Hyde councillor calls for a volunteer army of unpaid workers!

Rising Star - "SEO Andy" Kinsey

By Steve (Starlord) Fisher

The Town Council roadshow in Tameside is currently being rolled out across the Borough with gusto. I recently wrote on the NV blog about the first Town Council meeting which I attended at the Stalybridge Civic Hall on Wednesday 15 February. Last Monday, I ventured into Hyde to attend the first of their Town Council meetings at the Grafton Centre.

This was a much smaller meeting than Stalybridge, with around forty people attending including councillors. It was also far more tightly controlled by Labour councillor, "SEO Andy" Kinsey, (a search engine optimizer), with a special interest in community groups, who chaired and set the tone of the meeting. Unlike the Stalybridge Town Council meeting, there was little that was spontaneous about it, being far more directed and controlled, with a largely passive audience. Much of the meeting was focused on a power-point presentation by Andy Kinsey, called "Community Groups Together." Before beginning his presentation, Andy insisted on laying down some basic grounds rules. We were told that this was not a District Assembly or a councillors surgery.

Andy told me later, when we went into group session with an unidentified councillor on each table, that each Town council was different, and this was the way, they were going to things in Hyde. This was Andy's response when I drew a comparison with the Stalybridge meeting, which was far more involved and democratic in my view. However, councillor Helen Bowden (Hyde Newton), told me that she felt the Stalybridge meeting had been taken over by a few disgruntled individuals.

Although the lead Third Sector (voluntary, community and faith) organisation, 'Action Together', had been billed as attending the meeting, they sent their apologies. Andy's presentation was focused on how community groups, social enterprises and non-profit organisations, could all come together to work unpaid for the betterment of the community, undertaking jobs previously done by council employees. On our tables, we were told to make a list of all our skills and talents which we use in our community groups. This we were told, was necessary to build up a "Skills Database", that would be put on Facebook and called "Doing More Together - Skillshare Hyde."

To me, it seems that the whole object of Town Councils is to pretend that the public are actually invloved in decision making when there is no real autonomy or communities being in control. I very much suspect that this is really a mask to disguise the real intention of co-opting volunteers and community groups to do council work for free. As the Labour leader of Manchester City Council, Sir Richard Leese, said last November, it was the job of the voluntary sector to now "fill-in-the-holes" left by public sector cuts. How about voluntary councillors?

Are Tameside 'Town Councils' a ploy to get the public to do unpaid council work!

By Steve (Starlord) Fisher

IT isn't absolutely clear to me why Tameside Council decommissioned all 8 District Assemblies on 24th May 2016, but I can guess that it's got something to do with a lack of money, rather than the official line that they've had their day.  They've now come up with the idea of nine new 'Town Councils' which started last month when Stalybridge Town Council held its first meeting on Wednesday 15th February at Stalybridge Civic Hall.

The meeting that I attended was advertised in the Tameside Reporter about a week earlier and was well attended. Around 80 people turned up including ten councillors.  The meeting commenced at 6.30 pm and went on for over two hours.  A lot of people questioned the validity of  Town Councils as the councillors tried to sell the idea to a sceptical public who wanted to know - 'What can it do, what is it for and basically, what is the point?'

One person asked  about the sale of the Aldi car park and why councillor Dave Sweeton had voted for it, even though it wasn't clear, who it had been sold to.  A number of people were angry about what they perceived as the neglect of Stalybridge, by an Ashton-centric Labour controlled council and some wanted to know, what the council was going to do for small businesses in the town. An elderly lady expressed her concern about the proposals to introduce do-it-yourself self-service libraries (Open+) which constitutes part of the 'Tameside Vision'.  Other people asked about the legitimacy of the meetings - it seems that some Stalybridge residents  had been petitioning to set up an independent Town Council for Stalybridge -  while others were angry that the Mayor, rarely ever came to Stalybridge.

Someone else asked if minutes were being taken of the meeting. I asked if there would be any powers devolved to the Town Councils and do these bodies have the full support of the Executive Cabinet of Tameside Council. Councillor Jim Fitzpatrick said there would be no devolved powers and that a majority of councillors had voted to support Town Councils.

While the Stalybridge meeting was well attended the same cannot be said of other Town Councils. Only two members of the public  attended the Dukinfield Town Council meeting and just seven members of the public at Droylsden. Councillor Brian Wild - a local property speculator and labour councillor from Dukinfield - told the local press that Dukinfield Town Council, couldn't afford to hire the town hall for an evening meeting and therefore, had to meet in the afternoon.  We understand that Cllr. Wild, a retired window cleaner, is reluctant to drink in Dukinfield, because people ask him questions about his extensive property portfolio.

Dukinfield Property Speculator - Cllr. Brian Wild

Although the official mantra of Tameside Council is that they are bringing democracy closer to the people with their Town Councils, that would help to create a bottom up form of government, instead of a top down one, where the public could influence decisions, my overall abiding impression of this meeting -if you cut out the official bull-shit - is that the council are seeking to co-opt members of the public as volunteers to do many of the jobs that were previously done by paid council workers, under the pretext of civic obligation, known euphemistically as 'ACTION TOGETHER!' 

Last November, Sir Richard Leese, the Labour leader of Manchester City Council told a meeting of the Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisations (G.M.C.V.O.) that it was the role of voluntary organisations, to 'fill in the holes' left by public service cuts. Personally, I cared very little for District Assemblies and was unperturbed by their demise.  However, they did have financial resources to fund community groups and to pay for such things, as street cleaning.  With no real powers, the Town Councils, have been allocated budgets of around £2,000 per annum.  If the future is one of volunteers, cutting grass and picking litter, why don't we go back to the era, of volunteer unpaid councillors who did an excellent unpaid job in their Urban District Councils?