Carnival, voter ID and library costs - This weeks Redditch Standard letters

THIS weeks Redditch Standard letters.

‘Colour, music, dancing and laughter.’

THE slightest hint of rain and a cool breeze.

A typical carnival day.

Standing on the corner of Clive Road looking up Prospect Hill where the officials were convincing drivers that ‘Road Closed’ meant, well, ‘Road Closed’.

We could hear the drummers first and feel them in our ears and in our chests as they emerged from little Albert Street.

Dancers, marchers, then these almighty transport dinosaurs.

Unbelievable monsters being born in Albert Street filling the road and carrying young and old and escaping balloons.

Colour, music, dancing and laughter.

Welcome back Redditch Carnival and all of you who took part and long may the carnival live.

Roy Banks

‘Voter ID hits the poor’

RACHEL Maclean reckons we are in danger in the voting booth from the Chinese trying to rig the elections – that’s why she is trying to justify the Voter ID scheme.

In fact, the number of cases of impersonation fraud is negligible – just three in severn years.

Yet the scheme with the limited types of photo ID hits the poor, disabled, young and minority ethnic communities all of whom just happen to be less likely to vote conservative, even Jacob Rees Mogg the Tory Minister thinks the Voter ID was all about trying to gerrymander elections to boost Tory votes – should we expect anything else from the local MP?

John Powell, Mayfields

Redditch

”Love to see the market outside’

REFERENCING the article in Standard, I would love to see the market back outside – it gives the town more character.

When it moved inside it took me ages to find it again.

I don’t spend much time in the Kingfisher, so I finally found it tucked away in a corner.

Instead of being open to view as you walk up the street, it’s in a dead end as it were.

CE Griffin

‘Local people need more control over what happens in their communities’

IAIN Barker makes a fair point. Birmingham’s woes are a decade in the making. For the record I fully support Kier Starmer’s attempts to sort out the Labour Party in Birmingham earlier this year.

However here is the truth. You can be a Tory councillor in Thurrock, Woking and Thanet or a Labour one in Warrington, or Birmingham.

Every local council has had their spending power cut by 60 per cent since 2010. The Tories abolished the audit commission – the body that kept council spending in check.

They also encouraged councils to speculate with investments.

Northamptonshire Council was abolished because of the mess made in local government finance by successive Tory Chancellors. Tax cuts for party donors being more important than libraries or bus services.

Interestingly, across the members of all three main parties, there is a consensus.

Local people need more control over what happens in their communities.

We are an outlier amongst other Western countries.

Westminster has too much power and too little understanding of the needs of local communities like Redditch.

Coun Ian Woodall

Headless Cross and Oakenshaw.

‘More important things to be funded’

I FIND it stunning that – just a few short months since the Conservative-led county authority pushed through the relocation of Redditch Library Services, from the purpose built library building to a corner of the Town Hall, despite overwhelming opposition – we now have the Conservative-led borough council saying ‘Ooops we miss calculated the cost, its going to cost an additional £1million’.

So that’s a combined £10.4million of Government and borough money being spent on a vanity project.

Coun Dormer said: “If this wasn’t, the best thing for the town, I wouldn’t be doing it.”

Well, I would suggest there are lots of more important things these funds could spent on than relocating a facility that the majority of consultation respondents wanted to stay in its current location.

Mark Tomes

Chair of Redditch and Inkberrow Liberal Democrats

‘Concerned about £1million loan’

A RECENT survey by the independent Local Government Information Unit shows Redditch is 31st in the league table of all English Councils at risk of bankruptcy with a ratio of debt to spending power of 14.1. (Incidentally Birmingham has a smaller ratio of 4.4).

I was therefore concerned to read that Conservative leader Matt Dormer is asking councillors to approve a further £1million loan to prop up the refurbishment of the Town Hall to facilitate his vanity project – the demolition of the town library.

The current council reports show the cost of that demolition and replacement with a new cafe and plaza remains at £4.2million however, if the 20 per cent additional costs for the Town Hall are anything to go by, I would suggest the spendthrift leader will soon be back for another bailout loan.

Coun Dormer’s plan is to sell off vouncil land and assets including the much-loved and used Community House in Easemore Road (the value of which was originally overestimated). What jewels in Redditch’s crown are safe from Dormer’s fire sales?

Combining the cost of the library demolition and refurbishment of the Town Hall begs the question ‘to what better use could £10.4million be put to improve the lives of the people of Redditch?’

That is a question every councillor needs to consider when they come to vote at the full council meeting on Monday, September 25.

It’s clear the Labour Group will oppose the additional loan as they are consistent in their opposition to the current civic vandalism.

However, I doubt the Conservative councillors will see through the waste of taxpayers’ money that their leader is spending, neither will they admit they are the only people in Redditch who do not realise that their emperor is wearing no clothes.

Phil Berry

Batchley