Signing off

And so ends my accidental two-year misadventure in the British political system.
I'm still not entirely sure how I got involved in all this in the first place!

For anyone like me - an ordinary, non-political punter - tempted to follow where I went before my advice is:

For God's sake, no: in this sewer there is just too much **** to wade through.

Umami, umami, it drives you flippin' barmy

Adventures In Extreme Taste #7.

I call this creation "Kamikaze Kuppa" and dedicate it to the Tokyo Celtic Supporters Club:

Take one heaped tablespoon of Bovril.
Take one heaped tablespoon of the reddest (ie strongest) miso you've got.

Combine in a mug containing half a pint of hot water.
Stand well back

Blog being repaired - honest!

Due to great upheavals in the personal life I've been held up a bit on fixing the blog. But the links in about the last 15 posts should be good now & I'll fix the rest as soon as.

There'll also be some v. interesting new posts soon, particularly about a quango called "Standards for England". You'll remember that Eric Pickles suggested abolishing them as an actual impediment to functioning democracy - well, I may have amassed some evidence to back up the Community Secretary's plan...

All will be revealed: please look back in next week!

Labour of Hate Pt 5!

From here in the North Herefordshire People's Government In Exile I have just managed to extract the following minute from Leo Council:
Question from G Pardoe

Now, some in Leominster have questioned my assertion that North Herefordshire Labour Party basically do exactly what Bill Wiggin & North Herefordshire Conservative Association instruct them to do.
And they have asked me for proof of my assertion.

Hmmm...

"G Pardoe" is Gerard Pardoe, prominent Labour party activist and Labour candidate at the May elections (I royally trounced the Blairite no-mark at that election, but that is no excuse for his loyal defence of Tory expenses shyster Bill Wiggin in his complaint to Leo Town Council!).
His missus Emma is also a Labour party member of LTC.

I would note also that one of those who "passed" (ie: approved) Mr Pardoe's complaint to LTC that I might be wasting public money drawing attention to Mr Wiggin's expenses was - you guessed it! - anti-establishment socialist firebrand Phillipa Roberts!

Bill hits those boundaries for six!

Hmm - this could get interesting.
In June the Daily Mail reported that the Tory party were going to sacrifice Bill Wiggin MP in the forthcoming boundary shuffle as he has become an embarrassment.
This appears to be coming true and Mr Wiggin would have no chance in the new Ludlow & Leominster constituency against Ludlow's popular Phillip Dunne, who has never had to pay back thousands of wrongly claimed expenses and apologise publicly to the House of Commons.
So this desperate attempt to whip up a campaign to save Mr Wiggin's seat has been dropping through letterboxes.
Trouble is, local politician Phillipa Roberts is claiming on her FaceBook page that she received this inside a House of Commons envelope with a covering letter by Mr Wiggin. Ms Roberts is Labour but she was a candidate at the last general election & it's hard to believe she's making this up.
This doesn't sound like the sort of thing the rules would allow, does it?
I'm back in Leo this weekend: will check out how many of these letters have been delivered...

Blog under repair!

Today, 27th Oct, I started fixing the links working backwards through the Blog (changed broadband provider  etc). The old ones will be finished next week...

 Meanwhile, have a look at my new Blog - which will run in parallel to this one - about my adventures on Merseyside!
S.P.Q.L

The Hereford Times they are a-changing

... but not voluntarily, you understand.

A year ago next Wednesday the Parliamentary Committee on Standards and Privileges found that my MP Bill Wiggin had seriously breached their rules in claiming false expenses.
The influential local paper the Hereford Times had to report this, but the editor, Wiggin groupie Fiona Phillips, published a false story making out that the breaches weren't serious and were some kind of accident.
Today the Press Complaints Commission forced her to publish this retraction on page three with the same prominence as the original false story.

It shows the weakness of the PCC that it took them so long to have a seriously false story amended. But it's rather splendid too, as Mr Wiggin's wrongdoing is splashed to the people of Herefordshire (everyone reads it) just as he hoped they'd begun to forget about it!

Ms Phillips hates my guts - she recently published a spiteful piece more or less commending the police for intimidating me on Mr Wiggin's behalf ( that is currently under investigation, I'll post stuff about it when it's no longer an official case).

What the editor doesn't know is that this year, especially during the May elections, I was running a mole inside her paper. Here is the transcript of some of the facebook messages between the mole - whom we'll call 'Hereford Hack' and me, edited to protect confidentiality & so La Phillips can't guess the identity of the mole.

I think it's in the interest of everyone in Herefordshire to see just how much information about dodgy politicians and execs the reporters uncover which is then spiked by the editor...