REFELCTIONS ON THE WEEK

Here we are again, another Saturday and another weekend as the year hurtles past. As I sit in front of my computer looking at a blank screen wondering what to blog about today I thought it would be good to do a bit of reflection on the week gone by, the bits I have not mentioned on this blog.

Monday, the morning we all hate as we drag ourselves from our beds bleary eyed from the weekend’s excesses. The first thing I had to do was to get my ageing Rover car into the garage for a bit of TLC from Norman, who has been looking after my old bangers for over thirty years.

Norman runs, literally, a real little back street garage in Birmingham. It’s a small lock up that by the look of it would put many off using the place, but that doesn’t worry Norman as he has enough regular customers, like me, who have been benefiting from his mechanical skills and advise for years – he always has as much work as he wants. Part of his service is his willingness to drop what he is doing when you arrive and give you a lift to the office nearby where I do my bit most days. We always have a chat about things and I asked him if he had any thoughts on the EU’s intention to drop its rules on ‘Block Exemption’ from next year which will have quite a major impact on the little garages like his around the country. He had not come across this and despite my warnings he did not seem unduly worried. But I am if he packs up I will lose a really good mechanic.

Quite a few people in the car maintenance business are more worried about these changes, however, than Norman. They are predicting that the removal of this rule could see the closure of thousands of small independent garages around the country as the car manufacturers will no longer be obliged to supply the parts or computerised information required for the small independents to operate. This would force motorists to use the main dealers for their servicing and repairs who are generally far more expensive than the helpful chaps such as Norman in his lock up.

Monday evening I was chauffeur driven by my old UKIP pal, Alan Sheath, to attend the Halesowen UKIP branch meeting which Alan chairs. These UKIP meetings in a pub are always pleasant evenings where a couple of pints are enjoyed and campaign plans are made.

Tuesday was a particularly enjoyable, and successful evening with the setting up of a brand new UKIP branch in Tamworth. We already had a prospective UKIP Parliamentary candidate lined up for this constituency in the shape of Paul Smith who is a local postie. It was because the Royal Mail has been so hard hit by the EU’s postal directives opening up the postal services to competition that made Paul come to UKIP and offer his services as a potential candidate. He knows all too well that the trouble the Royal Mail is in can be directly blamed on the interference from the EU and our Government’s obedience to it by so slavishly implementing the EU’s destructive directives, no matter the cost and problems they inevitably bring.

Again the meeting was held in the back room of a very nice establishment that serves alcoholic beverages of the real ale type. A reasonable number of people turned up and plonked themselves down in front of Paul and I and expectantly stared at us to get things going. It fell on me to go into my public speaking mode to explain why we were there and the aims of UKIP and what the party expects of a branch. A few questions were fired at us, which I think were answered satisfactorily, and with a little coaxing three people put their names forward as branch chairman, treasurer and secretary. It is always satisfying when you know you have done what you set out to do, and in this case to get UKIP on the map in Tamworth.

Wednesday was Hereford college freshers day, which has already been covered on this blog. That was followed by Wednesday evening at the UKIP branch meeting in Edgbaston. Again that was a branch I helped set up and have watched grow from a small group to a decent sized branch in just a couple of years. One of their branch members, Maddy Westrop, has put her name forward as the by-election candidate for the New Hall ward in Sutton Coldfield. As the date of that election had not been announced there was some speculation as to when it would be. Blow me, when I returned home and checked my e-mails, there was one informing me of the by-election date – so it’s now all hands on deck to get her nomination papers sorted out.

Thursday was, or should have been, a free day for me, but the morning was spent in my father in law’s flat with a couple of nice young ladies from the hospital who had brought all sorts of equipment for Fred, my father in law, for when he leaves hospital after his nine week incarceration after fracturing his hip. They raised his bed, left him with some weird and wonderful equipment to help him around the house and a chair to sit in as his own was too low. They had planned to raise that too but they constantly referred to health and safety rules and decided against. One nice thing was all their measurements were taken in inches. As a member of the British Weights and Measures association I congratulated them on the use of sensible sizes.

After that I picked up my better half and headed for my favourite place, the Lyndon House Hotel in Walsall where I had arranged to meet UKIP campaigner, Sean Gleason, who is another UKIP by-election candidate in the Heath Hayes and Wimblebury ward in Cannock. As his deputy nominating officer I had to sign his nomination papers to give him consent to use the UKIP name and party emblem. After a pint and a chat he headed off to the Cannock elections office and I home where a bit later I got a call from him as his nomination papers had been rejected.

It seems that one person who signed, and apparently expressed his displeasure with Labour as one who had always voted for them but now felt badly let down, had also signed the nomination papers of the Labour candidate! The way things work is the first candidate in counts, if Sean had got there first it would have been the other candidate who would have had the job of getting a replacement signature. However, there was another small problem too which takes us into Friday morning.

As Cannock District Council had no paperwork to state that I was the UKIP deputy nominating officer, despite the fact I had been the DNO for a UKIP candidate in Cannock during the June county Council elections, it meant I had to dig out all the relevant paperwork and on Friday morning troll up the M6 through its roadworks and 50 MPH limit, through a vast array of speed cameras all to meet Sean in the elections office in the town where we finally got his paperwork completed with an hours or two to spare. Cannock could prove an interesting by-election for UKIP, in the June County Council elections our UKIP candidate, Bob Pitcher, gave the local Tories a real run for their money, in fact at one stage during the count they thought he may win – so look out for Sean in this one.

After that it was off to the Birmingham elections office to get the nomination pack for Maddy then back into the office to do a bit. Friday evenings are always the best part of the week, at the end of the day its into the Lyndon around 6 pm where Mrs B and I get to meet up with my brother and his better half for a beer or two and compare how our weeks have been. Then Saturday morning comes around and its back to a blank computer screen and wondering what to blog about.