Oh well, Tim’s ‘mate’ Gareth Davies is at it again, this time launching the kind of savage attack not seen since the days of dear old Geoffrey Howe on the back of a few comments from one of my local (ward next door) councillors, Bob Piper - and missing both his target, the point of Bob’s comments (March 8th) and, most interestingly of all, Bob’s follow-up (March 9th) by a good old fashioned country mile.

On the face of it, we have two Labour councillors both pushing what, superficially, appears to be the same ‘beware of letting the Tories back in’ line but look beyond the soundbites and the contrast between to the two counldn’t be more marked.

Bob writes not only from personal experience but as someone who still holds true to Labour’s real roots; trade unionism, a deep-seated belief in social justice and the ultimate goal of improving the lot of the ordinary working citizen and building a fair and just society.

Not ‘Old Labour’ and certainly not ‘New Labour’ but Real Labour, the kind you still find at the grass roots of the party.

Head over to Gareth’s blog and what we get instead?

A ‘Stepford Councillor’ and a relentless stream of empty brown-nosing - no real arguments, no sense of personal values or commitment, just a series of garrulous restatements of the whatever official party line happens to be approved for public consumption at the moment.

I have to admit to finding Gareth’s blog somewhat compelling at the moment, if only because of gems such as this one (from March 10th)…

“One of the fascinating topics that we discussed over lunch was the difference between emplooyment [sic] structures in japanese local government compared to the UK; their management structure places more stress, it seems, on generic management skills rather than specialist or technical knowledge…”

Hehehe! how wonderful is that? Pure fucking Dilbert all the way - say hello to Gareth the pointy-haired Councillor…

Better still is the news that, sometime after the election, Gareth plans to regale us all with his thoughts on ‘Socialism in a time of prosperity’ - stop, this is killing me - as he apparently believes that “there’s a need to say more than we say now about what socialism means.”

This is absolutely rivetting stuff, Gareth - I can’t wait for your dialectical analysis of the differences between UK and Japanese employment structures in local government…

… except that, loosely translated, “places more stress, it seems, on generic management skills rather than specialist or technical knowledge” equates to ‘managers know next to nothing about the jobs their employees actually do’ and I hate say it but Scott Adams got in their before you with ‘The Dilbert Principle’.

Priceless!

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