Justin's adventures in Bournemouth

Hi all!

Listen, there I was off to the Labour Party exhibition (my first big job at Smoothly Connected Public Affairs Consultants since I came down from Cambridge in the Summer) when I got into my usual tizz wazz and ended up lost somewhere near Waterloo station in a place called, can you believe it, ‘The Cut’ (my first time in South London - scareee!!).

Anyway I asked some bloke, passing by in the shadows, for directions. He turned out to be called Mr Southpawpunch and he accompanied me towards the station whilst I made the small talk. However, when Mr Southpawpunch found out what I do to make a humble crust, I got the strong impression that he was going to stab me and throw me into the Thames!!

A bit of fast talking from me (I was a regular in the Cambridge Floodlights) did get me out of that difficult situation but not before me having to agree that I'd write a report about Bournemouth for him - so here we go.

The exhibition

I thought I might start by giving those of you - not connected into the political mainspring, unlike myself - a flavour of the Labour Party exhibition by telling you about some of the stalls that I blagged my way around.

Whilst being rather squiffy on my first afternoon there from all the Pimms I’d consumed at various socials and fringe meetings, I came across Saveco’s large stand at the front of the exhibition hall. I was pleased to find Abigail (from my tutorial group) stood under their large sign (‘Your Saveco store - the heart of your community’). She’s apparently slumming it working for the retailing giant in some glorified glad-handing role that she secured through contacts she acquired when she was Protocol Secretary of the University Labour Club.

She showed me round the reproduction they'd built on site of part of one of their megastores. There were mock ups of council enquiry counters, a mini police station, a small chapel and more - all located inside one of their shops. There was some blurb about how Saveco could provide this package as a ‘total link solution, providing all the public services for your community’.

Whilst chatting with Abigail I noticed that the Saveco staff just looked on benignly at the visitors to their stand blatantly shovelling up as much as they could of the jars of Paraguayan upland olives, packets of Mongolian unpasteurised cheeses, flagons of Belgian First Pressing Damson beers and more besides; from the large mounds of Saveco ‘Uppercut’ products that were on display. The visitors squirreled their bounty away into large sacks that all exhibition attendees seemed to be carrying round all the stalls for this very purpose.

So anyway, still rather groggy on my feet, yours truly pressed something I shouldn’t have and this damn alarm started going off, just besides one of those detector things that you see at the entrance to Saveco stores. I then noticed a pair of wall mounted shackles opening and a blue flashing light going off along with a metallic voice saying: ‘Attention. You’ve passed in breach of the unresolved payment protocol. Place both your legs now in the shackles. They’ll close to ensure your safety and so that Security can attend to your under resourced customer revenue situation’.

All the Saveco staff tried to stop this palaver that I’d caused, and they walked over to where I was to try and turn off that part of the display. But whilst they did this I saw a dozen or so visitors take the opportunity to strip the Saveco stand bare.

A large, under the table, stash of champagne bottles, three small flat screen monitors and two large boxes of Saveco £100 vouchers (they were only being given out to those who had credentials to prove that they were members of council planning committees) swiftly disappeared into various sacks.

A model, wearing items from Saveco’s ethical (all items edible) lingerie range, was also carted off by a couple of staff accompanying a former minister. He walked swiftly away in front of them all, with both a threatening gait and his beer belly obscuring his upper thighs. He looked back over his shoulder to tell his aides to make sure that they didn’t ruffle his captive’s underwear.

Amongst the other interesting stalls that I visited were some in the ‘community safety’ enclosure. There was a rather fine device for deterring anti-social behaviour - a shopkeeper mounts a cylinder-like object above his door that he can then use to spray skunk scent over anyone hanging around and thus ‘negatively conflicting his retail revenues’.

There was also a great gadget that could be a big help in educating slower children. If they type in too many wrong answers in an online spelling test, delivered on a specially adapted computer monitor, the keyboard delivers a small electric shock.

Casecon

I was also quite taken by some of the service providers who demonstrated how they could bring 'leading edge innovation to the heart of the political process.' There was an exhibiting company there, Casecon, who are specialists in providing outsourcing solutions to MPs and councillors.

As well as handling the arrangements for making surgery appointments with elected representatives, Casecon will actually conduct the casework - right through from the initial query to the eventual outcome. Somewhere offshore they have computer servers that generate one of several proforma letters that deal with all possible issues that might be raised. These can then electronically interact - and for an indefinite period - with parallel letters that are generated by those companies providing the same services to councils, the NHS, etc.

And in a clever twist, more often than not it’s actually the same company working for both sides and thus creating a virtuous circle - promoting efficiency by just communicating with itself.

But it gets better. The guy showing me around explained how much of a councillor’s or an MP’s time is spent dealing with mundane issues - constituents complaining about the local hospice shutting down or some chav parents whinging that a foundation school is refusing to enrol their kid despite them living next door to the school playground.

Those who we elect shouldn’t be dealing with this grind but instead could spend their time better - developing their policy awareness, e.g. going on parliamentary delegations to research winter sports resort development in Dubai or participating in events like the ‘Promoting Growth Through Building a Moral City’ jamboree that was recently held in Las Vegas.

To resolve this conflict, Casecon have now introduced online avatars - they represent the MP or councillor - and which can ‘meet’ with a constituent who wishes to raise an issue.

The trials of these new services have demonstrated that both sides are satisfied with this innovation. In a survey conducted with those who have undertaken online consultations with a Casecon computer avatar, the percentage of electors who thought that the simulation was more intelligent or more interested in their problems than their real life elected representative was 97% and 94% respectively.

And likewise, both MPs and councillors were confident that this computer application was proving a great help to them - for example, various MPs found that they now never needed to make the long journey to their constituency and this was proving to be a big help in their push towards meeting their carbon neutral targets.

Furthermore the introduction of 0870 numbers to access these virtual MP or councillor surgeries, along with nationality entitlement checks and fingerprint scanning beforehand, had worked well in reducing the number of frivolous enquiries that Casecon was needing to handle on behalf of their politician clients.

The rise of Justin

I’ve got myself into a bit of a sticky situation on the ladyfriend front in Bournemouth. I went to several social events the other night (photo - featuring top totty - from the 'Fund Managers for Labour' shindig shown above) finishing with the McSparran Whisky Scottish Trade Union Ceilidh night - Kilt, Dinner Jacket and Black Tie obligatory. Free Bar. (Pay bar for the press).

After having sampled a glass from every distillery that they’ve got, I found myself doing the crossed hand dance with a 40s something, rather weather-beaten former Mayor from some place in east London that I’ve never heard of. We’d both been knocking them back since early morning and I’m afraid that I fell for her line about ‘going back to her room at the Grand Hotel to see my chain of office - you don't get to keep it after serving your term of office.’ It turns out that she’s 3 years older than my mother.

Anyway, she’s clearly taken quite a shine to me and, to be frank, I need to be making contacts so as to be sure of meeting my client acquisition targets. The councillor appears keen to act in a mentoring way towards me and I have also become quite interested in the possible career path that she’s been mapping out for me.

My new friend has told me that it used to be that being called to the Bar was the surest route to selection as a Labour candidate. However my work as a political consultant, perhaps to be followed by an in-house role with a venture or a vulture capitalist fund, was now perhaps the most common route to political success. It would even enable me to overcome the disadvantage of having gone to Cambridge rather than to Oxford.

She’s made it clear, that if I’m wiling to play ball with her, or rather play with her... then there’s a lot she can do for me. As well as a guarantee of regular work for my consultancy from her council and from various Quangos on which she sits, she’s said that she could also fast track my political career by getting me selected as a councillor, appointed to various public bodies, grant-aid funded and generally given a boost.

I hadn’t quite realised the fair sums that you can make by sitting on some Quango, or as a cabinet councillor, but the real financial jackpot is when you become an MP and receive not just a salary but you also benefit from the endless legal fiddles that MPs pull.

My ladyfriend has apparently previously blown her own chances of selection as an MP (and she also had to stand down as a magistrate) after an episode last year. She admitted that she had threatened some copper with the sack (‘I have known - personally, and biblically - your boss, your boss’s boss and the Mayor of fucking London’) if he didn't let her go after he nicked her for drunkenly driving the Mayoral limo into the Town Hall fountain. The policeman recorded all of her tirade on the video camera mounted in his cop car.

She does get rather maudlin at times. Last night in bed, when particularly pissed, she was self pityingly going on about how she has become all that she once hated and she also mentioned her youthful involvement with the ‘Trots’. The latter is a new one on me, maybe it was a dance craze that she was into - like the ‘Tango’ or the ‘Twist, maybe?

She said that it's apparently useful if I join a thing called a 'trade union'. She did explain what one was but I do admit that I switched off at this point. I’ve scribbled down a list of contacts she gave me when she was talking about people I should be getting to know, but they all sound so similar - Accenture, Capita, Connect, Unite etc. I’d be very grateful if someone could drop me a line and tell me which ones of these are trade unions and what is it that they actually do?

Fringe meeting

There’s a bit of a rush on tonight. Our key account manager, Jeremy, has been called back to London to twist some arms for a bank client of ours that needs heavyweight political input to stop the Bank of England revealing that they’ve also been funnelling millions to them just like they did for Northern Rock. (I’m not sure if I should be writing this bit down).

Anyway, I’m going to need to cover tonight and chair the fringe meeting that my firm is sponsoring - ‘Local Government: Let’s put the governor back locally’. Also speaking at our event will be the Entrepreneur Partnership Facilitation Officer from Unison, the Sales Manager for Sponsors from the New Local Government Network think tank and various MPs who are on our payrolls.

Only Jeremy shot off up to London with the only copy of tonight’s speech! I was rather concerned until, after talking to my colleagues, I’ve learnt that that all I need to do is name check all the relevant buzzwords: multi-partnership, customer centred, engaged, diversity, community, sustainable and many more (they go on for two whole pages!) and then add in some appropriate link words - and, they, we, etc - and can then be sure that my address will go down a storm!

Political karaoke

I didn’t realise that there’s also some sort of debating club that holds meetings during the Labour Party exhibition. I wandered by mistake into a large hall in which there were masses of empty red chairs. There was also a few ageing eccentrics and some sharp suited corporate types huddled near the front of the hall listening to some old crone with a lesbian haircut droning on about bus services in Donchester (or somewhere ‘up North’ anyway)’.

The degenerate (?), delegate (?), desperado (?) - sorry, I couldn’t quite hear how she was called by the Lady Chairman - even made a few, almost barbed, references to the Prime Minister in her speech but she was then very careful to completely smoother these comments with endless wittering about the many benefits that the government had brought to former Tory voters.

She ended her speech by saying that soundings, taken amongst all the seventeen Labour Party members in her constituency, had showed unanimous support for the proposed new British national slogan to be ‘In Gord We Trust’. This remark raised a small cheer from the audience, most of whom I’d previously assumed had fallen asleep.

When I left the hall I wasn’t surprised to overhear someone say that some ‘conference’ had just decided that this was to be the last year that would allow such potential valuable exhibition space to be wasted on this political karaoke.

Mr. Southpawpunch

Mr. Southpawpunch was very unhappy with what I’d written when I gave him the above report about Bournemouth to He said strongly that it ‘wasn’t what the sort of intelligence that I’d promised him’. He was also with some swarthy moustachioed bloke, who talks with one of those foreign accents and who declined to give me his name and who also nodded his head in vigorous agreement with Mr. Southpawpunch.

Both of them then started quizzing me intently about the security arrangements at the Labour Party exhibition - 'did I see how many snipers there were, how closely did they look at the photo on your ID card, were there any police dogs sniffing your bags?'

I asked him why he was interested in this stuff and he said that they might be paying a ‘special’ visit there next year and they wanted to be forewarned. He then had some whispered conversations with the swarthy bloke that I couldn't catch although I did manage to hear them say something like ‘they’d all be legitimate - from the consultants staffing the stalls to the delegates snoozing through the ‘debates’.

I hope that the readers of Mr Southpawpunch’s website find this report more useful than he did.

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Burma

Mr. Southpawpunch has asked me to add something further to this week’s article. He wants me to write that -

‘The pathetic fallacy of those gutless Labour reformists who say that revolutionary change is impossible, will, with any luck, be blown apart in the next few days in Burma.

Any heroic actions, mass activity and possible revolutionary change in that country won’t take place in defiance of the usual bugbears of the Labourites - low levels of political participation, court injunctions, etc.

If these actions do occur in Burma - and they’ve already started - they’ll occur despite a decades old dictatorship. And they’ll also take place - not in fear of breaching minor legalities - but directly against planes, tanks and machine guns.’

He said a lot more besides but I couldn’t get it all down.

And then he and the swarthy bloke got quite agitated again, and looked some more at both the Burma websites and the Burma page in their atlas that they’ve poring over. They then chanted some political slogans about that country whilst both jabbered on a bit, followed by them making gesticulations towards enemies that only they can see.

Justin