After a digression or two over the last few days into other matters, its time to get back to a few more local issues - which inevitably means heading back into the weird world of Birmingham City Council Deputy Leader and Lib Dem PPC for Birmingham Yardley, John Hemming.

In my temporary absence from the fray, PoliticalHack has done a stirling job of picking up the gauntlet, finally wringing from John, after a mere seven days, that the Birmingham Lib Dems were, indeed, following the national party’s orders and handling postal vote applications on behalf of Lib Dem voters - not that John seems particularly happy to have had to admit that publicly.

The shabby opportunism of efforts by John and the Birmingham Lib Dem High Command to pin the blame on the DTI for the demise of Rover rather than on his former friends, the ‘Phoenix Four’ seems to have abated somewhat in the face of the harsh reality that even Digby Jones of the CBI, a man who should know a bit about running a business, doesn’t buy his version of events either, while Annil Chandra, the former Rover Project Manager who purports to be leading efforts to set up a worker’s cooperative at Longbridge and the only other person to repeat, publicly, John’s claim that ‘it was all the DTI’s fault’ appears to have gone very quiet indeed since being ‘outed’ as one of the Lib Dem’s candidates in Bourneville in last year’s Birmingham City Council elections.

But to further back up the truth that Rover was in serious trouble long before the government got involved, its worth reading this article from the Birmingham Evening Mail which shows that Land Rover, which is still using the Rover K series engine in its Freelander models, was stockpiling engines for several months before Rover crashed in order to tide it over until it was able to switch to a new engine from Ford - now why, John, do you suppose they were doing that if not because they were well aware that Rover was ‘living on borrowed time’ under Phoenix and, in that case, how are you going to blame the DTI for that?

In fact I’ve unconfirmed reports which suggest that SAIC has already sold off a package of 45 different rights to intellectual property which was formerly owned by Rover and sold to the Chinese around 5 months ago, long before things finally went pear-shaped, and that this rights sale was in preparation for the production of wholly Chinese-manufactured cars in the near future, based on the right sold by Rover.

More and more it looks like SAIC led Rover right up the garden path until it got what it really wanted - the ability to build its own cars for the Chinese domestic market - and then walked away without ever having any real intention of concluding a deal which would have kept production going at Longbridge.

There’s one last bit of catching up to do with John, before moving on to something fresh, and that’s in relation to postal votes.

The last couple of posts on his blog appear to show John taking a remarkably studious interest in the number, extent and, in some instances, detail of applications for postal votes in Birmingham for the upcomning election. In fact reading his comments one would be forgiven for thinking that he has been, personally reviewing applications…

…in which case I’m sure he won’t mind publicly clarifying a number of points.

1. In what capacity is he obtaining all this information about applications for postal votes in Birmingham - as a parliamentary candidate or as the Deputy Leader of Birmingham City Council.

2. If he is obtaining this information as a candidate can we be assured that any other Parliamentary candidate can obtain the same information, by the same means and on the same basis as John.

3. If he isn’t acting as a candidate in this, but obtaining this information by virtue of his position as a local Councillor and Deputy Leader of the Council, is that ethical? Is there not an inherent conflict of interest? In fact would that not be a matter for either the Electoral Commission or the Standard’s Board? I ask because because what John appears to be doing is certainly not mentioned in or covered explicitly by the Electoral Commissions revised code of practice, so I was wondering whether this was just something that candidates are allowed to do anyway, in the absence of explicit regulations, or whether it something he’s just been doing of his own bat.

4. Is he personally looking at applications and in which case; is he looking at all of them, some of them - and if so, how is he deciding which one’s merit his attention - or none of them and simply relying on reports from Birmingham’s interim Returning Officer?

5. And equally, if he getting reports from the Returning Officer, is that as a candidate or a councillor?

UPDATE

THe question above are no longer relevant in light of that information - unless John is doing something very, very stupid indeed.

Moving on to his plans for polling day itself:

6. What assurances is John prepared to give that there will not be any incidents of the kind referred to during the course of the Election Court hearing in relation to last year’s Council elections, which resulted in staff at at least one polling station lodging complaints against his polling agents in regards to their conduct, which the complainants appeared to consider intimidatory.

7. Also, with regards to his comment that the Lib Dems will have ’some patrols to follow the personators from polling station to polling station so we can collect evidence as to who is personating’ - is that, in the first instance, not the job of the Police? In fact has John even informed the Police of his plans and obtained their opinion/blessing for his plans?

8. In fact could this not be considered a rather intimidatory statement, not only to possible personators but also to legitimate voters who are intended to nothing more that exercise their lawful right ot vote but may then, as a result, find themselves being followed on leaving the polling stations by what amount to little more than a private vigilante police force under the command of a candidate?

9. Could some legitimate voters not find these statements so intimidatory that it could succeed in dissuading them from exercising their democritic right to vote altogether? And if so, would this note, itself, be in breach of election law and a criminal offence? One thing that is clear is that if these patrols do happen it won’t be on the basis that those carrying out these activities will be identifying themselves clearly as working for the Lib Dems, in which case is there not also the risk that this might lead to, or be interpreted as harrassment?

10. And again, on the subject of ‘clearance’, has John seen fit to make the Electoral Commission aware of these plans and seek guidance both on their legitimacy - or otherwise - and if they so and this is permissable, has he taken further guidance from the Electoral Commission regarding the conduct of the these patrols and what action they may, or may not, legitimately take, if any?

And now, my final question and one I can answer immediately…

Knowing full well that John visits this blog on a fairly regular basis - its I rare I mention his name without him turning up within a few hours - has he got around 24 hours to formulate a satisfactory response to these question before I start asking some questions of my own - questions I might add that will directed to WEst Midlands Police and the Electoral Commission, just to satisfy myself that everything that appears to be about to go on polling day, is actually within the rules, regualations and code of conduct?

The answer to that last question is - you betcha - after all, we wouldn’t wish to see an overzealous parliamentary candidate disqualified from the election for breaking the rules or another messy round of election courts, would we?