CONSERVATIVE group leader was in robust mood this morning (Monday) when YT’s Mike Jones interviewed him in the council chambers.
The interview was based on the amendments that the Conservatives with the help of the Independents and UKIP forced through at last weeks council meeting.
Garry robustly defends the budget as part of a Conservative “New Way Forward” He clearly believes that their approach to “zero based budgeting” is the way forward for the Thurrock economy as opposed to the “salami-slicing approach by Labour”.
Garry takes on criticism of the Thurrock Adult Community College and their plans to “package up the Councils leisure activities to enable a specialist organisation to run them.”
Cllr Hague also looked forward to the coming local elections on May 5th. Campaigning begins in three weeks and he makes reference to the team that will, he believes out the Tories back in power.
He actually has the cheek to say “let’s talk to everyone involved and move forward”. TOO LATE Mr Hague, you are supposed to talk to people before you vote to close services down overnight and sell off the land. WE will be talking at the ballot box in the next election and the defectors to UKIP and other parties have done the smart thing as I think the conservative party are going to get a really good feeling about the mood of the voters about local and national policies.
A definite rethink is needed on closure of Thurrock Adult College. Yes Budgets are tight but to close college could lead to loss of current funding stream. This in turn is likely to mean more work and expense for Council Officers in the future to get it back. You can have my £3 Council Tax cut back. Petrol rises this month alone have already eroded it. KEEP THURROCK ADULT COLLEGE
So jinksbella and vince63, are you saying that you believe Mr Hague is lying? He is talking about moving the services provided by the current college to a new location. If that’s all it is then why all the hubris? He says that no services will be lost, is he lying? What is the truth?
gray 64 my problem with the Adult Education situation is that is slotted into a budget for 11/12 therefore has to be achieved within this time scale. There was no consultation with Staff / Council Education Teams at Council and the future College provision in Thurrock is up in the air any way because of the LSC funding crisis. Therefore there exists a potential for the college to close and not reopen immediately, There could be a loss of funding streams / administrative issues and redundancies. And then you have to recruit again. Why? Sort out the new college facilities in Thurrock First – consult with staff and users then make a decision. Simple yes.
If you look at his body language alone in the interview he looks very uncomfortable and the word “shifty” would be an understatement. He is talking about relocating the services to a building which the plans are not even drawn up for yet due to funding restrictions! As for the word “lie” … I could never put that together with the word “politician” as they are always truthful and honest aren’t they?
jinksbella, I think it’s a little unkind to say that Mr Hague looks shifty. I think he starts the interview a little nervous and, perhaps, a little out of breath but I wouldn’t say more than that. I also think that, when you are going to pick a fight with a politician you need to pick the right one. Your earlier posts were raging against the closing of the college, a point of view which Mr Hague and his fellow councillors could quite legitimately dismiss as they are clearly saying that they do not intend for the borough to lose any of the provision for adult education. In fact, Vince63 has found the right way to attack this issue. It’s all very well for Mr Hague to say they are just moving venues but what if that venue isn’t ready on time? That is where your efforts should lay because he will find it much harder to answer questions on it as it will be patently obvious to casual observation whether the alternative premises is ready in the time allowed.
“gray64″ are you for real? The fact is that college services will be lost for good. Many of them have already been severely cut now this is the final nail in the coffin for Thurrock if this closure goes ahead.
If the college closes this summer where will all the disabled and elderly learners go for instance. The new campus” I think not that is for FE and evening classes. Where is the alternative provision going to come from now and in the long term? Yes there may be proposals for a fancy new campus with an add on adult facility but adult provision will be small, mainly run as evening classes for employed people and there will be no daytime provision for the sick, the disabled, the elderly, and mothers with children at school. THERE WILL BE A LOSS OF PROVISION NO DOUBT ABOUT THAT. If you care make your voice heard. Once gone it is very hard to get things up and running again from scratch.
Think about it. We will all be old one day. Do you want the opportunity to go to a local class and learn something new in the daytime, to meet new people? If you are laid off work or disabled do you want these opportunities to be there? imagine if they were not. No job,disabled, elderly. What will you do in Thurrock? Are we going back to the days when the disabled and elderly could expect no more than to be shut in all day with no outside interaction?
The cost of keeping these facilities going is as nothing compared to the huge social cost and increased mental health problems etc. Don’t take my word for it just watch it happen if this goes ahead. Be prepared for future headlines from our local social services breaking under the increased strain that will be put on them by the fallout from this decision.
Concerned, yes I am for real, are you? Do you know Mr Hague personally? He might always be like that. Also, how do you think you might look to others with the full glare of the media staring at you? Uncomfortable would be my guess. All I am saying is that there is too much heat being put into this issue by people who feel they have a grievance. Half of your post consists of speculation and rhetoric, there are no facts there at all. If you go at a politician like that then you will fail because they will have answers for you and you won’t have any facts to come back at them with. To be sure that a politician is lying or is misleading the public you have to research the issue properly. In this case you need to know when a new premises will be available, will it run the same courses as now and will there be a gap between the old college possibly closing and the new one opening. Until you know the facts of those points you can’t condemn Mr Hague’s proposition. One further point. Would you also be condemning the loss of the PCSO’s if the council decided to get rid of them instead of closing the college? The unpalatable truth is that there is no money for all of the services currently provided.
In all honesty I am not interested in Mr Hague whatsoever and my remarks about him looking uncomfortable were an aside.
All I am concerned with is the college and any other loss of services in Thurrock. I don’t care whether the decision was made by Tories or Labour. I have no current relationship with the college as a member of staff or a learner but I have been a leaner there in the past and I have witnessed a lot of good work being done. People’s lives have been changed there I can assure you. It provides a great deal of educational and emotional support for the disadvantaged and this borough will be poorer for it’s absence. Government policy under both Labour and the Tories has been scaling down adult education in the last few years. So you see for me this is not a political thing it is the same for both parties. That is why I believe this is the beginning of the end for real community learning in Thurrock. Unless people really fight to hang on to every bit that is left it will be gone all together.
As I have posted elsewhere, the days of never ending credit are over and everybody has to live within their means. Our Council doesn’t have the money to run all of the services it used to so the services provided have to be brought into line with the money available. I don’t think that, even now, a lot of people realise that. As a country we overspent on our credit card and now we have to pay the money back with interest (lots and lots of interest!). I don’t envy the Council their options, they were doomed to be pilloried whatever choices they made.
This is not known by the public but the truth is the College is completely funded by a government adult funding agency, so we do not cost the Council a penny. In fact the truth is the council gain from the adult education service as they “topslice” a very large sum (much more than the proposed saving of £50K) from the budget and the college buys various services from the council.This includes all the maintenance of the building and running costs. It is simply not true that the College is costing the ratepayer money!
Which is why it seems unlikely that the Council will axe the service completely. You never know, Mr Hague might actually be telling the truth and the services will remain; just in another location. Stranger things have happened.
Lets hope that Impulse have absolutley nothing to do with the Library, Theatre etc, they have consistently failed to run the Leisure Centres that they have under their belt at the moment, I cannot even believe that Mr Hague is thinking about this.
As for the move of the Adult Education Centre and the selling off of the land, this still has to be put to a public consultation surely??
The problem is a lot of provision has gone already compared to how it used to be. It t would not be a good thing to have it diminished further.
The timing of this announcement suggests that what TBC really want to do is close down the college this summer. Maybe hive off a few select services to the new campus (under a guise of adult ed. still operating in the borough) but that is not going to provide enough services for those in need in this borough and is unlikely to be stepped up in future. I really do believe that is the realistic view of this situation. As the commentator above said it’s not costing the council anything so the only incentive to close it is to sell off the land. That’s where the council stand to gain.That is the true motivation.
It seems to me that the key question left unanswered by this interview is when will the Adult Education College close and when will the new campus be up and running.
As others have said, if these two dates do not coincide then people will lose their jobs and services will probably be lost. They cannot be delivered if there is nowhere to deliver them from. In the current economic climate it is unlikely they will be brought back.
In an interview that I saw with John Kent on this website, he pointed out that the Council are already working to move Grays Beach and the Thameside outside of direct Council management. He points out that all the Conservative proposals mean is that these arrangements will need to be rushed through rather than done in the planned way that had been agreed.
The way Garry is talking here, I would have imagined that he had never had the chance to run the Council. Zero based budgetting is not a new idea and it is something many organisations aspire to but rarely do successfully. However, he had the opportunity to put it into practice just last year and decided against it. Now he claims that as soon as he was out of office he started suggesting that Labour should do it instead.
There is much written on this website about inability of Council Officers to run services effectively and whatever the merits of those comments. It cannot make things easier if the goal posts are shifted at the last minute, which is what seems to have happened here.
To me it seems that all Garry has done is play politics with a serious situation, and that does not sound like the behaviour of someone I would want to be involved with.
smithereen I agree with you. The fact is that no members of staff of any of the organisations even the most senior were informed that a vote was to be taken in the council chamber regarding the future of their services. It was rushed through without giving those affected a right of consultation or reply. Why would that be then? Why did they hide what they were about to do knowing full well the impact it would have? That’s why Mr Hague looks so shifty he knows exactly what has been done.
Can you imagine if without any prior consultation you were told that your management had a meeting and your workplace was closing and you were losing your job when you have been given to understand that it was secure for at least the next year. How would you feel? The councillors who pushed this through were immoral not allowing affected people to be at the meeting when the decision was taken by fore warning them. They embarked upon a strategy of avoidance which they are continuing. They must not be allowed to pull the wool over peoples eyes.
Further to my previous notes, from enquires at Council it would appear that New College construction in South Grays would not be available until at least 2014. Therefore my concerns with Redundancies / Loss of Staff and costs of a new start up are valid. Couple this with the loss of the college for two years just adds to the problems. Time for a petition to save existing College as it is. The motion to close is costly; no savings taking into account closure and reopening effect on staffing costs and detrimental to the Community with a loss of facilities for possibly two years thus motion has no merit.