Trafford Council has twice been found guilty by the Local Government Ombudsman of maladministration causing injustice. Both times they have simply ignored the ruling.
Both cases involved vulnerable people and both seem, to me, to be
simply that Trafford is too stingy to pay what it should and has too
much brass neck to be bothered by the public reaction.
In the first case it refused to agree to waive repayment of a
housing grant it had made to an elderly woman with mental health
problems who had been unaware of a change in the rules governing such a
clawback.
In the second it is refusing to pay £100,000 in compensation to the
family of Carly Wright, a young woman with disabilities whose needs
were neglected by the council when she was due to transfer from
children's services to those for adults.
You can read the rest of my latest post on the Total Politics site here.
We were just quorate for the full parish meeting as late summer holidays had taken their toll on members.
It meant a brisk trot through the agenda until we reached the
‘pallet’ problem. It’s one of those interminable planning issues which
make Jarndyce and Jarndyce seem like an open and shut case.
So I suggested that perhaps we copy in our district councillor on the correspondence to see if he could get some resolution.
Some members laughed, one said something rude and another just stared at me like I’d announced I was from Mars.
You can read the rest of my latest post on the Total Politics site here.
And if you want to know the identity of the councillor in question, well it shouldn't be too hard to find out, but I'll post it up if anyone wants to know. My point, though, was a wider one about holding members to account.
The latest edition of my county council newspaper has dropped
through my letter box and the first thing I checked was the Sudoku on
the back page.
I'm not a quiz fan but the last edition carried an error (not the council's fault) which made the Sudoku impossible to complete.
The magazine is pretty good - I write some of the articles for it, but it has won an award from CIPR so it's not just my opinion.
However, the torrent of abuse from residents this error sparked was astonishing.
You can read the rest of my latest post on the Total Politics site here. And then you read above that a plea from Hazel Blears for good ideas for redress for residents when things go wrong with local services.
For a village of around 2,500 we’ve got a lot of places to drink. There
are two pubs and two members clubs all within a few minutes staggering
distance of each other on the high street.
It could be that we’ve got some serious issues of alcohol abuse to
address, but I like to think it’s a sign of a vibrant community.
While the fate of rural post offices has been widely debated, the future of rural pubs has not received as much attention. The Pub is the Hub initiative is an excellent exception.
You can read the rest of my latest post on the Total Politics local government site here - and/or you can read the new Alex Salmond interview which is causing a stink in Scotland. There's another, slightly older, interview on the site which caused me more of a fit. Claire Fox from the Institute of Ideas. She seems very pleased with herself and I still can't understand how she is gainfully employed with her vacuous and self-aggrandising 'Institute'. If proves if you're willing to make yourself available and say something contrary (but not too contrary, this is the sanitised awkward squad) then the media will give you a berth. Fox says:
I joined the RCP (Revolutionary Communist
Party) in the early 80s. I’d be in it still but it was wound up at the
end of the nineties.
Or put it another way: her magazine Living Marxism thought it could get away with smearing journalists exposing ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia and was bankcrupted out of existence.
Fox says her political hero is Trotsky:
because he had the courage to write
The Revolution Betrayed, admitting that everything he had fought for
had been compromised and explaining how and why
good answer. She also says the smoking ban:
drives me mad with its petty, draconian assault on liberty
You know who the smoking ban helps? People who work in pubs and clubs. They had no choice but to breath in carciogenic fumes. (Lots of info here) Staff in restaurants and casinos and bookies and bingo halls all faced having their health affected through the actions of others. You wouldn't expect a builder to handle asbestos without the proper safety equipment so why expect a barman to swallow your smoke? And the majority of people working in pubs and restaurants and casinos and bingo halls are working class - not much point in the RCP leading the the proletariat to victory if half of them are struggling with emphysema. Trotsky would not have deployed such woolly arguments.
And as for her political hate figure
Al Gore or any one of today’s self-styled
eco-warriors who preach apocalypse and restraint. Gore embodies a
particular brand of ‘greener than thou-ism’ that I despise, as he
finger-wags at those of us who dare argue people are more important
than the planet and development is more crucial than carbon-counting
Well Gore'sa bit of a pain sometimes, true, and his wife was responsible for the parental advisory labels on albums which did sooo much to stop people swearing on rap records. But for cockeyed statements this is great. So is climate change happening or not? Fox seems to suggest it is but it's more important (as per an earlier answer she gives) that we enjoy our cheap Ryanair Flights. Quick digression: Fox actually says
thank you Ryanair
That's Ryanair, one of the most vicious companies around in how it treats its staff (this release is a little old but will suffice for evidence). Fox, is your head seriously that far up your own whatsit? Sorry, back to the main programme. Where were we. Oh yes, finger-wagging greens. Um, if the planet is becoming a less pleasant place doesn't that kind of affect people? And which people do you think get affected most? Is it, um, those less able to buy themselves a ticket somewhere safer? Or is climate change not happening and therefore you are at odds with the majority of scientific opinion? (And what's your evidence). Come on Fox, make it difficult for us - let's try and put together a semi-coherent argument that doesn't scream: "I have no scruples and will do anything for wonga". Fox is asked about her most memorable time in politics:
The miners’ strike. The
striking miners on picket lines in the Midlands read the FT, grilled me
about international politics, the economy, culture etc and taught me
never to underestimate or patronise working class people.
Good answer. Bugger, it's much easier to hate. I got a military escort in Bosnia a couple of years ago when I was on an assignment. I jumped into this Landrover and there was a copy of Wilde's Salome on the dashboard. So I turned to the well-spoken captain accompanying me and asked what he thought of it and the driver, a private, quiet bloke, said that actually it was his. If it makes you cringe, how do you think I feel. Fox is right: never underestimate and never patronise - but I would add, any class.
Wednesday night's parish council meeting should have been a doddle with
a couple of planning applications and some cheques to sign leaving
plenty of time for the chairman to go bellringing (and yours truely to catch the football).
Instead we had to consider an issue which is probably going to become more pressing over the years.
You can read the rest of my latest post on Total Politics here.
Like most rural communities we've got that potent mix of young people,
lack of transport options, lack of facilities and boredom.
A critical mass has built up in the village over the last six months to
try and tackle this. We've had the church, the police, MoD, youth
service and parish council talking round and round.
And the first result? A pool table. One that we don't actually have the room to store anywhere.
*sigh*
You can read the rest of my latest post on the Total Politics site here.
In evidence to a Commission for Rural Communities inquiry some parish councillors noted with pride that their authority had not raised its precept in 25 years.
They would have had a heart attack if they’d been on our council. This year we agreed a precept rise of more than 30%.
You can read the rest of my lates post on Total Politics here.
Like Gavin Whenman, I'd seen the reports on Tory PPC Ian Oakley who was convicted of a campaign of harassment against political opponents.
The issue of councillors out of control came up in the pub recently
after one of our parish meetings. Some of us idly discussed if we were
vulnerable to fraud.
It seems our local school has spent £75,000 on some new play equipment.
It's nice equipment, but £75K is an eye-watering amount. Especially as
it appears the money was spent by the outgoing headteacher without the
governors properly authorising it.
Could one of our councillors access such money and not have to account for it?
You can read the rest of my latest post on the Total Politics site here.
Allotments, planning applications, funding requests and co-opting a new
councillor. Another typical agenda for last night's (Thursday 31 July)
parish council meeting.
The biggest relief was not having to sit through another update on the proposed unitary council for Wiltshire.
The last one went on for an hour and it was like a scene from the Night
of the Living Dead by the time the earnest man from county hall had
finished his spiel.
You can read the rest of my latest post on the Total Politics web site here
politics, journalism and some points in between from Phil Chamberlain, a Wiltshire-based freelance journalist, UWE journalism lecturer and media trainer