THEY COULDN’T ORGANISE A DRINKING SESSION IN A PLANT THAT MANUFACTURES ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES!

According to the latest Press Release emanating from the Tameside ‘brains trust’ (The council)  - in the face of on-going Government cuts, they are now going to concentrate their resources on statutory functions and other priority areas!

These they have prioritised as:

              Disposal of under-utilised car parks and new charges introduced for others.

Stopping inspection of low and medium risk business premises

To consider to reduce further the costs of bin collections by collecting outside     normal working hours.

Significantly reduce highway maintenance by dealing with high risk repairs only and  stop local highway improvement schemes altogether

Stop routine maintenance and lighting checks and respond to complaints only

Review all fees and charges

Reducing our winter gritting programme so that we only cover priority routes

How about a piss-up in a brewery?

If we take these one by one in means, they will sell off a few of the car parks that currently shoppers, workers and visitors use, which, if they are serious, not only increases the pressure on the remaining parking facilities, but inconvenient for workers and devastating to traders. This short sighted view to sell the land is purely to help plug the gap in the council finances, and they are using the excuse of it being ‘under-used’ as a justification for it. 
Surely we should be arguing that land 'owned' by the council is no such thing - it belongs to the people and as such should be available for them to use as they wish - if that is for parking so be it.
The other measure to introduce ‘new charges’ for the other Car Parks, only offers yet another reason to shoppers to shop elsewhere!

As for stopping inspection of low and medium risk business premises, well that is probably one of the factors which lie behind the ‘horse meat’ scandal!

Thirdly, after introducing one of the most costly and confusing refuse collection systems in the country; one which replaced a very successful ‘one bin’ emptied ‘once a week’ by one vehicle with 3 men, with 4 bins, with two sometimes three being emptied once a week by two or three vehicles with 6 or 9 men; someone, presumably the one with the council pencil and calculator, has decided this is expensive and maybe there’s a better way to do it!

Next, the announcement of significantly reduce highway maintenance by dealing with high risk repairs only and stop local highway improvement schemes altogether, hopefully means that they will stop creating hundreds of ‘traffic calming islands and pink pavements, together with the practice of sending round a man with a can of spray paint to put marks around the pot-hole’ in question, followed some weeks later by a couple of bods in a lorry who tip a pit of tarmac in the hole and stamp it down with their hobnails, followed some weeks later by 4 bods who dig out what’s left of the tarmac, clean the hole (which is now twice the size of the original pot-hole, fill it with more tarmac and complete it with a mechanical compactor.

At last, someone must have realised that by employing fill-it, botch-it and scarper; pothole patching will end up costing them much more in the long run! 

Now as for stopping routine lighting checks, this could have been sorted years ago when the council were presented with a simple computerised system that remotely checked the condition/longevity of lighting luminaires, but preferred to continue with the old method of sending two men in a van (on overtime rates, because to check lighting it has to be dark!) around the borough, visually checking street lights!

Reviewing all fees and charges, means all fee and charges will go up!

And finally, to reduce the winter gritting programme to only cover priority routes. Well that all depends on whose priority they mean!

Personally, simply stopping wasting money on ego boosting vanity projects like the killing of Hyde Market by throwing £1.3million reducing the market to a mere handful of stalls, might go along way. 

Also, wasting £36,000 on a virtual Town hall’ which had to be scrapped! Or the totally unnecessary insistence, on moving of a War Memorial 35metres costing another £75,000 and in spite of massive local resistance.

Then there's spending £14million on a low priority road to nowhere and another £1800 entering the council’s Northern Bypass road scheme for initial consideration for recognition in the Considerate Constructor Award scheme! Not to mention the extra cost of sending God knows how many dignitaries to the awards gala dinner!

In fact it makes one wonder if the council has any feelings at all for the town of Ashton; there can’t be many towns in the country whose council seems so desperate to keep people out of the town centre that they are not only contemplating selling off the central car parks, but they have now built 2 bypasses to encourage travellers to circumvent our shops and keep on going to other towns!

But, despite these newly announced cuts to services, they announced last week that they are spending £4.5million reducing the amount of stalls, remodelling the market square and building themselves a state-of-the-art new council office block, to which, I feel sure, people will flock to from miles!

Our Labour councillors seem to have a very weird idea of us all being in this together! - God help us!