IF YOU MUST LEAD WITH YOUR CHIN, COUNCILLOR...

There’s a saying in boxing that goes, “Don’t lead with your chin.” It referred to a boxer who always left his chin sticking out, inviting his opponent to knock him out.

Metaphorically, it could be interpreted as someone making themselves an easy target. Leaving oneself wide open to attack.

In a letter written in his usual ambiguous style, Cllr Taylor revealed the limit of his literary skill by bouncing from verbigeration to contradiction, seemingly with consummate ease.

Whilst bruising the Priscian’s head without remorse, he tells me he believes in free speech and thinks the local newspaper is the place to exchange views, but doesn't think right wing views should be aired! He says he admires me for holding firm views, but doesn't want to hear them!

He criticises me for using a ‘nom de plume’ yet it is widely rumoured that he frequently uses the services of a ‘ghost-writer’ to create his prolific musings; a point easily understood when one compares the vocabulary used in the spoken, with that of the written word.

He invites me to engage in politics and advises that to do so; one would have to be able to take a punch instead of giving one. He goes on to say that that he accepts the criticism he has received over the years, but takes that as part of the job and declared that whatever people may think of him, his detractors were greatly outnumbered by those who elected him.

Really, John?

May I respectfully remind you that most of Tameside’s councillors were elected by a minority of voters.  In your case councillor, at the last local election, 1905 people voted for you. But, 7429 Dukinfield residents, who were registered to vote, did not! That minority is even smaller if you consider the number of people who did not bother to vote or were not eligible to do so.

So now you have revealed your weak spots, maybe I will consider standing against you in 2015, although there are plenty of reasons not to do so. If anybody thinks that Tameside; indeed Britain, is democratic, they are deluding themselves. The main party is so firmly entrenched with the complicity of the media and financial establishment that it is next to impossible for fresh blood with new ideas to bring change to a decrepit system.

A point proven by people like yourself, John, who when other people’s views and opinions are at odds with their own, they conspire to remove the dissenting voice. That’s why we’re having this interchange. That’s why the Editor has 'washed his hands in public' and asked the readers to decide my fate!

But much more importantly, by writing with such vitriol, you have made my point. You have inadvertently revealed to the reader a blinkered tribal view from a senior councillor who simply appears to deny the possibility of integrity or decency in people with opposing views.

By orchestrating my exclusion, the councillor and his buddies, seems to have forgotten that the working man is meant to be symbolised in the Labour movement. The fact that some disagree and have shunned the Party does not make them ill-informed. The fact they saw someone else's ideas as being better than Labour's doesn't denigrate them to second-class people.

You then go on to accuse me of spouting right wing views. Strangely, I get called left wing and right wing pretty much equally, depending on who is disagreeing with me. This obviously means that I must be perfect!

Personally, John, in local politics, left and right is nonsense. There’s only right and wrong.

All I know, from personal experience, is that ‘leftist’ economies with massive state control tend to be less free as the state continues to encroach on individual freedoms as “the state knows best” and therefore choice is limited as the state removes it.

It is almost academic whether we be governed by Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat or a coalition of all three; given the incompetence of the system which appointed the administrators in the first place and given their limited, state-constrained vision of how to go about things, their bureaucratic solutions always, inevitably, fall apart.

In a nutshell, John – most of these administrators, councillors and politicians do not come from a pool of untapped talent, they come from an artificially restricted list which “positively discriminates”, which means we, the ‘plebs’ are not getting the people with a range of talent and initiative, to effectively run an efficient council/country. Instead we are governed by people from a certain background, gender, ethnicity, political view, mind-set, with a readiness to comply.  Now, don’t get me wrong, there is some undoubted talent within the favoured groups but it’s instantly observable that the majority of those we in Tameside are forced to deal with, are not those endowed with it.

By the way, as for the red phone booth gag, use your own jokes. Don't steal from other comedians!