Robbie Williams won't give us the time of day

I'm going to have to have words with Robbie Williams.
Yes, he's the undisputed king of pop in my home city of Stoke-on-Trent and around the world.
He's got millions of adoring fans, so when he dropped in on the Potteries unannounced, you'd have thought he might have let said fans know about it.
They've bought his records, they've bought his merchandise, and they've bought tickets to see him in concert. Yep, they've helped him achieve the multi-millionaire status he now enjoys.
But he didn't want to see any of those fans whose hard-earned has gone his way. Or so says my local paper, The Sentinel. He crept inside Port Vale Football Club - where he's majority shareholder - and met staff and players. Then he crept out again and nobody else was any the wiser.
The next time he's in town - be it Burslem or Tunstall, where he grew up - I hope to see him. And if I do, I'll tell him that he ought to give those loyal fans the chance to see him.
Robbie Williams is like plenty of other celebs who talk about their heart belonging to their home city and all that. So perhaps he should remember the rhetoric when he's here.
A quick public appearance and a word or two with us ordinary folk would have done much to lift the current doom and gloom.
Come on, Rob. Sort it out.

Stoke-on-Trent City Council? Clearly clueless!

I'm not surprised a mere 19 per cent of voters in Stoke-on-Trent turned out to make their mark in the recent mayoral referendum.
For it seems that the council hasn't got a clue what it's doing.
First there was the story of the town hall workmen who gutted the wrong house in Hanley, forcing their way inside while the new owner was on her jolly hols.
Now council painters have excelled themselves. Yep, it seems there's little holding back the Potteries more than the clueless council.
For said painters have gone and given some garages a new lick of paint... before they bulldoze them.
It seems residents got letters from the council, telling them the garages in Greendock Street, Longton, will be knocked down by the end of the month.
So you can imagine their surprise when the same council turned up the other day to give the garages a spruce-up.
You just couldn't make it up...

To vote or not to vote?

Correct me if I'm wrong, and I've yet to leave the house, so there's a possibility I could be.
But I can't imagine the heart of Stoke-on-Trent has ground to a halt today as thousands of determined residents vote in the mayoral referendum.
I would be surprised if Hanley bus station has been abandoned, and the Potteries Shopping Centre has been cleared (unless another dozy cleaner's spilt bleach all over the floor) as voters rush to their nearest polling station.
Call me Mystic Meg, but I reckon the turnout in this 'historic' poll we be pitifully low. I know I won't be voting, but that's because I live across the divide in the loyal and ancient borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme.
Yet if I were a city resident, I don't know whether I'd make my mark on the ballot paper today. Don't get me wrong, I think anybody with the right to vote should use it. And I think anybody with half a brain should do all they can to keep the BNP away from running the Potteries.
But I think your average Stokie is completely confused by what the yes/no choice today really means. And it's no wonder the BNP seems to be an option worth considering when the elected mayor and the Lib/Lab/Con lot seem to spend their time wasting tax payers' money on trips abroad, and doing what they want.
I hope the position of elected mayor remains after today's poll. And I hope somebody with brains and scruples goes for the job and wins over the people of the Potteries.
It's what we need to shed that image of being a backward, depressed and depressing city. And it's what we need to send the hateful BNP packing. Then, perhaps, we can enjoy some of the 'regeneration of Stoke-on-Trent' that everybody's been talking about for so long.

Life in the slow lane...

Don't you just love the powers-that-be at Morrisons? No really. Don't you?
Today's news that they've cut the price of petrol to 97.9p for a litre of unleaded will no doubt have motorists revving their engines in delight.
I too would be celebrating. If I still had a car. You see, I ditched mine more than a month ago in an attempt to save money. I also wanted to protest at being ripped off every time I tried to get from A to Z (there always seems to be roadworks in Stoke-on-Trent, so A to B's not so easy).
It also signalled the start of a new fitness regime. Walking to and from work, I thought, would be an ideal way to keep trim and de-stress after a busy day at the office.
But today I find myself longing to see the keys to my car on the dining room table. 1. I'm fed up of walking to work. 2. I could be cashing in on bargain petrol if only I'd have kept hold of the motor.
I reckon I'll have to turn to pedal power instead. And it seems there'll soon be no better place to live than Stoke-on-Trent if I want to beat the crowd on my push bike.
Stoke-on-Trent City Council is apparently planning a £4.8 million spending spree on new cycle routes, bike hire centres and training courses to get the Potteries on their bikes.
A 'Cycle City' - that's what we're set to become.
So perhaps I'll learn to live without my car, after all. I just hope I can find a crash helmet to complement my oh-so-trendy waterproofs.

Turn-er off!

One last rant before I call it a night. Is Anthea Turner not one of the most irritating "celebrities" to come out of North Staffordshire?
I'm all for girl-next-door types (no, really, I am) but I cannot bear that cheesy grin and the 'I might be minted, have several acres, and a life's supply of Cadbury's in the north wing, but I'm still a Stokie' balls.
It's Blue Peter what's wound me up. The BBC children's TV show is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and La Turner's been back on breakfast telly doing her Tracey Island bit all over again.
And don't mention her preaching about being a perfect housewife. You know the routine... 'I always dress the table with freshly-laundered linen. I find it complements the baked beans perfectly'.
She's been on the telly doing it, and now she's got ANOTHER book out, with her top tips for a perfect Christmas, or so I'm told.
I'm sure there's many a housewife who'd be perfect with a retinue of staff on hand to do the dishes and vacuum the airing cupboard. And I reckon a multi-millionaire husband probably helps too.
Yet somehow, I don't believe your average resident in her native Norton, Stoke-on-Trent, finds it quite so easy to follow in the pedicured, well-heeled footsteps of angelic Anth.

Doom and gloom at JCB

You know the credit crunch is truly biting when a company as big and iconically British as JCB stars to massacre its workforce.
I reckon most casual observers might have thought the 400-odd redundancies announced by the digger manufacturer earlier this week would have been enough.
But it seems the future looks grim for those left behind. According to my local paper, The Sentinel, JCB, based at Rocester, near Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, are now giving their workers an ubearable ultimatum: choose to reduce the number of hours you work (and brass you take home) or risk many more job cuts.
The economic gloom being experienced across the board already feels like it has lasted a lifetime. Soaring shopping bills (bad news when you can eat for Britain like me); a collapsing housing market; rocketing gas and electricity bills; and banking chaos.
You'd like to think that companies with as robust an image as JCB were equipped to weather the storm better than most. After all, the firm has enjoyed such phenomenal success from humble beginnings in a garage in Uttoxeter.
Yet there's no escaping it. The future's looking grim, and if firms like JCB are to slash their workforce, what hope is there for less mighty businesses out there?

Muggers, your time is up!

Stoke-on-Trent might have a reputation as a backward place... an industrial wasteland where residents have never travelled more than five miles down the road; a city where the tracksuit bottom and hair scrunchie remain de rigeur.
Then there's that oft-trotted-out gem... "It might be a dump but the people are ever so friendly. You won't find friendliness like it. And the pies are dead cheap an' all."
Now though, our national profile could be about to get a boost. 'Why?' I hear you cry.
Because of the good old boys (and girls) in blue at Staffordshire Police. Yep, if you want a city that innovates and brings ground-breaking, forward-thinking solutions to old problems, you want to be in Hanley.
You see the city's Central Forest Park has apparently become a bit of a hotbed for muggers and mobile phone thieves. They've been targeting kids at an award-winning skate plaza, cunningly asking them for the time.
When these nippers on four wheels get their mobile phones out to check the hour (watches, unlike the tracksuit bottom, are SO last season), the strangers with a passion for punctuality half-inch their phones.
And, bang! The cops are left with another crime stat to add to the databse.
So what's the answer? More bobbies on the beat? Hauling some of these muggers before the courts and making an example of them in The Sentinel?
Come, come... what an old-fashioned approach to fighting crime you have.
The answer (stupid!) is to stick a big clock on a lamp-post in the park. Then, when those cunning crooks ask their victims for the time, they'll simply reply: "Look, dude, there's like a big clock on that lamp-post, like. Are you blind?"
At which point the would-be phone thief will be thwarted and, through sheer frustration, chin the skater in question instead. Adding nicely to the crime stats for assault.
It's genius.

What would Fanny say?

Those poncey foodies at the Stone Food and Drink Festival have done it again.
Not content with bastardising the beautiful North Staffordshire oatcake with a ridiculous jam and custard filling, the festival's patrons are now said to be fuelling demand for beer-flavoured ice-cream.
I'm all for creativity in the kitchen, but how's a glutton supposed to know what's normal any more?
And what'll be next? Baked bean and banana panninis? Marmite and marmalade focaccias?
I suggest these people jump in their 4x4s, sod off back to the Waitrose coffee bar and stop giving the news editor at my local paper, The Sentinel, such food for thought.
For, after the oatcake saga made headlines the other day, I see the alcoholic ice-cream is now worthy of column inches.
According to the paper tonight, sales of Titanic beer, which is the produce of Stoke-on-Trent's Mother Town, Burslem, have been boosted by the unusual ice-cream recipe.
Some Delia wannabe on daytime telly has used it in her 'chocolate and stout ice-cream' recipe, boosting sales. Then the Stone lot have been clamouring for Titanic so they too can rustle up the dessert.
At least it's good news for Titanic in these troubled financial times. But I reckon Fanny Craddock will be turning in her grave.

Just? Just not good enough...

My mates tell me I'm a loony, leftie, liberal type who'd do well to read The Daily Mail a little more closely and see the world as it really is.
But there are occasions when even I read something that takes my breath away.
In The Sentinel tonight, there's a report about paedophile Tristan Myatt, who has been jailed for five years after raping a child and sexually abusing young children.
The 20-year-old, from Waterloo Road, in Cobridge, Hanley, admitted one charge of rape and a string of sexual assaults.
Unsurprisingly, his five-year jail term has provoked a storm of protest on The Sentinel's website. People, some of them parents, are staggered that such a vile catalogue of crime can lead to such a pathetically short sentence.
The judge says he was considering jailing this man for life, but decided to give Myatt five years before he tries to convince the parole board he no longer poses a risk of re-offending.
I'm not sure that jail will do anything to address this bloke's sick behaviour, but he has to be punished. Some will say he's ill and needs help, not punishment, but that's just nonsense.
A sentence of five years is a joke, and a very sick one at that. And what happens when this man is released? How many times have you read about criminals with mental health problems being allowed back into society, only to slip through the net and murder or maim? How many times have 'agencies' (as the bureaucrats so fondly call them) failed to 'join up' and share records, allowing crims to commit yet more crime?
The big worry with a case like this is that this bloke will indeed 'convince' the parole board that he's no longer a danger and go on to reoffend.
And I can't help feeling the parents of his victims will have a problem with the copper who describes the sentence as 'just'. Five years behind bars in return for doing unspeakable things to children? That hardly sounds just to me.

Oat so wrong!

I'm not fussy when it comes to food. I'll eat anything. Well, almost anything.
And being a proud North Staffordshire type, I love nothing more than a freshly-made oatcake from the shop round the corner on a Sunday morning - complete with crispy bacon, sausage, egg and tomatoes.
So imagine my horror when I discover that a lot of poncey foodies at the Stone Food and Drink Festival have named vanilla custard and jam as the number filling for the humble North Staffs Oatcake.
I am shocked, nay, stunned. And I'm almost ashamed to say that I come from Stone. The people concerned have obviously had too many aduki beans, have spent too much time sipping cappucinos and reading the Telegraaaff, or have simply taken leave of their senses.
I want never to read of sweet fillings like these being lauded as perfect bedfellows for the lovely, savoury oatcake. So there.