News and other Busyness

A Bird In The Hand....

Squall 16, Summer 1998, pg. 10.

DEAR OH DEAR OH DEAR OH DEAR. John Bird, the Editor-in-Chief of The Big Issue, is to stand for possible election as the new Mayor of London.

Once a working class Eastender, Bird hasn't looked back since marrying into the aristocracy. But brace yourself for disbelief... The campaign manager chosen to spearhead his thrust for mayordom is none other than the arch right-wing ex-Tory MP for Sutton and Cheam, Lady Olga Maitland, daughter of the 17th Earl of Lauderdale and author of the seminally binable ‘Margaret Thatcher: The First Ten Years’.

Squall readers may also remember Maitland as a vociferous supporter of the harsh measures against squatters and travellers contained within the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act. So rabid was her foaming mouth in fact, that she was chosen by the Tory Government to be one of the 16 Tories selected to sit on the Standing Committee section of the infamous Act's passage.

She was also in favour of increasing the severity of measures contained in the 1996 Noise Act: "Noise at night from other sources should be included in the Bill. For example cockerels crow at night and with the early dawn they make a dreadful piercing sound."