Saturday 27 February 2016

Yay, Yay and Thrice Yay!!!

With Darren Cooper you just cannot make it up. Like the goose that laid the golden turd (surely "egg"? - Ed) he is the gift that keeps on giving.......

A couple of days ago I put up this screenshot showing the imbecilic Sandwell Labour "leader's" apparent penchant for "the ladies":



The would-be Metro Mayor (ROFLMAO) has reacted quickly to this disclosure but in an unexpected way. The laughable buffoon has amended the offending Facebook page but just to remove his public declaration of love for Corbyn's lunatic Labour Party. Gone is his absolutely shameful support of the loony far-left cell but he has happily restated his neanderthal, sinister and sexist "interest" (yuk) in the odd bit of skirt! Don't believe me? Well here is the screenshot from this very afternoon:


I think the socialist "sisters" should have an appropriate word, don't you readers?

PS

There is a rumour going round that is bizarre even by "Sadwell" standards - that Zahoor Ahmed's wife has been chosen as a Labour Party candidate! More info welcome.......



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Thursday 25 February 2016

Stop Press - Jan Britton's Blog!

I am sure Jan Britton cannot be referring to me in his "Word on the Street" blog today as that would be libellous... Certainly the person who sent it to me took it as a reference to myself. I hope he is going to publicly put up the alleged "proof"... (I do hope he is not foolish enough to be listening to our friend on the Yew Tree "LOL"!)


After bragging about the "socialist paradise" he stated:

"This strikes me as further evidence of the point I made last week, that whatever might be said by a small but vocal number of internet critics, Sandwell Council and Sandwell Borough are in good shape and doing well, if not better than many other local authorities. Incidentally, I saw some interesting work yesterday that does a very good job of proving - or at least getting very close to proving - that the majority of our most abusive internet critics are in fact one and the same person with a particular axe to grind using multiple identities on various social media sites, blogs and websites. Funny old world the internet, the more I learn about it, the funnier it gets, except that some of the personal abuse of councillors and employees is not funny at all - but I did say last week that I was not going to dwell on the subject, so I will move on."

Bit insecure aren't we Jan? Perhaps you should go back to f*cking up the Children's Services instead of wasting taxpayers time and money writing this sh*te!

(Anyone got a copy of his apparent rant from last week?)

Incidentally, Jan The Man is fighting a Freedom of Information request to release this blog from April, 2015. It is clearly prepared by him and sent through official SMBC channels. Perhaps he likes to keep bullying of critics of his failing authority behind closed doors? Here is the header:

From: Word On The Street [mailto:wots_newsletter@sandwell.gov.uk]
Sent: 25 February 2016 08:51

Subject: [Word on the Street] New Post in Investing In Place : Glimpse of the Future
Posted in Investing In Place by Jan Britton on Thursday, February 25th, 2016

That is now the subject to an internal review request via the FOI procedures. Watch this space!



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A Sandwell Miscellany!

It is common knowledge - even though he won't come out and say it - that the simpleton from Smethwick who leads [sic] "Sadwell" Council, Darren Cooper, wants to stand for Metro Mayor (after publicly stating there should not actually be a mayor) and so I am now writing his (unauthorised) biography. Please do not hesitate to send information to me via the following email:

cooperbiography@gmail.com

Of course, Darren Cooper himself used public money in a masturbatory masterpiece - a filmed interview about his life and career called "Lie Story". (Sorry, what was that? Oh I see - it's actually called "Life Story"). But regular readers will know that he has been somewhat more reticent about talking about his disastrous first marriage (the repercussions of which ripple through time such that he did not attend a recent family wedding in Cornwall), the serious accident involving his vehicle outside a Labour Club (where the story is probably more about the cover-up than the incident) and why he told many people he had acquired the money for his house extension via a certain private individual. Hopefully, my biography will be able to put some meat on the bones!

There has been no comment from him yet concerning his sister's council house as featured in my last post.

Of course, the record of Sandwell Council under his "leadership" has been dismal what with the Children's Services catastrophe and multiple land sale scandals etc.

(This is a convenient place for a timely reminder that the closing date for The Skidder's national competition to find "Britain's Thickest Council Leader 2016" is 12 noon on 1st April. Cooper won it the 2015 prize and remains a strong contender to retain his crown this year. Please forward your other nominations asap.)

The would-be mayor may think that being ignorant, illiterate and inarticulate are sound qualifications for the job and. whilst a percentage of Sadwell morons seem to agree, it won't wash in Brum and Solihull. (Mind you - it might be good news for folk in Soho and Vic if and when he abandons them!)

This blog has put up numerous examples of his pathetic Twitter drivel and I shall seek to make sure that these reach a wider audience than the long-suffering folk of Sandwell in the coming weeks. Just in passing, I found another classic from 2014 the other day. As we have seen already, he (a "politician") cannot spell "Thatcherite" and he once accused UKIP of being a "thatch rite party". Here he is again:


Yes old beans, I was beaming at that one....

Readers will know that Darren Cooper can't write his own speeches and blog but someone in the half a million pound a year press office has to do this for him. He also lifts his daily "news" tweets from something that local MP John Spellar puts out. After various warnings, he has tried to clean up his own torrent of Twitter excrement and now lets his troll associates do all the nasty stuff for him. But he is getting itchy fingers of late and his inability to understand how to use apostrophes has become manifest again:


Like many other politicians this half-wit has no shame nor, it seems, memory. Even though he presides over a brutal one-party dictatorship that rolls its tanks over anyone who stands up to it, he had the gall to pass on (as his own) this gem from Spellar the other day:



And then he passed off another Spellar tweet as his own:


....seemingly forgetting that the three laziest MP's in the last Parliament were all Labour and one of them was the Bermondsey resident who purports to "represent" West Bromwich East - yes, Sandwell's Walrus of Lurve himself, Tommy Watson. Even Darren's mate Brian Rickers, the local Unite Regional Organiser, takes to Twitter to call him, "Lazy Tom"!

(Here's the chart showing the expenses-guzzler Watson couldn't be bothered to waddle into Westminster for over half of the votes during the period 2010 - 2015!!!!!!)



Mention of Unite the Union reminds me that there are rumours of some financial irregularity at the WM Regional Office. I did send this email to their press officer yesterday but I have not had the courtesy of a reply:

"THIS IS NOT A PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION AND MAY BE USED AS I SEE FIT.

Dear xx xxxxx,

I understand that there has been some financial irregularity at WM Regional Office. Would you care to supply  a statement about this for my blog and for the benefit of Unite members please?

Julian Saunders"

No doubt some Unite members who are forking out their dues may want to follow this up......

Returning to Darren Cooper I will be making a number of revelations about his conduct very shortly but here is one to be going on with. I have not hitherto put this up as it includes my address. Sometime ago, an officer at Sandwell Police called Inspector Rowe pretended to be concerned about my safety noting the number of threats I was receiving. Of course, when I was actually physically threatened on the streets of Oldbury by someone claiming to be one of Cllr Hussain's immediate family nothing was done. (Of course, the young man may have been only pretending to be one of the the Hussain family  but they are well aware of my address anyway and so in for a penny, in for a pound.) New readers will not be aware that Cooper threatened to confront my wife at her place of work for unspecified reasons but, if he does stand for mayor, I wager that not many other candidates will have sent someone a "we know where you live" message/threat via Twitter direct messaging. Needless to say the class dunce could not even spell my name correctly:



And finally..... not only has this deluded egotist no insight as to the total inappropriateness of him being a political "leader" but there are many rumours that he also fancies himself as "a ladies man". Notwithstanding his "official" number of relationships I had discounted this as improbable fiction but, maybe when he sends this sort of lusciously romantic image out, the laydeez of Langley and environs really do go weak at the knees.....



But then perhaps there is something in all of this after all judging by the "interests" section of his Facebook profile screenshotted just two nights ago. Perhaps Sandwell women will have to push lusty Lothario Paul Sandars aside and form an orderly queue!



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Sunday 21 February 2016

SMBC Council House Policy + more

We have seen the unusual policy operated by the man who purports to be "Sadwell" Council's chief executive, Jan Britton's seemingly uncontrollable staff. Cllr Frear (query name Frear?) and Paul Kerton (SMBC employee) managed to get priority over the poor and disadvantaged to get one at Hill Top, Oldbury. Cllr Mohammad Rouf sold a house with no mortgage and had interests in at least one other property and yet he too was able to move ahead of the homeless and needy into council housing in Smethwick pending a move to the seven bedroom mansion in Florence Road (built on land sold by Britton's Council to Rouf's son). Cllr Hussain's daughter was given a four bedroomed council house on Judge Close even though Jan Britton's staff KNOW she and her husband own a house in Century Road (I went down to take a look recently and that house is most definitely occupied! So by whom? Is Hussain's daughter receiving private rental income whilst occupying a SMBC property?)


Of course. the "leader" of the Sandwell Labour dictatorship, Darren Cooper, has had to admit a huge waiting list in the Borough -  just, er,  6,199 in January, 2016. His "guru", the self-declared mentally-ill Andrew Hipkiss, has been regularly tweeting about Sandwell doing so much for refugees whereas Cooper told the press Syrians would NOT be housed in the "socialist paradise". His Deputy, the great orator Steve Eling, has also declared a "crackdown" on council house fraud!

Happily, Sandwell Labour's friends in West Midlands Police have stated that they are not prepared to investigate any of the above! (Incidentally, Cooper and his social media spokesperson have been bragging on Twitter about another "no further action" decision but there has been no announcement from WMP and they have declined to respond to my query about this. What can it all mean and how do Cooper and Hipkiss come to have this information?)

Cooper, being the class dunce, often makes contradictory policy statements when the press office cannot muzzle him and, as we know from the sign in his office, when not seeking spiritual enlightenment from the Yew Tree Maharishi, he relies on guidance from the grave via the late Mr Elvis Presley:


But at least we know that in 2014 he appeared to be rather scathing of the council house right to buy scheme:



Information came my way this weekend about one Kim Oseland. In 2003 it seems that Kim had been living in a "Sadwell" council house since, at least 1997, but then in July, 2003 her and a person believed to be her husband bought the property from, er, SMBC via right to buy. Alas I don't know the price but on 4th January, 2008 the house was sold on for £125,000. One imagines that a healthy profit was turned but, if so, that was no doubt, declared to SMBC since records from 2008 show that, happily, Kim was comfortably ensconced straight back into an SMBC council house in Oldbury!!!! Of course, there can be no question of any shoddy dealings here as Kim is the sister of one Darren Cooper, The Sage of Smethwick himself!!!

An old story:

The old tale of a leading Sandwell figure exposing himself in public and the subsequent - but seemingly belated - cover-up has raised its ugly, er, head again. All info very welcome.

A trailer....

I have recently sent two emails to Cllr John Tipper about a certain matter. In the absence of a response from him to clear the matter up I had this interesting exchange with Jan The Man himself:

Me
Have you had any meetings with Cllr Tipper on an individual basis in the last 12 months and, if so, what was the purpose of the meeting(s)?


Jan
Private meetings between myself and any Councillor, employee or member of the public will remain private.


Me
Ah so it was a private meeting then!


Jan
I'm not going to play word games with you.

Looking forward to sharing more on this anon.....


Addendum 22/02/16

I am pleased to say that John Tipper has now contacted me. Mysteriously he had not received my emails even though they had not bounced back. I was able to put an allegation to him from a member of the public and John has categorically knocked it down which is good enough for me. John further adds that he has never had any private meeting with Jan Britton. It's good to talk! Thanks for that John!

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Wednesday 17 February 2016

Honk Honk!

A little bit of good news from the boondocks of  "Sadwell" for a change! Devoted readers will know that, apart from their obsession with canine excrement, Darren Cooper and The Comrades are also unkeen on the avian variety especially when it features in Cooper's beloved "Green Flag" parks. Accordingly, when the Dictatorship took exception to Canada Geese defecating in the parks a simple "final" solution was, er, hatched - start slaughtering them!


Step forward the incredible local campaigner, Ian Carroll (also exposing the environmental disaster that is the Rattlechain Lagoon) and his merry band who have battled tirelessly to stop this outrage. Please take a look at Ian's website:

http://www.saveoursandwellcanadageese.org.uk/

And, at least for now, Ian and Co have triumphed against the Pyongyang-style regime and even the Express and Star have reported it:

http://www.expressandstar.com/news/2016/02/17/sandwell-council-to-stop-culling-canadian-geese-for-now/

Of course, the sleazy "socialists" may seek to reinstate the massacre when the heat dies down but I think I can safely say that Ian's steadfast gaze is firmly upon them!

You see folks, you don't have to put up with what Sandwell Labour are forcing upon you!

A SHORT PERSONAL NOTE:

Darren Cooper's social media spokesperson and "guru" (plus other accomplices) have been putting it about that I abuse and harass people with mental health difficulties. This arises from my questioning how the said "guru" managed to fly from Sadwell to, er, Disneyland, Florida whilst in receipt of state benefits because of such extensive mental disability he is "unable to leave the house except for medical appointments".

I shall continue to ask that question but, for a number of reasons, I wholeheartedly support those with a range of mental and, indeed, physical difficulties. Incidentally, before the true identity of Cooper's "guru" was exposed he ran a Cooper-associated troll account on twitter called @OdgenW where he, inter alia, set up a "loony list" for people who disagreed with Darren Cooper and regularly referred to people as "fruitcakes" and "nuts". Registered mental health nurse Darren Cooper, of course, also infamously used Twitter recently to refer to someone as a "cretin". You will not find that sort of thing in my scribblings!

I am nothing whatsoever to do with UKIP but, unfortunately, some arse in Sandwell has seen fit to publicly distance that local branch from this blog on the basis of the guru's ludicrous, false and unfounded allegations (and with no reference to me). And this is despite the fact that the "guru" spends morning, noon and night sitting on his arse tweeting abuse about UKIP generally and, er, "Sadwell" UKIP in particular!!!! Well Sandwell UKIP, I have never asked you to read my blog so you f*ck off and do your thing and, with the help of the wonderful Skidder team, I'll do mine!!!!

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Saturday 13 February 2016

Darren Cooper and the M6 Toll

It is common knowledge that the leader [sic] of the Sandwell Dictatorship, Darren Cooper, was at the back of the queue when the brains were dished out and, once again, his intellectual deficit and chronic naiviety were on display for all to see on Midlands Today (MT) yesterday.

Cooper has ditched his bouncer-chic look again and appeared clean-shaven in an interview outside Birmingham (not "Sadwell") Council House. This blog once exposed that his office had deliberately ordered that his Labour Council's contract and procurement rules should be overridden so that us taxpayers could pay £10,800 to ex- Birmingham Labour Councillor "Super" - as Cooper calls him - Steve Bedser. This was alleged to be for "mission impossible" ie to improve Cooper's communication skills and body language by means of £450 a time executive coaching "sessions". This charade finished when I exposed it and clearly the money was wasted since Cooper remains an inarticulate speaker with a propensity to finish most sentences or points with "yeah?". (One crept into the MT interview despite editing).

(Of course, Cooper cannot write his own blogs and speeches and taxpayers fork out over half a million pounds per annum for the Sadwell Council "press office" to, inter alia, wipe his arse for him. He has tried to clean up his notorious Twitter account - associating with trolls who do all the nasty stuff - but his seemingly erudite tweets are also a con having been lifted from a daily newsletter prepared by local MP, John Spellar).


The above is the actual authorisation direct from Cooper's office to pay his Labour mate £10,800 of OUR money - Bedser is a "bespoke supplier" who was "directly engaged via leader's office". Of course, Jan Britton, the Chief Executive lets Darren do as he pleases and so this was all signed off by SMBC staff Lindsey Rogers and N. Aldridge without question.

The local political establishment has deemed that we should be forced to have an extra tier of expensive governance imposed upon us - the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA). Technically this body is not even in existence yet but Cooper has been an enthusiastic cheerleader for it as he sees it as a vehicle to further his political career now that even Corbyn's Labour can't stomach him as an MP. Despite his manifest personal shortcomings and his close association with vicious social media troll accounts he is, incredibly, the deputy chair of the "shadow" WMCA and was put up yesterday to speak to the media.

We have been led to believe by the establishment that the new WMCA will simply be a body coordinating the transport and economic interests of all the wildly disparate members (from the leafy and affluent avenues of Solihull to the dog-sh*t strewn streets of "Sadwell"). Oh no, the politicians say, this won't be like the old West Midlands County Council frittering away public money on grandiose but hare-brained schemes. Yet before it even exists, Cooper was up yesterday saying they are looking at buying the M6 Toll Road!

The M6 Toll is privately run and global financial giants UBS are apparently considering a two BILLION pound bid. Cooper says that WMCA want to join with some "partners" to buy it and then the idea is to make it FREE to use ie not generating ANY income to actually pay back the 2 billion investment! Quite why any serious investor would want to become involved in such a ludicrous scheme is not explained by The Sage of Smethwick.

The new Corbynista who runs Birmingham City Council, hard-left John Clancy (who has the top job despite despite never having run a tap before) has been muttering about raiding local authority pension funds for "investment"  money and, lo, Cooper mentioned yesterday that "some of the pension funds that have been talked about" may wish to "invest" in this crazy idea. (The Trustees of pension funds have a legal duty to maximise returns for their members and not to give multi-million sums to the likes of Clancy and Cooper).

But to cap it all, Cooper's pathetic naiviety on commercial realities (coloured by his political "views" and the wisdom of his pet troll "#guru", the purportedly mentally-ill Andrew Hipkiss) were there for all to see in his absurd and meaningless peroration which MT put up even though it doesn't actually make sense:

"This is an awful lot of money YEAH that has gone to banks. Maybe the banks owe us a favour on this one?"

This errant nonsense was not questioned by the MT "reporter", Bob Hockenhall, but Cooper has many friends at the BBC in Birmingham and perhaps the editors are responsible for this apparently slack effort?

What is "this" money that has gone into "the banks". What is he talking about? Which banks and what has this got to do with the M6 Toll road?

Does Darren Cooper seriously think the WMCA will survive thanks to "favours" from unspecified banks? What planet is he on? Which banks does he think will ignore the interests of their shareholders to finance yet another Labour vanity project? Come on Cooper - let's have some answers!

No doubt there is plenty more of this horse sh*t to come. YEAH, watch this space.......
The new Metro-Mayor?

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Thursday 11 February 2016

Black Deeds at Black Patch?

Just over a year ago, I wrote a post questioning why Labour Sandwell (aka "Sadwell") Council were trying to stitch up yet another private deal without opening it up to any sort of competition AND to destroy parts of the historic Black Patch community open space to boot:

http://thesandwellskidder.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/kitchener-streetblack-patch-park-bent.html

News reaches me that someone called "Nick" from SMBC has been proactively involved in trying to sort out a "deal" for "Smart Waste Company Limited" to build on the Park plus some ancillary property deals. It seems no other party has been allowed into this process. (Judicial Review anyone?)



Of course, if "Nick" is our old friend from so many of the recent Sadwell Labour scandals, Nick Bubalo (£108,219.00 per annum), and he is able to swing a deal that will obviously be very helpful when he takes his "regeneration" hat off and puts his "head of planning" hat on to decide on the, er, same application! (Of course, Bubalo recently made an application on behalf of his own Labour Council to place giant advertising signs on the greenbelt at Ray Hall Lane which, you will not be surprised to know, the cunning comrades waved through in record time!)

Two directors of Smart Waste are Kuldip Singh Wouhra and Paul Deep Wouhra - both also directors of East End Foods. I am told that East End have, mysteriously, been involved in some meetings about the deal which is all very odd!

Are "Nick" and East End about to put one up our rear end? All info welcome please!

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Wednesday 10 February 2016

What The College Tried to Hide - Technical Blog

This is a technical blog for those who understand College funding. I am going to need some help from Skidder readers here as I am not sure what it is in the following minutes of the sleazy "Sadwell" College's Board of Governors which they were so anxious to keep secret. If I am missing something significant, please let me know!

Perhaps I should also say that the College only produced these minutes via the Freedom of Information Act after I had been forced to go through the request and internal review stages and then appealed to the Office of the Information Commissioner. Recently these tosspots were then moaning about the cost of replying to FOI requests. There is a simple answer - just comply with the Act in the first place and stop trying to keep stuff secret for fallacious reasons!

What follows relates to another so-called "partnership" with the basket-case Labour Council which, of course, forced the College to take the person purporting to be SMBC's "Chief Executive", Jan Britton, onto its Board as part of the bent Public deal. You will see from the second minute set out below that even though Britton was riding two horses (and this was nothing to do with his size) the College Board discounted any conflict of interest in letting him take part in discussions on a contract involving a party he runs [sic]. There's "arm's-length negotiation" for you!

It seems there is some scam afoot to try and screw some more money out of the Skills Funding Agency which is now the remit of Tory Business Secretary, Sajid Javid. Happily, his top cop brother, Basit, is also on the College's Board........

First minute - "special meeting" of 16th April, 2015:






And here is the follow up at the meeting on 11th May, 2015:




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Tuesday 9 February 2016

What is Jan Trying to Hide?

TOYS OUT OF THE PRAM!!!!!

Not long ago, someone leaked Jan Britton's blog attack on social workers to the Halesowen News and to The Skidder. Britton is, of course, the man who purports to be "Sadwell" Council's highly-paid "Chief Executive". (Happily the brilliant Private Eye Magazine also picked up on the story)

A former Councillor pointed out to me that the blog was seemingly prepared on "work's time" and possibly with the assistance of other members of SMBC staff. It was then disseminated via the publicly-funded SMBC computer system. Ergo, the blog was "public" and susceptible to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, 2000. I duly made a request under the Act for copies of all Britton's blogs since April, 2015 - something that could be very easily supplied with the press of a couple of buttons. I can do no better than to disclose in full the extraordinary reply I have just received. What  do you think readers?

I have applied for an internal review and also set that out below but would ask you to kindly  read the following short note first.

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Note to Skidder Readers

Darren Cooper and his troll, Andrew Hipkiss, have managed to get my political Twitter account permanently suspended. You will know that Cooper has been trying to silence this blog from "day one". The letter that forms part of this post seems to be part of the same tactic. (Plenty of sh*t, Sherlock!)

Bringing Sadwell into further disrepute......

Some folk are putting the blog up on Twitter and please feel free to do the same but until I can resolve issues with Twitter I cannot post it myself. I am, however, appointing a public relations firm to assist with the dissemination of this community news service and so please await further announcements!

In the meantime you can read the blog via "Julian Saunders" on Facebook and also join "The Sandwell Skidder Readers' Group" - a secret group on Facebook - but please note that the Cooper troll network are likely to try to infiltrate that Group at some point and so your identity may NOT be secure.

The Skidder (and Skidder team) will not be silenced! 

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Here is SMBC's FOI Reply and attack on me:




And here is my reply of 9th February, 2016:

"I am patently not a vexatious applicant as my earlier FoI's have shown. Important information - which you have attempted to shield from public view - has been flushed out.

As of today, my well-respected blog relating to the Council has had nearly 340,000 views and it is an important means of letting the people of Sandwell see what is really going on.

The fact that you do not like the style or content of my blog is irrelevant to the operation of Freedom of Information Act 2000.

For the record, I have not made applications via a variety of persona. I previously used What Do They Know to make requests in my own name and then started making applications via this gmail account all signed "Julian Saunders". 

If anything is "vexatious" it is your personal attack on me.

In the circumstances, please take this mail as a FORMAL request for an internal review pursuant to the Act.

Julian Saunders"

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West "Bastards" Albion

I am happy to announce a tiny slither of good news now that the Albion Foundation has filed its accounts with the Charities Commission for the financial year ended 30th June, 2015. But blink and you will miss it!

A tiny number of WBA fans have had a go at me for writing about The Albion Foundation - a registered charity intimately linked to a rich Premier League Football Club (and one that should be even richer with the new TV deal around the corner  - assuming, of course, that we can manage to stay in the top flight). But people are misinterpreting the point I am trying to make (deliberately or otherwise). It is quite clear that The Foundation do some fantastic work and that is to be encouraged. But the Club is a private business yet gets enormous kudos and favourable coverage from involvement with the charity. That sort of "positive marketing" would not come cheap if the Club had to pay its own marketing teams or consultants for it and yet it puts a pitiful amount of actual cash into the Foundation. The situation becomes worse because it has shifted part of the burden for part-financing its own charity to us taxpayers via the w*nkers who run the Labour basket-case local, "Sadwell", Council.

Before I go on, may I just mention that of the miniscule number of folk who have had a pop at me, not one admitted to having actually paid a single penny to the charity by way of a donation! If you are going to have a go may I suggest £5 a shot to The Foundation! Please read on below the following appeal for help.....

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Help Please

Does anyone have any screenshots or other copies of entries made on WBA fan sites by "Coops" - in particular the infamous "cancer" jibe?

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If you look at the Foundation's website (which I would encourage you to do as you may want to get involved and help in some way) it is all in blue and white and just in case you still don't get the positive marketing message for the rich football Club the Foundation's logo spells this out:

Link to website:

There are some cynical souls who also believe that the Club are "using" the charity to bolster its own youth development programmes (a mere £629k of the charity's money was spent on, er, "football development" last year) and that some of the Foundation's foreign trips, eg to Africa, are glorified scouting missions. Whatever the position is The Foundation, unbelievably. states that one of its main strategic principles as a charity is:

"to add value to West Bromwich Albion Football Club....."

What the f*ck.....?????? If you don't believe me take a look at page 5 of the accounts:

And the accounts also acknowledge that the foreign trips "enabled us to expand the reach of the Foundation and the Football Club." Well they do say charity begins at home.....

The Foundation have actually managed to get some "corporate sponsors", an American (!) motor parts firm, Borg Warner, bhp design and Bache Group. You would have thought hard-nosed business folk might well have cavilled at being asked for cash when wealthy WBA were putting in sod all but there we are and, perhaps, there are signs that people are beginning to wise up as the accounts show that "sponsorship" has dropped alarmingly from £66,127 (2014) to £37,095 (2015).

Happily, the finances are rosy (no thanks to the vast majority of Baggies fans) and this is notably thanks to the likes of the Premier League and the FA who have been very generous.

Enter stage left the lunatic "leader" of Sadwell Council, Darren Cooper, who is very anxious to involve himself in anything WBA but to use OUR taxpayers' money rather than his own (see also the big shaft of taxpayers going on over the Three Degrees statue - more on this blog anon).

Despite 40 years of failing the local area, the Labour Dictatorship in Oldbury still spend our cash like inebriated matelots on "pet" projects and nothing is dearer to the heart of the egomaniacal Cooper than "The Baggies" boing, boing. Recently, the comrades were castigated yet again for the appalling state of their Children's Services Department and the Government has had to step in to try and clear up the appalling mess and to protect the most vulnerable kids in the grim Borough (kids at HIGH RISK of physical and/or sexual abuse). The Council Cabinet [sic] member currently responsible for this abortion is homelessness expert, Labour Cllr Simon "Two Homes" Hackett, and, happily, he also sits on the Board of Trustees of, er "The Albion Foundation"! Despite Labour's horrendous f*ck up with Children's Services the Express and Star reported in August, 2015 that Cooper and pals were CUTTING the budget for these poor kids by £7m!!!!


(From the Charity's website).

In December, 2015 The Foundation were happy to "give something back" to the local community by organising a disabled sports day in Oldbury with Sadwell "Adult Social Care". But they neglected to say how much they were getting from the taxpayer via the Dictatorship. And what of Labour's "Adult Social Care" - well that is failing dismally too and the E&S reported that "significant" work needed to be done to get the Council "up to scratch" in this area. In particular, the health of local Sadwell communities was much worse than the national average.

Of course, despite Labour's Stalinist grip on Sandwell for 40 years, Darren Cooper claims all this sh*t is nothing to do with Labour and all because of "Tory cuts" but he still keeps piling our money into The Foundation allegedly on projects connected to, er, Children's Service and Adult Social Care where he is simultaneously axing their funding. 

It is slightly risky just pulling figures from accounts as The Foundation's year end is 30th June (the same as the Football Club) and so the accounts are a "snapshot" of things as they stand on that date. Accordingly, a charity or company may have money in the bank on that day that is already earmarked for expenditure. Charities also prudently maintain a reserve for any "rainy day" and the accounts show that the charity always likes to hold £150,000. But as at 30th June, 2015 the actual bank balance was a stonking £452,639. With the above caveat, why are taxpayers shovelling money into an organisation with nearly half a million quid sitting in the bank?

Cooper and his comrades are specifically said in the accounts to have diverted taxpayers' cash of £74,775 to the charity as at 30th June, 2015. No wonder the charity agreed to the so-called "give back day"!

Even more incredibly, in the financial year in question, Cooper's clowns also made a payment of our hard-earned on 1st January, 2015 DIRECT to WBAFC of £7,906.40p.

Although The Foundation's accounts to 30th June, 2015 are now available those for the Football Club are not and do not have to be filed at Companies House until 31st March. Accordingly, the last accounts for The Baggies are for year ended 30th June, 2014. At present, the Club are charging £25 for an adult ticket in the BRE and, in a "sale", a mere £34.99 for an adult sleeveless shirt. In 2014 the Club had a turnover of £86,760,000 and made a clear profit AFTER TAX of £10,761,000. So did they splash the cash with "their" in-house charity and "give back" to the community. Well the good news is YES! They paid the charity a mighty £17,779.00. That is for the WHOLE YEAR.

If the 2015 accounts show roughly the same position, then the rich Club donated 0.02% of turnover to the Charity or, using the profit figure, just 0.16% of post tax profit! That is generosity alright! If you deduct the money we taxpayers gave to the Club (as above) then the net donation goes down to £9,872.60 or just 0.09% of post tax profit.

And you will see that, leaving aside the direct payment to the Club, Cooper & cronies put over four times more into a Premier League Club's own Charity than the Club itself did! No wonder Labour have brought Sadwell into the relegation zone in almost any league table going.

My message to the Chairman is clear if the Club has indeed made another healthy profit. The poor and vulnerable of Sandwell need the £74,775 Cooper has given away and so please give it back. Please also put some proper money into the Charity so that taxpayers's money is used to provide statutory services - as it should be. (If you will allow a bucket collection at a home game I will also be more than happy to give up an afternoon to help out and I am sure many others will too.)

At almost exactly the same time that the accounts were made up in June, 2015, the Birmingham Mail were reporting that WBAFC was looking at a possible £10m deal for Demba Ba plus wages of £60,000 to £70,000 A WEEK. Of course, the Club has to compete in the mad mad world of top league football but these figures do rather put the donation of £17,779 over a whole year into perspective. But, happily, this is a considerable improvement on the year before where the tightwads on the WBAFC Board gave "FA" to the Charity. That is not "Football Association" but, er, "F*CK ALL"!

THE SANDWELL SKIDDER - A COMMUNITY BLOG - READ THE SKIDDER, KIDDER!

(PROUD TO BE TROLLED BY DARREN COOPER & ANDREW HIPKISS)

email   thesandwellskidder@gmail.com                  facebook  Julian Saunders

Confidential Phone No: 07599 983737                     twitter X (censored by "free speech" Twitter)


Saturday 6 February 2016

Twitter Love Trolls #6

Last night, Twitter suspended my @bcrover account. They have given me no reason whatsoever as yet but it will be very surprising if one of the complainants is not Darren Cooper. Brian Rickers or Andrew Hipkiss given their intimate involvement with the troll network that has been harassing both Mr and Mrs Skidder for OVER TWO YEARS! I am appealing the suspension and will keep you informed.

In the meantime, West Mercia Police are now actively involved in investigating all this and it is to be hoped that they will be more diligent than their neighbours at West Midlands Police!

Twitter have already rejected a complaint against the new troll account @BrummyS1 and allowed it to continue. I have pointed out that the profile picture has been lifted from a Russian dating site!

This troll has been attacking my wife in the terms so enjoyed by the troll accounts linked to Cooper and Rickers but except when attacking me or my wife the tweets are far too articulate to have been written by dimwits like Cooper and Rickers.

A trick of the trolls is to appear to be a "normal" account. Thus the troll tries to farm followers. The people behind this troll account tried to use World Cancer Day to garner more support - retweeting dozens of tweets on the subject and adding what purported to be "her" own thoughts. How sick is that? But it's worse, the troll has been actually just been lifting Tweets from other users and "cutting and pasting" them as "her" own (there are more of these):

Cooper and Rickers cannot manage 140 characters in a tweet without f*cking-up and rarely display humour. Yet the troll who was exposing their favourite attacks put up this amusing effort:

But it turns out that this soccer-crazy Russian lovely also follows the BBC Sport site:
And on the subject of tax - Miss Moscow apparently pays UK tax. Oh no, its another cut and paste job:

The clever Californians at Twitter can't see through all this and so here is yet another example:

And look who was one of the first to gloat about the suspension of my twitter account:


Twitter can't understand this but I bet Skidder readers can!

And on the subject of trolls, how about this one that has reappeared (note spelling on the profile):


There are only four followers on this threatening account. I bet you can guess who one of the four is....

THE SANDWELL SKIDDER - COMMUNITY NEWS - READ THE SKIDDER, KIDDER!

email   the sandwellskidder@gmail.com               facebook   Julian Saunders

Confidential phone no: 07599 983737                   twitter: currently suspended.

Wednesday 3 February 2016

Unite's Regional Fantasist

Trade Unions employ some weirdos but is there a stranger pairing than Unite and its West Midlands Regional Organiser, Brian Rickers?

We all know that Unite is a sick joke where the top echelons strut the political stage whilst the lumpenproletariat fork out their hard-earned dues month-in, month-out. But are those at the bottom of the heap getting a square deal? And when they need the Union, are the staff up to snuff?

If you need to turn to a Regional Organiser for help would you want him/her to be a liar and fantasist? Well that's yer man in the West Midlands.

Of course, Unite has its own "dirty tricks" department and it is just possible that some of what follows has been covertly authorised by the Union. There is also the question whether Rickers is using Unite-funded phone/equipment for his dubious activities and that they are turning a blind eye.

Let us look at some of the facts:

1  Even though Unite have lost large numbers of members at Sandwell Council through redundancy they "rule the roost" with the local Labour Party. Rickers and the Council Leader, Darren Cooper, have an extremely close relationship which must have helped when Rickers "negotiated" the transfer of the Unite workforce in refuse services to Serco. This pair incessantly put on Twitter that they are having Sunday lunch together but they are close alright. If you are in Unite & work for SMBC then "good luck" is all I can say.

2  Rickers used Twitter to imply that I had been at an event "photographing" his kids which would have been a bit difficult as I could prove that I was at work 20 miles away at the time!

3  Rickers and Cooper started to harass an arts charity in Birmingham. Rickers claimed that he knew people who work there but he does not. This was a lie - pure and simple. When I blogged about this nasty smear campaign it all stopped in their names but the attacks intensified dramatically against the charity via a series of troll accounts and other methods:

http://thesandwellskidder.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/labour-leader-unite-officer-harass-arts.html

4  With Darren Cooper, Rickers directly associated himself with numerous troll accounts and then openly interacted with them to spread their poison. This is now part of a police investigation.

5  The really bad troll attacks started at the beginning of December, 2014 and are ongoing (though to a lesser extent at present). Cooper and Rickers were directly interacting with the accounts which made what they knew to be grossly defamatory comments about me and my wife. The trolls threatened to ruin our Christmas and just in case I didn't get the message one of them sent me this:


6  The trolling was intense but Rickers was claiming on his Twitter account to be abroad. I employed a private investigator and can confirm that he was, in fact, safely ensconced in the warm bosom of, er, Dudley. Another lie, I'm afraid.

7   Eventually a classic sting operation completely fooled the imbecilic Cooper. False information about me was fed to him which he either passed on to the trolls (assuming he was not actually one or more of them himself) - thus proving he was in direct contact with them - or even more recklessly - used himself. Myself and a third party fed Cooper, inter alia, the line that I had been barred from a bar in Brum for touching up the female staff. Cooper immediately started tweeting about it and his Unite mate joined in. This is an illiterate Tweet he sent to Cooper claiming he had visited the bar - which he had not. I know this from other methods but note that he is claiming to have "just left" the bar at 8.43 am when it was, er, closed. Oh dear, oh dear  - yet another blatant lie!


Is this filling you with confidence, Unite members of the West Midlands? Let's look at some other stuff. Your RO seems to be living in some sort of fantasy work. He has now changed his Twitter profile, for example, to show that he is based in Leicester when he is not! What is that all about?




About the only thing that Rickers has got right - and I suppose the infinite monkey theorem could apply here - is his assessment of Unite favourite, Tom Watson MP who also gets funding from the monies of the worker ants. In a rare moment of insight, Rickers came up with a most appropriate name for the joint laziest MP 2010-2015:




(Note these two tweets were copied to Cooper and to Cooper's (allegedly mentally-ill) social media spokesperson, Andrew Hipkiss.)

I sent an email to Rickers yesterday but have had no response. People have been telling me that he has been off sick from his onerous Unite duties but other people were telling me he has been spotted on a number of occasions recently going in and out of SMBC premises which doesn't seem to match up (and he doesn't live in "Sadwell" and so can't have been doing personal business).

But he claims the Spanish holidays keep on coming though. On the weekend of 12th/13th December, 2015 he claimed to be in southern Spain with SMBC "comrades":




Just 10 days later he was alleging he was back there! This is just two of a number of Tweets where he claimed to have gone on 22nd December, 2015 for 36 hours but then claimed to be flying back 8 days later on 30th December:



But wait for it - there is even more! Here is again on 30th January claiming to be enjoying la dolce vita:


Scenario 1 - Unite really do pay Rickers well enough to indulge in all this whilst the dimwitted drones who pay their dues struggle to make ends meet. Or maybe he in on sick pay and this is part of his recuperation (!) But, as above, he does have form for pretending to be away when he is not.....

Scenario 2 - He is just some sad, pathetic, man who regularly wakes up and thinks, "I know! I'll pretend to the whole world that I'm in Spain today." No doubt this fantasist is just the sort of chap Unite need in a responsible senior position! ROFLMAO.

I believe that Unite used to have a rule about taking action against members who brought the Union into disrepute. Does it also apply to employees if they still have it, I wonder?

Oh, and by the way, if Rickers WAS in work today I hope he was giving matters his full attention as he was still up tweeting bollocks at 3.08am.......

Addendum 03/02/16 a correspondent has sent me evidence that many of this peculiar man's Spanish photos are off the site of a Spanish estate agent via a site called "TinEye". Have checked and this is correct. How very odd!

THE SANDWELL SKIDDER - COMMUNITY NEWS - READ THE SKIDDER, KIDDER!


(PROUD TO BE TROLLED BY ANDREW HIPKISS)

email  thesandwellskidder@gmail.com                facebook  Julian Saunders

Confidential phone no: 07599 983737                   twitter  @bcrover (Vernon Grant)