‘Save ourselves’ vote no surprise

THE FRIDAY THING: WAS anyone, apart of course from council leader Howard Sykes, surprised that Oldham’s councillors decided to park his plan for a reduction in their number in a place where it would be vandalised and have the wheels removed?

Howard was, at best, naive in not recognising that there are enough self-serving members on the council benches to sabotage a plan that would see 20 struck off the allowances list and robbed of their mantle of self-importance.

There are most likely more jobless members of Oldham Council than there are gainfully employed and even the basic council allowance — without the additional perks of office — pays for holidays, running the car and the occasional meal out.

That there are far more councillors without additional perks than with should, perhaps, have alerted Howard to the disappointing fact that both loyalty among his own members as well as that of his hungry-for-the-trappings-of-power Tory coalition partners, was as thin as a five-pound note but worth much less.

The Sykes plan, which had the backing of Cabinet (where sit the big-money brigade who would not believe that they could possibly be ousted and thus had nothing to fear either in terms of finance or face) would have saved Oldham £350,000 a year and with it probably the jobs of quite a few council staff.

Rebels in Howard’s Lib-Dem team, not surprisingly from the Saddleworth faction, and a turncoat Tory put their own future ahead of the people they were elected (on paper, at least) to serve.

Bizarrely, Howard has been accused by Labour of “cheap politics” for trying to reduce the cost of local government in Oldham, but then we already know that Labour’s mantra has long been spend-spend-spend, even when there is no money left, not even under the chief exec’s settee cushions.

It is fair to say that this was not the proudest day in the history of local government in Oldham. Quite the reverse, in fact.


WELL, I succumbed in the end to a pressure far greater than the combined forces of the Beefeaters and the Household Cavalry and by the time you read this I will already be wearing Union Jack tie, socks, bowler and cufflinks (I was spared the Union Jack pyjama trousers).
A super injunction prevents me from revealing the source of this domestic royal wedding tyranny and all I can say that it wasn’t a footballer, a TV personality or even jug-eared Andrew Marr.

Under specific orders I will be getting into the spirit of that wedding. That is until I get enough of the spirit inside me when I shall retreat to a darkened room to lie down under a William and Kate duvet with a dampened commemorative tea towel across my fevered brow.

What impact all of this will have on my dreams would be too much even for Sigmund Freud to explain. Nightmares are likely though.


FINAL WORD: It is good to read in these generally doom-laden days of insolvency and rapidly dismantling and disappearing services that, when it comes to education, we can teach the world a thing or two.
Our teachers may be striking because the inept among them are in danger of losing their jobs, but we are world leaders when it comes to teaching and training terrorists how to rain havoc, death and destruction on us.

There will probably be an Ofsted award on the way as I write.