New Leaflet out.

Friday evening saw the delievery of my latest newsletter. I have started distributing it this weekend, with parts of Swinley and Whelley. I will try and upload a pdf copy on the blog. Hopefully this will be delivered by the end of next weekend. If you have not had your copy by then please let me know and I will send you a spare one.

Already had a phone call from a resident in Swinley saying that she is very impressed. A lot of hard work goes into these leaflet so it is always good to hear comments from people.

Grit Bins Ordered.

I have sent in the locations for the grit bins were they meet the Council Criteria. I will hopefully get this approved as soon as possible so that we can get them in situ before to long.

Whilst we might have been caught out this year hopefully by having these bins we will not get caught out again.

The grit in the bins are for the streets that they will be located on.

Election Law should be changed!

I hear on the grapevine that a Tory Councillor is looking to move to Bury St Edmunds. But they are putting themselves forward for a councillor in Wigan. They can do this as they will qualify for living in the borough for the last 12 months....or should I say they have been on the voters role for 12 months, which might not be the same.

However, I believe that when you sign up to stand you should actually agree to some kind of commitment. If this person gets in then they will only have to turn up to one meeting every 6 months and get their full allowance. Not bad work if you can get it.

This is not the first time this kind of thing has happened in 2008 Cllr Philip Thompson, Camden Council moved to America and still claimed his money. Quite ironic that his name should be Cllr Thompson.....

I will be writing to the electoral commission to voice my concerns and to see if they can look into this.

Should the Major get a new car?

With the council do cuts all over the place it does seem strange that the Council should be getting a new car for the Major. Is this really the right way to spend tax payers money at this difficult time and if we did not do this what other services could be saved or increased by using this money better?

With the budget meeting next week I am sure this will feature in the meeting and lets see what happens.

Scholes issues

After yesterday the two incidents that people wanted to speak to me about were about anti social behaviour and then issues with leases.

I have arranged for a visit to one of the people concerned tonight to start the process of and get all the details. The second person they have said they will email all the details to me in the next day or two.

Anti social behaviour is so common in the high rise flats with noise that this proves that the wrong type of people in there soon cause a nuisance in there for the rest of the residents quite easily.

Scholes Issues.

I have been contacted today by two people independently of each other on the high rise flats in scholes. I have arranged to contact them both this evening as this seems quite strange that two people would do this on the same day unless there were some major issues.

Scholes residents have a hard time of the Council and they seem to have an up hill battle to get fair treatment for what ever reason.

Hopefully what ever it is I will be able to help sooner rather than later. I will keep you all updated on these events too.

New Website.

As a leader of the local Wigan Independent Conservatives and a Councillor I am keen to use as much new technology as possible in communicating with the public. This is because I believe the more we communicate with people the more people are likely to get involved in voting. With rates of turn out so low I believe that we need to use as much as possible rather than just say at election vote for me or us etc.

So I have been learning how to do websites and I am please to say that this should be up and running next month. Hopefully with the blog, face book, websites and leaflets we can maximise the message of what we are and what we are about and get more people interested in voting in Wigan.

It is just a basic website nothing fancy but it is another medium that we will be using.

Welcome to Andy Lomax.

Today confirms that Andrew Lomax will be standing for our party at the next local election on May 6 for the Wigan West Ward.

I am delighted that Andrew has decided to stand for us. He will be an excellent candidate for the Wigan West Ward and I predict that this safe Labour seat could now fall with his hard work and grit that he is showing.

Andrew runs the Save Wigan Campaign and is passionate about Wigan and saving Wigan. It is refreshing to see some one like Andrew stand and I am sure there will be more to follow.

New Budget.

We had our group pre budget meeting last night and there were some interesting things that were coming out of it.

What seems to be the case is the Controlling group has been running our savings down and we are getting low in reserves only to say, I suspect next year we need a big rise and blame the tories, after they get in power.

More details will come out over the next weeks.

Issues whilst Door Knocking

Whilst out last night knocking on doors and introducing myself like I do twice a week a number of issues came up.

The state of the roads which I have already mentioned in previous blogs.

The state of the foot paths, in the sense that an area gets dug up and that part just gets repaired. After a few occasions of this the footpath as a whole looks like a mess as when looking down it just looks like it is just patched up all over the place.

Speeding cars in Danesway. Residents have said that they were looking to contact myself to find out if this is possible. I have raised this now with the post code to see if this is possible.

The neighbouring property, which is the same size and type, is paying less council tax. I explained that there is a process for challenging this and appealing. I have arranged to call back down to the resident at the weekend and I will also post this on the blog and facebook page.

A number of different issues but all, with the except of one, were pleased that I knocked and introduced myself and had asked if there were issues. Good Night work.

I will post updates on these matters as they come up.

What do people want from their Council and councillors?

Whilst local councillors are running round saying this and that it is always in my thoughts that is this what people want. Or are they wanting something else or to raise an issue which they believe would need to be given more priority.

Also what do people want from their local council and what are they are wanting them to look at or do for them.

Why nor email me with any issues that you think need to be looked at or if you have any issues, queries or questions.

Email me on gareth.fairhurst@wigan.gov.uk

General Election date

Whilst I am bemused why Gordon Brown does not say when the General Election date is, it seems that there is a serious debate on when the date is. With a number of newspaper one minute saying that it will be on the same day as the local elections and then some say that it will be called early and then the reason why I am not sure if actually this helps or hinders the voters. Are they feeling involved and have some kind of new element to look at rather than which party to vote for, as they will probably have made their mind up already this new angle gives a new interest to the whole thing or is it just putting people off thinking I am sick of it all and I wish we could get on with it.

For me I am certainly interested in the debate and reasons why. The answer will any one get the answer? No! It will be called when it is called and we can't change that, although this to me is a new interesting angle and debate on the issue.

After all that I still think it will be on the same day as the Local Elections - 6 May 2010.

Update

Was in London all yesterday on Council business and it was an early start and late finish. Sorry I can't to much about this yet but once I am able to I will let you all know.

I have been awake since 4.30am for some reason, so I have been working on a new leaflet which hopefully will be out in the next week or so. This will be another edition of my in touch magazine.

I have also been looking at preparation on the local election in May.

There was also an article in yesterday Wigan Evening Post about the Tory Councillor Peter Thompson and not being in any meetings from 6 September 2009 till 26 January 2010.

Council lose more personal data!

The Council has confirmed that a number of staff details have been lost. The data was put onto a usb memory stick and this has gone missing. The details were being transferred from Stockport back to Wigan when lost, so they have no idea of where it could be.

With the embarrassment of losing over 33000 children's details this is yet another situation where the question must be asked which is if the Council should be allowed to hold data, given their track record?

I have written to the chief executive with some serious questions and comments and I await her reply. The question is who's details will be lost next?