Archive for October 9th, 2008

Yellow School Buses – Deliberate Deception

Published by Iain on October 9, 2008 in Greater Manchester and Salford. 0 Comments

Important as they are, I never thought I’d be writing repeated posts about yellow school buses, but I think this issue is entirely symptomatic of the misleading way in which our Labour leaders have approached the TIF consultation and the information which has been put out to the public.

A week last Monday, GMPTE officers delivered a presentation to the Walkden & Little Hulton Community Committee about the TIF bid. I have a copy of the presentation and I’ve read it carefully. Here’s what it said about yellow school buses:

In case the image isn’t working, that’s “up to 29 yellow school buses by 2018″.

Now, and credit to David Ottewell for this, we can now see where that figure of 29 came from:

So, when local residents are told that “up to 29 yellow schools buses” will be included with the TIF package by 2018, we can now see that this is manifestly not true. Of those 29 yellow buses,

  • 1 already exists
  • 9 are being provided by regional funding (RFA)
  • of the remaining 19, some will be provided from TIF funds and some will be provided from “local funds” (LTP – ie, the Council taxpayer), but we don’t know how many.

So local residents in Salford are being told that up to 29 yellow school buses would be provided through TIF when the actual number is likely to be no more than 10 or 12. This is a shamefully misleading use of figures and local residents should be appalled that their money is being spent on such dreadful propaganda.

Twitter Feed

Published by Iain on October 9, 2008 in Site News. 0 Comments

Eagled-eyed readers may have already noticed the Twitter feed which has appeared at the top of the right-hand sidebar. This means I’ll be able to give quick – and quicker - updates when I’m out and about at meetings or at events in the local area.

This will be in additional to my regular posts, so do keep an eye out for the updates!

City West Transfer Takes Place

Published by Iain on October 9, 2008 in Salford and Walkden. 0 Comments

Following last week’s delay, I was pleased to learn that the Council housing stock in west Salford was successfully transferred to City West Housing Trust late on Monday night. This is good news – any further delay would have seen the postponement of improvements for tenants and would have been financially catastrophic for the Council.

Contact details for City West can be found on their website. Local residents in Walkden who wish to contact City West locally can call the Walkden office on 0161 605 7210.

The stock transfer brings to an end my time as a board member of New Prospect Housing. I was appointed to the board in December 2004 and I’d like to thank everyone I’ve worked with during that time – and especially John Rogerson and Steve Sheridan as Chairs of the board – for their help and support.