Author: Howard Wilkinson

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver host John Oliver is known for his viral TV rants about American politics, where he plays on his English outsider status to take pot-shots at President Trump, or ‘Drumpf’ as he’s christened him.

In a startling turnaround this week he moved closer to home—and spoke out on Brummie politics. He explained the electoral position in the UK and then launched into a routine all about the battle for the Birmingham Erdington seat in tomorrow’s election. For one reason or another—maybe the US public wasn’t ready to hear Oliver’s take on Cllr Robert Alden, or maybe censorship, or is it all fake news?—it never made it to the screen. But we have obtained a transcript…

Take my home town of Erdington, it’s supposed to be a safe Labour seat—that’s the Democrats, slightly angrier in worse clothes, but essentially the good guys—but it has become a marginal.

Or so the British media tells us. You can only really trust them to report two things: what’s on TV that evening, and that, yes, Pippa Middleton has indeed got a bottom.

But if it is now close in Erdington in Birmingham, this seems to be down to the personalities involved.

On the one hand, Jack Dromey a former union big wig who’s sort of semi-retired into being a Labour MP. On the other, Robert Alden who for some reason doesn’t seem to have ever had a proper job… almost as though his Dad was the Mayor and his mum is a councillor and wannabe MP too. Young Bobby has spent a lot of time in Erdington casting himself as the local compassionate conservative: all saving the bees, worrying about the environment, and opposing the opening of businesses and community centres which just happen to be run by immigrants.

So Dromey is a Labour guy from down south who got the gig for good behaviour, while Alden is a Tory who has put himself about the place fussing about bins and having photos taken cleaning up alleyways. And fair play to him. Have you seen some of the Erdington alleyways? I often saw them from the inside of those bins, where I was hiding from the local toughs after school. So, in some way thanks Bobby for keeping somewhere open for nerds to hide—after your lot closed all the youth clubs and cut the police.

You see the point is this: a vote for Robert Alden is a vote for the Conservative government. That’s the same conservative government who have forced cuts onto Birmingham Council—the same cuts which, as the leader of the local Conservative group in the council, Alden claims to oppose.

Now, Jack Dromey may look like a squashed cauliflower  on top of a Burton’s window mannequin

but he’s about as likely to change his mind – he’s tribal labour, it’s all in the family,  and that means attempting the best for normal people. Some people on the doorstep object to Jack because he’s married to Labour grandee Harriet Harman, like he’s some sort of cuck, and as though Bobby’s mom isn’t going to pick his ties out for him.

It’s like you’re being offered a choice between a grown man in a Lion King wig who’ll treat your public services like a fucking hyena and the volleyball from Castaway, who at least will vote the right way with Tom Hanks.

Alden thinks he’s Simba but actually he’s Timon and Pumbaa distracting you while Theresa May sneaks in to steal your kids’ lunches.

Animal caste systems are no basis for a system of government, and neither is hereditary councillorship. But in England it’s often the circle of life, in this case the Kingstanding Circle of life if you will.

Pauses for laugh but doesn’t get one

[aside] Kingstanding Circle is a place in Erdington, in Birmingham in Eng- aww, never mind

Oh, and one more thing—at the end of The Lion King Simba basically wins because it rains. No matter what the weather is like on June 8th, get out and vote—vote for the volleyball, vote for Harriet Harman’s husband, vote with Jeremy Corbyn, vote for the many not the few, for an Erdington with a future.

Hakuna Matata: it means No tories.

Sutton has a Town council, they were even elected and everything rather that just being the last people propping up the bar at Moor Hall golf club when the motion was passed. The town had a referendum to set it up and allow them to add an additional charge to council tax in the ‘royal town’ – they get £1.8 million a year to spend.

But so far they’re struggling to find things to spend it on. They’ve decided to spunk invest half a million on a ‘CBSO play songs from the adverts concert in Sutton Park’—including ways to keep people without B72-76 postcodes out—but still £1.3 million remains. With the financial year end approaching from behind there are rumours of wolves circling with things like ‘civic wifi plans’ that will cost almost exactly the right amount.

We reckon there are better options. This is what £1.3 million could buy the residents of Sutton:

• Two cursed restaurants:
  • There is only one cursed restaurant on the market in Sutton Coldfield right now, and it’ll use up half of the money in the kitty. There are some addresses where every business fails. Don Diego seemed to have broken the hoodoo of “the restaurant next to Ask” until its new owner decided to try to murder his staff in a diesel fire. Yeah, a diesel fire. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• 130,000 Freddos (pre-Brexit prices):
  • In Sutton Coldfield they have both types of conservatism—big and small c. In an independent Sutton Coldfield children will be able to play football in the streets, you’ll be able to leave your front door open, and Freddos will only ever cost 10p. The town could afford to buy a lot of them with £1.3m and then control the retail price through subsidy. Only two school children will be allowed in the shop at any time.
• Schools:
  • £1.3m will go a long way to overturn the local effects of national spending cuts. If you just look at one of Sutton’s secondaries, Arthur Terry School, you’re looking at a drop of £900k over the next 2 years—and that’s just one of the town’s state funded schools. If a surplus of £1.3m could be achieved year on year it would relieve a lot of pressure—go further by not bothering with classical music concerts and lumping the whole budget on the children.
• A wall around Perry Common:
  • Possible disadvantages will include poor stock levels on the shelves at Tesco New Oscott when people can’t get to work, but Ocado does deliver to all Sutton postcodes.
• 10 buy-to-lets in Erdington
• Harry Redknapp’s dog’s wages at Blues
• A new ornate entrance to Sutton park for Andrew Mitchell MP,  with a smaller ‘plebgate’ next to it.
• Libraries:
  • A back of a fag packet calculation here but we reckon you might be able to buy some books and pay some staff and provide a valued public service with all this money
• A shy Tory campaign in the mayoral elections: millions of leaflets, but no blue ink.
  • John Lewises’ Andy Street has spent over a million so far on leaflets to every corner of the West Midlands in order to make cash pay in getting the job of Mayor. Scared of being held to account for the record of the Tories in Brum and Westminster he’s mostly been trying to pass himself off as a green or independent candidate: even in his letters to residents in Solihull where being a Tory is usually considered a plus.
• 260 biggest rabbits in the World.  
  • (Delivery not included) but they only have to come from Barnt Green.