Quote:
Originally Posted by garinda
'Labour MP Graham Jones says his constituency of Hyndburn has had the biggest cuts in Britain - nearly £3m at a district level. As he goes on, noise levels rise, Mr Cameron says there will be difficult decisions and everyone should be "honest about that"
BBC News - The Full Story: PM's Questions |
Graham's bit is about 29 minutes in, standing up doing what he said he would do and being a voice for Hyndburn. Nice to see that he got as direct a response from the Prime Minister as he would have expected from Peter Britcliffe.
It doesn't help Hyndburn one bit that the Leader of the Council is recklessly spending all the money in the pot as fast as he can and that next year's council (whichever party they are) will be financially screwed.
He's been applauding himself on having a net underspend of £1.9m this year but what he has failed to let the elctorate know is that £690k of that is actually what they voted as an increase in the budget so they haven't saved more at all.
Rather than either save it or use it to reduce the amount of cuts that need to be made, the Conservatives are spending it on massively wasteful projects and it needs stopping now:
£300k extra on top of the £400k already spent on the Civic Theatre, £20k on a planning document for Hill Top despite it being a Tory-run LCC project, £20k extra for Rhyddings Park, £115k extra for the unsuccessful Floral Market Towns project and £20k on a Play Pitch Strategist who can tell us what our playing fields need.
Another planned motion involves raising council borrowing from 60% up to 100% of its allowance while interest rates are so low so that they can 'invest in Hyndburn'. Can no one at the Conservative Party see the collossal flaw in this plan? Does the term 'negative equity' ring any bells?
All of that money could be saved, it is sheer waste and an excuse to get in the papers crowing about what he is doing for Hyndburn. The biggest kick in the nuts is allocating an extra £17k to Area Councils since we have all had our budgets slashed this year and we almost certainly won't see that money directly.
We are ruined next year and I want to make my firm opposition to these plans known here and now. Someone at HBC is alledgedly paid to read Accy Web and report back to the Leader's Office so whoever you are I hope that you're sitting comfortably in your job because it certainly can't be guaranteed next year.