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SON OF GRIDKNOCKER

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Everything posted by SON OF GRIDKNOCKER

  1. Perhaps I should also have observed that Station Approach is really such a naff name for this pointless £25M urban link road to nowhere. In recognition of a lifetime's service to Herefordshire Council (and as one councillor who vociferously opposed its building), why not name it GLENDA POWELL HIGHWAY?
  2. I admire Mrs Hey's enthusiasm - and the optimism of the HiB volunteers - though I fear this small pavement-level flower bed will be filled with discarded cans and condoms by Christmas. What is needed (and at £25,000,000 surely HC'S budget could have stood it) is for the entire length of Station Approach , all the way from Commercial Road to Edgar Street, to be lined with trees: professionally planted and securely staked, in state-of-the-art tree cages, regularly watered and maintained.
  3. This is the profile of a new terrace of brick-built houses near Birmingham city centre (designed by the Courtyard's architect Glen Howells) which is due to be unveiled later this month by the developer Urban Splash. What a pity something as architecturally well-mannered as this couldn't have gone up on the ex-Rockfield DIY site alongside Hereford Station, which will shortly be playing host to a student accommodation block which looks more like a STASSI training centre!

    Brick houses.jpg

  4. The Westminster rumour mill is suggesting that even though there is still almost a fortnight before the official announcement of the result of the Tory Leadership election, BoJo is already drawing up a list of his Cabinet. With hook-nosed Hammond in a sulk and dreaming of continuing his snoozes in the House of Lords, who will be the porcine one’s Chancellor? The smart money is on Johnson’s campaign chairman, Ian Duncan Who – guaranteed to make as big a Horlicks of the economy as he did of our benefits payment system. The other key ‘Prime Ministerial preferment’ must surely be for BoJo’s chief Vote Rigger, Gavin Williamson. The former fireplace salesman yearns to return to the Defence Ministry, following his banishment by Mrs May for leaking State secrets. Six months on the Naughty Step is surely an adequate punishment, Gav has told Boris. Really? What about poor old John Profumo – virtually caught in flagrento delicto with the lovely Christine Keeler, who was also sharing her bed with an attaché from the Russian Embassy? Profumo was to spend 12 years in the wilderness, working as a charity worker, before he was accepted back into society.
  5. Flamin’ Ada. Not only has Mr Blobby had to hire creepy Steve Bannon’s 2-i-c as his Organiser (“just make sure the security guys around you are multi-ethnic. Makes good global TV.”) but he’s drafted in Ian Duncan Who as the campaign’s chairman. Things must be looking pretty desperate in model bus-maker’s BoJo’s Command HQ. ANYONE BUT BORIS
  6. Thanks Meg. I know you are someone who has recently (possibly even currently) had close contact with the wonderful staff who keep Britain's NHS running - despite the current national vacancy tally of 100,000. Last Saturday, at a session at Hereford County Hospital, I had a fascinating conversation with an experienced Staff Nurse. When I brought up the prospect of Bojo's bizarre suggestion that the NHS might be 'sold off' to the US, she shook her head in horror - as if I'd suggested that we should pawn the Crown Jewels to help pay for all those air-conditioned football stadiums that are being built in Quatar. ANYONE BUT BORIS
  7. Classic news item from the ‘You Couldn’t Make It Up’ website: the Daily Telegraph sagely decided to take a telephone canvass poll of all Tory councillors in England and Wales over last weekend, asking them whether they felt Mr Blobby was still the right man for No 10, after that Friday night altercation. Sixty-one per cent did. Well what a surprise!
  8. Tory Minister Mark Field physically assaults a peaceful female protester handing out leaflets at the Mansion House, on the spurious grounds that "she may have been armed" (despite the fact that she was wearing a Greenpeace sash). Twenty-four hours later the police are summoned to Mr Blobby's London home because a 'domestic incident', which the gaffe-prone Leader-in-Waiting declines to discuss with the party faithful on the stage of Birmingham's Symphony Hall on Saturday night. ANYONE BUT BORIS
  9. Rory Stewart’s surprise elimination from Wednesday’s round in the Tory Leadership contest was achieved by what can only be described as vote rigging. As many as five staunch Boris supporters (hopeful of preferment in his government) were persuaded by one of his henchmen to temporarily ‘lend’ their support to Savid (my Dad was a bus driver) Javid. Javid duly moved up and young Rory was shafted. They don’t call ‘em The Nasty Party for nothing!
  10. According to statistics held by the House of Commons Library (an information source which I’m prepared to believe), the Tory Party had 124,000 paid up members in March last year, compared with Labour’s half-million plus. Yet BBC bulletins today, reporting on the race for No 10, are saying that 160,000 ballot papers are about to be posted out to the Nasty Party’s membership. A 25% hike – even allowing for the Boris Factor (or, as others see it ‘The Elephant in the Room’) does seem quite extraordinary. ANYONE BUT BORIS
  11. Have any other VOICE members noticed the uncanny resemblance between Tory leadership hopeful Jeremy Hunt and the vile Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad? In fact, has anyone ever seen them in the same room together?
  12. Eat your hearts out David Owen, Woy Jenkins, Shirley Williams and that other bloke who never spoke. It took aeons of navel-gazing to form the SDP, yet it burnt out (or was sold off to the FibDems) after only 7 years. Nigel Farrage has every reason to look as pleased as Punch. In just six weeks he invented a manifesto-free party, he didn’t get distracted by tiresome details like members’ subs, he got ‘egged’ by a well-aimed banana and caramel milkshake, and one third of all those who bothered to turn out to vote in last Thursday’s pointless EU elections now think he’s the next Messiah.
  13. One omission from the excellent list of lies which Megi brought us (above), is the £1-billion bung which Mrs May conveniently conjured up from that non-existent Money Tree growing in the back garden on 10 Downing Street to keep the Ulster Flat Earth & Anti-Abortionist Party on side.
  14. It’s going to be a two-horse race – and both of them are clapped out nags only good for pulling Steptoe and Son’s rag and bone cart. The candidate who has major media backing undoubtedly has the high ground. So no prizes for guessing which candidate the Barclay brothers’ Daily Torygraph will be putting its weight behind. And with his wife employed as the paper’s highest-paid columnist (now that Ross-on-Wye resident Quentin Letts has gone), the Daily Mail will have to be Gurning Gove’s cheerleader. Did anyone else spot Mrs May’s remark at the end of her resignation address about not being the last woman Prime Minister? Was this, I wonder, a subtle hint that her vote in the leadership election with be going to Penny Mordaunt, who she recently appointed in succession to the hapless Gavin ‘Private Pike’ Williamson? And the least-likely contender to make it onto the members’ ballot papers? The self-important Sajid Javid. As veteran columnist Polly Toynbee observed in Saturday’s Graun, people are tired of hearing his: “My dad was a bus driver” story.
  15. Regardless of ones political affiliations, it is bad enough to have one Prime Minister walking into the job without any sort of public mandate, but it looks ominously like history will be repeating itself again in 2019. ANYONE BUT BORIS
  16. Well, folks, seems it will soon be time to focus on the Leadership election, as Mrs May has now indicated that she’ll be jumping ship in June. Let’s not go into the boring detail of who the aspirants for this lucrative job are, save to point out that the casting votes in the second round of the contest (the first round is restricted to the 330 serving Conservative MPs in the Commons) are vested only in paid-up members of the Conservative & Unionist Party of the UK. And at the last count there were a mere 125,000 of them – mostly with Bus Passes and many with limited life expectancy. Against a UK population of just over 66 million. So the next British Prime Minister will be elected by just under 2% of the population. Does that sound fair to you? ANYONE BUT BORIS
  17. I'm sure there won't be many tears being shed in the Palace of Westminster this morning over the timely demise of the egregious Gavin (Private Pike) Williamson. His departure should certainly puncture the Tories' balloon of invincible self-confidence on polling day. Let's hope the Indie pact holds together in all wards.
  18. Now that we’ve got the Grand National out of the way, let’s take a look at the runners and riders who are getting saddled up and being gently eased into their racing stalls in readiness for the next big race: The Tory Leadership Handicap. The bookies’ Dream Ticket to run against current favorite Bo-Jo are Savid Javid & Jacob Rees-Mogg (a slaphead and a top-hatted toff. What a combination). Then there’s the unrivaled intellect of Sir Nicholas Soames paired with Dennis ‘The Beast of Bolsover’ Skinner. Known throughout Westminster as The Dim-witted Duo are David Davis & Chris Grayling, with the latter still having difficulty assembling the HornbyDublo kit Santa brought him last Christmas, let alone building Crossrail or HST2. For glamour and good looks there’s Yvette Cooper partnering the diminutive Liam Fox. And bringing up the rear of the field (and presently refusing to be walked into the stalls) are Chuka Umunna and Arlene Foster. The Daily Mail’s Golden Boy, former fireplace salesman Gavin Williamson, has had to scratch as he’s busy preparing to flood the streets of post-Brexit Britain with tanks, artillery and armed troops.
  19. Brexit is fast turning into a Dog’s Breakfast and though I don’t have a lot of sympathy for Mother Theresa, I do feel that that villainous quartet of Barnier, Junker, Macron and Tusk have shown her very little mercy in these last few days. With the annual May Fair due to arrive in town very shortly, I’d like to suggest that the operators rig up an extra stall, which I think would prove extremely popular with the crowds. It could be one of those old-fashioned shooting galleries with air rifles and lead pellets and there would only be 4 targets to hit to win a major prize: cut-out coloured tin profiles of the arch-villains of Brussels. Roll up, roll up!
  20. You’ve got to hand it to the good old Guardian when it comes to knowing which organ stops to pull out on the mighty Wurlitzer marked ‘Freedom of Information’. Last week they got the Cabinet Office to reluctantly admit that £5.5-million a month is currently being spent on management consultants, in “providing extra skills in planning Brexit-related tasks.” Pull the other one missus. The only ‘skills’ these suits are providing is in their ability to bank their ill-gotten gains as fast as possible, because their government-appointed paymasters – the Brexit ministers who are currently running in and out of radio and TV studios - are a bunch of no-nothing dimwits.
  21. I'll second that, Cambo... adding the name of the Indies' Angela Tyler (Aylestone Hill Ward), who called at our house last week to personally canvass our support. She seems to me to be a thoroughly good egg. So good luck to her!
  22. Ian Duncan Smith: popularly known as 'Ian Duncan Who' by cynical political sketch writers such as our local man Letts. Don't know anything about 'the Truss woman' - other than that it's a most unfortunate surname she'd be well-advised to change before the 1922 Committee's Leadership Election.
  23. With comedy actor Volodymr Zelenskiy set to become the Ukraine's President on 21 April (barring any intervention from humorless Putin), my money would be on Armando Iannucci as the next British PM.
  24. @twowheelsgood: Many thanks for this information. Since you say that HC has been picking up the tab for the rent of this safety structure, is there any way of discovering what it has cost us council tax payers over the last 14 years? Or perhaps Cambo (always an expert on scaffolding and roofing) would care to hazard a guess? Your observation that the occupants' properties "must be blighted" is extremely accurate: according to one report, an unfortunate owner discovered she couldn't move as there were no willing purchasers.
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