The month that was September 2012

I normally try and do a post each week on the blog but with things busy at work and more appropriately the Council work. A number of residents have contacted me about issues that effect them from parking issues to anti social behaviour. I with Cllr George Fairhurst are working on those issues.

September has been a very month with the core strategy consultation taking the most of the time up at the beginning of the month and it is looking like that the people have Standish have sent in nearly 50% of the whole borough responses in. This is a massive achievement and I thank all those that helped to achieve this great result. Now we wait to see what the response is. During the consultation I was invited to attend a another residents meeting in another area that was under the same threat as Standish. In there a Labour Cllr told the residents that they where good at moaning and not good at action, although there were hundreds in the room. I guess if he was trying to motivate people he didn't achieve this. I guess this is the difference between Standish Independent Cllrs is we work with residents and Labour just shout at them if they don't get their own way.

Also Ashfield issue has not gone away and we have now got the Council to agree that the way to resolve this is to hold a public enquiry. This will hopefully be held alter in the year and this will again a huge amount of work to achieve a good hearing for us. We have hundreds of Witness statements in already and when we know more we will start the exercise again to get even more.

Also I have been involved in a working group where Labour have changed the constitution of the Council (the rules of the Council). I was strongly against these as these lead the Council to not being open and transparent which I believe the Council should be but one thing is apparent that in the Council there is a Councillor who is an independent on his own in Hindley and he is being bullied and I hate bullies. Also the rules restrict debate at best and at worst it stops debate, which is clearly what Labour want to do. They do not like issues like Ashfield being brought up and raised. Now their plan is to restrict and stop debate.