Polling stations across Bury will be open on Thursday for the Borough-wide referendum on whether or not to have an elected Mayor. I will be voting “No,” on this important question, and there are lots of reasons why. I’ll tell you my top two reasons tomorrow and Wednesday, but today it’s the reason that wins the bronze medal… I will be voting no because I oppose congestion charging, and this is vote is a distraction that will do nothing to help stop the charge.

Supporters of the bid for a Mayor claim that it will be a good way to stop the proposed C-Charge. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The facts on the C-Charge are as follows:

- Government have promised £3bn of public transport investment for Manchester. They will give us £1.5bn, and loan us the rest so long as we pay it back over thirty years by introducing a congestion charge.
- The plans will become reality if seven of the 10 Councils in Greater Manchester vote for them when the Leaders of these Councils meet later in the year.
- If less than seven vote for the C-Charge, then it won’t happen.
- Bury Council’s Leader is one of the ten who will vote. Bury Council has already rejected the idea of the charge. The Council adopted a policy objecting it after a Lib Dem proposal which I myself proposed at a Council meeting. I have led the opposition to the C-Charge and I am confident that Bury Council oppose it, and that the Leader will vote against it when it counts.
- If we vote for a Mayor, all that will happen is that the Mayor will get one vote at the meeting, rather than the Leader. Any Mayor will have no more and no less influence than the Leader has. The Mayor will have no power of veto, and cannot stop Bury having the charge if 7 out of 10 Leaders vote for it.
- Last week it was suggested that a Greater Manchester-wide referendum takes place on the charging issue. Lib Dems in Bury support this approach. It shows that the current campaign against the charge is working. Having a Mayor will have no impact on this referendum either.

Please do not be fooled by people who say that a vote for a Mayor will stop congestion charging. It just won’t. It will be a distraction from the main issue about trying to stop this charge. For the charge to be stopped, we need a strong Council, not a Council weakened by a Mayor taking powers from it.

Anyone who tells you that a Mayor can stop the charge is lying. Lots of people have been lied to already by the group behind the petition for a Mayor. People were tricked into signing a petition for a Mayor thinking that it could stop the charge. A Mayor cannot stop the charge.

All a Mayor can do is exactly the same as the Leader is doing now. And since the Leader has already said that he is against the charge many times, the only thing that might change if we elected a Mayor would be that the Mayor would be less opposed to the charge!

Electing a Mayor can never be just about one issue. And on this issue it is even more important not to vote for a Mayor, because a Mayor will have no influence on congestion charging.

Rick

On July 3rd, the people of Bury will be asked to vote in a referendum. You should have already received your polling cards and people who have a postal vote should have received their ballot papers in the last few days. Everyone will have their chance to say whether or not you want the way the Council is run to change, so that it is led by an elected Mayor.

Lots of people have questions about this important issue, the local Lib Dems have produced this factsheet
to answer some of your questions.

The sponge-brained halfwits at Orange Broadband have made a spectacular, tumbling re-entry into my life this evening, with a letter demanding that I pay them £40. And after a particularly useless telephone call to them which got me not one millimetre closer to sorting out their mess, I feel it only right to inform my tiny readership about them and their foolish ways.

Let me begin by putting their customer-service shoddiness into context: As someone who has worked in a variety of public sector settings, each one devoid of any sense of urgency, and frequently entirely bereft of staff from about 14:30 on a Friday, I have encountered my fair share of dodgy customer services. As a Councillor trying to get Bury’s Six Town Housing to remove its head from its backside for half a second, I have experienced even worse. But Orange Broadband make even the most lethargic Housing Officer at Six Town look like a fawning, bowing, scraping butler who has just graduated summa-cum-laude from the Harvard School of Brown Nosing.

They are, without exception, buffoons. I must have spoken to thirty of them in my time, and not one of them has done a single thing remotely useful for me. I would have had as much joy speaking to the dialling tone. Their know-nothing, slack-jawed idiocy goes beyond the annoying and is actually a joy to behold, simply because it confirms my suspicion that even if I were to sell my brain to the highest bidder on eBay, and then look for a job with nothing in my head but the stitches, I could still find gainful employment working in the Orange Broadband call centre.

At one point last year, they cut off my broadband service for three months for no reason. Each time I rang their far-off call centre, I was met with a different baffled joker without the foggiest grasp of what my problem was or how to fix it. The excuse changed every day, the promises got more outlandish as I got more angry, and the solution arrived without warning or explanation after three long months. I still don’t know what went wrong or how it was fixed.

When I moved house I vowed to leave the world of Orange Broadband behind, and so whilst the ink on the property contract was still wet, I joyously rang my far away call-centre friends and told them that I was cancelling.

But alas, yet oddly predictably, the message appears not to have got through. And so today I was sent a bill for £40, and a letter telling me that because I hadn’t paid them anything for six months, they had had to close my account. Of course, had the lady in the call centre understood my phone call when I cancelled, she would have gathered my intention to cancel my account and the impending cancellation of my Direct Debit. But clearly the language I used in the phone call was in a code beyond understanding. After all, I said “I intend to cancel my account, and thus inform you of the impending cancellation of my Direct Debit,” which is highly ambiguous and open to various interpretations. 

Silly me, because when she said “Fine,” I imagined she meant “Fine.” Whereas in fact, of course, she meant “I have no idea what you are talking about. Goodbye.”

So now apparently I owe them £40, and they are threatening to “take legal action.” Which would be amusing, if the bureaucracy involved weren’t so annoying. I have no doubt whatsoever that if I were ever to get a court summons, I could muster about 10,000 people to testify to the general awfulness of Orange’s Customer Services, and demonstrate with diamond-solid proof that the chances of my cancellation instruction finding its way from The Call Centre At The End Of The Universe all the way back to Accounts was nil. Sadly, it probably won’t get that far, and the bill will lay on some credit reference agency’s file somewhere, meaning that their error will cost me the chance of a cheap  mortgage in a few years.

The thought of dealing with that makes me full of rage.

And yet I can’t solve it. I tried to tonight, but the guy in the call centre genuinely had not a clue what I was on about. He asked me for my land line number three times. Three times. And then, in the ultimate irony, my attempts at being helpful backfired spectacularly: I only received the bill when my former landlord posted it through the door of my new house today. We’ve moved on, you see. So, after our man in with the Brintey Spears headet in the call centre far, far away re-affirmed the looming court case and the outstanding bill which he said “must be settled in full as soon as possible,” I offered him the opportunity to take down the new address so as to allow me to engage in conversation with Orange without the landlord as an intermiediary. “No,” he said “We can’t take any new details. Your account has been closed.”

Idiots.

Rick

I don’t know whether heavy rain brings out maniacs, but in the showers last night I was a victim of road rage, and it made me sad that people can be aggressive for absolutely no reason at all.

I was returning from the fish and chip shop (Dockers, the new one on Bury New Road near Lidl – and very nice it is too) when I made the major strategic error of turning onto Kings Road. I had momentarily forgotten the vital lesson that one should never go anywhere near there in a car because whereas the area was designed principally as a thoroughfare, it is in fact a car park. This was clearly demonstrated last night when about thirteen cars were trying to turn about four different ways, simultaneously navigating between parked cars strewn across the place and abandoned by all and sundry. It was like the aftermath of a stock car rally.

And of course it was raining very heavily, so people were wet, and hot air was blowing to keep windscreens clear, so they were hot too. And wet, hot people don’t like being stuck in traffic jams. As anyone who’s seen “Falling Down” will confirm.

Amidst much hooting and tooting and not moving anywhere, there emerged from the back seat of a Toyota Corolla someone who could best be described as an urban orang-utan, swinging his arms and grunting in my general direction. I wound down my window and began to decipher the string of obscenities with which he put forward his opinion that without several cars reversing, he would be stuck there all night. Whilst I couldn’t fault the animal-man’s logic, his pointing, shouting, swearing and generally menacing behaviour was absolutely unnecessary.

What makes people get so cross, so quickly? If anyone in any of the cars he’d been screaming at had been equally angry, they’d have got out and belted him. It was only sheer cowardice, rather than respect for the law, which stopped me getting out myself. His entirely unreasonable behaviour made me fill up with rage. How dare he come pointing his angry fingers at me? How dare he launch into a string of language barely fit for the mess deck of a Navy frigate, in the middle of a street with families everywhere? What gave him the right to fill the air with his noxious anger, just because someone had held him up for thirty seconds on a Thursday evening?

I am firmly of the view that he is exactly what he mouthed at me when he drove past. But I won’t type the word out on here.

Was it always like this? If there was traffic fifty years ago, did drivers get out of their Austin Sevens, remove their hats and monocles, and launch into a fearsome tirade against the occupant of the stationery Vauxhall Victor? Or do we live in a time now where this type of behaviour has come to be within the boundaries of acceptability? I don’t know if any of the other drivers victim to this abuse were as shocked as I was. I hope they were.

I think my feelings of rage were more down to frustration than anything else. Not frustration that I was stuck in a jam because of an atrociously parked Volvo estate, but because this grunting, screaming madman could get away with his flood of swearing without any form of retribution whatsoever. And because if anyone had calmly told him to keep it down, they’d probably have been rewarded with a beating.

The only consolation would have been that his getaway would’ve been blocked by the traffic.

I wish we could reclaim some of the respect that went before. Politicians talk about this all the time, and real solutions are obviously hard to find. But I wish we’d all have got out and politely told this guy where to go last night. That we didn’t was to be expected, but he couldn’t have beaten us all up and he’d have learned that there are better ways to get out of traffic jams than shouting at drivers til they drive away scared.

This guy had kids in his car. That’s the most depressing thing. They’ll learn that shouting is the way to get things done. That patience and mutual understanding aren’t worth bothering with if you’re big and strong enough to frighten other people. I don’t know how to fix this, but I enjoy thinking about it, and I know other people do too. And hopefully we can find a way soon. Because going out for fish and chips shouldn’t be this hard.

Rick

Last night’s Council meeting saw a number of interesting questions asked and answered.

Liberal Democrat Group Leader Cllr Tim Pickstone asked a very pertinent question about congestion charging. Obviously the Lib Dem Group remain passionately opposed to the charge, and one of the main reasons is its effect on some local communities. Simister, for instance, which residents won’t be able to enter or leave without passing through the charging zone. And Parrenthorn High School, one third of the pupils of which live the other side of the M60.

Local people in Prestwich might be penalised for very short journeys going nowhere near the City Centre. If the M60 is to be the outer charging zone, there needs to be consideration paid to this issue, and Cllr Pickstone asked for such flexibility to be considered in the unhappy event of congestion charging being introduced.

Lib Dem Deputy Leader Cllr Andrew Garner asked about the Sheepfoot Lane / Bury New Road junction, which has recently been rebuilt, but which now has a dangerous dip in the middle of it. We were assured that this will be fixed in the next few weeks.

I asked about bio-fuels. The government has set a target that all Council vehicles should run on 5% bio-diesel by 2010, which the Council is complying with. But I asked whether the Leader agreed if this was simply a stunt by the government. They look “greener” on the surface, but the bio-fuels debate is much more complicated and a lot of people think that growing crops for fuel, rather than growing them for food and concentrating on alternative fuels and efficiency, is a more sustainable way of doing things. This is certainly an issue to watch out for.

Cllr Mary D’Albert, the newest St Mary’s Councillor, asked about the horrific state of the Borough’s roads. We were told that over 18 miles of roads need repairing in Bury. And yet for Prestwich, the budget for road repairs won’t even fix a single road! It’s shocking, and we will be pressing for lots more money in this budget in the future. Government’s continued budget cuts to Councils do have a big impact, and the crumbling roads are one of the more visually obvious signs.

The Lib Dem Group also asked about graffiti (the policy for the removal of which is to be re-visited, as everyone in Prestwich can probably testify that it isn’t working at the moment!), the Sustainable Communities Bill, and other issues.

Such questioning of the Council is important, as it raises the profile of issues that matter to local people, and gets the Executive to think more about what they’re doing. Unfortunately, our rights to question are being curtailed, and the rights of the public removed entirely, by the leading Tory group who are abusing their power by restricting these rights. See posting below for more about that.

Rick

This is the speech I made to full Council last night proposing the Liberal Democrat motion to stop the government’s plan to close five Post Offices in Bury as part of the national plan to close 2,500. The motion passed unanimously.

“Thank you Mr Mayor.

I am proposing tonight’s motion on Post Office closures.

The programme of closures sets government against local people.

It puts Whitehall bureaucracy on a course against the residents of Bury.

And it sends the message that the future of Post Offices is bleak and unsustainable.

Mr Mayor, this is the biggest Post Office closure programme ever seen.

Ten years ago there were 18,000 Post Offices

Now, one third of them have gone.

In 1999, Bury had 46 Post Offices.

When the doors close for the last time at the Post Offices now threatened, that number will have fallen to 25.

40% of the Post Offices in Bury, gone for good.

They call it modernisation. I call it decimation.

The actions of the government and Royal Mail, Mr Mayor, mark a sustained and relentless attack on a cherished local service.

Something that has defined this country for hundreds of years, destroyed by the government in just ten.

Like limits on habeus corpus and right to trial by jury, the end of Post Offices is another plank of Labour’s legacy.

And I condemn these proposals here tonight.

Because Mr Mayor, these aren’t just buildings closing.

They’re symbols of community, familiarity and unity.

That might sound grandiose, but just ask the man on the street whether I’m over-doing it.

Closing the local one is alright for me. I can drive to the next one to pick up my parcel from eBay.

But to the frail widow next door, the local Post Office is a lifeline.

A Post Office is more than a place to buy stamps.

It’s a place where public service meets the public it serves.

If they take away our Post Office, they rob us of a fundamental interaction with a necessary service, and steal from us a trusted and familiar way of doing the basic things.

They drive us away from comfort and towards hardship.

Why are we sitting here and letting them do this do us?

This is not what this Council is about.

The people of Ainsworth Road are losing their Post Office.

The people of Rochdale Road are losing their Post Office too. The alternative suggested by Royal Mail is for a Post Office with a bus stop over twenty times further away.

The people of Walmersley Road are losing their Post Office, sending people to The Rock, where the queues at busy times already stretch out the door.

Greenmount are losing their Post Office, and Elton their’s.

These aren’t in the middle of nowhere, visited by no-one and providing scant services. Rochdale Road alone serves over 1,000 people a week.

And let us not think that this is just an issue for Bury.

There are many people up and down the country, living outside the Borough, like the Leader of the Council, who face the threat of closures too.

These are busy, thriving Post Offices being closed just because the government says the network can’t pay to keep them.

But the response as proposed makes no sense

Because even if this economic argument held water, which it doesn’t, the government is closing down Post Offices on a geographic rather than an economic basis, picking ones to close not because they should, but because it’s less likely to be obvious if they do.

As the sole shareholder in Royal Mail, it is this government’s job to think again.

The government’s years of disinvestment, idly presiding over a network falling into economic slump mustn’t go unchallenged any longer.

I can accept an argument for closures if it is based on reason, and if the solution proposed is better.

But Mr Mayor I cannot accept the government winding down the network and then closing parts of it just because they’re wound down, and then replacing them with nothing.

And so I say, when there is so much that we can’t do anything about;

When there is hardship and trouble that we cannot stop;

When sometimes the problems our residents face just cannot be solved, should we not seize every chance to make a difference now?

This is one such chance.

We need to tell Government to offer the Post Offices a viable future.

A future as part of a sustainable network of useful community facilities.

Why, for so long, have Post Office services been dismantled, when there is so much more we could be using them for?

Why, with the advent of new technology, is the Post Office not a place where I can access a range of services that means that every Post Office is profitable and serves a purpose?

The National Federation of Sub-Postmasters calls for the development of better banking services in Post Offices. The government says no. We should say yes.

Post carriers say they want to work with Post Offices, ending monopoly and providing choice. The government says no. We should say yes.

We should say that we are for better local services, not closing local services.

We are for progress, not cut-backs.

We are for innovation, not ruination.

And Mr Mayor we are for a Post Office in every community that needs one.

Four million pensioners use a Post Office Card Account for pensions and benefits.

Four million.

Lots of them live in Bury, and in closing Bury’s Post Offices, the government will make it harder for our most vulnerable people to access these services.

Who will be the voice of the elderly and the frail if not us?

We should leave here tonight resolute in our opposition to closures.

And then tomorrow morning we should start work, like Essex County Council has done, to think of new ways for Post Offices to work.

Of using the Post Office as a hub for community services provided in venues as diverse as sports clubs and local shops.

A community wide solution, so that the services go on even if the buildings themselves are taken from us.

Making use of the resilience and resourcefulness of this great Borough to make change for the better.

And let us not say that a small group of determined people cannot take on the forces of power and win.

Not only must we do just that, but we should do so in the knowledge that nothing else has ever changed the mind of government.

The people of Bury should expect nothing less.

And like they expect more from us, I expect more from national government.

Their job is to lead and to innovate. To think of new ways and new solutions.

It is not to manage a decline, but to reverse it.

Because where once we had a postal service to rival any in the world, now there’s no second delivery, no Sunday delivery, and soon no Post Office at the end of your street.

I have yet to meet a single person in this Borough in favour of Post Office closures, and yet the government continues with its charade of consultation.

Believe me Mr Mayor. As someone trying to eke out a few quid from the road maintenance budget of this Council, I know that there’s only so many times you can ask a question before it becomes obvious that the answer is going to be no.

The government keep asking us on this one, but they don’t seem to hear us tell them no.

Their consultation should be called off now Mr Mayor, along with the plans for closures.

And our MPs should be forthright in their opposition to these plans. They are at Westminster to do our bidding.

It’s no use Ivan Lewis lamenting in the papers how he fears the government is out of touch, if he stands back and watches it ignore the pleas of the people by closing half the post offices in his constituency.

Mr Lewis let every person in Bury down when he failed to vote against these government plans in Parliament.

Instead he went to the papers and said “Residents who use these post offices will be concerned,” and that bit of stirring oratory was as underwhelming as his complete lack of condemnation for these closure plans.

Where’s his passionate defence of local services? And where’s David Chaytor’s? He too didn’t vote against the closures when the people of Bury cried out for him to do so.

These men we sent to Parliament could go some way to fulfilling their promise to the people of Bury, by signing Early Day Motion 1584 calling for extra support for Post Offices and our elderly with the renewal of the Post Office Card Account.

I ask them to do that.

Mr Mayor, we do not relish, nor do we enjoy a confrontation with government.

We do not suspect, nor do we believe that this government sets out to damage communities.

But our paths are diverging where they should come together.

And let the mark of this Council’s service to Bury be that when we saw the low road taken, we stood up proud and forced the government to turn back.

And even though this Council’s leading group may have shamefully voted tonight to take away the rights of the people to come to our door and question us, they should show that their respect for local people hasn’t dwindled entirely, and join us in calling for a halt to these closures.

Mr Mayor, us Councillors are a fortunate bunch of people.

We have influence and a little bit of power. And as people who spend our free time leafleting, we know more about the value of the postal service than most.

And on this of all topics, our voice can be heard that little bit louder because of this room we meet in, and the faith shown in us by those who put us here.

So come on. Let’s use every drop of our energies and all the power of our office and stop these Post Office closures, starting now, starting here.

Too many have gone already, let us start building the future of the Post Office in Bury right now.

Mr Mayor, it is with a determined heart that I propose this motion.”

The Liberal Democrat motion to full Council calling for a halt to the government’s plans to close five Post Offices in Bury was successful last night, winning unanimous support from Councillors.

The motion was brought to Council as a result of the government’s plans to close 2,500 more Post Offices, having already closed one third of the Post Office network in the past ten years. It called for an end to the closure programme, the halting of consultation in favour of giving full support to rebuilding the network, and called for both of Bury’s MPs to make amends for supporting the government’s plans in Parliament.

I proposed the motion, and you can read the full text of the speech I made above. My colleague Cllr Wilf Davison seconded, and made a great speech telling Council of the efforts he’d made to speak to the post masters at all the threatened Post Offices in the Borough.

Our Post Offices are vital public institutions, and supporting them is crucial in preserving our communities. The Council has now made clear its support for local Post Offices and its opposition to the government’s ongoing and damaging closure programme.

Rick

Last night’s full Council meeting was used by the ruling Conservative Group to make the most damaging change to democracy in Bury for many years.

Just eight weeks after taking control of the Council for the first time in two decades, and having already removed opposition membership from the Council’s Executive, last night the ruling group voted disgracefully to remove the right of the public to ask verbal questions at Council meetings.

The Tory proposals were part of a raft of measures to “improve the efficiency of Council meetings, “ almost all of which were either damaging to the democratic accountability of the Council, or improvements to process that went nowhere near far enough.

The Conservative Group voted en masse for these proposals, despite one veteran Councillor speaking passionately against them, and several others voting with very heavy hearts indeed. Although the Labour and Liberal Democrat groups spoke and voted against these damaging plans, the Tory majority meant that they passed.

But I was not surprised at the reluctance amongst many in the ruling group to submit to the wishes of the leadership. The plans see the rights of the people we serve seriously curtailed. Where once anyone could come to a Council meeting and ask the Council anything, now questions must be received in writing six days in advance, with no opportunity for a follow-up question.

What kind of message does it send to local people, when we are elected to serve them, and then remove their right to question us with our first act of power? It is a disgrace and the leaders of the Council should be ashamed of themselves. The sun came down on a dark day for democracy in Bury last night, and the Conservative group have done untold damage to the institution of the Council. Where Bury Council was once a leader amongst other Councils in providing access to the people we serve, now it has surrendered its advantage.

At a time when public faith in democracy and elected representatives is so low, this type of action is just beyond understanding. It is also completely unnecessary. In all the Council meetings I have ever been to, there has never been one where public question time has exceeded its allotted time or unduly delayed the meeting. These restrictions can only be politically motivated, to remove the threat of having to deal with tricky issues. Well, to the Leader I say that tricky issues come with the job, and ducking them is simply unacceptable.

Rick

Lock your doors and windows - the unstoppable whirlwind of excitement that is full Council rolls into town again tonight, and you have the chance to come along and see it for yourself at the Town Hall from 7pm.

On the agenda tonight are the usual suspects such as Questions to the Executive and Questions to outside bodies. But also tonight there is an interesting motion opposing Post Office closures, which I am proposing. For those that don’t know, the government are “consulting” on plans to close 2,500 Post Offices nationwide, including five in Bury. What this means in reality is that they have decided to close 2,500 Post Offices including 5 in Bury, but aren’t doing it yet because they’re waiting for the news to settle in before actually bringing down the shutters.

Liberal Democrats oppose these closures for lots of reasons, and when I upload my speech onto here tomorrow, you can read why I do. But hopefully the motion will pass tonight, calling for a halt to the closure programme and calling on our two Labour MPs to do what they’re paid to do and actively oppose the government’s plans on our behalf. I am still coughing like a chain-smoker though, so the delivery might not quite be as I hope.

As well as that motion, Bury Conservatives are suggesting a shameful reduction in the rights of local people to ask them questions tonight. They have proposed removing the rights of local people to ask verbal questions at Council, for no good reason at all that I can think of. They’re also reducing the opportunities for Councillors to ask questions, and are generally taking the opportunity that power affords them, and battening down the hatches. Expect some fireworks there too.

Everyone is welcome to come and see the fun. I wish more people would do, too. Public attendance fluctuates but is normally quite good, and what better way is there to bone-up on the issues raging in Bury than to take an interest in the goings-on in Council?

And the good thing for you guys is, you can leave when you want to and don’t have to stay to the bitter end. Which is more than can be said for me…

Rick

Today has been hugely dull. Great gusts of tedium have blown themselves around me as I trudged from meeting to meeting at work. And because I am left handed and was at one point using a flip-chart marker, an untoward smudging incident occurred and now I have ink on my fingers and I look like an errant schoolboy.

One of the necessary evils of my job as a Councillor is to chase up Council Officers who haven’t responded to my emails. I don’t know if it is a pathological thing with some of them, or whether the world wide web doesn’t function in the small quadrant of land between the Town Hall and my house, but whatever the reason I am frequently ignored. If this is how they treat me, God only knows how they treat people without the luxury of a public mandate.

Today’s chasings-up include a month-old request for a reply to a letter regarding Phillips Park. Some local people want help planting out some flowers there, but the response so far from the Council has been nil. You’d think they’d welcome the help, but I don’t know what they think because they haven’t bothered to reply to me.

There is also the matter of a “Keep Clear” box, desperately needed for residents of The Radius who can’t get in or out of their car park because of jams outside. This was requested in April, promised three weeks ago, and still hasn’t been painted. I don’t know how long it took to paint the roof of the Sistene Chapel, but this appears to be a job on a similar scale.

The third issue relates to the green ooze on Woodward Road, which I have written on here about before and which still shows no signs of being removed. Apparently it may have something to do with a collapsed drain, which is a relief because I thought at one point it marked the start of an alien invasion. But regardless of the exact cause, it isn’t pleasant and it’s still there. So, two months on, and five emails down the line, I have asked again today, in a tone probably most reminiscent of a school master dealing with someone who hasn’t done their homework.

And finally there is a vulnerable old man who asked me to have the kerb outside his flats dropped if possible, to allow him to enter and exit his own home without jolting him out of his wheelchair or requiring a detour to the end of the street. Obviously my pavement-lowering skills aren’t top-notch, but I know a man who can (The Clerk of Works, Bury MBC). Unfortunately he too ignores me, and so I have asked again for his help today. It’s OK though, I am sure this poor old man bouncing along the road in his wheelchair doesn’t mind that the man paid to serve him is too rude to do his job.

The shoddy response times to requests for service from the Council are nothing short of maddening. The Council has a customer service charter which states that emails must be answered within 24 hours, and responded to fully within 10 working days. I have kept an informal record for the past couple of months, and this standard is not met well over half the time. And I am a Councillor, so am probably treated better than most. And there’s not much I can do about it either. I have raised it in Council, I have spoken to people and emailed them time and time again. And nothing changes. We are still having phone calls, emails and even face to face chats ignored. We may be opposition back benchers but we are still elected members with people counting on us to get things answered.

The poor people who come to me for help must wonder why I can’t act quicker, and honestly so do I. I am not asking for the impossible. I don’t want a bypass built past somebody’s back garden in a fortnight. I want simple things, or quite often just any kind of response at all so that the resident doesn’t feel like he’s being ignored. Often a reasoned “no” is quite sufficient. But I am not even getting that.

It’s frustrating. Almost as frustrating, in fact, as trying to scrub permanent marker off my fingers. And let me tell you from bitter experience in the toilet at work today - that is VERY frustrating. 

Rick

I spent the weekend working on a motion for Council which I will be proposing on Wednesday, to do with the Post Office closure programme. We oppose the programme, which sees 2,500 more Post Offices close across the country, including another five in Bury I was typing away with one hand (my left one, as us left-handers tend to do…) whilst holding a gigantic Post Office publication in the other, which lists in staggering detail every fact and fancy about the closing Post Offices. So I will be speaking in support of the motion to stop the closures on Wednesday night, and if the mood takes me I shall read from the giant book.

This speech presents me with a problem because I have a cough, and as a result I can’t string more than two sentences together without collapsing into a heavy-breathing, spluttering wreck. This is doubly unfortunate because I absolutely love the sound of my own voice, and the thought of giving up an opportunity to hear it for eight or nine minutes depresses me greatly.

However, I will soldier on hoping that Mother Nature is a Liberal Democrat, and will cure what ails me. Her and Vick’s Vaporub, which I heard from a world renowned medical expert (my Dad) yesterday can be used as a cough-repellent if placed on the tongue and swallowed.

Also this week I will get to talk to a real life Australian person, when my oldest friend returns from his new home in Melbourne with his Antipodean girlfriend in tow. By “oldest friend” I mean longest standing friend. His age is, like mine, 27. Anyway, quite what the girlfriend will make of Bury town centre as opposed to the palm trees and tanned bodies of Oz is beyond me. But we do have the World Famous Market, whereas all they have is the set of Neighbours and a beach.

The weekend just gone saw a bit of leafleting in Besses in the rain, which was deeply unpleasant. It’s not a ward I am overly familiar with, and whereas in my home patch I can trudge, head-down, in the downpours, on unfamiliar ground I have to keep looking up to make sure I don’t walk into some street furniture. So I got a bit damp.

Us Lib Dems also had some festive frolics on Saturday night, when my Mum (who is our campaigner and candidate in Besses ward) had a birthday party cum housewarming. I shan’t reveal her age, but at least she now has a suitably warmed house. And more leftover food than I ever thought possible.

So anyway, that’s my immediate past and immediate future. And remember, the Council meeting on Wednesday night is open to the public, so just come along. You can even ask a question to the Leader and Cabinet, although this is probably the last time you’ll be allowed to do that. Of which more tomorrow…

Rick

So David Cameron is going to sue the Lib Dems about a leaflet we’re putting out in Henley? Well, I haven’t seen the leaflet, and I don’t know whether what it says is true or not. I certainly don’t know if it’s actionable, but I suspect there are lots of Tories who think it is, and lots of us who think it’s not. Chances are it’s neither absolutely true or absolutely false, which is why a judge somewhere might get to decide. Whatever it is, there are so many borderline lies that inhabit election leaflets from every party, and they’re the types of thing that drives me mad and makes me wonder why I’m doing this kind of thing at all.

It’s no surprise that temperatures are running a little high down there. This is a by-election on top of another by-election, right after the local elections. There are some people who’ve barely slept in three months, and I’m surprised they still remember the candidate’s name let alone write only lovely things about his opponent.

But it’s pretty rare for any leaflet to be greeted with cries of “See you in court!”

Maybe the threat of legal action might reign in some of the more outlandish leaflet claims from all sides, and maybe it will cascade down to the lowly likes of us campaigning in local elections. Because even here our leaflets can sometimes go way over the top. And screeching half-truths about opponents makes us all look like bickering idiots with nothing positive to say.

Political leaflets are odd. It seems as if we consider it unacceptable to think the same as our opponents on any issue, even though we do think the same thing on many especially at a local level.

If there’s a hospital to be closed, we’re against the closure and we strain every sinew of our being to find even the most tenuous reason why our opponent might not be. “The government of his party wants to shut hospitals” is reasonable, if there’s evidence to back it up. But is it fair to say “The Council run by his party 150 miles away shut hospitals”? Or “25 years ago his party shut another hospital”? I don’t think that it is. But if there was the chance to write it then I can bet my bottom dollar that somebody would.

And we do it all the time – all the parties do it all the time. I don’t even care if it works to win votes, because if it does it also works to convince voters that we’re all drones incapable of doing anything but degrading our opponents who are, on the whole, perfectly decent people who wouldn’t want to shut hospitals in an ideal world.

Even at my most local of levels, at the last election we screamed at Labour and they screamed at us on things that, really, we weren’t miles apart on. Rainsough for instance. So much was made of the failure to renovate the shops. We blamed Labour and Labour blamed us, when the truth is that it’s neither of our faults. It’s a symptom of neglect caused by people who’ve long since retired or died and who could’ve been wearing any colour of rosette under the sun back in 1981 or whenever the hell it was. Luckily for us it was a red one so we could blame them. But I don’t think it was fair to, because they’re not standing now and the guy who is seems a perfectly nice chap with a brain in his head and some good ideas.

Of course, there are times when we genuinely disagree. When there’s clear space between us. And we should let every voter know where both sides stand on these issues. But even here there’s surely a better way of doing things than we manage in our elections. We paint ourselves as haloed saviours, and the opposition as salivating attack-dogs ready to rip communities to shreds simply because they’re too stupid to see the obvious solution we’ve seen.

Neither of these two personas is right, yet why do we treat the voters as too ill-informed to recongnise that issues are nuanced and that there rarely is a black and white solution? Surely we can’t believe what we’re saying?

Is it any wonder that people are disengaged, when what we give them to be engaged with is a cartoon version of the issues which they probably already know isn’t very well connected to reality? In a by-election, whoever wins will have been called a bumbling buffoon by his opponent in at least half a dozen leaflets on every doorstep in the constituency. This hardly does much to help with a respectful society, does it?

I know that there’s an end game to campaigning. I know that the more Councillors we elect, by fair means or foul, and the more MPs we get by tipping the swing our way through no-holds-barred campaigns, the more likely it is that one day, one day, we’ll have the chance to put our policies into practice and make a real difference. But do those ends justify the means that we sometimes use? And would it only be a pyrrhic victory if we obtain power and influence by shouting down our opponents with smears and out-of-context quotes? How can we strive to be leaders when our journey to leadership is marked with such questionable moral judgement?

We should all try and do something different, I think. And it’d have to be all of us at once, because if we alone became the party of nice leaflets I suspect we’d get truly panned.

I doubt it will ever happen. Campaigning is so targeted and sophisticated now that before too long the likes of Mosaic and hacking into the Tesco Clubcard database will mean we can just leaflet half a dozen swing voters until they collapse under the strain of it all, and then fill in a proxy vote for them at their hospital bedside.

But I just wish we would all take a breath, lose the tunnel vision and remember why we’re in it in the first place. It’s not to hire lawyers and fight over leaflets full of mis-quotations in the High Court. It’s to spread our good ideas and change things for the better.

Rick

The first girl I ever loved got engaged today. And it wasn’t to me.

I was utterly in love with her for about three months in the spring of 1999. Stomach-turningly, heart-swellingly, swoon-inducingly gone whenever her name was even mentioned. I met her at my 18th birthday party. For a boy at an all-boys school who’d barely spoken to a girl in 7 years, having one this gorgeous at my party was quite an achievement, even if everyone there knew that one of the cool boys knew her really (through his mum), rather than me. 

In those days my heart was fairly easy to win. Having a pulse and being a female outside of my immediate blood-line were the two main qualifications, and honestly it was probable that neither were absolutely necessary given enough encouragement. She had both, and was lovely to boot. And so I was smitten.

I spent the whole spring and summer of that year doing nothing but rehearsing jokes to crack in front of her, and wishing pain on my friend Ben whom she seemed to whisper to her friends about, despite him being less amusing, generous or kind-hearted than I thought I was. I distinctly remember driving home on an early summer’s evening sobbing in my clapped out 1989 Nissan Micra after he kissed her in the back garden of a friend’s house. I thought my entire world had crashed, and I was so blinded by crying that it was only sheer luck that I didn’t crash my car into the central reservation of the motorway on the way home.

At one point during it all she’d sat me down and tenderly explained that although she liked me very much, we’d always be friends and nothing more. And she was true to her word. On both counts, no matter how drunk I got her.

We are still friends, and she’s still lovely. And she texted me tonight, as Tam and I were gorging on processed beef toenails at Dexter’s in the Trafford Centre, to tell me that her and her boyfriend had taken the leap we still haven’t taken ourselves, and got pre-hitched. There’s a diamond to prove it, I’m told, whereas the closest I have taken Tam to that is leaving her in Accessorize poring over the bangles whilst I stand outside looking bored.

On top of the marriages and the pregnancies that I’ve mentioned before, another door to the past slams shut tonight with this piece of news.

I’m happy for her of course. She was delirious on the phone. Her fella is a lovely guy. Nicer than Ben ever was, by a country mile, and now that my heart doesn’t treble its beat-rate every time I see her, I can concede that he’d even run me a close second if there was ever a contest. And Tam is the most wonderful woman on God’s green Earth, so there never would be.

But I haven’t forgotten entirely, and it’s an odd thought that this girl I was mad about is getting married now. She may never have succumbed to my 18 year old charm (which basically involved me looking at her a lot, alternating between hopeful and glum, depending on whether she was alone or with Ben), but at that age it takes quite some character not to laugh in my face. And yet she didn’t. She became my first grown up friend instead, and from little kids on the edge of a big adventure we’re now where we are, and she’s getting married.

Which is just great. Except I don’t know whether I should be too, or whether it’s just fine to be messing about in Dexter’s in the Trafford Centre and putting it off a bit more.

God knows. And it hurts my head to think about it, especially with a belly full of beef toenails.

Rick  

PLEASE SUPPORT YOUR POST OFFICES - SAY NO TO CLOSURE

Under proposals submitted by The Post Office and supported by the Labour Government, a further 5 Post Offices are being proposed for closure in the Bury area.

They are at Limefield on Walmersley Road, Ainsworth Road, Radcliffe, Elton, Greenmount and Rochdale Road.

We believe these are much valued community facilities that are depended upon by many in our communities, especially the elderly.The Post Office is now consulting on their proposals. Please sign and encourage friends to sign. The more support we can get the more likely we can make The Post Office listen to local people.

Sign the petition here

I haven’t yet reflected on the marvellous Prestwich Carnival that took place over the weekend, centred on St Mary’s Park in the ward.

We are lucky in Prestwich to have a couple of great annual events including Carnival and the Clough Day, and this year’s Carnival was a stunning celebration of all that’s good in the local area. As ever the floats and processions were a sight to behold, and whilst it’s not quite Rio or Notting Hill, we more than pull our weight in terms of local entertainment!

The turnout was brilliant as ever, and thankfully the weather held meaning that everyone there could take advantage of the funfair and the greenery of the park. Lots of money was raised for charity as always, and my congratulations and thanks to everyone involved in organising what was certainly a very successful event. The only problem is trying to beat it next year!

Rick

Last night was a meeting of the Bury Lib Dem Council Group, which I endured with a banging headache and throughout which I was nuzzled by Cllr D’Albert’s dog. It was deeply unpleasant.

I am still a bit ill, and last night had a fitful sleep interspersed with coughing fits and groaning. There was a time this morning when I was going to take the day off work, but I thought that if I was well enough to stagger to the bathroom without collapsing in a heap, I was well enough to go into the office and infect my colleagues with whatever nasty bug is currently wreaking havoc with my head.

When I got home from the meeting last night, I received a call from a gentleman from “MART” which is Manchester Against Road Tolls and which is campaigning against the proposed congestion charge. He wanted me to use my influence of the Passenger Transport Authority to press for a Greater Manchester-wide referendum on the issue.

I told him that I am no longer a member of the PTA and so I couldn’t influence them at all, but that Bury Lib Dems have called for a GM-wide referendum publicly before and that we remain opposed to the charge. The new PTS members from Bury are both Conservatives and I hope that they continue Bury’s opposition to the charge whilst representing Bury on the PTA.

I also told him that MART could do itself and the rest of us a big favour by stopping linking congestion charging with the possibility of an elected Mayor for Bury. A particularly maverick member of their group has been shouting loudly about how voting for an elected Mayor in Bury would sound a death-knell for congestion charging. Not only is that plainly false, but MART risk damaging their own anti-charge campaign by espousing such blatant falsehoods.

Also this morning I received a call from a Rochdale Councillor who visited St Mary’s Park at the weekend and found it devoid of unlocked toilets. I must confess that I don’t know whether he toilets are normally locked, or whether this was a one-off, but either way it’s a bit much to try and make St Mary’s Park a destination for visitors without providing a single toilet. I have asked for an explanation from the Council, but frankly my head is far to achey to deal with bladder problems today, so if I get a response I will wait until tomorrow to open it.

Rick

Another week beginneth, as it probably says in an ancient text somewhere… This week there are no Council meetings as such, although there are a couple of Lib Dem meetings to attend. We have a meeting of the Council Group later on today, when all 9 Lib Dem Councillors come together. So if anyone wants to stage a coup d’etat in Prestwich, that would be an ideal time. We’ll all be busy.

The on Wednesday there’s a meeting of the local party Executive in Elton, to which all members are welcome to come.

Council-wise, I have spent a portion of this morning finalising some questions that the Group will be asking of the Council’s representatives on outside bodies, such as the Police Authority and the Passenger Transport Authority. And I have also been dealing with some casework around troublesome heavy goods vehicles treating the local side-streets like a stock car rally.

Aside from that, I think I may be coming down with something. Tamsin has been hacking her lungs up continually for the past fortnight with what the doctor has described as a “severe respitory tract infection.” In layman’s terms this means she coughs with such comic force that she could have been a very popular silent movie star, and with such regularity that you can set your watch by her. I think I may have caught something off her, because I am a bit chesty myself today.

As the week goes on I will keep you up to date with all the happenings in the ward.

Rick

Another deeply malicious article in the Advertiser this week on the elected Mayor.

Voters in Bury will be asked on July 3rd if they want to have an Elected Mayor running the Council. The referendum has been called because 10,000 or so signatures were collected, allegedly in favour of a Mayor, but in reality in opposition to congestion charging. Those behind the petition have linked the two issues without a single fact to back them up, and are continuing their catalogue of lies in the run-up to a vote which could forever damage the relationship between Bury and its local leaders.

The article “Vote to veto the toll tax” in today’s paper is hugely misleading, and potential voters should be very wary of the claims made within it from both the author and pro-Mayor campaigner Geoffrey Berg.

Mr Berg is right that this congestion charging is a massive issue. But the Mayoral referendum will make absolutely no difference to it at all, and voters should be made aware of what will and won’t change if they vote for a Mayor.

The article says “if Bury votes for an elected mayor who is opposed to the congestion charge in the July 3 referendum, the borough could become exempt from the charge.” But this is simply not true. The two issues are absolutely un-connected. It is as simple as that.

At present Bury Council has made it very clear that it opposes congestion charging. When the issue comes to a final vote at the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA), the Leader of the Council will vote against the charge. Replacing him with a Mayor can do no more than bring exactly the same result. The only difference will be that it will be the Mayor voting against the charge, not the Leader. The vote will carry exactly the same weight.

And remember of course that there is no guarantee that an elected Mayor would vote “no” at all. An elected Mayor won’t be bound by the will of the Council, and if we elect a maverick then he can vote how he wants and we’re stuck with him for four years. Putting that much power in the hands of one person is dangerous. Add to that the cost of a Mayor (£100,000 for the referendum, same again for the election, another £100,000 annual salary and maybe another £75,000 salary for his deputy), and over four years we’re looking at nearly £1m taken out of front line services like caring for the vulnerable and cleaning the streets.

I have personally led the fight against congestion charging in Council. In council, I proposed the amendment opposing the charge, and this opposition was adopted as Council policy. I remain stridently opposed to the planned charge. But I will be voting “No” to a Mayor in the referendum because I see absolutely no connection between the two issues. I urge my fellow voters not to fall for Mr Berg’s lies. A Mayor would be bad news for Bury. So would congestion charging. So we should reject a Mayor once and for all, and pull together to oppose this charge.

Rick

Tonight is the first meeting of the Resource and Performance Scrutiny commission of the new municipal year. I was on the commission last year, as the sole Lib Dem, and here I am again, this time joined by our newest Councillor Mary D’Albert. Many of the other faces will be the same though. This appears to be the commission Councillors come to and never leave. A bit like a retirement village.

Tonight isn’t entirely a normal meeting, because much of the agenda is devoted to discussing what we’re going to do in meetings for the rest of the year. I was quite disappointed with aspects of scrutiny last year – not least the fact that after four hour meetings we often achieved little but the accumulation of vast quantities of hot air. I was disappointed to read in the annual review report that we only had 11 meetings last year. This was far more than the other commissions (we’re only scheduled to have 6), but I thought I’d spent enough time in that room to have had at least 50.

So I am going to suggest a few alternative ways of doing things this year. The agenda is so massive that it’s inefficient having all of us meeting at the same time. I think working groups looking at a small number of topics might be better, so I will suggest that. Last year this was adopted on a small scale, and I think it worked very well.

Also on the agenda tonight is a report on complaints. Ironically I have a major complaint about this report because I think it is largely a load of rubbish. It tells me very little, and the low numbers of complaints seems at odds with the experiences I hear about from residents all the time. This might be my own lack of understanding (I hope it is), but I have a number of questions which I want answering tonight.

All this assumes of course that I don’t pass out through hunger between now and then. My “bikini fit” diet is progressing in a way that makes me wish I could die fat rather than live slim. Sunday and Monday were fluids only, which passed off surprisingly well. But Tuesday and Wednesday were fluids and fruit, and by the time I got to my sixth consecutive meal of sticky, sugary tree-grown yuk I gave in and had a can of soup. It was either that or go into the garden and howl at the moon until bedtime.

So I fell off the wagon slightly. Today I am allowed raw vegetables, which means my lunch is the hugely appealing prospect of some chopped up peppers and carrot.

I’m not sure if it’ll make me live longer, but it’ll certainly feel longer.

Rick

In the wake of the announcement that dozens of post offices in and around Greater Manchester, 11 across the Stockport Borough, are scheduled for closure, Liberal Democrats from across the area have launched a petition to ‘Save our Post Offices’.

Cheadle Constituency Mark Hunter MP, Hazel Grove Constituency MP Andrew Stunell, Manchester Withington MP John Leech and Rochdale MP Paul Rowen, along with Lib Dem Councillors and activists launched the petition today in central Manchester by holding a demonstration to oppose the plans and asking local residents to sign up in support of the protest.

Speaking after the launch Mr Hunter said: “It’s not too late for action on this issue. I hope local people will speak out and sign our petition to save their local post office. Many are under threat now and many more will surely follow if the Government gets is way.

“Post Offices are a vital part of the community; they often help to keep local other shops afloat and are relied on by a very wide variety of people particularly the elderly and young mums. It seems to me that Labour is fast becoming a Government that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. The Liberal Democrats are committed to the future of the Post Office and we will keep up our campaign to show the Government that local people want to keep their Post Offices open.”

Mr Stunell added: “We lost a lot of Post Offices in this area when the Conservatives were last in Government, and now we are faced with a Labour Government that does not understand how strongly people feel about their local Post Office.

In fact the situation could soon get even worse - the Post Office Card Account that many pensioners rely on for drawing their pensions and benefits is being reviewed and if that work is lost by Royal Mail than even more Post Offices will surely be closed in the future.

The Liberal Democrats have a viable plan to prevent further closures and help to sustain the network; a plan that wouldn’t cost the earth that would invest in our local Post Office network not chop it up. Post Offices should be local and should be supporting our communities and we will continue to fight with our local community to save them.”

A couple of weeks ago I shrieked around the district in triumph having secured the construction of a bollard at the top of Dashwood Road. I had been trying to get it in place for about six months, and had strangled myself in more red tape than it would take to gift-wrap the Eiffel Tower. But a local resident and I got there in the end. God bless the Council and its lightning reflexes.

Today someone reversed into it, knocking it down, before driving off. Which was fairly irritating.

Thankfully someone got his number-plate, which I have passed on to the Police. I don’t know if wanton bollard destruction is a crime, but I hope so because he has deflated me somewhat, and thus deserves the type of punishment metered out to errant slaves in Roman times.

It is doubly bad because I am on day two of my “bikini fit” diet today, and in absolutely no mood for irritants. The first stage of the diet is a “detox,” which is apparently supposed to make you feel better by removing from your diet all solid foods for 48 hours. So I haven’t eaten anything requiring the use of teeth since Saturday evening, and am feeling the strain. Yesterday I was only allowed water. Today I have progressed to water and smoothies. Tomorrow I am on solids again, but only fruit.

I work with nurses and they doubt the healthiness of my choice. I doubt my own sanity, and would genuinely kill for a bag of crisps. And not just a stranger. I would kill a friend.

But the women in the book look good in bikinis, and since I am too lazy to find a diet for men, this will have to do for now.

Whether it works or not will be interesting. But regardless, if they catch the bollard murderer I will suggest to the judge that he don his black hat and sentence him to a fortnight of bikini fitness dieting. That’ll teach him.

Rick

I have just been out leafleting and once again had the distinct misfortune to find myself on Knowle Drive, the great forgotten road in my ward, the surface of which is not at all dis-similar to the surface of the Moon.

Numerous residents of this little street have complained to me and to colleagues about the state of the road before. And another one collared me today. I agree with their views entirely. Having been asked to stump up ever-increasing amounts of tax, they are within their rights to expect to drive from one end of their road to the other without feeling like they’re in a giant tumble dryer.

The annoying part for me is that there’s very little I can say beyond “I agree 100% with what you’re saying.” I must have asked the Council half a dozen times or more for their assistance with this road. But as I have mentioned on here before, the entire budget for minor road repairs for Prestwich in 2008-9 is £108,000, and the single neediest road costs one and a half times this amount. Without something radical, the people of Knowle Drive have got about as much chance of seeing their road satisfactorily repaired as I do of winning Wimbeldon.

Which, for local people, is hugely annoying and begs the oft-repeated question “where does all the money go?” I know that the answer to this is fantastically complicated, and that the oft-repeated “answer” that it is all wasted on asylum seekers and managers is entirely false. But for me, the lack of understanding and the huge amount of frustration that the ongoing inaction fosters amongst local people highlights a bigger worry - a complete lack of communication from the Council about why priorities are the way they are.

I try to explain local residents about the increasing cost of social care, say, and the investment in Children’s Services. But I can’t do it half as well as the Council could, by showing people that the reason their road hasn’t been done this year is because we’ve recruited a dozen new care co-ordinators instead, and as a result 100 more elderly people are being cared for at home. They mightn’t be happy about the road, but at least they’d understand why. At the moment there isn’t even that, and there’s resentment growing.

I read Council communications, and they don’t do the job. They tell half a tale, stressing the positives without ever talking about the sacrifices. They treat Council Tax payers as children, with a patronising dis-regard which never comes near to discussion of a real issue. It has to change. When I write St Mary’s Focus I try and put both sides of the story, because it’s rare that there’s an issue simple enough to be dealt with in a line or two. But the Council, and the national government as well, brush argument and difficulty under the carpet with sham “consultations” and phony words which are designed to win people round but in reality do the reverse. Why are they so scared of telling the whole story?

For the time being all I have for Knowle Drive is a shrug of agreement and the will to somehow pester the Council enough to have them pay for the repairs to shut me up. It’s not really all I should have up my sleeve.

Rick

Some time ago I began a battle with the DVLA after they mistakenly sent me a fine for not taxing a car that I’d sold and told them about. They didn’t bother updating their records, despite me telling them twice, and so when it wasn’t taxed, they fined me. This annoyed me greatly, not least because the only way to appeal the fine was time-consuming and annoying, and didn’t allow me any option but to use the post and a long form.

So I made a request under the Freedom of Information Act for the facts on these fines. I got no response, and so after a month I sent a reminder letter and copied the Information Commissioner in for good measure. A stream of profusely apologetic letters followed from the DVLA, but still no information. Today, two days after the second deadline passed, some information has finally arrived. And it makes grim reading for anyone interested in fairness.

In 2007 the DVLA sent out 1,227,047 letters like mine - late licence penalty notices or LLPs. One of them was to me, and it was wrong. My LLP charged me £40, rising to £80 if I didn’t pay within 28 days. I wondered how many others were falsely charged, so I asked how many of the letters were appealed against, and how many appeals were successful.

Bizarrely, the DVLA keep no records of this. They do not therefore have any idea how many people there are, like me, who find themselves aggrieved at being fined for doing nothing wrong. Incredibly, the DVLA also keep no record of how many cases they take to court, or how many of these result in acquittals. I asked them for the numbers, and they just don’t have them. They’re sending out penalty notices with no idea if the people receiving them are really guilty, and well over one million citizens are being sent penalty notices whilst the issuing authority has no idea how many of the people they’re fining has a legitimate problem with the fine.

The DVLA claim that, since people pay the fines, that must mean that they were justly handed out. This is rubbish.

For starters, the appeals process excludes the opportunity to talk to a human being, and involves a lengthy written form. There is also a financial dis-incentive to appeal, because the fine doubles after 28 days regardless of the reason for the delay. So people may well pay just to save a bit of money and make the problem go away. If challenging the machine is this difficult, why bother?

Secondly, the premise that people are paying the fines is wrong. The DVLA tell me that £28.3m was recovered using LLPs in 2007/8. A simple sum shows that if all 1.2m people fined paid the minimum £40, they’d have collected £49m. So at least 525,000 of the people they fined haven’t paid for one reason or another. That’s over 40%. Could it be because, like with my case, the recipient complained and was let off? It might be. I don’t think it was because they were all just penalty-dodgers - The DVLA tell me that there were only 15,000 successful convictions all of last year.

The DVLA should be keeping a record of challenges to its fines through the appeal process it allows. At the very least it should have a vague idea how many people legally challenge them in court and win. Otherwise how does it know the effectiveness of the system? At the moment it can tell me neither of these things.

The DVLA issues fines, but can’t tell me how many are appealed, how many appeals are successful, or how many court cases it brings result in acquittals. And so the faceless bureaucracy assumes it is right, demands our money, and to hell with the consequences. The DVLA could be swindling the British tax payer out of millions of pounds. And nobody there is keeping the records.

Rick 

Here’s a question - would Sir Alan Sugar hire a man who, when set the task of firing three job applicants and narrowing the shortlist to two, in fact manages to only fire one applicant, thus leaving four?

Probably not. And yet Sir Alan himself did just that this evening, whilst hunting for his Apprentice on BBC1. Normally, I wouldn’t care, but tonight I ws forced to watch The Apprentice having been cruelly abandoned by Tamsin. She has gone to see “Sex And The City,” a movie so unappealing that I’d genuinely trade in my corneas for a medium popcorn at the cinema door rather than have to sit and watch it. So I was left with the television and the ironing.

Thankfully, the evening was for-shortened somewhat by the Developing Communities sub-group of Prestwich Local Area Partnership, which I chair and which took place at the Methodist Church Hall after work, postponing my return to the empty house with its irnonig and television by a couple of hours. A surprisingly low turn-out this time after some staff shake-ups in the partner organisations over the election period, but there were still eight of us there to talk about some of the key issues in Prestwich.

There were updates on the Children’s Centres - the Sedgley one is all but done and we’re talking about the garden area and developing outreach facilities. The St Mary’s one is a bit further behind after the planning delay, but is still set for completion in the summer.

We also talked about a great new health project in Rainsough targeting men through football, and giving them the opportunity to earn formal qualifications and get health check-ups through participating in events put on by the local Primary Care Trust.

There were some frustrations, such as the ongoing saga with the Rainsough shops on Chapel Road, but on the whole it was a very positive meeting, giving groups the chance to talk to each other and build networks that can help us all. That’s one of the main aims of the group, and it works well.

It was also the first formal meeting where we could present our ideas as Councillors for the new Prestwich Plan, which I hope will form the bedrock of everything we’re doing for the next three years. It amalgamates early drafts, which accrued after conversations with partners, with our own ideas for a green, strong and thriving Prestwich. There are ten priority areas, and actions in each. We’re consulting on it with the partner agencies now, including representative groups of lots of different areas, faiths and interests. And once we’ve got comments, we can finalise and publicise the document and move forward achieving what we’ve said we’re going to do, in conjunction with the Council and everyone else.

Not a bad evening’s work, even if now I am bored and wondering how long that film she’s gone to see can possibly be…

Rick

The report today from the think tank Reform, claiming that maths exams are easier now than years ago, has drawn a predictable response from the government, who once again bury their heads in the sand in the face of overwhelming evidence that they’re wrong.

The report analysed exams for 16 year olds from 1951 and found that standards have fallen markedly. I am often sceptical of think tank reports, but I remember thinking the same thing myself at the time I took my own maths GCSE in 1996, and we have been frequently told it since. Put simply, I got a good pass in my GCSE, but would have failed an O-Level if I’d been born twenty years earlier.

Take a look at this comparison page to see for yourself the difference in standards. I reckon I could give the later papers a good go even now, but I don’t even understand the question from 1951.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/03_06_08_mathematics.pdf

The report concludes that the syllabus has got broader and shallower. As someone who lives with a teacher, I know that the entire curriculum is now so broad and shallow that often we barely scratch the surface. Our children are becoming the jack of all trades and the masters of none, which is a failure to get the basics of the education system right, and risks seriously damaging the economy in future, when graduates in maths and sciences from emerging competitor nations are better skilled than the young people graduating here.

Of course give children the introduction to a broad range of subjects, but we must teach key skills in depth and make exams a rigorous test so that entry to higher and tertiary education is made in subjects in which young people really do excel. We produce many times fewer science and maths graduates than our economic competitors, unsurprising given the lack of focused challenge in mathematics exams that this report highlights. Easier exams don’t stretch the gifted into developing an interest beyond that which is necessary to tick a box and pass a GCSE. The advanced study of maths and science should be about discovery and excitement and the wonder of the natural world and what makes and changes it. It’s why I was never good at it, because I had the skill to write about it rather than the patience and logical brain to learn it.

And yet the government remain in denial about this despite an overwhelming weight of evidence, insisting that the standards of exams are closely monitored. Well, they aren’t monitored closely enough, are they? Lib Dem Shadow Children, Schools and Families Secretary David Laws has called for a fully independent regulator to restore confidence in the system. Given that it is not serving its purpose, and giving young people increasingly valueless qualifications in which universities and employers have little faith, this is one approach that will work to make maths teaching as effective as possible.

I don’t begrudge a single young person a GCSE in anything. I congratulate them all on their achievements, and if they do what’s asked of them then they deserve all the credit we can give them. But if what they’re asked to do does little but give the government a tool to massage attainment figures, then both they and us lose out in the long run. Making exams harder doesn’t mean consigning children to failure. It means giving them real choices between subjects that they’re good at, and subjects that they’re not. It means preparing them to use what they learn in the workplace, rather than using it to pass an exam and then forget. And most of all, it means instilling in young people a love of a subject, a passion for learning it, and a will to continue developing and discovering that will last way beyond the end of an exam.

Rick

Last night I went for a run for the first time in too long. I was distressed to find that it is still as difficult as it was last time I went. Having moved house since I last tried it, I now have an exciting new route to try, which takes me into hiterto unexplored parts of the ward such as Rainsough and Hilton Lane. Unfortunately the run confirmed what frequent leafleting excursions had suggested - namely that the entire area wasn’t down hill.

Today I am continuing preparations for tomorrow night’s inaugural meeting of the Developing Communities LAP sub-group. The new Prestwich Plan is taking shape, and so hopefully we’ll be able to get a good,solid meeting tomorrow.

Before that though I am meeting a local resident tonight to talk about how the Council provides services to the Jewish community in Prestwich. Sedgley ward in particular has a very large and growing Jewish population, and I am the only Jewish councillor across all the three Prestwich wards. So it will be an interesting meeting with a man whom I know is very well informed and interested about these matters.

And at the very least it gives me the perfect excuse not to go running again. Something that makes me ache this much can’t be good for me.

Rick

Last night I went to the Liverpool Sound concert at Anfield, headlined by Sir Paul McCartney, a man so dazzlingly wealthy and with a musical back-catalogue so ludicrously accomplished, that even a brief contemplation of the scope of his life makes my brain hurt.

Here’s a guy who’s more famous than The Queen, and has been since my parents were in short trousers (or, in my mum’s case, whatever young girls wore in the early 60s). Until I was about 16 I thought that “Yesterday” was a centuries-old folk song, and scientists have now proven that the tunes to “Hey Jude” and “Let It Be” are automatically woven into the genes of foetuses in the womb, along with the ability to see and cry.

I wonder, what does he do with his days? When you and I get up and go into the office, what does he do? And how can he do it, given that his appearance anywhere is fairly likely to cause hysteria? What is he doing right now, I wonder? And how does it feel to churn out a new album every couple of years for the entire duration of my life to date, only for everyone in every audience you ever play to to actually want to hear things from decades before?

I also wonder how he manages to be even anywhere on the “normal” spectrum after this much adulation for this long. I get light-headed and ego-maniacal for weeks after the odd occasion I get stopped in Tesco and asked about a planning application. Macca gets kings and presidents falling at his feet every day for 50 years, and other than his over-use of the thumbs-up and peace gestures, he appears at least as sane as most of the people I bump into daily.

Ah well, I comfort myself with the fact that I don’t need to think particularly long and hard about him. He seems capable of taking care of himself, and I have more pressing needs to attend to, such as the new version of the Prestwich Plan, which I have been working on over the weekend in front of an audience of 36,000 screaming fans.

This plan will hopefully become the document which drives forward the work of the Local Area Partnership for the next three years. The priorities within it have come from discussions with partners such as the Police, Fire and NHS, as well as being the priorities of the community as represented by the local Councillors who they elect.

Achieving the targets in the plan will also be the agenda for the two sub-groups of the Local Area Partnership. I chair one of them, the Developing Communities Group, and we meet for the first time this year on Wednesday. I suggested Wembley Stadium, but apparently the likely crowd demand has meant us booking Prestwich Methodist Chirch Hall instead. I spent time on the phone to the Local Area Partnership manager this morning, finalising the agenda for the meeting.

Also this weekend I chased up some very outstanding casework to do with Woodward Road. I wrote on here about some mysterious green sludge which had appeared there six weeks or so ago, and I had asked the Council to clear it up. Despite numerous promises to the contrary, the Council still haven’t sorted it out, and so today I asked them yet again to take a look. This is another issue to be brought up at the next Local Area Partnership meeting where Council officers will be there in person to answer residents’ queries.

Which just goes to show that whilst Beatle-mania and the adulation of millions would be nice, all I really want is for someone to replace the paving slabs on Woodward Road. Maybe that’s what Macca’s up to on his days off…

Rick