I have, in my hands, a leaflet from the local Lib Dems proclaiming the headline,

“THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN SACKED!”

Well, powerful stuff. But who’s ‘they’? ‘They’ are two local councillors, one in charge of refuse, and another the ex-chair of the Health and Social Care scrutiny panel.

No, please, don’t fall asleep. It gets better.

Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council, you see, have (probably? allegedly?) broken EU law in awarding a  £50 million bin collection contract to French rubbish giants Sita. It’s the council officials that broke these rules, and it’s believed to have cost Calderdale voters something in the region of £6 million.

The controversy comes from whether or not elected politicians – especially the Cabinet that rubber stamped the official’s decisions – should be held to account for this. Is anyone politically responsible? The Cabinet have collective responsibility, so theoretically if the buck stops somewhere, it should stop there, shouldn’t it? £6 million is not small beans. £6 million is an absolute disgrace.

The local Labour Group agreed. They’ve resigned from chairing their scrutiny panels and, on the 1st October, there was a big Council meeting, where they called for a vote of No Confidence against the Tory Cabinet.

Now, considering there’s a leaflet with, “THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN SACKED” as the headline from the Lib Dems, you’d imagine this same Lib Dem group voted in favour of Labour’s coup attempt, calling those Tories to account for costing the local taxpayers millions.

Sadly you’d be wrong. They actually abstained, saying that both the Tories and Labour were to blame for the scandal, and therefore it would be wrong to just punish the Tories… and so they helped the Tories stay in power.

And the quote from the Lib Dem group leader explaining this masterpiece of political tactics?

We are not prepared to plunge Calderdale into civic chaos by calling for the entire cabinet to resign.

It’s important to stress here that the ‘civic chaos’ would have been the Lib Dem group taking over. As the second largest group after the Tories, they would have been asked to put together a Cabinet, such is the tradition in Calderdale. Having said that, they would then have had to work with Labour and the Independents to get anything done, in a Town Hall that renowned for a complete lack of productive working relationships between the groups.

Perhaps having everything blocked would be civic chaos, but at least they’d have tried, at least they’d have shown what they could do even in the worst possible situation – and importantly someone would have been seen to have taken the fall for robbing the local taxpayers of £6 million.

Perhaps, just perhaps, having to work with other parties to get things done is a good thing, isn’t it? Isn’t that the point of PR, after all?

The local paper that reported the sorry affair in the Town Hall is full of comments from angry locals that, no matter what the intentions or reasons for the decision, the end result is that Councillors have collectively voted themselves off the hook for responsibility for the mess (leaving it all on the unelected officials). They’re singling out the Lib Dems – here’s an example:

…it is not gratifying to say I told you so about the useless Liberals,what we have lost here, was a chance for a clear out, of all that is wrong with the corrupt system, that seems endemic at the moment in Calderdale,this was a chance for the Liberals, to resemble some sort of credible alternatives to these accusations,but they simply have no backbone of their own unfortunately.

Will Calderdale’s voters pick up on the subtle nuance of the Lib Dem’s position – “sack just those two, not the whole cabinet”? Will they appreciate that they’ve left it up to the voters to decide whether or not to boot out those individuals responsible rather than using Town Hall shenanigans to override the democratic choices people made before?

Or, like me, will normal people see the headline “THEY SHOULD BE SACKED” and gasp at what looks like hypocrisy? My immediate reaction to seeing, was “BUT YOU SAVED THEM!!” and I’m a paid up party member. What about everyone else? Perhaps it’s only because I read that particular story in the local paper that’s caused me to spot anything wrong here. Most people won’t have, and the odds of people having read (and remembered) the story in the paper and then reading the Focus leaflet are extremely low. I’m reliably informed that Lib Dem groups are advised to avoid taking over minority control, too.

Presumably this is why this sort of thing works, no matter what I happen to think about it, and so, in the end, this is why I don’t (normally) get involved on the ground.

A not so subtle response to this and this.

A group of children, broken up into two gangs: They have one bucket of toys, with only enough toys for one of the gangs.

To prevent fighting (and broken spectacles) they take turns every week to elect a new leader. Invariably leadership alternates between each of the gang, although sometimes one gang can hold the bucket for many weeks at a time. Gang A’s leader, if he wins leadership of the whole tribe, always grants the bucket of toys to his gang, and Gang B’s leader always decides to give the bucket to her gang.

Round and round they go, the bucket of toys passing between each gang.

Then there’s a few children that aren’t part of either gang. They’re a minority, because not being in a gang means no access to the bucket – so they decide to offer up a better solution for organising their affairs: Why not have a competition or some kind, each week, to decide who gets each of the individual toys in the bucket? Another suggests: Why don’t we get some more toys, or come up with new games? The non-gang children already invent games and so their ideas seem completely obvious. Obsessing about the bucket is stupid, isn’t it?

The leader of each gang considers these suggestions, then disregards them: “That would mean some of my gang would go without toys, and some of their lot would get toys they don’t deserve. When they’re in charge, we get nothing, so why should we give them anything? No! Never!”

The non-gang kids realise that the only way to end the ridiculous situation with the bucket is to get one of their own elected as a leader. A discussion is had as to the best method to achieve this, and opinion is divided – there are two proposed solutions:

1) Promise to give half the toys to each gang

2) Always stick up for the gang currently without the bucket

Sadly, the creativity the non-gang children display inventing games does not seem to stretch to any other options. 6 months later, having still to win leadership even once, they spend most of their time being asked, “Will you support Gang A or Gang B?”

The moral of the story, such as there is one, is that if you try to play someone’s else game, you’re going to get spanked.

Wow, I said blogging would be light… I didn’t think it’d be this bad. Needless to say the crisis at work continues, demanding all of my attention. How was the Tory conference? Any good?

So, time to start thinking about the wisdom of writing policy ideas for Labour because, like Nineteen-eighty-four, they don’t spot the satire, they don’t spot the joke, they don’t really see the problem.

Oh, sure, they’ve managed to make it a bit more accessible and voter friendly, but the basic idea of putting the unemployed to work monitoring everyone else on CCTV from their own homes, which I wrote up as a piss take here, is apparently going to become a frickin’ reality according to the BBC.

Sick. I feel sick.

UPDATE: I realise it’s a private security company doing this, offering people ‘points’ for spotting shoplifting. Here’s the problem with this: If you provide an incentive for people to spot wrong-doing, you’re going to get an awful lot of false positives… not sure you’ve seen them put something in their bag? Better report it anyway – don’t want to miss the points, and points win prizes. As something that’s going to piss off a lot of people and just generally add to the horrible atmosphere, I think it’s a dead cert winner.

Consumers should be allowed to know which shops are using this system, so that if you’re Black, or Asian, or a teenager, or just a bit scruffy you know to stay away from these shops, or at least ensure you’re not carrying any bags, or wearing a coat, and have your hands firmly in your pockets (or in the air) at all times. Remember to avoid looking at cameras, or just generally looking at the wrong thing. Act natural.

So yes, as long as there’s a warning on the shop entrance saying, “this store is monitored by anonymous internet curtain twitchers. We take no responsibility for footage of you appearing on Youtube” so I can stay away I’ll be happy.

But if the idea’s successful, if it works, if it causes no problems, expect to see distributed CCTV monitoring being taken seriously by Councils and Government… then I’ll be distinctly unhappy.

It’s crisis time at work again, at least for the next week, which means blogging’s going to be light again. Apologies.