The Manchester City
Council Leader’s Blog is an
interesting piece. Called ‘Fighting for Fairness’, it is about the recent Council Executive meeting that
spent most of that meeting addressing cuts to local swimming pools and
libraries.
From the title and
text, you would think that it was the Council that was
fighting to keep services open, NOT the 1000s of Manchester residents
that signed, marched, occupied, lay down in roads and attended council meetings.
Its unlikely that any
pictures will emerge of the council leader addressing crowds, loudspeaker in
hand, urging them to fight cuts to local services.
And its easy to jab
Labour over these issues but not so helpful.
Its more helpful to
ask questions:
Why has the
Levenshulme pool not been built? When campaigners fought to keep their baths open in 2011, the
council were happy for people to think the pool will be open this year.
What guarantee is there that other promised pools will open in 2015?
Why are local
libraries under threat anyway? Why didn’t the Council plan ahead in 2011? If
that seems unfair, Manchester Central Library, costing £48 million in
refurbishment, is to share a new award of nearly
£1million with Birmingham Library. Someone planned ahead for
Central Library. Whilst it is good news, its more money for large capital
projects whilst local services go to the wall.
Where is the new
thinking on how to keep council services open? York Council is experimenting
with creating a mutual to run its
services instead of cutting services or getting volunteer’s to
run libraries.
It’s a sad day when a
Labour Council takes on board the Big Society model of service delivery.
There are other ways
of addressing changes in local council services in Manchester.
Watch this space.
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