Campaigning for justice

I've written before about the sheer cruelly of the welfare reform act and its pleasing to see that the Campaign to Defend Council Housing are now co-ordinating a national campaign of opposition. There also a group called Councillors against cuts http://councillorsagainstcuts.org/  which I have supported.

National Campaign for Benefit Justice

Tenants, Disabled People Against Cuts and other campaigners are linking up in a national campaign against attacks on Housing and other Benefits. 40 people from 31 campaigns, tenants and trade union groups met on 19 Jan in London and agreed to build an umbrella campaign to oppose attacks on the poor and to fight for benefit justice. The PCS trade union, with members in Job Centres and Benefit offices, and Unite trade union are among those backing a united campaign.A 7,500-strong facebook group Bedroom Tax...think its unfair...join the fight here were represented, along with pensioner, women's and unemployed groups. Initial plans include a protest in February and a Benefit Justice summit and further protests in March, one month before further devastating benefit cuts including the 'Bedroom Tax' hit in April 2013.The Campaign for Benefit Justice agreed this statement: Cuts in benefits are an unjust attack on the poor. Cuts concentrated on Housing Benefit are already breaking up families, communities and support networks. They will mean poverty, debt and evictions. We oppose all cuts in benefits and tax credits. We did not cause the banking and economic crisis and will not be scapegoated to pay for it. We reject false divisions and stigmatisation of people who are low-paid or unpaid. We will join with local and national campaigns including disabled peoples, tenants, unemployed workers, trade unions, students, pensioner, single mothers and others to oppose benefit cuts. We will support and link up local campaigns. We oppose all evictions and legal action against those hit by benefit cuts and support all actions taken in defence. Sign up to support the Campaign and statement by emailing info@defendcouncilhousing.org.uk As a Children's Social Worker I have already made a number of presentation about the impact of these changes on children and if anyone wants a copy please email me.

Value for money?

We hear a lot of wittering from Eion Watts and co about attendance at Bolsover Council meetings and I wouldn’t want anyone to be misled. So here are the facts taken from the Council's  own published records for 2011/12.  If I was the leader of his party I'd stopped pointing at other people.

 

A message to you Eion

A message to you Eion (Leader of Bolsover DC)

Hi Eion this is the blog that you don’t read and keep telling me that no-one else reads. You mention that at every single Council meeting which is kind of you and the least I can do in return is to suggest some ideas for your very own blog. Here are some suggestions of things we’d all like to know but only you can answer:

·         How luxurious are the beds, and how good are the meals, in the Union Jack Private Members Club which the Council has footed the bill for when you were on Council business in London?

·        How you entertain yourself in your Mercedes Benz on your long and lonely drive to your meeting in Kilmarnock for which the Council paid you over £230 in travel allowances when the train could have cost less than half the cost?

·         Where will any Parish Council, Councillor or Voluntary Organisation get the money from to take over the running of the District Council’s three Community Houses as you proposed last week?

·         What other District Council services you intend to also try and off-load to Parish Councils or voluntary organisations so you can carry on paying yourself and other Councillors the highest basic allowances of any District in the country?

·         Why are you spear-heading Cameron’s attack on the poorest in society by imposing an 8.5% tax hike on those working age families unfortunate enough to claim Council Tax Benefit even though it’s forecast to cost Bolsover DC more to collect it than the Council will get from it?

·         How many miles has the very opulent civic car done in its first year of use?

And if you get bored of writing about Bolsover DC I’m told people in Barlborough would like to know your views on how much of their Parish Council expenditure has gone on legal costs and compensation payments to staff.

Go on Eion, give openness a go, surely you have nothing to fear from the people?

What gets more time in a Bolsover DC meeting – M1 congestion or a proposal to tax the poorest people in the District?

If you want to see what people value look where they spend their time. At this morning’s Council meeting the members of Bolsover spent nearly an hour considering the impact of opening up the hard shoulder of the M1 to traffic. Members queued up to tell the professionals from the Highways agency what to do with their scheme.  The truth as we all know, is that without a proper transport policy whatever you do with the current roads, king car will choke them,  a reality that has eluded this government just as it eluded the last one.

Ultimately it didn’t really matter, Bolsover DC is not in charge of motorways, (just imagine), and it was only a consultation. Later on the agenda came something that Bolsover DC certainly is in charge of; deciding whether the 4,000 poorest families in the District should continue to get their Council tax paid in full. Suddenly all those strident voices had nothing to say, they meekly stared at their beautiful desks. In a re-run of the Poll Tax the Executive of this Labour-controlled Council wants everyone on benefit to pay about £85. They weren’t every dissuaded when I pointed out that the costs of collecting this at £25,000 pa was more than the revenue that the District would receive from it!

The Leader Eion Watts made some remarks about how very sorry he was, and how dreadful the government was, and then got quite annoyed that I dared to list some of the 100+ Council’s who are standing up to the Government and are not levying this tax.  He also tried to defend the Councillors highest basic allowances in the country, which I hadn’t even mentioned, but you know what a guilty mind is like.

Will they ever smell the coffee?

Amazed, astonished and baffled

All term used by Cllr Macgregor (Labour) of Bolsover DC in the six press releases issued last year regarding benefit fraud (the last one being on the 16^th January 2013). Cameron and Osborne must be delighted that by making sure the local headlines are full of terms like “benefit cheats” it is so much easier for him and his chums to slash welfare spending on “scroungers” whilst handing out tax cuts to millionaires.

The truth as Bolsover Councillors (should) know is that for every £1 lost in benefit fraud £17 goes unclaimed because people are too frightened to claim them. For comparison another £15 is lost in tax fraud and £70 in tax avoidance). But during the year not a single press release was issued to encourage benefit take-up let alone show a comparison with tax fraud.

So why is Cllr Macgregor all of a dither over this? Is it because in 2001 it was reported in the Guardian that he was “being investigated by fraud squad officers in Derbyshire over allegations that he used his position as head of a regeneration trust in a rundown mining area to line his own pocket”? The article went on to say “further investigations revealed that on numerous occasions between 1997 and last year, Mr MacGregor's separate expenses for representing Bolsover district council and the regeneration trust showed him to be in different parts of the country at the same time”, and that as a result he along what another person “agreed to pay £5,000 each and legal costs of £16,000 to Creswell parish council”. See: http//www.guardian.co.uk/society/2001/may/04/regeneration.communities

What is amazing, astonishing and baffling is that Councillor Macgregor still has a seat on Bolsover DC at all let alone that he has been given a Cabinet position for Corporate Efficiencies (some irony here methinks). It would be nice if he showed some empathy for those on the sharp end of the Tory cuts, but instead he, along with his colleagues, are quite content to continue to rake in the highest basic allowances of any District Councillors in the Country.

When you live in a glass house and continue to throw stones and denigrate others it is not surprising that you end up amazed, astonished and baffled.

Bad days for Bolsover

On the 21^st December the Government issued its grant allocations and they contained a real sting in the tail for Bolsover. The Council is facing cuts of up to 35%. Here’s the data from the Local Government Chronicle:

Council	2013-14 % change	Cumulative % change 2013-14 to 2014-15
Great Yarmouth*	-15%	-39%
Burnley*	-15%	-38%
Barrow-in-Furness*	-14%	-36%
Bolsover*	-14%	-35%
Hyndburn*	-13%	-34%
Pendle*	-15%	-33%
Hastings*	-15%	-33%
Chesterfield	-14%	-25%
Preston	-13%	-24%
Copeland	-10%	-21%

 

Those Councils asterixed have been offered an “efficiency grant” which would reduce these losses. However payment of the grant in 2014/15 will depend on the Councils performance in 2013/14 and that could be a problem for Bolsover.

What does it mean? – Well I think it means 3 things:

1.   There is no excuse for waste inefficiency and waste. How can anyone fight against these cuts if our own Council is frittering money away? There are over 400 Councils in the country and only two failed their value for money assessment, guess what one of those was Bolsover. I think this is now the fourth or the fifth “last chance” saloon message delivered by External Audit, will it be acted on this time?

2.   There has to be an end to waste and extravagance. Have a look at the table again, just above Bolsover is Barrow in Furness, also a Labour dominated Council. But they couldn’t be more different in their priorities. The Basic Allowance paid to the Councillors of Barrow is just £2,120, in Bolsover it is well over four times higher. You don’t need to be an accountant to know which of these Councils will have to wield the largest axe. And it doesn’t end there. For two years the leader of Bolsover, Clr Eion Watts, combined the highest basic allowance of any District Councillor in the country with the highest claim of travel and subsistence expenditure of any District Councillor in Derbyshire. A double whammy indeed. In 2009/10 his claim for travelling and subsistence alone was over £7,500 by comparison the total claims for travelling and subsistence from all 48 Councillors in Chesterfield (also in the above table) was just £3,811!

3  There is no point in saving the Council if we sack the District of all its assets to pay for it. In a lesson it learnt from Thatcher the Council is staging its own fire sale of assets. Bolsover’s public toilet went last year; Sherwood Lodge and Green are due to be buried in tarmac soon and if the Labour members of the Safe and Inclusive Scrutiny Committee get there way all the Community Houses will be closed shortly. Enough is enough the coalition is doing enough damage already it doesn’t need any help from the Labour councillors on Bolsover.