A bit of background for those unfamiliar with Shoesville. For as long as I've lived here, and that's over 30 years, our town council has been led by some of the worst kind of self serving and self important stuffed shirts (and blouses) it's possible to imagine. Mired in a culture of rampant cronyism coupled with an innate ability by our civic leaders to bury their heads in the sand, or up their own backsides, our town has steadily declined over the years from being a pleasant, if somewhat sleepy, market town to a situation where we now find that pound shops, mobile phone shops, fast food outlets and chain pubs dominate the centre of what is supposed to be a county town with (laughable) ambitions of city status.
Whatever colour of political party at the helm, and we've had all three, the good ship NBC has always been akin to a badly piloted vast oil tanker that takes forever and a day to change course, by which time it's often too late. I'm sure this is true for a lot of places up and down our sceptred isle, but I can only speak for my town.
If you think that was a rant, I've not even begun. Anyway, back to the Tory party's local election "manifesto" such as it is. The 5 pledges made by the Tories as advertised on the front of our freesheet paper are some of the vaguest all-things-to-all-men, wishwashy trite load of old bollocks I've seen from a political party, and I've seen a few. Let's see what they are promising:
Put Northampton back on track
Regenerate Northampton and protect the interests of the whole borough
An admirable pledge, but exactly how do they think they are going to achieve this when all past administrations have failed miserably, and their same party paymasters have applied their draconian cuts to the central grant? As an example, over 10 years ago it was rightly suggested that our upturned skip of a bus station, which was once voted the second worst piece of architecture in the UK (we can't even win that!), be demolished so that the town centre could be re-developed in order to attract shoppers back from the likes of Leicester and Milton Keynes.
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| Gorgeous... |
Nothing has happened, and these have been "good times" economically. How are they going to realise this lofty ambition? They won't.
Reduce waste to protect public services
Cut senior managers, waste and consultants and cut increases in councillor allowances
Hahahaha! By the time the May elections are over the council staff, managers included will already be suffering the first wave of redundancies, essential and supposedly protected frontline services will have been slashed, there will be fewer police officers on the streets, social services will have had its budgets slashed, etc, bloody etc. Are they seriously suggesting more of the same? Madness. Will probably appeal to the uninformed and the wilfully ignorant with its emotional phrasing, which is no doubt the intention.
Invest in safer and cleaner neighbourhoods
Ensure Northampton is an attractive, clean and safe place where people feel welcome
Cleaning up some street rubbish is not going to regenerate the town, and well they know it. Sounds nice though. The only way you're going to make the town safer is by having more police on the street. Can't see that happening either, quite the reverse in fact.
Demand better homes for the future
Be honest about our housing needs and protect the vulnerable in Sheltered Housing
"Demand"?....."Is that Wimpey Construction?"..."Yes"..."We are the town council, and we demand that you build more "affordable" homes that folk won't buy because they cannot raise the 30% deposit needed before they can get a mortgage." As for sheltered housing, how about using the numerous brownfield sites within the town boundary that currently lie unused, or worse. A bugbear of mine is the former St Edmunds Hospital site, for a considerable time now privately owned, which has been an eyesore on the main thoroughfare into town for years.
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| Lovely......(and this is only a small part of the site) |
Empower communities with pride in Northampton
Support our communities so people feel proud of Northampton and our heritage
Think about that headline, what does it actually mean? Nothing, or anything you want it to, that's what. Empty political waffle, and this from the same party that expects people they make redundant from social provision jobs, and the charities from whom they cut funding to do the same work voluntarily all in the name of the "Big Society". If Northampton Tories really want to make us "proud of our heritage" how about reopening Abington Park museum all year round for starters? Again, never going to happen.
Just to balance this out, I'm sure the Lib Dem and Labour manifestos are just as vacuous, but in Labour's case maybe not quite so blatantly hypocritical, and as I've said before, all three parties have contrived to sell my town down the river over the years. None of them will get my vote, and indeed, I have not voted for one of the major parties in local elections for years. If there's an independent along the lines of the venerable Tony Clarke in my ward I'll vote for them, or the Greens at a pinch.
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Our hearts go out to the people of eastern & northeastern Japan who have suffered nigh on unimaginable natural catastrophe in the last few days. I have to ask though - what government in their right minds builds a nuclear power station 80 miles from the most unstable geographical fault line in the world? Even the ConDems wouldn't do that.....hmmm.
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