The (Not So) Mysterious Death of a Provincial Theatre

With 13,000 plus friends on Facebook favouring its retention, support from beyond the Tameside boundaries and celebrities, Tameside Hippodrome must have had a fighting chance of being saved.

Dude, Where’s My Pub: Who Closed It Down?

Was it: a) HM Government; b) Thatcher; c) The pub companies; or d) The supermarket chains…?

Before I start, it is best in convivial company not to discuss political issues within the walls of your local pub. This article breaks a multitude of rules by discussing pub politics. Assuming you may be reading this in the comfort of your own home by your laptop/cheap can of lager/favourite ashtray/fellow online poker player, this shouldn’t matter.

Turkeys voting for an early Christmas

A succession of hollow victories or The Great Leap Backwards?

Recent by-election results have seen the Tories gain ground over Labour in their former seats and wards.  The most recent one was Norwich North where the Conservative candidate got twice the number of votes of the second place Labour candidate.  Though third place, the Liberal Democrats saw a drop in their vote.  Is this a Labour problem, or a problem facing the parties on the centre-left to centre of politics?

Critics would state that the expenses scandal, courtesy of the Daily Torygraph, had a main influence on the vote.  This was the claim made after the European Elections where Britain warmed to the right-wing parties.  However, it was not just Britain, but most of the EU Member States’ electorate which swung to the right.  Instead of turning to the left-leaning parties, Little Englander style rhetoric has been exported to mainland Europe, small wonder why UKIP was the second most popular party in Britain at Strasbourg.

Are we voting Tory because we really want a change, or are we really mean spirited enough to vote for cutbacks?  Do we really give a stuff about the unemployed, or would we rather make them suffer?

Cutting jobs would see a reduction in High Street spending due to reduced income, thus reducing income tax and VAT receipts for the chancellor.  Result: reduced receipts leading to further cuts in public spending.  Alternatively, VAT could be extended to more pervasive avenues like transport fares, books and children’s clothing – which would be massively unpopular.

The recession would also see an increased need for public services.  By this I mean the local Jobcentre Plus, the NHS, municipal social services provision and the emergency services.  Cutting jobs in the public sector would be a false economy.  How do we know if private sector or third sector organisations would provide adequate replacements?  Personally I think not.

The third sector should have a complementary role to existing public sector provision rather than as a replacement role.  As for the private sector, well, they have to make a profit and answer to their shareholders.  Therefore, the latter may only cherry-pick the most profitable areas.

Does Tameside need a Tory Government by 2010?  Absolutely not.  With few major employers besides superstore chains, the public sector accounts for more than half the borough’s workforce.  This is not only Tameside MBC but also the NHS.  The borough has already lost jobs from private enterprise with one of its constituencies (Denton and Reddish) reporting a 111% increase in unemployment.  Tameside needs further cuts in employment like I need a hole in the head.

Cutting back the public sector could mean the end of Tameside’s ‘Tameside Works’ programme, designed to help local businesses weather the worst effects of the recession.  Fewer bus services may be subsidised with service cuts reducing employment opportunities (thus exacerbating the recession).  Events like ‘Party in the Park’ would also be a thing of the past.

It doesn’t take a genius to work where the cuts are going to go in Messrs Cameron and Osborne’s Utopia.  If recent reports are anything to go by, they are chomping at the chance to cut and privatise anything at free will.  To be totally honest, Britain needs a Tory Government like we all need holes in our heads.

For anyone wishing to see the reasons against, one should take a trip to South Elmsall, a place which has not recovered from the last Conservative government.  Houses dating from the 1950s are boarded up, examples of which likely to fetch respectable prices – even in this downturn – in more affluent areas.

A Cameron led government could see the gap between the rich and poor widen even further – even though social mobility under this Labour government, is worse than the Great Dole Age of 1980 – 1993.  The recession could mutate into a depression with the unemployed bullied even more.  The public sector could go the way of the dinosaurs. 

As for the North West, there will be several thousand Beasley Streets served by antiquarian trains and buses, taking tourists to the post-historic ruins of 1990s retail parks.  All this would be amid the background of champagne quaffing City bankers, still not taking responsibility for the recession.

Still want to vote Tory?  I take it you don’t remember Toxteth, the Miners’ Strike, the Falklands conflict, the abolition of GLC/GMC and other metropolitan counties, the castration of the trade unions, Poll Tax and privatisation…

I could go on, but that’s best left for another subject.

S.V., 27 July 2009.

Ewing School: East of the M60 first again

Update on Ewing School.

Some time ago, East of the M60 reflected on the ‘grotesque shambles’ of Manchester City Council’s proposed closure of Ewing School. Though a local Liberal Democrat newsletter exposed this at the end of last year, the story has finally made the Manchester Evening News (Wednesday 11 February 2009).  East of the M60’s story was released into cyberspace nearly a month before the MEN’s account of event.

Since Manchester Withington MP John Leech proposed an Early Day Motion for the retention of Ewing School, an online petition has attracted over 650 signatures.  This is in addition to the 2,500 signatures gathered at a rally in West Didsbury.

The loss of Ewing School and the council’s proposals are tantamount to “inclusion by isolation”.  Think of the pupils who will have made friends at West Didsbury, only to find he/she has been moved to Moston or Wythenshawe. For the good of fellow auties, aspies and SPLDers like myself, sign the online petition as soon as possible.  In the words of Del Trotter, ‘You Know It Makes Sense’!

Save Ewing School

S.V., 11 February 2009

Why Change a Winning Team?

Outrage over Manchester City Council plans to close Ewing School

Imagine being part of a successful football team, winning every trophy imaginable and being forced to split that winning team by the FA.  Picture the prospect of your teammates being split into ninths.

As part of Manchester City Council’s plans to improve integration with mainstream schools within its boundaries, is a proposal to downgrade and close two special schools within Didsbury. One school is going to lose its secondary school classes, the other is going to close completely. The latter one is Ewing School, the school I attended from January 1987 to July 1990.

I could cope with the mighty Stalybridge Celtic losing 6-1 to Durham City, spend hours on rail replacement buses from Hell. These are minor compared with this recent development.  This development interferes with people’s lives at a fundamental level rather one’s peeves.

I am always happy to talk at length or write about my time at Ewing, and claim that Ewing School, not my secondary school, was the one which helped me the most. What helped were the small classes (18 was the biggest class number) and the high pupil to teacher ratio (4 pupils to 1 teacher).  I also enjoyed being able to go to different places on a weekly basis along with my fellow peers.  It is thanks also to Ewing School that I am able to appreciate the countryside, enjoy walks and travel independently by bus, train and tram.

Ewing School already has a proven record in enabling pupils to settle in mainstream schools long afterwards.  So much that there is a waiting list and people moving to South Manchester so their child can be taught by their specialist teaching staff.  Instead of keeping up the good work, the council wishes to break up that successful team.

They propose that its students would be dispersed into 9 ‘havens’ within existing mainstream schools.   How do you tell the pupils that their best friend will be moving to a haven in Moston if he/she will be moving to one in Gorton?  Will the Ewing staff leave the profession altogether rather than join one of the havens, resulting in a loss of specialist personnel? Any move away from the status quo would cause chaos with parents and their children already satisfied with Ewing School.

As a former pupil, I am totally against the plans.  This is an issue shared by Manchester Withington MP John Leech (Liberal Democrats) who in December last year submitted an Early Day Motion favouring its retention.  I have written a letter to him.

A petition against the closure will be launched on Saturday 17th January 2009.  The rally and launch will take place in West Didsbury between 12.00pm – 2.00pm.  If you can make it, please do, especially if you live in the constituency, or linked with Ewing School, as for example a former teacher or pupil.

S.V., 15 January 2009

Nightmare on Deansgate

If Manchester Votes ‘No’ To £3 Billion Transport Plan, Will The Last Person To Leave Deansgate Allow Extra Time For Their Journey?

The North ‘Beyond Revival?’ Sorry Love, It’s That Tory Think-Tank Which Is

“I stick my big nose in when I go out/Sealed off car park, what’s it all about…?”

- ‘Petty Sessions’, Half Man Half Biscuit ( 2008 )

Almost as inevitable as Prince Philip’s ‘foot in mouth’ outbursts on our fellow brothers and sisters abroad is a loony suggestion from the odd Tory. This time it is the turn of David Cameron’s favoured think-tank Power Exchange.

New Year, New Increases, Old Grumblers

Bus and rail fare squabblefest

Can’t you tell that the New Year has started already? Two days into the year, our blessed transport companies let New Year in by issuing a 5 – 15% fares increase on its passengers.

“…Remember, pavements are more important than your children.*”

600 more face court for feet on seats

Is dirtying a train seat as heinous a crime as murder, rape, assault or robbery? In the eyes of one rail franchise, this seems to be the case.

Tameside Still Solid Labour Territory

Reports of a Labour meltdown seem to have fallen on deaf ears in the Tameside area. With Hull losing to the Liberal Democrats and the Tories taking control of Plymouth, it has been business as usual for the Greater Manchester area. Rochdale switched from being in no overall control to being a Lib Dem council. Manchester, Wigan, Salford and Tameside metropolitan borough councils remained solid Labour territory.

Thatcher’s Children from Hell

Daily Mirror, 16/02/2007

‘The Awful Legacy of Thatcher’s Orphans’.

Today (16/02/2007) Paul Routledge was on form and remains one of my reasons as to why I still buy the Daily Mirror.  This article has hit the nail on the head as to why the UK has the worst child poverty and deprivation record out of twenty developed countries.

For further evidence of this, I recommend visiting at least one of the mining villages abandoned, since the Tories decimated the mining industry and their right to work.