Scaremongering time again

Another year, another set of made up Labour scare stories designed to frighten the vulnerable and be reproduced on a leaflet.

Year after year Labour councillors pretend to be planning to write a budget, just to get their greasy paws on budget options from officers.

Officer proposals that is, not Lib Dem proposals, and in most cases these are options Lib Dem Councillors have already rejected.

They are given to Labour anyway in case Labour wish to include them in the Labour budget - not that they have written a proper budget this century.

So isn't it astonishing how year after year these confidential documents slip out of the paws of Labour councillors and under a journalist's pint glass.

And yes, of course they somehow get presented as being Lib Dem budget options.

It's amazing what tales you can get published these days.

Fortunatly no one outside of Old Hall Street belives a word Labour have to say anymore.

The Post & Echo were once such respected organs, yet it's heart was ripped out when Trinity turned it into the "Oldham Echo", and clearly it's liver is in a perilous state too!

Time for a new year detox perhaps?

Banned!!!!

Would you believe it?

Your humble blogging canine has been banned from all Liverpool City Council premises, at the demand of Labour Councillors who are aparently so fearful of a little dog's daily musings, that they have decided I must be silenced at all cost.

In the words of one of my regular correspondants, "they clearly don't like it up 'em!"

So much so that I was threatened with assasination, on Christmas day no less.

Ever since I have been sniffing my sausages very carefuly before consuming them.

Fortunatly I can rely on the security of my official supplier at Mr Churchill's food emporium, but you never know who might come into contact with them after they leave the shop.

Is there an investigative journalist who can take up my cause against these evil Labour dog haters?

Or perhaps someone would care to make a freedom of information request to expose the identity of the Labour Councillor who fears me so much that library users and council employees must be banned from hearing the jucy stories I sniff out on your behalf.

Like Jane Kennedy, I now feel I should be able to claim life insurance on my expenses. And how about an official food taster?

In the best possible taste

In this season of cheer I thought it appropriate to dispense with hard politics and instead bring together two of the themes of Christmas, religion and light entertainment!

I did have some left over sausage and bacon rolls to offer you as well, unfortunately I ate them a few hours ago in a late night attack of the munchies!

Today's characters on offer do have political connections though. One a born and bred Scouser who appeared at the Tory Party Conference announcing a plan to bomb Russia

The other now adopted to the city, but sent in by Blair to be Labour's Bishop in Liverpool. Fortunately he seems to have become disillusioned with new Labour, like the rest of the population.

Scumbags

I'm sorry to have to say that some humans are just scum!

I have received reports today that the dogs trust in Whiston has been raided by thieves who have stolen all the food stores for 100 of my homeless and hungry compatriots.

An urgent appeal has gone out for tinned food donations, and I myself have just donated a large part of my food stockpile.

If any of you can help, please do so!

Waggy Christmas

Its Christmaaaaaaaas!

I'm so happy today. I was up bright and early to check out my stocking, and boy was it well stocked.

Doggy chocs, a new blanket and the lovely little coat I am pictured wearing in the picture above.

And the best is yet to come, Christmas dinner with all the trimmings, er well, to be honest there is only one trimming I am really interested in.

Yes you guessed it, lots and lots of lovely chipolata sausages wrapped in bacon. Yum Yum!

And so, it is time for my Christmas message to you all.

It's been a long hard year, and many of my readers have been hit hard by our Government's recession and credit crunch.

Our thoughts are with those who find themselves out of work or even homeless in these difficult times. And also with our armed forces who find themselves spending Christmas day overseas.

Our thoughts are also with the many of my fellow canines who find themselves unloved and in kennels and re-homing centres across the country, and our grateful thanks offered to those kind humans who give up their Christmas to look after them.

It has been my great duty and privilege as your blogging dog to record the many events that have affected the lives of our local representatives. All of whom I know make great sacrifices to stand up for the interests of their constituents.

Christmas is not a time for party politics. So today I wish you all, whether you are friend or foe, a very merry Christmas.

Gawd bless you, every one!

Mean spirtied II

Yesterday I commented on Jane Kennedy's Christmas message, but now I take it all back after I have seen my blogging Nemesis's offering to the people of Kensington.

A lovely un-seasonal postcard, with a big picture of Kensington's three clowns grinning.

Now that's what you really want staring down at you on Christmas day, as you digest your Brussels Sprouts.

At the same time Lou-Bo is delivering a rather poor 8 page "report" on her activities. Unfortunately she chose to include the original version of this picture, just to remind everyone of Jane's First Class Gravy Train lifestyle.


Merry Christmas everybody!

Mean spirtied

As many of you will have seen, those nice Lib Dems have been out and about delivering thousands of Christmas cards to the good humans of Liverpool.

And what a lively card it is, penguins and lambananas playing together in the snow.

Local councillors have scrimped and saved to pay for it to be printed, before trundling off into the cold to deliver them.

Finally I have been able to see a copy of Jane Kennedy's Christmas Card, OK nice picture drawn by a local school child, and a big advert inside to say that it was paid for by mail order shopping company, Shop Direct!

How tight fisted and mean spirited can you get? Is there anything this woman pays for herself?

Is this because she blew all of her "communications expenses" on leaflets before she decided she couldn't win?

And what message does this send out? Your local Labour MP want's you to buy your Christmas gifts by mail order instead of supporting local shops.

Bah Humbug!

Popular local boy cheated

Liverpool's popular and well known 2008 Lord Mayor has been cheated out of his dream of becoming an MP in his home town.

Proud working class Scouser, Steve Rotherham's bid was snubbed by Labour's decision to impose an all Luciana shortlist on Liverpool Wavertree.

Putting on a brave face, Cllr Rotheram said: “I’m disappointed...we need more women...But we also need more Scousers and working-class people.”

Click Liverpool reported Labour insiders as saying that, "beautiful, career politician" Luciana Berger was starting to look like a shew-in.

A Lib Dem campaign insider tells me that this shortlist was their dream result.

"Steve was always going to be the toughest challenger. He's the only popular well know name Labour have, and a genuinely nice bloke. Whoever they pick now could have as little as 7 weeks to get their name known before polling day."

Rumour has it, Steve has instead now set his sights on challenging Joe Anderson for the leadership after the local election in May.

Anne Baldock

Another reader send in this lookalike of American actress Anne Ramsey, best remembered for the title role in the comedy film, Throw momma from the train.

Really stretching it

14 Kilos of elastic bands.

That's a hell of a lot of elastic bands! Over 30lbs in old money.

32 boxes at 454 grammes each equals more bands than any office could considerably use day to day. Unless of course they where being used to bundle up Labour party leaflets and letters, rather than legitimate constituency work.

£90.24 and yes, you guessed it! They were all charged to you and me on Gravy-Train Jane's expenses, as you can see here.

To claim they are all being used in her office is seriously stretching it - no pun intended.

Wavertree selection advertised

Here it is, before it is even hot on the press.

Many thanks to my Labour source who sent me the Liverpool Wavertree selection advert for Labour, which has been drafted in advance of today's meeting.

Unfair banking charges!

You would think that someone would be able to manage their finances on £104,000 a year, particularly when also receiving a lavish expense account on top of that.

Not so for Jane Kennedy, ex Financial Secretary to the Treasury, whose own financial management was so poor that she apparently exceeded her overdraft limit.

Shamelessly, she then tried to claim her interest and banking charges on her expenses - Not just once, but in August, September, November and December last year.

And when they were refused, she sent back terse notes on the claim form, telling the fees office that they should pay up because it was their fault she was overdrawn, as they had been late paying her previous month's expenses.

Is there any limit to the greed and brazen arrogance of Labour MPs?

And is it any wonder the nation's finances are such a mess, when they were being managed by someone who couldn't keep her own finances in the black while earning four times the average wage of her constituents?

But Scousers are nothing if not generous, I'm sure if she had let us all know that things were that tight for her, we would have had a whip round.

YOUR money for HER life

So people say that MPs have become the modern day highway men, but their latest trick to emerge is to take your money for their life insurance.

High on the list seems to be Wavertree's Jane Kennedy, who already announced she was standing down because of the fall out from the expenses scandal.

In June the Fees Office sent her this letter telling her that they could no longer pay for her life insurance cover with Barclays, at £7.50 a month.

But can someone tell me why the taxpayer was ever footing the bill for this? It was hardly a second home expense. Did she give this to herself as part of her employment incentive package?

Perhaps she regarded it as danger money, after she found herself without the 24 hour protection from Special Branch when she ceased to be a Northern Island Minister?

Stand and deliver!

Billy Clein

It's often been said that the Clein party is the third largest group on the council, and we may have just found another of them.

Perhaps it is just the beard? But there is certainly more than just a passing resemblance between these two?

Behind the times

As you know I regularly trawl the web looking for juicy titbits to offer you, my lovely readers, with news, gossip and entertainment that you may have missed.

Not surprisingly, I don't check the irrelevant Liverpool Censervative website very frequently, and clearly nether do they.

Any Conservative voter wanting to know how their campaign in Liverpool is going, can check their site here, and you will be pleased to know that "The City of Liverpool Conservatives' campaign for the May 2008 Local Elections is now in full swing with a programme of canvassing and leafleting well underway."

So how does that work then?

Ding Dong! "Good evening madam, I was your conservative candidate in last year's local elections. I was wondering if I could have been able to count on your support? Oh, OK you're still thinking about it. Well don't forget, the polling station closed at 10pm, 588 days ago."

Give them another five years and they will be looking forward to increasing their share of the vote in the 2010 General Election.

We've all been BANNED

Davey B was chasing his tail with joy last week at news that his blog has apparently been banned by Liverpool Direct (although my Council sources tell me it hasn't been blocked from any computers in the Municipal Buildings or local libraries).

Meanwhile, I conducted one of my regular checks on local MP's websites, only to find that Garston's Maria Eagle appears to have banned the entire city from accessing her site.

I assumed it was a temporary problem, but having tried every day for over a week all I can get are imposing FORBIDDEN messages and news that I "don't have permission to access this site."

You would think that this close to a General Election an MP wouldn't be so shy about promoting herself.

Unless of course she is about to announce she is standing down to spend more time in her lavish new £7,140 bathroom, part funded by the taxpayer before she flipped her second home allowance back to her London flat?

Talk about "splashing out" at our expense.

So far she has been allowed to get away with it, remaining, ironically a Justice Minister!!!

Party Season

It's that time of year again, with everyone having to worry about Christmas cards, presents, the office party, it's just a ceaseless round.

I enjoy a good office Christmas party, think of all those cocktail sausages and sausage rolls.

However those nice Liberal Democrats have taken the time to help organise a Christmas party for pensioners, and Wavertree's next member of parliament is dropping in to lend a hand as he does the usual MP's round of community fun days, village fetes and sheltered housing visits.

Yet one cheeky group of pensioners in Kensington recently invited Colin along to their party, but asked he could attend as their male stripper!

He agreed to attend, but (un)fortunately a sense of decorum prevented him agreeing to provide them with their raunchy entertainment. So Colin won't be doing the dance of the seven towels any time soon.

Another Labour selection row

Labour is facing another neopotism row over attempts to impose another young female candidate with family connections to Gordon Brown on a constituency party.

Helen Holt has pulled out out of the contest for the Sherwood constituency in Nottinghamshire , claiming that the selection process has been skewed in favour of the fiancée of a close aide Brown.

Telling The Times that she believes she has been the victim of dirty tricks by supporters of Emilie Oldknow, girlfriend to Brown’s political secretary.

“I feel I have been totally stitched up. My face does not fit. I believe I am being used in a process that from the outside looks fair but is a way of parachuting a candidate into the position because she has family links to Gordon Brown,” she said.

A similar case happened earlier this year when the leadership attempt to place the 22-year-old daughter of Blair's favorate advisor Philip Gould in the safe seat of Erith and Thamesmead.

Of course, it couldn't happen here.

The very idea that a Labour selection process in Liverpool could be rigged to favour a young woman because she has links with a Labour leader is, well, completely unthinkable.

Roy Rosie Brown

Another one sent in by a reader in West Derby. Personally I think this one is a bit too cruel. But I'm sure Mr Brown is used to being insulted.

Feline lookalike

I know it's not Monday, but I couldn't wait that long to show you feline Hitler lookalike that one of my regular contributors saw while delivering.

Most stupid statement ever

No it isn't! No it isn't! No it isn't! No it isn't! No it isn't! Got the message yet you stupid mutt?

Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest.

Under cover campaigner

Ornithologists have been reporting that global warming has affected bird migration and we are seeing our feathered friends venturing much further north than ever before.

One ambitious little bird, deeply rooted in the south, was spotted hundreds of miles from home in Wavertree last weekend.

The frequently spotted Berger was seen dashing about the constituency in a rushed attempt to raise her profile before she lands in front of a selection panel in January.

All of this is very hush hush of course. There has been no mention of this in her blog or any of the leaflets going out with her name on in London.

It wouldn't do to alert the voters of her safe ward in Camden that she wants to abandon them, before they have even had a chance to vote for her. People might actually question her loyalty and commitment.

They might feel hurt, they might feel betrayed, they might not care. But it seems that the highly ambitious Luciana is quite prepared to land an enormous bird dropping on her colleagues in St Pancras & Somers Town Ward, and the residents she claims to be committed to fighting for.

Perhaps therein lies a warning for her new colleagues in Liverpool and her prospective electorate oop north.

The clock is ticking

Eyebrows have been raised at the news that Labour won't even decide the process for selecting a candidate for Wavertree or Sefton Central until the 17th December, meaning that Labour still won't have a candidate until well in to the New Year - possibly as late as February.

OK so Gordon has until June to hold an election, but with increasing rumours of an election being called in March they could be said to be cutting it a bit fine.

Of course, conspiracy theorists within Labour are starting to suspect another motive. The closer the selection process is left before the election, the easier it is to impose a candidate from London on the local party.

That's democracy - Labour style.

A tale of two tashes

At the risk of ending up with guacamole on my face, I found a strong similarity between these two moustached individuals, when digging through my archives the other day.

Yes this is the fourth of my promised Lord Mayor lookalikes and the de-facto Prime Minister (the only title he hasn't actually got)who according to legend mistook mushy peas in a Hartlepool chip shop for an avocado-based dip.


The biggest difference of course is that Paul Clark is a winner, not a spinner!

Follow The Dude

I was rather shocked when I sneaked into the cinema last week.

Before the big picture, we were presented with the following short film encouraging you all to live more like me.

I would have fallen off my seat if I hadn't actually been laying under it!

Serial Loser

Winter's tail

Trotting down Edge Lane the other day I got a text message inviting me to the preview of the excellent Go Penguins exhibition.

It really is all very exciting and good to see that so many local school children have got involved with the project.

I am looking forward to trotting round town to see them on public display, but these three chaps agreed to be photographed with me while still in "cold storage" so to speak.

They were very friendly and certainly well worth a visit.

You can download a copy of the penguin trail map here.

Shutting up shop

We keep hearing rumours that Labour have all but given up on Wavertree, well this could be the proof.

Thanks to one regular reader who send in this photo last week of Labour HQ on Prescott Road, with a For Rent sign outside.

Office space and print room to let? Available from May 2010.
For reasons not entirely clear, Gravy Train Jane rents this office from the owners of Liver Launderettes and, of course, charges this to her expenses.

Of course that this is also Labour's campaign office for the city, complete with taxpayer funded risograph printing press and phone bank (naughty naughty) so the loss of this facility will surely hit Labour hard after the election.

Maybe Lib Dem Colin will put in an offer to house his new office?

Goldringer

I have really really got to stop people sending their own lookalikes in. This week's posting is really starting to stretch the imagination.

A few weeks ago Labour deputy Paul Brant paid for a lavish 007 themed 40th birthday party for himself, hiring the Mersey Ferry for the evening.

How much it cost, we may never know. But perhaps all the money Paul saved over the years by misusing his council parking pass will have helped lessen the wear on his bank balance.

As the night wore on one guest, by this time rather drunk, was actually willing to mistake these two characters for Labour councillors.

A slap in the face

Long serving Labour party members where left seething and insulted after Lou-Bo and Gravy Train Jane invited an "intimate" group to hear David Mili-bland in a meeting at the Devonshire Hotel.

The first most Labour members heard about this was on Dale Street Blues where Mr Bartlett picked up on this secret meeting after my blogging nemesis "bragged about it on her blog," and hailed the availability of FREE tea and biscuits.

Bartlett's blog is now full of comments from angry Labour members who felt they had been slapped in the face by their own party.

Lou Bo, desperate to undo the damage, then claimed every Labour member in the North West had been invited by e-mail. Only for Labour members to respond, "oh no we haven't!"

One member, who was important enough to be invited, tried to defend the decison saying, "Foreign Sec's visits can't be too highly publicised as he needs added security".

So never mind chaps, your only good enough to go out delivering in the rain and the snow. They couldn't invite you because you might be "a security risk."

Go stuff some more envelopes, do some more canvassing, and you might get invited to have a mince pie with Joe Anderson.

While he was here, Bland (who is not a Mili) praised our very own Gravy Train Jane as the saviour of the Labour Party.

Apparently this upstanding woman who, we are told (mainly by her), almost single handedly fought Militant in Liverpool, is the same lady who claims she is quitting politics because those nasty Lib Dems make fun of her expenses.

Ah didums!

Labour thow in the towel

Prospective Labour candidates eyeing up Gravy Train Jane's seat might think twice after reading this article in The Times.

Labour is now so strapped for cash, and so certain of defeat, they are writing off 60 seats where they currently have MPs.

Seats with majorities of 3000 or less face being cut off completely, while others with larger majorities are being made to show evidence of campaigning in order to stand a chance of getting funding.

Meanwhile Labour MPs are complaining about being "fobbed off" with DIY tool kits and three quarters of Labour's 80 seat phone bank is lying empty, as the party has only funds to staff 20 phone lines. "Drastic cut backs" are being made as expected donations "fail to materialise."

It all begs the question if Liverpool Wavertree, notional majority of 3038, has escaped this list?

There has been little evidence of campaigning over the past 4 1/2 years apart from what can be paid for on Jane's taxpayer funded "Communications Allowance". Are the extra 38 votes really enough to save this seat for Labour?

Surprise Berger bash attendance

Odds have shortened on the surprise potential candidate for Wavertree, Luciana Berger, who was spotted sitting next to MP Jane Kennedy at a Labour fundraising dinner at the Devonshire Hotel last week.

Was this a trip to case out the constituency? With this probably being her first visit to Liverpool, it would be interesting to know her impressions.

Jane's obvious favouritism is believed to be causing some annoyance amongst other potential candidates, some of whom have been working with JFK for years.

"We've given up"

With all the current excitement I forgot to tell you all about my recent trip to London.

I popped into a meeting of the Improvement and Development Agency, just to find out what was going on.

From my vantage point under the buffet table I was astonished to spot two vaguely familiar faces, who looked amazingly like councillors Jim Knokes and Claire Wilner, discussing Labour's chances in Wavertree with another councillor.

"We've all but given up holding Wavertree," they said!

Come on, where's your fighting spirit?

Cats and Dogs

Another lookalike send in by a regular reader. Two campaigners on the Liberal-left.

Actress Susan Sarandon campaigned against the war and is a UN goodwill ambassador but I best remember her as the voiceover of Ivy, the stray Saluki, in the film Cats and Dogs. She was really hot!

My fellow blogger, university lecturer and former Journalist Paula Keaveney however is apparently more of a cat person. But I won't hold that against her.

Who would pay for a website like this?

Take a look at Peter Kilfoyle's website.

I know what you're thinking. A rather quaint website from the early 90's that someone forgot to close down? Wrong! It appears to have been created in 2008...yes 2008!

Incredibly he paid £176.25 for this (on expenses of course!) Quite possibly the worst website of the century. Someone saw him coming.