Just a note to wish all Muslim readers and residents a Eid Mubarak, a happy Eid.

Rick

I attended a briefing for Councillors tonight on the Equal Pay / Job Evaluation issue. The presentation was given by the Director of HR and the Director of Strategic Finance, and they answered sa lot of questions on all sorts of topics for nearly two hours. Their time was appreciated by the many Labour and Lib Dem members who were there.

Sadly, the conservative Executive were notable for their absence. I know it’s the Tory conference this week, but I still think that it is an absolute disgrace that not a single Executive member was at tonight’s meeting. Not one of them stood by their officers, nor did any of them even sit in the audience to hear the vocal, emotional and quite justifiable concerns from opposition members from both Labour and the Lib Dems. The Leader has once again shown that his priorities are quite wrong. He has once again shown a lack of leadership and a disregard for his staff and the JE process that is so complete it almost borders on the callous. The Tories gathering in Birmingham today want to prepare for government. But at a local level the people running their Councils can’t even be bothered to come home to discuss the most important local issue of the day. It is simply disgraceful, and every one of the Executive should be ashamed.

The questions were thorough and numerous, but sadly the answers given did little to reassure me of the fairness of the process. The moderation element strikes me as particularly contentious. It was revealed that part-way through the process, nearly 40% of staff were looking like they’d lose money. After the final stage of moderation, this figure had come down to 28%, and whilst this is certainly good news for those no longer losing out. the subjectiveness of the moderation process that this indicates throws up major doubts for me about the robustness of the whole thing.

We were re-assured about cost-neutrality, and I don’t think for one minute that anyone has been purposefully down-graded or held back for malicious reasons. But the moderation process dealt in abstractions - bringing jobs back up or down towards similar roles rather than contemplating the real financial hardship that these decisions are causing the real people who hold those jobs.

Once again the opposition members were united in their calls for further work involving members from all sides to try and find the best solution. Unfortunately the Council’s hands are tied in having to implement a scheme. I think this is unjust in itself, but nowhere near as unjust as the results it is creating, where people have no alternative but to leave jobs they love because of crippling pay cuts.

We might not be able to get rid of every pay cut. We might not be able to end the overall injustice. But we can certainly work harder to make things better where we’re able. Unfortunately once again we are thwarted by an Executive not attending meetings, not answering questions, sending officers into the breach when they themselves swan off to the party conference. This lack of leadership will not be forgotten by a staff body who’s morale is already crushingly low. It makes me despair, but at least there is some hope that reason will prevail when opposition members continue to press hard for answers and progress.

At the end of the meeting, Labour Councillor Alan Matthews was taken ill in the Council chamber. I wish him well and a speedy recovery.

Rick

I would just like to take this opportunity to wish all Jewish residents of Bury, and all Jewish readers of this blog, a happy new year and well over the Fast.

Rick

Tonight is a session for Councillors on the Bury MBC Job Evaluation process which has been so controversial. The session has come about after Lib Dem Councillors asked the Leader for it, and I hope he is there tonight to answer the questions which we have submitted and which we’ll be asking after the presentation.

It is vital that we get to understand what has happened and why, and to ensure that the process is as fair and open as possible. There are rumours flying everywhere, staff morale is very low, and I am hoping that this will be the first sign of increasing openness from the Executive. It is a pity that Cllr Bibby felt it more appropriate to attend a dinner function last week than answer Scrutiny questions on this issue, but tonight he can make a small amount of amends.

I will let staff know about the answers to the questions I submitted, assuming they’re received, and hopefully we can get some re-assurance or at least some more clarity.

Rick

Since they are incapable of managing my car tax history without sparks flying from within their addled brains, I can only assume that the DVLA’s sole purpose is to irk me until I suffer a seizure. I appreciate their efforts, but really, a government agency spending millions should be doing more than just that. And right now I’m not sure that it is.

Today I attempted to get a tax disc, after they failed to send me a reminder and for some reason known only to themselves wouldn’t let me renew on line or over the phone. I could almost hear them manically cackling at me as I arrived at the Post Office.

Obviously because the government have closed every Post Office in the world except the one I was queueing at (now located within a WH Smith), the line this lunchtime snaked backwards and forwards like we were stood along the Thames waiting to file past a Royal coffin. I only joined the back of the queue after frantically looking round the shop for the necessary form. There weren’t any in view, and finding only CDs, books, boxes of chocolates, magazines, mothers dragging their screaming children round the greetings card aisle, and all the other paraphernalia that the Post Office now shares with its landlord, I took my chances at the back of the line knowing that if I got to the front and was refused due to a missing form, there’d be anger suppressed so tightly into a ball deep within my very soul that it would emerge into an inexplicable and crackling ball of fire in about three decades time and I’d be carted off somewhere warm and padded.

Eventually, after 24 minutes of waiting, one of the three working cashiers spread across the 12 cashiers’ desks called me forward. Everything was in order. I passed through my log-book and insurance certificate, and even the missing form was brushed aside. Then though came the inevitable “Computer Says No” moment, when due to a reason which the cashier couldn’t tell me, my details had been “flagged,” and she’d been made aware of a period of “missing taxation” on my car. It would have been a waste of breath to describe to the poor Post Office woman that my car was new when I got it, had been taxed when I drove it out of the showroom, and today was my first renewal. And besides, breathing was difficult at that point because every fibre of my being was forcing itself not to scream like a banshee and run out into the street beating my chest in fury.

After a hurried conversation with a senior, I was granted the opportunity to part with my £120 in exchange for a tax disc, and left. I don’t know what the problem is this time with the DVLA, but I half expect to have been dumped onto a Richard Nixon-style “enemies list” after rebuking them on here before for being the biggest collection of circus clowns since Barnum and Bailey’s last big-top jamboree. Having harassed me for no reason for months regarding a SORN declaration that I had no earthly cause to make, and thus didn’t make, they now seem to have taken a shine to me and are haranguing me over tax discs too.

Their single-minded and hugely successful attempts to be nothing short of useless should be commended, and I would do just that were they not supposedly in the business of serving the public and not causing them stress-related illnesses. I suspect their management were too busy selling my details to private parking contractors to bother to do their job properly.

My mood was not lightened on the walk back to the office, when I encountered a pair of PCSOs on the beat, both of whom were engaged in mobile phone conversations. I thought at first they were on their police radios reporting crimes or some such trivial matter. But when I overtook them it was clear that unless Nokia now make police radios and colour them bright green, and unless the crime concerned was a boyfriend staying out late the previous evening, they were having a gossip on my dime. This just about tipped me over the edge, wondering whether I can go through a single day without bumping into officialdom and public service so woefully inept that it makes me want to go and live in a cave surrounded by ice cold water and kelp for ever more.

The fact is that 99% of public servants are dedicated, hard working, industrious, efficient, and worth every penny of my tax. I am one of them, professionally and as a Councillor, and I like to think I do a good job. Why then the remaining 1% are always the ones I come across is a mystery. But right now they are, and my only catharsis is writing this!

Rick

I discovered many joys when I moved house this year. I no longer had to wade through piles of boxes every time I moved from one room to the next, because we lived in a dwelling larger than a postbox. I could sit outside without being leered at from a looming block of flats overhead. And I could sit in the bathroom without feeling like I was inside the world’s biggest petri dish.

Perhaps the biggest joy of all though was discovering that Drinkwater Park was on my doorstep. This unsung green corner of the Borough is an absolute gem, and I have spent many happy hours wandering through it, in amongst the rain which has incessantly poured for the last eight months. It is part of a corridor of parks that runs from Phillips Park, through Prestwich Clough and out into Drinkwater, and which also spills across the River Irwell into Salford and Clifton Country Park. It’s got acre upon acre of woodland, streams and rivers. And there’s never anyone in it either, which is both odd and great, because when I want to get away from the world and everything in it after another Council-related tedium-fest, I can go there, scream at the moon like a maniac, and not get carted off anywhere by concerned passers-by.

And, better still, Dirnkwater Park is on the verge of a transformation. Not, you will be surprised-yet-relieved to hear, into a much-needed block of luxury apartments, but instead into the “Newlands LIVIA” project, run by the Forestry Commission and the North West Development Agency, which will transform much of the land on the Salford side of the park and a fair bit of the neglected Bury side too. Since nobody in the world except for local government folks care where Council boundaries are, I am just glad that the park itself has the chance to benefit from this fabulous new project. .

LIVIA stands for Lower Irwell Valley Improvement Area, and the developments will help to transform what is already a pretty pretty part of town into what Salford Council are saying will be “the most beautiful part of Greater Manchester.” I would like to see them fight Saddleworth Moor over that one, but still it promises to be a great boon for Prestwich to have an even more gorgeous green space on its doorstep.

The project aims to link a series of smaller environmental improvements that have taken place over the last few years - such as United Utilities’ rejuvenation of the reclaimed wastewater treatment works, and work in the area around the redundant Agecroft Power Station. By linking all these smaller areas into one cohesive parkland that is well managed for the first time by a single agency, the impact will be dramatic. The LIVIA project will include a range of natural and physical amenities that aims for greater participation in healthy lifestyle activities. Once completed, LIVIA will have sculpture trails, outdoor classrooms, informal play areas and a mountain bike course.

This Saturday (tomorrow) there is a consultation event at the Phoenix Centre in St Mary’s Park, starting at 1pm and including both a tour of the woodland and a Q&A afterwards. So I get to spend Saturday walking round the park, and do my Councillor duty at the same time. Bonus.

I think Prestwich is incredibly lucky to be so close to the city of Manchester yet have fabulous parks within dog-walking distance. Drinkwater is probably the least well known but the most interesting, and it’s great news that the whole area is set to benefit from the money and effort which will make it sustainable for generations to come.

Rick

I spend a growing proportion of my life idly flicking through the Sky channels until bedtime or the warm embrace of death, whichever comes first. This evening I stumbled upon “The Virgin Daughters” on Channel 4. Assuming it would be something about Richard Branson and maybe even involve some attractive air hostesses, I flicked over. Unfortunately I discovered a mildly off-putting documentary about creepy mid-west American fathers who corral their daughters into “purity” and whose adherence to the Bible clearly doesn’t extend to explaining that “Thou shalt not hold hands with a boy” isn’t one of the ten commandments.

All of which had me scampering upstairs in fright and to this blog to recount this evening’s meeting about the Ruskin Road gardens issue. Spending the entire early evening in a deserted council office talking about boundary fence issues is better than “The Virgin Daughters,” but only just.

Just to re-cap the issue in hand: The Council gave some land up in 1939 for the cultivation of vegetables to help the war effort. They didn’t claim the land back until last Thursday, and the way they chose to do it was to send the people who’d used the land as their back garden for the last seven decades a rental bill.

Needless to say this approach didn’t go down well, especially since the bill amounts to about a 15% Council Tax hike, and the alternative to paying it involves giving the land up and paying even more to have the Council clean it up. “Just sign here” appears to be the Council’s way of explaining potentially expensive and vastly complex pre-war land law issues to confused residents, and it’s not really the way to go, in my view.

So some senior officers from Environmental Services met with Cllr Mary D’Albert and I tonight, along with the Cabinet Member for Environmental Services, the Conservatives’ own indefatigable Cllr Dorothy Gunther. I appreciated their time, and we had an interesting, if largely entrenched, meeting.

I put my view across, which is that it’s bordering on the ludicrous to charge unknowing residents £150pa out of nowhere for land given over to people who lived in their house generations before they were even born. They fired back that it was absolutely right to even up the score with other 250 garden tenancies in the Borough, and charge the rents. I countered by saying that two hundred and fifty wrongs don’t make a right, and they shrugged a bit before Cllr Gunther said something along the lines of ”a lot of them probably aren’t poor anyway.” Comments about poor people aside, I can see the logic to the Council’s view. But if we’re talking about a sum which means pretty much nothing to the Council, but a lot to the residents, then compassion trumps logic, especially since I reckon there’s quite a lot of logic on my side too.

And thus we hit a stumbling block in the Council’s drive to raise revenue at the hands of unwitting locals. In all fairness, there did seem a genuine desire on the part of officers to haul back from the Council’s original line of more or less holding residents upside down until the requisite amount of money fell out of their wallets. But even the spirit of compromise that they agreed to - possibly waiving restoration charges - didn’t go anywhere near what residents or I want, which is to remove the threat of market-rate rents being imposed on gardens that have been peacefully enjoyed largely rent free since Neville Chamberlain was in charge.

The Council’s arguments seem contrary to one another. On the one hand they say that, as landowners, they can charge whatever rent they want, which is why they’ve gone straight from the more-than-reasonable sum of £0 per year to the market rate of roughly £150 per year. But on the other they say that they can’t use their landlord’s prerogative and charge a peppercorn rent, because it wouldn’t be fair to the other garden tenants who pay market rate in their houses.

But if the Council have the power to set the rent, then they have the power to set it at whatever level they choose. I am arguing for a fair and affordable rent for my residents, and they are not. That’s the truth of it. 

I was reminded several times by officers of my duty to all of Bury to try and raise revenue where Council land is occupied. I don’t need reminding, but my duty is primarily to those who elected me, and here they’re being badly done to. The amount of revenue we’re talking about is tiny, yet the harm it can do is great.

All of this stems from the recent realisation that lots of Council-owned land is unregistered, and some of it has been used by people as gardens for donkeys’ years. I applaud efforts to harmonise legal arrangements for garden tenants. I want every garden tenant to have a tenancy agreement or the option to buy, rather than the slapdash, finger in the air, point to your forehead and say “dur” approach which seems to have afflicted the Council until recently. But the level of rent is a different matter, and a matter over which the Council has discretion. It should use that discretion to set a peppercorn rent, and when properties are sold it can increase the rent then in the knowledge of the new owners. Anything else is unjust, in my view.

Although we had to disagree on the major issue, there was a bit of success at the meeting. The Council have agreed to hold one on one meetings with concerned residents, with us in attendance. And they’re going to stall the charges for a while until these and further discussions are out of the way. And, crucially, the footpath which cuts through the whole sorry mess and has been unused yet un-closed for the last seventy years is now going to be dealt with. But I think we could be in for the long haul here. In a week when the Council Leader has already put dining on pheasant ahead of answering staff questions on pay cuts, the Conservatives in charge of the Council should be wary of the headlines a tax on the gardens of poor pensioners may create.

Rick 

After only six months of asking, and after only two inexplicably lenghty delays, the Council finally pulled its finger out yesterday and installed the much needed additional safety barriers at St Mary’s Park. And I thank them for that.

Since the St Ann’s Road / Bury New Road junction was re-modelled, the exit from the park has not been properly guarded, but now it is, and the likelihood of an excited kid scampering out into the road and ending up squashed by a bus has been dramatically reduced.

So that’s good news, and my thanks to everyone involved, from the resident who alerted me originally through to the Highways officers who got the job done.

Rick

The Scrutiny commission on Job Evaluation scheduled for Thursday night has had to be cancelled. The Chair of the commission rang me this lunchtime to say that The Leader of the Council, who was first informed of the commission’s wish to speak to him over a month ago, and who received his formal invitation over a week ago, has said that he has not had enough notice. Therefore he cannot attend due to a prior engagement, and has decided instead to go to a dinner held by Manchester Enterprises.

I am very sad that the Leader has chosen not to come to Scrutiny. Having submitted a list of questions to him, I am doubly sad that these will not now be answered on Thursday. The meeting will be rescheduled at the Leader’s convenience in the coming weeks, but it will be little comfort to the many staff who are left waiting longer still for answers to questions.

The Leader needn’t have feared partisan finger pointing. Not from me anyway. I wanted an open, honest debate and a chance to get real answers to important questions. Staff would’ve wanted the same, I’m sure. And we’re all still waiting.

He has decided to eat canapes and quaff wine whilst hard working Council staff face the real prospect of losing their homes. It is the worst kind of slap in the face for staff.

Last week at Council I felt some sympathy for the Leader. Of course I felt more for the staff, but the Leader seemed stuck in an unavoidable situation, trying hard to do the right thing. As the meeting progressed and he lurched away from solutions and towards blame, much of this sympathy dissipated. His silence since, and this shocking decision to put a dinner in Manchester ahead of his responsibilities to staff, makes me want to know not only the answers to my list of questions, but what on earth the Leader thinks he’s doing.

He was wrong not to attend the recent JCC meeting. He was wrong not to answer questions directly at Council, and to delegate them to the Cabinet member for HR. And he is very wrong indeed not to attend this meeting. His excuses are flimsy, his leadership weak, and his dereliction of duty is a disgrace.

I am upset. Staff are doubtless moreso. We have looked for leadership but have been let down badly.

Rick

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

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

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

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

Moderation: 

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

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

Gains and losses: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rick

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rick 

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

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

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

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

Rick 

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

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

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

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

Rick

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rick

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rick 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rick

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

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

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

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

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

Make it Happen includes plans to:

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

Invest more in the education of the most disadvantaged children

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rick

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

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

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

Rick

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rick

Ahead of the Lib Dem conference, which starts in a couple of days in Bournemouth, Lib Dem Shadow Home Secretary Chris Huhne has sent this message outlining the parties approach to crime:

“Crime hurts some of the poorest and most vulnerable members of our society, who are least able to withstand its effects. All the political parties want to cut crime. The only question is how.

Our approach, as Liberal Democrats, is fundamentally different to that of Labour and the Conservatives. We favour what works. Criminal justice policy has been buffeted by tabloid opinion for too long. It is time for hard evidence in cutting crime.

With the highest prison population in Europe, we rely on prison far too much. First, re-offending is appallingly high as prisons are colleges of crime. Secondly, the chances of being caught are far too low as only one in a hundred crimes leads to a conviction. Our plans emphasise catching criminals through more and better policing.

This means more police on the streets, gathering intelligence, encouraging witnesses and building relationships with the communities they serve. It means improving the standard of the average police unit to that of the professional best so that the chances of detecting crime go up. That would solve an extra 140,000 violent crimes every year.

Unlike Labour and the Tories, we will not duck the big issues in police reform. It is unfair on the vast majority of diligent and hard-working officers that less conscientious colleagues are not tackled. We will review the single point of entry at the level of constable, the 30 year lifetime career, and pay by seniority rather than effort and talent.

At the heart of our reforms is a radical decentralisation of power. Local police authorities will hold chief officers to account; set local priorities instead of following Whitehall targets; and set budgets and tax precepts.

Unlike Labour and Tory plans for elected sheriffs, all parts of the community, including women and ethnic minorities, would be fairly represented. The plans breathe life into our commitment to localism by ensuring that councils take control where possible, but that police authorities are fairly elected otherwise. And they set out a route march for a real attack on crime by focussing not on what sounds tough, but on what works.”

Rick

Tonight’s Council meeting was dramatic, and certainly the most raucous I have been involved in. The public gallery was full to overflowing with staff affected by the job evaluation regrading which has come to the fore in recent weeks. When that particular issue came up, the meeting descended into chaos and shouting as the public vented their fury at the Leader, leading to an adjournment. When the gallery was cleared of protesters, the Labour group walked out, leaving the chamber and refusing to return to continue the meeting.

Put simply, the Equal Pay issue is that many staff are threatened with losing upto 40% of their salaries, many thousands of pounds, after a job evaluation exercise designed to bring the single status agreement into place. Single status is designed to ensure equal pay for jobs of equal worth. Bury has evaluated all roles, and some of them have seen pay reductions. The staff in those roles are obviously unhappy with this. When the equal pay issue was brought up during the Leader’s statement, and then again at question time, the answers from the Leader and the Executive Member for HR were met with anger, shouting and abuse from the gallery. I don’t think anyone came out of the situation well, and it is a shame that a good opportunity for real debate has gone begging.

The staff and unions got little out of the meeting tonight, but they must take some blame for that themselves. Whilst it was understandable that the temperature was running high, the staff did themselves no favours by behaving like an angry mob. I can fully understand how their predicament would have them angry. I would be inclined to shout myself if in their shoes. But nobody will get anywhere by angry voices alone, and when it became clear that the Leader’s answers weren’t being heard without interruption, the Mayor was right to adjourn the meeting after several warnings, and clear the chamber of the protesters. Their tactics were disrespectful, and their behaviour has no place in the Council chamber. They may well have been more frustrated still by the Leader’s evasiveness. But still, their actions were uncalled for. I hope they get the chance to air their views again, but if so they must do so properly and allow time for real answers.

The Labour group’s withdrawal from the meeting in support of the banished staff was a cheap stunt which will do nobody any favours in the long run. Their behaviour before the adjournment was also unreasonable, refusing to acknowledge the fact that it was under a Labour administration that the groundwork for these plans was laid. Labour claim to stick up for the Council staff, but the facts are that this is not a party political issue between Labour and the Tories. The policy is being implemented by the Tories, sure, but it was first agreed to by Labour, who have no solutions to it themselves other than to do what the Tories already suggest. For Labour to pretend now that simple answers exist is wrong and unfair to staff. And their walking out tonight in support of an angry mob displays their own lack of respect for the only way that this can be sorted - namely patient dialogue. The only way we will get an equitable result for staff is if there is a proper debate involving all sides. For one side to walk out is just not on.

The walkout was an abandonment of the people of bury, not just on equal pay, but on the other important issues that were debated after Labour left, including Radcliffe Riverside school and local planning issues. Labour played no part in these discussions. They had gone home to watch the football in disgust. Their abdication of the duty to be a sensible opposition, asking questions reasonably, is disgracefully short-sighted and childish. Their absence did allow though for a continuation of sensible debate on Job Evaluation involving the Lib Dems as the sole remaining opposition, including a commitment from the Executive to explore any possible way to make the process fairer. If Labour were a real friend of the Council staff, they should have stayed to question the Leader sensibly and rationally, rather than to chase the easy applause of a worked-up crowd. Tomorrow when things have calmed down, what will Labour’s walk-out have achieved? Very little. And what will they say to the people of Radcliffe about their school? They had the chance to debate it, but forgot the important by focusing on the urgent, to the detriment of a great many people. Their leadership should think again about their priorities.

But it is The Leader too who needs to learn lessons from tonight. His answers were too often evasive, defensive, and prone to slip into party political blame games. His decision to delegate responsibility for answering to the Executive Member was wrong, and showed a lack of leadership when it was most needed. He should have made a clear statement, answered questions himself, and been resolute without trying to pin blame on the opposition. It is little wonder that the public and the opposition groups were so frustrated when The Leader himself was so easily rattled, so quick to blame others, and so intransigent in his answers. He needs to be better prepared in future, and more willing to take on his critics head on and be responsive to the questions asked. He would win more friends and more votes if he answered honestly and in good faith, rather than reciting bits of a statement over and over.

Lib Dems locally have been working hard with the Unions, officers and the Executive to make sure the appeals process and the overall Equal Pay / Job Evaluation process is as fair as possible. We will continue to do so over the coming months, and will not stoop to childish stunts as Labour did tonight. Labour let themselves and the staff of Bury MBC down tonight, and I hope that in the coming months all sides come back to the table to try and sort this issue out.

Rick 

It’s full Council tonight, when all of Bury’s Councillors meet to question the Executive and talk about the decisions that have recently been made. Tonight might be fiery, as it’s the first meeting since the Equal Pay issue cropped up.

I am also asking a question on the missing Butterstile Lane street sign. It is odd that since submitting my written request, there has been a flurry of activity to try and rectify my complaint. Four months of inactivity, misinformation and downright incompetence from the officers of the Council and the Tory Executive masters, gone in the blink of an eye when the issue becomes public. Funny that…

So hopefully I can update you on that tomorrow. My fellow Lib Dem councillors will be asking lots of other questions to, som eof them a touch more strategic than my demands for a street sign!

Don’t forget that the meeting is public, and you can attend, at 7pm, at Bury Town Hall, if you wish.

Rick

Last night I was leafleting in the ward, catching a few brief and glorious moments of only partially-black skies before the inevitable return of the ever-present rain.

We are on the rounds with the new St Mary’s Focus this week, so look out for that. Alongside your Focus is a survey, from the Bury South Lib Dem parliamentary candidate Vic D’Albert, on a host of local and national issues which you might want to complete. It asks questions on all sorts, from the congestion charge to criminal justice. And if you fill it in and return it (it’s Freepost so it needn’t cost you anything) then you have the chance to win an iPod in the prize draw we’re having for all returned surveys.

I was excited that maybe I’d get the iPod if nobody bothered to fill it in, but sadly we’ve had hundreds back already so that’s another dream shattered.

The survey is important, as it gives you a chance to have your say and tell us what you think about what we should be doing locally – what we need to campaign more heavily on, and what issues matter to you. It only takes a couple of minutes to fill in, and there’s space to raise new issues if they aren’t covered elsewhere.

So when you see it on the doorstep (and assuming your cat doesn’t eat it, like our’s attempted to), then please fill it in and send it back. An iPod may be winging its way to you if you do. Although not if I can help it…

Rick

There was more evidence of the graffiti “tagging” plague in Prestwich over the weekend, with a bus shelter outside St Mary’s Park, and various walls in the area falling victim to the same vandal.

It is great news that graffiti cleaning kits are now available to local people, and that young people responsible for many of the acts of vandalism have been made to clean up their mess as part of their punishment. But we clearly haven’t got to the bottom of the issue yet, and we will continue to work with the Local Area Partnership including the police and Council to find the perpetrators, punish them, and make them aware of the damage they’re doing to the local community.

Rick

The dustbin-shaped spectre of town-centre grot has raised its head again this weekend in three separate emails I’ve received from residents drowning in a sea of discarded litter.

Last year local Lib Dem Councillors launched a high-profile and successful campaign for a “deep-clean” of the Village centre, using high pressure water jets to get rid of grime. We also secured commitment for extra cleaning on weekends to get rid of the litter. Unfortunately the scourge of dirt is making a re-appearance, with particular grot-spots near to the Fairfax pub and on a couple of the side-streets off Bury New Road.

This is hugely frustrating, and the problem won’t be solved properly until we get real commitment not just from the Council, but from businesses and local people as well.

The Council need to be a lot more rigorous in their cleaning. Residents tell me that the promised twice daily sweeping of the Village doesn’t happen as regularly as it should. Despite Council promises of an information board showing where and when the last and next cleaning session will take place, no such board has yet appeared. It is difficult to know what to do beyond continually shouting at them to provide it as promised, other than kidnap a street cleaner and hold him to ransom (let’s not do that…) until the Council learn to do more than give us empty promises. The Council should also up its enforcement now, in partnership with the Police, so that people chucking litter about like confetti at a wedding know that they can’t get away with it.

Local businesses have a role to play too. So often I see trade waste pile up outside shops, in loading bays and outside big bins. This isn’t on and needs clamping down on. If businesses need more bins, they should ask me and I’ll get them. If they need recycling help, let’s get together and sort it out. Let’s not just dump rubbish everywhere and have it blow about the street like tumbleweed.

This is particularly acute for the licensed businesses and takeaways in the area. It is extremely annoying to drive through the Village on a Saturday morning and see hundreds of beer bottles, food wrappers and cigarette ends. These businesses should provide more bins outside their premises, offer to take in rubbish when it’s generated, and work with us and the Council to sort the problem out.

And I appeal to the people of Prestwich too. We are to blame for the litter problem as much as anyone. So often I see local people throwing litter on the floor, not using the bins, treating the street like a dumping ground. The behaviour goes unchallenged, unsupervised and unstopped. And our communities and streets suffer as a result. I appeal to everyone locally to remember the effect that just a single piece of dropped litter has in adding to the growing problems locally.

I have been talking to the Council about possible solutions, but of course the only way we can truly eradicate the litter problem in Prestwich is through joint working locally between businesses, the police, the Council and ourselves. And that’s what we’ll keep trying to do.

Rick

I am flattered to have been shortlisted for an award at the Lib Dem Blog of the Year awards. For the second year running I am in the final five in the category of “Best Blog from a Lib Dem elected to public office.” The award has been re-named the Tim Garden award this year, in honour of Lord Garden, Lib Dem Blogger who died last year.

Last year I didn’t walk off with a medal, and since I’ve carried on in much the same fashion this year as last, I expect that the result this time round will be similar.

Thankfully there are more convincing excuses for my inevitable fifth place than my own laziness - the main one being the quality of the opposition, all of whom beat me hands down. My fellow shortlisted nominees are:

Baroness Ros Scott, Brian Robson - Lee Green Councillor, Eaten by Missionaries (Iain Sharpe), Mary Reid, and Peter Black AM

The winners will be announced at the party’s conference in Bournemouth next week.

Rick

I received a letter from the Royal Mail today explaining their decision to remove the post box on Rainsough Brow. They confirmed that it was for health and safety reasons, because the road is too busy and parking isn’t possible because of yellow lines. I have to say that it remains a mystery why the decision was taken now, years after the installation of the mini roundabout and yellow lines Royal Mail claim are the reason for the removal. But that remains the reason all the same.

Fair play to the Royal Mail, they have been very good since I first raised this issue on here and on the phone to them. Today’s letter from a lady at Royal Mail HQ followed a phone message and another phone call from the Prestwich sorting office. Whilst they have no problems removing our post boxes, at least they’re keeping us informed. That’s one up on the likes of Orange Broadband. Whilst I can fault their method of communicating the closure (the amateurish note pinned to the box, which they say wasn’t the original one they put on their which must have blown away or been stolen. Hmm…), I can’t fault their efforts to make amends. They’ve been very good.

Unfortunately the prognosis for a replacement looks pretty bleak. The letter tells me that there are five post boxes and an office within half a mile, and that that is within their service obligations. This is true (I drove round and checked) and I suppose we can’t ask for another when there are so many abundant in the area. But it’s never nice to see something go, and the way in which it was handled originally with some very unprofessional communications by Royal Mail had the potential to do quite a bit of harm. I hope that harm has been minimised.

Rick

The forthcoming weekend promises little but bleak weather. On the plus side, my alarming descent into middle-aged domesticity will come grinding to a halt as the wet puts the kibosh on me creosoting the fence. But it isn’t all good news, as any attempts at leafleting I may try to do will come crashing down around my ears in a flurry of damp paper and pouring rain.

Today I have been working with the Council’s environmental health people to try and sort out a rat infestation problem on Bury New Road / Church Lane. A building has been left to fall into disrepair, and the rodents have moved in, much to the displeasure of the (human) neighbours.

I have also been finding out information on behalf of a resident about the Council’s expenditure on agency and temporary staff. The Council spends loads on this type of staffing, but they are making savings and at least the amount is reducing.

Other than that, I am disappointed to have noticed that the post box on the corner of Rainsough Brow has been taken away. I discovered it was on its way out when I walked past it and saw an amateurish-looking notice pinned to it. I rang up and found out that it was due to “health and safety,” but despite my protests that it wasn’t in the least bit dangerous, it’s gone and nobody can tell me if any replacement will be provided. It was particularly annoying having to trek up Butterstile Lane to my new nearest post box in the pouring rain last night. This is some way down the list of reasons I am going to campaign for a closer replacement, but it’s certainly the one that seems most pertinent as I gaze at my sodden jacket!

Rick

This morning I have been discussing a noise complaint with a local resident and the Council. There is a factory in the ward which has houses all round it, which makes quite a lot of noise quite a lot of the time, and also has lorries coming and going all day long. Unsurprisingly residents aren’t happy with this state of affairs, but the factory has been there longer than most of them.

It’s a tricky situation involving trying to liaise with the residents, Council and the owners of the factory, who are sometimes accommodating and sometimes not. At the moment the issue is more around the noise than the traffic, but the entire thing is symptomatic of the growing problem of decades-old streets and houses trying to cope with the modern world.

Years ago the traffic wasn’t really an issue, because the streets of terraced houses didn’t have cars double-parked all the way along. Now these parked cars have their wing-mirrors snapped off with alarming regularity, and trucks far bigger than they were years ago come trundling down streets where kids and pets are playing.

The noise wasn’t so much of a problem either, as a lot of the workers came from the nearby houses, and the machines themselves weren’t as large and powerful as they are today. Nowadays the houses have people in them commuting to work miles away, and coming home to find a factory staffed by people who’ve driven and parked outside their house, to work machines that are going well into the night.

Unfortunately, we can’t move the factory. They have every right to be there, and whilst it wouldn’t get through Planning now, it did back then before all the residents moved in. What we have to do now is try and talk through the issues and find a resolution that is as good for everyone as is possible. And hopefully we will.

Rick

Orange Broadband are a unique company in my experience. They manage not only to offer insulting levels of customer service to anyone unfortunate enough to be contracted to them, but have reached an exciting new zenith with me by haunting me even from beyond the consumer grave.

Despite having left them 9 months ago, they continue to harangue me with their incompetence. The pain just won’t go away. Dealing with Orange Broadband is like repeatedly being stung in the eye by a wasp which just won’t die no matter how many times you whack if over the head with a breeze block. Just when you think it can’t possibly still be annoying you, it buzzes right back into life.

This afternoon I received a heart-warming call from a debt collection agency, informing me that I face court action unless I pay Orange Broadband £40 in dis-connection fees they say I owe them, having apparently left my old house without telling them. this is rubbish of course, as I’ve told Orange before, and told the debt collection people today. Somehow I doubt it will be the end of the matter, but I continue to try just as they continue to try me.

The call itself was a cautionary tale of modern Britain - they wouldn’t tell me what it was about without me confirming my date of birth and exact address (for “data protection” purposes), and I wouldn’t tell them who I was unless they told me what it was about (for “they might be trying to empty my bank account” purposes). After an impasse and some angry hanging up by me, I checked their phone number out on Google and found it belonged to Direct Legal and Collections, whose website proudly announces that they have been “expertly managing debt collection since 1992.” It appears that mine is the latest debt for them to expertly manage. Unfortunately for all concerned the debt is a figment of someone’s imagination. So I rang them back and told them that on this occasion they had been mis-informed by the cretinous buffoons at Orange, and that they had better take their expert debt collection elsewhere because they would have to prise the £40 from my cold, dead hands.

The issue stems from when I moved house earlier this year. I rang lots of people to tell them I was moving. Most of them were representatives of professional organisations like the AA, nPower, and British Gas. The Council were slightly confused as to why I was moving and what to do about it, but we got there in the end. None, though, were half as utterly flummoxed as the poor devils at Orange’s call centre, who expertly managed to ignore each one of my repeated calls telling them to cancel my contract. I must have rung their far-away call centre three or four times, each call cheerfully answered by an automaton telling me that my account would be updated within 24-48 hours and that my service would cease as requested. When this kept not happening, I kept ringing back, and was repeatedly assured by ever-more-happy-sounding call centre operatives that they were doing what I was asking.

And, let’s remember, I was asking to be cut off. I wasn’t asking for much. My contract had long-since expired, I had paid all my bills on time by direct debit, and I hadn’t marched on Head Office armed with a machine gun despite their frequent and inexplicable failure to provide me with any kind of service to speak of during my time with them.

Unsurprisingly, just like every other request I ever made of Orange Broadband, it turned out that the cancellation request was never actioned, and when the phone line eventually got cut off, I was still an Orange customer. So they started chasing me for the £40 disconnection fee. I have spoken to them before about this issue, and told them that there is absolutely no chance they’re getting the money off me. Whilst they seem unwilling to take my word for it, it is re-assuring to note that I’m not the only person suffering years of misery and madness at the hands of these fools.

What isn’t re-assuring is that an enormous company like Orange can provide such atrocious customer service, then resort to debt collectors at a moment’s notice to retrieve tiny debts. In any rational world, Orange should be paying me for providing me with achingly slow and barely-ever-working-at-all broadband for four years. As it is, their error means that I stayed connected one month too long, and now they come after me with the long arm of the law. And what avenues do I have to challenge them? Certainly not by using Orange or the debt people. The people at Direct Legal and Collections seem to think that an “expert” approach to debt collection involves not knowing anything about the claim or how to challenge it, and trying to ring Orange involves more inter-continental phone calls than a busy night at the Foreign Office.

It’s crazy. And worrying too. I am bothered to the point of occasional distraction by the looming threat of Orange’s lawyers dumping my credit rating in the North Sea, and I hope that more vulnerable and less independent people than me are treated with a bit more respect so that they worry less. I can only hope the Orange account-chasers are as incompetent as their colleagues in Customer Services. These are big companies, treating their customers like irritants, and then farming out problems to external debt collectors and denying us the chance to query them properly. It adds to my stress, everybody’s bills, and doesn’t change the abomination that is Orange Broadband’s approach to its customers.

Needless to say I am not going to pay this money, and if it means ending up in front of a District Judge, I look forward to a colourful and frank exchange of views with the other side.

Rick

Last night’s meeting of the Rainsough TRA Executive was successful - we learned a lot about the current issues, and now have a few tasks to get on with ahead of the next full meeting next month. I am going to try and reconnect with Cllr Peter Connor in Salford to try and get some movement on the long-running Chapel Road shops saga. It is difficult to suggest a solution that pleases everyone, but what is certain is that the current situation isn’t in anybody’s best interests, so we need to get some progress at least. I will keep trying.

My thanks to the two Police Community Support Officers who gave up their valuable time to attend last night. We talked over crime issues on the estate, and there was good news - the community centre will be getting additional security features in the door soon, which will hopefully prevent the type of problems they’ve been dealing with recently.

There were also issues raised about bins, roofing repairs, and dogs in the area. We’ll look into all of these and update the committee when it meets again in October.

Rick

Tonight there is a meeting of the Rainsough Tenants and Residents Association. There will be a representative of the Police there to talk about crime and anti-social behaviour, so if you are a resident or tenant of Rainsough please come down to the Scout Hut at 7pm and have your say.

Rick

Last night’s meeting on congestion charging was very interesting. Once again I was very impressed with the public transport improvement suggested. But once again I was left thinking that it is just plain wrong for the people of Manchester to have to pay again for public transport that they have already paid for through taxation.

Of course congestion charging will deter people from driving their cars, which is the type of behavioural change necessary for economic and environmental reasons. But the method proposed is very blunt and absolutely unfair. The “Transport Innovation Fund” of which the congestion charge is part is not in the least bit innovative. Innovation might include charging based on engine size, vehicle size, pollutants given off by vehicles, or even income. It might even involve not charging to drive at all, but offering incentives to take public transport (like making it very cheap), or imposing an effective car tax regime which really does punish high-polluting vehicles. The charge as proposed does nothing like this.

There were also some interesting revelations which I didn’t realise before. The system of recording drivers entering the charge zone will be both cameras AND tag and beacon. It is necessary to have both because a tag will be needed for regular commuters, and a camera to catch those without a tag. Since tags will probably cost drivers money to obtain, and since they will be responsible for them, I can’t see how they will appeal to anyone at all. Why bother having two costly systems rather than just one?

I also found out that the charging rates will be the same for all vehicles including HGVs. This seems very odd if congestion reduction is desired. Businesses have far more flexibility at their disposal to try and ensure that their goods arrive by other means or at other times than HGVs in the rush hour.

It was also revealed that the data used to inform the projections on income from the charge and numbers affected is very old! It came from the last census in 2001, already 7 years old. The data will be 12 years old by the time the charge is introduced. I don’t think it is acceptable to base decisions on data this old.

Overall my stance against the charge has hardened if anything. Whilst the improvements will indeed make a big difference, the fact that they’re needed at all show just how badly let down local people have been by successive governments not investing money in public transport properly. In effect we are now being asked to pay a congestion charge to bring Manchester up to the level it should already be at. My stance is, has been, and will remain, that we should campaign for the investment without the charge. That is fair and just, and in-keeping with economic and environmental needs.

Unfortunately the current consultation doesn’t give us that option. The “take it or leave it” offer from government prevents this. I know the risk we take in leaving it, but I believe strongly that we have to show government that local people cannot be bullied. Being against the charge does not mean being against public transport, and I continue to hope that those who really believe in public transport investment will vote “no” in the referendum and campaign for real improvements without charges that increase the financial burden on those already struggling to get by.

Rick

There is a public meeting on the Congestion Charge tonight, starting at 19.00 at Elms Methodist Church, Elms St, Whitefield (opposite Cafe Roma, off Bury New Rd near to the new Morrison’s).

The meeting will be chaired by Cllr Vic D’Albert, and there will be a representative of Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive (GMPTE) there to answer any questions you might have about congestion charging, public transport improvements and the like.

It is an ideal opportunity to learn more about what might be happening, why it might be happening, and to make your mind up ahead of the referendum later on this year. I hope as many of you as possible will come down.

Rick