That MP letter in full…

(OK, not totally in full, I blotched out my address. There are strange people out there…)

His website that is no longer live can be found HERE and you can’t send messages HERE.

I recommend this book for him… or maybe even that one.

Letter from MP

A Houses of Parliament letter awaited me today. CCMP has disclosed all Morley Together correspondence- but only that sent to Morley Town Council!

An accidental or deliberate misunderstanding? Stalling for time hoping for a good outcome on Friday?

The letter finishes with:

“I hope you support the principles of Morley Together. Please let me know.”

Don’t worry, I will…

Schools signing up to Morley Together

I had been rather surprised that David’s school had signed up to Colin Challen’s Morley Together, it hadn’t been raised at Governor meetings and wasn’t in the Head’s report. (The Stephen Lawrence award, by comparison, had been discussed at length).

Anyway, the Head and senior management team inform me that they haven’t signed anything, agreed to anything or received any certificates. Apparently CCMP mentioned it on the way out from a Stephen Lawrence event and they expressed some interest to find out more.

So, yet again, all is not quite what it seems.

From our Watermelon MP…

More on Morley Together

A few weeks back, I asked the Town Council ofice to dig out all relevant correspondence on this Morley Together business. Being a Member of the Council, it wasn’t necessary for me to make this a Freedom of Information request but I did ask that it be treated as such as regards content and timescales.

This was in response to the total lack of response from Colin Challen MP since March 8th when I emailed him the day after the Motion was hastily approved (via his dormant Website).

The pack yields two interesting details.

Firstly, the Mayor wrote to Colin Challen on February 19th that the Council support the principles of Morley Together, based on it being agreed by the Strategic, Policy and Constitutional Committee. On this basis, CCMP rightly assumed (and went to Press) that the Council had signed up to it. This was denied in Full Council, however, by Cllr Grayshon, when I asked for clarification.

I don’t think this was deliberate per se, but more a case of backtracking when they realised that it would need to go to Full Council.

(With hindsight, I suspect many Councillors were rather worried about getting this motion agreed, preferably unanimously, before the spectre of twelve possible BNP Councillors at the May meeting.

The second interesting detail is the correspondance from CCMP himself. The main letter is fairly much as expected from the press report, however a specimen certificate has a Hope not Hate logo on it.

Take a look at http://hopenothate.org.uk/. It is the website of Searchlight, which describes itself as the “Anti-Fascist Community”. From my brief perusal, it is rather like the BNP- surface respectability, extreme views, shades of obsessive compulsive behaviour, not very pleasant under the rock.

Lots of others (& not just the BNP) describe it in less glowing terms, however. (and here and here).

I liked this quote;

There’s something rather sinister and undemocratic, however, about an organisation which doesn’t put up candidates itself but devotes itself to attacking people who do submit themselves to the democratic process.

Someone replied to this as follows:

There’s something sinister and undemocratic about the BNP. Other parties don’t have an equivalent of RedWatch, where if you criticise the BNP, someone will come in the dead of night and firebomb your car.

Really? I thought Labour had outsourced it to Searchlight. Tell that to Chris Beverley, who experienced a bit of RedWhite&BlueWatch at his house.

Ample time my arse!

Amy Teale asserts that I had ample time to speak on the Morley Together Motion. I checked with Roland:

0:00 Cllr Gettings (Independent) Mayor, introduces Agenda item 12
0:12 Cllr Grayshon (Morley Borough Independent) makes announcement clarifying newspaper reports
0:36 Cllr Grayshon proposes Motion
3:35 Cllr Gettings asks for a seconder
3:39 Cllr Teale (Labour) gives a formal Second
3:45 Cllr Grey (Independent) proposes procedural motion to vote on the Motion in two parts
4:05 Cllr Bradley (Independent) Seconds
4:40 Cllr Gettings puts it to immediate vote on discussing in parts – lost
4:46 Cllr McSharry (Labour) Comments on Motion
5:10 Cllr Slingsby (Independent) comments
5:37 Cllr McSharry Point of Order on Cllr Slingsby’s comments
5:45 Cllr Bradley Interjection on Cllr McSharry’s comments
5:55 Cllr Leadley (MBI) proposes Move to vote
5:57 Cllr Grey points out he wishes to speak
6:02 Cllr Gettings asks for a seconder
6:07 Cllr Welham (Independent) Seconds move to vote
6:10 Cllr Gettings clarifies that vote against permits further discussion,
6:20 Vote on move to vote- passed
6:30 Vote on motion- passed
6:51 Cllr Grey expresses strong disappointment on not being given a chance to speak
7:07 Cllr Gettings makes closing remarks

One minute nine seconds. Less than I thought!

MP’s rebuttal in full…

Here is the reply to my letter last week, via the Postbag page.

It doesn’t really answer the question, does it? Of course, the cat gets let out of the bag again on page 15 where this appeared…

Yeah, right. Oh, look, a photo opportunity. Blinky (left), Watermelon (right).

Are they new £20 notes they are holding? the ones with adam Smith on? Surely they aren’t trying to buy our votes?

If you want to see a more senior politician make a fool of himself, go here (strong stomach required!)

Morley Together in the Yorkshire Evening Post

…is now appearing in Google searches pointing to the Leedstoday.net site, home of the Yorkshire Evening Post. It wasn’t showing up last week though.

I don’t read the YEP, Karen thinks it is rubbish, at least compared to the Manchester Evening News. Perhaps Google agree with her!

Anyhow, I now know what the pledge actually says (or at least how it is reported) and it seems that the participants get a nice certificate as well.

I’ll get round to reading it all in due course. Interestingly, another article has comments and not everyone thinks it is a good idea.

Morleygate update

The Morley Observer & Advertiser have been on the phone, asking if I would mind if they turned my letter into an article as it was a bit too long for the letters page. (They normally attend Full Council but Erica the reporter couldn’t make it this time.)

I’d be delighted, I said. I look forward to Wednesday’s paper with interest…

We have the Mayor’s Ball tomorrow night, it will be interesting to see if news has spread about the cat loose amongst the pidgeons.

I make a great friend but a terrible enemy!

Light the blue touchpaper…

I have composed a letter to the editor of our local newspaper about Morleygate. It will appear on Wednesday if the Editor chooses it for publication.

I have enhanced it slightly here by embedding Hypertext links. I believe it is self-explanatory…

Although I am a Town Councillor, I generally refrain from joining in with the tedious party-political tittle-tattle that graces your letters pages. However, on this occasion, I feel the need to speak out.

I regard myself as a libertarian, a value system based on freedom, liberty and property, the basis of the American Constitution. (This is also often known as Classical Liberal in the UK). A year or two back, I read a book called “The retreat of reason” which argued against what it described as “Political correctness and corruption of public debate in modern Britain”. I am disappointed to have to report that Morley Town Council appears to have fallen victim to this insidious creeping doctrine that demonises non-believers and stifles freedom of expression.

Last Wednesday at full Council, I realised with a shock how PC we had become. During the meeting, two Councillors were challenged for their choice of innocuous phrases during discussions, where the challenger had chosen to take offence at perceived slights to others unspecified. This is classic PC- attack the heretics for what you think they are rather than what they say.

The climax of this virtuous PC vacuum was the debate on Colin Challen’s “Morley Together” campaign, which I understand from your pages includes some sort of pledge. The Motion was submitted without any supporting paperwork saying what we were actually signing up to, proposed without even mentioning what Morley Together was about, debated for one minute eleven seconds and then curtailed by a move to the vote. (This is procedural motion intended for the purposes of speeding up turgid long-winded debates where the arguments are becoming circular. In layman’s terms, a move to the vote means “We have heard enough, let us vote on it now rather than talk further.”)

When this happened I was absolutely incredulous. I was just about to speak and made it clear that I still wished to do so. Council, however, preferred to move to the vote and the motion was quickly passed with a majority. I personally voted against- not because of the sentiments of Morley Together but because what I considered to be a seriously flawed and contradictory Motion was rushed through with inadequate debate by a herd mentality.

I am genuinely of the opinion that the Council has brought itself into disrepute. It didn’t do anything wrong legally but has exposed itself as morally weak by this rather shabby behaviour. My colleagues who voted to curtail discussion should reflect on their actions which I regard as no less than shameful. I shudder to think what members of the public present that night thought of this new low in local democracy and suspect that some of them wouldn’t trust some of us to sit on a toilet the right way round…
I decided a while back not to re-stand for Morley Town Council and was naturally disappointed to not have had the opportunity to make my Valedictory speech. However, I will put it on my online Blog in due course.

Finally, I’d like to thank the people of Morley who have contacted me on Council business over the last three years and hope that my small efforts to assist were helpful. It has been a pleasure to serve the Town and it is such a shame that it had to end this way.

Cllr. Ian Grey