Mid-term blues hit early

With open hostility in the ruling group surrounding positions and the number of officer departures I suspect the hand-quivering clustershambolic leadership of Chambers and Jarrett must be on the close.

All eyes for this week will be on Full Council on Thursday night where we will finally get a confirmation on the Mayor and Deputy Mayor and on the discussion around member allowances. 

Medway Labour of course had a consistent policy on both these issues last year which we believed reflected the public interest; namely a return to the fair points-based system around mayoralty selection, which takes the pathetic partisanship (observed in the Conservative Group this year) out of the Queen's appointed representative for Medway; and a cut of the Conservative party chairman & deputy chairman perks who we believe are 'lapping the cream' of public money whilst the majority of Medway taxpayers continue to pay huge sums of Council tax for poor political leadership.

It is of course good to note that members will be taking a pay cut this year, as per the recommendations of the independent panel, but this does not go far enough in my mind and what we need is specific focus on those mid-level takers of public money.

We do not need so many Tories on the payroll at Gun Wharf. 

The other points to note from the meeting come from the public and member questions for the evening. A number of noticeable themes emerge

The first is that the Tory attempt to introduce a 'fake' Freedom Pass, as promised in their local manifesto in 2011, has clearly backfired badly. The Tories have a terrible record on the Freedom Pass having spent most of 2010 opposing any form of public subsidy for bus travel for young people because of cost, seemingly taken out of a hat, and pubicly lambasting the opposition Labour Party for proposing the idea. In 2011, the Tories took the Freedom Pass and audaciously added it to their local manifesto and claimed Labour were opposed; but the budget in 2011/12 only allocated a pathetic sum to the scheme, and so Labour called the Tory rat out. 

Rightly so, as we now have a scheme which to huge numbers of parents is woefully substandard; and I expect many more will continue to articulate not only the rank Conservative hypocrisy but also why we continue to suffer a worse deal then our neighbours in Gravesham, Sittingbourne and Maidstone who have a Conservative-controlled County Council.

Roads and re-surfacing also make an appearance with the announced overspend of £1.2m on the Stoke Crossing, dubbed the 'Bridge to Nowhere' by the press. With Tory-leaning Parish Chairman and Councillor's citing the money could have been better spent elsewhere, and the public outraged at the scale of spend whilst residential road budgets are seemingly 'gerrymandered' into Tory wards with a number of roads slipping budget cycles, this will prove controvertial.  We all know the Tories have spent millions on road schemes in Chatham no one voted for or wanted, and that have gone millions overbudget; taking money from what could have been spent on residential roads. 

Tories will no doubt spread the blame; who will it be this month... I cant wait. 

A number of other questions relate to the botched care home closures and privatisations which have been totally mishandled by the administration, and which descended into a farce, when the Council refused to extend the consultation on a proposal from Medway Health to take on the closing Balfour Centre. The Tories also ignored local campaigns calling for a limited partnership and stakeholder co-operative model of management favouring overt privatisation. We now go into the future with no public care home provision as a number of privately-owned homes continue to fail CQC reviews. 

The way in which the cabinet managed the Balfour process was nothing short of incompetent; as standard from Medway Tories. 

Marlowe Park and the campaign by Cllr Igwe to safeguard this facility is also on the table; Cllr Igwe led the campaign and called-in the manner in which the Medway PCT communicated and acted. 

Lastly the Community Safety Plan is due to be discussed; now that Cllr OBrien has returned from his 'fact-finding' tour of Kent it is interesting to note the precious little change in the document that all these visits were apparently tasked. Given Medway has seen a massive reduction in crime from 1997-2010 there will surely be commentary around the cuts to PCSOs, cuts to Police numbers and the real concern that opportunistic theft and crime is increasing across our towns. We may also get an announcement on whether our multitiled Cllr Mike will be standing for Police Commissioner on the back of his record as Medway CSP Chair. Then again; we may not.

A busy night ahead. 

A £14m Bridge too far

£14m cost of one bridge v pot-holed streets across Medway

It is particularly galling to read on today's paper Tories jumping over themselves to distance from the £14m Stoke Crossing 'Bridge too far' which is due to open in less then a week, if the press is to be believed.

A bridge which Tory portfolio holders have been happy to support and propose and which, up until now, has received little to no comment from local Tory-dominated local Parishes, despite the £1.2m overspend

We all hope the opening ceremony will bode better then that of its similarly over-budget bus station in Chatham, which was incomplete and 'unsafe' according to one leading Conservative Cabinet member.

What this blog particularly notes is the way Tories will play to the readership; of course it was the Medway Tory Group who led the political leadership behind this project and presumably kept an ever 'unwatchful' eye on the financial control from Gun Wharf. It was a £14m project which also happened to be built in a ward with a Tory Portfolio holder responsible for roads at a time we can see, or at least I believe, gerrymandering of funding into Conservative wards for residential roads is ongoing.

The opposition needs to be a lot more aggressive about highlighting these types of programmes outside of the inner wards of Medway; irrespective of location this £14m could have funded almost half of all new road-resurfacing in residential Medway, if we are to believe the figures from John Woodcock MP, who challenged our Council last year on this documented incompetence. In short; it’s a damn lot of money not to have an opinion on; and a very loud opinion at that.

The fact we also have it £1.2m over budget on a spend of £14m, is in itself, an egregious waste of public money, and is simply not justifiable at a time of austerity when residents expect tax-payers money to be spent efficiently.

Voters in the South respond to strong leadership and economic credibility; neither and you loose. Highlighting poor project management goes to the heart of leadership and credibility to those in the private-sector who left Labour in droves in 2010, but are not certain that Cameron has the grounded ability to lead from the centre. Tories locally are exposed, and will continue to be exposed, because they simply haven’t grasped that it is a lack of financial control and resource in the finance office that is the problem.

The opposition has no levers to make decisions, no executive powers nor any responsibilities of office. We have the power of words and the pulpit of public opinion, and more importantly the perception of public opinion which added together paints a narrative. The maintenance of narrative is more important then the sum of its contained parts; highlighting Tory incompetence on spending is a narrative because its true, but also because Labour Councillor’s have had the leadership to stand up and speak up; loudly and often. Chatham bus station, Care Homes, Schools etc etc…

The article on Stoke highlighted a blue-on-blue story; with one Tory taking the local credit for a short attack on what was a decision made by colleagues in Gun Wharf; making a very salient point that spending of £14m on an infrequently used crossing may or could not have been the best use of public resource. Of course this may come back to bite in years hence, but by that stage the public awareness of this issue will be so reduced to nullify an article. It will matter zilch to the average voter.

Sometimes making a stand and putting your head above the parapet is the right thing to do; clearly a number of Tories made a call to do so; and as it is we get a blue-on-blue story with local Tories benefiting from attacking their own Council colleagues. A net zero sum game for a poor news item which if you look at the letter columns has, as is to be expected, generated public interest.

A party of opposition needs to oppose on important issues; locally Labour is stepping up to the mark and we have seen the fruits of this work; compare and contrast with the Lib Dems and Greens over the last 12 months. Lib Dems have led on possibly one issue; the opposition to City Status, and even that has been poorly managed. No one can now position Labour as nothing but the only realistic and credible opposition in Medway, but much much more is to be done. The project to improve has a long way to go.

Tories are very happy to play both sides of the debate; Labour needs to ensure its voice is in every and all debates for our community. It is clear that whilst so much has been achieved there is more to be done and as an opposition Councillor I will be playing my part with colleagues and future Council candidates to ensure it does.

Labour is the only voice of opposition to the incompetent Tories. We can never drop this ball.

Road budget gerrymander

Road and Pavement Resurfacing List 2012 - 13 Cllrs (4 4 12)

Every April & May we go through the same overt Tory games with road repairs and pavement re-surfacing works published and the resultant examination leading to charges of gerrymandering.

This year of course the budget for road-resurfacing and pot-hole repairs for all areas has been slashed by Medway Tories by £250,000.

It makes a mockery when residents in inner urban wards; River, Strood North/South; who have the oldest set of properties, and roads remain in a total state of disrepair, that resource is conveniently skewed to other Conservative-controlled wards. It happens every single year; without fail.

I jog along Priestfields Road weekly; my mum is about to move to Priestfields so I declare an interest right now. But there is no way that Priestfields is more in need of re-surfacing than Wayfield Road in Luton & Wayfield. I know both roads very well; and Priestfields is in a far better state currently; and both I would argue similar traffic flow. It can only be political pressure.

Indeed no Labour controlled wards will have any form of conventional road re-surfacing at all. Not one. And broken down as a proportion; of the 28 schemes planned 18/28 are in wards with only Conservative dominance and a further 6 have majority Conservatives. [Road scheme number 11 is also right on the edge of Twydall]. This is gerrymandering of Council tax-payers money on a grand-scale.

In addition the above document contains a number of projects which should have been completed last year; which to me shows that the budget for road surfacing has been raided to pay for Council budget overspends in other departments.

Below is last years road and pavement resurfacing list

Public Information Road and Pavement Resurfacing List 2011 - 12 (9.5.2011)

Duplicates from 2011/12 and 2012/2013 include:

• Robson Drive - Microsurfacing - Supposed to have been completed in June / October 2011
• Vicarage Lane - Microsurfacing - Supposed to have been completed in June / October 2011
• The Fairway - Conventional - Supposed to have been completed in June / October 2011
• St Margarets Street - Microsurfacing - Supposed to have been completed in June / October 2011
• Laburnam Road - Microsurfacing - Supposed to have been completed in June / October 2011
• Woodstock Road - Microsurfacing - Supposed to have been completed in June / October 2011
• Southwark Road - Microsurfacing - Supposed to have been completed in June / October 2011

It seems to me that either the Tories are trying to hoodwink the public in this years budget by undertaking work they should have done last year or more likely; road resurfacing budgets have been raided to pay for overspends on other programmes; such as the bus station / Stoke Crossing and other over-budget capital projects.

It stinks to high heaven and shows that despite Tories squandering millions on road schemes in Chatham that they simply dont care about residential streets. It also shows that if you live in a ward outside of Rainham, Hempstead or the Hoo Peninsula the chances of you getting your road re-surfaced is next to null.

A quiet but growing financial incompetence surrounds that of the Stoke Crossing; to anyone that has travelled to this crossing it is simply the most grotesque waste of public money that I have come across; and many readers have seen Tories spray money into the wind over projects elsewhere.

The project is effectively a £14m bridge over a railway line in a rural part of Medway. This is a very expensive project when you consider the bus station would have cost a third of this amount.

It gets less press because though a multi-million pound project it is not in a visible location; but I have done a screenpic below.

£14m to cross a piece of railway track. Really... only Medway Conservatives

This is a multi-millon pound project to cross a tiny piece of infrequently used railway line; it is an absolute joke of quite sizeable proportions. How in any right-wing, low IQ'd brain, which sadly comprises the mass ranks of blue-rinsed lemmings, could anyone put this bridge as a priority is beyond any semblance of rationality and thought. And yes, like most Conservative projects; its over-budget by a cool £1.2m according to the latest reports. Standard lax attutude with public money that comes as standard with the Medway Tories.

What this post highlights is Tory duplicity and casual disregard for public money. Not only have the road surfacing budgets been gerrymandered but many should have been completed last year. Why? Because on project after botched project we are plugging the gaps on Tory pet projects like the Stoke Crossing.

A bridge to nowhere. No Tories; a bridge too far for taxpayers who are fed up of utter failure and incompetence to manage our local Authority

Gaping hole of judgement?

Medway roads and an administration in abject denial?

It seems the parlous and disgraceful state of Medway roads are once again being raised in the press in what seems like a regular slew of news stories lambasting the Tory administration for a total failure to fix the pothole menace.

Labour have been challenging the Tory Council for years on potholes and even pledged a war on the pothole as part of the local election manifesto.

We have calculated that it will cost a staggering £35m to now repair our road network in Medway. A direct result of years of underinvestment in residential streets.

The public understands that over the last 10 years we have seen millions spent on large scale road schemes, whilst there has been a real lack of focus on residential streets. Coupled with two bad winters and Tory cuts from government, we are now in unenviable position of having poor roads for a long time to come.

Meanwhile this blog revealed the extent of road repairs for this year and how many appear to be in Tory wards which could lead to a suggestion that they have been prioritised.

The public expect the Tories to have a plan and be open about road repairs. Instead, we have a lack of a strategic plan and a portfolio holder in denial about the state of the problem, and the damage caused by years of underinvestment in our road infrastructure by the current Conservative administration.

John Woodcock MP has been on the offensive and has challenged the Tories to set a firm timetable for action against potholes. He has stood up for residents.

Instead of welcoming this suggestion in the interests of residents we continue to have words of denial from the portfolio holder.

He has appeared to dismiss the problem and failed to take into account a fair suggestion for a plan for road repairs.

All this blog asks residents; go out and look at your road and ask yourself - has it, under this Tory Council, got better or worse?

Road Resurfacing / Pavements

Public Information Road and Pavement Resurfacing List 2011 - 12 (9.5.2011)

Please find above the road and pavement repair list for the Medway Unitary Authority for 2011/12.

Some big winners and loosers