Well Done Adrian Sanders

Well done Adrian. Yesterday, just in case you missed it, there was a vote in the Mother of all Parliaments (which is looking increasingly tatty these days) to make poor people ineligible to attend University. Turns out to get into university these days it's how many pound coins you've got, not how many "A" levels you have. Nine thousand pound coins and you can go to Uni for a year, the average course is 3 years so twenty seven thousand coins is what you need to get a degree. Plus what you have to spend just to stay alive. Mine cost less than a hundred quid but that was 30 years ago. No I didn't buy it from some fake American University, it came thanks to a great idea by Harold Wilson. Which proves that politicians can have good ideas from time to time.

Anyway, back to Adrian. He is our local MP and a LibDem. Before the last election the LibDems tried to get our vote by promising to vote against any rise in fees for students. The head LibDem made this promise but the moment he got a sniff of power he began to look for ways to rationalise the fact that he would have to break his promise in order not to fall out with his new lover that nice Mr Cameron.

The story I did read was that Adrian Sanders wasn't going to vote yesterday as he had an important meeting here in Torquay with a government minister about Health Care in the Bay. As Adrian wasn't going to vote with the coalition on this occasion and the government minister was obviously going to side with Mr Cameron their absence would have cancelled each other out. The fact that Adrian Sanders voted against must, I think, mean the government minister didn't come down to Torquay to make sure Health Care in the Bay was being catered for but decided putting up university fees was more important. All this mean is there was one more vote for and one more vote against which didn't make any difference to the outcome but showed that the government don't care about Health Care in the Bay. Sad state of affairs but not surprising.

Now voting against your side when you are in government isn't some thing you do lightly. Then up at the top don't think, "Oh well he cast his vote according to his principals therefore he must be a good chap." No, what them at the top think is, "He voted against us, the bastard."

So well done Adrian.

An Other Tree Turned to Sawdust. Council caught up in conspiracy plot.

What it used to look like

Now

When a tree comes to the end of it's life out there in a forest where there is nobody about to hear it fall, it does so without a sound according to some philosophers. Others maintain that even if there is no one standing in the forest waiting patiently for the tree to fall it will still make lots of noise when it does. Who cares? The tree doesn't, it's just a tree. Usually out in the forest trees dies slowly, they get old and a branch falls of and then an other and then a few more. The tree ends up with gashes in the truck and water gets in and the poor tree slowly rots from the inside out. All this can take years and the only ones who have any interest in this process are younger trees hanging around waiting for enough space to grow up in. Plus the local insects that make a living on rotting wood. Or maybe a tree will get struck by lightening and depart from life in a loud bank accompanied by lots of heat. Or an other tree will suffer the millions of volt of electricity sent down from the heavens and set the forest on fire and our poor tree will be consumed by the flames. Or our brave hero who has been growing tall and straight for a couple of hundred years will live in the Amazon Rain Forest and meet it's end, more and more often these days, like so many of it's colleagues, under the deadly assault of a chain saw.

Now a tree living in an urban environment is almost certain to face the chain saw style end. Councils everywhere can not afford to have trees dropping rotting branches on passers by. You could lose too many council tax payers like that given the number of trees planted in urban areas.

One of the problems round here is that Torquay is basically a town that change from a few hovels round the harbour to a fashionable watering hole in the mid to late 19 century. And one thing Victorians loved to do was plant trees all over the place. This trend continued through the Edwardian period and still continues today. So its not surprising some of these trees are getting on in years and are reaching the stage of dropping branches on to the heads of passers by. The council sensibly have a quick look at all it's trees to see if action is needed to prevent this happening. Given the "I'm going to sue for every penny I can get" culture we have imported from America you can't blame them.

A couple of days ago a large Holm Oak in the Princess Gardens near the theatre developed a large crack, nice friendly tree this, giving the council a warning it was in dropping branch mode. So down it came but not without some controversy. The council here have a history of doing things in a way that would baffle most people. I mean we live here and we have to put up with it but it doesn't mean we like the way our town is run. Headless chickens, sometimes vindictive headless chickens, or even single-minded headless chickens spring, to mind. So when the Herald Express ran the story about the tree coming down there were about 30 comments downloaded suggesting an ulterior motive for cutting the tree down. Sorry the tree was in a sadly dangerous state. A two foot long crack had opened up and a branch weighing about 5 tonnes was likely to end up crashing on to a nearby shelter. A shelter used mostly by visitors to our fair town. If the council hadn't cut the tree down I can imagine the headlines in the Walsall Gazette or the Rotherham Recorder, " 20 Tourists Killed When Tree Falls" "Torbay Council didn't do anything for fear of upsetting locals."

So one this occasion the council have got it right, I wish they would get into the habit of getting things right.

PS Oh yes. Nearly forgot. The person, a professional protestor by the sound of him, who went down to Princess Gardens yesterday and called one of the guys cutting the tree down a Nazi didn't do his cause any good either.

Birthdays

It was my birthday yesterday and I got 3 emails and a text message from various family members reminding me of the fact. When I was a child I liked reminding, usually with a birthday present, that I was a year older. But now I am not so sure. Then today I checked my bank account and there was a little present from The Department of Works and Pensions which was nice. Only £10 but it all helps. Now I couldn't remember getting this gift last year so I had a look through my old bank statements and there it was, the same amount, £10, paid in early December 2009.

Haven't the DWP heard of inflation?

Still no snow in Torquay.

More Blood Letting But Still No Snow

No snow in Torquay but still fairly cold, down to -4 Thursday night and day time never got above zero.

What else? Oh yes after dumping Nick Bye, Torbay's best ever and least loved elected mayor the con party have also ditched the leader of their councillors here in the Bay. For the second time in less than a year. After getting rid of Councillor Kevin Carroll last April he got re-elected on the promise he would be a "cuddlier" councillor from then on. It turned out he wasn't "cuddlier" enough for a majority of his fellow con party councillors who backed a vote of no confidence in the poor guy. Then the deputy mayor Councillor Chris Lewis quit his post so he could run for mayor. saying, "I think Nick (Bye) has done a good job but I couldn't criticise some aspects of what was going on if I remained in the cabinet and as Deputy Mayor. I thought it would better to have a clean break and a new approach. To be the leader you have to put forward your own manifesto. I am now free within the group to say what I believe in." He wants to be mayor and leader of con party.

Quick question here Chris; Why couldn't you criticise what was going on if you thought it was wrong when you were deputy mayor. You just had to stand up at the time and do the honourable thing and say, "This is wrong. I quit" or have you just become aware that it's wrong now you are no longer deputy mayor.

So what we have got at the moment is a mayor who because he doesn't have the backing of his party, doesn't have much power. There is no deputy mayor and no leader of the party. So the Con Party could be considered to be in a state of disarray, not a nice state to be in with an election in 5 months. I know a week in politics is a long time but not when you go round shooting yourselves in the foot, or even both feet.

Mind you the opposition round here might not be in a position even to catch up with, never mind overtake the heavily limping con party. People round here still call a local barn the Spanish Barn because some tourists from the Iberian Peninsular slept there for a week 400 years ago. With memories like that we can still remember that 4 years ago the Lib Dems closed most of the public toilets in the Bay to save money. What did they want to save the money for you might ask? Well a few weeks later they voted for a massive increase in their out of pocket expenses; by a million quid more or less. The Con Party and the public protested this nonsense and we managed to get the toilets open again. And as soon as the Con Party got elected they did absolutely nothing about the expenses increase. Well what did you expect? Miracles?

Maybe it's time for the local Labour Party to re-invent themselves. No. No, lets get that right. It is TIME for the local Labour Party to come in from the wilderness like a joyful prophet riding into town on a donkey.

Either that or we could join Devon County Council and have done with trying to run the Bay ourselves because we have made a right mess of the job over the last 10 years.

Russia

So Russia get the World Cup. What a disappointment. Why didn't Ronald Regan bomb them while he had the chance? Sorry, only kidding but it does now mean England will not be able to stage the World Cup until I am in my nineties at least.

PS That 3rd goal against Germany. It was never over the line.