I am once again called to London for a little while, and so there will be a little hiatus from the blog.

I like to think that my work on Bury Council has somehow found the ear of the congnoscenti, and that my presence in the capital is all part of a plot to get me close to the corridors of power so that I can fight for fixed pot-holes and new street lights on a national scale.

Sadly, it’s nothing of the sort. But never mind. Back Sunday.

Rick

I was very disappointed to learn that the fireworks portakabin that we fought so hard to get rid of last year has returned this year to Bury New Road.

It seemed last year that it was perfectly legal for any fly-by-night operator to set up temporary shop in the middle of the pavement selling explosives. Unless he was caught completely blocking the road or selling to kids, he was fine. I don’t know how this has managed to happen again, as I thought the licencing authority would have remembered last year’s furore and not granted a licence again. Hopefully they haven’t, and a simple check will reveal illegal acvtivity and have this thing shut down. If not, I have already informed the Police, Trading Standards and Highways so that they will be paying the shop a visit to check that there are no breaches.

I am no killjoy when it comes to bonfire night. I love it, and am frankly gutted that I;ll miss it this year for a Council meeting! But there are many reputable fireworks sellers in the area who are familiar to local people and who are also familiar with local people. These are where fireworks should be sold, so that they don’t end up in the hands of kids or in dangerous situations. These are lethal explosives and should be treated with respect, not flogged out of the back of a portakabin in the middle of the street.

I hope we manage to get rid of this menace once and for all this year, and I am annoyed that we have to go through this again. In the meantime I appeal to the Authorities to do all they can to stop this, and I appeal to local people not to use this shop and to buy safe fireworks from a reputable source.

Rick

Last night’s emergency meeting of the Council on Job Evaluation saw the Conservative Executive miss yet another opportunity to ease the turmoil that a lot of our staff are going through.

I am sad this morning because their tactics denied an already fearful staff any respite whatsoever.

Conservative conduct, in consistently seeking to defend their mis-handling of the process, was so arrogant that it bordered on the callous. Where the Leader should have been humble, he was aggressive. Where the Conservative’s should have been striving for openness and honesty, they voted for secrecy and allowed no progress.

I don’t care who’s to blame for us being in this mess. I don’t care what political capital might be lost by some kind of “climbdown,” and neither should the Tories. They would gain far more from working together to find a common solution.

I think staff are perfectly right to feel incredibly let down by the Council this morning.

The evening started at arguably its lowest point. Council presented the Conservatives with a motion, given without notice, to allow for 30 minutes of questions from the packed public gallery. Labour and the Liberal Democrats voted for the motion, but the Tories opposed it, and their overall majority of 1 meant that it was was defeated.

I simply don’t understand why the Tories are so unwilling to face questions on this issue. Their arrogance in seeking not only to deflect criticism, but to prevent it being levelled at all, goes beyond annoying and becomes really quite upsetting.

Our staff have the right to be heard, the right to question their leaders, and should not have had that right denied them last night. That the Leader cannot publicly defend his policy is shameful.

Thankfully this disappointment did not completely prevent the staff’s concerns from being raised. Labour’s motion criticising the conduct of the Executive was proposed by Cllr Trevor Holt, my colleague on Resource and Performance Scrutiny Commission and a long-time Trade Unionist and supporter of the staff cause. That he remained calm and dignified against the blank-faced intransigence of a Tory group so clearly in denial over their errors is to his credit. His speech plainly illustrated the heartache that so many staff face.

Regardless of blame, the facts remain. That they were not even acknowledged by the Leader is something I just cannot understand.

The debate itself too often lapsed into party bickering. Cllr Bibby’s statement was shockingly partisan and aggressive. His approach failed both to tell us anything new at all, and also to help the staff in any way. As Cllr Holt remarked at the end, it was completely devoid of humility. The Conservative Group, with their copies of the statement in front of them, flicked through the pages with the Leader, seemingly unable to grasp that this was just not the time for points-scoring and for firing anti-Labour jibes.

Cllr Walton, the Executive Member for HR, once again sought to distract attention from the substance of the issue by picking tiny holes in the wider argument. His actions - querying the small details whilst ignoring the bigger issues - might bring him closer to the safety of the end of the debate, but again do nothing to help the staff. His actions throughout the meeting, prowling the Tory benches whipping votes, again suggested that the leadership were putting politics before people.

That the Tories would reject the Labour motion was not surprising. It was gratuitously critical of the Leader in a way that was unhelpful. So the Liberal Democrats amended it, retaining calls for a fair and open pay review, and for an all-party approach to moving the issue forward. All negativity was removed, only the promise of progress remained.

Cllr Tim Pickstone, my Lib Dem Group Leader, spoke only briefly but captured in a couple of minutes what it had taken the others half the night to ramble towards - that staff are not helped in any way by bickering, and that the only solution lies in cross-party working towards a common goal.

Cllr Pickstone followed equally hard-hitting and perceptive comments by Lib Dem Parliamentary candidate for Bury South Cllr Vic D’Albert, who’s analysis of the issues was just as apt. He was spot on when he said that the Tory arrogance was digging an enormous hole for them, for reasons beyond understanding. His frustration at the tone of debate was palpable and understandable, and it was no surprise that his remarks, like those of Cllr Holt and others on the Labour benches, were met with applause from the gallery. 

The behaviour of the Tories was as remarkable for its illogicality as Labour’s passion was commendable for being so genuine. But without a firm committment to progress, all the passion in the world was no use to the staff.

In the end, even our amendment (supported by Labour) was defeated by a Tory group hell bent it seems not only on disappointing staff but on damaging for years to come the relationship between the staff and us Councillors. Remember, it contained nothing but a re-affirmation of support for fair pay, and a call for an all party approach to taking the issue forward. Why it was deemed worthy of rejection is a mystery.

Staff remain in the limbo they’ve been in for months. But in a way that isn’t even the worst of it. The staff wage issue will be finalised, for better or worse (and now, it seems, it’ll be for the worst) in a few months time. But the wider problem that the Tories have created will last far longer.

The trust between employees and the Council as an employer has broken down completely, and none of us know what that will do to services in the Borough. The office of Leader has been brought into disrepute by tactics which are at best arrogant, at worst just cruel. Party politics, suspicion and petty-minded rivalries have got in the way of progress.

When it comes down to it, there are no easy answers to the issue. But when the Leader of my Council remains unmoved by a member of our staff losing 40% of her salary, and will not consider working with the opposition even to help her, simply because of his arrogant superiority, he and his group should hang their heads in shame. That this is happening to thousands of staff, and still the Tories are unmoved, is a level of callousness that I don’t like to see in this Borough.

My heart goes out to the staff this morning. Let down again by politics.

Rick 

Last night’s emergency Council meeting debated Job Evaluation and equal pay.

I care very deeply about this issue, and as the Lib Dem Resource and Performance spokesman on Bury Council I have worked in Scrutiny, with the party, and closely with the Executive to try and make some progress.

The debate itself was largely a disappointment, and certainly resulted in nothing but further heartache for the staff. You can read my account of it above.

The essence of the issue was captured splendidly in the debate by my Lib Dem colleagues, Cllr Tim Pickstone and Cllr Vic D’Albert. I think they lived up to their titles as Group Leader and Parliamentary Candidate with aplomb, speaking with dignity and clarity. They said very briefly what I was going to take ten minutes and more to say, and so I didn’t say anything in the end. My points had been made and there seemed little point repeating them, especially when the evening called for conciliation rather than accusation.

But, for the record (and also because I need somewhere to save the speech and I don’t trust my pen drive!) below is what I was planning to say. I know I promised a number of staff that I would speak for them. That I didn’t was nothing to do with a lack of feeling, and I am sorry if I let anyone down with my silence. I felt that everything that needed to be said had already been said, but I do hope that the speech below shows where I stand on this issue, even if in the end the words themselves remained unsaid.

Here is the speech:

“Mr Mayor, it is rare that the Council faces something that affects this many people this much.

The reasons why job evaluation has caused us difficulties are many and complicated.

But whilst the pay review itself may have forced the Council to make some decisions none of us wanted to make, it is, to a large extent, the leadership’s mismanagement which has brought us here tonight.

Striving for equal pay is a noble goal.

But aiming to create it through points and questionnaires is a fool’s errand, although sadly one we’re stuck with.

Trying to address inequality is impossible when everything is based on perception, not fact.

Calling the outcome fair when scores are changed behind closed doors and points removed to preserve hierarchies is just not right, even if it’s the only way out.

We should be honest enoug to tell the staff that.

At least if we do that, we’re battling unfairness with the staff, not defending untruthfulness against them.

We cannot blame the Leader alone for the wider unfairness.

Job Evaluation could never be truly fair because although it might be right for future staff, it consigns the current staff to wage levels much different to what we all freely signed up to.

That is an injustice just as great as the one it seeks to correct.

And it leaves a mess of confusion where staff are told that their job has never been worth their pay, and Councils are paying out salaries they never budgeted for.

We’ve spent hours looking for a scapegoat and blaming each other.

We’ve said it’s the government’s fault for drafting the law and washing its hands of the consequences.

It’s the judges’ fault for applying the law without thinking of common sense.

It’s the lawyers’ fault for chasing the compensation.

It’s the Union’s fault for not thinking in the round.

It’s the Labour group’s fault for starting this here.

It’s the Leader’s fault for not stopping it.

It’s my fault. It’s your fault.

The search for blame is pointless, because it gets us nowhere.

But two things are clear.

First, our staff are suffering tremendously, and it is definitely not their fault.

And second, in difficult times when the causes of our problems are complicated and there’s no easy way out, we need our leaders to lead.

I’m sorry to say that Cllr Bibby has not.

And I am genuinely sorry, because he is the Leader of this Borough, not just of his group. And as he falls, so do we all.

It’s not to do with his party and mine, and I won’t mention either of them in this speech. It’s to do with problems and solutions.

For where there have been chances to make things easier, he has not taken them.

Where he should have stood shoulder to shoulder with staff, he has buried his head in the sand.

And where he should have brought clarity, he has allowed rumour to reign.

Tonight I have been genuinely shocked by his aggressive speech. Councillors should be humble.

Mr Mayor, we should have been as one in our desire to do our best for staff.

It takes all sides to commit to solving the problem, especially the Leader, entrusted to lead us all.

Yet there have been too many times where that leadership has been lacking.

Leadership is about being right and being strong, and he was neither when he made the choice which led to the cancellation of the Scrutiny meeting on 25^th September.

It was a cowardly and a bad choice.

His excuse, a diary clash and a dinner in Manchester, was personally insulting to me as a member of that Scrutiny Commission, and hugely disappointing to the staff.

That the Leader couldn’t send his Deputy to the dinner brings his priorities starkly into question, and his office into disrepute.

He sent his deputy to AGMA to vote for the TIF bid. He remembered she existed then.

If I led this Council Mr Mayor, I’d have been at that meeting.

Forget diary clashes. The Leader has a job to do.

If he’s scared of the politics of it, then he should have more faith in himself and the scrutiny process.

He shouldn’t be leading a policy he can’t defend.

We owe our staff everything.

Every one of us gets elected and re-elected because of them.

This meeting is going on because of them.

The road outside is open because of them.

Our children are taught, our needy are cared for, our dead are buried, because of them.

Staff will be the ones working with us to find solutions to this. We won’t do it ourselves.  

To go out to dinner rather than come to answer questions was disgraceful, a callous kick in the teeth for staff and the Members who want to help them.

That meeting was the opportunity to put the rumours to bed – to reassure the staff that we’re on their side.

The Leader didn’t take it, and it turns out that our right to scrutinise the Executive is worth nothing more than some canapés at the City Inn.

Mr Mayor, the Leadership’s attitude so far to informing staff about this issue has not been good enough.

Cllr Walton has outlined some of the steps taken, but many members will know from personal experience that some questions remain unanswered.

Almost every day I get emails from staff asking whether this or that rumour is true, or why some or other perceived injustice is being perpetrated against them.

The Leader is nowhere, nowhere to be seen.

I’ve contacted him many times, and never had one direct response back.

His officers answer some of my questions, but never a word from him.

Members have had one briefing, and he wasn’t even there for that.

I still don’t know if and why the Council is choosing to follow the example of Blackburn and not of Staffordshire in dealing with this issue.

And I still don’t know how many roles had points deducted at moderation six weeks and more after asking.

Even today there are rumours of a 4^thstage of moderation doing the rounds at the Council, which can’t be put right because the staff have little confidence that what the Leader tells them isn’t just spin.

How can it be right that the Executive proceed with a policy as potentially damaging as the one proposed, when getting answers to questions on it is so difficult?

Staff must be tearing their hair out with worry and frustration. These are their livelihoods at stake.

The Leader had the chance tonight to answer questions. Why did he not take that chance?

That he didn’t give half an hour is sad and wrong.

In answer to Cllr Walton’s earlier question, that is what is not transparent about this process. It’s the awful message it sends.

If the Leader of this Council, the man who is the last hope the staff have, the final arbiter, the man from whom they can go no higher, cannot answer our questions, then I ask you Mr Mayor, why doesn’t he give up his seat for the Chief Executive and go and put his feet up at home?

At the last full Council meeting, the Leader was asked why the Team Talk newsletter claimed that scrutiny had raised no concerns about this process.

I am glad he raised it tonight because staff should know the truth about what happened.

The Executive Member for HR stood up in front of 100 or more angry staff and said that the many issues raised at scrutiny weren’t concerns at all, because an issue and a concern are two slightly different things.

Mr Mayor, when hundreds are losing thousands, and those sticking up for them have been misquoted, my response to a fabrication like that would have been to reach for the nearest Chief Officer and have the thing corrected.

The Executive Member’s was to reach for the nearest dictionary and try to wriggle away.

It’s no wonder staff feel confused.

Mr Mayor, whilst there may not be an ideal solution to this problem, the Leader is the final hope where logic and good sense have long since disappointed staff.

Character produces hope, and in the leader’s lack of character the staff saw their hopes dashed.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick Mr Mayor, and is it any wonder that morale amongst our staff is now so low?

But all hope is not lost.

We need to take action, and we need to do it now.

The substantive motion is overwhelmingly negative, and proposes a working group but no agenda for it.

But there are ideas which can be developed using an inclusive approach.

Staff at risk of losing money should be given as much help as possible. Any vacancy should be their’s to apply for first, any team they work in re-structured to give as much scope for more responsibility and pay as possible.

The Council mightn’t be able to fund all the salary increases, but we must find money to pay for training, to give at risk staff more chance of a better-paying job.

We owe it to them to pay, and it’s good that this is already happening.

If they want to leave and have the chance to, we should allow them time off for interviews in Bury just like we do for Local Authority jobs elsewhere already.

It will help local businesses and it will help our staff.

We don’t want them to leave, but we understand if they need to and we shouldn’t stand in their way if we can’t offer them more.

And we need to resolve the ongoing suspicions that staff have around appeals.

Mr Mayor the Executive cannot make a decision without a full understanding of the consequences, and of the actions needed to make things better.

I have outlined some of those actions, only briefly, but if we agree this amendment tonight, we can discuss many more from tomorrow.

My Mayor it breaks my heart to see and hear some of the stories that the staff tell me.

Good people, honest people who have worked for years for Bury, reduced to having to sell their homes and take their children out of university in the name of equality.

There is no fairness in that.

That I cannot give them their money back is genuinely upsetting.

That the Leadership has not moved quicker to try and minimise the harm is a disgrace.

I wish we could go back to the start and look for a better way to bring fair pay.

We can’t do this, and I fear we may never see a solution where nobody loses out.

But we can resolve to do what we can, together, to make the most of what limited options we have, and move beyond partisanship towards a common solution.

We may not solve this problem, but this amendment starts the ball rolling on some of the things we can do to try.

A public commitment to staff tonight might help show them that we are doing what we can.

Enough of the bickering, enough of the secrecy and the rumours.

And I say to the Executive, please, where questions are asked, answer them honestly and quickly.

Where problems are highlighted, acknowledge them even if they can’t be made good.

And where our staff need our help, let us lead them towards it.

Mr Mayor this amendment will not solve the problem.

It is a small step in the right direction.

But it is necessary for Bury, the least we can do tonight, and hopefully the first of many steps towards solving this. And I am pleased to second it.” 

Rick

Tonight is an emergency meeting of Bury Council, to discuss the issue of Job Evaluation and the pay review that come about as a result of it. It was called after the Leader of the Council failed to attend meeting with Unions, staff and Members to discuss the issues, despite being invited. Staff remain in the dark, confused and suspicious of a lot that’s going on, and of course are still trying to make sense of a proposal which will see almost half of them lose a portion of their salary in the name of “equal pay.”

Your Lib Dem team will be there in full, and as Resource Spokesperson for the Lib Dem Council Group this is certainly an issue on which I will be making our points forcefully.

You can read all about the outcome of the meeting tomorrow, or you can see for yourself this evening at the Town Hall from 7pm.

Rick

Today I have been talking about crime in the area, after a few burglaries and robberies in the ward. A man who’d had his house broken into and his new car stolen rang me up to report it and see if I could help him out. I wish I could find the people who do this type of thing, and march them back to their victims to return the stolen goods, then march them to the Police Station to see justice done. My initial reaction of course is much stronger than that, as it annoys me beyond what’s probably healthy to think of someone breaking into a family’s home and causing untold problems and damage, let alone just nicking stuff.

But unfortunately both the problem and the solution are more complicated than I want them to be, and I’m powerless to do much but work with the police on safety and crime reduction initiatives. It’s frustrating that I can’t do more because I am desperate to help people suffering crime through no fault of their own.

One of the down sides of being a Councillor is that I get to hear about every single crime in Prestwich. Whereas before I just read about the serious ones in the paper, it’s now hard to think that there’s none of it when weekly newsletters detailing every bit of crime and anti-social behaviour in Bury drop into my inbox. Bury is safer than it was, and Prestwich is by noi means a crime hot-spot, but that doesn’t make it any easier for the man that rang me this morning, nor does it make me feel better when I read about every bad thing that happens!

I think all of this is making me irrationally fearful that my own house is likely to be ransacked at any moment. But regardless of that, there have been a few break-ins of late in the area, and so everyone should of course take the sensible precautions and not leave windows open, remember to lock doors and put on alarms etc.

I am finishing work today for a week, which has left me giddy with delight, and looking forward to forgetting the office for a few days. I can concentrate instead on life’s more simple pleasures, such as the Blackpool Illuminations, which I am going to visit at some point, and lambasting the Leader of the Council for treating staff with contempt on Job Evaluation, which I will be doing at the Council meeting on Monday.

There will also be some leafleting over the weekend throughout Prestwich and Whitefield, involving my fellow Lib Dems and I. So watch out for a Focus on your doorstep, and have a fun weekend.

Rick

Folk singer Sandy Denny, followed by a host of others over the years, accurately summed up my general mood when she sang “Who knows where the time goes?” In answer to her question, all I can do is shrug my shoulders, because I really have no idea.

Today has entirely passed me by in a blaze of meetings and emails. I had a very odd conversation with a Council officer at lunchtime about a road he was very concerned about. I had to tell him that I’d never heard of it and that it wasn’t in my ward, nor had I raised concerns about it like he thought I had. All of which was very strange, particularly as the conversation took place whilst I was in my car and I actually had to reach for the A-Z to find out what the hell he was talking about…

Unfortunately, I have nothing to report but that today. A few things have been progressed, but nothing’s been finished, and much of the Council-related chatter has been about the fact that, yay, I can in fact make next Monday’s emergency Council meeting about job evaluation. Quite what I’ll say there remains a mystery, but hopefully one which will become clear before the time goes completely, and I find myself stood up with not a word to say…

Rick

I have heard today from the Chairman of Marauders Football Club about an issue which seriously threatens the future of the club, and with which the Council are being decidedly unhelpful.

Marauders are a family club, giving the opportunity to play football to hundreds of local children. I myself have a trophy from 1989 when my team won the Marauders under 8’s 7 a-side league, and I remember the place as a fantastic way to get involved in youth football.

Now though the club is faced with problems because of a lack of facilities. Money has been raised for more, but the whole thing depends on a transfer of some land in Prestwich from Tesco to the Council. Marauders volunteers have been working very closely to get this transfer done, but for some reason there have been interminable delays in actually doing it, and it is looking more and more like the Council are to blame. I have asked them for an explanation as to why Marauders accuse them of unreasonable delays (of over a year) in progressing the transfer. It now may be too late, as Tesco have indicated that they are unwilling to part with the land whilst the Prestwich Regeneration plans are coming into fruition.

It is important that we get to the bottom of this, and work very closely with the Council and Tesco to get some progress. I know that Marauders have also approached Ivan Lewis MP, and any additional pressure he can bring will obviously be a help too. We should be working together to help community clubs like Marauders, and regardless of where the blame lies, we all need to work to do whatever it takes to keep this club going.

Rick

I think the Leader of the Council may have been misquoted in relation to the ongoing St Ann’s Road / Ruskin Road gardens issue. Either that or he’s completely misled local residents and is now back-tracking wildly…

The Advertiser last week reported that Cllr Bibby (the Conservative Councillor who is Leader of Bury Council) had acknowledged that the sums of money being demanded from residents were pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of the Council’s budget. The paper reported that he acknowledged that the issue should be resolved, and promised to meet the relevant parties as soon as possible to put an end to the problem.

Naturally I was delighted, as were the residents. So I informed Cllr Bibby of my availability, and reiterated our belief that the residents should be charged a peppercorn rent.

Unfortunately Cllr Bibby now wants to do something quite different to what was reported in the paper. I have asked a couple of times now for a meeting, as well as thanking him for backing us up on the issue of the cash. But Cllr Bibby tells me that he is simply “looking into” the issue. He’s not been willing to set a meeting date, and will come back to me with what he calls a “final solution” of his own. I am slightly scared by his choice of phrase there, but aside from that, either The Advertiser has wildly misquoted The Leader, or he has yet again ducked an issue after having gone to the press to appear like the knight in shining armour.

I feel sorry for the residents, who may have had their hopes dashed. And I appeal to Cllr Bibby to do as he seems to have promised in the paper, and meet with the residents to clear this distressing situation up once and for all.

Rick

I honestly do think there is a scientific experiment worth performing to see if some unseen natural force purposefully plants obstacles in the way of people in a hurry, and then cackles manically as they stumble over them. Just forget curing disease for a minute, and let the world’s scientific community answer the question on everyone’s lips – Am I cursed for all time to be bothered by idiocy at every turn?

Today at work, I had a presentation to give. The audience comprised mainly of people who control my career prospects like a puppeteer dangling a marionette in front of a child. Essentially, they own me. I tried to make it work. I tried a lot. And yet somehow the globe conspired to make even this seemingly simple task require feats of Herculean forbearance to achieve.

First off I went out at lunchtime to grab a bite to eat. Surely Mother fate cannot blame a boy for wanting a sandwich?

Unfortunately the act of sandwich buying required the removal of cash from a cash point. I wandered into Abbey, only to immediately be locked inside because some member of staff was opening the safe, and it was “company policy” to detain all customers whilst there was cash on display. Prior to today I was unaware that bank customers can be held hostage by branch staff whilst some spotty teenage buffoon fiddles with the safe like a cack-handed simpleton oaf, but apparently it’s true, and I was. Without warning we were trapped inside, reduced to captives in a bizarrre financial zoo. The doors were double locked and a crowd of confused people wondered ever so quietly whether the world’s politest bank robbers were raiding the place.

I returned to the office, by now short of time and oddly confused over whether or not I’d been witness to a serious crime, to print the necessary mountain of papers required to service my presentation. I was greeted by a printer which had taken on a decidedly French attitude to work, and downed tools for no apparent reason. Something about a “paper jam” kept flashing up on the screen, but despite dismantling it until it looked like an explosion in a Meccano factory, no such jam could be found. My increasing exasperation turned the air an angry shade of blue when, upon putting back together the ancient printer, it turned out that there was no paper in it AT ALL, and that some would have to be sourced. Naturally, because I was in a rush, the pile of paper usually lying there for refill purposes had worn down to nothing, and so I hacked away at a box of paper bound by the strongest tape known to man until I finally rescued some. My Fairy-soft hands are not used to such treatment, and there are cuts which show the scars now. There are also bits of cardboard strewn around the place like the box has been attacked by hungry dogs. I have often thought that people in offices around the world are only a tie-knot from savagery, and I think I may have gone some way to proving that hypothesis this afternoon.

On reaching the room, the eternal struggle between laptop and man was replayed. I have my political principles, but honest to God whichever party can come up with a laptop that talks to a projector without the whole scene turning into the final battle in Lord of the Rings gets my vote.

Eventually we got there, and after some preliminary faffing with a hideously complicated interactive whiteboard, and after I tripped over a flipchart stand, all was well.

Unfortunately all is not well with the Council. But this post has gone on long enough, so I’ll start another one and be serious there…

Rick

Liberal Democrat MP for Hazel Grove Andrew Stunell today met with Sir Neil McIntosh, Returning
Officer for the Greater Manchester Transport Referendum, to set out his opposition to the proposed question wording, published on Monday 20 October.

The meeting in Westminster came after a group of cross-party MPs led by Mr Stunell called at the weekend for a change to the question, which they believe is misleading in its present form.

Commenting Andrew said:

“The proposed question doesn’t mention the Congestion Charge at all, which will astonish most people. It must be made clear that there is a price to be paid by local residents for this plan, or the whole referendum is undermined. After all, if you ask people if they want a bar of chocolate, most people would say yes, but if you told them it would cost £10, most people would say no. The Congestion Charge issue is the key factor, and should be in the question.”

The row over the proposed question comes in the wake of a poll showing that 48% of residents across Greater Manchester did not know that public consultation on the Charge had taken place, with only 11% actually taking part.

Commenting further after the meeting, Andrew said:

The consultation process hasn’t reached its target, with half of all residents completely unaware of it. Now we’re being told that the referendum question itself will not make the direct link between the transport proposals and the congestion charge. I have urged Sir Neil to
think again before the final decision on the question is taken next week.”

It is good to see that cross-party opposition to the congestion charge proposals is now really getting moving. I have said all along that this is not a party political issue. It is simply a question of whether Manchester should play the guinea pig role whilst a deeply regressive and unfair tax is used to pay for transport we should already have.

Today the people of Liverpool began to benefit from a “tap and go” smart card bus ticketing system, which is a revolutionary innovation for the area, and will allow simple and convenient bus ticketing, a bit like London’s Oyster. This is just the type of innovation Manchester should already have, but we can’t get it without Congestion Charging. Nobody has yet told me a good reason why not, and whilst this question remains unanswered, I can’t see a good reason to vote for this congestion tax.

Rick

Late last year Bury Council commissioned the consultants URBED and AGDR to draw up a vision, and strategy for the centre of Prestwich. This was after many years of campaigning by your local Prestwich Liberal Democrat Focus Team to get Bury to take our town centre seriously. Local people are now being asked to have our say on the proposals in the consultation period which is 13 October - 24 November 2008. Every household in Prestwich is being sent a consultation newsletter which includes a survey to send in your views. The newsletter is here, the full report is here.

The vision for Prestwich is that it becomes a sustainable “urban village” inlcuding:
- a community hub
- a lively high street
- a gateway to parkland
- a place to live
- a place to work

You can visit the special consultation website at www.bury.gov.uk/prestwich regeneration or email your views to prestwichregeneration@bury.gov.uk. Please let us, your local Councillors what you think so we can best represent your views.

Somewhere along the line it all went wrong, and so now I find myself looking forward to spending Friday night in the textiles section of IKEA. For the few uninitiated people left in the world, IKEA is the place where youth and freedom come to die atop a mountain of flat-packed furniture. Where once I lolled about innocently, surrounded by cuddly things and spending time lying on grass on summer evenings, now I stand confused with a screwdriver in one hand and a cartoon instruction manual in the other, trying to assemble furniture the various ill-fitting parts of which leave me shrieking in despair.

Tonight, thankfully, we are only going for curtains, so I can leave the screwdriver in its box. But the fact that it has become an event so important to our lives that we’ve spent most of the week looking forward to it is a distressing reminder that I have sleep-walked into the domestic doldrums, possibly never to return. One of these days I am going to have a mid life crisis so dramatic that it makes Michael Douglas in “Falling Down” seem like Bambi’s mum.

I have just spent some time preparing for the next meeting of the Prestwich Developing Communities Group, which I chair and which is a sub-group of the Local Area Partnership. I think the major role of the group is ensuring that the Prestwich Plan, which we developed earlier this year, is carried out and that all the promised improvements are implemented. The Plan has been around for a few months now, and it’s coming to the time when we have the first round of updates. I have come up with a list of people whose targets are ready to be updated, and now they’ll be contacted. I do hope that the promised progress is being made. This is the first time we’ve had such a hands-on approach to monitoring performance and improvement, so maybe the requests for updates and to appear at meetings might come as a surprise. But I think it’s important in managing the work of a complex partnership that we hope will deliver big improvements for Prestwich.

Over the weekend, assuming I escape IKEA intact, I am going to visit my ludicrously pregnant friend. She is now the size of a yacht, and I expect the arrival of a new little friend for us all at any moment. Apparently she’s not due for another three weeks, but the dimensions of human anatomy surely can’t allow for much more growth. I hope that whatever happens the birth doesn’t take place whilst I’m there. Aside from the health consequences, my life has enough note-worthy incidents in it without me accidentally witnessing a birth. And besides, I have plans for Sunday involving Café Rouge and a folk concert. I don’t want to be knee deep in damp towels and umbilical cords.

Rick

I was asked to appear on the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2 today to talk about the DVLA’s general ineptitude and ludicrous heavy-handedness in doling out fines to all and sundry. The radio folks had apparently seen my earlier rants on here about the £40 fine the DVLA mistakenly sent me. Somehow they had not managed to find anyone else equally apoplectic with rage at the DVLA’s idiocy, so settled on me.

Unfortunately I followed a guest whose dead son had been pursued by them, and who had had to resort to taking a jar of ashes to court to get them off her back. I couldn’t really top that with my story of sending them a politely worded letter until they left me alone, and so I limped my way through 90 seconds of awkwardness. It was quite clear that, following on from “ashes-gate,” the presenter and I were of one mind that it was probably time to drop the subject.

As well as my cameo as Mr Anti-climax, the experience was tarnished by a telephone line with an echo that made the whole thing sound like I was talking inside an empty cave. And I also forgot to mention anything I really wanted to mention, like the 1.2m fines sent out by the cretinous DVLA computer each year without a phone number to ring to appeal them; or the 500,000+ fines which aren’t paid, likely because a lot of them are sent in error; or the fact that only 3% of non-payers actually get taken to court.

Instead I was corralled into talking about silly things like whether it was right for “mild mannered” Liberal Democrats to get angry at the DVLA. The whole thing was an opportunity wasted, I fear. Plus, a complete mental blockage preventing me from remembering anything about how to do interviews. Ah well… At least I got to appreciate the amusing irony of hanging on the line whilst Radio 2 played Rod Stewart’s “Lady Jane” which includes the line “don’t leave me hanging on the line.” If I’d have known when listening to it that it would have been the high-point of the occasion, I’d have hung up.

My media-generated sadness was compounded today when I read in the Bury Times about next week’s Council meeting about Job Evaluation. They are terming it a “showdown,” which is absolutely fantastic save for the fact that I can’t go to it because I’m on holiday. I sit through more tedious Council meetings than all the sins in all my past lives could warrant, and yet when one comes along which would give me the opportunity to do something good for the staff, my party and the general populous, I’m away. It’s like last year when I bought a season ticket to watch utter trudge at Manchester City all year, only to miss the victory against United whilst cut off from the world on Mull.

Two days in London have not mellowed me.

Rick

At the very beginning of “Human Traces,” a novel by Sebastian Faulks, is a passage about a boy who causes a dead frog to leap about the room by applying electrodes to its brain. I didn’t think that I’d ever be able to apply that tale to my life, but recent efforts by the Council’s Environmental Services Department have shown me that I can make use of the dead-frog parable after all.

It’s remarkable that after many months of utter stasis on any number of local issues, the Department has, in the last few days, had some form of electrode attached to their nether regions. A frighteningly high voltage must be unceasingly passing through it, because recently the Department has jerked into life like Frankenstien’s Monster, and is going on a rampage of improvement works throughout the ward.

On top of the couple of successes from the other day, today there were two more. First off some overhanging trees on Bury New Road were cut back. That nobody walking along the pavement-cum-jugle-pathway had their eyeball punctured by an errant twig dangling about the place was more down to outrageous good fortune than anything else. But now the shoppers of Prestwich can walk down the road without risking a thorn to the skull, thanks to the good work of the Council, and within the timescales they set themselves when I asked them to do it.

More remarkable than that though, is that only five months after I asked for a replacement chevron sign at the end of Butterstile Lane, one was put there today! All shiny and new it is, a beacon of hope to any driver too engrossed in his text message / fiddly radio / attractive passenger to notice that there is a sharp bend in the road. And, in all fairness to Environmental Services, although they admit that there was a monumental cock-up which saw a four month delay in the first place, they have met their revised deadline on this occasion.

Which is all good news.

Unfortunately any semblance of jolliness was ripped from within me, and replaced by a black shadow enveloping my entire body and soul, when I discovered that the Council had shafted me by scheduling the emergency Council meeting on Job Evaluation for half term week when I am away. This horrific piece of diary abuse means that I will be reduced to either lambasting the Leader of the Council by speaker phone, or more likely entirely prevented from giving him the public rollicking he so richly deserves for his utter neglect of the feelings of staff.

I was very much looking forward to getting answers to questions, and allowing the staff of the Council to channel their anger through me and enjoy a collective cathartic release as I told the Leader exactly what they and I thought of him. Sadly this pleasure has now been denied me, although the staff will be pleased to hear that there are plenty of others forming a not-really-very-orderly queue to shout at the Leader on their behalf instead of me.

And on top of that, I have to get up at the crack of dawn tomorrow, as I’m going to a conference in London with work. I don’t know if there is a darker colour than black (well, I do, and there isn’t), but if such a colour were to exist, the thought of a 5.45am alarm call would have turned the existing black shadow just that shade.

But still, whilst this is bad news for me, it is good news for you, because I won’t be able to blog whilst there (the internet hasn’t reached those parts yet…) and so you will be safe for 48 hours. Rejoice.

Rick

After months of ceaselessly howling at the Council’s Environmental Services Department like some kind of feral dog that just won’t be put down, I scored a double success today. And there was a victory for common sense over housing too, which was the cherry on top of my Council cake.

Firstly, and most astoundingly, the Council finally agreed to implement the street cleaning rota sign that we’ve been harping on about for about the last year. After to-ing and fro-ing between officers and the Executive, and after quite a bit of me banging my head repeatedly against hard surfaces, out of nowhere the Council have agreed that from next week local people will be able to see exactly when the centre of Prestwich is cleaned.

This is great news for many reasons. It’s not just because the Environmental Services Department have at long last moved towards sanity on this issue, but also because local people will be able to see, for the very first time, just when the centre of town is cleaned. This will either put pay to the damaging rumours that we aren’t cleaned as often as we should be, or it will confirm them, and then we can shout a lot and get it put right. Either way, at least we’ll know.

The sign they’re going to use to keep people informed was actually designed by me, because it ws getting so ridiculous that the Council wouldn’t do it themselves that I had to do it for them. So from next week you will be able to see who cleaned Prestwich, when in the day it was done, and where to go with complaints. Thanks very much to the Council for agreeing to this.

Also today, a vehicle owner who had very considerably parked his gigantic advertising truck outside someone’s front room a month ago finally moved it, after your local Councillors stepped in yesterday. The Council paid a visit to the owner this morning, and when it was made clear to him that it wasn’t really on to leave a massive advert blocking someone’s entire windows, he shifted the truck. We don’t know where it’s gone, which is slightly worrying, but if it’s ended up outside your house instead, accept my apologies and please just get in touch.

And finally, there has been some progress with the sad case of the family with the baby living in damp conditions at Sherbourne Court. At first, Six Town Housing used their corpse-like reflexes to suggest a meeting in about three weeks. They have since reacted to my ongoing looks of anger by shaping themselves and actually popping round to see the sick child earlier than planned. This has now happened, and they’ve agreed a plan of action to improve the through-flow of air, and to replace some faulty equipment in the bathroom. In addition, another meeting has been arranged between the tenant and the Council regarding possible re-housing. So we’re getting somewhere there too. 

I needed a couple of good news stories today, after last night’s meeting of the Council’s Licensing and Safety Panel. For some reason, every meeting of the panel sees me descend into some kind of vortex into the recesses of the space-time continuum, as no matter how long or short the agenda, the meetings all manage to drag on ad infinitum until I almost forget why I’m there or who I am. Last night’s went on til gone 10, and in all seriousness I doubt the fairness of a process which sees panel of Councillors deciding on the livelihoods of taxi drivers when they’ve all been there for three hours solid, and some of them haven’t been home yet after a long day at work before the meeting. We should start earlier, split up, have more meetings, or preferably stick to doing what we do know but just say less words, speak quicker, and keep our veerings from the relevant at least marginally sane. Three hours into the meeting, and after the umpteenth question from a panel member who would have known the answer if he’d read his papers in advance, it really is a battle to see which will explode first - my rage or my bladder. This is a serious panel whose decisions have a real impact on real people - I don’t see that there’s an excuse to get so delayed on an agenda and to rush through some people’s cases because we’ve dithered on others.

I hope then, that the weekend is as pleasant and successful as today has been. I was supposed to be going away, but that has turned to dust like so many other of my exciting plans. And as a result I am left here with my leaflets and the faintly distressing prospect of having to watch England labour to an unconvincing victory against Kazakhstan in the football.

Ah well, at least the Licensing meeting isn’t still going on…

Rick

Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, has released a statement on the government’s moves to intervene in the banking crisis:

“When a ship is sinking, we must send out the lifeboats, not argue about who steered the ship into the iceberg. At Prime Minister’s Question Time yesterday, I pledged my support for the moves being taken by the Government. Vince Cable and I have been clear that we must do whatever is necessary to halt the downward spiral of the British economy.

But the Government must do more. It must use the leverage it currently has over banks to end unacceptable bonuses for senior executives, ensure that home repossessions are only ever an absolute last resort, and cut some slack for struggling small businesses before calling in their loans.

Now is also the time for tax loopholes to be closed for the very wealthy and the money saved to be used to cut taxes for low and middle income earners. Hard-pressed families and individuals need more of their own money back now more than ever as they are worrying about their savings and facing mounting bills.

We are fortunate to have a great deal of economic expertise in our party with Chris Huhne, David Laws and Susan Kramer working closely with myself and Vince Cable on the challenges that face us. Over the coming weeks and months it will continue to be our party that is leading the debate with the ideas and solutions to put Britain’s economy on the right track.”

On a related note, I was assured this morning that Bury MBC does not have any money in troubled Icelandic banks. This is good news, particularly after what happened with Bury’s money when BCCI collapsed a few years ago.

Rick

Last week I wrote that the Leader of the Council had opted out of attending an Overview and Scrutiny panel on Job Evaluation / Equal Pay, in favour of going to a swanky dinner in Manchester. I was angry about this, but confident that at the very least the meeting could be rescheduled so that employees could get some reassurance over a process which could see many of them lose thousands in salary.

Today the Leader has once again left me feeling extremely angry and disappointed, failing to agree a date for the revised meeting, and again depriving staff of their right to a public explanation. I have been working with the Chair of the Scrutiny Commission to make sure that this meeting happens. I know that the Chair has been forthright in his requests to Council officers and the Leader that he make himself available. This has not happened, and now the opposition to the Bury Conservative Council have had to resort to drastic measures to get this heard in public.

A motion has been signed, calling for an extraordinary meeting of full Council on this issue. This means that the Leader will be forced to come to a public hearing and answer questions on this issue.

It is a crying shame that it has come to this. Whilst it is obviously vital to get effective scrutiny of the process, a meeting of full Council is only fractionally as effective as a Scrutiny Commission would have been. The environment is nowhere near as suited to proper questioning, and the confrontational layout of a chamber with opposing members facing each other is not conducive to information gathering like the inclusive environs of a Scrutiny Commission are.

That this issue needed forcing at all is a damning indictment of an absent Leader who has shown nothing but a lack of interest in responding to questions which need answering.

Maybe I’m naive about politics and how the Council works, but I just don’t understand how the Leader of an organisation that is, for whatever reason, shafting a quarter of its staff, can just disappear from view and seemingly go out of his way to block scrutiny of the process.

He does himself and the Council as a whole no favours at all by not being utterly open to questioning, and nothing but transparent in his desire to share information. It is not good for anyone that we in the opposition have to strain every sinew on behalf of the staff to get the Conservative ruling group to answer questions about this process.

This isn’t about bashing the Tories. We don’t want to question them to make them look silly or to apportion blame for the outcome, which was not entirely anyone’s fault. We want answers about the process the Tories implemented, and about how we can all make it better for the staff.

I am incredibly frustrated that the Conservative response is to bury their heads in the sand and not answer. It took weeks to get the answers I posted on here yesterday. Weeks of uncertainty for staff, weeks of frustration for Councillors, and weeks of feeble inaction by the Tories.

This issue is massive. It affects thousands of people, leaving them helpless at a time when the wider economy is making things worse. Our role is to help them, and we can’t because the Conservatives led by Cllr Bibby are making the job of helping so much more difficult. They should genuinely be ashamed of themselves.

We don’t want a party political fight, we just want open answers. The consistent, inexplicable delays just makes me shake my head with dejection. It’s crazy and it makes me wonder what the hell I’m doing with it all. What is the point of trying when every avenue is blocked?

I hoped very much that yesterday’s answers marked the start of some new openness from the Leadership and the officers carrying out their instructions. Today’s ongoing unwillingness by the Leader to submit to the most basic scrutiny has convinced me that it wasn’t, and now the opposition has had to invoke this drastic step of a full Council meeting to try and get the answers we should have had long ago.

Rick

I have today received answers to a number of questions I have recently put to the Council regarding Job Evaluation and Equal Pay. I feel that it is important for staff and everyone involved to be as informed as possible, so here are the questions and answers received from the Council’s Director of Personnel today:

Question 1:
Is it true that appeals are taking place without Union representation, because Union officers are busy advising would-be appellants and do not have capacity to attend appeals that have been scheduled early in the process whilst still dealing with the preliminary stages of those for later on?

Answer 1:
In response to the further question concerning appeals, I met with the Branch Secretary and the Regional Officer from Unison this morning when we agreed the following with regard to the future conduct of appeals:

Unison will provide trained panel members so we can run 8 panels per day. During that first week Unison will “double up” and may sometimes provide two analysts to sit on the appeals panels, one will take part, the other will be an observer;
We will review the position when we meet on 23rd October.

Unison will provide the names of their analysts to Corporate HR; local stewards will be supported by regional officers to ensure that the 8 panel commitment can be maintained.

The co-ordination of appeals will be undertaken by Corporate HR working on the assumption that we will run 8 panels per day. Advance notice of the appellants details, paperwork, time and venue will be provided so that Unison have at least three working days and no more than seven working days notice to prepare for the hearings.

We agreed to review the process and progress of appeals in two weeks time (meeting with Unison on 23rd Oct)

For the remainder of this week we will cover appeals where TU analysts are available / have committed their time to participating in the appeal.

For information, some appeals have taken place this morning (supported by Unison) and others have taken place where the appellants requested that their appeal went ahead without a TU analyst.

Question 2:
How much money will it cost to extend full pay protection for employees of Bury MBC to the 2 years, 9 months level proposed by Bolton MBC

Answer 2:
If we were to offer full protection for 2 years, 9 months, the total cost to the Council would be £9.5m.

Please note we have sought permission to capitalise protection costs, however this option has been declined by the DCLG.

Question 3:
Please explain the different points-to-pay system which sees 430 points in Bury equate to £18,907 and 430 points in Bolton equate to £23,749

Answer 3:
The establishment of a pay to points system in each Authority is a matter for local determination that is influenced by local job market factors and affordability. All Local authorities must retain the nationally agreed pay spine (which Bury has done) but each Authority can determine the relationship between JE points and pay to suit its own local circumstances. For information please note that in the pay to points model developed by Blackburn with Darwen council, 430 points equates to a salary range of £17,800 - £20,100.

Question 4:
Please explain the low scoring for Revenues and Benefits staff in relation to the “Responsibility for Finance” section.

Answer 4:
Employees within Revenues and Benefits were awarded points within the levels 1-4 against this factor (there are six levels in total).

The factor measures the direct responsibility of the jobholder for financial resources, including cash, vouchers, cheques, debits and credits, invoices, budgets and income.

It takes into account the nature of the responsibility, eg. correctness and accuracy, safekeeping, confidentiality and security, deployment and degree of direct control etc.

This factor is hierarchical for jobs in finance and the guidance states that the levels awarded to jobs should reflect this. Consequently managerial roles within the R&B service were awarded Level 4 which is defined as:

The job involves high direct responsibility for financial resources. The work involves either:

(a) accounting for very large sums of money, in the form of cash, cheques, direct debits, invoices, or equivalent, where care, accuracy & security are important or:

(b) being accountable for large expenditures from an agreed budget or equivalent income. The responsibility may include contributing to the setting and monitoring of the relevant budget and ensuring effective spend of budgeted sums.

Other posts in the hierarchy were graded accordingly.

Question 5:
How many roles had their points cut during moderation, and what was the average number of points lost?

To be advised.

Question 6:
Can you confirm that, for all part time staff, gains and losses have been pro-rata’d as appropriate?

Answer 6:
Yes, part time equivalent figures have been used in the calculation

Question 7:
Has consideration been given to the “Stafford” model of dealing with this issue?

Answer7:
Contact has been made with Staffordshire to establish the facts. Staffordshire did not abandon Single Status. They are in the advanced stages of implementing the results from their Pay and Grading Review. In broad terms, some £85m has been pumped in to support the review’s outcome. This has, of course, significantly reduced the number of losers.

I continually receive questions from staff and residents on this, which I am relaying to the Leader for answers. These are the answers I received today, and I am hopeful that the outstanding question, and any others I receive, will be answered shortly.

Rick

Some success this morning in the struggle with Six Town Housing over the condition of the flat at Sherbourne Court. It is home to a baby (and will soon be home to another), but is riddled with damp which is obviously doing nobody any good.

After some increasingly fraught lobbying yesterday, we have managed to get the maintenance visit which was compassionately scheduled for three weeks from now brought forward to tomorrow. That will allow for repairs to be scheduled, which I have asked to be actually carried out urgently.

Unfortunately the morning has not been entirely successful. I am becoming increasingly tired because of Tamsin’s futuristic alarm clock, which is driving me mad and is so hyper-effective that it wakes me up a full half hour before it’s supposed to each and every day.

It is a Philips “Wake-up Light,” ostensibly designed to wake people up slowly and as nature intended, rather than startle them into consciousness by playing the news intro from Five Live, which is what traditionally woke me up. The advertising blurb talks about people with conditions which make them actually depressed about getting up on dark mornings. Tam seems well up for believing this, and whilst I am sure that there are awful and genuine mental illnesses of this sort, I am struggling to overcome the suspicion that she might just, y’know, not like getting up for work.

So this thing of her’s is a radio alarm clock with a gigantic light on top of it, which slowly comes to life for half an hour before the scheduled alarm call, reaching full brightness at wake-up time rather like the sun rising. And then, at the allotted hour, rather than the radio or some beeping puncturing the air, the sleeper can be stroked gently towards awakenness by the sounds of water rolling over rocks, or birds tweeting in the trees, or, oddly, frogs croaking. Tamsin likes the birds.

Apparently Tam likes this new method. Unfortunately I think I have the world’s most sensitive eyes, because the very instant the light begins its grim march towards full shininess, I wake up. And then I spend the next half an hour staring at the ceiling watching it get brighter and brighter, like a passenger staring out the window on a space ship to the Sun.

For her, this alarm clock does exactly what it says on the box. She langurously stretches out at 7am with a smile on her face. I look bitter and annoyed, and would much prefer to revert to the traditional method which saw me flailing about like a madman as the news headlines blare from the wall, wondering whether I am still in my hideious nightmare or whether the FTSE losing 2000 points in one morning is actually true.

What makes the situation worse is that I bought the damn thing, as a birthday present. And it cost the best part of £100! One hundred pounds to be woken up for work in the most irritating way possible.

She’s bounding round the house like a song bird, fresh as a daisy, whilst I am half an hour more tired than I was before, becoming insane with hatred for the little orange glow in the corner of the room. I have tried wearing a mask to shield my eyes, but frankly it makes me look like a buffoon. And I think I have an odd-shaped face because it won’t sit right on it.

There is no escape from this. Even now I can feel it burning its fake sunshine into my eyes. I can’t bring myself to deprive her of her morning crux, but how’s a man supposed to get a good night’s sleep when the sun itself rises in his bedroom? Answers on a postcard please.

Rick

I was very disappointed today to hear from the Council’s Head of Waste Management, who contacted me to say that the promised street cleaning rota sign will now not be coming to Prestwich. As a reminder – having been contacted by many residents concerned about street cleanliness, we asked for (and were promised) a sign in the centre of the precinct indicating the street cleaning rota for that week, signed after each clean to let local residents know when the cleaning had been done.

The rota was not suggested by me. It was suggested by a large number of the people whom we Councillors and the Council itself serve, namely the residents of Prestwich. I asked Cllr Dorothy Gunther, the Conservative Executive member for Environmental Services, to accept their suggestion, and she agreed on behalf of the Council. Now though, we are told that this won’t happen.

The fact that people empowered to make and implement decisions have now changed their minds will annoy a lot of residents, I’m sure. It’s certainly annoyed me, since it’s taken so long to get precisely nowhere, and especially since I relayed the agreed action to the people who asked for it. Once again I think that the people of Prestwich have the right to feel let down by the people at the Town Hall and by the Tories running it.

The Head of Waste Management said:

“Cllr Dorothy Gunther and I have discussed the matter and we are of the view that a rota of the type you suggest would serve little purpose in reality. What’s important is how clean the precinct is and not how often it is cleaned. It is cleaned as often as is necessary to maintain a satisfactory standard of cleanliness and that may be 2 or 3 times daily. Furthermore it may differ between days of the week and between different times of the year.”

I strongly disagree that the proposed rota will serve little purpose. When it started becoming clear that even a starting pistol wouldn’t jerk the Council into action on this, I designed a rota myself and sent it to them. It could easily be adapted to suit different times of day and times of the year. It was not about imposing a standard rota. It was about informing residents of the proposed schedule for that time and place, and crucially that the proposed schedule was adhered to.

I think it would have served to provide what is lacking at the moment, namely confidence amongst the residents that the centre of Prestwich is being cleaned satisfactorily. The Council and I agree that what is important is how clean the precinct is. I think disagreement exists between residents and the Council over whether or not it is in fact clean.

The rota would have shown the number and frequency of actual cleans, so that residents would know that efforts are being made to keep the precinct clean. If residents could see that the precinct is still not clean to their satisfaction despite two or three cleans a day, we could begin a dialogue about how to solve this problem. At the moment residents aren’t sure when things are cleaned or who is cleaning them, and so naturally assume that “nothing is ever done” or “Bury Town Centre gets cleaned more than Prestwich.” I get these complaints all the time. The Council has an ideal opportunity to put these rumours to rest with this rota, but have chosen not to do it.

This signed rota isn’t about checking up on street cleaners. It’s about providing local people with information about what standards are, and clarity that they’re being met, so that they stop complaining to me (and the Council) that they aren’t.

I am very disappointed that people living in, working in, and travelling through Prestwich Village still have no idea how often their streets are actually cleaned, who is doing the cleaning, and who they can complain to. There is talk of a Street Cleaning Plan to give people information on the service. But even when this has been put in place, there will still be a lack of information on ACTUAL cleaning (as opposed to planned cleaning). So there will still be the opportunity for accusations that standards aren’t being met.

It’s very irritating and, I fear, another example of a promise broken for no clear reason. It would have cost nothing and generated a lot of goodwill, as well as keeping residents informed, and educating them on Council services. Unfortunately they are now denied that chance.

Rick

Tonight is a meeting of the Bury Liberal Democrats. It is taking place at Fishpool Liberal Club from 7pm, and all members and supporters are welcome. Recently the attendance at these meetings has gone up markedly, and whilst they’re not quite large enough events to necessitate the hiring of ballrooms and convention centres (yet) they are certainly worth coming along to if you’re interested in the Lib Dems in Bury and/or are a bit of a meeting junky. Luckily for me, and handy for those looking for an explanation as to my ongoing unpopularity, I am both of these things, and so will be there with bells on. It would be great to see all local members there, so please do come down if you have the chance. Rick

So I went to a wedding this weekend, the entertainment part of which was a “Ceilidh” - Scottish dancing which is like Working Men’s Club Linedance night crossed with a fiddle and an accordion, all set to the dictatorial shouting of a man in a kilt. I was dreading it, but in truth it was actually very enjoyable, and I now regret my overly negative build-up in Friday’s post. Yes, I did look like a cross between a marionette and a man being executed by Old Sparky, but I had a splendid time, and can now do-si-do with only minor bruising.

The wedding itself was fairly uneventful (although the bride and groom, one of whom was friends with Tam, neither of whom were friends with me, probably thought different). The major incident of note was that the church organ failed halfway through the ceremony, and refused to be revived. The bride remained calm, although I would have been livid. The last thing any newlyweds want for the wedding night is a malfunctioning organ.

Of course I still found the wedding hugely distressing, as someone else my age surrenders their childhood in a blaze of veils and cravats, and hurtles headlong into cosy middle-aged domesticity without a thought for the simmering resentment that must surely, surely, be dangerously building up within them as their lives turn into monotonous net-curtain-grey deserts of boredom. Why do they do it? How can they do it? Is the groom secretly Jerry Lee Lewis? Next time I go to the wedding of a friend I may hum “Great Balls of Fire” during a quiet part of the ceremony just to check. Crazy stuff that we children, who just yesterday were chucking frisbees about in the back garden, are now marrying each other. It’s like I’ve joined a cult and not realised.

I’ve given this a lot of airtime on here before, so I won’t delve into it again now. But it’s a good job I didn’t know bride or groom this weekend, or else I may well have tried to stop the whole thing and ordered us all back to school where we belong.

I have come home to quite a few bits of casework from residents. Once again the issue of litter in Prestwich Village refuses to go away and leave me in peace. There seems to be a particular problem with smokers confusing the pavement with the bin, and dropping their cigarette butts all over it outside The Fairfax pub. So I have asked for extra enforcement action. And by “extra,” I actually mean of course “any,” since there doesn’t seem to be any ever, and litter droppers would have to be both filthy and extremely unlucky to get caught as things stand at the moment. In my view, it’s no good bragging about the potential for fines if there’s never anyone there to dole them out. I know resources are tight, so I have asked for a targeted “spree” of enforcement as a minimum, so that people are aware that there will be some come-back if they continue to spew litter out like a catherine-wheel-cum-bin-explosion.

The Ruskin Road gardens issue has also been on the agenda over the weekend, after featuring in the Manchester Evening News and on BBC1’s “Northwest Tonight” on Friday. I am glad that the press release from the Lib Dems in Prestwich has had some effect on the media, even if, at the moment, our please to the Council are falling on less than receptive ears. I have been chasing up the Council wondering why the letters they promised 10 days ago offering 1-2-1 meetings with residents haven’t been written yet.

And I have made further contact with Six Town Housing over the ongoing issue of the damp flat and the ill baby. Their response of “Well, yeah, we know the baby’s sick but there’s a waiting list and she’s on the bottom of it. See you in three weeks” was about as acceptable as me wearing a white dress with a train to this weekend’s wedding and shouting obscenities during the exchange of rings, and so I have asked Six Town as politely as my rage would allow to think again and give this case the priority it deserves. They appear happy to see babies ill. I am not.

Hopefully we can progress these cases this week. I will keep you informed.

Sunday nights are obviously the most awful of the week, made all the more simply unbearable by Strictly Come Dancing. I hope your’s is OK.

Rick 

Last night’s Local Area Partnership was notable for a couple of reasons.

A local resident came along last night and raised an issue in the public forum which was very upsetting. His partner is a tenant of Six Town Housing at Sherbourne Court, and her flat is riddled with damp. She has a baby of 1 and another on the way, and the baby’s mattress is covered with damp, her clothes are damp, and the entire flat is a health hazard. Complaints have been made and not responded to properly, and when the tenant requested help with a bath, she was told to fit it herself.

We were all shocked by this tale of inadequate service from Six Town. It’s not the first such story we’ve heard, and it won’t be the last. As a regular at Rainsough Tenants and Residents Association, I am frequently made aware of some shocking cases of atrocious customer service from the Council’s Housing Arms Length Management Organisation. This one was particularly upsetting though, and made even more so because, yet again, nobody from STH had bothered to come to the LAP. This happens all the time, and I think in all the LAPs I have been to, STH have come to one ever. They are a part, a vital part, of the Local Area Partnership. Many of our most vulnerable residents need their help and support. It is galling to see them ignore their responsibilities and act so shoddily.

Today the issue has been chased up, and despite a baby’s health being put at risk due to faulty maintenance, STH’s response has been to schedule a meeting three weeks from now. This again is just unacceptable, and I am trying to force a meeting as soon as possible and much sooner than that.

Moving on from the disappointment of the STH issue, there were also a couple of interesting presentations last night. Firstly the skate park presentation from local young people, which showed that they really are determined to make progress on what I think would be an excellent new facility for local people. They’ve got their work cut out, both in terms of funding and getting the public on board. But they’ve certainly got a lot of goodwill from members of the LAP.

There was also an update on plans for Philips Park, which will be restore dto something like its former glory (and more) if a Heritage Lottery Bid is successful. And there were also pleasing reports from the Primary Care Trust who were consulting on health care priorities locally, and from the Police who reported a drop in crime in the area recently.

This weekend I am going to a wedding, part of which involves a ceilidh, which I am informed is basically Irish dancing, and will doubtless involve me flailing around like I am undergoing a serious attack of the central nervous system, and wishing to the Lord above that I was elsewhere.

All good fun…

Rick

Don’t forget the Local Area Partnership tonight, at Sedgley Park School, from 6pm. All the fun of the fair, without the risk of being dragged onto rickety roller-coasters that fold out of trucks and are just one loose bolt away from disintegrating in a ball of fire and screaming.

I am looking forward to tonight particularly because of the presentation from some local young people about their plans for a skate park. Not everyone likes skateboarders, and there is quite a lot of worry that a skate park might attract noise and disturbance. To be honest I think it would do the opposite, and give young people a structured and safe place to roll around on their skateboards and career off railings doing the type of stunts that make me wince just thinking about them. But if that’s their bag, then so be it.

So I’m hoping that tonight’s presentation will get the ball rolling on taking that issue forward. We have a vibrant and organised youth service in Prestwich, centred on the Phoneix Centre in St Mary’s Park, and it would be nice if thought could be given to perhaps turning one of the two unused bowling greens into something that would be very well used indeed.

Also tonight is the open forum, which I mentioned yesterday. It’s worth mentioning again, partly because it extends this posting towards a length that I find acceptable, but mainly because it’s the best chance local people have to air their concerns, raise their issues, and bring local causes and bones of contention to the ears of Councillors, the police and the NHS. So, if you are free this evening and you want to listen to the issues in Prestwich, or start your own, then come down to the LAP and join us.

Rick

I have managed to shuffle through the last two days of my life without having the spirit within my very soul tapped and extracted by an incompetent nincompoop whose job is ostensibly to actually help me. Which is a bonus.

I was helped of course by resolving my DVLA issue on Monday and thus removing myself from within the whirlpool of idiocy that is that organisation. Any interaction with the DVLA is only marginally more pleasant than donning arctic explorer gear and locking myself inside a convection oven on “high” for three hours.

But even the Council have joined in, and haven’t let loose a monsoon of rain upon the parade that is my attempted service to St Mary’s yet this week. In fact, they are bending over backwards to help with a number of things. So much so that I sent them a thank you email yesterday, an act only slightly tarnished when my spell-checker automatically queried the word “pleased” and suggested “angered so much that I thrashed the radiators until they fell from the wall” as an alternative.

All in all, it’s turning out remarkably nicely, although my unhindered progress is so rare that I feel like I’ve walked to the top of a hill and seen a brontosaurus lolloping through the valley below.

As the week progresses there is plenty more excitement to come too. Tonight is a meeting of the Bury Council Liberal Democrat group, where we will talk about the latest to-ings and fro-ings of Bury political life. Of course the ongoing issue of Job Evaluation and Equal Pay are sure to be towards the top of the agenda, as well as the work on developing Prestwich Village, which is continuing behind the scenes.

The Prestwich issue is bound to come up, along with lots of other local issues, at the meeting of Prestwich Local Area Partnership (LAP) tomorrow (Thursday). The meeting will take place at Sedgley Park Primary School on Kings Road / Bishops Road, with public question time from 7pm, and the business part of the meeting from 6.00 should you fancy that too.

Remember that LAP meetings give you your chance to question local Councillors, raise issues that we might be able to help you with, or bring anything to our attention that you feel we and the Council ,Police, NHS and fire Service ought to know about. Everything from the regeneration of the town down to the light outside your house. The LAP is the only place where you can find representatives of all the public services in one place ready to help with the issues you want to talk about. So please do come along.

Rick