On Thursday evening, the Manchester Climate Forum are hosting an interesting debate entitled “the 3 billion quid question” about the TIF bid and congestion charging. You can find out more information here.
Panellists include representatives from the Greater Manchester Momentum Group, United City, Clean Air Now and the Campaign for Free Public Transport. There’s also a Councillor from GMPTA speaking in a personal capacity. Unsurprisingly, given that the Manchester Labour Group - and Sir Richard Leese in particular - seem to think they have a devine right to speak for the whole of Greater Manchester (and the Manchester Evening News is happy to give them that platform) this is a Manchester Labour Councillor.
The meeting will run from 7.30pm to 9.20pm at the Friends Meeting House, 6 Mount Street, Manchester. It’s free and open to all, although I understand that there may be a collection tin to contribute towards organisation costs.
I’ve had glossy leaflets fall out of my Manchester Evening News. There’s an expensive-looking website. There are adverts in the local media. Now, I can’t even log on to Facebook without finding taxpayer-funded congestion charge propaganda!
So how much is all this fancy advertising costing hard-working local residents in Salford and across Greater Manchester?
The front page story in today’s Manchester Evening News shows exactly whose interests Greater Manchester’s Labour Councillors put first - and it certainly isn’t the people they are elected to serve:
PRO-CONGESTION charge councillors are planning to build themselves a private underground car park in the city centre. Senior Labour councillors - who are backing the toll in exchange for a massive expansion of public transport - want to tunnel next to the town hall to provide spaces for the 96 elected members, a handful of top officials and approved visitors.
Ironically the car park bunker, under the Peace Gardens, would be only a few yards from one of Manchester’s main tram stops in St Peter’s Square. The scheme is part of a £150m plan to carry out urgent repairs to Central Library and the town hall complex.
Actually, I dispute the last sentence. The underground car park has little relevence to the (clearly long-overdue) renovation of the Central Library. It is beyond contempt that the Manchester Labour Councillors thought they could bury details of their self-interested crackpot car-park plan as part of the Central Library documents in the hope that nobody would notice. Well done to David Ottewell’s eagle-eyes.
Incidentally, on a related note, is anyone else a little disappointed at the disproportionate coverage that Sir Richard Leese’s regular pronouncements about the TIF bid receive? He is, after all, just one of ten Council Leaders that make up the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA) who have submitted the bid. He’s not even the leader - that’s Peter Smith from Wigan.
The other day I received an e-mail from Manchester Confidential entitled “Exclusive: Sir Howard Bernstein wants your questions on Congestion Charging“. The article in question can be found here.
I’m intrigued and also very concerned by this. Sir Howard is one of only a handful of Local Government officers to have a media profile of his own, but at the end of the day he is still an officer - albeit a very senior one - and he will find it almost impossible to take questions from allcomers about what is probably the number one political hot potato in Greater Manchester without himself stepping into the political sphere.
This makes for a very uncomfortable precedent. It is the politicians who make the decisions and they ought to be the ones up on the platform defending and explaining those decisions.
I had an excellent weekend in Chester and I’m very grateful to my friends and colleagues in Cheshire and the Wirral CF for organising an excellent dinner on Saturday night. Despite being one of the most in-demand politicians around just at the moment, Edward Timpson MP had agreed to be the guest speaker and gave an excellent speech.
This week there is a Council meeting on Wednesday where we are discussing whether to agree with the new AGMA Constitution. AGMA is the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities and exists to partially fill the void left by the abolition of the old Greater Manchester County Council many years ago.
I’m sceptical of the benefits of the new constitution - which will effectively concentrate power in fewer hands (and appointed hands at that) - but we’re having a presentation and full morning’s discussion on the issues so I will be listening attentively before making up my mind.
If (as I fear) the proposed arrangements remove power up from Councils rather than down from regional quangos, and take the decision-making process a further step away from the electorate, then I will find the new constitution impossible to support.
I’m interested to hear what debate has taken place in other Greater Manchester boroughs on this issue - please do leave your comments!
Normally you wouldn’t expect the Manchester Evening News to splash big stories across their Saturday edition, but today there are two very big stories for local residents in Salford:
I’ll be commenting in more detail on both stories later today tomorrow.
Where do you find Greater Manchester politicos - press and politicians alike - on their Sunday off? Having read David Ottewell’s blog, clearly the answer is at the cricket, although I found myself amongst a different section of the barmy army on the other side of the ground.
I can’t agree with David on one point though:
Anyway, I bet Gordon Brown wishes he’d been there. Not because he’s any great cricket fan, but because England’s win might have restored his faith in miracle come-backs.
As Guido would doubtless agree, if Brown had been in attendance then England would clearly have lost!
David Ottewell has published an interesting article about Greater Manchester-wide vote shares in today’s Manchester Evening News. It’s also available in handy bar-chart form on his blog.
Rather makes a mockery of the Labour and Liberal Democrat spin about Conservative performance in the north and Greater Manchester in particular.
A Good Week To Be A Burglar
Iain Dale has an interesting post about the policing of Party Conferences. The costs do seem to be obscene, and I’m not looking forward to most of City Centre Manchester being fenced off again - as happened two years ago when the Labour Conference last came to town. Of more concern to local residents, however, is the effect that these Conferences have on local policing.
When Manchester last held a major political Conference (the aforementioned Labour Conference in September 2006) I asked in Council about the effect the Conference policing would have on neighbourhood policing. I was assured that it would not have an impact - only for many of our officers (including the neighbourhood inspector) to be dragged into Manchester to preside over the Conference. I remember we had a community meeting that at which the police were due to give an update to local residents and not one officer was available to attend even for half an hour to talk to residents. The assurances were worthless and residents lost their local police officers to fortress MICC. Definitely a good week to be a burglar.
I hope things are better planned for the Labour Conference this year and of course the Conservative Conference in autumn 2009.