The Debate: Are our city's councillors letting Liverpool down?

Feb 26 2008 by Ben Schofield, Liverpool Daily Post

The statue of Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, watches over Liverpool from the top of the Town Hall dome. Picture Howard Davies _240

YES: The Case For - Time for the council slanging matches to stop

by Rex Makin, solicitor and freeman of Liverpool

THERE are no winners or losers in this very serious matter.

Anyone who goes to a council meeting will find it hard to distinguish between the yah-boo politics of both sides. There seems to be a slanging match between the two leaders, and that's not productive.

The more important point is that the Labour opposition have not for some time produced a contrary budget.

The ruling party produces a budget and it's accepted as is. It is the duty of the opposition to attack it but their credibility is reduced by their failure to produce a contrary budget. It's all very well to throw stones at your opponents but if your arguments lack credibility, then you fail to be constructive yourself.

The amount of personal publicity which is engendered by the Leader of the group is becoming boring. Instead of seeing his visage on a regular basis behind a routine speech, it would be far better if the practical day-to-day problems were tackled more constructively in public view. For example, I heard that the Big Dig was to be accelerated to finish by May.

Going home on Friday down The Strand, a barricade fell on my Bentley - more haste, less speed. Is this kind of incident encouraging the visitors who are already put off by the absurd restrictions on parking and the gentlemen in yellow hats who pounce unreasonably like the animals in Noah's Ark two by two? All visitors to Liverpool are just baffled by our restrictions.

It's said that the penalties exacted are a sort of revenue- raising device. If so, the person responsible should be ashamed of himself.

The Audit Commission made sweeping condemnations of the financial mismanagement but, unfortunately, instead of recognising whatever truth there is in those criticisms, we had whitewash. And, as Mrs Malaprop once said, comparisons are odorous - comparisons always are.

But the fact of the matter remains, there's a lot of homework necessary to be done to remedy the situation. I believe that the ruling party has many weaknesses and the greatest mistake after the last standards committee, which condemned the leader Mike Storey, was for his successor to have brought him back after practically no time as a modern-day Lazarus, into an executive position and one which was partly responsible for the Mathew Street debacle.

David Henshaw and the chairman of the Culture Company were responsible for a chain of events that have brought us not only a financial chasm, but also ridicule.

I refer to Robyn Archer and her golden handshake and others who followed in her wake. I would like to know who exactly is going to pay the money agreed with Jason Harborow

NO: The Case Against >>>