Enterprise zones

Our congratulations must go to Walsall Council for their bid being successful in the latest round of enterprise zones.

Their successful bid just over the boundary at Darlaston, will go along way to reduce un-employment in Walsall. but due to Darlastons close proximity to Wednesbury and Tipton it will obviously help a number of Sandwell residents gain work, who in some cases live just yards from the zone.     

Once an enterprise zone is awarded, companies can claim a number of tax breaks and a discount on their rates and a range of other incentives to help them over the first

5 years.

Sandwell Tory said  

When a Local authority makes a bid, you have to meet the correct criteria,

Working and talking with local business, helping business and involving business

Leaders in the decision making process, goes a long way to help you being successful.

Sandwell Roads

After we made a number of complaints to London about the state of Sandwell Roads, our Government as given Sandwell nearly an extra £million to repair the pot holes.

Sandwell Labour just don't get it so I shall say this only once


The Government gave Sandwell money because a number of our local roads were shocking
yes shocking to your shockers, track rods and suspension bushes

HELP

After the economic down turn, looting and now the water works in West Bromwich, I see our local Conservatives have asked for parking charges to be dropped in our 6 towns, just one day a week to help our local traders, markets and shops.

Traders interviewed from Wednesbury, West Bromwich and Blackheath said the proposal is an excellent idea would bringing back shoppers.

The Councils response

“The Council can do little to change shopping patterns”

Sandwell Tory said

“I have a message for Sandwell Council, according to the traders Sandwell’s parking charges did change shopping patterns, people went to Merry Hill”    

Sandwell Tory also said

The Government has set up a fund to help shop keepers and communities affected by the riots

As part of concerted, cross-Government action to help open up shops, rebuild damaged buildings, and make sure people who lost their homes are re-housed, the Local Government Secretary has announced a package of support including:

• A £10 million recovery fund to help councils with the immediate costs of making their areas safe, clear and clean again.
• A £20 million High Street Support Scheme, which will be made available immediately, for the streets and areas where businesses were affected by the rioting.
• In addition, seriously damaged homes and businesses will be taken off the respective valuation lists, which removes any liability for council tax or business rates.
• Councils already have the power to offer rate relief for local firms, while paying a quarter of the cost; central government automatically pays for three quarters of the cost. This Scheme will help reimburse councils for their costs, to facilitate immediate and real financial help to be given to small and medium firms to rebuild their local businesses.
• Re-housing funding to meet the immediate costs of emergency accommodation for families who have been made homeless by the disturbances.

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/media-centre/news/934592

read more
http://www.expressandstar.com/news/2011/08/15/call-for-free-parking-to-boost-shopping/

Let’s wait and see if Sandwell Applies to help our people

Were still waiting to see if Sandwell applies for new school re-build money 

West Bromwich Riots

I was shocked to see the criminality and destruction that occurred in West Bromwich

and other areas, these last few days

We completely condemn the scenes that we have seen on our television screens and local newspapers. These are totally sickening scenes.

The Prime Minister said

People should be in no doubt; we will do everything necessary to restore order to Britain’s streets and to make them safe for law abiding citizens.

Sandwell Tory said
This is criminality pure and simple. It has to be confronted and defeated. We are on the side of the law abiding people who are appalled by what has happens in their own communities.

Sandwell & specifically West Bromwich Police officers have shown incredible bravery confronting the thugs and our personal thanks go out to them.

Is Sandwell playing Politics with our schools?

We have been saying that the BSF programme was wasteful on this blog for months

see pull them down now build them again,

After our council bulldozed a number of school losing over 2000 places saying “we didn’t need them “only to announce a few years later Woops we do need them.

We also questioned who was in charge of school maintenance for the last 30 years?

Now our local MP James Morris has stepped in 

James Morris MP backed the Government’s decision to scrap the Building Schools for the Future programme agreeing with Mr Gove that it was a wasteful and inefficient.
The MP said:

“A line should be drawn under BSF after Michael Gove’s decision and Councillor Cooper should stop politicising this subject and playing politics with our children’s education.

“I have been lobbying the Government hard on the subject of the capital funding of schools in Sandwell and believe there are now better solutions that are in place to repair schools.
“Michael Gove has allocated £500m for the schools in most need and there will be a survey of all school buildings to ensure the money goes to the most deserving schools which was not the case with BSF.”
Mr Morris pointed to The James Report which revealed that BSF was £10billion over budget and often the schools which were the best at the bidding process got the most money and not the schools which were in the poorest areas. Mr Morris added: “Now BSF is history I want to work with Sandwell’s leader Darren Cooper about finding better solutions for Sandwell’s schools.

Sandwell Tory said
Let’s wait & see if Sandwell do apply for this new money?

Read the full article

http://www.halesowennews.co.uk/news/local/9149731.James_Morris_MP_blasts_Sandwell_leader_for__playing_politics__with_schools/

Labour say

1, We’ve spent £800 Million less on Health

WRONG

The problem with Labour's argument is £800Million was there and has not been spent this accounts to less than 1% of the NHS budget and is called an under spend, some years there are overspends.

Sandwell Tory said

If you give someone £10 for a present and they only spend £9.90, how on earth is it a cut when you’ve still given them £10 ????  

2, Poor areas are having money taken away and giving it to the shires counties

Labour even put numbers to the perceived problem they say

Manchester would lose £41Million and Surrey would gain £61 Million

Wrong

If you left things as they are, Manchester would  lose £41 Million, but you would have to wait 20 long years doing absolutely nothing to the funding for it to all add up to the sum of £41 Million

Obviously we have promised to increase Health spending and the commentators actually said Manchester is no worse off at all.

Listen to Radio 4 yourself

BBC Radio 4 “More or less” programme at 1.30 Friday 5th August 2011 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b012x12m

You’ve only got  7 days from this posting to listen to the truth, set you time line to 06.05 minutes

Sandwell Tory said

What’s that I hear spinning??

Sandwell Free bee

The latest Sandwell controversy surrounds the old West Bromwich Court house.

Apparently according to press reports the building was given away to the

Government during 2005

Now after falling into disuse the Government plans to sell it

Quote

“But council bosses are worried Her Majesties Court and Tribunal Services will benefit from the sale” !!!!!

The thing West Brom residents should be asking are

Why was it apparently given away free?

Were there any covenants written into the hand over?

Santa gave me a bike in 1975 I hope he doesn’t want it back

illiterate kids

I stumbled upon a research document produced in 1999, titled “A century of change”

http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons/lib/research/rp99/rp99-111.pdf

its contents made good reading take a look a pupil numbers

It then goes onto talk about literacy

During this time we have had massive changes in technology, from a low technology

Coal, steam & iron based economy of the Victorian era, to a point where a number of our homes are powered by nuclear reactors, we put men on the moon, we can put space probes outside our solar system and land other probes on planets with precision accuracy millions of miles away.

We have phones that only 30 years ago were similar to “Star Trek “communicators

and a number of homes have the internet, giving worldwide communication.

Manufacturing as moved on from the days of machining to a few thousands of an inch to computer controlled machining centres that can machine to 5 microns and do it every time, to compete in this ever changing world we need to up-grade the skill set of our people and steal back the advantage we once had producing innovative products.

Strangely though a number of the people who currently have leadership roles in society, were taught by Engineers, accountants, mathematicians and English specialists demobbed from the military after the war and later went into teaching armed with only a few pencils, bits of paper and dedication, to work with.

I still owe a personal debt of thanks to my Physics & Chemistry teacher’s for the extra lessons given to me and an my friend so we could get our ‘O’ levels, only years later did I find out that both did overtime with no extra pay.   

Now we move to 2011, the latest Government figures show that about 1 kid in 3 leaves Primary school without having reached a reasonable level in reading, writing and Mathematics.

It’s very easy to stand on a soap box and blame our teachers, but over the last 50 years I don’t believe the dedication of our teachers as changed one bit

They are still dedicated committed professionals working lousy hours, focused on developing our kids and a lot of these working hours are un-paid.

.

The thing that does seem to have changed is the curriculum and that’s where I feel the debate on Education should start, giving our teachers the right tools for the job.

First year

1.     The UK economy has grown by 1.8 per cent.

2.     The private sector has created over half a million extra jobs.

3.     Youth unemployment has fallen below the level we inherited from Labour.

4.     Businesses have invested £88.6 billion across the economy, up 6 per cent on the year before.

5.     Britain's credit rating, which was put on negative outlook under Labour, has been restored to its previous highest possible level.

Why we needed to deal with Labour's Debt

Put the TV on any channel and watch the news about
Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain with a hit of Italy and the Euro

Enough said

New School funding for Sandwell

It transpires that Sandwell will not be getting any more of the £125 Million in money for the old BSF programme, but a new multi £billion re-build programme has also been announced.

The reasons stated are simple.

From Mr Gove’s statement to the house 19^th July

In order to ensure we spent money properly I asked Sebastian James of

Dixons Store Group to review the entire DFE approach to capital funding.

 

His report makes compelling reading. I commend it to the House.

 

He found that the whole capital system was bedevilled by

 

A complex allocation process with multiple funding schemes

 

A lack of good quality building condition data

 

Inefficiency in building design

 

A lack of expertise when it came to improving new buildings

 

A failure to make procurement as efficient as possible

 

A lack of clarity on maintenance

And overly complex regulatory and planning requirements

 

See the whole statement here

http://media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/m/michael%20gove%20school%20funding%20statement.pdf

he went on to say

I am also announcing that an extra £500 million of capital funding will be available this financial year for those local authorities where rising pupil numbers is putting severe pressure on school capacity. Details of how allocations will be made will be provided over the summer and finalised in the autumn.

The statement is based on an independent report on the BSF by Sebastian James

See the whole report here

http://media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/c/capital%20review%20final%20report%20april%202011.pdf

Good News

We now ask the thousands of families in Sandwell to lobby their councillors and Schools so they can apply for new rebuild money from the new programme

More extracts from Mr Gove

Furthermore, I am pleased to be launching a new privately financed school building programme. This programme will focus on the school buildings in greatest need of repair.

The programme will be available to all publicly funded schools. I am determined that criticisms of the previous model for private financing must be addressed and I will only agree to projects when a series of rigorous value for money tests have been passed.

Local authorities, schools, and organisations with responsibility for schools will be able to submit applications for the programme.

Information and guidance on preparing applications will be available online. Applications can be submitted between 3 and 14 October.

Will Sandwell apply ????

We very disappointed that Sandwell has not told the parents that funding is available for rebuild programmes; we want the best for our children and teaching staff, so we can raise the educational standards in Sandwell, which allow our people to get good well paid jobs