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Archive for December, 2007
If you are a Salford taxpayer, you won’t have enjoyed reading today’s story in the Manchester Evening News about next year’s budget:
CRUNCH talks will take place tomorrow over a looming financial crisis at Salford Council. The city is anticipating a £12m budget deficit when Whitehall announces later this week how much each local authority will get for the coming financial year.
Council leader John Merry insists it will not mean town hall cuts but tough “efficiency” savings. However, the Tory opposition have criticised the council for not making sufficient savings in previous years.
Since I was first elected to Salford City Council in 2004, my colleague Cllr Ian MacDonald has delivered three alternative budgets. Every year we have urged the Council to make efficiency savings and look at overstaffing, and every year we have been rebuffed by the ruling Labour Group who have continued to waste money as if it was going out of fashion. Last year, rather than look at genuine savings, the Council raided the reserves to prevent an inflation-busting Council Tax rise.
Now they have run out of options, but it will not be the Labour politicians who pay for the mess they have made. It will be the hard-working taxpayers in Salford who will have to fork out more for their Council Tax whilst suffering cuts in services.
Of course the Labour Government have not helped - they have piled extra responsibilities onto local councils without providing a funding base for those responsibilities - but the responsibility for the current financial mess lies firmly at the door of Council leader Cllr Merry and his predecessor Cllr Bill Hinds in his current role as lead member in charge of the budget. If Labour had accepted our alternative budget for the last three years, we would not have a looming black hole in the Council finances.
Tomorrow I have a meeting of the Budget Scrutiny Committee - which promises to be stormy. I’ll let you know how it goes.
The Bolton News have now picked up on Labour’s selection shambles in Bolton South East. There’s nothing on LabourHome though. Funny that.
BBC News North-West has just run a report on the Labour Party selection for the Bolton South East constituency, which is a stone’s throw up the road from here.
Apparently three local Labour Party branches have called for an investigation into the selection process, which concluded last August with the appointment of London-based barrister Yasmin Qureshi. Kevin Meagher, runner-up last year and (then) constituency Chairman, was filmed calling for the ballot to be re-run.
This is not the first time that a local Labour Party has run into selection ballot problems - Barbara Keeley’s victory over Ian Stewart for the nomination for the Worsley & Eccles South constituency was subject to a probe after complaints, and as a result Labour have still not chosen between Stewart and Hazel Blears for the new Salford & Eccles seat.
Ask Developments are a well-known Manchester-based property developer. In 2004 they made a sizeable donation to the Manchester Central Constituency Labour Party.
Today I popped into the Town Hall, and waiting in my pigeonhole was - amongst other things - a glossy colour photocopy of an article entitled “the true cost of congestion”. I assume it was left there by GMPTA Chairman Cllr Roger Jones, but I am happy to stand corrected if it was someone else.
The article is a standard puff-piece for congestion charging, and reads like it could quite easily have come from the pen of Sir Richard Leese. However, it wasn’t written by a politician - at least not a professional one. The author of the piece is one Ken Knott, Chief Executive of… Ask Developments.
Now, I assume that the reason articles like the one I refer to are merrily bandied around by the Labour Party is because it looks like independent and well-respected local businesses are in favour of the congestion charge. That is not the case here. Ken Knott is a Labour supporter and the company he leads has funnelled a substantial sum of money into the local Labour Party.
Don’t get me wrong, Mr Knott has every right to donate to the Labour Party, and he has every right to state his opinion. However, he is no more of a neutral commentator than any Councillor or MP, and local residents across Manchester should take his words with a sizeable sprinkling of salt.
This is my usual monthly round-up of where site visitors are coming from - of course it is worth noting that the majority of visitors come straight to this blog rather than “clicking through” somewhere else. Many thanks again to all the readers of this site and to everyone who has kindly linked to me.
Here are this month’s top ten referrers:
1. Google Search (-)
2. Live Search (+3)
3. Iain Dale’s Diary (re-entry)
4. ConservativeHome (-2)
5. Chris Paul (re-entry)
6. Vote UK Discussion Forum (-2)
7. Salford Conservatives (+3)
8. Yahoo Search (-2)
9. AOL Search (re-entry)
10. Facebook (-3)
Some significant changes this month, and PoliticalBetting, MyBlogLog and Tim Roll-Pickering have all lost their places in the top ten.
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