NEVILLE FARMER

Convicted criminal, Cllr Mumshad Ahmed, says he wants to draw a line under the happenings of the last few weeks. How dare he? Because he didn’t tell the voters that he was up on a charge he knew would stick, they won’t be able to draw a line under it for years.

He says in the Shuttle at he admitted his guilt from the outset. If so, how come the Tories didn’t know they had a criminal standing for them on June 4th? Surely, the party placed an obligation on him to inform them when he was banned from driving last December or when he was charged with driving while banned on two further occasions? Our local LibDem party has had to instigate such rules after past problems with unelected members but Ahmed was already an elected representative and should surely have made a commitment not to bring the party or council into disrepute?

If Cllr Ahmed had really admitted his guilt from the outset, did the Tories of Wyre Forest not question why he was driving to their HQ, Margaret Thatcher House, as one of the convictions states?

Cllr Ahmed’s case is not as Wyre Forest District Council leader, John Campion understates, a “lapse of judgement.” What he did was wilful criminality. As for Cllr Campion saying he was disappointed but supported Councillor Ahmed! Would he have said that if the drunk driver had run down a child or caused a serious accident while banned and uninsured? I believe in people being allowed to atone for their crimes but Cllr Ahmed actually stood for election while awaiting a trial he knew he would lose.

David Cameron talks of cleaning up the Conservative party. He has sacked senior MPs for non-criminal offences. Wyre Forest’s Tory council cabinet are supporting a convicted criminal, humiliating their membership and demonstrating contempt for the law and for their constituents.

I call on Dr Richard Taylor MP, Nigel Knowles (Labour PPC), Lib Dem Cllr Helen Dyke, Cllr Fran Oborski of the Liberal Party, Health Concern Cllr Howard Martin, Kate Spohrer of the Green Party, Mike Wrench of Ukip and Mark Garnier, Conservative candidate to join me in writing to David Cameron to request Mumshad Ahmed’s expulsion from the Conservative Party and for him and John Campion to vacate their posts forthwith.

Neville Farmer

Parliamentary Spokesman

Wyre Forest Liberal Democrats

If there was ever a reason for voting out Gordon Brown it is the state of the economy. However, if there was ever a reason for not voting the Tories in it is the same one.

For, who is the man who the Tories trust as their party treasurer and chief fundraiser? Why, Mr Michael Spencer, the Chief Executive of the two companies that supplies Wyre Forest’s credit rating service and brokered the Wyre Forest Council £9 million investment deal with the Icelandic banks.

On the 11^th June, the Independent newspaper said, “The Communities Select Committee say in a scathing report that the Financial Services Agency (FSA) should investigate whether it is appropriate for one part of Mr Spencer’s ICAP empire to assist council finance officers with council investments while another part receives fees for brokering the deals. This could give rise to “actual or perceived conflicts of interest”, it said.”

In all, 51 councils accepted Butlers’ credit rating services and invested £470 million in Iceland. Of them, 16 percent, including Wyre Forest DC, also took on the services of ICAP to broker the deals.

Though Butlers insist they are “segregated” from ICAP, Wyre Forest’s Treasury Management Review Panel report of February 19th says the Butlers representatives called themselves the “go between” for WFDC and ICAP. The report makes interesting reading. You can find the link on http://www.wyreforest.gov.uk/council/docs/doc39536_20090219_cabinet_report.pdf 

The rather restrained document exonerates Wyre Forest’s own financial officers, largely because they weren’t qualified enough to be responsible, with the council relying instead on Butlers. In return, Butlers says it is only a credit rating agency and offered Wyre Forest no investment advice.

If this sounds like buck-passing, the government Select Committee report puts it this way…”Responsibility for local authorities’ investment decisions lies, and must lie, with the local authorities themselves. However, the claim by some treasury management advisers that they give information only, not advice, on investment counterparty creditworthiness is, in our view, misleading.”

What is not misleading is that while Wyre Forest’s residents are £9 million out of pocket, ICAP, Butlers and Michael Spencer are not and Butlers continues to be under contract to Wyre Forest until September 2010.

So, there’s Tory financial management for you. I know that as a Lib Dem I’m biased, but even the Mail on Sunday, The Observer and former Tory chancellor, Nigel Lawson seem to think Vince Cable MP is a better man to revive our economy than George “Flipper” Osborne. Flipper’s chums in the banking industry might disagree but who are they to judge?

Neville Farmer

As everyone now knows, Churchill, unwitting and doubtless grave-spinning icon of BNP and Ukip, said democracy was the worst kind of government apart from all the other kinds, or words to that effect. Last week’s Euro elections showed the downside of democracy.

Satisfied that the Daily Telegraph and the rabid pack of hacks slavering at their heels must have told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about politicians, the populace voted with its feet. Only just over a third voted, at all. Many people didn’t because they said all politicians were crooks. Many of those who did voted for fringe parties, as though they must be clean and only the three main parties were at the trough. Many voted for Ukip, a party with one former MEP in prison for fraud, one awaiting trial, two sacked,  a self-confessed single purpose and no concept of government. Some voted BNP, though for all the money spent, no more than last time.

What all of this illuminated was a great failing in the political classes. We have spent decades navel-gazing while the public became more and more isolated. Tony Blair was undoubtedly the worst at putting out messages yet ignoring the responses but Margaret Thatcher wouldn’t listen to anyone without a very positive bank balance, John Major had the communications skills of a whelk and Gordon Brown seems irritated the public even exists.

Few politicians of any hue recognised the public’s disenchantment in time. Even in Wyre Forest, local politicians claim that the public knows what they know and will act accordingly. But they don’t and the vote showed it.

Barely a week goes by when a letter doesn’t appear in the Shuttle claiming councillors earn fortunes and all politicians are crooks – a statement based on no evidence whatsoever that the writers would be horrified at if applied to rumours about themselves. However hard a councillor might work and however little they are rewarded for their efforts, the public doesn’t believe it.

So what to do? Well, we could start by handing a few of the responsibilities of government back to the public. Let’s stop thinking we need nannying all the time. Let’s refute any demand that “the government should be doing something about this” for every little thing. And let’s start working together once we are elected. Let’s end the offensive practice of denying district councillors access to county information unless they’re Tories – classic soviet practice if even there was. Let’s make the truth about allowances and the details of expenses public, so people can judge for themselves who’s honest and who’s creaming it.

In central government, we could also start removing the powers of whips, PR consultants and advertising agents, while MPs just do what they’re told. The richer parties hide behind these slick message machines and we have no idea whether our local candidates can even speak.

We could use our local press more – insisting that all politicians and candidates report on their activities every week so the public can see who they might be voting, or against, next time round.

And the public? Well let’s get off our butts and find out just who is representing us – and I don’t mean read the Telegraph and believe it verbatim, because they merely serve the agenda of the Barclay Brothers and their banker friends. We live in an information age and it’s easy to do a little research about candidates to get a broader view.

After all, merely not voting or protesting by voting for a fringe party out of spite is to doom us to four or five years of truly awful government…  as we will shortly discover.

Neville Farmer

Parliamentary Spokesman,

Wyre Forest Liberal Democrats