Mrs Angry's Christmas Message

Well, citizens, friends, and readers: it has been an interesting year here in Broken Barnet, hasn't it, in all sorts of ways?

Over the Christmas break, to remind us all of the fun we have had, a Broken Barnet xmas/new year quiz may emerge from Mrs Angry's gin soaked alcoholic haze, or it may not. As well as staggering about with a horrible injury Mrs Angry now has xmas flu and is in a very, very bad mood. Watch out Santa.

She would like, all the same, to take a moment to pass on Christmas greetings and thank some people who really should be thanked.

Thank you most of all to all readers, commenters and twitter followers: why you bother reading this rubbish I'm not sure, but I am glad you do. I would write it anyway, and sometimes even forget that anyone else will read it, but I am always amused by your responses.

Greetings to fellow bloggers around the country: in South Wales and all over the UK: the virtual friendships made in the last twelve months have been really enjoyable, and it has been a pleasure to get to know you, even if only in cyber space.

Mrs Angry never fails to be astonished by the volume and variety of visitors to this blog. Some are regular callers, distinguished, for example by the old Scansafe filter of the London Borough of Broken Barnet, or the Greater London Assembly (Brian on his blackberry usually, or Councillor Robert Rams), the Houses of Parliament, government departments (hello Eric), a certain police intelligence unit who worries that Mrs Angry is a dangerous anarchist (possibly true), oh and my mysterious friends in West Virginia and Washington who call in everyday from their desks at 9am local time: (who are you, she often wonders, and why do you bother?) Merry Xmas anyway.

Let me not forget all the corporate visitors: BT, Crapita, Capgemini, Serco, Steria, Apcoa, HCLAxon, Impower (hello Mr Max Wide) ... hope all of your outsourcing wishes come true, but not here in Broken Barnet.

To some of Mrs Angry's naughtier visitors who land here by mistake, yes especially you, the gentleman in Tamil Nadu who is still looking for convent schoolgirls in need of correction: sorry to disappoint, and frankly you will be very hard pushed to find any - Mrs Angry is one of the last of her kind, like the pandas in Edinburgh Zoo, you know, but less high maintenance. And she needs no correction, of course, being perfect in every way.

To the Tory councillors and senior officers of the London Borough of Broken Barnet: your institutionalised idiocy and deep rooted culture of incompetence has provided Mrs Angry and all the Barnet bloggers with so much material over the last twelve months ... thank you, but really we would prefer it if you behaved yourselves, did your jobs properly, and made our close attentions entirely unneccessary.

And I must thank the pantomime villains who make Broken Barnet the feast of entertainment that it is, all year round, too many to list, but especially:

In his last season treading the boards, before a well deserved retirement, Himself, Brian Coleman.

Actor/comedian Councillor David Longstaff, the butt of Mrs Angry's jokes on so many occasions (more to come, we think ...)

Councillor Andrew Harper, who also can always be relied on to rise to the occasion (definitely more to come, blessed as he is with a portfolio of such weight and breadth ...)

The substantial number of Tory councillors who never speak in meetings (thank God) and are clearly only interested in collecting their allowances and grabbing the biscuits on offer on the buffet table.

The Tory councillors who regularly fall asleep at meetings, mouth hanging open, bored by their colleagues' mute endorsement of Cabinet policy.

Chief Executive Non stick Nick Walkley, who earns more than the PM, but earlier this year cautioned council workers to be sensitive to colleagues who were feeling 'less valued' after they received their redundancy notices.

Deputy Chief Executive and Chief Finance Officer Andrew 'Black Hole' Travers, worth every f*cking penny of his £1,000 a day.

Captain Craig Cooper, in charge of procurement, but in a deeper sense, very much not. Still: you men can't multi task, can you? Poor loves. All that adding up and thinking hard: just too much.

Let's not forget Barnet Council's own Keystone Cops, run by MetPro's Mr Noyan Nihat and Senior Officer Kevin Sharkey: you got that film back from Snappysnaps yet? Still waiting for my copy. Barnet have now dispensed with their services and now they are using their expertise in safeguarding to provide 'crime response' services to a primary school in Totteridge.

Mrs Angry happens to be on very good terms with Santa, and has given him all your names to put on his naughty list, which serves you right.

This past year has been very difficult in many ways, for many people, but some wonderful things have happened too: Mrs Angry, rather to her surprise, has noted a new sense of community spirit, here in Broken Barnet. In hard times, people really do come together to fight injustice, and to make their voices heard.

It has been a really gratifying and rewarding experience to make so many new friends and make connections with local bodies and groups. We don't need the Tory party to tell us how to make a big society: in every community around the country there are already many unsung heroes working quietly to help their fellow citizens, and protect their best interests: it's a form of public service, a civic duty performed by people who care, unlike so many of the elected representatives who disgrace the positions with which they have been entrusted.

Some of the same elected representatives like to nominate their friends and political associates for our local civic awards: in fact there are many people who have been active in this borough in resisting the lunatic policies of the One Barnet programme and who deserve proper recognition for their struggles on behalf of our community: here is just a handful of names -Linda Edwards from the Larches Trust, David Young, for his fight on behalf of the residents affected by the loss of sheltered wardens, David Howard and John Cox for their campaigning on many local issues in Barnet, John Burgess, Unison secretary, working so hard on behalf of council members facing the loss of jobs, thanks to the One Barnet outsourcing scam; Loretta Paterson, a retailer who has been a determined voice against Brian Coleman's catastrophic parking scheme , Mike Naronha and Gillian Gear from the threatened Barnet Museum, Dennis Pepper for his efforts to protect the Dollis Valley Green Walk: oh, and so many others.

Mrs Angry would like to thank her fellow Famous Five bloggers: Citizen Barnet, The Barnet Eye, Mr Mustard and Mr Reasonable, for their comradely support throughout the year: we all have our different interests and viewpoints, and we don't always see eye to Eye, but we all stand together, and what fun we have had this year, haven't we friends ...

Out in the real world thanks must go to the Guardian's Dave Hill and Patrick Butler, the revered Westminster hack, aspiring blogger and bad speller David Hencke, Private Eye's Tim Minogue: and of course Lord Gnome.

Thanks to Eric Pickles for bigging up the Barnet bloggers, and humiliating the Tory councillors of Broken Barnet: oh, how we laughed. Still laughing, to be honest.

And so to all friends, wherever you are, near and far, I wish you all a very merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year,

and here is a big virtual hug (don't come too close, though, if you don't want xmas flu) from ...

Mrs Angry

Now find a small child or Tory councillor to frighten, and make him or her watch this.

Merry Xmas xxx