Dropped kerbs

Some of the street infrastructure around Birkenhead and Tranmere really is poor. Today I spoke with an officer at Wirral Council and requested dropped kerbs for the bottom of Craven Street leading onto Conway Street and also for the network of paths leading from Victoria Road to Milton Road East.

The programme is full for this year but hopefully they will be given due consideration and included next year. If the funding hasn't been cut that is!

If there are other areas you would like to see addressed please let me know.

Bedroom Tax: Advice & Resources

The Green Party firmly opposes the so-called "bedroom tax" and its pernicious impact on many vulnerable people. We have prepared material to inform and assist people affected by this attack on their homes and livelihood. This is Wirral specific and a very valuable resource for anyone affected.

All of the details are on the Wirral Green Party website:

http://www.wirralgreenparty.org.uk/

New charge will kill garden waste collections

The new £35 charge for garden waste collections will kill this hugely popular scheme. Our Labour council knows perfectly well that most people can't or won't pay for a service they rightly expect to be provided as part of their council tax.

The inevitable outcome will be less waste converted to valuable compost, an increase in fly-tipping and higher charges as more waste is sent to landfill.

This is yet another example of how everyone in Wirral is paying the price for our council's self-confessed "bad financial management" and our government's misguided austerity programme.

No more litter bins for Wirral?

Looks like Wirral won't be getting any new litter bins this year based on this message I've just had from the council:
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Good afternoon Mr Cleary

Thank you for your recent enquiry requesting the installation of a litter bin on Church Road between Beech Road and the new retail centre.

At present, all non essential expenditure has been frozen to enable the necessary savings to be made for the budget year 2013/14. This includes the purchase and installation of litter bins. It is therefore unlikely that any new litter bins will be available for installation within the next twelve months.

At present, officers are monitoring the usage of litter bins at various locations to determine if they are fully utilised. If a bin is identified as not being required at a particular location then the location you have requested will be given due consideration when determining where it is to be resited.

I trust this clarifies the Council's position on this matter

Regards

Press letter re council consultation

ONE of the questions in Wirral Council's ongoing consultation asks whether residents favour a switch in the local election timetable to complete elections once every four years rather than the present system where partial elections take place three in every four years.

However, Wirral's ruling Labour cabinet clearly isn't bothered about what residents think.

In December, it voted to change the election timetable long before the public consultation was complete. Given the justified unpopularity of the current government, this switch obviously favours the Labour party. 

This clearly demonstrates that the “ You Decide” consultation is an expensive, politically expedient sham.

"What Really Matters"

Wirral Council's consultation exercise "What Really Matters" is an
expensive sham. The budget options outlined are based on an initial
consultation which attracted responses from less than 3% of the
electorate. It is designed to provide an appearance of public approval
for Council decisions where no such approval exists. The views of such a
low sample cannot be taken as representative of the Wirral public as a
whole, much less as providing any kind of democratic support for Council
actions. The public has been rightly suspicious of the exercise from the
start and has demonstrated its distrust by ignoring it.

People do not want to be given a choice of what kind of pain to inflict
on themselves and their neighbours while nothing is being done to
address the gross unfairness in society.

The government's programme of austerity, of which council cuts are part,
bears down harshly on the low-paid, the unemployed and disabled while
wealthy tax dodgers continue to prosper. As well as being viciously
unfair, the Coalition's economic policies are failing
miserably--Government austerity in a recession has, as widely predicted,
only prolonged the economic suffering, ensuring growth only for food banks.

Budget deficits will begin to fall when the government reverses its cuts
agenda and invests in the green economy, not as it cuts more. The answer
is certainly not to further impoverish the already disadvantaged. Given
Labour's abject failure both locally and nationally to oppose austerity,
this leaves the Greens as the only party to articulate and campaign
vigorously for an alternative.

More bad news on road safety

Latest figures on road safety indicate just how badly Wirral and Merseyside in general is doing. Figures for 2011 show the numbers killed or seriously injured in Wirral jumped 17%, much higher than the national increase (2%). For Merseyside as a whole the figures for vulnerable road users are even more worrying. 2011 was the worst year since 2005 and the worst year for cyclists since 1998.

The figures show that, despite all the rhetoric, local police and politicians aren't doing enough to protect and encourage pedestrians and cyclists. We badly need 20mph implemented and enforced as the default speed limit on residential roads. You can see the full Wirral Green Party press release via our Facebook page.