Deafening silence

HOW do you recognise the Labour members of Blackburn with Darwen Council?

Easy. They're the ones with gags and lobotomy scars.

Well, they might as well be - given the remarkable reaction to a simple question put to councillors over the town hall's ban on shopkeepers' 'A-board' pavement signs.

What did they think of the policy? asked the Chamber of Trade.

Answer: They are, it seems, not allowed to say.

Furthermore, some, we are told, would not be able to answer anyway.

Accordingly, regeneration committee chairman Councillor Andy Kay is to oblige instead with a response on behalf of members of the council's ruling Labour group.

Even allowing for the possibility of there being something in Coun Kay's imputation that some of his colleagues do not have sufficient brains to answer the Chamber's questionnaire, is it not outrageous that Labour councillors are not apparently allowed to have minds of their own or the liberty to speak them?

For heaven's sake, what are they supposed to do when they come knocking on folks' doors for their votes and are asked their opinion on this or that?

Send for Coun Kay? These people were elected by the people and should answer directly to them - and not be the stooges of a manipulative party elite.

Are they so afraid of the party bosses that they dare not be themselves or is it really they are too thick to speak for themselves?

We know, of course, from the carpeting that ex-mayor Peter Greenwood faced from the Soviet-style party commissars after he complained about power on the council being in too few hands how upset these bossy boots get over even a hint of a robots' revolt.

But these gagged and dragooned Dalek councillors ought to ask them who respects a council chamber stuffed with slavish wimps?

If they have either guts or brains, the Labour members so insulted by their own leadership would tell the Stalinist control-freak town hall politburo to stuff their whips up their junta - along with the vicious vendetta against the town's traders and their 'A-boards.'

Either that or admit to their own cowardice.

DEAR ME, the Sally Army, I see, is that latest church to decide it must become more "relevant" in order to survive.

So out go the military-style uniforms that Salvationists have worn since 1879. And in come jeans and baseball caps.

"Worship Bands," with keyboards, drums and guitars, are to supplement the Salvation Army's traditional brass bands.

Well, as survival plans go, this is a death wish. Take a look at the nigh-empty C of E churches to see where "relevance" to the times - in the form of women priests, homosexual vicars, nave raves and condonation of living in sin - gets you.

The fact is that the dear old Sally Army, with its old-fashioned uniforms and music, stands out in this anything-goes age as a clear and unashamed example of uncompromising values and standards - and for that it is admired.

Becoming like the rest may make it more in tune with the times, but the watering down of principles that - M- la C of E - inevitably comes with this does not guarantee the salvation of the church.

OH, how jolly "green" and tree-huggingly nice it is that council officials will be cycling on the "company bike" to jobs two or three miles from Blackburn town hall instead of going about in those horrid politically-incorrect motor cars which local government is urging us to give up.

Next news, they'll be giving up the hundreds of free parking places on the shopping precinct that have been the council employees' tax-subsidised perk for years.

And if they do, you'll see me biking to work on a fairy cycle as well.

For what this example brings to my mind is not so much a refreshing instance of them doing as they preach to the rest of us, but, in the cycling context, the image of Arthur Seaton, the loveable anti-hero of the 1960 film Saturday Night And Sunday Morning, slaving away in a bicycle factory and muttering that what those in authority serve up to the rest of us is "all propaganda."

My yardstick on this will be observing how many council bikers there are buzzing about Blackburn on a cold, wet Tuesday afternoon in November and how full the sectioned-off town hall workers' car park happens to be at the same time.

DORIS Karloff - also known as Ann Widdecombe, the no-nonsense Shadow Health Secretary on the Tory front bench - is fast becoming my pin-up girl.

She has told William Hague that "health" is a post she could not accept in government - because it would be irreconcilable with her beliefs on abortion, which is licensed by the Health Secretary.

Anyone who puts integrity before career is a rare bird in politics these days.

But is not Miss Widdecombe (pictured right) also one who allies her personal beliefs with public opinion on this issue - unlike many others in Parliament?

For recent opinion poll evidence suggests that a majority now believes abortions are too easy to obtain.

Given that in the past 30 years since the current abortion law was introduced almost five million pregnancies have been terminated, it is plain that abortion is available on demand - whatever pretence to the contrary the government tries to maintain.

Is it not a pity that Miss Widdecombe is a somewhat lone political voice expressing concern at the law having been allowed to go far beyond its original intentions and Parliament not even daring to debate this fact?

I hope she will "get stuck in" on this question.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.