Yesterday afternoon I attended The Salford Garden Party at the Civic Centre in Swinton. This annual event is designed to promote, amongst other things, the services Salford City Council has to offer it’s residents. As someone interested in local politics, the highlight of the Garden Party is “The Big Ask”, where ordinary people like you and me have the opportunity to question our city’s councillors and leaders on, well, pretty much anything we like.

Last year I attended and queried Councillor Merry on my pet hate of potholes, but my intention was simply to listen this year – since I’m hoping in the not too distant future, I’ll be the one answering the questions.

While this year’s questions covered a wide range of topics, all night I’ve been struggling with Derek Antrobus’ answer to one posed regarding the council’s decision to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on the Christmas Ice Rink. When asked, Councillor Antrobus defended the near-£200,000 spend on a month’s worth of subsidised ice-skating by stating it provided youngsters something to do and was a healthy activity.

Yet the Council had the opportunity to continue to fund free swimming beyond 29^th August for under-17s at an annual cost to the city of almost £200,000 (Since free swimming was introduced in Salford there were over 150,000 visits to pools by young people. The government grant for free swimming for 2009/10 was £196,287 – source Salford Star). In fact, the free swimming government grant ended on 31^st July and Salford Council decided to fund it for a further month (until the end of the summer holidays), so they clearly understood the long term value of free swimming for young people.

So, Councillor Antrobus, your argument for supporting the Ice Rink for a few weeks of “exercise and something to do” doesn’t quite stack up when the same money could have been spent providing free swimming for an entire year for those same youngsters. Perhaps the flashy ice rink with it’s stays-on-all-day-and-all-night lighting ticks more marketing check-boxes than free swimming for non-voters?

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a letter to the Salford Advertiser’s “readers’ viewpoint” page in reponse to Blackley & Broughton MP Graham Stringer’s column. It was printed in this week’s edition (albeit edited down to the required 300 words), but unfortunately the Editor has decided not to attribute the letter to me, even though I provided my name, address and permission to print both.

Here is the complete unexpurgated response to Graham Stringer’s column on the Alternative Vote:

I was astonished to read Graham Stringer’s column in last week’s Advertiser (Thursday 29^th July) where he announced he would be voting against the introduction of the Alternative Vote (AV) in next year’s referendum.

In this year’s general election, Mr Stringer’s party campaigned on a manifesto pledge to introduce AV immediately and then later to hold a referendum on Proportional Representation. Clearly, this promise was an act of political opportunism, designed to facilitate a coalition deal with the Liberal Democrats in the event of a hung Parliament. No wonder Mr Stringer’s party are so bitter about the outcome.

Labour was the only party to make such a pledge yet, as a party, they are now vehemently against the policy. Then again, the Labour Party has never been particularly fastidious about observing manifesto pledges. One example was its promise at the 2005 general election to hold a national referendum on the new EU constitution, only to abandon the idea once safely re-elected. That act of calculated cynicism is about to be replicated, once again on a major constitutional issue.

Mr Stringer and his party accuse the coalition of ‘gerrymandering’, a word which in the past has been used to describe how the voting system has been used to exclude Catholics in Northern Ireland, or black and poor people in the United States, from exercising their rights. The accusation is one of the most serious any party can make as it is tantamount to an accusation of electoral corruption.

AV is not wrong or illegal nor is it less proportionate than our current first past the post system. Indeed AV is used all over the world in such countries as Australia, Ireland, Scotland and even some American Mayoral elections use the AV system. Nor is it wrong to adjust constituency boundaries which, at present, only benefit Labour (possibly to the tune of an extra 5-7% of votes). The truth of the matter is that Labour is keen to protect an electoral system that favours large parties and disenfranchises voters, they are also keen to protect the current constitutional boundaries that favour Labour.

In trying to explain his position Mr Stringer has taken Winston Churchill’s comments about democracy and misused them, I believe because he did not understand what Churchill was saying: progress is good and if you don’t change or develop then you’ll never have a better system of democracy. Churchill did not say that what comes later is worse; he said that whatever comes after is an improvement.

Finally, in his column, Mr Stringer drew attention to some 3.5 million potential voters that are unregistered in this country and stated that some of those people are unlikely to vote Conservative, implying some sort of conspiracy. Two things occurred to me when I read this most ridiculous comment: firstly, unless Mr Stringer has developed telepathic powers, he has no idea how those 3.5 million people would be likely to vote; secondly, if those 3.5 million people are so unlikely to vote Conservative why, after thirteen years of government, didn’t Mr Stringer’s party do more to ensure that they were registered to vote? Furthermore, none of the proposed changes will prevent these 3.5 million people from registering to vote in the future, making Mr Stringer’s comments all the more ridiculous.

But why would I expect a fair debate and accurate information from someone who denies the existence of dyslexia, a condition which is very real to the 6m dyslexia sufferers in the UK today? That Mr Stringer denies the existence of dyslexia, which affects 10% of his constituents, is not that surprising when you consider he denies that AV and PR are fairer voting systems that would ensure more electors’ votes count in an election.

I have written to my own MP, Hazel Blears, asking her to support AV in next year’s referendum and urge Mr Stringer to stop thinking about himself and vote with his conscience, for the benefit of those he claims to represent.

It seems that buildings are falling down all over Salford. If the council aren’t tearing them down in the name of “regeneration” then council-owned buildings are falling down, due to poor maintenance (or lack thereof). Case in point, a row of shops on Liverpool Street in Langworthy (adjacent to Seedley Primary School).

The shops have been vacant for many years and the council has been unable to let them, latterly because they have been uninhabitable. The picture above (taken courtesy of Google Streetview) is by my reckoning at least a couple of years old, and you can see how bad things were then.

So it should not have come as a total surprise yesterday morning when I arrived home from my night shift at 7am to see a pile of bricks strewn across the pavement and road. I was far too tired after a 10hr shift which started at 9.30pm the previous day to stop and take a picture, but as soon as I arrived home I made sure there was a message waiting for Lib Dem Langworthy Councillor Lynn Drake.

Thanks to Lynn’s efforts, by 9am the council had inspected and now it looks like some of the block is to be demolished.

This pathetic way than Salford Council have of handling their extensive property portfolio so annoys me. They seem to have no understanding that these building are assets, not problems to be ignored (and then finally destroyed when their failure to maintain them results in a collapse).

Do the council not realise that as well as the financial cost of ignoring building maintenance there is the personal cost to residents? Neighbours of mine could have been injured or possibly killed if the building had collapsed if someone was walking by at that moment. I would not even like to speculate on how many rats are probably inside the end building, which as I mentioned, is next door to Seedley Primary School.

I hope that the council will move quickly to solve this problem – both the short term and long term needs of the site. Let’s remember, if this building had been in private hands, surely Salford Council themselves would have begun legal action to force the owner to make the building safe and secure.

While I note Salford’s Labour council is supporting the evil empire that is Tesco on their application to build a new store on Fitzwarren Street in Pendleton, they seem to have completely forgotten about the little shops.

Or maybe they just don’t care for the small businessman?

It’s been a bad week for Children in Salford. At the start of the week, St. James RC Primary School in Pendleton was the subject of an arson attack, which saw the roof severely damaged – but thanks to the quick response and bravery of local firefighters, the damage was contained and valuable equipment and school work was saved.

On Thursday, the Salford Advertiser & Manchester Evening News broke the story that I had feared could happen again. Earlier in May of this year, OfSted inspected Salford’s Childrens Services and it seems the report is going to, once again, rate the service as inadequate.

This is the second time Salford’s Childrens Services has been rated inadquate by OfSted, both times under the stewardship of Langworthy Councillor John Warmisham. After the last inadequate rating, the council gave undertakings to the government it would improve the service (and briefly it did). Now, if the MEN article is correct, the council’s efforts have failed and our looked-after children are once again at risk.

I call on our new coalition government to take decisive action and step in to take control of Salford’s Childrens Services and rescue things before another, inevitable, death occurs. I do not want another Demi-Leigh Mahon case hitting the Advertiser’s front page – but it’s obvious to me that Salford Council cannot be trusted to take care of our children at the moment. The department needs radical overhaul – I do not know what that means in terms of staffing, Jill Baker (former strategic director of Childrens Services) was sacked, Chief Executive Barbara Spicer took over temporarily and then handed the reigns over to Jill Baker’s former deputy, Nick Page.

Further, if the Salford Labour cabinet will not take former Lead Member for Childrens Services John Warmisham to task,then I would hope that local Conservatives and Salford Liberal Democrats can come together to push for a full investigation into what has gone wrong.

As I look across my road to the newly-built Willow Tree Primary school due to open in September, I worry what will happen to those children that didn’t make it into the new school (because it is too small to occupy all the pupils who currently learn at the four schools it replaces). I worry about how our looked-after children are cared for in Salford Council’s childrens homes.

And I fear for Adult Social Care, John Warmisham’s new post in the cabinet. After the disasters he has left behind him at Childrens Services and Housing before that, things do not bode well for Salford’s older people.

At around 1.30am last night/this morning, I was awoken from a sound sleep by an almighty crash from outside. It’s the kind of sound you know is so, so, wrong. On examining the scene it became clear that a Toyota had hit the metal barrier opposite my house, chopped a concrete post in half, lost it’s bumper, rode up the barrier and then buried itself into my neighbours Clio – writing both cars off.

How the car hasn’t flipped onto it’s roof or smashed into my own car, I will never know. How the occupants survived the incident, only they know that.

For far too long we’ve had to put up with heavy traffic on Seedley Park Road, if it’s not the heavy goods vehicles delivering materials to the new Willow Tree Primary School currently undergoing construction a few yards from my house, it’s speeding ‘boy racers’ who see my street as a race track and speed bumps as nothing more than a challenge.

The junction outside my house is a nightmare. Clearly, the design looked great on a piece of paper, but in the real world – it just does not work. Anything larger than a family saloon car must drive onto the wrong side of the road to turn right, lest they hit the illuminated barrier in the middle of the road. Most of the HGVs that turn from Glendinning Street onto Seedley Park Road, block the road trying to make it around the tight corner (whilst performing the manouvre on the wrong side of the road).

Everyone survived last night’s accident, but how long before a speeding car or HGV kills a child on Seedley Park Road? I worry it could happen.

That’s why over the next few days you will see me at your door, calling on my neighbours to sign a petition which I intend to present at the next council meeting. I am asking for a weight restriction to be put in place on Seedley Park Road and Lower Seedley Road and I’ll be looking for highways to try and help prevent incidents such as the one last night from costing lives.

Last night I attended our first Ordsall & Langworthy Community Committee meeting since the election. From a representative point of view, nothing has changed. All 6 Ordsall & Langworthy councillors remain the same (since neither of the 2 up for re-election lost their seats) and our first point of business was to elect our community committee chairman, who also retained his position. Congratulations to Roy Marsh, he guides us through the busy agenda with a good degree of skill.

It has always slightly annoyed me that as a mere resident, representing no one group, while my voice can be heard along with all of the others in the room when it comes to discussing topics on the agenda – I do not have a vote when it comes to making community committee decisions. The rule is: you must be a ‘member’ of the committee to vote. Membership is open to elected members (I tried so hard!) and representatives of residents associations and other partner groups.

Therefore I was extremely upset and annoyed when the next agenda item for consideration by the community committee was the ‘approval of a decision to lock Chimney Pot Park from dawn until dusk’. After a lengthy, but thorough consultation which involved the entire ward (and beyond), the overwhelming result of the public consultation was to close off Chimney Pot Park at night. Without going into the problems that troublemakers have caused by congregating in the park at night – the residents of CPP have, quite frankly, had enough of the anti-social behaviour brought about by a minority of idiots in the park after dark.

Residents want the park closed at night. Personally, I voted for the alternative option (which was to light the park instead), but I respect democracy. I respect the 68% of people who out-voted me. Why then, would the community committee want to ignore the 68%? Simply, they did not like the idea of locking a park at night.

With no thought to the people enduring a living hell, who have to live through the constant onslaught of stone and bricks thrown against their windows & cars from the elevated position of the park, the ‘voting members’ of the community committee decided to ignore a full and proper consultation – intending to overrule local residents wishes.

At this point I made an impassioned plea to the voting members to re-consider and think about the problems of the area and more importantly what the residents of CPP wanted. I’m afraid all I think I have achieved is to hold off the decision for a couple of months – since after some heated debate with a voting member from the Pendleton/Broadwalk area, it was decided to defer the decision until the next community committee meeting in July (where Neighbourhood Manager Ross Spanner will present a full report on the consultation, including actual numbers of people who responded).

It is my profound wish that Chimney Pot Park has re-established it’s residents association by the time of the next community committee meeting, since if they have, they would be entitled to vote on this very important matter.

I cannot fathom why we should (and do) allow people from outside the area make decisions in our area. The only two ward councillors who attended the meeting both live outside Langworthy, yet they were granted full voting rights. Members of residents associations from Pendleton and Islington Estate were also allowed to vote, yet I, someone who lives close by the park, was not. Nor was their anybody present from Chimney Pot Park itself to either speak or vote.

Voting members of the community committee should remember why they are there – to help make the area better for local people. They have a unique privilege in voting, and therefore a unique responsibility to think beyond what they want themselves and represent the unheard population who need their wishes and requirements met.

As I’m sure most readers of my blog are aware by now, I did not win in Langworthy, while I am obviously disappointed not to win, I offer my congratulations to John Warmisham. While I am sure John is pleased with his victory, I have every intention of continuing to fight for Langworthy and I’m very happy with my 1,211 votes (which was more than Lynn Drake polled in 2008 when she won here).

Further, I hope John joins me in thanking the electorate for a record turnout in Langworthy – I’d like to think that both the intensive Labour and Lib Dem campaigning in our ward over the last few months contributed to the fact that more local electors engaged in the process. I found it incredibly frustrating last year (when I stood in Irwell Riverside) that only 17% bothered to vote. Look at it this year, 43.5%. That’s great news for the city, I really hope we can maintain (and maybe improve on) these turnout figures.

Elsewhere across Salford, it was a disappointing night for the Liberal Democrats. We lost 2 seats (Mary Ferrer in Claremont and John Deas in Weaste & Seedley). Both were shocks for us, but it upsets me to think that the city has lost 2 really good councillors. Our two main targets of Swinton South and Langworthy saw us come close, but there are no prizes for second place!

If there is one saving grace for us, it is that our own data shows that, broadly, the local election results mirrored the general election results – which simply means electors voted in both elections wearing their “general election hats”. I firmly believe that in next year’s local elections, the trend will reverse somewhat and we’ll see voters thinking nothing but locally.

The Salford Liberal Democrats are here to stay. We’re a committed and great bunch of people who genuinely care about our city. We will be back.

Every weekend for the last few months the team has been meeting up at 10am and 2pm on both Saturday and Sunday as our campaign to get Norman Owen elected moved into top gear. There has also been the small matter of the council seats we are defending, plus several targets we are confident of stealing from under Labour’s noses.

It was therefore extremely pleasing this morning to see I had been beaten to the office by half the Salford Lib Dem team who were all raring to go – what was even more gratifying was the 4 new volunteers that came down to help the Langworthy and Ordsall campaigns. With only 5 days to go, I’d like to note the invaluable help of our 4 new helpers: Jane, Anthony, Andrew and Michael.

The extra help added the already dedicated team meant we were able to hit two entire wards today, with plenty already planned for tomorrow.

So, if anyone else can spare an hour of your time over the bank holiday weekend, please feel free to drop by the office at 10am and 2pm on both Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday, where you’ll find a dedicated team stuffing their bags with leaflets for delivery all across Salford.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Through my work with Unsworth Junior Football Club, I have received the following letter from Barnsley Football Club who are holding trials for all age groups (U7s thru to U15s) at the end of May. The trials are being held in Stockport and you MUST register in advance.

I have forwarded details of Barnsley Football Clubs Advanced Development
Centres, for whom we will be hosting trials over the coming weeks. The
information is provided below and there is also an attachment on which you
will have a players details form for players to fill out and bring along
with them to the trials. We are contacting all local football clubs, schools
and leagues to provide the information for the trials. We would ask that
this is passed to players whom you feel are at the standard required for the
development centre, or to players who would like to attend the trials. There
are no limitations on the amount of players from each club or school
provide, so if you would like to attend as a group, as the trials are open
to everyone you are more than welcome to do that.

One of the most important factors to note for players who are successful at
the trials is that, any player who is selected WILL NOT HAVE THEIR CLUB
COMMITMENTS AFFECTED IN ANY WAY. This means that players are able to play
for their local club as well as attend the development centre. The trials
are for players from under 7’s up to under 15’s, 2009/2010 season.

We do require all players to register for the trials so we know exactly how
many players to expect. You can do this by calling the number on the forms
or by emailing us at admin@elitedc.org . As a representative for a club or
school you can nominate a number of players together rather than all calling
or emailing individually.

Download the form here

Good luck !

Updates to my blog have been a bit thin on the ground lately, but the campaigning has not stopped! In between bunches of 11 hour shifts at work (including a night shift that screwed my body clock up for days after), leafletting/canvassing and attending the various hustings/debates with General Election candidates there has been little time for blogging.

Last night I set the Sky+ to record the Leader’s Debates and headed off to Irlam to lend my support to Richard Gadsden, the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Candidate for Worsley & Eccles South. Since most of our efforts are going into the Salford & Eccles campaign, where Norman Owen is likely to oust Hazel Blears – Richard hasn’t had the benefit of much support from the local party. In fact, Richard was leafletting in Swinton South yesterday morning! Therefore, I felt it only right that a couple of Lib Dem members stopped by to say hello and listen to the debate.

It was good to chat with Jackie Anderson and Pamela Welsh prior to the debate – both are to be applauded for their respective organisation and participation in the Irlam & Cadishead Question Time (which Jackie admits was inspired by the recent Seedley & Langworthy Question Time debates in Langworthy).

The subjects were varied and wide-ranging, from the obvious local environment issues, war in Iraq/Afghanistan, interational aid and even a question about “the 3 pillars of sustainability” (to which I admit, I had no idea what they were until I Googled them).

Richard showed he had a sound knowledge of Lib Dem policy and was able to articulate that into well spoken answers that I’m sure the audience could relate to, although I was dissapointed that Tory candidate Iain Lindley and Sale-based Worsley MP Barbara Keeley argued about leaflet lies and I still don’t know which of them is telling the truth about SureStart centres!

In any event, it was a good night for democracy and it was therefore fitting that Kat and I returned home to watch the Sky News Leaders Debate, which we had earlier set to record. One thing struck me as we watched, how similar the pre-prepared answers were of Iain Lindley and David Cameron. I was hoping that, like Richard Gadsden and Nick Clegg, politicians vying to be our future leaders would understand their party policies and articulate them in language that the audience could understand. But no, David Cameron and Iain Lindley had learned their manifestos parrot-fashion and felt it acceptable to reel it off, page by page.

Of course, at least Lindley, Gadsden and Keeley knew what their manifestos contained, unlike the UKIP candidate who, at times, seemed to desperately search his notes for answers (they weren’t there). The English Democrat representative was not much better – they were easily the poorest on the panel and well out of their depth.

Once again, a big thank you to Jackie Anderson for organising the Irlam & Cadishead Question Time and Salford Advertiser reporter Pamela Welsh for chairing the hustings. Next time Pamela, be more assertive