I still cannot come to terms with the rationale behind the councils' determined efforts to save a few coppers by depriving the local (not to mention visiting) population of much needed conveniences. Certainly the local Tory Group seems bent on electoral suicide with a range of 'improvements' enjoying about as much local popularity as foot and mouth. What will be their ticket at the next election I wonder? Perhaps it will be cool, designed to appeal to voting yoof... 'Vote Conservative... the party wot shut the bogz!' Somehow I suspect not.
In Calderdale local politics are becoming a joke. We seem to elect councillors merely to preside over tax increases, cuts in traditional, long established services, the selling of public (our) facilities off to private developers and the spending of large sums of public money on consulting consultants about which consultant to consult and on politically fashionable construction projects that no one wants!
I mean... is it easy to annoy so many people, or do you have to take a diploma course? No-one in local government respects the wishes of the majority of the general public ... but they will bend over backwards to accommodate whichever politically correct minority is able to bleat the loudest. So far the Tories have brought us chinese flagstones, shuttered toilets, the scrapping of free school milk and ever more charges and restrictions for the motorist. On the cards is allowing Halifax to lose its only cinema and the closure of Elland Pool. Not to mention the Wellesley Park furore!
And the other lot were no better... zones and loops, voucher parking, more red lights than Las Vegas, 'rumble' strips, traffic 'calming', narrowing busy roads under the guise of creating 'cycle lanes ' that end abruptly and lead nowhere! then we had the draconian restrictions against dog lovers, the attempted closure of community facilities like Shelf Village Hall, and the Wellesley Park Music School... not to mention the FIRST round of toilet closures (remember the fiasco in Hebden Bridge?) The list goes on and on.
It strikes me that Calderdales Councillors must all walk around wearing catheters and stoma bags ... as it obvious they dont seem to need toilets. Perhaps they envisage life as some sort of Hollywood movie world, where people never go to the bog! The criminally insane excluded it seems to me that only two sorts of people would ever want to stand for local office ... those who wish to improve public services and facilities and provide a better quality of life for the people of the area, and those who want to feel self important and bask in the prestige that goes with being referred to as 'Councillor So and So'. The local Tory group have definitely failed on the first count, so it must be the second!
Of course (they remind us) we could go back to the bad old days when the council was 'hung', with no one party in overall control. With a hung council nothing ever gets done (and we all know that they have to 'do' things to justify their existences!) and one groups plans are constantly scuppered by the other. Sounds pretty good to me! If nothing ever gets done we'll all be spared their blasted 'improvements' and can get on with our lives in peace. Someone should stand for a 'Hang the Council' party, pledging to do absolutely nowt except side with the opposition to any party that threatens to 'do' something! The mighty casting votes of The Hang the Council Party would keep all of them in line! But half a mo..... don't the Lib Dems do that??
Jim Jarratt.
