More news from the soap opera that is Swansea Labour Party. You will recall that in earlier episodes we met those bright young things Pearleen Sangha (@PearleenSangha), “Big fan of Ray-Ban eyewear”; Mitchell Theaker (@mitchelltheaker), “Labourite and gin lover”; and John Bayliss (@JohnCBayliss), “LGBT campaigner”; all students at Swansea University when they were elected to the council last May. (Click to enlarge images.) These three are devoted to, in order of precedence: 1/ preening and promoting themselves, 2/ helping the good times roll, 3/ student politics, 4/ the internal bitching of the Labour Party (at a ‘national’ level), 5/ assorted right
-on causes, 6/ enriching the shysters of the wind con racket.
Although, nominally, Swansea councillors, these three don’t give a lot of thought to the city and its people. Swansea council merely gives them a platform from which to giggle and gossip with slightly more credibility about what really interests them . . . be that gin, Gay ‘rights’, bars and restaurants, the next yoof commissar of the Labour Party, feminism, name-dropping, recipies, etc., etc. That’s the thing you notice when you look over their tweets, there are virtually no references to the city they’re supposed to be serving, unless it can be used to promote one of their p
et causes. Other than that, it’s all about enjoying themselves, but only with ‘their people’, as I’ll explain. Something else I should have mentioned is that they have opinions, on everything. They know nothing, but give out their views on everything. Take Pearleen Sangha, an American, living in Wales, but she has taken sides in the Scottish independence debate. No prizes for guessing . . .
They even use a cash-strapped city’s money to promote those ’causes’, and possibly to promote their friends. For it is rumoured that the soon to be announced GLBT Officer for the city will be a ‘friend’ of John Bayliss. Now of course, our three – and, it must be said, there are others – will argue that this new post is ‘serving Swansea’ . . . leaving us to wonder how the city could possibly have managed in the past without such an appoin
tee.
And they do get about! Thi
s year alone, Pearleen Sangha has been home to California for a wed
ding, and was also in Leicester for the conference of Labour Yoof. A busy girl, Pearleen. Too busy to be a councillor on Saturdays, as one of her constituents found out recently – “Do you know what day it is?” the impudent constituent was told. I mean, bothering your globe-trotting councillor as she prepares for dinner with friends! Mitchell Theaker has been to India for a few weeks, empathising and meeting “bigwigs”. While John Bayliss has been home in Sussex for a while helping Labour candidates in the elections there next month. Of course it can be argued that while Bayliss is away the Uplands ward is in the delicate and fragrant hands of comrade Pearleen . . . unless of course anybody wants help on a Saturday. (The large photo of Councillor Bayliss below is taken from his blog. Quite fran
kly, it’s toe-curlingly embarrassing. He looks like ‘the podgy one’ from a boy band, feigning modesty as 
he’s hailed by the total membership of his fan club.)
More thoughtful – cynical? (do I attract cynics?) – readers may at this point be asking themselves, ‘California, Leicester, India, Sussex . . . what the fuck has this got to do with running Swansea?’ A question more and more people are asking, even within the Labour Party.
Another thing you’ll notice by going through their tweets is that the Labour Party isn’t just the political party they belong to, it’s e
verything they are. They live on Planet Labour. One tweeter from the Labour Yoof shindig claimed that one third of all the people he knew were at the conference! That’s sad, and worrying. For here we have an organisation that has virtually cut itself off from the rest of society and whose members only mix with ‘their own’. This is New Labour’s gift to us all – a class of professional politicians for whom the talents of being glib and photogenic, being astute at networking and ruthless in back-stabbing, count for more than un
derstanding life outside the bubble. As it must, for they know nothing of life outside the bubble. It’s odious; alm
ost incestuous.
Yet these middle-class kids are helping run Swansea. They puff and posture as the defenders of the downtrodden, people they would never mix with socially, but to whom they must pander because that’s where their votes come from. And it’s all feigned, all hypocrisy. All done to justify their hedonistic, gossipy lifestyles which, let me remind you, are being paid for by the citizens of Swansea.
Before we can achieve indepen
dence from England we must gain independence from a Labour Party that becomes less and less Welsh every year. As the Party fills up with careerists and chancers from outside Wales, and the disconnect between the party apparatus and its captive vote increases year on year, there is no longer any reason for Welsh people to vote Labour. If only we could offer them a viable alternative!
UPDATE 24.04.13: Someone phoned me to ask, ‘Why are they allowed to get away with it?’, meaning why aren’t the lotus eaters being reined in. The leader of the Labour group on Swansea council, and the council itself, is a scouser named David Phillips. I’m using a photo here that I’ve run across more than once. It shows him, steely-eyed, looking into the distance for foes to crush and challenges to overcome. Mussolini liked to be photographed in a similar pose. (I wonder how Phillips would look in a helmet?)
You will remember that I wrote about him a while ago, when it was realised he wasn’t allowed to use the letters after his name that he’d been using to impress people since washing up in Swansea. Around the same time I heard that he’d turned up for the funeral of a former Labour councillor in a long, flapping, white trench coat, looking like an extra from a film noir. (Everyone else was in black.) And it should go without saying that his wife, Sybil Crouch, is also on the council, and a cabinet member.
So it would be pointless hoping for intervention from that quarter. Phillips is just another poseur. Swansea Labour Party is full of them now, all trying desperately to impress each other. They can’t pronounce Cwmrhydyceirw or Waunarlwydd, they know nothing of the history of Swansea, they don’t understand its people, but none of that matters. All that matters is that Labour now controls Swansea again. My city reduced to a ‘scalp’.This is ‘Welsh’ Labour 2013.
P.s. Councillors were not paid and when the Ratepayers came into power they continued the work started by the previous administration., I strongly believe in supporting the person and not the party.
I remember Gerald Murphy I worked there during his reign and we do have him to thank for the South : Dock. reclaimation and the Marina -reviving the old buildings in Wind Street – community development was top of the list roads maintained, rubbish collected every week and staff were encouraged to be visionary and innovative.
I always believed that politics should not be to the fore in local government – but looking back on those halcyon days I realise what the good times were – when Councillors knew their area and worked hard to serve their constituents irrespective of their political leanings or personal leanings.
Says it all really. I remember Murphy being filmed on Townhill gazing fondly down at the dog’s breakfast of a town below him – with scarcely a building of architectural merit – and saying “I’m very proud of all this”. I remember the agricultural land deals for councillors then, wondrous to behold, planning permission being granted a short while later. I remember the sewage companies being ‘given the nod’ to turn the discharge pumps off when the beach water testers were in town. Need I go on ……..
Might I suggest that getting a few younger people in as councillors is not such a bad thing? I don’t recognise a past golden heyday of administration at Swansea – I’m old enough to remember them all getting locked up for corruption in the 70s, hence the old joke about only getting a council quorum in the exercise yard. Also, I don’t think that the born in Wales, bred in Wales, ploughed in Wales councillors have served us very well in the past – usually a bunch of backscratchers, seasoned with freemasonry and petty corruption. What’s wrong with a few people who can bring a different perspective, or someone who’s 20 and never done a job. It’s better than some old back-scratching hack with an IQ of 70 who’s only in it for the status.
No problem with a few younger people as councillors, but don’t you think they ought to know the area they’re representing?
Yes, yes, we’ve all heard the old jokes about Swansea council, ‘Best council money can buy’ and the rest. Truth is, Gerald Murphy did a bit of bird for being open to blandishments, and I think the chief executive also got caught accepting prezzies. Then the Ratepayers took over (remember them?) and old Sid Jenkins, council leader, got caught dining lavishly at someone else’s expense. Small coal. Look at the bigger picture.
Murphy was from my part of town, I knew him. He was a rough diamond but Swansea hasn’t seen a better council leader since. He had Swansea’s best interests at heart. I guarantee that if he’d been running Swansea in recent decades Cardiff wouldn’t have grabbed everything. As for a bit of back-scratching and shows of appreciation . . . I’d be worried if it didn’t happen, because then we’d be ruled not by rounded human beings but by fanatics and zealots.
The real problem, which seems to escape you, is that the Labour Party, and other parties to a lesser extent, have great difficulty finding young people locally to stand for councils, or indeed people of any age of a decent enough calibre. Which is why we have the Swansea situation: kids fresh out of college, assorted oddballs and misfits, all from somewhere else, that view Swansea council as somewhere to ride their hobby-horses.
In part 7 I think you should take a look at some of the older generation of Labour councillors like deputy leader Christine Richards who is rarely seen in the civic centre but has become a permanent fixture in the council’s suite at Liberty Stadium. Also worth questioning the value of a Cabinet member for allotments.
Might it not be the case that the “older”, more local, element in the Swansea Labour Party has been elbowed aside by the arrivistes? And what’s wrong with allotments? Don’t get Big Gee started!
Shambo – you’re wrong.
The depressing thing is that the electorate – or that part of it which still bothers to vote – is so much on autopilot that they continuie to elect these freaks just because they’re Labour. It doesn’t say much for the other parties, esp Plaid, that they can’t break the spell of these nonentities. I’m thinking of voting UKIP just for the sheer hell of it.
We’re all aware that it’s not just the Labour party promoting their foreigners in our communities; all of the English parties do it because the passive Welsh allow it. If something is considered not worth fighting for then we deserve what we get.
Buy a light box and see your doctor about the benefits of anti-depressants.
There may be a Sad Old Git (SOG) support group near you.
The under 25 wearing a woolly hat looks old enough to get a free bus pass.
Ooo! Get her!
For me, the real worry is that they do know who Chris Bryant is, but they still vote for him.
I’m not sure how the Labour party get away with it. I mean, how can someone like Chris Bryant represent the Rhondda? I’m guessing that at least 90% of the people who live there don’t know who he is? Worrying stuff.
What a bunch of scumbags. I had a quick look at the first two on the list.
“Pearleen Sangha @PearleenSangha 11 Apr
I appeal to @UKLabour elected officials or staff-how many of you have casework on the #bedroomtax? I want to retweet all of your responses.”
Those would be the Labour scumbags that didn’t actually oppose the bedroom tax then? And why would she care when her council isn’t actually going to stop anyone being evicted as a result of it.
Next.
Mitchell Theaker @mitchelltheaker 20 Feb
21% of Swansea’s children live in poverty. Our entire manifesto, administration and mindset is geared towards tackling this. @SwanseaCouncil
That would be because there is a very obvious correlation between child poverty and labour as I have shown here. To summarise all constituencies in Wales have >10% child poverty. But crucially ONLY Labour constituencies have >20%. And the worst constituency of all is the area that houses the Senedd with >30%.
Typical Labour scumbags, using the poor and needy as a stick to bash the Tories with whilst offering no alternative.
Exactly. These people are in denial about their own party.
I’m a full on anti English-led Labour person (forget the tag “Welsh Labour” no such animal exists), I also loathe the way the Labour party has manipulated and exploited the poor working classes throughout it’s existence. HOWEVER most people in poorer areas of high unemployment have been brain-washed into believing that their only hope lies with the Labourite branch of politics – including Plaid Cymru in the modern era (the only other party to ever draw the attention away from Labour in the Rhondda – a good example)..
Consequently your observation is a little distorted if I may say so. The reason why the Labour constituences are the ones that have 20%+ rates of poor children is because those children’s voting parents have put those people in power because they believe (wrongly) that they are the only party that can lift them out of their poverty. So lets not get a skewed view of the situation here by suggesting that the so called socialists (because true socialists they are not) Labour party has caused the poverty problem. Poverty has always been there, poverty is encouraged and deployed as a tool by the capitalists to drain money away to their fat pockets & on to the banking system as we know it.
It’s a well known fact that by keeping the working masses underpaid & struggling to survive whilst being in fear of their jobs (that’s the purpose of high unemployment) works well when it comes to the capitalist structure. Capitalism fuelled by personal greed is the evil at the root of the problem. More so practiced by imperialist and colonising nations – tick the boxes for most of the western hemisphere’s nations here. Whether red, pink, blue or true blue England’s political parties have been guilty of propagating and supporting these capitalist trends. It’s a case of greater or lesser evils – depending on the balance of power at the time.
Castro, Chavez and others have long realised this. So please God let Alex Salmon lead the Scots to independence in the future, and pray that we can follow suite afterwards (we usually play catch-up rather than lead in these matters). BUT the important thing is that we do not fall back into the capitalist trap as Ireland have by aping their prevous capitalist oppressors in the way they run their economies and treat their poor.
“Consequently your observation is a little distorted if I may say so. The reason why the Labour constituences are the ones that have 20%+ rates of poor children is because those children’s voting parents have put those people in power because they believe (wrongly) that they are the only party that can lift them out of their poverty.”
I really don’t understand the point you are trying to make. There is a correlation between Labour and child poverty. Whichever came first is academic because they have had decades to turn things around.
The point is simple. Labour are in power where traditionally there are poor people – Kier Hardie the very first Labour MP got elected in 1900 on the ticket that his party would raise the poor people out of poverty in one of the most deprived areas of Wales at the time – Merthyr Tudfil. By the same token the other mob – the unprincipled millionaire toffs, landowners and industrialists turned politicians, are the obvious choice in areas of affluence. It’s not rocket science. The affluent areas become richer and continue to vote for their champions, The poor get poorer and continue to vote for their champions. The Tories never MADE the rich areas rich. Labour never MADE the poor areas poor (thereby causing high rates of child poverty – as you suggest). Then there’s the middle ground squabbled over by both parties these days.
In modern times (unlike Kier Hardie’s genuine principled stand in his time), It suits Labour to keep their areas under privelleged because it gets them power. The Tories just make sure that their mob stay privelleged & rich.
At their core BOTH are as unprincipled and self preserving as each other. THAT’S why what’s needed is something totally different – especially for Wales. What we need is a patriotic party, that genuinely cares for the welfare of it’s citizens and their country – based on social justice and proper equality – not poverty or affluence depending on their ‘colour’. I see glimpses of that with Salmon, but not (red) Plaid Cymru. We do NOT need something stuffed in ‘right’ or ‘left’ pidgeon-holes and coloured red or blue according to English political custom..
Whichever came first is not ‘academic’ – as you suggest – it’s a recognised constant. that fuels the on-going situation. It will remain so until the overall set-up changes.