Rowengate: Banana slip-ups and splits?

Paul Rowen's parliamentary claim for a 40p banana is making Rochdale's current MP famous.
Like a polished turd in a swimming pool, the banana won't go away. The bent yellow floater is causing no end of stink and embarressment.

Daily Mirror readers all over Britain can read about Paul Rowen's bananas libel threat in Kevin Maguire's Points of Disorder.

Word on the street is that the strange fruit is one of the reasons for dissent and backstabbing apparently going on behind the scenes within Rochdale Lib Dems.

Poor Cllr Alan Taylor faces a revolt. He could soon be out in the cold following a vicious little coup d'etat in his Banana Republic of Rochdale.

"Ambitious" 80's throwback, "Millionaire hairdresser" Cllr Greg Couzens is on a charm offensive with a cunning little plan to become Leader of the Council then perhaps to unseat Paul Rowen as MP.



"Project Affleck" has begun.

Cllr Couzens is Going Back to the Future by wanting to copy the 1980's alternative Madchester hippy type stalls once housed in a dingy old building off Tibb Street called Affleck's Palace.
Fair play. It is "thinking outside the box" But is all this just self-promoting horseshit?

Rochdale is full of empty bombed out dingy boarded-up shops. Thank millions of pounds and over a decade of mismanangement by the Rochdale Development (sic) Agency for that.

But Cllr Couzens has "a dream" for an "emporium of eclecticism". With him prepared, as a "successful entrepreneur" to take a "leading role" as a dragon choosing the den. Perhaps hubris allowed a wee Freudian slip: While writing about Project Affleck, again and again, in the Rochdale Observer letters page new boy Cllr Greg suggests that the successful seats "won't be first come first served". Instead it could be judged by "local entrepreneurs" . Such as who? Rochdale Lib Dem "benefactors" and supporters Terry Mason and Chris Greaves?

Cynics say they can see right through his rhetoric and suggest it is all hot air to get his name publicly associated with Obama style "change", "positive approaches" yet "commercial prudence and competance".

Greg is a politician after all.

But allowing the publication, in Lib Dem leaflets, of a photoshopped image, as a smart Freemason type, holding the Chancellor of the Exchequer's briefcase does make him look a bit of a tit.

But political ambition can be shameless.

All the back stabbing must be bad for Lib Dem morale. Whispers about the failure of past administrations (Paul Rowen, Alan Taylor and Cyril Smith mentioned by name). The knife in the back of the Hothouses and the patronising dismissal of the "wimmin and the ethnic contingency" appear to sideline the work of Cllrs Irene Davidson, Mohammad Sharif and Deputy Mayor Zulf Ali.

No wonder journalists from that there London see Paul Rowen and his 'bunch' as a laughing stock.

With all the monkey business going on, the 'split' will soon be apparent.