IF YOU'RE IN A HOLE, KIERAN, STOP DIGGING!

"Ef off, I know how use a f**** shovel!"

Talk about the ‘bleeding obvious’ Kieran Quinn, Chair of the Tameside Brains Trust and this year's holder of the GMPF Fergi-time calculator, now tells us in his blog that “..Social housing is in short supply due to lack of build and increasing waiting lists. …That’s why many residents opt for the private rented sector which can be both expensive and is inadequately regulated!”

No shit, Sherlock!

He must think we've forgot the fact that when Kieran Quinn’s party was last in  government, only a fraction of the houses needed were built, but now, with an election on the horizon, this time they’re promising to do better!

His answer is: We have supported 50 first time buyers through our very own local “Lend a Hand” scheme in associated with Lloyds TSB. – Well, it’s a start!

Now remember he is talking about ‘social housing’ which means homes that are affordable to rent/buy by people on low incomes; he then tells us that in response to the national housing crisis, GMPF has formed a partnership with the 10 local authorities in Greater Manchester, whereby five schemes have been developed so far, investing £25 million in the construction of 240 much-needed 'affordable' homes. And an additional £75 million will help stimulate further housing growth. This is just the start of a bolder ambition across Greater Manchester.

Now let’s just think about that for a mo’ - £25 million to produce 240 affordable homes!

That equates to £105,000 to build each housereach!

If the renter pays £100 per week (£5200 per year) it will take over 20 years before they break even! - Which part of the word 'investment' does he not understand?

Now call me cynical, but if you force developers to build and sell cheap to first time buyers/renters, don’t be surprised if they build to the lowest quality they can get away with. 

And when those first time buyers/renters want to move up the property ladder, what then?

Will they be able to afford the jump? Will the property then be sold off to a 'social landlord' or will those properties have to be sold only to first time buyers for ever, irrespective of price or demand?

Or is it, as I suspect, the Labour party making up for their lack of new home construction throughout their 13 years in office and trying to come up with populist but ill-thought tinkering with the current property market.

He then tells us, “We have transferred or sold a number of sites to our local social housing provider, to provide affordable homes for rent for Tameside residents. The 9 sites will provide space for 330 houses and provide the council with an estimated £320,000 a year in council tax and £2 million in New Homes Bonus.”

Here again, when one checks young Quinn’s figures, it throws up a few more questions that should start a few ‘alarm bells ringing’ if these councillors get their way.

If he expects to raise an estimated £320,000 per year in council tax from these 330 new houses, it indicates they are in council tax band – A

However, at the current 2015 rate, tax band - A is £946.40 per house, per annum. Which equates to approx £312,000 per year.

To achieve a council tax income of £320,000, from an additional 330 houses, the council tax would need to go up by another £23.30 per household, per annum, increasing the future council tax band – A, to a minimum of £969.70 per annum, per household!

I WONDER IF ANY OF OUR LABOUR COUNCILLORS WILL BE ANNOUNCING THAT IN THEIR LEAFLETS WHEN ASKING TO BE RE-ELECTED?

On the other hand, if the council claim there will be no increase in future council tax rates, then perhaps our Kieran should consider enrolling in one of our New Academy's to re-take his Maths O-level! - 'er no perhaps not!

TAMESIDE WITNESSES THE SECOND COMING OF SIMON DE MONTFORT

For sheer brass neck, Tameside’s Council Leader, Kieran Quinn must be a prime candidate for taking the last chocolate chip biscuit.

In his latest blog, he actually had the temerity to talk about the importance of ‘democracy’

Now here is a man who presides over one of the most anti-democratic forms of local government – where the majority Labour party holds 96 per cent of the seats, but then, through cabinet appointments, this translates into 100% of the cabinet positions – which massively diminishes any other political points of view.

Introduced by Labour in 2000, the introduction of ‘the cabinet system’ fundamentally changed the nature of Local Government. It sought to have a select group of councillors lead their electorate, whereas the former committee system assumed that  a councillor would represent them. 

There’s a very big difference, but one not often explained by our current councillors, who still claim they are in office to represent the wishes of their constituents!

Under the leadership of Cllr Quinn, Tameside council’s executive committee is made up of eight councillors. The fact that most major decisions are made by the all-Labour cabinet, means the remaining 43 backbench councillors have very little influence. Consequently, important decisions are being made that affect large swathes of the boroughs population, mainly behind closed doors, and in most cases by a very select group of nine labour councillors, ‘the cabinet’.

There isn't a week goes by that critics complain in the local press that public questions to the council often go unanswered, and no follow-up is permitted and on the rare occasion they do, the reply is not responsive.

I've heard it myself from current councillors that although they often want to agree with their constituents, they cannot be seen to disagree with’ cabinet decisions’ as it would have a detrimental effect on their future prospects. They forget who elected them and because of the whipping system toe the party line!

He then had the affrontery to talk about the low turnout and the diminishing number of people voting! He said, “…it is a pity they don’t use that right because it really does give them power over the decision-makers. All 57 members of Tameside Council only hold that rank thanks to the people who put a cross against our name every four years. None of us takes that support for granted and we’re all fully aware that it could be removed at any time.”

This is absolute nonsense!

We all know that the Executive leader is not too clever with figures but even he knows that if everyone in Tameside who was eligible to vote at the next local election voted for anyone but Labour; Labour would still hold total control over the council!

This is because the current system has been orchestrated so that only one third of the councillors are up for re-election at a time. So if they were all voted out, they would still hold a two thirds majority!

My growing concerns are based on the inability of back bench councillors to truly represent the people they stand for and work for the good of the borough.

If Kieran Quinn is so concerned with democracy he should announce in his re-election manifesto that if he and his Labour colleagues are re-elected, they will use the new powers introduced under the Localism Act to trigger a governance referendum, to abolish the dictatorial cabinet system and re-introduce a system of open door, all party committees and revert to a full council election.

Only then will we see how serious Cllr Quinn is in his gushing support for local ‘democracy’

To those who perceive this as just another go at the council then you are sadly mistaken. It’s about re-introducing a fair and transparent process which is all accountable and not hidden behind closed doors and brushed under carpets which is often the case.

Unfortunately, too few people take an interest in what is going on in local government. If they did, there would be little short of rioting on the streets, when they realised just how badly served they are by the present administration.

To those people I say, just look around you.

Look at all the services that have been lost, the dead market grounds, the lack of Town Centre shops and parking restrictions. Look at the waste. Then listen to the excuses from our councillors. Most of whom have been ‘on the council’ for most of their working lives!

These people are solely responsible for the sad state of Tameside and only you, with your vote, can begin to make a change.

In conclusion, Cllr Quinn wondered why interest in politics seems to have hit an all-time low!

And they say satire is dead!

SAFE IN WHOSE HANDS?

With just over 100 days to go until the General and Local Government Elections, politicians both at national and local level and from all sides of the political spectrum have metaphorically taken their places in the ring and will be slugging it out between now and 7 May'

As the policy battles begin at national level, locally, as in previous years, we are starting to hear a lot of misinformation from certain local members of the Labour run Tameside council, who regularly blart-out their blinkered version of a given situation before they have checked the relevant position of their arse and their elbow!

Why is it, as soon as any level of election is on the horizon our local career councillors turn their attentions to matters in which they cannot possibly have any influence rather than concentrating their efforts on local issues, which, if nothing else tends to demonstrates an attentive attitude to their local constituents’ concerns?

In other words why not just tell us how they intend to perform their duties as 'public servants' carrying out the will of local people!

This week’s letter allegedly from Cllr Taylor, was a perfect example of this political phenomenon, where he took up the only weaponry in Labour’s armoury (Ed Miliband's words) and jumped on the NHS bandwagon.

In his usual rhetorical style, he asks why it is that A & E waiting times have suddenly ‘gone through the roof’ and predictably blamed it all on ‘the coalition cuts’

No mention of the fact that Tony Blair and his many, health secretaries, decided to remove the responsibility for out-of-hours care from GPs and hand it to primary care trusts. Nor any explanation as to why in Labour’s target-obsessed NHS where, as the Francis report into what happened at Mid-Staffs revealed, told us that ‘compassion’ can be lacking!

Let's face it, the NHS that was, has long gone, and in its place is a system that is not working.

For instance, our local GP surgery used to have an open door system; a first come first served, policy. Patients were happy to arrive and take their turn, there was a steady flow of patients receiving treatment, the GPs were busy the entire time they were at the surgery and because there was no appointment system, there were no 'no shows'. Then the local health board, in its infinite wisdom, said the surgeries must move to an appointment system! Needless to say, it was difficult to get an immediate appointment, mostly taking anything up to 10 days, 'no shows' increased, fewer patients were seen by their GP and numbers attending A&E went through the roof!

In essence the prime objective of the recent NHS reform programme was, like that of the Blair government, ‘marketisation’ – which introduced a shift from bureaucratic planning and cost-based resource allocation to a model in which funding is allocated to healthcare providers according to their ability to attract patients within some sort of competitive market.

Both attempts at this NHS reform also involved a degree of privatisation – in simple terms, a change in the ownership of healthcare assets, as non-state purveyors of various types expand their production of healthcare.

Now with the NHS becoming the General Elections political football, this situation is currently of some significance, because about 5% of NHS expenditure in England is spent on healthcare services supplied by private companies and voluntary organisations.

Significantly, John Taylor’s writer also failed to mention all the debt accrued by the private finance initiatives (PFI), the absurd public-private partnerships that proved very profitable for a few companies but utterly disastrous for the public purse. Labour essentially sold off the family silver and we’ll never get back many of the buildings, resources and land that we gave to the private sector under ludicrously in-equitable terms. 

Sadly, there’s not much we can do about that now. We have to cut our losses and try to get out of these PFI deals.

The sad truth is, the NHS needs to be reformed but based instead on patent outcomes. The problem is a patient outcome based healthcare system would be painful for politicians, because it would require them to put aside their ideologies. The attempts at reformation, first by the Labour government and then subsequently the coalition to introduce more efficiency through competition have in fact meant an explosion of expensive bureaucracy.

Therefore, the current political mindset is that further NHS reforms would be a vote-loser.

From Labour’s point of view, any suggestion of further change is met by a wall of self interested protest. It’s their default position on most policies and in particular a deeply entrenched problem at the heart of any struggle to improve the NHS - total resistance to change of any kind. All that seems to matter to the political class, as they position themselves for their election campaigns, is demonstrating a commitment to maintaining the ideological purity of the institution. Patient outcomes and quality of service appear to be an irrelevance.

If we’re honest we all know that the NHS, as it stands, is a mess and we all know that all politicians agree that the NHS should remain ‘free’ at the point of treatment. Therefore it’s about time that the voting public get a proper debate on the future of the NHS rather than the distorted shouting match over privatisation that Labour's deception permits. Despite the range of experiences from brilliant to abysmal, our parties are terrified to suggest a different model of delivery for fear of the electoral consequences.

The councillor then went on to mention that the government had ‘found’ £700 million to ease the burden at A & E departments and suggested that it would probably cost another £700 million soon as the Tory drive toward ‘privatization’ continues – are we really expected to believe that the long standing Dukinfield councillor is unaware that Labour were going to fund the NHS much less than the coalition?

Not wanting to drop the NHS ‘privatisation’ subject, he then brought up situation at Hitchingbrooke General Hospital (a NHS Trust that had been delegated to a private company) and how the project failed.

However, what he conveniently left out was the fact that before the hospital was transferred into private hands, Hinchingbrooke Hospital, in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, had debts of £40 million and was described as failing to care adequately for patients.

It must have also slipped the Labour councillors mind that it was in fact Labour’s Health Secretary, who is now the Shadow Health Secretary; who was responsible for the privatising of the only NHS hospital in England!

Go on councillor, deny it! - Hinchingbrooke hospital - the only NHS hospital to be privatised, and it was orchestrated by the Labour party!

I can only assume that councillor Taylor has so little regard for the intelligence of Tameside’s voters that he constantly spouts facts that can be undone in minutes by any seven year old with an average understanding of browsing the internet.

Just to remind him, here’s the timeline of how the hospital was put up for tender:

July 2007 – The Department of Health, under Labour, gives the Strategic Health Authority approval to examine different options, including franchises.

July 2009 – Department of Health approves the business case for an open competitive tender for a franchise.

October 2009 – Open competitive tender announced and 11 organisations submit bids, six are selected to move to the next stage. Only one was NHS-only: Addenbrooke’s in Cambridge. Circle say there was no mention of a preferred provider at any point in the tender.

February 2010 - Addenbrooke’s pull out of the bidding process.

March 2010 – A shortlist for the franchise announced: Serco, Ramsay and Circle. Serco’s bid did include a partnership with Peterborough NHS Trust.

(May 2010 – General Election in which Labour leaves office)

August 2010: The shortlist narrowed to two: Serco and Circle.

November 2010 – Circle announced as preferred bidder.

November 2011 – Contract signed with Circle, which began work in February 2012.

It’s a matter of public record that the tender was an open competitive process, and it was clear by the end of 2009 that Hinchingbrooke would, in fact be run by a private company.

So, in summary, Labour started the tender process to privatise the hospital and the Tories/LibDem coalition completed it.

This situation is typical of the two-faced Labour party stance where they agree to a policy in principle, but jump around kicking and screaming when the coalition implement it.

So, in whose hands will the NHS be safe, councillor?

THE TRUTH ABOUT FLY TIPPING

It’s not often that I find myself in agreement with our intrepid leader Cllr Kieran Quinn, but fear thee not readers, by the time I got to the fourth paragraph of his latest blog, I reverted to my usual position of thinking, 'what a wazzock!'

For those who have not had the time or inclination to visit Kieran’s blog, he was telling how much he gets so annoyed by the mess caused by a few inconsiderate people who would rather dump their rubbish than dispose of it properly.

Apparently, he can’t tolerate mess, whether it’s at his home or in the community, “it gets on his nerves and it particularly annoys him that councillors and staff have had to deal with several cases of fly-tipping over Christmas.”

Now, at Christmas, it’s been suggested that we generate around 30% more waste than normal!

Understandable too; especially in households with children whose Christmas presents seem to need rolls of wrapping paper and in the main these days, delivered in large cardboard boxes.

Armed with this knowledge, one would have thought that the council’s waste collection

Standard issue for most councillors

schedules would have been rearranged to accommodate this extra tonnage, but no, in our area it was Monday 12 January 2015 before the full to bursting ‘blue (paper & cardboard) bin’ was emptied.

Now, don’t get me wrong; I don’t condone fly tipping, but if the council cannot get its act together to shift the excess at a time of year that sees mountains of empty boxes discarded, then some people will resort to dumping it elsewhere.

However, it was the councillor’s next statement that had me reaching for my calculator!

He said, “This dumping is nothing short of an environmental crime but more than that, the actions of this selfish minority cost us an absolute fortune. Last year the council had to spend £300,400.00 clearing up 768 tonnes of litter and fly-tipping, at a time when we are having our funding slashed to the bone it is galling in the extreme to have to spend so much on anti-social activity which could be avoided so easily.”

Now let’s be honest, we have a lot of pretty gullible voters in Tameside, who unfortunately believe every word our career councillors utter without question. So let’s just look at those figures again.

As it stands, the current Landfill Tax is £80.00 per tonne. (Source: HMRC – 2012) A figure confirmed by Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority (GMWDA -2014) and also by their recycling and waste contractor, Viridor Laing (2014)

Now, it may be that the Executive Leader could be suffering from a disability known as developmental dyscalculia, or maybe the council calculator has the equivalent of a ‘Fergie Time’ button where figures are spewed out at random by some spurious inbuilt algorithm or more likely that Tameside are paying way over the odds, but if, as the Executive Leader tells us, our ‘local heroes’ cleared 768 tonnes of illegal rubbish, and dumped it at one of GMWDA’s facilities, it should only have cost £61,440  (768 tonnes  x £80.00 per tonne = £61,440)

Still a lot of money, but a lot less than £300,400 – in fact £238,960 less!

Jumping back to his usual default stance of complaining about ‘budget cuts’ he then told us “Whatever your views I’m sure we can all agree that this is money could be better spent. By my reckoning, if we had no dumping to deal with we could afford several social workers. If you asked me to pick between the two, well, I think the answer is pretty obvious.”

Alternatively councillor, why not look at the problem from a different angle.

In July 2014, the maximum fine for fly-tipping was increased to £3m for companies and £95,000 for individuals.

Even low-level offending could attract fines of up to £10,000, and people who break the law could serve up to three years in jail.

That being the case, our local heroes would only need to catch 1 person fly-tipping and issue them with the maximum fine and the entire outlay for clearing all 768 tonnes of rubbish would not only be eradicated, but our council would be £33,560 in profit and able to employ yet another 'social worker'!

So, how many fly tippers did our local heroes catch?

How many were prosecuted and what were the total fines collected?

Now if I'm being unfair or my figures are indeed wrong, no doubt our leader (or one of his lackey’s) will avail himself of my comments facility, but I won’t hold my breath!

DON’T ASK ME, JUST THROW MONEY AT IT!

Someone once asked Tony Blair if there was anything he regretted from his time in office, to which our former Prime Minister surprised the interviewer by answering: ‘The Freedom of Information Act’.

One of the effects the ‘Freedom of Information Act’ (FOI) enshrined, was to introduce a "general right of access" to information held by all public bodies, subject to certain absolute exemptions where disclosure was not deemed to be in the public interest.

However, in Tameside, the overriding principle of requiring the council to publish their monthly spending data; supposedly to enable greater transparency, greater engagement and greater efficiency by allowing inspection by residents, appears to be a total anathema, and supposedly to minimise awkward scrutiny, Tameside bosses appear to have have designed the format in which they chose to publish their monthly expenditure, in the most user-unfriendly fashion; however when one persists and trawls through the information, it’s quite enlightening to see that the practice of ‘throwing our money at private sector consultants' in order to solve problems that could be resolved internally by well-paid civil servants’ councillors and council bosses is increasingly on the increase.

Take this for example, found under transactions made by the council in October 2014.

Ref: 5174415 under the heading of Housing, Economic Growth, Investment and Sustainability, a figure of £5,600 was paid to a company called PARKING MATTERS LIMITED who proudly list Tameside Council as one of their valued clients; - and who, according to their website are a specialist consultancy that provides innovative advice on all matters related to parking; and speak of how their ‘clients’ can rely on their expertise and consistent track record to optimize the value of their parking assets!

In a nutshell, they advise property owners, local authorities, developers and operators on how to realize the full potential of their parking assets!

Now, forgive me, but on reading Tameside Council Leader Kieran Quinn’s blog, dated November 10^th 2014, he gave us the impression that “it was because of feedback from residents, businesses and the shopping public that the Council moved to significantly reduce the cost of car parking in prime town centre car parks to make them even more attractive and affordable for shoppers. This, he told us, “will of course support the local economy and, in the run up to Christmas, should significantly benefit everyone.”

He went on to say, “Once in place, Tameside will have the lowest tariffs for long stay car parking in Greater Manchester as well as being one of the cheapest for short stay town centre parking.”

So, despite our leaders claims that this small effort to encourage a few more people to fight to park, albeit more cheaply in our towns, came about by “listening to what the public has to say” something, he tells us, “the council does on a constant basis” would now appear to be based on ‘paid for’ consultative advice prepared by a private company! - Advice that thousands of Tameside town centre retailers, shoppers and visitors could have told him for free!

Could this be yet another example of ‘over-paid, under-qualified, political square pegs that have been crammed into the council’s round holes; or could it really be true that there is no one left within the hallowed portico's of Tameside Town Hall who can sort out the boroughs car parks?

God help us!

NEW YEAR RESOLUTION or REVOLUTIONS?

 Morning folks.....Wednesday was the last day of 2014 and as we all woke up to a brand new year, it was hard to believe that it was a mere 12 months since I was writing about the disastrous financial catastrophe incurred by John Taylor’s insistence on investing £69,500 of taxpayer’s money into building 30 log cabins, whilst trying to create a pseudo Christmas Market. 

However, that figure albeit large, paled into insignificance when compared to the £75,252.50 employing a PR/Events company to run the show! – So before we get the final figures in from this year’s dreadful event, it’s worth reminding ourselves that this cash strapped council speculated well over £144,752,50 of taxpayers’ money on Ashton’s first Christmas Market!

As per usual when things don't go quite right, after last year’s event, it was followed by the inevitable ‘consultation’ as to how the 2014 Christmas Market could be improved, but in typical Tameside Council fashion, the result was once again to put the entire nonevent back in the totally unqualified sycophantic career councillors hands, when what was really needed was strong local democratic oversight by experts.

Roll back a year to, February 25^th 2013 you may recall being told that the Stalybridge eyesore that had once housed CASABLANCA’S Health Club was set for demolition and were promised a ‘speedy’  redevelopment by New Charter Housing, who’d bought the site the previous October 2012.

Once again, that intrepid poster-boy for all that’s wrong with local council democracy; ‘Cllr John Taylor, deputy leader of Tameside Council chipped in and said: "These are great times for Stalybridge. We are finally going to see the end of a building that has spoiled the town centre of for almost eight years."

He finished his piece by donning a newly opened Day-Glo Jacket...and posed for the obligatory photo-shoot after sending the actual demolition gang ‘off camera’ for an early lunch!

However, council promises are just like Holland’s ‘pie-crusts’ and are easily broken, so you’ll not be too surprised to know that 2 years later; at the start of 2015, the demolition site is still just as it was; leaving Stalybridge town centre with just as big an eyesore as it had before!

Perhaps to take the focus off the on-going Stalybridge ‘redevelopment in waiting’ fiasco, we were told, again by Cllr John Taylor that ASHTON MARKET HALL had been voted ‘Best of British’ whilst in actual fact; ASHTON MARKET HALL was not voted ‘Best’ of anything - In fact it had won absolutely nothing!

However, never one to let the facts spoil a good politically advantageous story, it transpired that it was actually ASHTON MARKET who’d won an award, however it only won in one of the twelve award categories on offer and that was in the minor classification of: BRITAIN’S FAVOURITE MARKET.

By the way, to be eligible to be considered for an award in this National Market of the Year Competition, the council must pay an annual subscription of just under £1000, - an expense that the council has seen fit to continue -so don't be surprised if in 2015 we get another piece of engraved glass for the council's trophy cupboard!

By the end of February I had occasion to visit yet another of Tameside council’s catastrophic marketing decisions.

It was Saturday lunchtime, about 12.20, when I happened across the £1.3 million Hyde Civic Square/Market ground where there were two stalls occupied and a children’s round-a-bout operating! One stall was selling rolls of carpet the other dog beds!

For the moment I’ve forgotten the name of the councillor who promised that this investment would transform Hyde into a bustling market town once again! So a collective “Well done” to Tameside council for their consistency in winning 'first prize' in the local government 'waste of money' awards.

As the year rolled on, we were 'enthralled' by the Council Leaders address, which despite the usual blame-game and excuses as to why they were finding life in the Town Hall challenging, we were told ‘That total saving on councillors allowances for this year alone was over £113,000 which along with savings arising from ‘reductions in administration’ this represented a saving of 10% to the overall costs.

However, when one looked closer at the published financial statements it revealed that councillors in Tameside received more that £1.2 million in allowances, with the highest amount being paid to the Council Leader Kieran Quinn himself!

In total, the allowances bill for Tameside councillors in 2012/2013 came to £1.204,972. Compared to £1.200,094 in 2011/2012 which was yet another increase on 2010/2011, which was £1.186,473.

So, instead of keeping his promise of saving £120,498 from his councillors allowances; despite all the platitudes of hardship, government cuts; food banks; closures and sell-off's;- not forgetting cutting the number of lollipop ladies; reducing the number of pensioners' luncheon clubs; community centres and cutting the budget for road repairs, this caring bunch of self-serving, bottom feeders still managed to jack-up the council tax bill by 3.5% and increased their collective allowances by another £5000!

In March, we heard of Tameside Council's Deputy Leader, John Taylor describing his party’s venture into the Wythenshawe Ward; where they’ circled their political wagons - in order to get their candidate Michael Kane elected.

Taylor a self confessed film buff, said they had ‘ridden in’ as a posse who had ventured into unknown territory, with himself leading the hastily sworn in mob, as their Sherriff! He was obviously suffering from a John Ford moment.

Then, as election fever gripped the inner chamber we had the usual promises and warnings followed by the by-election farce proper. That’s where nobody votes and the councillors stay the same!

It was at this point that Cllr Kieran Quinn, like most sensible politicians whose party is again seeking election, took the popular high-ground- by telling us of his keen interest in local history, particularly the history of Droylsden, - the town he represents.

In attempting to prove his sincerity, and in-depth knowledge, he described in detail the time when Droylsden’s Lumb Mill was demolished and how he organised the preservation of an engraved monument to Droylsden’s proud manufacturing past. A time  when ‘Cotton was King!’ - namely the mill's name stone.

In his blog he told us, “I’m sure many Droylsden residents will have fond memories of the mill and working there before it was finally demolished in 1991.” 

He then went on to tell us, “…This is why when the building was being demolished, along with residents and my fellow councillors, I organised for the Mill’s entrance stone to be saved and, initially, displayed at Littlemoss School!”

So by implication, and taking his words at face value, we, the residents of Tameside, were led to believe that those philanthropic councillors of yore,led by non-other than Cllr Kieran Quinn claimed that he had the foresight to save a rich historical piece of our industrial heritage for us to admire.

However, that being the case, perhaps the councillor could explain how he and his fellow councillors managed to rescue the mill’s entrance stone from the demolisher's in 1991, when, according to his council profile, he did not become a member of the council until 1994?

The rest of the year went on in much the same way, with nonsense, drivel, and broken promises delivered by the usual protagonists who are still so prone to politically embroidered exaggeration; I am led to understand that many of the more rational councillors have also suspended belief in their colleagues excessive use of hyperbole and rhetoric and have recently distanced themselves from many of their more fanciful remarks. 

In the coming year, if the people of Tameside don’t wake-up and vote in numbers for people who are qualified to set and attain realistic targets for all the towns in our borough, then I suspect 2015 will bring us more of the same abject misery.

That being said, ....it's traditionally time to think about New Year Resolutions.

I wonder what our councillors will choose to change?

That’s if they intending making any.

Me? I don't think I'll bother! ........ I’ll just say a little prayer.....

“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change

The courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference!”