It’s Part of the Job Description by Les May

IN a recent piece I quoted the response of Councillor John Hartley to someone who contacted him highlighting the fact that Rochdale’s Chief Executive, Steve Rumbelow, is being paid a salary for doing a second job whilst supposedly working full time for Rochdale MBC and that this had been sanctioned by councillors. His response was effectively: ‘you could have been at the Council meeting which did this, if you were not you have no reason to complain now’.

We seem to have a man here who fails to understand the nature of representative democracy. If you vote for a particular policy, then being asked to justify your action to that part of the electorate which think that policy is wrong, is part of the job.

Not picking up e-mails, failing to respond, querying why they have been contacted, responding with platitudes, terminating exchanges when pressed, are stock in trade for some Rochdale councillors. Nationally Governments of all political stripes come under pressure from the broadcast and print media. That pressure is absent in Rochdale because the print and on-line media in the town function in the political sphere as little more than outlets for press releases originating from publicity aware local councillors.

It wasn’t always like this in the town. In the 1970s RAP, the Rochdale Alternative Paper, edited by David Bartlett and John Walker, did hold local politicians to account. It was RAP, not Simon Danczuk, which revealed in 1979 details of Cyril Smith’s behaviour at Cambridge House. The present incumbents at Number 1 Riverside are perhaps fortunate that their antics are not subject to similar scrutiny and it appears that some of them want to keep it that way.

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