Our new party leader, Nick Clegg’s New Year Message, is clear and motivational.  We also need to work harder to get our message across to lobby for more people to vote for us.  We need to work harder to do this by “using clear, precise and simple language, cutting through the jargon and the cant, exposing duplicity and manipulation.”  Our messages need to express what we want to do and can do, not just looking good or sounding good.  Language that is fit for purpose. 

(Title: W. Nicholson’s “The Wind Singer”; Language: J. Humphry’s “Lost for Words”)

Back-Pay I got mine – both of – for my full-time teaching job and part-time political Councillor work/role for Bury MBC. So, why haven’t the Police got theirs? Bury MBC pays its share from our local Council Tax payers money into Police coffers and for one, I expect Police pay rises to he honoured!

Alan Gordon vice-Chair of the Police Federation commenting for The Observer, today, says that it’s caused the Government extreme embarrassment …. He thinks that ‘they were hoping that the whole problem would disappear over the Christmas break’ …. Will that be when the Police are at home with their families like teacher, me…. or WORKING …….. and feeling very annoyed that their public sector counterparts are hitting the Christmas Sales with their back-pay?

Switched to a relaxing Christmas cheer and ready to settle with a book, last night – news of the shocking assassination of Benazir Bhutto brought me back to the reality of politics and violence in other countries, especially the dangers to women politicians when they put themselves forward to challenge the status quo.  BBC 4’s Women’s Hour focused on this, this morning, beginning with the re-transmission of their July interview with Benazir and her hopes for the political future of Pakistan. They followed with a superb piece about women in Kenya and how many are continually bullied by men who consider their place to be at home and not in the political arena - if you didn’t catch it - you can for the next 7 days!

Supplementary Info: Accident Statistics (from Bury MBC) - this is very worrying!          

Injury collision info in the most recent standard 3 year monitoring period available to us ( ie 01/10/04 - 30/09/07 ) it has been revealed that there have been 15 injury collisions which have occurred at this junction during this period.  Fourteen of these injury collisions resulted in slight injury and one of the injury collisions was recorded as a serious injury collision. 

The collisions resulted in 27 casualties from the 15 injury collisions recorded. Twenty one of the casualties were either drivers or passengers, 2 were motorcyclists, 3 were pedal cyclists and 1 casualty was a pedestrian.

I much prefer to walk, its better for you and a steady pace burns 100 calories per hour ….. However, to walk in urban villages such as Prestwich, you need to be able to cross the roads!  We’ve got a new ‘joined-up’ Police-operated traffic management system for arterial roads to the City of Manchester.  Which means that lights are operated and altered to suit traffic flow.  An impact for us locally is that traffic junction light change sequences are speedier.  This has resulted in more traffic accidents from motorists who jump lights as they turn to read as well as impossibility for pedestrians to cross some road junctions.  However, traffic flow has improved and standing traffic with resulting pollution, reduced.  

The A56 junction of Bury New Road with Hilton Lane/Scholes Lane is now a particular problem, concerning many residents and school children.  As it’s also a junction that I use regularly, I see children and Mums darting across and stupid drivers refusing to allow them time to cross- how sick can people be when they start to drive up to people to push them off the road.  I was so mad I wanted to drive into one man recently as he forced a mother with a pram and two children to literally run for their lives.  But that’s not the answer! 

So at our recent Council meeting, I asked the question about why this junction is so dangerous and yet there are no plans for improvements due to the scale of costs of doing it.  I’d lobbied for a re-modelling survey and costings to be done and have been told it will be over £1 million!  I’ve asked to Scoot to slow traffic down there and a lolly-pop school crossing service.  Ah……… but the junction is unsuitable for a crossing patrol - ……. – is it too dangerous for one?  When the junction is finally improved, I was told, they will certainly consider a crossing!   I’ve been working to get this junction improved for several years and it’s getting more and more dangerous and will continue to campaign for it.

Do we have the record for the greatest number of new party leaders in two years?   At least we can now settle down and get to business - getting our message across and persuading residents to vote for us.  I’ve just been helping at a Christmas party for gentlemen who live at a rehabilitation hostel in Manchester. 

It’s part of my day-job as a teacher, not my political hobby - something we do, as a college, each year.  I was there to support my students who were helping our guests to have a lovely meal and enjoy carols, turns and bingo. One of the care workers and I recognised each other - I leaflet her home regularly.  She tries each year to get her husband and son to vote - they don’t and we had a really positive conversation about how difficult it is to get people to believe that their vote is vitally important and by voting for us we can make a difference. 

She’s a great lady, one of the ‘Joans’ of life - she works hard caring for the home’s residents and enabling them to move on with their lives, she has her family and looks after her Dad too.  She’s the lady who lives next door to us - or that we hope that she does - the lady who is always there to lend a hand and always be pleasant and cheerful.  Not somebody who expects everybody else to do everything and them to do nothing. 

It was a special evening - it always is.  Being elderly comes to us all and hostels such as this that work so hard to help are so few and poorly funded - we need to do more to help them to do more.  Our leader has a lot of work to do to help us to do this.

I have just received the news that Manchester City Council will not allow houses to be built in Marie Louise gardens after all - residents and park lovers have lobbied for over eight months to ensure that the green spaces of this park are not lost for ever.  It’s a really special place - if you get time to visit it - I have been there many times over the years - the best was when assessing play workers for their NVQs with a group of children for a Teddy Bear’s picnic!  http://www.westdidsbury.org.uk/news/home.ikml

 Previous posting on my Blog Site for 8th February (www.anngarner.net) about the development:

“I am in West Didsbury Residents Association. We are opposing development plans in a small park on Palatine Rd, Manchester, called Marie Louise Gardens. The park lodge was sold under a rather dubious ‘right to buy’ to a parks superintendent and it has now been bought by a night club promoter who is going to vastly extend it. He has quietly negotiated boundary changes to his property with Manchester Leisure and the purchase of a further 400 sq metres of park land on which he plans to build a showy 18 room villa with balconies overlooking the park. He will be giving an undisclosed 6 figure sum of money to Manchester Leisure to fund “improvements” to the park as payment for the additional land. All this was negotiated behind closed doors and only came out in the plans.The two developments will dominate the small and tranquil park in a way which was never intended when it was designed. The park will effectively become the back garden for the developments. The plans can be viewed on www.manchester.gov.org.uk /planning/public
access. Plan nos -081609/FH/2006/S2″

Manchester City’s Labour Council should have thrown plans to build in this park and loose green space months ago - they should be ashamed of themselves!