One of the things I enjoy most about being a Councillor is that every so often I get to write a speech, and give it, and have people listen to it. Maybe it’s because I was always good at “English” at school. Maybe it’s because I have ideas about things and relish the chance to give them voice. Or maybe I’m an egomaniac…

Whatever the reason,  I do like political speeches, even when it’s not me writing and giving them. More than any other form of communication, a few words spoken from the mouths of leaders can influence the course of history. How many were inspired by Martin Luther King saying “I have a dream?” Would the people of this country have remained strong against the Nazis were it not for Churchill saying that “We will never surrender”? President Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg talked about “Government of the people, by the people, for the people” - a concept used to drive forward democracy for nearly 150 years since.

The Gettysburg address, by the way, contained less than 300 words and took two minutes to deliver. This single blog post is well over twice as long! Managing to define a century, crystallise a vision of government, and go down in history simultaneously in the time it takes to phone for a pizza is quite a feat!

I write speeches for Council and they aren’t even in the same universe as the great ones. For starters I don’t have the talent, but thankfully I can hide behind the excuse that it’s difficult to inspire a generation on the topic of free bus travel for the elderly.

One day I want to write a speech that blows the doors off the room, with a broad theme and full of concepts that appeal to everyone. In the meantime I learn from other people, and I have quite a guide in whoever is writing Senator Barack Obama’s speeches. It’s not often that I read a speech on the computer screen off a website and it brings tears to my eyes. I do with some of his. Any writer who can manage to convey such hope through a speech without his words even being spoken aloud is a genius. And when combined with Barack Obama’s rhetoric, which could stir a corpse to dancing, the words become stellar and I genuinely believe will help to change the world.

Last night’s convention speech by Senator Obama, accepting the Democratic nomination for President, was one such speech. An astounding tour-de-force of inspiration. I think everyone should read it.

I won’t critique the American Presidential race. I don’t know enough about it beyond what I read in the news, and there are plenty of others who can give better analysis than I can. But I know the power of words, and how they inspire whole countries to action and change. At a time when the world’s feelings towards America have massive ramifications for us all, I want a leader at the helm who can make a difference with words as well as bombs. Someone who can inspire and who’s vision of hope can be communicated across the world.

Unfortunately, I know, it’s more complicated than that. I care a lot less about what the next President will do to American domestic education policy than I do about what he’ll do against global terror. Which is why I don’t have a vote in the election and why a President’s job is the world’s toughest balancing act. I just wish it wasn’t quite so complicated, and that we all did have a vote over here!

Some (just some) of the criticism of President Bush is unjust. And some (not all) of the faith put in Senator Obama to change the world is doubtless mis-placed. But I want the President of the United States to be a leader of the world capable of making the positive case for liberty and reason. And with speeches like this he will help bring billions onto the side of freedom and progress.

Rick

Last night was another meeting of the Council’s Licensing and Safety Panel, which considers private hire and hackney carriage licensing and safety issues for the Borough. Of particular enjoyment was the almost biblical miracle of making a tiny agenda last nearly three hours.

There was the usual crop of applications for license, and hearings for those license holders who have committed offences and risk losing their license. Of most interest though was a report on the future of taxi MOT testing in the Borough. At present there is only one facility for drivers to use, but the Drivers’ Association has asked that consideration is given to extending this provision and opening up the market. So we have asked for some work to be undertaken to find out the possible effects of this. It’s clearly an issue for many drivers, dozens of whom turned up to hear the discussion.

This weekend we’ll be out leafleting in St Mary’s, so look out for that. And on Sunday it’s the annual Bury Liberal Democrats Summer BBQ, where we grill beef in the name of Nick Clegg.

All members and supporters are welcome - please email me for details. It’s going to be a fun occasion where you will have the opportunity to meet fellow Lib Dems (and those dragged along by their Liberal Democrat friends / relations), including Councillors who can live up to the high standards to which they’ve been elected by gorging themselves on four or five pounds of ground meat.

I hope to see some of you there - it’s always lovely to see new faces. And, if nothing else, it’s a free feed.

Rick

I was informed yesterday that a site visit had taken place to see the missing street sign on Butterstile Lane. Apparently the sign exists! Any problem is all a figment of my imagination, apparently…

Unfortunately, it transpired that the site visit had been to the wrong end of the road, and the operatives involved had not deduced that, like many roads, this one has two ends. The end that they inspected does indeed have its full complement of signs. The end I wanted them to look at does not. And so they returned to base thinking that all was well. I have had to tell them today that it is not.

The manager concerned offered to meet with me to discuss the issues, but I have told him that it won’t be necessary and that there is only one issue - the missing street sign that I just want him to replace!

As a reminder, this was first reported back in May… Quite how something this simple can be turned into something seemingly unachievable is beyond me.

The trials continue…

Rick

Tonight saw the resumption of my Council year with a meeting of the Resource and Performance Scrutiny Commission.

Most of the reports presented were mainly for information rather than comment, and it was good to see that the finances of the Council appear to be in robust shape. Whilst we can debate spending priorities and tax levels, at least we’re confident that we’re not going to go bust, and the officers of the Council deserve credit for that.

The most notable item discussed was not on the agenda though. The minutes of the last meeting showed clearly that the Commission had raised a number of concerns over the Job Evaluation / Equal Pay issue that has been in the news recently and is understandably worrying a lot of Council employees. Unfortunately the Council’s internal newsletter said that the Commission raised no concerns, and I was keen to put this right, as were my fellow panel members. We made it very clear that our concerns remain, and that we want to be sure that the process is as fair as possible. To that end I was very pleased to see that a special meeting of the Commission is to be arranged for late September, before the end of the consultation period. At this meeting there will be a single-item agenda where we will hopefully have the chance to question The Leader and the relevant Executive Member on this issue, and then give a formal response on it.

Despite statements to the contrary, the Commission and its members are very concerned, and I am glad that we will have the chance to get more information on this very important issue.

Rick

This morning I went downstairs at 5am to have a glass of water, and fell over my cat. This inauspicious start to the day continued when it proved impossible to get back to sleep, and now I face the rest of it in a kind of grey haze, my reactions trailing about 5 seconds behind the rest of me.

This was particularly annoying at 10am today when the Post Office rang me back to discuss the fate of the post box on Rainsough Brow. I was unable to fully grasp what was being said until after I’d put down the phone, and thus the messenger was deprived of the shot he so thoroughly deserved.

Last week I wrote how I had found the box inexplicably shut off, and discovered on ringing the Post Office that it had been condemned by the black-cap wearing “Health and Safety” people. I now know the reason why the box has suddenly become hazardous - it’s that it’s placed near to a mini roundabout, and is thus dangerous to collect from.

The mini roundabout concerned has been there for years (although, clearly, not as long as the post box), but only now has it been deemed too dangerous to park up near. I was pretty amazed to hear that this was the reason, and also that the decision was made to instantly shut off the box, and remove it within the week. There is a Chinese takeaway car park right there next to it, with people coming and going all the time. I am told that they will “consider” replacing it, but no guarantees have been given. There was a mumbled acknowledgement that maybe some local residents might have liked to be involved in the decision, but apparently annoying vast parts of the community is less dangerous than continuing to collect mail from a post office in exactly the same position relative to the road that it’s been in for years.

Rick

We have a new addition to the family! Tamsin and I adopted the above ginger cat from the RSPCA in Rochdale, and he has been finding his feet at home today. He is called Mac (after Macavity the Mystery Cat, of TS Eliot and latterly Andrew Lloyd Webber fame). He only has three legs, and thus he has middle names including Tripod and Reliant Robin.

Right now he is sliding about on the floor in the lounge. It is very exciting. There are lots of cats in the neighbourhood, but none with quite the same number of limbs, so he’ll always be easy to find.

Rick

Council officially returns from recess tomorrow and, like buses, I have waited weeks for a meeting only to see several looming on the horizon now as three are coming over the next three nights.

Tomorrow it’s another meeting of the Resource and Performance scrutiny commission, on Thursday it’s the Licensing panel, and sandwiched in between is a meeting of the Lib Dem Council group where we’ll reconvene to discuss the issues that have been happening whilst people have been away.

The bank holiday weekend has not been as relaxing as I’d hoped, and I now find myself at the depressing precipice of another working week having recharged my batteries not one iota.

I was on a “stag weekend” in Chester on Saturday and Sunday, a part of which involved trooping to a tree-top activity centre / assault course designed without reasonable thought to the fact that I like to go about my daily business without being strapped inside a harness and throwing myself onto a cargo net 50ft from the ground. Heights and I do not have the most cordial relationship, and the experience there did not help make it any better. And, as a result of some inexpert leaping and a subsequent underwear malfunction, I am now both tired and injured. As I limped from venue to venue in Chester afterwards, wishing to God that it was still under Roman control and that a centurion would put me out of my misery, I once more was of the view that I am not cut out to be a 27 year old man when I am in the company of other 27 year old men. They have more stomach for a night out than I do.

Last night, returned from Chester and when I was desperate for sleep to envelope me like a loving friend, I had to attend a rock concert at Lancashire County Cricket Club. And let me reveal to you this pearl of wisdom - trying to capture 40 winks whilst standing ten yards from a speaker doing 150 decibels is easier said than done.

I did eventually find my bed, only to be woken early this morning by what sounded like a large lorry careering through my bedroom. It turned out to be driving on the road outside, but I am of the view that the walls to this house are made from tracing paper, as they have all the sound-proofing qualities of a pair of tights.

And so we come to tomorrow, and a return to the business of Bury. Jokes aside, there is serious business to discuss at the Scrutiny panel, not least the Job Evaluation exercise that has justifiably worried a lot of people and which I hope we get to talk about.

I miss Council when it’s in recess, and I’m glad it no longer is. There is much to do and I am looking forward to getting on and helping to do it.

Rick

I have been in exasperated communication with the Council today regarding the continuing drama of the missing street sign on Butterstile Lane.

The sign has been missing, presumed nicked, for three months now. I reported it when it disappeared, and since then the forlorn signposts have been standing vacant like a football goal waiting for a cross bar.

I have blogged about this before, expressing my shock at the Council’s advice that it would take ten weeks to replace a sign. I was of the view then that it’d be quicker to design and build my own iron forging plant and cast the sign myself than wait for the wheels of Council bureaucracy to creak round and get this sorted. When I chased the matter up a few weeks back this view was confirmed when I was told that ten weeks actually meant twelve weeks. The reason for the further delays was not explained to me, so I can only put it down to someone not doing their job properly and treating the issue with the contempt it doesn’t deserve.

So we arrive at today, at the end of the revised waiting period, and still no sign. Quite why something this small yet this important to drivers and walkers and, well, anybody really who wants to know where they are, can’t be sorted in less time than it takes to walk across Europe is a mystery to me.

So I have made my feelings clear to the people in charge. We still don’t have a sign, but I feel slightly better and it makes me feel that at least I’m trying to do what I was elected for, rather than just having ineffective Council officers crush any notion I might have of making even a tiny difference for local people.

Honestly, sometimes I think talking to the Council and asking them for something is about as useful as begging a shrub to cook me my dinner. But we live in hope – my main current hope being that the press pick up this blog post and embarrass the Council, thus joining me in trying to up the pace towards “snail” from its current level of “corpse.”

Rick

Last night I went out to post a letter, only to discover that my local post box on Rainsough Brow had been sealed off without warning. A note (clearly printed off someone’s PC and without any Royal Mail logo or contact details on it at all) had been stuck in a plastic wallet and pinned to the box, helpfully announcing to the world the blindlingly obvious – “This Post Box has been closed.” It also said that the box would be removed within 7 days. And there ended the note.

I was surprised and annoyed to find this out – no warning, no information on the reasons for the closure, no information on where to find out more, and no directions to the nearest alternative box. I live at the end of the street and am the local Councillor, and I don’t know exactly where the nearest box is, so I don’t know how people less familiar with the area are to be expected to know. What they will know is that yet another local service has disappeared without warning or consultation, and there’s little option but for them to accept it.

This morning I rang Royal Mail “customer services,” a falsely labelled operation who’s job seems to entail passing callers around between operatives until they die of old age. After 15 minutes of recorded messages trying to direct me to the website (tried that…), interspersed occasionally with someone telling me I’d got through to the wrong department, they admitted their complete inability to provide me with a service and I was given the number of the Prestwich sorting office.

I rang Prestwich, and was told by someone shouting across the office to the colleague who picked up the phone, that the box had been closed “for health and safety” reasons. I wondered how unsafe a post box could possibly be. Were children getting trapped inside, I asked? Were letter-writers being met at the box by a pair of small eyes and a little hand grabbing their letters from within? No, apparently not, although the precise reason for the closure was not made clear to me. Maybe there’s been a plague of exploding post boxes of which I have not been made aware…

The box will be removed within a week, and nobody there seemed sure whether a replacement will be provided. I made it clear that there are lots of people in Rainsough, on Hilton Lane and on Butterstile Close and Avenue who care a lot more than the Prestwich sorting office and would very much like not to be deprived of their post box as well as lots of their post offices.

I was promised a call back next week when certain key staff return from their holidays. In the meantime I am left to wonder whether, having failed to provide residents with any information on this at all, or consult them at all on their views on this post box, I should believe the Royal Mail now. I will keep trying to find out information, and won’t let the box go without a fight.

In the meantime, please ring the Prestwich sorting office on 0161 912 6902 to make your feelings clear and to try and find out the information which I couldn’t.

Rick

The last few weeks in the world of Bury Council have been dominated by the issue of job evaluation / equal pay. As a result of an exercise in job evaluation designed to iron out pay inequalities, lots of Council staff face cuts in salaries. For some the cuts are more than 40% of their wage, a vastly unjust wage cut in anybody’s book. But at the same time, lots of staff are gaining, and the cost to the Council of paying for the entire process £7m+ in time-limited pay protection, fees and officer time.

The exercise has been extremely controversial, and like all Councillors I have had dozens of letters from staff set to lose out. My heart goes out to them, and my will is set to try and see a way out of this that ensures fairness and doesn’t cripple the Council financially.

The plans for re-grading of posts are currently out to consultation. My views on “consultation” are jaded to say the least, after exercises of that name have turned out to be nothing of the sort in the past. I only hope that all sides use the time set aside to really consult everyone and try to come to a consensus view.

As local leaders we Councillors need to be careful not to take the easy road and make political points out of this. I was very disappointed to read local MP David Chaytor try to pin the blame for this on the Conservative Council. Retorts from the Tories that Labour sat on the problem for years are equally irritating. These games make politicians look like children and, worse, they do nothing at all to help the dedicated staff of the Council who are threatened with serious financial hardships.

It is easy and natural to try and find somebody to blame for this. And that time may yet come. But it isn’t now. Whilst it’s true that the letters of information arrived at the weekend, and whilst the Council might not have been crystal clear with some of their briefings, these are not the issues which will be important in the final reckoning. We should not lose sight of the the bigger picture by focusing on these small points.

The reasons for the current situation are many and varied. We could blame the managers and leaders of yesteryear for setting up unequal pay in the first place. We could blame the Unions for doing nothing for so long and then supporting a process before opposing its results. We could blame the government for passing laws without thinking through their consequences. We could blame lawyers for being greedy. We could blame judges for interpreting the law without taking a broader view. We could blame the Council leaders, we could blame the officers, we could blame ourselves for letting this injustice go on for so long. I don’t think we should blame anybody at the moment. Hard working public servants should not have their financial security threatened in this way, and instead of looking to blame, all sides should consider how well-meaning measures have been used to create such a plainly unfair outcome, to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.

And, in seeking to blame people now, whilst the issue is so raw and still undecided, we might risk ignoring real ways to try and get ourselves out of this predicament.

What we should be doing is looking forward. The Council’s leaders should be looking far and wide across the country to see how other Council’s have handled this situation. And if there is no other way for Bury within the law, then we should be looking at ways to make any wage cuts as bearable as possible for those involved, and thus minimise the potential damage to the Council, its staff and the people of Bury. That is what the Conservative Council has to do now. If they fail in it, they can be justly blamed. If they succeed, we should congratulate them. And as an opposition member it is my job to make sure that they’re doing it properly.

There is an appeals process, and we need to make it as transparent as possible. We need staff adequately represented, and we need to give them access to as much information as they want. If it’s inconvenient or it takes a bit longer, then so be it. We need to make sure that the appeals process is scrutinsed properly, and that it takes into account every stage in the evaluation process. We need to make sure that appeals take into account individual jobs, rather than job families. Again, the time to blame those leading the Council will be if and when they fail to do this.

And where, after a fair and open appeals process, people still lose out financially, we need to put in place every support mechanism possible to minimise damage to them and the Council’s services. That means supporting staff in training and development, re-examining job roles and team structures to take advantage of “natural wastage” through retirements and resignations so that people who remain suffer as little loss as possible.

I am glad that some of these steps are being considered now. But not enough of them are, and it is up to the Conservative Council to make more of them happen. The blame game has led to suspicion and almost open warfare between staff, unions, MPs and the Council itself at a time when we should be coming together for the good of everyone. Unions threatening strike action is understandable. But the Unions backed the scheme originally, and they should join with the officers and leaders of the council and finding a way out of this mess we’re all in.

In the end it will be the Council’s Executive that take the final decision. If that decision is arrived at without exploring every avenue to make it as equitable as possible to all concerned, then the Conservative Council should rightly take the blame. At the moment though, shouting at them rather than railing against the flaws in this process does the staff of Bury Council no good at all. 

Rick

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg has warned that Visiting Britain’s energy security is under severe threat as a result of the Government’s disintegrating energy policy, which will lead to an ever-increasing dependence on vulnerable foreign energy supplies.

Setting out Liberal Democrat proposals to secure energy independence for Britain yesterday, Nick argued that politicians of all parties need to demonstrate the kind of vision, application and political will behind the Apollo Project that succeeded in putting man on the moon, in order to head off the threat to the security of our energy supply.

Nick Clegg said:

“The Government has been looking at energy from the wrong end of the telescope.

“The scale of its failure to plan for Britain’s energy security has been brought into sharp relief by the Georgian crisis, which underlines the risks of increasing dependence on foreign energy sources as North Sea oil supplies run down.

“Rather than use its period in office to reduce Britain’s dependency on vulnerable supplies from unstable regions, Labour has dithered and flip-flopped for over a decade. Instead of an energy policy, we have a potential economic, environmental and national security disaster waiting to happen.

“But we have an enormous opportunity to create real energy independence for the UK, freeing ourselves from the shackles of foreign oil, coal and gas.

“Renewable energy is no longer a pipe-dream. It is realistic and achievable. All it requires is the leadership and vision that has been lacking under years of tired Labour thinking.

“That’s why today I am setting out Liberal Democrat proposals to become energy independent by 2050. This will require the kind of ambition and political will that succeeded in putting man on the moon.

“We need an ‘Apollo Project’ for British energy independence.

“Just as Britain invested in the North Sea in the 1970s to transform our energy prospects through oil production, we must today make similar investment in renewable technologies to harness Britain’s vast renewable energy resources, combined with major reductions in energy consumption.”

Rick

I have been spectacularly busy at work recently, hence the lack of a post yesterday, and this one which, as you will see in approximately nine lines time, will come to its conclusion. In the last few days though we have begun to print the latest St Mary’s Focus, which will start to hit doorsteps shortly, and I have been limbering up for the resumption of Council business next week.

There have been lots of interesting issues cropping up over recess, not least of which is the job evaluation / equaly pay issue which I know has affected a lot of Council staff. Recess comes to an end after the bank holiday and I know then that this and other issues will come to the fore again. And I for one am looking forward to it, because I’ve been pretty bored and stuck for things to write in the meantime!

Rick

You may have seen in the news last week that local Lib Dems were oppsoing the Council’s ludicrous heavy-handedness over the issue of graffiti.

The Council had sent letters out to local people who had graffiti on their homes, threatening them with court action and a £1,000 fine if they didn’t get the mess cleaned up. Many of the recipients of the letters were scared and annoyed, and local Lib Dem Councillors were livid. The Council were not only abdicating their responsibilities to act to prevent and clean up graffiti, but the letters were outrageously over the top.

Now though, after a campaign against this action, the Council have relented. The threat of court action and fines has been lifted, and local people will soon be contacted offering them free use of graffiti cleaning kits. This comes on top of news that four of the main culprits have been detained by Police, and will be given the option of cleaning their mess themselves as part of their punishment.

Whilst this is a major move forward, and a victory for common sense, I still think that the Council needs to do more to remove graffiti itself. Nothing displays crime in an area more than graffiti, and it sends a clear message that the law-breakers have one over the law-keepers. At the moment the Council doesn’t prioritise its removal, and I think it should. Our local environment is important, and whilst home-owners should be involved in cleaning up graffiti, the Council and its partners shouldn’t rely on them exclusively to clean up after vandals.

Rick

Bury South MP and Health Minister Ivan Lewis writes in the Sunday Times today , suggesting that the way to alleviate financial pressures for middle-income earners is to raise taxes for the rich. He is wrong, ignoring the glaring policy errors of his own government, and amply demonstrating the nannying, we-know-best mentality that is at the heart of the failing Labour administration.

Mr Lewis claims that now is the time to put the national interest first, and to move away from sound-bite policy initiatives to grab the headlines today or this week. A noble thing to say, but sadly his call for increased taxes on the rich is just the type of cynical vote-grabbing manoeuvre he claims to want to avoid. He says himself that he won’t talk about specifics, which is probably just as well because scratching below the surface of this hollow pronouncement will shows flawed his ideas are.

Mr Lewis claims to be in touch with the deisres of ordinary people, but he is mistaken if he thinks those desires include any sort of income-tax raise at all, even for the very rich. Until Mr Lewis and the government stop mis-spending the money we all already pay, they will never win any argument to the contrary.

And this is the main problem with Mr Lewis’ headline-grabbing suggestion - It’s simplicity ignores dealing with the problems that Labour themselves have created or ignored in the nearly a dozen years they’ve had to sort this out. Sorting them first would end the need for tax hikes for anyone:

There is staggering waste in public services. This most overly bureaucratic and centralised government machine in Europe is stifling local innovation and forcing public service away from local accountability and towards compliance with an expensive, inefficient and all-powerful government machine. Local Authorities pay hundreds of thousands of pounds for inspections; NHS Trusts spend similar sums becoming Foundation Trusts and satisfying government watchdogs of their fitness to operate; and God alone knows how much money is wasted on consultations which get us all precisely nowhere at a cost of millions. I don’t begrudge public sector workers their pensions, nor do I think any one of them does a bad job, but centralised drives towards efficiency, and an ever-growing list of demands fro Whitehall means that any form of local innovation is nigh-on impossible. And this needs to change.

The government should sort this out before imposing any more tax on anyone. And it should get its spending priorities right as well, so that it provides services the public wants, not services that it wants. The government ID Card scheme will cost £7.5bn, enough for 50 of the best schools in the world, or 10 of the best hospitals in the world, or world-class public transport in 5 of our cities. Why don’t government scrap the scheme, like the Lib Dems would? Don’t raise taxes Mr Lewis, spend them properly.     

Mr Lewis seems determined to tax the rich more, but where is the government zeal to collect the tax already owed by the super-rich? Climb-downs over non-dom taxes and a refusal to deal with accountancy tricks means that many of the richest already escape their obligations. Without dealing with these problems, the government could put up the top rate to whatever it wants, and they’d still not have grasped the nettle. 

The government has missed opportunity after opportunity to introduce fair, radical ways to introduce tax changes that will help poor people and middle income earners, alter behaviour to make the country greener, and serve to end massive injustices. Why were recent car tax plans so comprehensively botched? Why punish the poor by imposing retrospective taxes on Ford Focuses, when money would’ve been raised, and good would’ve been done (and votes would’ve been won!) by massively increasing taxes on far dirtier and far more expensive cars? People on the average wage drive average cars like Focuses. Millionaires don’t. Millionaires drive Porsche Cayenne Turbos. So tax the Porsche, which belches out fumes like a Victorian mill, back to the stone age, and leave the Focus alone. That’s a better way to help middle earners, it’ll get the dirty cars off the road, and it won’t give green taxes a bad name.

The same is true on the Council Tax. The formula is so skewed towards punishing the average earners it’s almost untrue. People strive their whole lives to afford a three bed semi, and are taxed to the hilt with raises every year even if their income barely moves. Yet the difference between the bill for the office worker in that semi and the Premier League footballer in the £5m mansion down the road is tiny in real terms. If it insists on non-income related taxation in the first place, why doesn’t the government grasp the nettle and re-band Council Tax to impose much bigger bills on the much bigger houses, and much smaller bills lower down?

Mr Lewis could also do well to consider not taxing the poor, rather than taxing the rich to help the poor. Why not raise the threshold at which income tax is paid? Allow those who earn the least to keep more of their money, rather than pay to fund a government machine designed solely to give it them back? What is the point of rhetoric talking about escaping poverty when this government more than any has slung millions into a culture of handouts with its tax credits and means-tested benefits?

And therein lies the fundamental contradiction in Mr Lewis’ argument. He talks of helping middle Britain and wanting to reconnect to the “aspirational” classes. And yet the method he proposes to help that aspiration is to impose ever greater reliance on the state.  The reward he proposes for those who achieve their goals of financial independence is higher taxes once they get there, and the solution to the financial problems of those he seeks to help is to dole out more cash from government coffers. His approach is as doomed to failure as it is woefully out-dated. It is like suggesting that the way to make a car go faster is by ripping out the seats and chucking on them on the back of the tow-truck in front.

Raising taxes on the rich to give back to the middle classes is not the way to help those in our country who aspire to better things. It’s the bluntest of blunt instruments, suggested by a Minister showing us all how far from sharp he is. Instead of Mr Lewis’ approach, I want my government to be far more imaginative in its solutions. Yes, impose greater taxes or financial responsibilities on those with the most where they’re just and required - an obligation on energy companies to re-invest their profits in environmentally sustainable fuel, or a crack-down on tax avoidance. And yes, use benefits to help the very poor where they really are needed. But real aspiration can only be supported by giving people the freedom to make their own choices and live in a society free as much as possible from government interference and unnecessary handouts.

We should not be seeking to tax our way out of our economic problems. We should be looking to give people more freedoms to spend their own money, to take responsibility for their own behaviour, and to make choices themselves rather than have them made for them by government. Mr Lewis should spend less of his time suggesting simple-minded ways of shoring up the votes in my ward, and more time convincing his ministerial colleagues to cut taxes and red-tape, and make the types of changes to the tax system which will make a real difference to peoples lives for years to come, not just until the next Whitehall cheque arrives.

Rick 

Yesterday there was a meeting of young people interested in a skate park in the area. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend, but fellow Prestwich Lib Dems Cllr Vic D’Albert and Cllr Ann Garner did go. By the sounds of it the young people put up an excellent set of potential ideas, and a range of options for the type of facility that would suit them and the location it could go in. I have heard some very positive feedback from the meeting, and people there were especially impressed that the young people themselves continue to play such a pivotal role in the development of plans, and they have done throughout.

The next step may well be to bring the proposals to the Local Area Partnershiup formally, and then we can hopefully get some agreement on a way forward. I know these things can take time (sometimes too much time), which can be frustrating especially if you’re desperate for a facility which is much needed. But hopefully we can get some progress on this. The young people obviously care very much about this facility, and with any luck I will be able to use the Developing Communities sub-group of the LAP, which I chair, to get some progress on a facility which gives young skateboarders a safe place to go which is good for the whole community.

Rick

It’s A-level results day today - a day etched into the brains of 18 year olds up and down the country like a farmer’s mark branded into the rump of a cow… I remember well the unending summer of misery I endured before my own results were published, including a night entirely devoid of sleep beforehand, and then a surprisingly good outcome at the end of it all.

Well done to everyone in the ward who picked up results today. No matter what the grade, the hard work necessary even to get to the end of an A-Level course is no mean feat. If the results were good, then you deserve particular congratulations. And if they weren’t, then I know that there are many options to consider, and all is by no means lost.

The results have shown another improvement. Now over 97% of papers are passed, and a quarter of them get a grade A. So with one in four candidates now achieving an A Grade, we need to be sure that the most talented students are being properly stretched.

Liberal Democrats today call for action to make sure that the value of these exams remains high, and that the efforts of young people are justly rewarded with qualifications that mean a good deal to universities and employers. The new regulator must now act by reviewing today’s top grades so that we can be fully confident that the apparent improvements are real.

Our Schools spokesperson Annette Brooke has also raised concerns over the geographical divide in results. There is now a clear divide at the heart of our education system. The rate of improvement in the A Grade pass rate in the south is nearly three times greater than in the north.

Ministers must work to find the reasons for this inequality and ensure that any improvements in our schools and colleges benefit all students.

This is a system that isn’t perfect. But the young people coming through it today have passed the next stage in their development, and will start in university or employment in a few weeks. I remember that the trepidation I felt waiting for my results was forgotten just a short time later when the next chapter in my life started at university. No matter how anyone receiving results felt last night or feels today, the results are just one small part of a wider adventure, and I wish every one of the students getting results today all the best with it.

Rick

The Policy Exchange published its “Cities Unlimited” report today. It was met with news headlines screeched at such a pitch that only certain dog breeds could hear them, because it suggested that citizens of struggling northern towns might be better moving to the south to further their prospects after the failure of current regeneration projects in the north.

This suggestion grabbed the headlines, but in fact the report contained several interesting ideas on devolving powers to local authorities and doing away with the types of centralised regeneration funding arrangements which haven’t worked in the past.

The report makes me think in a new way about what local councils could do with regeneration money if given the powers to do so. The report recommends that funding be allocated simply related to income levels, so as a reasonably affluent borough Bury mightn’t get that much. But what it did get would be up to us to spend, and we’d be accountable to local people properly if it was spent rightly or wrongly. If we wanted to spend it on a business park or a bypass or an urban forest, we could. We could give nurses a pay rise to attract the best ones, or pay for more police officers in response to local concerns. Or we could use the money to cut taxes locally, rather than respond to centrally imposed rules that give us no leeway for local innovation.

Bury could have its own identity, we could learn from others as to what worked and what didn’t, and as the report says, we wouldn’t just be one of 1,000 identical towns across the country.

The report points out that more power for local authorities makes them a more attractive place to work, will create diversity in terms of policy development, and will allow for local politicians to be held more reasonably accountable for local successes and failures. As a local councillor myself, a massive bug-bear is that my influence on policy is so tiny when set against the Whitehall machine, that I am reduced to the level of just a glorified answering machine for small-time problems like broken street lights. This is an important job, but it should be one of many jobs councillors have. Government moves to concentrate what little powers councillors have in the hands of an Executive of just a few of them makes the situation worse. The entire system needs overhauling, and these recommendations are a step in the right direction.

I don’t think that the report is spot on in everything it suggests. I think there is a lack of consideration of the ramifications of the suggested movement south-eastwards on other local services. And whilst the suggested seismic shift in local/central government relations is welcome in my view, it won’t work to give communities the power they should have without similarly locally-led police, health and other services. I also don’t  like the suggestion, however coyly made, that success for people from northern towns can be best achieved in the south simply because that’s the centre of much of our economy. Success is about more than just the opportunity to work for a financial services firm. It’s about family networks and geographical stability as well, and bringing up families in familiar places which appeal beyond having a tube station at the end of the road.

But this report strikes a chord with me in many ways as a guide to the potential of local government, and what we can achieve for communities if given the chance to. If we were trusted to do so, Councils could innovate and make a real difference to people’s lives - transforming failing areas into successful ones free of central red-tape and accountable as a result. That would be a major step forward.

Rick

The news today confirming that 5 Post Offices will close in Bury, despite wide spread public opposition, is shocking but sadly not surprising.

When the closures were first announced, there was total condemnation from all sides. The Post Office and the government claim to have engaged in a “consultation” since then, but today absolutely nothing has changed, and the five due to close are still going to close.

Whilst I know that there’s sometimes a difference between consulting with people and doing what they want, the universal opposition to these closures from people of all backgrounds and political persuasions has done nothing to change the mind of the Post Office.  The consultation was a sham – nothing more than an opportunity to appear as if listening, when in fact just delaying the implementation of policies already decided upon without any public involvement at all. A business decision masquerading as a reform to a public service. And a terrible outcome for communities.

The reaction from the government and Post Office to this consultation is a disgrace, and their continued progression with this closure scheme is nothing more than a blatant positioning of profits ahead of people.

Once again a sham consultation has dealt a double blow to the people of communities up and down the country like our’s. It is symptomatic of a phoney “consultation culture” which pervades all public services and is a gigantic fraud. As a result of this Post Office consultation, not only do we lose out on priceless community facilities for the sake of financial savings alone, but local people get a kick in the teeth by an arrogant government pretending to consult when in reality never even intending to do anything of the sort.

Consultations should be used to seek out information, to take advice from local people and to work out issues. Used this way, the government and Post Office would have found that Post Offices do more than sell stamps – they are at the heart of community life. They’d have found out that sometimes financially efficient processes mean less to people than the ability to talk to a real person. They’d have found out that people appreciate a simple local service more than having travel insurance and home loans and credit cards offered to them at every turn by an organisation desperate for cash and going the wrong way about getting it.

This consultation though, like so many others at the moment, was used to tick a box which says that local people should be involved in decisions. Government can claim that consultation took place. But local people weren’t really involved. The decision was made behind closed doors, and the “consultation” period is just a necessary annoying delay for government before the Post Office can do what they want to do. The reality is that the mechanics of consultations are clearly broken when the overwhelming views of the consultees are summarily ignored for the reasons already made clear before the consultation began.

The issue of Post Office closures is not a knife-edge split in public opinion. A crushing majority of people outside of the Post Office management want them to remain open. The Post Office must know this, and it is only our fraudulent consultation culture that forced them to enter into this expensive charade.

Were they seriously expecting people to study the closure proposals and go “Oh, OK, that’s fine, I agree, close it down”? Of course not. They spent time and millions of pounds of our money on a consultation because it’s the done thing, and because it looks good to do so, even though the result remains virtually unchanged. A few Post Offices are saved (literally, a few – 4 out of 62 to close in Greater Manchester, with two of those cancelled out by the addition of new ones to the doomed list), but the programme remains virtually completely intact despite the universal opposition to it.

I would have had more respect for the Post Office and the government if they’d have scrapped the consultation altogether, together with all the other phony exercises in involvement that result in precisely no change at all. As it is, our fake consultation culture breeds resentment and frustration, and achieves precisely the opposite result to the increased inclusivity it sets out to achieve.

It’s no wonder people aren’t getting involved in their communities when they are promised so much influence by government lip-service, but are in fact so powerless. This centralising, nannying government has done real damage to effective public engagement by taking powers from Councillors and diverting them to quangos, and by creating the type of faceless bureaucracy where the ordinary person battles daily against the invisible hands that pull the levers. “Consultation” exercises like this further embed a sense of powerlessness because having been promised a say, ordinary people have their views completely ignored and barely even acknowledged. The government is acting like a primary school teacher, making the people of Britain expectantly beg like four year-olds for a longer playtime, all the while knowing completely that there’s no chance of it at all.

Government should make one of two choices.

It should make a real commitment to consultation and involvement – giving power to existing local accountable bodies like Councils to give people real choice over their local services.

Or it should stop this consultation culture entirely, and invest the money currently wasted on shambolic listening exercises in providing a better service.

I’d love them to do the first thing. It’s what Lib Dems stand for and it’s what we’re putting into practice where we’re in power in communities up and down the country.

Choosing the second option would be wrong, but at least it would be gutsy and honest. The government can say “We’re in charge, these are our plans, and if you don’t like it, there’s an election in 2010 and here are the directions to the polling station.” It would save time and money, and of course it would also achieve precisely the same result in the end as we get now.

It might even result in a better deal for local people because we could channel opposition to government plans through elected Councillors and MPs – paid to lobby public services on our behalf – who would have a better chance at convincing agencies like the Post Office than a diluted puddle of consultation responses that provide the perfect excuse not to listen, and a handy alternative to taking locally elected representatives seriously.

Unfortunately the government will continue to opt for this hybrid option – pretending to give people a say, spending the money to do it on glossy brochures and private polling companies to hold “listening events”, but actually not doing it really. This is the easy option. Instead of engaging people in debating hard issues seriously, government arrogantly makes its decision regardless and then, even worse, pretends to ask communities what they think, just to avoid the accusation that they’re acting improperly. It’s a trap too easily and too often fallen into.

The government’s attitude is a crying shame, and when the Post Office up your street becomes a kebab shop, and nobody can quite figure out how it happened or what to do about it, we’ll all be suffering because of it.

Rick

Another week, and as the Council’s recess floats serenely towards its conclusion, we prepare for the re-commencement of battle by having our annual Councillor appraisals. I don’t know what the other parties do locally, if anything, but tonight will give me the opportunity to look at areas of strength and weakness, and plan on how to become more effective in all of my roles as a Councillor – scrutineer of the Executive, representative of the people of St Mary’s ward, and community leader in Prestwich.

And the session also gives me the perfect opportunity to avoid going for a run. I am not at all in the mood after witnessing the sight of 9 year old Tom Daley diving his way towards glory this morning. His monumental efforts served less to inspire me towards greatness, and more to convince me again that sporting prowess is just beyond me. I just wish you could stay trim by blogging.

Rick

The BT phone box opposite St Mary’s Park on Bury New Road is to be removed shortly.

I found out last night, only be walking past it and seeing the sign inside. I don’t know if people living closer have been told or not, because this is the first I’ve heard of it.

I know that BT have a duty to provide phone boxes, and in these days of mobiles I suspect that they all lose money hand over fist. I can’t imagine who would use them regularly now, except for members of the Soprano organised crime family, and people conducting extra-marital affairs…

It’s still not nice to see local ones go though, not just because it’s another local facility going, but because people may genuinely need them in emergencies, especially people who mightn’t have mobiles like the elderly. So I will be glad to lobby BT on residents’ behalf if they are against this move. There are alternative boxes in the Village a few hundred yards away.

Rick

A resident has contacted me about speeding traffic on Butterstile Lane. It reminded me to follow up my own concerns actually, because recently I’ve driven down that road wondering when exactly Prestwich agreed to open its own Drag Race Speed Way on that street.

I don’t know why some drivers treat Butterstile Lane like Brands Hatch, but they do all the same, and it’s exceedingly dangerous - it’s a residential street with double parked cars, a row of shops and a primary school on it. It’s not on at all that people should be speeding down it, and whilst the mini-roundabout at Agecroft Road East has helped, I think that more should be done. So I have asked the Council to give me information on installing some flashing speed signs. There are already various types of these signs about (one on Bury New Road near St Mary’s Park, and another on Hilton Lane, for instance), and they really do work.

I think we need one on Butterstile. There haven’t been any accidents involving pedestrians there to my knowledge recently, but we need to sort it out before there is one. Too many people are zooming down there, and it should stop.

Rick

Yesterday I was supposed to do one of the most athletic things I’ve done in a long while by climbing Snowden, which is the tallest mountain between here and Australia (if you drive to Liverpool and then get a boat to Sydney). Unfortunately the heavens came to me, rather than the other way round, as a deluge which lasted for 18 solid hours put my climbing adventures on the back burner, and washed away a large part of my garden.

In my extensive mountaineering experience (I got the cable car up Mont Blanc in 1994), a sure sign that attempting a climb is not a good idea is when you drive to the foot of the mountain and still can’t actually make it out due to the sheets of horizontal rain making it impossible for you to even lift your face without feeling like you’re taking part in some kind of medieval water torture. I was within 50 feet of the largest natural bump for hundreds of miles, and I may as well have been staring at a grey wall. So we sat in the car for half an hour hoping that a hurricane would arrive to blow the endless black clouds away. It didn’t, and so we drove home.

My sporting desires didn’t die on the windswept mountain-side though, as of course it’s the Olympic Games at the moment, which has spurred me to contemplate lots of athleticisms recently. I have been for two runs since Tuesday, and will go on another one later. But it’s glory I want, and running around the block for half an hour doesn’t really do it for me. So I have been searching for an Olympic sport at which I could get good enough by 2012 to wander down the M6 to London and clinch a medal.

Obviously the popular sports like Track and Field are non-starters. I may only be 10 seconds or so off the world record in the 100m, but the record itself is less than that, and so by the time I finished my heat, they’d be lining up for the final. It takes me longer to run 5k than it does Olympians to run 10. So I have been looking at types of Olympic sports that don’t get much coverage outside of Games time, to see if I could sneak in under the wire.

Archery was my big hope. I know lots of runners. I even know one or two weightlifters. But not a single archer, and since the British team has half a dozen of them in it, I reckoned that if I took it up tomorrow, I might be good enough by 2012 to Robin Hood my way to Gold. Unfortunately, I watched it this morning and now realise that there is absolutely no chance of me becoming a world class archer. Not if I practiced for ten hours a day every day for the rest of my life. What they do is AMAZING. They are aiming at a target about the size of a flip-chart, 70m away, and they NEVER miss. They never even come close to missing. The target is split into rings, with 10 points for the inner-most, less points for each one further out. I watched 48 arrows fired, and only one of them landed at less than a 7! And most of them were 8 or 9. From 70m away! Arcing and floating and shaking their way to a goal that I can barely even see. If I had a go, one of two things would happen. The arrow would fall from my hand and puncture my foot, or it would go flying so crazily out of control that some poor Chinese spectator would be the first person to be bow-and-arrowed to death since the middle ages. I would absolutely not be winning a medal.

There comes a day in every man’s life where he realises that he’s probably never going to win an Olympic Gold. I think that day has arrived for me today. Our athletes are demonstrating that they are clearly so imperious at their chosen disciplines that they are the sporting equivalents of the jugglers I see in the circus - they give up their entire lives to practice at something, and become so good at it that they make everyone else think that it’s as easy as pie. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite and is so jaw-droppingly difficult that only a microscopic proportion of the entire world could do what they do. The archers didn’t even win a medal, and yet they are three hundred thousand times better at archery than I could ever be in my life. The best I can hope for is that, come the apocalypse, I somehow end up marooned with one of them so that they can hunt me my dinner.

But in the meantime, I have to go and write a letter to lobby the IOC to make leafleting an Olympic sport. I see now, it’s the only way for me.

Rick

Last night was the annual general meeting of the Rainsough Tenants and Residents Association (TRA). I am pleased to say that a new committee has been elected, with a new Chair taking over the reigns of the TRA’s work.

The meeting allowed some of the residents and tenants to air their views on a number of concerns, notably crime and the ongoing issue of the shops. The next meeting on 2^nd September will see the Police present, and we can start to address some of the concerns brought up last night. The shops issue is obviously still going on, and I will be contacting the Salford Councillor in charge of Housing in the next few days again to try and get some movement there, as well as continuing to see if we can come to a sensible compromise over what needs to be done with the units.

It was a successful night, and the committee seem rejuvenated. At the same time as our meeting, there was a youth club going on upstairs, and judo took place at the Scout Hut as well last night. The continued hugely successful operation of the building and its clubs is fantastic news for the community, and testament to the very hard work of the people involved. I know they care passionately about Rainsough, and their work is very much valued. Long may their successes continue.

Rick

Youngsters who commit minor criminal offences or get involved in antisocial behaviour should not face effective restorative jusstice rather than prosecution in the courts, the Liberal Democrats said today.

Our new crime strategy will mean that children who admit their guilt would be punished by panels of local people, and would have to put right their crimes through such punishments as cleaning up graffiti. A pilot project involving young people is currently underway right here in Prestwich.

Our new proposals also include the formation of a new youth volunteer force to carry out community projects, which will serve to create more community identity and instill a sense of civic pride in young people.

Chris Huhne, the Lib Dem Shadow Home Secretary, said that Labour had “criminalised a generation of young people”.

There are more young people in prison in the UK than anywhere else in Europe, some of whom are there for very minor offences. And yet crime continues to rise amongst the young. In fact, those sent to prison as children are far more likely to re-offend. The government is spending 11 times more public money on locking young people up than on preventative measures, and it simply isn’t working.

Restorative justice plans as proposed by Lib Dems today mean that young offenders may be forced meet victims and see the consequences of their crimes. Moving beyond punishment of offenders, Lib Dems will also tackle youth alcohol problems. Shops that sell alcohol to under-18s could face being stripped of their licence at the first offence.

Gun- and knife-crime hotspots will be targeted with high-profile policing, with extensive use of intelligence-led stop-and-search powers, and there will be a Police Community Support Officer in every neighbourhood whose job it will be to work with young people, and the intriduction of a Police Cadet scheme to better relations between young people and the police.

Chris Huhne said: “If we want to tackle the problem of youth crime, we need to take action early to stop kids from embarking on a life of crime before it’s too late. The old parties are falling over each other trying to be tough on crime, but nothing is being done do stop young people getting sucked in to a cycle of crime. Ministers know that programmes to divert kids away from crime work, and are even happy to promote such projects. However, they have failed to fund them properly in favour of punitive policies that grab headlines but achieve little. It is time for a new approach to youth justice which both prevents crime and confronts young people with their actions if they do break the law.”

Rick

The news that the government is considering suspending stamp duty for new home purchases makes no sense to me. Aside from the fact that I paid two grand when I bought my house the other month, and would be mightily peeved to find the tax now abolished, there are more important reasons why it seems like a knee-jerk reaction which will actually worsen the economic woes that the government have got us in to.

Vince Cable, the Lib Dem Shadow Chancellor, has raised concerns that a reduction in the amount of taxes taken in by the government will lead to a shortfall.  He said “The Government shouldn’t be trying to bribe people into buying houses in a falling market.

“With the economy grinding to a halt, we are already likely to see a shortfall in taxation. Suspending stamp duty, even on a temporary basis, will only make this situation worse.

“The falls we are seeing in the housing market are painful, but necessary, if homes are to become affordable once more for those not on the property ladder.

“Ministers allowed house prices to get hopelessly out of control. They must not now artificially prop up the market for political expediency.

“The stamp duty is system is deeply unfair, as the slab structure creates massive distortions in the market, but this needs to be dealt with in a methodical way, not through panic decisions.”

In addition, the government’s plans have not been welcomed by those in the Housing industry, who have warned that potential buyers may now be put off completing purchases whilst they wait to see if government plans become reality and save them money.

Once again it seems as if the government have gone after headlines and publicity stunts ahead of common sense, fairness and prudence.

Rick

Following my holiday excesses (including the frankly shocking abuse of the local Cornish Pasty shop in Tintagel…) I chose to go for a run last night, and whilst at the time I felt it necessary to draft a will, now that the dust has settled and I have regained my composure I feel it’s done me good. I still look pregnant side-on, but the guilt pangs are leaving me slowly.

I managed about 5km, which I don’t think is bad in this Olympic week. I was only 250% over the world record time as well, and since the actual Olympic final is a few days away yet, I’d probably have a good shot at the gold were the British team not selected so irrationally early.

Aside from giving me Olympic dreams which were subsequently then crushed, the run also allowed me to survey much of the ward. Obviously lots of this was done in an increasingly breathless haze, but it did allow me to see some of the streets that we have agreed need re-paving or re-surfacing in the coming months. Of course, due to the very small budgets allocated to this area by the Conservative Council, only a couple of roads in the ward will be re-surfaced this year (the total budget isn’t enough to do the single neediest road, let alone the dozens of others in a poor state), but the trip around the streets set me up for an evening of Focus writing, which I did when I got back.

The new Focus is now drafted, and I’ve sent it off to the other local Councillors to make sure I’ve not written anything that’s completely wrong or, most likely, full of the types of spelling errors that make Focus look like it’s been written by a 6 year old. Once we’ve got the thumbs up, it’ll be made to look pretty by someone with more IT skills than me, then printed and folded by us, and hopefully distributed in the coming weeks…

Assuming that I don’t keel over belatedly after the run.

Rick

Last night’s meeting of the Bury Lib Dems was well-attended and very enjoyable. Unfortunately my ineptitude in sending out the papers meant that a number of participants were wrongly directed to the other side of Bury, but I survived the onslaught of angry late-comers, and live to fight another day.

I am back on work today, which is just plain rubbish. It galls me that despite tremendous scientific progress in the last hundred years which has seen everything from global communications to man exploring outer space, nobody has come up with a plan which sees me not getting up at 7am and coming into the office. But still, the reality is never as god-awful as the anticipation, and it’s nice to see my colleagues again. I will spend the day ploughing through the avalanche of emails that I am currently buried under.

Council-wise, the recess continues, which means less meetings and less things to do for a month. However, there are still issues on the horizon. I am beginning to write the new St Mary’s Focus this week, which will hopefully be landing on local doorsteps in the next few weeks. Also on Thursday it’s the Annual General Meeting of the Rainsough Tenants and Residents Association, which I will be at.

Right now though I must get back to work… Oh how I long for Cornwall, even though it’s raining!

Rick

Don’t forget that there is a meeting of the Bury Liberal Democrats on Moday night (4th August) at Prestwich Liberal Club on Bury New Road, at 7pm. All members and supporters are welcome at what is sure to be an entertaining evening. There will be a debate on congestion charging, local party news, and the chance to meet like-minded people (and me). It’s all very friendly, and if you are a supporter who wants to get more involved, do please pop down and say hello. We’d be delighted to say hello back, and probably take it from there!

I hope to see you there.

Rick

Whilst I was away, it was confirmed that the issue of congestion charging in Greater Manchester will be put to a public vote at the end of the year. Local people across all ten Greater Manchester Authorities will be asked whether they agree with the introduction of a congestion charge in return for investment in public transport. Votes will be counted in the 10 Authorities, and if 7 or more of them vote “Yes” then there will be a charge.

I will be campaigning for a “No” vote, and hope to be at the forefront of this campaign. There are many reasons for a “No,” which I will go into ad nauseam and beyond between now and voting day. But, put simply, the main reason is this: There is simply no reason why Manchester should pay again for public transport when it has already paid for it through taxes which the government chooses to spend on other things.

There are plenty of other reasons, and I welcome all thoughts, comments and views on what I know will be the hottest topic on Manchester politics for the next few months.

Rick

I was very saddened to learn of the passing of Reverend Leslie Olsberg last weekend, whilst I was away on holiday.

Rev Olsberg was a pillar not only of the Manchester Jewish community, but of Manchester as a whole, and a true giant of a man who’s positive contribution to the life of the local community can barely be over-stated. Well known across all faiths and parts of Bury and Manchester, throughout his long life he worked hard for the good of local people. He was Minister of Heaton Park Synagogue for 35 years, and touched the lives of virtually every Jewish person over three generations in Manchester. When I was younger, I often saw Rev Olsberg at my school, and I know that his hard work and support of local Jewish groups made an enormous contribution.

He was held in tremendous regard by those who knew him, and he will be sadly missed.

Rick

I have returned, bronzed and refreshed, from my holidays in Cornwall. And now it’s Sunday evening, and having stood on hilltops gazing out at the ocean for a week of bliss, now I stand on the edge of a cliff with only the abyss of a working week to leap into, and I would gladly trade everything I own and everyone I know for another week off.

Last year we went to Mull for our hols, and this year we stayed in the real-life King Arthur-themed funfair that is Tintagel, complete with mock battles and people wandering around in robes with swords. Rather like the Town Hall on Council night.

We stayed in “Merlin’s Den” which turned out to be a studio flat at the bottom of someone’s house and not the hiding place of a bearded wizard as I’d hoped. Still, there were views of the sea, which stretched out so gorgeously from beyond the cliffs at the end of our road that it’s easy to see why people reckoned the Earth was flat until the crew of Apollo 8 proved otherwise.

So lovely were the surroundings that, for the first 36 hours of the holiday I wondered again why people ever bother to go through the trauma of airports and flying when there is unbeatable holiday goodness right here in the UK. Then on Sunday night I found the heavens open and every shop in the town closed, and remembered exactly why people escape the trauma of Britain for the unbeatable holiday goodness of everywhere else in the world.

The rain continued to tease us throughout the week, lurching towards us with disappointing regularity and making me thankful that someone remembered to put a roof on most of The Eden Project. Unfortunately, roofing technology wasn’t quite as sound in the thirteenth century as it is today, which rendered our visit to Launceston Castle a damp affair.

However, it wasn’t all wet, and I did manage to squeeze in some skin-burning during my stroll along the coastal path. As a result of this and some recent peeling I now look like a cross between a beetroot and some grated cheese.

I would recommend Cornwall though, in all seriousness (and as a world respected travel writer, my seriousness matters…). For one thing there are no aeroplanes involved, as I mentioned, which is good for both the environment and my own sanity. If God had meant us to hurtle about the globe at 40,000 feet in tubes of metal, he’d not have invented the queues at passport control. A holiday to Cornwall also doesn’t involve changing money or feeling like an idiot being shamefully inept in foreign languages. And Cornwall has a lot going for it too - pasties for a start, of which I had too many for my general physical well-being. And scenery, which took away my breath and has barely returned it. And big old houses and castles and villages and the feeling that despite all the traffic and people and noise, there are places not so far away that are green and quiet and yet still feel like home. 

Tamsin and I attempted to ride a tandem at one point, which had the potential to add rich rivers of comedy to this blog posting. Unfortunately for that (and oddly disappointingly for me…) the entire ride passed off without incident, as we picked it up remarkably quickly and didn’t fall off once. Not a single joke to be had. Sorry.

But now I am back in Manchester, having endured a six hour train journey up here whilst Tam remains away until next weekend. I don’t know who designed the latest generation of inter-city trains, but their decision to design toilets so gigantic that they take up half a carriage, and so futuristic that opening the doors needs an advanced qualification in mechanical engineering, deserves to be tied to the tracks and mown down by one of his own creations. Since there seemed only room for about 9 seats in my carriage, whilst 40,000 people got on the train, I stood on the way back home. Unpleasant.

It’s good to be back. I’m refreshed, there are big issues to discuss, and I’m raring to go.

Rick