INCENTIVE [in-sen-tiv] noun

If you want to arrange a drinking session in a place that produces beer, then don’t for God’s sake ask a Tameside councillor for advice!

In the middle of March, Tameside council issued a Press Release in which Cllr Jim Fitzpatrick, Tameside Council’s first deputy, said: “At Tameside Council we are acutely aware of the pressures under which retailers have had to operate over the last six years. We are committed to reviving our town centres and have been working closely with town teams.”

So, what do they do? They craftily increase the Car Parking charges by 80% – from £1.00 to £1.80 for an hour - 5 to 10 minutes of which is spent queuing at the pay-station whilst people rummage around trying to find the right money, as NO CHANGE IS GIVEN; another way of screwing shoppers and visitors!

Next, in a bid to encourage residents to support their local traders, we have the announcement of a Loyalty scheme which the media reported as being ‘the brainchild' of Stalybridge councillor Claire Reynolds, - a strange claim considering the plethora of loyalty schemes featuring points or stamp collection requirements that have been around since the early 60’s!

Her suggestion being that these ‘points or stamps’ could then be cashed in for ‘rewards’ such as tickets to events or a free swim!

However, typical of Tameside council, they announce a scheme that on the face of it would appear to have merit, but as usual, the finances have not been thought through! No mention of how this scheme is to be paid for!

In the 60’s, Green Shield issued 1 stamp for every 6d spent with participating retailers. The equivalent today would be 1 stamp or loyalty point for every 50p spent.

In the 60’s, each book contained 1,280 stamps and to collect enough stamps to fill it, one would have to have spent £32.00.

To fill the equivalent of 1 book today you would have to spend £640.00.!

So, to get an adult ‘free swim’ in Tameside, normal cost: £5.10p you would need to spend £81.00. – That’s after you've just paid another 80p for the privilege of parking your car!

Now if our creatively challenged councillors think that is an incentive to visit Ashton, Hyde, Droylsden or Stalybridge, then they probably still believe in the tooth fairy and that the moon is made of cream cheese!

THEY LIVE AMONG US!

I often read the blog of Tameside council’s Executive Leader Kieran Quinn, not because I’m a fan, but I like to keep a watchful eye out for the first signs of madness; which someone said, was hairs growing on the palms of your hands. …The second sign is looking for them

However there are many types of mental imbalance; an example of which is here:

In his piece on Tameside’s 40^th Anniversary, Cllr Quinn waxed on about how in the 70’s local government was based on a Victorian template, and because of this, the nine towns of Tameside were at the very fringes of their own counties and felt neglected! – So, nothing has changed there then!

He also told us how ‘places like Ashton and Hyde struggled to get their voice heard among so many communities with which they had little in common’ ….. sounds familiar!

Of course, despite the fact that the borough has plenty to be proud of. He couldn't resist riding his favourite hobby-horse by reminding us how it has weathered some very stormy economic times during which society – and how indeed local government – has experienced a staggering amount of change. …Not noticed much change in the personnel who make-up the main body of the executive council!

So, having told us how proficient they are with our money, he then announces, that over the next few months the council will start the process of leaving its 34-year-old Ashton administrative complex so that the construction of a new, multi-million pound, smaller and energy-efficient building it will share with Tameside College and other partners can begin…. One can only hope they look after this new building better than they have the present one. Let’s be honest, we are surrounded by iconic buildings, some dating from the 15^th to the 18^th century, so, for a multi- million pound building to be condemned after a mere 34 years, should be a major concern to us all.

But the passage that made me fear the worst and one that must put a chill up the backbone of every Tameside resident was, “I don’t know what the next 40 years will bring, but I can assure you that that Tameside Council – and by that I mean all 57 members – will continue to serve you to the best of their abilities.”

My god! That must be the most dreaded sentence of the modern era! “I’m from Tameside council and I’m here to serve you for another 40 years!”

"Give us my our money back..."

…Now I don’t know about you, but the thought of a 115year old Jim Fitzpatrick, still spouting threats like “…Although taking people to court is always our last resort, we will not hesitate to do so if this is the only we can recover the money that has been fraudulently taken from us.”

Or an 100+ year old Ann Holland,
 Still refusing to apologize for

"You don't have to answer for me!"

wishing The late Baroness Thatcher permanent blindness, or the ghastly sight of an aging John (the Sherriff) Taylor riding at the head of his Labour posse, to instill voting suggestions into unsuspecting  townships, whilst still picking up doggy-doo’s in Dukinfield and opening his 43rd ‘successful’ yet financially disastrous Christmas Market, will send the ‘phone lines at The Samaritans into melt-down

"It's a shitty job, but someones got to do it!"

Personally speaking, I think rather than looking for hairs growing on the palms of our councillors hands, I suspect that ‘believing you can do no wrong and that you are perfect and others are very imperfect. Never questioning your judgment or feelings, and many variations thereof, could be considered a more accurate measure of madness!

BEFORE YOU VOTE, CONSIDER THIS…

Councils are responsible for providing local services and facilities. 

Your elected representatives, or councillors, are also supposed listen to your concerns and represent you at a local level. This system is known as local government.

Here in Tameside, your present council is responsible for all of the following areas:

·        

  Council housing

·         Education services

·         Electoral registration

·         Environmental health

·         Leisure and recreation facilities

·         Libraries

·         Local planning

·         Local transport

·         Parks and public places

·         Regulation of local business

·         Roads and footpaths

·         Social services

·         Waste and recycling                  

L                     
Look at the list above and give a mental mark out of ten how efficient you think our current councillors are at servicing, providing and maintaining those services.

Now consider that the vast majority of our current councillors have been administering these services for well over 35 years. Have they got better or worse?

Each councillor is elected for four years. However, Tameside council votes by thirds, this means that only a third of councillors are elected every year over a four year cycle (with no elections in the fourth year) this results in the fact that even if every councillor presently serving on the council is voted off in the upcoming election, the councils remaining two thirds will still rule the council!

True democracy is not just about ballot papers, it’s about inspiring people to take part in the democratic process.  The fact that the overwhelming majority of Tameside voters take no part whatsoever indicates not just a democratic deficit, but a disease at the heart of the ruling Labour council that acts as a barrier to their claims of representation.

People, please wake up!

Tameside’s current councillors don’t want you to vote!

Mass abstention encourages the current councillors to maintain the current state the borough is in – it serves these career councillors just fine, allowing them to claim a democratic mandate to keep on ruining our towns, whilst pursuing their own personal agendas.

To remove Tameside council from its existing political grip, it would take a minimum of 8 years!

This is not democracy!

Personally, I really don’t care which councillor or political party you vote for, but if we are to claim real democracy in Tameside, we must demand that the council changes the way we vote and that is that all of the councillors are elected every 4 years.

If they truly believed that the people of Tameside have voted them into office on merit, then they should have nothing to fear from a full council election every 4 years.

MONEY’S TOO TIGHT TO MENTION!

"Has anyone got a couple of AA batteries for my calculator?"

Hypocrisy is an attitude that appears to have been enthusiastically embraced by certain senior members of Tameside’s council.

More and more we read in our local papers, council press releases lecturing us about imposed financial prudency by people who would have us overlook their own monetary shortcomings.

Take this example, written by Tameside council leader, Kieran Quinn on his latest blog:

KQ: “One of Tameside Council’s most pressing duties is looking after the public money with which it is entrusted. During times as uncertain as the ones we are currently experiencing, it is vitally important that we not only spend that money wisely but also plan carefully for the future”

Now tell me how that statement squares with the Key Decision Notice passed by the Executive Cabinet regarding speculating over £291,000 on a 3 year Christmas Market?

The first paragraph reads:

The principle of a Christmas Market is to promote Ashton Town Centre as a Christmas shopping venue. It should be viewed as a long term commitment and even if successful in the early years it will still take several years to break even.

It continues:

The Strategic Planning and Capital Monitoring Panel on 1 July gave approval, subject to an appropriate Key Decision, for £69k capital funding and £97k revenue funding per year for 3 years (total £291k) for the scheme. After which a decision will need to be taken whether the Christmas Market should continue or not. As part of this, consideration should be given to the on-going financing of the Christmas Market.

On-going monitoring will need to take place to ensure the costs are kept within this allocated budget. It is proposed that the income from stall rental will be used to offset some of the events running costs.

Cabin rental charges for the first year of operation (2013) are set at £200 for the two week period with a £25 early bird discount to all applications received before 15 November 2013.

(4) The Deputy Executive Leader (John Taylor) will annually review and set the cabin rental price with a view to increasing rents to £275 for the duration of the 2014 event (with a £25 early bird discount) and £350 for the duration of the 2015 event (with a £25 early bird discount).

 (5) To implement the decision at (1) above, approval be given pursuant to Procurement Standing Order D.12(3) to accept the tender of New Image where fewer than three tenders have been received.*

So for an outlay of £291,000 the council expects an income of a measly £24,750

That, dear taxpayer is a loss of £266,250 (two hundred and sixty six thousand, two hundred and fifty pounds!)

If this is an example of how this Labour run council is ‘spending money wisely and planning carefully for the future' - then God help us!

AUSTERITY BRITAIN? …Not in Tameside!

This Labour council appears to have adopted a new approach to communicating unpopular decisions and obscure reasoning to the public: If something is black, they call it white. Say one thing; do the opposite, therefore it's much more instructive to pay attention to what our councillors do than to believe what they say.

I don’t know about you, but I'm getting rather fed-up of hearing austerity advice from the humble councillor from Globe Lane, who week on week, spouts his warnings that because of continuing cuts from central government, this service has to be cut; such and such has to be shelved and publicly owned property and assets must be sold off, whilst on the other hand he has furtively orchestrated to ring-fence, vast sums of money to fund the dubiously successful Ashton Christmas Market for the next 3 years!

So, despite Hyde, Stalybridge, Denton and the other towns barely getting enough funding to plug-in a set of festive light-bulbs to encourage their towns Christmas footfall; according to a ‘Key Decision Report’ passed in July 2013, approval was given for £69,000 of capital funding to buy the materials to build 30 Log Cabins and an additional £97,000 revenue funding, per year, for 3 years, to finance the scheme. That’s £291,000 of our council tax money that was never disclosed up-front! At that point it would seem that Cllr Taylor and the rest of the controlling cabinet had clearly forgotten the phrase ‘Austerity Britain’ and substituted it for ‘Opulence Unlimited’

So, when we are told that services are being chopped, lollipop ladies dispensed with and community assets sold off, it’s not because the council has no money. It’s because those whose job it is to seek out value for money, just haven’t got a clue on what is a priority! - Surely this example of extravagant speculative spending has to be one of the biggest manifestations of hypocrisy that has ever been played on the people of Tameside!

Why on earth was it necessary to build 30 cabins at £69,000 when the very same cabins could have been hired for £13,800? And once the 2 week rents had been offset, they would have only cost £7,800! – A figure that most people would find far more acceptable! In fact, at that price, the council could have held two week Christmas Markets in Ashton, Hyde, Stalybridge, Droylsden and Denton, and still had £30,000 left over for publicity!

Nothing is ever as it seems at Tameside Town Hall, because it's not what officials say that counts. It's what they do - or don't do

The only thing that is truly consistent with controlling councillors is that they're generally regarded by most people as untrustworthy and do the exact opposite of what they say. Nice work if you can get it. And once they've got it, history shows they hang on to it!

 A situation that won't change until there's a major clean-up of the double-speak that infects local politics.

THE MAN WHO CLEANED UP TOMBSTONE, sorry that should read TAMESIDE

The Man who shot Liberty in Tameside

Just as cowboy builders are the bane of the building industry, cowboy councillors must be the equivalent curse in local politics.

I found it strange then, that during last nights Full Council meeting,Tameside Council's Deputy leader, John Taylor described his party’s venture into the Wythenshawe Ward; where they’ circled their political waggons’ in order to get their candidate Michael Kane elected, as a posse who had ridden boldly into unknown territory, with himself leading the hastily sworn in mob, as their Sherriff!

Unfortunately for the analogy challenged councillor, the term ‘Cowboy’ when associated with builders, is simply another term for a rogue trader, who often possess little or no knowledge of building, so inevitably you end up with a botched job! – Obviously, the same therefore must go for cowboy councillors! Who ruin things for perfectly reputable councillors, and for all the talk about them; whether they be Sherriff or just one of the posse, they’re in the minority – it just happens to be the minority that gets all the publicity.

The only saving grace for two gun toting Taylor is the ever increasing regularity in which he shoots himself in the foot!

HOW MUCH?

"...Another few grand, we could have got Rent-a-Crowd!"

A couple of payments caught my eye the other day as I scanned Tameside council’s November & December 2013 payment archives.

The payments were to a company called New Image (Public Relations) Ltd; they were the company who were engaged by the council to run Ashton’s ‘successful’ 2013 Christmas Market event.

Item No. 5129366 for £56,752.50 and item No. 5132143 for £18,500 a total of £75,252.50

Now if these payments were paid to New Image to run the free entertainment, the free helter-skelter, free children’s swings, and security etc, then we must add this to the £69,500 the council put aside to buy the materials to build 30 pseudo ‘log-cabins’

 – that would mean that Ashton’s first Christmas Market cost the taxpayers of Tameside well over £144,752.50.

If this is not the case, perhaps Cllr John Taylor, (the man who has total responsibility for Markets) might like to explain why, in these cost-cutting times, just what the council are paying £75,252.50 to a Public Relations company anyway?

Given the timing of the rushed‘consultation’ where Cllr Taylor only wanted to hear views from ‘positive’ voices, I wonder if asked now; after all the hidden costs have been revealed; how many of those positive voices would vote to repeat this exorbitant exercise next Christmas?

Einstein said, if you keep repeating the same experiment in the same way and expect a different result, you must be mad.

Personally I prefer to quote José Maria de Eça de Queiroz, who said, “Politicians are like nappies - they should be changed regularly, and for the same reason.” 

Later today, we will once again be treated to the Leaders ‘Key-note speech’ where we will hear how much money has been cut from the council’s budget and therefore, how many ‘front line services’ will suffer and community assets sold off on the cheap, because of those inefficient politicians running central government. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear how much the council will need to increase the council tax again.

Just for once, wouldn’t it be nice if we heard that because of radical efficiencies the council are reducing our bills and giving the money back to ‘hard working families’

Dream On!