Be Excellent To Each Other

For some while now, I've been intending to impose myself on the parish council. They're short of numbers so are proposing to take on new parish councillors by cooption. Basically you say "yeah, I'm in" and they pop you on the council.

However, my ambitions have grown beyond that. I quite fancy the idea of running for MP. It can't be that hard, if one is willing to debase oneself enough, to get onto a shortlist for any of the three major parties in any constituency. And hells know I debase myself enough for my shitty career already.

There is of course the small matter of compromising one's beliefs, so I couldn't really get elected as a Tory or Labourite, or at least I couldn't without lying about my beliefs convincingly for a while.

So that sort of leaves me with the Lib Dems.

And what really, really worries me is that, if I do that, I could end up running the bloody party, given the sub-Cameron streak of piss who's in charge now. And that worries me. I don't think I can trust myself to run a political party that could have a determining say in the running of the country after the next election. The words "pogrom against anyone I don't like" hover scarily over the mental horizon with a distinctly be-permed, Thatcherite outline. Thanks, Mum.

God knows they say "fear the angry liberal", but there's a reason.

For context, a guy from my first firm ended up at a Tory thinktank and is now their candidate for some shitty Home Counties constituency. We get everywhere.

What's after party leader? PM then ascension to the heavens?

I was bored and decided to have a mental exercise based around "what would it be like to be Malia?"

He says.

You wouldn't like the alternative.

*masons' handshake*

Kissyfur for PM!

Naturally, the higher up the chain you get, the more of us you bring in. Easy peasy, problem solved.

THE CAMPAIGN STARTS HERE!

You're got three months at best, people.

Endless suffering, or the endless happiness of Frohmania. It's up to you people.

I'm happy to let the people of your constituency decide.

After that, Dimrill's zombie launcher.

Oh! Oh! Can I be your filibusterer? It'll be great. Anytime someone asks an awkward question, you can refer them to me, and I'll be all "Did I ever tell you about the time I lived with a psychopath? It all started in late 2007... now, chances are that a psychopath isn't actually what you think it is. Although to be fair, the term has fallen out of favour with most psychologists, but its replacement is frankly rather crappy and vague, and besides, it makes conversation fiddly. Did I mention that I lived with one? It started in 2007, see, quite late in the year, as I recall. I remember it was winter because it was about the time I tried taking pictures of the canal outside our window and it was all foggy and mysterious. We lived by a canal then, see. Not me and the psychopath, oh no - me and some other people, but I was living there when we first met. The other people I was living with, right, they had a kid. Oh, that was a drama, let me tell you...."

I for one welcome our new rectangular haired overlord.

Is this because you aren't a mod?

When you're running the country, Chris, we'll all want important positions.

Right, this afternoon, I am making an archive of MR Kissyfurs postings for blackmailhistorical purposes.

"Tough on foxes, tough on the causes of foxes"

Other foxes? That's pretty tough.

I'd vote for you, SonicKissyfur the Hedgehog.

A-ha. Keep telling yourself that.

Not forgetting all those meet photos with Dimrill in the background:

Fuck, yeah!, another fucking lawyer in politics.

What the fuck is it with people who study "law" that makes them so certain that they're fit for Government? Fuck 'em.

If you want to be an MP, tell me three problems and three improvements you'd make to each of the following:

Education
Health Care
Foreign Policy
European Policy

Let's see, prima facie, if anyone would vote for you!

Sorry Mr. Chris, not a personal attack at you at all, but my rant at the current system and the criteria the voting public *should* apply to the people they are voting for.

*puzzled*

Have I done something to upset you of late?

@malia - absolutely nothing! That was, if anything, supposed to be a compliment.

@end of an era - I don't think lawyers think being a lawyer makes them inherently more suited to being a politician. I think it's more to do with a desire to turn gamekeeper, after seeing it from the poacher's end of the process.

And I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with "fucking lawyers" that makes them a bad choice for a politician. Any more or less than any other profession. The worrying common denominator with politicians is a desire to be a politician.

Also, to be honest I wouldn't much fancy it, due in large part to the "campaigning and talking to strangers" which is a precondition to getting in.

The parish council, on the other hand, I will be getting onto, as they need to do more to kick the highways agency up the arse to get them to lower speed limits and improve road safety in our parish. There are a lot of kids and few pavements, and a lot of twatty drivers.

On your four questions, though, I'd outlaw faith and private schools to stop the drain of higher achieving teachers and students out of the public system. On health I don't believe is as fucked as the Tories keep saying, and little needs changing. Other than getting rid of the use of PFI schemes which increase the cost of running hospitals and take choice away from the trusts runnung them, and cutting down on target-lead healthcare. They can be useful, but have been treated as a panacea by labour. On foreign/european policy, I'd stop invading places, and get more engaged with Europe. I'd go into more detail but I'm on the blackberry in bed about to have a nap as I've been up all night with poorly second born.

Don't ban private schools.

Ok, seeing as you asked so nicely.

Oh, you want to be one of those NIMBY twats who ruin perfectly good roads by getting the speeds lowered to 30. That's happened twice around here recently and shouldn't have been allowed.

Let me tell you this *IT MAKES FUCK ALL DIFFERENCE*. The boy racers will still belt through your little happy joy fun 30 zone at 50 regardless. There will be no increase in pedestrians and no decrease in accidents because none of the accidents were ever to do with speed in the first place.

Near here there was a perfectly safe 40 that was reduced to 30 for a stretch of 2 miles. It's a disgrace and I had to complain 3 times before I could get an adequate answer. The answer was that the parish council had asked for it, not that someone had independently assessed it was needed. It was perhaps neeeded for a 400 yard section near the village centre but to put the limit along a 2 mile stretch along a major arterial route was disgusting.

The next village along from the twats who installed a 30 on one of the widest, well lit fucking roads with offset pavements in Hampshire has a different solution. A flashing sign that reminds you its a 40. Seems to be far more effective than the unenforced 30 up the road.

The limits should be set independently and this scheme that lets the NIMBY's influence things (introduced by Labour) is annoying.

It makes me utterly fucking sick that NIMBY cunt parish councillors and their posh Dail Mail reading mates are allowed to influence these decisions. They should GTFF and leave it to the experts

I'm now going for a lie down before I get really angry.


[edit] This is not a pop at Mr Chris, but is intended to point out the utterly disgusting attitude of the parish councillors of the area I'm talking about. The cunts couldn't even give me a satisfactory or prompt answer despite repeated attempts from me. Their decision was entirely arbitrary as they couldn't back themselves up with statistics or even a coherent argument. I ended up speaking to the traffic consultancy firm employed to implement the scheme who basically admitted to me it was all barking mad but they were being paid to do it.

Ok, we won't do it then.

If you feel that passionate about it Chinny perhaps you should take some involvment with the Parish council and express your opinions to them. Then if you felt that there was a happier resolution to be reached for both sides (higher speed limit and improved road safety) you would be speaking to the people who were in a position to do something about it rather than impotently complaining about it and coming across as angry and perhaps agressive to them rather than reasonable and cooperative.

That is a bit of a problem with 'local' politics and planning. It entirely revolves around nimby cunts and their personal hobby horses. They are usually retired and so can spend 50+ hours a week battling to have their way. Normal, reasonable people will struggle when faced with this.

Yeah I wasn't meaning that to sound like I thought he should go and get elected or whatever you have to do, just that the rant was a bit harsh and maybe he would have better results if he actually spoke to the people involved about it rather than complaining to them about how he can't drive as fast anymore. If these people are met with that then I'd imagine they would assume you were complaining simply because you wanted to drive fast and not because you felt the issue could be handled more reasonably and may even be willing to direct them to evidence of such.

Excuse me, but I wrote some very reasonable letters and emails to the county council and parish council both of which they first of all saw fit to ignore, and then gave very unsatisfactory answer. I did not come across as "angry" and "aggressive".

Why should they have any influence over a major arterial route through the county? If it was a 60 I might have been able to understand it, but a 40 to a 30 is madness. When the NIMBY councillors moved there, did they not notice the road?

I wrote them a very detailed and reasonable letter as I believe others did. Their attitude was "we've done this because we can, fuck off".

Excuse me, but I didn't read any of the letters you wrote to anybody and was simply commenting on the post you made in this thread.

I think he's having a rant, it's theraputic
I think there is an element of truth behind it though, sadly.

People should serve time as local decision makers like jury service, rather than self selecting idiots with too much time on their hands. This is not aimed at Chris BTW, I think he would make a positive improvement. Tough going though, probably.

Ranting is fine but I don't think it's very fair to respond to someone who has expressed an interest in taking on that role by immediatly calling them 'cunt parish councillors and their posh Dail Mail reading mate'. I don't for one second think that Chinny was speaking about Mr Chris when he said that but I think that when people respond to comments made on here then perhaps they should consider how that response may be taken by the original poster.

Point, and I see chinny has amended his post to make that clear.
I think he'll get a lot worse when he's an MP though!

Within about a minute of posting I amended it at the bottom to clarify what I was talking about in case there was any misunderstanding.

Excuse me!

Put me in charge of roads, Mr Chris.

You're excused.

Put me in charge of Rhodes, please, Mr Chris.

Chinny,

Its a 30 zone on a narrow non-arterial road with no pavements and a lot of houses, and is a route which children to walk to school. It should either have traffic calming and/or a lower speed limit to take account of the fact that it is shared use with heavy pedestrian traffic. Adjoining single track lanes covered in houses are all 20 (and their drop from a ludicrous 60 has demonstrably helped make the roads safer), and this road should be too.

Even if it wasn't, and it were a 50 zone that "cunt parish councillors" dropped to 30, cry me a fucking river. Not only are there road safety considerations (which may or may not apply in you case), but there are othe things as well - hell, road noise increases exponentially with speed. That place you're passing through is other people's home, and they pay the taxes for it. The needs and considerations of people who *live there* massively outweight the impatience of fuckwit drivers who are merely passing through, and who can't acknowledge anyone else's needs could possibly matter as much as their need not to have to leave home five minutes earlier.


Funnily enough I happily obey dropped speed limits even on main roads like the A46 (part of my daily 60 mile round trip to work) when I'm driving through other people's villages, as I have a tiny bit of consideration and actually *expect* there to be lowered limits in such places.

But this "I'm a driver and own the roads" shit should be in another thread, thanks.



Edit - this isn't a pop at you personally, obv. I knew you didn't mean me as I read the guardian.


Gilly,

It's stuff like this that motivates people to take on the non-paid role of parish councillor. Once on they do then tend (in the main) to pay attention to everything, rather than just get their single-issue sorted, particularly in a small, close community like this one. The parish council is there to look out for the community, and I think that's a laudable aim. Particularly when its quite time intensive and is unpaid. Its not just planning and roads, it's right down to little things like the community fetes. I love my area, and the parish council has helped create what it is. I want to help with that.

That said, I do hate completely self interested people who get onto parish councils. My dad, in his retirement from being an accountant, spent some time as a finance officer/clerk to a parish council. One of the councillers there spent the entire time trying to get a footpath built from her back gate to the shops at the taxpayer's expense - people like that make me sick. It's misuse of public funds, nothing more, nothing less.

Of course, self-interested cuntery isn't peculiar to parish councils. Just look at local government and MPs. Hell, it's a *virtue* in the private sector, so given how much politicians worship the market it's hardly surprising they go the same way.

Boo fucking hoo. They move next to a major road and then bitch about the noise? That's like the cunts who move next to race tracks/Alton Towers/whatever and then start bitching that its noisy. When they bought the house it was apparent. In fact the house value probably reflected the road noise.

It's one thing building a road/Alton Towers/whatever next to someones home, it's quite another bitching about these things after the event. The world has to change to suit them. Simply should not be allowed where a major arterial route is concerned.

I don't. He sent an actor to the Manchester Meet to say that he was Mr Chris. He was lying to us before he even started running for office.

5 minutes extra travelling, boo fucking hoo. If the residents, who live there, want it one way, and a few drivers who pass through occasionally want it another, the residents' opinions count more. Soz. The drivers' minor inconvenience will always matter less than any safety improvement, however slight, and any increase of quality of life for the residents. And the residents have a say in how their area is run. Democracy in action, there.

Any further iterations of this conversation will be met with more boo hooing, so best leave it there, as it'll get tedious.

@Plissken - for various reasons, the security advisers recommended a body double. Something about Zardoz and a biological weapon, I think.

It's the actions of a few influencing the many. You get someone with too much time on their hands pushing for their own agenda and everyone follows.

It's like asking people if they want free cake. They wouldn't have even thought of free cake until they were offered it.

And sorry but the road is wide with houses very well offset and screened. They could have taken the same option as the village down the road with their illuminated sign. They could have just put the 30 through the village centre. Both would have been the reasonable options. What they actually did was stick it onto 30 even for the long section where there are no houses on one side and the houses on the other are offset by about 300 yards with their own lane running parallel to the main road!

It is just utterly barking mad and as I said in my letter, I would have supported a 30 through the village centre but the long stretch of road either side? It's just a "me too" mentality.

I don't know the layout, obviously, but I'd have thought you'd have to have the lowered speed limit for a section either side of the residential area, as the slowing down/speeding up is both dangerous and more noisy, so you want that happening away fro the village - most normal drivers don't get down to 30 until after the sign, and most start accelerating before they get to the higher one.

EDIT - hang on - free cake is a good thing, isn't it?

I want cake.

This will certainly mobilise people to the polls.

A dog keeps shitting outside our driveway. What are you going to do about it Chris?

Bring it inside?

You in favour of giving immigrants free housing then?

It's a Yorkshire terrier, proper English through and through.

Yep, especially if there are "hardworking indigenous white people" in the queue ahead of them.


See, everyone likes cake.



I'll provide everyone with this problem with a free cork, a latex glove and a dog biscuit.

Can I have a horse?