Andrew 'Tweedledumber' Bingham wins in High Peak

High Peak Councillor (and blogger) Anthony McKeown broke the news of the High Peak election result first on Twitter - and the winner is the Tory Andrew Bingham. It's High Peak Labour Party's own fault - they failed miserably by not taking swift and decisive action over the expenses fiddles of the crook Tom Levitt.

We're sure some very odd people would like to extend their congratulations to Bingham, 'Tweedledumber' in our parlance due to his non-difference from Tom Levitt regarding the Bypass, but the choice on this issue between all the three main candidates was a non-choice for us. Nevertheless, this writer regards Bingham as the natural enemy and we intend to be ruthless.

Longdendale Siege are back on the march...

With immaculate timing, and at long last, the Longdendale Siege Committee have updated their website. It seems that nothing spurs them into action like the threat of the collapse of their beloved road.

Linked to from numerous points on the homepage is a three page newsletter, which can be viewed here (opens PDF), which Mike Flynn was seen distributing at weekend. Now we could spend all day taking this document apart, not least because of it's shocking grammar, but we'd rather highlight one or two issues that crop up in it that have been covered here on the blog in the past.

Firstly, you have the reference to the fact that the Smithy Surgery at Hollingworth wrote in to the Public Inquiry to support the bypass. We covered this in August 2007, and pointed out that the Highways Agency's own evidence shows that pollution levels will increase, and that far being from a detailed and reasoned analysis, the GPs preferred to merely state opinions (that they 'were told') rather than facts on an A5-sized compliment slip.

Secondly, the document regurgitates unreferenced & unsourced pollution statistics. We covered this in depth as well back in March 2008, by again outlining in detail how pollution would worsen with the bypass. We also noted that Longdendale Siege were not willing to present this data to the Public Inquiry so it could be subject to scrutiny.

The most laughable part of this document is the threat that direct action will be taken to obtain the road! How we'd love to see that - surely nothing would endear Siege less to their only constituency, the inpatient motorist.

But the most interesting part of the PDF is who's written it. If you go the file properties, it tells you the author is a David Moore. Remember him? Yes, we wrote a long article about this character back in February 2008. Moore is well known to anti-bypass objectors, at one time he frequently wrote in to local papers in support of the road, but what was less well known was that he was project manager for the Tameside MBC sponsored North European Trade Axis (NETA). This was a project to promote a 'trans-European transport network', linking the Humber ports with the Irish Sea ports, bringing HGV traffic from Europe, via Longdendale (& the bypass) to Ireland and back again. The website has since been taken down (how mysterious!), but the links to the pages we provided still work in the Internet Archive - you can view here David's lovely face and his contact details for the NETA project.

Siege are threatening to lobby 4NW - so that tells you who still holds the purse strings in this whole affair. But in the meantime, why not welcome them back by dropping them a line at their new email address - bypassnow09@googlemail.com - or give them a call on 07913 034896. Tell them we sent you and blow them a kiss...

Hoongate: Who? is fooling Who - enter 'Bronze' Adonis...

The first document submitted by the Highways Agency to the Public Inquiry in nearly 6 months appeared in the last couple days on the Persona Website. 

It's a letter from the Department for Transport to the Planning Inspectorate (opens PDF), ostensibly concerning a complaint from the stalwart Objector John Hall about Geoff Hoon's meeting with pro-Bypass politicians last November. Whilst this is a rather pedestrian and brief document, it does contain a very interesting new development. 

In a highly suspicious move, the letter reveals that the ultimate decision maker on the Bypass project will be the Transport Minister, Baron Andrew 'Bronze' Adonis rather than Who?/Hoon. There are several apparently significant implications in this chess move.

Firstly, that Hoon/Who? doesn't want to be tarnished with making a decision (whatever that may be), and also that he's been rattled by the criticism coming his way that he's usurped the Inquiry with the 'Hoongate' meeting. John Hall has touched a raw nerve here.

Secondly, who (Who?) better to make a decision than an unelected bureaucrat like Adonis? It can't ruin his career because he's not - and never has been - an elected politician. He climbed the greasy pole as one of Tony Blair's policy wonks, after repeatedly failing to become an MP (for the Liberal Democrats!).

Thirdly, Levitt, Purnell and Oldham must be feeling pretty bloody stupid and duped by Hoon's chess move here. They even posed for photos with him for Christ's sake!

Lastly, after the 4NW decision last week, will Adonis agree to meet with Levitt and Purnell? If Levitt went on his own, it'd look like a Gilbert and George convention, increasing the comedic possibilities. Perhaps the best we can hope for is that they'll pose for photos which will result in another in our 'lolprat' series.

More news as we get it.

Andrew Gwynne the Eco-Tourist

We've rarely considered political figures beyond Longdendale and High Peak, since they are often shouting the loudest in favour of the Longdendale Bypass. But some new revelations lead us to turn the spotlight tonight on Andrew Gwynne, the Labour MP for Denton and Reddish, another big supporter of the Bypass. 

The reason is that it came to light a couple of weeks ago that Gwynne took a trip last year to Svalbard, islands in the Arctic Ocean, and part of Norwegian territory. According to an article in the Tameside Advertiser, Gwynne and the party he journeyed with were invited by the Royal Norwegian Assembly to survey the damage being done to the island by climate change in April last year. The top of the article describes Gwynne as an 'Eco MP'. We'll demonstrate that he is actually at best an Eco-Tourist.

Now you may remember some time ago that one of David Cameron's first jaunts as leader of the Tory party was to go on a holiday - sorry! - fact-finding trip to Svalbard for similar purposes. So it's in vogue for the political class to go and look how bad things are somewhere else rather than looking closer to home. The fact of the matter is that Gwynne was so concerned about what he found in the Arctic that he didn't bother to report his trip at the time it took place and make the most of the publicity, only when he had to declare it to the Parliamentary authorities for the Register of Member's interests 7 months later. This was clearly more of a holiday/junket than anything else - if you type "Andrew Gwynne" and "Svalbard" into Google, all you'll find is the Advertiser article and articles about the entry in the Register of Member's Interests - there are no articles to be found in foreign press, tourist board websites, environmental journals and the like. 

This is not the case for the other MPs taking the trip. Jamie Reed MP had an article on a local newspaper website within a month of the trip. Kerry McCarthy MP blogged about the trip within a week. Not be outdone, Jo Swinson MP did a podcast whilst she was there! (see entry 7th April). Only Tory Boy Greg Hands MP and Gwynne failed to mention it, demonstrating the depth of their sincerity/pathetic PR strategy (delete as appropriate)

Regarding his 'eco credentials', putting aside the bypass, we find that Gwynne is a strong supporter of Manchester Airport, and if one wants to know his position on Heathrow, visit his voting record page on publicwhip.org.uk and use your browser to search for 'Heathrow' - you'll find Gwynne, like Tom Levitt, is completely loyal to the Government's position in favour of expansion. And of course, we all know about his support for the Bypass. So how exactly can Gwynne be realistically described as an 'Eco MP'? At least Tom Levitt can bleat in support of a local Hydro Electric Power plant (however lacking in credibility said plant is) -  Gwynne presides over the Junction 24 M60 Roundabout at Denton, a site which has disastrous health implications for his constituents, yet he wants more of the same for the area - the construction of the Longdendale Bypass will massively expand road traffic congestion in this part of his constituency, as will any expansion of Manchester Airport for air traffic. 

If Gwynne was sincere about accepting his invitation from the Norwegian Government to see what Climate Change is doing to Svalbard, perhaps he should invite Norwegian officials to Denton to show them how sincere he is about making their situation much worse. Not to mention ours.

Geoff Who? & Purnell - lolprats

In homage to one of our favourite websites, the wonderful icanhascheezburger.com, we present our moderately amusing take on the phenomenon that are the lolcats. 

So here's a challenge. If you know lolcats and you think you can do better than our version above, then email us with suggestions for an alternate caption for this, and any other picture of the pro-bypass protagonists which we can build into a regular series. If you provide (or point us to) the picture and the caption, we will do the rest...

(the above is a picture of Geoff Who? meeting James Purnell at the 'Hoongate' meeting - from Purnell's abortion of a website)