Councillor Cooney cops-out of climate change

by changing the subject!

Councillor Ged Cooney

IN a sickly outburst at a Council meeting last Tuesday, Tameside Cllr. Ged Cooney, who represents Droylsden West and is vice-chair of the Greater Manchester Pension Fund, chose to use the fact that an ugly building on Manchester Road, Droylsden, that is being now used as a venue for the Pension Fund, had been dedicated in 2015 to a guardsman who died in a landmine blast in Afghanistan in 2007, to dodge his own responsibility for the fund's long-term investments in dirty carbon fuels.

When the new headquarters in Droyslden of the Greater Manchester Pension Fund was dedicated in 2015, Councillor Kieran Quinn said:  'By honouring Tony in this way as a member of our armed forces I believe we are honouring all our fallen heroes.'

What is disgusting is why the bosses of the Greater Manchester Pension Fund should now be using a fallen hero to excuse their own climate abuse and to distract attention from their unsavoury dirty investments.  At the same Council meeting Cllr. Cooney, Cabinet member for housing, planning and employment, had to defend Tameside Council's outsourcing partnership with the now disgraced outfit Carillion PLC.    

At last week's meeting, Tory Cllr. Liam Billington put an awkward question of Cllr. Cooney about Tameside Labour Council's historic partnership with Carillion with the previous council leader, Cllr. Quinn bragging about his close relationship with the dedicated blacklister almost to the point of the company's final collapse.  

In reply Cllr. Cooney blustered-on about it being difficult of finding an outsourcing company which hadn't been implicated in blacklisting, and he mentioned Laing O'Rourke, which in May 2016, together with Carillion were among eight companies that apologised for blacklisting building workers.  Labour Cllr. Quinn knew about this at the time, because I as Secretary of Tameside TUC wrote to him about it in August 2011.   Of course I didn't get a reply then or later, because Quinn and the then Labour council were happy to continue doing business despite the squalid existence of the unsavoury blacklist.

The real issue now is will Cllr. Cooney, his councillor leader Brenda Warrington, and his other Labour colleagues now turnover a new leaf?

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More brouhaha about Flag Flying in Tameside!

Stalybridge Labour Club

A KEEN eyed vexillogist and Northern Voices reader, recently sent us this picture of the rainbow (gay) flag blowing proudly in the wind atop the flag pole of Stalybridge Labour Club. 

The art historian and journalist, Brian Sewell, expressed the view in July 2011 that the lives of many Mancunians were haplessly intertwined with transvestites, transsexuals, teenage lesbians and a horde of homosexuals across the range, because Manchester is known for being one of the most LGBT friendly cities in the UK. The gay art critic, asked:   'Is Manchester now the Sodom of the North?  Where once we had no gaiety at all, we now perhaps, have rather too much.'

In May this year, Cllr Leigh Drennan became the first openly gay Mayor of Tameside.   Two other boroughs in the region, have had an openly gay Mayor - Bury and Manchester.  Among the Mayor's charities this year, will be the 'LGBT Foundation'.   In his year as Mayor, Drennan has said that he hopes he can help to raise awareness of the issues LGBT people face and help people overcome prejudice.

In recent years, the subject of flags and their symbolism, is something that has given rise to much brouhaha and consternation in Tameside.  In March 2018, two Tameside Conservatives, Cllr Doreen Dickenson and Liam Billington, saw red when an hammer and Sickle flag was run up the same Labour club flagpole. The Communist Party flag had been put there, by friends and family,  following the funeral of Rodney (Rod) McCord, a communist and local health campaigner who had died in March 2018.

Their complaint went viral and caused a furore on social media.  The two low-life Tories, shamelessly tried to make political capital out of Mr McCord's death and the flag incident, by linking it to the poisonings of Yulia and Sergei Skripal, allegedly by the Russian state.  It was also alleged that the manager of Stalybridge Labour Club had received death threats and that one of Mr McCord's sons Danny, had been contacted by someone working in the office of Jeremy Corbyn, demanding that the flag be taken down immediately.

In January 2019, a row erupted when the landlord of the Sportsman pub in Hyde, was told by a Greater Manchester Licensing Officer working for Tameside Council, to take down a flag with an iconic image of the famous revolutionary, Ernesto 'Che' Guevara.  The landlord, Geoff Oliver, and his Cuban-born wife Maria, had run the pub and restaurant El Cuba Libre for the last five years.  The flag had been on display on-and-off at the pub for the past five years and wasn't removed from public view.  It has been rumoured that a certain Tameside Tory may have been behind this complaint involving the landlord of the Sportsman pub.

We are not aware that there has been any objections to the rainbow flag. Nowadays, LGBT issues and identity politics have supplanted class politics and have become something required by etiquette and current fashion. There is an obvious and inherent danger with all of this.  The massive attention paid to issues such as Brexit and identity politics, has utterly distracted attention away from the real issues and problems of the world such as, economic inequality, social class, poverty, injustice, capitalist greed and wars, and has divided much of the British left. It has also alienated many people from becoming involved with left-wing politics because of its now farcical nature.

Curiously, the landlord of the Sportsman pub who refused to withdraw the Cuban flag from public view, had his license amended by Tameside's licensing panel when it came up for review. From being allowed to keep serving until 2:00 am in the morning, this was restricted to the witching hour of midnight.  However, we understand from sources, that Stalybridge Labour Club - now privately owned - and which suffers from a lack of customers, has had its licensing hours increased and can now serve until 3:00 in the morning. 

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Tory bad boy makes good on Tameside Council!

Enfant terrible - Liam Billington

NORTHERN Voices congratulates Liam Billington, the Conservative Party candidate who yesterday won the Stalybridge-South ward with 1233 votes, in the Tameside  2018 May local elections.  Katy Flanagan, the Labour candidate, came second with 834 votes.

As the former editor of the scurrilous blog 'Tameside Eye', young Billington, once disclosed  that Tameside Council had spent over £30,000 on a variety of futile events - 'the diversity breakfast', 'lifestyle clinics', 'urban walks', all organised by sixteen 'well-being champions'.

In November 2014, he criticised a charity (Tameside 4 Good), for making a donation of £1000 to Tameside and Oldham Gay Society which they hailed as a success story.  He described 'Tameside Pride' as "a bunch of puffs mincing across Ashton", and suggested that the money would have been better spent on food-banks or care for the elderly, the people who need it most.  Asked whether he regretted his choice of language, he declared, "I'm gay myself and I use the word all the time."

As the Tameside Eye blogger, Billington was arrested in 2008 on an allegation of harassment relating to three doctored images that appeared on his blog.  The complaints were made by Labour councillor's  John Taylor - who Billington dubbed 'councillor fuckwit' - and Sean Parker-Perry.  Aged 19, Billington was held in custody for seven hours at Ashton police station, where he was photographed, finger-printed, and a sample of his DNA was taken.  His two computers were removed from his home and seized as evidence. After being charged with one count of harassment and two counts of racially aggravated harassment, he was eventually released on police bail.  After considering the evidence against him, Manchester Crown Prosecution Service, decided not to prosecute.

As the Conservative Party candidate for Stalybridge South, Billington recently launched a petition to bring back a market in what is now the Stalybridge Civic Hall.  He believes that reviving the market will be a key component to the regeneration of Stalybridge.  He is, however, no defender of public libraries and will find himself, well at home, among the many semi-literate councillors who make up Tameside Council, who have also closed many libraries throughout Tameside.  The young whizz-kid, once said, "Who needs public libraries when you've got Amazon and a laptop."  Needless to say, not everyone has a laptop or can afford to buy books online. But this doesn't seem to worry Billington.  I suppose that's what makes him a Tory - I'm all right Jack, fuck you!

No doubt, this young controversial 'enfant terrible', will bring some much needed opposition in the one-party state that's called Tameside Council and will enliven the debates in the council chamber.  A future Tory leader in the making on Tameside Council? Watch your back John Bell!

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