Councillor Richard ‘Tricky Dicky’ Kingstone has recently decided to start a ‘peoples panel’ to tackle an issue that he can do a fat total of zero about. Oh and tellingly, any other issues that are of concern.
We actually believe that Tricky Dicky has seen the future, knows it’s in Parish Councils, and is in fact positioning himself to be Mayor of a new Parish Council with a ready picked bunch of his most loyal followers ready to bestow the honour he couldn’t possibly refuse on him. It’s only natural of course that because he started the group, he should of course be leader of it. Perrycrofts Parish Council and Mayor Kingstone, you heard it here first folks. As someone pointed out in the Mailbag that first brought this to our attention, if only Tamworth had people who were formally elected to fight on their behalf, parties can barely get decent candidates as it is, imagine who Kingstone will manage to dredge up from his group, think Ron Brown (shudder). We certainly wouldn’t advise anyone to contact anyone in this group for help with anything, it would be a huge mistake. Stick to citizens advice or actual elected Councillors who have better access to the council than these pretenders will. As usual this is just another attention grab from Kingstone, who having failed to get elected as a County Councillor, is desperately scrambling to keep himself visible. Naturally his spokestroll thinks it is a great idea, which should give anyone immediate cause for concern.
During the full council meeting earlier this week, the spectre (filling the hearts of Councillors who don’t have the balls to tell residents how it is with dread) of those bloody telegraph poles raised their head. A question then from a member of the public, (who thanks no doubt to being completely mislead by Councillor Richard Kingstone into believing TBC has anything to do with telegraph poles), asked a question regarding Lightspeed who are the poster boy for telegraph pole hate in Tamworth (Openreach who are also doing the exact same thing happy to let them bear the brunt). The resident pointed out that Stonydelph had been designed to have it’s utilities underground ‘to preserve it’s visual character’, we never ever imagined hearing ‘Stonydelph’ and ‘visual character’ in the same sentence.
The resident has taken exception to the fact that Lightspeed have made his garden accessible via the pole and is rather unhappy about it. Now, we really aren’t trying to defend Lightspeed or Openreach for that matter, but these people complaining bitterly about poles are apparently not curious enough to go and look at notices advising them of the imminent erection of a pole, which have been put up literally everywhere by both companies (in fact Lightspeed and Openreach haven’t bothered tidying up these notices after the poles have gone in). We’ve seen these notices on every single lamppost in any given area on our travels around Tamworth. These residents then bury their heads in the sand rather than engage with these companies before the poles go in, and are horrified when a pole duly appears, saying that they haven’t been properly consulted with. Complaining residents are of course never to blame for their own inaction in these matters. Unfortunately they are only ever motivated by their fear of their house price falling because of a wooden pole. This is the same bullshit people like this used to bring up regarding telephone masts whilst simultaneously complaining mobile coverage was shit. In essence the NIMBYs are back in force and are precisely the reason government gave telecoms companies to go and put in poles. Well off arseholes living comfortably that aren’t as Internet savvy as generations below them, are yet again setting up everyone but themselves for a fall.
The member of the public then asked the Council if it would serve notice to remove permission for these poles across Tamworth and make them get full planning permission. He acknowledged that this could be a County Council issue which it wholly is of course, but apparently thought he’d ask anyway at Tamworth Borough Council rather than check his facts, showing how concerned he really was. He’s also apparently an expert on underground infrastructure, citing Virgin Media burying their cables underground in the 90s and wondering why Lightspeed/Openreach can’t do the same. Simply, they’ve not got the same startup capital as the many cable companies did before they all went tits up thanks to splashing out on digging up roads before ntl then Virgin Media came along and swallowed them up.
Staffordshire County Council are its own planning authority and have allowed these poles to be placed on highways land, which is theirs, which is the answer he got from leader of the council Carol Dean. Communication companies have been given the go ahead to roll out fibre optic broadband as fast and efficiently as possible, which means poles. Repeatedly digging up Tamworth to install the next fibre providers kit, is ludicrous and results in a complete lack of competition in the market from alternative providers to BT Openreach based providers, which is a very good thing to have. Burying cable also means that everyone gets a considerably higher bill, which again from some comments we’ve seen, the well off older morons are more than happy to pay to avoid the perceived wooden ‘menaces’. People are laughingly suggesting that we are going backwards in the technology stakes, telegraph poles are tried and tested and have been consistently used decades on from their creation, so have lampposts which hail from similar times, no-one has suggested we get rid of them yet and replaced them with drones to light our streets. Thankfully they are no longer gas lit, and our telegraph poles have fibre optic cable strung along them.
Unfortunately the kind of people complaining about all of this stuff are not the kind of people to usually read Debunking. We will always have clueless idiots with loud mouths and little knowledge making a lot of noise about issues that only bother them financially in some way. It is telling that the resident who praised seeing democracy in action and thanked councillors for their hard work, upped and left as soon as he had his rather pointless but obvious answer. Where there are people like this, there will always be people like Kingstone and the Troll keen to encourage and manipulate them.
We do have to make clear, that despite everything we’ve said, we certainly are not saying that these poles are not occasionally put up in some questionable locations. What we do know is that complaining residents are just burying their heads in the sand, ignoring and not engaging in the process to do something about it, and then wailing and gnashing their teeth after the fact. Councillors won’t tell you that, because they’re afraid of being trashed unfairly on social media. Some like Kingstone go the other way and work up the expectations of and gaslight people before they are duly let down by reality.
On a side note it seems MP for Moseley North has been rather upset by Lightspeed who apparently claimed in a letter to residents that she has the power to allow or refuse telephone poles.
She rightly states in her attached statement that the matter is in the hands of local planning authorities, in this case as we know, Staffordshire County Council. Which also proves that despite her blustering, she can do nothing about the poles going up either. It is government policy, and unless she has a word with her boss, they aren’t going away. Notice how she hasn’t told residents that she’s raised this with an appropriate minister, because the minister most likely won’t be in the slightest bit interested. Edwards has wheeled out a minister before to promise a police station we still haven’t got. It should tell you everything.
We thought we were done with telegraph pole articles, but sadly people won’t stop bloody moaning about them. Telephone masts were not the killer monsters that everyone made them out to be, and telegraph poles are certainly not dangerous, although we have actually seen comments from people worried that the wires are so close to their house, yes, they’re worried about cables carrying enclosed light. Yes really. How about people find something better to do and choosing to give themselves a collective heart attack over basically nothing. Us reasonable people, won’t hold our breath…
