Method In The Madness

We’ve been musing on this car parking malarkey and we’re still trying to make sense of the madness. Last night’s Business Overview and Scrutiny Committee did nothing to dispel the notion that something amiss is going on here.

For a start haven’t we been down this road (pun intended) before?  We remember that The Brand New Brighton Rocks On campaign forced Wirral Council to do a U-turn on parking charges in New Brighton in 2015. Now Wirral Council are thinking out of the box (and out of their minds)  by proposing parking charges all over the place.

The Business Overview and Scrutiny Committee Cllr Michael Sullivan was at pains to explain during his comedy turn at chairing the meeting that these were only proposals, nothing had been decided and they had statutory duties . We assumed the main statutory duty  was to cause as much dissent and opposition to the proposals as possible. In which case – job done!

It has been suggested by one of our commentators that :

Everyone seems to assume that this proposal is real.
Wirral has form for putting forward proposals similar to this so they can be withdrawn as a demonstration of “listening to the public”
Standard PR tactic.
What is it within budget proposals they are trying to draw fire from?

An interesting viewpoint and one we would certainly give credence to having observed the ‘bureaucratic machinations’ of Wirral Council over the years. Especially when the controversy over these proposals is creating a bigger smokescreen than a broken exhaust pipe. Perhaps to hide something even more toxic?

We also note how teen sensation Labour Cllr Warren Ward was given the elder statesman role as the rest of the councillors on the committee backed his notice of motion calling  for an impact report on the proposals.

We anticipate this impact report will be very short and read : CATASTROPHIC

As we replied to our commentator :

We hear what you’re saying……especially when the proposals seem counter-productive to their so-called pledges. Nothing but nothing would surprise us when it comes to Wirral Council.
We await developments and political manoeuvrings with interest.

 

Park and Get Taken For A Ride

 

 

Once again we get a sense of deja vu at Leaky Towers as another campaign seeks to prevent car park charges being imposed at Fort Perch Rock in New Brighton –  and it would seem anywhere else you might want to park your car on Wirral.

http://www.wirralglobe.co.uk/news/15011517.Labour_urged_to__come_clean__over_plans_to_charge_for_car_parking_at_Wirral_country_parks/

‘The Brand New Brighton Rocks On’ was a winner of a Leaky Award 2015 for Campaign of the Year.Their campaign forced Wirral Council to do a U-turn on parking charges in New Brighton.

https://wirralleaks.wordpress.com/2016/01/09/the-leaky-awards-2015/

However undeterred and looking for a convenient cash cow it would appear Wirral Council are back like ‘The Terminator’ of the traffic world.

The new campaign to prevent the imposition of parking charges is here:

https://www.change.org/p/councillor-phil-davies-say-no-to-parking-charges-in-new-brighton?source_location=minibar

We think it is significant that the campaign has rightly identified where the real political power base lies within Wirral  when it says : ‘The Labour Council in Wirral has scrapped parking charges on some days in Birkenhead but plans to introduce ‘pay and display’ charges around the seafront. This could force Morrisons, the Light Cinema and Bubbles play centre to do the same and push even more traffic into the residential roads nearby. Tell our councillors to treat all parts of Wirral fairly and scrap the plan for charges in New Brighton!’

However what we’re particularly perplexed about is that Wirral Council somehow think that erecting parking meters left, right and centre is a whizzo money making scheme. Surely they must know that powers invested in them under Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 make it illegal for local authorities to set charges in order to provide a source of revenue for other activities, even if the money raised is used to fund transport provision. The level of charges must be based solely on the need to manage parking; if that level generates a surplus only then may it be put to use elsewhere. Having said that we know how lax Wirral Council’s legal department can be when it comes to giving proper legal advice and complying with the law!

So here’s an alternative idea – how about imposing charges on Wirral Council staff and councillors parking outside council buildings and see how that goes down shall we ?

The Leaky Awards 2015

We must first apologise for the late arrival of the much anticipated annual Leaky Awards.

However we thought we’d wait until it was our 500th post before releasing the names of the lucky and unlucky losers!!!.These are our suggestions – you may have others.If you do we’d be delighted to hear from you!.

It has been a momentous year for Wirral Leaks and we’d like to thank our illustrious contributors,impeccable sources and incredible leakers who helped us SMASH !!! through the 400,000 hits barrier just before Christmas in what was a record breaking year for us at Leaky Towers.

As a point of comparison Council Leader Phil “Power Boy Pip” Davies’ totally tedious “Leaders Blog” has had a total of 15,000+ hits.Did somebody mention public interest?.Somebody needs to tell Pip’s poor-man’s Machiavelli Martin Liptrotsky that he needs to up his game and start earning his £45K shit-glittering fee.Might we suggest sexing the blog up?. Cllr Adrian Jones in a mankini ,Cllr Joe Walsh in a jockstrap, Cllr Moira McLaughlin in her matron’s outfit – that sort of thing.

Meanwhile our 500th post will review our year and explain why we are the pre-eminent political blog on Wirral.Could it be because we prick the pomposity ,highlight the hypocrisy and satirize the sleaze that Wirral politicians and officials have been allowed to get away with for far too long?.

However on with the show :

Campaign of the Year 

What has gratified us more than anything this year has been to witness the Wirral populace emerge from their political apathy and start kicking arse.

Our advice to you all is to do it more often as Wirral Council haven’t got a bloody clue what they’re doing and they just want to avoid adverse publicity at all costs.

So our joint winners are :

Brand New Brighton Rocks On https://www.facebook.com/Brand-New-Brighton-Rocks-On-101238503553982/?fref=ts

Their campaign in forcing Wirral Council to do a U-turn on parking charges in New Brighton was co-ordinated ,reasoned  and reasonable.Wirral Council could learn something from these lot.

Help Save Hamilton Square Birkenhead https://www.facebook.com/savehamiltonsquare/

We were the first to report the criticism about Wirral Council’s circling the Square proposals.We are gratified to report there is now a co-ordinated campaign group.Join and have your say before Hamilton square becomes a less than magic roundabout.

Wirral – the People Fight Back https://www.facebook.com/Wirral-the-People-Fight-Back-1637227719856809/?fref=ts

A regular compendium of Wirral Council woes.Somewhat like Wirral Leaks this campaigning Facebook page acts as a critical friend wanting the council to be better for the benefit of the people of Wirral.However it would seem Wirral Council much prefer non-critical friends like those local government lackeys they had in recently undertaking a “peer review”.

We also should mention the Save Woodside Ferry Terminal campaign but fear that this noble cause may have already been politically hijacked.Was anyone taken in by the “Foulkesy Across The Mersey” charade at Thursday’s Merseytravel meeting?.Let’s face it , when was the last time Foulkes or any other of the leading campaigners (including Frankenfield) used Woodside Ferry terminal?.At least Foulksey has a decent excuse – apparently the last time he was on the landing stage he was nearly harpooned.

We also remain to be convinced by the Save Girtrell Court campaign.We are a big supporter of services for disabled people but so far we’ve only heard from unions,staff,councillors and social services managers.When do the tenants or their advocates get a say ?- and if they do will they have an informed choice about the services they really want?.

Director of the Year    

Shock horror! – the winner of this award does not emanate from the charisma free zone that is Fish ,Blott and Armstrong .

No , the director we’re talking about here is John Brace.The man with the movie camera at meetings across Merseyside .He used to be a master of the single shot but now he’s learned to do tracking shots. Just promise us John that you don’t learn to do close -ups.Nobody wants to see Wirral councillors in close up.Ever.

http://johnbrace.com/

Quote of The Year 

Unison Branch secretary Paddy Cleary apparently “slammed” the proposed closure of respite care home Girtrell Court (see above) by saying: “You really don’t expect this sort of thing from a Labour Council.”

Is this what passes for “slamming” round here?.Seriously Paddy – where have you bloody been?. Oh !-  sitting in Wallasey Town Hall on the Council payroll !.

Memo to Paddy : This a Labour Council in name only and it is exactly the type of “thing” they’ve been doing for years.We deserve so much better and so do your members and until you all realise this your membership and influence will continue to dwindle.

Mathematical Problem of The Year

Somewhat like the lottery , when it came to the departure of three of our most senior Wirral Council officers within a 10 month period of each of other,  the permutations were apparently endless .Three was the magic number of their bonus ball and their lottery win netted them £500,000 of public money –  thereby proving the mathematical equation that two into one does go !.

Cryptic Question: When is a triangle not a triangle? Answer: When it’s a square!.You do the math!

Photograph of The Year

Yes – for the second year running it’s multi-award winning  ex this, ex-that , and ex-the other Cllr Foulkesy who saw fit to publicly publish this picture.

We can imagine his acceptance speech for this award will go something like:

“Speaking as one of the main beneficiaries of Frank Field’s “Feeding Birkenhead” initiative I’d like to thank him for his support which has enabled me to keep putting my snout in the trough of plenty for a quarter of a century”.

Although we’ve judiciously edited the picture as the other person in shot is no longer a civic dignitary and therefore no longer fair game we would like to make it clear we did not photoshop this picture.Now ordinarily this would be a caption competition but we’d request that readers insert their own captions in the privacy of their own home.We don’t want Foulkesy having to make a cheque out to himself for hurt feelings do we?.

Finally we’d like to thank everyone for their leaks in the past year and we look forward to publishing more shocking revelations.Currently this seems to be the only means by which wayward Wirral Council officials will be ever held publicly accountable.

Indeed thanks to our much valued sources we already have a couple of eye-watering exclusives to kick off 2016!……….

 

 

 

Loss of Control

We don’t know who’s piloting Flight WBC right now but it appears to be experiencing severe turbulence.

We mentioned in our last post about council bosses love of power and control ,well all of the indicators – and as we know these people love their key performance indicators – seem to be showing a distinct loss of control.

Talking of which news reaches us that ex emergency control room staff are to sue the council after their jobs were kept open after the proposed date firstly by agency staff and now by community patrol staff .

A Freedom of Information request has revealed that the community patrol staff are being paid to cover their former colleagues jobs.Talk about no honour in honorariums!

There has also been confirmation in writing from Council Leader Power Boy Pip Davies that the council had no intention of closing the control room all along. We are promised the release of some interesting emails which will detail the full extent of the callous skulduggery which led to people losing their livelihoods.

Meanwhile we at Leaky Towers are absolutely loving the pressure group Brand New Brighton Rocks On and their highly effective campaign which led to a humiliating council U-turn on car parking fees at Fort Perch Rock https://www.facebook.com/groups/brandnewbrightonrockson/

Witness also the political awakening of the usually supine union Unison who have finally smelt the coffee and are kicking off about  Wirral Council  appointing consultants to deal with “public affairs and communications” and  “budget planning” and they will receive a daily rate of £850 and £903 respectively.The appointments of Paul Masterman  and Julie Alderson have been described by Unison as a “kick in the teeth for council staff.”

Especially as the both come with “a bit of previous” and appear to be in the usual mould of local government money-grubbing leeches.

It’s interesting to note that Masterman is a former head of communications at Staffordshire County Council where no doubt he worked with Eric “Feeble” Robinson – so again it seems we’re back to auto-pilot where the incoming Chief Executive parachutes his mates in from previous jobs.

http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/Residents-angry-Staffordshire-County-Council/story-23353978-detail/story.html

Masterman is obviously the replacement to fill the infamous Ugg boots after the former head of communications was shoved down the emergency shute. However we still can’t understand how someone can be made redundant and yet ,somewhat like the control room staff, their posts remains intact and still attracting a huge pay-packet for consultant at council tax payers expense.

Meanwhile Ms Alderson’s colourful past history speaks for itself and it seems she’ll fit in nicely with the self serving crew at WBC .

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/236983/Disgraced-town-hall-chief-s-new-200-000-job

Unison spokesperson Paddy Cleary says the union is “totally dismayed” by the extraordinary sums the pair are being paid and is hoping there will be a backlash from “an angry Wirral public”.

We certainly hope so too – especially when there seems to be a reassuring new breeze of political activism blowing a gale through Wirral and it seems to be blowing Flight WBC off it’s well worn chartered course.

Needless to say Wirral Leaks is looking forward to reporting on the inevitable crash landing.