Nick Bent, the aspiring Labour MP for Warrington South, is fighting an utterly shameless campaign, jumping on every half understood populist issue he can find in the town.  

For someone as well educated as Nick it is an embarrassing tactic, though he appears to be utterly unembarrassed to be peddling “the malicious confusion of EfW [Energy from Waste] plants with incinerators [which] has been most misleading to both the public and Government”. 

No not my words, but the words of a report from the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, a highly respected independent professional body. Their report clearly explains what Energy from Waste is, how it is controlled to be one of the cleanest forms of energy by European legislation and why it is an essential part of the country’s future energy mix as well as dealing with the problem of waste disposal.The report points out that: 

A garden bonfire or a few fireworks can produce more damaging output than an Energy from Waste plant does in a year.

It is very sad to see that Nick, who has written with religious zeal about “sustainable development”, is prepared to sell his soul for a few votes, by trying to frighten the citizens of Warrington with his talk of incinerators. I hope he is ashamed of himself.

The Tories have led us to reverse the battle cry of the American Revolution. The colonists broke away from Britain because they were being taxed but not represented in Parliament. Lord Ashcroft has been seeking to influence your vote, that of every voter in a marginal constituency, and, ultimately, who represents you in Parliament, while opting not to pay taxes in the United Kingdom.

The anger that the disclosure of Lord Ashcroft’s tax status has unleashed isn’t just because he is a non-dom who opts not to pay taxes in the UK. It is because he has been concealing this fact from the electorate through a wall of silence which was becoming increasingly embarrassing to his Conservative beneficiaries. Every member of the shadow cabinet was being asked about Lord Ashcroft’s tax status, and the undertakings he made when he became a peer, and they all avoided giving an answer. If there is nothing wrong with accepting funds from offshore billionaires to help you persuade voters in marginal seats why not simply admit it?

The ultimate hypocrisy is that they now all say how pleased they are that it is all out in the open, so why was it hidden for so long? They are right to say that both Labour and the LibDems have benefited from political donations from other non-doms. However neither party tried to cover it up. We all have some donors who end up being embarrassing, as do politicians in most western democracies where campaign funding has to be raised from donors. It is part of the price we pay for a democracy based on private political funding.

The problem of course is that the Tories attract funding from the superrich. They are now priding themselves on having reduced their dependence on Lord Ashcroft. Sure, but only to replace it with cash from bankers’ bonuses.

Likewise Labour depends both on a small number of wealthy donors and on the deep pockets of the trade unions, who appear to get precious little in return.

The LibDems have the lowest level of funding and, fortunately, we are not in anybody’s pocket.

So when the silky voiced Tory call centre operative gives you a ring to persuade you to support their campaign, or the latest suspiciously glossy piece of Tory literature falls on your mat don’t be seduced. Think carefully whether what is good for the superrich is also good for you and the wider community. If you decide it isn’t you will know that you should cast your vote elsewhere.

The opinion polls running into the coming election are extraordinarily interesting for anyone who pays attention to politics. For those of you following such things two resources I have found helpful are the UK Polling Report which records every poll. And the wonderful BBC animated graphic which makes this type of data more understandable.

The polls are sitting in what is called “hung Parliament” territory. I don’t like that term, “hung”, it  sounds too much like a death penalty, and that is what the two big parties, who have happily played ping pong with Parliament for generations, want you to believe. I believe that a balanced Parliament, with no single party having overall control, is actually a very positive solution to the crisis in politics we face today.

A balanced Parliament would not have taken us to war in Iraq. A balanced Parliament may have been less afraid of regulating the bankers and would probably have given us an economy less dependent on the profits from City speculation and subject to the devastating consequences of failed bets. A balanced Parliament may well have allowed us to reduce inequalities in society faster and given our young people a better start. In a balanced Parliament MPs would think for themselves, properly represent their constituencies and not vote robotically according to the party whips’ instructions, (just take a look how often the current MP for Warrington South went against the party line).

In most constituencies the voters have no chance of affecting the outcome of the vote. One of our Labour councillors will be fighting a safe seat in Wigan which the bookies rate as a total certainty. Another, who fought Warrington South, somewhat unsuccessfully, for the Tories last time, has gone to Congleton, part of the former Winterton empire where the chances of losing are negligible despite the current  MP couple’s eccentric sense of humour and attitude to the unfortunates who travel standard class.

Fortunately Warrington South is a three way marginal. Here your vote will have a real effect on the outcome of the election and the makeup of the next parliament. That is why the Tories are pouring vast cash resources into the seat. Lord Ashcroft, the ”is he, isn’t he a non-domiciled peer”, with his fortune secreted in Belize, the bankers who have failed the country but still want to sway its politics and the candidate himself are doing their best to buy your vote.

Labour are in a much more difficult position, which is why Nick Bent is calling in favours from his old boss, Tessa Jowell, and friend Beverley Hughes, both members of the New Labour establishment, to raise funds for his campaign. Jo Crotty is funded substantially through local contributions and the contributions of individual Liberal Democrat members.

If you think a balanced parliament and MPs who think for themselves and represent your views are a good idea, you will support Jo Crotty in the coming election. Don’t listen to the squeeze messages, both David Mowat and Nick Bent will try to frighten you that a vote for Jo is either a wasted vote, or a vote for another candidate.

Admittedly without a fair voting system, votes for everyone except the candidate who is first past the post are ‘wasted’ and we are certain to end up with an MP that only a minority of those eligible to vote want. However the only way to declare yourself in favour of a fairer, more accountable, balanced Parliament is a vote for Jo. I hope you will support her.

I have a confession to make. I voted for Margaret Thatcher. It is worse, I voted for her twice! I was even a member of the Conservative Party.

However my political redemption came in 1984. I was at an academic conference in Italy and I saw, what became an iconic newspaper photograph:

Source: BBC  Credit: John Harris 1984

At first glance I thought it must be an Italian newspaper – then it became apparent the war against the striking miners in England had turned very nasty. Riot police were striking out, almost indiscriminately, in this case against a miner’s wife who very narrowly avoided being struck on the head.

I had supported the control of irresponsible and insufficiently accountable unions. What I could not support was a war against entire communities, waged by a hastily assembled national police force. As a student in County Durham from 1969-72 I had learnt about the humane and fair way that the mining industry had been rationalised there.

 Communities were not told to “get on their bikes” they were retrained, rehoused and the environment was restored to green fields in a fair, planned and humane way. Families may not have liked to hear that their mines were going to close and their villages would, eventually be bulldozed away. But they understood the need and they were provided with an alternative way of life. None of this seemed to be on offer in 1984.

I joined the Social Democrats, and after the “Alliance” election voted to merge with the Liberals to form the Liberal Democrats. This became my political home because it is the party that interprets “fairness” the same way that I do.

No political party is going to stand on a platform of “the unfair party”, so in the coming election voters will have to interpret what fairness means when discussed by each of the main parties. I feel most comfortable with our definition: Fair taxes, A Fair start, A Fair green economy and Fair votes. As announced in January in the Liberal Democrat policy launch of Four steps to a Fairer Britain.

Nothing the Conservatives have said or done in the run up to this election gives me any confidence that what they think is “fair” bears any relation to anything I believe in. I am afraid that the “nasty party” is, somewhat unsuccessfully trying to dress itself in new clothes, which are no more than PR spin.

Now Gordon Brown promises “A Future Fair for All”, a message that would be more convincing if his party hadn’t promised that in 1997 and missed so many of their aspirations. Nevertheless imitation is the sincerest form of flattery so it will, at least make the electorate consider what they consider to be “fair”.

Anyone living in Lymm will be aware that much of our street lighting is, in the jargon, ‘time expired’. Many roads seem to have 57 varieties of street lamps in various states of repair or disrepair. It is clear that our street lighting has been neglected and underinvested in for decades.

When I was elected to the Executive Board, one of the first decisions I was involved in was to approve the lighting maintenance budget of about £ 500,000. It wasn’t until after the vote that I asked some questions and did some calculations. Perhaps I should have done that before the vote, but there wasn’t any more money whatever my results.

It turns out that Warrington Borough Council is responsible for about 26,000 lighting columns, each of which costs on average £2000 to replace. That is £52 million pounds worth of equipment being maintained with a £ 1/2 million pound budget. I challenge anyone to make that work, I calculated that that is enough money to keep only about a third of our lighting stock working.

I started to look around at what other authorities have done and found that some, Leeds in particular, had used the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) to provide the funding for new more eco-friendly energy efficient lighting to replace their worn out energy greedy stock.

 I don’t like PFI, nor do Liberal Democrats generally. It is a way of hiding public spending, passing the cost onto future tax payers and in the end paying more. Unfortunately under the present, and the last, government there is no alternative. In fact the government offers PFI credits, a subsidy to encourage PFI deals.

When our new head of highways, David Boyer arrived in post, I mentioned my concern about street lighting to him and the initiatives I had heard about elsewhere. He has followed this up and the Executive Board approved an expression of interest in a PFI funded project to update Warrington’s lighting. As worn out lights are highest on the priority list much of Lymm should benefit.

We heard this week that our application has been successful. The Department for Transport has provisionally allocated £ 45m of PFI credits to enable Warrington to upgrade street lighting. We now have to put in a final proposal and the deal needs to be approved by the Executive. However, at last, there appears to be a way forward that will stop the lights in Lymm going out

I have had a letter from the officer dealing with this matter to tell me that the proposal will be going to the Traffic Committee on a date yet to be fixed.

Since completing the table of responses two more survey forms have come in strongly in favour of the double yellow line proposal.

However it is clear that the issue which most people are worried about is the speed of the traffic on Booth’s Hill Road. Vehicles coming into the village from the west (from Warrington) are most likely to be speeding. Vehicles leaving the village accelerate as they pass the end of Highfield Road.

Double yellow lines will remove parked vehicles so those coming out of Highfield Road will have a better view of the traffic coming in and out of the village. However objectors to the scheme, and those wanting other measures as well as double yellow lines, are concerned that the absence of parked cars will encourage cars to speed up earlier and could make matters worse.

It will be up to the Traffic Committee to hear these arguments and decide whether the scheme goes ahead or not. It is very important that both those who want double yellow lines and those who have doubts are heard at the committee so that a sound decision can be made.

However one thing that most respondents seem to agree about is that the A56 running through residential parts of the village needs additional traffic calming measures to ensure that the 30 mph speed limit is respected so that residents. visitors and cyclists are not put at risk.

I will make sure that everyone who has expressed a view is told of the date of the Traffic Committee as soon as I know when it will be.

A new group of volunteers is working hard to bring the Youth Club building back into use. ClIr. Bob Barr says, “I welcome this because the only way to get new community facilities for people of all ages in Lymm is to show there is a demand. Space in all the other centres is often booked up. I wish this group well and I am pleased that the Property Services Department at Warrington Council is working

with them to make this possible.

 In the future

The longer-term future of the Youth Club Building is under review because the Borough Council has a legal obligation to ensure the best use of Council assets. The building itself is reaching the end of its useful life and can no longer be justified on such a central and attractive site. If the community makes full use of the building, over the next few years, ¡t will be much easier to make the case for a new facility in the future.

[ This item first appeared in the Autumn 2009 edition of FOCUS – an update will be posted later this month ]

Thank you to the 17 residents who returned our survey sheets about the proposed parking restrictions on Booth’s Hill Road, at the junction with Highfiled Road, last Sunday and the 10 of you who replied on-line. Here is a summary table of the results.

The proposal for going ahead with double yellow lines immediately is supported by almost half of you, and a further quarter favour double yellow lines with additional traffic calming on Booths Hill Road. A significant number of those favouring the parking restriction have experieinced near misses due to traffic speeding along Booths Hill Road which they couldn’t see clearly.

Almost a third either do not want double yellow lines, or would prefer to see alternative traffic calming. A number of those objecting to the double yellow lines have suggested strongly that the absence of parked cars may encourage cars to drive faster on Booth’s Hill Road, making matters worse

I have passed these responses to the Borough solicitor Tim Date and hope that he, and the director of Sustainable Transport, David Boyer, will take another look at the proposals.

Before going ahead, the proposal, associated risks, and alternative solutions to this problem should be dicussed with those residents who are most affected. If there is still disagreement the matter should be passed to the Traffic Committee for their decision.

Incidentally, the Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy defense, that  adequate notice of the proposed restriction was provided by placing a notice in the Warrington Guardian and on the odd lamp post is unaccaptable. It took me and Ian Marks little more than an hour  and a half to ensure that 130 homes in the vicinity of the proposed restrictions were leafletted and informed of the proposal. In future Council officers should do the same.