Richard Baum

The job evaluation issue cntinues, with no resolution yet for the many hard working Council employees threatened with losing big chunks of their salaries in the name of “equal pay.”

Of the many things not helping this situation, rumours, lack of opportunity to question the Leadership, and the Leadership’s avoidance of tackling the issues with straight answers are just a few.

Thankfully, the Resource and Performance Scrutiny Commission this Thirsday can put pay to all of these unhelpful things. Much of the meeting is being given over to this issue, and the Leader of the Council and the Executive Member for HR have been invited to give a presentation and answer questions from both the members fo the Commission (of whom I am one) and the public. It is a public meeting and anyone can come if they wish. It starts at 6pm in the Town Hall.

I have submitted a few questions in advance to the Leader and the Executive Member for HR. I don’t suspect there’ll be time for me to ask them all on the night, but I have asked for answers to them all anyway, and I’ll let you know the answers when I get them if it’s not at the meeting. The questions are as follows:

Moderation: 

 1.      Please explain the moderation process. In particular:·   Who proposed this system of moderation·   Where/when else has it been successfully applied·   What accountabilities do the moderators have (who do they report to/ who pays them/ how independent are they/ how do we prove this)·   Where are the results of moderation scrutinised/by whom 

2.    How many roles had their points cut during moderation, and what was the average     number of points lost?  3.    In the moderation process, has existing structural hierarchy been preserved to the detriment of actual points accrued? Will such hierarchy be any factor at all in the appeals process? 

Gains and losses: 

4.    Can you confirm the average amount of money gained by “winners”? 

5.    Can you confirm the average amount of money lost by “losers”?  6.    Can you confirm that, for all part time staff, gains and losses have been pro-rata’d as appropriate? 

7.    How is it appropriate that, following moderation, the lowest paid worker in the Council is a Benefits Clerical Assistant, with fewer points than a Shelving Assistant or Modern Apprentice? 

8.    A Clerical Assistant in Benefits accrues 160 points, and £4,000pa, less than a Clerical Assistant in Payroll? Is it the Council’s view that this is appropriate?  Strategic Questions: 

9.    What is the Council’s response to concerns that accepting this Job Evaluation process implies that many staff have been significantly over-paid for years? 

10.  Has consideration been given to the “Stafford” model of dealing with this issue?  The questions are partly my own, but most have come from emails I have received from staff. It is vital that rumours are put to bed, that staff concerns are set to rest, and that we get real answers. It’s not about party politics or playing games, it’s about straight talking and re-assurance. I want to know that the leadership are giving as much thought to a sensible resolution to this crisis as possible. Staff morale has crumbled, and many staff are suffering the torment of possibly losing lots of money. Hopefully Thursday night will take us forward, and I look forward to open, honest answers to these and other questions. I want us to move forward in a spirit of openness towards a solution that is fair. 

Rick

It has become clear to me this week that I am not actually very good at anything. And this disturbs me somewhat.

When I was at school I was never really very accomplished at art. Or science. Or sport. I wasn’t awful at them, I just wasn’t very good. I could kick a football, a skill which foxed some people. I just couldn’t kick it in the direction I intended. And I could more or less get through a biology class, even if on occasion I muddled my fallopian tubes with my umbilical cord rather more than I am comfortable admitting to my female friends. But I excelled at nothing. There were always the people who were so obviously going to be professional botanists or astronomers or cricket players that they could’ve sawn their own limbs off and still made the grade. I was always getting 7 out of 10.

Thankfully there were subjects like english and history, and there were just enough of them to mean I could drop the unpleasant ones like physics, and acquire exams in things that relied on opinion more than fact.

And I was never very good at doing things either, like cutting stuff out or managing to put on my lab coat the right way round. I just assumed that this awkwardness and general lack of skill at anything whatsoever would disappear along with my youth, rather like being nervous around girls. Unfortunately, whilst the lack of nervousness around girls has now disappeared so completely that I say the most horrifically inappropriate things to them without even realising it, the physical awkwardness remains and I still can’t tie my shoelaces without giving it my serious and undivided attention. Double knots present a sometimes insurmountable challenge to this day. Which is probably why I never warmed to the Cubs.

A few months ago I needed to get undressed in a hurry. Without delving into the detail, I can tell you that it took me so long to untie my shoes that she almost gave up and went home.

My problem with doing stuff has been brought into sharp focus in the last couple of days during attempts to paint the spare room. For some reason known only to herself, Tamsin has taken a violent dislike to the blue colour its walls were painted, and has plumped instead for a mint green. Both old and new colours appear fine to me (someone who really, really, couldn’t care less even if the walls were adorned with prophetic images of my own death), and yet we have been gripped by emulsion madness these past few days, spending more money and significantly more time in B&Q than I am in any way comfortable with. The place is choc full of real men wearing steel-toed boots and talking to nodding staff about drill bits. I don’t know one end of a claw hammer from the other. It makes me uncomfortable.

And yet my rushed exit from the mammoth DIY warehouse only hastened the nightmare that was returning home to actually commence the painting. We bought a couple of “rollers,” mis-named in my view because whilst Tam achieved a smooth action, my one was obviously faulty and bumped along the wall like a car on a rumble-strip. In addition, our two tubs of paint were clearly differently mixed, because whilst her’s applied itself without streaks and evenly across the surface of the wall, my paint looked like the inside of an Aero.

And when it came to the tricky bits (which, for me, was everything from the moment I opened the door, but which I was informed by Tam is the corners and the tops and bottoms), believe me when I tell you there were nearly raised voices. Apparently the dust sheets and masking tape weren’t just there for show, a fact which was relayed to me in exasperated tones after I had splattered both roof and carpet. She’s obviously not keen enough on the mint green to want it on the ceiling…

I escaped the painting briefly by offering to cook tea, which remarkably is an activity I can accomplish without either poisoning us both or setting the house ablaze, despite it involving chopping, stirring, decanting stuff onto plates, and diluting glasses of Vimto.

The room is now painted, and we’ve got there in the end. But not before the relationship was sorely tested. And I got paint on my nice polo shirt.

So the whole experience has left me thoroughly emasculated, and reminded me again of the folly of my school days when teachers had me trying to draw bowls of fruit for reasons beyond understanding. I wasn’t good then, and I’m clearly no better now. My hands and I have a relationship of mutual tolerance, and nothing more.

I often think of the astounding good fortune I’ve had, living in this country at this time. The wonder of living in the twenty first century, when our houses are built for us (and the less stubborn amongst us realise that painters can be found in the Yellow Pages) and every help in life is made available. So many of us have every comfort, every chance, every opportunity. Yes, I know there are problems and that not everyone has an equal chance. That’s wrong, but this is a jokey post and I hope you get the joke in what I’m saying. Even in a world where everything’s not perfect, I am grateful that simpleton buffoons like me, barely capable of changing a light bulb without contemplating writing a will, don’t go homeless and hungry because they can’t hunt and forage. Thank God for scientific progress that I can take advantage of without understanding a bit of. It has clearly saved my life. Don’t get me wrong - I am curious about stuff. I just know my limits, and they come somewhere just after knowing how a lava lamp works and a long way before knowing how the large hadron collider works.

And thank God for being able to do things involving words. Words and ideas and talking to people, and basically not having to do anything that involves scissors or rope or balancing stuff. I’m better at the words and the thinking and the ideas and the getting things done, even if it’s not me doing them. And that’s no bad thing at all. Not just for being a councillor, at which I hope I can bring these skills to the table. And not just at work, where they seem to serve me well. But also immediately after I’ve accidentally trod mint green paint into the carpet. Because I can think of a fantastic excuse…

Rick 

The Council’s Environmental Services Department have once again left me reeling with their lies and broken promises. Following hot on the heels of the missing Butterstile Lane street sign (17 weeks and counting), and the shocking disregard for local people that is the cleaning rota display (we asked for cleaning reports, they stuck up a photocopied sheet of paper), and also this week’s Ruskin Road gardens debacle (threatening letters sent to innocent residents), the Council’s Environmental Services Department have now let down St Mary’s residents for a fourth time. 

I have just been informed that the barriers promised by the Council outside St Mary’s Park have not been installed. They were promised to me by the area traffic engineer ”within 2-3 weeks” in mid-July, but have yet to appear, and tonight I was informed by the resident to whom I relayed the promise that it had been broken. I must confess that I haven’t kept a hawk-like eye on the situation myself, but mainly because I made the fatal error of believing what the Council were telling me. I am coming to learn that their promises mean very little.

Needless to say I am disappointed by this latest neglect of duty, yet I am not surprised because it is sadly what I have come to expect from a Council department which I am rapidly coming to believe serves to do little but lie to me. And if residents are promised things by Councillors and then let down because the Council fails to act, what good is that for anyone? The delay has now been 8 weeks, and once again I am forced to apologise to residents after the Council’s incompetence.

This is simply not on, and I have written in the strongest terms to the Executive Member and the Executive Director. I will have further communications this evening because I have completely lost patience with the Department now.

Rick 

Some good news today for the many hundreds of Bury Council staff adversely affected by the job evaluation process that’s going on at the moment. Intervention by Bury Liberal Democrats has led to concessions by the Conservative Council, with the news that council staff set to lose money after job evaluation will be allowed to attend their appeals in person.

Prior to the meeting of Full Council on Wednesday 10th September, the Conservative Executive had been clear that no personal hearings would be granted. However, at the meeting last Wednesday I asked for this policy to be reconsidered, the Council’s Chief Executive today sent a letter to all staff informing them that personal appeals would now be allowed.

Naturally we are pleased that the Conservatives have finally seen sense. Staff should of course be allowed to attend these appeals, where massive chunks of their salary are at stake. We have always been clear that we want a transparent, open process, and we are glad to have convinced the Tories of this.

At the Council meeting, the Labour group chose to display their unhappiness at Job Evaluation by walking out of the meeting. Liberal Democrats stayed to oppose the Conservatives in a sensible way. I asked for the appeals process to be reconsidered, and now it has been. I will continue to try to make this process as fair as possible, and challenge every instance of unfairness that we see. I hope the Conservatives continue to make concessions where they’re necessary, and continue to be open to constructive challenge.

Rick

A group of residents on Ruskin Road and St Ann’s Gardens have been in touch with all three St Mary’s Councillors. The ends of their gardens were once a public footpath, but 70 years ago the land was given over to the occupants of the time to cultivate for vegetables to help the war effort. The land was never formally re-claimed, and now the Council have woken from their decades-long slumbers and announced to the current occupants that they might have to pay to keep hold of the ends of their gardens, or pay the Council to take them off their hands. In either instance, money needs to flow from residents to the Council, and no alternative option is suggested.

I am trying to get to the bottom of the facts, which look very much like they may have been written on parchment using a quill and ink in the days when Mrs Wallis Simpson was the talk of London society. But whatever the facts are, once again the Council have put the cart before the horse and sent out threatening letters to residents demanding money out of the blue without explaining the situation or providing offers of help. They also didn’t discuss the issue with ward Councillors to alert us to the situation at all.

It’s the same nasty trick that was pulled with recent letters about graffiti from the Council – a demand for money rather than a constructive offer of help. When did the Council stop being a public service and start acting like a burly bailiff?

The same thing that was done with staff set to lose out in job evaluation – letters sent to arrive on a Saturday, heralding awful news. And the same thing happened last year with letters suggesting that people claiming to live alone to get single person Council Tax discount might be lying.

The Council keep sending out disturbing, worrying, rage-inducing letters without giving a thought to the consequences, and then being utterly blind and deaf to frantic calls for help. My Lib Dem colleague Cllr Steve Wright asked a very relevant question to Council last week calling on the Executive to give re-assurances that the types of thoughtless missives that keep being sent out would stop. He was given that re-assurance, but it doesn’t seem to have stopped. The Council are sending out more threatening letters than a deranged stalker, and it has to stop. They should remember that their function is to provide services and help to residents, not just bill them as and when they see fit.

As regards these particular gardens, Cllr O’Hanlon has tried for three weeks to get a response from the Council officers concerned. They have been silent, whilst residents already strapped for cash contemplate having to pay the Council more money for unclear reasons. It’s not acceptable.

So today I escalated it to Director level, and am grateful hat a response was forthcoming more or less straight away. Hopefully now we will see some re-assuring correspondence between Council and residents before long whilst the complexities of this issue are looked into.

Rick

My battles with the Council’s Environmental Services Department continue. I don’t know if their sole purpose is to improve Bury’s environment, or whether it’s to annoy me so much that my brains explode and come dripping out of my nostrils. At the moment they seem to be neglecting the former but making a darn good go at the other thing.

Some time ago, after one complaint too many about the Prestwich litter mountain, Cllr Donal O’Hanlon and I came up with something which we thought might be an easy solution. We thought we’d ask for a sign in the Village so that people could know when the streets were cleaned. We weren’t talking about a sign made of uranium and visible from space. We weren’t talking about a sign carved from dodo bones or containing a buttock-print of President Bush. We were talking about a piece of paper stuck to a wall.

And yet despite the plan’s simplicity, the reaction of the Council was akin to us having asked them to re-route the M60 via Loch Lomond so that we could indulge in some fishing. They just weren’t budging.

Eventually, after taking this most tiny of issues to both Scrutiny and Full Council, we were promised our sign. Apromise was made to provide an information sheet in Prestwich Village so that local people could know when their streets were cleaned. We made it clear that what we wanted was something akin to the types of notices seen in service station toilets i.e. a sheet signed by the cleaner indicating when the cleaning was done. And bear in mind that this wasn’t a vanity exercise. It wasn’t that we wanted the Baum and O’Hanlon Legacy Sign. We were responding to some pretty desperate pleas from residents drowning in polystyrene burger boxes.

And last week, after only nine months of waiting (bear in mind that that is long enough for the Earth to travel three quarters of the way around the Sun…), an email arrived trumpeting the installation of our sign. I paid it a visit this evening, and when I saw it I wished to God Almighty that I could be hurtled towards the Sun at frightening speed, just so that my body could boil and I could escape the Council’s unending fungus-headed inadequacies.

Because unfortunately, the Council’s Chief Principal Senior Litter Sign Officer has been cut out of the loop somewhere, and there has been what can only be described as a tragic misunderstanding along the complicated road between my mouth and the Council’s ears. The sign that has been provided is completely inadequate. Using the sign provided to learn about when the streets were last cleaned is like trying to capture Shamu the Killer Whale using a jam-jar full of tap water. You could try forever but it’s just never going to happen.

The sign does not come close to doing what was agreed. In fact, it shows a distinct lack of effort, and when I saw it I was angry that local people’s wishes could be treated with such dismissive dis-respect. The Council clearly took our request, decided that it was far too much effort to enact, and so did the bare minimum possible to try and make us go away.

To save you a trip to Prestwich, I will describe it to you. It is a single A4 sheet of paper. There is no Council logo or Team Bury logo, and the heading says simply ”Prestwich Town Centre Route One,” followed by a list of streets and how often they are meant to be cleaned. It is completely meaningless. It’s like a teacher teaching Shakespeare by photocopying page 27 of Hamlet and telling his students to go away.

Nowhere obvious does it say what it is all about, who it is from or why it is there. Not only that but the type is tiny, and it is stuck on a library window which is shuttered off all evening, all night, and most of the weekend. It is completely unacceptable, and contravenes just about every corporate style guide and diversity requirement in the book. I would like to know who thought it was an acceptable way to provide information to residents.

It also does not do what it is supposed to do - namely alert local people to how often their streets have been cleaned. It describes when they are supposed to be cleaned, but the whole point is that local people are not convinced that the standards are being met. This sign is to help show local people that the standards are being met, not simply what they should be. Why such an obvious requirement could not be fulfilled is enough of a conundrum to make me shake my head so violently from side to side that it could snap off at any moment. And oh, how I wish it would. 

To give a better idea of what local people require, I have mocked up a sheet and sent it to the Council’s Executive Member for Environment, the Director of Environmental Services, and a few other people who might be able to drum up enough brain-stem activity to accomplish what’s required. It’s to be signed by the operative each time the streets are cleaned, with a time next to the signature. Then they will know that, yes, the Longfield Centre was cleaned three times today. Or they’ll see that it wasn’t, and they’ll know who to call. I think it would improve public perception of Council street cleaning, provide better information for residents, and perhaps help reduce litter if it becomes clear just how often the streets are being cleaned. The Council obviously disagree, and think that none of that needs to happen, or that it can be achieved using a badly photocopied scrap piece of whatever tatty junk they blu-tac to the library.

I have included in my draft some explanation of the purpose of the sheet, and a space for contact details, and a suggestion that it is printed larger than A4 size, and in a better place like the new (and excellent) noticeboard near the Retreat Fountain.

With any luck we’ll get somewhere this time. Since I’ve done the Council’s job for them and all they have to do is press “Print,” if we don’t get somewhere I might just give up the whole charade and go and live in the desert somewhere. And no-one wants that. I look horrific in beach wear.

Rick 

It was great to see the new Morrison’s supermarket open at last in Whitefield today. For some reason I found myself compelled to go and have a look, despite needing no groceries whatsoever. I was like a lemming - a blank-eyed automaton switched to shopping autopilot until at the checkout purchasing several completely unnecessary items.

Obviously there were a billion other people there as well, as if convinced by an unseen retail deity that bargains were afoot inside the shiny new palace of meaningless expenditure. The car park was like something out of a disaster movie, with traffic heading in all sorts of directions extremely slowly indeed. Everyone in western Europe seemed to have descended on the store, but inside they seemed to be coping remarkably well, even if some idiot (me) left his Switch card in the Chip and PIN machine and head to run back like a galloping horse and prise it back from the jaws of waiting identity thieves.

I have read a couple of local politicians wax lyrical about how wonderful the new shop is. But frankly, it’s a supermarket and as such is completely identical to every other supermarket in Britain once through the threshold and into the strip-lit crammed-aisle cavern inside. Just stare at the shelves and fill your trolley, there’s a good drone…

Outside it looks lovely mind, and the fact that it’s next to the road rather than set back half a mile from it means that it stands a better chance of not going bust than the shops that were there before.

In all seriousness, it’s a real boon for Whitefield, and it adds greatly to the Elms Square area which has benefitted a lot from regeneration in recent years. Now we’re spoiled for supermarket choice, with a Sainsbury’s, Asda and Tesco all within a couple of miles. Someone should shout “House!!” and walk off with the jackpot now that Morrison’s have turned up as well.

Obviously I’m going back to Asda from now on. I don’t like change. But it gives me somewhere new to stop off and buy an unnecessary fattening snack on the way home from Council meetings. Thank God it shuts at 8 most nights…

Rick

Monday morning found me unnaturally cheery, despite God’s unceasing gentle mocking of me from on high. I remained chirpy despite walking headlong into a spider’s web on the way to the car, and spending the next three hours finding bits of it in my hair. My sprightliness didn’t desert me even when Mac, our three-legged and vicious-toothed cat, refused once again to use the cat-flap we have had installed for him at considerable expense (he prefers to look sad by the patio door until we open it for him instead). And even as I left for work, safe in the knowledge that it will rob me of the next five days, I was still remarkably ebullient.

My aura of happiness started to desert me when I was listening to Five Live on the drive in. As part of the BBC’s commitment to broadcast at least eight seconds of Lib Dem conference coverage amidst the hours of froth on Labour’s self-immolation in the news, they dispatched a reporter to Bournemouth Airport to get the views of the man on the street. The aim of the exercise was to garner opinion on the Lib Dem conference and the merits of Nick Clegg. Unfortunately, the interviewees were clearly more interested in duty-free Pernod and whether their airline was seconds away from calling in the receivers than they were in politics, as nobody knew what was going on or who Nick Clegg was.

And whilst Nicky Campbell and the reporter guffawed at the general ignorance and offered such insights as “Well, he has got floppy hair, so it’s no wonder people think he’s David Cameron,” I hit my head repeatedly on the steering wheel, veered casually across a number of lanes of the M60, and almost caused a lorry to hit the central reservation.

Hopefully the debates and policy announcements at conference in the next few days will go some way to putting that straight. Today is the centrepiece debate of the week – “Make it Happen”, the party’s ‘vision and values’ paper, which will highlight the key areas of focus for the party.

The paper sets out the party’s vision and values as the basis for developing the next General Election Manifesto and campaign messages for the remainder of the Parliament.

Make it Happen includes plans to:

Deliver big tax cuts for people on low and average incomes paid for from taxing pollution and closing tax loopholes used by the rich

Invest more in the education of the most disadvantaged children

Deliver on an ambitious green agenda, including forcing energy companies to pay a large share of their windfall subsidy to help homes use energy more efficiently

Protect civil liberties, scrapping ID cards and introducing a Freedom Law to get government off people’s backs and keep personal data private

Clean up the political system and bring an end to the influence of big money on politics

Conference will debate an amendment to resolve that any reduction in overall levels of public expenditure should be a lower priority than measures to reduce inequality in British society, improving public services, including in particular health, education, child care and public transport, and making the urgent investments needed to tackle accelerating climate change.

These are exciting times for the party, as we define the core policies which will lead us into an election campaigning for a greener, fairer Britain. And with any luck the message will chime with the folk at Bournemouth Airport. Or at least give them an idea about who Nick Clegg is.

Obviously, despite such exciting policies, I returned to my default Monday-morning setting of anger and resentment at having to even bother with life soon after arriving at work – there was a two hour meeting of a group to which I have been press-ganged, the contents of which were so tedious that I wanted to plaster Whiskers over my eyes and let Mac the cat bite them out for me. Instead I just closed my eyes and wished I was in Bournemouth That’s where the action is.

Rick

The Lib Dem Blog of the Year Awards took place last night, and for the second year running I am forced to regret the premature unscrewing of the bottle of Tesco Value fizz-wine, having come somewhere between second and fifth position in the “Tim Garden award for the Blog of the (pause, take breath) Year from someone who has been (pause, take breath) elected to public office” category. 

The winners can be found here. Let me give particular mention to Peter Black AM, for winning the solid gold statuette that was destined for atop my faux-marble fireplace, and to Alix Mortimer, who won the top gong.

I am not in Bournemouth, principally because the thought of a six hour train journey down there makes me want to defect to the Labour Party (their conference is up the road). But several of our happy Prestwich gang are, and I am getting regular updates, so rest assured that Bury is represented. I am disappointed to note that none of my local colleagues stormed the stage last night after I was once again overlooked. I will be having stern words on their return.

Rick

An article in today’s edition of the Jewish Telegraph has made me very angry. It describes the efforts of defeated Conservative council candidate for Sedgley ward Jonathan Grosskopf’s efforts to clean up graffiti in Prestwich. It has numerous errors, uncorroborated slurs on the Council, Councillors and the Local Area Partnership, and sounds more like the rantings of a deranged party political broadcaster than the serious efforts of credible journalists.

Once again, I am sorry to say that the JT has completely misrepresented the actions of local Councillors and the Prestwich Local Area Partnership, and once again has mislead the community with an article as lazily researched and written as it is devoid of facts.

Regular JT columnist Doreen Wachmann puts in her opinion on the matter, as the JT resorts to its own contributors for quotes rather than unbiased members of the public. Wachmann’s remarks are, as is unfortunately so often the case, only selectively true. Doreen gives an unattributed quote, criticising local Councillors and saying that she was “told that other Councils remove graffiti free of charge.” The truth of course is that a small number do, but most don’t. Bury Council does remove racist or offensive graffiti for free. Now, thanks to the efforts of local Lib Dem Councillors there are free kits to help residents clean other types themselves where able. Council policy on graffiti is set by the politicians in control of the Council – the Conservatives, represented by Mr Grosskopf. So if Ms Wachmann has a problem with Council policy on graffiti, she should not congratulate him as she does in the article, but instead join local Councillors like me in challenging the Conservatives.

The Council’s policy of not cleaning up non-offensive graffiti has been vigorously challenged by local Prestwich Councillors, including me, and we have recently secured the capture of four offenders through collaboration with the police. They will now be removing their own graffiti as part of their punishment.

Ms Wachmann’s comments in the article that the “Prestwich Area Board took months” to come to a decision about graffiti removal kits are simply not true. The kits were ordered and delivered swiftly, and are now available. In fact, Mr Grosskopf used one to clean the graffiti! Mr Grosskopf’s Conservatives wouldn’t pay for them in the Council’s budget, so I myself offered to pay for one on the community’s behalf, as did several other Councillors and businesses.

The article also completely fails to mention the efforts, lauded in the local and national press, of the Prestwich Liberal Democrats and the Prestwich LAP in forcing a Council climb-down over letters threatening action against victims of graffiti for not clearing it up. Its distortion of the facts is almost absolute.

Ms Wachmann also comments on the Prestwich LAP, and again her remarks are erroneous. She is wrong to state that she is invited to meetings of Prestwich Area Board as a Jewish Community Representative. Like all residents, she is welcome to attend, but the Jewish community is represented formally by the JRC via Mr Sidney Baigel. If Ms Wachmann did attend, she would not be representing the community. Incidentally, I attend every meeting, and have never seen her at a single one. If she did attend she might at least realise that the correct name of the meeting was Prestwich Local Area Partnership, not Prestwich Area Board.

I am always happy to discuss my work for Prestwich with Ms Wachmann, Mr Grosskopf, anyone from the Jewish Telegraph or anyone else. My details are publicly available and I respond to every enquiry. And yet the paper made no effort to contact me or any other of my Council colleagues before running a story so full of holes.

For the sake of the community and the credibility of the newspaper, I appeal to the Jewish Telegraph’s staff to at least make some effort to corroborate sources and print articles that are based on fact rather than distorted opinion. To do otherwise is dishonest and, when the facts become clear, makes the newspaper and the community that reads it look ridiculous.

I don’t mind if the JT has a political bias towards the Conservatives or anyone else. Newspapers can have such bias if they want. But the paper owes its readership at least some semblance of the facts. Its writers should work harder, its editors should seek more balance, and the paper should not stoop to journalism so utterly flawed. It doesn’t just damage me and local Lib Dems, but potentially relations between the community and the Council. Such lazy and error-strewn reporting could have long-lasting damaging effects.

Rick