World domination starts in Shaw

THE FRIDAY THING: IF you think you can hear “We’re all doomed” — the plaintive cry of Frazer from the brilliant “Dad’s Army” — above the din of traffic jams then the odds are you’re in either Saddleworth or Shaw, where parish councillors are under threat from an invasion of revolutionary Localismists, led by Jim McMahon, from the enemy power that is Oldham.

General Jim and his troops have breezed into Saddleworth and Shaw and set up camps on the doorsteps of the parish councils, installing their own command networks in what looks suspiciously like the beginning of a plan to take over the world.

Will the parish council’s survive this coup? Will anyone other than the parish councillors care one way or the other?

Saddleworth Parish Council chairman Bill Cullen suggested perhaps not, when he was asked for his response to the invasion and said meekly: “We need to be more assertive” which is hardly a bold rallying cry to his own troops to join the battle or at least to man the barricades.

Maybe it’s an acknowledgement that the parish council has knocked once too often on the door of the last-chance saloon and, this time, found it locked.

Smiling General Jim, pictured in the Chronicle this week with recruits to his co-operative council cause (you can’t say that after five pints), aims to open head offices in all the districts of Oldham, a chain of mini-town halls (hardly a threat to Tesco) that will take local government to the people — whether they want it or not.

If the Saddleworth and Shaw examples are anything to go by the answer will be not, but Jim is resolute in his belief that local government should be exactly that . . . local.

Each district of the borough already has its own collection of ward councillors and then there are district partnerships which include local councillors and co-optees from the local community and the new “town halls” will include full-time staff. Will there not be duplication and additional costs?

The test for this new co-operative way of working will be whether it delivers better services to the people of the borough and whether ordinary people respond positively to the new structure, have a more positive view of local government, actively get involved in projects and, at the very least, turn out to vote in local elections.

Oh and standing up and saluting whenever General Jim enters the room would help.


THIS is traditionally the time when dieters dash into the chippy for a calorie fix; smokers buy a packet of 20 (having first negotiated a big loan) and puff frantically as though their lives (rather than, in truth, their deaths) depended on them; the new leotards bought for the gym are abandoned along with the sweat-stained exercise plans and a toast is drunk to the end of the booze-free January resolution.
Why oh why do people do it? It is the triumph of wild optimism over sober truth; the one time in the year when people convince themselves that they can live without those nasty but comforting habits like chocolate cake, chocolates, cigarettes, beer, red wine, chips and curries and spending six hours a day enveloped in the sofa watching soaps and trash TV.

So if you have abandoned your resolution and are feeling gloomy about your lack of willpower , you can take comfort in the fact that you are not alone but a member of an enormous food-scoffing, fag-puffing, booze swilling, chocolate-munching gym-hating army and are, deep down really quite happy about it. There’s always next year.

David Cameron’s resolution was to find out what makes people happy and he spent £2 million of our money on finding the answer. There was much talk of well-being, mindfulness and promoting happiness but in the end the answer was much more prosaic.

It’s money, David, money. The more money folk have the happier they feel. We could have told him that and saved £2million.



FINAL WORD: Those campaigning to raise £80 million to buy a new royal yacht for the Queen to celebrate the diamond jubilee could hardly have picked a worse time with the sinking of the Costa Concordia and the death of several passenger s filing news bulletins round the world.
If there’s an ad placed for a skipper for the new yacht, Francesco Schettino, captain of the Concordia who was evidently first rather than last into the lifeboats, beating all the women and children, probably need not apply.