Comment on the importance of being a Blundell

 "What's picking a lock compared to buying shares?  

What's breaking into a bank 

compared to founding one?  

What's murdering a man 

compared to employing one?" 

 

From the 'Threepenny Opera' by Bertolt Brecht

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Before red banner Cllr. Blundell is wearing glasses looking
adoringly at his bearded mate

AN Anonymous comment  on this NV Blog questions the arguments of Rochdale Councillor John Blundell with regard to his views on homeless beggars.  'Anonymous' cites the finding of the End Child Poverty Coalition that 'child poverty in Central Rochdale (After Housing Costs) at a staggering 57.04% and for Rochdalr as a whole at 45% (some 14,198 local children)'.

 

Then 'Anonymous' asks what is the opinionated Cllr. Blundell's view on this problem given that statistics are now suggesting that child poverty is so significant?  

 

'Anonymous' must know that Rochdale's Councillor Blundell holds the cabinet position for Regeneration, Business, Skills and Employment under the Labour administration of his leader Cllr. Allen Brett.  Cllr. Blundell has some ideas about how to discourage homeless beggars based on his economic theories, and in an article written in Manchester Confidential in December 2017 he announced some of his simple text book views:

'The fundamental principle of economics is that people, or agents as we like to call them, respond to incentives.'   

Then Cllr. Blundell tells us:

'Often money is the means of incentivising people to do things they wouldn't opt to do otherwise, like work. Conversely it is also used to disincentivise things we like to do but shouldn’t, like smoking, which is heavily taxed.'

Last week, sitting in the Flying Horse pub, I remembered these words by Blundell as I watched him ensconced at a table outside in Rochdale Town Hall square stuffing himself in the company of a woman I believe to be the new Kingsway Labour Cllr. Elsie Wraighte.  What, I wonder, would 'disincentivise' the already pleasingly plump Cllr. Blandell from eating too much?

Or what was it that was incentivising last January when he became a non-executive director of the Manchester Airport Group?  At the time Cllr. Blundell declared : "I am ecstatic that I have been chosen to join the board at Manchester Airport Group as a non-executive director and look forwarding to being part of the major growth the Airport is currently going through.”

Indeed, the local beggars may wonder with the playwright Bertolt Brecht:  'Why be a homeless beggar when you can be a Labour Councillor and non-executive director like Councillor Blundell?'   After all, even when the councillor is an electoral fraud like Councillor Rana from Spotland and Falinge, or an unbelievable witness like Cllr. Richard Farnell, or a philanderer like the former disgraced Rochdale Labour MP, Simon Danczuk; a spirit of tolerance prevails rather than any attempts to 'disincentivise' their waywardness, and this  seems to have become very much part of the culture among the Rochdale councillors of all parties.  Indeed, recently  Cllr. Blundell even sort to defend the dalliances of Simon Danczuk saying what he did was 'Only Human!'.

Given their recent political history the Rochdale councillors, all of them, should really be asking themselves what kind of example they are setting to anyone?

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