Category Archives: Local Politics

Local Politics, West Lancs

Tories hammering Ormskirk with proposed cuts

Reported in the Advertiser this week – Tories proposing to:

  • Closing the Civic Centre – ending pantos, shows and other entertainment in the town
  • Removing funding for Police Community Support Officers
  • Increasing pest control charges by up to £5 per job
  • Removing the rangers’ service
  • Stopping the annual kite festival
  • Stopping Community Chest grants

Labour colleagues on the District Council saying that the Tories are trying to paint a worst case picture to lower expectations. But it certainly shows where their priorities (don’t) lie.

Local Politics, West Lancs

West lancs services to be slashed in budget?

Bill Taylor, the Chief Executive of West Lancs Council writes occasionally in the localgov website. He writes the following in his latest article District View: Has CPA had its day?

I argued in this column recently that the days of step change improvement are finished, finito, gone for the foreseeable future – the notion that across the piece we can get substantially more for less is plainly ‘tosh’; (obviously we will continue to seek to make efficiency gains when we can but these are not going to bridge the massive financial gaps in councils budgets).

We are, therefore, in a period of retrenchment where services will have to be reduced particularly in non-priority/statutory areas. (my emphasis)

The Council is drafting it’s budget for 09/10 which will be announced in next month’s meeting. Bill leaves us with no doubt that there will be cuts – and gives a good idea where they will be. If he’s citing non-statutory, then I expect big cuts in leisure.

What’s more worrying is that he cites “non-priority areas”. This is arm-waving stuff, what’s a priority today could be dropped tomorrow if they don’t like it. Certainly the Tories in West Lancs have never liked being involved with improving health – they see it as something for the PCT to do. They tried dropping the doctor referral scheme a couple of years ago (and then brought it back after an outcry). I expect that they’ll try something similar again this year.

For the Chief Exec to say that there isn’t any further scope for step change improvement shows how low the Council’s ambition has sunk. To dismiss the idea so glibly has to be a concern to all Council Tax payers in the District and I hope he is put on the spot about it at forthcoming meetings.

Local Politics, West Lancs

Extra £400,000 investment in West Lancs roads

I rarely quote press releases in full, but this will make a big difference in West Lancs. There are some parts of the District that really need some additional investment in the roads and this is welcome.

From the Lancashire County Council website:

News : Extra £400,000 for West Lancashire’s Highways

WEST LANCASHIRE’S highways are set for a major overhaul following extra investment from Lancashire County Council.

The county council recently awarded an extra £415,350 to carry out additional maintenance and repair works in West Lancashire. This is on top of the £3.5 million the council already planned to invest in the area.

Lancashire Local – West Lancashire has now agreed how the cash will be spent and road safety, pedestrians, crime reduction and highway resurfacing projects will all receive extra investment.

County Councillor Matthew Tomlinson, Cabinet member for sustainable development, explained: “I am delighted that the county council has been able to allocate an extra £5million for highways in Lancashire and that West Lancashire is receiving a large part of the cash.

“Thanks to this an extra 21 schemes will be carried out this year. These are jobs that would not otherwise have got done this financial year, but our local highway team are now able to make some real progress.�

County Councillor David O’Toole, chair of Lancashire Local – West Lancashire, said: “It is very good news, not only that this money has been found, but also that the county council has handed the money over to local councillors to make the decisions on exactly where it is spent. As a county councillor for West Lancashire, and chair of the Lancashire Local, this is a step in the right direction that has allowed us to take control and tackle some of the longer standing projects that we simply didn’t have the money to pay for.�

Local Politics

Local decision making – not there to avoid hard decisions

Disappointing result from the Manchester congestion charge referendum, but not unexpected. The adverts I saw around Wigan from the YES campaign were dull and uninspired – probably not wishing to show people smiling and happy with their shiny new public transport. The NO campaign was easy – don’t let the bastards take more of your hard earned money. Mix that with a recession and your three year plans towards a referendum quite easily go up in smoke.

Would the vote have been won if there wasn’t a recession? No. The margin would have been closer, perhaps 70/30 instead of 80/20.

But improving the public transport infrastructure and getting more cars off the roads is essential – particularly in cities like Manchester. It amazes me that Ormskirk is considered to have unusually bad traffic problems. Yes there are things that we need to sort out, but when you travel around towns in Gtr Manchester you realise that something radical needs to be done across the board.

Which gets to my main concern: the charade of local decision making on issues such as this.

I think that the rejection of the transport innovation fund in Manchester is similar to the rejection of free swimming by our local council and many others around the country. A quick google search found EIGHT local councils on the first page of ten results.
These were:

I’m sure there would be plenty more had I bothered to click on “next page”, but the point is obvious. West Lancs isn’t the only Council choosing to betray it’s children or old folk, they’re doing it all over the country.

Why? Because the Government gave the Councils a choice in the first place. They could have said “Here’s your share of £140 million for free swimming – now go and get on with it”… instead they gave Councils the opportunity to reject the cash.

And there are plenty of reasons for local councils to reject the money – not least because if you’re running a local council but want to win the local parliamentary seat, you don’t want to be giving Labour the prize of free swimming in the area. Especially if you can then paint the Government of wanting to push up council tax for the privilege.

In my humble view, if the Government thinks that free swimming for the under 16s and the over 60s is important, then it should have found a way for it to be paid for universally. For goodness sake, we should have the courage of our convictions and insist that it is done.

Ditto the transport referendum. It’s obvious that something radical and different is needed to tackle the problems in our towns and cities. Yet, surely it is also obvious that there is a range of powerful and wealthy organisations lined up to fund opposition campaigns should the proposals be put to the people.

We don’t take this approach with smokers (a referendum, perhaps, on increasing cigarette duty to pay for NHS costs); nor do we with environmental issues: recycling, carbon emissions, etc. Why then, do we choose to do it with swimming and transport?

The Manchester scheme wasn’t perfect, and perhaps it would have been different had it not needed to go to a referendum (a verdict at Council elections might have sharpened local Council leaders’ minds.) Yet the Government can say that it put the money on the table and the opposition can say that the people have spoken and the status quo
continues.

With the swimming, the Government can claim that it offered investment and local councils are free to reject it… and the status quo remains.

Eleven years after sweeping away the Tories on a promise of change, Labour can’t hide behind a screen of supposed local decision making to do nothing where radical changes are needed.

Local Politics, West Lancs

Some dangerously sensible thinking from Sefton Lib Dems

Perhaps…

Sefton Lib Dems reportedly put forward a motion to Cabinet to build stronger Lancashire links between Sefton and Lancashire. The report on “Birkdale Focus” site unsurprisingly takes a pop at their local Tories for not supporting it, but goes on to say that it was passed in the Cabinet vote.

Their deputy leader is quoted saying:

“… we desperately want to find a way to improve the eastern and northern access into Southport, both by train and car, but the road bottleneck is in Ormskirk and the missing rail link is in Burscough. As both these towns are in Lancashire, we want Sefton to take the lead to work across council boundaries into West Lancs, just as we do to the south of the Borough with the other Merseyside Authorities.”

It remains to be seen what the Tories in West Lancs make of this. If it is just a LD wheeze to out-fox the Tories on Sefton Council, then West Lancs Tories might follow suit and reject the gesture. I hope not.

West Lancs is stuck between Merseyside, Gtr Manchester and Lancashire. It we are serious about getting the investment needed into our infrastructure and towns, then we need to have close working relationships with the neighbouring boroughs.

Local Politics, West Lancs

Relative truth, relative lies

Currently mulling over the truthfulness and not of local politicians at the moment. I had a much longer posting in my head, but I don’t think time will allow… but suffice to say that a letter that we received last week from a local politician has left me wondering if we still actually value truth any more in politics.

This might sound naive, but during 15 years of active political engagement, it’s only in the past few years I’ve come to see at first hand not just a twisting of the truth (which, lets face it, you expect) but outright lies.

The point of a local opposition party is to challenge lies and deceit when it appears, but in West Lancs I think there is a stalemate because there is no third-party to keep the others in check. The local papers don’t scrutinise – partly because you have to get someone to do the digging, which costs money.

A lack of clear responsibility for local services – caused by the split between County and District – gives space for claims and counter-claims to be made with no real authority and no clarity for the population to gauge the truthfulness.

A status quo appears to have emerged where stuff just gets said with no apparent consequence. Free swimming for the under 16’s is just one example. The Tories say that it will cost an extra £100,000 to implement it and so they’re not doing it – when there is very little justification for that statement at all. Does that make it a lie? On the face of it, probably not. If they said it just so that they have something in the local paper which puts the government in a bad light with the aim of keeping control at the District and perhaps gaining votes at the County and General Elections, then yes, that makes it a premeditated lie – but my analysis is just guesswork – so I can’t say one way or the other. I’m pretty certain, though, that I’m right.

The Skelmersdale development is said to be bringing in £350 million investment into the town centre (I may have got that figure wrong), but when questioned that £350 million was the projected _value_ of the town centre when it is completed – not the amount of investment. Is that a lie? Does it matter? It expect that it does if you’re being kicked out of your house to get the development done. Does it matter if the conclusion of the project is a new re-invigorated town centre?

If it becomes OK to mislead on the big things – for the greater good. Does it then follow that we should lie on a personal one to one basis? To gain power, or to maintain power? To avoid people finding out what one really thinks?

Personally, I think I have to go back to Philosophy 101 and Politics 101. But my gut feeling is that where we have politicians willing to be truthful with the public that they serve and who can be trusted on a one-to-one basis, then it’s not just a better functioning local democracy, but we also then will have a better chance of getting the things that the District, the towns and villages, really need.

Local Politics

Well, who would you trust?

So much for painting Osborne as “not a toff”. He’s in it up to his neck.

His weasel words tonight won’t help, either. I notice that in the q&a that the BBC are showing this evening he insists on saying “we never solicited a donation” and “we didn’t ask for the money”. Knowing that the clip would be repeated ad-nauseum he avoids saying “I” which would lose him even more credibilty.

Two years ago, Cameron sacked Bernard Jenkin when he suggested that an Asian Councillor might not be selected as a candidate (which Jenkin denied). Cameron was desperate to show the Tories had changed. So Cameron surely must sack Osborne now, because not only has Osborne shown that he’s an unreconstructed toff, but also that he can’t be trusted to tell the whole truth, that his judgement is flawed and that the Tories are still happy to go for the big foreign donors.

Local Politics

Tories block free swimming for unders 16s

Paul Cotterill reports that the council last night decided to deny under 16’s the right to free swimming in the district’s pools. Despite the fact that the Council could draw from the £40 million that the Government has made available to make this happen.

I know no more than what Paul has written at the moment but I’ll try to get to the bottom of it. I honestly can’t see why a council would decide against this when the cash is there. The only thing I can think of is that the Tories are trying to make some sort of political statement.

Regardless of what argument they might have used last night, there is no good reason for voting against this scheme. This is a reprehensible decision.

I am certain that every one of the Labour Group will have voted to use the Government money for free swimming and that the Tories won it on the back of their thumping majority. I _hope_ that our Labour councillors demanded a recorded vote so we can see if any Tories had the sense to vote in favour of it.

an update 21st October: Paul Cotterill has a couple of updates with the background on this decision by the Tories. Best to check over there for a good analysis of how they try to defend their decision and Paul’s attempts to hold them to account.

Local Politics

Conservative expenses – what does it tell us?

The prospective Tory parliamentary candidate has made a fuss over the summer about his publishing of expenses. Taking a look at his site it says, amongst other things:

2007/08
Taxable Gross Allowance Received: £7416.57
Charitable Donations through Give As You Earn: £1920.00
Expenses claimed: Nil
Other: Not applicable

Then some stuff about palace garden parties from this year, which I’m guessing is meant to impress…

Some observations: No expenses are claimed, which is fair enough, I don’t think I did over the four years I was in the Council. It’s nothing spectacular. Gross allowance received looks about right for a cabinet member, about £3,000 more than the normal councillor.

However, £1920.00 donated to charities via give as you earn. What’s this about? I don’t see any reason for listing it, except to show what a great bloke he must be for donating a slug of his allowances to charity. This figure would mean a lot more if put in the context of the household income and the household charity donations.

And I can’t help but think of Matthew 6:1-5:

“Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

This isn’t meant to be an attack on his religious beliefs which I’m sure are strongly held. I’m convinced that he would normally agree with the line in the Bible, but I think that the desire to present himself as a generous chap to the electorate was too much.

Personally, I’m with Matthew on this one. Donations to charity should be a private matter. But now that the figure of £1920 donated to charity is out there, I’d like to know who received it. If he really believes in openness and transparency then he should list both the charities and the amounts they received.