A tragical history tour

Been trying to write a play. Made this vid about it:



If you're interested, it's partly based on my book 'Dead Groovy' avaiable at all good bookshops and from Amazon.

And answer came there none

Just received a reply from the West Midlands Combined Authority to a couple of inquiries I made recently. You will see it is not much of an answer: Thank you for submitting the following Freedom of Information Request on 14 September 2026.

Information requested:

"Why are no accounts available after May?".

Clarification received on 16 September 2026:

“You know very well I am referring to the monthly expenditure over £500 and you also know you have uploaded two months since I sent in this inquiry as well as uploading the out of date notification that the accounts are open for inspection (a notification that’s now expired).

You will also see I have submitted another inquiry about why the last chief executive received a £150,000 pay-off when she supposedly resigned of her own accord. I look forward to your response.'”

Our Response:

The publication did not take place when originally intended. This has now been corrected and the information is available. We apologise for the delay and any inconvenience this may have caused. Accounts from May are now available and can be found here: https://www.wmca.org.uk/what-we-do/budget-spending.

If you are dissatisfied with the handling of your request, you may request an internal review by writing to:


We hope that the above information addresses your request, however if you are dissatisfied with the way in which we have handled your request, you have the right to ask us to review it. You should make your request for a review within 40 working days of receipt of this letter to Information.officer@wmca.org.uk We will provide our review within 20 working days of receipt.

If, following our review, you remain dissatisfied with the handling of your request or our response, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK's independent authority for upholding information rights.

Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.

Gibberish marching to a different drum

The former chief executive of the West Midlands Combined Authority, Laura Shoaf, resigned in June last year – with a £155,000 pay-off.

What with the money she earned working for Mayor Richard Parker and the ‘compensation for loss of office’, Ms Shoaf was paid £283,000 in the 2025-6 financial year, according to the WMCA annual report and accounts.

She was replaced by Ed Cox, who is presumably responsible for the guff in the report which, under the heading Executive Directors (no apostrophe) Office, promises:

• ‘Work and design sprints… to embed the organisation’s target operating model and relationships between strategy, corporate services and delivery functions.’

• ‘To embed a values driven culture…. A detailed action plan, structured around nine core objectives and associated subobjectives, has been developed.’

• ‘Progress will be monitored through the ongoing People & Culture Senior Leadership Team and newly established Corporate Services Group. Supported by a newly published Behaviours Framework which embeds a culture first approach within the Integrated Performance Management (IPM) Framework.‘

• ‘Our newly established leadership architecture will further support and embed the expected behaviours at every level across the organisation.’

• ‘A structured communications drumbeat is in place to ensure staff receive timely, clear, and accessible updates.’

• ‘An Organisation Design Panel has been established to provide a single, strategic lens across the organisation, offering fairness, clarity and consistency for organisation design and structural decisions.’

In promising us a ‘trailblazing authority’, Mr Cox uses the word ‘embed’ 39 times in his report so something might stick.

SONOS and the sound of silence

TWo years ago, a software update perpetrated on their customers by Sonos, the sellers of speakers, was a complete disaster.

Now they have imposed another update and, predictably, it is another disaster.
After six interminable phone calls and lengthy attempts to make my music library play through my Sonos speakers (it plays through my cheap IKEA a speaker) they finally admitted the update meant Sonos could no longer play .wav files through Sonos speakers and I’d have to wait for the update to the update.

THey had no idea how long it would take.

Almost as frustrating as the sound of silence is the fact that Sonos don't simply admit their latest disaster up front and save callers like me from hours on the phone to their call centres while they go through the many other possible reasons for this failure without once admitting the whole thing is the fault of Sonos and you just have to wait while they try to untangle themselves.

Beause I paid a reasonable amount of money for a Sonos system, I'm stuck with it. When it works, it's quite good. But my advice to anyone thinking of getting Sonos speakers is simple: Don't. THey are more trouble than they're worth.

And the gravy-train keeps on rolling

It would be wrong to say West Midlands Mayor Richard Parker doesn’t know what he’s doing but that may be because he spent £1.1 million asking other people – in June alone.

According to that month’s West Midlands Combined Authority accounts, he and his cohorts spent £310,000 on ‘consultants’, £553,000 on ‘external advice’, £38,000 on ‘land advice’ and £191,000 on ‘legal advice’.

And it would be wrong to say nobody wants to work for him, though his dependence on temporary staff cost the taxpayer £858,000 – just in June.

Still, according to the unaudited accounts for 2025-26, he is looking after his ‘Director of Mayoral Strategy’ who, at £130,000 a year, earns £30,000 more than the boss. The mayor also has a Chief of Staff who gets a mere £91,000 while the Deputy Mayor’s on a trifling £10,000 (though as leader of Wolverhampton Council, it's reasonable to assume Coun Stephen Simkins is not on the breadline).

Luckily for everyone on the gravy-train, there’s more to come. The WMCA report and accounts notes:

‘There is a need to reconvene the Independent Remuneration Panel to refresh existing allowances and to consider new allowances that may come out of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill such as allowances for Leaders and the appointment of Mayoral Commissioners.’

Mind you, it’s not necessary to work for Mayor Parker to coin it in. There have been 16 ‘exit packages’ in 2026 costing a total of £631,000 compared with 12 in 2025 costing a mere £165,000. Nice work if you don’t have to do it…

• Meanwhile the Cock of the North is flogging ‘Manchesterism’ baseball caps for £25 and ‘Good Growth in Every Postcode’ bags for £20 to anyone idiotic enough to want one.

Why tax more when you can't spend what you've got?

As the Cock of the North plans to throw more millions at his Mayors, what’s Richard Parker doing in the West Midlands?

Enjoying higher business rate income for a start. This year, his fiefdom expects to scoop up £15 million from hard-pressed businesses. This will increase by 10 per cent every year, reaching £19.5 million in 2028, according to the West Midlands Combined Authority’s unaudited report and accounts for last year.

Amid the usual drivel and guff, this tedious document does disclose that Mr Parker is not very good at his job, which is supposed to be spending our money.

His capital budget for building things like Midland Metro tram lines was £653 million but he only managed to get rid of £463 million, a £190 million or 29 per cent shortfall.

He also underspent on his revenue budget. It was £556 million but he only managed to spend £532 million

. All of which makes you wonder why he needs to treat businesses as a cash cow. Yet he’s still pleading poverty. The report claims Mayor Parker faces a £33 million shortfall next year and £29 million the following one.

We shouldn’t worry too much given that he can’t get rid of his money fast enough. Surely it's time for a rebate?

Why Reform’s millions won’t make any difference

There is no point getting cross about the millions of pounds poured into Nigel Farage’s party because all that money will just get thrown away by profligate buffoons.

Political parties are basically run by quasi-civil servants dressed up as political advisers, policy wonks etc who take exactly the same approach to other people’s money as civil servants.

In other words, they piss it away on pointless things with no thought for how the money was made, who provided it or where the next dollop is coming from.

The Reform millions will simply be poured down the drain like the Tory and Labour millions already are and they will make virtually no difference to the party’s prospects whenever the next General Election place.

Crypto-millionaires or trade union bosses might be able to buy a political party but they can’t buy the British people, who are neither as stupid or easily-influenced as some pundits think they are.

At General Elections, the British people get it more or less right irrespective of the millions thrown at the process. Yes, they elected Labour last time and probably didn’t intend to see such a huge majority. But that’s to do with the first past the post system. It has nothing to do with how much money any party spent.

Awash with cash, we can rest assured Reform will pour it down the drain just as other parties do. It’s the attitude all parties take into Government, which his why taxes only ever go up.

Restrictive covenant nightmare

Earlier this year, an estate in Bexhill, East Sussex, hit the headlines after residents were presented with bills of £7,500 or more for breaching restrictive covenants on their houses by building conservatories or putting up garden sheds.

A company called Asset Invest Ltd bought up restrictive covenants on an estate of houses for just £1 then issued bills to residents who had breached them – even when the owners had obtained planning permission. The BBC did a piece on this in April which tells us quite a bit about the people behind this.

But it turns out this is not an isolated case. A Worcestershire resident told a meeting held by Nigel Huddleston, MP for Droitwich and Evesham, that Asset Invest had sent him a bill for £70,000 relating to a breach of a restrictive covenant on a recently-built buy-to-let house he’d acquired.

As he told Mr Huddleston, the company has been buying up restrictive covenants, without telling the home-owners who are subject to them, and then enforcing them even if they are decades old. It is blighting properties, making them difficult to sell without coming to a settlement with Asset Invest. ‘It scares people and is clearly exploitative,’ he said.

There are others badly affected. One of those affected said on-line: ‘I am sure you will appreciate that I wish to post anonymously given this company’s behaviour. I live in another part of the country and only know about Asset Invest taking over our covenants as our MP wrote to us, have since discovered they have charged a neighbour over £30k for building works… it’s a living nightmare.’

Another said: ‘We've just had a letter from these people asking for £19500 to remove covenants from my late father's property on an estate near Portsmouth. The planning permission granted for a conservatory and estate agent’s sale notices seemed to draw their attention to us, now they want the money to go away and not scupper the house sale. Has anybody managed to find a way to fight these parasites?’

Though buying up covenants seems the latest ruse, two years ago, Asset Invest put up a 2,000 square metres strip of land 14 feet wide at its widest in Greenwich for £13,500 claiming it had potential for two dwellings. The company also offered 217 square feet of land in Wilmslow, Cheshire, as an ‘excellent Space - Freehold for Events/Pop-Up in Centre of The Carrs Picnic area’ for £8,500.

It does seem bizarre that a third-party can buy up covenants at knock-down prices and then impose what are little more than fines on people who have innocently gone about improving their homes.

Mind you, Asset Invest’s website includes a testimonial from one of its ‘clients’, a residents’ management company in Bedfordshire who seem very happy with them.

It says: ‘We were contacted by Asset Invest who informed the residents they had purchased a strip of land, this being the only access to our properties. Asset Invest gave the residents the option of purchasing the land collectively. The letter came out of the blue for the residents as we understood the land already has been passed to the residents! Asset Invest took time to explain how this would work. We were advised of the pros and cons and allowed time to seek advice. Once we made the decision to purchase Asset Invest were there to help with names of solicitors should we need it. The purchase of the title deed was straightforward and the only hold ups were from our end! The residents trusted Asset Invest and felt happy with the purchase price.’

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cddqry9zrl6o

War correspondent's report on the Battle of Worcester

The first report of the Battle of Worcester came in the Government propaganda paper “Mercurius Politicus” which was written by Marchamont Nedham, the leading journalist of the English Civil War.

Nedham, who started writing for Oliver Cromwell as the price for being freed from prison after earlier working for King Charles I until his execution in 1649, declared the battle was “a very glorious day of decision”.

Some historians claim the report was written by his boss, the Government’s “Secretary for Foreign Tongues”, the famous poet John Milton.

But Nedham (1620-1678) was regarded as the most potent reporter of the era and both the Royalists and Parliamentarians valued his services highly. And he may actually have been at the Battle of Worcester 375 years ago today.

His report on the Battle of Worcester said, among other things:

Referring to Charles II’s defeat and flight from the city: ‘Thus seems to be the setting of the young King’s glory…. Their King, it is said, went out very meanly, with only 12 horse.’

On the outcome of the battle: ‘In all the engagements that ever we had, never did a more immediate hand of God appear than in this nor more courage and resolution in an army, though no flesh hath cause to boast because it is the Lord only that hath done all these things.’

Referring to Oliver Cromwell, he wrote: ‘My Lord General did exceedingly hazard himself, riding up and down in the midst of the shot and riding himself in person to the enemy’s foot offering them quarter whereto they returned no answer but shot.’

And he quotes Cromwell as saying: ‘It is for ought I know, a Crowning mercy.’

Nedham points out that September 3 was Cromwell’s lucky day, as he won the Battle of Dunbar on the same date a year earlier. However, September 3 wasn’t always lucky for Cromwell – he died on September 3, 1658.

Nedham, who was born in Burford, Oxfordshire, and began his journalistic career working for Parliament before switching sides to support Charles I and then turning again to back Cromwell, survived attempts by the restored Royalists to have him hanged, became a doctor in the 1660s and went on to write for King Charles II.

“The Man Who Invented the News”, covering Marchamont Nedham’s chequered career, was published in 2022.

Chips with everything

It’s unlikely the great Margaret Thatcher needs defending from a little squirt like the Cock of the North but his analysis of what is wrong with Britain today is so stuck in the past it deserves all the opprobrium it gets.

To say it all went wrong in the 1980s (apart from Brexit, obviously, which according to him is also to blame for our present evils) is to assume the 1970s were days of miracles and wonder.

It was the era of militant trade unions, Red Robbo, Arthur Scargill and the Militant Tendency, the three-day week and the unburied dead. The unions were responsible for the destruction of British industry. Mrs Thatcher rescued the ‘sick man of Europe’ and gave our country the chance to recover.

Old-fashioned Corbynistas like Andrew Burnham may never forgive her (schoolchildren are still taught by their left-wing teachers to loathe her) but the country would be in a far worse state today if it were not for the massive improvements made by Mrs Thatcher’s Conservatives.

Of course we can argue it over, point by point: The miners’ strike; council house sales; privatisations; economic reform and liberalisation; lower taxes; less State spending; less State interference. To some people, these are reasons to hate her; to the majority, they are among the reasons why she was one of our greatest Prime Ministers.

Those like Mr Usurper Burnham, who want maximum State control of our lives, can’t move on. But the world is different now. He is fighting the day-before-yesterday’s battles in a desperate, pathetic spasm of self-justification.

His every utterance betrays the chip on his shoulder and if State Socialism is the answer, it’s a bloody stupid question.

The slow road to Benefits Central

Goodbye Symphony Hall, farewell the National Indoor Arena (or whatever it’s called this week). Goodbye Edgbaston cricket ground, farewell Villa Park. Au revoir New Street and the Bull Ring, it was good to know you.

Sadly, the coalition of chaos now in charge of Birmingham, under the boot of the people who really run the council, is succumbing to the fad for imposing 20 mph zones wherever a hated motorist might once have ventured.

The net result will not be full buses, trams and trains. It will be fewer visitors, fewer businesses, less money, more decline and dereliction. The city may become greener and cleaner but there will be less economic activity and Birmingham’s tragic decline will accelerate as drivers jam on the brakes.

The fanatics will have finally won their long-standing war on the motorist. Nobody will want to drive in or around Birmingham again if there is any alternative.

The city of a thousand trades is already the city of a thousand vacant shops. Unemployment in Birmingham is the worst of any big city, having hit 13.5 per cent of the workforce – almost three times the national average. In Handsworth it’s almost 20 per cent. Youth unemployment is 19.3 per cent.

Only two-thirds of Birmingham’s adults have a job compared with 75 per cent nationally.

Of course, speed limits are necessary and the city’s dire unemployment figures don’t have much to do with the war on motorists. But they do have some impact and forcing people to crawl along at 20 is bound to make the city economy worse than it already is.

It would be nice to think the coalition of chaos would do what it can to make the city more prosperous rather than doing its damndest to turn Birmingham into benefits central. But then the big cheeses are Lib-Dems and Greens so all is lost.

https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/downloads/file/31966/unemployment_update_-_august_2026

Manchester Express? That’ll do nicely, thank you

The Mayor of Manchester and his gofers spent £56,000 on the combined authority’s credit cards in the second quarter of the year as the Cock of the North was strutting his way into Number Ten.

These payments include the obligatory £4,670 at Amazon, £1,027 to Facebook, £284 with Deliveroo and plenty of ‘subsistence’ at purveyors like Tesco, McDonald’s, Morrisons and so on.

They’re a well-travelled lot, these Greater Mancunians. They’ve even been to Birmingham where they spent £1,050 at a Premier Inn. They paid £675 to Lufthansa, £359 on parking at Heathrow Airport, £3,009 at Hampton by Hilton (in Manchester), £1,338 with Jet2 but a mere £146 with Ryanair. Another £1,485 went on ‘travel training’ with the University of Essex.

They generous, too, spending £1,830 with One4All, who supply multi-store gift-cards, and £215 with Huggg (yes, 3Gs) who supply ‘gifts your team and clients will actually want’.

Some people remember the old metropolitan county councils. They were axed as a waste of space in 1986.

They were replaced by regional development agencies in 1999. These, in turn, were designated pointless and abolished.

Then we had local enterprise partnerships, which were an even greater cunis. Now we have elected mayors like our national saviour.

The Cock of the North is to give us more of pointless, provincial, pettifogging panjandrums and wants to throw more money at them as if, by some miracle, they will transform their regions into economic powerhouses if only the taxpayer would cough up a bit more blood from the stone.

Or they can just use the nation’s credit card. Until we can’t keep up the monthly payments any more.

How the Cock of the North likes to spend your money

The Cock of the North’s spending spree as Mayor of Manchester may have come to an end but the bills are still coming in. In the three months to the end of June, the glorified quango forked out £316 million. This splurge included:

• £70,000 on a ‘green summit’;

• £6.6 million on consultants and professional fees;

• £240,000 on agency staff including one payment of £21,940 (plus £90,000 on recruitment);

• £5.8 million on traffic lights;

• £170,000 on private medical care including £6,000 on counselling and psychotherapy;

• £267,000 on research.

Other spending went on such vital schemes (with some explanations of what they do taken from their guff-laden and impenetrable websites) as:

Work

• Mantra Learning £1.2 million ‘We are providing Government-funded HGV Skills Bootcamps to address the driver shortage’;

• Back to Work Training Ltd £692,000;

• Bright Direction Training £315,000;

• Standguide Ltd £232,000 ‘Standguide has supported individuals and employers for over 35 years, helping over 13,000 people across the UK in the last 12 months to retrain, find new careers or grow their own businesses’;

• Ingeus UK £621,000 ‘Every day our teams across the UK help people improve their skills, employment, health and wellbeing. We’re purpose-led, passionate and proud to work with customers and communities to drive social change’;

• Learning Curve Group £62,000 ‘Gain new skills and confidence with an accredited online course. Study for free with Government funding.’

Media

• Carbon Creative £25,000 ‘We aim to be at the intersection of art, technology and sustainability where we combine pure imagination with digital engineering to create engaging dynamic and effective work.’

• Carbon Trust Advisory £30,000 ‘We partner with leading businesses, governments and financial institutions to accelerate their route to Net Zero. We are your expert guide to turn your climate ambition into impact’;

• Best Asian Media £18,000;

• Media coaching £17,000;

• Doodledo Motion Ltd £30,000 (they make videos);

• Jaguar Press £15,000.

Research

• Brand Edge £20,000;

• DJS Research £191,000 ‘We’re an employee-owned, B Corp Certified™, mid-sized market research agency with a proven track record of delivering actionable insight for clients across the UK and internationally’;

• Little Lion Research £56,000 ‘We undertake research that helps our clients to understand and demonstrate the impact of their plans and projects.’

Transport

• New and refurbishing traffic lights £5.8 million;

• Cyclescheme Ltd £30,000 ‘The UK’s number one, free to join, Cycle to Work scheme provider’;

• Prestige Chauffeurs £8,700 (they will be sorry to see Andy rolling about in his state-sponsored limo).

IT

• Dell Computers £192,000;

• Phoenix Software £1.5 million ‘We don’t just supply technology – we listen first, then work alongside your teams as part of the solution, not just the supply chain’;

• 6B Digital £6,300 ‘We deliver intelligent digital and technology solutions for critical applications across complex and innovative sectors’;

• Kaleidoscope Consultants £50,000 ‘has worked with national, regional and sub-regional bodies to create data management frameworks and governance arrangements that work to deliver data-enabled public services to citizens’;

• Shaping Cloud Ltd £17,000 ‘Azure. Done brilliantly. For organisations that can’t afford mistakes’;

• Telent Technology Services Ltd £197,000 ‘Telent designs, builds, manages and maintains the UK and Ireland’s critical digital infrastructure, helping to keep the country connected, moving and safe’;

• Accenture £50,000 ‘Our wide range of capabilities, ecosystem partnerships and unmatched industry expertise can help your business become the next best version of itself.’

General do-gooding

• Catch 22 Charity Ltd £228,000 ‘For over 200 years, Catch22 has designed and delivered services that build resilience and aspiration in people and communities’;

• Collaborate Out Loud £18,000 ‘Creating Surprising, simple and social spaces for social change and innovation’;

• Creating Effective Generations £10,000 ‘We specialise in supporting those vulnerable to Child Criminal & Sexual Exploitation’;

• Stitched Up Community Benefit Society Ltd £13,000 ‘Promoting creative expression through clothing + textiles + working to make sustainable clothing choices more accessible’;

• The Big Life Company £1 million ‘Fighting for equity in health, in wealth and in life’;

• Talk to Sara £15,000 ‘We exist to support survivors of sexual violence through trauma-informed care, advocacy, and community connection’;

• The Pankhurst Trust (incorporating Manchester Women’s Aid) £187,000 ‘We have 3 strands to our work – a Suffragette museum contributing to the city's heritage offer, a number of equalities projects promoting and supporting women, a number of domestic abuse services positioning us as the city's largest independent specialist provider’;

• Greater Manchester Immigration Unit £49,000 ‘Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit is a voluntary organisation supporting people subject to immigration control for over 35 years. We offer free legal advice, representation and support services to people seeking asylum, refugees, children and vulnerable adults’;

• Greater Manchester Women’s Support Alliance £217,000 ‘The Alliance is committed to funding and providing high-quality services to support, safeguard and empower all women’;

• Hideaway Youth Project £46,000 ‘Dedicated to the welfare of young women and men in Moss Side and surrounding areas’;

• LGBT Foundation £50,000;

• Manchester Camerata £108,000 ‘The world’s first orchestra with a mobile phone section.’ (Ode to Joy, the EU anthem, naturally). Introducing the AO Simphony | The UK's First Mobile Phone Orchestra;

• Manchester Rape Crisis £64,000;

• Rochdale Women’s Welfare Association £10,000;

• Soil Association £14,000 ‘We are the leading food and farming charity. We're on a mission to fix food and farming for all, the nature-friendly way’;

• Mosscare Housing £841,000 who are ‘Busting the myths around Social Housing and Asylum Seekers’;

• Workers’ Education Association £596,000;

• Noise of Angels £1,000 ‘Emerging as a distinctive new voice in the UK's left field electronic space’;

• Oasis Hub Oldham £163,000 ‘We are actively engaged in creating a community that is characterised by trust, safety, cohesion, mutual support, vibrancy, health, and opportunity, where individuals feel included, connected, and supported and in which they feel happy and proud to live’;

• Paws for Kids £19,000 ‘We are a community based domestic abuse service in Bolton offering a number of projects providing practical and emotional support to help break the cycle of abuse. We support individuals and families in their home and in temporary accommodation. We run the YPDVA service for 16-19 year olds representing the young person at MARAC. Each project is supplemented by group work and in-house counselling. We also offer a pet fostering service covering the Northwest for those fleeing abuse’;

• Pupils Profit £25,000 ‘Our goal is to teach pupils how to set up and operate sustainable Healthy Tuck Shops and Eco refill shops, which will contribute to a school's overall well being’; • Breaking Barriers (Meaningful Employment for Refugees) £24,000;

• Zion Arts Centre £75,000 ‘The UK’s only dedicated arts centre for children and families.’

Business development

• Future of Greater Manchester Ltd £24,000 ‘We build better places through connection, knowledge and leadership’;

• Greater Manchester Business Support £733,000;

• MIDAS Manchester’s inward investment agency £449,000;

• The Growth Company £2.7 million ‘We drive innovation across place promotion and investment, business support, skills and careers, people focused services, and insight led impact’;

• The Innovation Unit Ltd £214,000 ‘Our mission is to reduce inequalities and transform systems by growing people-powered innovations.’

The spreadsheets also show £50,000 for the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, £100,000 on uniforms, £349,000 of payments where the recipient’s name has been redacted and £64,000 to Click Travel Ltd. Then there’s Delicious Catering £3,000; Lunch in the City £630; and Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust £430,000.

My personal favourite is the £22,000 grant to Hey Little Cupcake. ‘For over 16 years, we've been creating freshly baked cupcakes, celebration cakes, wedding cakes, afternoon tea experiences, baking classes and corporate cupcakes from our Manchester baker.’

No wonder shop-keepers are clicked-off

If the Cock of the North’s love of the High Street was so great he’s happy to wipe out vape shops and bookies, why didn’t he require his own employees to shop in Manchester rather than buy stuff on Amazon when he had the chance?

Admittedly, shopping on-line is easier, saves parking costs and fines and we know the item we want is available, whereas shops these days often say it’s not in stock but you can get it from their website.

Even so, you’d think our glorious leader’s anxiety to save the ‘hollowed out High Street’ would start with shoppers and money he has direct control over.

But when he was Mayor of Manchester, credit-card users in his employment shopped at Amazon 149 times in the first three months of this year, spending £6,231.87.

Not all that much, you may think, but add in £299 at Sainsbury’s on-line, £426 to Asda on-line and £3,556 at Screwfix Direct and you might think the poverty-stricken shopkeepers of Greater Manchester – who, after all, pay for much of this – would have appreciated a little support from their local squire. What about leading by example?

Still, as Andrew Burnham’s fiefdom paid £14,330 to Google, £4,920 to Facebook and £854 to Mailchimp, they have clearly gone digital. Luckily, they did manage to pay £125 to Flowers by Bethany , £202 in a restaurant, £819 at Premier Inns, and £110 at Mcdonald’s, so that’s nice.

(Annoyingly, credit card data for Andy’s last three months as Mayor are supposedly available on-line but if you try to read or download them, they don’t work. Wonder if they have something to hide?)

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16044211/Former-M-S-boss-brands-Andy-Burnhams-plan-save-high-streets-lot-b-s-nothing.html

Pork-barrel scratchings with Andy and John

When the Cock of the North and his new best friend, Chancellor John Healey, took time out to debate the relative merits of pork scratchings and scampi fries in a nauseating video, did they also mention Britain’s defence spending?

Mr Healey resigned as Defence Secretary supposedly because he couldn’t get enough money from Rachael Reeves’s treasury. Then, in what came as a surprise to most people – notably Ed Bacon-sandwich-eater – the military’s champion is now its paymaster.

Yet no-one – not our Glorious Leader, his Chancellor or even new Defence Secretary Wes Streeting – is willing to say we will hit Mr Healey’s target of three per cent of GDP to go on guns and bombs by 2030.

What’s going on? Is it possible Mr Healey was lined up as Chancellor all along? Is it perhaps the case that his supposedly principled resignation just a week before Andrew Burnham became an MP again had nothing to do with the defence of the realm and everything to do with undermining Keir Starmer?

Mr Streeting, with terminological inexactitude, claimed he had enough support to mount a leadership challenge but that fizzled out. Now he says it’s more than his new job’s worth to say how much his new department should get.

Maybe Mr Healey really is a man of principle and will give Mr Streeting enough to secure Britain’s defences though it means finding £10 billion from the magic money tree which is already supposed to deliver £15 billion more for defence on top of all the other perks and promises Andy makes every day.

Or maybe Mr Healey’s resignation was simply part of the plot (which the Cock of the North claims to he had nothing to do with) to stitch up Keir Starmer and crown Burnham without a fight. In which case, it was just you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours and keeping the country safe from attack is just an unfortunate casualty of this summer’s coup.

Andy Burnham's pub video slammed - 'patronising to Labour voter!'

This Charming Man

When the Cock of the North gave his first interview to the State broadcaster, what did we learn from the twitchy behaviour of our new dictator?

That he is uncomfortable answering even the least-penetrating questions such as: ‘Will you get on with Donald Trump?’ or ‘Where is the money coming from?’

Laura Kuenssberg kept bowling him juicy half-volleys and all he could do was pat them away to mid-off.

The BBC billed the interview as an ‘exclusive’ but it was hardly a great triumph when every regime strong-man in any banana republic needs to capture the media in order to spread his propaganda and give him a cloak of legitimacy.

In Andy Capp’s case, we got a severe case of parochialism (does anyone really think a regional Mayor has support or legitimacy?), evasiveness and the usual slipperiness from the man who – astonishingly – claims not to have had anything to do with the plot to get rid of Keir Starmer.

Will he meet his own new Chancellor’s demand to increase defence spending? Hmm, he hasn’t really looked into it yet. Will he impose a new Death Tax to pay for social care? Hmm, he’s only been in the job a few days. Will he save money on welfare spending? That’s a question he must consider in due course.

He even had the nerve to claim people did not want a General Election and went on to claim he would stick to Starmer’s election manifesto because we live in a Parliamentary democracy.

He almost said there wouldn’t be an election before 2029 but not quite, which means he’s planning one next year when he has thrown around a few sweeties, the bills haven’t come in and he has ducked the ‘hard decisions’ he claims to be facing.

Having watched this nonsense, it makes you wonder why he wanted to be Prime Minister in the first place other than obvious self-aggrandisement. Either he has plans and daren’t tell us what they are or he genuinely doesn’t know what to do. I’m not sure which is worse.

The Cock of the North struts into Downing Street

As the Cock of the North’s Socialist coup comes to fruition, he could become as prolific as Donald Trump in using social media.

Andrew Burnham is certainly no stranger to on-line propaganda. In three months between January and March this year, his Greater Manchester authority spent £4,923 on Facebook ads and £14,330 with Google.

Our glorious leader’s former fiefdom spent £854 on email marketing with Mailchimp not to mention £252 with Elon Musk’s X to ‘enhance the user experience’.

Still, it’s small beer when merely eating and drinking leads to credit card payments of £930 at Asda, £301 at Costco, £110 at McDonalds, £569 at Morrison’s, £310 at Sainsbury’s, £434 at Tesco and £279 at Waitrose.

Mind you, when Manchester firepersons went to Mozambique in January to help with flood relief, they managed to pay £473 to Kangela Maputo which would appear to be a luxury seaside resort ‘nestled in the unspoiled coastal bush of Maputaland and overlooking the breathtaking Indian Ocean’.

One of the few policies today’s Prime Minister has outlined is a cut in taxes for High Street shops paid for by an increase in taxes on warehouses. This will dismay one of Greater Manchester’s biggest suppliers, Amazon, where £6,231 was spent on 139 transactions in the first quarter of this year.

The shops might not need the help if only Mr Burnham and his staff bothered to get off their backsides and use their local shops rather than sitting at their desks waiting for yet another Amazon Prime delivery. Still, it seems Mr Burnham likes to do things the easy way.

Tagged, taxed and traduced - don't let the Cock of the North catch you with money

Here’s a warning for the Cock of the North as he prepares to impose an exit tax on rich people fleeing his Socialist regime. It’s from my book ‘The Ministry of Theft’ which is meant to be a satirical look at the near future but might just be more of a prediction than I feared:

‘As the trickle of rich people getting out of the country threatened to turn into a flood, the Government banned all known billionaires and their families from leaving.

Since the imposition of Personal ID devices, it was easy for the Ministry of Surveillance to place a tag on their digital passports which meant they were unable to pass through control barriers at any legal route out of the country. To be on the safe side, the ban affected hundreds of thousands of people who were required, for a fee, to prove their relative impoverishment before the tag was lifted.

A State of Emergency was declared. The Prime Minister insisted it was a temporary measure to prevent the country’s oligarchs from escaping the new Fairness Charge which even middle-classes with modest assets hated and called a second Wealth Tax. The travel ban extended to anyone directly or indirectly related to the named wealthy individual – even ex-wives and step-children, cousins and uncles, were affected – and, with the compliance of the National Bank, the Government was able to prevent them from removing their money even if they were not allowed to remove themselves.

Wealth tests were imposed at airports. Security checks now included demands to see three years of bank statements. Thorough searches were made to prevent the export of cash or valuables. Some people thought they could convert money into diamonds and wear them on the way out of the country but it quickly became apparent this was not only unacceptable but the jewels themselves would be confiscated as punishment for trying to circumvent the regulations.

There were other ways round the Government’s prohibitions. The most popular was through the purchase of Bitcoin and other digital currencies which soared in value as demand increased. Some pundits warned that, once the State of Emergency was over, the value of virtual-reality money would plummet. That did not end the speculation. The Government sought international agreements to prevent what it called the laundering of money via cryptocurrencies but only with modest success. To the Prime Minister’s unconcealed fury, other countries saw themselves as competitors with Britain and encouraged wealthy people to move their money to their jurisdictions by whatever means were still open to them. The drain of capital became a game of cat-and-mouse as the rich sought ever more elaborate ways to get round the ban on extracting their money and moving it somewhere safer. Accountants and lawyers got rich as a result and both groups used their skills to ensure their own earnings were, as far as possible, placed legally beyond the reach of The National Revenue and Customs.

It didn’t take long for international confidence in the financial stability of Great Britain to drain away. This provoked ever-rising rates of interest. In turn, this stalled demand for loans and mortgages, crippling the economy while the cost of servicing the Government’s own debt grew more and more unmanageable.

The blackouts grew worse.' Buy it now - while you can still afford it

A win for the ages?

Some people don’t love the Daily Mail but you’ve got to welcome their success in defeating the concerted attack by celebs and the ridiculous Hacked Off whingers over allegations the paper broke the law to land various stories.

It is such an emphatic victory one would hope critics of the press will crawl back under a stone and stay there. Alas, that is not likely.

Indeed, there is a danger the Northern coup d’état leader will impose state regulation as part of his campaign to impose a 1,000-year Socialist reich.

State control should be anathema to any sentient being.

We’re fed enough lies, half-truths and misleading nonsense by our rulers and their spin merchants already. Getting at the truth is increasingly difficult. Yet sometimes it really matters that the great and good are exposed for the grubby little self-servers they really are.

Congratulations to the Daily Mail on a famous victory. Let’s hope this is (as they say about World Cup victories) ‘a win for the ages’ and not just a brief glimpse of honesty as we drown in a sea of propaganda.

https://www.dailymail.com/columnists/article-15960437/conspiracy-Daily-Mail-enemies-free-Press-STEPHEN-GLOVER.html

The United States of Amnesia

Only an idiot would say history is bunk.

Stone me. Someone did.

An American, inevitably. And not just any American but the man who gave the world the Ford motor car, named after Henry himself, and available in any colour as long as it’s black.

That was in 1916 but by then the die was cast. America was doomed and over a hundred years later it is rushing headlong towards catastrophe.

The “world’s greatest democracy” elected Donald Trump as president not once but twice. In between his two stints in the White House, it elected Joe Biden and might have re-elected him even though he had dementia.

What a dreadful choice: The village idiot lining his own pockets like a despotic banana republic dictator or the dead man stumbling.

How did it get to this? How did the United States of America degenerate to such a point that the world’s greatest superpower is now as divided and crumbling as it has been at any time since its civil war over slavery?

The answer, of course, lies in its history. You need to go back to the founding of the United States of America to see the seeds of its own destruction, where it all went wrong. It is reasonable to argue the answer to America’s woes today result from its very establishment 250 years ago when it rebelled against rule from Westminster. Its ‘founding fathers’ gave it a constitution which explains most of the United States’ twisted and unprepossessing history.

The truth is, America was not founded by men whose overwhelming desire was for liberty from the tyranny of a despotic King across the water. It was founded by gangsters, slave-owners and bigots who wanted to preserve the “liberty” to kill Roman Catholics and native Americans. They wanted to keep hold of their property – the black men and women who created their prosperity and allowed them to behave with unspeakable cruelty. They insisted someone else pay for their defence from native Americans without contributing a single dollar for their own security. They demanded the indulgence of all kinds of religious fundamentalism which are still a notable feature of American culture even today.

They rebelled against Britain for no better reason than that they wanted to remain intolerant in matters of religion, ignorant on the question of human rights, indigent when it came to maintaining any form of law or administration and isolated when it came to the 18th century enlightenment.

The USA was founded by religious fundamentalists who happily put witches on trial and burnt them. The country has never really abandoned its millennial fanaticism; indeed, much of today’s astonishing idiocy in America has its roots in the allegedly sacred “constitution” drawn up 250 years ago and now held – by deluded Americans only – a beacon of liberty for the whole world.

Let us for a moment consider the ridiculous right to bear arms.

This was established, in the second amendment to the constitution, so the country could maintain a militia. The Protestant fundamentalists inherited a horror of standing armies from the days of Oliver Cromwell’s military dictatorship in the 1650s. They needed local militias to protect themselves from an over-mighty army controlled by the President so the right to carry a gun was enshrined in law. The problem was the Americans never managed to differentiate between the quasi-military local armies and individuals with guns. Nor have they ever discovered the difference between a flint-lock musket and a modern machine gun. Instead, they have invested in their own little arms race where no-one trusts anyone else so everyone has to carry a gun.

Consider the famous words from the Declaration of Independence – mostly a long-winded whinge attacking King George for crimes he did not commit – “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

All created equal? Inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? The hypocrisy of this revered and much-lauded claim must have been astounding even when it was written. Obviously, women didn’t count. But what about other men, slaves for instance or native Americans? This equality led to a bloody civil war and genocide while the country even now retains an unspoken apartheid.

The United States of America is a dangerous, lawless and deeply-confused country which has never come to terms with the treachery, bloodshed and unresolved contradictions which gave it birth. They continue to paint George III as a tyrant and those loyal to Britain as traitors (they hanged enough of them). But America was established in blood and has wallowed in it ever since. It was not to be trusted 250 years ago. Nothing’s changed.