Is the whole price/prize point about Merseyside’s Mayor actually a load of rubbish?

Is the whole price/prize point about Merseyside’s Mayor actually a load of rubbish?

Is the whole price/prize point about Merseyside’s Mayor actually a load of rubbish?

                                                  

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Liverpool City Region Combined Authority Scrutiny Panel 28th October 2015 Part 1 of 2

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Liverpool City Region Combined Authority Scrutiny Panel 28th October 2015 Part 2 of 2

Ged Fitzgerald (Chief Executive, Liverpool City Council) tries to explain devolution to a meeting of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority Scrutiny Panel 28th October 2015
Ged Fitzgerald (Chief Executive, Liverpool City Council) tries to explain devolution to a meeting of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority Scrutiny Panel 28th October 2015

You can view what was said at a public meeting earlier this week on the subject of devolution for Merseyside above. It’s openly admitted however that the communications/engagement/public relations side of this has been pretty poor.

I will disagree with something that’s been said throughout this process since it doesn’t make sense (although from press reports Cllr Phil Davies has done a U-turn in favour of a Merseyside Mayor).

It’s been stated (in the video above by Ged Fitzgerald, Liverpool City Council Chief Executive and Mayor Joe Anderson before) and again and again that the price of devolution is a Merseyside Mayor. This whole process based on the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill which is wending its way through parliament.

I realise legislation does get amended, but as it’s on its 8th parliamentary stage out of ten it’s going to be eventually (especially as it’s a government bill) mainly in the form it’s now in.

Here’s the section on an elected Mayor.

It modifies the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 to state:

107A 15 Power to provide for election of mayor

(1) The Secretary of State may by order provide for there to be a mayor for the area of a combined authority.
(2) An order under subsection (1) shall not be used as a condition for agreeing to the transfer of local authority or public authority functions.”

In other words what is repeatedly repeated (and perhaps why they’re so bad at communications) doesn’t make sense. The government can’t say we’ll give you this if you have an elected Mayor and the price/prize thing is a load of rubbish. The government can’t do that as the legislation that will underpin this (which has to come into force to trigger the next stage which would result in devolution) makes that unlawful.

With me so far?

The government knows this is going on and I’m sure that it doesn’t make them look favourably on Liverpool when these sorts of political shenanigans to make them look bad, are being played out amongst Merseyside’s more ambitious Labour politicians.

So why would this have got started?

My best educated guess (as trying to make sense about what’s going on with the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority with its poor public relations is like wading through treacle) is a certain Labour politician wants (again) to blame something unpopular in some quarters on a Tory government (even if it isn’t entirely true).

Add to this the ambition in some quarters to actually be Merseyside’s Mayor (because once it’s a done deal all they’ll need is the Labour nomination) gives a motive.

So that’s my opinion. The whole price/prize thing is a politician’s way of deflecting the blame knowing that generally the media won’t inquire too deeply and I think readers of this blog can make a jolly good guess as to who wants to be Merseyside’s Mayor.

Once again Labour are blaming something they want (a Merseyside Mayor) on the government, stating an untruth (that it’s a condition of the devolution deal which it’s not because the legislation would make that unlawful) and hoping everyone will believe it?

Well who do you believe? I’ve outlined above the consistent line that they’re trying to spoon feed the Merseyside public and the press whilst deflecting any attempt at scrutiny by politicians by openly refusing to state how the negotiations are going?

There will be an extraordinary public meeting of all Wirral Council councillors (as well as public meetings of councillors in the other areas of Merseyside and Halton) to discuss the devolution deal. Wirral’s will be held on the 19th November starting at 6.00pm in the Council Chamber at Wallasey Town Hall.

Isn’t it about time the public were told the truth?

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For The Small Price Of A Lightbulb

For The Small Price Of A Lightbulb

For The Small Price Of A Lightbulb

Bam Nuttall contract drawings of one of the twenty different designs for wiring for one of Wirral Council's streetlights thumbnail
Bam Nuttall contract drawings of one of the twenty different designs for wiring for one of Wirral Council’s streetlights thumbnail

One of my favourite authors, Isaac Asimov when editing books of science fiction stories (or even his own stories) used to add an introduction to each story. This is an introduction to a piece by a guest blogger (in future these introductions will probably be shorter).

Many moons ago, I started and ran a video games website (single-handed) that had more readers each month than the Wirral Globe has now. Just in case anyone considers that a “hobby”, I was paid for it, just as I earn money from writing this blog.

Visitors to that website used to submit content (there was a forum too) and believe me having to edit a submission from a teenager who completely ignores any of the rules of grammar and doesn’t use full stops was a stretch.

For a while I’ve been thinking of a new feature on this blog similar to the letters page of the newspapers where users can submit content. After all (apart from a submission by Leonora who I’ve tried to gently encourage to write again) readers of this blog have had to put up with me for the last five years!

I have asked a number of people to write a guest post, however Nick Lauro has been the first to thankfully say yes!

Compared to the experience above, editing Nick Lauro’s submission has been a dream by comparison. I have only made one very minor edit!

His piece is about something that I’ll refer to as a “bread and butter” issue of political activists or a politician and reminds me of a similar problem I tried to sort out once on the Beechwood estate. Writing any more than that about it would spoil the surprise.


By Nick Lauro

Is it really too much to ask? It’s not as though I’m asking for the air fare and the accommodation costs for a trip to China, it’s just a couple of street lamps that need fixing! So began my speculation, as I pondered in the dark about exactly how much of Wirral council taxpayers’ money it costs to send a van and a couple of engineers out to repair a street lamp or two.

It all started around the end of September when unusually, my little cul­-de-­sac was plunged into darkness by the simultaneous failure of not one, but two lamp posts. Not the end of the world, maybe a bit on the Victor Meldrew side of petty but nevertheless, a valid security risk to my fellow neighbours whose houses sit next to the shrouded, wooded scrubland that provides an obvious getaway/hiding place, for even the most feckless burglar. It’s not the first time a street light has failed over the 11 years I’ve lived in the road, and has always been an easy problem to rectify; contact council, report faulty light, wait a few days, light fixed.

Reporting a faulty street light is as simple as visiting the Wirral council website and filling in an online form that rewards you with a message of acknowledgement ­much preferable to hanging on the end of a telephone waiting to speak to an overworked, underpaid, first­ line support employee from an understaffed department. After you’ve completed the reporting process, you sit and wait for the lights to come back on again ­or in this case, not… four ­plus weeks and two ignored Tweets later, darkness still prevails when the sun goes down and my train of thought drifts toward ideas of austerity, cuts and a local authority so fiscally challenged, they can no longer provide the same level of service for our most basic of urban requirements. But wait; there is much talk in the local press about my locality being saved from oblivion by the universal panacea for all cash­ strapped local authorities ­a ‘Golf Resort’. We have a white knight upon his steed, bringing us promise of regeneration and our council coffers once again, overflowing with bullion ­surely enough to restore Wirral’s street ­furniture to working order for years to come?

Alas, our saviour and two of his executive salaried colleagues have departed in what looks to be a strategically planned exit, taking between them, some £500,000 of council taxpayers’ money in remunerations. Who will save us now, from further fiscal disaster? Who can keep the dream alive for ‘Wirral Waters’? Will the money to fix two dodgy street lamps down my road ever be found?

Seriously folks, when an organisation funded by money from the public purse ­our money ­can seemingly see fit to play the sort of boardroom games more in keeping with the style of premier league football managers, it is easy to feel bitterly short-changed. The recent monetary machinations carried out by our most highly paid public servants, only serves to cast suspicion and doubt on their ability to even find the money to change a light bulb.

© Nick Lauro 2015

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ICO rule that Wirral Council’s refusal of FOI request based on “commercial interests” is incorrect (FS50585536)

ICO rule that Wirral Council’s refusal of FOI request based on "commercial interests" is incorrect (FS50585536)

ICO rule that Wirral Council’s refusal of FOI request based on "commercial interests" is incorrect (FS50585536)

                                                                 

ICO Information Commissioner's Office logo
ICO Information Commissioner’s Office logo

The Information Commissioner’s Office have issued another decision notice in favour of this blog. You can read it for yourself as I’ve uploaded it to the blog decision notice FS50585536 (although eventually it’ll be published on ICO’s website).

It’s five pages, so I’ll summarise what it states and go into the history.

As a local government elector during the 2013/14 audit I requested various invoices for legal work which I have a legal right to inspect and receive free copies of as a local government elector on the Wirral.

Sadly the invoices that this decision notice refer to were only the first page of a multi-page invoice. I made a FOI request for the rest of the invoices. One was for £48,384 and the other for £2,700 (both from Weightmans).

Wirral Council first refused the request on a quite baseless and ludicrous application of stating that they were covered by legal professional privilege.

Whoever dealt with it at internal review agreed with me that this was incorrect.

However then Wirral Council refused the request giving the reason of "Commercial interests".

The Information Commissioner’s Office was not convinced by Wirral Council’s arguments and has rejected Wirral’s application of withholding the information based on commercial interests.

I am pleased the decision notice doesn’t give Wirral Council the option to "pick another reason" to withhold the information. There’s one request I have to Wirral Council now on its third decision notice because Wirral Council has exploited that loophole in the past.

So Wirral Council have (well had from the date of the decision notice which was 2 days ago) 35 days to supply the information or 28 days to appeal the decision.

Let’s hope Wirral Council stop playing games over freedom of information and do the right thing?

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Greenpeace protests about John West outside Merseytravel’s HQ with a giant tin of tuna

Greenpeace protests about John West outside Merseytravel’s HQ with a giant tin of tuna

Greenpeace protests about John West outside Merseytravel’s HQ with a giant tin of tuna

Greenpeace protest outside Mann Island Liverpool about John West and tuna fishing 28th October 2015
Greenpeace protest outside Mann Island Liverpool about John West and tuna fishing 28th October 2015

The plaza outside Mann Island in Liverpool has seen many protests. There have in the recent past been a trade union protest about worker’s rights on this £1.2 billion contract signed by councillors on the Merseyside Recycling and Waste Authority to deal with Merseyside’s rubbish (exclusively published by this blog) and more recently another trade union protest about removing guards from Merseyrail trains.

Although industrial correspondents seem to have disappeared from the media, as a political journalist reporting on political protests is part of the role. As you’d expect I’ve seen many protests (in fact nearly every Liverpool City Council meeting I went to earlier this year seemed to have a protest outside) but never have I ever seen a protest involving a massive tuna can.

Greenpeace did send me a press release, however I haven’t based this story on the press release but instead some questions posed to Greenpeace instead as there are already other stories in the media based largely on the press release.

You are probably wondering what the connection is to the Merseyside taxpayer. A long time ago, Merseytravel moved its headquarters from Hatton Gardens and signed a lease for Mann Island. For some reason (don’t ask me why) they rented the whole building at Mann Island including many floors they wouldn’t need.

As this article in the Liverpool Echo points out John West (the tuna company) were offered a £1 million sweetener to relocate their headquarters to Mann Island.

I posed some original questions to Greenpeace and these are their answers. I was at Mann Island yesterday for a public meeting, but due to the protest Mann Island was in partial lockdown so it would’ve been impossible to speak to John West to report on their side. My questions are in bold.

Q. The building you were protesting outside today is leased by a body called Merseytravel. However they realised they had leased too many floors and needed tenants.

In order to encourage John West to sublease some of the building from Merseytravel they offered a cash payment and a rent free period. This amounts to either £1 million or a rent free period of 4 years and 9 months. There is more detail here http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/merseytravel-hands-1m-sweetener-john-3346198 .

Did you know about this taxpayer support that was behind John West’s HQ being based at Mann Island?

This looks interesting but it’s not something we have a position on I’m afraid – as our focus is on the sustainable and ethical fishing methods of John West and their owners – Thai Union – who are the world’s largest tuna company.

Q. You state that John West have broken their promises. Are there other brands of tuna you’d recommend consumers buy that are fished for sustainably?

Yes, we have a tuna league table which ranks the tinned tuna sold by the UKs major supermarkets and tuna brands, according to how sustainable and ethical it is. It’s here – scroll down. Overwhelmingly, the most sustainable options for consumers are supermarket own brands. Waitrose, M&S, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Aldi all perform very well. So too do Asda, Morrisons and the Coop – all of which sell 100% sustainably caught tuna in their own brand tins. At rock bottom is John West, with just 2% sustainably caught tuna in their tins. Princes and Lidl also need to do much better and change the way they source their tuna.

Q. What is John West’s response to your protest? As someone who was in the building today, it was basically put on a partial lockdown in case protestors wanted to go to the John West part. Have you had any formal response from John West?

There has been no response from John West today as a result of our activities. We tried to deliver our petition containing the names of more than 70,000 people who are demanding that John West honour its sustainability commitment and its owners – Thai Union – clean up their act globally. But Paul Reenan, the John West MD refused to come down and accept it.

John West has put out a previous statement, responding to the launch of our campaign just over 4 weeks ago. The main points they raise and our rebuttals are here.

Q. If John West made claims that turn out to be false have you taken this up with trading standards?

A Greenpeace investigation found 1000s of John West tuna products coming from Thailand and some of them had 100% traceability labels on tins that were misleading. This is because they claimed the tuna could be traced back to the vessel that caught it, using their website, but this was false. More on that investigation here. It’s an interesting angle and it’s definitely something that could be looked into.

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EXCLUSIVE: What do the plans for a new fire station at Saughall Massie look like?

EXCLUSIVE: What do the plans for a new fire station at Saughall Massie look like?

EXCLUSIVE: What do the plans for a new fire station at Saughall Massie look like?

                                                     

Dan Stephens (Chief Fire Officer) answers questions at a public consultation meeting in Saughall Massie to discuss proposals for a new fire station (20th April 2015)
Dan Stephens (Chief Fire Officer) answers questions at a public consultation meeting in Saughall Massie to discuss proposals for a new fire station (20th April 2015)

The story of the possibility of a new fire station in Saughall Massie has rumbled on to a new phase as Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service has requested pre application planning advice from Wirral Council. Pictured above is Dan Stephens in Saughall Massie trying to explain the need for a fire station earlier in the year to residents.

In the interests of openness and transparency (and if the Chair of the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority Cllr Hanratty is reading and deplores the drain on financial resources providing the information I’m about to show on this blog I might point out it was emailed to this blog I didn’t ask for it so no cost to the public purse whatsoever), I’m publishing here some documents to do with Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service’s request for pre-application planning advice.

I might point out they got a lot of free planning advice which was revealed via FOI requests as emails passed between officers at Wirral Council and Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service.

Just before I get to the documents (I’m sure someone will eventually reveal what the advice is that Wirral Council receives in response to this) I will point out the way the project is described by Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service’s contractors is that this is all going through the formalities and this this is essentially a done deal. Although like Cllr Blakeley I will make it clear that is merely how anybody reading these documents would think and it may just be MFRS’s contractors getting ahead of themselves in documents that I think they wouldn’t assume would be published.

As there are many Ordnance Survey maps included, I am obliged to include the following: Contains OS data © [unknown database] Crown copyright 2015. You can read the Open Government Licence that Ordnance Survey makes its maps available under here.

However a decision is yet to be made on the land and yet to be made over planning permission. So that’s the caveat I will put here as from the tone of some of the way these are written you’d guess that these decisions had already been made.

Pre application planning advice request Saughall Massie Fire Station

There are also a number of documents attached to the advice that show the layout of what it proposed and plans.

Saughall Massie Fire Station attached documents

Saughall Massie Fire Station attached documents 2

Pre application documents

The purpose of pre-application planning advice is so that if there are any problems plans can be changed. So therefore it is possible the planning application will vary from the above.

As detailed by the Chief Fire Officer Dan Stephens during the consultation, once a planning application is submitted there will be a period of consultation before any decisions are made.

However if you have any comments, please feel free to leave a comment.

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