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Farewell to the County Council A year ago the borough elections we so bad for Labour that we knew our control of the county council was doomed, and that half of us were bound to lose our seats this year. An atmosphere of gloom descended upon us all. And so it transpired last Thursday. Twenty seven of the thirty Labour councillors were roundly trounced. I lost my Perrycrofts seat to Ben Adams by 703 votes to 1358. Never mind. In four years time Carol will get back onto the county council, and Sue Woodward and Matthew Ellis will be in Parliament, and maybe Janos as well. And as Roger Smith would put it, the world won't have come to an end. I'm grateful to the voters who allowed me these past four years of privilege. ***** Back to the Grindstone After a great deal of work tramping the streets of Tamworth, my work as a County Councillor for Staffordshire County Council has come to an end. But life goes on! and the work continues. I am now concentrating on the script for the Tamworth Panto Company's next production, Cinderella. I have to ensure I get all the boo's and hisses in the right places.
***** Economic Development & Enterprise Some readers may remember that in our Autumn newsletter we announced that we were reviving ‘Local Heroes, Local Villains’, the play that had celebrated three hundred years of Thomas Guy’s town hall. Cllr. Bruce Boughton had asked us to revive it, and four unrecorded meetings with officers of TBC were held to firm up the arrangements. But in November last year we were advised that if we wished to proceed with this revival we would have to hire the Assembly Rooms and present the play as a commercial project. We scrapped the idea. And from Bruce Boughton, not a word of explanation. Bruce Boughton is the cabinet member for economic development and enterprise. He it was who welcomed the canopy in St. Editha’s Square as a performance space, to create ‘a vibrant and prosperous town centre’. He contracted Ian Gibbons to promote a programme of activities. What he didn’t know was that the council had forgotten to apply for an entertainments licence to use the canopy. So the local pigeons have since enjoyed exclusive use of this space. But Bruce continues to come up with ‘new ideas’ to enliven our cultural life. He hit upon the new idea of celebrating St. George’s Day – unaware that Tamworth Heritage Trust began these seven years ago: I read the lesson at the service in St. Editha’s Church, the British Legion hosted the lunch, and the St. George’s Day Society held an afternoon tea dance. Cllr.Boughton was living in Canada at the time, which is probably why he now claims that last year he was responsible for ‘our first ever St. George’s Day celebration and the reintroduction of bonfire night’ Bruce Boughton also claims that he has commissioned ‘a masterplan’ and is holding consultations, that he is looking for ‘off the wall ideas’ and has received an evaluation of the council’s 2008 outdoor events programme. It seems that in local government magazines like ‘First’ he can make any wild claims he likes in the confidence that nobody will bother to point out that his claims are fantasy. He will no doubt come up with a Christmas Lights initiative, begun by Jules Cadie in the late 1980s, revived when Margaret Clarke switched them on in 2002, and allowed to die each time by the shopkeepers and the council’s inertia. A local council is not best structured to foster enterprise. In the 1970s Vic Mortimer built up a successful boating business on the Anker, so the council at the time took away his franchise to run it themselves. It failed within two years. Yet this is another of Bruce Boughton’s bright ideas. It could succeed again, but not in partnership with Tamworth Borough Council. Whether it will save the Tamworth pig from extinction is another question. I myself do not believe that Bruce is planning to operate a bacon butty business this summer at outdoor events, folk festivals and civil war re-enactments. I am sure he is not really breeding hens in his garden to produce new laid eggs to complement the menu. After all, if he succeeded TBC would probably take over the operation and begin to lose money within two years. JAG **** Cllr. John Garforth puts a Smile
Cllr. Garforth commented ‘It was heart warming to see what a splendid job is being done at Jolly-totz, and more specifically as it’s in an area that really needs support. These pre-schools do a wonderful job making the most out of the term ‘Children Learning Through Play’ and I was very impressed with the facilities already in place and the way the children are stimulated in play and social activity. I wish the pre-school all the very best for the future and I am happy that the grant is to be put to such good use. I will definitely keep in touch and make it my business to try to help Jollytotz develop as it is a most essential local amenity.’ Jolly-totz take children from 2yrs to school age. For details on the pre-school please email: jollytotzpreschool@hotmail.co.uk or Phone: 07854 278274 ***** My Avengers Past Catching Up with Me
Good afternoon Mr Garforth, I have spent a couple of hours reading your site. I've found it by luck. I'm the webmaster of the French site dedicated to The Avengers, Le Monde des Avengers (http://www.theavengers.fr/index.htm) and I was very surprised when I read the following assertion : I assume that anybody coming to this website is concerned with my activities as a Staffordshire County Councillor or my work as an activist in the Labour party. So most of this material is devoted to those aspects of my life. I have read your four novels and that is how I've found your website ! In fact, I had to explore the website to be sure you are the same person ! I have written a review of each book concerning the series and here is the one about the novels: http://www.theavengers.fr/faq/faqbibliotheque_romans.htm#1 My favourite ones are : The Laugh was on Lazarus and Heil Harris ! I would be very honoured if you accept to answer the following questions for the site. 1 When and how did you discover The Avengers ? 2 What are your favourite season and episodes ? 3 Why did you decide to write novels on The Avengers ? 4 What is your favourite one ? 5 You wrote you have met Diana Rigg: What was her reaction to the novels ? 6 Did you meet other members of the cast or production ? 7 Was it easy to write on Steed and Mrs Peel, compared with others novelizations of televisions series like The Champions and Paul Temple ? 8 Were the novels based on episodes of the series ? 9 Did you have any feedback from actors, the production or fans ? 10 Your novels were a world wide success (They were translated in French, German, Dutch and they were even sold in Chile). How do you explain that success ? 11 Why did you write on your website the following passage. Don't you think it is a privilege that these novels are still popular among fans forty years after their publication ? I recommend that if anybody comes across any of these works in second hand shops or jumble sales you buy them and destroy them unread and I will reimburse you the 50p or whatever you paid, as a service to literature. Best Denis My repy is as follows: Hi Denis, It was kind of you to write so good naturedly about my rather frivolous comment quoted at the end of your letter. It is of course quite unwarranted and since posting it I have several times thought of removing it. The fact is that for a ‘serious’ novelist my c.v. is a disqualification from being thought a proper writer. At the time, in the mid-60s I approached the task with genuine enthusiasm. ‘The Laugh Was on Lazarus’ was conceived as I thought with originality, an imaginative opening chapter (I have given public readings of it) and contains some effective writing. ‘Heil Harris’ must have some virtue because the German publisher used the other three but refused to publish that one. My own favourite was ‘Gloria Munday’ because for me it was a very 60s-Twiggy-pirate radio saturated time which I thought then that I had captured quite well. My main regret is that I was writing the four books to a printer’s deadline, and I think the fourth of them (Heil Harris) was rushed and therefore suffered. The fact that television spin-offs were a despised genre was brought home to me on the occasion that I met Diana Rigg at her flat in Dolphin Square with her PA (or an ITV PA assigned to her) called Marie Donaldson. I don’t think Diana Rigg had read any of them, but Marie Donaldson vetted them all and she thought that one of them (probably Gloria Munday) verged dangerously towards an explicit sex scene. I explained that what I was trying to do – and Miss Rigg interrupted imperiously with ‘I know what you’re trying to do!’ So I gave up any attempt to talk intelligently to her. She thought she was royalty and was treated so by all her hangers-on. That is why my favourite Avengers series was the Joanna Lumley period, I’m sure I’d have fallen in love with her. But by 1967 the Avengers was already in deep trouble because the Americans thought Patrick McNee was too old and they wanted him replaced by Roger Moore, who in fact had bigger fish to fry. Around this time they also brought back the original producer (John Pierce or some such name) who wasted a lot of my time discussing writing ideas – the old mantra about new ideas and new writers – before dishing out the new series (it was Tara King by then) to the same old gang who wrote everything around that time. On one of these occasions when I was summoned to Elstree I watched Tara King dodging in and out of doors and running along a balcony in what I assume was an audition. That was also how I met Bette Davis. Now back to your questions: 1. I discovered The Avengers during the Honor Blackman series, which were probably taken more seriously forty five years ago than they are now. 2. I can’t answer this – in my memory they are a continuum, no longer divided up into episodes. My favourite series was either Honor Blackman’s or Joanna Lumley’s.It always seemed to me that Diana Rigg was acting with subtitles across the bottom of the screen, ‘acting’ and she was more serious than this stuff. But them I’m prejudiced. It wasn’t until Bleak House that I took her seriously again. 3. I didn’t decide – my agent at the time asked me to do it because he thought my work combined thriller and comedy and class and thought I could do the job. 4. see above 5. see above. 6. see above 7. I found them all easy – I think that was why I was chosen for the jobs. If you have read The Champions you’ll see that I set myself the challenge of combining the pilot (which had not been seen at the time) and the first couple of episodes into an integrated plot. I thought I did it quite well, but that is for others to judge. At least it kept me interested. 8. Not The Avengers novels, The Champions and Paul Temple yes. The Paul Temple scripts were old radio serials from the Bristol days which I thought were dated so I tried to make them slicker, like the Francis Matthews TV series to which they were linked. I think Francis Durbridge was slightly hurt that the same old gang (see para 2) wrote the TV series instead of Francis himself and he was suspicious of me, deleting any comedy that he detected. 9. I had no feedback. Performers do not react to the written script. They count the number of words, evaluate their role, when it goes out if it succeeds they take the credit and if it fails it was badly written. Which is generally fair, we have many more brilliant performers than writers. 10. The success of The Avengers novels was due to the success of the television series. The novels were re-published in various countries in the early 1990s because of Joanna Lumley and AbFab. No credit to me. Okay, Denis, I think I’ve answered all your questions. I’m sorry that my website was politically motivated and treated my 60s and 70s hack life as peripheral. I know a couple of people in Tamworth who treat me with respect because of The Champions. I’ll read your reviews of the novels now, but I promise not to pop up and argue with the things you say. Your reactions are as valid (maybe more so) than my intentions forty years ago. Take care now, with all best wishes, John ***** Elections 2008 - The Morning After the Night Before In 1987 Ken Livingstone called his semi-autobiography ‘If Voting Changed Anything They’d Abolish It’, so perhaps we shouldn’t be too downhearted about the massive vote against Labour last Thursday. But maybe a little introspection is in order. Firstly, a young Martian who finds himself living in Perrycrofts and able to vote for the first time might wonder what the election was about. If he read the national press he would think it was about bogus immigrants flooding into the country and drunken youths rampaging about our town centres with knives or, more seriously, the fact that all our standards seem to be set by European bureaucrats. So our young Martian would set about reading the campaign literature of the parties and their arguments in the local press. After all, he doesn’t want to find Plutonians or Uranians moving in next door to him – he’s never met a West Indian and the only Chinese he’s met have been in Chinese restaurants. He’s appalled to read about drunken youiths with knives, but he’s reassured to see that all the political parties are against anti social behaviour, even the young lady from the BNP. All the parties and Richard Kingstone are in favour of weekly black bin collections and the main argument is which of them promised to bring them back first. They all seem to be keen on keeping our streets clean, and the Conservatives are going so far as to clear up the litter round Wilnecote school themselves. And they are all against wasting money, but that is a sine qua non on Mars. Of course there are serious issues, such as the tendency for local authorities to offload their properties and services to the private sector, but nobody seems too bothered about that. There are a few howls of outrage here and there – at the threatened closure of a day care centre or the closing of a school, but as a distinguished county council colleague always says, has the world stopped turning in its orbit? They are not election issues. Gone are the days of the Eatanswill elections, when the Tory claimed that black was white and the Whigs claimed that white was black and the voters argued fiercely and came to alcohol fuelled fisticuffs on this vital issue. It is perhaps a sign of the times that the bar at Peaks Leisure Centre, where the count was held last Thursday, was firmly closed. Elections are now a sober business. The third Sir Robert Peel, son of the prime minister, would have resigned on this issue. Our Martian friend, if he bothers to vote at all will be forced to decide where to put his cross on the basis of the candidate’s face. A successful businessman, affable looking and grey haired in his wisdom or the long retired small builder, looking like a lost bloodhound? A Landrover engineer looking smartly approachable or an oriental ancient martial arts exponent? It seems that the Martian and a majority like him were overcome with human sympathy and voted for the poor old sods who needed most help. As a geriatric myself I am reassured that the voters think if you’re old you must be clever (which ain’t necessarily so) and that if you can find your way to Marmion House without a white stick and a Labrador you must be capable of running the town. And at least the poor old sods balance out against the hooting and hollering of the juvenile element, the Maisey Oates and Dozy Oates and little Lambsy Tivey who prove that young blood and new ideas are best avoided. Diddle ee I’d de do, wouldn’t you? Next comes the boring bit. The Times on Saturday had a cartoon of the Titanic broken on the sea bed and a voice through one of the portholes exclaiming ‘The re-launch starts right here!’ Gordon Brown announced that he was going to tour the country listening to the people until, like Neil Kinnock in 1992 his voice croaked. Labour apparatchiks popped up on television and Sunday papers determined to ensure that their message would finally get through to the people, and this time persuade them Then came the murmurs of discontent… My abiding memory of Gordon Brown was after the meeting at Warwick University when the lights had gone down and the audience was going home and the stage was being re-set for an afternoon session with Polly Toynbee, Harriet Harman and the deputy leader contestants. We found Gordon Brown wandering lost in the shadows at the back of the hall trying to find his way out. It seems to me likely that either next October or the year after, Gordon Brown will be brought down by lesser men. Ken was elected as mayor of London by the same a-party-political voters of London as Tony Blair led in the national Labour landslide of 1997, both without a socialist idea in their heads. So my money is on Ken Livingstone to become the Labour leader in October 2009 We live in interesting times.But we cannot deny that last Thursday was a rout for the Labour party, and my colleague in Wilnecote who sent me this photograph of Tory celebrations in their patch shows them enjoying the euphoria of victory. Good luck to them while it lasts. Fred Petronius **** Letters to the Editor The Editor, Letters 23rd March 2008 Dear Sir, Rubbish on the Moral High Ground I think Lee Bates misses the point about my letter on Tory litter picking in Wilnecote.I was The modest point I was making was that Tamworth’s Tory council is responsible for street cleaning and anti-social behaviour and the rest. The problems need to be addressed in Marmion House by a re-examination of the contract with Street Scene. Quite how Lee’s tribute to ‘the excellent work Street Scene does’ in this context baffles me. I am equally baffled by his claims that the monthly litter picks in Wilnecote are open to all and are non-political. Capital letters and exclamation marks and ‘believe you me’ do not make an untruth true. It was a member of this ‘unpolitical’ grouping who took to your columns to attack poor old Marion and me. That this ‘Tina Clements’ might on closer examination be related to a Tory councilor of the same name was not mentioned, nor that he might even have been on that litter pick. I accept that Lee Bates himself is non-political. But this is in the sense that John Cleese, in an early Frost Report, declared to a pollster that ‘we are entirely non political in this household: we always vote Conservative’. Lee Bates and his litter-picking chums remind me of John Ruskin and the pre-Raphaelites of the later nineteenth century, who identified with the working classes by indulging in a little manual labour on Wednesday afternoons, weather permitting, to show solidarity with the masses. It was phoney, patronising, but harmless. Yours etc., John Garforth *****
Lee Bates responded to my letter by saying that he and his chums reconnoitre their area in advance and plan their litter-picks accordingly. A resident of Wilnecote sent me this photo of Lee and his cohorts on an early morning inspection, but I think there must be some mistake! ***** The Editor, Letters 3rd March 2008 Dear Sir, Rubbish on the Moral High Ground I suppose Tina Clements and her Tory chums were doing no harm collecting litter in the streets of Wilnecote last Sunday, but it is a bit rich for her to claim that they were ‘helping in the community’ whereas Cllr. Marion Couchman and I were out ‘asking for votes’. Ms. Clements overlooks the fact that the council has a contract with Service Team to keep our streets clean and free from litter. It is significant that, faced with litter problems, instead of challenging the professionals to do the job properly our busy Tory councillors constantly have their photographs in your pages as though they are doing the job on the cheap. As a stunt this is not quite in the same league as Margaret Thatcher in military uniform pretending to drive a tank, but it is equally phoney. I hope they won’t tackle the problem of yob culture in the town centre by going out on Saturday nights pretending to be policemen. Neither Marion nor I represent the Wilnecote area, but we know that only a Labour council can tackle Tamworth’s problems with Labour solutions. I’m sure we both feel diffident about knocking on people’s doors and asking them to vote Labour. Such activity may be vulgar, as Tina Clements implies, but it is not a stunt. Fortunately Marion’s return to the council last year marked a beginning which will bring back wisdom and experience to our politics. It will see the end of Oates-led posturing incompetence. Although if Tina Clements wants to continue ‘helping the community’ in the only way she knows how then we will keep her supplied with environment friendly plastic bags. Yours ***** The weekly bombardment from Shenstone continued in the Herald this week, this time from the man himself, Matthew Ellis, member for Lichfield Rural East. Again in this climate of election fever the Shenstone lads were directing their ammunition against the county. This week Matthew directed his fire against county council leader John Taylor under the headline ‘Can we afford county council’s optimism?’ He described John Taylor as the failing council leader. Well, in the spirit of knock-about Punch and Judy election politics I replied thus: Dear Sir, Neil Fuller’s sense of approaching election fever last week (Prospective Labour Councillor for Mercian Ward – you omitted his name) is the only possible explanation for Matthew Ellis’ determined pessimism about what the county council can afford. Matthew is one of the most formidable and ambitious figures on the county council, so he must know that the evidence does not support his description of John Taylor as the leader of a failing council. There is nothing quite so tedious as argument about finance and corporate performance assessments, which is why – when election fever has not inflamed your letters page – his assertion would normally go unchallenged. And it is true that three years ago the county’s performance was given a two star rating. Of the five component strands of the assessment, social care received one star. This was why the assessment was repeated so soon afterwards. This time the social care rating had improved to three stars, education and lifelong learning were awarded four stars. Overall it was recommended that we be rated a three star county council. But the Department of Communities and Local Government intervened; because these improvements had been achieved in one year we had not demonstrated that they were ‘sustained’ improvements. They reduced our rating to two stars. But even that is not failure, and it is better than our neighbouring county councils. I hope our readers are still with us. Because even at election times they should not be misled into thinking that their county councillors are muddle-headed simpletons, and that all they need to do is vote for Matthew’s less impressive colleagues to receive a cheque in the post for their £700 refund of mis-spent council tax. They know what disasters are being wrought by his unimpressive colleagues in power at Tamworth Borough Council. Yours, etc. ***** Tamworth Herald - February 2008 Sir, So the prospective Conservative County Councillor for Perrycrofts thinks that we need ‘a county council that delivers efficient services and value for money’. Such a banal mantra that nobody could disagree with is not an argument for not paying the county employees the £113m wage bill that has been negotiated by the employees, the staff and their unions under a nationwide process that was begun by the Tory government in the early 1990s. The District Councillor for Fazeley and Mile Oak seems to think that wages are a luxury addition to the cost of a service, whereas it is the third element in the value of any product and is usually greater than the inherent value. The cost of coal is mainly the cost of miners digging it out of the mine, the cost of milk, eggs or wheat is mainly the cost of farm labourers producing them, the same with cars or clothes. The main cost of social care are the undervalued carers. Staff are a precious and costly asset in any enterprise. What is neither efficient nor effective is when the Tory borough council spends more than a million pounds on a proposed transfer of its fixed assets as happened with the housing stock fiasco, as is likely to happen with the transfer of the historic castle, assembly rooms and tourist information centre. This is stumbling along the same route with yet more expensive consultants. The Tories’ chaotic lack of business sense was vividly demonstrated when they sold off Peaks Leisure Centre for £1 to Sports Village UK, whose track record was visible for all to see on the internet. Mr. Adams is clearly unaware of the Changing Lives programme, which is spending more money on improved social care in a way that addresses future problems and present inadequacies in the system. I can understand his fear of change, fear of the unknown, but he should not spread alarm and despondency to gain short term popularity. And I do not know what he is proposing about gridlock on our roads. I too find it exasperating when I visit Ventura Park, but that is not caused by the county council. The idea of such demonstrable incompetence being unleashed on the county council may chill the blood, but the citizens of Perrycrofts can be reassured of the continuing service of their present representative, who is – erm – me. Yours On the same Thursday this letter appeared the ubiquitous Mr. Adams had written another letter to the Herald about county council funding by the government. The correspondence pages of our newspapers are a little like shooting galleries at a funfair – a conveyor belt of imitation ducks are being paraded before us, and as we shoot each one over the next and the next phoney ducks appear. We have responded to Ben Adams as below. One more pot and we win a kewpie doll. 7th February 2008 Dear Sir, I sense the approach of local elections as the young Turks of the Tamworth Tory party move from the discussion of serious issues in your columns to the mindless repetition of mantras about waste and inefficiency that sound convincing but are not supported by argument. These prospective councillors and Tory spokesmen do not even respond to the arguments that are put, they merely repeat their incantations in the belief that your readers will accept anything they are told often enough. This becomes tedious and allows real misgovernment in our council chambers (Peaks, housing heritage etc. etc.) to continue with yawns of indifference. A few years ago the American composer John Cage gave a series of lectures, and after an hour he took questions from the audience. He had ten prepared answers and whatever the questions were he gave his answers in sequence. Ben Adams, who misleadingly gives his address as Tamworth (he lives in Shenstone) uses the same technique with politics. The county council was not ‘bailed out’ by the government, Tamworth council does not run a ‘tight ship’ and thus receive only 5.7% from the government. The government provides 80% of the money spent by local authorities, the precise percentage depending on what they perceive as our efficiency and that is how they control our policies and the way we provide our services. Until he appreciates this Mr. Adams’ assertions about bailing out and tight ships are mere gobbledygook. He is the John Cage of Shenstone. To paraphrase the final sentence of his latest letter to the Herald, knowledge of how local government works, it seems, is entirely unnecessary for a prospective Tory councillor. Yours sincerely Neil Fuller
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Bruce’s second hand optimism continues: ‘This year’s summer festival will feature a zone dedicated to the Tamworth pig,’ he claims proudly. ‘Another cause I am championing.’ He might be onto a winner. There is less likelihood that indolent officers, accountants and shopkeepers will sit back and wait for him to fail again, since his Sandyback enterprise does not require borough council backing.
The Leyfields based pre-school, Jolly-totz were this week celebrating – having received a £1000 grant from local County Councillor John Garforth. The grant was awarded from Cllr. Garforth’s Local Initiative Members Scheme.
I have recently received correspondence from the webmaster of the French Avengers fansite who came across this website. Here is the correspondence. 
Ken Livingstone explains in ‘If Voting Changed Anything’ that during the dying days of the Callaghan administration he climbed aboard the Labour party at a time when all the rats were abandoning the sinking ship. He became leader of the GLC in less than three years. Now that he has been ousted from London by Boris he is yet again the loose cannon of the Labour left.
responding to an attack on Marion Couchman and myself by someone called Tina Clements, who had suggested that we were engaged in vulgar electioneering while she and her chums were ‘helping in the community.’