Simon Danczuk Reopens Care Home

Rochdale’s nominally Labour MP Simon Danczuk got back to what he likes doing yesterday - expending very little energy - or, indeed, money - while gaining maximum publicity. The embattled Parliamentarian briefly put his recent problems behind him as he reopened a local business which had been flooded out and closed at the end of last year. The excellent folks from Rochdale Online recorded the occasion for posterity.

All went well for Si: “The owners of a flood hit care home have thanked Rochdale Council and MP Simon Danczuk for helping get the business back on its feet … Mr Danczuk did the honours at the ribbon cutting ceremony to mark the reopening of Riverside Nursing Home in Littleborough, which had been closed since last year’s major flooding … Residents were evacuated when the flooding hit and the building was left without electricity or gas … damage cost the business an estimated £150,000 in repairs and lost income”.

And everyone seemed pleased. “Business Manager Natasha Khan said: ‘It was an awful start to the year but we are turning it around and we are so pleased to be back open again … I’m really grateful that our local MP has supported us as well as the council’ … Mr Danczuk said: ‘This is a fantastic nursing home and I know I speak for staff, residents and relatives when I say I’m delighted to see it back up and running’”.

One wonders if Ms Khan would have shown such enthusiasm for the appearance of her local MP, had she known just how much attention he was paying to the travails of those in Rochdale and Littleborough at the time the floods hit, which was not very much, as Zelo Street revealed at the time. And it gets worse.

Simon Danczuk talks about “speaking for staff, residents and relatives”, but when those staff and residents were being evacuated, he wasn’t speaking for any of them. In fact, he wasn’t speaking at all, because when the River Roch burst its banks, on Boxing Day last year, he was not merely far away in Leyland with then-girlfriend Claire Hamilton (who wisely dumped him shorty afterwards), he was asleep.

But he was not asleep as in tired and having to go to bed - he was asleep as in tired and emotional. Danczuk’s fondness for the falling-over water had been indulged spectacularly that evening, to the extent that, as can be seen from the photo, he was so pissed as to be incapable of raising as much as a smile. He had visited the Rub-A-Dub and had become Elephant’s Trunk And Mozart. He was utterly and totally ratarsed.

That was the level of “support” he was giving Ms Khan and her colleagues at the Riverside Nursing Home at Littleborough. That was how much he cared for all those other businesses which were flooded out, many of which cannot now get insurance and face crippling costs, or even ruin. When his constituency needed his attention, Simon Danczuk was indulging in an act of alcoholic derangement, and all too successfully.

One can only wonder when the next scandal will hit Rochdale’s MP. Here’s hoping.