Nice to see Iain Dale keeping up with local politics…

Today I had a letter from the People’s Republic of Camden telling me that my appeal against a parking ticket had been successful. You can have no idea what pleasure that letter has given me.

People’s Republic of Camden?

Let’s see, the Leader of the Council is Keith Moffat, who happens to be a Liberal Democrat, as are five other members of Camden’s Executive, John Bryant, Janet Grauberg, Chris Naylor, Benjamin Rawlings, and Flick Rea.

The remaining four members of the Executive, Martin Davies, Mike Green, Andrew Marshall and Andrew Mennear are all Tories, and perhaps even more embarrassingly, it’s Mike Green who holds the Environment portfolio, which includes transport and, therefore, is presumably responsible for Camden’s policy vis-a-vis parking tickets.

So the ‘People’s Republic of Camden’ is, in fact, run by a Lib Dem/Tory coalition with a present composition is:

Conservative: 14 councillors
Green: 2 councillors
Labour: 17 councillors
Liberal Democrats: 21 councillors
Anyone else up for sending Iain a blue-bound of the ‘Thoughts of Chairman Maggie’?

*In case anyone’s wondering about the title, ‘Chinaman’ in this context is a cricketing-term for left-arm leg spin bowling. The most widely accepted version of the and the origins of the term is that it is believed to relate to former West Indian spin bowler Ellis “Puss” Achong.

In the 1933 Old Trafford Test match, Achong, a left-arm orthodox spinner and the first Test cricketer of Chinese ancestry, bowled an unexpected wrist-spin delivery turning from off to leg - what Aussies would call a “wrong ‘un” as it span the ‘wrong ” way - and had the English batsman Walter Robins stumped by Ivan Barrow as a result. Legend has it that Robins, as he walked back to the pavilion, remarked “Fancy being done by a bloody Chinaman”, hence the name.