David Wilkinson

The announcement by the Government that it had reactivated ‘Salt Cell’ (to direct where the supplies of salt and grit should go) is an indication of how bad the situation is and how useless this government is.

Gordon Brown takes charge and says that there will be salt for roads and gas to keep our homes warm BUT the first thing that happens is that local councils are told to reduce their use of salt by 25% and the National Grid announces two gas alerts and factories have their gas supplies cut off. But we are safe in the knowledge that G.B. is in charge.

Lord Adonis, the Transport Chief, told the Sunday Mirror: “In order to increase the resilience of the road network we will seek to reduce the outlay of salt by 25% a day.

“Authorities will need to take decisions on the prioritisation of salt distribution.”

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn also admitted to the paper some “difficult decisions” would have to be taken about which roads would continue to be treated.

After last winter supplies of salt/grit were built up by local councils however the government of course only does anything when things are totally desperate and thinks ‘Oh we best buy some salt/grit after the worst winter there has been here for some time’. The trouble is the salt from Spain and USA only arrives in this country on the 21st and 28th of January - by then a thaw might have set in.

It might have been better if the government had planned and worked with local councils and built up a national reserve, but that might be called ‘good government’. The government of course will accept no blame about its failure to plan and will pass the buck to councils, the highways agency and anyone else it can find to take the blame.

I wonder what the effect will be here in Westhoughton. I have just asked the following question to officers of the Labour-run Bolton Council: “Given that the government appears to have instructed local councils to reduce salt use by 25%, could you inform me what effect this instruction will have on the gritting operations of the council to keep the borough’s roads open and the safety of the public.
If this instruction of the government is put in effect by the council which routes will be untreated?”

Many things vanish over the years as species die out and the latest species to die out in this country appears to the common garden shovel judging by the very few people who have cleared their own footpath from their front door to the pavement outside and prefer to walk on snow and ice, but many of these same people will be the first to blame the council for not shifting snow.

Well today is certainly a winter wonderland, it looks very nice but it’s murder underfoot as I was delivering more of the Westhoughton Liberal Democrats residents’ survey and I had a good chat with a number of residents on Green Meadows about the subjects of gritting, bin collections and that it’s been a long time since we had such heavy snow probably the winter of 78/79.

One thing which was appalling this morning was the stupidity of some motorists who do did not clear the snow from their car windows and have a strange ability to peer through a circle on the front windscreen and then there is those who think they can still do 50 through the slush on Wigan Road.

Some have asked why has the not council not gritted, yet since the start of snow something in the region of 2,500 tonnes of grit has been laid and whilst on my travels this morning I met a group of council workers who normally clean the streets who were moving snow and gritting the footpaths on Market Street.

Once the cold snap is over, the next problem will be the condition of the roads which took a real pasting from last winter and given that there is a backlog of around £50 million on roads and footpaths work across Bolton, things don’t look good.

Well it’s another year and they seem to go even faster the older one gets.

For many, not just in the UK but across the world, they will be hoping that this year and the decade to come will better than the last in which we have unfortunately seen the worst examples of mankind with the madness of evil terrorists of all types who think it’s OK to kill to justify their aims. The crazy thing is many claim that what they do is in the name of God, yet every religion abhors killing. Then we have those who say that they are going set people free and then impose their brand of freedom of the very people they have just “freed”.

Sadly that’s what Blair and Brown did when they used this country, the lives of our service men and women, and billions of pounds worth of our money with the illegal war in Iraq. And now we learn the sickening truth of Blair saying he would have gone to war in any case, WMD or no WMD. So much for the Labour and Tory MP’s who voted for the war: it’s easy to be gung-ho from the safety of an armchair.

This act, together with the recent scandals in our so-called Parliament, show the urgent need to change the way government and politics are run in this country and I do not mean by just having a fresh bunch of suits sitting on the benches of the House of Commons after the General Election.

It needs major changes to the systems which run the country and the involvement of the British people: but sadly many people have now become blasé about mainstream politics and have branded us politicians all the same (when most certainly we are not). This loss of faith and commitment to democracy has allowed the rise of the extreme right with its “simple” solutions for today’s problems. But the extreme right’s solutions mean drastic measures i.e. to ‘deal’ with everyone who does not agree with your point of view.

This year will be a general election year and it will be interesting to see if as a country we will accept a new bunch of suits to run the country, go back to sleep and in four or five years time say ‘that bunch were no good at running the country so let’s have another change’ OR we will demand REAL changes to the way things are done.

So my message for 2010 - let’s kick out armchair politics for good.

Happy New Year to everyone.

Best wishes,
David.

Another Christmas day has arrived… Christmas is of course a great time for children, may be not so much so for frazzled parents, and those who are making Christmas dinner! But even with all the hassle it’s a great day to be with family and friends.

Drink in moderation, not too many mince pies, and have a great time!

All the best,
David

You may have read today in The Bolton News that Bolton Council’s computers have been hit by a crippling virus. It seems it’s not only people who are coming down with winter viruses, only this one seems pretty nasty. I was quoted in the paper as follows:

Cllr David Wilkinson said he received an email on Monday afternoon requesting that he shut down his computer between 6pm that evening and 7am yesterday.

He said it was the first time he can remember such action being taken: “I think the system gets targeted by millions of viruses each year but this is the first time we have ever been ordered to shut down completely.”

But people can relax, the council says that it has not affected frontline services.. phew!

The Green party recently demonstrated that they clearly know nothing about the issues affecting residents in Westhoughton, when their spokesperson said they had a preference for smaller shops, even when there is only two greengrocers and one butcher in Westhoughton Town Centre and the population has soared by several thousand over the past 30 years of continuous house building - residents have simply got in their cars and shopped elsewhere. Read the rest of this entry.

I read with some interest the story in the Bolton News Saturday 17th October the information the information that Sainsbury’s have decided to drop their plans to install wind and solar devices from their new store in Westhoughton. The three state of the art wind turbines were to be totally different to the conventional 3 bladed type (like a propeller) and
there were also to be photo voltaic panels on the roof to capture energy from the sun, which even work in cloudy conditions.

It a shame that Sainsbury’s have decided not to make the new supermarket even more green by the use of wind and solar energy. Instead 20% of the supermarket’s energy will come from a bio-boiler, which will allow them to meet the Council’s guidelines. But they could be a whole lot more green if they wanted, and lead the way in sustainable building.

I cannot tell you the relief I had when I heard that the road surface of Wigan Road and Hart Common was to be resurfaced AND new safety measures where to be installed.

The road was long overdue a resurfacing programme. After 20 years of decay, and a lack of investment by Labour and Tory councillors in the highways infrastructure, the road was beginning to look more like crazy paving than a major A-road.

This morning I took these pictures, and as you will see… what an improvement! I’m hoping that the new safety measures will be effective, but there will be an assessment of the 40mph speed limit in the area once the new safety features have been in place for some time. Then hopefully we will be able to see if they are doing their job.

This is an issue I have been campaigning on with my fellow councillor Julia Silvester for many years now, and I am delight to see steps being taken at last.

The messy back gardens of the shops on Market Street adjacent to the Pavilion Square car park are to be covered up by a new scenic fence, I am pleased to report back to you. The fencing will promote the town and will help to rid the area of the unsightly back entrances of the some of the shops.