Green Action Day

Last year the residents by St John’s Gardens off Deansgate were having huge trouble with litter in the gardens, and generally people treating the place very badly. As I’ve mentioned similar things in a recent post - they are the local residents and this is their community park, they don’t want people going there to use it to dump litter, buy drugs and leave used needles there. The council had been neglecting the park very badly and so the City Centre Conservative Action Team had a litter-picking day. We will repeat this on March 11th this year and also on Dale Street in the Northern Quarter.

On Dale Street in the city’s bohemian Northern Quarter there is a patch of land that is planted with trees and shrubs. It is very badly neglected indeed, it is surrounded by a wall  thats falling apart, its covered in litter, and is very dark in the evenings providing somewhere for people to urinate and groups of kids to congregate. Again, its a great opportunity for it to be a little community park for the residents of the Northern Quarter, it’d be great if it had some seating and lighting for the local residents to use. To highlight this we’re going to try to clean it up a bit on our action day too.

If you’d like to come and get invovled helping with this, or want to meet me to talk about any other local issues please get in touch campaign@robadlard.com for meeting times.

George Osborne

I met George Osborne today who was in Manchester speaking at the Business School, and taking part in Chinese New year celebrations in China Town. Its so refreshing to here new and sensible ideas on how to improve our economy – although its changing a little, it still amazes me how the media has never picked up on the fact that Gordon Brown is simply a charlatan. He never has been doing a great job of running the economy, why would you want him to run the whole country!!

We talked a little about Manchester in general and its clear George is a big fan on Manchester and admires the cities heritage and civic pride. In his speech he quite rightly said the Manchester is the UK’s No.1 creative city, and he hopes it can become Europe’s No.1. The Halle Orchestra  for example has been named the UK’s best orchestra, and it is now in better financial shape than it was a few years ago when most people genuinely believed it would go bankrupt and disappear. Even successful institutions such as the Halle need more help in achieving even more to improve even further, so I hope the city realises this and will be an enthusiastic partner in helping that happen.

If we’re number one creatively, we’re really loosing out in other areas it seems. We have had nowhere near the success Leeds has for example in attracting financial services. London has become the No.1 place in the world for that sector, ironically partly due to tough new legislation in the USA. When regional cities in the US mounted challenges to New York for attracting financial services they did very well (Chicago and L.A.) however the competition didn’t damage New York, it actually benefited from it – lets see something similar here.

Campaigning in the city

Thanks to everyone for Wednesday night, although our post campaigning drinks maybe shouldn’t have ended up in the Press Club (it has new carpets at long last!) as I ended up meeting David Cameron for the first time with a stinking hangover.

Campaigning in the city is always tricky because it requires helpers in each apartment building. If you don’t have literature from us, or see us visiting your building its because we don’t have a contact there. If anyone would like to assist with this in any way, or would like to help deliver leaflets for us please get in touch.

Campaign@robadlard.com

Proud of Piccadilly

Just a note regarding safety in the city centre.

Going back to my basis for standing for council this year, and the foundation of my campaign, its about wanting Manchester to be one of the most desirable city centres to live in. Anti-social behaviour is a problem everywhere, and in all cities to a certain extent, but in great residential cities its more mixed. If you live in a nice expensive residential area of London or Manhattan, and you’re near a square or park you can expect a totally different quality of life.

• On my walk home from the concert hall in the last couple of days I encountered the standard large number of people urinating in public. In Piccadilly Gardens against Cafe Nero is a favourite for people. The concrete ‘bus shelter’ that houses it is just perfect for people to urinate against, it was a great decision to build it there exactly where its needed.
• A group of scallies were hanging around the gardens (again, par for the course), initially throwing stones (and bizarrely) shoes at the glass windows of the Rice restaurant, and then a chair.
• Somebody throwing a bottle across the street on the corner of the gardens by Kro Bar
• One of the foulest group of scallies I’ve come across on that walk was outside the Spar on London road. (that stretch of road is usually one of the most unpleasant to walk along) They were harassing and racially abusing a group of Asian girls so horrendously that I actually did report it to the police. The girls were obviously travelling from the station into town for drinks and were being pursued along London road.
• There is litter all over the pavement
• The glass of a bus shelter is shattered all over the pavement
• I get to my apartment building and someone is urinating on the Grade 2 listed stonework, a building that lots of residents have invested their hard earned money in.

This is in an area where you will be paying band F council tax for a 2 bedroom apartment.

There is absolutely no pretence whatsoever that Piccadilly Gardens is for the local community, the residents who live around it and pay a lot of money in tax to fund its maintenance (and constant re-turfing!?) It simply does not serve that purpose. The only people who praise the gardens say its great in the summer because families come into the city with their kids and play in the fountain. I’m glad they enjoy it, I really am, but that is nothing at all to do with the people who live there, its my local park and its a disgrace.

This is not how residential areas are meant to be. If life is to be this way, we all want to have our council tax bands re-defined to reflect the lower level of services and quality of life

Congestion charge will make city life less practical

Its a funny thing with the congestion charge, a Conservative colleague was pointing out to me that if the city is less congested, city life will be better. This of course I imagine would be true, although not many of us have chosen to live here for a quiet life. There are two reasons that I think the charge will damage city life however,  and I wanted to just put them out there for debate.

1.  We live in the city to take advantage of the quality bars, restaurants, cafes etc, not as I said earlier to have a quiet life – if the congestion charge leads to businesses failing it will be bad for city residents. My favourite coffee shop near Piccadilly, Manna, has gone out of business, businesses fail all the time in the city, its tough out there. Most places in the city have to rely on business from outside the city, as there will never be enough of us in the city to sustain these things all ourselves, the population is still that of a very small town taken on its own. The closing of the Establishment was blamed on the fact that its simply difficult for people to come into the city to dine etc. This was an argument many people made against the recent parking proposals from the Lab our Councillor Neil Swannick. This would be much more acute with congestion charging. Are people really going to take a long bus journey from various parts of the region to support our top quality food and drink establishments? When the industry suffers and our favourite places close, and city life becomes much less for for us all will we be glad that its quieter?
2. As I tried to explain to Neil Swannick, the City Council seems to not care or not understand city life – maybe because nobody in the town hall lives in the city centre ward, not the Lib Dem candidate, the Labour candidate nor it seems the Labour city centre spokesman. People can’t live in the city if it cripples their family life and social life. If it becomes too difficult for people to visit us, we will leave the city to visit them (again bad for the city’s economy) until the process seems so arduous people will leave for the suburbs – this is already happening due to lack of parking. Lets be clear about that also, deliberately restricting the number of parking spaces for residents in the city doesn’t ease congestion, it just means people won’t live here, or won’t stay here, thus endangering the whole project of city living that many people in the city like me want to see succeed.

Ideology over common sense…again

In reading some responses its reminded me of some more practical reasons for opposing the congestion charge when looking at some of the public transport journeys I make. I don’t have a car, and use buses, but preferably trams and trains.

I was relating that it takes me longer to get to parts of south Manchester on the bus that it would take to get to regional cities such as Sheffield or Liverpool by train. This is often why trams appeal so much, it saves us time, and is favoured in general by professional busy people. This was also the reason given by Labour councillors on Manchester’s City Council for using cars – even to get to a meeting on how to cut down on car use – it simply takes too long to get places by bus, it makes business inefficient, literally cutting time from the working day, and cutting drastically the number of meetings that can take place in different locations on one day.

When most journeysto and through parts of Manchester would have to be made by buses (which already cause a huge amount of congestion in the city centre) because the Labour government pulled the funding for the last Conservative government’s tram plans for Manchester, why does the City Council expect everyone else in Manchester to give up more time to travel when they’re not willing to do so themselves, and in many ways I understand their point, but we can’t have one rule for them and one for everyone else.

Cynical dishonest politics

I’m nearly speechless after getting Labour’s new leaflet today. I realise I’m new to this game in many ways, and not part of a big local political machine like the Labour party is here, but I’m really horrified at how cynical and simply dishonest their campaign literature appears.

It is so extremely misleading to suggest as they do that they were on the side of city residents, and helped defeat the Labour Council’s parking proposals…..hang on, they ARE the Labour Council, how does that work, do they think city residents are stupid! I really find that so condescending, if I wasn’t a Tory already I’m sure that would make me one! Its the kind of playing-both-sides-of-the-coin politics that puts people off the whole political process. They are all part of the same party in the same town hall – how can one part of the Labour Council propose something in the city, that the city centre spokesman then treis to make appear he had no awareness of, and then opposes it and claim it as a victory of Labour against….Labour?!

Failures on recycling

Manchester, it was announced in the MEN, has failed to reach its recycling targets, falling way short in fact. Labour Councillor Paul Murphy states its “one of his big priorities for the city”. Why then are residents in my building finding it so hard to get recycling facilities here? Maybe only buildings with a certain proportion of Labour supporters can expect the levels of services that we all pay a great deal for in the city. If you want to contact Councillor Paul Murphy about recycling please do so at Cllr.p.murphy@manchester.gov.uk

Three letters…

Today is a mixed day for me, tonights Halle concert should be fantastic, Mahler 4 with the most amazing sporano, should be quite special. I was sad to read that Anthony Wilson is starting a battle against cancer – especially as I saw him in Love Saves the Day yesterday and teased him about his beard! I wish him all the best and hope he’ll be back to normal as soon as possible. But as today is also the day I’ve been waiting for for a long time, the day when I’ve heard my sister is winning her battle against the dissease I feel on top of the world, even getting zero Valentines cards won’t get me down!

Wilson writes today in the MEN about his experience with the NHS and it makes interesting reading. I was having long discussions last night (with an old family friend that I haven’t seen in years who is a nurse and a friend who is a doctor) and the information is so mixed, but there are so many stories of so many good people in the NHS, and also terrible stories of shockingly bad management….its a debate that will go on for some time no doubt…

Draining funds from the North…

The rising cost of the London Olympics have caused people to ask why some of our great venues that already exist can’t serve some purpose. Before acquiring a serious injury I had a brief career as a racing cyclist in Europe and the USA, I have raced on many velodromes worldwide, but none as good as ours in Manchester, which was a legacy of Conservative Government backed Olympic bids for Manchester. It isn’t just world class, but many consider it to be the best in the world. Recent Olympic games have failed to better it, why does London think it can? The British Cycling Federation and national team is based here, if great expense is spent on a Velodrome in London it is likely that situation will change.The London Olympics will drain funds that the regions need. Transport schemes such as Cross-Rail at a cost 7 billion pounds will support the games, at a time when we are facing a road-charging system masked as a congestion charge to pay for Metrolink – as requested by the government after the Labour pulled its funding. The government didn’t provide funding in time for our Metro to be ready for the Commonwealth Games, however they will make sure national taxation and Lottery money pay for London schemes, leaving us to raise a new local tax in order to pay for our own public transport. When will people notice that Labour has ceased to care about the North, there has never been such a London-centric government