Time that councillors should be cut too
HOW many councillors does it to take to change a light bulb ? Three in each ward - one to hold the bulb and two to turn the ladder, or so it seems.
Interestingly in Rochdale, the serious question is being asked: how many councillors does it take to run a town? (M.E.N. March 7: Council is looking to cut councillor numbers by a third).
Richard Parnell, Labour leader on the council, would like the number reduced from 60 to 40 to save money and an all-party working group is mulling over the options.
A glorious opportunity was lost when the then chancellor, George Osborne, sat down with Greater Manchester’s ten council leaders to work out the devolution agreement for the city-region.
There are 645 councillors across Greater Manchester - just five fewer than the number of MPs in Westminster. Mr Osborne should have asked - do we need so many in view of all the power about to be transferred to an elected mayor and combined authority ?
There are 96 councillors in Manchester alone.
Get rid of half of them leaving us with 48 - one for each of the 32 wards and then, as in Wales for the Assembly and in the Euro elections, let us choose 16 from a list on a proportional representation basis.
That would kill two birds... ridding us of the often-undemocratic first-past-the-post system and introducing an element of PR.
We need nothing like the number of councillors who currently populate our town halls. But when was the last time you heard of turkeys voting for Christmas ? Henry Matthews, Moston THE report regarding cutting the number of councillors from three to two per ward is one that has been mentioned several times by contributors to Viewpoints.
Over the past few years, thousands of Manchester council employees have been made redundant in money-saving schemes, yet there is never any suggestion that a reduction in councillors is needed.
Consequently, we still have the same number in each of the 32 Manchester wards all collecting their expenses on the council gravy train.
Ninety-six councillors currently cost the council tax payer £1,564,000 per annum, plus whatever extras they get for being on various committees and/or chairing those committees.
By way of example, in 2012, a councillor would have had a basic allowance of £15,956 plus, if they were on the police committee, a further £11,500.68. If they were the chair of the said committee they would get another £18,010.73 plus £1,284.80 in expenses bringing the total to £46,752.21 for a 12 month period with a full four year term equating to £187,008.84.
One wonders whether they’re just in it for the money. Nice work if you can get it.
A reduction of one third of councillors would have a saving of at least £521,824 on average.
The time has now come to reduce the number of elected members and save that money. Will Boycott Manchester
OAPs don’t have it good
ON reading in the press that us pensioners are on a good pension because of this ‘triple lock’ (being average wages, CPI or 2.5% which ever is the largest) is a con because my state pension only went up by 2.1% because only part of it went up 2.5% but the Serps and graduated pension bit did not.
The next con is that my company pension, from Procter & Gamble, for decades went up in line with RPI (was always larger than CPI) but three years ago P&G decided to come in line with the government of CPI but with no triple lock rises here.
No, they decided to give half of CPI plus dug up an old Pensions Act 1995 which states that they need not take any consideration of years service before 1997.
Next I come to renew my Green Flag breakdown cover & I am told that I qualify for four years no call out discount, yet by going online I can get the same cover cheaper probably because I am classified as a new customer.
Then I renew my annual travel insurance and I have to go through a 30-minute phone call over which medications I take. And because I am on statins my insurance doubles, even though I am less likely to have an heart attack or a stroke than someone that does not go to the doctor and is therefore not on statins. Then National Grid notified me they are replacing my gas pipes in November, then December, then January and eventually give me 15 hours notice they are cutting my gas off in February.
To make matters even worse they also want to cut my gas off a further day when I am due to go on holiday, which means my house had no heating for four days and I had to wait two hours when we got back for a gas fitter to turn it back on.
We had to run the central heating all night to get the house back to normal.
Now my rant is over I shall curl up and hide behind the settee so the world can’t find me.