Liverpool Party Central - Green Party

BUDGET CUTS - YEAR TWO

2011-07-27T19:48:49Z

This year, the Leader of Liverpool city Council again invited all parties to join a cross-party budget setting process.

This posting examines what went wrong last year and why the Green Party is not risking a repeat of last year's experience.

Last year all four parties on Liverpool City Council worked on a joint budget proposal in the face of the crisis imposed by the government's Comprehensive Spending Review.

A coalition government containing Liberal Democrats was imposing a vicious, crippling funding cut on our city; a Labour council administration was going to have to pass on that cut.

As a Green Party we had no need to take part in imposing these cuts, but - for a while - it looked like there was something special going on for Liverpool and we set aside the interests of the Green Party in the interests of the city.

We took a risk on that. We had nothing to gain and perhaps a lot to lose.

]]> We know now that in the end that the consensus was broken by the, then, Lib Dem leadership who launched an attack on the joint budget proposal which they had been party to. With consensus broken, there was no longer any need to damage the Green Party nationally by voting for a cuts budget in Liverpool. We abstained. However we have never attacked the content of that joint budget proposal and we have defended the need to make those tough choices; we share responsibility for shaping that budget and we are seeing the grave consequences now.

Download a full account of last year's actions here.

NEVER AGAIN
The invitation last year from the Labour leadership was a bold and principled political move and the risks were worth taking in the hope of enhancing the city's reputation and showing solidarity in adversity.

This year, the leader has repeated the invitation. Again, I think it is a sincere act. However last year's failure has tarnished the prospects of a cross-party budget process and it will not gain any credibility even if all parties sign up to it.

The responsibility for making the budget proposal will be with the controlling group on the city council - Labour. We hope and expect that the Labour administration will be open to ideas and suggestions from all citizens and groups in Liverpool and the Green Party would use that, general, route to seek to influence the budget process.

As an opposition party we will scrutinise the budget proposal when it appears and we may put forward amendments on budget day.

But we will not make unfair attacks on the administration or try to deny that they have any alternative other than producing a balanced budget, taking account of the realities of the cruel funding cut imposed by government.

Liverpool Direct and Beyond

2010-10-08T16:12:57Z

Liverpool City Council's information services provider - "Liverpool Direct" - is coming under scrutiny with the publication of a leaked consultants' report. The contract is up for renewal. It would be a good time to take a fresh look at how best to provide computer and communications services for a local council.

Central government has started to encourage a move away from big contracts with single providers such as BT (the council's majority partner in Liverpool Direct Ltd).
read more

And using Open Source software means savings from buying software licences with their repeated upgrade costs.

]]> Breaking up monopolies and using free software tools - like OpenOffice - can save money. It can also save jobs.

The traditional criticism of any move away from proprietary software is that it will create a need for more support and retraining. In the short term it will. But support and training are resources that need people to provide them. At a time when jobs are scarce and savings are called for it makes sense to redeploy people as trainers and support workers rather than put them on the dole. Using free, Open Source software can save software licence costs and make that redeployment self-funding.

As a very large public sector customer, Liverpool City Council could help nurture a local software industry on Merseyside by local procurement rather than relying, as it does, on a single monopoly provider for all its systems.

Road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death an acquired disability in children

2010-05-14T10:44:51Z

Every year about 170 children are killed, and 4 000 seriously injured on our roads.
The media do not cover this type of death, when a child is shot, mauled by a dog or killed by a peadophile it will be on the front page of every newspaper and on each TV channel.

]]> For the three children who are killed every week on our roads there is no such interest.
Since 1985 the average distance travelled by a child in a car has risen by 70%.
In my daughters school there are people who live 0.2 miles from the school who drive every single school day. Not only is this very polluting, childhood obesity is rife.
All over this country, fat unhealthy kids are being driven to school by fat unhealthy parents.
Since 1985 the distance walked by children has decreased by 19%.
Road danger is a strong disincentive to walking and cycling.
For these reasons and many more i support the green party's attempt to introduce a 20 MPH limit on all of our domestic roads.
Cars make us fat and lazy.

Battrees

2010-05-13T09:57:55Z

Some 18 months ago i came up with an idea.
In order to build the environmental academy on Newsham Park, 450 mature trees were cut down, this in an historic grade 2 listed park, in a conservation area.

]]> The academy had a very short lived battery collection, it was well intentioned, but lacked direction. I thought a good way of breathing life into this idea was to give the collection some purpose, something tangible that would involve the children, the park and the wider park community.
Bingo, collect the batteries, weigh em in, and with monies collected, instigate a tree planting programme on Newsham Park.
the name of the project was easy, BATTREES.
The first place i wanted the trees would be where the ugly white cement bollards now close off the road outside the academy on Gardners Drive.
This area is an absolute eyesore, not only would the trees replace the job of the horrible cheap and nasty bollards, they would hide the school from view, from our park and create wildlife habitat. This idea was hawked around at various meetings, parks fora, long conversations with council officers, schools, local business people, shops.
Have now got LOTS of interest from other schools, and a multi national supermarket.
That was 18 months ago, why do good ideas take so long to come to fruition in this city?

It now looks as though this lobbying, persuading is coming to a head, soon there will be new trees sprouting all over this park, and the truly magnificent thing is that millions of batteries will no not go to landfill, but will fill our land with BATTREES.

landfill

2010-05-11T00:06:47Z

From what I can gather, liverpool sends 500 000 tonnes of waste to landfill every year, if anyone knows the exact ammount please advise.
The things which have the highest impact on the environment from household waste are soiled nappies and dog dirt.

]]> Council policy at present is to put these in landfill. What would be better would be for these waste products were disposed of via sewerage.
this is easy to be done. The council should introduce nappy liners in all nurseries, hospitals, old peoples homes, and encourage use of nappy liners by giving them to parents of nappy wearing toddlers.
I have been worried about this issue for some time. My first child used terry nappies, this did solve the prob of sending solids to landfill, but, involved a lot of cleaning, and drying.
Now with the experience gained from bringing up kids i find that the liner is simple, and cuts down on pollution, because the liner, and contents are easily flushed down the toilet, and will end up in Stanley Dock and dealt with in a very green way.

The same is true for all the dog mess that people place in a plassy bag. This goes to landfill; frankly a stupid way to deal with the problem. It should be council policy to issue bio-degradeable pick up sacks that can be flushed down the toilet. Just as important, all the dog litter bins to be flushable.
this is the sensible way forward.

The problem isn't that Greens can't count - it's that votes don't count

2010-05-10T16:21:05Z

Councillor Radford posted a blog today claiming that "The Green Party website does not show the accurate elections results with an inflated claim for their vote and the deliberate exclusion of The Liberal Party vote".

He provided no link to the website he mentioned to specify whether he meant our local website or our national website.

]]> I assume he means our local website .... but it is accurate and says "Thank you all who have supported us, campaigned for us, put up posters in your windows for us. In the end, the news is mixed. The Green Party won its first seat in Parliament, against all the odds. But here in Liverpool we failed to get our third councillor, in spite of a strong campaign, and strong candidates. Still, we did get almost 5% of your votes, in a system where many people decided to vote 'tactically' rather than for the candidate they really preferred."

All I can think is that Councillor Radford was talking about my own blog post which - incorrectly - stated that "Locally, the Green Party got over 5% of the votes in Liverpool". Now this was wrong - we actually got 4.59% of the vote - and I have now corrected it. However, it should have been obvious that this was a mistake because I linked from my blog direct to the Liverpool City Council site that gives the overall results. In the unlikely event that I was trying to pretend that the Greens had a fraction of a percentage greater vote than we in fact gained, why would I then link directly to an external webpage which clearly shows the actual vote?

Councillor Radford also complained that the Liberal vote was ignored ... does he mean the local Liberal vote? But in my blogpost I didn't discuss the vote of any of the other parties locally.

Or does he mean at the end of my post when I discuss the other parties share of the national vote? But there I missed out many other parties, several of whom got significant numbers of seats (eg SNP, Plaid Cmymru). I was trying to make a point, not be comprehensive. Furthermore, in his post Councillor Radford missed out the BNP, SLP, UKIP, etc.

I don't understand why some people's blog postings descend into political name-calling. There are plenty of much more important issues out there. Why not talk about them?

One topic that is getting a lot of coverage just now is electoral reform and proportional representation. I have discussed this in earlier posts here and here. Yesterday I helped fund 38 degrees to put adverts in the today's papers calling for a fairer voting system. I've also signed up to TakeBackParliament.com who are campaigning on the same issue.

Looking at this locally, the Greens, Liberals and Tories together got a combined 17.7% of the vote in Liverpool... and gained just 1 (Lib) councillor. In comparison, Labour got 51.3% of the vote and 20 councillors whilst the Lib Dems got 29.4% of the vote and 9 councillors. So similar to my earlier comparison, the percentage of vote in Liverpool needed to elect a local councillor was:

2.6% for Labour
3.3% for Lib Dem
17.7% for Green/Liberal/Tory

So, I say again - that just isn't fair.

285 000 votes, 1 member of parliment

2010-05-09T11:59:39Z

The greens had their best ever showing at the polls last week, over a quater of a million voted for us nationally, and we got our best ever turn out in liverpool.
Our ideas are not easy for some to take, and people do not like change.

]]> Big changes are coming, the financial mess capitalism has produced, again, is going to have to be paid for.
More importantly, the resources of this planet are being exploited at an alarming, unsustainable rate. Change has to come on this front too.
There are so many things wrong with our culture, it is difficult to know where to start.
The way in which our old are farmed out to die in tiny little rooms, the overuse of cars. over thirty percent of all food bought in this country is sent to land fill, far too many kids are fat, yet there is also a serious problem with anorexia.
It is not only bankers who are greedy, nor are MPs the only ones who fiddle.
Whatever deal is done by the three main parties, you can bet your life it will be enlightened self interest, that is a nice way of saying selfishness, that will be the driving force.
The real problem of rampant consumerism will not be tackled, because those parties call that growth.

Thanks for voting Green and for campaigning for the Green Party

2010-05-09T10:14:45Z

The results are all in, although it's not conclusive. The politicians are trying to fix up a deal. Contrary to newspaper opinion, it's happening in the open - unlike the numerous secret deals that take place within parties and also between parties and their financial backers.

More notably, everyone is now talking about our voting system and many (myself included) have been pushing for proportional representation. See, for example, TakeBackParliament.

]]> For Greens, the great news nationally is that we have our first ever MP, Caroline Lucas in Brighton. Until now, Britain was the only country in Europe never to have had a Green MP.

Locally, the Green Party got nearly 5% of the votes in Liverpool [in my initial post I said the Green Party got OVER 5% of the votes in Liverpool but this was wrong, we actually got 4.59%], and much higher in key wards within the Riverside constituency such as St. Michaels (Tom Crone), Greenbank (Peter Cranie) and Princes Park (Addullahi Mahamoud).

So a big thanks to everybody who voted for us in the national or the local elections last week.

Disappointingly, we didn't gain any Councillors. We are especially gutted about St Michaels where Tom has campaigned so hard, supported by our two current Green Party councillors, John Coyne and Sarah Jennings plus a small army of willing leafletters, canvassers, web-designers, and so on.

In the Wavertree constituency where I was standing I was surprised and delighted by the number of non-Green Party people who willingly offered to help with the Green Party campaign - particular thanks should go to David, Isabelle, Ray, Deva and Margaret (and my Mum and Dad!).

Apparently there has been a surge over the weekend in people joining the Green Party - so if you might be one of them, look at the Liverpool Green Party website and please do get in touch - email, phone, or come to a meeting.

I went to the count itself on Thursday night and stayed to 6am until the Wavertree result was finally announced. My partner, Julian, wrote a blog about the on-the-night events here. Personally, I found it upsetting watching people - whether in the Green Party or other parties - who had worked incredibly hard realising that they had lost. I realise that there have to be losers in politics but it is tough to take when the voting system so unfairly favours the largest parties.

Nationally, the Green Party had 285,616 total votes but only got 1 seat.

Based on the BBC's voting numbers, the votes needed per seat for each party were:

Labour - 33,350
Conservatives - 34,989
Liberal Democrats - 119,788
Greens - 285,616

There are over 8 times more Green votes cast for each Green MP than Labour votes for each Labour MP ... and there are over 3.5 times more Lib Dem votes for each Lib Dem MP than Labour votes for each Labour MP.

That just isn't fair.

Tom Crone (Green Party) wins the heated debate at the Liverpool, Riverside Hustings

2010-05-05T11:27:28Z

I went to a lively - bordering on rowdy - hustings last night at the Methodist Centre on Beaconsfield Street in Granby. There were only three candidates, Louise Ellman (Coop/Labour and the sitting MP for Riverside), Kegang Wu (Conservatives) and Tom Crone (Green Party).

]]> The Lib Dem candidate, Richard Marbrow, was supposed to come but didn't appear.

The place was packed - latecomers had to be turned away. There were questions from people there who passionately cared about a wide range of issues - from keeping the NHS public to tackling climate change to opposing nuclear weapons to Islamophobia to helping the Palestinians and, in particular, the blockade of food and medicene in Gaza.

Anybody who thought that the low levels of voting in the Liverpool, Riverside constituency is due to people there not caring or not knowing about politics would have changed their minds if they had been there.

Riverside has had the lower turn-out in the country for the past two General Elections but this voter apathy is much more likely to be due to the huge Labour majority here making people's votes count for very little. The VoterPower website indicates that votes in the Liverpool, Wavertree constituency, where I am a candidate, have much more influence. It suggests that voters in Liverpool Wavertree have 1.51x more voting power than the UK average whereas voters in Liverpool Riverside haves 14.29x less voting power than average. See my earlier blog on this.

I was really impressed by the Chair of the hustings, Earl Jenkins, who just about managed to keep order and to not let the meeting descend into a shouting match whilst giving respect to everybody there. A tough job - I reckon he'd make a fine politician himself!

I realise that I'm partisan but just listening to the applause it was clear that Tom Crone won the debate by clearly and honestly explaining the Green Party's position - and by emphasising our basic moral principles which guide our policies. Tom and his team have been working incredibly hard over the past few weeks, particularly in his local ward of St. Michaels, where we hope he will be elected as a councillor.

Below, another blurry photo (sorry) of Tom being mobbed by voters at the end of the debate.

Newsham Park Community Development Association

2010-05-05T09:44:25Z

The main reason for me getting involved in local politics was, and is, newsham park. This park was, when opened, without doubt the best park on earth.
The park boasted a full time staff of 42, the amenities in the park were astounding, and showed to the full, the benevolence of our civic minded Victorian forebears.

]]> About ten years ago i joined a group called, "the friends of newsham park", this group has now disappeared.
On Monday 10th May 8.00pm @ St Cecelias Club, Green Lane, Liverpool 13,
there is a meeting to set up a similar group of people who love this park and surrounding buildings.
To be accused of running the area down, for simply stating that the park is decaying, and in need of immediate attention, is ignorant political point scoring.
Newsham park is in desperate need; the tree stock has diminished to critical levels.
Kemp, the designer of this park was a genius, his creation of, "the rural illusion", was truly magnificent. The park was locally known as, "the forest".
Where they are going to chop down loads of mature trees, to build a changing room, used to be known as, "the newty".
Even ten years ago you could stand in the park, and not see through it, all of your sight lines disappeared into infinity. Today with the massive tree loss that has gone on, you can see right through our park.
The school, park interface is a disgrace, cheap as chips fencing and wall, topped off with Orwelian security cameras, and over-high lampposts' give the place the look of a prison. The school was gifted the park, and was given about 20 million pound, and yet the labour government, and lib dem council allowed them to get away with the stark, overbearing interface, in an historic listed park in a conservation area.
I take my children to this park on a daily basis, when there it is hard to relax for the amount of cars that race along Gardners Drive. The simple solution here is to close the road.
Telling it like it is, is not pulling the park down, the emperors new clothes comes to mind.

Vote for the Green Party in the local elections this week

2010-05-03T11:18:38Z

All of the media excitement about the national elections for our MPs has meant that the local council elections - also on May 6th - have been overshadowed. Steve Radford recently made a similar point in his blog.

]]> Nationally, the Lib Dems are hoping to make a breakthrough in terms of their number of MPs and, understandably, TV and the papers have been full of this. If there is a balanced (hung) parliament this could give the Lib Dems enough power to force a referendum on changing our voting system to proportional representation in our General Elections. This would benefit all smaller parties with widespread but currently lower levels of support - so the Green Party as well as the Lib Dems. I also think that it would engage people more in politics, as I argued in an earlier blog.

Locally, though, the Lib Dems are already in power in Liverpool. They have a by-the-skin-of-their-teeth majority of councillors and so they they make all of the decisions. Locally, then, if you want to see a more balanced council with different parties sharing the responsibility for governing Liverpool, then please vote for the Green Party on May 6th.

For example, Tom Crone who is standing in St. Michael's ward and Peter Cranie in Greenbank have both been campaigning hard. In this election the Green Party is standing candidates for the local council elections in every ward in Liverpool - and we already have two councillors, John Coyne and Sarah Jennings.

So make your vote count - vote Green!

(If you want to know more - check out our manifesto, available free here)

car free park/free car park

2010-05-01T11:50:28Z

When visiting newsham park with children it is very hard to relax. keeping an eye out for dogs is bad enough, but the thing that really has you on edge is the cars that drive into and out of this park all day.

]]> there is no reason for there to be access into the park for cars, as the road is closed at the corner of Gardners Drive, Balmoral Road. There are a small, but persistent number of cars and vans that cut across the grass and use the park as a rat run. Worryingly the academy has began to use the eastern side of the road in the park as an overflow car park. This was something local residents were assured would never happen when planning was in progress.
The academy traffic also uses short cuts through Denman Drive and Newsham Drive, drivers use these to avoid traffic lights on West Derby Road, on the other side of the park, Balmoral Road is used by academy traffic to avoid lights on Kensington.
The fact that the school is an environmental academy is rather ironic. most of the children live within a short walking distance
I would like to see the park a car free zone

Kensington cricket club

2010-04-30T10:15:10Z

I am lucky enough to live right on top of Newsham Park. When this park was opened in 1868 it was arguably the best park on earth, sadly today, after years of neglect it could never be described as that. ]]> The main problem for the park at present is the high ammount of trees that have been killed by dogs, sadly, it is not only fighting dogs that kill our trees.
In order to build the new pavilion on our park, ten mature trees are to be felled, i hope the contractors stay within the guidelines of the Unitary Development Plan, "for every tree cut down in a conservation area, two must be planted".
i was against the building of the pavilion because it was going to be yet another park turned over to football. There are to be two football pitches on thePrescot Road side of the park. We only got these because of development next to the Peter Lloyd, where the football pitches were originally going to be.
The reason for my opposition to the pavilion was that it destroys sight lines, our park was built to create the rural illusion.
There is a calming effect that works when in this park. Kemp the designer was genius. He left us an amenity that is more important than any buuilding in this city.
Now whenever football is going on in the park, there will be the accompanying traffic.
That being said, the pavilion is now a very soon to be realised reality.
During canvassing i have uncovered a huge desire for a cricket team to be based in this park. The pavilion would be a perfect base for the team

If you are interested playing cricket please join the facebook group called, "Kensington cricket".
The current England cricket team does not have a player from liverpool, not surprising when you consider the lack of oppurtunity for kids to play.
We want a youth team and a womens team as well as the mens.
We want cricketers in the national teams from this area, that starts with providing pitches.
If elected i would be pushing for a cricket field on Newsham Park.

daily mail

2010-04-28T22:29:55Z

it is with sorrow that i have to agree with the daily mail. gillian duffy, speaking her mind on immigration, labeled as a bigot.
gordons gary sprake moment.

The energy challenge - weaning us off fossil fuels before its too late

2010-04-27T21:48:47Z

Yesterday I went to a talk by a physicist, Christopher Llewellyn Smith, at the University of Liverpool.

Many of his slides were the same as those for a talk he gave in Stanford University in February this year.

]]> He's done the calculations for world energy that David McKay - another physicist - did for UK energy in his book that can be downloaded for free here.

A summary of the talk: we are running out of fossil fuels fast. Worldwide reserves of oil especially, but also gas and coal, are being used up rapidly and burning them is causing climate change. We need to address these twin problems.

Without going back to muscle power (which would be unable to support the world's population, currently over 6 billion and likely to peak at over 9 billion) he claims that only solar or nuclear power can supply the bulk of energy required ... though alternatives like energy efficiency and renewables can provide important components to a solution.

The big question is, are people willing to pay more now so the lights don't go out in the near future?

And will the politicians try to persuade people to do that?

It was thought-provoking.

As was one of the questions - "If you had the money that was spent worldwide on bailing out the bankers last year, how far would that have got you in research for alternatives to fossil fuels and tackling global warming?".

He didn't know the answer but said that if the banking crisis had achieved one positive outcome it was that a billion pounds no longer seemed like a lot of money.

He said he hadn't yet decided how he was voting in the elections but that the problem for politicians is their short-term approach. We need to start right now (actually, we should have started 10 years or more ago) to provide the infrastructure needed for energy security and to tackle global warming. The issues just aren't here-today-gone-tomorrow with the next set of newspaper headlines.

PS - Don't believe in climate change? From my experience, it seems like nothing will change the mind of a global warming skeptic .... but this site - run by scientists - does its best to provide a fair view of the research.