Homophobic Tweet from Labour Councillor Jim Fitzpatrick

Councillor Jim Fitzpatrick who represents the Hyde Godley ward for the Labour Party posted the above comment to Twitter earlier today. His long term partner, Janet Jackson (no, not that one) is standing for the seat of Stalybridge North which is currently held by the Conservative Councillor, Clive Patrick.

Councillor Patrick has put out a leaflet about the number of "husband and wife" team of councillors which plagues the Tameside Labour Party. Described as a "family affair" by one local blog, there are currently 4 married couples sitting on the council, with Janet Jackson and Audenshaw's candidate, Tessa Smith, wife of Mike Smith, Councillor for Denton West bringing that total to 6 if they win their seats on May the 3rd.

Fitzpatrick who works for Manchester City Council and who sits as a executive cabinet member of Tameside Council as First Deputy, is obviously irked by this and has chosen to attack Clive by saying that his missus "has not mentioned the man he lives with". For the record, Clive is openly gay and lives with his civil partner, who works as a nurse and nothing to do with politics. The comment by Councillor Fitzparick has a whiff of homophobia to it.

Janet Jackson works as a Administrative Assistant for Jonathan Reynolds, MP for Stalybridge & Hyde and PPS to Ed Miliband. This is the second gaffe of the week as earlier on we exposed Reynold's Parliamentary Assistant, Adam White pictured smoking drugs.

Source: Twitter

UPDATE 01/05/2012: Councillor Fitzpatrick has now removed the comment from his Twitter account. He hasn't made a public apology to Councillor Patrick.

Pass The Dutchie to the Left Wing Side!

Well, well, what have we here? Just what is that in Adam White's hand? The Labour candidate for Longdendale seems to be enjoying himself with a joint in hand.

Reports from locals suggest that whilst living in Stalybridge, before jumping into Longdendale when he won his selection against Councillor Sean Parker-Perry that White allegedly dealt drugs in the town centre.

Adam White who tweets at @theday2day also works as a parliamentary assistant to Stalybridge & Hyde MP, Jonathan Reynolds, the PPS to Ed Miliband.

Don't Tell Joan!

Councillor John Taylor, the long serving Labour councillor for Dukinfield and Deputy Leader of Tameside Council, has a habit of sticking his foot in with his classic letters to the local press. In the past, Taylor has wrote to the Tameside Reporter boasting of his holiday to Benidorm where he saw "Sticky Vicky" and recommended that she should do a show in Stalybridge. Admittedly, they have got slightly better of late as they are now sub-edited by Tameside Council press officer and cheerleader in chief, Mike Pavasovic.

It's a surprise that Councillor John Taylor doesn't ask Mike Pavasovic to edit his Tweets as he made sexual advances towards another Labour Party member on Twitter. She Tweeted about a sex tip she had saw in the Cosmopolitan Magazine which read:

"Raw chillies in your mouth while giving head can really add spice to your sex life. #fakecosmosextips"

Our respected Deputy Leader, who is married to his wife Joan, responded by asking her to get in bed with him!

"@Lefty_Lisa lisa go to bed or call round and see me ."

A picture can be found below, but you can view the conversation on Twitter here.

In the past we have seen celebrities like Jason Manford for posting lewd tweets in private resign from their jobs. Can you see John Taylor resign? Well like all other councillors, Taylor has no talent to fall back on. His only job is to work at the council where he gets a reported £35,135 a year as deputy leader and that excludes any external bodies he sits on. And that Spanish villa he just bought isn't going to pay for itself now is it?

New Charter's Top Brass Ripping You Off

In Tameside's public sector, we have a revolving doors policy where staff often leave to take "voluntary redundancy" and come back as a contractor or as a consultant. Take this example of our local housing association New Charter and their former Business Development Director, David Rigby who decided to take early retirement to take advantage of a pensions loophole. He then boasts that the Chief Executive, Ian Munro will be instantly employing him again on a consultancy basis. So in effect, there has been no money saved. Just those at the top get to line their pockets and rip off the taxpayer.

And where is the procurement? Didn't Mr. Munro seek to tender the services which are already available in-house via newly appointed PR consultant Bob Clowery, who formerly worked for the Tameside Reporter? Or was it just a leg up for one of his mates?

Just a week before he left, he sent this blasé email:

From: David.Rigby@newcharter.co.uk
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2010 11:15:35 +0000
Subject: News of my departure may be greatly exaggerated...
To: xxxxxxxxxxxxx
I’ve been offered and accepted a good deal on early retirement from New Charter.  But because of a looming change in the law on pensions, I will leave on Tuesday March 30th.  Yes, that soon...

Sadly, my impending status doesn’t yet give me access to pensioners specials on lunchtime menus!

It’s hardly an immediate separation, though.  I have been asked to manage the next series of BBC One ‘Neighbourhood Watched’ for both New Charter and Aksa Housing Association in a personal capacity.  The prospect of having the Group in more than two-thirds of the series is a good one.  Ian Munro our Group Chief Executive has also asked me to work on a number of other projects for New Charter, again on  a consultancy basis.  And I may as well offer my services elsewhere...

With the speed of all this I am unsure of all arrangements, but I can always be contacted by my home email address david.rigby5@btopenworld.com.

Like a sorry politician, I am “planning to spend more time with my family”, but I may not be able to keep away from work!

You maybe thinking that this goes on quite a bit in the private sector. Maybe it does, but it isn't right where public money is involved. New Charter is funded via grants from the public sector and tenants paying rent. It's those tenants paying rent who are on low incomes and struggle to pay their way as it is. It's this sort of scam/fraud whatever you want to call it is pushing up the rents of social housing tenants and the Labour controlled New Charter should hang their heads in shame.

This just goes to show that Housing Associations need to open themselves up to freedom of information laws. Currently, New Charter doesn't accept FOI requests.

To see New Charter's board then click this link. It is full of Labour councillors who also get an extra few grand as an allowance for the privilege.

You can find David Rigby on LinkedIn and Twitter where he now describes himself as a "Housing Communications Consultant".

Note: This subject was also raised on the Tameside Eye blog.

Councillor Janet Cooper - Longdendale

I have heard some complaints about Councillor Janet Cooper, the Labour councillor for the Longdendale ward. I'm told she is just plain rude to her constituents and generally unhelpful. For someone as so senior in the local Women's Institute, she shows some rather unladylike behaviour.

She has been given numerous nicknames by her constituents. Hit the read more link to see who she has been compared too...

Kailash Chand's Brass Neck

You may read Dr. Kailash Chand in the local press often expressing his views as a former GP. He often expresses some whacky views which often include greater taxation to fund the NHS, banning things or giving a tax credit to those with a BMI under 26. Basically, he is very much in favour of the state having more control of your health and it should come as no surprise that Chand is life-long Labour Party member.

He controversially stood to become the Parliamentary candidate for Stalybridge & Hyde when James Purnell resigned in 2010 which was later won by Jonathan Reynolds. He lost, but his agent blamed the Tameside Labour Party to mired with "institutional racism".

But before he long kicked off his campaign to become the Labour candidate in Stalybridge & Hyde, Chand had retired as a GP and was and still is chair of Tameside and Glossop PCT, which is responsible for one of the worst performing hospitals in the country.

• It has been rated one of the seven most deadly hospitals.
• It has been warned by the health watchdog, Monitor for financial mismanagement.
• Yet after many warnings, patient safety is still a concern by the Care Quality Commission.

Yet with all these issues facing Dr. Chand, he somehow manages to find time to criticise the governments proposed health reforms which would see PCTs scrapped. So you can see how he would be upset.

Indeed, he is a regular contributer to the left-wing Tribune Magazine and also the Guardian. He is so proud of his work that he emailed his political ramblings to the directors of Tameside Hospital to an article he wrote for the British Medical Journal where he declares "no confidence" in Andrew Lansley (what a surprise!) as can be seen in the email below:

A call to rally the dying troops perhaps?

For those who don't recognize the names in the email:

• M Sugden: Unknown
• John Hallsworth: Non Executive Director of Tameside Hospital, former Labour councillor and leader of High Peak Borough Council.
• Graham Curtis: Non Execuitve Director of Tameside Hospital.
• Yvonne Pritchard: Non Executive Director of Tameside Hospital.
• Lynn Travis: Tameside Labour councillor for the Ashton Waterloo ward. She is also a Non Executive Director of Tameside and Glossop PCT.
• Mike Leigh: Non Executive Director of Tameside Hospital.
• Peter Joinson: Non Executive Director of Tameside Hospital. Former Labour councillor in Tameside and Deputy Leader of the Council.
• Naomi Duggan: Director for Public Affiars at Tameside Hospital.

Kailash's efforts to undermine the health reforms haven't gone unrecognized by his party collegues, he has recently been appointed by Ed Miliband to review Labour's health policies.

What's sad about this is how Labour Party members in Tameside are claiming senior jobs in running the failing Tameside Hospital. They, along with the MPs play politics with "THAG" (Tameside Hospital Action Group), yet never do they mention that their collegues are actually running the whole show and getting paid generously on top as directors. This is just cheap electioneering at its lowest form. Many people have died at the hands of mismanagement at Tameside Hospital as shown in countless articles in the local and national press. Have they no shame?

Tameside Labour Flyposting on Council Property

Tameside Labour have used property owned by the council and paid for by the taxpayer to publicise their party during the local elections which have just gone.

I'm told that there has been complaints made to the Head of Democratic Services, Robert "Jaws" Landon. He chose to ignore the complaints and allowed his paymasters to continue as they please.

Here is what Tameside Council says about fly posting on council street furniture:

(ii) Fly Posting
For the avoidance of doubt, the use of signage, bills, placards and posters attached to street furniture or on any other Authority owned property or property to which you do not have the owner’s express consent for the purposes of advertising your election interests, and/or political campaign is illegal. Anyone who displays an advertisement, or knowingly permits someone else to do so – i.e.: engaging the services of someone to do so, or is aware that a publication giving publicity to his/her interests is displayed without the consent of the Local Authority or due authorisation is acting illegally contrary to the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, Section 224 and regulations made there under. The maximum fine on conviction of any offence is presently £1000 for each and every poster; with an additional daily fine of £100 for each and every day that an illegal advertisement remains in place after conviction.

In addition to this offence, attaching signs to street furniture, verges, trees, etc on the highway constitutes a further offence under the Highways Act 1980, Section 132(1). It is an offence under this Act to attach/affix any advertisement to street furniture, for example lamp posts, without the permission of the Highways Authority. You do not and will not have such permission and, if convicted, could face a fine of £2,500.

The Council operates a strict policy on the display of all advertising, in accordance with legislation, fly posting will therefore not be tolerated, and appropriate action will be taken by the Council, on any infringement of these rules.

Source: http://www.tameside.gov.uk/by_hydenewton/nomination

Back in 2008 a Tameside Council jobsworth threatened to fine a pensioner for fly posting for putting up advertisements for her missing cat. So they do take it seriously.


As there are three signs attached to council planters, then it would seem that Tameside Labour Party owes Tameside Council £3,000 in fines. There is also a fine where each sign is charged £100 per day. They have been there since the election was called on the 5th of April and was still there on the 7th of May. That's 32 days, so £3,200 or £9,600 for all three signs. So they owe £12,600 in fines.

Cough up Kieran. We know you have the money tucked up in your Spanish villa.