and the fact that they acquiesce, in their own exploitation. "They were the enemy" Tressell wrote, they not only "submitted like so many cattle to the existing state of things, but defended it, and opposed and ridiculed any suggestion to alter it."

It is often said of the book that you can identify many of the characters with people you know and that is perfectly true.  The same arguments that you find Tressell's working men having between themselves, you can still hear played out to this very day.

However, it would be a great mistake to tar all the working class with the same brush as middle-class academics, who write about them,are inclined to do. Anyone who has been involved in English left politics, will know, that most of the participants are middle-class university types, the sort who make up the bulk of the Labour Party membership today.

Yet, the people who most influenced me politically, were not academics like Dave Selbourne, who I knew as a student, but ordinary working-class people, like the anarchist copytaker, Jim Pinkerton, from Ashton-under-Lyne and the opera buff, Jack Macpherson, who lived in a council house with his wife Margaret, in Dukinfield. Both these men were representative of what I would call, the class conscious working-class, politically savvy, as well as highly cultured.

I think Brexit is a big mistake, for a variety of reasons, and though it seems to have politicised many working class people, who previously may have been indifferent or apathetic to politics and felt powerless, I suspect it will be economically damaging to many of the Brexiteers in the long run. Yet, one can't deny, that with Brexit, the worm has turned; the working-class voter has found a voice and far from feeling impotent and powerless as they used to do, they now know they have some influence and can make a difference. Now the genie is out of the bottle it might be difficult to put it back.

Labour’s betrayal of women,

 children and homosexuals.

What do you do if you abhor Tory politics but there’s nobody else to vote for?

Bea Jaspert

Feb 16 · 6 min read

Illustration by Ailin Rojas Bondarczuk

WHAT do you do if you are appalled by the imposition of austerity on the poorest and most vulnerable alongside tax breaks, perks and freebies for the rich, inherited wealth and big business? If you are sickened by the scapegoating of immigrants, the demonisation of foreigners, the denigration of the poor, the criminalisation of black people, the cronyism, the profit motive as god over all other considerations etc — but the only opposition party with any hope of ever beating the Tories at the polls has signed up to a misogynistic, homophobic cult?

That is the Hobson’s choice facing women, and those who support child safeguarding, women’s sex-based rights, and the sex-based rights of homosexual people.

It is also the choice facing anyone who believes in freedom of speech and freedom of expression as fundamental democratic rights.

Labour Campaign for Trans Rights last week issued a contentious series of pledges — contentious for a number of reasons:
1. They define “transphobia” as dissent with ‘gender identity ideology’.
2. They slander Womans Place UK — a grassroots group campaigning for female sex-based rights, and LGB Alliance — who campaign for homosexual/bisexual rights, as “transphobic hate groups”.
3. They call for the expulsion from the Labour Party of all dissenters.

READ MORE:   https://medium.com/@BeaJaspert/labours-betrayal-of-women-children-and-homosexuals-90c724c1c0d0?fbclid=IwAR0XL_LVfRUKt3AH_ly1RAjeCr9iWZkKB2gFAm6OCutRo5VwvO-vJc1cyNc

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On Being Gutted by Tory Turkey's Xmas Vote

And  Gracious in Defeat!

'Let me be gracious in defeat,' comedian MARK STEEL WROTE ON TWITTER after the exit poll:                     'All the people celebrating now are the most entitled, embittered, sneering nasty selfish racist foul fuckwits.  I'd still rather be with the decent people, however gutted they are , than with you for a second.'

In a more restrained demeanour Dave Smith of the Labour leaning BLACKLIST SUPPORT GROUP, wrote on Facebook:

13 December at 03:37

'This is an awful result for the entire labour movement.
'Whatever people's thoughts on Corbyn or Brexit; the Labour manifesto commitments on workers rights, NHS & public services, renationalisation of rail & utilities, house building and the climate were supported by the majority of the population. All these things are now at risk from a rightwing Johnson government.
'For blacklisted construction workers, our hope for a public inquiry into the Consulting Association scandal now appears to be off the agenda for the next few years at the very least. Blacklist Support Group would like to put on record our thanks to John McDonnell and all those who fought our corner and made both blacklisting and the spycops scandal mainstream political issues.

'But working people should never rely on Westminster politicians to solve our problems for us. The trade union movement is going nowhere. We fought back against other Tory leaders in the past and we'll do it again. We need to stay strong; but we're also allowed to feel gutted.'

Jay McKenna Acting Regional Secretary for the TUC in the North West wrote more soberly:
'Last week was undoubtedly a disappointment for the labour movement and underlines the scale of the challenge we face... And there will be more. More action but more listening about what people want and need from us.'   

To get over being 'gutted' there is even some talk of Jeremy Corbyn becoming like Tony Wegdwood Benn, the son of William Wedgwood Benn, 1st Viscount Stansgate, a 'National Treasure'*.

* 
Corbyn attended Castle House School, an independent preparatory school near Newport, Shropshire, before, at age 11, becoming a day student at the Adams' Grammar School in the town.

*****************

Constructive Ambiguity Boris Johnson Style

by Les May

BORIS JOHNSON’S failure to date to get a General Election at a time of choosing has had the effect of forcing him into the position that when we do go to the polls he is going to have to give greater clarity about his real intentions.

Here are some facts.   In the 2016 Referendum 65% of Tory voters and 35% of Labour voters chose the Leave option.  And there the things we know for certain, end.  The rest is speculation and guesswork, and Johnson knows no more than the rest of us.

In particular what he doesn’t know is how many of those Tory Leave voters want the UK to leave the EU having signed an agreement, a.k.a. ‘a deal’, and how many don’t want any kind of deal.   The first of these, together with those who do not want to leave, probably have nowhere else to go in an election and will have to stay with the Tories even if there is no agreement, but Johnson needs to keep them all happy by dangling the prospect of an agreement in front of them to make sure they do. The second are more problematic.  If there is any prospect of him signing an agreement they are likely to vote for the Brexit party so he has to keep them happy too by dangling the prospect of no agreement in front of them.

If he could have secured an early election he could have faced both ways and got the votes of both groups in the certain knowledge that when the crunch came and one group was disappointed, there would be nothing they could do about it. Now he cannot do that.

Who said ‘Constructive Ambiguity’ was a Labour problem?

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Hidden in Plain Sight

by Les May

NORTHERN VOICES does not have a ‘party line’ in spite of some people thinking it should adopt theirs.  But there are some discernible themes; a belief in Orwell’s dictum ‘If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear’, a reluctance to spray around like so much confetti words like, nazi, fascist, racist, sexist, anti-semite, islamophobe, homophobe etc and an unwillingness to inflate the importance of Tommy Robinson and his ilk.

Recent events have shown that it is not the streetwise rabble rousers like Robinson that we need to fear will move us along the road to a far right politics. It’s the respectable schemers who have managed to get themselves into 10 Downing Street and are working on ways of keeping themselves there in perpetuity, we should have been keeping a close eye on.

In this context it’s interesting to note the different reasons cited by MPs who have left the Tory party in the recent past and those who have left the Labour party. In a joint letter Heidi Allen, Anna Soubry and Sarah Wollaston described how the leadership had allowed a ‘hard-line anti-EU awkward squad’ to take over the Tory party. In other words their reasons for leaving were political differences about the EU.   In sharp contrast the MPs who have left the Labour party have claimed it to be ‘racist’ and ‘anti-semitic’, two vague and infinitely elastic notions. It seems that the Tory dissenters have been far more aware of where the real danger lies than some who claim to be ‘of the Left’.

During the weeks immediately prior to Johnson sliding into the position of Prime Minister, having first been crowned by Tory party membership,  I watched, three Labour MPs who at different times were contributors to BBC2’s ‘Politics Live’, launch their on attack Johnson by saying he was ‘racist’.  It was the Tory ‘grandee’ Chris Patten, last governor of Hong Kong, who launched his attack on Johnson by saying he as a ‘liar’, before saying a lot of other uncomplimentary about him.

Calling Johnson a racist on the slender evidence of remarks he has made is lazy. We should be able to expect some deeper political insights from our MPs.  One only had to listen to the MPs who are backing him to realise they were single mindedly determined to take the UK on their own terms. And behind them are a few Tory MPs who would not serve in his administration to make sure he does not waver and leave the EU with ‘a deal’.  Is he going to end up as their puppet?

The shape of things to come if Johnson wins the next election can be seen already.   Sajid Javid is said to be unhappy with Johnson’s spending pledges.  After he is safely in Number 10 these could be quietly dropped.  Bullying has become the order of the day.  According to The Times, Dominic Cummings who has been imported as Johnson’s enforcer told a meeting of special advisers, ‘If you don't like how I run things, there's the door. Fuck off.’ Johnson is threatening to withdraw the whip from Tory MPs who do not back him.

If we do end up leaving the EU without a deal and Johnson does win the next election, I hope the Labour MPs who have worked so assiduously to undermine Jeremy Corbyn are proud of themselves.

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Tory Debates: 'Words have consequences'

Power Politics Smelling Around a Lampost

by Brian Bamford

DURING the Tory leadership debate on the 30th, June, the BBC was accused of bias and the Daily Mail ran an headline: 'BIASED BRAZEN CONTEMPTABLE' and an editorial entitled 'A farrago of deceit and naked BBC bias'.  The editor Geordie Greig wrote:  'One questioner was an imam ('Abdula from Bristol'), who took Mr (Boris) Johnson to task over his use of Islamaphobic language.'  

What the Imam questioner from Bristol asked was did Boris accept that 'words have consequences?'

Boris then admitted that some of his remarks might occasionally have caused some plaster to off the ceiling, but added that people sometimes chose to 'escalate' his comments. 

Ludwig Wittgenstein was once quoted as saying:   'A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.'

Despite Geordie Greig's protestations about BBC bias in the Daily Mail, the Imam was justified in asking his question which was of interest to the public.

more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/ludwig_wittgenstein_147252

A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/ludwig_wittgenstein_147252

The roots of this question stem from a column in the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper on 5 Aug 2018, in which Johnson wrote that while he doesn’t support a burqa ban in Denmark, he does think they’re 'ridiculous' because they make women look like 'letter boxes' and 'bank robbers.'

But Johnson was also perfectly entitled to describe the effect the asthetic style of the burka had on him:  'If you say that it is weird and bullying to expect women to cover their faces, then I totally agree,' Johnson wrote.  'I would go further and say that it is absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes.'

Months later in December 2018, Boris Johnson was cleared by an internal Tory Party internal inquiry of breaching the Conservative Party’s code of conduct by comparing veiled Muslim women to letter boxes and bank robbers when an independent panel decided the former foreign secretary was 'respectful and tolerant' and was entitled to use 'satire' in his newspaper column in August.

When I worked at Arrow Mill in Rochdale in the early 1970s, the Pakistani textile spinners there told me that at that time their women-folk wouldn't wear the veil because we natives would laugh at them.  At that time there were less Asian women in the UK, and what shocked most people was that the women usually trialed behind their men-folk when they where out walking in the streets.  It was years later when the fashion of the burka became more commonplace among Muslim women in the UK.

From a logical point of view  'words have consequences' because words are tools to shape meanings in the way a chisel would impact an impression on a piece of wood.  Polemics is the art of throwing eggs or delivering blows in the businesslike manner of a boxer (see Wittgenstein reference above).

In response to this we are told that the critics of Boris will tell us that they are offended and that what Boris writes is a form of 'hate speech'.  Well they may well make this claim as such people often do as they are very vocal.  Yet, others may thus equally respond, as Queen Gertrude did in Shakespeare's play Hamlet:.  'The Lady Doth Protest Too Much, methinks'. 

Most writers on Northern Voices have been clearly committed to libertarian anarchism as rooted in free speech, and question the squeamishness of those who make claims that they are perennially offended by something or other.  The squeamish are now categorised as 'snowflakes'. 

Yet are the squeamish simulating their 'offence' to close down free speech in the way that is available to any human being?  Here we are dealing with something like a private language or the philosophical 'problem of other minds'.  We have words that refer to sensations like being 'offended' or being 'in pain', but we have no way of knowing if these sensations are fake or not.

To throw into relief the possible artful practices of squeamish human 'snowflakes' let us consider what Wittgenstein asks about a dog:

'Why can’t a dog simulate pain? Is he too honest? Could one teach a
dog to simulate pain? Perhaps it is possible to teach him to howl on
particular occasions as if he were in pain, even when he is not. But the
surroundings which are necessary for this behaviour to be real
simulation are missing.'

We can however go further and distinguish between the artful human snowflake and the dog by what Russell B. Goodman writes about in his essay 'Thinking about Animals:  James, Wittgenstein, Hearne': 

'Dogs can be sneaky or deceptive, and that there are stories of
dogs pretending to be injured and doing other clever things. So
perhaps a dog can simulate pain. Would the dog then be dishonest?
Wittgenstein is making a revealing little joke here, based on the
incongruity of saying that dogs either are or are not honest. They
do not have a form of life in which honesty is a major component
in the way that for example, hiding bones and smelling lampposts
are.'

Thus honesty, hypocrisy, sincerity and what could be called human decency, do not form part of the dog's universe.  What could be said about Boris's comments on the Burka and the claim of his alleged Islamophobia is that he is there to entertain and is simply attention seeking when he talks about letter- boxes.  After this week's latest debate with Jeremy Hunt, Eamonn O’Domhnaill, 48, a finance manager from Ireland, was unimpressed with both candidates but said:
'I don’t believe Boris Johnson is taking this seriously - there has been far too much buffoonery.'.

We all know Boris is believed to have favoured remain in the run-up to the referendum.  It is tempting to suggest that there is a certain Fastaffian amorality about his politics which places him closer to Russel B. Goodman's dog smelling round a lamppost as he seeks the Tory leadership..

*****************."

Turning A Blind Eye

by Les May

TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL recently published it’s global rankings on public sector transparency. In the past the UK has been in eighth position.  Now we have dropped out of the top ten most transparent nations.  This fall suggests that we should not be complacent in tackling misconduct in public life.

Larger issues such as the suspension from Parliament of Ulster MP Ian Paisley for failing to declare two jaunts paid for by the Sri Lankan government reach the national press and are quickly stamped upon.  These are not the major problem. It’s the complacency about the ‘drip, drip, drip’ of seemingly minor issues of misconduct which leads to increasing distrust of institutions, officials and politicians, and ultimately to a decline in standards in public life.

In recent years Rochdale has had two issues of complacency with regard to somewhat dodgy goings on at the ballot box.  In 2016 a ‘marked register’ went missing under mysterious circumstances in the Spotland and Falinge ward.   I use the word ‘mysterious’ deliberately because no police investigation followed what might have been deliberate theft after a council officer simply declared it ‘lost’.  Other towns take matters like this seriously.

The second was a Rochdale Councillor for the same ward who admitted improperly soliciting a postal vote and then using it to vote twice in the May 2018 local election. Both of these are serious offences.  Again the two offences were treated with complacency. Instead of looking at the seriousness of the crime, which he should have done, Labour leader Allen Brett turned a blind eye to this and chose to look only at the nature of the punishment received; an admission of guilt, a police caution and no jail sentence.

In October 2018 Tory leader Ashley Dearnley raised this matter in a full Council meeting.   Unanimously Labour voted against the Dearnley motion, which is interesting.  Now I know that not all Labour councillors were so complacent as Brett about this example of electoral fraud.  The fact that the Labour vote was unanimous suggests to me that Labour councillors were instructed to vote in a particular way.  That such things do happen can be gleaned from the comment of the ex Labour councillor for Balderstone & Kirkholt who said, ‘I was being told how to vote, being threatened ...’ after resigning from Labour and joining the LibDems.

Allen Brett may have been able to brush this piece of misconduct under the carpet and keep his disgraced councillor onside in August 2018, but it may yet end in tears for Labour.

Last May the ward I live in came close to a serious upset for Labour.  Very unexpectedly the young Tory candidate came close to beating the Labour incumbent.   If he decides to stand again this year and chooses to make an issue of Allen Brett’s obvious willingness to support a Councillor who admitted electoral fraud who knows what might happen? 

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