— Politics Hub with Sophy Ridge (@SkyPoliticsHub) March 20, 2016
An Extraordinarily important letter; take it at its face value, here is the guy who has been implementing Tory welfare cuts for the last six years and he is now saying that they are unfair…
.. and that the government, the Conservative Government, of which he has been a member of is not proving that ‘We are all in this Together’; This is a huge moment!…
The achilles heel, the electoral achilles heel of the Conservative Party is the idea that they are the party of the rich, and here is the welfare secretary, the Tory Welfare Secretary saying that it’s a real problem. It’s devastating!
Tim Mongomerie – speechwriter for the former Conservative Leader, Ian Duncan Smith Founder of ConservativeHome, The Tory Grassroots website
There’s plenty wrong with the EU. The economic collapse of Greece was not just a consequence of a country partying out on debt. Merkel’s Germany was happy to be complicit in financing that debt in the good times, happy to wash her hands of responsibility in the bad; and leaving Greece crushed.
Then there’s the Euro bureaucracy and distortion of democracy. Quite a lot stinks!
Whether to be “Labour-in” or “Labour-leave” was never going to be an auto-response for me; the EU is just so hard to endorse.
Nevertheless,
There’s a reason the extreme wing of the Conservatives are aligned with UKIP in this. There’s a reason they hate the EU and believe me, it’s not ‘straight bananas’ or even immigration – it’s Rights! The Tory right wants to get rid of our rights.
Whether it’s limits on the working week, equality under the law, or protections from arbitrary dismissal, there’s a shopping list of rights and obligations they’d love to see withdrawn . There’s no secrecy about this, and they’ll say the UK is quite capable of deciding these things on its own.
The trouble is, for all its faults, the genius of the ‘Common Market’ is that whilst allowing all member countries to compete equally within the EU borders, it has set standards of freedoms and rights that have to be bestowed on the people of its member states.
These right wingers want free access but they don’t want the obligations. And they say the EU will happily give the UK access to its market once we’ve left.
The Brexiters are lying
There’s every reason to think the EU backed by its own citizens would set far more demanding restrictions than has ever applied to Norway or the US. Giving the UK access to the EU markets without the same working time directives etc. and obligations would be seen as a threat to the EU itself.
I don’t want us to lose our rights; and I don’t want us to lose access to European markets. These aren’t glib slogans. There’s real and present dangers from voting leave. I’ll be voting to remain.
I might not love the EU, but it’s essential we stay.
Mike Cordingley
By Dave Kellam – Flickr: Flagging Support, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20427155
The most important council meeting of the year. It’s by far the most unpleasant meeting of the year too.
We in Labour failed to convince voters we should gain control in Trafford last year; and this is the consequence. We have a Tory council with free reign to direct whatever any spending choices towards Altrincham and Hale.
Power within the Conservative group is concentrated with the leader, deputy-leader, finance and most of the influence coming from the Hale – Bowdon – Altrincham axis. Hale gets its brand new library whilst Davyhulme loses theirs.
That’s the Conservative way.
And the Conservative way is replicated all the way to the top. When it came to the Government helping out councils, it chose a method that benefitted councils who’d suffered the least in the years of austerity. Surrey gets the largest single amount, at £24m, followed by Hampshire (£19m), Hertfordshire (£16m), Essex (£14m), West Sussex (£12m), Kent (£11m), Buckinghamshire (£9m) and Oxfordshire (£9m). You couldn’t make it up. A scheme that rewards councils for the most billionaire’s mansions within their domains.
Trafford gets the relatively pitiful transitional £0.5m for 2016/17, but it’s still more than any other council in Greater Manchester apart from Stockport. It feels like Trafford is being patronised by Tories from the Shires who are blessed with more moats than foodbanks.
We’re left with a budget gap of £22.6m. They’re imposing the Osborne Tax to raise £1.6m. They’re not increasing base council tax even if the Government expects them to. Much of the savings will be invisible to many but grim and confusing to a few. We’ve seen an illustration of this with the home to school transport for young people with special needs attending Brentwood school. The parents and children were protesting last night. You can’t make these sorts of savings without hurting people or communities. I think people get this now.
We in the Labour Party have a responsibility to take the battle to the Tories. We need to be winning seats.
Trafford Town Hall by Peter McDermott, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
This junction was raised as an issue last Autumn. Talbot Road is these days a busy arterial route into Manchester and at peak times it’s pretty busy.
The road works much better with the improved cycling facilities but for pedestrians at Greatstone Road, there’s no accommodation made to allow safe crossing. The sequencing of the lights gives no time and it doesn’t matter how agile you are, you’re going to have to run. We’ve raised this and received the following reply. So some progress.
We’ll keep pushing.
Dear Councillor Cordingley
Firstly, may I apologise for the lack of response to your e-mail of 6 November. I thought that I had picked it up but, clearly, did not.
Following traffic surveys that were carried out in May 2015, work is now underway to prepare an improvement scheme for Great Stone Road, between A56 Chester Road and Talbot Road, before applying for the necessary funds from a Section 106 contribution.
It is also proposed that the scheme include an upgrade for the traffic signals at the Great Stone Road/Talbot Road junction so as to improve facilities for pedestrians.
In the meantime, I will contact TfGM’s traffic signal engineers to ascertain if there is a possibility of making minor amendments to the signal timings, with a view to introducing longer inter-greens between phases, thereby giving pedestrians a little more time to cross the arms of the junction where there are no pedestrian facilities.
I trust this information is of assistance.
Regards
By far the most promising element is the last paragraph. The light sequencing is the biggest problem. Technically, I’m sure it’s easy-peasy but it’s amazing how long these things take. We’ll keep pressing.
Morning meeting in Leyland Lancs for Strategic Scrutiny Network setting agenda for next full meeting. Just up the road from Croston badly hit by floods – puts perspective on some of our issues.
Locality Partnership in the evening. I got a lot of out of meeting and feeling energised.
Wednesday
Meeting at Cricket Club re Youth activities with Laurence Walsh at lunchtime. Full Council meeting in the evening. My least favourite meeting of the month and this one was particularly bad.
Thursday
Scrutiny Task Group in the morning, Library Volunteering in the afternoon and Gorgeous Gorse Hill AGM in the evening. The Gorgeous Gorse Hill meeting was my highlight of the week. The inspiration for new things just keeps coming and their pinterest page is well worth looking at.
Friday
Economic Growth meeting – Trafford is blessed with some really good officers in Economic Growth and it’s always a pleasure to sit with them. I’d really like them to take more account of public transport, but I’m afraid that the Conservatives see this as something not for them. I’ve posted the following quote before, but it’s worth repeating:
An advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport.
Enrique Peñalosa, Former Mayor of Bogata
Saturday
Two sessions of canvassing in Urmston. Reports of Labour’s demise are somewhat premature.
Every year I submit Chatsworth Road in Lostock to the council’s highways dept as my number one priority within the ward for resurfacing. The best I’ve achieved is some haphazard patching of occasional potholes here and there.
It’s a well used route. I’ve talked to councillors with residents who use it regularly, particularly in Davyhulme and Flixton. All have agreed that the road is the worse for wear. I’ve always had the suspicion though that cyclists see this road as in a lot more serious condition than ‘worse for wear’. It’s more than an uncomfortable ride too. The road is rutted throughout and the cyclist is forced off their natural course by regular fractures of the surface. This makes it quite dangerous in sharing the route with motor vehicles as the cyclist is forced to weave in and out.
We’ve not really put in a concerted collective demand for the road to be resurfaced from cyclists and it’s perhaps time we did. I’ve helped cyclists before, particularly with regard to Victoria Road in Hale; but that was for a cycling club. We don’t seem to have a collective voice for cyclists from the Urmston side of Trafford. I’ve been approached by one cyclist who feels that he’s going to have to change his route to avoid Chatsworth – I believe there’s many more cyclists out there who ‘require’ this road to be resurfaced. My lonesome annual plea for this road to be top of the list has not worked. I’m therefore putting the call out for anyone who’s had experience of an uncomfortable/dangerous riding experience along Chatsworth Road to ‘tell’ their story to the council, to make the case collectively with me.
Tell me about your bike ride on Chatsworth Road in Lostock. Ideally use the comments below, so that it might encourage others to join in. If you absolutely prefer confidentiality then email me at michael.cordingley@trafford.gov.uk.
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