Tory threat to parking enforcement
February 7, 2010 Iain Roberts 4 Comments

Last week I was writing about Cllr Maureen Walsh resigning from the Tory group on the Council.  I was interested to know why the Conservatives were being less than honest in their leaflets.

Syd Lloyd, another Tory councillor, didn’t want to answer that and, in time honoured fashion, challenged me on something totally different to distract attention.

Syd said that Lib Dem claims of Tory cuts were untrue and challenged me to provide evidence.

Well, I can only suggest that Cllr Lloyd reads the material his party is putting out.

In their recent newspaper, the Conservatives called for free parking in Council car parks.  Reasonable idea, of course – worth considering.  In the run-up to Christmas, the Lib Dems found ways to offer free parking on several days.

But I oppose it as a general scheme because the money from car parking in Stockport (several million pounds of revenue) pays for parking enforcement and a range of other services.  If the money doesn’t come in,  it means cuts to Council services.

The Lib Dems are working hard to improve parking enforcement at the moment – it seems odd that the Conservatives are calling for something that would reduce parking enforcement further,  leading to more cars parking illegally on our streets.

council, parking

4 Comments

1
Oliver Johnstone
Monday 8 February 2010 - 1:13 am

Councillor Roberts, the question as to why Maureen Walsh has decided to resign the Conservative Whip is a question for the Cheadle Constituency Conservatives not a Councillor in the Hazel Grove Constituency.

Now, why has your party lied about a non-existent Conservative threat to Council services – published on a leaflet with your name on it? Do you still standby that claim and why, when you know it is a baseless lie?

Stop dragging politics into the gutter!

2
Syd Lloyd
Monday 8 February 2010 - 9:54 am

Dear Iain, Is this really the best you can do? The Lib Dems have falsely claimed throughout the Cheadle & Hazel Grove Constituencies that the Conservatives are going to make major cuts to Council front line services. All you can now come up with is that we want 1 hours free parking for residents in the District Centres. You claimed that the Conservative cuts we were in excess of the whole library budget and the cost of street cleaning and the cost of powering the Boroughs Street lights for a year! This would represent cuts of a few million pounds at least. You have not been a Councillor very long so you can be forgiven for not knowing that 3 years ago the residents of my area submitted a 4000+ name petition for 1 hours free parking to help re-generate and re-vitalise our District Centre. The cost of this per year would be about £5k at our Centre. You really do need to stop misleading people and substantiate your claims that we are proposing massive cuts. We are not and we never have. We cannot make cuts to the Council budget as we do not run the Council. I challenged Andrew Stunell MP at the weekend again to see if he could come up with any answers, and he couldn’t.
Time to put or shut up Iain.

3
iainroberts
Monday 8 February 2010 - 4:20 pm

Syd, Oliver,

I do find it frustrating when the Conservatives throw out these claims in leaflets, refuse to acknowledge the costs behind them and then blame *us* for pointing out that you don’t get anything for free in this world.

Of course, the Conservatives could put forward an alternative budget, just as opposition groups do up and down the country.

4
Ian Anderson Gray
Tuesday 9 February 2010 - 8:01 pm

Hi Iain, thanks for your blog and your article. I think it’s great that local councillors are blogging and connecting with people on the local level.

However, I get a little frustrated with political slanging matches. I don’t know the details of why Cllr Maureen Walsh resigned, but to start moaning about conservative leaflets might be a little hypocritacal. I do try and read all the leaflets that come through my door from the different politcal parties because I want to give them all the benefit of the doubt. However, there is so much propaganda in them and I am never sure how much truth is in them. Perhaps the conservatives have been less than honest, but the leaflets you sent out at the last local election were sometimes a little misleading- in particular mentioning a possibility of a Cheadle train station when one would not be possible, and taking credit for the work that had been done on the A34 right filter. All parties seemed to take credit for the new Tescos that opened when the bulk of the work had been done by St. Mary’s Church. I’m not just getting at you, Iain, I know you do a great job and work hard- but I feel all parties need to have an unblemished record when it comes to this. I’ll try and write to the Cheadle conservatives about this because we need some openess from them.

I wish the local parties would work together more and put their differences aside. I do hope you and Pam King work together with Mick Jones even though he may have a different political standpoint.

I do feel very strongly if more people are to come back to trusting politicians and to voting, that all parties need to be open and honest.



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