Category: Blog

Tim Cheetham is a councillor in Barnsley. He’s been at the forefront of using social media (Twitter, Facebook etc.) but primarily he’s just a damn good councillor.
I noticed this short interview with him on the LGA website and felt it deserved a bigger airing. He talks about increasing transparency and involvement in the work that councils do. And he was ‘blown away’ by the work that Greater Manchester Police did in their 24hr tweetathon where teams across Greater Manchester tweeted what they were doing across Greater Manchester.
Needless to say I agree with everyword on the tweetathon. In fact I agree with every word in the interview. I appreciate he’s talking about a conference day but that doesn’t detract (I wasn’t there either).

Let’s start with the positive

George Osborne signalled two themes in his budget.

The need for a Budget for Growth

The need for a Balanced Economy (North v South, Manufactoring v Financial/Service Sector)

He’s right that these are the immediate requirements. We won’t be able to shift the debt unless we deliver real growth in the economy. The UK economy is failing to re-emerge out of the trough created by the wanton indulgences of the global banking sector. This is because we allowed Nigel Lawson, Maggie Thatcher, Norman Lamont, John Major and yes, Gordon Brown, to put the short term flattery and fawning from the cretins in the City of London ahead of the fact that no nation can thrive if it doesn’t make anything. Where’s our aircraft industry, our car-makers, our ship-builders, camera-makers, tram-makers? The lessons from our current plight are not new, we’ve known for centuries that reliance on a couple of sectors will catch up with you in the end. The fact that the banking crisis is a global phenomenon shouldn’t blinker us to the fact that countries with strong diverse economies are going to pull clear out of this quicker than nations made up of supermarkets, bankers and social workers. Look at how quickly Germany is reemerging..

So George Osborne is right to identify growth in a balanced economy is imperative but he doesn’t do enough.

• 1p cut in fuel duty and postponement of April’s Fuel escalator – I agree with this. There’s an argument that the VAT increase should not be applied to fuel. I don’t buy George Osborne’s explanation that this would take 6 years to get through EU regulations. Given we’re baling out Portugal, given we are in a position of negotiating strength, it could have been sorted in days. Osborne is clutching at straws with that one, but in any event, I’m not sure that we should be removing the various levies on fuel. The 1p cut is probably right at this time. But the reality is the fuel price has to increase, we’ve got to reduce our over-reliance on the car for all sorts of reasons. Politicians are not coming clean about this. Both the Conservatives and Labour Front benches are allowing the price at the pump to increase whilst positioning themselves as the friend of the motorist. It’s unpopular but if we’re to compete, we have to reduce unnecessary fuel use; it’s a scarce commodity with a price to match and it’s about time we accepted that..
• Corporation Tax reduced by 1p – I agree with this – We do have to encourage business. It’s not going to do much on its own. I’d really like to see an end to employers national insurance. We should not be taxing jobs. I’m not suggesting that companies and employers should not be contributing to our shared responsibilites (defence, health service etc.) but I’d argue that we should be focussing on the capital in the company rather than the numbers in its labour-force. The labour-intensive industries should not be contributing more than those with one man and a nuclear reactor. We want those jobs.

And that’s about it for growth. He’s made it easier for developers with a presumption in favour of planning applications. A fact lost on Conservative Councillor Michael Cornes at last night’s presentation from the Breathe Clean Air Group. Just as he was claiming that localism will make it easier for people to oppose developments, his Chancellor was pulling the rug from under his feet and saying developers can pretty much build what they like.

He’s also given the go-ahead for the northern hub linking Manchester Victoria and Piccadilly. As this potentially could improve the regularity of trains on our line in Gorse Hill, we have to welcome it.

But there’s the rub. At a time of recession we should be stimulating the economy through more investment. The northern hub is welcome but it’ll take too long to get started. The investments that would make an immediate difference are the Building Schools for the Future projects, Sheffield Forgemasters, Affordable House Building,

The supply of land needs to increase. Too much of it is held as a speculative hedge-fund by investors and the aristocracy. We tax jobs and the poor but land gets EU grants. And before Tories start saying Mike Cordingley would like to tax your gardens, I’m talking hectares not patios. There would be an argument over legitimate farming but I’m sure a sophisticated land tax could be constructed. The important thing is that we are able to build the houses, schools and hospitals needed by our people, stimulate our economy and at the same time ensure the most priviliged in our country share the burden that’s being placed by the Tories on our poorest and most vulnerable.

What you do in a recession has implications for years. It provides opportunities as well as challenges. Osborne has set all his focus on 2015, the next General Election. There’s a possibility that we might just might be reducing the deficit then (and the Tories might just reap the benefit). The problem is that we will still be relying on the same bogeymen, the bankers that got us into this mess in the first place and the economy will be as unbalanced as ever and far further behind our competitors than it is now.

I caught this tweet requesting the donation of a blog post to publicise the Manchester Twestival 2011 which is supporting the Wood St Mission as its charity this year. The Twestival takes place tomorrow Thursday 24th March. To be honest I’ve no idea what a Twestival is but I’m sure it’s good fun. However I do know of the enormous impact that Wood St Mission has had on the poor of Manchester and you can read more here.
They’ve been going for nearly 150 years and sadly there’s still a pressing need for them today. I hope you will take part.

Drastic cuts in key education services by the controlling Tory group on Trafford Council are being blamed by the Labour opposition for a serious breach of the Data Protection Act affecting 1,300 children and infuriating their parents.

Due to what the Council calls “a processing error” parents who received details by e-mail of the secondary schools to which their children  were assigned 12 months ago received another e-mail on Tuesday this week. This one provided information on the new schools which children would be attending from this September. The trouble is they weren’t their children.

Meanwhile the real parents of this year’s cohort of 1,300 children, who were expecting e-mails at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, were left waiting anxiously for information about which school their child had been  allocated – and so, no doubt, were the children.

The Council is now having to prepare letters of apology to go out to both sets of parents and will be reporting the matter to the data protection commissioner. It is also investigating how the mistake was made by its Corporate IT department.

Trafford Council has already had a small number of calls from parents concerned that information about their children has gone to the incorrect e-mail address and more are expected over the next few days.

“I am horrified that this could have happened, “ Councillor David Acton, leader of the Labour Group on the Council, said. “Parent and children confidentiality has been seriously breached. There has been a monumental systems failure by Trafford Council and I’ve no doubt the Tories will be looking for someone to blame.”

“The fact is that the significant cuts made by them in school support and school admission services must have played a part. Council staff are becoming totally demoralised.

“We raised our concerns about these cuts at a budget scrutiny meeting a few weeks ago and more recently at the Council’s budget setting meeting but the Tories simply ploughed on regardless.

“The fact is that Trafford’s Conservative controlled Council has been sailing very close to the wind with their £21 million budget cuts, no doubt hoping to please the Tory-led Government. We believe this will lead to further significant service failures and deep service inefficiencies which will affect Trafford’s ratepayers.

“The Tories have tried to dupe people into thinking that slashing service budgets will not affect front line services. This incident, which is an extremely serious breach of the data protection act, shows that they are wrong.”

Press Release from Dave Acton on behalf of Trafford Labour Group

Today is the closing date for representations on the permission to operate. This is a separate process to the planning permission.

I have emailed the following representation to Antony.Poole@environment-agency.gov.uk;

Dear Sir,

I write with reference to the above permit application submitted to you, regarding the development of the Barton Renewable Energy Plant by Peel Energy.  I wish to object to the environmental permit application for the following reasons:

I believe that such a contentious plant requires a thorough and comprehensive Health Impact Assessment. It is recognised that the site borders an Air Quality Management Area at the M60 with already high levels of NOX and particulates. Additionally there are worryingly high concentrations of respiratory health problems downwind of the site. See http://menmedia.co.uk/salfordadvertiser/news/s/1337388_salford_hotspot_for_deadly_lung_disease

Residents need assurance that the existing health problems will not be exacerbated and I do not believe we can have that assurance without the thorough assessment.

The concerns about this plant are real and widespread. I believe that the submission is insufficient to address those concerns at without a Health Impact Assessment, and residents are going to feel that the permission process has been a sham.

We need to believe that the health implications have been thoroughly assessed down to street level. Too much of the application as it stands considers the emissions as in a vacuum when our air is already polluted and we need to understand how even a small further deterioration will impact on health of residents.

Please acknowledge receipt of this email.

Yours faithfully,

Mike Cordingley
Councillor for Gorse Hill

0161 865 9228

www.gorsehill-labour.co.uk

The Chief Executive of Trafford Housing Trust, Matthew Gardiner has written on his blog of his hopes for the Government’s Big Society programme. Matthew is not someone normally associated with political eulogising, so his words are interesting. He writes;

if The Big Society is about reversing that trend and giving power back to individuals, as well as providing a fund of resources that communities can access, then I think it is a game changing movement. This way it will produce stronger citizens, more resilient societies, the essential ingredients that you would need to do away with organisations like ours.

Most of the focus nationally has been on whether The Big Society has been just a cover for cuts. The debate has been about the money. The money is actually a secondary question; because at the heart of ‘The Big Society’ lies a much more fundamental question over the role of people versus state, and we need to tackle that point of principle before we can even begin to look at how the policy is resourced.

For the past seventy years or so, there’s been a general political consensus that the state should take on an increasing role in allocating resources to communities and individuals. The Conservatives have always advocated delivering greater freedoms to the wealthy, through private health and education, but they have never deviated from the consensus that the state is the amniotic fluid that succours the grateful or ungrateful masses. Whether the state is represented by Government Department, Local Authority, Registered Housing Provider or state sponsored charity like NSPCC is really a matter of detail, the state looks after us from the moment we’re born to our burial in the ground. And as the state has increased its role, it seems to me that neighbourliness and collectivity has decreased. It’s interesting how people describe different facets of the State. It is ‘our’ army, ‘our’ health service, ‘our’ roads, ‘our’ parks but it is never ‘our’ Strategic Partnership, ‘our’ Local Transport Authority, ‘our’ Government Office North West. Much of the state has become distant, objects of contempt or bureaucratic obstacles to our own ability to shape our lives and community. Politicians like to be able to say they did this or they delivered that, but the reality is that no politician as far as I’m aware has ever financed a project, laid a brick, or prescribed medication in their role as a politician. And as the language of politicians and bureaucrats has diminished the role of the citizen (it’s their taxes), the individual has become increasingly disinterested in their community. I believe that Socialism has never been about disenfranchisement or surrogation of our influence to our benign political representatives.

The Big Society does have an attraction as a concept to me. I do believe it can be viewed as ‘Power to the People’ rather than ‘Power to the State’. It’s telling that no section is more contemptuous of the Big Society than those on the right of the Conservative Party who see the only legitimate lever of power as the amount of money in a persons pocket. I want to see more of that wealth being used for the public good and I want to see the super-rich taxed more, but I want to see communities mobilised into taking more responsibility for their neighbourhood and their neighbour.  Most of all I want communities to be able to take credit for what they have done, and politicians take credit for enabling rather than doing. To me that is socialism and I’m not going to take a partisan position against the concept just because Cameron is for it and the chattering Guardian establishment is against it.

Mike Cordingley
(Personal View)