Friday Exclusive: Keen house pics as letter is issued to neighbours

You may have heard the story of Alan and Ann Keen’s home in Brentford (in her seat, he represents next door). First came the news that Hounslow Tory-run council was attempting to repossess the house which has lain empty while the MP couple with neighbouring seats have had the painters and decorators in. Then was the follow-up revelation that squatters had entered. Well two developments:

1. Ann Keen has issued a letter to her neighbours – in full here.

2. Up until now if you wanted to voyeuristically get close up to the net curtains without making a trip to Brentford, you’d have had to make do with the muck-raking Daily Mail (who also got the scoop on James Purnell’s former flat). I can now step in to make amends. Taken by my own fair hand are some pictures of the gaff. Click on any of them to enlarge – particularly the last one of the Downing Street style front-door.

Readers will judge for themselves but it is interesting to see the MP(s’) side – noteably absent amongst the outrage reaching us via newspaper proprieters. Some valid points are made. Furthermore am I the only one who finds the demand of backy’n'booze a bit of an ask?

Beware cash-back rip-off in Ealing

A pal of mine who works in trading standards at Tower Hamlets finds that a good deal of work in the department is taken up by consumers who’ve been scammed by dodgy enterprises offering so-called “cashback” deals. The question is cashback a rip-off has been a running one on various forums. The answer is almost always yes.

Now much heralded by local Tory blogs – see here and here – is the annoucement that Tory Ealing Council will give a £50 cashback bung to all households. As a council-tax payer I will be eligible but I can’t help feeling the whole thing is a gimmicky stunt. They could have reduced everyone’s bills rather than this headline-grabber (recently featured on the BBC London news) or even continued funding groups such as the Southall Black Sisters pressure group which one commenter to Phil Taylor’s blog vows is where their £50 is going.

Added to this is the general climate of tackiness that the Conservative council seems to have fostered. On this forum, the sinister banners trumpeting frozen council tax around Ealing Broadway amid the ever-lengthening number of empty retail premises, are decried. As one commenter opines:

What is really annoying is this big brother attitude of telling us how well the council are supposedly performing through the endless stream of literature, banners etc that are constantly being pushed on us. This reminds me of 1984 not 2009 especially as the lead story on this site talks about Ealing being the 7th worst boroughs for litter in the country, which doesn’t quite fit in with the hype does it?

I remember when the then Labour administration in the late 80s launched the quarterly council glossy mag it was condemned as a costly local version of Pravda by the then Conservative opposition. Looks like seeing as they are the masters now this content-free puff has gone into overdrive appearing monthly now plus in-between handbills (often “consultations” on creating more of those cash-cows that are CPZs which by all accounts are helping choke off retail trade).

Gimmicky casback… £50
Boasting propaganda (all round town and through your letterbox)… priceless

Jackson Reaction

Am still shocked about Michael Jackson’s passing. Went to bed after seeing Kirsty Wark interrupted in the middle of a story in expenses (BBC exectives this time) on Newnight to recieve news in her ear-piece that he’d been rushed to hospital. Awoke to hear he’d passed away. This picture depicts a pre-surgery MJ.

A number 10 spokesman and David Cameron have both expressed sadness for Jackson fans in Britain and the world while a bogus David Milliband has twittered that never before had somebody soared so high then dived so low. The phoney Foreign Secretary apparently has 1,800 followers.

Already it is being called a Diana moment. As far as I can remember William Hague’s weirdly detached response and then accusation of Blair milking it was seen as his downfall – along with a trip in baseball cap to Alton Towers, visit to the Notting Hill Carnival and stay in a hotel with Ffragrant Ffion before they’d tied the knot; that last one a faux pas with the Tory faithful.

There were no 24 hour news channels for most in 97 but Diana dominated the bulletins that there were. Certainly Hopi seems correct that normal news seems to have been suspended. Both Sky News and News 24 seem to consist of wall to wall tributes from any old Tom, Dick and Harriet. I must say I saw him live in about 1991 (?) at Wembley Stadium. I won the tickets for completing a slogan about why Sony tapes were the best (answer was “use them and you won’t need your head examining”). Can’t remember that much about the gig for some reason, even the support act escapes me. I think the exact prize was an “all expenses trip” but I didn’t take them up on that as it was just an 83 bus ride away and I had a monthly LT travelcard as I was working in central London.

Anyway I hadn’t meant to post a “shock horror party Labour member declines to claim expenses” story. What I did want to say is, where’s Jarvis Cocker when you need him? I notice man of the Sheffield (common) people JC has declined so far to comment. Footage of the 1996 stage invasion where Cocker mooned during his “Heal the World” in the protest at Jackson’s “self-aggrandising performance” is here.

Susan Boyle and Gordon Brown: Am I Bovvered?

When Gordon Brown checked in with Simon Cowell that Susan Boyle was ok the other week following her checking into rehab, he was met with ridicule. The PM can’t win it seems. People accuse him of not having an empathetic side but then when he does go and prove he has, he’s accused of being gimmicky. Have posted a longer thing on celebrity culture including a comparison of the Hairy Angel and Heathcliff of Kircaldy at Comment is Free here. Example paragraph:

Politics 2009-style feels like one big reality show – from the speaker’s election to Alan Sugar’s appointment. Meanwhile, even without trying, we know everything about Susan Boyle and nothing about Diversity, the actual BGT winners. We are fixated by the whole mindset of Britain’s Got Talent, without acknowledging that Britain’s Got Problems. There are real issues around – a global economic crisis and the continued environmental threat to our planet but you wouldn’t know it, which is the real scandal.

In the meantime Jon Stewart’s take on it all is here (at 4.13) or in still form here:

Play for Today: England People Very Nice

This blog does not usually do theatre reviews, probably because this blogger rarely goes to the theatre but I managed to catch last night “England People Very Nice”, the controversial 2 hour treatment of 400 years of immigration in Brick Lane that’s currently at the South Bank.

Anything that’s had praise aplenty and four stars heaped upon it from the Torygraph whilst simultaneuosly being accused by liberals eg Socialist Worker and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown of being racist does not sound promising. However I found it an absorbing, warm and funny account. Yes it did have a go at Bangladeshis (portayed as bigamous, uneducated and uncouth) but similar accusations were levelled at all historical settlers to the East End – French Hugenots, Jews, Irish you name them and it was all done with humour. Political/social satire never really recovered after the end of Spitting Image in my book. “Have I Got News For You” has a fairly circumscribed format (a quiz on newspaper headlines) and is often frequented by people who look like they are part of the establishment so I wouldn’t rate it as being able to have a laugh at migratory movements.

The play also exposed (or should that be supposed) how chicken tikka masala was invented (remember when that was labelled as a by-word for Britishness) and also had a dig at political correctness. During a scene in the blitz a pair white locals step over the dead body of an Indian lascar lying in Brick Lane after discovering he’s not one of them. The PC Plod type on the scene decries them for lack of sensitivity “that’s some mother’s son” he chides. “Are you ok?” the two ask the copper. “No I’ve been on a course”, he replies. The audience all around were rolling in the aisles.

Rather than slamming multiculturalism has become fashionable in recent years it’s a celebration of it, the joke is on the BNP and the whole “British jobs for British people” line on immigration. The play basically exposes the fallacy of racial purity by demonstrating that no culture is self contained. “Cultural change” is an oxymoron. The critics ofits cride parade of racial stereotypes seem to have mised the point that all this is implicit though, requiring inference from the story, that comes bang up to date with some energetic hip-hop updating the tinkly pub piano, rather than stated in a bashing-you-over-the-head way. Which is good as I like to avoid violence to the person on my rare outings to theatreland.

The play was predictably slated by a Newnight Review panel including the elephant lamp-loving Tory education spokeman Micheal Gove earlier who found it too didactic. Judge for yourself. There is an offer via Travelex to get plebs like me in, seats for some performances are up for grabs for a tenner. The clip’s here.

Political betting on Kitty Ussher

Oddly enough Mike Smithson at the excellent Political Betting site was tipping now ex-Treasuary Minister Kitty Ussher back in September as a potential Labour version of Sarah Palin. This is before Obama won and when Sarah P was seen as invigorating the clapped out Republicans’ chances by refreshing the parts others could not reach. Read it here.

Old blogposts in the current light of day eh? Meanwhile by the power of google CNN is also reporting an “Usher parting company” story. It’s not however a departure from the Treasuary but a marital split for the similarly monikered singer.

Left Adrift?

Spent Saturday at the Compass conference. You may have already seen reviews of it up at Comment is Free from Britpop author/Guardian employee John Harris and War on Want’s John Hilary. Both were podium speakers. I have up on the same site a view from a bit-player. Although I was a speaker at a parallel break-out session on “Breaking up Britain” addressing devolution organised around the energetic Mark Perryman’s latest book, for the most part I was a humble observer of the set-piece stuff. My verdict is here. Unusually the comments up so far do not seem to be the usual “you’re not as fit as your sister” ones but this time attacking Chuka Umuna, one of Labour’s bright young things for the future (hell everyone’s seemingly younger than me nowadays) who is mentioned in it. Redress the balance if you so wish (I mean by saying what a good thing Chuka is, that is).

Cameron hams it up with German accent

It’s not been YouTubed to my knowledge but the Daily Telegraph reports that David Cameron, appearing at a public meeting in Norwich in a bout of electioneering in advance of the forthcoming by-election, adopted a comedy German accent to mimic a fictitious officer of the state demanding “your papers please” in a future Britain of ID cards. Has he not been on the Tories’ diversity awareness course? Is he trying to alienate the Teutonic vote? Is this what Dave is like in his off-guard moments when not appearing silently in photo opps with cute baby seals? Not amusing, not big, not clever, not impressing anybody. At least he didn’t say “two world wars and one world cup” but it’s hardly becoming of the person that wants to be this nation’s next Prime Minister.

Incidently, also on the Telegraph website Ben Leapman, a uni chum of mine who was behind the Freedom of Information Request that unleashed the whirlwind that became expensesgate adds an FOI consideration into the increasingly crowded race for Speaker of the House of Commons. He suggests that by voting to keep expenses secret both Parmjit Dhanda and Anne Widdicombe have pretty rotten credentials to be cobweb buster in cheif. Judge for yourself who is the most plausible from Newsnight’s US primary style debate tonite.

UPDATE: Iain Dale has the Cameron footage here. Well I’ve always though the man is a good actor if nothing else. Just don’t mention the war.

Euro Blues

Why is it that the UK always votes on a Thursday? It took 3 days for our votes to be counted at last week’s European election because we needed to get in synch with the 26 other countries. By then cataclymsic changes had taken place on the domestic political landscape. When the results finally did come they were not a pretty sight for anyone inclined towards Labour. But the good news is that Euro polls rarely predict the General Election result – take 1984, 1989 and 2004. Furthermore, proof of the European elections’ status as receptacle of protest votes par excellence can be seen in the fact that the BNP and UKIP have not scored as well in the local elections this year; as it seems to be conventional wisdom these days that European elections simply don’t count. As a former European list candidate I disagree of course.

Longer post by me on this is up at Progress here.

European Election results: Ealing Borough Breakdown

Some comfort in a dire night for Labour from my home borough. The results up on the Council website and also via the mysterious blogger Ealing Rambler show that Labour was still out front according to Thursday’s poll. The BNP polled a measly 3% in the “Queen of the Suburbs”- wish this could have been the same elsewhere.

Given the backdrop of Labour’s worst ever performance and that there are all-out Ealing council elections next year, last won by the Tories, it’s not the most brilliant result for Cameron who is angling for at least two parliamentary seats. The third one – Ealing Southall blew a big fat rasberry to him just after Brown took power when his model candidate Tony Lit (who appeared on the balllot-paper as “David Cameron’s Conservatives”) finished a distant third behind the LibDems.

The Tories took the town hall in 2006 by hitching on to the anti-Uxbridge Road tram campaign that was popular at the time. Today’s equivalent is the anti-Heathrow expansion bandwagon. I note the the government has been hinting at rethinking its Royal Mail policy. Labour would do well to look at its Heathrow stance so that the “No Third Runway” posters I see displayed in people’s windows these days are not replaced by “vote Conservative” ones in due course.

Update: It emerges Hilary Benn is on record warning against further Heathrow development too.