Back in January this year, after a series of text messages with Councillor King, I posted a suggestion on the Warwick & Leamington CLP forum. My argument was that the Labour (and Green) councillors on the planning committee of Warwick District Council had voted for a change to the planning permission for the Taylor Wimpey development at Union View which would cause chaos and disruption for residents of Hatton, Hatton Park, Hatton Green, Hatton Station and Shrewley.

I'm posting this now because the chaos and disruption continues to this day and the underlying issue has not been addressed.

The issues are, of course, not merely the officers’ proposal which was seconded by Councillor King and then nodded through by the planning committee with barely a murmur. The bare murmur in fact came from a Conservative councillor, and his thorough and analytical presentation to the committe was ignored because the officers had backed the developers and the councillors had, in the main, not done any homework.

Had they done so, they would have been minded and able to challenge the officers and the developers and refuse the application. But it is clear from watching the video of the meeting that, with the exception of Councillor Phillips, no-one had looked at the big picture nor examined the details. Certainly the Labour representative was unaware of the implications of the decision so casually made.

The issue continues to be a cause of major concern to my neighbours and the rest of the Hatton population. This discontent is being exploited by the Conservatives who are blaming the Green/Labour coalition for their distress. My sense is that it will adversely affect Labour’s chances in the local elections next year. Some of us worked hard earlier this year to gain a seat or two in the Budbrooke ward, and came close. Unfortunately, I know some who voted Labour in the WDC election will not do so again in the CC election in 2025.

As a long-standing member of the Labour party, longer-standing than many on the District Council, I have often argued for a proper relationship between electors and elected representatives. Once a member becomes a Councillor via the hard work of many local comrades, they disappear into a self-contained bubble. The rest of us have no role and no say. Were you, for example, consulted on the coalition with the Greens? Or the proposal for the merger of WDC and Stratford?

This is not intended to be ad hominem, but Councillor King, who seconded the egregious motion which has prompted all this, is a councillor for Leamington Clarendon. He is not actually on the Planning Committee but was, at the time, a substitute for a councillor who couldn’t make it.

Nevertheless, if he is sitting in judgement on matters relating to the other side of Warwick, he should surely consult Labour members in that part of the district before he casts his vote. At the very least, he should have ascertained the feelings of the residents affected.

And the same principle should apply to all our councillors.

Today from the everysmith vaults: ​Seven Last Words, played by The Lindsays. I've always regarded this as a secular piece and I'm thinking of using the Intro for a secular broadcast. Listen out.

It hasn’t been very long but we are already seeing just what kind of leader we have elected. Many of us have been clear that our vote for Labour was in no sense a vote for Starmer, nor for the egregious privateer Wes Streeting, nor for Ashworth or Lakehurst or Evans or any of the vicious cabalistas who have taken over our party. I say this now because they need to be aware that their super-majority is a frail thing: it will vanish completely with a paltry 6% swing next time.

“Next time” is five years away, however. And that is a hell of a long time in politics. Anything could happen. Well, almost anything. We are not going to see anything approaching a socialist policy, for example. And we are unlikely to see much of the structure created by the Tories over 14 years overturned.

I am no psephologist, but Sir John Curtice is clearly correct. The Labour majority is the result of the collapse of the Tory party. Which is a problem for the new government, because its potential programme is essentially a version of what we have endured for 14 years.

We are about to experience another five years of the same old.

As we watched overnight on Thursday/Friday, there were hints that the electorate is aware of the dangers.

Ashworth was defeated, and Streeting almost so, not solely because of Labour’s anti-Gaza position, but because they are seriously unpleasant people, seemingly without an ounce of humanity.

We are fortunate that the Leicestershire voters kept Ashworth from Parliament. Streeting snook in by 500 or so votes. But this quasi-humiliation did not temper his approach.

On Friday, an NHS contract for ‘Integrated Care’ worth £32 million was put up for grabs. It’s a Tory scheme of course, based on an American system, but Labour were running with it within 24 hours of winning the election.

One might think that if anyone could be trusted to ‘change’ the received wisdom, it would be Streeting. He was from the start one of Starmer’s yes-men. But Starmer is wearing belt (Streeting) and braces (Alan Milburn).

Yes, that Alan Milburn, the former Labour health secretary who was responsible for the PFI deals before becoming chair of the PriceWaterhouseCoopers health industry board, in which highly role he championed private medicine.

Milburn is not the only milk monitor being brought in to ensure that Starmer’s apprentices do not allow a tad of socialism into their policies.

Education is another field in which he is fiddling nervously.

Joining the department headed by Bridget Phillipson, and replacing the exemplary Matt Western as HE minister, is someone we all thought was gone for good.

But please welcome back the woman who resigned in disgrace and was thrown out by her electors in Redditch back in 2009.

A woman who fiddled her expenses and whose husband, she said, watched porn while she was at late night debates - and why shouldn’t the public pay for his habit?

Yes, this is the appalling Jacqui Smith, who should not only not be in power, but should not be in the labour party either.

But it’s people like Milburn and Smith that Starmer needs. Because even in a party which has been purged of any kind of independent socialist thinking, Starmer is not brave enough or bright enough to run his own course.

He needs these dinosaurs from the tail-end of the Blair-Brown hegemony.

He’s running scared of the likes of Faiza Shaheen, Jeremy Corbyn,  Diane Abbott, Jovan Owusu-Nepaul, Ken Loach. He’s even frightened of eminently sensible, moderate, intelligent and honourable MPs like Matt Western with their cross-party appeal and understated skills, who have shown they can win a Tory seat and build a foundation of votes. (Starmer of course managed to lose 18,000 of the votes he gained under Corbyn.)

Like so many good people who have been members of the Labour party for much longer than Starmer, and who fought a safe Tory constituency rather than a safe Labour one, Matt is not required on this voyage.

But without him, and people like him, we won’t get anywhere.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Meanwhile, Bob is on the road again. It’s the Outlaw Tour with Willie Nelson, and he’s changing the set list each evening. Fortunately, on the road with him are some great tapers - notable BlueChair - sending their recordings to Benny Boy for tweaking and refinement. Currently playing, is the show from Bethel on Sunday. Sox beat the Evil Empire that night too!

The newspapers, broadcast media and political podcasts over the last few days have been obsessed with the machinations inside the Tory party in Basildon and Billericay. It is one of the safest Tory seats in the country, with a majority so large that it should withstand a Labour landslide come July. With the incumbent MP John Baron standing down, and with only a month to go before the election, the Chair of the Conservative Party, Richard Holden, has announced the new candidate. It is Richard Holden.

The move has shocked not only the Tory voters of Basildon and Billericay but also the unshockable political journalists. The news featured on most bulletins and on Newsnight. It also featured prominently in the press and The News Agents devoted an entire podcast to the topic.

That this flagrant example of parachuting should attract so much attention from the mainstream media has surprised some of us on the Left, where parachuting is part of everyday life.

And in the Labour Party, we don’t just put our yes-men and women into seats without an incumbent. We trump up charges against existing candidates, find them guilty and allow those who made that judgement to move into a safe seat without challenge.

The dismissal of Faiza Shaheen in Chingford and Woodford Green is perhaps the most egregious. Labour has lost a candidate who would have been a credit to the party and a serious player in parliament.

Faiza was removed on the basis of a few tweets over 14 years, none of which seem in any way contentious but were used by three NEC members - two of whom took over safe seats and one of which said nothing and failed even to turn on his camera during the Zoom interview - to justify their factionalism.

Faiza is a great loss. Let’s look at a gain.

Luke Lakehurst is a seriously unpleasant man, but he is - since a couple of hours before the closing of nominations - the Labout candidate for North Durham.

He is an extremist, a self-proclaimed “Zionist shitlord” who has accused the UN of being anti-semitic and - a non-Jew himself - has accused non-Zionist Jews of abandoning their Jewish identity. “They don’t go to shul at all. It’s become a purely cultural thing around a bowl of chicken soup.”

He also, famously, said of (the late MP) Glenda Jackson that she made him “want to puke” and “sets my gag reflex going”.

But that’s ok - it’s not as if he’s a Tory donor. And why should the media be concerned about this man being parachuted into a safe Labour seat.

After all, Starmer was clear that all candidates should meet the highest standards.

Faiza, a working class Muslim with a PhD and a community base, doesn’t. Akehurst, a shit with no community base, does.

Standards? Or double standards?

Today from the everysmith vaults: ​The Lindsays, playing the Razumovsky quartets. I miss them.

These days, I am seldom surprised by the behaviour of our elected representatives at local and national levels. Here in Warwick, we have a particularly offensive example, as three councillors used an Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting to direct their prejudices against SEND children and their parents. It rightly provoked a furious reaction. The local MP was on the tele; the Council released a statement; the Leader could not comment because it was all under investigation; demonstrations were held at Shire Hall; and the councillors involved showed themselves to be only a little chastened and barely apologetic.

I do not expect my councillors to be Nobel prize winners or postgraduate alumni from top universities. I do not look to them for their rhetorical and oratorical skills. I do not even ask for them to share my political views.

But I do require, as a minimum standard, the qualities of competence and compassion, intelligence and common sense.

To watch the video of the Children and Young People Overview and Scrutiny Committee is to be appalled not merely by the ignorance of the specific comments but also by the standard of the discussion as a whole.

As it happens, I have also been watching the video recording of the Planning Committee of the Warwick District Council at work. Specifically, I have been watching our councillors decide whether or not to allow Taylor Wimpey to amend the original development proposals and thus require the installation of “temporary” traffic lights on an already busy road for a year or more.

This is not the small matter of a minor and occasional inconvenience. There are only two means of access and egress and both are effectively blocked by long tailbacks morning, evening and frequently throughout the day.

The “temporary” traffic lights which make moving from our home to … well, anywhere really, are not the problem. They are the symptom of the problem.

And that problem is Warwickshire District Council and its planning committee.

Back in 2019, the 5th of November to be precise, the proposal to approve the new development was put to the committee by the officers.

After a discussion in which the vast majority of councillors expressed serious disquiet, it was proposed to approve the officers’ recommendations.

The proposer? The Conservative Councillor Sukhi Sanghera.

Remember this is the evening of the 5th of November.

That same day, the 5th of November, The Insolvency Service had issued a press release announcing the extension of restrictions on Sanghera. 

Bizarrely, the Council itself (on the 8th) claimed that it had become aware of the decision from the press release but not until the 6th. So did this validate the involvement of Sanghera in the decision-making?

Not really, because he had been disqualified from being a member effective from 15 August 2019.

But even a proposal as flimsy as this needs a seconder. At this point, there is a pause. The chair, Councillor Boad, informed the committee, none of whom was minded to get involved, that if he didn’t get a seconder, they would all “be there all night”.

At which point, the recording has Councillor Kennedy, a novice Green elected six months previously, formally seconded - with the rider that he didn’t know what he was doing!

And that is how this insane development got the go-ahead, with a proposal from a councillor who was sitting illegally and was subsequently jailed.

Today from the everysmith vaults: 60 years or so ago I was a frequent but irregular visitor to Les Cousins, a folk and blues club which hosted many of the greats of the folk and blues world as well as many just starting out. A recent 3 CD release - the soundtrack of Soho's legendary folk and blues club - includes tunes from pretty much everyone who ever played in that basement. I commend it to you.

It must have been The Onion. It could only have been The Onion. Only a magazine that hailed the Russian revolution with the headline "Bearded Coffee House Types Seize Power in Russia" could have featured a lead story back in 2000 headlined "Christian Right Lobbies to Overturn Second Law of Thermodynamics".

Of course, it was nonsense. And those who believed it were shown to be scientifically illiterate, religiously insane and lacking a sense of humour.

So what do we make a new law about to voted upon in the UK which declares that we - judges, barristers, MPs, citizens, all of us - must now accept that Rwanda is a safe place to live?

How do we know this? Because the government is about to pass a law which dictates exactly this.

The state of our nation, and the shambles which is our politics, have come to this.

​We must accept that black is white, that the moon is made of cheese, that Rwanda is safe.

Now you would think that the Labour party and the LibDems etc etc would be up in arms, leading a nationwide revolt against the proposed legislation.

Most of the rebellion, that is to say most of the most effective opposition, comes from within the governing party itself.

It's the Tories. It's Rees-Mogg. It's Truss. It's Braverman. It's that arsehole from Stoke who is the Deputy Chairman of the Conservative party.

For some reason, the most egregiously right wing piece of legislation in decades is, for some members of the Conservative party, not sufficiently egregiously right wing at all.

We are told we must ignore the law. And those who tell us this are deputy chairmen of the Tory party. 

They have no morality, no ethics, no honesty.

I despair.

Today from the everysmith vaults: A very short piece which I heard on the Third programme a few weeks ago and have managed to track down. It is a piece called Shelter Island by the violinist Randall Goosby. Need to hear more from this guy.

On Wednesday evening, the House of Commons voted on an amendment to the King’s Speech. The amendment, tabled by the SNP, called for an “immediate ceasefire”. It failed. It failed because the official opposition failed to oppose the Government and in so doing opposed the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, more than 70% of the British population and 87% of Labour voters. Why?

The wording of the amendment caused panic in Starmer’s office. It clearly reflected the views of the vast majority of the Labour party; even, in fact, the views of many of his front bench shadow ministers.

But it had been tabled by the SNP. And the SNP must not be allowed to take the initiative on popular opposition.

So a narrative was quickly created. The SNP were acting in bad faith. They were playing political games. Tabling the motion was a “ploy”.

Despite this, more than 50 Labour MPs voted for the ploy. Front bench spokesmen voted for the ploy and thereby lost their job.

Jess Phillips was the most high profile of them, and her decision required its own narrative. “Sources” claimed that she was acting  cynically in response to the opinions of her Muslim constituents and voting only in self-preservation.

Shock! Horror! An MP listening to his/her constituents and acting accordingly! Isn’t that what they are supposed to do?

Unfortunately, we are now talking about what Starmer calls the “changed Labour party”. Forget democracy. Substitute democratic centralism, the system of internal control which was so successful in Communist parties the world over.

And this is why the marches, the vigils, the demonstrations are so important.

Our “representatives”, our MPs, will not stand up for us as we wish to stand up for the Palestinians. In this literal and symbolic issue, Parliament and its members continue to play political games.

Parliament right now is irrelevant.

Today from the everysmith vaults: I am listening to the Boston residency of the Rough & Rowdy ways tour. His cover version on the 5th was Merle Haggard’s Footlights. Check it out.

On Saturday evening, in the front parlour of 5 Cwmdonkin Drive in Swansea, the baritone Gareth Brynmor John and harpist Alis Huws performed Dylan, the song cycle by Michael Stimpson which sets to music works by Dylan Thomas, including Ceremony After a Fire Raid, a powerful poem he wrote in 1945 after a visit to Coventry. It concerns an innocent child, in its mother’s arms and burned completely. Listening to the live stream of this piece (it is #6 in the cycle), the parallels between what Thomas describes and tries to understand with what is happening in Gaza cannot be ignored.

It is an extraordinary poem, because it is a ceremonial in itself, in its own right. I urge you to read it because it feels as if an organ is playing it, as if a prophet is proclaiming it.

It is a personal response to the death of the child but it identifies the poet as part of the whole human race: “Myselves”, a Greek chorus of grievers, a collective of sadness and despair.

The child is not named. He or she is anonymous. A symbol of sacrifice. “Myselves” grieve and the grief itself is confessional. Grief is guilt. Grievers are also “believers”. The poet is the spokesperson. The poet is the priest.

Forgive
Us forgive
Us your death that myselves the believers
May hold it in a great flood
Till the blood shall spurt …

It is the poet - and through the poet, the people - that can say this, that can feel this, that can act on this.

Right now, the politicians are cynically playing with words, insulting us with passionless pretension and ruthless refusal to acknowledge the truth of the actions and reactions.

Beginning crumbled back to darkness
Bare as nurseries
Of the garden of wilderness.​

Today from the everysmith vaults: I need to declare an interest. Gareth Brynmor John is my nephew. I am listening again to his interview and performance with Alis on Radio 3. It is still available on Sounds (​In Tune 5pm Friday 3rd) and I commend it to you.

What we've been seeing on our television screens in the last few days is horrific. What we've been hearing on our radios is horrendous. What we have been reading in our newspapers is harrowing. And what makes all of these so abhorrent is that we do not know whether what we are seeing, hearing, and reading is true. Something is happening but we don’t know what it is, do we?

During the last week, we have absorbed many truths and even more lies.

We know, for example, that Hamas murdered forty babies, decapitating some. Or do we know that this is yet another “big lie”?

Who knows? This truth is still being repeated a week after the events of last Saturday. And it has spawned further truths.

For example, this is a Palestinian trait - that they are not using violence to achieve a military objective, but to satisfy an innate blood lust.

That appeared on my twitter feed via a post from David Baddiel, who also told me that the Left celebrated riotously at the news last Saturday. 

Did I? I remember horror, sadness, despair. I don't recall celebrating.

And here's another. Did the Palestinian ambassador suggest/imply/state unequivocally that Israel had it coming? 

Kate Burley said all three things on Sky News and refused to apologise after it was revealed by Novara Media that, as part of a answer to a question in which he was denouncing and condemning Hamas, the ambassador said that everyone, including the Israeli government, could see this coming.

Meanwhile, on BBC News, Palestinians have 'died". Israelis have been “killed”.

Front pages of our newspapers are showing images of Palestinian children to illustrate stories of Palestinian terror against Israeli children.

There is no truth inside or outside the gates of Eden. Except this:

In Gaza and in Israel alike, listen to the child not the gun.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Once in a while, I grant iTunes carte blanche to trawl my vaults and choose on my behalf. Today, weirdly, it chose the Shostakovich settings From Jewish Folk Poetry from Michail Jurowski and the Staatskapelle Dresden. This ain’t no lie. It is the truth.

Cricket fans - and I’m one of them too - claim that their game is the more complex. It has more variables. It is more nuanced. And I would tend to agree. If I didn’t I just needed to watch an over or two bowled by Bishan Bedi, Shane Warne or Muttiah Muralitharan. All spinners who earned their wickets with guile and craft rather than pace and power. And then the Red Sox signed Tim Wakefield.

Tim was a knuckleballer, throwing slow pitches that moved erratically and unpredictably. There are few, if any, pitching knuckleballs in the majors today. 

Tim on the mound was one of a kind. What I didn’t know when I watched him was that he was one of a kind in the community, in the city.

We’re not talking about the high profile charities with celebrity gala dinners and massive media coverage. 

Tim did the hard work, visiting sick children in hospital, turning up to host small isolated events, donating large and small sums wherever and whenever he could help.

He died on the last day of the regular season and the Sox came through for him with with a win against the Orioles. 
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Throughout Boston and baseball, throughout New England and here in Warwick, in the heart of old England, he will be remembered.

Years ago, Private Eye - I think - published a clipping from a parish magazine, which included a review of a performance in a small village of The Cherry Orchard by Anton Checkhov. The reviewer concluded that the “brilliance” of the local am-dram actors was “wasted on a disappointing play”. I have this judgement in mind as I sit to report on the Loft’s production of A Delicate Balance by Edward Albee.

It was the last day of the month and the last night of the run, and a full house: a Saturday night house for a play which spans a weekend. An outing of ladies seated behind us was congratulating itself on choosing to attend this play rather than the Scottish play which is next in the season. “I’m so glad we came tonight” said one. “It’s so much lighter than Macbeth.”

Perhaps. Albee is a heavyweight playwright. His themes are weighty. On the other hand, we were promised - in the programme - "acerbic wit".

​Maybe the lightness comes from Albee’s absurdist belief that we exist in a meaningless, random universe.

In the light of the absurdism, the family - Agnes and Tobias, Claire and Julia - are required to talk a great deal in a succession of soliloquies and to drink (almost) too much throughout.

So far, so good: a drawing room comedy that has some good lines but is not that funny and is primarily signalling the deep-seated issues in what we quickly understand to be a seriously dysfunctional family. And then enter their closest and oldest friends, Edna and Harry. They have come to stay, because they were scared. Of what?

“We were frightened and there was nothing!” says Edna. (Hint! Hint!)

Edna and Harry are both invaders of the household and also the mirror-reflections of Tobias and Agnes. They are the catalyst for the disintegration of the family and their routines and rituals. This is the focus of Acts II and III, and this is where the individual crises of each character are highlighted.

I am guessing that director Sue Moore has encouraged a realistic approach to the script. It may be absurdist, abstract, prolix. But this cast ensures that there is no difficulty in suspending our disbelief.

The “fulcrum” Agnes (Lorna Middleton) delivers her long speeches with an almost gossipy eloquence. The ‘well-named” Claire (Leonie Frazier) is wholly convincing both as an observer and a deliverer of cutting-edge venom. Tobias (Craig Shelton) is memorable as a physical presence and delivers one of the most moving moments of the play in a meditative monologue after a night without sleep. Julia (Leonie Slater) manages to make the contradictions of her role - four times married and nearly 40 years old but behaving like a ranting teenager - credible. Harry (Paul Curran) has little to say, but says it well (the last scene with Tobias) and plays his silences better. Edna (Lucinda Toomey) is solid and stolid, her language and attitude, brusque and down-to-earth. Her fear is reflections in the mirror, the recognition that they would not have allowed their friends to stay had their situations been reversed.

It is to an already departed Edna that Agnes sums up the previous two and a half hours in the final line of the play:

“We sleep to let the demons out, to let the mind go raving mind, and when the daylight comes again … comes order with it.”
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Today from the everysmith vaults: At FarmAid 2023, Bob picked up his guitar again and treated us to Maggie’s Farm, Positively 4th Street, and Ballad of a Thin Man. I’m not going to quote Dr Johnson on the topic of women preaching, but I will say it was not bad; in fact, not bad at all.
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