"Corruption":

‘Stories About the People Mentioned’:

Sentences announced in Britain's "Donnygate" Labour Party corruption case:

28 March 2002

Prison sentences were announced this month, in what has been described as the worst local government corruption case since the 1970s. One of the most comprehensive police investigations into council fraud ever carried out has resulted in two senior Labour Party councillors in Doncaster, South Yorkshire and a property developer being sentenced to a total of 11 years in jail.

In total five people were convicted, including Peter Birks, the former head of council planning, and former mayor and council deputy leader Raymond Stockhill, who took bribes to process a planning application. Others, including John Dainty, the leader of the council’s Conservative Party group, were cleared of corruption in this case, but at the time of writing, faces further allegations. (This later resulted in a prison sentence).

The financial scandal originated with dealings between property developer Alan Hughes and Birks and Stockhill. Hughes’ business was in dire straits when he bribed Birks and Stockhill to process a planning application for land protected against development. In 1992, with debts mounting to more than £6 million and his business failing, Hughes applied to develop land known as Poppyfields in Branton, South Yorkshire, but his application was rejected. He knew Birks and his lifelong friend Stockhill and felt that they could influence the planning committee. He lavished around £30,000 on Stockhill, and gave a £160,000 farmhouse to Birks and his wife.

A few months later his second application, despite being virtually identical to the first, was granted. Hughes later sold the land for £2.25 million, thus saving his business. Hughes was sentenced to jail for five years, Birks for four years and Stockhill, for two years. Stockhill’s sentence was later suspended to one year, because he has suffered a stroke and a heart attack and is deemed to have a maximum life expectancy of five years.Hughes’s common-law wife, Stephanie Higginson, and his financial adviser, Gordon Armitage, were found guilty of aiding and abetting corruption and were given a 160 hours community service sentence and a one-year jail term respectively.

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The court also heard how the investigation had uncovered five other occasions where Stockhill and Birks had supported plans by Hughes against the advice of officials. In one case Hughes made a profit of £150,000 in a day as a result of a planning decision.

The case against the two top-level councillors does not tell the full story. They have been described as the tip of a vast pyramid of corruption, or as one newspaper termed it “a rotten network.” Doncaster has been under police investigation for fraud since 1997, involving councillors taking expenses for foreign trips and purchasing racehorses. The financial embezzlement is reported to run into millions. The investigation into the scandal brought about 74 arrests and 23 Labour councillors have so far been convicted for expenses fraud. Also implicated are two former town mayors.

None of the town’s 21 districts (wards) was left unaffected. Included in the 74 arrests was councillor Malcolm Glover, who was appointed as a “clean pair of hands” after the scandal broke five years ago.

In passing sentence at Nottingham Crown Court, Justice Hunt, said the corruption scandal—dubbed somewhat unimaginatively as “Donnygate”—had betrayed the public’s trust: “Public life requires a standard of its own. Power corrupts and corruption in government by those elected by the public strikes at its integrity and at the root of democracy. Fortunately it is rare in this country.”

The judge’s summation was a mixture of public hand-wringing and a clumsy whitewash. To limit the financial wrongdoing to a few individuals and seek to draw a line under it is convenient for many in public office today. But contrary to the statement of Justice Hunt this case is far from being an aberration. Even as it was breaking in the news in 1999, less than a 10 minutes drive away from Doncaster in neighbouring Labour Party-dominated Rotherham council another scandal was emerging. Rotherham councillors had set up an initiative ostensibly to deal with the town’s dire poverty. But investigations uncovered that appointed officials had received salaries of up to £100,000, while the organisation had failed to draw up a single working policy to combat poverty.

After years of very high level cases of Tory sleaze and financial malpractice, the Blair Labour government, on entering office, sought to capitalise on the public revulsion against such conduct.


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Not only have events since demonstrated the hypocrisy of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s claims of “transparent government”, they have shown how far back the internal rot in the Labour party goes. In the nearly two decades when the Labour Party was in opposition, many of its local representatives were busy creating small fortunes for themselves through all manner of covert business deals and kick-backs.

With the overwhelming hostility of the local population towards Tory officials, many Labour councillors saw their tenure as almost assured. They looked upon their administrations as akin to personal fiefdoms. The corruption cases in both Doncaster and Rotherham council may never have come to light. The latter was only stumbled upon due other allegations.

May 2003:

WORK STARTS ON OLD CINEMA SITE:

Empire Cinema – Heanor

RUMOURS circulating in Heanor, Derbyshire, that asylum seekers were to be housed in new flats being erected on the former site of the Empire Cinema have been quashed by the developers Walbrook Housing Associated Limited.

Work has just begun by contractors William Davis Limited to build 12 flats on the site in Red Lion Square. Andrew Lock, area housing manager for Derby based Walbrook Housing, said that the flats will be allocated to local people. He confirmed that the development will consist of six one bedroom and six two bedroom flats which are due to be completed in late summer.
Mr Lock continued: "The flats will be let to local single tenants or couples and we are working very closely in partnership with the Council to reduce the Borough's housing register." The site has stood derelict since the Empire was demolished in 1989 after providing entertainment in the town for some 72 years.

Built in 1911, in its heyday it was fully equipped as a theatre to seat 733. In its early years, famous artists trod the boards included Gracie Fields, Arthur Tracy, Sandy Powell and Jack Warner.


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Charity concerts were regularly staged and during the 1920s and 30s, Heanor Operatic Society presented Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. The first 'talkie' film to be shown at the Empire was 'The Singing Fool' in August 1930 and from then on the building became a cinema showing films rather than live performances. Several factors contributed to the decline of cinemas in the 1970s and 80s particularly competition from television. It finally closed in 1983 and the building was boarded up until its demolition six years later.

‘A Few Personal Notes on Dion Hanson’:

I first met Dion all those years ago when I first began work for ‘Cinemex’, when they took over the Heanor ‘Empire’. He has a true love of cinema, and in particular, wide screen processes of the past which made these places of entertainment so popular. He is possibly the most obliging person I know regarding his ability to help anyone who has a problem with cinema equipment; the harder the problem, the greater his interest. I honestly believe that if he had been the sole person behind the ‘Cinemex’ Group, there would have been a possibility of it surviving much longer. People I got to know during my years in the cinema business, always spoke well of him, and here are a few articles from the Internet, with apologies to those owning the Copyright ©

Meet Dion Hanson (in 2000)

Dion Hanson, Dolby U.K. Technical Services Manager, helps ensure that the sound at major European film festivals, such as Cannes and Venice, is all that it should be. He and other Dolby staff arrive well in advance to inspect and fine-tune the venues screening competition films, plus in the case of Cannes the many local cinemas used during the festival for marketing new releases.


When Dion visited Cannes over fifteen years ago, only three of twelve Palais du Festival screens and five of thirty local commercial cinemas were equipped to play Dolby soundtracks. Today, he says, every screen in the Palais, from the temporary 400-seat press preview theatre to the 2,500-seat Lumière, is Dolby equipped, as are all local cinemas. The major Palais venues and several local cinemas are equipped for Dolby Digital in addition to analog formats.

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The Venice festival, the oldest in the world, screens features in four Dolby Digital theatres and uses three small Dolby SR screens for retrospectives and jury previews. Some venues are below sea level, so when the festival closes, Dion helps move sound processors, amplifiers, and speakers to higher ground. "Otherwise, when we returned next year, they would be a nice moldy green colour—or worse," Dion reports.


It is the kind of worldwide service to the film industry that Dion and his Dolby colleagues provide that invokes comments like director Alan Parker's at the Cannes Festival last year: "There are few companies in this industry that provide the kind of support that Dolby does.

Nice remark, about a nice fellow:

(2001)

This was the third time I had seen Dion Hanson`s "Fantastic Formats" presentation, and it is pure joy. (Well almost). Who could forget that immaculately-suited announcer in the Fox demonstration film, produced to convince exhibitors that in order to screen authentic CinemaScope ®, they had to invest in magnetic stereophonic sound? His constant instructions to "Tom", an imaginary projectionist at the back of the theatre, brought roars of laughter. This was just one of so many instructive, enjoyable and nostalgic items, with which Dion delighted us.

Initially, the account of the continuing development of Dolby sound was intriguing and interesting...until the demonstration. Mr. Hanson, it was TOO LOUD. I instinctively checked the walls of the theatre for cracks. Afterward, many of us crawled into the foyer, deafened, dazed, and searching our pockets for Paracetamol. "Turn it down, Tom!".

A Technical mind:

Dion Hanson gives his impressions of the Autograf system which was shown in Amsterdam, and looks at retrofit adaptors which enable older projectors to read cyan sound tracks. One such company is Audio Cine Walter Voigt AG of Switzerland who have developed a laser scanner which will fit all the Phillips projectors including the DP70 and DP75 as well as the FP20 range.

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The conversion is so simple it can be done in less than five minutes including alignment. You simply undo the screws holding the old exciter assembly in place and replace it with the laser assembly. A switch mode or stabilised 5V supply powers the laser so it is possible to use your existing supply if it is of that type. Alignment is achieved by rotating the assembly until the output level peaks.

The one draw back is that laser scanning does increase the background noise slightly more than a visible light LED does. But if it is the difference between reading or not reading the sound track it is worth listening to and making your own judgement. Certainly the simplicity of installation makes it easy to try out available at the moment are for the Meopta, Erneman 8/9/10/12/15, Philips FP 5/6/20, Philips DP70, Kinoton, Prevost, and Cinemeccanica. With prices ranging from US $ 670 to $ 1100 per projector. Dion Hanson. (2001)

Dion Hanson is now a successful engineer, and installer, in his own right, and lives in the Midlands with his family.


‘A BBC Heart of Gold Award is for Special People’:

Report from 'The Derbyshire Times'

When a South Derbyshire pensioner heard he had been awarded a 'Heart of Gold' by television stars Esther Rantzen and Mike Smith, he could not believe it, and thought it was just a joke!

It happened to Harold Brown, a 68 year old pensioner, from South Derbyshire in England. The awards are only made to special people who have done deeds of bravery and kindness for the benefit of others.

Harold, along with his Country and Western buddy Bernard, who worked at 'The American Adventure' Theme Park, discovered that a group of fellow employees had nominated Harold to receive the award, for the time he had spent befriending disabled visitors at the park. He didn't however like the invitation to appear on the television programme, so the B.B.C. paid for a Country and Western evening at a local hall, where he was presented with his special award.

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'It was a great evening for me', said Harold, 'but I didn't do anything but let the people know how nice it was to see them all', he said. Over a number of years he has made friends with people from all over the world, and they send him postcards when they return home. 'It's great walking about dressed as a cowboy' said Harold, 'but then again people tell me I’ve been a bit of a cowboy all my life!' With that, like all good cowboys, he rode into the sunset.....
Nice one Harold!

World Wide Demand for Forgotten Pottery

(From Mid Derbyshire Times Extra Feb. 13th. 1981)

The Pinxton China Factory was in existence for only 17 years. Today, nearly 200 years later, it has brought international fame to the former colliery village.

Pieces of the locally produced porcelain are fetching four figure prices from collectors throughout the world. Interest in the ill fated china factory continues to grow, yet until recent years, Pinxton was the forgotten china.

Mr. and Mrs. Percy Dennis of Langton Hall, Pinxton, have a large collection of the factory’s output. Said Mrs. Dennis: “When we started collecting, many people had never heard of Pinxton china, and didn’t know what it was like”.

Today, it is a vastly different story, with pieces of the rare china producing competitive bidding at sales.

Mr.and Mrs. Dennis began their collecting to ensure that a selection of the china remained in its ‘home’ village. Langton Hall where they live, was formally the home of the brother of John Coke, the founder of the factory. Today their collection continues to grow, and the couple have become experts on the local china.

A sugar bowl and cover, bearing a scene of Brookhill, recently sold at Sotherby’s for over £2, 000. There were now collectors in various parts of the world. The factory founded jointly by John Coke and William Billingsley, ceased production in 1813.

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‘Rock ‘n’ Roll and Teddy Boys’:

All began in the early 1950's in England. Some teenager’s gangs appeared in the East End of London; they were called the Cosh boys. It was very easy to recognise them. They wore a very special rig : long jacket with velvet collar and cuffs drain-pipe trousers like under the reign of Edward VII (1901-1910), bright ankle socks and slim Jim tie. There hair was "long" and greased. These Cosh boys terrified the English society: razor attacks, fights between gangs but also against the police, robberies ... After the Second World War England woke up with an headache! Press needed a new term to describe these gangs which number increased each day? The word chosen was Teddy Boy(s) and Teddy Girl(s), Ted(s)

It seems that the first newspaper that used the term Teddy Boy was the Daily Express on September 23rd 1953. At this epoch, Elvis Presley was just a truck-driver!

And then, came Rock 'n' Roll immediately adopted by the young generation and of course by the Teds. Bill Haley, Elvis, Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and British artists like Tommy Steele, Cliff Richard and the Drifters (then the Shadows), Billy Fury, Marty Wilde (and many others), became the teenagers' idols. It was the beginning of something new, a wind of freedom. In Britain, in September 1956, Bill Haley had 5 records in the 'Top 20' and the film Rock Around The Clock was shown at 300 cinemas, but, in the early 60's, the tastes of the public changed and many Teds, after the military service in the British Army, put away their finger-tip drapes, their tightly fitting trousers and cut their hair. Was it the end of the Teds' culture ? Not at all ladies and gents!

50's R'N'R still had many fans in Great Britain; many of them, the (Ton-Up) Rockers wore the "uniform" of the "American bad boys”: black leather jackets, T-shirts, jeans and motorcycle boots.

In 1967, Bill Haley's Shake, Rattle and Roll crept into the British charts again. At the end of the 60's, some bands played authentic R'N'R for a new generation of Teds which joined the original ones.

Bands like the Wild Angels, the Houseshakers, the R'N'R Gang (in France), Shakin' Stevens & the Sunsets, the R'NR Allstars recreated the true spirit of R'N'R.

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They rendered the big success of the 50's 'Johnny B. Goode',' Little Queenie'. 'Tutti Frutti', 'Peggy Sue’, 'Be Bop A Lula, 'C'mon Everybody', 'Summertime Blues', ‘Great Balls Of Fire’,).
This return to the traditional R'N'R was called Rock 'n' Roll Revival.

In the 70's, the new generation of Teds developed a strong identity: hair lacquer started to replace grease, the drapes were brighter and, sometimes, the drain-pipes were tighter. Gradually, this new generation discovered one of the roots of R 'N' R : Rockabilly and Country Music. Remember, Mr. Presley started off on Rockabilly! People like Carl Perkins, Johnny & Dorsey Burnette, Charlie Feathers, Hank Mizell, Warren Smith, Billy Lee Riley, Charlie Rich, George Jones, Carl Mann, Hayden Thomson, Janis Martin, Wanda Jackson, Sleepy Labeef (and many other artists) became suddenly famous in England, then soon after in the rest of Europe. In the same time, in the U.S.A., the great label Rollin' Rock recorded brilliant artists as Ray Campi, and Mac Curtis.

This is
The End

Thank you for reading my autobiography, I hope you have enjoyed some of the stories.

There will never be another era in history like the cinema and theatre of the twentieth century, and I am pleased to have lived during that time. I am pleased to have been been associated with such a wonderful media.

© Bernard Goodwin 2003


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