A proper job for Mike Freer

I was dismayed when Mike Freer was elected MP for Finchley and Golders Green. Not because of any personal dislike of this man who once described me as a "one handed blogger", but because I find it perverse that a man who failed so miserably as leader of Barnet council should be rewarded for his failure by stepping up to being MP. I believe that his success is wholly attributable to the lacklustre campaign run by Labour in Finchley and Golders Green. With his record at Barnet they should have mercilessly put forward his record as proof that he wasn't the man for the job. If you want to know his litany of failure, just search this blog for the tag "Councillor Mike Freer". If you don't believe me and think I'm biased, have a look what former Barnet Tory bigwig, David Miller has to say about him in his blog.

But he won, the people of Finchley and Golders Green have spoken and Mr Freer is MP. We all have to move on. Now Mike has the job, maybe he'll find himself a role. Maybe being relieved of the day to day stresses of running a council will be the making of him. I wish him well in his new job and hope he does the business for his constituents. I have a vested interest as he's MP my daughters school.

I was pondering the question of what Mike Freer brings to the Parliamentary Conservative Party and it suddenly struck me that Mr Freer could actually carve himself out an important niche and make a name for himself. He is one of  a tiny number of openly gay Conservative MP's. This is one area where the modern Conservative party is massively out of step with public attitudes. When Mike Freer was Leader of Barnet council, he championed gay and lesbian inclusion withing the council. He personally took on the cabinet responsibility for promoting inclusive policies. I asked a member of Barnetgay.com what their opinion of Mikes performance in this role was and they told me that he  worked his socks off to promote inclusive policies for gay and lesbian people. They added that unlike the previous Labour/Lib Dem administration which paid lip service, Mike actually rolled up his sleeves and got his hands dirty.

It is plain to absolutely anyone that the Parliamentary Conservative party needs someone to speak up publicly on these issues. When was the last time a genuinely progressive policy emerged from a Conservative about such issues? The Tories would be mad to let Mike Freer near any finances given his record with Icelandic investments. They would be bonkers to let him near any projects which involve building anything, given the Aerodrome Road bridge fiasco. They would be insane to let him anywhere near anything to do with the environment, given Barnets appalling record in the green belt. They would truly have a screw loose if they let him loose on anything which involved the law, given the Sheltered Housing court fiascos. They would however be extremely wise to put Mike Freer in charge of overhauling the Conservative party in relation to gay and lesbian issues. This is one area where Mike Freer has earned genuine respect in Barnet Council. Maybe he can find his place in Parliament, add some value and do something useful. Mike has a good record and a good reputation at Barnet Council in his work for inclusivity. I genuinely think he could do a good job on a wider stage, given the chance.

Out fishing with Barnet's Gay Mafia

If tomorrow's newspaper headline's say "Today Rog T sleeps with the fishes" you will know that everything I've written below is rubbish. One of the dangers of blogging with a fairly easy trail to who you really are is that you sometimes get some rather strange people emailing you. Now I'm fairly thick skinned and as soon as I get some quality rubbish, the spam filter is updated and the delete key is used. That way I only have to read one lot of rubbish and all subsequent efforts are purely a waste of time for the senders.

There seems to be one correspondent who has gone to extraordinary lengths to make their point, so I thought I really ought to use this opportunity to set the record completely straight (pardon the pun). The first communication I had was in the halcyon days of my blog at the Edgware Times. The email asked me what I was going to do about Barnet's gay mafia. It then went on to list several councillors and some of the positions of trust that they had (such as President of the local scouts). The implication was that I should use my blog to lead a crusade against these councillors from my blog and get "decent people" running the council again.

Now much as I wish that my trusty blogs had the power to dismiss councillors at will, I think that amongst the many delusions the writer of the email had, was one that a blog by me would change anything. I have a simple policy of ignoring all "crank" emails so it went straight to the trash. A couple of weeks later I got a follow up email. Same subject, same tone, same result. The third in the sequence was a little bit different. This one had a slightly threatening tone. It was clear that I was a coward, maybe I was a closeted homosexual, maybe I wasn't what I seemed. I was clearly like all of those other gutless people in the press. Now if you reply to nutcases, you just encourage them, so that was yet again ignored. The fourth email in the series informed me I was being watched and they had information which would expose me (for what I know not). Anyway it all went quiet then. That was until a couple of weeks ago.

My friendly neighbourhood nutcase sent me an email to gloat at my sacking from the Times as a blogger. He suggested that if I'd exposed Barnet Council's gay mafia, I'd have done a huge public service and Phil Crowther would have been too scared to have sacked me. I was very tempted to email back and suggest he discuss this with Phil Crowther at the Times, but as I said, if you respond you only encourage them.

Anyway I got another one last week. This time there was a complete change of tone. It seems that I'm a gutless hypocrite because I say I'm a Roman Catholic, but I won't expose the gay mafia. I claim to be "one of the boys" by liking football and beer, but I clearly swing the other way as I am not "totally disgusted by the morals and behaviour of ......". It appears that as I "confessed" in my Times blog that a friend of mine was gay and I'd even had a beer with him once, there was "undeniable proof". It was also "clear that I had been suffering from AIDS since 1984"(clearly I should get in touch with the Guiness book of records for survival). The best comment of all was that my clear dislike of two rather high profile Barnet Councillors was clearly the result of "past lovers tiffs".

So there you go. Well I suppose it is a theory, up there with the flat earth and Lamarkian evolution. The latest email, I received yesterday. It berated me yet again for all my many failings (see above) and made a veiled threat that unless I exposed the Gay Mafia at Barnet Council, some terrible thing would happen. It challenged me as to why I'd expended thousands of words deriding the policies of certain promonant Barnet Councillors, but had never mentioned once the fact that they are gay.

Well, the reason is quite simple. It really has nothing to do with their ability to do their jobs. I don't care what any of them do in private and it's none of my business. I am quite happy to expose anything which is against the interests of the people living in Barnet but poking around in people's private lives is not what I do.

If anyone out there gives a monkey's, then google "gay barnet councilor" and see what you get. You can also check their list of members interests and all that sort of stuff. I really don't care. You may wonder why I haven't named any of these councilors here. Most of you probably know who they are anyway, they are quite open, so why? Well purely to wind up my trusty emailer. You see that whilst he thinks the fact that the bloke responsible for the management of the Darland Lake Management committee (apologies if the title is incorrect) is gay is a massive issue, to the rest of us the issue is whether he manages Darlands Lake properly. End of Story.

So why have I chosen to post this piece after all of the many ignored emails. Well I have a little theory of my own. Let me share it. Now I'm married, been in a long term relationship for many a year. I've got children and I'm a Roman Catholic. I subscribe to the "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" brand of religion. Now I haven't had any homosexual relationships, for the simple reason that I don't fancy guys and I love women. If you want to choose to believe otherwise, that's really up to you - I'd be more upset though, if you thought I was a closet Manchester United fan.

The point is I feel pretty secure in who I am. The guy I trust most in all the world is gay - who is he? He's the guy who mends my guitar amplifier when it goes bang. If he makes a mistake I could fry. He's a good pal and yes I have a beer with him sometimes, for what it's worth. What do we discuss over the beer? Guitars & Music, rather like I do with most of my other muso mates.

Reading the rants from my trusty emailer, I detect a strange undertone. Almost looking for some sign. Why could this be? Let me tell you, I suspect that our emailer is a repressed gay. His disgust is actually directed at his own cowardice. He assumes everyone else must have the same issues (in spite of the evidence). It would never occur to me to draw conclusions about someone in the way he does, so why does he? It reminded me of the strange case of the Austrian National Front leaders hidden love affair. Often the reason various ...phobes have their prejudices is they actually can't come to terms with their own feelings and sexuality.

Anyway, this will be the first last and only message I have for you - seek professional help and get a life. Let the rest of us live ours the way we choose. Oh and if the people who our friendly neighbourhood nutter named really were a proper mafia as he alleges, I'd have been sleeping with the fishes long ago !