Video newsletter from conference

With Conference now on the horizon, I am putting together the pre-Conference edition of Parliamentary Campaigner. Lib Dem candidates should receive it within a few days. I have included some ideas on the innovations page about how to communicate with people back in the constituency whilst in Bournemouth.

One of the ideas I am suggesting is a daily email newsletter to local members. But that brings me on to another idea I am hoping to test out which is to do a daily video newsletter which I will send to people on my regional email list. Producing this assumes a number of things: that I can work out how to use the new high powered, all-singing-all-dancing laptop I have just got with video editing facilities; that this wonderful new laptop will give me internet access (it is being rather temperamental at the moment but I think it's just the signal strength around here - hopefully there will be a wifi connection at Conference); and finally that I actually have the time to film and edit it all.

The videos will go onto YouTube and then onto this blog. Now that I have a Partner account with YouTube, I can put bigger videos up. So, all very experimental, but watch this space. It may work wonderfully, or is may be a complete failure. Trying it out however will be fun.

Historic setting for a friendly encounter

The world's longest continuous running steam railway, the Tanfield, is in my council ward. Most of the line itself is now a footpath rather than a railway. The bit at Marley Hill that continues to run trains is a tourist attraction as well as a heritage centre.

The whole length of the line from Pontop Pike to the Tyne at Dunston, Gateshead, is now featured in a book and dvd called "Like Taking Coals to Newcastle", produced by Sunniside History Society, based in my home village. They had a repeat launch of the dvd today (I couldn't make the first one because, ironically, I was meeting some historian friends of mine two weeks ago). It took place at Beamish Museum, which is in Co Durham, but near Sunniside.

The guest speaker was Government Chief Whip Nick Brown MP. Among the guests was Dave Anderson, Blaydon MP, with whom I had a friendly word, at the tram stop as we waited amongst the American tourists for a 1923 built tram to whiz us around the Museum! It beats having to get a National Express train to London on a Monday morning!

Anyway, I am back home now. If you are a Lib Dem Parliamentary candidate, watch out for the pre-conference edition of Parliamentary Campaigner coming your way soon. I'm working on it now. (I'm fitting in the work between going to the allotment, editing videos and salting my runner beans!)

Reducing personal debt - we should not be surprised

The media yesterday seemed rather surprised that the UK's level of personal debt fell last month and for the first time since records began in 1993, more mortgage cash was returned by borrowers to lenders than the lenders lent out.

Think back to the early 1990s. Reducing personal debt was then, if not an obsession with people, then at least an aim. Over indebtedness was a millstone around the neck of the British economy and people were worried about their jobs and therefore their future incomes. As debt is taken out against the prospect of continuing income into the future, people were trying to avoid a burden many felt they could not sustain.

There are significant differences between the current recession and the one in the early 1990s. Then, part of the driving force of the recession was high interest rates, brought about to tackle rising inflation, some of which (though not all) had its sources in the reunification of Germany and the absorption of the Ostmark into the Deutschmark. Nowadays, the problem is the opposite in that demand for goods and services has slumped and therefore prices (other than for basics such as food and fuel) have dropped.

Nevertheless, a common thread to both recessions is indebtedness. The credit fueled booms of the late 1980s and the 2000s saw too many people take out an unsustainable level of debt. At some point that money has to be paid back. In boom years, people think they can pay it off on the back of rising house prices. With that gone, now they have to pay it off from income.

Massive personal borrowing is a cause of boom and bust (a problem Brown claimed to have fixed but simply allowed to get worse). The bust is when we pay back for the boom. And with hundreds of billions of pounds owed by UK citizens as consumer (as opposed to mortgage) debt, my guess is that people are going to be paying off more debts than they take out in new borrowing for some time to come.

Off to Cambridge

Having spent most of the week I am now heading up to Cambridge. This required a journey across London this morning. This was a human obstacle course par excellence. It started on arrival at Victoria Station where the queues for ticket machines put wartime Britain in the shade.

That would not have been relevant for me if I did not have to recharge my oyster card. So I joined a queue, took ages to get to the machine and had to have 2 goes at operating it as it was being temperamental. With my card recharged I headed off through a packed tube system to Kings Cross where I was met by a wall of people. Kings Cross must have been celebrating human sardines in a tin day. I am on the Cambridge train now which itself is doing the sardines in a tin impersonation. I should be there in 20 minutes.

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Adding insult to our transport injury

The announcement yesterday by Network Rail that they support the creation of a high speed rail link through the Midlands and North West to Scotland is good for those regions. But what about the North East and Yorkshire? Our region subsidises the rest of the rail network - the East Coast Line is the only route where rail companies pay the government to use the line rather than the government pay them. Our region is not on the motorway network either.

So this announcement is something of an insult to injury for the North East.
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Oh for some real bread

As I am down in London this week, I am relearning to survive on commercially produced food from supermarkets and restaurants. Some of it is absurdly artificially overflavoured. Some is completely tasteless. I bought bread at a Tesco Express this morning. Frankly tissue paper has more flavour and body to it. We make our own bread back home. You can't beat it!

I have been to Cowley St today for meetings about the photo ops at conference. Comments from people suggested the good life is Gateshead is clearly working for me! Meanwhile I restocked the jam supply for my former colleagues. The cupboard had been bare there for a few weeks.

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Spending a penny just got more expensive

It seems as though deflation is yet to catch up with that time honoured activity of spending a penny. The last time I used the toilets in Victoria Station was years ago and cost me 20p. Having just needed to spend a penny in Victoria it now cost me 30p. Whilst Gordon Brown may have let the economy go down the pan, spending a penny seems to be a bit of a money earner for Victoria Station. I suppose I feel a bit pissed off about it!
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Braindead Big Brother bites the dust

I was in a minority when Big Brother was launched earlier this decade. Whilst many avidly watched this programme and its bewildering array of idiotic attention seekers who played up their absurb personal characteristics, I simply fumed about the braindead quality of this broadcasting initiative. Quite what people saw in this voyeuristic claptrap was beyond me.

So the news that Channel 4 is to drop this rubbish is welcomed by me. Viewing figures have collapsed so its got to go. Quite right too. Let's hope no one else buys the rights to broadcast it.
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Labour to abandon Trident?

This is the speculation in the Independent this morning. The suggestion is that Brown has been under pressure from Chancellor Darling to change the tone on public spending or risk letting the Tories win the argument on how much the government should spend.

One of the suggestions, and it reads more as an Indie rather than government one, is that the new Trident subs will either be delayed or cancelled altogether. The cancellation of the upgrade is now Lib Dem policy. A couple of years ago we kept the option of new subs open though opposed taking the final decision on replacement until around 2014 when the international situation would be clearer. Nick swept that policy away a few weeks ago, saying that building the new subs was no longer an option. Frankly, the cost of having the symbols of a superpower without the economy of a superpower was no longer a credible option.

Whether the Indie is right on delaying or cancelling Trident is yet to be seen. My feeling is that Brown will not want to reopen the issue. The thing that most scares the Labour leadership is Labour's past. Revisiting something that was so divisive is hardly appealing to Brown and his master Mandelson.

Mind you, what are the crusty old left Labour "socialist" brethren on the backbenches to make of this? After all, a great many of them quietly trooped through the government lobby 2 years ago to vote for Trident replacement. Having swallowed their pride back then, are any of them likely to want to regurgitate it now? Not a pretty thought but perhaps they won't want to be reminded of their anti-nuclear views that still saw them vote for Trident.

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Heading down to London

Well, it's groundhog day! It's Monday and I am on a train heading to London. At least it's not first thing in the morning. I certainly don't miss those early morning trains to London. I was however up at a reasonably early hour this morning. Our candidate Neil Bradbury called to have some photos done in Sunniside before he went to work. So we were out on the Front St to catch the rush hour.

At least it meant I had a good start on a piece of literature I need to produce. I was able to finish it before leaving to catch the bus to Newcastle.

An editorial board meeting of Parliamentary Campaigner, which I edit, is the reason for the trip. I'm staying down for a few days so I can sort out the flat and garden there as well. And I need to get some photos around London. So it's not going to be an action packed week.

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Frank Fields and the Lady Harriet

Hardly a month goes by without a call from Labour maverick Frank Fields on Gordon Brown to resign. The latest call is a bit different. It includes high praise for the Lady Harriet. It seems that Fields believes Harman will help Labour avoid a crushing election defeat.

As a Lib Dem who has no desire to see the "socialist" brethren continue in office where they operate a reverse midas touch (they seem to be able to convert gold into lead), I back the idea of a Lady Harriet Labour leadership. She really would scare the horses! Her voice sounds like someone dragging fingernails down a blackboard. And whilst Labour would undoubtedly play the anti-privilege card against Cameron, with Lady Harriet at the helm, they would simply come over as an even bigger bunch of hypocrites than they are now.

So, all power to Frank Fields call. The only problem is that in Labour, his support is seen as the kiss of death. Perhaps we should persuade him to come out against the Lady instead!
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Photo ops at conference

Those who attend Lib Dem conference and have taken part in the photo ops I have run at past events may be interested to know that we will definitely be holding more events at the forthcoming Bournemouth gathering. Not all arrangements have been sorted yet and not all MPs invited to take part have yet responded.

However, those who have agreed to participate are Tim Farron (theme of fair treatment for farmers); Lynne Featherstone (equalities issues); Norman Baker (transport, possibly rail fares) and Simon Hughes (environment).

North East reps will also have a number of photo ops to attend and information will be circulated in due course.

Anyone holding a fringe event or wanting photos taken in addition to the photo ops should email me at jonathanwallace at compuserve.com.

Photo editing experiment - here's the result

I created this image of the Swing and High Level Bridges between Gateshead and Newcastle by editing together 5 separate images. The version I came up with has a far higher resolution that the above version but click on it to get a better view. The sloping right hand end of the High Level Bridge is caused by my having to rotate through a wide angle to capture the individual shots. Perhaps I should have used my tripod.

This was just the result of my playing about but I was sufficiently impressed with the software I used to share the final, reduced resolution version.

Bromley shows true colours of Tories

So, there we have it, true-blue Tory Bromley is going to subsidise private schools with council taxpayers' money. It is somewhat unfortunate that my London home falls (just) within the boundaries of Bromley and therefore I have to endure, when I am there (not so often these days) a Tory dominated council which now looks set to take from the majority to give to a fortunate minority.

Bromley is also the provider of schools for that part of London. Bromley Local Education Authority are not exactly giving themselves a vote of confidence in their own ability to run schools if they are paying people to escape from them.

And this move hardly smacks of the compassionate Conservatism David Cameron would have us believe his party now supports.
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I picked a fine time to quit London

Today's retail price index is 1.4% in negative figures. Under rail ticket regulation, prices increase by RPI plus 1%. That means prices will come down next year! Typical. Just when I quit London, fares to get there have come down.

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History rather than politics tonight

I have just arrived at the Bridge, one of the historic pubs of Newcastle. It is at the north end of the High Level Bridge, one of the great railway bridges of the UK. I am here to meet up with some historian friends. An ideal venue for such a meeting. We are the first to arrive.
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Flower bed petitions and digging potatoes

I walked down to Whickham this morning to print 500 petition forms in our office and then deliver them with Neil Bradbury, our candidate for Blaydon. The petition opposes the decision by Labour to remove some of the flower beds in the area. Labour in Gateshead are the party of cuts though if you listen to their sanctimonious drivel, you could be conned into thinking otherwise. I have just been out to collect the replies. 109 petition forms were returned to us. Not bad.

I spent the afternoon working on another bed of the flora variety - my potato bed. Time to pick the spuds, until the rain set in and we had to give up. I'll finish that job tomorrow.

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Osborne as slayer of bonuses - and Hannan a fan of NHS

Are we really meant to believe that little pipsqueak George Osborne believes in banning bank bonuses? Was this not the same person who two years ago was arguing that we needed even less regulation of the City than even Labour's light touch approach gave us? He must be having a laugh. George Osborne as slayer of bank bonuses - next they'll be saying Daniel Hannan loves the NHS.

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It must be the silly season

I thought I would take a few minutes break from picking raspberries in Lotties Wood near my house in Sunniside and catch up on some political blogging. It is of course August and therefore we are well into the silly season (as well as the jam making season!)

The story that is getting the silly season treatment is the leadership "ambitions" of Peter Mandelson. There was a time when most Labour members hated Mandy so much that he was regarded as Public Enemy Number One. It seemed that people like me had a higher regard for him than the socialist brethren. Mandy was regarded by the his Neanderthal comrades as the person who dumped all their cherished beliefs in the socialist utopia, and in the process made them electable (but also devoid of political content). Now, it seems, the socialist dinosaurs love the guy. Labour's Atavistic Tendency is out in force and Mandy is their new pin up.

But this passing love affair is destined not to last. Nevertheless, the media have grasped hold of it by the short and curlies and have blown it into a story of Mandy for PM. The difficulties of dumping his peerage and getting back into the Commons would, you would think, have deterred the media from this daft story, even assuming the Labour party successfully prised Gordon's fingers off the keys to Downing St (and so far every attempt to do so has failed).

Yet, even the return to the Commons of Mandy has been plotted out by the media in the form of the retirement of Hilary Armstrong, the hereditary socialist MP for Durham North West. The former Blairite chief whip, who inherited her seat in the Commons from her father, has announced her retirement at the next general election. The speculation is that she will resign her seat in September to create a vacancy for Mandy's return. It reads more like the storyline of a Jeffrey Archer novel rather than a future reality. But it certainly makes for an interesting silly season!

Brown however has Mandy where he wants him: on side to deter the Blairites from challenging (other than the hamfisted attempted by the Blairite B Team of Blears and Purcell). He is also imprisoned in the House of Lords. You have to credit Brown with something (though not much). He may be an appalling communicator with a temperament totally unsuited to the role of PM, but he certainly has staying power within his own party. The people in the general election however may not care to continue with Brown as the boss. Don't however underestimate Brown. He will do anything required to stay at the top.

Meanwhile, a wild deer has just trotted past me and it's time to go back to picking raspberries (and to blow one at the whole Many as PM story!)
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Delivering petitions

I have just finished delivering a petition in Whickham about Labour's cuts to flower beds in the village. Labour calls them "efficiency savings". They can't bring themselves to he straight with people about what they are doing. Anyway, I am now off to the recycling centre to take a pile of cardboard and then I'm off to the allotment to pick potatoes.
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Heading back home

After 4 days in North Wales I am now heading home. The train has just pulled into York. I'm not back til after 10pm and I'm already hungry! I'll get dinner when I get back. In the meantime, I am reading a book about the Cold War by Jeremy Isaacs and Taylor Downing. I am feeling old as a result. Some of the events mentioned from the 1970s I remember. And I certainly remember the autumn of 1989 when Soviet control of Eastern Europe collapsed. By then I was already a Lib Dem Parliamentary Candidate (for Hexham). Yes, I am definitely getting old.

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Enjoying North Wales

IWe arrived in North Wales on Thursday evening. Yesterday we went over to Llonagllen to walk over the Telford Aqueduct. Look out for the inevitable YouTube video next week! I've just been to Bangor and Anglesey to photograph the Menai Bridge. Watch out for material going onto Flickr soon.

This afternoon I will be at an 18th birthday. Oh joy.
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On my way to Wales - and time to rant again about train companies

I am about to leave London and head to North Wales for a few days. I have just had to spectacle of being stuck in a queue in Victoria for half an hour trying to cancel my London travel card. When eventually I did get served the cashier walked off with my pass and then eventually returned to tell me that because of some obscure "warranty" ithey were not going to refund it and I had to go instead to some obscure office in Cannon Street. I am sure the system is designed simply to make it impossible to get a refund. A sort of full money back guarantee as long as you know the way to get round the complex barriers and hurdles. I'm fuming! But I aint giving up.

Anyway I should be at Euston soon and on the train to Wales. And I aint going to let basket case rail companies spoil my holiday!
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Doing tourist type things

I went into Cowley St this afternoon to sort out some photo issues. Now I am at the theatre about to watch Avenue Q. I'm doing tourist type things. I haven't done that in my years of travelling to London but now I can! Tomorrow however I am not being a tourist. I need to sort my garden in London instead.
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Hitting Labour where it really hurts - in the motions

This is a classic example of Labour's "don't do as I say and certainly don't say as I do" approach to politics in Gateshead. A little bit of background at this point is necessary.

Gateshead has a relatively high number of people who suffer and die early from smoking related illnesses. Gateshead Labour MP David Clelland is the leading critic of his own Government's attempts to end smoking in public places (he wanted private clubs excluded) and end tobacco point of sale displays in shops. Mr Clelland also has very strong links with the Tobacco Retailers Alliance which is leading the campaign against the ban on retail displays. His step daughter is the boss of the organisation, a fact Mr Clelland failed to declare until he was outed by the Observer a few weeks ago.

This has not made him popular with Labour councillors in Gateshead who quite rightly are very concerned about the appalling effects of smoking to the residents of the borough. The apparent concern of Mr Clelland for the demands of the smoking lobby over the health needs of his own constituents do not seem to win the backing of Gateshead Labour councillors.

Mr Clelland argues he is being "tolerant" and has further argued he does not believe a point of sale display ban would work. Many other people are indeed less tolerant - of illness and premature death caused by smoking. Given the much higher incidence of smoking related health problems of his constituents, Mr Clelland's "tolerant" views are all the more disappointing.

So, come the last full council meeting and Labour has a motion calling on the borough's MPs to support the government's proposed ban on point of sale tobacco displays. The motion was very ably moved by Labour's deputy leader Ian Mearns (I can't help feeling Labour would be in a much better position if he rather than Mick Henry led them on the council.)

I then moved an amendment which simply added to the call on MPs to support the proposal by asking them also to speak in favour of the plans in the Commons. The hysteria from Labour was - well you had to be there it believe it. Council Leader Mick Henry spent most of the debate attacking me personally. By the end of the debate it was difficult to believe that all that was being asked of Labour was that they were being asked to ask their own MPs to speak in favour of their own policy.

This of course was far too much for Labour, "led" by Mick Henry to contemplate. He claimed that MPs could not be asked to speak for something. He gave the scenario of the Council calling on all councillors in Gateshead to speak in favour of council policy.

Interestingly the previous month, "Leader" Mick had made precisely that demand of the Lib Dem group! At the end of a debate on National Express plans to introduce a charge for seat reservations (a debate on the back of a motion I wrote!) Taking-The-Mick Henry alluded to the cross party agreement on the issue and then demanded that the Lib Dems should speak positively about the council more often and include more in support of Labour decisions in our Focus leaflets!

So it's okay for Labour to demand the Lib Dems speak in favour of Labour policy but it certainly is not okay for Labour MPs to be asked to speak in favour of Labour policy!

What a bunch of jokers Labour are turning into in Gateshead. That reminds me, there was another motion at the July Council meeting, moved by Labour Councillor John McElroy. This one was about the media industry in the region and the need to support it. But it was carelessly worded with the result it could be read as offering to give tv license fee money to Sky TV! I moved an amendment which attempted to remove the worst and most careless feature.

I could see, whilst I was speaking, that the penny had dropped with Labour cllrs as they realised precisely what their motion was calling for. They could not of course vote for our amendment. Once their motions are written, they do not accept amendments, no matter how sensible. So they had to come up with another ruse. Standing orders were suspended so that they could reword the motion to rewrite the bits that were clearly going to cause them trouble.

With a bit of luck, whoever wrote the sloppy original motion will be drafted in to write Labour's national manifesto. It would mean a manifesto that truely reflects the nature of Gordon Brown's government - sloppy and falling apart the moment anyone examines it.
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Fiona Hall's celebration party

I went to Fional Hall's celebration party this afternoon in the Biscuit Factory (it's an art gallery, not a production centre for dunking materials) in Newcastle. Fiona was re-elected as MEP for the North East last month so we were all in good spirits, especially as the region got the highest Lib Dem share of the vote in the UK. The biggest subject of conversation raised with me by people was the Good Life and how we are coping with self-sufficiency.

Talking of which, I went down to Beggarswood at Lobley Hill this morning to check out the supply of wild cherries. It's not in my ward but I was recognised by some LH residents and ended up getting some casework to do!

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Would you believe it - I'm heading down to London

I haven't quite escaped from London it seems. I am now at Newcastle Central waiting for my (delayed) National Excess train to Kings Cross. The trip is for a variety of reasons. Firstly, I need to check my flat there is in good health. Secondly, I am continuing to run the photo ops for candidates at conference and I need to sort out some issues regarding that. Thirdly, I need to take jam into Cowley St. Apparently there is a jam famine there and the troops are ready to rebel if their marmalade and jam demands are not met! And finally I need to sort out my garden in London.

I am there til Thursday when I go up to North Wales for a short break (which also includes taking photos and video of historic landmarks for a project on which I am working.)

I will be back home a week tomorrow. David as usual is holding the fort in my absence.

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Another byelection gain from Labour in Redcar

The Dormanstown byelection in Redcar was held yesterday and the count was this morning. Another gain from Labour. Well done to all our people there.

The ward, previously safely Labour, had a byelection in April which resulted in our first gain from Labour. All we had to do was repeat the result. We did just that but the other parties saw their votes fall.

By the way, another North East result with the Conservatives in 4th place. The biggest losers in votes however appears to be the BNP.

Lib Dems 805
Lab 515
bnp 145
Con 73
Turnout 29.8%

April 2009:
LibDem 809
Lab 667
BNP 305
Con 125

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The Monday Morning Blog: hello, it's me, I'm on the train

I thought I had left early Monday morning train journeys behind me. How wrong I was! Here I am, on the 6.54am train from Newcastle to Carlisle, surrounded by people with backpacks and bikes. As for me, I'm in my suit!

It didn't take long for the party to catch on to the fact I am back full time in the North East. Since I returned, I have had a steady stream of requests to go to meetings, take photos and shoot video. Today, I am off to Kendal, admittedly outside the North East, to help run a meeting of the Lib Dem county group, suitably enlarged following the local elections last month. It was ALDC who put my name forward.

So, I get to see the Lake District and get home this afternoon, in time to go to the allotment and do other self-sufficiency things.

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At the Pink Picnic in the Park

I was asked by Newcastle Lib Dems to help run the stand at the Pink Picnic in the Park in Leazes Park. So here I am on the stand surrounded by muddy paths and squelching ground. Just like being on the allotment! Fortunately the rain is holding off for now.

Greg Stone, our candidate for Newcastle East and hopefully slayer of the ineffectual Nick Brown at the general election, has had to leave suddenly as someone has broken into his car and let off the hand brake. So his car started to head down the bank! Given the stands here at the Picnic are on a bit of a slope, and the ground is rather wet, I also feel we are slipping down the slope. Leazes Lake is getting that bit closer!

Meanwhile, the signatures on Fiona Hall MEP's petition on recognising same sex partnerships across Europe is gathering quite a few signatures. Greg should be back soon to take over the stand, hopefully before we end up in the lake!

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MP to be smoked out by party members

Labour MP for Tyne Bridge, Mr David Clelland, is not having a good year. There is open speculation in the North East press about his future following his interesting use of the expenses system to give his then partner Brenda an equity release of £45,000 from his taxpayer funded London home. (Shortly afterwards Brenda became Mrs Clelland.) To add to his troubles, it was revealed that Mr Clelland had bought a rather attractive "oriental rug" and tried to get the taxpayer to pick up the bill for it.

Mr Clelland has also been one of the leading critics of the government's policy on smoking. He led the unsuccessful attempt to have private members' clubs excluded from the ban on smoking in public places. More recently he has been trying to incinerate government plans to ban tobacco displays in shops. The Observer recently attacked him for not declaring an interest in the issue. It turns out his step-daughter is head of a pro-smoking lobby group that is financed by the tobacco industry to fight the retail display ban.

Now Mr Clelland's troubles are a bit closer to home. Gateshead Council's Labour group will tomorrow move and debate a motion at full council highlighting the deaths and ill health caused by smoking in Gateshead - pointing out that the smoking-related health situation in the borough is amongst the worst in the country.

Interestingly, the motion goes on to demand that the MPs of the borough support a ban on point of sale promotions of tobacco in shops. Most Labour councillors in Gateshead come from the new Gateshead constituency for which Mr Clelland was narrowly selected to fight the next general election. His Tyne Bridge constituency is being scrapped.

So on the big, high profile issue on which Mr Clelland is battling, his own troops appear not only to be failing to back him, they are demanding he abandons the line he is taking. Is this the opening shot is a Gateshead Labour plot to rid themselves of this MP? Are there ambitious people in the Labour group with their sights set on his seat? Is Mr Clelland about to be smoked out?

Bumping into a "former socialist"

I was in Gateshead Civic Centre this morning to attend Cabinet and bumped into a senior member of the Gateshead Labour party. To spare him his blushes, I will not mention his name! He was talking about his villas in Spain. "How interesting it is to see a socialist engaging in the world of the multiple home owning democracy, even if the homes are abroad!" I joked.

"Former socialist," he corrected me!

I'm sure the company he keeps in the Labour Party is of like mind!

The Monday morning blog - no train journey today

For the first time in nearly a decade (other than holidays and times when I worked from home) I am not spending a Monday morning on the train to London. Bliss! Not that it's very relaxing here. Okay, I didn't have to get up at 6.40am, but I have had to make a trip to the allotment and now I am back home, surrounded by papers I need to read for meetings tonight and tomorrow. Meanwhile an email has arrived asking me to facilitate a meeting next Monday in Cumbria of the county council group.

So I am rapidly back into the swing of things (not that I was ever really out of them.)

Yesterday I paid a visit to Newcastle North constituency, a key battleground in the North East. The news from there is that Little Big McHenderson, the Labour MP (and a definite vote winner - for the Lib Dems) has announced his retirement at the general election. Whether or not this is to spend more time with his burgers (he's on McDonald's payroll as an "adviser") is not clear.

I was also out collecting petition signatures against Labour's cuts to flower beds in Whickham (Labour call them "efficiency savings"). We got about 70 signatures.

I'm off to bake bread now!
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Three quarters of a million YouTube viewings

Another milestone in my bid to conquer the known universe - whilst I was on holiday my YouTube videos reached three quater of a million viewings. Sadly, for the rest of the world hoping desperately that I would get a life, I have over 2 hours of video shot in Paris, Norway, Faroe Islands, Iceland and the Orkney Islands over the past 3 weeks which will all be edited and uploaded to YouTube.

If anyone is short of something constructive to do, feel free to boost my viewing figures further at www.youtube.com/jonathanwallace

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National Express resigns as the Fat Controller

It seems everything happened whilst I was away. Michael Jackson died (we had previously tried to get tickets for the O2 concerts when they were first announced but found they were sold out). Britain had a heatwave (we were getting worried as we sailed around the North Atlantic that all our crops would be frazzled by the time we got back - fortunately they are all doing well.). Cowley St suffered a flood on floor three right next to my old desk. (I always miss the exciting stuff!)

But the big news in my absence was that National Express decided to hand back the keys to the East Coast railway line. Seems as though National Excess couldn't afford the fare. Quite when they will hand over the service is not known but it is rather ironic that just as I stop using the service as a regular traveller, they decide they want to hand over the service to people who know how to run trains.

It is doubly ironic that I should find myself writing this post on the National Express train heading to Newcastle. At least however I am heading home.

I feel sorry for the staff running the rail service. Not only do they have to put up with passengers upset by management decisions to cancel trains, they are about to have their third employer in two years.

The question now is what happens to the franchise. I have seen suggestions that the government wants to offload it as quickly as possible. There are some who want it fully nationalised. There are times when putting a company into public ownership is the right thing to do. There are other times when public ownership is inappropriate or just plain damaging. I certainly don't support public ownership simply for the sake of it. I'll leave that to the Labour dinosaurs. The railways themselves did not do well under state ownership. Remember Beeching was a government appointee with a government remit to hack down large parts of the rail network. In effect British Rail was neglected as governments were not committed to investment and making it a success. There are plenty of faults with the current private franchising operation, but outside Network Rail, the private operators are at least committed to making running trains a success (even if like National Express they make a hash of it.)

I can't imagine for a moment that a Tory government would look on a publicly-owned rail system favourably despite their protestations of support, which we all know is drivel. A rail network fully owned by the public would not fare well under the Tories.

Perhaps what we need to do is work out what the final shape and purpose of a rail system should be and then decide the ownership on the basis of how best to deliver that vision.

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The Monday Morning Blog -Back in the UK

We arrived at Harwich at 8am today and we are now on the coach heading to Victoria. A very pleasant holiday and we are thinking of returning to Iceland to see the country in more detail. The trouble with doing a cruise is the rather fleeting glimpses gained of places visited. Iceland has too much interesting geology and history to do on three one day visits. We need much longer there. Whilst I think it unlikely we will get back to the Faroes, we are likely to return to Norway. It is, after all, only a ferry ride away from Tyneside.

I wouldn't mind returning to the Orkneys, though it would be as a stepping stone to visit the Shetlands. Incidentally, the amusing incident of the holiday was in the Orkneys. The local MP, Alisdair Carmichael, had picked up from Facebook that I had arrived in Kirkwall and sent me a message suggesting we meet up. Alas, we didn't have time to do so as we were only there for half a day. But we did speak on the phone. Facebook, internet, mobile phones. There's no escaping them!

Apparently there has been a heatwave in the UK whilst I was away. And the first thing that happens when we set foot again back here? - it rains. Welcome back! Mind you, I guess the allotment could do with a heavy downpour.

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In the Orkneys

We have just arrived in Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands, having spent a day and a half sailing across the North Atlantic from Iceland. So we've done volcanoes, whale watching, geysers and waterfalls. Today we go to Skara Brae and then it's back to Harwich for the end of this holiday.

Given the poor signal at sea, I turned on the blackberry as we arrived this morning in Kirkwall and got a bucketful of emails.
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MP's staff car travel claim and the Sedgefield By-election

Do you remember the Sedgefield by-election? I do! I went to do the photos and video for the Lib Dem campaign (and managed to write off one video camera in the process when I got caught in one of those massive downpours.)


I wasn't the only councillor from Gateshead to be involved with the by-election. Paul Foy, Labour councillor for Birtley and office assistant for Blaydon MP David Anderson, was there as well. The reason I knew that is down to Councillor Peter Mole, a Labour council cabinet member. At full council on 19th July 2007, on the same day as the by-election, he announced that Cllr Foy was down in Sedgefield helping Labour in the by-election. As is so often the case, Cllr Mole is a useful font of wisdom when it comes to what's happening in the local Labour party!

I was therefore intrigued by the following claim for "staff car travel" made by Mr Anderson on 28th July 2007, just 9 days after the by-election. The amount was for £214.80. That seems an awful lot for one month's car use by a member of staff and, unless I have missed it, I can find no other similar claim anywhere in Mr Anderson's accounts. In other words this claim seems to be a one off.


Now, we all know that an MP's office budget cannot be used for party political purposes. Paying staff expenses to help Labour in a by-election is certainly not a permitted use of taxpayer funded office allowances. Quite what the claim in Mr Anderson's allowance was for, and which member of staff it covered, are not clear from the published accounts. All but the actual amount has been covered up.

So, could Mr Anderson enlighten us with the details as to what the purpose of the "car travel" claim of his staff member was for?

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Norway and Faroes now done

The GPRS signal is rather variable out here as we head around the north of Iceland so whether or not this post will get through immediately or wait in the queue for the signal is yet to be seen. Anyway, we did Norway last week, visiting Flam and Alesund. We were whale watching as we headed for the Faroe Islands on Saturday and we also experienced 24 hour daylight.

We've done one stop in Iceland this morning, to look at lava flows and go swimming in a hot lake. Very relaxing, except we had to get up at 6am to do it. We are now heading anti-clockwise around Iceland and should be in Reykjavik tomorrow.

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Dave Anderson expenses - councillor's business benefits

Before going on holiday, I found a bit of time to go through the claims and receipts of Labour MPs in Gateshead. And some very interesting reading they make. So here's the first in a series of interesting highlights.

Blaydon MP David Anderson paid a company from his taxpayer funded office allowance £2056.25 in March 2006 for "consultancy, constituency office support and development, staff development, casework management, media handling and parliamentary reports."

In December 2007 a payment of £4,459 was paid to the same company, this time in connection with Mr Anderson's annual report.

The company in question is Mapset Ltd. I can reveal that the director of this company is a Mr Gary Haley, a Gateshead Labour Councillor.

He had previously been Labour candidate in my ward but at his 3rd attempt at election his vote spectacularly collapsed. He then turned his attention to Dunston Hill and Whickham East ward, a very marginal Lib Dem held seat. During his two attempts to get elected there I am pleased to say that the Lib Dem majority increased substantially.

Mr Haley then jumped wards again in July 2007 to be Labour candidate in Dunston and Teams, a safe Labour ward, which resulted in his election as councillor (it was his 6th attempt.)

I found the following description of Mapset on the Journal website from 12 August 2003:

"Mapset has built up a reputation for high-quality book design for large-scale projects in environmental publicity.

"But it also works on projects including map-based corporate publicity."

Quite how all this fits in with running a constituency office, casework management, media handling and parliamentary reports is not clear.

£6500 of taxpayers' money paid to Mr Anderson's friend's business is a great deal of money. I am a great believer in ensuring as much support as possible goes to local businesses where they are able to supply good quality goods and services at a competitive rate.

So I can only hope that Mr Anderson wanted to ensure other local businesses got a fair chance to bid for the contract. After all, I'm sure Mr Anderson would not want to be seen favouring a business run by one of his Labour chums.

So perhaps he could enlighten us as to the tendering process he used and, without giving away any commercial confidentiality, indicate how many other offers for the same work resulted from the bidding process and therefore how much was saved by opting for Mr Haley's company.
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Just arrived in Norway

A very calm crossing of the North Sea. It was more like sailing on the Mediterranean, especially given the temperatures. The last time we sailed across the North Sea to Norway was on the ferry in November 2003 in the middle of a heavy storm. Yours truely was very seasick!

We have just arrived at Flam and we are due to go ashore shortly.
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About to pack

I have just left George Crozier's leaving do in Westminster. Contrary to popular opinion, as implied by one of my regular readers, only a small number of people are leaving Cowley St. We are moving on for different reasons and we are all being replaced! So sorry Kevin, not quite the story you were suggesting!

Anyway, I am heading back to the flat now to pack for our holiday. We leave tomorrow for a cruise to Norway, Faeroes, Iceland and the Orkneys. A chance to take lots of photos and video. The house, allotment and cat Freda are being looked after by Mam, Dad and our friend Glenys. We have decided however that this is possibly not the best time of year to go on holiday, just when the first crops are ready for harvesting on the allotment.
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Back in the UK

I am on the Eurostar having just arrived on the UK side of the Tunnel. A pleasant trip and a bag full of digital photos and videos to sort.

Sitting down to have a sandwich for lunch shortly before leaving Paris, and looking at the messages I sent on my blackberry, I spotted a dreadful typo in my blog post yesterday about Labour MP Doug Henderson. I wrote about his being "burghered" (as in the citizens of a town) by Gordon Brown when I meant to say he was "burgered" as in made into the food so beloved of McDonalds! Oh well, time to burger off!

Meanwhile I got a message this morning. A request has gone in that an additional section be added to one of the publications I produce. It inevitably means I will be working tomorrow. Oh joy! This was meant to be my holiday.

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Costing an arm and a leg in Paris

As promised in my earlier post, here I am at Montmartre, Paris, having dinner. I have to confess I am horrified at the costs here. £10 for a pint for example. Over £10 for an omlette. Paris has gone up so much in price since I was last here in 2002. But at least the Metro is cheaper than the Tube!

We've done Eiffel Tower, Arch de Triomphe, Pyramid at the Louvre, Notre Dame and now Montmarte. Having broken the bank, we'll try to find somewhere that does not measure its prices in astronomical units. Not even MPs on £400 a month taxfree food allowances could survive here!
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Is MP Henderson about to be burgered by Brown?

Little Dougie Henderson, Labour MP for Newcastle North, could see his Parliamentary salary reduced if Gordon Brown gets his own way. Chairman Brown, no doubt supported by First Secretary Comrade Mandelson, is looking at paying MPs less when they have significant earnings from outside Parliament. Little Big McHenderson is earning a whopping £25 grand a year for "advice" from the capitalist giant that is so loved by the socialist brethren. He claims that he only has to give 10 days a year to the job telling McDonalds how to sell burgers to the great British public.



The talk in the press is of Brown moving to cut the pay of MPs earning bags of cash from outside sources as it is a way of putting in the boot on Tory MPs, so many of whom earn great dollops as directors, company advisors and so on. The problem is that a bunch of Labour MPs will be caught in the same net.



So, is Little Big McHenderson about to be burgered by Brown?



Mind you, Comrade Alan Milburn, part time MP for Darlington and a fan of keeping people in emplyment (he practices what he preaches by having 5 or 6 jobs himself in addition to being MP) looks set to be burghered even more by Brown. His earning from outside interests make Little Big McHenderson's burger money look like chicken feed (which is probably more nutritious than the burghers he promotes.)

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Off to Paris

I'm on Eurostar travelling to Paris, having just left St Pancras. I'll be in France only for a one night stay. It's my first Eurostar trip since the international terminal was moved from Waterloo and having now seen St Pancras, it thoroughly deserves all the accolades it has received.

Not everything this weekend has gone to plan. I had intended sorting my rather neglected garden in London yesterday. I didn't even manage to set foot in it. My excuse is that it was the first day of my holiday.

Anyway, my next report will come from somewhere in Paris, probably from Montmartre.
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Over and out

This is me outside Cowley St today, my last day on the Lib Dem staff payroll. I am busy clearing the last bits from my desk. In a few minutes I will be out of the building......

How to make elderflower champagne

Okay, not a political story but I made elderflower champagne over the weekend. When I made it last year and posted up the recipe, various people spoke to me afterwards, having read about it on the blog. So inevitably, here comes the video!

Last day in Cowley St

I am on the train now heading to Victoria for my last day working in Cowley St. I've already had a leaving lunch and a bit of a surprise party with colleagues in the office yesterday. My main leaving do is in July.

So, there we are, another life changing decision has been taken and many challenges ahead. And of course the opportunity to wreak as much havoc on Labour in Gateshead as possible!

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Leaving Cowley St for the Good Life

This Friday is my last day at Cowley St. I am leaving for the Good Life in Gateshead! Literally! My department is being reorganised and I was offered redundancy or interview for one of the new jobs that will be created. The reorganisation is the result of the Bones Review. Lib Dems will know what that is - in a nutshell, a reformed structure for the party centrally that is designed to deal with the demands now placed on the party and takes the organisation forward. Any sensible organisation must review its structure to ensure it best operates in the current and likely future environment.

The outcome for my job is that my functions are being split between 2 new posts and my current job ceases to exist. My original plan was to apply for one of the new jobs but after a great deal of thought, I realised that now is the ideal time to pick up where I left off 9 years ago when I first started working in London.

One of my big aims has been to become self-sufficient, to grow all our own food. We have made a start with this, taking on a derelict allotment 2 years ago. It is now into production but needs more work. Saving the environment is not just something I want to talk about. We each have to do our bit and for me, I want to do that bit more. Growing all our own food means we will greatly reduce our impact on the environment. I am looking forward enormously to working on this.

But there are other things in the pipeline as well. I will be able to pursue a career as a failed novelist and finish the novel I have been writing for the past 10 years! Finding a publisher may be a bit more difficult. I also have plans to make a series of local history videos and publications. All these have been shelved for years but now there is a possibility of doing them.

And finally, I am much more at home in politics being a field officer rather than stuck behind a desk in HQ producing material for others to use. I have done as much campaigning as I can in Gateshead whilst doing my London stuff but I want to do so much more on my home patch. We have target seats I am now signed up to help in the region. And in Gateshead I will be taking a more hands on role in taking the battle to the Labour party. The socialist brethren had better watch out - I'm back!

So, after 7 years at Cowley St, and 2 before that at the LGA, I'm coming home for good. Deciding to leave HQ has not been easy and I couldn't have asked for a better bunch of people to work with. But there are times when you know a lifetime opportunity is waiting to be grasped and may never come again.

So thank you to all my colleagues in Lib Dem HQ, it's been a great 7 years. And to everyone else watch out for things happening in Gateshead.
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The Monday Morning Blog - Balls and the lack of Tory scrutiny

I see that the Guardian today has interview Ed Balls, the scariest member of the Government and the Chancellor Brown never had. In it he argued that Labour is in danger of letting in the Conservatives by fighting themselves. The bout of infighting means that Labour are not scrutinising Cameron and his party.

Balls, dare I say it, is correct. He is also correct in his assertion that parties that are divided do not win elections. Asking what the Conservatives stand for is a perfectly legitimate question. With the greatest of respects to the Conservatives, being nice and cuddly does not constitute a political programme. Even Blair in his cuddliest days in opposition had some policies, limited though they were. It could be argued that with little of substance in Tory policy, there lurks a bigger danger of old style Toryism waiting to raise its ugly head when it feels the time is safe.

All of this is of course being overlooked whilst Labour engages in its own suicidal civil war. Perhaps the focus on the divisions helps mask the fact that few seem to know what Labour now stands for, reflecting the outlook people have on the Conservatives. Maybe there is method to Labour's madness after all!

"Clinging to Power" is hardly a great campaign slogan. It didn't work for John Major in the mid 1990s and there is no reason for believing it will work for Labour now.
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When an apology is all about saving your skin

Had I been a Labour member last week, I would have been livid at the behaviour of Hazel Blears. Resigning from government is one thing. Resigning on the eve of an election, and sticking the knife in the back of your own party on the eve of an election, all for the sake of your own ego, is unforgivable. Blears, always something of a joke in government, and always with that irritating grin welded to her face, set out to do the maximum damage to Brown. And she did it in the most arrogant of ways.

She banked on bringing down Brown. She believed she had the power to set off the powder keg below the PM. She ended up showing how arrogant and out of touch she is. That's not an unusual description for many government ministers. They've been there so long that they think the world revolves around them. Blears, like Flint, simply had egos that were too big to cope with the situation.

What struck me most when Blears stormed out of the Cabinet was that the people on the ground in her Salford constituency were not in anyway complimentary about her. Yet she was behaving as if her journey back north would be met by acclamation by the people.

I suspect her contrition and apology today have been inspired by the verbal savaging she is likely to have received from local Labour members and constituents. She does of course have a selection meeting coming up and a skin of her own that needs to be saved.

No doubt a week ago she was dreaming of a cabinet position under a new PM. Now she has the nightmare of being booted out of her job as MP by her own party. If that is what happens, I'm sure plenty of Labour members will be happy to see the back of her. The rest of us won't miss her either.

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Heading back to Gateshead

I have council later today but instead of travelling home last night, I am heading home this morning. Last night was Greg Simpson's leaving do (he was Director of Policy at Lib Dems). He is off to do a high powered job at the Ministry of Defence. Anyway, the leaving do kept me in London overnight.

Coming up at council will be a motion to be moved by me calling on National Express to drop its new seat reservation charge. I am completely unaffected by the charge as it only applies to open standard class tickets. The tickets I buy to travel between home and London are prebooked and therefore come with an automatic seat reservation. National Express say that unclaimed seats are blocking the chance for other passengers to have a seat whilst travelling. This is rubbish. No unclaimed seat remains empty for long! In reality this is just a way of raising extra income.

Anyway, the big hurdle today for me lies just ahead. When I get to Victoria, I have to get across London to Kings Cross with the Tube on strike and the buses packed out. I've worked out the route I can take on foot instead. Lots of good healthy exercise in all that clean central London air!
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Excellent news from the Commons

Brown survived last night, as predicted. Excellent news. He survives to lead the government of the walking dead to Labour defeat.
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The Monday Morning Blog - Brown will survive tonight

Having predicted for two years that Brown will survive to the general election, I did have a wobble last week when Blears self-destructed. All is back to normal now in the sense that Brown is on the rocks but secure in his hold as Labour leader.

The problem for the Labour rebels is that they have no candidate to challenge Brown. And even if they did, they would have to get over the hurdles which have been placed in the way in the rulebook which were specifically designed to prevent leadership challenges. It is also clear from the past week that the Rebel Alliance is a disorganized bunch who have failed to attract big names from the cabinet. With Darling, Milliband and Johnson staying loyal, Brown is safe.

What also holds it together for Brown is MAD - mutually assured destruction. Were Labour to dump Brown now, the demand for a general election would be all-consuming. And do you think Labour would want a general election in the current climate? Their one and only option is to hold on to the bitter end in the hope that the expenses scandal can be sorted and there is an upturn in the economy. Even then, there is no guarantee of improved Labour prospects. The economy recovered under John Major in the mid 1990s but the Conservatives went down to heavy defeat in 1997.

So whether Labour love him or loath him, they are stuck with Brown.
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Fiona re-elected in North East

I was at the Gateshead count where we got just under 9000 votes to Labour's 13,000. UKIP were 3rd and the Tories 4th. I got home and waited nervously for the North East result to be declared.

Our fear was that Fiona Hall could lose out to the UKIP surge. Fiona only just won her seat last time round from Labour. Once the picture of Labour collapse was clear, we knew Labour were not the risk this time. As it turned out, Fiona was re-elected with a comfortableish majority. UKIP did surge butt not by enough. Delighted to see her back in.

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Houdini Brown strikes again

Watching the news this afternoon is like watching a drama unfold. As it was, when I got back from the verification this morning, I watched the news of the reshuffle and then fell asleep for three hours. I woke up to a back-to-the-future world in which Brown was still PM and Labour were still at war with themselves.

Nevertheless, Brown appears to have seen off the rebellion. The suicide bombers of Blears and Purnell have been nothing but duds. Caroline Flint has failed to spark a rebellion. And she looks absurb anyway following her gushing praise of Brown less than 24 hours earlier. Now, she simply looks like she has thrown her toys out of the pram following a strop caused by not being offered a cabinet post.

Meanwhile, the Cabinet has a ring of something from the nineteenth century. All those Lords. Seems as though Labour have run out of talent in the Commons.

So Houdini Brown escapes again and the spineless jellies of the Labour party are stuck with the person they know is so very wrong for the post of PM. Not that the opposition want him gone before the general election. Time, I guess, to say thank you to all those jellies for their spinelessness.

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All previous predictions are off

Gordon Brown will continue as Labour leader until the general election. That is the prediction I have been making for the past year or so, ever since the rumblings of discontent began within Labour ranks about Brown. The resignation of Blears could well be the final nail in the coffin of that prediction. The Jacqui Smith announcement yesterday was something Brown could survive with a reshuffle. Now I am not so sure. It appears Blears has deliberately attempted to undermine Brown. What a strange time we are living in. I have never known anything like this before.
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More focus deliveries

I am currently walking to Lobley Hill from my village in Sunniside to deliver 500 focuses. It also gives me the chance to check out some casework issues and check on wild food sources on the way! Then I have to get back home to write my final focus for this election campaign.
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The Monday Morning Blog - move over Darling

It's day 23,456,936 of the MPs expenses scandal (or at least it feels like it!) and the spotlight is on Chancellor Alistair Darling. His sin, according to the Daily Telegraph, was to claim on two homes at the same time. Effectively, he claimed in advance for the service charge on his flat and shortly afterwards was appointed Chancellor with a posh address in the exclusive and sought after suburb of Downing St. I understand from the BBC this morning he has paid back the sum in question.

Meanwhile, it was revealed that Mr Darling appeared to have been living previously at no fixed abode - or rather, had switched his 2nd home 4 times in 4 years. What a pity he is presiding over increasing housing shortages and a slump in new house building for everyone else. But at least he's okay (until Brown decides to rid himself of Darling and appoints his chum Ed Balls in his place.)

The sacking of Darling as Chancellor is not that far fetched. Vince Cable has called for it! And if past precedent is anything to go by, Labour will ignore Vince's call, and then a while later will adopt it as their own idea.

No train journey to London this morning for me. No experience of National Excess's cancelled trains. No crawling out of bed at an uncivilised hour of the morning. This week I am at home to help in the Euro elections on my home patch.

Printing on a Sunday evening

I am in the office in Whickham printing my next Focus newsletter for Sunniside. And I can see as I look from the window a beautiful red sunset over the Derwent Valley. A gloriously sunny weekend which has resulted in my back being slightly burnt - I took my shirt off for an hour yesterday whilst on the allotment. Bit of a mistake.

I am waiting for Neil Bradbury, our Blaydon candidate, to arrive at the office. He has just produced a Focus for one of the towns in the constituency so will need to use the printing machine after me.

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What's coming up this weekend

I am sitting on the train heading home at the moment with my blackberry buzzing every few minutes. People are responding to a message I posted up an hour or so ago on Facebook about myself. You have to be a Facebook friend to know what it is. I'm leaving the announcement on the blog for a short while but let's just say that it means quite a big change for me, I am looking forward to it and it is something I have been planning for years.

Anyway, with that tantalising glimpse into my future now done, let's look at what's coming up this weekend. Tomorrow morning I will be at the Sunniside Methodist Chapel Fayre. My trips there always result in considerable purchases of strawberry plants and cakes. I see no reason why tomorrow will be any different.

Then I'm writing and delivering more focuses as well as spending a bit of time on the allotment. I have an entire bed to dig over. I'm thinking of putting in our old Ford Escort under the scrappage scheme to get a new rotovator!

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Why does McDonalds pay this Labour MP £2500 a day for "advice"

We have just had a snippet of what is to come shortly when MPs are required to publish their earnings and time spent on second jobs. Labour were the keenest advocates of this requirement, possibly thinking that it was part time Tories who would provide the most interesting copy for the media.

Alas for the hardened socialist brethren, it appears that one of their own is amongst the first to have his other earnings dragged out of the closet. And horror of horrors, the MP is on the payroll of the great symbol of capitalism, McDonalds.

Little Doug Henderson, the largely unknown Labour MP for Newcastle North, earns £25,000 for ten days work a year "advising" McDonalds. In case you have eaten too many Big Macs and are feeling somewhat mentally incapacitated as a result, that's £2500 for each day worked. What a whopper! (Okay wrong company!) There was I thinking it was only failed bank executives who clocked up salaries on that scale.

Quite why McDonalds think Little Big MacHenderson has anything to offer in the way of "advice" is beyond me. He didn't exactly cover himself in glory when Northern Rock (based in his constituency) went belly up. His advice to the government was to ignore Vince Cable's call to nationalise the failed company.

Anyway, I hope McDonalds feel they get their money's worth. After all, they have to sell an awful lot of big macs to pay for his advice. As for the money, I bet he's loving it.

It's not the first time I have seen this giant of capitalism cuddling up to crusty old socialism. I've visited Yalta a couple of times in the last few years. (It's in the Crimea in the Ukraine.) The Lenin statues are all still in place but the city's McDonalds on the promenade sits right next door to a Lenin statue. I bet he's turning in his grave (or in his Moscow mausoleum)!
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Labour MP's tax claims collapse overnight

This may just be an unbelievable coincidence! Last night I blogged that the Labour MP for Durham City, Roberta Blackman-Woods, was claiming that households were saving an "average" of £200 a month due to the VAT cut. I calculated this would mean a family would need to spend £8,000 on VAT rated goods a month.

I made a return visit to her website where she made the claim this morning and found an overnight rewriting of the offending article. Alas, the fantastic claims for the VAT savings have collapsed as quickly as Labour's credibility. Now she is claiming a mere £200 a year saving.

Her press release however is well worth a read. It is a good lesson in how to write the most puerile drivel going: http://www.24ten.co.uk/news/news_detail.asp?aID=599

This Labour MP thinks the average family spends over £8000 a month

Roberta Blackman-Woods is the barely known Labour MP for Durham City where she is defending a majority of around 3,000 over the Lib Dems. Hopefully, she will be one of those swept out at the general election when a bit of serious sweeping-out-of-the-contents-of-the-political-stable action by the electorate will reduce Labour's ranks to a rump.

She is a mega-super-loyalist backer of the Labour government, always voting for the whip. Her latest claim however is a real eyebrow raiser. According to her, the average family is benefitting to the tune of £200 a month from the VAT cut.

To achieve that sort of saving, the "average family" will have to spend in the region of £8,000 a month on VAT rated goods.

Not even MPs spending their full 2nd homes allowance will come close that that figure! This one really does take the biscuit (VAT zero rated of course!)

I'm sure Roberta Deadman-Walking's constituents will be interested to know how much she thinks they all have to spend.

Weekend round up

It is Tuesday but it is the start of the working week. Nevertheless, there is no "Monday (or Tuesday) Morning Blog" this week. It's half term, the political stories are all about expenses and that has been done to death on this blog (though I guess we will return to it at some point) and I used my main bit of material on Sunday for what would otherwise be the Monday blog post.

So, instead, here's my roundup of the last couple of day. On Sunday I got my hands dirty on the allotment battling with the fantastic crop of weeds that insists on growing the moment my back is turned. Removing them is a vast but delicate operation that results in a gigantic compost heap and sore knees. We also went on a foraging expedition - well, a walk to Sunniside Park, looking for beech and sloes to pick in the autumn. We found what we were looking for.

And yesterday, we went along to the Northumberland County Show. Photos for this will follow some time this week. Back at the house I uploaded the video that I have sold to a publisher to their ftp site. A 3 minute video, high resolution, took up nearly a gig of memory space even when zipped. Quite how my old, creaking home pc coped I'm not sure but it took over 4 hours to upload to the site!
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Off to the Northumberland County Show

This takes me back to the time nearly 20 years ago when I was candidate in Hexham. We are off to the Northumberland County show to look at tractors, sheep and chickens and generally have a good time. We are not looking to buy a duck house as a second home and we won't be buying horse manure (we use cattle manure on our allotment!) We are simply going there enjoy ourselves and get more ideas as we move towards self-sufficiency.

We left the car at home and are on the bus to Newcastle now. We then get the train out to the Tyne Valley. So in respect of getting up early to catch a train, it's just like any other Monday morning!

The first time we went to the show, it took us half an hour to get out of the car park. Since the show is next door to Corbridge train station, it would be madness (and more environmentally damaging) to drive. And our clapped out Ford Escort would have to complete with all those Range Rovers for a parking space. So let the train take the strain.
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Who said real politics is suspended?

Yesterday morning I headed down to Whickham village centre to help run a street stall with colleagues. We were collecting signatures on petitions opposing new parking charges plans for the village and proposals to take away some of our flower beds. In essence, it is the sort of thing that local politics is all about. But given the general climate about politicians at the moment, we gathered with a sense of trepidation. Just how were people going to respond to us?

Were people going to be angry, treat us with a "plague on all your houses" approach or be interested in what the petitions were about. As we started to gather signatures, I noticed we were all defensively making jokes to constituents about signing cheques for 2nd homes, clearing moats and buying manure and duck houses. People laughed and then talked about the issues on which we were collecting signatures. Very quickly, we discovered people were interested in local concerns and our battles for better facilities. And whilst people are hopping mad about some of the unforgivable expenses stories, for them, it was business as usual for local politics.

We now have 500 signatures on the petition opposing the new parking charges plan.

Afterwards, I went down to the village of Ryton where the Hirings (the annual fair) was on. I met up with more of my colleagues were doing a roaring trade in tombola tickets on the Lib Dem stall. Local politics, local campaigning, local fund raising, all still happening. Here in Gateshead at least, normal activities continue, despite the best efforts of Expensesgate to get in the way.

Visit Gateshead!

Another of my videos. This one is to encourage tourists to come to Gateshead. (I hope my appearance does not put people off!)

A patchy Conservative recovery

The most interesting point about the Chopwell and Rowlands Gill by-election in Gateshead last week was the big fall in the Conservative vote and share. It falls into a pattern of by-elections and to some extent local elections that has been in place for some time. The Conservative recovery in recent years has been patchy. It has been strong in some areas. In other areas it has simply not happened at all. The Labour heartlands used to have a strong Conservative vote. There were plenty of people who could be termed "working class Tories". And there have always been "middle class" areas within the Labour heartlands where in the past the Conservatives had significant traction. The Conservative appeal in so many Labour heartlands has now gone. The implosion of the Conservative organisation in the 80s and especially the 90s in Labour heartlands has, other than on occasioanly islands, been so extensive that there are no grassroots left to grown when the political sun shines for the Conservatives.

In by-election after by-election in wards in Labour heartlands, the Conservatives are more often than not coming behind the BNP in 4th place. In Chopwell and Rowlands Gill they were saved from humiliation of 4th place simply because there were only 3 parties standing. Nevertheless, the Conservative share was down 8%. It should be remembered that when Rowlands Gill was a ward in its own right 30 years ago, it returned Conservative councillors. It is a prosperous town which is exactly the sort of area where the Conservatives would normally be expected to do well. Last week they barely registered at all with the voters.

It was the same in my ward last year. Whickham South was Conservative until 1986. In the byelection in July, their vote was tiny. In a byelection in Salford yesterday, they came 4th. In a recent byelection in Hartlepool they came 5th. There is a clear pattern developing of the Conservatives being an irrelevant fringe party in some areas.

There are some exceptions. North Tyneside and Sunderland for example. But cross the border from those councils and the Conservatives are back in a desert.

Back in the 90s, Labour's then recovery was marked by the election of Labour councillors in areas where few had dreamed of Labour ever being elected. I always remember the shock people experienced when Labour councillors were elected in Isle of Wight. The equivalent Tory recovery is much more patchy. There are some in the Conservatives who think the general election is in the bag for them. They should not be so easy however with their confidence. They need to gain 130 seats to scrape in with a minimal majority. That is going to be a major challenge.
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Alan Beith as speaker

Alan Beith has put his hat in the ring to be the new speaker. Alan is superbly qualified for the post, not the least because he is respected across the parties. So I wish him well and if he is successful, I know he will do a good job.

The small drawback is that the speaker goes from being a party politician to being above politics. The effect of that will be that we lose our only Lib Dem MP is the region.
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And the oscar nomination for the best video shot on an island few have heard of is.....

I got a message tonight as I was sitting in Cowley St working on a Focus. It was from a major publiching company. They want to buy one of my videos! The price on offer is not going to make me rich but it's not to be sniffed at! It was shot on a tiny island in the Indian Ocean 18 months ago. All about how the islanders make salt from sea water! The only drawback is that I need to edit a high resolution version. That shouldn't take too long. I'll do it this weekend in between delivering Focuses and planting cabbages!

So, to the senior Labour councillor in Gateshead (the mayor!) who was talking to me at the Whickham Fayre on Saturday, and who poked fun at my videos - in a nice way of course - I have only one thing to say: keep watching my videos!
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The Monday morning blog: equity release for MPs - all within the rules of course

I was late to bed on Saturday evening, and just before I decided to call it a day, I caught the news on Sky that Fraser Kemp and David Clelland were the next features of the Telegraph's rolling campaign to out the more interesting details of MP expenses.

Having suggested to colleagues for a few weeks that the expenses of one MP in particular would make interesting reading, I ended up receiving a string of phone calls on Sunday morning, some of them before I was fully awake and out of bed, congratulating me on my prediction and urging me to get a copy of the Sunday Telegraph. So off I went to Sunniside Chapel Stores, via the allotment to open the greenhouse window, and bought a copy of the Telegraph for the first time in my life. And for good measure, I bought a copy of our regional newspaper, the Sunday Sun, which was featuring David Clelland, MP for Tyne Bridge (which is mainly in Gateshead) on the front page.

I am not going into detail at this point about Mr Clelland's expenses other than to outline them. He bought out his then partner's share of their jointly owned flat in London, allowing her to realise a substantial capital gain. Mr Clelland paid for this gain by increasing the mortgage on the flat and then passing the increased costs on to the Fees Office. I presume that Brenda paid capital gains tax on the substantial gains she made on this investment in the "booming" London property market, as Mr Clelland described it. Shortly afterwards, Brenda became Mrs Clelland.

Well, what an interesting equity release scheme for MPs! And of course, it's on expenses. I hope Mrs Clelland invested the money wisely.

Meanwhile, Fraser Kemp must have been three sheets to the wind when he bought 16 sheets for his one bedroom flat in London, all on expenses. It is mind boggling to think of what he needed so many sheets for. The quantity outstripped the requirements of a modest bed and breakfast establishment or a hospital ward! No doubt he turned as white as a sheet when he was exposed.

And finally to mortgages. Having gone through the reverse of equity release last year by paying off a chunk of our mortgage on our house, it is definitely a day to remember! (For us it was made more memorable when our bank temporarily went AWOL with our cash.) MPs Chaytor and Morley must have been on interest only or endowment mortgages (the figures for interest payment claims were just too high for a repayment mortgage that was about to be paid off). To pay off an interest only or endowment mortgage, the mortgagee has to hand over the money for the outstanding loan. Interest of £800 a month (which was what was claimed by Morley) equated back then to a mortgage in the region of £150,000. I can't imagine any circumstances in which a person will forget about having written out a cheque or carrying out a bank transfer for such a huge sum of money. So I find their explanation that it was all a mistake and they hadn't been aware that they had paid off their mortgages a bit hard to swallow.

No doubt, I will be returning to MP mortgage arrangements and equity release in the not too distant future.

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Things to do instead of watching Eurovision

1)write a Focus newsletter

2)have a nice long hot bath

3)catch up on the latest depressing news about MPs' expenses

4)All the above.

I'm opting for 4. I like multi-tasking.

Not a National Express rant

There is a possibility that National Express may have to give up the East Coast franchise. The idea has been doing the rounds for some weeks. It appears clear that, as the bid for the franchise was made during the Brown boom years, they have offered too much. Now that we are in the Brown bust years, the projections of revenue and passenger numbers are simply not enough to provide the income to pay the £1.4 billion they are required to pay over the next few years.. The franchise is going belly up.

The East Coast is the only profitable line on the rail network. Far from operating on a subsidy, it operates, or at least it did, at a profit. Companies bidding to operate the route, did so by offering a premium. On all other routes, train companies offered to run the trains on the least subsidy. The East Coast in effect was paying the subsidy for elsewhere on the rail network.

Now National Express is struggling. They have been caught out by the economy going belly up, having successfully bid for the route just as the credit crunch was kicking in. Just as Northern Rock was sinking into a sea of debt, National Express was sailing out onto the sea of train travel from its normal port of All-Things-Bus-And-Coach.

With future passenger figures evaporating, the talk is of their renegotiating or abandoning the franchise. Contrary to what you may think, I am not keen that National Express lose the franchise. I want them to run trains and a good rail service. I want them to stop cancelling the 7.40am on a Monday morning. But the idea that the trains will improve by yet another demoralising change in the franchise is not a view to which I subscribe. That said, I haven't a clue how to solve the problem on paying for and running the railways. State ownership saw the railways normally at the rear end of government investment plans. It meant having a rail system owned and operated by a body that was more interested in putting money into something else. Remember, Beeching was a government appointment and a government act of transport vandalism. So calling for nationalisation may get some people turned on and excited, but they have not yet demonstrated any evidence that the government's buying up of all railway operators will in any way benefit the rail system.

That said, the ownership of the infrastructure by the government is a sensible option. The collapse of Network Rail demonstrated that and there is an interesting comparison with the roads. Both are owned by the state but both are used by private operators.

Which still does not bring me to a solution to the East Coast franchise. Any ideas?

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New Blaydon Blogger

Neil Bradbury, our new candidate for Blaydon, has set up his own blog at http://neilbradbury.blogspot.com/. So pay him a visit and, no doubt, some of you may even want to respond to what he writes!

Chopwell and Rowlands Gill byelection result

Result just through in Chopwell and Rowlands Gill:

Lib Dem 898
Lab 1221
Con 177

Labour usually get in with a majority of 800-1000 so it is down heavily. If you look at my last post, it is in line with that.

The Tory vote however has been more than halved. Admittedly it was over two decades ago but the Tories used to be strong in Rowlands Gill. Now they barely register.
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A prediction for Chopwell and Rowlands Gill byelection

Chopwell and Rowlands Gill byelection in Gateshead today. This is normally a rock solid Labour ward. The Chopwell area has been represented by Labour since the First Eorld War. But Labour is going through a decidely bad patch and the question is, what effect will this have in CRG. The canvass has been encouraging but I like to believe these things when they happen. My feeling is that there will be a low turnout and Labour will hold on, though with a rather slimmed down majority compared to the supersized one they normally have. We will know in about 4 hours.

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Rhubarb!

No, not a comment on the latest revelations of MPs' expenses! It's my first crop from the allotment this year. A large quantity of rhubarb. That should make Cowley St happen. I use colleagues to market test my jam and they love rhubarb and ginger. Normally they can't get enough of the stuff. Well, supplies will soon be replenished!

More about the mad, mad world of Labour

I forgot to mention the following in my blog post this morning about Labour's mad attack on us in a safe seat they are defending in a byelection in Gateshead. A quick recap - Labour spent the weekend putting out leaflets attacking our candidate and foolishly (for Labour) focusing all their efforts on attempting to rebut our campaign. The result is that the entire campaign is now being fought on our agenda which contains a whole string of negatives on Labour. It is a classic on how to boost an opponent and undermine your own candidate!

Anyway, the bit I forgot to include this morning was about one of the photos in one of our Focus newsletters. It was of our candidate outside a boarded up shop in the ward. We are campaigning for the area to be regenerated. Labour however claim the shop there has been open for business for the past two years. They allege that the photo therefore had to be taken over 2 years ago.

It was actually taken one month ago! This incredible Labour gaffe leaves me wondering how much the councillor, who made the attack., knows his ward.

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Labour hit the panic button in by-election

Chopwell and Rowlands Gill in Gateshead is arguably one of Labour's safest wards in the country. Chopwell itself has been represented by Labour since the end of the 1st World War without interruption. A by-election is taking place in the ward and the contest will be held on Thursday.

The other two Labour councillors in the ward are John Hamilton and Mick McNestry. These are two individuals for whom I normally have a bit of time, though given the letters they have put out over the weekend, I suspect the sand is running out in the hour glass on that one, unless I happen to want a bit of time spent on being entertained by political court jesters!.

Yes, we have a classic example of Labour hitting the panic button and suddenly they have made all our issues about their own party, their candidate and their MP into top election issues for their own campaign. It's one of those situations you pray for. You produce your own literature with all your key campaign messages, all of which are damaging to Labour and you think, wouldn't it be fantastic if Labour fought their campaign trying to defend their own negatives and fail to get onto their own positives. Welcome to the mad, mad world of Labour in Chopwell and Rowlands Gill!

The letters they circulated over the weekend defended their decision to select a candidate from outside the ward. They also admit what we have been saying - that their candidate is a "reject" from another ward, having failed in a previous election.

They also have a go at "local lad Ray" - repeating the positive description we have used on him in our own literature! (Our candidate is called Ray Callender and is the only candidate who lives in the ward.)

In the leaflet we put out two weekends ago, we pointed out that the Labour MP for the area, Dave Anderson, had voted with the government on the Gurkhas - backing the government policy to kick many of them out of Britain. "This is quite simply untrue," they claim. Really!? In which case there needs to be an urgent police investigation for the real Mr Anderson must be kidnapped and an imposter put in his place who voted against the Gurkhas!

Labour also defend Mr Anderson's record on Post Offices - maybe it was another imposter who voted to continue closing them! But thanks Labour for focusing attention on a Labour negative.

So Mick and John, many, many thanks for the letters you put out over the weekend. Copies are on their way now to our HQ as examples of counter-productive panic attacks by opponents. If you are needing help to get your letters delivered, give us a call. I'm sure we can give a hand to get them out! They should be worth quite a few votes - to the Lib Dems of course!

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The Monday Morning Blog: how many Tory MPs does it take to change 25 light bulbs?

To which the answer is none. They get someone in to do it for them and then charge it to the taxpayer.

And talking of tax, all those Labour demands that there should be a clampdown on tax avoidance by the rich seem rather hollow now. Leather clad Hilary Blears, dressed for the part of Meatloaf's Eddie in the Rocky Horror Picture Show yesterday may have oozed sympathy for the voters who :"hate" all this, but her posturing simply made matters worse. She made a profit on the sale of her London flat of £45,000, almost twice the average annual wage, and then paid no tax on it, having previously soaked the taxpayer for the cost of the place. I wonder what her struggling constituents made of that.

So, for good measure, here are my proposals for reforming the 2nd homes allowance:

1)No entitlement for London MPs.

2)The constituency home (or within reasonable distance of the constituency) should be regarded as the main home, so the London home is all that is accepted for the allowance.

3)Reduce the level of allowance from the current level of £24,000.

4)Taper the amount an MP can receive. The costs of owning a second home in London go down over time (I can speak from experience) so once the start up costs are met, there is no justification for the continued high payments.

5)No entitlement to 2nd homes allowance for anyone with grace and favour accommodation.

And finally:

6)No entitlement to claim for furniture and electricals. After all, what is to stop them leaching back to the main home? MPs can easily afford to furnish 2 homes on what they earn.
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Give Margaret Moran MP enough rope to hang herself...and she'll claim it on expenses!

I didn't know whether to pity Labour MP Margaret Moran for her incredible stupidity in agreeing to be interviewed about her equally incredible expenses claims or to be angry that she has got away with such an incredible scam. She was certainly on the take today - she took the rope, lots of it, and well and truely hung herself on the BBC. We await the receipts to see if she charged the taxpayer for the rope.

Meanwhile, tourism minister Barbara Folly is hardly an advert for holidays in the UK. The streets are too unsafe for her to venture out of her ironclad, taxpayer funded fortress in Soho. For the cost of her security system we could have paid for half a police officer.

New candidate for Blaydon

Just finished the selection meeting for Blaydon. We have chosen Neil Bradbury as our new candidate. He is currently one of our Euro candidates and is a councillor in Prudhoe in the neighbouring constituency.
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Hustings, allotment and video-making - it must be the weekend coming up

Sitting on the train to Newcastle, I've just had a look at my list of things to do this weekend. Tomorrow morning is the hustings meeting for the Blaydon selection. I've been canvassed by two of the candidates, missed a third who called when I was out, missed a 4th who phoned when I was out and have heard nothing from the fifth. Tomorrow morning we shall know. One of the two candidates who called in person came down to meet up on the allotment! That's dedication! However, I want to see how they perform tomorrow before I take a final decision.

None of the candidates however will be able to do anything other than agree to take large quantities of leaflets for delivery in the Chopwell and Rowlands Gill by-election. The leaflets will be handed out before the speeches. We anticipate getting lots and lots of them delivered this way!

I've also been lined up to do a few photos of historic buildings this weekend. And I have 2 videos to finish filming and editing. Weekends wouldn't be weekends however without work on the allotment. We have a load of courgettes and gherkins to plant and rhubarb to pick.

And finally, on Sunday evening, I have a meeting about a venture with which someone is hoping for our involvement. More about this another time if it gets off the ground.
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David Cameron and the non-election in Newcastle

Does anyone get those David Cameron emails? I do! And I was quietly amused by the one that arrived tonight.

It talks about the local elections and taking the local election message to various named places, including Newcastle. Alas, this reference to my Tyneside neighbours overlooks the fact that there are no local elections in Newcastle this year!

There are also no Conservative councillors in Newcastle and they have no winnable seats.

Not the best flying start to your election campaign, is it David.?
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Weapon of Woolas Destruction

Well, I've seen nothing like it before and it reads more like a plot for a tv drama rather than real life. But Joanna Lumley was not acting today when she confronted and flattened Phil Woolas.

Not even John Major's government got kicked about like that. I'm sure it was a sobering experience for Woolas.
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An amusing incident I must pass on

A colleague of mine in the Lib Dem group in Gateshead passed this on to me and I was rather amused by it. I will not mention names or locations but here goes.

My colleague was delivering some Focus leaflets recently, one of which went through the door of the Labour councllor for the ward where my colleague was delivering. Inside Focus was a story about a local issue we were taking up. Moments after the Focus went through the door, the Labour councillor was running after my colleague demanding to know why Focus didn't mention anything about what he, the Labour councillor, was doing about the issue in question! He seemed most upset that he wasn't mentioned. (We weren't aware he had done anything about the issue and it did appear to have been left unsolved for some time.)

So it's nice to know that Labour councillors actually want to be mentioned in Focuses and also appear not to have thought of putting a newsletter of their own out in that area to explain what they do.

However, I am pleased to inform readers that tonight I wrote another Focus leaflet which does mention a Labour member and goes into a few details about what he has done recently. Gordon does, after all, provide us with some good copy for inclusion in Focus.
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Health campaigning MP turns chocoholic!

Sharon Hodgson, the Comedy World's very own infiltrator into the world of politics, has just performed her latest comedy turn. So what has this Labour MP for Gateshead East and Washington West been doing as her latest entry in the Political Comedy Awards? She is demanding lots and lots of chocolate be added to food served up in schools. The specific demand is for chocolate on flapjacks that are served up for kids. So, in questions to Schools Minister Jim Knight in the Commons last week, far from raising something important, Sharon Hodgson opts to be the Chocoholics' pin up with an absurb question to the minister about chocolate no longer being permitted on biscuits in school.

The chocolate topping has gone because standards of nutrition of food served in schools have been tightened. Recent attempts by the government to tackle the obesity timebomb however have themselves been backed by Chocolate-Adoring Sharon. So you would have thought she would have been all in favour of leaving off the chocolate. Maybe healthy eating was just a passing fad for her, something to be nibbled when she felt hungry for a bit of media coverage, but otherwise wasn't part of her normal political diet. She is, after all, the person who demanded cheap cola, popcorn and sweets for kids in an early day motion recently though she then went on to demand "healthy" school meals are served up for kids.

Consistency is not something to be associated easily with Ms Hodgson. She is as useful to politics and the people she represents as a chocolate fireguard is to a list of useful household appliances!
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The Tuesday morning blog: no, no, never, abolutely loyal, no way will I stand etc

The next stage of the Labour self-destruct process has begun. Or so it would seem. When Cabinet members have to tour tv studios on a bank holiday Monday to tell everyone they think the PM is wonderful, only person for the job, he walks on water, he is the only person who can lead Labour through difficult times, etc etc, then you know the rot has well and truely set in and the decline is terminal. Like a house suffering from dry rot, the structure is dangerous and costly to put right. Demolition is a better option.

I don't know whether to sympathise with the Lady Harriet or to laugh at her (possibly both). Her protestations that she doesn't want the leadership and will "never" want to be leader do not stand well beside what has clearly been a period of positioning by her. Nevertheless, she is almost certainly being completely honest when she says she does not want to be leader at the moment. After all, the chances of a heavy defeat for Labour are growing by the day, regardless of who leads them. Why grab the poison chalice now? Let Brown take the party to defeat then take on the role. It also avoids carrying the ignominy of being the PM with the shortest period in office.

So, Brown, as I have said on numerous occasions last year when Labour MPs messed about thinking they should dump him, is in post til the general election. After that, Labour will be reintroducing their very own style of bloodsport in which we are all spectators, assuming of course they are heavily defeated and go into opposition.

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Even the ultra-loyalist Blears turns on Brown

Okay, so she is a Blairite, but Hazel Blears has a reputation for being a Labour loyalist come-what-may. She always had a chirpie, rather irritating, often reality-free response to every Labour setback. So if she is making critical comment, the rot in the Labour party must be so far advanced that it is almost impossible to reverse in time to save them from a poor general election result.

I still hold to the view that it will be difficult for the Conservatives to emerge after the general electio with a majority. Labour in self-destruct mode will however hasten their own demise.
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The Eagle has landed

Back from annual council meeting in Gateshead. The new mayor has been appointed. He is John Eagle, member for Bridges ward in central Gateshead. He was described as "one of the longest serving members of the council" by his proposer who pointed out he had been elected in 1998. Given that I was first elected in 1987, what does that make me? Part of the fixtures and fittings or a permanent feature of the Gateshead political landscape, like a granite mountain, gradually being eroded away over time!? Strangely, I am still one of the youngest members on the authority after 22 years.

Anyway John. Good luck in the year ahead.