John Hemming's Web Log

Today was another "roadshow" day where we visit shopping centres. Before that, however, I joined with the other trustees of the Westley Vale Millennium Green to tidy up the site. Just in case people do not believe that a candidate in a suit will pick up rubbish, here is a photo of me picking up rubbish. - and a picture of the rubbish I collected in about 15 minutes. We then visited the Wheatsheaf Shopping Centre, Yew Tree and Poolway Shopping centres. Everyone seemed very friendly even the Labour Party. After that I saw a novel campaigning technique from the Conservatives. It appears that they have decided to get a helicopter to tow a large sheet with a message on it. The message "Imagine 5 more years of Blair", is, however, not exactly what we would call positive campaigning. In fact it argues strongly for people to swing to the Liberal Democrats. After all the Independent's research shows that if people swing from Labour to Lib Dem it will not let the...

Five News's Press Release A Five News investigation has exposed how easy it is to rig the postal voting system. As six million people prepare to vote by post, Five News successfully obtained multiple votes in two constituencies, highlighting just how open to abuse the system is. This is the first time the ease of MULTIPLE fraud has been exposed in the postal voting system. The broadcaster downloaded and completed Internet application forms for postal voting from the Electoral Commission's website. No form of id was submitted, nor did Five News get permission from the voters. Five News identified a number of obviously empty or derelict properties and then checked the Electoral Roll to find the identity of those registered voters. In every case, voters were still shown as being registered at the properties, even though they clearly no longer lived there. Internet application forms for postal voting were then completed and submitted with a request to send the ballot papers to a di...

I attended three meetings today (as well as other campaigning issues). One was a meeting at Sheldon Heath Arts College. One of the issues that came up was school dinners. It was clear that the Labour representative had no practical proposals for improving school dinners. The next meeting was a review with parties of the plans for the election from the Returning Officer. Although things are a lot better this year, there is still a tendency to give political parties the "Mushroom treatment". We only found out today that postal votes were posted from Manchester on Tuesday and Wednesday this week - when they had assured me they would be posted on monday. There is a clear lack of understanding of a need to provide timely information as to what is happening. The evening hustings was about the NHS run by NHS Concern. This had some interesting elements to it. The UKIP candidate thrown out of Monday's Gay Community Hustings was allowed to argue her case at this. I argued t...

Although there remain votes that are misdirected and there still appear to be 22 voters who are getting two postal votes, the final lists of postal votes have now been issued. The total across the city is only 57,000. This is in fact about 13,000 fewer than last year's European and Local Elections. Having superficially reviewed the postal votes it appears that mass postal vote fraud will not be part of these elections in Birmingham. That does not mean that there will be no fraud. However, it does mean that the fraud will be less. That also does not mean that personation will not occur. However, with sufficient Polling Agents we have a reasonable chance of picking that up. We will also have some patrols to follow the personators from polling station to polling station so we can collect evidence as to who is personating. The individuals personating can receive jail sentances as a result. With a bit of luck, therefore, we should be able to prevent a proportion of the personation...

What we had today was A 12 year old boy with a poll card (twas ever thus) (Hodge Hill) A voter who has been left off the electoral roll - who found out when Lynne Jones walked past her door. (Selly Oak) 22 voters who (it appears) will be getting two postal votes (sometimes for the same constituency, sometimes for different ones. (Across the city) 10 voters in Aston who still are getting their votes sent to someone else. (Ladywood Constituency mainly, possibly Perry Barr) Still it appears that we have frightened off the mass fraud. I will, of course, only be sure that this is the case when I get the list of postal votes from the second batch. We are expecting a level of personation and will be appointing around 100 anti-personation "Polling Agents" in a number of seats. We will also have patrols to bring in the Fraud squad where postal votes are being collected from people. In the mean time Clare Short has been avoiding meetings with Ayoub Khan. The police are, however, be...

Michael Howard the Tory leader has said that his party is now 2-0 down at half time. I am told that on an analysis of last season's Premiership and Football league games there were 214 games in which one side was 2-0 down at half time. In only 5 instances did the side losing at that stage win. It is rumoured that on each of those occasions it was against Southampton, but no-one has sourced that rumour. What Howard actually said was: "I am a football fan. You often find if you are a football fan there is a team that might be two goals down at half-time, [but] they win the game." So "often" is 2.3% of the time.

Tony Blair said previously: "Labour has no plans to introduce tuition fees for higher education." and that Labour had "no plans" to increase National Insurance.

Ayoub Khan, Mike Whitby and myself spoke at the Vaisakhi in Handsworth Park today. The Vaisakhi is the celeration of the creation of the Khalsa which happened 306 years ago. There are two marches one from Birmingham and one from Sandwell which meet up in the park. There is a stage with Sikh music and various stalls. Anyone is welcome to come and as with many of Birmingham's celebrations gradually a wider range of people is attending. I visited the St George's Day celebration yesterday in Victoria Square, but sadly did not have time to take from campaigning to go to the concert. We also have a number of melas, a Carnival and the St Patrick's day parade. The top attendance is at St Patrick's day with about 100,000. Vaisakhi attracts about 40,000 people. There are about 50-60,000 Sikhs in Birmingham and probably about the same in the Black Country. This means that at least 1 in 4 of Birmingham's Sikhs attends Vaisakhi. The Sikhs raised the same question that S...

I am speaking at two public meetings later today in Clare Short's Constituency. I have, therefore, hunted up Clare Short's reasoning for supporting going to war in Iraq. I have always found this the oddest reason. One of her reasons was: "We should also consider taking military action if it is necessary to minimise suffering and to maximise the speed with which Iraq is reconstituted so that it gets up and going and its economy is improved." Hansard 30th January 2003 Column 1052 - see link So Clare's argument is that the Iraq invasion was necessary: so that ... its economy is improved Does that mean that given the problems at Longbridge (caused by the government) she will be calling for the government to invade Northfield?

Apart from ordinary campaigning I also attended two Birmingham Hustings sessions today. At both of them the issue of scrapping tuition fees came up. There was also the question of how we obtain better skills. I take a slightly unorthodox position on the matter of tertiary education. For example I have great difficulty understanding why someone should have a Batchelor of Science degree to be a pastry chef. This comes to the link. The course is: International Culinary Arts (Pastry) BSc (Hons) "This course prepares you for a career in the international hospitality industry and enables you to seek a position as a pastry chef or senior pastry cook on graduation. Stimulating your creativity, the course will give you state-of-the-art, technical skills by giving you the opportunity to practise your craft in our training kitchen."

If we can get the government to move by losing a legal case, I just wonder what we could achieve if we won a legal case. Clearly the Judge was uncomfortable with what was such a hot potato. The issue remains, however, that there are things that the government can do that will cut postal vote fraud. The ball is in their court.

Various people (mainly those in the Labour Party) have tried to argue the case that the DTI did not push MG Rover (and Powertrain) into administration. The linked article that has just been pointed out to me includes the following dated 4th April 2005. Five days to rescue Rover as Chinese blow cold on deal By Michael Harrison Business Editor Apr 4, 2005, 12:34 MG Rover, the only remaining British-owned volume car maker, will be forced to call in the receivers by the end of this week unless an emergency £100m loan is made available from the Government. This was reported at midday on the Monday of that week. Personally I feel this particular article substantiates the argument beyond reasonable doubt. The result of articles such as this (for which the DTI have to accept responsibility for starting the Hares running) was that suppliers refused to provide supplies without cash up front. The company's cash, therefore, drained away in 2 days. See my earlier post for the rest of the matt...

List of Parliamentary Candidates for Birmingham City Council Electoral Area for General Election May 5th 2005 Nominations closed at 4pm. Birmingham (Edgbaston) Alden , Deirdre Conservative Beck , Peter Green Dixon , Mike Lib Dem Stuart , Gisela Labour White , Stephen UKIP Birmingham (Erdington) Ebanks , Sharon BNP Elvidge , Victoria Conservative Evans , Jerry Lib Dem Hepburn , Rannal UKIP Simon , Sion Labour Williams , Terry NF Birmingham (Hall Green) Harmer , Roger Lib Dem Hughes , Eddie Conservative McCabe , Steve Labour Muthulah , David UKIP Birmingham (Hodge Hill) Adams , Denis BNP Begg , Azmat Peace and Progress Byrne , Liab Labour Davies , Nicola Lib Dem Duffen , Adrian UKIP Thomas , Deborah Conservative Birmingham (Ladywood) Khan , Ayoub Lib Dem Nazem , Lynette UKIP Short , Clare Labour Stroud , Patricia Conservative Birmingham (Northfield) Burden , Richard Labour Catrell , Mark BNP Chant , Gillian UKIP Ford , VIcky Conservative Moultley , Louise Nationalise Rover - Socialist Al...

It looks like the hearing on Thursday is the Full Hearing not the permission stage. That is a good idea taking into account the timing issues. For those who are interested. As far as Judicial Reviews go there are three stages: The "pre-action protocol". This started on 5th April, but was not responded to by the government. The permission stage, where a judge decides whether there is an arguable case The final hearing. It appears (on the basis of phone calls I have just had) that we are now going for the full hearing on Thurday. Further Comment (20/4): It turns out it is actually the Permission stage.

This research shows how the current simplistic targeting regime drives people into odd decisions. It is a bit like the old rationing system in some services of "not answering the phone". By delaying diagnosis the time between diagnosis and treatment is reduced. However, we really need to be able to do "triage" and identify who needs very rapid treatment. It is a good rational case as to how simplistic targets actually work against patient care.

The Court Hearing day is now listed for the permission stage of the Judicial Review into the lawfulness of the election. That is for this Thursday. It does prevent me speaking at the Sustainable Buildings Conference and presenting Evidence to the Mobile Masts Scrutiny, but the Scrutiny Committee will meet on other days. I would like to have also gone to the opening of the Birmingham W1 marketing office for the city in London W1, but that is on Wednesday and I am very busy in Birmingham at the moment. The appopriate Judge was not in on Weds hence the Thursday date. I have not managed to speak to the Treasury Solicitors yet, but we need to stick to this date. If we can get permission that should act to discourage fraud. It is not impossible that we will get a formal undertaking from the government to act to enable evidence collation on the 2005 General Election.

Apart from this morning's campaigning in Yardley, I also spoke at public meetings in Tyseley and Saltley as well as doing an interview on the politics show. This morning I played telephone tag with Respect. They are also judicially reviewing the general election using the same (originally my) solicitor Fatema Patwa. Their JR is asking for too much from the judges. They are also a long way behind my case. However, I am hoping to get an early court hearing some time tomorrow (ie hear about it some time tomorrow). The Politics Show looked at the issue of Rover. Sadly they don't seem to understand what is going on. The important and urgent issue is one of trying to rebuild a manufacturing operation there. That will facilitate getting people back into work and maintain the skills base. Caroline Spelman (Tory Meriden) banged on about an indepentent investigation into MGR etc. Although I think she is right I do not think that is top priority. It will take some time to do thin...

One of the issues raised with me today related to a 16 year old boy whose family for various reasons cannot cope with him. He falls into what I describe as the Twilight Zone of Social Care. Children under 16 are "children" and the system sort of copes with them. People of 18 or older are "adults" and the systems sort of handles this situation. People who are 16 and 17 end up in a twilight zone. The saddest part of this case, however, is that the way the system works and the responses of the system are almost guaranteed to ensure that at some stage this particular individual will end up in prison. There are so many problems that happen in the relationship between Social Care (aka Social Services) and society. Part of this arises from the breakdown in support structures. Part of this results from the pattern of behaviour encouraged by "the system". What happens is that people who are on the periphery of society get used to blagging things. This involv...

TUPE (The Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations) is always a key issue in terms of any corporate rescue. When a business is sold from one person to another then TUPE generally applies. This has the effect of transferring some liabilities from one organisation to another. I have not been able as yet to clarify the position as to exactly which liabilities transfer through administration. My understanding is that the liabilities for redundancy payments rest with the administrator if redundancies are made during administration. That is a reason why normally a lot of redundancies occur during administration. There are press reports indicating that other liabilities transfer. This may mean that the only way forward that anyone will finance is to have completely new businesses set up and employ new staff (which are, of course, likely [but not guaranteed] to be people who were made redundant). It does appear that TUPE scuppered the SAIC possibility. If the busines...

He is not taking the chance of visiting Longbridge as far as I know. The announcement has been made of 5,000 redundancies. There is clearly a ripple effect that occurs for other organisations as well. The big question for the weekend is whether it is possible to produce a stable smaller business making cars. If that can be done then there are more positive options for the future. What is important is that the auctioneers are not just being brought into the plant.