Spiders And The Light Near The End Of The Tunnel

Following on from the story about the lightship on the Mersey comes news that the historic one, Planet appears to be have been saved. The Liverpool Echo reports that,

• Planet’s owner Gary McClarnan has sold her to Liverpool businessmen Alan Roberts and Tom Surtees, who want to keep the ship in her current Canning Dock berth.

The ship cost the new owners around £139,000 and McClarnan has indicated that he did have higher offers but felt that the purchasers were best placed to ensure the ship remained in Liverpool.

No doubt if Liverpool City Council had agreed to purchase this historic maritime vessel, the rentaquote brigade at the Taxpayers' Alliance would be on the case. In one of their latest missives -in the Lincolnshire Echo - they point out that 2,000 hoax and spurious 999 calls in the area, "risks lives, wastes the time of highly trained people and lands the rest of us with a hefty bill." Well done. Today's 'Stating The Bleeding Obvious To Get Your Name In Print To Make You Feel Important' Award is duly on its way to T & A House.

Still, there's no such thing as bad publicity. The TA proudly reproduce an Independent article by Paul Vallely about La Princesse, which name checks the Tory apologists, despite the generally positive tone of the piece.

It may be pushing at open doors like a slobbering Littlejohn by getting your name linked with so-called political correctness gone mad stories such as the fewer salt-shaker holes, homophobic speed cameras, and £5,000 claim for being Polish, particularly give that they seem to be in papers like the Mail and Express, but as people have found to their cost before (The Sun, Boris Johnson, even Ringo), be careful not to upset the Scouse psyche. We liked our spider. Come back soon.

Quite a positive slant today. Even my failing bank seems to be getting taken over by a less failing one. But wait, those 3 stories I referred to. Seems to be more to them than the glib comments from the so-called independent, Taxpayers' Alliance.

Jokes from the Edinburgh Fringe (via The Independent) for the Taxpayers' Alliance:

• "I love paying tax so much, the sight of a gritter lorry gives me an erection" – Jon Richardson

• "If Britons were left to tax themselves, there would be no schools, no hospitals, just a 500-mile-high statue of Diana, Princess of Wales" – Andy Zaltzman

La Princesse - Short Video

Maybe the Taxpayers' Alliance - that self-appointed Tory rentaquote body - would like to tell the thousands of people lining the streets for La Machine's 5 day extravaganza how it was 'an outrageous waste of taxpayers' money' and explain how 'Who on Earth would want their hard-earned cash spent on a mechanical spider? It's bonkers,' does not make them look foolish.

Maybe, people reading their widespread musings in the national press will think twice about the motives and methodology of their 'research.'

If the T.A had their way, very little tax would be paid and very little would be spent on social projects or art, and these areas would only be available for the rich and privileged. People and organisations are entitled to opinions on public funding of such matters, and not everyone considers Damian Hirst to be the equal of Rembrandt, but it is time that newspapers stopped filling articles with glib, ill-thought out comments from axe-grinders like the T.A. and Migrationwatch.

As I've said before, one only has to look at the profiles of members on their own site to see their political bias.

Gordon the Spider

I was accompanied to Liverpool City Centre to see the attempts by French scientists to take the spider that invaded us in our year of culture, by the senior member of Mother and Child Quiz Team (3 weeks without a win) and what should happen? Gordon ' I support another Rovers' Brown should turn up. Your intrepid photographer was totally taken in by the serious-looking people outside St George's Hall with wires extending outside their ears. I thought they were either looking for a dodgy guy on a grassy knoll, or being told the answers in countdown.

I noticed a few people with elongated lenses but I just thought they were pleased to see me. I went on a 10 minute sojourn to glimpse the spider being put on a truck. Upon my return I realised the real reason for this multi-million pound extravaganza: get Eric The Fish away from the P.M.

I came back, only to be informed by the leader of the once-unbeatable Mother and Child Quiz Team that Gordon had been and gone. 'Did you say anything to him?', I ventured.
'I asked him what he was going to do about the arachnid problem', she may have replied.

Anyway, I hope to put some photos up on here and Flickr as the story unfolds.

FLICKR FOTOS HERE

Of course, there are moaners on parade too. Step forward the self-appointed party poopers of the Taxpayers' Alliance, who seem to get quoted in newspapers more often these days. In the Mail article referred to in the previous post, they end the story with this piece of gloom,

• The TaxPayers' Alliance has called the artwork an 'outrageous waste of taxpayers' money'.
  

  Spokesman Matthew Sinclair said: 'Who on Earth would want their hard-earned cash spent on a mechanical spider? It's bonkers.'

Not as bonkers as you lot, mate. It may be a load of hydraulics but the T.A. are a load of bollocks.
This is the same group (about 3 of them) that says of a proposed windfall tax on the profits of the energy companies:

• A windfall tax is the last thing Britain needs during these tough economic times.

• A windfall tax would also be a huge risk to families struggling under the credit crunch because utility companies would be under a lot of pressure to pass the cost of the tax straight on to consumers.

Great logic! Don't prod the spider or it may bite you; if it does it's your own fault.

The Taxpayers' Alliance, like Migrationwatch is becoming the source of rentaquotes in the right-wing press, but more disconcertingly, in other papers too. The idea is simple: nobody likes paying tax and these experts hope to tap into concerns about central and local Government waste. So who are these self-appointed experts?

• Andrew Allum, Founding Chair
  
  From 1998 to 2002 Andrew served as a Conservative member of Westminster City Council. He left the party in 2003, having lost faith that it represented his brand of free market, individualist and compassionate politics.
  
  Matthew Elliot, Chief Executive
  In November 2007, Matthew was presented with the Conservative Way Forward ‘One of Us’ award by William Hague
  
  Florence Heath
  Florence led the student Conservative association at Imperial College for two years as well as the Europe-wide European Young Conservatives, and served on the committees of the local Conservative associations, Conservative Friends of Gibraltar and the cross-party Youth for a Free Europe.
  
  Matthew Sinclair (quoted on the Spider story)
  He has been actively involved in politics since joining the LSE Conservative Association in his first year at university. This has included fighting the anti-capitalist movement in the Student’s Union and helping out in the election campaign of the Letchworth Conservatives in 2007.
  
  Mark Wallace
  
  Before joining the TaxPayers’ Alliance, Mark was the Campaign Manager of The Freedom Association (a union-bashing organisation favoured by Thatcher). Mark has written for a variety of publications, including Freedom Today magazine, ConservativeHome.com,
  

• The Freedom Association was founded by Guinness Book of Records compiler, Norris McWhirter, whose campaigns for freedom gave medals to athletes who boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics, and defended sportsmen who went to South Africa during apartheid. So no bias towards the right there!

Will newspaper editors please insert a caveat when including the views of think-tanks and pressure groups. As Milton Friedman, Thatcher's hero (almost) said, 'There's no such thing as a free fill-up.'