BLOGGING BOB'S TASTE FOR SCANDAL

11-12-2006

The Stirrer's revelation that Sandwell Councillor Bob Piper featured a picture of a "blacked up" David cameron on his website, created a storm of controversy (and, as usual, other media have been only too happy to rip-off our story without giving us credit). Now Lemmy Attem gives us this exclusive profile of the West Midlands man of the moment.

Bob Piper's ‘minstrel' scandal isn't the first time the outspoken self-confessed Labour dinosaur has caused serious offence. In August 2005 he made an out of court settlement to pay the legal costs of Walsall Council chief executive Annie Shepperd after he owned up to being behind an underground website which she claimed libelled her.

Councillor Piper, a former assistant branch secretary for Walsall Unison, targetted senior Walsall officers in his campaign but admitted that the statements were untrue and promised not to repeat them.

Tories in Sandwell naturally seized upon the payout to demand he resign his post as councillor for Smethwick's Abbey ward for bringing the council into disrepute.

But Bob held on - and has continued to providecontroversy and amusement in equal measure. Earlier this year,his newly launched blog, which has gone on to be regularly cited by the Guardian and received more than 100,000 hits, caught the eye of the local papers when he gave a scathing review of attempts by Walsall Council to "up" the image of the borough with Parisian style street cafe culture.

As an elected Sandwell councillor his comments were taken to be highly offensive by Walsall leader Tom Ansell, who even threatenedPiper with the Standards Board.

The blog entry read: “I was working in Walsall, a town which totally redefined the word grotty and whose council was once described by someone from the Audit Commission as a ‘basket case'.

“The then chief executive tried to blame me for putting that phrase in his mind but I pointed out that I must have been misheard because I had referred to Walsall as a bastard place.

“Parisian style cafe culture, my arse - if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it's a duck, or in this case a dump.”

This did not sit well with Coun Ansell, a Tory, who referred to Bob in interviews with the local papers as ‘the most obnoxious man I have ever met', a comment Bob took as a great honour.

Piperis certainly not backward at coming forward. A vociferous objector against plans to open a casino in Bearwood he used his blog to tell Planning Inspectors who overruled Sandwell Council and granted permission to sit on the end of a ‘red hot rasp'.

It's fairly obvious that Bob in no way meant to offend anyone in racial terms, but on this occasion perhaps his love of freedom of speech and expression may have gone a little far.

Nonetheless, controversy breeds coverage and if anything this incident will just add even more readers to his normally very intelligent, well-observed and witty blog.