Dunkin' Mc Donut - The man to save Barnet's Tories from themselves?

One of the nicest politicians in Barnet is Duncan MacDonald. He's one of the few local politicians who I wouldn't mind going for a few pints with. He likes music he can have a bit of a laugh about things. To sum up, he's pretty down to earth. Some of Barnet's Tories are rather scornful of Duncan. They have a little nickname for him. They call him 'Dunkin Mc Donut'. They think this is highly amusing. I've not discussed this with Duncan, but I'd guess he's really not that bothered. Lets face it, if that's the best they can do......

Anyway, you may wonder why I have chosen to share the hilarious wit of the Barnet Tories with you? Well they have this Leader called Mike Freer, who to be quite honest, really doesn't cut the mustard. Their problem. Well they all agree that he's the best person to lead the party, despite a catalog of failures costing tens of millions of quid on his watch - Icelandic Banks, Aerodrome Road, Partingdale Lane, The Underhill enquiry, tellies on council officials desks, brand new laptops in storage etc.

It is plain to absolutely anyone that they need a better leader, but as they all agree they are even worse than Freer, they are stuck. Their big thing at the moment is "Future Shape of Barnet Council". Try hard as I have, I've been totally unable to work out what the millions of pounds of money, which have paid for armies of "consultants", have actually achieved. The truth is that no one has a clue what "Future Shape" really means. Mike Freer tried to explain to the Guardian last week. His explanation "It means that if you are an invalid stuck in bed, you have the choice between someone coming to wipe your arse or going on holiday to Benidorm" (Actually that wasn't exactly what he said, but it was words to that effect).

The whole scheme has drawn nothing but ridicule and scorn from all corners of the political world, starting with David Cameron and George Osborne. I've been to several council meetings and it is clear that no one has a clue what the whole project is about.

Well that was until today. I've finally had someone explain to me in plain English, what it's all about. I've finally seen an article where all the consultants gobbledegook is translated into language that a thicko like me (and the Tory cabinet) could understand. The man who achieved this miraculous feat? None other than the Tories favourite mid morning snack Mr Dunkin' Mc Donut himself. In his blog today, Duncan explains the scheme. I've no idea how much he got paid to produce this item on his blog, but it is far better written than anything I've seen from the £1000+ a day consultants. If you live in Barnet or you are interested in the scheme, you MUST read this.

I'd especially recommend my avid army of Tory Councillors who read this blog to check out Duncan's blog. As I read it, I realised that if the Tories had an ounce of sense they'd ditch Freer and poach Duncan MacDonald from the Lib Dems. They seem to think that Future Shape is the way to go and he's clearly the only Councillor who really understands it. As such he's clearly much less stupid than Freer or the rest of them. A Liberal leading the Tories, I hear you scoff. Well let me remind you that Great Britain's greatest ever prime minister, Winston Churchill was a Liberal who switched to the Tories. I'm not saying Duncan is the next Churchill, but he's a damn site better than any other options.

Urgent : Barnet Tories Sheltered Housing Decision

I was most alarmed to read Lib Dem Councillor Duncan MacDonald blog concerning the Councils decision on sheltered housing wardens. I suggest you read what he has to say. He sums up my feelings in this paragraph :-

Whilst the retention of the alarm system is welcome this options does not recognise the fundamental value of site based wardens. Having recently had to visit my Aunt in Scotland who is in a sheltered housing scheme I can personally vouch for the value of site based support. Without it my Aunt would be in a nursing home at much greater expense. I really don’t care if the current system does not meet some strategy or target. It works very well and is well liked and valued by residents of sheltered housing schemes. The money can be found for this and I have plenty of suggestions as to where it can be obtained starting with the scrapping of multiple special responsibility allowances for Councillors.

There are two Council By-elections this week. I just hope and pray that the voters in these wards send the Council a strong message. After reading Vicki Morris blog about Tory Lynn Hillan's crude attempts to bully a local Jewish charity into silence, I cannot believe that Edgware's voters will sit back and passively let this happen.

I guarantee that the one thing which will focus the minds of the Council Cabinet is the thought of losing their majority and their beloved allowances. I say this to the thousands of decent Tory voters in Edgware and Totteridge. If the Tories lose BOTH seats, they will still have a majority on Council. This is your chance to send a powerful message WITHOUT losing them the Council. If you disagree with the policy on Sheltered housing, this is a unique chance to tell them. In the long run, you might be saving their bacon !

Greetings from the Lunatic Fringe !!!!!!!!

You know they say that the first sign of madness is thinking that you are completely sane !!! For all I know I've been locked up in an asylum for the past 45 years and none of this is real. Maybe you are all figments of my imagination. If I really am living in a psuedo "Matrix" world, please please please Mr Evil programmer make a few changes. I'd like some better weather, ten million pounds and ....... Well enough of that, Mrs T may read this.

I've posted over 150 blogs on this site so if there are any clinical psychologists out there who think I am insane, please post a comment with a website address to your practice and I'll get in touch for treatment. I've a wife & kids and I'd hate to think they were living with a nutcase.

Why you may ask why am I asking these rather analytical questions on a Sunday evening? Well it seems that I've been called "The Lunatic Fringe" on a blog. Now it may or may not surprise you to know that the person who left the accusation did it using an anonymous ID. It may or may not surprise you that they left it on another blog (didn't have the guts to come here). It may or may not surprise you that they were challenging a vociferous critic of Mike Freer's Barnet Council administration. It may or may not surprise you to know that they left a whole stream of comments with a list of slurs, half truths and downright lies. It may or may not surprise you that they rejected the offer to discuss the accusations. The blog is run by Lib Dem Councillor Duncan MacDonald. You can see the whole sorry tale here :-

http://cllrdmacdonald.blogspot.com/2009/02/councillors-surgery.html

If I've got a criticism of Duncan MacDonald it's that he's quite a nice bloke and he's too civil to idiots such as this. I suspect that person leaving these comments

a) Has an unfeasibly receding hairline
b) Has unfeasibly big Ears
c) Has an unfeasibly small willy
d) Has an unfeasibly large Crack habit
e) Is an unfeasibly pathetic Chicken

If this description reminds you of anyone - please don't post it here as I'll have to remove it - wouldn't want to get in trouble with Mr Beaky would we - I'm just meditating on what I imagine our friend to look like.

Then again, I'm the lunatic fringe so what do I know. As I'm clearly bonkers, I'm sure to have got all of this wrong. Now of course if the mystery man reveals themselves to us all, they can prove us wrong.

By the way thanks to our mystery man. I've been trying for about six months to come up with a Title for the False Dots new album (my band for the uninitiated) - I really like "Greetings from the Lunatic Fringe" - if our mystery man gets in touch, I'll send him tickets for the Album launch party, so long as he promises to lay off the crack for the Evening.

Councillor's doing there job properly

On this blog we praise anyone we see doing the right thing and kick anyone in the goolies who we see doing bad things. Isn't that the way it should be? What do I think Councillors should make their no 1 priority? Cutting Taxes, making YouTube video's, attending conferences in the USA, reopening dangerous country lanes to speeding traffic, buying TV's for officers to put on their desks, spending £650,000 on consultants to write blue sky discussion documents about future shape? I suspect you've guessed, I don't think any of those things are a priority. I think that a Councillors No 1 priority should be to protect the most vulnerable members of society. Those that for whatever reason can't look after themselves. Those of you who have followed my blog for a while, will be aware that I've praised Councillor John Hart for intervening with Barnet Council when my now dearly departed mum was having problems with Barnet Council providing her meals on wheels service. When the council outsourced this service many old and vulnerable people suffered immense hardship and hunger as meals didn't arrive. Councillor Hart, being rather more sensible than some of his colleagues, stepped in to help.

It now seems that Barnet Council are yet again putting the boot into the vulnerable and elderly people in Barnet. Councillor Duncan MacDonald (Lib Dem) is leading a campaign against this atrocious policy - http://cllrdmacdonald.blogspot.com/. In short, the Barnet Tory beancounters have realised that it costs more to keep people in sheltered accomodation than a normal property. Their solution, cut the budget for sheltered accomodation by 75%. It seems that a bit of research has shown that Barnet are not unique in trying to cut the budget here - http://www.shelteredhousinguk.com/.

I've known several family and friends who's elderly relatives ended their lives in sheltered accomodation. A warden system allows an elderly person to have both independance and safety. I'd be the first to agree that some budgets in Barnet should be slashed to save money (conferences, tellies, YouTube video's, etc) but I'd fight to my last breath to protect vulnerable and eldelry people to live in dignity.

I trust you feel the same. Well done Councillor MacDonald for raising this matter.

leaderdoesntlisten.com

Former Barnet resident : Chief Abiola - an example to Mike Freer


Barnet Council has decided to spend £400 of Taxpayers money setting up a blog for Councillor Mike Freer, Leader of Barnet Council. It is called Leaderlistens.com and if you want to see what Mike has to say, click HERE. Now it may surprise you to know that I think that Mike Freer having a blog is a great idea. I thoroughly disagree with his colleague Brian Coleman (Click HERE to find out about him)who says that blogs are a waste of time and Twitter is for twits (presumably why he thought his leader set up a Barnet Council Twitter site. Click HERE to see what our local twits are up to). Now Mike Freer used to have a blog on the local paper (The Times Group) which he got free of charge. It seems he stopped that when he started his new blog. My blog here on Blogspot is also free. Anyone can have one and even someone (me) described by a certain local Tory Councillor as "an imbecile who's blatherings are only of interest to himself" can easily put one together. Now why Mike needs an expensive blog, when everyone else gets one for free mystifies me, but hey he's not paying, so I guess he doesn't really care.

Having said that I didn't write this to moan about that. I'm writing this blog to have a little discussion about his Blogmaster policies. He's presumably justified the expense of the blog on the grounds that it's a public service. He says he'd love to hear from us, but I know of several people who've posted comments to the blog which have never appeared. In fact the only comments which have been successfully moderated were four comments that were posted between 14:13 and 15:19 on the 4th November. Strangely enough these four comments, the only ones to appear, were all rather tame and were posted on the day of the last Council meeting, when Mike knew he had a plethora of questions regarding his blog from Lib Dem Duncan MacDonald. Now far be it from me to cast doubts about the motives of "Amanda", "Sam" and "Gloria" who all independently posted their questions in a period of just over 1 hour on the day of the council meeting, but it does look rather fishy doesn't it?

In his latest blog Mike bravely puts the boot into the racists who've sent him nasty messages about the single Nigerian mother living on benefits in a house valued by some at £1 Million at taxpayers expense. Now I've had much experience of Nigerians over the years. I worked for a building firm which had many contracts arranged by the Nigerian embassy. One of the last projects I worked on was a large house in Temple Fortune owned by Chief Abiola (click HERE to find out about Chief Abiola). Chief Abiola at the time was running a campaign to become president and replace military rule with a civilian Government. He eventually won an election, but the result was nullified by the Military and they refused to let him take over. Chief Abiola was a highly intelligent man who would sit down with us, share a cup of tea and discuss politics. He was a highly impressive man who had a great understanding of human nature and the way politics works. One of the things which has always stuck in my mind was his analysis of what was wrong with Nigeria and the political system. He stated that as soon as he became president he'd completely abolish all censorship of the press. He said that it was impossible to have a successful country unless you knew what was going on. If you relied on your secret police to tell you, you'd find out nothing. He said that many African leaders clamped down on the press because they didn't like reading nasty things about themselves. He said that they were fools and just censoring the comments didn't stop people saying them. He said that all happened was people ceased trusting the press and believed every rumour, no matter how ridiculous.

It seems that Chief Abiola could teach Mike Freer a thing or two about gaining the trust of your electorate. Mike doesn't publish posts he doesn't like. This makes his blog a highly ineffective medium for communication, and as such it is an even bigger waste of the £400. As the blog is run by the council, to encourage two way dialog, surely Mike's editorial policy is actually an abuse of resources. I don't really have a problem with any of the information he's posted, but I have a massive issue with the fact he apparently accepts comments from the general public, but only prints the ones he likes. In an answer to Councillor MacDonald at the Council Meeting, he stated that the one response he'd had from me was unsuitable for publication. Councillor MacDonald allowed the comment to be printed on his blog (click HERE to see), but Freer wouldn't explain why he'd banned it.

It is quite painfully clear that Mike Freer is censoring his blog. There is a great tradition of free speech in Great Britain. Politicians, especially those standing for Parliament need a thick skin. If you can't stand the heat, you really shouldn't be in the kitchen. All Mike really needs to do is read the comments, publish them, think about the issue raised and post a response when he's got a proper answer. If he has no answers, then I'm afraid he's in the wrong job. Trust the judgement of his readers. If someone posts a ridiculous or unfair comment, then people will see through it. I'd like to see the Leader Listen format work. I think it's a good thing that Mike Freer is going out into the community and taking public questions. I just think it's a shame he ruins it with his Pravda inspired blog policies.

We all know about regimes which are keen on censorship, both past and present. Unlike Tory Councillor Daniel Thomas, I would never compare a mainstream politician to an extremist Party, as that would be most unfair and quite ridiculous. I do however think that history is there to guide us and teach us lessons. The lesson I've learned is that censorship doesn't work.