Posted On June 26, 2010 Leave a Comment

Dithering Con-Dem coalition fiddles while Wirral burns

25th June 2010
  

Following last night’s Cabinet meeting. Cllr Phil Davies Deputy Leader of the Labour Group said:

Wirral's Labour Group Leader Cllr Phil Davies condemns the collaborating Con-Dems as they implement savage Tory/Liberal Government's cuts on the people of Wirral

Cllr Green is fiddling while Wirral burns. As long as he chases cheap headlines and bats all the issues into the long grass the crisis will continue to deepen. Every month that goes by without decisions increases the risk that Council workers will lose their jobs, and residents their services, not because of the financial crisis, but because the incompetence of local politicians has dramatically increased the scale of cuts necessary. He will literally have talked us into disaster.
 
It’s time to get real. He still has £4m to find of in year revenue savings. On current projected figures he has another £24.4m to find by March 2011 and an additional £57m to find over the following two years. On a pro rata basis that means that next year alone, amongst other things, nearly £8m has to be cut from Adult Social Services, over £6m from Children’s Services, over £2m from Cultural Services, nearly £2m from Housing and Regeneration and over two million from Technical Services (covering highway maintenance, traffic schemes, bin collections etc.)
 
If anyone thinks this can be achieved without affecting front line services, and without disproportionately affecting the poorest and most vulnerable members of our community, they are kidding themselves. The bad conscience suffered by Wirral’s Liberal Democrats over the national increase in VAT, which they campaigned vigorously against in the national election because it affected the poor most, will pale into insignificance when they see the real, harsh consequences locally of their own government’s decisions played out across Wirral by their own joint administration.
 
That’s assuming, of course, that this administration is capable of reaching any decisions in time to set a legal budget.  Jeff, it is time for you to do what Labour has done for the last 15 years. Accept the responsibility  of Leadership. YOUR government has imposed massive cuts upon us – YOU DEAL WITH THEM.” 

What did we see? No less than eight different reviews announced, all delaying any decisions. (One of those reviews actually sent back to the starting blocks, under totally unnecessary new management, an existing programme of change which would potentially have delivered up to £15m of savings towards his target!) An absurd and paralysing increase in pointless bureaucracy as he attempts to micro-manage an £865million Council budget down to the last £100. And cuts in sandwiches. Even that wasn’t costed – presumably because it saves so little that the amount would look ridiculous. This is ideology gone mad. 

“Cllr Green is way out of his depth in this crisis. It is painful to watch him dithering and floundering around trying to work out what to do. Given the scale of the financial challenge now facing the Council, courtesy of his government, we expected to see, at the least, a list of costed options for savings which would give the Council a good start towards reaching its target. 


Posted On May 7, 2010 1 Comment

Resounding Wallasey victory for Labour’s Angela Eagle

7th May 2010 – 5.00am 

Following yesterday’s general election contest, culminating in the Wallasey Town Hall count at about 4.30 this morning, Labour’s Angela Eagle emerged the victor with an excellent majority exceeding 8,000 votes.   

The vast resources funding the local Tories’ electoral machine, with its never ending glossy publications, could not match Labour’s honest campaigning and relentless exposure of Tory propaganda.   

Never short of a little excess of self confidence the Tories were devastated by the extent of Labour’s victory. 

We will continue the report when the Council election results are also available later today.

Posted On April 14, 2010 1 Comment

Who funds the Tories?

There's an old saying: 'He who pays the piper calls the tune'

14th April 2010           

The link below will take you to a newspaper report that describes hot information about Wallasey Tories’  income.         

http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2010/03/26/wirral-conservatives-hit-by-debt-collector-smear-92534-26113025/           

This is a Labour poster from 1966. The Tories say they have 'changed' - but have they? With 14 millionaires in David Cameron's Tory shadow cabinet whose interests would a Tory Government truly represent? In fact has anything about them truly 'changed' in the past half century?

Since we reported on 3rd March 2010 about the Conservatives enjoying huge sums of money from Lord Ashcroft, it has also been revealed publicly (see weblink above) that Wirral’s local Tories have received circa £50,000 from a well know law firm that also specialises in debt collection.  There is no need for us to elaborate further, here, as these massive donations have been well publicised in the newspapers.  But can anyone feel surprised that Tory income  comes so much from organisations having little in common with the great majority of ordinary hard working people?       

Tory funding propaganda       

Their propaganda ludicrously attempts to present trade unionists’ support for Labour as similar to their own support from big business.  It cleverly tells only a part of the truth, presented in a way that can leave readers to infer something unspoken while the Tories wriggle farcically to shift public attention away from their own enormous money sources.   

At a time when the other political parties represented  bankers, big business, land owners, and stock exchange gamblers, the trade unions helped to create the Labour Party.   And Labour gave a voice to millions of people who previously had no ‘natural’ party to represent them.    Some unions have a political fund and members can contribute to it, if they want to.      

The unions consist almost entirely of working people – people in offices, building sites, factories, schools and universities, doctors and nurses - all those who contribute usefully to society.  We also have many, many, small business owners supporting Labour – our own Labour Councillor John Salter being a classical example.   Working people understand perfectly that THEIR OWN Labour Party, often in the teeth of Tory opposition, gave us the NHS, decent pensions, minimum wage protection, the Health & Safety at Work Act, decent education, Sure Start, the Pensioners’ Winter Fuel Allowance, and most of the benefits that working families have.  Despite any propaganda claims to the contrary,   Seacombe Labour at best benefits only marginally from union support by being included in (some) election leaflets.  But our local ward funds come entirely from our own members and from our fund raising support among the people of Seacombe.         

Contrast our funding sources with where the Tories get their money and it’s a ‘no brainer’ isn’t it?       

Meanwhile, the Conservatives have been putting out some pretty costly literature just lately.  Expensively produced shiney booklets abound (with little meaningful content but lots of glossy pictures) and  often with ludicrous suggestions that they are closely involved in just about everything.                 

It’s easy for the Tory propaganda machine to encourage their candidates to go and stand near good things for a photo and give the impression that they’ve had something to do with them!  But it doesn’t follow that they are in fact anything to do with them at all.  It’s clever psychology – the stuff of soap powder advertising.     Labour doesn’t need to do that sort of thing.  We are in there with the community all the time.   

This is what the Labour Party’s General Secretary Ray Collins said:              

“I know that many of you are campaigning hard against some very well-funded Conservative campaigns. But although we can’t count on the millions of Lord Ashcroft’s money, we can count on the British people. They won’t allow their vote to be bought off by a billionaire from Belize.
Last night, I hope you will have seen on the news that Lord Ashcroft, the man bankrolling David Cameron’s party, has finally been forced out of the shadows.

 For ten years, William Hague, Michael Howard and David Cameron have each concealed the truth about his status. By his own admission, Lord Ashcroft has given millions to the Conservatives and may be the largest single donor of all time. His company, Bearwood Corporate Services, is at the centre of a major investigation by the Electoral Commission.             

I have already written to the Electoral Commission to urge them to conclude this investigation before any election campaign takes place – if they wait until after an election, it may be too late. 

 Next time you see the Conservatives’ glossy leaflets or airbrushed posters, don’t let people forget that these expensive Tory campaigns have come at the cost of a new school or a new hospital wing in your constituency. Because instead of paying tens of millions of pounds in tax on his huge foreign income as Lord Ashcroft had promised to do when he became a peer – money that could have helped thousands of ordinary families in constituencies like yours – Lord Ashcroft chose to spend the money on David Cameron’s campaign instead.

On Sunday, David Cameron said he had changed his party. Yesterday Lord Ashcroft showed how little they’ve changed. They’re just the same old Tories.”             

In 1999, when Conservative leader at the time William Hague first recommended Lord Ashcroft for a Peerage, he was rejected. It was only in 2000, after he promised to return to live in Britain and pay tax here, that the House of Lords allowed him to become a member.     
But it has now been alleged that it was a promise he never kept. His company, Bearwood Corporate Services, is at the centre of the major investigation by the Electoral Commission that Ray Collins refers to above.     
When Seacombe readers see the Tory glossy leaflets being peddled around the ward (until recently by the defector Denis Knowles who crossed to join the Tories but still will not resign for the Seacombe People to decide his future in a by-election) they may wonder why Labour doesn’t throw similarly huge amounts of money at glossy leaflets.   For us the answer is very simple indeed.  We  haven’t that sort of money.      
Labour represents ordinary people who work hard and live here  – not in offshore tax havens.  
  • The Tory party has always represented the interests of bankers and stock exchange gamblers – and those people who for many years have invested the enormous profits made for them by British workers not in modernising British factories, so that they could compete effectively, but in overseas industry in countries where profits are high because wages are low.   There is no patriotism in capital.
  • With fourteen millionaires in his Shadow Cabinet where will Cameron’s loyalties lie? 

We now know how Wallasey Tories pay for their glossy leaflets and booklets - but its a sure thing Seacombe Ward Labour Party has no large benefactors from offshore tax havens or anywhere else.  Nor, in case the Tories indulge in a bit of misleading propaganda, do we have large dollops of trade union money given to Seacombe Ward Labour Party.               

But we believe the words on the  paper we use are far more representative of Seacombe People’s interests than bin loads of glossy Tory propaganda.                

               

                 

« Older Posts