Recently in Local issues Category

I got a bit of stick on Twitter today for suggesting that a claim by the ATL teaching union that they wouldn't be on strike if there was an alternative wasn't entirely truthful.

The North West office the TUC suggested that I 'have no idea.' If that's the standard of debate within the TUC these days, then it's no wonder the negotitiatons with the government over pensions aren't going that well.

Someone else asked me to 'cough up my alternative then.' So here it is.

I'm not against teachers or members of the public sector going on strike. I'm not saying I agree with the government plans on pension reforms. What I do think, however, is that the unions who went on strike today have increased the chances that they'll be defeated.

Strikes should be the last resort for one simple reason: They need public support to work.

The sight of up to 400,000 people on the streets of London protesting against public sector cuts was both encouraging and slightly tragic.

Encouraging in the sense that, in an age when we are all supposed to apathetic to what is going on around us, 400,000 people made the effort to protest in London. 

The fact the trade unions were at pains to stress they wanted a peaceful protest, not the mob rule antics of the student protests from last year, was a point well made.

But as those 400,000 marched through the streets of London, it was hard not to ask yourself: What's the point? What can they achieve? Who is really going to benefit from this?

To answer the last question first: The only real winners out of the protest will be Ed Miliband and the trade union movement. Miliband's team ensured yesterday was about him distancing himself from the errors of the Labour government, instead aiming fire at the Tory government's cuts programme. In one sense, he'll be preaching to the choir.

Everything appears to be grand in Planet Clegg at the moment. Tough decision after tough decision is being made, and in the minds of those at the top of the Lib Dems, the rewards for taking these decisions will be votes of gratitude at the next general election.

Meanwhile, back in the real world....

Clegg is very keen to be associated with the cuts George Osborne has pushed through Government - and, maybe to his misguided credit, is much more ready to offer his opinion on the impact of the cuts than many around him.

Take, for example, his response to the claims from the Local Government Association to the claims 100,000 jobs will go as a result of the spending cuts heading the way of Town Halls.

BACK at the start of June, as the European election results were declared, and Nick Griffin scraped in to the final MEP place in the North West, health secretary Andy Burnham was adamant about how the mainstream political parties had to respond.

Quite forcefully, as Labour's representative on the BBC election special, he told viewers that all the political parties had to challenge what the BNP said, and overcome the fact that the BNP is very good at disguising its racist undertones.

He wasn't the only one to be vocal about the BNP's success, even if it was by quirk of an odd electoral system, and how the party should be challenged.

David Miliband said: "Every vote is of equal value and it is important we try to understand why people have voted the way they have and make sure the strength of this country and its traditions of decency will win out."

THIS probably says more about me than it does about Ed Balls, but when I was alerted to his presence on Twitter, I started following him because I half expected him just to use it to pump out "isn't the Government brilliant" messages.

And while he has used it to pump out "isn't the Government brilliant" messages, by no means is it the only thing he's done. I also half-expected him to follow on from Number 10's lead and fail to engage with the public on Twitter.

Again, I've been proved wrong. Earlier this week, Mr Balls Twittered a link:

An interesting email dropped into my inbox this week. It was a press release from the Chartered Institute of Journalists and was about the BNP, or rather how it felt the media should cover them.

The BNP's recent success (or rather, the absurdity of the the electoral system for European elections) has apparently made a lot of people think. Back before the election, I wrote a post which suggested that the idea that "journalists shouldn't give the BNP the oxygen of publicity" wasn't the best way to deal with a party who doesn't think twice before peddling mistruths in its pursuit of power.

Since the election, the National Union of Journalists, jumped out the trap with a call for its members to discuss how the media should report the BNP, or as it put it "The BNP's election victories have brought a new urgency to questions about how journalists should report fascists and racists."

The CIOJ doesn't feel the need for discussion. It's line is simple: Treat them like any other party, because, as it says: "Accurate reporting will undermine the strong support of such parties."

SOMEBODY, somewhere, within the corridors of power in Westminster, did a good job convincing Gordon Brown that taking the cabinet "on the road" would help win over voters.

In theory, a blog called "Outside the Bubble" should be full of praise for efforts to get those in power out of their bunker and out into the country.

But as people in all the places where Brown has taken his cabinet on tour will tell you, it's not so much a case of the cabinet climbing out of their bunker as the government simply moving the bunker somewhere else for the day.

IF voters were split up by personal interest, rather than by geography, it's a safe bet those who fell into the commuting constituency would never vote to re-elect the incumbent government.

And that statement couldn't be more true for than for those commuters who have to suffer the battle up and down the West Coast Mainline week in, week out.

The arrival of privatisation of the rail network came with a string of promises about faster train journey times and plush new trains. To be fair to the Government, it has delivered on both of those promises, but massively late and even more massively over budget.

The Government, however, never mentioned that its consultants had failed to take into account that plush new trains travelling at greater speeds would lead to more passengers wishing to go places on these trains.