If the ghost of Christmas past has his way, Liberal Democrat nightmares in Manchester could be
realised today. A year after their dangerous liaison with those blue-blooded Tories, the chickens
are coming home to roost, just in time for polling day. Today’s election results where the Lib-
Dems are contesting 33 seats including the seat which is held by the leader of their party in Gorton
South, could be the final nail in their collective coffin. This is the same leader, Simon Ashley, who
stated ‘Manchester has received a fair settlement’ when his coalition government announced in
December that Manchester’s financial settlement, including a 23.3%, £8m cut to Sure Start and
a 35%, £12.6m cut to the Supporting People Grant, leading to an incredible 25% cut in Council
spending by next year.

The subsequent realisation that this would severely impact on Manchester’s City Council’s ability to
continue to fund all its services, will haunt me as the most difficult and the most defining moment in
politics I have experienced. The harsh reality in the cold light of day meant we had to set a budget
that had service cuts of £109m in March of this year, rising to £170m next year. The decisions taken
were agonising and not what any of us entered politics for. Most politicians, me included, came into
politics to make the world a better place in whichever manner we are able to. None of us anticipated
we would have to implement a budget in March of this year which would seriously reduce services
that many of us hold dear. The worst aspect of this unholy mess was knowing that this was a
purposely unbalanced and unfair settlement set by the coalition government to punish urban
cities like Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and Newcastle whilst at the same time increasing
settlements in Tory heartlands such as Devon. This is clearly an ideological battle that the Tories fully
supported by the Lib-Dems, are waging and seems to be tantamount to a war on the poor, shifting
money from the most vulnerable communities in our society to some of the most affluent.

It is within this context when Simon Ashley states that ‘Manchester received a fair settlement’ that
the Lib- Dems will be judged today.

This is the single issue that will decide the vote in Manchester’s local council elections and the
wind is certainly not blowing in the Lib-Dems direction. A total of 33 seats are being contested
in Manchester with Labour and the Lib-Dems polling 33 candidates each. Of these, 20 are sitting
Labour councillors and 11 sitting Lib-Dems councillors. One independent seat following a Lib-Dem
resignation and one Tory seat following another Lib-Dem switch completes the picture. That leaves
13 seats up for grabs following another Lib-Dem resignation in the Burnage ward which means there
will be a by-election in Burnage too. A prudent estimate would show Labour holding all its seats and
winning 6 seats. An optimistic estimate would put Labour winning 9 seats.

If the second scenario is played out, the Lib-Dems will politically be a non-entity in Manchester
politics for at least ten years if not longer as their activists’ base for coming elections is decimated.
And the evidence is already there. Two local by-elections in the last six months in Manchester
resulted in 152 Lib-Dems votes in the Hulme by-election in November and 52 Lib-Dem votes in
the Baguley by-election in January 2011. In May 2010, the Lib-Dem votes were 1229 and 1178
respectively and in 2008, the Lib-Dem votes in the same wards were 190 and 243. The by-elections

results are an eye-watering defeat to a party that a year ago was seen as the third way. Couple those
results with national polling of the Lib-Dem swinging from 7% in January 2011, the lowest level of
support they’ve received in any national poll since 1990 to just over 12% currently.

This spells catastrophic disaster for the Lib-Dems. They have long regarded their local councilors
as the vanguard in their arsenal, the grass-root connections that bind them to local communities.
Losing their leader’s seat in Gorton South will not just leave the Lib-Dems with an internal
management problem but will devastate their morale, their blind allegiance to a very unpopular
coalition within their ranks and most importantly as a credible opposition party in Manchester. It is
entirely possible that this will happen. Knocking on the door-steps throughout Manchester, Labour’s
returns are demonstrating that the Lib-Dems are hemorrhaging support. Local people are angry,
disappointed, feel betrayed and have repeatedly said they will never vote Lib-Dem again after their
party has allowed Manchester people to take such a financial hit. These sentiments are doubly
intensified when Lib-Dems in Liverpool, Rochdale and surrounding local authorities have resigned or
openly called on Nick Clegg to remove their party from this toxic coalition partnership.

My predictions are Labour will comfortably take 7 seats and if it’s a really good day Labour will win
11 seats from the Lib-Dems. That will be one message Nick Clegg will be unable to avoid.

A  couple of weeks ago I wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister, criticising his comparison between Manchester’s Labour council and Tory-run Trafford. It was ridiculous, I said, to compare our city with the leafy suburbs. Trafford is just more of a David Cameron kind of place.

Dear David Cameron,

My name is Grace Fletcher-Hackwood and I’m a Labour candidate in Manchester, the greatest city in the world.

You might remember Manchester as the city whose budget you slashed by 21%, causing 2000 job losses, library closures, swimming pool closures, cuts to children’s services, adult services and advice services, to name but a few.

I’m writing in response to your interview with the Manchester Evening News yesterday. I wanted to let you know that you got a few things wrong.

First let’s get one thing straight: Manchester’s local government settlement has been cut by 21%. The Transition Grant you mentioned is just that – we only get it for one year. Manchester City Council’s total government grant for 2012-13, including the funding for the council tax freeze, and including the NHS funding, will be £383.6m, down from £485.8m in 2010-11. That is a cut of 21%. Don’t let Nick Clegg do your maths for you, Prime Minister: you know he can’t count above thirty.

Secondly, Prime Minister, you said that the government has been “absolutely responsible and fair” in your approach to the local government settlement. When I finished laughing – because when England’s fourth most deprived local authority area takes a higher percentage grant cut than Buckinghamshire and Richmond upon Thames, you really have to laugh or cry – I noticed that you backed this up by saying that “Manchester will receive £714 per resident…whereas in my own constituency in West Oxfordshire, residents will receive £233.”

Mr. Cameron – do you think we’re stupid? West Oxfordshire is, jointly, the least deprived local authority area in the country. How many children in West Oxfordshire rely on libraries as their only source of books, or public parks as their only place to play? How many looked after children do you think there are? (450 in the whole of Oxfordshire in 2010, since you ask, compared to 1425 in Manchester.) Mr. Cameron, the people of West Oxfordshire elected you as their MP. You might as well compare Manchester to Mars.

You accused Manchester City Council of timing its redundancy announcement to coincide with the Oldham East & Saddleworth by-election. Do you expect anyone to believe, Prime Minister, that Labour organisers up in Oldham took time out from campaigning to put a call in to Manchester Town Hall? “We’re only going to win by 3500! Quick! Ring Richard Leese and tell him to make two thousand people redundant!” Sir Richard didn’t give a Shapps about Labour’s majority in Oldham, Prime Minister. He was busy trying to protect our city from you. And incidentally, those 2000 job cuts have been made without a single compulsory redundancy.

I think your mistake was in thinking that Manchester and Oldham are basically the same place. And you made that mistake again when you compared us to Trafford.

“Trafford Council is only considering removing 150 staff posts. The vast majority of their savings are coming from efficiencies which will have no effect on frontline service levels…How have they done it? Tough though it is, it’s not rocket science – cutting back office, sharing services, finding smart ways of delivering more for less.”

No, Mr. Cameron, efficiency savings are not rocket science. Manchester has led the way on this – the council has made efficiency savings of £55 million over the last two years, has often led the way in sharing services and, in fact, does all the procurement for Greater Manchester authorities. We also share legal services with Salford. Trafford is following our lead. What’s more, Manchester planned to make £96m savings between 2010 and 2013. But the scale and speed of the cuts you have forced on us have made it impossible to avoid cutting services.

Channel 4 News’ Fact Check blog helpfully pointed out the difference between Manchester and Trafford – Trafford faces a ‘spending power’ cut of only 3.8% this financial year, whereas even by your own figures, Manchester’s cut is well over twice that. Once again, Mr. Cameron, it’s not rocket science: it’s just maths. Manchester and Trafford are not comparable. Anyone in Manchester could tell you that.

Because Manchester people are not stupid, Prime Minister. You can try to blame the council cuts on our chief executive’s salary, but we’ve done the maths: if we could get Howard Bernstein to work for nothing, and then backdate that to the 19th century, we’d be able to make the cuts you’ve demanded of us. Otherwise, not. No: when I talk to people who have been affected by Manchester’s cuts, they are not taken in by the lies that you and Grant Shapps and Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander and Eric Pickles have been telling about Manchester. They lay the blame squarely with the government.

You said yesterday that you are “working incredibly hard to support the poorest paid and the most vulnerable”. Prime Minister, some of the poorest-paid and most vulnerable people in the country live in this city, and what you are doing for them is raising their VAT, putting their children off going to university, damaging their rights at work, restricting their access to justice, closing their libraries, closing their swimming pools, preventing them getting advice, cutting police from their streets – nearly three thousand police cuts in Greater Manchester! – cutting their DLA, cutting their housing benefit, cutting their pensions, cutting their Winter Fuel Allowance, allowing Andrew Lansley to play merry hell with their NHS, and finally, as if all that weren’t enough, Prime Minister, you come up here and you try to lie to Manchester people in our own paper. Manchester has had enough.

Mr. Cameron, you obviously do not know Manchester. But we know you. You are an enemy of the public sector, a Thatcherite and a liar. If you have the audacity to show your face in our city for your party conference this year, you should not expect a warm welcome. But hey – maybe they’ll have you in Trafford.

Regards

Grace

(Photo by Ed O’Keeffe)

This week my new toy is Storify, a tool for searching out items from the social web – tweets, Facebook updates, Flickr photos, YouTube vids and more – and assembling them as a story. It seems to me the logical next step from Posterous and Tumblr – rather than just whacking up a single link or a copy of something you’ve seen elsewhere, you can seek out shared media on a specific issue and use it to create a coherent article.

It’s currently invite-0nly (invites are dead easy to get old of though, just enter your email address here) and in beta, which means that I’ve got slightly addicted to the feedback forum where you can suggest changes and improvements, and find out what changes are already planned. I don’t have an iPad but the drag-and-drop style of Storify is going to suit an iPad app beautifully.

So what to use it for? I’ve made two so far – on Sunday I put together a review/video collection of Friday night’s Elbow gig at the MEN, and this morning I used it to put together some thoughts on how to use social media for Labour campaigns (please feel free to suggest changes or additions to this. Oh, and a warning: it contains lots of Kevin), for some training I’m doing this evening. I’m going to be using the latter as the basis of a presentation of sorts, so we’ll see how well it works for that.

I’ve also considered it might be useful for:

- putting together a briefing on the social media response to a particular campaign/event/issue (basically, I’m always looking for an excuse to go on at my boss about Twitter :p)

- demonstrating an interesting or entertaining Twitter conversation (more effective than tweeting ‘OMG everyone look at @johannhari101 and @caitlinmoran’s last few tweets to each other, and almost as quick)

- creating a how-to guide: particularly if you’ve got videos available. I’m thinking I might do this if we ever start #mobmonday off again.

My Elbow story has gone down well mostly with other people who were also at the gig – including some of the people whose tweets I’d used: when you publish your story, Storify gives you the option of tweeting it at everyone whose tweets were included, which is an effective way of getting your story seen by people outside your own social network, as well as just being  polite

With both stories I’ve created so far, I was searching among a very limited number of social media items – in the Elbow story, I was searching for tweets, pictures and videos created on a single evening by people who actually attended the gig. So I’d be interested to see what could be made of an event with much more material available.

The obvious example there is the protest march on Saturday. Hundreds of thousands of people, vast numbers of whom are very engaged with social media – and many of whom had wildly different experiences of the day. I spent Saturday marching with a small group of friends, somewhere near the middle of the march, unable to see much (I’m 5’1.8″…) but definitely out of trouble; my housemate was right at the front for the speeches in Hyde Park; and of course I also have some people in my social networks who were part of the occupation of Fortnum & Mason’s. You can imagine how difficult it would be to collate tweets, pictures and videos into a story that represented the full range of experiences of an event as massive as Saturday – and how easy it would be to cherry-pick the bits that matched your own angle.

I haven’t seen any Storify articles that try to cover Saturday properly – the only one I’ve seen that related to it at all was by Greg Stekelman, who just used it to show a collection of his own tweets (and a photoshopped picture of Ed Miliband as a puppy. N’awwwww) – so if you have, let me know. Either way, if you’ve not got an invite yet, sign up!

It was only the second meeting and there were loads of people there to interrogate the councillors and so on, which is very encouraging!

Aside from said interrogation, the meeting included a quick talk by a member of Census staff, which apart from anything else reminded me that I still need to fill in my part of the Pallas/Fletcher-Hackwod household census.

However, she also mentioned that there are a number of drop-in sessions across Manchester for people who need guidance on completing the form. A couple of people in Fallowfield have asked me for help with this already – I’m going to see a couple of residents on Sunday to give them a bit of a hand – so I had a quick look when I got home, and the dates of the drop-in sessions are all on the Manchester City Council website. There’s a session in Fallowfield at 2-5pm on March the 31st at Fallowfield Library – if you know anyone who needs any help please point them in the right direction!

Unfortunately, as you’ll probably know if you’re from Manchester, I’m only on about John Cameron, Lib Dem councillor for Burnage ward (his website bio is a hastily-done mix of present and past tense, like the Wikipedia page of someone who may or may not be dead), who has announced he will be stepping down in May.

It’s the only good thing a Lib Dem has done for Manchester in quite a while. Not content with propping up the Tory-led government that has stunned our city with £109m of unfair cuts, Lib Dem ministers have been lining up to attack us over the last few days:

Nick Clegg accused Manchester Labour of making cuts for political reasons.

Danny Alexander accused us of hoarding reserves when we should be spending them on services.

And like the little kid in the playground who hangs around behind the bullies shouting “Yeah!”, Manchester Lib Dem councillor Martin Eakins forwarded Clegg’s speech full of lies to the Labour group, just to make sure we’d all seen it.

Let’s be completely clear: they’re talking rubbish. Manchester Confidential comprehensively fisked most of the right-wing claptrap flung at our city about the cuts last month, and I’d urge you to read their piece here. But to address the points made by Clegg and Alexander:

No, Manchester City Council is not ‘hoarding’ reserves.

There is no Scrooge McDuck-style swimming pool full of gold under the Town Hall for Richard Leese to go swimming in, compelling image though that may be. The council has had to make 2000 people redundant. And pay them all redundancy pay. That’s why we’re not spending the reserves on keeping the public toilets open.

No, Labour Manchester and Lib Dem Sheffield have not had to make ‘almost identical savings’. Clegg said himself that Sheffield is having to make 8% cuts. Manchester’s cuts are over 20%. Besides which – why, when the local government settlement has been made for 2011-13, has Sheffield’s Lib Dem council only made a budget for 2011-12? I’ll tell you why. Local elections take place in seven weeks. Have you seen the Sheffield Lib Dems’ majority? They don’t t want to take the flak for deeper cuts when they know they won’t be in power long enough to implement them. Seven weeks on Friday, they won’t be running that council. Seven weeks on Friday, the Liberal Democrats will be waking up to find themselves decimated in local elections across the country. John Cameron is getting while the getting’s good. If only Martin Eakins and Nick Clegg had as much sense.

And no, Manchester Labour is not ‘making cuts for political reasons’, and it is offensive to say so. I was at some of the meetings where the scope of these cuts was discussed: Labour councillors were in tears. What the Tories and Lib Dems do not understand is that we are proud of this city, and proud of what Labour has helped it to become. The best analogy I have heard for the cuts to Manchester was from Cllr Jim Battle, who said “It’s as if you’d built your house with your own hands, and lived there all your life, and then one day someone came along and said ‘You’re going to have to tear the roof off, smash the windows out, rip out the central heating and burn all the furniture.’ And then you have to carry on living there.”

You can not take £109m out of a local authority budget without affecting frontline services. You want Manchester City Council to cut the waste and the drinks receptions? They’ve done that. It didn’t save £109 million. Of course it didn’t.

Of course, the Lib Dems’ Tory masters have had all the answers for Manchester since January. Grant Shapps, Eric Pickles and David Cameron himself slammed our council for wasting money on ‘non-jobs’ like a ‘Twitter Tsar’ and for paying the chief executive ‘more than the Prime Minister’, that magical figure. We don’t have a Twitter Tsar, unless it’s me (and I don’t charge). We have a staff member for online communications, like any 21st century organisation; and yes, we have some highly-paid staff, Howard Bernstein included. But guess what? So does Eric Pickles’ own government department. As Bolton Council agreed at their meeting earlier this month (sorry, I haven’t been able to find a link for this), requiring councils to publish their staff’s pay is all very well, if the same is going to apply to central government civil servants too.

Did you all see the real Nick Clegg found chained in Conservative Party basement story, mocked up by Greg Stekelman, earlier in the week? I found it hilarious and disturbing in equal measure. But I saw a lot of people commenting on it along the lines of “This would explain everything!” When it comes to Nick Clegg, I don’t believe there’s much to explain: he’s always been a Tory in almost every respect. He’s demonstrated this as clearly as can be by colluding with the Tories attacks on Manchester – first on our budget and then on our reputation. And I doubt the people of Manchester will let him forget it.

I went along on the night myself – somewhat last minute, as I only heard about it at 10pm – stayed until about 3am and then went home, rather than sleeping on the Steve Biko steps. Fair play to MPs Kate Green and John Leech who stayed all night: I’m afraid I didn’t go up to John Leech and ask how many more people would be made homeless because of the welfare reforms of the Tory-led government he supports, as some of my Twitter followers suggested. There’s a time and a place…

The event aimed to raise awareness of the plight of rough sleepers but in particular asylum seekers, often forced into homelessness by the destitution policies of successive governments.

This is all part of Still Human Still Here, a campaign to allow asylum seekers to work. Amnesty UK and STAR say this would lift thousands of asylum seekers out of poverty as well as reducing the burden on the taxpayer. You can read more here.

1. It was so sunny. I’m such a predictable creature. A couple of hours of sunshine and I find myself wanting to nip to Sainsburys for picnic food

2. I spotted this mosaic-thing on a wall on the Moss Side side of Parkfield Road – I’d never seen it before, and if I’m entirely honest with you, this entire blog post has been an excuse to show you this picture:

Isn’t that lovely?

3. Although we didn’t get the best response on the doorstep – everyone was out enjoying the sunshine, probably even more than we were – most of the people we did speak to were going to vote Labour. Lib Dem support around here is in freefall.

4. I walked home through the park and was accosted by a young lad offering me free tea and biscuits. Free tea and biscuits. If you know me at all, you’ll know how much these things mean to me…It turned out he, along with a group of equally lovely student-looking types, was from Holy Trinity Church on Platt Lane; and if I’ve read their website correctly, the tea and biscuits effort is part of Platt Students‘ regular Sunday ‘Godzebo’ project. Now, religion is not my thing, but I am a big fan of tea, biscuits and puns on the word ‘gazebo’, so I thought I’d give them a shout out. If you’re interested in their work you can follow them on Twitter; and if you happen to be lying around Platt Fields next Sunday to laze off a hangover, have a look for the Godzebo before they run out of bourbons.

However, just lately it’s also full of smoke, noise, and occasional showers of dirty water, as Bruntwood carries out the renovation of Afflecks. Delighted as I am that Afflecks was saved from closure a couple of years ago, the ongoing building work is making life difficult for other local businesses on Oldham Street – and I was horrified to discover that Best Vintage, the shop responsible for my most wearable unique vintage finds – a gorgeous batwing t-shirt I wear as a dress, numerous Mad Men-style skirts, a 70s-tastic red shirt, a rainbow-striped dress, a handbag the size of a small car, £18 Converse, a flat cap, stretchy belts, and those are just the first things to come to mind – is facing closure due to its unfortunate location directly underneath the Afflecks scaffolding.

If you’re at all interested in reworn clothes then I’d urge you to get yourself to Best Vintage while you still can. It’s one of the most user-friendly vintage shops around – without the cutesy cupcakes-and-antique-dressing-tables decor of some of the girlier shops, but also avoiding the scary where-to-start bulging racks of bigger stores. It’s big on menswear. It’s high-quality stuff you can reasonably afford; the staff are friendly (not a given, even in Manchester); and the music alone makes it worth a visit. (You haven’t lived until you’ve tried on skirts to a bass-heavy Beyonce soundtrack suddenly interrupted by the Glee version of Don’t Rain On My Parade…) Oh, and they’ve got a 25% off sale right now. Get down there.