U-Turn On Roundabout = Dead End

Dead end

Our further congratulations go to Leaky Awards winner Help Save Hamilton Square Birkenhead https://www.facebook.com/savehamiltonsquare/ as an increasingly desperate Wirral council sneak out the news on a bleak Friday afternoon in January that they’ve shelved their embarrassingly misconceived plan to turn the wondrous Hamilton Square into a not-so-merry-go-round.

http://www.wirralglobe.co.uk/news/14207993.Plans_to_open_up_historic_Hamilton_Square_to_traffic_are_shelved/

We are proud to have published one of the earliest objections raised to the harebrained scheme from the ever eloquent Dr.Robert Smith https://wirralleaks.wordpress.com/2015/11/12/squaring-the-inner-circle/

We live in hope that this U-turn serves as a further example that a) Wirral Council do not know what they are doing and b) they are currently desperate to maintain their reputation at any cost.

The current administration appear to teetering on the precipice. As we have commented before they may have the electoral mandate but they don’t have the moral authority to run Wirral Council.Indeed we have our doubts that if Lyndale School were currently up for closure that Wirral Council would go through with it – massive capital receipt notwithstanding.

The increasingly desperate PR stunts point to a council in crisis and the results of that ridiculous MORI poll they published yesterday just reinforces our belief that this  council is all surface and no substance

http://www.wirralglobe.co.uk/news/14205247.Wirral_Council_survey_highlights_residents__concerns_over_anti_social_behaviour_and_community_safety/

MORI’s chief executive Ben Page said: “I’ve looked at 100 or so councils during 30 years in this job. Wirral is not in crisis, it is clearly on the road to improvement.”

We’d just like to say that we don’t need a poll of a tiny minority of the local population to tell us that Ben Page is a bloody fool who doesn’t live on Wirral !.

 

The Leaky Awards 2015

500 posts

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

Foulkesy and pussy

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!……….