Cllr. Cooke's Blog.

Salford Council has budgeted for 0% pay increases this year. On the surface this is understandable – the national pay offer from the Local Government Employers is 0%. However, negotiations are not yet complete between unions and the Employers’ organisation. This headline says it all:

“Council employers looked set for another explosive showdown with the unions this week after refusing to offer workers any pay rise this year.”
http://www.lgcplus.com/finance/latest-finance-and-partnership-news/clash-looms-after-pay-freeze-offer/5010605.article

Effectively, what the council have done is say that no matter what figure the national pay negotiations end up at they are setting pay at 0% (a real-terms cut in pay). So if the national picture is that councils end up offering a 1.5% pay rise – Salford will ignore it. Ignoring national negations and ploughing their own furrow may make for a pretty restless workforce. Mind you, the council did make manage to save £400,000 in staff pay last year thanks to industrial action – perhaps they see upsetting the staff as a way of saving more cash this year too?

There’s an intriguing item in Salford’s list of efficiency saving for this year’s budget (for efficiency savings you can often read ‘cuts to services’ or ‘increase in charges’). In amongst some truly worrying items, like increased costs for already stretched local schools, and cuts to domestic care for those who struggle to care for them selves, is a proposal to save £30k by reducing refreshments in committee rooms.

Proposal A2 – Reduce supplies and services expenditure on Administration, item (3) Democratic Services – reduce refreshments in committee rooms £30k.

This saving will be achieved in the following way: “cease providing biscuits for all meetings and only provide drinks for members and external visitor meetings”.

Firstly – how in the world have the council been spending £30k per year on biscuits? And how is it that staff are forbidden coffee and tea during their meetings, but councillors can have it?

A quick Google reveals the 300g packet of Hobnobs retails from 59-85p. A 100 pack of six different kinds of assorted mini biscuits of a similar kind to those eaten in the council sells for £22.26 (each pack contains 3 biscuits). So, that’s 50847 packets of Hobnobs, or 1347 catering packs (totalling 404312 biscuits per year or 11080 biscuits per day – including weekends).

Obviously the numbers of slightly frivolous – I’ve not included the cost of staff or of tea and coffee; so I doubt that eleven thousand biscuits are really consumed each day in Salford Council. However, the point is very far from frivolous – how can the council have been spending this much money on tea and biscuits whilst they have for years underfunded key services like Youth Services?

Yesterday Salford independent councillor Joe O’Neill used his blog to liken Coventry councillor and former Labour MP Dave Nellis to a Nazi. Frankly, I think this kind of behaviour crosses the line of behaviour expected from an elected representative. It’s one thing to accuse right-wing fascist politicians of being Nazis, especially when they’ve been caught expressing admiration for Hitler and the like, but for Cllr. O’Neill to level the charge at a left wing councillor who as far as I’m aware has campaigned against racism and fascism is astonishing. I personally don’t have a huge amount of time for Cllr. Nellis’s ideology, but I do believe that holders of public office should show each other a little more respect than this.

These are Cllr. O’Neill’s orginal words from yesterday:

“Perhaps a Labour member could update me on who this ranting guy was. Thats the way the Hazel campaign is going, Barry told me he was booted out of the Labour party seemed to have new converts tonight. I listened to him speak perhaps if he put on a German accent, and i closed my eyes it could have been 1939 all over again?”

Sadly, Cllr. O’Neill has an unfortunate habit of going back to old posts and changing them when they become embarrassing, so he’s since added an extra rider to the post make his original post seem less offensive and removed the word ‘ranting’.

You can see the original post here, and the modified one from just minutes ago here. No doubt the comment about ‘right wing Liberal nuts’ is aimed at me. I’m not sure that the best thing to do when you’ve been caught doing something wrong, rude and offensive is to insult the person who catches you whilst using language that many with mental health issues would themselves find offensive, but hey ho.

Edit: for reference – Cllr. Nellis was in Salford for the candidate selection of the Hazel Must Go campaign – a platform being used by members of the left, disaffected with Labour, to seek election. If it were really about ousting Hazel the group would have thrown their weight behind the Lib Dems who are the current main challenger to Hazel, but in reality this is just yet another socialist platform disguised as something else.

Some alarming rumours buzzing around that the Salford Advertiser is to cease free home deliveries. Salford Youth council announced the news on its website. Salford Online  latched onto the story and so did a number of others. So far local Advertiser journalist Pamela Walsh has been quick to quash this story, however it’s now being reported on the North West media site How-To as well. Salford Youth Council have a copy of the page announcing the end of deliveries, dated last week. I’ve gone back to my copy and can’t see this announcement at all – very odd indeed. Was it sent in error to some homes? Was my copy missing a cover sheet? Is delivery being stopped in certain parts of the city and, if so, which parts?

Just what is going on with the Guardian Media group (who have no press releases to the effect on its website)? People will start to say that there’s no smoke without fire and wonder if a crisis nearly erupted and now is being suppressed. However, I’m sure what local residents will want to know is, after the Advertiser’s campaign to save Hope’s maternity services, do we now need a campaign to save the Salford Advertiser?

Salford council has enthusiastically embraced the Government’s Academy schools programme, which sees private groups running schools in return for ‘sponsorship’ which pays for a small part of the building of the school. And, as I mentioned a couple of posts ago,  rich religious men involved in the running of these academies have been busy donating tons of cash to the local Labour MP, Hazel Blears.

I’m sure I’m not the only person concerned about these academies – and not least because they don’t seem to be fulfilling the government promise of dramatically improving results (http://www.salfordadvertiser.co.uk/news/s/1189880_citys_alevels_among_worst_region).

But what also really concerns me is the way the council has replaced state schools with religious academies and consequently excluded non-religious teachers from jobs. Salford has the Oasis Academy on the Quays, which replaced Hope High in Claremont ward, and Salford City Academy, which was formally Canon Williamson High School. Canon Williamson was a CofE school, so it already placed restrictions of its employment practices by faith – so no change with the arrival of the Salford City Academy. Hope on the other hand was a standard comprehensive, whereas the Oasis Academy discriminates on grounds of faith in its employment practices:

“There will be a clear expectation that the person appointed as Principal of an Oasis Academy will be able to demonstrate their commitment to the Oasis values and behaviours which are the outworking of the Christian Ethos which underpins the wider work of Oasis and which is set out in the Education Charter (enclosed)”

(from the job spec letter, Jan 2010, to prospective candidates for the post of Principle starting Sept. 2010).

Now I have no issues with people holding a faith, but I am extremely concerned that tax-payers’ money is being spent on replacing a school which made ability to teach the sole criteria for holding a teaching post, with one that can employ, promote, or dismiss a teacher on grounds of adherence to their particular flavour of Christianity. Should a state school really be able to fire their maths teacher because she gets divorced, or converts from Protestantism to Catholicism? Should a council make people redundant by closing the school they worked in and then pay for a new school for which they are barred from working because they are not Christian?

I for one think this is an extremely worrying state of affairs.

In my previous post I mentioned that the council are building a stadium for Salford Reds at a cost of £20m. This story has appeared in the local press and an extremely unequivocal statement by Steve Simms – Salford Red’s Director of Football (deputy leader cllr. Lancaster was astonishingly rude about Simms and his statement in the council meeting). Happily, Salford council’s leader and deputy leader have given strong assurances to council, in response to questions from the opposition, that the new stadium will be a community stadium with no club having exclusive use, and it is intended to be a profit making venture for the city. There’s still a business plan to be produced and this must stack up before it can be built – but I’m sure that if we can be convinced it will make money for Salford residents (or at least reduce the appalling debt the council is in) and provide a stadium for the community, then it will receive all party support.

The matter of the council loaning the club £350,000 for which it has apparently given three different accounts of what the money will be spent on is however an issue of ongoing concern.