Ed Balls, the man who is responsible for Britain’s economic mess, is back in the Labour shadow cabinet. Ed Balls isn’t just a deficit denier; he’s a deficit enthusiast.

It was Ed Balls who decided to let the bankers run riot and it was Ed Balls who ensured that our economy was unable to deal with any economic downturn.
Despite that he still refuses to accept that Labour made any mistakes on the economy. He’s not a deficit denier, he’s a deficit enthusiast.

Ed Balls on banks:

• ‘Nothing should be done to put at risk a light-touch, risk-based regulatory regime’ (Bloomberg Speech, 14 June 2006).
• ‘I believe we are right to avoid prescriptive, heavy-handed regulation in Britain’ (Balls, ibid.).
• ‘In my first speech as City Minister at Bloomberg in London, I argued that London’s success has been based on… light-touch principle-based regulation’ (Speech to The Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce and The British Chamber of Commerce, 13 September 2006).
• ‘It is important that the FSA continues to deliver a light-touch and risk-based regulatory approach’ (14 June 2006).
• ‘[The Labour government] will outlaw the imposition of any rules that might endanger the light-touch, risk-based regulatory regime that underpins London’s success.’ (13 September 2006).

But now:

• We should have ignored Tory and City claims that we were being too tough on financial regulation and been much tougher still. (Independent, 24 January 2011)

Yesterday Nick Clegg and Paul Burstow unveiled a new mental health strategy in which more focus will be placed on dealing with mental health problems at an early stage.

The new mental health strategy for England promises an extra £400m for therapies, such as counselling, to increase access to them by 60% by 2015. It also stresses the need for early intervention, to nip in the bud mental health problems in children.

Mental health represents 23% of burden of disease (30% of people that walk through a GP’s door, for example) but only 11% of expenditure. One of the first speeches Nick Clegg made on becoming Liberal Democrat leader was to highlight the state of mental health provision and accuse politicians of “shamefully” turning a blind eye to the scale of mental health problems.

Under Labour the top-down approach has ultimately denied many service users the personalised support they need.

Under measures announced today we will be investing around £400 million in talking therapies over the next four years:

·         an extra 1.2m people able to get treatment for depression and anxiety
·         0.5m more people will recover, many more showing measurable improvement
·         75,000 more people will be able to work, or take part in education, training or volunteering
·         and more than £700m in savings, in healthcare, tax and welfare gains.

Speaking yesterday morning on Daybreak, Nick Clegg said: “Today we are announcing that we are repealing an old-fashioned outdated law which means that MPs at the moment are disqualified from being MPs if they have a mental health problem which goes on for more than six months.

“We are scrapping that – it is a relatively symbolic thing because it has never been used – but it nonetheless shows that we are determined to root out that stigma.”

“Many people think that soldiers coming back from conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan, they have been so brave and so courageous, I think people think ‘Well, surely they are not susceptible to mental health problems’.

“But often, actually, the toughest battle for them is when they have actually come back from the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Paul Burstow youtube video can be seen here with more info available on the Lib Dem website here

Alastair Campbell blog: More Power to Clegg on Mental Health Agenda
Guardian: Children to be offered talking therapies
Sun: Sun wins £7m for Our Boys

Read More

The government are implementing a key Liberal Democrat manifesto pledge and changing the tax system to make it fairer, by lifting the poorest workers out of Income Tax altogether and cutting taxes for most people.

This April 880,000 workers will stop paying Income Tax when the lower threshold is raised from £6,475 to 7,475.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies says the tax changes will mean the richest tenth will lose around 3% more of their income and that the main winners from the 2011 tax changes will be lone parents who are not working, and low-to-middle income households.

The IFS report concluded that:

·         The main winners from the 2011 tax changes will be lone parents who are not working, and low-to-middle income households

·         For example a family with two children and one person earning £20k will be £530 better off

·         Those earning up to about £42.5k a year (including tax credit) will also be better off owing to the changes being introduced in April

·         The biggest losers are the very richest households owing to restrictions on the amount that can be contributed to a private pension. They have also been affected by the 50% income tax rate on earnings above £150,000 and withdrawal of the income tax personal allowance above £100,000

While Salford City Council started to publish a breakdown of their expenditure (more on this later), as per the coalition’s new initiative on transparent government, a council house rent rise three times the rate of inflation went largely un-noticed.

Salix Homes tenants will be faced with rent rises of around £4 per week, which may not sound much – but if you are a minimum wage worker or struggling to survive on benefits, it’s a significant rise.

The rent rise is doubly annoying when you look at how Salford Council spends your money – they bleat about government cuts, but the shear amount of wastage on ice rinks, proms in the park, sponsoring the BBC Philharmonic, management and consultancy fees has ended up costing the poorest people in our city a collosal amount in rent rises.

Perhaps then, it would be no surprise to learn that Salford Council spends more on management fees to Salix Homes (£12.3m) than it does on repairs of council homes managed by Salix (£11.6m). This, perhaps, explains why Salford Council predicts that by next year 60% of it’s council homes will not meet the Decent Homes Standard. According to the Government, ‘A decent home is one which is wind and weather tight, warm and has modern facilities.’  That’s around 5,500 homes that will not meet these basic of standards.

Our Labour-led Salford Council has it’s priorities wrong and nothing I have seen in 2011 is leading me to believe they are likely to change their ways. Times are tough and the council should not be wasting our money on frivolous projects (such as spending £750,000 moving 2 blue cranes up the road) and all the others I mentioned above.

It’s time for a change on Salford City Council.

I’ve always stood up for free, fair and unbiased reporting as I believe it’s one of the things that makes this country great. To stand up and speak the truth is, I think, a universal right. The Egyptian people are struggling with this same problem as we speak, their media’s right to free speech was quashed yesterday when the popular news network Al Jazeera was banned from broadcast.

So it with disdain that I read in our local paper, The Salford Advertiser, the week before last about how the Langworthy ward contained the most benefit claimants compared to the rest of Salford. Whilst this snippet of information is true, the article written by Salford Advertiser reporter Denise Evans was slanted (along with unhelpful comments from Langworthy Labour ward Councillor John Warmisham) to suggest that because Langworthy had the highest number of benefit claimants, they therefore must all be benefit cheats.

The Langworthy article was poorly constructed to sensationalise a statistic that exists purely because of the geographical and diverse community that we have in Langworthy, compared to say Worsley and Boothstown (which the article helpfully points out has the lowest benefit claimants).

My letter, which was published in last week’s Salford Advertiser readers viewpoints page, addressed some of the problems with the assumptions in the original article and I won’t repeat those words here.

Manchester Evening News

It was doubly disappointing to therefore read a Manchester Evening News article written by respected MEN reporter Pamela Welsh (see here), which is basically a government-bashing piece that shows the MEN is decidedly biased in it’s reporting.

To openly support an anti-government petition is surely beyond the remit of The Manchester Evening News – this goes beyond mere news reporting and comment; it is making the news itself.

Pamela Welsh and The Manchester Evening News should withdraw “support” for this petition and merely report on it. If they do not, I cannot take anything they write as the truth, but merely the opinion of an anti-community and anti-government mouthpiece.

Salford and Manchester’s free and fair local paper has died. RIP.

Back in November I wrote here about the cancellation of funding from the NWDA for phase II of the Quays Gateway Masterplan, which involved moving the old and disused Quays Cargo Cranes to the M602 roundabout and the construction of three key ‘supercrossings’ that would be built across Trafford Road directly in front of the new Oasis Academy at MediaCity:UK.

When the Manchester Evening News suggested that the whole plan had been scrapped, suddenly Salford Council came to the rescue and claimed the MEN had it all wrong (even forcing the paper to print a retraction and withdraw online versions of the articles) and that the Cranes had been saved after all. Salford Council generously offered to fund the continuation of phase II of the Quays Gateway Plan – minus the Trafford Road supercrossings.

A despicable plan has been hatched, and it would seem this plan was in motion as far back as November of last year when Ordsall & Langworthy Neighbourhood Officer Ross Spanner suggested that the community committee would have to consider funding the supercrossings from it’s road safety budget, following the withdrawal of funding from the NWDA.

So, in exactly 7 days time on January 11th (6.45pm), the Ordsall & Langworthy Committee will be asked to exhaust it’s road safety budget to pay for three supercrossings that Oasis Academy should have been forced to build as part of their planning application.

Further, if Salford Council can afford to fund the moving of 2 lumps of old, rusting metal to “pretty up” a roundabout but cannot fund essential life-saving supercrossings that would protect our children – they they have their sums wrong (at the very least their priorities).

I’m asking every resident of Langworthy if they think this is right. Please do your best to attend next week’s community committee meeting and send the council a message that we will not be manipulated in this way.

There are far too many road safety schemes that need the community committee’s attention to be exhausting our budget on a scheme that should have been paid for by Oasis Academy and could be paid for by Salford Council.

What do you think? Cranes or Crossings?

Blogging has been thin on the ground these last few months (a new year’s resolution may be in order to rectify that), but it seems that a new year has not brought a ‘new’ Labour. In fact, quite the opposite.

Nationally, we see Labour claiming the VAT rise is “the wrong tax at the wrong time” – and while I’m no fan of the VAT rise, I do remember Alistair Darling publicly discussing the need to bring in a rise of 19%. Just what would Labour have done if they’d won the election (or, god forbid participated in a coalition)? We’ll never know, Labour’s blank page is still waiting for a drop of ink.

Locally, Salford’s Labour are no better. The end of the year saw disaster after disaster: Salford Childrens Services being rated poor (the lowest possible rating), the previously excellent Adult Care suffered badly under the new stewardship of Langworthy Councillor John Warmisham and a dodgy land deal was done with Tesco.

The £4m under-the-counter “deposit” by Tesco as part-payment for land in Pendleton adjacent to the Precinct could be tantamount to a bribe, but to subsequently discover the land itself has probably been undervalued by possibly a further £10m suggests a return to the sinister and backhanded corruption that I personally always thought was the writings of  TV fiction.

I’ve submitted a Freedom of Information Request to attempt to find out which officers knew about the £4m payment and, if it’s even suggested anyone on the planning panel knew about this, I intend to report this whole sorry saga to the Council’s Standards Board.

Don’t for a minute think I am against the new Tesco at Pendleton, I’m not. But I am against council corruption.

This year, I’ll be standing as the Liberal Democrat candidate in May’s Salford Local Elections – where it’ll be my intention to route out corruption like this and expose the guilty. With more opposition councillors on the council, I’ll have more chance to reduce Labour’s waste and ensure we return our Adult Care & Childrens Services to the effective departments they have the potential to be.

I’ve just finished reading the latest Ofsted report on Salford’s Childrens Services and it doesn’t make pleasant reading. Regular viewers of my blog (or even those willing to try a casual search here for either ofsted or childrens services), will know that I’ve written often about this subject, none of it flattering to Salford Council.

As the last few years have gone by, Salfords Childrens Services has fallen from good, to adequate, inadequate and now poor (the lowest possible rating). We are at rock-bottom. Whilst it’s not all doom and gloom in the Ofsted report (for example it points out that the majority of our secondary schools are good or better at helping young people develop the knowledge and skills necessary to gain a job, that achievement of three to five year-olds has been above the average[s] for similar areas, the large majority of schools have good or better behaviour and more children and young people taking part in physical activities and sport), the ‘poor’ areas make difficult reading.

The Manchester Evening News reports that this year’s rating is worse than 2009, when it was rated ‘adequate’. But in fact, my blog readers may remember in June I wrote here about a scathing report from Ofsted which branded safeguarding services ‘inadequate’ for the second time in four years. This time, Inspectors said the council had still not taken ‘sufficiently robust action’ to improve its safeguarding services.  Safeguarding services monitor and provide support for children living in the community and deemed to be at risk from neglect or abuse.

In the June report, Ofsted found child-protection concerns were not properly identified or responded to quickly ‘leaving some children at potential risk’.  Caseloads of some social workers in the court and child protection team were too high.

And, as the Evening News reports, since August the department has been subject to a notice ordering it to improve – the government says it could take over running the department if there isn’t significant improvement by next month. I urged the government to step in and take control in my last blog post in June and today I repeat that call again.

Salford Council have had enough time to improve and have failed to do so.

So much has been written about Tuition Fees of late, it’s not surprising this bit of good news for pensioners hasn’t made it to any mainstream media. The state pension will rise for single people from next April, it was announced today.

Liberal Democrat Pensions Minister Steve Webb said the pension for a single person will rise by £4.50 to £102.15 a week.

Single people on the pensions credit would receive an above-earnings increase to their minimum guarantee of £4.75 to take their weekly income to £137.35.

For couples, the increase on their minimum guarantee would be £7.30, taking their new total to £209.70 a week, Steve Webb said in a Commons statement.

Steve Webb said the Government believed it was “right” to move to the consumer price index (CPI) for uprating additional state pensions, public and private pensions and social security benefits.

But he conceded: “I do acknowledge that over the long-term the CPI tends to rise more slowly than the RPI but the question of course is not which is the higher or lower number, it is which is the most appropriate way to track and measure the changes in average prices.

Mr Webb had earlier told MPs: “At a time when the nations’ finances are under severe pressure, this Government will be spending an extra £4.3 billion in 2011/12 to ensure that people are protected against cost of living increases.”

Dear Steve,

Today’s vote on Higher Education funding was one of the hardest things we have had to do in politics. I know that there are strong and passionately held views on all sides of the debate, which I very much respect.

And of course I understand why many in our party wish we could have pursued a different policy. I wish that too; but we simply were not in that position, we did not win the General Election but went into a coalition and had to tackle the greatest economic crisis in decades.

Within those constraints, Vince Cable and his team have put together a highly progressive package. We are ending the upfront fees for part-time students, increasing the repayment threshold from £15,000 to £21,000 – lowering every graduate’s monthly repayments, guaranteeing that poorer graduates pay less than they currently do and richer graduates more. Added to those progressive changes, a national scholarship fund has been setup to give further support to students from the poorest backgrounds as part of our fairness premium.

Taking all things into consideration, this is a package which is fairer than the existing situation, fairer than Lord Browne’s original review, fairer than the NUS proposals and fairer than the policies that both Labour and the Conservatives would have implemented had they been in government alone. And at the same time we are delivering on our front page manifesto commitment for a fully funded pupil premium – which will act as a huge driver of social mobility. That is something we can all take pride in.

Best Wishes

Nick Clegg MP
Leader of the Liberal Democrats and Deputy Prime Minister

It’s time once again to update the local community committee’s priorities for next year and we want to hear what you think. Last year our priorities ranged from Improving health and reducing crime all the way through to initiatives for investing in young people,  encouraging learning and creating prosperity.

You can email me your thoughts at steve@stevemiddleton.info, use the contact me page here or simply leave your comments below. Your comments can be anonymous if you wish, but I’ll make sure all suggestions are heard by the committee.

Back in late 2007 an idea was muted by council officers that Salford needed a shiny new “gateway” into the city that looked appealing, instead of the drab entrance to Salford that the M602 roundabout offered. With the news that MediaCity:UK was to happen, a £3m funding application was submitted to the North West Development Agency and the idea was born.

The programme was split into two phases, the first involving updates to lighting, subways, plaques and pedestrian crossings at the M602 and Broadway roundabouts, which many considered necessary due to the complete lack of maintenance by the council.

The second phase involved the relocation of the Quays Cargo Cranes from their current location at the head of Ontario Basin to the M602 Roundabout. Many Salfordians have often complained about the way the cranes have been allowed to rust and rot and a lot of people wanted to see them saved and restored. However, phase two came at the astronomical cost of £750,000. Personally, I was quite vocal about the plans, and many shared my view that £3m spent on prettying up a roundabout, carrying out repairs that should have been done anyway and moving 2 huge lumps of metal up Trafford Road did not present value for money. That money could have been better spent saving Hope Hospital’s Maternity Unit, our NHS drop-in centres, building schools big enough for the number of children or repairing our dilapidated roads and council-owned buildings.

Yesterday I learned that funding for phase 2 has been withdrawn. The official word is that phase 2 has not been “scrapped”, but essentially (other than what work has already started) the rest of the plans are very unlikely to go ahead.

Why blog about this? Well a small, almost insignificant part of phase 2 was the construction of three “super crossings”, aka wide pedestrian crossings at key locations on Trafford Road and Broadway, which would make it a bit safer for pupils to cross these busy roads when the new Oasis Academy at Media City opens. With phase 2 being in doubt (read cancelled), the super crossings are unlikely to go ahead without the funds being found elsewhere.

One proposal put forward has been for the Ordsall & Langworthy Community Committee to exhaust it’s entire budget for the year to pay for these 2 super crossings. It’s worth noting that when the plans were submitted  by Oasis Academy for planning permission, they did so on the basis that these extra crossings would be in place by the time the new school opened. Their plans included the bare minimum needed (in terms of pupil travel plans) to allow for planning to be passed.

So, what’s the cost of these super crossings going to be to the community?

The answer is circa £160,000-£170,000 – and the reason I am blogging about this is to ask what you, the Langworthy community, think about this. I’d love to hear your thoughts, either by leaving a comment below or emailing me at steve@stevemiddleton.info

There will be further discussion on this at the next community committee meeting on January 11^th (6.45pm). I urge as many Langworthy residents and groups as possible to attend to ensure you get your voice heard. If you cannot make it, I will do my best to get as many responses heard by the committee as possible.

At the Ordsall & Langworthy Community Committee on 2^nd November Neighbourhood Manager Ross Spanner confirmed that funding is in place and secured for new fencing that will close off Chimney Pot Park from dusk until dawn. Regular readers of my blog will remember that this has been a contentious issue, with residents divided over whether to close off the park or provide better lighting, which would have made it safer to keep it open.

A consultation event was carried out by Seedley and Langworthy Trust (SALT) and after a worrying delay of a couple of months, ratified by the community committee. The majority of people who responded to the consultation decided in favour of closing off the park and erecting fencing to keep it secure. It was felt this would remove trouble makers involved in drugs & other crimes from the park and help protect Chimney Pot Park streets below from the constant problem of stones thrown at cars/windows from the elevated position of the park.

There is no definite date when the fencing will be installed, but Ross assured us it would not be too long.

Every single member of Ed Miliband’s new shadow cabinet served in Gordon Brown’s government.

Of the 19 members of the new shadow cabinet, 11 served as cabinet ministers under Brown, while the other eight held ministerial posts.

Every member of the new shadow cabinet voted for ID cards. Of the 14 who were MPs at the time, 12 voted for the invasion of Iraq.

Miliband himself was a key adviser to Brown in the Treasury, including chairing his Council of Economic Advisers, responsible for long-term economic planning. He was then parachuted into a safe seat and fast-tracked into the cabinet before writing Brown’s election manifesto.

Miliband claimed his election heralded a new generation in Labour politics, but his shadow cabinet is made of the same New Labour politicians that spent recklessly and left the economy in tatters, stole our freedoms, left our political system in disgrace and failed to close the huge gap between the richest and the poorest.

The Daily Telegraph has analysed the background of all the new Shadow Cabinet members and has found that they are overwhelmingly white, privileged and heterosexual. Social diversity was delivered a blow with Diane Abbott, Ben Bradshaw and Chris Bryant not getting a place.

The full list of the new Shadow Cabinet can be found here.

What do North West Labour and Conservative controlled councils have in common? They think it’s OK to charge their constituents to shop locally.

Salford Council has charged for it’s car parks for a good few years now. So even if you just want to pop to Salford Shopping City for a few minutes, perhaps to post a letter, it’ll cost you a couple of quid.

My Bury Lib Dem colleague Vic D’Albert has blogged today that the Conservative-controlled Bury Council are now introducing car parking charges at the Prestwich Town Centre Fairfax Road car park. I know this car park well, as I lived in Prestwich for a number of years – and I used to regularly shop at the Longfield Centre, since even then I believed it was better to shop locally.

What a pity Bury Tories are as short-sighted as Salford’s Labour. As Vic points out, the policy is being brought in for purely financial reasons. The car park charging proposal was introduced into the Council budget by the Conservative group earlier this year to balance the budget.

Have they not thought about the impact this will have on the struggling small businesses in the Longfield Suite? I assume they gave the Longfield the same consideration that Salford Labour gave Salford Shopping City when they increased parking charges there.

Listen up Conservatives and Labourites across the North West. It should be free to shop local.

On May 5th 2011, there will be a referendum on whether to adopt the Alternative Vote. The First Past The Post system hands power to the lucky few who live in marginal constituencies and sucks it away from the vast majority of us who do not. So over the next eight months the Liberal Democrats will be fighting hard, with others, for a ‘yes’ vote in the referendum.

I’ve pledged to vote YES to fairer votes on May 5th 2011.

We’ve seen the results of the current voting system from the War in Iraq to the MPs’ expenses scandals. The problem is that too many MPs do not answer to the voters because they are in a ‘safe seat’. Other MPs can get elected even though more than two thirds of people vote against them. Many votes are ‘wasted’.

It’s time to change this in Britain.

On May 5th 2011 millions of people across Britain will vote on how we elect our MPs. But it is about more than just changing the way we vote, it’s about giving power back to the voters and getting MPs and a Government that works for you. Already people are lining up to stop this change, to keep the current, broken system.

We cannot let them win. Join our campaign!

Register here to become part of the Liberal Democrats’ Fairer Votes Campaign and we’ll stay in touch as the campaign develops to let you know how to get involved and help shape a fairer future.

While I’m generally supportive of the coalition government’s attempts to fix the problems that 13yrs of Labour mismanagement have left us, let me make it clear – I am a Liberal Democrat. There are many Conservative activists, councillors and MPs I can converse with (even if I don’t necessarily agree with their politics), Nadine Dorries is certainly not one of them!

Nadine Dorries has been in the news again this week. On Friday Lucy Glennon wrote in The Guardian that the Tory Bedfordshire MP had blogged about one of her disabled constituents’ frequent tweeting. Dorries assumed that someone who could tweet so much was obviously not disabled enough to be claiming benefits and suggested the person in question should get a job, or she would “inform the authorities”.

While that was a terrible generalisation from Dorries (and without foundation I might add), perhaps her far worse accusation that the constituent continued to “…work for the Labour party and write porn at the same time as claiming your disability benefit”  I would think be worthy of complaint and, if it was me, would certainly see libel proceedings begin forthwith.

So then why did Tory Nadine Dorries pick on this unsuspecting constituent? Was this a personal vendetta or a response to an attack from the disabled constituent? It would appear not. It seems apparant that Nadine Dorries has a hatred for disabled people (certainly a misunderstanding of the limitations some disabled people have), but far more concerning is the fact that Dorries thinks disabled people can’t have a social life or political views. Dorries belives that the disabled can’t partake in any physical activities at all (otherwise she believes they aren’t truly disabled). How short sighted for anyone in Britain today, never mind an MP.

So, why is Nadine Dorries so belligerant?

One only has to look at her Wikipedia entry for answers. She has made it her business to “attack” people, either for no good reason or perhaps because it’ll look good as a “campaign” on her next constituency communication.

Dorries served as a member of the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee. During her time on this committee, she only attended 2% of sessions. Refusing to sit on the committee due to the manner in which the committee was chaired claiming that the Chairman, Lib Dem Phil Wiullis was acting as a puppet for another Lib Dem committee member, Dr Evan Harris. The committee then reformed as the Science and Technology Select Committee, she did not attend a single session in protest.

When accused by the Daily Telegraph in 2009 that she claimed £24,222 Additional Costs Allowance (for ‘secondary’ housing costs), Dorries counter-attacked on her blog, alleging lack of good faith on the part of the paper. On 22 May she went on BBC Radio 4 to draw parallels between the McCarthy ‘Witch-Hunts’ and the press’ revelation of MP’s expenses. She claimed everyone was fearing a ‘suicide’, and colleagues were constantly checking up on each other. Later in the day her blog was taken down. It transpired that Withers, lawyers acting for the Barclay Brothers, the owners of the Daily Telegraph, had required the removal of the blog, on threat of libel action against the service provider.

From her ridiculous campaign against a “proposal to ban the wearing of high heels in the office” through to her less than parliamentary behaviour towards the Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow, who she plotted to have removed from the speaker’s chair accusing him of opportunism and disloyalty. After Bercow’s wife, Sally, was approved as a Labour parliamentary candidate and gave an interview about her personal life, Dorries argued that the Bercows were damaging the historic respect the office of Speaker had. In January 2010, she refused to honour the tradition of MPs of standing still and allowing the Speaker to pass them in the corridors of Parliament in protest to Bercow’s decision not to wear the Speaker’s traditional uniform.

Perhaps all this explains why Nadine Dorries was defeated so easily by Hazel Grove Lib Dem MP Andrew Stunnel in the 2001 general election by a superb 8,435 majority.

Northerners are glad that Nadine Dorries moved away from our area, but it’s very sad that she was parachuted into a safe seat in Mid Bedfordshire in 2005. She should move out of politics altogether after this latest fiasco, as she has proven just how out of touch with the 21st century she really is.

Today, Ed Miliband tried to rewrite history by putting distance between himself and New Labour and presenting himself as part of a new generation of Labour politicians.

The truth is Ed Miliband spent the last 13 years at the heart of the New Labour project. He was an adviser in Gordon Brown’s Treasury from 1997 and went on to chair the Council of Economic Advisers, responsible for long-term economic planning, in 2004.

He was then parachuted into a safe seat and quickly appointed as a minister in Brown’s cabinet before writing his 2010 election manifesto. He was an integral part of the Labour Government that left the economy in tatters, faced allegations of complicity in torture, stole our freedoms, left our political system in disgrace and failed to close the huge gap between the richest and the poorest.

In the Treasury he was reckless with our money. When he was in charge of environment policy he was timid and weak.

Ed Miliband’s voting record shows that he was fully signed up to New Labour’s assault on civil liberties and voted against an investigation into the Iraq war. He was also weak on tackling climate change and bringing greater transparency to Parliament.

Voted for:

* Control orders
* Identity Cards
* Reducing parliamentary scrutiny (eg. The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act)
* All the Terrorism Bill’s clauses including 42 and 90 day detention
* Trident replacement

Voted against:

* Introducing Parliamentary approval to be required for deployment of the Armed Forces
* An investigation into the Iraq war

Patchy record on:

Climate Change – He introduced legislation which included a pledge to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 (Miliband’s 60% target was only increased after pressure by the Liberal Democrats) but:

* Voted against a 2007 Liberal Democrat motion calling on the Government to do significantly more on climate change
* Was absent in 2008 on a vote to allow consumers to be paid renewable energy feed-in tariffs
* Was absent in 2008 on a Planning Bill amendment to consider climate change in applications
* Voted against a clause in the Climate Change Bill allowing the Secretary of State to set a maximum level of carbon emissions for energy plants in 2008
* Voted against the 2009 Lib Dem 10:10 motion calling on the House to reduce energy usage by 10% during 2010

Transparency of Parliament:

* Voted for MPs’ expenses and financial interests to be made public in 2009 but was absent on all other Freedom of Information amendments relating to making Parliament more transparent (most notably the 2008 vote on the report from the Members Estimate Committee which recommended external audits of the Additional Costs Allowance).

Today, Labour’s new leader promised a ‘New Generation” of Labour and claimed the party would be different, but with Ed Miliband at the helm, surely all he can deliver is more of the same.

Myview is Labour will spend decades in the wilderness and Ed Miliband will never be Prime Minister.

I was honoured to be invited to talk this morning on Gaydio, Manchester’s first radio station for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. Gaydio became the UK’s first full time LGBT FM radio service in June of this year.

It was a delight to talk about my involvement over the past few years in the Liberal Democrats and I was joined by the Secretary of DELGA Hollie Matthies who talked with passion and authority about a policy being put forward on Tuesday at the Lib Dem Conference in Liverpool entitled ‘Marriage without Borders’.

DELGA are the Lib Dem LGBT body and they have been at the forefront of LGBT equality for decades and have the best record in Parliament of any political party on LGBT equality issues. Prior to the last three general elections DELGA issued seperate LGBT manifestos and on each occasion these were all accepted into the full party’s election manifestos.

As such, DELGA are encouraged to put forward motions at our party conferences, and new St. Austell & Newquay MP Steve Gilbert will be introducing the Marriage without Borders motion, which argues that no matter what gender or sexuality someone is, marriage and civil partnerships should be available to all.

This motion comes during the week that I am celebrating the 10th anniversary of my marriage to the gorgeous and intelligent Kat Middleton, so it seems so wrong and unfair that while I can enjoy the benefits of marriage, other couples cannot simply because they identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transexual/transgender.

Equally, there are many mixed gender couples who do not wish to marry in a church, but would like the commitment of a civil partnership – the fact they cannot enter into civil partnerships is also wrong. Fortunately, as Liberal Democrats, fairness is at the heart of everything we do and I am 100% convinced DELGA’s motion will be approved and we can put this to government.

It’s worth pointing out that the motion is called Marriage without Borders because those who get married (no matter what their beliefs, gender or sexual orientation) should have their marriage recognised throughout the world. It’s a sad fact that many countries do not recognise UK civil partnerships and this can affect the right to work in, live in or even visit foreign countries.

The hour seemed to wizz by, but I am grateful to Gaydio and the host of the morning show, Andrew Edwards, for allowing me the opportunity to respond to the TUC’s disappointing comments about government cuts that may target LBGT groups. I’m unsure why the TUC seems to think the coalition might target LBGT groups, as I am convinced this is simply not the case. Savings need to be made across the whole of government spending and until the details of the comprehensive spending review are revealed, we do not know what they will be. Scaremongering and idle speculation is unhelpful, but then I expect nothing less from an organisation aligned with Labour, the party that left the coalition with a huge mess to clear up.

Whilst browsing through recent planning applications/decisions today (sad, I know), I was disappointed to come across an application from Lark Hill Primary School on Liverpool street. The headmaster of Lark Hill (Liam Fry) proposes to build a new extension to the school (presumably to cope with the extra pupils the school is due to receive thanks to the incompetence of Salford’s Labour Council and their barmy decision to build a replacement school too small for the 2010/11 intake).

Why am I disappointed? Well, one word: Consultation.

Lark Hill have failed to consult it’s neighbours on this building plan which directly affects hundreds of Langworthy/Pendleton/Clarendon residents.

I’m sure the local community would have had very little problem with the proposal to expand Lark Hill Primary School, but common courtesy would be to behave a tad better and talk about the plans with your neighbours.

For those interested, the plans can be viewed here (but the application has been permitted, so no further comment can be made).

Shame on you Mr Fry, be a bit more neighbourly in future.