Rochdale Borough Liberal Democrat Manifesto 2011

1. Communities First

 a) Liberal Democrats will put residents and communities first. Decisions should be taken as close to communities as possible. We believe that an effective Council is always listening to communities, and building decisions from the bottom upwards. We want to extend the structure of Area Forums, which already exist in some parts of the Borough across the whole Borough. We want to give more financial resources and decision making powers to Township and Area Forums in order to encourage local organisations and individuals to engage and participate in local decision making.

b) We will devolve local decision-making powers to communities for local youth work, street cleaning, parks, community centres, local highways capital investment and the local voluntary sector.

c) We are committed to fundamentally change the relationship between the Council and residents, so that residents are helped and supported each time they engage with the Council.

We will put communication systems in place that will change and enhance the way the council responds to residents’ requests efficiently and effectively.

d) We want to reduce the amount of time that passes between decision making and action on the ground by making individual officers responsible and accountable for implementing decisions.

 

2. Jobs, creating prosperity in the Borough.

a) Building prosperity and creating jobs depends on attracting new business into the borough. We can achieve this by building on the borough’s existing strengths and developing clusters of excellence in a range of business sectors like manufacturing, engineering, information technology, green technology and distribution.  Liberal Democrats will actively promote Rochdale Borough as a place for these sectors to do business in.

b) We will target education and skills training to these priority sectors including apprenticeships.

c) We recognise the importance of basic literacy and numeracy skills. We will promote new ways of engagement to make sure people acquire these skills, so that no one is excluded from employment opportunities.

 

3. Supporting Arts, Culture, Heritage and Tourism

Liberal Democrats believe in the positive contribution Arts Culture and Heritage make to our communities.

a) We will aim to set up a new trust which will support and enhance existing organisations, help to set up new groups, create a network between groups and individuals, promote events and create a high profile for Arts Culture and Heritage in this borough.

 b)  Rochdale Borough has good potential for tourism linked to our rich culture and heritage, like the East Lancashire Railway,  the Cooperative Movement and the Middleton Townscape Heritage Initiative and Rochdale Town Hall.

We will invest in these facilities to encourage tourism and hospitality.

. Environment-  a Clean and Tidy Borough.

a) A clean and tidy Borough is a high priority for Liberal Democrats in the Borough

b) We will target resources to educate the public about the benefits of looking after our public spaces and instil pride in the place we live.

c) We believe that businesses, particularly those in the food and drink business, should lead by example and be encouraged to keep their premises and the surrounding area clean and tidy.

d) We will target resources to the Borough’s gateway sites.

5. A Sustainable Future

Climate change and the pressure on natural resources are very big challenges that need to be addressed at international, national and local level. To play our part Liberal Democrats in this borough will

a) increase the Borough’s  recycling figures to be the best in Greater Manchester,

b) put more emphasis on sustainable travel creating more opportunities for walking and cycling,

c) reduce harmful carbon emissions across the borough by creating new opportunities for green technology improvements to our housing stock, particularly for ‘hard to treat’ properties.

d) aim to make any new development carbon neutral including  the Council’s new schools and public buildings.

e) We will welcome new business and encourage initiatives that will promote and implement innovative ways of managing energy consumption and heat conservation.

f) We will actively explore how the Council can support communities to build renewable energy installations on private and Council land.

Why the Coalition is right and Labour is wrong

Today is the first day of the new tax year. A big day as it marks a momentous shift towards a fairer tax system. This morning I listened to the Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls being interviewed on Radio 4. As much as he tried to avoid the question he couldn’t deny that 80% of the less well off people will be paying slightly less tax and that the majority of tax burdens needed to pay off the national deficit will be shouldered by the 20% better off people. This is real progress and the reason why I am still proud of Liberal Democrats being in government.

But of course Labour have now shifted their argument essentially saying that nobody should have to feel the pain of paying off the national deficit because if we go about it nice and slowly the economy would start growing again and the deficit would reduce naturally as tax income would increase by the number of people who find new employment.

However there is a fundamental flaw in this argument namely that the deficit is getting worse every day, because we’re not even paying all the interest on Britain’s debt.  Even the brightest recovery will not generate enough tax income to stabilise the debt.

Of course it would be great if we could avoid the pain of reducing the budget deficit but during the Radio 4 interview the Shadow chancellor didn’t come forward with any realistic model to demonstrate his point.

He couldn’t refute that rather than avoiding the pain it would merely delay the pain.

If Labour were still in charge, Britain would now be like Greece or Ireland.

A Good Kicking

A Good Kicking for whom?

I woke up again this morning to the headline that the Liberal Democrats got a good kicking, this time in yesterday’s Barnsley by- election. Since Lib Dem bashing has become a national sport, journalists didn’t have to think long to come up with that headline.

Had they been a little less lazy then a much more interesting headline would have been: People overwhelmingly return a party back to power whose previous member has gone to jail for expenses fraud.
Only 6 weeks ago something similar happened in Oldham East. An MP had to resign from his seat because of wrong-doing and his party gets back in.

What these two results seem to show is that cleaning up politics is not important for people in Barnsley and Oldham. It seems to indicate that people easily forgive corruption and wrong-doing by politicians as long as their party promises them some castles in the sky or scares them.
Winning elections by playing on peoples’ irrationalities is a cheap victory for which no thinking Labour party supporter should be proud.

When I grew up in the seventies being left wing was about having a critical mind and being sceptical of big party manipulation; the left stood up for emancipation and freedom of the individual against the apparatus of the state and the big parties, whose self interest perpetuates the status quo.

None of the ideals are alive in the Labour party today. The Labour party as it presents itself today is full of people and messages, used to power but void of new ideas, blocking progress or change, unresponsive to a proper rational debate and unable to admit past mistakes. This is the attitude of a tired party stuck in negativity and denial.
This Labour only appeals to voters who are as depressed, resigned and negative about the future as them; so resigned in fact, that they allow a party to continue in power in their area, whose members are corrupt, manipulative and deeply cynical.

 

A Borough of Philistines

The budget for 2001-12 has been passed at Full Council. It has been a difficult budget which councillors from all political parties together with officers had worked on for more than 18 months knowing that the Council had to make ten of millions of savings in future years.

Therefore it was appropriate that we all supported the budget proposals particularly because the new Labour administration didn’t really make any real changes to the original consultation put forward in November by the Lib Dem/Tory coalition Council.

The only change the new Labour leader achieved is to buy time for some tough decisions to be made at a later stage. That is of course politically clever but expensive, because the council has to borrow more money to bridge the gap if the savings are not made in time.

The Lib Dem group put forward three amendments to yesterday’s budget, all of them were defeated; a pity because two of them would have meant extra money for front line services like community centres. It was surprising that Labour wasn’t supporting those amendments.

However the real betrayal was that the Labour party didn’t support our amendment to save the Council’s Arts and Heritage Service, although the Labour leader Colin Lambert had promised privately that he would look favourably at an amendment.

Arts and Heritage services are provided on behalf of the council by Link4Life, which is an arms length charity set up some years ago, mainly to avoid VAT charges.  This tax technicality allows Link4Life to have more money to invest in leisure services than if the service was run directly by the council. We have seen big improvements in our sports provision since Link4Life took over, backed by massive capital investment agreed by the Lib Dem administration in 2007.

But the Arts and Heritage service has always been the Cinderella of Link4Life’s operation. Never has this become more obvious than now. Like all other services Link4Life was asked to cut 25% from their budget. 80% of those savings were heaped on the Arts and Heritage service, none on the sports service and the rest on so called neighbourhood services which also provide sports sessions.  Link4Life claims they are cutting 64% from the sprots budget and 36% from the Arts and Heritage budget but this is imply an accounting trick. The cuts to the sports budget can be off-set against increased entry charges and membership fees to sports centres and swimming pools. The Arts and Heritage service does’t generate income to off- set cuts because the entry to our galleries is free and it doesn’t cost to visit the Tourist Information centre.

The Lib Dems firmly believe that this is the end of Art and Heritage in our Borough.  Touchstones Gallery opening hours are now much reduced, there will be no more educational support to schools and no more visits to the Gallery for school children. The Tourist information centre will close. There will be no more public access to our stores, housing a large number of items which make up our borough’s history. There will be no more scope for changing exhibitions and no more arts events supported by the Council.

All the Liberal Democrat group asked for was for Link4Life to make savings fairly and proportionately across the board. In order to keep the Arts and Heritage service on a minimal budget Link4Life would have had to give up a few coaching sessions that wouldn’t make or break our sports provision.

But to no avail.

We will now be the first council to be a Borough of Philistines unable to value and appreciate the huge contribution that the creative arts and our heritage make to people’s lives. We will all be the poorer for it!!

Norden Old Library new venue for my surgery this Saturday

New venue for my Councillor’s surgery at Norden Old Library this Saturday

I am now holding my surgery at the Norden Old Library every month on the second Saturday at 10.30 am. 

In November the new community rooms on the ground floor of the Norden Old Library opened to the public. Since then a number of high profile events have taken place there, like the Christmas Light Switch on and a packed Open Day in December. The new community facility is going from strengths to strength with the Council’s Youth service now running weekly sessions form the building and many different groups hiring the rooms for their activities.

It is also the perfect venue for my surgeries right in the heart of the village with very easy access from the main road. I can now even offer a cup of tea or coffee to constituents who want to speak to me. Why not pop in next Saturday and at the same time have a look round this marvellous new facility. “

 Dates for next surgeries:  Sat. 12th February 2011, 10..30 am;  12^th March 2011, 10.30am; 9^th April 2011, 10.30am  Norden Old Library, Edenfield Road, opposite the War Memorial

 You can also visit the Norden Old Library website

www.nordenoldlibrary.org.uk

New Green Infrastructure- Action is needed now

I listened to an interesting programme on Radio 4 this morning  ahead of today’s  Summit in Brussels about European Energy Policy.

The North German plains are covered in wind turbines.  They produce far too much energy for the people who live around them.  More often than not the turbines are switched off,  because the extra energy cannot be transported to other parts of Germany or Europe.

In South Germany, where the weather is much sunnier than in the north, many people and businesses have installed solar panels; but when they produce extra capacity beyond local need, the energy is simply wasted. Again the problem is that the energy cannot be transported.

In Denmark big waste incinernators could produce energy far beyond local need.  Again the capacity to trasnport the energy even from one part of a town to the other is not there.

What is needed in all those cases are new super grits and new pipelines  which would  allow our new low or non carbon enegry installations to work to their full potential.  As the manager of the waste incinereration plant in Denmark said on the programme: ” World wide massive pipelines are being built to transport oil and gas across the globe, but we don’t invest in simple networks that transport our green energy across Europe.”

These are the Green Infrastructure projects that the new Coalition Government together with other European countries should commit to. Action is needed now.

The EU wants to cut Green House Gases by 90%  by 2050. The big decisions of how this can be achieved will have to be taken in the next five years.

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.

Crunchy numbers

A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,700 times in 2010. That’s about 4 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 30 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 16 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 9mb. That’s about a picture per month.

The busiest day of the year was December 5th with 89 views. The most popular post that day was Seven councillors resign from Lib Dems .

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were libdemvoice.org, libdemblogs.co.uk, twitter.com, facebook.com, and healthfitnesstherapy.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for wera hobhouse, wera hobhouse blog, wera blog, earth cafe rochdale, and video merry christmas.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Seven councillors resign from Lib Dems December 2010
3 comments

2

About Wera June 2010

3

The mess Labour left us in July 2010
6 comments

4

Building Schools for the Future July 2010

5

Video: Tuition Fees December 2010
1 comment

Video: Merry Christmas!

7 Years of Political Change in Rochdale Borough

Seven years ago, Rochdale Council was run by Labour. Six years ago, it was an all-party run Council with a Liberal Democrat leader, 5 years ago, it was run by a Labour / Conservative coalition, 4 years ago by the Liberal Democrats on their own, and for the last few months it has been a Liberal Democrat / Conservative coalition.

The decision of eight Liberal Democrat Councillors to go independent over the last three weeks  has changed the balance again, and we now have a Council where the Labour party is again the largest party, but without an overall majority. The convention is that the Leader of the Labour Party now becomes the Leader of the Council. Will this make any difference to the man in the street?

The majority opinion about our Council is that it is mediocre. You will find surprising agreement across all political parties that the real problem is that councillors and the communities that they represent are continually undermined and disempowered by a Officer-run council that always seeks to draw all decisions to the centre and make behind closed doors decisions.

So when the Council changes control again, the faces will change, but the decisions probably won’t. The big change will come when ALL political parties in the borough come together on a shared agenda to give more power back to the people through devolution  and townships. This has been a core Liberal Democrat agenda for the last few years, and it has been a big success across Lib Dem run Rochdale  and Pennine Townships with Area Forums and across Labour run Heywood and Labour run Middleton.

This devolution agenda is under threat. From none other than the newly independent Councillor Greg Couzens and his new political party of independents. Councillor Couzens, while still a Liberal Democrat, had proposed that the devolved money to Townships is scrapped, and all decisions are taken centrally.  It’s a silver lining for communities of the borough that Cllr Couzens will shortly be removed from his position of Cabinet Member for Finance. His record on the Springfield Park Golf Driving Range, on Ding Quarry or on safe development at TBA has been abject. Time after time, he has undermined communities, preferring instead the cosy decision making of the Town Hall.

We’ve had 7 years of political change, but whatever party is in power, the only change that really is needed in this borough is the change from an Officer-run Council to a Council run for and by the communities that pay for it.

It may be some way off, but I hope that we the Liberal Democrats will now rebuild from opposition, come back more rooted in our communities, and be ready to give power back to the people when we win again.

Extra Millions for Rochdale, Heywood and Middleton Schools

I welcome the announcement that Rochdale, Heywood and Middleton schools will receive around £3.3 million extra funding next year thanks to Liberal Democrat plans for a ‘pupil premium’.

 

The coalition government has announced the details of the policy, which was one of the Liberal Democrat’s four main pledges at the general election. A total of £625 million will be invested in the policy in 2011/12, rising to a total of £2.5 billion by 2014/15.

 

Under the policy, money is targeted at the poorest students in order to close the attainment gap between children. In countries that have adopted a similar system, the policy has dramatically reduced the link between family income and educational achievement.

 

Investing extra money in schools was a key policy that I and other Liberal Democrats campaigned on in this year’s election. I am delighted that Liberal Democrat ministers in government are now delivering this policy.

 

As a result of this extra investment, Rochdale, Heywood and Middleton schools will receive an additional £3.3 million next year, and around £13 million extra a year by 2014. This will make a real difference to schools in this borough.

 

At a time of financial difficulty, this government has been able to prioritise schools, protecting the schools budget in cash terms from cuts and freezing salaries so that money goes further, as well as targeting this extra money where it is most needed.

 

The Liberal Democrats were clear from the outset that protecting and improving our schools would be a key aim in government – without that Liberal Democrats presence, this simply would not be happening.

 

• As of January 2010 there were 7,714 pupils between reception and year 11 receiving free school meals in the Rochdale Borough.

 

• The pupil premium will be worth £430 per pupil on free school meals in 2011/12, rising to approximately £1700 per pupil by 2014/15.

 

• The pupil premium will be worth £430 per pupil on free school meals in 2011/12, rising to approximately £1700 per pupil by 2014/15.