MPs We Voted In

To calm the Rwanda crisis  down we need an anti-inflamaTory? Chance would be a fine thing.

Yorkshire return 54 members of Parliament  and unless there have been any ‘overnight’ changes to party allegiances 24 are represented by Conservative MPs and 30 by Labour MPs. 

Lib Dems, Greens even SNP and Plaid Cymru fail to register a Yorkshire member -no surprise there. However more concerning is the lack of any ‘Independent’ MP. I am not advocating the Yorkshire Monster Ravers party but an MP without vested interests in anything other than serving our communities and Yorkshire interests would be a better bet.

We don’t get much of a say in who our MP’s will be!  Candidates are generally chosen from party faithfuls, committees or the Westminster select. Options are foisted on us under party banners, no wonder fewer people are choosing to vote.

“Politicians are like nappies. They should be changed frequently…..and for the same reason.”  Barry Crier

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Shout-Out for Towns of Yorkshire

A shout out should draw critical attention to someone’s unacceptable actions or behaviour.  At God’s Own County Yorkshire’s version we want to hold someone accountable for failure to acknowledge, promote and support our great towns. We don’t need regional mayors to tell us what is good and worthwhile. Get out and about to see for yourself.

Southern Yorkshire pilgrimages to these selected hot spots would be a good start for a shout out about day trips from the three original county ridings (towns in North East and West will feature nextmonth).

Stocksbridge.
Brodsworth.
Anston.
Rotherham.
Mexborough.
Barnsley.
Thurlstone.
Pennistone

Yorkshire definitely has something to shout out so add your voice and support to out southern towns. I confess I have never visited a couple of these towns!

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Global Yorkshire

Global HQ

In Yorkshire we don’t give false praise or butter up the none believers. Take us as you find us in God’s Own County.

On the Global Web

Our reputation and international presence goes before us but Yorkshire folk are also semi-social media gurus.

  1. Find us on spoof domains such as Tykes.com, Tykes.global, Texan Tykes, Irish-Tykes.ie, and most importantly of course GOC.co.uk.
  2. Snap-chat is what you do over a sarnie. Long before T’internet was invented What-app was Yorkshire dialect for what is causing you concern. Off your facebook was caused by too much Tetleys Bitter, pin your ‘ear’oles back if your interested but Ticktock it’s pasttime you Reddit.
  3. Ee-by gum has been approved by Sensativity readers in Chinese, Russian, Arabic and Hieroglyphics (only joking about that bit). We regret ‘ya daft hapeth’ has been excluded from Roald Dahl books as it may offend Lancastrians.
  4. The mega Meta global event is launching a TransOceanic Yacht Race from Hull to Hobart featuring boats from Holland, Hong Kong, Honduras, Haiti and even land locked Hungary.
  5. Click bait your grouse and pheasant for moorland shooting

Global TV From Yorkshire

It is impossible to single out any one TV series set in Yorkshire as there are so many internationally renown programmes to choose from.

  1. A top 10 would include old standards like : -Downton Abbey
  2. All  Creatures Great and Small.
  3. Heartbeat
  4. Gentleman Jack
  5. Last of the Summer Wine
  6. Emmerdale
  7. A Touch of Frost
  8. Last Tango in Halifax
  9. Happy Valley
  10. Ackley Bridge

What a Yorkshire boxed set that would make. Are you watching ITV Yorkshire aka (YTV)

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Gaudi In Yorkshire

Earlier this year GOC threatened to start a series of chimney photographs. Little did we know that Antoni Gaudi the Spanish designer and architect had left his mark on Yorkshire with his chimneys.We didn’t know because in all probability he hadn’t! In fact Yorkshire left our mark on his chimney designs during the industrial revolution.

Chimneys  after a night on the sangria.                         CC BY-SA 2.5 wikimedia commons

a forge Work-a-Day Sheffield Jotter R Tucks yorkshire - PICRYL - Public Domain Media Search Engine Public Domain Image

Sheffield forge chimneys with appropriate smoke. I bet the workers were ready for pints of Wards (Vaux), Stones, (Bass)  and Tennant’s not necessarily or exclusively in that order. 30 Sheffield breweries used to exist to slake the thirst of steel town workers. Visiting pubs run by them was called forging a pub crawl.

Smoke gets in your Ey by Gum

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Nostalgia is Bigger Than It Used To Be

Reposted on World Book Day 2023  School Children can dress up as a character from a book. Lenny Henry, L.D Lapinski, Adam Kay and Joe Wicks join the line-up offering interesting books for £1 World Book Day 2023. Alan Titchmarch is unlikely to feature at many schools or fancy dress events but this book is available at many charity shops for less than £1.

Book Cover

Nostalgia is big business and isn’t going to disappear anytime soon. Alan Titchmarsh has latched on to the trend with his BBC book ‘When I was a Nipper’ available from amazon as paperback or hardback.

Why Nostalgia is Getting Bigger

  • The baby boomers are enjoying life and there are a lot of them around. Long may that continue despite the torrid time currently being experienced due to corona virus corvid-19
  • Old music acts from the 60’s and 70’s are touring and performing in ever growing numbers. I saw one of the Dubliners on a zimmer frame at St Georges Hall Bradford last year!
  • Discretionary spending on nostalgia increases year on year. Collecting memorabilia, old pottery, and modern antiques has been promoted by lifestyle programmes on TV.
  • Family tree compilation and ancestor research has joined the list of popular hobbies.
  • Themed holidays and a greater number of museums and local attractions based on nostalgia proliferate.
  • There is a demand for nostalgia because times were good. The supply of nostalgia based products, services and media is aimed at satisfying the demand.

Yorkshire Nostalgia

    • The Railway Children is running again in a live performance at Waterloo Station
  • Heartbeat of Aidensfield fame may have ceased production but it is still running on digital TV channels and dvds. How long before we are nostalgic for analogue TV?
  • Another show that runs and runs is the Last of the Summer Wine. I can even get nostalgic for the reruns!
  • If you want to keep up with nostalgia you can do a lot worse than read The Dalesman

original posted 15.2.17

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Identity Politics None Woke Version

What \can Sigmund Freud Teach Our Politicians

  • The id is the unconscious primitive and instinctual part of the mind that contains sexual and aggressive drives etc. Many politicians spring to mind if you consider this.
  • The super-ego brings lots more politicians to mind. It is supposed to operate as a moral conscience: are you following Boris?
  • In Yorkshire ‘e-ego on then’ encourages politicians to stand for election again and again and again.

Vote in Yorkshire’s May Local Government Elections

Before you will be allowed to exercise your universal suffrage right to vote you will need to prove your identity or have a registered postal vote.  Voters wishing to apply to their council for free ID should first make sure they are registered to vote. The rules are new and Kirklees MDC  explain  ‘Accepted forms of ID include a UK, European Economic Area  or Commonwealth passport; a UK, EEA or Commonwealth drivers’ licence; and some concessionary travel passes, such as an older person’s bus pass or an Oyster 60+ card’ (in Kirklees I should coco). Voters will be able to use expired ID if they are still recognisable from the photo. I am not recognisable even from any current photograph.

Muddying the waters still further, to get a Voter Authority Certificate you must be registered to vote and register online at www.gov.uk/register-to-vote.

No more being ticked off a list at a polling station more likely an officious third degree from yet more civil?public servants. Will the rule change work to  stimulate electors to generate more or fewer votes. I know what I think.

 

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Self Identification as a Tyke

It will not come as a surprise that I identify as a Tyke and always have done. From mothers milk, with no foreign formulas, through trusted Yorkshire tea and Tetley’s, I was a proper baby Tyke. I graduated at an early age to revere some of the best beers any country could offer.

Then along came a party from north of the border which had the idea that anyone could self identify as what ever they chose. They passed a contentious act in the SNP parliament virtually to that effect. Could Nicola Sturgeon seriously think someone could replace their kilt with a flat cap and become a self professed Tyke on a whim? Not on your Nellie as she found out.

Vintage Tea Towel: Tetley Tea Bags new unused advertising image 1creative commons

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Commission Police Commissioners,

The New English Dictionary has many definitions for ‘commission’ but number 5 on page 271 states . ‘ an act of committing something: the commission of a crime.’  So have I stumbled on the Yorkshire comma.  Are we to have a body of commissioners seeking out police committing crime called Commission Police, Commissioners. This may be laudable or even necessary for the Met in London where strangely there is no Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC).  Commission Police with or without a comma are not wanted in God’s Own County.

The role of a PCC is to be the voice of the people and hold the police to account. They are responsible for the totality of policing. We elect them, currently in Yorkshire, one Labour, one Conservative and West Yorkshire’s Mayor  . The aim of PCCs is to ‘cut crime and deliver an effective and efficient police service within their police force area’. They are elected by the public to hold Chief Constables and the force to account, making the police answerable to the communities they serve’. West Yorkshire – police governance falls under the remit of the Elected Mayor a pseudo PCC.

Annual salaries for a PCC is South Yorkshire £ 88,600 and North Yorkshire £76,300 and additionally all PCCs must employ a Chief Executive (CEO) and a Chief Finance Officer. PCCs also receive cash from the Government to commission other organisations and groups to improving community safety.

In this post, doubtless, I will have committed many errors, which,  will attract attention from the comma police so I intend referring myself to the Police, Comma, Commissioners but don’t ‘quote’ me on that.

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Politicians Know No Boundaries

Revised Yorkshire Parliamentary Boundaries

We are overdue for a rebalancing of parliamentary constituencies to relate more closely to current and anticipated populations. The last changes for England & Wales was in  2010 so about 8 years late (normal for the civil service?)

The Boundary Commission current consultations closed last year and final recommendations will go to parliament by 1 July 2023.

Boundary Commission for England recommends changes that must be based on constituencies having no less than 69,724 Parliamentary electors and no more than 77,062 electors. This has led to 650 constituencies distributed to the four parts of the UK as follows:

  • England = 543,
  • Scotland = 57
  • Wales = 32
  • Northern Ireland = 18

Yorkshire will be unchanged with 54 constituencies as it happens 10% of the English total. There will be some local tweaking. London and South East will get 9 more MP’s  but the North East and North West  will be reduced by 4.

The detail available is vast and this link provides access to maps and geo data for Yorkshire and Humberside

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Repeal the Local Government Act 1972

‘Enough is enough’ as many true Yorkshire folk would say. It is too long since we achieved a repeal of the act of parliament that messed unnecessarily with our county boundaries and organisations. I know you can’t easily unravel such a ball of tangled string but beware of what  follows, more false savings, gerrymandering,  political posturing and another reorganised North Yorkshire Combined Council.

Changes and Effects Caused by the Act

  • South Yorkshire was an invented myth that lingers like the taste of  ginger.
  • Met Districts became the focus for large authorities with growing power complexes
  • Aldermen were killed off and sheriffs were promoted to be high sheriffs and small charter trustees created.
  • The new controls  were supposed to be a two-tier the system but turned out to be three-tier and like a lot of local government it grew like Topsy. It retained civil parish councils (arguably the most effective of the lot).
  • Health care and water supply / sanitation were taken over by separate, non-elected authorities.(A duff abdication of accountability)
  • Recognising some errors the 1990’s brought back the East Riding as a reorganised local government authority  with new boundary changes.
  • Political ducking and diving generated last minute ‘geographical’  changes for  Ossett and Rothwell.
  • A pound to a penny a reduction in overall cost was not even one of the lesser effects.

North Yorkshire Council Reorganisation 2023

‘A single new council for everyone in North Yorkshire’ will launch on 1 April 2023. It will cover District Councils, in Harrogate, Skipton/Craven, Richmondshire,  Ryedale, Selby District  and Scarborough. Surprise, surprise it will exclude York City Council which will still be run by the Vikings.

The new council reports it will ‘retain a main office in each former district supported by around 30 additional local customer access points.’ That’s modern economising for you. The foolish mandarins couldn’t have chosen a more suitable day to launch, April 1st. The changes to productivity may be even bigger than the current working from home initiative!)

 

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