Just a quick note to say that the site may be offline for a short while sometime in the next couple of days - probably for no more than and hour at most - while I make a few changes which will hopefully bugger up the link spammers who’re currently eating away at my bandwidth at a frankly stupid rate.

Oh well, ruminations on the subject of electoral fraud in Birmingham rumble on. This time its the turn of Deirdre Alden - Tory councillor, losing candidate in Edgbaston and one of only two Birmingham councillors to decline to have their entries in the council’s register of interests posted on the council’s website - to bang on about electoral fraud, likening Birmingham’s reputation to that of Chicago.

The other ‘holdout’ on publishing their interests online is her husband, BTW.

To clarify her comments for those who aren’t up on American political history, Chicago was, during the era of Mayor Richard J “Boss” Daley, allegedly notorious for its dubious electoral practices giving rise to the ironic phrase ‘vote early and vote often’ which was used by some to describe his electoral tactics. Republican folklore holds Daley responsible for the narrow victory of John F Kennedy over Richad Nixon in the 1960 Presidential election yet for all the allegations, Daley’s personal honesty was never successfully challenged and elections in his own ward was noted for being scrupulously clean.

Reading Councillor Alden’s comments I can’t help but feel that for all her obvious concern that Birmingham presents the right image to the world, that of a modern vibrant city, her use of such archaic political reference point - ‘Boss’ Daley died in 1976 - is not really in keeping with Birmingham’s aspirations of modernity and that, perhaps, she’d be better served in bringing her reference points a little more up to date.

How about “Our city is as synonymous with fraud as…” say, Bradford, where the actions of a Conservative councillor are under legal scrutiny. Or how about Burnley? Surely she could gain some additional insight from the Lib Dem group on the City Council who put her party into office.

Or perhaps Ohio would be a better reference, where as the Conyers report shows, America yet again demostrates that in some things it invariably manages to be bigger and better than all the rest.

And maybe she could also remember that the High Court have since cleared one of the Labour councillors who was ‘fingered’ by Richard Mawrey QC as being responsible for electoral fraud in Birmingham itself and wait for full judgement in his case which, its suspected, may have a few choice things to say about elements of the judgement handed down in the Birmingham Election Court.