A few weeks ago I mentioned that Cllr Simon Renwick had asked me to guest blog on his own site. I’ve written a short piece on Planning Guidance for him and it has been published this morning – click here to read it.
Archive for January, 2009
The January meeting of the Little Hulton and Walkden Community Committee is taking place tonight. The meeting is at the Sure Start Children’s Centre on Longshaw Drive in Little Hulton and starts at 6pm.
All local residents are welcome and it is a good opportunity to ask questions of your local Councillors and Council officers – hope to see you there!
The Friends of Walkden Station have an excellent post on their weblog about Northern Rail’s Disabled People’s Protection Policy (DPPP). I know that access is a big issue for many passengers at Walkden and indeed other local stations.
Essentially Northern Rail are committed to providing a taxi service to the nearest available accessible station (Atherton) for local residents who are unable to climb the stairs at Walkden due to disability.
It was rightly pointed out at the last FOWS meeting that the more passengers at Walkden who do this, the better the case for Northern Rail, Network Rail and GMPTE to put forward the necessary funding to make access improvements.
It seems that Gordon Brown has this evening backed down over tomorrow’s vote on exempting MP expenses from the Freedom of Information Act. This is a welcome u-turn but the Labour Government have shown throughout this whole debacle that they will continue to trample on democracy when they feel that they can get away with it.
I’m appalled by the attempts to cover up MPs expenses. The public need to have trust in the political system and it is essential that our elected representatives are open and can be held to account.
As the Prospective Conservative MP for Worsley & Eccles South, I can assure local residents that if elected as their representative I will make sure that I will be an open, honest and accountable Member of Parliament.
I didn’t get chance to comment yesterday on the reshuffle of the Shadow Cabinet that David Cameron carried out yesterday, but I’m really pleased with the strong and focused team that the Conservatives now have.
I know that we’ve had some guff from Labour commentators about the return of Ken Clarke, but that only shows that Labour are worried about his appointment. I expect Mr Clarke to play a key role in ensuring that we return the Conservative Government that this country needs, and his new role only emphasises the unity and purpose of the Conservatives under David Cameron.
I’m particularly pleased about the promotion of Chris Grayling to his new role as Shadow Home Secretary.
Chris has been a good friend to Salford and to Salford Conservatives, and has made no less than three visits to the City in the past couple of years – he is pictured left on a fact-finding tour in February of last year. His visit in April last year was chronicled by Fraser Nelson in the Spectator.
Chris’s local knowledge of the Worsley area and Greater Manchester as a whole is excellent and I am sure that he will prove to be a fine appointment – I look forward to him making an excellent contribution as Shadow Home Secretary which will make a real difference to local residents in Worsley & Eccles South.
I was very sad to hear the news that Maureen Lea, Labour Councillor for Pendlebury ward, died early on Saturday morning. My thoughts are with her husband Bernard and her family and friends.
National bookmaker Ladbrokes are offering odds on individual seats at the next General Election. They’ve priced up Worsley & Eccles South this week and are offering 3/1 on a Conservative gain whenever the election comes.
This is a remarkably short price given that no part of the constituency has elected a Conservative MP in the post-war period, and it just emphasises that the race to elect a new MP for Worsley & Eccles South is a genuinely competitive one. We can win. The local communities which make up the new constituency can get real change if they vote for it.
Of course when local voters last went out to vote in a real election, they overwhelmingly chose the Conservatives. At the 2008 local elections Conservative candidates had a poll lead of 12% over Labour across the Worsley & Eccles South constituency, with the other parties trailing far behind.
Ladbrokes are offering 100/1 against a Liberal Democrat victory here. When the election comes, residents will have a clear choice between a local Conservative candidate and Gordon Brown’s Labour representative – a vote for anyone else will just help Labour get back in.
Regular readers will notice that I’ve started to make a few changes to the site. It’s very much a work in progress and I’ll have a more professional-looking banner in place soon. Please bear with me while I make the updates and if you have any suggestions for site improvements do let me know!
One of the many misconceptions that the Salford Labour Party has been happy to let spread over the past two years is that the provision of four Roman Catholic High Schools across the City of Salford is unsustainable.
Reference is often made to the closure of numerous RC Schools across the City in decades past. I wasn’t on the Council at the time to debate the rights and wrongs of those decisions, but what I do know is that they were taken against a very different demographic background to the one we face now – falling rolls and significant depopulation from inner-city Salford. For a graphic illustration, just look at the huge disparities in local government ward electorates in 2003, before the current boundaries were introduced.
That’s simply not the case any more. All four RC High Schools have relatively stable rolls and in the case of St George’s and St Ambrose Barlow are actually turning pupils away by the busload.
All four schools are perfectly financially viable as well. Indeed, we looked at school balances on Wednesday at Children’s Services Scrutiny Committee and all four RC High Schools are running a surplus and are projected to do continue to do so. St George’s, remarkably given the current situation, is one of only two schools in the City with an all-black balance sheet with no past deficits nor projected future deficits (the other is ICCHS).
Contrast that with some of the community schools which have built up socking great deficits – over £2 million at Harrop Fold and £1.5 million at Hope High before it closed (incidentally that money has been written off and all the other schools will have to take the hit – a scandal and injustice in itself).
Nor is the size of the respective schools a problem. One of the more spurious arguments put forward by the Labour Party for closing St George’s was the Government’s supposed reluctance to release BSF money for smaller-sized schools – yet All Hallows will now receive a full rebuild under the current proposals without increasing in size.
So the viability of St George’s or any other RC School is not in question. So I ask again, why do we need to close down a successful high school?
Commission On Transport In The North
I’m really pleased that William Hague has today launched the Conservative Commission On Transport In The North. This is a wide-ranging consultation on transport issues across the North of England, and a chance for local residents and community and passenger groups to influence the next Conservative Manifesto.
I will certainly be making a detailed submission and I urge you to do so too. You can find out more information on how to submit your comments at the Commission website – http://www.transportinthenorth.com/