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Pic: Google AN UNPOPULAR scheme to build a block of flats in Cradley has been scrapped by Dudley Council and replaced with plans for new houses. Cradley Councillors Gaye Partridge, Richard Body and Tim Crumpton, are welcoming the proposal for ten homes and one bungalow on Foredraft Street. Residents had been up in arms over a previous proposal to build a block of 15 flats, a housing support office, four bungalows and a detached house on two council-owned parcels of land on opposite sides of Foredraft Street. Scores of objections against the scheme were lodged. In welcome news for residents the original flats plan has now been dropped and replaced with plans for 10 houses with gardens and one wheelchair-accessible bungalow.
John Major.
Impressionist Rory Bremner “saved John Major’s bacon” with a series of hoax calls to backbench Tories in the nineties, an MP claimed.
TV funnyman Bremner sparked panic in Downing Street in 1993 when he called a number of Conservative MPs purporting to be Mr Major.
The then-prime minister, who was leading a party fractured over the Maastricht crisis, ordered Whitehall’s top civil servant to investigate the calls and find out what his MPs had divulged.
The details of that inquiry have now been released by the National Archives.
It has emerged that Sir Robin Butler, then Cabinet Secretary, had difficulty convincing one MP that the call had been a hoax.
BBC News
By Sanchia Berg
image captionJohn Major was prime minister between 1990 and 1997
Impressionist Rory Bremner saved John Major s bacon when he inadvertently thwarted a Tory revolt against him, newly released files show.
Documents from the National Archives tell how Bremner impersonated the then-PM when he phoned Eurosceptic Tory MPs in 1993, asking for their support.
They had planned to challenge Sir John s leadership at the time of the Conservative conference in Blackpool.
But the lead rebel thought it was the PM phoning and abandoned the revolt.
Bremner, who made the calls in September 1993 for his new Channel 4 show, has since said he had no idea he had helped to thwart a rebellion 27 years ago.