Cllr Iain Lindley’s Diary

Tomorrow (Saturday) is D-day for local Labour MPs Hazel Blears and Ian Stewart, as local party members in Salford & Eccles constituency decide which MP is the weakest link. As I commented earlier this week, the race looks to be going down to the wire. It will be interesting to see whether the Salford Labour Party has the guts to deselect a Cabinet Minister who has let our City down badly.

Salford taxpayers who had the misfortune of picking up today’s Manchester Evening News will be hiding behind the sofa after reading the front page story. I wish I could say I was surprised, but our £20m Philharmonic black hole is entirely indicative of the incompetence of our Labour-run administration.

Rather than run over the details again – please read both the MEN story and Cllr Ian MacDonald’s press release - I thought I’d give my own perspective on this story.

Opposition Councillors – and presumably Labour backbenchers as well - were very much kept in the dark about the orchestra sponsorship until the very last minute. It was presented as a fait accompli and we were asked for support. I stand by that support – I fully support the principle of bringing the Philharmonic to Salford.

Importantly, the Conservative opposition repeatedly asked for assurances that this sponsorship would not be coming out of the general Council taxpayers pot. We received those assurances on a number of occasions. The deal was signed, and it still stands. There is no backing out of the orchestra sponsorship – the Council has a contract with the BBC.

Now that the LABGI grant is not available we will still have to find the money – except out of the general pot which we were repeatedly assured would not be the case. The money for 2008/9 alone is worth nearly 3% on the Council Tax. I suspect most Salford residents could think of a few ways to spend £2 million. It could even have been used to reduce the tax burden on hard-working Salford residents.

Of course, it now transpires that the LABGI money was not secure at all. The Philharmonic deal was signed in September. I am very grateful to Neal Keeling and the MEN for pointing out that the first successful challenge to the LABGI formula was a full two months before that, in July. Councillor Merry and Councillor Hinds should have known this – and yet they carried on regardless.

I doubt that the residents of Salford will forgive such an example of monumental incompetence in a hurry.

I understand that the long awaited bout between Salford MP Hazel Blears and Eccles MP Ian Stewart for the Salford & Eccles constituency Labour nomination is now well underway. Postal ballots have been sent out, and the spoils will be awarded to the victor this coming Saturday, January 19th.

The conventional wisdom would tell everyone that as a cabinet minister, Hazel is going to walk the selection. Now, I’m sadly no expert on the internal processes of the Salford & Eccles Labour Party, but I suspect this selection contest will go right down to the wire. Being a senior party figure, Hazel should have all the advantages, but there are three things which may work against her, two of which are entirely her own fault.

1. Hazel is the Secretary of State for Local Government, and has just presided over the worst grant settlement for Salford City Council in decades. She’s also responsible for the decision to claw back the LABGI local authority new business rate grant which will have a catastrophic effect on the Council’s finances this year – more on that soon.
2. Her behaviour over the closure of the Maternity Unit at Hope Hospital – especially after the final announcement – was nothing short of appalling.
3. I have heard on the grapevine that the two wards in Hazel’s current Salford constituency with the highest Labour Party membership are Kersal and Broughton – and both have been hived off into the new Blackley & Broughton constituency.

One thing is for sure though, Ian Stewart has a lot more riding on this selection vote than Hazel Blears does. If Stewart does not succeed, his Commons career looks to be over. If Blears fails, it will be mightily embarassing to have a senior cabinet minister chucked out by her own party members, but she will be found a poor unsuspecting constituency into which she can be parachuted.

I caught the bus into town this evening for a drink with some Conservative colleagues, but the journey to Manchester did not go entirely to plan. In fact, I count myself lucky that I have not been injured.

My bus was progressing smoothly – and on time – until we reached the Langworthy Road area. I was listening to my iPod and reading a text message on my phone, so I wasn’t really paying attention to the world around me, until suddenly I was shaken by an almighty bang. I looked up and the outer pane of the window immediately next to me had shattered completely – fortunately the doubling glazing had held firm and the inner pane had held intact.

The bus window had been shot at – probably with a pellet air rifle or something similar. The point of impact was no more than a couple of feet from where I was sitting. If the shot had been even slightly more powerful, I would have been completely showered with glass, or myself or a fellow passenger could have been hit by the pellet itself. Even as it was, the shock could easily have brought on something much more serious like a panic attack or even a heart attack.

The bus driver was very calm. He’d seen it all before, which is in itself very worrying, and didn’t seem very confident that anyone would be brought to book for this sort of incident. He pulled over at Pendleton Church and all the passengers disembarked and boarded the next bus while he waited for the police. The passengers were all lovely and I was repeatedly asked if I was okay – as I had been sat nearest the impact. I checked to make sure that the police had been called and boarded the next bus with everyone else; after all I hadn’t seen anything more than the bus driver and couldn’t have even said where we were when the shot was fired.

If this is a regular occurance – and the bus driver’s attitude indicated that it had happened before – then it is only a matter of time before some gets seriously injured in a similar incident. Innocent passengers could easily be killed, blinded or maimed by a stray pellet, and whichever yob decided that using a bus for target practice clearly has no regard whatsoever for anyone other than himself. I’ve had a very lucky escape, the next bus might not be so fortunate.