NO JOKE FOR STAYAWAY COUNCILLOR

31-03-2009

Attention seeking Wolverhampton councillor Jonathan Yardley has attracted national headlines today with a non-story about political correctness – but fellow councillors are asking whether he should be paying more attention to matters closer to home.

Yardley appears in the Daily Mail and other right wing tabloids following a front page showing in the Express and Star last night – and all because of a run-in with a member of the public at a Q&A session in his role as Cabinet Member for neighbourhoods and community safety.

Attendees were given electronic handsets and asked to press ‘A’ to signify they were male or ‘B’ for female.

When someone asked what transgender people should do, Yardley quipped, “press both together” – prompting a complaint to the cops.

It turns out that a transgender person in the audience genuinely wanted to know.

In Yardley’s account, he was then summoned to a meeting at Tettenhall police station, where he says police “put him through the mill” and warned him he could be prosecuted.

The police have a radically different account, saying they met Yardley about a range of issues, and said that at the time he had thanked them for their “appropriate and proportionate” response (dailymail.co.uk/news/).

Yardley, the councillor for Tettenhall Regis was so outraged by the incident that he waited a full six months to bring it to the attention of the newspapers.

So why the delay? Is Cllr Yardley’s legendary socialising starting to affect his memory?

Apparently not. He says he’s broken his silence now because of the outcry over David Jason’s limp “Mahatma Coat” joke which was lazily described as “racist” (Stirrer Forum thread).

Yardley’s attendance is certainly no joke – he has missed the last three Cabinet meetings, and the last two full Council meetings, which is hardly a laughing matter for the electorate of his ward in Tettenhall Regis.

DISCUSS THIS ON THE STIRRER FORUM