Local Election Bullshit (And The VERY Strange Tale Of Convicted Fraudster Timothy Ahlbeck aka Miles Prestland-Windsor aka Jonathan Briggis)

It’s local election day in England and Northern Ireland.

As per usual, the air is filled not with the sweet smell of democracy and freedom, but the overwhelming stench of bullshit.

Oh, you mean Irvine Welsh who lives as a tax exile in Miami, Florida, having previously lived in Dublin also to dodge Britain’s tax rates for the rich? What a hypocrite!

State of the parties (what a state!)

Down in Tinhatopia, what’s left of the British National Party is crying about Facebook banning them now that no one is interested in them so Zuckerberg’s not losing out on any advertising revenue in doing so.

Every little helps when you want to pretend you have a social conscience, and banning a completely irrelevent party is rather like a local council refusing to let a cinema show a screening of ‘A Clockwork Orange’ now it has joined the ranks of late night TV duvet stuffers along with other ‘classics’ of British cinema (or to use the technical term, ‘bargain bucket’)

Considering Facebook was all part of the Judaeo-Islamic-Masonic-Martian-Night King, etc. conspiracy (or whatever it is which is the favourite flavour of ‘bonkers plot’ among far right loons this week), you’d have thought they’d be pleased. Why were they on it anyway if they’re so convinced they’re out to get them?

However the natives (or should that be Nativists?) are more restless over the non-running of the party.

That’s not to say the BNP doesn’t still have a purpose – if only as a man-creche for Garry Fishlock to pretend he has an audience wanting to read his rantings about antique conspiracy theories and Star Trek. ‘The Protocols Of The Learned Elders Of Klingon’ anyone?

The biggest mystery for members is who is standing for them in the local elections. The party hasn’t told them, Hope Not Hate aren’t really monitoring it anymore as it’s no longer the cool ‘big bad’ with ‘the kids’, so they haven’t a clue – no change there.

It’s certainly a pretty turn of events when the John Tyndall Fan Club masquerading under the name National Front (and unfortunately also based on WordPress – boo, hiss!) look the better organised racist headbangers for elections than the BNP for the first time in two decades. At least they know they have three candidates and where they are standing – even if they can’t spell it. It’s the Todmorden ward, Calderdale; not Tomorden.

Todmorden is one of England’s more fascinating places, a settlement since pagan times recorded in the Doomsday Book which has alternated between being part of Lancashire and Yorkshire. Despite its size, due to the needs of nearby mills, it once had six railway stations (!) and was the scene of the still unexplained murder of Zigmund Adamski by unknown causes, with everything from Vladimir Putin to a hostile UFO being blamed. Perhaps that’s why the NF thought they’d find an audience here, if so it’ll have to do a whole lot better than the 145 (0.9%!) of the vote they got four years ago last time they stood only for the Todmorden Town Council. They’re up against Tory, Labour, Lib Dem and Green candidates, and it’s pretty safe to say the NF has last place sewn up here.

They may have made headlines by standing in Burnley (or at least the Burnley Express – slow news week, boys?), but considering it’s been five years since they last stood any candidate there and have done no groundwork, fourth out of four (with Tory, Labour and Green competition) looks assured – especially as it is the only seat the far better organised Greens are fighting. The real question here is whether the hippies will beat the Tories – it’s the Labour council leader’s seat, safe as houses, so locals may feel confident enough to do some protest voting.

The only one of the three seats the NF’s done any work for is Ecclesfield East, Sheffield, where its deputy lout Jordan Pont is standing in a ward which surprised everyone last year during a bad night for Labour in Steel City they somehow took a seat in this ward off the imploded UKIP. Someone at NF HQ (nor Hope Not Hate as per usual) hasn’t done their homework, because Pont is also standing for Ecclesfield Parish Council. Two seats up for grabs, two Labour candidates and two LibDems – you can see why the NF’s got its finger out for this one as this is their best chance to scoop up the reactionary Tory and ‘vote for the candidate which pisses off the rest the most’ vote.

It can forget about the City Council seat of Ecclesfield East – eight candidates, Tory, Lab, LibDem, UKIP, Greens, plus the Yorkshire Party (long running minor party wanting a Yorkshire assembly with the same powers as those in Scotland and Wales). The only eyebrow raiser in Sheffield is the complete vanishment of the Social Democratic Party, who appeared without warning all over the place a few years back and now have vanished entirely just as the party has come back to minor mainstream media interest after gaining a defecting MEP.

The Democrats and Veterans Party (another of those ‘patriotic parties for people who don’t want to look like nazis’ which are ten a penny today) make up the bulk of the off-the-wall candidates this time out. Expect the donkey shaggers alliance to be destined for last place as usual.

We are constantly told that there is a dangerous rise of the far-right in the UK. The reality is they’re non-existent, save for a few localised thugs or internet trolls like Count Dankula and Sargon of Akkad getting ideas above their basement. Hardly anything that will keep HnH and Searchlight in their jobs – time to get your CVs updated boys, as times are looking hard at mill!

Apparently the (wait for it!) Democratic Football Lads Alliance is the next one self-styled anti-fascists are saying we all need to watch out for. Four decades since ‘war on the terraces’, and still the far-left and far-right (two cheeks of the same arse) live in their Last Days of Weimar, Last Days Of The Spanish Republic daydreams of violent ‘street politics’ shaping a nation’s destinies in the internet age.

On the subject of conspiracy theorists, it’s not only tinhat morons swallowing that crap. It’s gone mainstream, but all too often it is the very people screeching the loudest warnings who peddle them. The Guardian are obvious – every story about anyone or anything pro-Brexit these days will somehow have a ‘dark’ side to it. For a bunch looking for racism 24/7, funny it happily uses the ‘dark colour equals evil’ trope at every chance.

But Open Democracy are something else. For a bunch dedicated to ‘free thinking’ (and that’s my Butterfly of Doom idea you nicked you skeets!), that does not apply if anyone dares to think anything else but liberal left. Give UnHerd and Spiked! their due, at least their platforms are ‘accept nothing, question everything’ in practice not only principle. Either it’s all up for question and scrutiny, or you’re wasting your time. As the unfolding disaster of Labour and the Green Party’s anti-Semitism proved, turning a blind eye to the good guys behaving like the bad guys is about more than surrendering a moral high ground. No one is going to back change when the strains of ‘meet the new boss, looks like the old boss’ resonate.

Same old Loonies in charge

Meanwhile, over in Bolney, West Sussex, despite their pleas for mercy and some else to come forward for election to the parish council, yet again it has been uncontested, which means a mere two decades later after he first won his seat they are still stuck with Official Monster Raving Loony Party member Baron Von Thunderclap as a councillor, and having to register him on their official site under the designation he stood under rather than plain old Peter Berry.

Must do wonders for local house prices!

The OMRLP tried to do a bit of baiting of Farage over the forthcoming Peterborough by-election after the electorate sacked the previous MP by Parliamentary petition (first time ever in history!).

One minor snag:

R U Seerius, once a parish councillor in Derbyshire for the OMRLP (until expelled for non-attendance), stated on the same day on the party’s website that they are still to pick the candidate. In all likelihood it will be Fatso Hope again, the Hermann Goering of Loonyism and twice as useless, still somehow in charge despite being called out for being racist by The Guardian – oh hang on, that’s why everyone ignored it. His cosying up to UKIP when run by Farage caused one regular candidate, John Cartwright of Croydon, to leave the party in disgust.

But good to see the OMRLP and BNP both appear to have much the same difficulties of no one having a clue what’s going on in their own parties. They would make for the sort of pedigree chums our mainstream parties would have so much in common with if looking for coalition partners to preside over another local and national government dog’s breakfast.

All stand for Screaming Lord Dr Timothy Miles Prestland-Windsor Jonathan Briggis, 18th Duke of Ahlbeck (preferably in a court of law)

But the looniest candidate in the local council elections has to be one Timothy Ahlbeck down in lovely Paignton, Devon – home of the late and much missed anthropomorphic fiction author and naturalist Brian Carter (his A Black Fox Running was to foxes and In The Long Dark to feral cats what Watership Down was to rabbits).

His election address says ‘Honesty and Transparency are of the utmost importance to me, in order that you, the public, are made aware of local issues and can be better involved in the decision making that affects your livelihood.’

The irony is he failed recently in court at Exeter to stop the local press reporting on his less than honest or transparant past.

Dr Timothy Ahlbeck alias Miles Prestland-Windsor alias Jonathan Briggis is a bit ‘special.’ Since 2002, he’s run up a slurry of convictions and prison sentences for everything from cheque scams and burglary to a bomb hoax.

He changed his name from Miles Prestland-Windsor (itself a new alias by deed poll!) after being banned from being a company director for fifteen years and receiving a one year suspended jail sentence in April 2014, after setting up internet and phone accounts for a fictional company and then tried to pay for them by using the bank details of another fictitious business.

He even rented six offices including a 32-seat call centre in Manchester to make himself look legitimate. According to the Manchester Evening News, the property company lost over £100,000 and the credit company his used to initially pay for it were left £70,000 out of pocket with nothing to show but egg on their face.

He has eighteen supposed companies registered at Companies House currently, even though he is meant to be banned from being a company director. For one – A&M Group Holdings – he claims to be a Lord of German nationality, and his most recent one Nutrisup Ltd (11868882) was only registered in March 2019.

Isn’t Companies House supposed to be checking on people registering as company directors to make sure skeets like this can’t do this? No wonder Britain is overrun with con-artists when someone disqualified from being a company director until 7 April 2029 can run up eighteen companies.

If you think that is bad, he was also running another eight in Scotland – which has its own separate Companies register and no facility for cross checking with its bigger counterpart in London.

Judge Roger Dutton described Ahlbeck/Prestland-Windsor as a ‘miserable fantasist‘ who ‘left for years a trail of debt behind you … You have become an expert con merchant taking out contracts that there was never any intention to pay and gaining some benefits from them…. you should not be allowed through the door of any institution that deals with money. You are a fraudster. Other people have to be protected from your wrongdoing.”

Sounds like he’d be perfect in local government – amazing the Tory-Lab-LibDems didn’t start a bidding war for his services!

But perhaps the House Of Lords is more his forté, after all, he claims to be one.

Yes, according to Company Check, he has a ‘total current net worth of £1.1 million’ – and if you believe that, you’re even more deluded than he is – a small lesson for those of you out there ever tempted to check someone’s creditworthiness from some internet website rather than a proper accredited financial institution.

Ahlbeck is standing for the Roundham with Hyde ward on Torbay Council tonight, two seats up for grabs with eight candidates vying (two Tories, two LibDems, two Greens, and one from UKIP). Would love to be a fly on the wall at the count tonight when that result is read out, and considering the heavy police presence around election counts it is doubtful Ahlbeck is likely to turn up as Mr Plod is now wanting him to be helping with their enquiries into certain breeches of the Companies Act which have been brought to their attention!