The Cauliflower Racket -

or some vegetables are more equal than others

By Andrew Wastling

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BY way of reply to yesterday's piece Beggars Opera or Comic Opera? - Strangling Civil Liberties on a United Front, I'd like to raise a few points.

I don't doubt for a second that the nauseating culture of palpable nepotism and political cronyism was once again alive and flourishing  at Rochdale Town Hall  :It was like viewing a tribe of back-patting gangsters as both the Tory and Labour politicians vied with each other to heap on the praise ' writes the articles author. I can almost picture it now.  All we are really lacking is a corrupt City Mayor, a few more henchmen in double breasted suits with Fedora hats carrying violin cases ,a couple of high profile payola busts with a snazzy Bix Beiderbecke soundtrack piped into the council chamber. Retro Gangsterism - its the new rock'n'roll  !

Or maybe a more toned down theme more akin perhaps to a scene from Brecht's famous play The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (1) portraying as it does the rise of a fictional 1930s Chicago mobster - Arturo Ui - and his attempts to control the cauliflower racket by ruthlessly disposing of the opposition to become chief vegetable gangster. The parallels are sometimes striking .We really should have a copy in the Library at The Ministry of Truth as No1. Riverside is to be shortly renamed.

Whichever is closer to the truth our town hall has of late  become an almost absurdist  theatrical experience where some of the performances  would not be out of place delivered in Al Capone pin stripe suits accompanied by gangsters molls with a mobsters getaway car revving up round the Town Hall - just in case anyone has to do a quick runner!

In this fevered political atmosphere its perhaps not  surprising that bashful Councillor Blundell did not intervene to challenge Councillor Sullivan and Councillor Howards motion to extend Public Space Protection Orders to the gates of local schools. Those  well known haven  for anti-social & criminal elements across the Borough ! Makes no difference , as Woody Guthrie said : ' Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen'.

After all it was only at the beginning of the month that Councillor Blundell was loudly proclaiming across the air-waves of  Key 101 radio station News on 8 March  that unless you were an 'aggressive beggar' you had '  absolutely nothing to fear from PSPO's. The Council 'is not the Gestapo' the Councillor responded slightly nervously . Quite right Councillor and we are here to ensure it never becomes anything close to resembling it. Even  if some members of our council would rather forget it those opposed to PSPO's maintain that :           'the price of Liberty is eternal vigilance.'

#Rochdale councillor @johnblundell993 speaks to Key103 about plans to stop anti social behaviour in the town centre.

When it was pointed out that the proposal document for Rochdale Council does not use the word aggressive beggar but only beggar in the text I was accused of 'splitting hairs' and promoting 'fake news' .I'll leave it to Councillor Blundel to justify to the Public precisely how a PSPO initially proposed for use against aggressive beggars in the town centre ( in the councillors own words) has transformed itself  less than four weeks down the road into a one size fits all quick fix for a multitude of issues the Council have failed utterly to get to grips with?

At this rate by Palm Sunday we can no doubt look forward to the reintroduction of Prohibition, unlicensed Speakeasy's on The Butts, local Protection Rackets & wholesale counterfeiting & gangsters across the entire Borough. Ah, the joys and pitfalls of turbo charged capitalism combined with a soon to be almost unregulated neoliberal global economy.

Just for the record PSPO's outside schools can in a matter of hours after a chat with a senior Police Officer be transformed by a single council official into a ban on parents holding a 'Save Our School Rally' at the school gates in opposition to future closure plans . Don't say you haven't been warned folks.

Recent Twitter comments from bashful Councillor Blundel hardly instil widespread confidence such as :

@libertyhq 's press release on the Rochdale PSPO is not factual, scare mongering and is completely alien to what the council wants to do

( 24 March 2016 )

Or the equally strident if slightly pompous :

Elected local representatives are making this decision. @libertyhq load of London liberal elites looking down their nose at northern towns

( again on 24 March 2016)

Segments of this Twitter feed appear to not only fly in the face of reality but seems to fly directly in the face of Council claims the PSPO proposal was being put out for consultation and not be a decision made by 'elected local representatives' for a start - not to mention fly Icarus style into the truth of the Sun. They are indicative of the kind of juvenile responses some of our local councillors resort to when caught bang to rights with their trousers down by people outside the Rochdale 'bubble', who not only quite obviously know what they are talking about , but are able to run circles round our local 'Alpha-Councillors' with those awfully annoying facts and the even more despised evidence which even our local Rochdale decision makers have to reluctantly number crunch from  time to time. People  who have an in depth understanding of the Law & the Legal System are often problematic for Rochdale Council .Just refer back to the embarrassing public thrashing our council got in the national media from those with a crystal clear understanding  of the Health & Social Care  Sector. Liberty after all have only been advocating on British Law since 1934 so I'm sure we'd all defer to Councillor Blundel's greater breadth of legal working knowledge & experience on the complex intricacies of PSPO's than actual British Lawyers, (2).

It would be illuminating  to know precisely which part of Liberty's PRESS RELEASE is not factual, scaremongering so we can all reset our thought processes from 'thought crime' to acceptable Council approved cognitive dissonance immediately ?

Perhaps Councillor Blundell can clarify for us lowly proles how we should think sometime soon . So none of us get ideas above our station or get into the annoyingly bad habit of asking tricky questions of our betters?

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(1). The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui or That Well-Known Racket .The scenario that Brecht presents is recognisably possible at other times, past, present and future. He points to a time of recession: people are suffering increasing hardship in deteriorating circumstances. Crime is on the increase, unemployment soars, street violence erupts. An enemy is at work, the people are told; a scapegoat is sought and hounded, while the well-off, anxious to preserve their position, join in the hunt or merely look the other way. Under similar circumstances Chicago produced Al Capone, and Germany produced Hitler, who rose to power on the backs of the wealthy establishment, which thought it could both control and use him, but which was blinkered by its fear of the "enemy within"

(2). Liberty is also known as the National Council for Civil Liberties. Founded in 1934, they  are a cross party, non-party membership organisation at the heart of the movement for fundamental rights and freedoms in the UK.

They promote the values of individual human dignity, equal treatment and fairness as the foundations of a democratic society.
Liberty is entirely independent. They're  not affiliated with any political party and they receive no Government funding – which means they're free to fearlessly and robustly criticise Government policy and truly hold the powerful to account. They  promote the values of equality, dignity, fairness and accountability in all that they do. 

Beggar's Opera* Or Comic Opera?

Strangling Civil Liberties on a United Front
by Brian Bamford

Tonight, at Rochdale Town Hall's Full Council meeting of the Rochdale Town Council, it was more like watching a stage show of Bertold Brecht's 'Threpenny Opera' than serious politics.  It was like viewing a tribe of back-patting gangsters as both the Tory and Labour politicians vied with each other to heap on the praise.  Talk about cosy council politics!

Councillor Liam O'Rourke even pontificated on how often the local Tories would join up with the governing Labour lads and lassies to proclaim and pass proposals and present a united front, no matter the perverse political origins of the proposals.  At one stage we were left wondering if the bashful Councillor Blundell was having an affair with one of the Tory lassies, so intimate was their demeanour.

There is much of the tragi-comedy about politics in Rochdale these days, which even in its own petty way rivals Brexit and Trump on the stage of national and international politics.

A major asbestos scandal has dogged the town for decades, the site of the former asbestos factory is now fast becoming a dump for waste which is being fly-tipped on an industrial scale; buildings surrounding the town centre neglected for decades are now cracking and disintegrating to such an extent that recently the trams to the town centre had to be stopped and buses diverted; travelling people now threaten Cronkeyshaw Common; market traders disappointed with the poorness of their trade in groceries have formed a co-op and are threatening to leave the town and now the Greater Manchester Spatial Strategy threatening the Green Belt around Rochdale.

But recently, it has been the proposals for issuing Public Space Protection Orders with on-the-spot penalties that has been causing consternation.  And this seems to be where the Tories and labour parties are uniting most.  Tonight, Councillor Sullivan and Councillor Howard moved and seconded a motion for extending the imposition of Protection Orders to the proximity of schools.  The motion stated:
'This Council welcomes the future consultation on potential use of Public Space Protection Orders in the Town Centre and recommends the introduction of similar Orders to enhance road safety outside schools.  As a Council we are committed to protecting the safety and welfare of the Borough's children, which is often put at risk by irresponsible parking outside schools.  The Council calls upon the Cabinet to develop proposals to trail Public Space Protection Orders around schools with known parking problems to tackle the associated risk to children, parents and carers; and following a period of monitoring to establish the success of this intuitive, the Council should explore options to roll out a programme of Protection Orders around schools.'
What this means is that extra unnecessary laws will be brought in by the law-makers of Rochdale to duplicate laws that already exists.  Natural justice, it seems, will now be binned in Rochdale!
What began with a Labour Party campaign to clean-up Rochdale Town Centre of beggars and other  'wrong-uns' , is now moving relentlessly on to a campaign against improper parking around school yards.  To get support for the motion one councilor last night even invoked images of car-keys being snatched by an angry schoolmaster trying to restore order and cat-fights by parents outside the school gate over parking spaces as mothers hung up their handbags to freely sally-forth in a fiery frenzy claiming the right of place to a space nearest to the school gates.
Bring on the 'On-the-Spot' Fines for Rochdale's disabled beggars and down and outs! 
Let's have more 'Public Space Protection Orders' against irate parents who park badly! 
The good Councillor Jane Howard, the Shadow Portfolio Holder for Adult Care and seconder of the motion relating to good order at School Gates, even whinged last night about not just swearing, but about one councilor actually 'blaspheming in this Council Chamber' she said, as had happened at the last full council meeting. 
With such examples of innate wickedness, the good councilors of the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale couldn't vote the motion through quick enough!  The band-wagon to corral the public is underway!  Bring on the Zoo-Keepers!



*  The Beggar's Opera is the story satirised politics, poverty and injustice, focusing on the theme of corruption at all levels of society. Lavinia Fenton, the first Polly Peachum, became an overnight success. Her pictures were in great demand, verses were written to her and books published about her..   Elisabeth Hauptmann (with Bertolt Brecht) and Kurt Weill adapted the opera into Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera) in 1928, sticking closely to the original plot and characters but with a new libretto and mostly new music.

Spain's Superior Sins!

Is Danczuk in trafficing in toenails lowering tone of Political Sin?

THE historian, Felipe Fernández-Armesto (10^th, February 2016) in El Mondo below ponders how Simon Danczuk, 'Pobre Simon Danczuk', may be devaluing the corrupt  practices of politicians to the level of something like comic opera.  While at least Spanish politicians approach a swindle in an intelligent worthwhile way with an eye for the economic value of the transaction Danczuk's dalliances in 'delinquencies' seem 'tonterias' or 'stupidities' by comparison.  By being titillated by a prostitutes toenails Danczuk would seem, on the face of it, to put even Mack-the-Knife from  Bertolt Brecht's 'The Threepenny Opera' in the shade.
For original article in El Mondo go to  

Política y sexo, mala conjunción | Opinión | EL MUNDO

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FELIPE FERNÁNDEZ-ARMESTO. 10/02/2016 03:02.

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Política y sexo, mala conjunction

by Felipe Fernández-Armesto

HOW MUCH, dear reader, for a bit of toenail?

The idea  would never have occurred to me to sell my toenails until I read the narratives of the journalists in the sex scandal that has raised big interest in the United Kingdom.  I refer to the case of the Labour MP, Simon Danczuk, who denounced his predecessor in the House of Commons,  the liberal Cyril Smith, known for his supreme fatness, yet also for his fame for his frankness that alarmed his colleagues.

Thanks to the intervention of Danczuk, Smith is now disgraced as a pedophile homosexual.  Now   Danczuk, since the failure of his marriage, has started a correspondence with a young girl of 17-years, proposing various sexual options that have been specified in reports published but that,including a good 'whipping'.  It is thought that he met a web fetishista where the girl sells – I cite the text of the Daily Mail:  'bits of her toenails' and samples of dirty underwear. 

I am very old and understand little of what's happening in the world of today.  Yet this history is very disconcerting, I suppose for everyone.

Two aspects , above all, are for me incomprehensible.  In the first place, the revelation that there exist such situations on the web leaves me perplexed.  How does one decide to announce an asset which will produce an offer?  How do you calculate its value?  Is the underwear that has been used to a state of great filthiness worth more than that that is only slightly soiled?  And the toenails, are they worth more more if they've been well used?  Is a big one of more value to a small one? Or is one of the small finger or of the attractive foot worth more for its daintiness than that of the fat foot?   Or maybe it is a question of colour.  One very brilliant, perhaps, will be more desirable sexually than another painted....

I don't want to have the cheek to imagine what the consumers do with the products obtained in the situation embraced by Señor Danczuk.  The underwear that serves let's suppose to wash-up the dishes, that results may work out more economic and more efficient, if I don't equivocate....  But, these toenails!  I confess that I am preoccupied.  Which perversion serves me? I don't suppose they are edible, like the rich feet of the pig that you cook in Galicia on the days of San Lázaro accompanied with chorizos or laurel sauce.  I don't go to connect to the web to realise investigations, nor go to register with a client and a pour over pornographic messages to fall over  Yes I have enough problems for me to inscribe on Skype with the object of making contact with persons whose names are evidently fictional, such as 'SexyKitten' and 'Spankykins'.  In case how then does a reader get things clear.  The requirement, in each case, should I maintain a decent silence and turn to the English poet, Alexander Pope, who said 'ignorance is bliss'.

Now I'm left perplexed with the persecution that we have in England with the disgraced sexually frustrated MP (Simon Danczuk).  In Europe, we are not wanted to bar our leaders as a consequence of sexual questions.  Making propositions to prostitutes is not, until now, the most grave offense.  Clearly Danczuk had thrown the first stone in denouncing Cyril Smith, and could be accused of hypocrisy.  But the 'pecado' that Smith did was presumed homosexual paedophilia:  quite distinct, from Danczuk's proposal of a session of 'ñaca-ñaca' to a lass that sells dirty underwear on the internet.  I know that the sexual practices we permit in one society, may be distinguished from that of others who would not accept those same practices.   These are always difficult to compare.  What one can say is that the important thing is that that the sex act is consensual.  For this reason, within the current legal doctrines, we would permit routine fornication, while always denying paedophilia and, within the sexual propositions, we'd admit good humour and condemn the repulsive...

In the case of sexual excess played out by politicians I can't find any coherent criteria.  In the United States, for example, Bill Clinton was able to keep the presidency despite having entertained Monica Lewinsky in the White House, while the Senator Gary Hart had to renounce his aspirations for the presidency for having an intrigue with a divorced woman.  In the 'case of Clinton', the consensus is not clear, because the young girl was working under the orders of the President, meanwhile in the 'case of Hart', the mature Señora was independent, and seemed to participate with enthusiasm with her lover. 

Eliot Spitzer, in another manifestation more recent example of the prudishness of the United States,  led to the resignation of a governor of New York for consorting with prostitutes.   The evidence that these relations were consensual and that they were paid special elevated prices – which, according to the citizens contributes most gravely in this case.  In France, we see, (Holland) abandon a series of women didn't damage a president of the republic, meanwhile in Italy , in the 'case of Berlusconi', the promiscuity without discernment only served at once to realise the machismo of the former Prime Minister.  Then we have poor Danczuk, who did no more than exchange text messages with a sales-woman of toenails.  He never met her or went to bed with her.  We don't even know if he had the consolation of acquiring toenails or garments of used underwear.  Yes,  we can accuse him of  bad taste; yes he may be stupid or pathetic; but he is not a monster like his predecessor in the House of Commons. 

There is no value to extend the sexual discussion, that would be basically irrational.  Nor does it deserve the trouble of studying the attitude of the public regard for the sexual stupidity of politicians because we can see this has an echo of the same irrationality.  Cases like that of Danczuk are part of the real world, even though some may think it alien, and throughly intelligible to a person of my generation.   Yes one can comment about the fraud of the electronic posts or drink powdered coca, or spend ones time following celebrities on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube.  Until now one can vote on Celebrity Big Brother.  Also one is able to show interest for the pieces of toenail  of a prostitute.  For me, they are all are equally stupid!

But at least a clear conclusion that we can get out of this mess in over the interest in Danczuk:

In Spain in political life we are lucky to experience cases with much more frequency in financial corruption than sexual scandals, the body of interest of the Spanish public is in the sex lives of singers, actoresses, sportmen and the members of Royal families.  I agree that a councillor in the town of Toledo  ---- who had to resign for performing in a pornographic homemade video; but this was more for the difficulty of maintaining the dignity of his position than for the supposed erotic vice.  In Italy, we have the examples in the general elections, like the notorious Ciccionina, without any consequence.

In Spain, for a change, we are immersed in a list of hundreds of politicians implicated in frauds or bribery...  Therefore, the proper question to ask in the New Year with the cases of 'ERE' in Andalucia, 'Gürtel (with his 'Bárcenas' case' ), 'Nóos', 'Pujol', 'Púnica', 'Rato' and 'Torredembarra', 'the Popular Party of Valencia' ... without mentioning other examples of rumours or accusations that have been brought the courts, like that of Gómez of the Serna and I don't know how many more.

I believe we should be happy about our major affliction of our sexual corruption. But what are we make of the fiscal fraud, the bribery or the embezzlement of funds compared with the delinquency of Danczuk!   Which is a more logical, clever, coherent and practical of all those (economic) sins our own politicians commit  or those of the less fortunate people (like Danczuk)?  We don't have a major elite in the moral respect, but compared to the rest (Danczuk etc) our sins are more intelligent.

BANarchists at PEOPLE'S HISTORY MUSEUM

THE busy business of banning Barry Woodling continued apace last Saturday at the People's History Museum during this year's so-called Anarchist Bookfair on the banks of the River Irwell.  The river is a 39-mile stretch of water that flows through the Irwell Valley in the North West of England.  The source of the river is at Irwell Springs on Deerpark Moor just north of Bacup.  The river forms a boundary between the great cities of Manchester and Salford.

Less great and more murky than the river itself is the politics of the Manchester Banarchists, who annually ban Mr. Barry Woodling from their midst at a now discredited annual event called the Manchester & Salford Anarchist Bookfair.  Though Mr. Woodling, who lives in Swinton, is of Jewish descent, he was first expelled from the Bookfair in 2012, when he was  accused of  being an 'anti-Semite' by one of the organisers of this event and seemingly 'banned for life'.  Although this has now been disputed, no-one will put a precise date on when he might be accepted as a good comrade again.

The Banarchists are committed to excluding folk like Barry for all kinds of reasons. 'Anti-Semite' was the first charge in 2012, but recently it has been claimed by Peter Good, a self-proclaimed professor of mirthology, who has had a stall at the bookfair for donkey's years, that Barry was somewhat intemperate in 2012 and indulged in altercations with various stall-holders.  Mr. Woodling denies this but has never been given the opportunity to put his side of the case because no proper case has been put forward by the organisers of this event.

Who are the organisers?

Well, it is not possible to identify the two main protagonists because they assume the titles 'David under the Pavement' and 'Meat and two Veg'. 

On Saturday various veteran anarchists like Ron Marsden from Didsbury, and a well-known senior fellow-traveller, Mike Ballard, from Chorlton, expessed their surprise at the continuing ban on Woodling.  Yet, the exclusion of Barry continues.

Who is to blame?

It seems that the management of the Museum were asked about their stand on this matter by other parties who happened to be at the event:  'Is Barry Woodling banned for life?' someone asked.

The Staff manager present said certainly not but was unable to identify any date in the distant future when Mr. Woodling would be allowed into the 'Anarchist Bookfair'.