Atoning for my misspent youth

It's fair to say that most people are not the same when they are 47 as when they are 17. I like to think I've grown up a little bit (god you must think, what was he like then?). In truth, I was pretty awful. aged 14 I threw myself lock, stock and two smoking barrells into Punk Rock, its ethics and its morality. I had the morals of a polecat (and probably the personal hygene to match). Strangely this never really seemed to put too many young ladies off. In my early teens, when I was at Finchley Catholic High School, the best source of local girls was St Michaels Catholic Grammar School down the road. Many of these girls got the 221 bus home with us. Often we'd congregate around Tally Ho corner and try and entice them with bags of chips or other suitable culinary delights. These early attempts were invariably doomed to failure. As the scruffiest and most objectionable kid at the school, with a poor acedemic record, I wasn't really at the games with the aspiring and clever young ladies at St Michaels. Then one day a miracle occurred. Bill Grundy decided to interview the Sex Pistols on the Today program.

All of a sudden, being a smelly oaf was cool. Pete Conway and myself, decided that this was an opportunity far too good to be missed and took our complete lack of musical talent seriously. We formed the False Dots. We were in a band. All of a sudden the ladies who had crossed the road and held up their noses, started to find us interesting. All of a sudden, the fact we were skint, scruffy and objectionable didn't matter. Sadly the school I was attending didn't quite see my charm in the same way and I headed on over to Orange Hill Senior High School. This had the added advantage of the girls being on site. Through circumstance and other reasons I won't go into right now, I ended up spending a lot of time hanging around with a few young ladies who lived in various squats in the Kings Cross/ Notting Hill area. Given that this would have not gone down too well at home, I kept this all rather quiet.

Although my grades improved at school as I developed better coping strategies for my dyslexia, my lyfestyle choices didn't help my grades. Band rehearsals, attending gigs and hanging around dinghy flats seemed far more attractive than actually working. I had a handy stream of spare cash from my rehearsal studio and other schemes I'd cooked up, so the paper round could be dispensed with. As the bands local fame and notoriety increased, we enjoyed a halcyon period where life was a complete scream. Life seemed to be one long party. All of those snobby girls from St Michaels now chased us. We didn't have to do anything at all. As an aside, let me share a little secret with you, which sometimes makes me giggle. Mike Freer's much feared favourite henchwoman Vanessa Gearson was a snobby St Michaels girl. She was credited with killing Iain Duncan-Smith's leadership of the Tory party. I get the feeling she doesn't like me and I've often wondered why? Anyway, I digress.

As with all parties, sooner or later they come to an end. In my case, this happened in 1984. The band was on the verge of major success, but we split up. I'd managed to have a steady relationship for two years at the time and this went as well. As if all of this wasn't bad enough, my health went. Oddly enough it wasn't my poor lifestyle which done for me, but a misprescription of a drug. When you wake up one morning throwing up blood uncontrollably, you know you are in trouble. When you spend six weeks in bed, you know things are serious. Now how does a brush with the grim reaper affect you?

It affected me in a rather strange way. I stopped drinking for six months. I started madly practicing the guitar for three hours a day. I started trying to write proper songs. I started to formulate a plan for my studio, to build it into the best studio in North West London.

So why is all of this relevent? What's it all got to do with the price of fish? Well on Tuesday night we had the first session of Sound Skool, a project run by YMCA at our studios. It gives young people aged 14-18, who are not in education, training or employment the opportunity to undertake a 10 week accredited course in Music Production, DJ'ing, MC'ing Singing or Band Skills. It's completely free and is held on a Tuesday evening between 5pm and 8pm. The courses are fully booked (in fact well over subscribed).

You can find out more about the Sound Skool project here -  http://www.facebook.com/soundskool
We are now looking for candidates for our next set of courses starting in September. If you are 14-18, not in education or training and have 3 hours free on a Tuesday night, get in touch.

I've got many things wrong in my life. I've made a stack of mistakes, but there are some things I am truly proud of. Helping to get the Sound Skool project off the ground is one of them. The great thing about running your own company is you can spend your profits on what the hell you like. I urge everyone who has their own business to put a little bit back into the community. The pictures on the blog are just a few of the young people who came down on Tuesday evening. To me that's a source of pride. When your dyslexic kids start misbehaving, coming home mashed, playing music you detest, talk to them, help them, advise them. When I started my band, my Dad let me have the use of one of his garages to rehearse in. He told me to rent it out and make a bit of money from other bands. I daresay he wouldn't of approved of much of what happened, he wasn't stupid, but he turned a blind eye. He ran me to hospital when I was bleeding to death, I probably knocked ten years off his life one way or another. He never saw the success we became, but we were turning the corner when he died in 1987. I believe that wherever he is, he's a bit proud of what we've done. I just know I'm lucky to have had such a wise father. I can't say thanks to him for what he did, but I can live in a spirit he would have liked. Have fun, enjoy life and give something back

Jack Cohen : The future of the Conservative Party in Barnet

The vast majority of Conservative voters in the London Borough of Barnet are decent, honest and hardworking people. They vote Conservative because they associate with the following values :-

Giving people more power and opportunity over their lives
Raising standards in schools
Building skills in the job market
Decentralising power

These are keynote policies on the Conservative Party website. There's just one problem for Conservatives in Barnet. Their local party believes in NONE of these things. Let me give you  a few examples :-




Giving people more power and opportunity over their lives - The local Conservatives decided that it would be a good idea to get rid of wardens from the various sheltered housing complexes across Barnet. They conducted a "consultation" with the tenants to see if they liked the idea. The results were remarkable. 85% said no. They hated the idea. Did the Barnet Conservatives (lead by Lynne Hillan on this fatal policy) give those people power and opportunity over their lives? No, they totally ignored them. They thought they knew better. Worse than that though. They hadn't even bothered to properly check out the legality of what they were doing. One of the tenants, 78 year old David Young, decided to ask his solicitor to check out what was happening. The result. A High Court judge has called a halt to the whole process. Just to make matters worse, when David Young took "power and opportunity" himself, how did they react? They launched a complaint against his solicitor with the Law Society. Like most of the other legal cases Barnet launches, they lost. I don't believe that a single normal Conservative voter would find this anything other than repugnant behaviour by their party.

Raising Standards in Schools - Fiona Bulmer who is the Tory responsible for education standards, does quite a good job, I wouldn't criticise her. Sadly Matthew Offord, the Candidate for Hendon has muscled in on her responsibility and took the portfolio for investment in education. He has brought his usual reverse midas touch to the role. The result. Chaos, kids in portacabins. Offord doesn't want to take the rap, because he knows it will damage his chances in Hendon, so he's wheeled out Fiona Bulmer to take the heat.He was happy to take the headlines when new schools were announced and the cash was rolling in. If you click on the link on his name above, you'll see that he's been moved sideways, where he can do less damage, as Borough Safety officer. That is how Offord behaves. Get a job, take the plaudits, then leg it when it all goes wrong.

Building skills in the job market - Barnet has a huge project called Future Shape. This is all about "outsourcing" local jobs. Rather than giving work to local people in hard times, the jobs are exported to other boroughs, other parts of the country or to call centres in foreign countries. Of course there is one area where they excel at "building skills". Yup, you guessed - for their mates. Vanessa Gearson has had various roles in the local Tories. She was a Councillor. She's stood as a candidate. She wanted to stand in Finchley, but Mike Freer got the nod. Knowing what she's like, Mike gave her a great consolation prize. She's now the head of communications at Barnet Council. You may wonder what sort of a person she is. Now I've no idea, but click on this link and see what the Tories own website says about her. I've no idea what her salary is now, but apparently it was £60K per year before her promotion.

Decentralising Power - There are 220,000 people in Barnet. Do you know how many selected Mike Freer to be Leader of the Council? Well at the last Council election, a guy called Brian Salinger was the Leader of the Conservatives. He lead them to an increased majority. Immediately after, Brian Coleman proposed a motion of no Confidence within the Tory group and he was ousted. Freer stood against him and was selected. 23 people decided. Many decisions which used to be made by full council are now made "in cabinet"  - ie behind closed doors.

If I was a real Conservative living in Barnet, I'd have nothing to do with this sleazy bunch. Clearly no sane Tory would vote for Labour with Gordon Brown in charge, but locally? I've been to a few Couincil meetings and the man who talks real sense is Jack Cohen and his Lib-Dems. The only way that Barnet will ever clean up it's act is a thrashing, when the National party does well.

If you don't follow my advice, don't complain when the Council Tax goes even higher. Barnet Taxes have rising far quicker than just about every Lib Dem Council anywhere over the last 8 years.

How many Barnet Tory Councillors have dissented from implementing the warden cuts?

Here's a question for you. When Lib Dem Leader, Jack Cohen called the Warden Cuts in for review, how many local Tories voted with Labour and the Lib Dems to retain the wardens?

Not a single one.

How many have actually worked to oppose the cut behind the scenes?

This answer may surprise you a little bit more. Yup there is one. I'm not going to tell you which one, but if you are interested,  she stands in the Edgware Ward. It's a shame that she hasn't got the guts to come out into the open, but I can't criticise her too much because she has been put under tremendous pressure by the powers that be. Then again she gets paid a fair old wedge to represent us.

My advice to her is this. You know the policy is wrong and you know why. When the first old lady dies as a result of this policy, will you be able to sleep at night. We both know how you feel about the matter, what is the point of being in politics if you have the chance to make a difference and you don't. If you take a principled stand, you may be the person to make the difference. Stop listening to people like Vanessa Gearson (Mike Freer's "communications chief"), and start listening to the people who elected you to stand up for them.

McBride scandal - The real issue

I wrote a blog last night detailing my views on the Damian McBride scandal. In all of the excitement, maybe we have overlooked the real root cause of the problem. Mr McBride is a civil servant. They are there to run the machinery of government, not to besmirch their opponents. MP's get generous allowances to employ staff. They get generous allowances to post us letters, they get generous allowances to travel around telling us how marvellous a job they are doing.

I totally disagree with the concept that on top of all of that, they get the civil service to do their bidding. If parties want to indulge in smears and character assassinations that is bad enough. The fact that you, me and the bloke next door pay for it is scandalous.

As you know, if you follow my blog, I tend to focus my political comment on Barnet, so lets have a look at what is going on here. Barnet council spend money (our money) on an advisor for the ruling Tory administration. This person is Vanessa Gearson. She is a prominent local Tory having stood as both a Barnet Councillor and a PPC. When her political career came off the rails a nice job was created at Barnet Council for her. According to Barnet Council watch, this post costs approx £60,000 per annum. Now I've no idea what Ms Gearson does, but I doubt she's organising rosters for binmen or visting lonely old people in sheltered accomodation to see how they feel about the council scrapping their wardens.
Given her history and the esteem in which other Tories hold her it is clear to me that her role is, shall we say, questionable and a waste of taxpayers money. Now I may well be wrong about what she's up to and if she can justify her salary as being of benefit to all Barnets Taxpayers, when warden cuts are being made, all she has to do is get in touch and she can be The Barnet Eye's first guest blogger. Can't say fairer than that can I?

Her salary would pay for two sheltered housing wardens. I guess you probably know which I think is better value for money. It's a shame that a Tory Council on a drive to cut out unnecessary waste are blind to this.

One of the justifications for the salaries MP's and Councillors get is that they could earn far more in the private sector. As Ms Gearson is an ex Councillor and failed PPC, maybe she should go out and get a proper job. This type of creation of jobs for your mates, when the electorate decide they aren't up to the job, strikes me as indicative of all that is wrong in British Politics. Anyway, I've offered her the opportunity to make her case and show me how much value she delivers for her £60K of my money. I await the call !

******* Update *************

Since posting this blog, it has been brought to my attention that Vanessa Gearson has now been promoted to another post in the council. Richard Robeson is the current cabinet advisor. Well Richard & Vanessa - my offer is open to both of you to explain what value the cabinet advisor delivers for the Barnet Taxpayer. As this would purely be an explanation of the job, it would ot contravene the rules on engaging in Political activity. Apologies to all for any inaccuracy above.