Tuesday 5 December 2006

Stanley Town Council and the Parish Councils: national and international readers, please skip

The following was sent out a couple of weeks ago, to all Labour and Independent District Councillors in the non-Stanley part of Derwentside, copied to a number of Lanchester Parish Councillors (Labour, Tory and Independent) and to the local press. I have received numerous positive responses (again from across the spectrum, as much within parties as between them) and no negative ones:

"Tuesday's meeting of Lanchester Parish Council confirmed what we all knew anyway, namely that the creation of the Stanley Town Council will result in the end of the Derwentside District Council donations to the existing Parish Councils. I have no intention of rehearsing here any arguments about the STC as such, since there would no point. But several of you will recall that I have consistently argued that, following the creation of the STC, DDC should no longer provide anything in the STC area which Parish Councils provide anywhere else in Derwentside.

This has earned me abuse like I have otherwise only ever experienced when suggesting that there were poor people in Lanchester and that they might need some help, but I stand by this as I stand by that: people who want the STC but do not want it to spend (i.e., to do) anything, instead demanding that the allegedly hated DDC carry on providing, strike me as completely absurd. Furthermore, the withdrawal of the DDC donations to Parish Councils because of the creation of the STC, while entirely predictable and understandable under the circumstances, only serves to re-emphasise the importance of this point, since the Parished areas are now paying directly for the STC. It will not do to say that "Stanley won't be getting a donation either", because Stanley never did get a donation, whereas we are actually having our budgets cut (and that quite drastically).

Therefore, I hope and trust that resolutions will be passed by every Parish Council within Derwentside, by both the Majority Group and the Opposition on DDC, and accordingly by DDC itself, to the effect that, following the creation of the STC, DDC should no longer provide anything in the STC area which Parish Councils provide anywhere else in Derwentside. A failure to do this would be iniquitous and immoral (as well as ridiculous from the point of view of the STC and its supporters), and it would not be forgotten in the run-up to the forthcoming Elections."

The question needs to be asked and answered: why should the Parished areas be made to pay for a body for which only the most questionable public support has ever existed even within its own area, which pretty much guarantees a platform for the BNP (the only functioning party in Stanley other than Labour, which will never find enough candidates to fill every seat), and whose own advocates appear to want it to do nothing except pass a monthly resolution telling Kevan Jones how wonderful he is (and, no doubt, pay its members - themselves - generous allowances) while still expecting the allegedly hated Derwentside District Council to spoon-feed them?

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