Arrogant and Out of Touch Labour

I’m disappointed that Labour have now begun real negative campaigning against me. The Lib Dems at least haven’t done and stuck to their issues. I think the problem for Labour is that without their candidate living or working in the city they’re struggling to do anything other than copy our campaigns and attack me – I note that their No.1 pledge is the same as ours last year!

One of the most frustrating things is their delivery of a letter from Labour councillor Paul Murphy, (the executive member for waste) to support their candidate’s campaign. The letter attacks complaints by city residents in my apartment block and the management company effectively saying we’re lying about claims that our rubbish collection has halved in frequency. Its so arrogant to do so when we know it clearly has and are aware of that. It simply proves his incompetence as the head of that department.

Their problem effectively comes from being unable to read my original letter. I complained about the halving of our service – which they refuted I think because they’re so paranoid about the fear of fortnightly collections, when I was actually talking about the fact we use to have a twice weekly collection! I had asked without real clarification about recycling collections. It was my understanding that this would be once a fortnight. If its once a week then great, lets hear about it councillor Murphy! After speaking to residents in Chepstow House they had said that once a fortnight for recycling wasn’t enough and that their bins overflowed. Our management company here had been told to expect once a fortnight collections for recycling too.

Our bins were very regularly not collected on the day that they were meant to be, and our management company had to ring the town hall and ask for them to be collected. The level of service has been very poor.

Lecturing city residents telling them they’re wrong to point out failings in the council just shows how arrogant Labour in Manchester have become. They seem so confident of not being challenged that they feel they can do and say as they please. Please send a message to the town hall on May 3rd that we don’t like to be patronised by the people we elect and pay to provide us with services we need.

Planting in the city

Last weekend we carried out a little exercise to highlight the fact that not much effort is made to make our city look attractive and colourful. I’m not talking about hanging baskets like in a rural village in bloom competition, but there’s a distinct lack of the stuff in our city. I’ve written previously about how easy it is for things to grow in Manchester, and man of the things I have growing on my balcony are a testament to this, fruit bearing vines, apple trees, fig trees etc.

The Conservative team in the city centre and I simply planted some things to add a little bit of colour. The area of land we had cleaned up before was the focus of one such effort, its great because its the only area in that part of the city to have anything growing there, but there’s nothing that blossoms. We added Narcisi, daffodils around the edges, base of trees, various other colourful elements and replaced a shrub that had been removed from a section in the pavement. I had also written since then that in the area where vagrants were sitting drinking in this area some of these were uprooted and removed.

We also added some colour to the edge of the canal which was totally bare, and added colour to others canal section. One thing I was determined to do was to add something to the surroundings of the Church St car park. Climbers are always a good way to hide ugly things such as railing, and I’m horrified and puzzled that PLASIC greenery has been added to sections there, what are they thinking!? We added various climing plants to sections including Clematis.

Paul Murphy’s waste department in disarray

I had recently received a pretty hostile letter, and virtually been accused of lying about the state of waste services in the city centre by Councillor Murphy, head of waste management for the city council – you get the impression if he could had written it all in capitals he would have done!  When I was writing own personal experience which can be verified by neighbours and our management company it shows what an alien planet some of the councillors in the town hall live on.

For me it typifies the problem that the council seems to think we’re not entitled to good services in the city centre simply because the city is somewhere for everyone to use, and although we contribute a great deal in tax, because most city dwellers are professional people and relatively well off we should somehow be ignored.

You can see my previous posts below about reduction in services. The council are so worried about being criticised for the possible reduction of services yet again to once a fortnight that they never read my letters properly to understand what I was complaining about. When someone like Councillor Murphy responds in such a hostile way to comments from a city resident (myself) when I’m drawing his attention to facts he seems unaware of, it begins to make sense that our services aren’t what they could be.

More action on Litter!

In recent weeks we have carried out action on cleaning up various areas of the city, again in line with the campaign to show that we feel the residential aspect in our city is ignored, not encouraged enough, and in turn this leads to further neglect putting people off moving here, and (I know from personal contact with people forming) the reason for them quitting city life. Liam Fox, Shadow Secretary of Sate for Defence, and his team will be joining our city team this-afternoon to re-visit this area again.

The only area planted with trees in the Northern Quarter is on Dale Street opposite Copacabana. We cleaned up this area when it was totally covered in rubbish, clearing up broken glass, used needles and bloodied swabs with much evidence of drug-taking. We also planted some things to make the area colourful, as there is nothing there that blooms, including a nice colourful shrub to replace one that had been removed.

I walked through the area two days ago, and the area next to the shrub was populated by vagrants with their dogs, drinking, shouting and swearing – nocity resident is going to pop along to that area to sit with their coffee and newspaper when the atmosphere is like that. When I came back later, there were bottles left there, cigarette packets and the shrub had been uprooted. This is at the heart of our campaign – city residents shouldn’t be excluded from areas next to their homes by outsiders with no respect or interest in the city.  This area is next to a large apartment building, Chatsworth house, across the road from Dale Street Chambers, and just down the road from Piccadilly Lofts, The Vaults, Navigation ouse, The Birchin, 25 Church Street, 23 Church Street, and Smithfield Building apartments. This is the community of that area, a large number of people for the city centre, all people who would feel excluded from using the attractive planted area and who would live a small park to be able to use for the local community. 

Graffiti Removal

On Sunday, my action team and I cleaned off as much graffiti as we could from black-spots where its rife, and even increased since my last check two days ago.

   Before and after photos

This is part of my campaign for a safer, cleaner environment for us to live in. We’re paying high council tax bands to live in an area that looks neglected, isn’t policed and has dark dingy streets where car crime and muggings (mostly amongst the vulnerable) is rife.

Cleaning graffiti sends a message that people live here and care about their environment, I hope its the start of a long process to introduce the ‘broken window theory’ style of city management that transformed New York from the worst city in the US to live in, to the best city, even for families. Please help me in this aim by getting involved if you can, and voting for me on Thursday May 3rd.

 Before and after removal in the Northern Quarter

Manchester City Council Puts Schools Bottom of League – and you’re paying for it

Manchester has the worst truancy rate in the country according to reports. This is despite the Children’s Services Department employing 1400 educational support staff. It employs 54 people in its School Attendance and Improvement Service, which is a number the City Council admits is far higher than in similar authorities.

Bureaucracy has become far too much of a burden, but despite launching a review two years ago on how to cut red tape, the review still hasn’t been completed! A damning report says that two thirds of time staff have to work is taken up by paperwork rather than helping kids.

If you’re a city dweller reading my blog, you may be thinking this isn’t one of my usual topics, and what does it have to do with you, nobody in the city has children (well, one person I know does). The reason why it applies to you is that when the council is being wasteful its costing you money. Nearly half the council’s budget (49%) is spent on education and social work every year, its the largest chunk. These are services that we as city dwellers do not use, but we’re paying for them.

Even if you’re not worried about the dreadful state of education in this authority, care about how much money is being wasted, remember this is a council that pays its councillors 3 times what Trafford Conservative Council pays theirs – its your money, the fact of overspending Labour councils has not gone away, people seem to have just stopped talking about it.

Apart from the worst truancy rate in the country, the GCSE results ranked the city 145 out of 150 councils….this is hardly attracting people to the city. Schools have a massive effect on property prices, and therefore desirability and the amount of money being lost from the area is huge. Its an indicator used by companies deciding if Manchester is a good place to find good employees, which would naturally put us at a disadvantage against other cities…and then talking of disadvantage putting off people from living and locating business here, has the Congestion Charge been abandoned yet? No not yet, but we’re still campaigning…..

Dirty City

I get really tired of Labour supporters trying to tell me that there is no problem with litter in the city. I was talking to someone this evening who had just returned from Budapest. They were saying how totally clean the city was, with litter bins everywhere that were emptied every day.

I see litter bins overflowing all the time in the city, I really think the council and its supporters should take their heads out of the sand – you’ve really just become habituated to how things are here – travel more and see how other cities are! There isn’t a litter bin on the street next to my apartment, and there is always litter there. I was walking through Piccadilly Gardens today and ALL the litter bins are the wrong side of the barriers to keep people off the grass, so everyone is just dropping litter on the paths – which genius came up with that plan!?

Time and again it comes down to what our aspirations are for the city, and what we’re comparing ourselves too. I argue that we should be trying to become a world city, its not enough to say we’re doing okay compared with Wigan or Milton Keynes, we want to compare our city to truly world class places, and nothing else will do. It seems far too often if we’re doing okay compared to our smaller UK neighbours the council is happy enough with that.

More Graffiti

Once I’ve started looking in other areas around the city I’m amazed at how much graffiti there actually is. Perhaps the current councillors just aren’t aware of it, or simply son’t walk around the city much.

The perfect example of what I’ve been talking about with regard to the ‘broken window theory’ is the sad disgraceful mess that is the ex-bar (which was various things and names such as Cantina) in Castlefield. Its windows are broken, it looks like its been the victim of arson attacks and is covered in graffiti. The reason is that empty clearly neglected buildings are exploited in this way. The reason why that looks like part of the worst neglected estate when its next door to a pristine expensive apartment buildings is that the council and the owners have shown they don’t care about it

Conservative Action About Graffiti – April 22nd

As we had a day to clean up parts of the city to show how neglected they are by the council (we filled 8 large bin bags in the Northern Quarter in less than an hour, finding health hazards such as used condoms, bloodied swabs and used needles) we will be taking action on graffiti.

I walked down Dale Street and Church Street today to catalogue the issue in that area and found that EVERY building had some graffiti on it. Although I’d noticed it and already decided it should be a key aspect of the improvements to our environment, I was amazed that no building had escaped. It does seem along with litter collection, street lighting and public safety the Northern Quarter is ignored. Its not exclusively a problem of that area however as I also photographed this across the road from the town hall

This one makes me most sad as its a really beautifully restored, stunning listed building which is now residential.

Visible Policing – Dark Streets – Getting mugged

I’ve been talking for some time now about the poor street lighting, particularly in the Northern Quarter. One street I’d singled out was Dale St and Paton St as being examples of this, and so it makes it rather ironic that some scallies attempted to mug me over the weekend on that very place. The police were very quick to respond, however as also previously mentioned many times, there is no visible police presence on our streets as a regular occurrence.

As you’ll see a couple of posts below these factors feature in my ‘key points’ list. These are key things I think need attention in order to make our city a better place to live. The point is that if we change our environment, we change the way people behave in it. If you’re walking down a dark dirty street, with graffiti on the walls you’re not going to think twice about doing something like urinating against one of the buildings (again I apologise, another topic of many posts on this blog!) however if you’re walking down a well lit street that’s clean and lined with trees you’ll realise someone cares about it and treat it with more respect – and its really respect for our residential city and its residents that my campaign is all about.

Please also note, as I had a day of cleaning up the litter black spots in the city the City Centre Conservatives are doing the same kind of thing regarding graffiti. This is to illustrate the point further about treating the environment with respect, and is a key part of employing the ‘broken window theory’ that was utilized so well in making Manhattan the number one residential city in the USA. The idea is that if graffiti is left for a while it sends a message that nobody care enough about that building to clean it off, and so therefore it doesn’t matter if others graffiti there too. I’d like to have a service in the city where all graffiti is dealt with in 24 hours, so we never surrender our buildings to people from outside the city who don’t care about it.  Check back for details of our action on graffiti, and feel free to come along and give us a hand – details to be posted here soon.