The last blog I will ever write about Barnet Council and Capita

Solzhenitsyn

Victim of idiocy

Back in January, I announced that I was stepping down from the role as a blogger writing about Barnet Council and all of its many problems. Many people misinterpreted this as saying I would not be writing any more blogs at all, or that I had given up caring about Barnet Council and its problems or that I had sold out (whatever that may mean, although I think the accusation was that I'd taken a large bung to STFU, which is quite ridiculous).

To clarify, I've been writing a book, which has taken up the 2 or so hours a day I used to spend researching stories. Since the  announcement, the stuff I've posted has been stuff I enjoy writing rather than detailed, researched blogs on the Council, which has made up most of my content. The results have been quite interesting. When I was writing about Barnet Council, most blogs got between 1,000-3,000 reads. Ignoring the Council they get between 100-500. That tells me that there is a huge amount of interest in the council and its shenanigans. This is exactly what I expected. If I was writing blogs to get hits, then I would be devastated, but I am more than happy with this. It took me ten years to build the Barneteye brand as a serious political blog. Transforming it into my random topics of interest was clearly never going to be of interest to people who simply want to be kept up to date with the shenanigans at the council. If I was earning enough money from the venture to make it worth while, maybe I'd have continued, but it was always a labour of love and when I stopped loving it, I really couldn't justify the time I was spending ignoring my wife and family.

Yesterday, I was confronted by an angry Mill Hill resident. They suggested that Capita had paid me off to shut up. If anyone knows me, they would know this is quite ridiculous. I'm wealthy and happy enough to be unbribeable. I don't want a bigger house, a flasher car, a string of mistresses in Mayfair flats. I resisted the urge simply to tell said person to simply F@@@ off. I made them a generous offer. I said that if they wanted to blog about Capita on The Barnet Eye, I would make the platform available to them and give them all the help and support I could. At this they said "I've got far too much going on!". I had to bite my lip even harder to refrain from telling them where to go. I said "So am I, so we'll leave it there if thats Ok" and took my leave.

I came home fuming. I have been in a foul mood since. It wasn't helped by possibly breaking my big toe at football last night. When I got up this morning, I really couldn't be bothered to post the usual joke. So over my porridge, I started to think about the situation with Capita and Barnet Council. What do I really feel about the situation? This hasn't changed one iota since I first heard about the Barnet Tories hairbrained scheme to outsource all of the council functions in 2008. The only thing that has changed is that whilst I thought it would be a bad, costly decision that would ultimately collapse in a mess, it has proven far worse than I imagined and the Barnet Tories are far more stubbornly and stupidly trying to pretend it isn't. Last May, in the Council elections, the people of Barnet had an excellent opportunity to throw the Tories out, but sadly the opposition fluffed our lines and they got back with a greater majority than before. As soon as the election was out of the way, the Tories revealed the true extent of the mess. Sadly they bottled it. A sensible group would have got rid of the leader and deputy leader and elected some new ones, without the baggage. But sadly Barnet Tories are not interested in doing the right thing (as a group). They seem to think that managing to con the public, by concealing the scale of the mess until after the election is a jolly wheeze and affirms their cleverness. It doesn't, but like John The Baptist, I simply feel like a voice in the wilderness, waiting for Salome to ask Herod for my head. Wheras John the Baptist was sent by God, I am just a bloke who writes blogs. When it comes down to it. The Barnet bloggers have won the argument but following last May's election, there is no prospect of anything sensible happening for at least another three years. I am lucky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn spent decades in a gulag for opposing communism. I simply have the indignity of being patronised by such intellectual lightweights as Reuben Thompstone and Dan Thomas.

My wife's degree is in Russian Studies. She worked for the Anglo-Soviet Creative Association when she left Uni. They helped produce Sharp and facilitated Michael Palin documentaries made in the USSR. In the 1980's I travelled around the country, visiting places such as Vilnius, in Lithuania, but then part of the USSR, meeting all manner of interesting people. I had to travel, illegally by train, pretending to be a drunken Belarussian peasant. It is amazing how people in authority will ignore you if you look drunk and insane. I was writing a book about the USSR. My thesis was that the whole country was a sham and that it was on the verge of collapse. I beleived that the Soviet Leadership had pulled off the greatest con trick of all time convincing the West that they were a super power. It had been run by a small cabal of not very clever people, who simply refused to face up to the truth that they were running the place into the ground (sound familiar). I also realised tha Gorbachev was actually not cut from that mold. He was an intelligent, decent and wise man. He saw that the USSR needed to face up to what it had become. The rest is history. By the time I'd collected all of my notes, the book was out of date. There was no story.

Now I see the parallels between the USSR under Breshnev, etc and Barnet Council. Stupid men are stupid men, whatever their political persuasion. Maybe I would have found some sort of reason to continue, but I am sorry to say that the Labour Party has made me lose all hope for both Barnet and the UK. My father was a WWII bomber pilot. He'd been a prisoner of war in Rumania and seen the suffering of the people under Axis ledership first hand. He was a fluent German speaker, although he never let on. He told me that he'd heard German's speaking in the camp and overheard SS officers who were responsible for interrogations saying that they knew the war was lost and that they wanted to get their families to the west of Germany so they could be captured by the British rather than the Russians. I asked my father if he felt sorry for them, he responded that he hated the SS as they were murderers and their actions against the Jews was the most sickening crime in the history of humanity. He explained that any potential despot or dictator will always start by picking on Jews. Of all the races on the planet, it is a universal truth that they will attack Jews first. Once you can desensitise people to racism and barbarity through anti-semitism, you can get them to do anything.

What has this got to do with Barnet and Capita? Well it has become clear that the Labour Party has deep problems with anti semitism. Labour are the only realistic alternative as an administration to the Tories. Until Labour sorts its issues with anti semitism out, it is not fit to be in any sort of power, anywhere. The sad truth is that I'd rather have the Weimar Republican incompetence of The Tories in Barnet than a party that is systemically anti semetic. I do not believe a single Barnet Labour Councillor is an anti Semite, but they are all card carrying members of a party that has failed to sort an issue out over three years, that should have been sorted out in five minutes. Every single person in the Labour party, who has posted anything anti semitic, should have been immediately suspended from the party. Labour should have set up a commission independent of the Leadership, made up of sensible people such as Councillor Danny Rich, who could adjudicate and either clear them, if there was a mistake or a misunderstanding or kick them out. You may ask what constitutes a "mistake or misunderstanding" in the issue of something as black and white as anti semitism. I will give two examples. Sometimes people are added to Facebook groups with racist content without their permission. That is clearly no grounds for someone being kicked out. Another example is where you retweet or like something on social media, which is part of a thread that has anti semetic content. Occasionally people start out by saying reasonable things, then post a series of ever more racist comments. Someone who likes the first post and doesn't see the rest of the thread (possibly as it hadn't even been posted) could make a reasonable case.

Labour can sling people out when it wants. I should know, I was expelled in 2010 for a technical infringment of party rules (which I could prove was incorrect as I wasn't even a member at the time).

So in summary, the reason why I will not be writing any more blogs on the subject of Capita and Barnet Council is quite simple. The case that Capita have failed and should be slung out has been incontrovertably made, the incompetents who could change it won't listen and with a bigger majority actually think they are cleverer than ever. The main opposition are a party that is simply beyind the pale. There is no prospect of a change for a minimum of three years and I have other things to do. So I thought I'd do my very best to explain in a rather long and rambling blog, why I simply can't be bothered anymore.