This morning your three St Mary’s Councillors (Donal O’Hanlon and me from the Lib Dems, and Cllr Gibb from Labour) met with officers of the Council to discuss the Butterstile Children’s Centre.

A site visit from the Planning Committee is to be made in mid-December so that they can exercise their legitimate right to make a decision on the merits of the planning application. I have presented the views of concerned residents to the Committee, as is my job as their Councillor. I am glad that the Committee are taking the concerns seriously. Obviously though they need to weigh these against the fact that now, because of government deadlines and the mistakes of Bury Council in the formative stages of this project, failure to grant planning permission soon will mean that the ward loses out on a Children’s Centre. This is something I absolutely do not want. Families in this ward deserve a Children’s Centre, and if they don’t get one because mistakes have been made by Children’s Services and Planning at the Council which meant that proper consultation has led to fatal delays, this is a disgrace.

We also discussed the proposed outreach centre in Rainsough. After a decade and more of inaction over the neglected shops on Chapel Road, I am glad that my intervention with Cllr Connor of Salford may now lead to movement on this issue. It’s far from certain yet, but the ball is rolling after I met him, and it’s up to Labour-run Salford to keep it rolling now and come up with some money as well.

Politicians on all sides are united, I’m sure, in the desire to see a Children’s Centre in the ward. But sometimes I feel that politics is put before people by some, and that decisions are made without proper consultation simply with newspaper headlines in mind. We can’t go on acting like this or else local people will get even more sick of local politicians than they are now. Nobody votes, and the types of crazy headline-grabbing rubbish in the press recently is why. It’s easy to get in the papers with a big news story of your own concoction, but it’s a lot harder to serve every interest group in your ward fairly and try to get a positive outcome.

That’s what we’re trying to do, and I hope that this time next year the Children’s Centre and outreach facilities in St Mary’s will be about to celebrate their first successful Christmas. Our local people deserve nothing less.

Rick

Today is my last day at as an officer at Oldham Council, and I must say that I am very sad indeed to be leaving.

My emotions have been all over the place since the weekend, when my leaving do confirmed that I was actually about to be kicked out of the Civic Centre once and for all, into the unknown.  

It probably isn’t within the normal social bounds of convention for a 26 year old man elected to public office to be seen crying his eyes out at his desk, but I’ve come mighty close in the last 48 hours. The blinding realisation that it’s all about to be over has hit me like a sledgehammer to the head. Only with less blood.  

Nobody likes change, and much as I want to differ from the herd, I’m with them on this one. Don’t get me wrong, I am very much looking forward to my new job, with Pennine Care NHS Trust. It’s where I want to go, and it’ll be a new challenge and hopefully I can really make a difference.

But there’s a big difference between handing in your notice with a smile of satisfaction and an eight-week wind-down ahead of you, and the screaming cacophony of self-doubt that’s currently bouncing about my head ahead of next week’s fresh start. 

I’ve had two proper jobs in my life (councillor-ing aside). The first was rubbish. I was training to be an accountant, and found it contained the deadly duo of utter unfathomability and chronic tedium. I wasn’t cut out for it. And I was travelling from place to place, never knowing what the hell I was doing.  My current job’s different. I felt at home from day one. I have got on with my managers to a man (and woman) and for the last three years have been so deep within my comfort zone in terms of professional relationships that stress didn’t even cross the radar. But now I’m leaping away from the sleepy nest of reputation and routine I’ve built for myself, and into the unknown.  

In terms of Crap Jobs v Great Jobs, it’s 1-1 at the moment. Which side will the next job be on? By rights it should be a Great Job – the organisation is where I want to work, the sector is fascinating and the people I’ve met so far are lovely too. But it could be rubbish. 

What if I commit some unspeakable social faux pas on day one in the new job and never recover? Like stained trousers or a pen mark across my face? What if I just can’t do what I’m asked to do, and the job is simply beyond my capabilities? What if my manager and I don’t get on? Why can’t I stay in my comfort zone (with pay rises every year) forever? 

This morning, at my last one-to-one with my manager, we had fun reminiscing – a good laugh and a realisation that we’ve actually done some good work together. Next week the page will be blank. I’ll have all the impressing to do again, and I’ll be in meetings with people all of whom know each other and none of whom know me. What will they make of this strange new guy? Which are the good ones and which are the bad? Which ones are secretly sleeping with which others? I’ll have no idea at all… 

My current crop of colleagues are a decent bunch, and I think that at least some of them like me back. I’ve been very lucky indeed. There are a disproportionately high number of them who are genuinely lovely. One or two are absolute class acts whom I will miss dearly. The thought of working without them makes my heart pang with sadness, it really does. Because I’ll probably never see them again, and if I do then it’ll just be like bumping into any other old friend in the street – an awkwardly familiar set of dull questions and a growing feeling that you just want them to go away. Even if I do manage to stay in touch, it’ll never be the same again. 

I got a card yesterday from a lady who used to manage me. What was inside was just a heart-breaking message that made me want to rip up my notice and go and sit on the floor of her office running errands for her forever until one of us retired or died. Her and the others, I just don’t want to leave them behind! 

And yet the bonds we form with these people are odd, when I think about it. These are the guys we spend half our lives with, but never scratch beneath the surface of. The people we laugh and joke with, but say goodbye at the office door and leave to live their own real lives alone. And the folks we know so many snippets about that they can seem unfeasibly perfect, yet in reality we probably don’t know them at all. The guy who makes me laugh so hard at work that my back hurts might kick his cat down the stairs at night for all I know…  

All this doubt of course is based on nothing but my own lack of self-confidence and the distant possibility that I just might not get on with anyone I meet. But it’s gnawing away at me to such an extent that I don’t know if it’s that that’s causing the upset or the fact I’m leaving where I am now. Maybe it’s both, I suppose… 

Whichever it is, it’s happening. There’s nothing I can do about it. And when I stop wallowing in self-pity long enough to think about it, there’s a great new job starting on Monday, and all this’ll be forgotten in no time.

Either that or I’m unemployed and homeless.

Ah well…

Rick

Executive last night was about as riveting as any meeting can be when your bit is thirty seconds long and comes around after two hours of standing outside waiting. But there were lots of other, more important things to discuss, so I don’t begrudge it, and you can read a full report of what went on by visiting Cllr Tim Pickstone’s site here. 

What was lovely though was that a number of my Councillor colleagues saw me loitering outside and said congratulations on the recent “Politics Show” appearance, and the speech I made at the last full Council. These positive words were completely out of the blue and came from members of both of the other two political parties. It was extremely heartening and genuinely made me feel very lucky indeed to be part of a collection of people who can put political differences aside to be nice to one another.  

I was quite touched, truth be told. I have found my fellow members to be universally supportive to me as a junior member throughout the last seven months, so maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. But it was very pleasant all the same. 

Rick

Tonight I am presenting the report of the Alternative Service Delivery Working Group to Bury Council’s Executive. The Executive is the collective term for the Leader and the portfolio holders who effectively run Bury like the government runs the country.

It also includes the other two political group leaders, including the Lib Dem leader Cllr Tim Pickstone.

I am only involved for one item on the long agenda, and where precisely this item will be taken depends on the finishing times of another meeting involving another Councillor presenting with me. So I may be home early, or I may be home late… In either event I am missing “Neighbours”, which is just no good at all.

Aside to that, I am finishing my job tomorrow, so am desperately trying to get stuff finished to leave me with enough time to clear my desk, delete most of my emails, and hand work over. There really isn’t time for me to be telling people about it on this blog.

So I’ll stop.

Rick

Tonight is Prestwich Local Area Partnership (LAP), where you have the chance to grill the great and the good of Prestwich! Your local Councillors from all three wards will be there, as well as representatives from the other public service partners in the area, such as the police, fire service, NHS and education.

On the agenda tonight for the first part of the meeting are updates from the local youth manager, the community development and town centre development working groups, and the review of funding applications.

The second part of the meeting is the open forum where members of the public are welcome to raise issues of concern with members of the LAP in an open session. So if there’s something bugging you about the local community - if your street needs cleaning or there’s anti-social behaviour where you live, come down tonight and raise it with us.

The meeting will take place tonight from 18.30 at Sedgley Park Primary School at the junction of King’s Road and Bishop’s Road in Prestwich. The open forum starts at 19.45 but you can come for the first part too if you want.

Rick

I have learned today that the Stagecoach bus strike action planned for Tuesday & Thursday this week will not now take place.  At this time there is still possible action for Saturday and talks are continuing. This is good news and I hope that a satisfactory outcome will be found to stop the inevitable disruption that a strike will bring.

Rick

So, it turns out that I have a fat face, and now 200,000 viewers of BBC1’s “The Politics Show” are as painfully aware of it as I am. People keep telling me that the camera adds ten pounds, but this is both irrelevant and inaccurate, as I have checked my wallet several times since this morning’s interview and it is still as bare as it was before. So even that can’t comfort me.

I found out of course because today was the day that I was interviewed live about the leadership hustings. My thanks to the BBC for the positive coverage and the opportunity to give us the air time. And my thanks to the Lib Dem press office for picking me from amongst the many. I hope we didn’t disappoint!

In addition to the facial-flab revelation, another bizarre fact revealed to me during my behind-the-scenes look at BBC Manchester today is that the TV set in the green room is utterly unable to pick up a watchable signal. Which is not something you’d expect from the BBC!

The interview itself went OK as far as I remember. I haven’t seen it, and the fat face realisation came as a result of watching the pre-recorded Q&A session from yesterday. I didn’t swear or fall over, so I passed at least the most basic of tests. I was caught looking in completely the wrong direction at the very beginning, but this was only for half a second and I pray that the entire population of north-west England was blinking at that point and missed it.

We (Darren Reynolds, Jo Crotty and me) were asked about the leadership, and Jo came out for Nick Clegg whilst Darren confirmed his status as a Huhne-ite. I was the undecided one trying to put the case for them both, which isn’t hard given that they’d both make excellent leaders I’m sure. In the end I didn’t really have time to tell people why I’d come down on the side of Nick Clegg, but I can put that right now.

After yesterday’s hustings Nick was the clear winner for me. Not just because of policy, (he is as sure and intelligent and focused as Chris Huhne on this, and the differences between them, whilst there, aren’t insurmountable), but because of his passionate communication of these ideas to the people in the room. Both Nick and Chris are clearly hugely talented and knowledgeable, and as was mentioned yesterday, are two of a band of Lib Dem MPs who can give the other parties a serious run for their money.

But in this age of media-driven politics, rightly or wrongly, it is the amount of conviction and edge displayed to the wider world that will win elections. Nick Clegg seems acutely aware of it. And he is very good at it. I put it to him yesterday that we didn’t need someone to smoothly brush issues away (like Cameron) or blandly and earnestly plug at a forlorn message (as we’re sometimes accused of), and his answer that we should be bolshy and spikey was both convincing and expressed in exactly the terms I would use. We need to be bold, and we need to make our distinct message heard better.

Half the people in this country are liberals, but only 20% vote Lib Dem. This figure will rise whether Nick Clegg or Chris Huhne wins, but I think it will rise more with Nick in charge, taking the message not just to the 350 activists in the room yesterday, but to communities up and down the country put off by consensus politics and spin.

So that’s why I’m backing him. I hope he puts Chris Huhne front and centre of a meaty policy area, because if there’s one thing that came across about Chris more than anything yesterday it was his determination to do good with liberal ideas and to embed them firmly in everything that the party does.

But I was very lucky to see them both at close quarters, and whilst it wasn’t an easy decision at all, I have made up my mind and will be voting for Nick Clegg to lead us.

As for the interview today - well, Annabel Tiffin treated us very kindly I thought, and we all got a chance to say our piece. I will watch it later and go insane with hyper-critical self-analysis, but for now my only regret is that the texts from viewers were all a bit negative. In the past the BBC would probably have just made some good ones up to even the balance. Ah, the good old days…

Rick

Today I attended the hustings for party leadership at Manchester Town Hall, which was a feat given that last night was my leaving do from work, and I arrived home at approximately 3am. The feat was made doubly impressive (or risky, depending on your viewpoint) because I had been asked by the BBC to be part of a three-person team to interview Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne in private before the official hustings. Chronic tiredness and interviewing senior politicians don’t tend to mix. Thankfully Nick and Chris were both very engaging and it was a fantastic opportunity to hear at close quarters their vision for the party’s future.

A couple of other activists (Darren Reynolds from Burnley, and Jo Crotty the Parliamentary Candidate for Warrington South) joined me as the very select band of lucky people actually getting the opportunity to meet and talk with Nick and Chris beforehand. I was the “undecided” amongst the three, with the others already having declared their support for one or other of the candidates. And tomorrow we get to talk about what we thought, live on BBC1 (in the north west) at 12.30 on The Politics Show.

I will save my comments until then, suffice to say that it was great to see so many people at the hustings - hundreds of Lib Dem activists in a lovely room and some great debate. My only regret is that every crevice and mark on my exhausted face would have been picked up by the ever present TV cameras. An unfortunate date clash with the leaving do, but what can be done?

And if the general tone and style of this post lacks its usual panache, it’s because I am still shattered now. So I’m off to bed.

Rick

I take back what I said yesterday about secretly wanting England to lose. It was horrible. Awful stuff. It might be amusing to think back on in a few years when Jose Mourinho or Martin Jol or Fabio Capello or (and let’s face it, he’ll probably be given the job by the buffoons in Soho Square) Steve Bruce lead us to World Cup 2010. But right now the founders of football have been pipped to qualification by a team who managed to beat Andorra 1-0. And on a pitch like a farm track despite spending nearly a billion quid on the stadium.

Thankfully McLaren has gone now, paying the price for the type of tactical bewilderment that had every fan in the nation screaming at the TV in despair. But it’s small comfort.

5-4-1 has never, in any match in history, worked. Unfortunately the England manager, the coach in what is supposedly the biggest job in world football, considered it appropriate to consign the team to hoofing the ball and allowing Peter Crouch to head it down to a Croatian for the first half. Idiocy, plain and simple. And now I have to reconsider my plans for summer 2008.

Thankfully there are things going on in the ward that distract me from the tumbling stumble-monkeys wearing the Three Lions with something approaching nonchalance. And many of these were discussed at the Lib Dem Group meeting last night. Such as…

- The planned extension to Forest Bank prison. We are investigating these plans with colleagues in Salford to find out more, and will be working with residents and our two Councils to get involved in this decision.

- Butterstile Children’s Centre. Again, let me say that all the work we are doing on this is on behalf of the residetns of surrounding streets, and the children using the site. We remain as committed as ever to securing a Children’s Centre for the ward, but need to make sure it’s done properly so that the best outcome happens in the end. And part of that is the site visit from Planning, which has been rescheduled now from 18th December to 17th December.

- Retreat Fountain. The granite replacement to the glass white elephant is now more or less done. Although it’s not what we wanted, it’s better than nothing and at least we can say farewell to the scaffolding and barriers after far too long.

- Prestwich Local Area Partnership. The next meeting of the LAP will take place next week, on Tuesday 27th November at 18.30 at Sedgley Park Primary School (on Kings Road / Bishops Road). The open forum part of the meeting, where you have the opportunity to raise any local issue to your Councillors and our partners, is between 19.45 - 20.30, although the whole meeting is open to the public if you want.

We talked about lots more too, but my mind keeps wandering back to the moment Steve McLaren decided to complement a back four of Richards (toddler), Lescott (2 caps), Campbell (73 years old and slower than a NASA shuttle transporter) and Bridge (rubbish) with a goalkeeper who had never played a competitive international before. Was he on the phone to HMRC giving them parcel delivery tips at the same time?

Such blithering incompetence at the highest levels of international football makes me feel a hell of a lot better about myself.

Rick

I heard some great news today from the Council, and credit where credit’s due regardless of whether this is a decision made by an officer or a politician – serving members of the armed forces will now be able to use Council sports facilities free of charge.

The service is to honour the sacrifices made by our forces - and celebrate the town’s strong links with them. And there’s a chance that it could be extended to ex services-personnel too.

Members of the armed services face extraordinary risks for the good of our country and often don’t get the recognition they deserve. The current debate about the military covenant, military pensions, healthcare and kit proves that.

But this gesture goes a small way to repaying the huge debt of gratitude we owe these incredibly brave people, regardless of our views on the conflicts they serve in.

Bury has a proud tradition of being associated with the services. especially the Lancashire Fusiliers, and long may that association continue. By taking this step the Council is doing what it can to show its appreciation and admiration for their bravery, and its gratitude for what they do.

In my view, a great gesture and a way in which we can all say thank you for people who put their lives on the line for us.

Rick

Tonight’s delights are a meeting of the Lib Dem Council Group at 6pm, followed by the inevitable heart-pounding trauma of England v Croatia at 8pm.

As a party I imagine we’ll be talking about lots of the pertinent issues ahead of the next Council meeting in a couple of weeks, including Radcliffe Riverside School, and the Prestwich Children’s Centres. There have also been rumours lately of a planned extension to Forest Bank prison which borders the ward from Salford and already encroaches onto local parkland and other environmental sites of interest. So I reckon that’ll get a mention too. And there’s the next Focus to plan, and recent committee meetings to talk about.

But we’ll all be out by 8 to watch England creep over the qualification finish line and breathlessly pant their way to Euro 2008.

I can’t be the only fan in England to harbour a secret desire for us to lose tonight, surely? I mean, obviously winning and going to the Euros is great on paper, but in reality it means the miserable McLaren era will continue, and that next summer will be a compendium of atrocious performances culminating in a rolling-over against the likes of Belgium in the quarter finals. And frankly, short-term anger aside, I’d rather be on a nice summer holiday away from it all. After all, Greece won the last one, so it’s a mickey-mouse tournament now, right?

And, because I won the ticket lottery and get the chance to buy England tickets if we qualify, I will actually have to be there in person to witness the misery. Rather than going to bed and pulling the duvet over my head after England 0-1 Switzerland, I will have to get water-cannoned into submission in a Zurich square.

Although, second-choice Steve does get a thumbs up from me for his ridiculous team selection. Keeping the David Beckham “will he / won’t he get to 100 caps” saga continuing for another few weeks by inexplicably dropping him, and jettisoning any semblance of an experienced goalkeeper in favour of a child called Scott, a youth who’s club I genuinely can’t be sure of. At least if he’s going to go down, he’s providing us with some comedy along the way.

They say that a week is a long time in politics. Given that a week ago England were down and out, and now they’re almost qualified, I think the same is true of the football. I am a lot more sure about what outcome to expect from the group meeting than I am from the football, that’s for certain!

Rick

Last night the Planning Control Committee of Bury MBC decided to withhold its decision on the planned Butterstile Children’s Centre, and make a visit to the site on December 18th. It was a tight call, with a 5-5 split vote decided by the Chair’s casting vote. I’m glad the vote went the way it did because I think a number of the people voting against a site visit did so on the grounds of proper committee procedure rather than common sense. The fact that the question wasn’t raised at the proper time during the meeting shouldn’t be a good enough reason to stop local people having a fair hearing.

I think this is probably the most sensible decision for local people. We all want a Children’s Centre for the ward, but School Grove is a traffic and parking nightmare already, and a new Children’s Centre, no matter how well planned or small or anything else, will only make the situation worse.

Now local people will have the chance to show to Councillors on the Planning Committee exactly what we in the ward already know to be true - that the School Grove situation is an accident waiting to happen.

The final outcome of the application may be swayed more by the positives of a Children’s Centre than by the negatives of the traffic problems, but at least local people will have been granted the proper say that they’ve been denied so far.

Rick

Tonight it’s Planning, at 7pm in the Town Hall. The main issue from a St Mary’s ward point of view is the Butterstile Children’s Centre proposal. Whatever the decision, lessons have to be learned about consultation and planning timescales.

There hasn’t been adequate consultation, and relationships between Butterstile School, local residents and the Council may well be at an all time low.

We’re either going to get a Children’s Centre that’s deeply unpopular with local people, or no Children’s Centre at all. One outcome would be bad for residents of School Grove, the other terrible for the ward as a whole.

And now the time has passed so that the sensible solution, a Children’s Centre in Rainsough where there is the greatest need for both renovated buildings and children’s facilities, almost certainly can’t come to pass.

What a shame, caused by the government’s crazy timescales, the Council’s inadequate consultation, and a failure to work with our neighbour Authority to get the best for local people.

I will let you know how it goes.

Rick

I have today placed an offer to buy a house in the ward which is both lovely and ludicrously unaffordable. The offer was gleefully accepted by the current owner who, if you find a quiet spot, you will be able to hear cackling like a maniac and jangling with shiny coins as he runs to the bank.

The same bank, no doubt, which delights in charging me not only thrice the price of the house in interest over the next 25 years, but also a four figure “arrangement” fee for the mortgage, and then £300 on top as an “administration” fee whenever I decide to leave their care.

Over the next 2 years I will pay £31,000 to the bank, of which £23,000 will be interest.

It’s absolutely ridiculous, and unfortunately for a blog that depends on my verbosity to continue, I am genuinely lost for words.

And of course we have no alternative. If they asked me to empty out my pockets, stand on an upturned bucket and hum the French national anthem through a kazoo for the mortgage, I’d have to do it.

And yet such is the lure of home ownership that we claw and gouge and spit and scream our way to the front of the queue for this blatant daylight robbery with smiling acceptance, rather than the mass taking-to-the-streets-with-ceremonial-swords violent protests that any right-thinking society would instigate without delay.

Charlatans the lot of them, these bankers. All they have is lots of money that I don’t. And resultantly they have me in an inescapable financial death-hold. The alternative is to pay someone else’s mortgage in rent.

And the government’s HIPs seem to be an absolute joke. I still need a survey, at a cost of £500+, because apparently mortgage companies don’t trust them! So the seller has to get one, and the buyer has to get one too! Anyone involved in property purchasing is just signing away countless hundreds of pounds for nothing! We may as well hand over their bank details to the government and let them take care of it!

I might just post them my bank details now…

Rick

I’m not the first to say it, and I won’t be the last, but if the government manages to lose the personal data of fifteen million of us (yes, 15,000,000 of us) in one go by bunging it in an internal envelope and hoping for the best, it doesn’t bode well for the ID card scheme.

But for me it isn’t the simple incompetence that’s the problem (although it is staggering that anyone, in any job, can be that incompetent), it’s the fact that the government expect us to hand over an incredible amount of data for virtually everything, and then they and the people they pass it onto treat it with such incredible disrespect. There’s nothing we can do about it, and the knock-on effects of them thinking it their right to ask for everything is having a disturbing impact on lots of other areas of life.

This government’s constant demands for personal data, now required for everything from car tax to purchasing a TV, and obtained in the name of everything from fraud-prevention to national security, is just simply excessive and gnawing away at our rights as citizens of this nation not to divulge every last bit of information to anyone who asks.

It’s a culture that’s pervading everything now. I went to the post office the other day to buy some stamps, and couldn’t leave the kiosk without being asked by the cashier what credit cards I had, whether I wanted a personal loan, and whether I wanted a car insurance quote. Now I know she was trying to sell me stuff, but what possible world have we stumbled into where it is even marginally appropriate to ask me about that? It’s my business, thanks. If I want credit, insurance or a loan, I’ll ask you. Shut up and mind your own business.

Every single one of the estate agents I’ve visited in the last few days (and, heaven preserve me, there’ve been a lot) has subsequently rung me to ask if I wanted mortgage advice, and what my income is. Mind your own business! It had occurred to me that a mortgage would be required to purchase a house, and that my income would be a fair guide to the likely amounts involved. I am not a numb-skulled simpleton, and if I want to talk to someone about mortgages, I will do so. I don’t need your offer of “help,” because it is clearly nothing more than a manic info-grab based solely on a vicious hunt for my money, and I have no idea what you’re gonna do with the stuff I tell you. Apart from probably laugh.

It’s this casual nosiness, and the equally casual acceptance of that prying from every commercial enterprise under the sun, that is one of the many negative consequences of the current climate we’re living in – where personal data and information isn’t personal any more. It’s the preserve of anyone who asks for it, and we’re used to giving it to them. It’s the norm to expect us to share everything now. The girl at the post office and the guy at the estate agent could’ve done anything with that information. It’s mine, and you’re not having it.

And neither are the government. Although they, of course, don’t just ask for it. They demand it. ID cards, which will be compulsory under government proposals, are not only spectacularly expensive, but will require us to give biometric as well as physical private information to a government that plainly can’t be trusted.

I don’t want to, I won’t, and I shouldn’t have to. There should be limits to what we’re asked to provide, and at the moment they seem to have been clearly over-stepped.

And 15 million people have found out what the consequences are today.

 Rick

One good thing about moving house (assuming we manage to find somewhere and then complete on it in the next fortnight, which I concede might be pushing it) will be that the bombardment of mail that is this leadership contest will leave me alone and instead cascade onto whichever poor sap rents this place after me.

Today I received another missive in the post from Chris Huhne, which I shall add to the top of the teetering pile together with the ones I have received already from Nick Clegg. And it may all come tumbling down if I add to it the printed version of the manic whirring email-arama that seems to spew out an incessant stream of stuff about the leadership contest, most of it unofficial but an alarming amount of it from the candidates themselves.  

The internet is the source of much of the gossip and tittle-tattle swirling around the contest, and because serious websites make my head ache (there’s a reason that broadsheet newspapers aren’t back-lit), for me it is Facebook that is the supreme hot-bed of this needless shouting. It is where all the loud-voiced politicos in cyber-land come together to bray at the temple of the two-line internet vox pop.

This is probably the first major British party leadership contest to have taken place in the Facebook age. And it might be the last, given that the internet is moving so quickly. By the time David Cameron gets found out and removed sometime next year, Facebook may be a thing of the past, replaced with animated talking versions of ourselves linked directly to our brains and allowing us deep inside the thoughts of our ex-partners. Which, lets face it, is where most Facebook users really want to be.

But for now Facebook and the leadership contest is easy blog fodder, and so blog about it I shall. 

I typed in “Lib Dem Leader” into the search engine on there, and there are 29 groups dedicated to the subject of the leadership contest, including those advocating Samuel L Jackson as leader (3 members), “Big Russ” for leader (5 members), and me for leader (7 members, none of whom are me). Flattering sure, but to be honest Samuel L Jackson could whoop my ass, and I don’t like the sound of Big Russ much either.

The serious candidates have lots of groups all to themselves. There are over 800 members of one Nick Clegg for leader group, and 36 more in another one with the same name. There are 36 Cornish Lib Dems, and 46 Somerset Lib Dems, who want to align themselves with both their county and Nick Clegg. The South West is a hot bed of Cleggism, by the sounds of it.

Chris Huhne for leader has 136 members. “Chris Huhne this time” has 533 members. Unfortunately for Chris, “Chris Huhne last time, Nick Clegg this time” has 76 members, many of whom presumably forget that it wasn’t actually Chris Huhne last time, hence him standing again this time… Chris too has a geographical contingent, and this time it’s much more spread out, with the Welsh Lib Dems for Huhne conjuring up 23 supporters, and the Scots chucking 7 more onto the pile. “Yorkshire for Huhne” is a slight exaggeration given that only three people from the county appear to have heeded the call.

I am going to wait until the hustings to make up my mind, since it’s easy to click on a Facebook group and a lot harder to actually listen to some arguments and come up with a decision. But for now the Facebook-stakes is clearly going the way of Mr Clegg. Perhaps because he is younger, looks a bit more “street,” and probably appeals to Facebook types a bit more.

So if this leadership contest were a Facebook poll, Nick Clegg would have it. On this occasion I am thankful that it isn’t, although there are times I wish the clamour for more Facebook-democracy was a little louder. There is also a group entitled “If 1,000,000 members join this group I will become Prime Minister and abolish Council Tax.” It has 14 members.

Rick 

Last week I finally sold my “luxury” apartment, after trying to remove the gigantic millstone from around my neck for the better part of the last year.

Unfortunately that didn’t mark the end of my dalliances in the property market, as I had to go house-hunting over the weekend, stumbling from awful house to awful house thinking that I would have to consign myself to decades of back-breaking penury just to buy one of the crumbling and horrifically furnished shacks put before me.

To be fair, there were some nice ones. But the choice tended to be small-and-nice or big-and-yuck. And the new houses in particular appeared to have been developed with the car-less dwarf in mind.  

I had always been a comfortable distance away from the housing market horror that engulfs the nation at the moment until now. I had wandered past estate agent’s windows seeing increasingly lengthy price-tags with only a vacant shrug and a sigh. I had barely blinked when people lucky enough to have been born before the late 1970s told me how they’d bought their palatial residence for about thirteen pounds only to see it increase in value by forty-thousand times over the past five years.

But now has come the nasty business of actually having to purchase a house myself. And the depressing fact is that houses, even in the Manchester suburbs, are simply out of the reach of most young people.

If I lived alone, I could probably afford to live in a tiny city centre flat, or a bigger one out of town. But, having experienced these developments (and now that I haven’t got one of them to sell), let me say that they are genuinely horrific places to live. The rooms are tiny, the bathrooms don’t have windows, and the fixtures and fittings aren’t fixed or fitted with anything approaching adequacy. The communal areas are dumping grounds, the management companies act like third-world governments, and whilst brochures boast of “concierge services,” you’re more likely to get a guy with a big key-chain working 9-5, and screw you if anything breaks at the weekend.

And if you’re lucky enough to get a parking space, the car parks are patrolled by the biggest bunch of money-grabbing sharks the world has ever known. Where I had mine, a minor violation (such as the wrong space or incorrectly displayed permit) would result in clamping and a £350 fine. £350! To park outside your own flat!

Horrible, horrible things those flats are. And yet there’s millions of them! Manchester’s “Green Quarter,” which should be more accurately re-named “Flat Quarter,” is home to about 1,000 of these things in four or five brand new tower blocks. And they’re selling for hundreds of thousands of pounds! Who is buying them? And why oh why oh why?

Where are these people going to go when they have kids? Or spouses? Or more stuff than can fit in one room? Because I can’t see these flats, with their scuffed communal carpets and fading first-day grandeur, holding value.

We might be lucky. We have a bit of money saved and can probably put a deposit down on somewhere nice-ish. But I simply don’t know how single people my age, or people on lower incomes, or who live anywhere even moderately more pricy than Manchester, will ever afford a house without their parents helping or dying.

And it’s difficult to see how anything can change without causing more problems. If house prices in general come down, then anyone who’s bought recently suffers. If the market stagnates and we wait for wages to catch up, we’ll be waiting years and this whole generation will miss out on home-buying into their middle-age.

Shared-ownership is one idea, and I know people who’ve tried it out. But often there’s rent to be paid on the bit you don’t own, which makes repayment even more difficult. You pay a mortgage on 60% and then rent on the last 40%. And there are some home-buy schemes with slightly better terms - taking a separate loan out on a part of your home and only paying back that bit later on. They are good examples of mortgage lenders and housing associations working together with a good outcome at the end.

But these days so many young people fall into the trap of paying thousands to a management company or rental landlord rubbing his hands together, cackling wildly and flashing his gold tooth at you.

What about involving the housebuilders or the government themselves in non-rental shared ownership? Allowing first time buyers onto the ladder at virtually cost price, and then imposing a sell-on clause whereby the profit missed out on first time round (plus a bit more) is paid back when the house is sold?

So rather than a house costing £100k to build being sold for £150k, it’s sold for £110k, and when it’s sold on ten years later at full market value of, say £165k, the housebuilder gets all of the £40k it missed out on, plus 75% of the £15k profit? The young person has ten years of equity in his house, and the rest of the profit to re-invest.

I don’t know if this is practical, but it’s an idea and it means that young people get a foot on the ladder, whilst housebuilders keep an interest in the property as its value rises.

I am back on the hunt tonight. I wonder what I’ll find…

Rick

Great news for users of the Ring and Ride service today - there are going to be 19 new minibuses for this vital door-to-door service thanks to the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Authority. Bury’s two members of the GMPTA are both Lib Dems - Cllr Andrew Garner and me. We’re proud that from January next year, as well as making local trips, Bury’s Ring and Ride users will also be able to travel into neighbouring districts for the first time thanks to the new vehicles. 10 of the 19 new minibuses will replace older vehicles in Greater Manchester’s Ring & Ride fleet and the other nine new vehicles - one for each depot in Greater Manchester - will run the new cross-boundary services.

Ring & Ride provides an essential transport service for people of all ages who find it difficult to use ordinary public transport.

It is extremely popular and up until now there just haven’t been enough vehicles to provide many journeys outside Bury. We know that passengers often want to travel a bit further afield and I’m delighted that, thanks to the extra minibuses and their new drivers, they will now be able to do so.

We want people to use public transport as much as possible and by investing in important local services like Ring & Ride we are giving everyone the opportunity to do that. 

A consultation with members of the public and Ring & Ride passengers last year showed that users were keen to see any money raised through fares reinvested in new vehicles to increase the capacity of the service. Passengers must register their details before they travel by calling the Bury depot on 0161 764 1999. The standard fare is £1 per trip or 50p for GMPTE permit holders.

Rick

This week saw the Annual General Meeting of Bury Lib Dems, which took place at Elton Liberal Club and saw me elected Secretary of the local party. It was lovely to meet up with members I don’t see very often, as well as the familiar faces who I see rather too often… The new Executive Committee of the party has a big job keeping the momentum going over the next twelve months, especially since I failed in my first secretarial duty of recording the minutes of the AGM by completely forgetting to record my predecessor’s annual report. Never mind…

This weekend sees more Focus delivery, as well as me continuing my hunt for a new house in the ward. We recently sold our flat against the backdrop of the impending collapse of the housing market. I think this was quite an achievement, and certainly saved what little was left of my sanity after eleven months of trying to flog it whilst newspapers screamed about imploding property prices each and every day. So this weekend we are gleefully rushing around trying to re-invest in the very same teetering market by viewing about a dozen Prestwich pads.

Maybe by Monday I’ll have found my dream house. And to think, it will only take 25 years of hard slog to pay the bank twice the asking price in interest.

Oh what a joy it is to be alive.

Rick

Local people will have their chance to put their case to the Planning committee over the proposed Children’s Centre at Butterstile School next Tuesday, and I have been asked to speak on their behalf.

This is a repeated item on the agenda because last time a lot of residents were unaware of their right to make representations, and so didn’t. Now the Council has consulted more widely and I can give across the views of local people very concerned about the increases in traffic on School Grove, and the increased danger to school children caused because of it.

I think everyone is united in their desire for a Children’s Centre in St Mary’s ward. I think the planning process has been seriously flawed, and now time is running out to get the money committed without us risking losing it. I am still of the view that a better site for the entire thing would’ve been in Rainsough, and we need to make sure that at the very least a substantial outreach centre is sited there, preferably in the shops at Chapel Road. But we are where we are, and whilst I’ll continue to push for this, if it has to be at the school then we nee to mitigate the potential problems with things like residents-only parking, no stopping in the turning-zone on School Grove, and enforcement.

These are the types of things I’ll be asking for on Tuesday. And remember that the meeting is public so you can come along as well.

Rick

This evening is a meeting of the Performance and Resources scrutiny commission - the last of the calendar year and the final one of four in eight weeks. And tonight is important for me personally because I am presenting to the Commission the findings of the sub-group on alternative service delivery models.

As exciting as that sounds, I will try to keep the audience’s rapture to a controllable level and present the findings accurately. It is certain-to be an interesting debate because officers and Members don’t agree on everything here, which means potentially tough decisions to be made.

Rick

Observant readers will have noticed that commentary on the Lib Dem leadership race on this blog has so far amounted to absolutely nothing. This is for a number of reasons.

First, I reckon it’s pretty boring for people who aren’t Lib Dems. A battle between two people who appear more or less the same, arguing quite nicely about stuff. Obviously I don’t think it’s boring in the slightest, nor do I think that Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg are the same. But I want this blog to be read by normal people, and normal people don’t really care who wins, as long as somebody does and then gets on with the job.

Second, I think that talking about competitions between Lib Dems necessarily means talking about things that divide the party. Which is a silly thing to do on a Lib Dem blog.

Third, any hardened Lib Dem types who stumble upon this blog will know more about the leadership race than me, so if I attempt some big-shot head-to-head comparison they will snigger at my ignorance and get their lucid analysis elsewhere.

And fourth, I really didn’t have anything of substance to say on it… until today.

Because today I received half a dozen postcards from the Nick Clegg campaign in an envelope, which was hugely exciting. Not only has this presented me with photos of Nick Clegg in a variety of poses, but as a fairly avid postcard writer it’s also saved me a trip to Paperchase to buy some more. Marvellous!

I love postcards. In these days of emails and texts, nobody writes anything any more. I can’t remember the last time I received a hand-written letter, and I imagine I get more personal correspondence than most given my role as Councillor. I think it’s a shame. All this instant communication isn’t just generated in seconds, it’s lost almost as quickly as it’s read. My mum kept her love letters from my dad long after the marriage itself had ended in the type of divorce that left me desperate and clingy for five years and leaves me baffled by human relationships to this day. But what do young romantics have these days? 160 characters on a Nokia screen, that’s what. Nothing to show your children and get weepy eyed over.

So I resolved to make the world a more letter-friendly place a while ago, and started sending postcards to people. I never get any back really, which is a mixture of my own deep unpopularity and my friends’ shocking laziness. But I know that most of the ones I send are kept by the people who receive them. and I like to think that in thirty or forty years, something I’ve created will still exist and might make them smile as they remember their bizarre Luddite friend. Which is more than can be said for the emails and texts I send.

So, since I haven’t been to the hustings yet, and since I’ve never met either Nick or Chris, I have nothing special to judge the candidates on other than the fact that Nick Clegg’s team seems to share my liking for the good old Royal Mail and the simple joy of writing things on cards and sending them to people.

For that alone, Nick Clegg has gone into a marginal lead.

Rick

Tonight is the Annual General Meeting of Bury Liberal Democrats, taking place from 7pm at Elton Liberal club. All members of the local party are welcome, as is anyone else who would like to join.

Tonight marks the end of my year as Membership Secretary. The year has seen our membership continue to rise, and it is more or less double what it was not much more than 12 months ago. Bury Lib Dems are a party on the up. Two more Councillors this year, and hopefully more to come in 2008. More successful campaigns, more successes locally for the people who have elected us. And a bright year ahead with the new Executive who will be elected tonight.

Their responsibility is a tough one – to develop the party to support and challenge the Councillors, develop the Membership and keep the party moving forward. But the core of our local party is strong and dedicated. And we’ll keep on achieving. And with your help we can achieve more. If you want to help us locally or join the Lib Dems just get in touch or use the links on the right. We are always looking for new Members and helpers, and it’s the only way we can bring Lib Dem policies and ideas to Bury.

Tonight is the night where the party gets its annual boost and a new team for the year to come. Its new faces to keep the progress going. And you can be part of it if you want. Just get in touch and join us making Bury better.

Rick

I was staring vacantly out of my office window this morning, wondering whether five days of desk-based tedium could be topped by five minutes of close contact with a white hot shard of flaming metal direct to my temporal lobe, when I saw a plane coming in to land at the airport, and it jolted me into realizing that maybe the world and everything in it isn’t so skull-crackingly horrific after all.

Just floating there in the sky. Looking like it was barely moving. A flying machine taking people places! Just 200 years since we all worked in fields with oxen pulling ploughs! A giant whirring mass of engineering and technology, actually doing what it is supposed to do, and not spluttering to a reason-less halt and being hurled at the wall in frustration like so much else these days.

I knew that the plane was moving of course, because it didn’t plummet to the ground in a ball of fire and burning kerosene. But it looked so graceful up there. A gorgeous gliding bird of human endeavour. A massive testament to all we’ve achieved and all we can do in the future. How the hell does a 300 tonne winged tube of metal get anywhere near moving at all, let alone doing so 35,000 feet in the air with not a string in sight?

Hundreds of people moving at hundreds of miles per hour. And I just thought about what an incredible age we’re all alive in. These are the days of miracle and wonder – a man on that speeding aeroplane making a call on his mobile phone to a man on another aeroplane on the other side of the world. Man alive… And those little cars at the airport with the steps on them! Amazing! Steps! On Wheels!

I know that planes pollute the skies and that every third person in economy has developed an airborne lung infection or a thrombosis by the end of the flight, but we’re working on fixing that. Just savour the good stuff for the moment. You can get to Spain for the summer if you want, without voyaging on the high seas or taking a fortnight in a carriage. And all you have to fear is losing your suitcase and getting Chlamydia.

And the good stuff doesn’t end there either. The Leader of the Bury Lib Dem council group has just bagged himself an iPhone, and was showing it to us yesterday. An iPhone. A piece of kit so sensationally futuristic it may as well come with light sabers and teleportation portals. It’s a piece of hand-held magic that, if you think about it, well… you can’t actually think about it because it does things that are way beyond the wit of most normal human beings. If it’d been brought up in a Star Trek script-writers meeting it may well have been laughed out of the room.

All you have to do is touch the screen and it does things. And not just random things. Things you tell it to do. Music, emails, the internet, a phone. All in one. And more stuff I don’t even know about! There’s a thing it does whereby if a photo is taken sideways, all you have to do is waggle the iPhone around in your hand and it automatically switches the photo the right way round. The most pointless piece of brilliance I’ve ever seen. And yeah, most of it is blatantly not required by anyone except the most bone-drillingly obnoxious gizmo geek, but normal people can have great fun with it too, and you’re never gonna be bored if you own one, are you?

This time of iPhones and jumbo planes is just an amazing time to be alive. And to think, at the rate we’re going now, my kids will probably look upon the iPhone with a mixture of open contempt and the type of sneering superiority we currently reserve for the whirring clockwork innards of the Sinclair Spectrum. In thirty years they’ll probably be able to destroy all of the world’s iPhones in one go simply using the harnessed power of thought. Or, as it will then be known, iBrain.

So next time the world brings you close to leaping head-first from a cliff-top into the pleasurable sanctity of the abyss, remember how lucky we are to be alive at the moment. It’s a strange thought, but needless poncy Apple gadgetry and airborne sardine-tin climate-changers have brought a smile to my face this morning. No mean feat.

Rick

One of the most remarkable books I have read in recent years is called The Last Post by Max Arthur. It is simply a collection of interviews with the final World War One veterans still surviving. Fourteen in total, although several passed away before publication of the book, and now only five remain. There is no analysis. No critique of their views, or detached reflection. Just the few who were there telling the stories as they remember them. I urge as many of you as possible to read this book.

The BBC have done something similar now, interviewing all five remaining WWI veterans, and you can see short excerpts of the interviews here. I am not ashamed to say that they brought tears to my eyes.

On a day like today it is even more poignant than usual to reflect on the quiet dignity of these last few old men who experienced a terror which I solemnly hope nobody ever has to experience again in the future.

Rick

Remembrance Sunday is a solemn occasion. And rightly so. I genuinely think that it is the most important thing I do in the year as a Councillor, and I take the responsibilities of representing local people and keeping fresh the memory of military sacrifice extremely seriously.

Unfortunately I am also, much of the time, unable to partake in any kind of social activity without worrying that I am doing something unforgivably terrible and so out of kilter with how normal people act that on-lookers are quite simply gawping in horror at my ineptitude. Which is another emotion to have affected me today.

Last year at this time I managed to forget to swap my photo-chromatic glasses over for normal ones, so laid a wreath in what appeared to be sunglasses on a cold November morning, which was something that I can only assume appeared grossly disrespectful. I didn’t even realise it at the time, as the wearer of the glasses can’t really tell. It was only afterwards when people asked me if I had sight problems that I realised I had attended Remembrance Sunday dressed as a third-rate Stevie Wonder impersonator. I was genuinely upset. And I consigned the glasses to the bin.

This year again there were social hurdles a-plenty causing me no end of inner angst. First off there is the business of marching. Many years ago I was part of a youth group that attempted to march places on occasion, and I was often gently ridiculed by my father for having absolutely no skill in this area. I assumed that once old enough to leave the group I need never trouble myself with marching again. Unfortunately this was not correct, as this morning proved.

I have never been the most well coordinated of people. I tried to learn to swim once, but couldn’t make my arms and legs do what was required of them and so was reduced to wading across the shallow end and cancelling any future water-based short breaks. Marching presents me with the same difficulties, as the discipline of putting one arm forward at the same time as the opposite leg, in time to music, is simply not within my range of capabilities. I wonder if there is some kind of government grant available for people like me…?

Thankfully, the other Councillors seemed equally as inept. And the situation isn’t helped by having to carry a wreath. The cadets and veterans put us to shame though, as they march in perfect time next to the bedraggled shufflers like me.

The laying of the wreath itself also didn’t pass entirely without panic. I don’t like everyone looking at me at the same time. One of my recurring nightmares sees me at my own wedding, dissolving into fits of nervous giggles because everyone who matters to me in the whole world is staring at me simultaneously, in silence. Forget worrying about the suits or the venue or whether or not I’ll end up resenting the girl concerned with every sinew of my soul thirty years and a few shattered dreams and ungrateful kids later - the real nightmare of my future marriage is just that everyone’s looking at me.

And eating a £50 a head meal at my expense, of course.

But, as a public figure (and I appreciate that I am a “Scottish League Division 3″public figure, but a public figure just the same, on days like today) I will put up with people’s eyes on me if the situation calls. Which is fine, if I know what I’m doing. Which obviously, because I’m me, I don’t.

I was sixth to lay the wreath. Cllr Vic D’Albert went first on behalf of The Mayor. Then one was placed on behalf of the Legion. Then Ivan Lewis MP. Then Cllr Michelle Wiseman on behalf of the Conservative Party. The Cllr Andrew Garner on behalf of the people of Holyrood Ward. And then me.

Now bear in mind that, of all the things I do in the year, if there’s one I want to pass without a hitch, it’s this one. I don’t mind offending the odd opposition politician, but I am not offending old soldiers. I thought I’d just follow what the others did before me, and what could go wrong?

Unfortunately by the time five wreaths had been laid, room at the front of the memorial had gone, and so I had a dilemma. Do I stack mine on top, or wander round to the side of the memorial and put it there? I thought I’d do the latter, which of course extended the “all eyes on me” time by a few heart-thumping seconds as I moved round the memorial and back again. Even though the whole clambering around manoeuvre took no more than about three seconds, it felt longer than the entire year to date, and my brain played an echoing loop of people screaming “what is the idiot boy doing?!?!” in my head throughout.

After pausing and paying my respects at the front of the memorial, I had to retreat back to where I’d started. But of course I couldn’t because the way had to be clear for the people behind. The wreath-layers previous to me had all assembled to my right, but there was room to my left and, giddy with the fact that I had lain a wreath without tripping over my own shoelaces in front of half the town, I decided to break with convention and move to where nobody had moved before.

I thought my nod towards post-wreath symmetry would be appreciated, but unfortunately the wreath-layer after me went to stand with the others, leaving me still alone, now with a five-to-one differential. Was my side reserved for somebody? Had I unintentionally offended all of Prestwich by standing on the sacred side given over only to serving soldiers and those in mourning? Why was I alone? Why? Oh God…

Thankfully I was joined shortly afterwards by Sgt Campbell who had lain the Police wreath, and there the pair of us stood until the end, faintly unsure of ourselves, as others piled over onto the other side with such gusto that I thought the ground might sink.

My worries of course are simply light-hearted. Today was a wonderful coming together of our community, and even if every eye in Manchester was peering at me through a giant magnifying glass, the honour of representing St Mary’s on such an important day would be worth it. Our brave old soldiers, and those still serving today are the heroes of our nation and deserve to be commemorated by us all.

If it wasn’t for them, I’d have bigger worries than wearing sunglasses and tripping over my shoelaces. We owe them an incalculable debt. And I remember them on more than just today because they fought to save the country and all that it stands for. And it is my job in serving you to live up to that legacy.

Rick

This morning I attended the annual Prestwich Remembrance Day service, this year held at the newly built Heaton Park Congregational Church. Father Croft led the service with his usual gusto, entertaining the adults and children and conveying the important and timely mesage that peace can only come about through selflessness sharing and trust.

It was lovely to see  so many people there representing a variety of organisations. Councillors from all political parties, our MP, representatives of the armed forces, cadets, Scouts, Guides, Brownies, St John Ambulance and others all coming together to remember the fallen and the brave men and women who have given so much for the country.

I was very proud and humbled to lay a wreath of remembrance on behalf of the people of St Mary’s ward to honour their sacrifice. And, as the message on the wreath said, and as all those young and old who had gathered in quiet contemplation proved, we remember them.

Rick

This weekend is of course Remembrance weekend, and I have the privilege of joining the parade on Sunday from the church to the war memorial to lay a wreath on behalf of the people of our ward. Last year I joined the parade as well to lay a wreath for St Mary’s Lib Dems, and it was a genuine honour to join the other local people in remembering the incredible sacrifice of those who have fought for our country.

It was brilliant to see so many young people join the parade and stand to remember, and of course this year I hope for even more. Everyone will have the opportunity to fall silent and remember at 11.00 on Sunday morning, but if you would like to join us then we will be at the war memorial at the junction of Rectory Lane and St Mary’s Road in front of PADOS House.

This is one of the times in the year when political differences are cast aside, and we all come together to remember a higher cause, and one without which all of our political arguments would be meaningless. I take the responsibility of continuing to uphold this vital tradition of paying our respects very seriously. And as a relatively young Councillor I am keenly aware of the need for people of my generation to realise the sacrifice of generations past.

So I will be there on Sunday morning, and I hope as many local people as possible join us in showing our gratitude to the fallen and our thanks to those who fought to protect our way of life and extend freedom around the world.

Rick

Today I have been chasing up a lot of issues on behalf of residents.

I have been in touch with the company developing Tulle Court to ask them whether or not they are going to renovate the unadopted road next to the development.

I have added some trees which are in need of pruning on Church Drive to the list which the Council has to prune back. Unfortunately this list is so long that the trees may well grow into mighty specimens, entirely overwhelm the district, and then die of their own accord before they are pruned back. But we can but try, and keep the pressure on.

I have also had some good news this morning about the road markings at the corner of Butterstile Lane and Bury New Road, which have faded to such a degree that I fear that soon locals may begin to see apparitions of the faces of deities in the road surface. Regardless of this development, it is dangerous at the moment, especially at night and in the rain.

I have also raised issues about brown bins today. The brown ones are for garden waste, and like the blue ones last year, coverage across Bury seems patchy at best. We should be encouraging recycling by providing adequate facilities for everyone, not just some people.

Rick

In light of the recent furore regarding the dodgy fireworks container selling fireworks from the street, I have today written to the Chief Fire Officer for Greater Manchester asking whether he was aware that fire service licences had been issued. And if he was, I have asked whether he has any answers to resident concerns over these sales.

I will give an update when I get a response.

Rick

Last night I was invited to be the guest of the new Croma restaurant which has opened in The Radius building. And Tam and I enjoyed a lovely meal. In true A A Gill style, I forget what we had to start with exactly. Something to do with aubergines in my case. It was delicious though, I remember that. The pizzas and desserts were also up to the usual standard, but what really struck me was the decor of the place and the fact that it will definitely attract the types of people perhaps under-served in Prestwich until now.

Funky seating and lighting, modern interior design and interesting art on the walls upstairs, as well as high quality and good value food, mean that the types of young professional people more likely to find home in Didsbury or Chorlton might be tempted into Prestwich for an evening instead. And Prestwich, with its enticing mix of proximity to Manchester, greenery, affordable housing and excellent transport connections, will start to become desirable for more people to live in as opposed to just visiting.

 With plans for the renovation of the Longfield Centre in the pipeline, it looks like bright times ahead for Prestwich.

Rick

Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive (GMPTE) has announced plans to introduce changes to Metrolink fares from Sunday 18 November.
 
Single and return fares will rise by an average of 5.7%, but season tickets will be frozen at their current prices until 1 February 2008. There will be no increase in child fares and some family tickets will be reduced.  

The increases will do little to tempt people out of their cars. On the odd journeys where there might be a choice between the car and the tram, the tram will now be more expensive than it was. 

GMPTE claim that fares will be re-invested in services, but as an occasional user of the system I have to say that significant improvements are required.

I don’t have to commute into town for work, so only get the tram for nights out and at weekends. And it’s extremely expensive, dirty, unreliable, and dangerous. And it stops way too early on the weekend evenings. 

Compare Metrolink to the London Underground. There, Oyster cards make fares cheap for even occasional users cheaper. The trains run into the early hours and there is real time information as to the next one. There’s always help at the stations too. Here, paper tickets dispensed by temperamental ticket machines emerge into filthy and unmanned stations for trams which arrive when they feel like it, populated by unwatched feral youths prowling and growling their way through the carriages, screaming and swearing.

And many’s the time that three go the other way before one turns up in the direction you want to go in. 

Until Metrolink uses its stupendously high fares to markedly improve quality and safety, or cuts the fares in half, we aren’t going to tempt people to use the system more.

How can anyone claim that fares are fair when a return Met ticket from Bury to Manchester at peak time will now cost a fiver, which is the same as from Zone 4 to Zone 1 on the Underground with an Oyster?! The weekly fares may be slightly cheaper on the Met than the Underground, but the service in London is incomparably better.

What these fare changes do is entrench the position of those poor saps who have to use the system (I know lots of them, and very few enjoy the experience) without making the prospect more appealing for those who don’t. Which will do nothing to alleviate congestion. 

I know that the track has been improved, but this is the only thing that’s got better. Once again the passengers have to pay in advance for future improvements. 9 new trams are promised, but they come after the fares have gone up. A bit like the muddled congestion charge plans which have us paying in the car with no suitable alternative yet in place!

However, there is some good news amongst the bad. There are some really good fare changes too, especially for families. The new weekend family ticket will be reduced by £1 to £5 for a one-day pass and by £3 to £7 for a two-day pass. The ticket can be used by up to two adults who are accompanied by one to three children. And child fares don’t rise either. It’s still a long way from London, where they travel for free. But it’s a start at least. 

Rick

Further to yesterday’s news about the fireworks shack plonked on the road by St Mary’s Park, I have heard back from Trading Standards, and the news is not good.Their role is only to make sure the fireworks are made to the required standard (which apparently they are in this case) and that they are not sold to under 18s.

According to Trading Standards, if I were to acquire the same storage licence this fella appears to have, I could flog the fireworks from my front room and there’d be nothing that they could do to stop me. Which is bizarre.

It looks unlikely that we can do anything to stop this guy this year (by the time the bureaucratic wheels of action have creaked into motion he’ll be long gone), but we need to make sure that he isn’t back next year. I am going to see if I can raise this issue at the next Prestwich Local Area Partnership.

Either that or go into the quasi-legal firework-selling industry of course…

Rick

The Liberal Democrats have chosen local woman Mary D’Albert as the Lib Dem Focus Team candidate for St Mary’s ward for the 2008 local elections. Mary lives in the ward on Prestwich Park Road South, and is a long-standing and active party member.

Mary has said how delighted she is to have been chosen as the candidate, and how excited she is at getting stuck in to some of the local issues. You can read more about Mary in the new edition of St Mary’s Focus, which is being delivered across the ward in the coming weeks.

After Cllr Donal O’Hanlon’s victory in 2006, and my victory this year, it would be fantastic to make it a hat-trick of wins for the Lib Dems in St Mary’s by helping Mary to victory in May.

The winner of the election will join Donal and me as your three local Councillors, because all Councillors are elected for a four year term, meaning Donal is up for re-election in 2010, and I am in 2011.

I have known Mary personally for a number of years and I know that if elected she will be an excellent and hard-working local Councillor. And she is here with Donal and I to help with any issues you may have, right from now. So welcome aboard Mary!

Rick

Walking outside at this time of year is often quite surreal. For most of the English winter, a dry, cold evening is a time for venturing forth hearing only the crispy leaves and seeing only your breath in the freezing air.

But for the first week in November there is a Kate Adie war report soundtrack and an apocalypse-mist foggy backdrop added to the mix, as hundreds of tonnes of grade-A ordnance is blown up in gardens nationwide for bonfire night.

It is a depressing but winnable bet that most of the people blowing up their fireworks have little knowledge of why precisely they’re doing it. And I’ll make that bet a double-header by wagering that more people create explosions in honour of the failure to blow up Parliament than actually vote in elections these days. But I have neither the time nor the inclination to think about who’s to blame for that.

What I do know is that stepping outside now looks and sounds like I am momentarily leaving the safety of Prestwich for the streets of a war-zone somewhere. It’s very bizarre. But comforting in a very English way. I may well be running scared of the faint but scary possibility of feral hooded BMX-ers lobbing lit roman-candles my way, but at least I know I’m home.

It has been brought to my attention that someone has dumped a cargo container on the corner of Bury New Road and St Ann’s Road and is flogging fireworks from within. I have alerted the Police, and both the Police and I paid the container a visit on Friday. The proprietors claim to have both the fire service licence to store fireworks, and the trading standards licence to sell them. And, according to the Police, they can prove the first of these claims. So the Police can’t shut them down.

I have left an urgent message with Trading Standards (who are closed at weekends) to verify whether or not they are legally trading. If they are, I would very much like to know why Trading Standards thought it a wise idea to allow them to start peddling explosives from a street corner in my ward out of the side of a cargo container dumped on a pavement. What next? Arms dealing from a portakabin in the park? At a time when we are all trying to make Bonfire Night as safe as possible, I am far from comfortable seeing fireworks sold from a place that looks like it’s run by Del Boy Trotter.

And of course, if they are trading illegally, I have asked that the Trading Standards staff head down there with the Police in tow on Monday morning and not only shut the operation down, but arrest and punish those selling the fireworks. We cannot have dangerous fireworks being sold illegally anywhere, and I won’t allow it here.

The container and its cargo will be gone by Tuesday of course. But even if nothing can be done in time, we need to make sure that this isn’t repeated next year.

Rick

Like a trumpeting marketing man from the Ford Motor Company, it is my joyous duty to inform you that the new Focus has hit the streets.

Unlike said man from Ford, my Focus is less a mid-range saloon car, and more a community newsletter. And whilst the car comes with a range of engine sizes and trim levels and arrives on the back of a transporter, the newsletter comes in one trim level (orange with black and white photos) has no engine, and gets delivered by hand through your door.

The latest issue has more on Philips Park, Lib Dem proposals for free kids’ public transport, and updates on recycling and the Bury New Road cemetery. There’s also stuff on new bins on Butterstile Lane, street lights and traffic lights mended, and a report on the Sherbourne Court clean up day.

Plus of course there are delightful photos of Donal and I. If you like that sort of thing.

So look out for your’s which will be arriving soon.

Rick

Local people are being asked to give their views on the future of Philips Park, after plans for renovation works were revealed by the Council. Options include bidding for heritage lottery funds to renovate the buildings and make substantial improvements to the park.

I think that Philips Park is one of Bury’s great parks, and I am proud that it’s in this ward. Now we need to know local people’s views on improving the park. For too long buildings like the Orangery have not been kept in the best condition or made best use of. Now we have the chance for some big changes.

If you have thoughts on what you’d like to see done to Philips Park, do get in touch with me using the details on the right hand side of this page, or reply using the slips on the back of your latest Focus newsletter.

Rick

An exciting new feature was added to the blog recently, so now I can see how many hits I get. I had imagined it was about three per day, with two of them being me and the other being someone like my mum. It turns out though that I am getting loads, which is brilliant. In fact, so far in November I have 1,337 unique visits, as well as 4,711 for the last bit of October when the hit-counter was installed.

Now, I know that if I visit every day for a month this counts as 30 visits, not one visit. But even if every one of those 6,000 people visited every single day, that’s still 200 readers. And I have no idea who any of them are!

So please do get in touch! The point of this blog is to get us in touch with one another to talk about the issues in St Mary’s ward, Prestwich and the wider world. So, whilst the technical people work on a “comments” function for this site, please email me and get in touch! I’d be delighted to hear from anyone, even if it’s just to say “hello.” And if you’ve got a question or something to discuss, all the better.

It’s very heartening to have had 6,000 hits in a few weeks, but I need to know who you all are so that I can better represent you. And after all, that’s the point of everything I write in the long run! Your ideas will help me serve St Mary’s better, help the blog get better, and do what it is that I wanted to do in the first place - talk with people about how to make things better.

So please do get in touch.

And, in the spirit of a web page devoted to the minutiae of my life, I will of course keep you updated with the hits figures as they get updated!

Rick

Last night was my debut speech to Council, proposing an amendment which called upon the government to extend the concessionary travel scheme and give free bus travel to school children, as well as to extend the yellow school bus scheme to every school in England. Below is a transcript of my speech, minus a few last minute amendments scribbled as the debate went on…

In proposing this amendment Mr Mayor, I would like to tell Council the story of Arthur Pennington, a resident of my ward who is 82 years old.  

Arthur visits his family in Burnley fairly often, and he likes to take the bus.  

He gets the X43 which goes from Manchester, through Prestwich and out northwards into Lancashire.  

And at the moment, Arthur travels for free. 

Except that, when the bus gets to the border of the Borough of Bury, Arthur has to get off, watch the bus drive away in the direction he wants to go, and wait for the next one to come so he can pay to be taken the rest of the way. 

The bus companies aren’t allowed to take him any further than the border, even though they’re going in the same direction.  

Some nice drivers let him get off and then straight back on again. But lots don’t. 

Now, I don’t think there’s anyone in this room tonight who doesn’t think that’s ridiculous. 

Arthur doesn’t begrudge paying.  

He objects to the silly situation of getting free local transport, then having to wait in the cold at a bus-stop far away because a very sensible policy has been implemented in a not very sensible way. 

But now, because of the government, his problem will go away.  

And I think we should thank them for that.  

Now Arthur, and every other over-60 in the country, can travel far and wide for free on buses.  It’s a marvellous idea, for lots of reasons.

And Arthur’s happy. 

But contrast Arthur with the many local people in my ward who have to go to school every day.  

They don’t travel for free.  

They pay 70p every time they board a bus. 

70p up from 50p last year, and up and up and up in recent years.

Trebling since I was at school in the 1990s. 

70p every time they board a bus. And for some of them that’s four times a day.  Two to get to school, and two to get back.  

That’s £2.80 a day, or £560 to get to school and back every school day for a year.  

So, a family with two secondary school aged children are paying well over £1,000 a year just to send their children to school.  

The same money as a summer holiday.  

The same money as a family day out at a museum or country house every weekend for a year. 

Much more than the cost of a school uniform. 

More than the cost of school dinners. 

The government should do something about that. 

And we’re calling on the government to give to our young people free travel, just as it is giving our old people. 

Mr Mayor, Councillors on all sides of this chamber agree that the 70p fare is too high.  

I know this because I was recently lucky to be chosen to take part in the presciently titled competition “I’m a Councillor, Get Me Out Of Here,” and was grilled by the youngsters of this Borough.  

And so were five of my colleagues here tonight. And we were all asked about the 70p fare. 

Councillor Connelly said “I think that people under 16 should travel free on the bus.”

Councillor Cresswell said “I would like to see free transport for all young students.” 

I agree with them both. And I said so in the competition. And the young people of the Borough will doubtless be cheered by the tri-partisan show of unity which we can display on this issue.  

Well Mr Mayor, us Councillors can’t get out of here now, so will they join me in asking the government to give us what we all want? 

Young people have no choice.  

They have no access to private transport of their own to rival the buses.  

They have no income, so have to rely on their parents. 

And obviously, the parents hit the hardest are the ones who have the least. Our young people need to get to school, and they need to do so on the bus.  S

o we shouldn’t be charging them £560 a year to do it. 

But it’s about more than getting to and from school. 

It’s about opening up social and leisure and cultural opportunities for young people to enjoy on public transport. 

It’s about providing added opportunity without added financial burden.  

It’s about instilling in our young people a lifelong appreciation for public transport as a sensible alternative to the car. The cleanest, greenest, safest choice.  

And the only way to get them to do this is by getting more of them on the buses for free from now.  

Of course it would cost money. I know that. 

I may have been elected at the last election, but I didn’t come down in the last shower. 

It’s about priorities.  

It’s about making the choice and teaching our children that public transport is the best way to travel.  

And choosing that we should spend the money where it needs to be spent. 

Because where there is a need, that money should be found.  

And there is a need. And that money should be found. 

It has been found in London. There, 385,000 young people of school age benefit from free travel. And the poorest benefit the most. 

385,000 young people. 

That’s nearly twice the population of our entire Borough. 

Think of the difference that makes.  

In London they made efficiencies with smart cards. Just the type of smart cards that will soon be appearing on buses here.  

And the buses made more money, because more adults were using them too, bucking the national trend.  Because if your children can travel for free, it’s cheaper for the family to take the bus than the car.  

And as the economy grows, more people use buses in our new quality bus corridors to get places. More passengers, more fares, more money for improvements. 

This is what happened in London, and it can happen here too.  And 80% of the people of London backed the move to introduce the scheme when they were asked by MORI. 

The people want the scheme. The children benefit from the scheme. The government should widen the scheme. 

And the government should extend the current yellow bus scheme to every secondary school in England. Because Mr Mayor, 

Yellow buses cut truancy.  Yellow buses cut traffic. And yellow buses save lives. 

In America over half of all school children take a yellow bus to school. In the UK, the figure is less than 10% 

Yellow buses cut truancy because children have a sense of belonging. Their own bus, in their own neighbourhood, with their own seat. 

Each day the same bus, the same driver, the extension of the school community to a place where too often there is bullying, over-crowding, and unreliability. 

Yellow buses cut traffic because parents are more likely to send the children to school on a designated school bus than on a regular bus. And the school-run accounts for 20% of all traffic on the roads. 

And yellow buses save lives because this extra traffic accounts for 40 deaths and 900 serious injuries each and every year. 

Yellow buses work.  

In Hebden Bridge, a single yellow bus has cut 25,000 journeys a year by car in the area.

Think of the impact on pollution, on traffic, and the future health of the children on that bus. 

We should extend the buses across the country.   

We should call upon the government to find the money to get our children to school in a way that is fair, green and safe. 

We should call upon the government to roll out a policy which manages to be good for education, health and the environment all at the same time. 

Because we can make a real difference and that’s what we were sent here to do. 

Mr Mayor. I don’t have children. In fact it’s not very many years since I was one.  

Nor am I an old person. Although there are times in this place tpwards the end of meetings when I feel very much like one.

But I listen to the old people of my ward, and I listen to the children.  

The old people are delighted that they can move around for free. And the children are sad that they can’t.  

We have an opportunity to foster a generation of children who see public transport as a first option, not a forced second choice taken up through necessity. 

We have an opportunity to make life that little bit easier for poor families. 

We have the chance to cut traffic, cut accidents, and cut pollution. 

And all it takes is the will to see it done.  

So let’s show the government that we have that will.

And let’s see it done. 

Mr Mayor, I have pleasure in moving this amendment.  

Local Lib Dems secured unanimous Council backing for two motions at last night’s meeting of Bury Council. The first called for action to stop the potential loss of another 6 post offices in Bury, in addition to the 16 already lost here. It called on the government to halt the post office closure programme, to stop removing government business from post offices, and to consider the options to give more government business to the post office. It also called on The Leader of the Council to write to government expressing the Council’s views.

The second motion was an amendment to an existing motion, and congratulated the government and GMPTA on the decision to extend free bus travel for OAPs, and in Greater Manchester to extend this to trams and trains. But it called on the government to go further, and introduce free bus travel for young people, and extend the yellow bus scheme to every secondary school in England, at no additional cost to local taxpayers or existing public transport users.

Both the post office motion and the buses amendment passed unanimously on a great evening for Lib Dems - showcasing our commitment to protecting local services in Bury, and our willingness to stand up for what local people across the Borough want.

Rick

So I spent Hallowe’en with a collection of faintly ghoulish representations of the undead. Yes, it was full Council.

And it was my speech, which seemed to go down well. Nobody fell asleep, there was no heckling or rotten fruit thrown my way (no more so than normal, anyway) and most importantly of course, our amendment calling on the government to extend yellow school bus provision to every secondary school in the country and introduce a free fare for school children carried with unanimous support. As did the other Lib Dem motion on post office closures, calling on the government to halt their attacks on these vital community facilities.

Mine was a nice safe topic to debut on, and something I know a bit about and care a lot about. So I was lucky I suppose. It was an enjoyable experience, and one I hope to repeat again soon.

And I was only 15 seconds longer than I said I would be in the little game of “guess the speech length” that Cllr O’Hanlon and I had going on. I should’ve put some money on it, although I imagine that may have been a legally dubious thing to do. He was well off, by the way. A good minute and a half too short.

It was nice to receive congratulations on the speech from Councillors from all sides, as well as their attention during it. These things are not, I imagine, offered to Councillors who have been members long enough to annoy their opponents!

Again though the Council experience was marred for me by the petty political nonsense that clouds so many of the meetings I go to. Quite why The Leader had to respond to a straightforward question about wearing poppies at remembrance day time with a political remark is a mystery. And I think it was a pretty low thing for him to have done. Which is probably why he retracted it after the shouts from the opposition benches (and many of his own Councillors). Other questions to The Leader lurched from the sensible to the nonsensical, with several too many diatribes from both sides about how terrible the other side is.

It’s all very much unnecessary and makes us all look like petty playground fools to the public who come along to see democracy in action. One day I hope there’ll be a straight question about a serious topic and a straight answer. And that both question and answer are brief and related to one another.

But that will have to wait for another night.

Rick