There’s just two days left to vote in the Total Politics Blog Poll 2009. It would be an honour for this website to get your support! Here’s how you vote…
1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and rank them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include ten blogs. If you include fewer than ten your vote will not count.
2. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
3. Only vote once.
4. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible.
5. Anonymous votes will not count. You must give a name
6. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2009. Any votes received after that date will not count.
I’m still mulling over my own top ten. It would be great if you could include my blog in your countdown…
Last night I attended the Eccles Community Committee meeting at the Eccles Gateway centre. It was extremely well attended with community representatives and local residents from across Eccles all making their points known.
We had a couple of very interesting presentations on regeneration, with one on efforts to improve Eccles town centre and a second on the Patricroft bridge area. We also had an excellent presentation from the Friends of Eccles Station (FRECCLES) about their hopes for improving the station gateway and getting more people to use the station. They are doing a great job and I fully support their aims.
The debate on the station turned to the problems with disabled access. Eccles, like most Salford stations (including my own local Walkden station), is completely inaccessible for wheelchair users and very difficult for anyone with even the slightest of mobility problems. I know that FOWS and FRECCLES have both been campaigning on this issue and I hope that progress is made very quickly.
(What many people do not know is that Northern Rail provide a taxi service for disabled passengers who wish to travel from inaccessible stations. Click here for more details.)
The Council’s electoral services department are currently conducting their annual review into the polling stations across Salford. If you are not happy with the location of your polling station, please e-mail elections@salford.gov.uk with your suggestions.
This evening I attended the Walkden & Little Hulton Community Committee at the SureStart Children’s Centre in Little Hulton. The agenda was relatively light, and the meeting would have been over very quickly but for a delegation of residents from Granville Street in Walkden.
The residents are (rightly) concerned about the impact of the proposed changes to the Tesco car park on their quality of life. At the moment, there is a substantial grassed area with trees between the Granville Street houses and the car park, but this would be removed under the new proposals which are currently lodged with the planning department.
I agree that this would have an unacceptable impact on their quality of life and I hope that agreement can be reached with the site owners to retain this green area.
I also raised the issue of litter. Under the plans, McDonalds will be resited nearer to the centre of the car park and this provides an opportunity for the planners to get tougher with McDonalds over the litter that emanates from their store and causes problems for residents on Granville Street and High Street.
I am broadly supportive of the remainder of the proposals, which involves changes to the traffic layout with new access on Ashton Field Drive and the removal of the High Street access road which is a horrible junction. However, the residents on Granville Street are right about the effect that the changes would have on their properties and a compromise should be reached.
Just got back from a productive meeting of the Walkden & Little Hulton Devolved Highways group. We have approved schemes suggested by residents for:
- Restricting rat-running on Peel Lane in Little Hulton
- Resurfacing Hill Top Road in Walkden North which is a mess
- Introducing (aesthetically-pleasing) bollards on Walkden Road near Salford College, to reduce problems caused by parking at the College
We have also conditionally approved proposals for improved traffic management at the Cleggs Lane, Manchester Road and Armitage Avenue crossroads, subject to the final costs being within the scope of the Devolved Highways budget.
Some good news from the Rail and Metrolink Committee of GMITA, which on Friday approved in principle a proposal to restore Sunday rail services along the Walkden line from Manchester to Wigan. The proposal now goes to the bean-counters for approval, and I sincerely hope that room in the budget will be found to restore the service.
The restoration of Sunday services would provide a huge boost for local residents in Walkden and Swinton, and would be excellent value-for-money. I support the proposal wholeheartedly.
Finally a word of thanks to the Friends of Walkden Station who have worked tirelessly on this – without their energy and enthusiasm it is unlikely that Sunday services would be on the agenda at all. Well done.
David Ottewell has an interesting post on his blog about the possibility of an Elected Mayor for Greater Manchester:
It seems the government remains wedded to the idea of elected mayors. The Department for Communities and Local Government put out a major paper today outlining its plans to devolve more powers to individual councils and so-called ‘city-regions’ like Greater Manchester. It is being heralded by John Denham as ‘the biggest single transfer of power in a generation’.
I’ve not yet read the Government’s paper in detail, but I will do so with an open mind. Certainly it can only be preferable to the current situation whereby the Labour Council leaders across Greater Manchester roll over and let Sir Richard Leese (Manchester City Council leader) tell them what to do.
The net result of this, of course, is that our Council Tax in Salford is going to rise continually for decades, and our local road safety schemes are going to get slashed, so that Sir Richard’s Labour backbenchers can have Metrolink run through their wards in south Manchester. Meanwhile in Salford, our sole consolation is a useless white elephant scheme (the Leigh Guided Busway) which we don’t want anyway. Such a shame that our own Council Leader cannot stand up for Salford’s interest at AGMA.
Yesterday myself and two colleagues travelled to Norwich to lend a hand in the campaign for Thursday’s Norwich North by-election. It was a long trip but completely worthwhile.
£200m Down The Drain
Full marks to Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling who has uncovered the depressing fact that the Government has already poured over £200m of taxpayers’ cash down the drain on ID cards.
This is money we simply cannot afford. Nationally, the Government is committed to spending billions, and individuals will have to hand over £60 for a card – money hard-pressed local people simply should not have to spend.
It’s high time the whole barmy scheme was scrapped – and the next Conservative Government will do just that.