In a week in which the French and the Spanish have been encouraged to join in the orgy of commemoration that confirmed that Britain Rules the Waves... someone thinks the Irish should forget their violent past.

Briefly interrupted the Match of the Day, icluding a most enjoyable humiliation of Man Ure, to watch a feature on the excellent Banksy on The Culture Show. As ever, the establishment looms as he apparently now has a coffee table book on the way, and you can buy Banksy originals for a couple of thousand quid.

HELP!!!

Yesterday morning, for no apparent reason, my entire Windows system froze on that blue screen which welcomes you to Bill Gates World. No amount of fiddling and faffing about with it would put it right, so I upped and went to my local PC repair shop in Bearwood to see what they could do. The sorry response came back later in the day: Not much mate. They could do a reload of Windows XP and then everything would be OK, but all my files, photos and music would be deleted forever. Well, I had remembered to do a backup in June on a memory stick, but if there is a Council Officer reading this who has received a letter from me in the last four months and hasn't replied... you can always deny receiving it because I can't prove I sent it. Anyway, I know Flikr is not to everyone's taste, but I can be grateful that at least all my photographs have been captured on there.

But does anyone know how to transfer the files on my I-pod on to the PC without losing all 4,000 tracks in the process because the I-pod carries out the transfer in the opposite direction?

"The paper also outlined more powers for parents: they will get the right to demand new schools..." Oh, well done Ms. Kelly. I'll start getting the local parents in my Ward to demand new schools. By the way... does this mean they will automatically get one? More crackpot ideas and spin from our New Labour colleagues.

Your Education service is in safe hands... and here are those hands.

Ruth Kelly: Attended the fee-paying Sutton High School, followed by Westminster School for A-levels. She went on to Queen's College, University of Oxford.

Baron Adonis: Attended the private Kingham Hill School in Oxfordshire near Chipping Norton. He graduated (BA in modern history) from Keble College, Oxford, subsequently completing a doctorate in 19th century political history at Christ Church, Oxford in 1988, and filled a post as a research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford.

Tony Blair: After attending the Durham's Choristers School, Blair was educated at Fettes College in Edinburgh (sometimes called the "Eton of Scotland"), then on to read law at St John's College, where he graduated with a second class degree.

God, their parents must have been unsuccessful in demanding those new schools in their neighbourhoods. No doubt they were hampered by the army of bureaucrats in the Council House scrathing their backsides and filing paper clips all day.

John Prescott: The son of a railway signalman, Prescott was born in Prestatyn in Wales and brought up in Ellesmere Port in Cheshire. He became a steward in the merchant navy, and was a trade union activist. What... no private school John? No "Eton of Prestatyn" for you then, eh? Think on lad, when these proposals go through, all the little John and Jane Prescott's will have a School of Excellence in their own back garden, run by a combination of the local vicar and MacDonalds.

Hell's teeth! And all we will have to fight the cause when the careerist backbenchers troop through the lobby, will be the Secondary Heads Association. More power to your elbows, comrades. I don't suppose there is any chance of the 'usual suspects' in the trade union movement getting off their fat arses and doing something, is there? Its your members kids too!

"....But otherwise the schools will be accountable not to government at the centre or locally but to parents, with the creativity and enterprise of the teachers and school leaders set free."

It must be lovely to live in the leafier parts of Islington, or to send your kids to The Oratory. Don't worry if there are not enough Labour MPs to push this through Mr Tony... the Tories will snatch your hands off for it!

For fear of a savaging from my ultra loyalist comrades in the 'modernising' wing of our Party, I will make absolutely no comment at all on the alleged plans Mr Tony has for his friends in the business community... and I wouldn't dream of calling the Education proposals elitist, middle-class and discriminatory. Not while there are others who will do it for me.

The talk amongst the chattering classes and tv pundits is whether, in the event that the boy Cameron wins the Tory leadership bonanza, Labour should shaft Gordon Brown and go for a younger model. The 'skip a generation' pundits argue that Gordon will look old and tired in comparison to the fresh faced public schoolboy and that Labour would lose votes in the same way that the Tories lost votes to the juvenile Kennedy. The choice of the generation skippers would appear to be the ever young David Miliband. Interestingly, the alleged source for this story in the Observer, is someone close to the Prime Minister. Now, surely, our beloved PM couldn't possibly want to scupper his old mate Gordon's chances of replacing him?

I'm sure I've said this before, but the joke about David and Ed, the Miliband brothers is that their father, the respected Marxist Ralph Miliband, wrote a book called Parliamentary Socialism in which his central point was that Labour would not deliver socialism through Parliamentary means. His sons are now setting about proving their father was right.

This looks like it create plenty of work for one blogger... even though others might keep their heads down.

'Me as Tory leader? It's ridiculous; it's absurd. It's quite flattering. But it's just for the birds' - Errm, David Cameron, The Independent February 2005.

Never mind the 'modernisers'... they're still out there. I've received an e-mail from a very disturbed young woman who feels very strongly that we should all be grateful to the wicked witch of Finchley for freeing the slaves, winning the war against socialism, single-handedly defeating the Russians and giving the Argies, the Irish and the miners a bloody good thrashing. Very, very disturbed person indeed.

Sectarian... moi?

Courtroom Drama

A 7 year-old boy was at the centre of a Birmingham courtroom drama yesterday when he challenged a court ruling over who should have custody of him. The boy has a history of being beaten by his parents & the judge initially awarded custody to his aunt, in keeping with child custody law & regulations requiring that family unity be maintained.

The boy surprised the court when he proclaimed that his aunt beat him more than his parents & he adamantly refused to live with her. When the judge then suggested that he live with his grandparents, the boy cried out that they also beat him. After considering the remainder of the immediate family & learning that domestic violence was apparently a way of life among them, the judge took the unprecedented step of allowing the boy to propose who should have custody of him.

After two recesses to check legal references and confer with child welfare officials, the judge granted temporary custody to Birmingham City Football Club, whom the boy firmly believes are incapable of beating anyone.


(Thanks to The Black Country Villain)

Smug, arrogant, young, ex-public schoolboy, wants to 'modernise' his party - not exactly original is it.

The ego has landed

I don't know who said it first about who, but if this man was an ice cream he would lick himself to death.

Biting the hand that feeds us

It seems Blair has yet another 'modernisation' plan in mind in his long-term strategy of turning Labour into the SDP. The man who told us he was going to rebuild Labour as a mass membership party, and spent the next 10 years watching members drift away, now wants to 'modernise us again. Tony Woodley advises him that further sidelining the trade unions is not the answer.

What is it about Blairites and business. the latest public service to be subjected to the 'New Labour' axe is the probation service. They have announced the privatisation of the sevice.... to coincide with the government's Inside Justice Week (October 17-23), which aims to highlight the greater involvement of local communities in the criminal justice system. So much for the new-found enthusiasm for localism and civic renewal. Local Probation Boards will be abolished and replaced by smaller "business-focussed" bodies, composed of people with senior business, financial and management experience. Yes, I see. So the people who have made a complete cock-up of running of British manufacturing industry can have a go at doing the same thing to our public services.

The revolution will not be televised ... is a terrific fly-on-the-wall documentary which details the story of the Coup in 2002 against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez from INSIDE the palace. Unfortunately, for reasons one can only speculate on, the distributors of the film appear to be deliberately boycotting the distribution of their own film. An old mate of mine who runs a Venezuelan Solidarity Group has decided to distribute the DVD free of charge, with just a small donation to cover his costs. Contact him and tell him you were referred by me... and he says he will accept a 'smaller' donation. Believe me... the film is pretty damn good!

The silence is deafening. As highlighted by Political Hack the Tory/Lib Dem coalition have wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds of council tax payers money on a consultants report which reached conclusions that.... "Any transport professional could have told them these conclusions before they started." So, always prepared to offer an opinion on anything, what does the egomaniac self-publicist who was Deputy Leader of the City Council when they threw this money down the drain have to say about it on his blog? Errrm... not a thing.

Well... if Hemming won't tell us what's going on in his Council... we will just have to read the newspaper. Birmingham - a city racked by indecision and procrastination.

For years people in Bearwood, particularly the elederly, have complained with some justification that we haven't got any decent toilets in the shopping centre. So, the Council did a deal with advertising company JCDecaux which resulted in one of those continental superloos being fitted in the town. Now, knock me down with a feather, the NIMBYs don't want it!

Kevin Phillips - Legend!

The Sunday Times is decisive on the right choice for Tory Leader. Find fence... then sit on it!

People who walk around whistling are like human ice-cream vans advertising the good things inside them with a merry tune. They're also thought to be two sandwiches short of a picnic.

Blair to privatise private schools. Don't get too excited, it means they continue to run them and we fund them.

Its a good news day.... maybe. It wouldn't be the first time this devious old get had spun a line of bull on the day of an AGM in order to get himself off the hook. It is said that no-one has got a good word for Doug Ellis. I have: try.... bastard.

Did Cameron inhale?

Should Tory Leadership candidate David Cameron be obliged to 'come out' over whether or not he took drugs as an undergraduate? Ann Widdecombe, that well known liberal on these matters, says no, he should not. She feels whether or not he has taken drugs is of no importance, but she wants to know if he is hypocritical enough for her liking and will persecute sufficiently those who do take drugs. But should it matter? Politicians like Mo Mowlam haven't found that admitting smoking a joint or two in their student days was a major stumbling block in their career. So why not Cameron.... it could even improve his street cred. with some people (although I suspect it would not help in the eyes of the reactionary old buffoons who will select their leader).

Well, if you apply for a job as a teacher, or a management job in the NHS, or a Social Worker (No, not a Socialist Worker... for them drug taking is obligatory) you have to declare to those interviewing you whether you have even received a police caution for possession of a tiny amount of cannabis. So, why shouldn't the rules be more stringent for those who want to become Prime Minister of this country? Come on Cameron... did you or did you not inhale?


Some clown wrote in a letter to last night's Birmingham Evening Mail that Peter Crouch should never be allowed anywhere near an England shirt because he "can't run, can't pass, can't head the ball and doesn't score goals." Just to avoid being entirely negative, the twerp suggested the laughable Emile Heskey as a credible alternative. Last season Crouch scored 12 goals in 27 appearances for Southampton, who were relegated. This compares favourably to Didier Drogba, who despite playing with the superstars of Champions Chelsea, only managed 10 goals in 26 appearances. As for Emile Ivanhoe (honestly, its his name) Heskey... he managed 10 goals in 34 appearances for 'sleeping giants' Birmingham City. Just think how good Crouchy will be when he learns to run, pass and score!