MORE ON THE DESTRUCTION OF DEMOCRACY

The very mention of ‘democracy’ and ‘Tameside council’ in the same breath, is almost an insult to democracy itself; the whole notion of an engaged citizenry holding their councillors to account, in many cases, dissolves before our eyes despite Cllr Taylor’s clever weekly prose.

In a recent short letter, the councillor sighted the destruction of democracy by the Coalition Government; ironic coming from a man who almost single-handedly, in face of hundreds of local protests, including his own Planning Officer for Conservation, pushed through plans to the to move a ‘grade 2’ listed War Memorial, 35 yards at a cost of £75.000!

In his letter, he whinged on about local government having to shoulder the majority of cuts, but if they, (the council) had not wasted tens of millions of pounds, Tameside would not be facing some of the financial constraints it faces now.

Take Tameside’s PFI commitments for instance. It is a common concern of PFI commentators that councils who are committed to PFI contracts will allocate budgets at the expense of other service areas and perhaps other non-PFI schools.

As it stands, Tameside council has ‘borrowed’ well over £180m to build and refurbish a number of schools throughout the borough through Labours now cancelled Building Schools for the Future programme. For the uninitiated, BSF programmes are in effect long-term construction partnerships with attendant facilities management and financing.

A well-educated schoolchild could understand the built in fallacy of these schemes. A building should cost the same whoever builds it; maintenance is the same whoever owns it. So adding a layer of bankers, high profit PFI firms and shareholders into the equation must cost more.

In this case the build cost of £180m over thirty years at today’s prices, will cost Tameside’s taxpayers an absolute fortune. For example, last year alone it cost council tax payers £10.9million.

These PFI contracts; approved by ‘the executive committee’ of our Labour council, commits the council to regular payments to the contractor over the 30 year life of the scheme. So before any money is allocated to maintain our Libraries, Social Welfare, Old People’s Services, Road Maintenance, Waste Management and everything else the council is legally responsible for, those annual PFI interest payments, must be allocated first. - Yes we may have a few modern looking designer schools, but I would rather the council invested more on employing exceptional teachers, than incurring a massive 30 year debt!

So, if you support Cllr Taylor in his campaign to blame the present Government for the lack of general funding, at least be grateful that one of the Coalitions first cuts was to cancel Labours BSF programme before any more damage could be done. That's because Tameside council were planning to ‘borrow’ a further £110m which would have increased the borough’s funding from £180m to £300m and increased the 30year payback exponentially.

Therefore, despite Cllr Taylor’s lame attempts to blame others for the need to apportion cuts, and blame the current financial situation on everything ‘Private’, just remember who it was who has signed away a huge 30 year portion of yours, mine and our children’s future taxes to Private sector Facilities Management and Financing Companies – Yes, those so –called champions of the Public sector, our staunch Labour councillors! - Personally I wouldn’t pay them in washers!