Morley- Cultural Mecca of South Leeds (Late September, good weather applied for)

We are having our very own literary festival next month, over the last weekend of September. Vague details here (no website as yet.)

It is excellent value at £2 entry for the two headline events featuring well-known Tykes Gervaise Phinn & Ian McMillan. What also caught my eye was a fringe event for designing a Morley Town Centre Map. Hmm. I have already spoken of our new map which I regard as rather Cack. Maybe the organisers also know this and hope something better might turn up courtesy Joe public?

The Literary festival looks like a good event, although I can't see it keeping the piss-heads away from the Pubs, luring the Chavs from their sofas or the scratters from their scraps down in't Bottoms.

Why is the event so cheap? Because it is being funded by public money, Leeds Area South are funding it but to what amount I don't know. (I could find out easily enough but can't be Arsed.) MTC are lobbing in a Monkey or two and the Obtiser are involved.

I have to admit to being a bit hypocritical here- I gratefully accepted £11k+ of Area money to get Morley FM off the ground. However, they were going to spend it anyway so it was nice that it went to us rather than Dyslexic Anglican too-tall Windsurfers or whatever PC causes otherwise chase for the wonga up for grabs.

Wouldn't it be nice if they just lets us keep the money in the first place, rather than tax it off us and then give some of it back to whatever trendy bandwagon is flavour of the month?

The trouble is, once it is seen as someone else's money, it doesn't seem to matter any more. No-one treats a Company Car as well as if it actually belonged to them and the higher up one goes, the less painful it gets. We give the EU bucketfuls of money which we gratefully receive back (well some of it) on grandiose projects that if the Council or Government proposed would see them voted out of office and prosecuted for malpractice.

It isn't someone else's money, it is ours. There ain't no UK PLC, Governments don't create wealth, only people and businesses do. All Governments can do is tax it...

These libertarian views explain why fellow Councillors regard me as a loose cannon on Morley Town Council as it goes without saying in the minds of my colleagues that we have to do what is best for other people which also involves spending other people's money. I don't want us to employ more policemen, gardeners, Town Centre Managers and the like, I want us to hold Government to account and put our own precept down as we pay far too much tax already, much of which is wasted. We will inevitably have an admin overhead to exist and I don't mind the Mayor organising civic dos with some cheese & twiglets but I don't regard our role as redistribution of wealth or topping out the shortcomings of Leeds City Council.

In the words of Monty Python, my hovercraft is full of eels.

(I just put that in to finish off the blog entry. Why? Because I can.)

Update: I mistyped Gervaise Phinn, now corrected. I have been told by two people now that he is not as good as his books, so to speak. Indeed, I can remember my Mum saying that about James Herriott whom she saw at a society do (Her Bosses were upper class and she occasionally got invited to dos at Lumley Castle).

A spitting image line just popped into my head, of young David (Steel) addressing his troops before an election, where he had famously told them in 1981 to "go back to your constituencies and prepare for Government". It was parodied as "Go back to your Constituencies and prepare for a bit of a disappointment..."