To try and gauge where we are following the elections, I did some comparisons of votes cast in the county elections compared to the district elections last year. Pointless doing a straight comparison with 2005 since there was a general election and things have changed so much since then.

The spreadsheet below is calculated by taking the share of the vote in 2009 and subtracting the share of the vote in 2008. Where there wasn’t an election in 2008 I went back to 2007 or 2006 (in the case of Hesketh with Becconsall, I took the last election that was contested).

The obvious highlights are:

• Labour increased the share of the vote in West Lancs North and Ormskirk West – I think that bucks the national trend.
• UKIP did incredibly well. Although they didn’t win any seats, they increased their share of the vote across the borough.
• The Conservative vote dropped significantly across the borough, but they still won seats because they were so far ahead in all areas last year.

I’ll take a look at the stats over the past five years and will post something later, to put things into perspective.

I received the Conservative leaflet today – well, to be precise I found it on the pavement while out delivering my own! Unfortunately it’s the only place I get to see their leaflets because they don’t deliver to our house (booo!)

Am I alone in thinking that they don’t seem to be interested in local issues? The leaflet covers some vague generalities – but very little about West Lancs or Ormskirk in particular. Having seen leaflets from Up Holland and Burscough it looks like they have the same front and middle across Lancashire and the only thing that differentiates them is the back page.

I scoured the pen portrait on the back page for some mention of the fact that their candidate lives in Parbold, but couldn’t find anything. I suppose they don’t want to print that.

However, it was good to see that they acknowledge that he has, in fact, been an Ormskirk Councillor for nine years – certainly not the “new voice for Ormskirk” which they claimed last month!

And yet, for someone who has been a councillor representing Ormskirk for nine years, the leaflet doesn’t contain a single practical thing he’s done. Instead it lists the various “portfolios” that he held at the Council, and doesn’t even say what he did when holding those portfolios. It also doesn’t say that he was shifted “sideways” (that’s me being generous!) out of the ruling cabinet and into overview and scrutiny last year.

While he’s been holding all these important council jobs the Conservatives have (amongst other things):

• refused to give pensioners free rail passes – despite the Government giving the Council money that could implement this;
• turned down government money which would have paid for free swimming for under 18’s (in Wigan, for example, they’ve brought in free swimming for all);
• let parks and playgrounds (like the one in Halsall Lane) become derelict;
• failed to collect so-called “section 106” money from developers including one sum of over £125,000 from developments in Skelmersdale;
• closed cash offices in Ormskirk and Skelmersdale, and as a result rent arrears have soared;

One thing the Tories have done is demolish four houses at a cost of over £600,000 so that a new town hall could be built – which I understand might not even be built!

Their leaflet is scattered with the usual tosh about Conservative councils costing less – which frankly doesn’t mean anything. For every survey or bit of research that shows one side, there’s another bit of research that shows the exact opposite. We usually use the “Labour councils cost on average £160 per year less”. These claims are unimportant – actions, as they say, speak louder than words, and in West Lancs we’ve seen money wasted and some actually lost while on the other hand they’ve claimed that there isn’t enough available to implement basic services that our neighbouring Councils are able to provide.

Their candidate has been at the centre of these discussions – making the decisions when he was on the cabinet and refusing to question them when he was chair of scrutiny.

Obviously I don’t expect them to print this in their leaflets, but I’m astonished that they don’t print _anything_ about what he’s done. I’ve lived in Ormskirk for three years and I don’t know what he’s done for the town. Could it be that in the nine years as a councillor he’s done nothing at all???

Last week canvassing on Whiterails Drive I got my first complaint about the mushroom farm off Cottage Lane. To be fair it’s more like a mushroom factory than a farm, but I thought I’d hear more about it on the doorstep. It wasn’t mentioned once on Redgate, nor Halsall Lane but I’m guessing that a session down Cottage Lane will put me right.

I must confess to having been ambivalent about the farm. I had noticed it when leafleting the other week but it wasn’t overwhelming and I remember Val Hopley raising it back in the days when I was a young Skem Cllr. My default position was broadly – “well, they make mushrooms… and mushrooms are good, aren’t they?”.

It’s tricky. Unlike, say, Edge Hill where the side-effects of expansion can be mitigated through additional campus accomodation, planning, etc. There isn’t much to mitigate a farm’s smell. Realistically, all that can be done in the short term is for local residents to keep on top of every planning application that comes in; for them to assess what effect it will have and to agree / oppose as necessary.

Obviously one complaint gets it on the radar, but I need to schedule in a canvass down Cottage Lane to try and gauge what people are really thinking.

A beautiful sunny afternoon for canvassing down Moorgate on Sunday. The tenants in the sheltered housing down Moorgate and South Terrace were all lovely, and I found myself chatting a bit too much and perhaps not being as “productive” as I ought to be.

One reason for talking so long was the number of complains and grumbles that they had about the road and the area.

I know the area quite well because our Joel goes to Moorgate Nursery and to a nearby child-minder. I know that parking is a problem and that the road surface is bad. However what I didn’t realise was that the road surface is so poor because HGV’s regularly use the street as a cut through to Aughton Street, and I wasn’t prepared for the outright objection to the residents parking that will soon be introduced in the area.

One would think that residents only parking would be a good thing and I’m sure that there are residents who want it to be introduced – although we didn’t meet a single one. The main objections seemed to be the price and an apparent unfairness that those without off-street parking were being penalised compared to those that could park in a drive. Given that they are all Council tenants in sheltered accomodation, that seems like a reasonable response. The other objection was that even after spending £35 for a parking permit for themselves and visitors there still wasn’t any guarantee that they would get a parking space (remember these pensioners already pay the Council upwards of £75 per week in rent).

The residents only parking scheme also impacts local businesses on Aughton Street who rely on customers being able to park nearby. It also means that staff at Moorgate Nursery and Childrens Centre will have to find somewhere else to park since they won’t be able to park near to the nursery any more.

I am told that someone with a clipboard briefly spoke to some of the residents and passers-by last year and this was the basis of the “consultation” that led to the scheme being put in place. Thankfully it is a 12 month trial which means that it can be objectively be reviewed this time next year – but all those who I spoke to were deeply unhappy about something that they have repeatedly objected to in the past and is now being forced upon them.

On a different note, one resident pointed out that the trains have started sounding their horns occasionally as they pass by. Now that might (might!) be easier to resolve than the town’s perennial parking problems.