24th March 2015

I haven’t posted much lately, but tonight, it was time to shake off the cobwebs, get fired up and get blogging again.  I’m also a tweeter by the way…

The thing I love about Twitter is it’s direct, it’s in yer face, and it can be used to reach distant and very important personages in their ivory towers, to get to the heart of contentious issues quickly and cuttingly (that’s if you’re not blocked of course !)

Here’s a wonderful case in point which happened this evening.  Thanks to a kind and obliging friend, I became aware of the Twitter handle of Eric Robinson, Staffordshire County Council’s soon to be former Deputy CEO.

Eric is Wirral Council’s new Chief Executive, and starts his Wirral “journey” (yeah, love that word) on 7th April.  Not long to go now, and we’re all practically wetting ourselves in anticipation.

Here’s a link to Eric’s Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/staffspeople

And here’s a timeline of tonight’s curious events…

6:20 PM @StaffsPeople ~ followed on Twitter by Wirral In It Together…

6:42 PM ~ My welcoming tweet is dispatched…

https://twitter.com/Wirral_In_It/status/580439602609127425

8:19 PM ~ precisely 97 minutes later, I find I’m blocked…

https://twitter.com/Wirral_In_It/status/580463983376900096

The LGC Awards

As those of us in the know are painfully aware, the Local Government Chronicle is an obsequious, tedious, fawning rag – published for consumption by town hall vested interests, stuffed with reams of self-congratulatory bullshit, and all funded with your money via regular, mandatory council tax payments.  These transactions are arranged and enforced in such a way that you may go to prison if you don’t cough up.

So to put it in easy to understand terms, you get forced into a corner, with your hands tied behind your back.  Then, a fat, hairy paw slips into your pocket, out comes your wallet, and the LGC rag gets bankrolled via the relieving of congestion in said wallet, courtesy of your councillors.

Then, after being propped up and given the freedom to churn out 12 months’ worth of insulting, self-obsessed drivel, the LGC editor feels obliged to give a little something back.  He packs a couple of slave-waged interns off to Abdul’s Trophy Shop with a sack of golden cups, under strict orders to have the names of inveterate, unapologetic, shameless liar (see here, here, here, here, here, and here) “Phil Davies, Wirral Council” or “Ged Fitzgerald, Rotherham Children’s Services” lovingly engraved across them.

That done, it’s time to print out posh invites to an expensive London-based knees up, where prawn sandwiches will be scoffed, fine wines will be quaffed … and waitresses may even come in for ‘violent attention’ by soon-to-be relatives of the most notable luminaries – who knows…?

And it’s all done to celebrate how high-achieving these abnormal, gutter-dwelling, malpractising power abusers have suddenly become – against every man and his dog’s expectations.

Imagine if you will, Count Dracula being placed in charge of auditing stocks at the local blood bank.  It’s exactly the same scenario, whereby the Prince of Darkness states his desire to celebrate all that is kind and good about donating your lovely plasma, before sweeping his black cape up, obscuring his fangs, ducking down behind the glistening trophies, and secretly fixing onto a fat vein.

The lifeblood is then sucked out of the poor deluded bastard who had kindly contributed several gallons of his life’s essence, under the bogus impression he was doing something worthwhile and laudable.

Eric’s in the money – boosted from going rate of £135,000 up to £180,000

And just to finish off, news reaches me that Eric’s stonking salary has been voted through by the untouchables i.e. the  Wirral councillors who nonchalantly presided over years of foul abuse of learning disabled people; bullying of whistleblowers; concealment of deaths; mobbing; lying through their teeth to cover it all up; writing off of millions upon millions in toxic debt, and so much more – yet escaped all accountability.  I thought I’d tweet about Eric’s good fortune:

https://twitter.com/Wirral_In_It/status/580477083568177152

…oh, and…

How can an incoming CEO, if he’s keen to make a good impression with regulators, auditors and local council tax payers, go running away from the issue of child abuse before he’s even settled in behind his desk – abuse which ivolved 1,400 children and we now know was consistently covered up by award-winning Rotherham Council at the time?

It took up until only a few weeks ago to force the resignation of the whole of the Rotherham cabinet and to finally secure the imposition of special measures.

The media searchlight will one day shift and come to rest upon Wirral if this new Chief Executive carries on slamming the shutters down and blocking out whatever or whoever he may regard as “inconvenient news”.

I mean, this guy is supposed to be one of the ‘best’ people.