One of the main issues which has concerned our readers this week has been Wirral streetlights. Or rather the lack of them or lack of someone to turn them off when they’re on 24/7! .
The streetlights situation brings into focus once again that Wirral Council need to concentrate on getting the basics right before they start channelling resources into speculative schemes such as golf resorts or international business centres.
Having vision (20/20 or otherwise) is one thing but short-sightedness or wilful blindness is another!
Firstly we must bring to your attention a disconcerting blog post by former Wirral Council street lighting design engineer turned inveterate blogger Paul Cardin which is absolutely essential reading on the matter.
https://wirralinittogether.wordpress.com/2016/01/27/whats-wrong-with-wirral-council-street-lighting/
Mr. Cardin records his concerns about information provided or not provided by Wirral Council about the location of street lights that have been turned off or were not working properly. The insightful post highlights(!) how some parts of the local media work and how some parts of Wirral Council don’t work with information appearing on and off websites like, well ,Wirral’s streetlights.
Another person who has resorted to social media to spotlight (!) their concerns is Wirral Leaks reader Nick Lauro who tells us :
“Well after 3 months of waiting after reporting, including Tweets to WMBC, a letter in the Wirral Globe, a piece on the John Brace website and FINALLY, writing to my MP, they sent someone out.
The best bit is the three-way procedure between BAM Nuttall, WMBC and Scottish Power for reporting, assessing and fixing street lamps. It really does become like one of those “how many men does it take to change a light bulb?” jokes. Of course, nothing gets done – apart from the cash-cow street-furniture contract.
In this case, some £30,000,000 on a 6 year contract seems to be riding on whether we get street lamps fixed. I wonder how many honking snouts are in the money trough on that one!!!!
The more voices shouting against the bureaucracy and professional obfuscation that WMBC seem to excel in, the more chance we have of exposing their mismanagement of our public services and general poor practice. I know two people who will have to remain anonymous, who both work for the council as two of the many long suffering employees working under what they describe as a joke management team that have lost any respect from the workforce, mainly due to the pay-freezes they have to endure whilst golden handshakes are given out to the most ineffectual executives, along with obscene daily rates for outsourced consultants.”
We’d like to reassure Mr.Lauro and the growing number of people who have been contacting us that we’ll continue to shine a light on Wirral Council especially when they don’t do the same for us!
Wirralleaks 
SSE (Scottish & Southern Electric) Lighting Contractor vans have been seen in both Birkenhead and Wallasey in the last few days.
So is this a sign that BAM Nuttall are deep in the mire and in order to extricate themselves, have had to subcontract the ever growing backlog out to money-grubbing private sector chums? Perhaps there’s a clause in the contract allowing this. I never thought I’d be saying, “Bring back Dave Boy Green”.
Whatever, it’s a far cry from the days when the streets were lit, everything ran as smooth as clockwork and the offices and depots were populated by well-trained public servants. Which last happened around 2003, just before I resigned.