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A unique encounter in shopping precinct...
All-female audience for Question Time...
Complaints prompt Chick crackdown...
Dragons breathe life into town...
Grot spot just yards from Heckmondwike town centre...
Ice slip woman feels frozen out by law...
'Home rule' call from MP hopeful....
Tory hits out at MPs' parking pass decision...
Ed Lines by Danny Lockwood
I CANNOT, for the life of me, fathom out why the BBC’s Question Time should: a) be filmed in Dewsbury apart from to rub our noses in our hard times; and b) feature an exclusively female audience.
Excuse my French here, but is someone taking the p***? Dewsbury? The town that spawned Karen Matthews, that iconic example of the scientific social equation: slag+thick+childabuse=jail.
Dewsbury, the town of terrorists, electoral fraud and a heroin-addict population younger than Liverpool, Glasgow or London? Lovely.
But hold on a second. This Question Time has a female theme. So let’s consider Dewsbury, also the town that gave us Betty Boothroyd, the pioneering first ever female Speaker of the House of Commons – one of the great Parliamentarians and who cares if she still smokes 80 Woodbines a day? Attagirl.
From Tiller Girl, to political aide to John F Kennedy (yes, I wondered too...) to MP and Speaker. What a woman. Now THAT is something any town would be proud of.
I don’t know if ‘auntie’ Beeb has Betty scheduled to appear on the panel, but it would be slightly ironic hailing her as Dewsbury’s ‘own’ Betty Boothroyd for the night, because actually, great lady or not, once she hightailed it out of this town you needed wild horses to drag her back.
Sure, she’d come and open a building in her name occasionally but I suspect Betty remembers a Dewsbury of sooty-terraced streets down neighbourly Eastborough, of mothers in pinnies and headscarves, hanging out their washing in the street, of every door being left unlocked at night.
We might not have the soot or the outside lavvies now, but little else has improved since the 1930s. And Betty sure hasn’t missed it much.
I’ve always thought it regrettable – and not insignificant – that when given a life peerage she didn’t choose to be Baroness Boothroyd of Dewsbury. It’s a shame, if only so that the title could sit upon the ermined shoulders of someone who had stood for, and achieved, great things. Because look what’s happened to it subsequently.
Maybe in plumping for Dewsbury to suit the female theme, the BBC took into account another local ‘baroness’, her Ladyship Ann Taylor, as two-faced and expedient a political opportunist as anything still crawling about the floor of the House of Commons. There’s no New Labour job so dirty that Taylor won’t handwash it herself, either in the Commons or now the Lords.
Much is made of the manipulation of the Muslim vote in these parts, and Taylor wrote the book on those kinds of electoral tactics.
But surely the Question Time producers aren’t hoping to include Taylor? She hated every minute she was in Dewsbury in the first place. Still, if it suits her Lords and masters, Taylor will be there. Just don’t expect to see her mingling with the locals afterwards. She’ll be down the road like the proverbial bat out of hell.
Let me see, can anyone think of any other ‘notable’ Dewsbury women? Well, now you mention it we do have some great ones that I would nominate for honours aplenty, and whose common sense on a prime public forum like Question Time I would pay good money to see and hear.
Who? People like Mavis Secker for starters, and her colleagues who have transformed Crow Nest Park with their tireless efforts, and sheer local love and pride for a great Dewsbury amenity.
But I’m thinking primarily of the woman who taught me most of what I know about journalism – the good bits, mind – Margaret Watson.
Margaret was my first News Editor as a callow young reporter back in 1978, and was still my guardian angel through six years as editor-in-chief of The Reporter in the 1990s. If anyone has ever given more, so selflessly, to the people of Dewsbury, then I’ve never heard of them. And the Women’s Clinic which she set up many years ago, and which still thrives, has give so, so much. What better in a week for women?
There’s also a generation of local women who laboured in the mills, struggled hard to raise their families and can look back with pride on their achievements (thanks mum – and thousands like you).
Then there’s our latest little ‘star’, Sayeeda, Baroness Warsi of Dewsbury, a right little box of 21st century tricks.
In a few months Warsi will be a minister – unelected – which will undoubtedly be a matter for celebration in some quarters. Her family should be proud because as I’ve said before they are a fantastic example of what immigrants can achieve in such a short time. This country remains a land of opportunity for those inclined to knuckle down and graft.
But her parent’s pride doesn’t mean that politics shouldn’t be ashamed anyway.
This is a woman who just a few years ago was basically tossing a coin over whether plumping for Labour or Conservative would constitute the the best career move.
Nothing wrong in that per se, but don’t talk to me about ‘political conviction’. As Jim Royle would say, ‘My arse’.
The Beeb is keeping mum about whether Warsi will be on the panel next Thursday night. I’d have thought she’s the reason for bringing the circus to town as Mrs ‘Most Powerful Female Muslim in the UK’. She’s the BBC’s little media darling and even I’ll admit she is pretty good!
But she’ll be there to signify what exactly? How much a Muslim woman can achieve?
I’ll doff my cap to that, if she’ll admit she only got where she is because she’s a Muslim woman.
But if and when she’s pitching her homespun charm next week, I hope she takes a minute to point out the real significance of staging an International Women’s Week event in this town.
Because half a mile away, locked behind a thousand or more doors, will be a huge number of female voters who cast their ballot exactly how their menfolk tell them.
And behind those doors and curtains will be girls made to put up with marriage to a cousin they’ve never met, who doesn’t speak a word of English.
Girls who may forfeit their lives to an ‘honour’ killing because of their modern British aspirations.
Sayeeda Hussain-Warsi went through an arranged marriage; she even pretended that it works! Yet when the choice was marriage or career there wasn’t a blinked eye of consideration.
I’m not saying I blame the girl. But spare us the dewy-eyed pretence.
And if she is on QT next Thursday, do you think she’ll tell the watching millions that she went to a Sharia Court run by the grandfather of Britain’s youngest Muslim terrorist to get a divorce?
Or that barely was the ink dry than she was away with her new beau – a man whose own imported, barely literate wife, didn’t even know she’d been divorced until after Warsi had married her man?
Maybe she will, because she’s full of surprises and fooled me for long enough. And she’s as smart as an alley cat, unlike her nemesis Shahid Malik. He would be just ‘plain’ stupid if his arrogance didn’t ratchet that up to ‘stupendously’ stupid.
See, no political bias here!
MENTION of Malik and with the election fever surreptitiously hotting up – everyone trying to give the serene facade of a gliding duck, while paddling like billy-oh under the water – more disquiet from the new outer-regions of Denby Dale and Kirkheaton etc, soon to be within the Dewsbury seat.
It seems Shahid ‘fill-yer-boots’ Malik has been waging a glossily expensive PR war a bit like Allied bombers dropping leaflets over Germany. Two questions: 1) Who’s paying for the fancy brochures? 2) What has happened to Dewsbury and Mirfield while you’ve been spending time campaigning in Denby Dale, Kirkburton and Skelmanthorpe for the last 18 months?
MENTION again of Malik, and how much longer can the various Parliamentary and local authorities put off their findings not just into Malik’s suspect expenses claims – because Sir Thomas Legg’s findings were only tip of the iceberg for Malik – but into the shenanigans regarding Councillor Eric Firth’s involvement in the planning affairs of Malik’s landlord and backer Terry Zaman. Let me guess ... just after the election.
I’M in the wrong job. Staff at the Met Office have picked up £12 MILLION in bonuses over the past five years? For what, exactly?
It isn’t as if they have to do overtime, is it? Man a snow plough when they get it wrong? Or run around public parks slapping Factor 30 on passers-by if the temperature hits 80 degrees and they hazarded a rough guess at 70?
They could stick their head out of the window and still get the forecast for the next 20 minutes wrong, so how on earth do they earn a bonus for being so bl**dy awful?
But more importantly, why isn’t a wage for simply doing the job right first time enough?
I CANNOT, for the life of me, fathom out why the BBC’s Question Time should: a) be filmed in Dewsbury apart from to rub our noses in our hard times; and b) feature an exclusively female audience.
Excuse my French here, but is someone taking the p***? Dewsbury? The town that spawned Karen Matthews, that iconic example of the scientific social equation: slag+thick+childabuse=jail.
Dewsbury, the town of terrorists, electoral fraud and a heroin-addict population younger than Liverpool, Glasgow or London? Lovely.
But hold on a second. This Question Time has a female theme. So let’s consider Dewsbury, also the town that gave us Betty Boothroyd, the pioneering first ever female Speaker of the House of Commons – one of the great Parliamentarians and who cares if she still smokes 80 Woodbines a day? Attagirl.
From Tiller Girl, to political aide to John F Kennedy (yes, I wondered too...) to MP and Speaker. What a woman. Now THAT is something any town would be proud of.
I don’t know if ‘auntie’ Beeb has Betty scheduled to appear on the panel, but it would be slightly ironic hailing her as Dewsbury’s ‘own’ Betty Boothroyd for the night, because actually, great lady or not, once she hightailed it out of this town you needed wild horses to drag her back.
Sure, she’d come and open a building in her name occasionally but I suspect Betty remembers a Dewsbury of sooty-terraced streets down neighbourly Eastborough, of mothers in pinnies and headscarves, hanging out their washing in the street, of every door being left unlocked at night.
We might not have the soot or the outside lavvies now, but little else has improved since the 1930s. And Betty sure hasn’t missed it much.
I’ve always thought it regrettable – and not insignificant – that when given a life peerage she didn’t choose to be Baroness Boothroyd of Dewsbury. It’s a shame, if only so that the title could sit upon the ermined shoulders of someone who had stood for, and achieved, great things. Because look what’s happened to it subsequently.
Maybe in plumping for Dewsbury to suit the female theme, the BBC took into account another local ‘baroness’, her Ladyship Ann Taylor, as two-faced and expedient a political opportunist as anything still crawling about the floor of the House of Commons. There’s no New Labour job so dirty that Taylor won’t handwash it herself, either in the Commons or now the Lords.
Much is made of the manipulation of the Muslim vote in these parts, and Taylor wrote the book on those kinds of electoral tactics.
But surely the Question Time producers aren’t hoping to include Taylor? She hated every minute she was in Dewsbury in the first place. Still, if it suits her Lords and masters, Taylor will be there. Just don’t expect to see her mingling with the locals afterwards. She’ll be down the road like the proverbial bat out of hell.
Let me see, can anyone think of any other ‘notable’ Dewsbury women? Well, now you mention it we do have some great ones that I would nominate for honours aplenty, and whose common sense on a prime public forum like Question Time I would pay good money to see and hear.
Who? People like Mavis Secker for starters, and her colleagues who have transformed Crow Nest Park with their tireless efforts, and sheer local love and pride for a great Dewsbury amenity.
But I’m thinking primarily of the woman who taught me most of what I know about journalism – the good bits, mind – Margaret Watson.
Margaret was my first News Editor as a callow young reporter back in 1978, and was still my guardian angel through six years as editor-in-chief of The Reporter in the 1990s. If anyone has ever given more, so selflessly, to the people of Dewsbury, then I’ve never heard of them. And the Women’s Clinic which she set up many years ago, and which still thrives, has give so, so much. What better in a week for women?
There’s also a generation of local women who laboured in the mills, struggled hard to raise their families and can look back with pride on their achievements (thanks mum – and thousands like you).
Then there’s our latest little ‘star’, Sayeeda, Baroness Warsi of Dewsbury, a right little box of 21st century tricks.
In a few months Warsi will be a minister – unelected – which will undoubtedly be a matter for celebration in some quarters. Her family should be proud because as I’ve said before they are a fantastic example of what immigrants can achieve in such a short time. This country remains a land of opportunity for those inclined to knuckle down and graft.
But her parent’s pride doesn’t mean that politics shouldn’t be ashamed anyway.
This is a woman who just a few years ago was basically tossing a coin over whether plumping for Labour or Conservative would constitute the the best career move.
Nothing wrong in that per se, but don’t talk to me about ‘political conviction’. As Jim Royle would say, ‘My arse’.
The Beeb is keeping mum about whether Warsi will be on the panel next Thursday night. I’d have thought she’s the reason for bringing the circus to town as Mrs ‘Most Powerful Female Muslim in the UK’. She’s the BBC’s little media darling and even I’ll admit she is pretty good!
But she’ll be there to signify what exactly? How much a Muslim woman can achieve?
I’ll doff my cap to that, if she’ll admit she only got where she is because she’s a Muslim woman.
But if and when she’s pitching her homespun charm next week, I hope she takes a minute to point out the real significance of staging an International Women’s Week event in this town.
Because half a mile away, locked behind a thousand or more doors, will be a huge number of female voters who cast their ballot exactly how their menfolk tell them.
And behind those doors and curtains will be girls made to put up with marriage to a cousin they’ve never met, who doesn’t speak a word of English.
Girls who may forfeit their lives to an ‘honour’ killing because of their modern British aspirations.
Sayeeda Hussain-Warsi went through an arranged marriage; she even pretended that it works! Yet when the choice was marriage or career there wasn’t a blinked eye of consideration.
I’m not saying I blame the girl. But spare us the dewy-eyed pretence.
And if she is on QT next Thursday, do you think she’ll tell the watching millions that she went to a Sharia Court run by the grandfather of Britain’s youngest Muslim terrorist to get a divorce?
Or that barely was the ink dry than she was away with her new beau – a man whose own imported, barely literate wife, didn’t even know she’d been divorced until after Warsi had married her man?
Maybe she will, because she’s full of surprises and fooled me for long enough. And she’s as smart as an alley cat, unlike her nemesis Shahid Malik. He would be just ‘plain’ stupid if his arrogance didn’t ratchet that up to ‘stupendously’ stupid.
See, no political bias here!
MENTION of Malik and with the election fever surreptitiously hotting up – everyone trying to give the serene facade of a gliding duck, while paddling like billy-oh under the water – more disquiet from the new outer-regions of Denby Dale and Kirkheaton etc, soon to be within the Dewsbury seat.
It seems Shahid ‘fill-yer-boots’ Malik has been waging a glossily expensive PR war a bit like Allied bombers dropping leaflets over Germany. Two questions: 1) Who’s paying for the fancy brochures? 2) What has happened to Dewsbury and Mirfield while you’ve been spending time campaigning in Denby Dale, Kirkburton and Skelmanthorpe for the last 18 months?
MENTION again of Malik, and how much longer can the various Parliamentary and local authorities put off their findings not just into Malik’s suspect expenses claims – because Sir Thomas Legg’s findings were only tip of the iceberg for Malik – but into the shenanigans regarding Councillor Eric Firth’s involvement in the planning affairs of Malik’s landlord and backer Terry Zaman. Let me guess ... just after the election.
I’M in the wrong job. Staff at the Met Office have picked up £12 MILLION in bonuses over the past five years? For what, exactly?
It isn’t as if they have to do overtime, is it? Man a snow plough when they get it wrong? Or run around public parks slapping Factor 30 on passers-by if the temperature hits 80 degrees and they hazarded a rough guess at 70?
They could stick their head out of the window and still get the forecast for the next 20 minutes wrong, so how on earth do they earn a bonus for being so bl**dy awful?
But more importantly, why isn’t a wage for simply doing the job right first time enough?
