Barnet Eye Weekly Roundup - The dark arts hit Barnet !!!!

There is something in the air. Vickim broke the news that Brian Coleman has appointed a spin doctor. I wondered how on earth you could put a positive spin on Brian (the Buffet Slayer) Coleman. Well now we know. I suppose it was bleeding obvious really  - slur the other bloke. Seems like Brian Colonman has gone on the attack on the expenses issue. Now I wouldn't have chosen this as a battleground if I was Brian Colemans spin doctor, but hey what do I know about such things. Interestingly the case for Brian Coleman seems to be that he's hard working, a mate of Ken Livingstone and a staunch supporter of the plan to shut Wyevale Garden Centre and replace it with Etz Chaim Jewish Free school. I wonder if Brian will still be as thrilled in June 2012. Still, I guess at least he'll have more time to write articles slagging off the British Olympic team. It will be interesting to see how this spat develops. At least Coleman has served early notice as to how he plans to conduct his campaign.

Mr Reasonable published a blog which deserves a far wider audience, detailing the subject of how a £2.5 million IT project has cost 10 times the original budget. Yup, £25 million for a system which still doesn't work properly.  Mr Mustard published a blog exposing the myth (Brian Coleman again) that Barnet has similar parking charges to other Boroughs. This is a story which the local press really should have picked up on. I wonder what Brians spin Doctor has to say about this (all Dismores fault no doubt)?

Our favourite councillor Little Bobby Sheepsjacksie Robert Ramsbottom had a simply fascinating post about Barnet Council infographics. Bobby has sophoric powers unique in the whole Universe. One supposes that Bobby thinks that people actually enjoy this drivel. Sadly he refuses to publish any comments I leave? What a poor little twatlet he is.

Finally in our roundup, we have the Broken Barnet blog, written by Finchley's favourite fishwife.
Mrs Angry details how Boris has sent her son a letter. Boris says :-

Ever since my 18th I have enjoyed my life as an adult citizen of the best big city on earth, and I hope you will too. I look forward to the vital role you will play in making London even greater.


Now if I was Mrs Angry, I'd be livid. We all know what sort of shenanigans Boris was up to, when he enjoyed life as an 18 year old member of "The Bullingdon Club" at Oxford University. Wikipedia notes that Boris and his chums got up to all manner of "fun" at the expense of the lower orders :-

Andrew Gimson, biographer of Boris Johnson, reported about the club in the 1980s: "I don't think an evening would have ended without a restaurant being trashed and being paid for in full, very often in cash. [...] A night in the cells would be regarded as being par for a Buller man and so would debagging anyone who really attracted the irritation of the Buller men."

Charming.

As to the "respectable press".  The Barnet Press and associated papers are on strike. See the video in the sidebar for more details. This blog was started as I felt local issues were being neglected. As the strike is over journalisitic quality, I clearly fully support it. The most popular story details how staff at the Royal Free will not be getting bank holiday pay for working the Royal Wedding. It seems that we can spend billions of pounds of public money, giving one of the richest couples in the country a day to remember, but we can't afford to pay the people who run our vital services properly to keep their country running.

And onto the twits. Matthew Offord tells us he was having a great time partying in Burnt Oak. Of course Mike Freer MP and Theresa Villiers MP are far too haughty to visit Burnt Oak, or even to twitter.

Anyway, I'm off to plant a few flowers on my Mum & Dad's graves, then to settle down for an afternoon of football, beer and fine food.

The nasty side of the Barnet Green party

On Saturday, I had the audacity to criticise the Barnet Green Party. Read this post :-

http://barneteye.blogspot.com/2010/05/barnet-greens-more-like-barnets-biggest.html

I wake up this morning to see Donald Lyven has left a comment. It seems like Mr Lyven doesn't like criticism very much. He says

Rog, your behaving like a complete arse again. I did not state in a letter anything of the sort. What is your problem? Is this the new politics? slagging off other parties because of your own twisted logic? You're the one who should be thoroughly ashamed.

Call me on 07939-021480 and I'll explain.

Donald Lyven - Barnet Green

Well for the purposes of clarity, lets set a few things straight. Firstly, if you read the original post, you will see that I put a link from the blog to Donalds letter to the Times. People can read what he said and decide whether I was being unfair (or an Arse as Donald so eloquently puts it).

The main thrust of my criticism is that the Green party in Barnet are not interested in the least well off people. This can be demonstrated by the fact that they stood candidates in well off areas like Mill Hill but didn't bother to put even one candidate up in Burnt Oak, probably the poorest ward in Barnet.

http://www.barnet.gov.uk/burnt-oak-elections2010-2.pdf

Now having said that I have a problem and my logic is twisted, Mr Lyven then invites me to ring him to explain. Why doesn't he just use the comments system to leave a clarification? He could say anything he likes and if he really believes that I've used twisted logic, he could give a fullsome explanation, which really would make me look like an "arse".

Mr Lyven says I should be ashamed. What for, for pointing out that Mr Lyvens party ignore the most deprived ward in Barnet? For putting a link to his own comments? He asks "Is this the new politics". Well sorry mate, I rather like the old politics. I preferred Labour when it was "Old Labour". I prefer it when people speak openly and frankly. Some of the people I admire most (but don't agree with) are Conservatives who are not afraid to speak their mind. Are they "arses"? No, they are just people who disagree with me. If Donny boy wants to be taken seriously, he'd better learn to deal with criticism in a more mature manner.

Mr Lyven's comments remind me of one of the "friends of freer" who often used to leave comments here claiming I'd "twisted things", whilst never ever actually providing any evidence (such as I do with links). I do wonder if maybe John Hart carried out his threat to buy the Greens a beer and used the opportunity with his sweet talking charm to persuade Donald to leave such a stupid comment.

P.S Note to Donald. I like a good row so bring it on.

Friends of Freer exposed as Cheats !!!!!

I don't care whether the readers of this blog agree with me or not. I don't care whether people think I'm marvellous or not. I write it because I think it has to be said. I think that the local papers are failing the people of Barnet in their coverage of local issues. I think this blog and the other Barnet blogs are becoming the place to look first for local news. David Miller's Barnet Council Watch broke several stories this week. I don't agree with David's Tory politics, but I think his blog is great and is the first one I check. Lib Dem Councillor Duncan MacDonald also does a good blog. This week's entries are eye opening. Vicki57's blog also has some interesting items, for those who care about social justice. Then there's Statler and Waldorf's daddy of all Barnet blogs. Between us all I think we do a public service for free. Whatever they say, the local politicians of Barnet listen to us. Now I don't mind what people say in comments so long as it's legal, decent and honest. This week I had a string of comments from "Amanda", "Jack" and "Do call me Dave". The comments were legal and decent. Trouble is, they were DISHONEST. You see I can see the IP address of the people leaving the comments and all of these identities were left within minutes of each other using the same IP address (ie from the same place). I've referred to these ID's before as the Friends of Freer. It seems he has rather fewer friends than he'd like us to believe.

I consider this practice to be dishonest. By all means leave messages. I don't mind private citizens using hidden ID's, but if people are public figures or using public owned equipment then they should be honest. Anyway, here's your chance for redemption. Say who you are and apologise to the readers of this blog for your dishonesty and I will say no more about it.

If you don't then in 7 day's I'll do a blog with whole story and all of the information I have. There's the challenge. We can do this on your terms or mine.

Stats Paradise : Boris, Brian Coleman and Fisting

The Friends of Freer
Last Tuesday I did something with the blog I swore that I wouldn't. I put a stats counter on. The reason I didn't want to was because I didn't want to know. Not because I was worried that no one was reading the blog, I couldn't care less really. No, I didn't want to write blogs to chase hits. I'm naturally competetive and I knew that as soon as I put a counter on, I'd start chasing hits and analysing why people visited the blog.

Now why did I change my mind? Because one of the Friends of Freer posted a comment about the "20 people who read the blog". It wasn't the fact that they'd implied I wrote a crap, boring blog which bothered me. It was the fact that I didn't know. I couldn't refute them, that got my goat. It was like being infected with a nasty virus. It spread and spread till I just succumbed. Off I went and installed statcounter (The little box at the bottom of the blog page).

Anyway, having installed the counter a week ago, I find some of the info fascinating. We've had 11 visits from the US, 5 from Canada, we've even managed one from China, as well as a host from around Europe. Strange that they are interested in Barnet? Well actually they seem interested in Boris and my dislike of the Daily Mail???? It seems that the top 5 searches to find me are "Barnet Eye" 22%, Brian Coleman 15%, Boris Budget reserves 6%, Friends of Freer 4%, Patrick McGoohan 4% and a whole host of others on 1%. Mind you the free counter I use only keeps details of the last 500 hits, so it changes. One unexpected thing was I got a massive spike yesterday when Dave Hill linked to me from his Guardian Blog - so it seems people who read the Guardian and like Dave Hill must be interested in Boris. Maybe this is the secret of Boris's great popularity.

I guess it is worth saying something about getting search engine hits at this stage. My Brother in law worked for Microsoft when they were developing the MSN search engine. He asked me what I thought the most popular search was? I had about 10 guesses before I gave up - The answer (this was a good few years ago - it may have changed) - Fisting - Oh well,I thought I'd put it on my labels to try and garner a few more hits - just what I said I'd never do.