IT IS LIKE GIVING MACHINE GUNS TO MONKEYS!

"Just give us the money!"

Tameside council Leader, Kieran Quinn; writing of his support for the devolution of powers from Westminster to Greater Manchester, left me with mixed feelings.

For those who may have missed it, the agreement signed by the 10 Greater Manchester leaders and the Chancellor marks the start of an historical shift of devolved power and resources from Central Government, to the regions.

Now this shift in power from Whitehall to our Town Halls may well help to create more jobs, deliver more homes and improve our transport networks, but one must remember in whose hands all this extra power and money is to be placed.

Currently, the combined authorities’ agreement amounts to around an additional £1 billion. But, as Cllr Quinn puts it, “The ultimate prize as far as he and the other Greater Manchester leaders are concerned is to take responsibility of the annual budget of a £22 billion budget of public expenditure in the city region.”

In his ‘Executive Leaders’ blog,(http://www.tameside.gov.uk/blog/leader/) he opened with a pretty innumerate start when he told us that he had been arguing the case for devolution (with successive governments) for some 30 years  However, and to illustrate my point, I find his statement rather worrying and confusing!

According to the councils own website, Cllr Quinn has only been a council member since 1994. Therefore he’s either got his sums wrong, (again) or he was calling for the devolution of political power in 1984, some 10 years before becoming a Tameside councillor and presumably employed as a humble postman; which begs another question, given his apparent penchant to up every figure he quotes by a factor of 10; just how he managed to get the post to the right addresses and perhaps more importantly how effective he must be currently as both chair of Greater Manchester Pension Fund, and the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum?

One only need examine the current council’s track record under the leadership of Cllr Quinn, who seems to have developed an aptitude for struggling with figures and dates, to see various examples where they have wasted millions of pounds of our money on ridiculous vanity schemes. So the very idea of letting these people get their greasy mitts on billions of pounds, should make every taxpayer in Tameside quake with trepidation.

Bronze statues of Banana's,
Christmas Market selling Banana's
A new Town Hall made of Banana's
A Banana Republic...
Tameside, totally Banana's

Just imagine a proportion of £22 billion in the hands of our current crop of career councillors, who less than 30% of the population of Tameside have put in office; and say, hand on heart that you’d trust them to reach into our pockets and use our money in the manner we would find acceptable.

Power in the hands of those who have never had power or responsibilities in their lives often develops into despotism when the leaders conclude that they, and only they, know what’s best for their constituents. There is no longer - we want to hear your views, no more give and take; there is only a follow orders mentality.

It is like giving machine guns to monkeys!