Back to the Future…sadly

New readers may have been lulled into a false sense of security by my generally sunny disposition and wittering on about books, but those of you with less active social lives and a longer acquaintance with this blog may remember the dark years of 2010-15, when far too much of my life – and yours – was taken up tracking the nefarious activities of one Paul Uppal, Conservative MP and a man whose venality was matched only by his idleness. Uppal's fans may be delighted to learn that having been given a sinecure by his old friends in the party, he has had to resign as Small Business Commissioner due to a conflict of interest – i.e. the same old same old. No wonder my Freedom of Interest request about his declarations of interest was refused. Let us hope this is the last stain Mr Uppal leaves on public life.

However, there's a new Sheriff in town: I have a new Conservative MP and it looks like he's going to fill Mr Uppal's corrupt shoes admirably. Even before he was elected the Guardian pointed out that he'd illegally taken £54,000 from his failing company – in a fit of sympathy not extended to your average teenage shoplifter, HMRC allowed him to repay only £2000 lest he go bankrupt through running a company badly and then stealing from it. Private Eye followed this with a report that Mr Anderson, a rabid Brexiteer, has started another company: one supported by European Union grants. Curiously, eTravelSafety has already been dissolved, though it still has a website. But don't worry, Stuart's got a third company on the go: Stand Sure Enterprises, which itself seems to have owned eTravelSafety. It's all very odd, but then there's a tradition of extremely marginal 'entrepreneurs' promoting the free market while sucking up state subsidies. No wonder he was listed as one of the most controversial new MPs. Still, now he's got a nice fat MP's salary, I'm sure he'll repay what he owes us.

Sadly Mr Anderson has blocked me on Twitter, which seems a little precious for a public tribune, let alone dubious given I'm a constituent of his. Still, I intend to keep an eye on him, which is more than the local paper – a long-standing Tory rag – has done. When the illegal payments story emerged they recorded a tearful video of him explaining that it was all done to keep his family off the streets. The latest delight is the government's launch of Town of the Year initiative. If you read the Guardian, you'll know that it was kicked off here by Robert Jenrick, another local. You'll also know that neither he, nor Mr Anderson, nor the government were aware that The Dark Place has been a city since 2000. Curiously, the Express and Star missed this insult in a way that I'm sure they wouldn't have done had a Labour government made this mistake. Instead, they refer only to 'areas' being regenerated. They are also fully behind Mr Anderson's campaign to demonise travellers, perhaps unsurprisingly for a paper that referred to them as a plague.

So anyway, this is fair warning: I'm still going to be wittering on about books, bikes (I bought No. 4 - a second-hand, heavily upgraded Boardman AiR Elite 9.0 - just before Christmas), music and the like over the coming year but there's also going to be a fair amount of petty spitefulness on my part. It'll be a stretch but I'm sure I can manage it.

Books read recently: Phineas Redux (Anthony Trollope) - hugely enjoyable, and featuring a dodgy Tory PM who first staves off and then springs an election while ducking any examination of principle whatsoever. Felt strangely appropriate. Then Nicola Ammanti's Anna: standard post-apocalyptic children stuff though featuring a compelling protagonist; Byatt's The Children's Book, which was largely wonderful. Now I'm reading Robert Frost's Selected Poems and Alissa Nutting's controversial Tampa. Marking is about to come in so I must make hay while the sun shines. Happy new year!