I attended a meeting of the Friends of Ashton on Friday night with the intention of discussing the proposal for the new Lift centre in Ashton and to listen to local residents' views.
The meeting started well enough with Cllr Paul Tushingham explaining that the Friends of Ashton was a non political group who welcomed everybody regardless of their political views. He then gave a measured outline of the proposal for the proposal, why the town hall was the favoured site and what disadvantages there were to the site - ie lack of parking. A discussion then took place between residents and councillors. So far so good.
What happened after that was extraordinary. The vice chairman Cllr Don Hodgkinson launched what I can only describe as a vicious tirade against Wigan Council and the Labour Party saying in effect that they cannot be trusted. The chair Paul Tushingham did nothing to control this - so much for it being non political - and eventually myself, Cllr Ann Rampling and three other residents saw no point in being there and walked out. I learned later that other members of the public did the same after we left. So in the end probably half the audience of at 20 at most had left the meeting before it ended.
Now I have no problem with being slagged off by opposition politicians. But what I do object to is the sheer hypocrisy of this group who pretends to be non political trying to masquerade as something else. When you have the Chair and Vice Chair who are members of the Independent group, the official opposition on Wigan Council, using this meeting as a platform to criticise the Labour Party and the Labour controlled Council then the only conclusion an objective person can come to is that this is a political group.
And if it is a political group then I have to ask why is it allowed to meet in a room owned by the Council and if it receives money from the Council, why. I have today asked Council officials to look into these two issues and will report back their findings in this blog.
3 comments:
This, if true, makes me very, very sad because the group started off with good intentions, and it still has some good people in it who have work very hard for no gain financial or otherwise.
In my opinion you cannot have a Chair and Vice Chair who belong to any political party and that goes for Labour groups as well Nigel running the show.
Once again people have let their ego's get the better of them.
Nigel, Do you know what effect the proposed traffic route, from the new proposed Industrial site at Junction 25 , M6, will have on the people of Ashton, as the route for all traffic heading North, will be to use the Ashton junction to turn round?
Strange post. I thought that you'd be keen to support any group that worked for the good of Ashton. They have their own website :
http://friendsofashton.org.uk/index.htm
and you can't deny that Liverpool road doesn't look a site better after their efforts
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