From the enigmatic but rather splendid 98th Entry Halton Apprentices website (don't ask) ...
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies" - Groucho Marx
I celebrate one Peter Davies, English Democrat, retired schoolmaster and now, the newly elected Mayor of Doncaster. Set aside if you can the catastrophic failure of Westminster, the extent of which has become far too apparent over recent years, and let’s review what the new Mr.Mayor chappie has been up to since the chains of office were placed on his surprisingly broad shoulders. On his first morning as Mayor of Doncaster, Peter Davies cut his salary from £73,000 to £30,000 then closed the Council’s newspaper for “peddling politics on the rates”.
A reasonable start, but since then…?
Now eight weeks into his job, Mr Davies is pressing ahead with plans he hopes will see the number of town councillors cut from 63 to just 21, saving taxpayers £800,000. Mr Davies said: “If 100 Senators can run the United States of America , I can’t see how 63 councillors are needed to run Doncaster".
He has withdrawn Doncaster from the Local Government Association and the Local Government Information Unit, saving another £200,000. Mr Davies said, “They are just talking shops”.
Doncaster is in for some serious untwinning. It is twinned with nine other cities around the world and they are just for people to fly off and have a binge at the Council’s expense.
He has promised to end council funding for Doncaster’s International Women’s Day, Black History Month and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History Month.
This is why if you put his name into Google you can find thousands of links to incandescent tofu munchers who would seem to have taken a break from sitting around all night drinking herbal tea to get really upset about what normal sane people call eminently sensible cost cutting measures. Mind you, the removal of free translation services for immigrants seems to have induced a pandemic of apoplectic fits in the trendier parts of London such that it has put swine flu in the shade.
Good. I hope they all choke.
Is this the anti-Christ?
That excerpt was slightly abridged. Meanwhile Ridley Grove, writing at Conservative Home, says ...
The more I read about Peter Davies the more I like him.
He is the directly-elected mayor of Doncaster and is responsible for the local services of just over 250,000 people.
He has ordered budget cuts across the city of 10pc to 15pc. Decades of monopoly Labour rule have convinced him that the savings can be found.
He is planning a 3pc cut in council tax.
He has already cut his own pay in half to £30,000. Next he wants to cut the pay of his own chief executive in half. That would save £85,000 more.
He wants to cut the number of councillors by two-thirds to just 21.
He has ended Doncaster's twinning with five other cities.
Another £80,000 has been saved by leaving the trade union of local councils (otherwise known as the LGA).
He believes immigrants should learn English and has scrapped the translation services that were slowing integration.
His war against political correctness is also evident in his cancellation of funding for gay and race pride events. He says they can go ahead with his blessing but not with money from Doncaster taxpayers. Also on the way out are community cohesion officers.
He may have scrapped the chauffeur-driven car he inherited but he is otherwise very positive about the motor car. He is increasing the number of parking spaces because he wants Doncaster to be business friendly. Incidentally he does not believe that Doncaster has a duty to save the planet from global warming but it does need to provide jobs for its people.
This retired RE teacher wants schools to run themselves.
What a guy.
Davies must seem like manna from heaven to worn-out hacks on the Daily Mail and other gutter-scraping newspapers, because he's not afraid to speak his mind ...
"I don't see why council taxpayers should pay to celebrate anyone's sexuality"
"Going on about diversity causes racial tension, it doesn't improve it. The Government has just admitted that gipsies should be given special treatment and that only makes people angry. I want every citizen of Doncaster to be equal"
"I'm not green and I'm not conned by global warming"
"Who says we have the moral right to tell Afghan society how to live?"
“These [wind farm] developments have little or no benefit in terms of contributing to decreased energy consumption, nor do they have any beneficial effect on the planet’s climate in response to the great global warming scam. I would certainly not want one of these monstrosities anywhere near my property, nor do I want to see them blotting the landscape of the English countryside and waterways and causing grief and concern to local people in terms of noise and the blocking of sunlight"
Davies was unexpectedly elected executive mayor of the once impregnable - and famously corrupt - Labour citadel of Doncaster. Executive mayors were a Blairite wheeze to rejuvenate clapped-out, inner-city town halls by creating all-powerful civic superstars (preferably cronies of Tony). Only a handful of cities voted for the idea, though.
The best-known is the Mayor of London, though his powers are by far the weakest. The capital was deemed too important for a single mayoral ego so that post, occupied by Boris Johnson, is largely promotional, with appointing, ribbon-cutting and Olympic finger buffets thrown in.
In the provinces though, the 11 other executive mayors reign like medieval princes. Mr Davies chooses and supervises a cabinet that controls education, transport, social services and pretty much everything else across his domain. And with a quarter of a million people, Doncaster is by far the biggest of these fiefdoms. That is why Mr Davies matters. He has made a punchy start which, if replicated nationwide, would lead to public sector bedlam. The question is who should be most worried about his success: Labour or the Tories? Because his message threatens both.
Deeply sceptical of 'green claptrap', he must be the only mayor in Britain who wants more traffic in his town. He says it will boost business and has just announced plans for more parking spaces and an end to bus-only routes. 'Like it or not, we live in the age of the car,' he says.
He wants to cut all 'non-jobs' in his 13,500 workforce - such as platinum-pensioned 'community cohesion officers' - and aims to shrivel future pay deals for council executives. Much as he likes his chief executive, Paul Hart, he says his £175,000 salary is 'a joke' and that any successor can expect half. 'Don't believe that stuff about "having to pay the best to get the best". It's arrant nonsense - look what it did to the City,' he says.
The Doncaster-born son of a socialist butcher, Mr Davies was a Labour activist until 1973, when the rhetoric at a May Day rally drove him to the Conservatives. He supported that party for more than 20 years, until John Major signed up to the Maastricht Treaty, whereupon Mr Davies joined the UK Independence Party (UKIP). He says he soon tired of UKIP's infighting and 'hypocrisy', so moved to the lesser-known English Democrats because he was 'fed up with England being taken for a ride'.
Mr Davies says he loves Scotland - he takes his annual holiday in Perth to visit 'the most beautiful racecourse in Britain' - but he believes the time has come to shrink Westminster and create an English parliament.
Needless to say the Lib Dems in Doncaster are horrified by Mr Davies, and have leapt to the attack in the vicious, underhand way we have come to expect from trendy lefties whenever they find themselves threatened. Lies and unfounded innuendo are their chosen weapons. Their petition is tagged "Peter Davies, homophobia" (see what we mean? You decline to give shedloads of public money to Gay Pride and you're labelled "homophobic") and claims to have been drafted by Doncaster residents. Mind you, it wasn't drafted by very many Doncaster residents - the last time we looked it had only 52 signatures.
You can find Peter Davies' own homepage here, and a Doncaster Free Press profile of him here.
Some of this page was pinched from Robert Hardman's Daily Mail article.
The GOS says: Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? It'll never work - far too sensible. Nothing'll come of it. There'll be tears before bedtime, you mark my words ....
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