I was shocked and surprised to see that Bury North’s Labour MP David Chaytor yesterday voted against Lib Dem plans to give Gurkhas a permanent home in the UK.

The Gurkhas risked their lives fighting for this country, and yet when they need our help, the government has shamefully turned their backs on them. David Chaytor MP has done the same by putting party loyalty above doing the right thing.

He and Labour have treated the Gurkhas appallingly despite the great contribution they have made to protect the freedoms and safety of this country.

I am sure that a large number of people across Bury will have been saddened by the way these former soldiers have been treated by Labour, and disappointed that the local MP didn’t support this worthy cause.

Rick

The Government suffered a symbolic defeat today when MPs voted by 267 to 246 on a Liberal Democrat motion to give all Gurkha soldiers equal right of residence in Britain. The government’s unpopular and unfair plans were vigorously opposed by Lib Dems from the moment they were announced, and I’m delighted that Parliament has backed the Lib Dem plans to give former Gurkha soldiers residence in the UK.

Commenting after the vote defeating the Government, Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg said:

“This is a historic victory for the Gurkhas who have served our country so bravely.

“This Government has now lost its moral authority. From the first moment I challenged Gordon Brown on this over a year ago, he didn’t understand that there was a simple moral principle at stake.

“People who are willing to die for our country, should be allowed to live in our country.

“The Government must listen to Parliament and scrap these shameful rules immediately and grant justice without conditions to all retired Gurkhas.”

The vote today may just have been smbolic, but it’s caused the government to think again, and rightly so. I look forward to hearing better ideas from them now that they’ve said they’ll look at the issue once more.

Rick

There’s a great old episode of “The Simpsons,” during which the family watch an episode of “Springfield Action News,” a ludicrous attempt by the town’s rolling news channel to broadcast something interesting to fill the void. They resort to outrageous scaremongering, making immense news out of meaningless events, and treating every day happenings like the end of the world. “President Reagan Dies!!” the newsreader screams, before pausing and adding “his hair.” And then there’s a segueway to a rolling telethon-style counting device which reveals that the death count from the approaching hurricane is… zero. “But it’s all set to shoot right up!”

I was reminded of all of this when watching the news of the “flu pandemic” today, which I’m sure may turn very nasty at some point soon but which is, infuriatingly for the people working at 24 hour news stations, resolutely refusing to infect anyone in the UK or kill anyone anywhere at all at the moment.

The BBC 6 o’clock news spent almost 15 minutes ramping up the fear factor for no reason that I could see at all.

All I’ve seen all day is people fleeing Mexico, and running away from airports here to avoid getting on planes to Mexico! And sober but uninteresting facts like a total of two mild cases so far in the UK, and a falling number of actual deaths elsewhere, brushed aside in favour of a fantastically unnecessary description of what would happen if the virus mutated and started affecting everyone everywhere.

And, to top it all, more time spent interviewing random people on the street going “well yes, I’m terrified, run run run!!!” than spent talking to doctors and infection control experts who all boringly tell us that unless we cough on someone we won’t catch it at all right now, and even if we catch it we probably won’t die. There’s no ratings in that now Doctor, is there?

Maybe it will get very serious indeed. But I get the nasty feelinbg that in this 24 hour news age, if anything really humanity-threatening does ever happen, we won’t be able to enjoy our last few days on Earth in peace. Instead we’ll have a minute-by-minute countdown to our impending doom. I’m not sure that’s the way I want to go… 

Anyway, I’m not a doctor, and have no real idea what I’m on about flu-wise, so I’ll be quiet now, and go about my business. Tonight, I am leaping head-first into a den of germs and illness by broadcasting on the hospital radio station which I have been a volunteer at for years. Sadly due to my Council commitments I don’t get to go these days very often. But since we’re in recess, I am tonight. And if I don’t go now, I’ll be late.

Rick

Monday mornings are bad at the best of times. This morning, Radio 5 Live promised me an interview with Harriet Harman MP, which thankfully I was scheduled to miss. Unfortunately, due to me being addicted to Jordan’s Country Crisp, it took me longer than normal to get ready and I was thus still getting dressed when she appeared to trumpet the new Equalities Bill.

I welcome the general idea of the Bill. There is a pay gap, and this seeks to close it. In spirit, she and the government have my support. But it was all spoiled by the ridiculous assertion from Ms Harman that by equalising pay for men and women there is no risk that, in some instances, pay for some will have to be reduced. This is simply not true, as any employee of Bury MBC will testify.

The truth is that, as things stand at the moment, sometimes, equality means that those who have enjoyed unfair privilege will have to lose that privilege, just like the Benefits Clerks in Bury lost out to pay for equal pay for others. In denying the potential for trouble, Ms Harman is undermining the good work that this Bill could bring about. She risks turning supporters against the idea of equality, and allows detractors of the idea of equity more of a voice. In denying the obvious risks she not only avoids facing up to them and finding solutions. Who knows what trouble could have been avoided at Bury MBC and at Council across the land if there had been an acknowledgement that true pay equity couldn’t be achieved immediately without suffering for some? If it had have been recognised, it may have been sorted. But it wasn’t and it clearly still isn’t, even though it’s obvious. In failing to face up to the unintended consequences of her legislation, Ms Harman demonstrates some of the nasty, blinded arrogance that is coming to typify the final months of the New Labour government.

Our Prime Minister is the same. His ideas on reforming the Second Home Allowance for MPs have been rushed towards vote, and now humiliatingly withdrawn after it became clear that they were probably going to be defeated. Mr Brown’s arrogance mirrors, perhaps spawns, the arrogance of his party. Rather than wait for an independent enquiry, or consult other parties (or even members of his own), he rushed forward with ideas as unpopular as they are nonsensical. Paying MPs to show up at the Commons whilst doing nothing to provide a sustainable way of housing them which is fair on everyone is just silly. The thought that he could do it alone is almost insanely arrogant. Just the type of arrogance from an MP, in fact, as is demonstrated by some of the worst expenses abuses. The Liberal Democrat proposals to provide an amount for rent or mortgage interest on a second home where needed, and to remove the opportunity for MPs to make a capital gain, is much more sensible and a proper way to reform the system.

And finally today, the government’s idea that communications companies should record all of our online activities, including what websites we visit and who we chat to online. The government is asking for powers greater than any police state in history, and although the data won’t be held on a single giant database, the government and police can get access to it and snoop on you and me for any reason, at any time, without a warrant. Again Labour is trampling over our right to privacy. Who knows what the financial cost of the scheme will be? But the cost to our liberties is enormous, as once again this arrogant government displays its contempt for our freedoms.

It doesn’t take much to annoy me on a Monday, but Labour have done it in droves today.

Rick

I have agreed to be part of a team attempting the “Three Peaks Challenge” in June. The challenge involves writing a will, and then attempting to climb Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon (the highest peaks in Scotland, England and Wales) within 24 hours.

Bearing in mind that it will probably take about 10 hours to drive between the three mountains, that doesn’t leave much time to scamper up and down them. Especially when it’s dark, which it will be at some point during the 24 hours, obviously.

Starting at 6am at the foot of Ben Nevis, we need to be at the top of Snowden 24 hours later, having climbed up Scafell Pike in between.

I am doing it for a charity called Tenovus, which helps people suffering from Cancer. The team (there will be 8 of us) and I need to raise £1,500 and of course would like to raise even more.

My own choice would have been for a charity which pays for the treatment of idiots injured during ill-advised mountaineering challenges, so that I could have taken advantage of the funds myself. But I was outvoted.

I know that this blog’s promary purpose isn’t to solicit money from readers. But asking you for cash makes me feel less dirty than asking for your votes, and that’s basically what this is about most of the time. So if you want to be very generous and donate to the cause, please visit the website we’ve set up at www.justgiving.com/3peaks1day

Anything you can give will help support a very worthy cause.

Many thanks,

Rick 

Spending my Saturdays leafleting is never as enjoyable an experience as, say, frolicking in a hotel suite with a member of Girls Aloud. Today it was made even less enjoyable by the news that we may all die of pandemic flu, thus rendering any electioneering I achieved this afternoon fairly meaningless.

Still, at least I will die knowing that I’ve done more than my fair share of civic duty, as today’s leaflet-a-rama was a joint endeavour to promote not just the Liberal Democrats and their surge beyond the borders fo Prestwich, but also the upcoming Prestwich Festival. The Festival will run from mid-May to mid-June, with dozens of events including the Clough Day, the Carnival,  and a Farmers’ Market. We were handing out programmes to people’s homes today on our rounds.

Things are fairly quiet at the moment, Council wise, because we’re in the year-end recess. That, rather than anything else, is the reason for the decreased frequency of my bloggings this past fortnight. There’s little to write about, so I’m not doing. Having said that, I am taking advantage of a little respite from the municipal fray by pottering about in the garden in a way not at all befitting a 28 year old. Today I became unreasonably excited with the purchase of a strimmer.

Tomorrow I am going to climb Snowdon. This is partly due to the need to up my fitness ahead of the ludicrous “Three Peaks Challenge” that I am doing in June (of which more above) and also because I know a couple of people doing the London Marathon, and anything other than a supremely sprightly Sunday will make me feel incredibly lazy. So I’m climbing a mountain in Wales whilst they stomp the streets of London.

Unless it rains of course, in which case I’ll probably just mope around the house.

Rick

When I was at university, not many of my student colleagues were interested in the budget. They were too busy doing things I should have been doing, like learning how to talk to girls. But they always perked up when I told them how much fags and booze were going up by.

These days, I suspect the situation at universities is much the same. Unfortunately most people above that kind of age now have to take a very close interest in all things budgetarial, because it seems that just about anyone who knows anything about economics concurs that the government has presided over a monumental economic calamity. And we’re now all a bit sombre. In years gone by, I sensed people moaning for a day or two about a tax rise here and there. Now, the BBC’s own inimitable Robert Peston reacts to the budget with the single word “yikes,” and it makes me a little bit sick…

The Lib Dem reaction to the budget can be found here. I won’t repeat what the experts say because I’m not one myself and they do a better and more informed job of it than I do. But whilst I’m not an expert, I am a normal working man, and I’m not happy with lots of what the Chancellor proposed today. I don’t think he was bold enough, or honest enough. His forecasts for growth seem to have been rejected by anyone holding either a degree in Economics or an abacus. There is nothing to stop tax loopholes, nor is there any explanation of what the real cost will be of the billions in efficiency savings identified.

That’s not to say it was all bad - I think the 50% tax rate for the richest 1% on their earnings above £150,000 is a necessary pain. I wish it didn’t have to happen, but it looks like it does. New sixth form places are good news, although how that’s squared with greater efficiencies I don’t know. And business will be pleased with the billions in aid it’s getting, even if the Chairmen of the businesses concerned will be paying more tax!

But all in all the day leaves me as disappointed as I feared it might. It’s a bit scary really. These crazy figures and mounting debt, and the creeping feeling that nobody in charge really knows how to stop it. And it’s all made worse by the continuing failure of the government to take the bold decisions and listen to the voices from the sidelines. We’ll all be paying for that mistake in the years to come.

Rick

It occurred to me today that yesterday’s post was an odd one. It essentially screamed from the rooftops about how great an idea it is to give low and middle income earners a £700 tax cut, paid for from people earning lots. This is indeed a good idea, in my book. But let’s be honest, this blog is part about letting people know what I’m upto and also part about trying to win votes. As the parliamentary candidate for Bury North, were that post to convince enough people to vote for me, I’d become an MP and immediately be earning enough money to get clobbered by my own tax policy. Still, it’d be a price worth paying I suppose!

The Council is currently in recess. Save for the odd meeting here and there to decide planning applications, Councillors have gone back to their wards to prepare for the start of the new municipal year in a few weeks time. That doesn’t mean fo course that the work on behalf of constituents stops, nor does it mean that the fun-go-round that is the political world stops either.

Locally, this week I have helped find out answers to residential queries on crime, garden tenancies and graffiti (again!). Nationally of course we all await with gaping wallets the contents of the Chancellor’s budget tomorrow. We’ve already heard that he’s planning to make £15bn of Whitehall “efficiencies,” which won’t result in service cuts yet have somehow magically become achievable at precisely the time a budget is announced despite being non-existent until now. It’ll be interesting to see what the Chancellor announces tomorrow. Having propped up the banking industry to the tune of £200bn (that’s £200,000,000,000) there’s not much spare cash floating about. If only he’d listened to Lib Dem Vince Cable, we might well be in a very different position altogether.

Rick

The Liberal Democrats will fight the next general election with a pledge to cut income tax bills by £700 for people on low and middle incomes, Nick Clegg revealed today.

The party will promise to raise the income tax personal allowance to £10,000 by closing tax loopholes exploited by big businesses and the wealthy.

Speaking today, Nick Clegg said: “These plans will give money back to the people who really need it at the time when they need it most.

“It is time to end the unfairness that sees big businesses and the wealthy treating taxes as something to be easily avoided, leaving everybody else to pay out.

“For too long governments have been letting companies stash their money in offshore tax havens while taxpayers are left to foot the bill.

“Over time a tax system has developed that creates loopholes for the wealthy and does nothing for those who really need help.

“People who say there isn’t enough money to make our tax system fair are wrong. Our plans wouldn’t add a penny to the overall tax burden, but they would spread that burden far more fairly.

“Far from making this reform difficult, tight Government finances and a harsh recession make it absolutely vital. It will help millions of low and middle income taxpayers who are most likely to spend  money so helping the wider economy. 

“The Liberal Democrats will create a fundamentally rebalanced system that is fair for all, putting hundreds of pounds back into the pockets of millions of British people, and taking four million out of paying tax altogether.”

Raising the personal allowance to £10,000 for all people will mean that those on the standard personal allowance will see an increase in their allowance of £3,525 in 2009/10; this will give an effective tax cut of £705 to anyone earning over £10,000 .

Raising the personal allowance will take approximately four million people out income tax altogetherMeasures which will be used to pay for this proposed increase in the personal allowance include: ·      

- Restricting tax relief on pension contributions to the basic rate

- Taxing Capital Gains at marginal income tax rates, allowing for indexation and retirement relief

- Tackling Stamp Duty Land Tax avoidance and Corporation Tax avoidance

- Subjecting benefits in kind to National Insurance Contributions as well as income tax and applying National Insurance to multiple jobs

- Switching aviation taxes from per person to per plane and increasing taxation on non lifeline domestic flights.  

Rick

The inaugural Prestwich Festival has now been launched.

A Festival celebrating Prestwich life was a key promise in the “Prestwich Plan” which was launched by the Prestwich Local Area Partnership (LAP) last year. Now the Festival is really happening, and will run between mid-May and mid-June.

The provisional timetable of events is now available online. As well as the Prestwich Clough Day and the Carnival, which will begin and end the Festival, there is a range of other events taking place. There will be a Farmer’s Market, music, film and dance events, and a “Prestwich has got Talent” event for young people. You can find out everything you need to know by looking at the programme online. Just visit this siteand follow the link to Prestwich Festival.

Festival sponsors have ledged enough money for the LAP to print the programme, and we will be arranging volunteers to deliver programmes to everyone in the area in the coming weeks. If you’d like to help out, please get in touch.

The first Prestwich Festival promises to be a great celebration of everything that’s good in Prestwich.

Rick

I think I’m one of the few people left in the UK who likes to stick up for the government and the politicians who run it, oppose it, and generally contribute to it. I think it, and they, can be a wonderful thing. I think that if we keep bashing government and politicians unreasonably, we’ll end up in a worse place than when we started. It’s easy to sneer at politicians, but it’s harder to make the country better, which is what they’re trying to do most of the time.

But there are times when I think that the people involved in running the country are deceitful money-grabbers who need a good kicking provided by me and my steel toe boot-clad size 11 feet. And today is one of those occasions.

It’s not about second homes, or porn films on expenses, or the fact that sorry seems to be the hardest word for Gordon Brown to say (until there’s a story that is a bit embarrassing and needs distracting from. like today). There’s enough people talking about that. My anger today stems from this BBC article, which was also covered in a couple of the newspapers but has attracted precisely zero comment from anyone else anywhere that I’ve seen.

It’s about the introduction of “green wave” traffic lights. This is a system. already in place in other european countries, whereby motorists obeying the speed limit are rewarded with a succession of green lights as they drive along a stretch of road.

Apparently the technology has been around for a while. It is good for the environment, because it reduces the stop-start traffic pollution. It is good for the economy, because it reduces congestion. And it is good for the sanity of people who can be easily reduced to screeching maniacs when confronted by yet another of society’s many hurdles, in the form of lights turning to red just as I get to them. People, in other words, like me.

Despite being generally wonderful, and supported by drivers, other road users, environmentalists, the transport industry and everyone else in the world, the technology has been actively resisted by the Department for Transport (DfT) until now. You may ask why, but you’ll regret it, because the answer will cause a vein in your temple to throb violently.

The reason is because making drivers stop continually means that they’ll have to fill their cars with more petrol, and thus pay more tax. The government have, until now, been purposefully stopping and starting cars just to rake in more tax. To hell with the damage to the environment. Forget about the stress to the motorist. It doesn’t matter about congestion or being late or haulage companies going out of business because their trucks are stuck at traffic lights. All that matters is lovely lovely government ££££££££££££££££.

Government money which, if we were just allowed to get on with life through green lights, and not stopped every 200yds, would never need to be collected in the first place because we wouldn’t need to spend it on cleaning the environment as much, funding the benefits of people made redundant due to congestion and fuel prices, or providing counselling services to people driven mad with stress.

New government guidance, in a document which should be called “Transport Policy: An end to staggering, cash-grabbing idiocy” but is in fact called “New Approach to Appraisal,” says that it is no longer right to view the additional taxes which come from red lights as preferable to giving the citizens who pay taxes a journey free from unnecessary hassle. So essentially, the document says that it’s government’s job to leave us all alone rather than purposefully take money from us. There’s a novel idea!

I have thought for a while that government transport policy is more muddled than a chimp working an Enigma machine. And this confirms my suspicions. They’ve been trying to annoy people out of their cars, ostensibly to improve the environment, but in doing so have increased pollution by increasing congestion and the need for fuel. Rather than making public transport better, cheaper and safer, which would really make a positive difference by giving an alternative to driving cars, the government have decided that making cars so unpleasant that getting the bus is the only thing that’ll save motorists from a stress-related medical episode is the best way forward.

It’s crazy, it’s about time this policy was reversed, and whoever thought of it in the first place needs to be tethered to a massive helium balloon and released into the air to be pecked by birds.

Rick 

It was my birthday today. I shan’t go into the details, because dwelling on a day entirely dedicated to the contemplation of life’s unstoppable progress towards the end is hugely depressing.

Birthdays are up there with New Years Eve and the weddings of people I knew as babies in terms of making me want to weep at the horror of the eternal nothingness that probably awaits me in a few decades.

I like being in control. I prefer to drive than to be driven. I like having the remote next to me when I watch TV. I am uncomfortable in the knowledge that time and biology will win and I will one day die. And birthdays ram that fact home to me like a flashing neon sign. But… at least it’s an excuse to eat cake. And that’s been a large part of the day. That and some crazy golf and a film at the Trafford Centre.

I am 28. Nothing hugely different to yesterday in terms of my physical shape. Although of course there is now a yearning chasm between myself and 25 (the age of youthful freedom), and just a short hop between myself and 30 (the age of oppressive responsibility). There’s only so much about that that can be made up by the consumption of cake.

Presents too seem to have tailed off these days. It may be a figment of my imagination, given the many years that have passed since, but I seem to remember that when I was a child it took the whole morning to unwrap the presents. This morning I had a keyring to unwrap, and a picture to hang on the wall of my study. Other presents don’t need unwrapping, because they’re so middle-aged and functional that the delight of using them outweighs a thousand fold the pleasure of unwrapping them. I asked for a garden strimmer, and there’s no way that gets wrapped up in advance.

My birthday was almost spoiled by Mac, our three legged cat, who disappeared without warning on Easter Sunday for 36 hours. He returned, without a word of apology, in the early hours of this morning, with injuries to two of his remaining legs. He had clearly got into a fight with someone/thing. The vet, to whom he is now virtually a blood relative such is the frequency of his visits to the surgery, sighed and asked again how many lives he plans to use up before finally picking one fight too many.

Sitting in a vet’s waiting room surrounded by snarling dogs is not what I want on my birthday. One of them was a Pit Bull and, whilst I realise this may be taken as a joke stereotyping the types of people who own Pit Bulls, let me say that I am not lying when I tell you that its owner was drinking a can of Stella, as it sat right there in the waiting room. It was 10am.

I am off work for the next few days. That, plus Council recess, means that the blog posts might be a tad on the irregular side. But you never know, something of substance may come up, and that at least would take my mind off ageing. Regardless, I am going to climb Scafell Pike, England’s tallest mountain, tomorrow. Testing my creaking body just to keep my mind from dealing with losing to Time again.

Rick

The Council’s Environmental Services Department are the local government equivalent of Manchester City - wonderful on their day, but all too often utterly woeful and seemingly incapable of the job they’re paid to do. Too often, over graffiti, road repairs and litter, their performance resembles the types of shambolic defeats that City receive every time they play away from home. Little in the way of commitment or rallying round a cause. But, on occasion, they perform the municipal version of a 6-0 win, and that’s happened this week regarding Dashwood Road.

There’ve been problems with the road which I’ve reported on before. Massive HGVs like to use it as an area to test their turning circles, which isn’t good news for householders whose cars keep getting bashed. We thought we could solve the problem by installing bollards, and although it took a while for the Council to emerge from its slumbers and install one, since then they’ve really been very good and installed more.

This week they installed a fifth, and it seems to be making a lot of difference. On top of that, their response times are now incredibly quick. HGVs still like to drive into the bollards, but last week a report of damage to one of them was made, and that damage was repaired in just three hours! That’s a five star service if you ask me.

Now we just need to do two things. Firstly convince the HGV drivers that residential streets aren’t part of their route. And second, get the rest of the Council to work as effectively and positively as the people involved with these bollards. But, I fear, that might be harder than teaching Manchester City to defend corners…

Rick

My Councillor colleagues Andrew Garner, Ann Garner and Tim Pickstone, who I joined on the leaflet trail in Moston this morning - I was taking the picture. You’ll have to take my word for it, but it’s true…

This morning I was up with the lark (in fact, I woke the lark up) to help the Liberal Democrats in the Moston area of Manchester. There’s a local council by-election today. The Liberal Democrat candidate who is campaigning to take a seat from Labour is Tim Hartley.

In a small piece of history, I think this is the first ever local by-election to be fought on a Maunday Thursday. The law recently changed to allow by-elections to take place today. I’m not sure this entirely makes up for me having to get up at 5am and be on the streets of Moston by 6, but it’s nice to be part of democratic history, even if it is only a tiny and religiously dubious piece of that history! 

It’s odd being out and about so early. I only get to experience it very rarely (either on election days or on trips to catch flights!). There was nobody about at all for the first hour, and I took the opportunity to make friends with a cat, a dog, and a pair of Canada Geese, all of whom were enjoying the early morning Mostonian air with us. Sadly they, like me, couldn’t vote. Nor could they leaflet, which was a shame because many hands (or paws…) make light work.

Rick

Last night was the final meeting of the Resource and Performance Scrutiny Commission, which also doubled up as my final Council meeting of the municipal year.

On the agenda was a review of disability transport services, as well as a report on Council procurement. Neither of those topics are enough on their own to prevent lapsing into a coma through the dullness of it all, but thankfully my general fortitude and sense of responsibility kept me just the right side of conscious. And actually, despite being a bit tedious, they both highlight some of the tricky issues that the Council has to deal with.

Transport for children with special educational needs, and for adults with disabilities, costs a lot of money. So what do we do to make the service as efficient as possible? That’s the basic premise of the service review. Some advocate outsourcing the provision to private companies. This would save money, but their buses aren’t as good (in fact, they’re often Council cast-offs!) as our’s, so the service might lose some quality. Others say we should use taxis rather than buy massively pricey buses. But this means more vehicles on the roads, and also gets very complicated when carers and helpers are taken into account. The whole service is a lot more complex than it looks from the outside. What we’ll end up doing in the long run is probably a mixture of solutions. But one thing is certain, any changes to services for disabled people cause political fireworks as well as genuine worries for a lot of service users.

Another complex service we looked at last night is procurement, which basically means “buying stuff,” but sadly is a lot more involved than that! The Council spends £100m “buying stuff” each year, so it’s vital we get the suppliers right, the invoicing right, and make the most of the fact that we’re buying a load of stuff so we should get a discount please.

The reform of procurement at the Council will drag on into next year as we try to make the best of our position and get the utmost value for money. If I remain a member of the Scrutiny panel (and don’t get reshuffled for the next municipal year) then I’d like to be involved. These aren’t the most thrilling services, or the ones with the most direct impact on local people, but their impact could be huge, and if we save millions through procurement it’ll mean better services for the people of Bury in the long run when that money is reinvested.

And there endeth the Council year for me. No more nights at the Town Hall for a month, which is a prospect I face with a fair amount of glee… Of course I don’t stop being a Councillor, so if there are any issues or problems you have, please get in touch. Now that I’m free of an evening, I’d be even more happy to help than normal!

Rick

The municipal year is gliding serenely towards the buffers. Let’s hope it doesn’t hit them between now and the end of the month.

Last night I attended the final Licensing and Safety Panel of the municipal year. This is where a group of Councillors discuss the licensed taxi trade in Bury, and consider applications for taxi licences to be granted or revoked.

It’s not like the traditional Council meetings, where often-baffling reports are considered in all their tedious glory, and things get done at a pace which makes an aged tortoise look like Usain Bolt. Instead, we have instant justice, as we get to decide which of the previously very naughty characters applying for taxi licences have been reformed to such a degree that they’re now fit and proper people to cart your grandma to Morrisons.

And last night we dispensed said justice three times. It’s a good feeling, as there are clearly people who were stupid when they were kids, are still paying for it now by having to submit to CRB checks every time they apply for a job, but who we can give a chance to. The guidelines we use are tight and very much with the safety of the public in mind. Where there’s doubt, the vote more often than not refuses the application. But it’s good to be able to reward a reformed character. Even if that reward takes the form of a drunken fare from Kay Gardens to Radcliffe at 3am on a Saturday morning.

It may be the last time I am on that panel, as after May it’s a new municipal year, and all of our meetings get thrown into the air to land in new and attractive combinations. But at least I can be proud that I’ve played a small part in giving someone a chance to do a public service in the borough.

Rick

This morning I joined the same crew who cleaned up graffiti a few weeks ago (now nicknamed the Prestwich Wombles), and spent a couple of hours picking up litter from the Clough. There were six of us, and we finished up with twenty sacks of other people’s chucked out crisp packets, beer cans and chocolate wrappers. Quite a good result for a morning’s work, although not a particularly positive reflection of the people dropping the litter in the first place!

It was obvious from the results that bits of the Clough haven’t been cleaned for years. At one point our clean up was lurching dangerously towards becoming an archaeological dig, as we discovered a bag of crisps from 1992 and a can of Pepsi from 1989 (when I was 7). I know sometimes people have unrealistic expectations of the Council, but I don’t think it’s beyond the people at the Town Hall to arrange to have the Clough cleaned more than once every two decades!

Picking up litter is surprisngly therapeutic, and even if the site of Gardner Mount close up, strewn with empty bottles and more reminscent of a tip than a playground, was a bit disheartening at first, when we’d finished we’d really made a difference.

I only wish people would take more care of the local surroundings in the first place. In Prestwich we have some outstandingly beautiful areas, and yet people don’t seem to care about them and chuck all sorts of rubbish into it without a second thought. In some of the out-of-the-way parts of the Clough there’s an aladdin’s cave of junk that’s been untouched for years. We couldn’t even begin to make a difference.

A good way to spend a sunday morning all the same, even if I wish that people wouldn’t drop litter in the first place, and that the Council would clean it up when they do. Even one of those tw things wouldn’t be a bad thing. At the moment neither are happening, and so the Clough looks like a tip and we have to rely on good-hearted local people to clean it up.

Rick

At Council on Wednesday we debated a motion from the Labour Group on the Secondary School Strategy for Change. It was a stormy debate with much riding on it. Labour’s proposals put at risk £80m of government funding and also risked stopping the building of a brand new school in Radcliffe.

The Council currently proposes to move Derby High School to a brand new school in Radliffe (the former site of the East Lancashire Paper Mill). This idea has been met with opposition by the Labour group, but support from the governor’s of the Derby. The proposal would see the current Radcliffe Riverside school (on the site of the former Coney Green school now)close.

So, we move from two old schools to one brand new school. But, Radcliffe will get a new school, and a very good one at that. It will join the other parts of the borough in having a first class secondary school, and we will finally get to the end of a years-old saga which has seen Radcliffe at the centre of an educational tug of war.

There’s always a need to make sure that schools provision reflects need, both now and in the future. This concern is particularly acute now because Bury has been promised £80m of government funding in the “Building Schools for the Future” programme, to renovate and build new schools in the Borough. This will mean massive improvements to schools at Elton, Broad Oak, Bury Church and other schools in Bury. But the government have said that we can only get this money if we address the problem of having too many school places and not enough children.

One way to do this is to move Derby to Radcliffe and close Radcliffe Riverside, as the Council propose.

It’s not an ideal solution. Nobody likes closing schools, least of all local Liberal Democrats who campaigned hard and successfully to stop the proposed closure of Prestwich Arts College in 2005.

But the difference between then and now is clear. First, Radcliffe Riverside is not currently attracting pupils (only enough for about one form want to go there next year), whereas Prestwich Arts College was popular, and remains so now. Second, BSF money is on the table now, and it wasn’t then. And third, the people of Radcliffe will benefit from a brand new replacement school. This wasn’t on offer to Prestwich.

We are worried about some aspects of the Council’s plan. In particular what happens to Radcliffe children between when Riverside is close and when the new school is finished (potentially five years away). They won’t have a school in their town, and this is a big concern. We need to make sure that any interim solution bears their needs in mind.

We’re also worried about the children who currently go to the Derby and how a move into Radcliffe for that school will affect those families in the long term. However, it is quite feasible that no child who goes to the Derby now will still be at the school when it moves. And we are mindful that other Bury town schools - Elton, Broad Oak and Bury Church are all being rebuilt or refurbished with the new BSF money that this scheme will bring to Bury.

We appreciate the points that Labour made in their motion. But they aren’t as valid as the proposals which will see a new School in Radcliffe and a once in a lifetime cash injection of £80 million into our local schools. So we couldn’t support their motion which would’ve stopped both of these things.

Their motion called for two new schools instead, but there aren’t enough children to fill them, we’d be losing the £80m, and there’s no mention of how they’d be paid for otherwise.

It’s a shame that the plan going forward isn’t perfect. But it’s the least bad option available and that’s why we supported it.

Rick

Wednesday night saw was the last “full council” meeting for the municipal year. The main event this time was a debate on the future of schools in the Borough, but that had to wait until the hors d’oeuvre was over, in the form of questions to the Executive.

Rules recently introduced by the Tory Executive mean that the only way to make sure a question gets put to the Executive publicly is to submit it so far in advance that nobody else has got a question in yet. So that’s what I did. Hence the slightly farcical situation of grilling the Executive member for Environmental Services about snow grit provision on a balmy spring evening. But the answer I got was a good one – Bury Council didn’t run out of grit back in March, and in fact had enough spare to flog some to its neighbours. So that’s good news.

I also asked about a couple of missing bins in the ward. But again I was thwarted by these mad rules because in the time elapsed between me submitting the question and getting it answered the bins had been replaced!

My final question was about Metrolink’s ongoing refusal to allow bikes on trams. This seems odd given that we should surely be trying to encourage people out of their cars in any practical way. Whilst I can understand forbidding them in rush hour when the trams are packed, there’s no reason I can think of to ban them off peak when the trams are empty. Unfortunately a policy that was made in 2002 stops bike riders from wheeling their cycles onto the trams, and at present it seems that the GMPTA (Passenger Transport Authority) and Stagecoach (who run the trams) don’t want to change anything.

There were other questions from Lib Dems, including on security around the Oasis concerts in June (from Cllr Ann garner), and a question from Cllr Steve Wright about Bury FC sponsorship. He asked, quite sensibly I thought, whether our sponsorship of the club’s shirts might take the form of an advert for a local charity or Council-run attraction, rather than just the Council logo. Unfortunately the Leader took this as criticism of the decision to sponsor the team at all, and retreated to his default position of huffing and puffing his way through an accusatory fog of indignation. It always amuses me when he completely misses the point. It worries me too, particularly when it happens as often as it does.

There was also a question on graffiti from our group leader Cllr Tim Pickstone. The Executive Member for Environment claimed that the Council’s policy of cleaning their own property and relying on houeholders and utility companies to clean up their property was good enough. It clearly isn’t, at least not in Prestwich. Utility companies aren’t cleaning their property, and neither are the Council, as evidenced when I spent lots of the Sunday before last cleaning it for them. So we have offered the Executive Member the chance to come to Prestwich and see the issues for herself.

Hopefully she will.

Rick

All that writing of cheques to the Council for Council Tax will no doubt have strengthened the arm muscles of Prestwich-ites all over the shop. And now the Council have made the most of that by utterly failing to ensure that the local streets are clean, thus enabling us to use our strengthened arms to pick up the litter ourselves.

Never one to look a gifthorse in the mouth, a number of local residents have organised a litter pick, this Sunday morning at 10.30am. I hope to be there, as well as lots of others. This is the second such event in recent weeks, after the graffiti clean up the other weekend. It’s great that this community spirit seems to be growing, even if the cause of it is the idle reluctance of the Council to keep the local environment clean.

If you’d like more details of exactly where it’s happening, please give me a call or email. It’d be great to see you out.

Rick

Forgive the lack of action on here for the last few days. The server can apparently no longer cope with the numbers of people using this type of blog! So it has melted, and has now been replaced.

Hopefully normality, in the guise of my meandering missives, will return from tomorrow.

Rick