Yesterday I got a call from Mrs Sane who was out on the road asking me to phone the police for her and tell them that some clever person had lobbed a traffic cone off an island onto the dual carriageway below and that just after the cone was a broken down and the two [...]

Please try not to laugh because this is very serious.  Coventry has left the City Region of Birmingham, Coventry & the Black Country. Since Telford & Wrekin parted company with the city region, it’s become more and more irrelevant as its focus narrows to providing the same Birmingham-centric services as the plethora of regional quangos [...]

Last night I went to Smethwick with the Campaign for an English Parliament to protest against the Regional Grand Committee for the West Midlands. We waved placards and held up a 12ft banner (with difficulty).  Lots of motorists were stopping in the road to read them and quite a few were honking horns in support [...]

I would love to have been a fly on the wall in Simon Murphy’s office today when he got the call from Telford & Wrekin Council announcing that they were leaving his city region quango with immediate effect. A week ago to this day I wrote an email to the leader of Telford & Wrekin [...]

The Birmingham Post is claiming that a Tory plan to strip Regional Development Agencies of some of their powers will damage the economy of the West Midlands and centralise decision making. This is absolute nonsense. Removing the regional quangocracy will empower local communities, increase democratic accountability in the decision-making process and could provide a vital [...]

According to the Times, Gordon Brown is planning to create a network of London-type mayors in the “English regions” to combat Englishness and promote the Britishness agenda he has become obsessed since being parachuted into the post of Prime Minister without a mandate. England has always been considered expendable by the Labour Party, hence their willingness to [...]

No Mandate Brown is appealing to “middle England” to support more devolution for Scotland and support the union. The One Eyed Wonder of Wankistan says that the UK is “the world’s most successful multi-national state” but that the union isn’t “a contract of convenience that can be renegotiated”. Multi-national or multi-regional? Remember, as far as [...]

The following was in tonight’s Shropshire Star: Claims City Region costs won’t be fair People in Telford will be paying on average substantially more towards the controversial West Midlands City Region than their counterparts in Birmingham, campaigners claimed today. The operating cots of the city region will be divided into 10 equal shares – meaning [...]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Information provided to the West Midlands NO! Campaign following a Freedom of Information Request has raised some serious questions about the City Region. The City Region will not be funded on a pro-rata basis as previously thought, but by simply dividing the costs into 10 equal shares. This means, for example, Birmingham’s [...]

No Mandate Brown took some time out of his busy schedule to tell one of his PR guru’s to send a pointless and evasive answer to the West Midlands NO! petition calling on the British government to abolish regional quangos. The Government believes there are issues which extend beyond the boundaries of even the largest [...]

The following article is in tonight’s Shropshire Star …  The leader of Telford & Wrekin Council today defended himself against claims of hypocrisy for taking an unpaid job with a controversial limited company in the West Midlands. Councillor Andrew Eade said although he had reservations, he felt that it was important for Telford to play [...]

Please can I ask that anyone who hasn’t yet signed the anti-regional quango petition on the Prime Minister’s website does so as soon as possible? It has 203 signatures so far and the deadline is the 19th of January. Please sign the petition and email the link to anyone you know that might be interested [...]

PRESS RELEASE: ADVANTAGE WEST MIDLANDS For immediate release Advantage West Midlands (AWM), the unelected Regional Development Agency for the West Midlands, has announced its budget for the financial year 2007-08.  The taxpayer will give this unelected, underperforming quango £296m for the financial year. AWM have just given jobs to two “local” entrepreneurs – Jas Bains [...]

I just sent the following email to Nick Clegg after reading that he has already dismissed a suggestion that we should have an English Parliament by saying that he will devolve power to “regions and communities” rather than the our country as most people want … Dear Nick, Could you please tell me what plans the [...]

Birmingham Chamber of Commerce & Industry and Birmingham City Council were criticised yesterday for arranging a seminar for local businesses on how to move their business away from the West Midlands. The President of Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, ironically, has a seat on the board of Advantage West Midlands, the unelected regional development agency whose [...]

Advantage West Midlands, the unelected Regional Devleopment Agency, has some targets set by what is now the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. The half-year results for April-September 2007 have now been published and on balance it’s looking … well, a bit poor really. The first target is job creation – how many jobs [...]

The following press release has been sent out today: Four anti-regionalisation campaigners have dealt a blow to regionalists in the area, undermining local authority plans to register the Birmingham, Coventry and Black Country City Region as a limited company by registering the company themselves. Stuart Parr and Andrew Bridgwater of the West Midlands NO! Campaign [...]

The Campaign for English Regions (CfER) has apparently risen from the ashes with an article in today’s Guardian by their Chairman, Phil Davies, calling for more regional government. The CfER is headed up by Phil Davies, former Leader of Telford & Wrekin Council.  Davies was sacked a few years ago following a vote of no [...]

The following story appears in tonight’s Shropshire Star: A Telford campaigner against a regional Government has said that giving a “sub region” tax raising powers would be bad for residents. Hazel Blears, Communities and Local Government Secretary, yesterday announced plans which would put Telford in a new “sub region” with the Black Country, Birmingham and [...]

Press Release For Immediate Release The West Midlands NO! Campaign warned, as far back as December 2006 [1], that the City Region had ambitions for tax raising powers. Many “business community” leaders in the West Midlands have backed the City Region in return for a promise that they will get more of a say in [...]