Stick To Sheep

According to Caerphilly council, it is offensive to refer to someone as British, and apparently it’s on a par with “Negro” or “half-caste”.

Mr Monkey does not consider himself British, but English, just as the Scots, Welsh and Irish hold on to their national identities.

But, if Mr Monkey is referred to as British, he’s not offended – after all, England is part of Great Britain. However, Mr Monkey can’t help feeling that being English, means he’s a 3rd class citizen of Great Britain.

England is the only one of the four countries that make up Great Britain that does not have a parliament or assembly. We’re ruled directly by a British parliament, headed by an unelected Scot.

Of course, Caerphilly council is a very small voice in the scheme of things, but it only takes a small spark of political correctness to start a fire.

Monkey Clip

This week’s Monkey Clip is dedicated to councillor Alex Donaldson, the mayor of South Tyneside.

Councillor Donaldson – a retired police officer – has a knack of losing things, let hope it’s not his memory. 

Mr Monkey reckons it’s time councillor Donaldson took more care of public property and this bit of advice may help. CLICK HERE.

Eddie Makes An Ass Out of The Law

Hebburn’s number one piss headand convicted drunk driver councillor Eddie McAtominey seems to have played a blinder yesterday by making an ass out of the law.

Steady ‘hic’ Eddie who was convicted of drink driving earlier this month and who was eventually forced resigned from his highly lucrative paid positions on the council and the Police Authority faced another charge of failing to provide a specimen following his arrest on suspicion of drink driving back in April.

Since then councillor McAtominey has consistently protested his innocence and has made a number of appearances before Magistrates in South Shields and Peterlee where he’s pleaded not guilty.

Unfortunately the lying bastard was caught red handed at the wheel of his car earlier this month after buying a bottle of vodka and drinking it before throwing the empty bottle over a wall and getting into his car to drive home. This time he was fucked and decided he’d better plead guilty.

He appeared before South Shields Magistrates the following day and was banned from driving for 22 months.

The same week his representative Terence Carney appeared before Peterlee Magistrates to continue the not guilty charade and a pre-trial date was set for 28th November.

Yesterday the piss head changed his mind and after months of prevaricating, lying, cheating and wasting thousands of pounds of taxpayers money and hundreds of hours of court time the scheming bastard pleaded guilty in the hope he would get off lightly.

Mr Monkey can’t believe that the stupid fucking Magistrates actually fell for his con, unless of course they took pity on the cancer pickled liver conman. Or did they now him? Seems justice was not done on this occasion and the sentence slap on the wrist certainly didn’t fit the crime.

A twelve month ban and a couple of hundred quid fine no way reflects the seriousness of his crime. The drunken bastard could have killed and injured innocent people; including children.

Seems the Magistrates at Peterlee may have forgotten why they volunteered for the bench in the first place – either that or it’s time they made way for people with balls.

Mr Monkey can’t wait to see what Labour North will make of all this, but they’re not exactly renowned for their balls unless they’re playing with each others!

Miliband’s Chippy Wins Award

Colmans chippy on Ocean Road are today celebrating being crowned UK’s Local Food Hero.

Judges and celebrity chefs Gary Rhodes, Allegra McEvedy and Mark Hicks voted Colmans’ seafood platter No 1.

They beat off stiff competition from 10 finalists from around the country to take the title on Gary Rhodes’ Local Food Heroes show on UKTV Food last night. They also scooped £40,000 in prize money.

Well done Mr Ord and all the staff at Colmans on winning the award.

The owner of Colmans, Richard Ord claims he will use the £40,000 price money to install state of the art fryers to reduce the company’s carbon footprint. Lets hope he’s as good as his word and doesn’t fund another Labour party bash.

Mr Monkey would remind bloggers that there are two other fish and chip shops on Ocean Road; the Smithy and Mr Monkey’s personal favourite The Red Hut. Both offer quality produce at sensible prices and you can be sure the proceeds aren’t being used to fund the local Labour party.

Hobbit Spits His Dummy Out

Seems the Fat Mackem Hobbit over at the Shire Curly’s Corner Shop has spat his dummy out because Mr Monkey removed the link to his boring blog.

He reckons that Mr Monkey removed the link in a fit of anger and this action bears a similarity to some other event in the blogsphere.

Sorry to disapoint you Mr Hobbit but nothing could be further from the truth.

The link was removed because it served no useful purpose. Originally it was provided to as a courtesy for Mr Monkey’s readers but it was apparent within weeks of Mr Monkey’s Blog going live that most of them couldn’t give a fuck give about the Hobbit’s insignificant little blog.

Mr Monkey thought readers might appreciate a link to something that wouldn’t sent them to sleep. But before removing the link to the Shire Corner Shop, Mr Monkey gave the Hobbit an opportunity to reciprocate the link. He choose not to, so Mr Monkey removed the link – hardly the actions of someone that was angry!

Mr Monkey has suspected for sometime that the Fat Mackem Hobbit is obsessed with figures and his latest comments proves this theory.

Perhaps the Hobbit’s obsession is psychological and is related to his childhood – the poor bastard never managed to exceed 5ft in height but his girth ballooned into something resembling a Teletubby.

He’s spent his entire life trying to grow taller than a daffodil and comfort eating in the hope he might achieve his goal. Then he discovered blogging and now spends every waking hour feeding his ego and pretending he’s a big player.

Come on Curly, big and Hobbit just don’t go together.

Talking of figures, when are you going to tell us how many readers you actually have? This time last year you couldn’t wait to tell the world how popular your blog was but suddenly your silence is deafening – or is it that your readers prefer a bit of Monkey business?

Labour Activists Scared Shitless

Mr Monkey suspects that even members of the Labour party must feel scared shitless by the news that Conservative MP Damian Green, their frontbench Home Affairs spokesman on Immigration, had been arrested by the Metropolitan Police. He also had his homes and offices searched, including his office at the Palace of Westminster, by “Counter Terrorism Police”.

The police action followed the arrest 10 days ago of a government employee who had allegedly leaked four documents to Green, who in turn passed them to the press. They were:

1. A home office memo, which appeared in the Daily Mail on 13 November 2007, which showed that the home secretary Jacqui Smith had been warned four months earlier that thousands of illegal immigrants had been cleared to work in sensitive Whitehall security jobs. The memo emerged days after the Sunday Mirror disclosed that at least 5,000 illegal immigrants had been cleared by the Security Industry Authority to work in sensitive Whitehall locations.

2. An email to the then home office minister Liam Byrne in February this year which showed that he was informed about an illegal Brazilian immigrant who faked an identity pass to work in Parliament. The memo, which was published in the Sunday Telegraph on 10 February this year, said Byrne was informed on 31 January. Byrne was accused of a cover up.

3. A list of Labour MPs who were likely to rebel against the government’s plans to detain terror suspects for up to 42 days without charge. This appeared in the Sunday Times on 20 April 2008.

4. A letter from Jacqui Smith to Gordon Brown warning that a recession would lead to a rise in crime. This appeared in a number of papers, including the Guardian, on 1 September this year.

None of these stories involved any breach of security, only political embarrassment for the incompetent Labour party politicians.

In a Metroploitan Police statement a spokesperson said,

“The investigation into the alleged leak of confidential government material followed the receipt by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) of a complaint from the Cabinet Office. The decision to make today’s arrest was taken solely by the MPS without any ministerial knowledge or approval.”

Yeah right!

Mr Monkey cannot believe that some twat was prepared to waste scarce “Counter Terrorism Police” resources – on a day when security around the world should have been on high alert following the events in Mumbai – on this blatantly political investigation. Are ordinary Policemen no longer capable of searching an office of an Member of Parliament, he’s hardly going to flee the country is he?

It is irrelevant whether or not Gordon Brown or any other senior Labour politicians were aware of Thursday’s arrest beforehand, or not, they’re to blame politically.

This affair also reflects badly on Sir Paul Stephenson, the deputy to Sir Ian Blair, who is taking over as Acting Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service. If he is seen to be continuing Sir Ian Blair’s NuLabour political policing style, then he must not be allowed to be promoted into that job full time.

Government Tries to Hide Free Heroin!

For once this has got nothing to do with the Taliban, Al Qaeeda or the Afghan people. It’s down to Gordon Brown and his Government.

Apparently the Government is insisting that the location of 26 sites in Hampshire used to grow opium poppies must remain secret.

This follows a Freedom of Information (FOI) request from local newspaper, the Daily Echo, CLICK HERE which has revealed that leafy Hampshire is the heroin growing capital of the UK.

The poppy fields should be easy enough to spot, drop Mr Monkey a line if you see one!

The poppies are used to produce morphine to sustain the high levels of drug abuse morphine used as a pain killer within the NHS.

It’s a rarely known fact that all poppies contain opium including the distinctive bright red, wild poppies that grow in the UK. Although they aren’t as strong as their Eastern cousin, the opium poppy, they can still be used to make a refreshing if vile tasting opium tea – google opium tea recipe.

Mr Monkey wouldn’t mind seeing an FOI request on how many of the poppies ‘go missing’ between the field and the medicine cabinet.

It’s also little known that it’s entirely legal to grow opium poppies in the UK for ornamental use, something encouraged by the government.

The Department of Culture, Media and Sports funded Plant Cultures website states, “Opium poppies grow well in the British climate – why not try it?”

How ironic then that the proceeds from the British Government’s own lucrative drug industry are indirectly used to wipe out their competitors another country’s drug production on the pretext that the cash it generates is used to sponsor terrorism.

Want To Sell Your Car – Don’t Advertise In The Gazette

Mr Monkey reckons it’s time car dealers moved away from their traditional dependence on local newspaper advertising and channelled more of their promotional spend on online and direct marketing campaigns.

 

Traditionally Friday’s Shield Gazette is devoted to the motor industry. There’s usually an ‘editorial’ about a new model of car based on the car company’s own press release. All the lazy bastards at the Gazette do is change a few words and add a headline.

 

They use this feature to con the motor trade into buying advertising whilst a few unsuspecting members of the public looking for a cars think they’re going to snaffle a bargain in Friday’s Gazette – what a con!

 

If you’re in the motor trade and regularly advertise in the Gazette and are wondering why you get a poor response; take a closer look at the findings of your own industry survey.

 

The Motor Trader Dealer Marketing Survey, sponsored by Experian polled the views of franchised and independent dealers, including car supermarkets, to see which marketing channels are working best for dealers. Seventy per cent of respondents said they had increased their online spend while 57 per cent had raised their direct mail spend.

 

Meanwhile 58 per cent had cut their print media marketing.

 

Annual spends on telesales and radio/television advertising remained unchanged for the majority of dealers.

 

The decline in importance of local newspaper advertising was further demonstrated when dealers were asked to judge which media offered the best value for money. Direct mail topped the list with 38 per cent of respondents, closely followed by online media at 36 per cent while print media and telesales were only favoured by 9 per cent. Radio and television were judged to be the worst value for money as they were both only favoured by 9 per cent of the respondents.

 

When it came to identifying which websites worked best for dealers Auto Trader stood head and shoulders above all the other sites as it was used by all the respondents. The second most popular site was Fish4Cars followed by Vcars.

 

Commenting on the survey Kirk Fletcher, managing director of Experian’s automotive division, said it highlighted a significant shift in dealer marketing. He also said, 

 

“The huge drop in local press advertising and increase in online activity highlighted by the survey shows that the automotive industry is now moving with the national trend in terms of their marketing techniques.”

 

So there you have it, newspaper advertising is the least effective form of advertising for the motor trade.

 

If you’re in the motor trade ask yourself why you’re wasting your hard earned money filling the pages of the Gazette whose readers can be measured in thousands (many of them can’t drive), when for significantly less you can reach virtually every household in Britain?

EXCLUSIVE REVELATION: The Plot to Financially Cripple the Gazette

After a load of commotion from the Malcolm Fanzine’s birdman over councillor attendances, not a dicky bird has been seen in the paper.

Mr Monkey wonders whether birdman has done exactly what councillor Alex Donaldson has done twice now – and LOST HIS BOTTLE!

A chimpanzee source says it could be because Papa John’s been tipped off about an Independent Alliance plot to cripple his newspaper by making their ad revenue evaporate.
At least one local business has been called up by an alliance-friendly representative, floating the idea of pulling all advertising from the paper, as retribution for the blatant bias shown in the paper.

This businessman was apparently also told to write to Papa John’s superiors at Johnston Press and tell them exactly why they were pulling advertising, and that they would only return as customers when the paper became fair and balanced again.

The representative also intends using his influence with the Chamber of Commerce, South Tyneside Business Network, STEP, the South Tyneside Manufacturers Forum, the Federation of Small Businesses and organisation like the Rotary Club and Freemasons to persuade businesses not to advertise in the Gazette. This shouldn’t be too difficult given the representative’s standing within the business community.

Perhaps Papa John doesn’t read his own newspaper, and has missed the fact that Allen Branley (the councillor with the least attendance) is also one of his bigger advertising customers.

South Shields To Get Free Parking

Seems Labour’s half witted attempts at kick starting the economy have as much chance of succeeding as Iain Malcolm has of fucking a woman.

Locally the reduction in VAT will do absolutely nothing to stimulate the town centre and looking at the number of shoppers in King Street earlier today it’s going to be a long hard winter for the retail sector.

Like most people in South Tyneside, Mr Monkey is pissed off with the council’s rip off mentality when it comes to charging for things such as car parking. It’s now accepted that car parking charges affects the choice of shopping venues with potential shoppers preferring to shop were parking is free.

Mr Monkey reckons it’s time South Tyneside Council did it’s bit for the local economy and instead of milking the public for everything it can, it’s time to give something back to the cash strapped public.

Come on Miss Piggy ‘do your bit’ – show us you care by allowing free car parking for a maximum of 3 hours every Saturday and on market days between now and Christmas?