I find it incredibly frustrating when politicians say nuanced and considered things about a small proportion of people, which are then seized upon by their opponents as sweeping generalisations about anything and everything. It makes me wonder why politicians ever say anything remotely controversial, and reminds me why most never do.

It happened to John Healey, a Housing Minister, today. On the whole I think the government’s housing policy could be improved in lots of ways. But I don’t disagree with Mr Healey when he says that “for some people it can be the best option for their home to be re-possessed. Even in cases [where lenders look at repossessions as a last resort] some families may not be able to keep up with mortgage repayments even if they’re re-negotiated and rescheduled.”

He was criticised from all sides for saying that. The Tories were particularly hysterical. Grant Shapps MP (Conservative Shadow Housing Minister) said that Mr Healey should “apologise to all those who’ve lost their homes.”

Why should he do that? His comments seem fair enough to me. He didn’t mean everybody, nor did he say re-possession was always best. I’ve never faced crippling debt myself, and I’m lucky in that fact. But if I did, and the option was either to pay massively re-negotiated mortgage terms which continue to suck all my income away, or to have my home re-possessed, it might be that re-possession was better. Mr Healey wasn’t saying that this was a nice thing to happen, or that he supported it or the banks, but he was telling an unpalatable truth - that some people’s financial situations are so bad at the moment that a mortgage isn’t an option. He wasn’t advocating homelessness, or being disrespectful to the thousands who have lost their homes.

Sarah Teather, Lib Dem Shadow Housing Minister, said that Mr Healey shouldn’t “dismiss the misery of homelessness.” Sorry Sarah (and sorry to anyone not wanting me to criticise my own party ever) but I don’t think he was doing that. It doesn’t seem right to me that we’re accusing him of that just to make Labour look uncaring when there are much saner ways we could do prove that their housing policy is wrong.

This could’ve been the start of a sensible debate on housing. We could’ve argued that housing for many is unaffordable due to the unfair Council Tax, or that government shared-ownership schemes haven’t helped as they shoud’ve done. Or that thousands of homes are lying empty because the government can’t get them occupied. Or that public-owned banks still aren’t lending enough or at reasonable rates. But we didn’t.

Instead, in another example of what will become a long and tedious succession of media wars in the run up to the election, it’s just a screeching cacophony of cat-calling instead. That’s a shame.

Rick

Last night I attended a meeting of the committee of Rainsough Tenants and Residents Association. These meetings are often frustrating, because Rainsough is unfortunately placed right on the border with Salford, thus blurring the lines of responsibility for action between Bury and Salford. Although all the people who live there are officially Bury residents, half the houses are owned by Salford, as is the estate’s biggest eye-sore, a derelict block of shops on Chapel Road. Since Rainsough people don’t vote for Salford Councillors, Rainsough is right at the bottom of the priority list, and it’s not very fair.

Last night’s meeting was particularly annoying because Salford Council and their “arms length management organisation” Salix Homes are refusing to give a decent response to tenants’ and residents’ reasonable requests to tart up the shops as a temporary solution before we finally decide what to do with them. They won’t even provide a few tins of paint, and instead we’re going to have to go begging to B&Q.

The whole idea of Arms Length Management Organisations, or ALMOs as they’re known, has done little to improve things for tenants. As far as most are concerned, they’re still Council tenants, and despite the best efforts of Councils and ALMOs, most people really aren’t sure who to call or what the difference is between the two bodies. And this can lead to a fair bit of official buck-passing too, as Councils and ALMOs blame each other for the increasingly desparate situation a lot of tenants find themselves in in terms of nuisance neighbours and minor maintenance.

It’s not all bad, as the new roofing and kitchens in local Council homes demonstrates. But when it comes to the little environmental things that can cheer up an area, like tins of paint and waste bins, it does seem a lot harder to get the wheels in motion with an ALMO than it does with a Council. I only hope that Salford Council and their ALMO see sense and realise that a few tins of paint can really make a big difference to local people in Rainsough.

Rick

Bury Liberal Democrats have welcomed plans to boost affordable housing and avoid home repossession. 

The plans, launched by the Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor Vince Cable MP and Shadow Housing Minister Sarah Teather MP, include: 

• providing refurbishment loans for owners of empty homes if the homes are leased to housing associations,

• boosting the amount of private housing for rent including using empty commercial property temporarily as housing,

• bringing in a new type of secure mortgage to help boost lending to house buyers,

• letting councils and housing associations buy up unsold private houses and allowing them access to funds to bring their homes up to social housing standards,

• making sure the courts allow repossession only as a last resort.

There are many people right across Radcliffe, Whitefield and Prestwich who are struggling to get their own home or are facing repossession because of the recession. We must do all we can to help residents through these bad times. 

Many homes built just before the recession started lie empty, often because the banks are not lending to people wanting to buy, yet there are many people needing a place to live. We want to unblock the system and our plans will help to do that. 

Giving housing associations and councils the opportunity to buy up empty homes that builders cannot sell will mean hundreds of local families will be able to rent a place of their own.

Rick

Well, Christmas is nearly upon us, and I proved it over the weekend by eating dinner wearing a hat fashioned to look like a turkey. Not that any real turkey would have quite so large a smile on its face right now of course, faced with imminent death, but I like to think that my choice of evening wear was a step in the right direction towards festive frivolity. It had a head and bulgy eyes, And its legs were dangling round my ears. Not as pleasant as when that normally happens, I must say.

I was away at Tamsin’s at the time, but have now put away the “hilarious” head wear and returned to spend Christmas here in Prestwich, looking after Mac, the three-legged cat who owns our house without actually appearing on any mortgage deeds. He has been in the wars recently, and is on antibiotics after a fight left his claws damaged and his temperament on the wild side of manic. The vet said it was probably with another cat, but by the looks of him it was with an armoured personnel carrier.

He is also sneezing quite a lot, which is disturbing since he manages to make a louder noise than I do (and that’s saying something). And he’s quite bitey at the moment. I don’t yet have a centre-piece for the Christmas meal, and if he doesn’t watch it, he might become it.

There’s not much to report from the ward at the moment, since the Council and everything in it has slowed down for a winter break. Council buildings are closed on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, but essential services will be provided and the Council can be contacted in emergencies if required (as can I, preferably not during The Royle Family).

It’s not all quiet though - I did get some good news today about Sherbourne Court, where a tenant has been living in conditions which would probably have stirred Victorian philanthropists to tears and action, but which the Customer Relations team at Six Town Housing shrug their shoulders at. There’s a new born baby in a flat riddled with damp and home to enough species of fungus to get the BBC Natural History Unit to commission a six part series, and now finally, after some increasingly shouty conversations between me and Six Town Housing we have got the family upgraded. The newborn and his mother will be be out of there and into better accommodation before you can say “oddly reminiscent of a twenty first century Jesus-in-the-stable-type story.” 

If anything important crops up over the holidays, you will be the first to hear about it (after the Council, me, the other Councillors, anyone reading this before you, the press and probably at least one of my parents) on here. In the meantime, I hope everyone has a happy Christmas. If I’m bored I may blog before and say it again. If not, there it is. Hope Santa is generous to you all, ho ho ho…

Rick

I have been at work today, drowning in a sea of meetings and really regretting not winning the lottery and emigrating some time ago. However, there are still a couple of things to report from around the ward.

First off, regular readers may remember a few weeks ago that I wrote about the poor family living in a damp flat at Sherbourne Court who have received scant help from Six Town Housing (the organisation that manages Bury’s council houses). Well today I hear that the problems are still ongoing, and have been hampered by some shocking customer service and a lack of care that borders on the negligent. The lady who lives there and is now about as pregnant as possible has been told to “wash away” the damp which infests her flat. This despite advice from her health visitor and just about every other sane human being around that this is not really an acceptable bit of advice when it comes to new born babies.

So I have contacted more or less everyone I know at the Council and Six Town to  try and sort it out for this family who should not be treated so shoddily. I have asked for real action to make the repairs necessary, and for a serious rethink of a customer care system which seems unable to prioritise the needy.

Also today I have seen the Bury Times, which has printed my letter about Job Evaluation / Equal Pay, and in particular the shameful silence from the Conservative leadership regarding the questions councillors and staff have asked about the process. I have been waiting months for some answers, as have the staff who must be going through a terrible time worrying about their future salaries. The Leader should answer questions. It is a shame for the Council, and an indictment of the Leader, that I have had to resort to embarrassing him in the press to try and get answers.

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

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

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

So, my birthday is over. There’s only one thing more depressing than contemplating a birthday and seeing another year fly by. And that is contemplating the day after a birthday, and realising that it’s a whole year until the next time anyone gives you cake with candles in it and lots of presents. That is essentially where I am today.

However, I am keeping the howling wolves of Time’s unstoppable force from my door by dabbling in some case work.

Now that we’re out canvassing, it means that rather than ring me up to ask for things to be sorted, local people can just stay at home and wait for me to knock on the door.

I have chased up a couple of things this morning on behalf of local residents who I’ve spoken to on the doorstep in the past couple of weeks.

There is an issue in Rainsough at the moment with the new roofs being put on the leased houses. A lot of the privately owned houses in the rows are being affected by the works, although obviously aren’t getting a new roof. So I have been making sure that the construction workers are considerate in removing the debris and keeping the disruption to home-owners to a minimum. It’s great for the tenants to be receiving home improvements, but the people who own their own home mustn’t be inconvenienced if at all possible.

Also today I have been working with the Council to get a patch of Woodward Road cleaned up. Yesterday a resident of that road pointed out the very bizarre green slime that has accumulated, and is creeping down the road due to what I presume is a drainage issue beneath the pavement. I hope it’s that anyway, or else we have been invaded by a strange alien life-form, which I could do without at this election time. In any event, I have been told that the street care inspectors and the cleaning team will head down to take a look at it later, and take whatever action is needed, such as a mechanical clean or engaging Ghostbusters.

I will keep you informed.

And we’re out again somewhere tonight (I don’t do the organising, and am not told where we’re going to canvass until about half an hour before, like it’s a secret gig of some sort at a dank underground nightclub). So there’ll probably be more issues tonight. Assuming the slime doesn’t get us all first.

Rick