No-rise Tories sat on the fence

SURVEYING THE COUNCIL:

OLDHAM’S Tories hope to hold the balance of power after May’s local elections and they practiced their balancing act at Oldham Council last night by pressing down so hard on the fence that they’ll all have hot cross bums for Easter.

The Tory position (not the one involving John Major and Edwina) was delivered in pious, sermon-on-the-mount tones by group leader Jack Hulme at last night’s council budget meeting and amounted to little more than a lecture on the lines of do what we would do if we could be bothered but we can’t. Not the catchiest of slogans, you’ll agree.

Both the controlling Lib-Dem group and the Labour opposition had prepared long, detailed budgets both with slogans: “We said, we did” for the Lib-Dems and “Labour investing in Oldham” and both settled on a tax rise of 1.9 per cent.

Despite having prepared no budget of their own the Tories called for a zero council tax increase but they didn’t say how it could be afforded because they hadn’t got a clue. Not even a few figures scribbled on the back of a fag packet.

Jack’s team (the only team that has all its players on the bench) voted against both Lib-Dem and Labour budgets because of their sudden conversion to a zero rise, forgetting, perhaps, that they had voted against a no-tax rise proposed by Labour last year, thus keeping the Lib-Dems in power.

Balance of power? Heaven help us all.

Howard Sykes’s budget speech was an impressive list of achievements, including a £21 million cut in spending.

“A thousand stones were turned over and a bright light shone into crevices and all sorts of nasty things emerged” said Howard, getting more than a little carried away with himself.

And apparently it is all down to PIF (and no, I haven’t developed a writing lithp) it is PIF as in Priority Investment Fund which means that the Lib-Dems have spent our money where they think we would like it to be spent — cleanliness, recycling, academies, the old town hall, that sort of thing.

Jim McMahon’s budget document was the most impressive ever seen from an opposition party. Fully detailed and with splashes of colour here and there, it was no “Harry Potter” or light night-time reading but it was a brilliant effort.

At its heart, Jim told us was fairness for all, Labour’s core values and the haves and have nots. Even the Tories were in there then, they who have not a clue.

After the party leaders’ speeches the Mayor, with a heavy sigh, announced that 34 — yes, 34 councillors — had indicated they wanted to speak, presumably on a budget topic drawn out of the hat, and it was at that point that the occupants of the press bench and, no doubt, the team of senior officers serving their time in the sin bin at the back of the chamber, lost the will to live.

The highlights were few:

John Hudson saying that the council had wanted to play Snow White but had turned into the Wicked Witch but didn’t mention the seven dwarfs, perhaps because it was too close to home.



Peter Dean, stepped down from his own fairy story to assure us we were listening (or on most cases not listening) to an “interesting debate”. No we weren’t.



Val Sedgwick dived into a lexicon of long ago to describe Labour as peevish for not including Lees Brass Band contest in a list of social events — including a bonfire — that it would support.



John McCann said that the bonfire would do nothing for Oldham’s carbon footprint and Howard Sykes said it would keep those forced into homelessness by Labour warm at night.



And Roger Hindle spoke in praise of a weed ripper, or it could have been a wee dripper, either way who really cares.



At the end of it all, Howard Sykes said that both main parties agreed on 95 per cent of the budget and only disagreed over 5 per cent which, after three and half hours in the chamber, was a great consolation to us all.

The key question is: Have the Lib-Dems made a difference? Yes, they have.