New Business Secretary Vince Cable’s been on a mission up North today, visiting Bentley’s manufacturing plant at Crewe. There are pictures abound of Dr. Cable posing next to the new £220,000 Bentley Mulsanne, which only a few thousand people in Britain can afford: for me this is a bit of an own goal when in the next breath you’re going to start talking about ‘reform’, or in laymans’ terms, cuts.
After the announcement that the Royal Mail would be in part sold off (no surprises there – it was in the Liberal Democrat manifesto and Peter Mandelson set the ball rolling on it last year), it was feared that Vince Cable would be carrying an oversized cleaver on his back when journeying up the M6. Not so, apparently.
Cablecar? RIIIIGHT!!
It is fairly well known that the Conservatives don’t like quangos such as the Regional Development Agencies: the Liberal Democrat manifesto tended to agree and said that unpopular ones would be scrapped. It appears that the Liberal Democrat approach is the one adopted by the coalition: unpopular ones will be stripped of all power and money and popular ones (determined by local councils and business leaders) will remain for the most part how they are.
The diminutive CEO of the NWDA, Steve Broomhead, brought out the big guns from the 140,000-strong Private Sector Partners to fend off Cable before the venerable Doctor had time to set down his attaché case and begin reconstructive surgery on his nervous agency.
The NWDA will face reform, lets be clear about that. But Broomhead is lucky: there “seems to be a business argument in supporting this kind of structure in the north west”. He was however told that there would be ‘less to spend’, and I imagine this message will be echoed around the UK in due course.
The NWDA might have North West in its name, but when deciding on funding does it really matter that their office block is based in Warrington and not Whitehall? Do they really know any more about, say, Blackpool than Whitehall mandarins? The government thinks not, and in order to reduce the number of quangos it is their aim to have a single government department handling the function and funding of the current RDAs.
North West tonight was scaremongering a little in suggesting that schools and hospitals were to be axed when none of this has been announced and Dr Cable would not be drawn on any particular project. This just demonstrates the Labour undertones coursing through the lifeblood of the BBC because they themselves fear the reaper.
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Excellent article Phil, as you know I am not fan of this wasteful quango and its useless overpaid Chief Executive. Broomhead gets paid nearly as much as Mr Cameron, that is not on, do really need to waste £171k a year on this jobsworth? Labour loves scaremongering and this story is one of their favourites. Ever since Ken Clarke mentioned reforming or replacing RDAs, Labour went on the defensive claiming they are stopping regeneration and all the usual bollocks. Then that obnoxious ‘Chances’ came on here insulting everyone and scaremongering people claiming regeneration in Blackpool would have ‘never happened’ under the Tories.
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The original Conservative plan as I understand it, was to give the councils more power and let them bid for funds directly, is that still the plan?
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I would like to know that too ZF, I think it is a sensible plan personally, cutting out the [pointless and expensive] middle-man and distributing funding straight to councils.
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“The original Conservative plan as I understand it, was to give the councils more power and let them bid for funds directly, is that still the plan”
In principle, thats a more efficient/better way of dealing out the money, I agree.BUT imagine Peter Callow putting in bids for money????
Jesus wept.
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Out of curiosity where is everyone today? There have been no comments all day long, the Gazette is as shit as usual, first my comments get deleted and then all the comments disappear later. Come on Gazette FFS get the site revamped. It still baffles me the LEP got a revamp first. Someone on here even once said JP actually told them the Gazette is their worst site for this malicious deleting. Come on Gazette sort it out, I am sick of being denied freedom of speech. We have enough of that already thanks to Liebour.
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I have high hopes for the Coalition;I never want to see another labour government ever again.
I hope labour choose Burnham or one of the rubberband creatures to be leader;it will keep em out for DECADES.
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Same here Harold, I hope they choose the best person to keep Labour out in the political wilderness for the next century.
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and that is? diane abbott? bnp choice, lol!
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