Rob Adlard's "rural feeling"

Another candidate for Stalybridge and Hyde interviewed by Saddleworth News is the Tory Rob Adlard. As you'd expect, our interest lies with what he has to say about the Bypass, and once again, we've produced an mp3 from the edited interview and have also transcribed it - both of these appear below.

As with Jonny Reynolds, there appears to be precious little comment from Adlard about the Bypass in other media. Even his own website's transport policy section has no specific mention of the Bypass. So Saddleworth News has done a good job of dragging what little these politicians have to say about the issue out of them.

And what does he say? Well, he's definitely for a bypass, although most of the time is spent attacking Roy Oldham's failure to deliver the road, which is in tune with the approach taken by Longdendale Conservatives. But his words about the 'majority' wanting a bypass concur with the perorations of other politicians - i.e. uninformed and without presenting any empirical evidence to support this assertion.

Adlard's record on the matter also speaks for itself: he did not write to the Public Inquiry to support the Bypass, nor schedule an appearance to speak in favour at said enquiry. You could say he's shown absolutely no interest in the matter, other than to play political football with it at election time: the same could be said of the Tory candidate for Longdendale Peter Hayes (whose fence-sitting blather about the bypass can be read here) - another one who thought the issue was so crucial to the people in the area that he decided not to register an opinion at the Public Inquiry. It's called having your cake and eating it.

Still, in a constituency that's been Labour since 1945 it's unlikely Adlard and Co. will ever get to the main course.


Interviewer:

Now one other erm issue that's important locally is erm the issue of the Bypass which is one that's erm rumbled on for a long time? Where do you stand on that?

Adlard:

It's an interesting and enormous issue, I mean, erm, you know it's something that's been going on for 30 years and it certainly divides the community here, erm - the majority of people want to have some kind of bypass. Erm, the village just up the road from me, Mottram, is absolutely split in two, er, by the problem with the roads right now and they're very upset about it - the majority of people up there want it, apart from the people who live on the outskirts, on the more sort of - erm - rural feeling, areas and they're very much more against it, er, and to be honest there are good arguments on either side.

When I started, erm, having a role to play in politics in this area, started to research, er, again the beginnings of the bypass and all the things that had gone on, we started by having a campaign to trying to get, erm, Roy Oldham the Council leader here to be more open and we were calling for more honesty erm on the issue, and use that as a starting point, and it was interesting when we began to do that, and we found that y'know there was a sort of spike in activity and promises about the bypass at election times. Recently he's just been holding -erm - consultations across all the villages in Longdendale, erm, y'know it's very very close to an election time er after the scheme fell through and he claims that it was because the Highways Agency, you know, withdrew the money and it was all their fault, and all the rest of it, and it was to do with the environmental campaigners, and it's not: I mean he never really had an argument to satisfy the environmental campaigners and just, you know, treated them as if they didn't have a point to make, and they clearly did have a point to make because, er, a lot of people were upset about that and it did cause ructions, but actually, that wasn't what stopped it. What stopped it was that the Highways Agency said it had the least strategic fit, it was the least suitable plan, the least well thought out plan, and the money went elsewhere, to other road schemes.

So, we need to start again, I think we need to look at it, erm, again from scratch - the scheme that Roy Oldham's proposing right now, we just shift the problem a little bit further down the road, away from his house in Mottram, and down into Hollingworth.

Andrew Bingham - Tweedledumber

Last week's Glossop Advertiser saw a number of all-too-familiar letters from pro-bypass fuckwits decrying the Highways Agency's decision to withdraw from the Public Inquiry. But amongst them was nestled this letter from High Peak Borough Councillor Andrew Bingham, the Tories Parliamentary Candidate for the area.

In it, Bingham paints a picture all too familiar because it's the same one painted by Tom Levitt, the man whose job he's after: the Bypass as the key to capitalist prosperity for the High Peak, representing an alleviation of all the traffic problems in the area, supported by almost everyone (none of whom can actually be bothered to officially do so). 

In our view, these non-differences between Labour and Conservative represent all that the political and economic system can offer here or anywhere else. They demonstrate the hollowness of both parties claims to an environmentally sound future where the infinite growth of markets is both necessary and desirable. Neither of them have anything to offer to anyone who believes in anything different.

You won't be surprised to learn that Bingham is as big a fan of the New Mills Torrs Hydro as is Levitt.  For us, this speaks volumes about his credibility, but we won't labour the point lest it appear to be our hobby-horse. 

Our sincere hope is that the legitimacy of the world of Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber, as represented by Bingham and Levitt, is on it's way out. Since it would appear to be high likely that Bingham will replace Levitt at the next General Election, we'll be keeping our eyes on him over the coming months.

Glossop Spur costs & Tory opportunism

Today's Manchester Evening News has a story which is well-known in anti-bypass circles, but perhaps less so more widely: namely, that Tameside Council's costs for the Glossop Spur have reached £800,000. There are two aspects of this we would like to concentrate on in this post.

Firstly, that this is in fact old news, to us at least. Indeed, our fellow campaigner John Hall submitted a Freedom of Information nearly 2 years ago and received a response indicating that the projected costs to March 2007 would be approximately £836,000. Given the hiccups with the Public Inquiry, the costs must surely be far more by now.

Perhaps it's time we rigged up another cost-counter for the Glossop Spur?

The second aspect is the fact that this article is effectively a press release for Tameside Tories. All you need to know about this lot is summed up by these words in the article:

"Councillor Bell said while the Tory group supports the proposal..."

We'd have to assume they do because there's been no opposition from them. It's hard to imagine what points they are trying to score here. Would they have done anything differently from the Labour Party? If they are committed to it, then surely that means they support it to the end - there's no implication that they would pull the scheme because of costs. This is simply a party political matter for this lot.

And who can be surprised? The 1990s Tory road policy got a bloody good hiding from environmental direct action campaigners, to the extent that most of the schemes were shelved by Labour upon coming to power in 1997. That's how unpopular they were, and still are. Why should anyone think this lot would be any different from Labour, should they come to power?

Time for a quote from Thatcher in 1990:

"We are not going to do away with the great car economy."

Any argument that advocates 'changed priorities' as a way to transport and ecological salvation really does not understand the central relationship of the car industry to modern capitalism. The answer lies without politics and capitalism, not within.

Meet the new Boss? ...same as the old boss

With all this talk of elections, we thought we'd muse for a minute on that bloke Dave Cameron's speech the other day (let's not forget these are the new Green Tories, and good old Dave has got a wind turbine on his roof - as did one local pipsqueak/councillor at one time). Take this sample...

So, his mother dealt with "the likes of Swampy" did she? It's easy to mock people who are (seemingly) not as strong, but it's also better to choose those who were the least effective - Direct Action stopped the Tories road building programme dead in it's tracks in the 1990s, and it will do the same with Labour's - or even the Tories if they have their jackboot on our necks again in a few weeks time. We too "fight for what we believe in and the changes we want to make" despite "the likes of you". Bring it on Dave...

And as an antidote to all that guff, here's a rejoinder to this Toff's mocking tones from good old Dan Hooper himself...