THE CUTS ARE HERE!

Somerset County Council are proposing savage cuts of up to 65% in some support areas.

Please see the email below sent to all Children and Young People Directorate staff, which demonstrates the frightening scale of the cuts to be imposed. It would indicate the closure of the Local Service Teams (Education Attendance Workers, Emotional Health Workers, Team 4 (Social Care), Connexions, Parent and Family Support Advisers - all of whom work to support families/schools).

Spread the word, forward this link to let as many people as possible know what is happening under this ConDem coalition.

Don't get fooled again!!

Shaun O Byrne
Secretary Bridgwater Labour Party

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I am writing to you so that you are kept as up to date as possible about proposed budget reductions in the County Council’s Children and Young People services. At a recent meeting of the Directorate Management Team, including the new Director, Louise Goll, with our partners (Members, Headteachers, Health and Children and Young People staff) outline suggestions for reductions were considered. The following broad outlines will be proposed to Members for decision after the announcements of Government spending plans later in the Autumn.

In broad terms, the local authority base budget for the Children & Young People’s Directorate is currently just over £66m and we will, in the first instance, be considering cuts of nearly £17m (approximately 25%) over three years. Children’s Social Care services account for nearly half of the £66m budget (approximately £29m including Disabilities services) and it is difficult to reduce this expenditure. Transport costs generally account for a further £11m and although we are looking at this budget it is currently overspending and is mostly demand led. Therefore, spending reductions will fall more heavily on the remaining services, the impact will be more like 65%.

The broad outline suggestions are as follows:

· Consideration to be given to adjusting the base budget for Children’s Social Care to reflect the current levels of demand locally and nationally. The proposal is broadly for half of the Children’s Social Care current budget pressure of £5m to be met by savings across the service and half through an adjustment to the base budget;

· A reduction by almost 75% in Partnership services, reducing the budget from £12m to nearer £3m. This will have very significant implications, particularly for local service delivery;

· A reduction in local authority funded school and pupil related services of approximately 50-60%, with remaining services developed in partnership with schools;

· Reductions of 40% in strategic and management budgets.

In the light of the above, it will be recommended that the Children and Young People’s Directorate should be organised in three services rather than the current four. These would be:

• Learning and Achievement,
• Strategy and Policy
• Children’s Social Care.

This note is, in a sense, a ‘green light’ for further discussions between staff, their representatives and managers to begin to flesh out these proposals in more detail. It will be important to capture the learning from the developments in Children’s Services over the last few years and to use that to help inform plans for the coming years.

I hope that now you know these parameters you will be able to see more clearly your own position in relation to reductions, and be able to plan with us the future shape of the service. I also hope that this will not come as a complete shock to you, since the Directorate has had to involve many people as it begins to formulate plans in these very hard economic circumstances.

This note has been sent to all staff in the Directorate and copied to our Lead Member for Children & Young People, our four key Members, Chairs of SASH/SAPHTO/SAHSP and SGSG, Corporate Directors and the Chief Executive, Chair of Somerset Children’s Trust, Police District Commander, Head of HR and will also be sent to Trade Union Representatives.

Bob Clark

Interim Corporate Director

Children & Young People

Labour’s Kathy Pearce elected as Group Leader on District Council

Following the death of Roger Lavers, the Sedgemoor District Labour Group has elected Hamp Ward Councillor, Kathy Pearce as their new Leader.

Kathy stood as Labour’s candidate in the General Election held earlier this year and has represented the Bridgwater Hamp ward on Sedgemoor District Council for 11 years. She grew up in the Hamp ward, has always lived in Bridgwater and alongside her Council duties, currently works supporting parents and carers of children with special educational needs.

Commenting on her appointment, Kathy said “Roger’s untimely death has left a big gap in the Labour Group and big shoes to for me to fill but I will do my best to match the high standard of leadership he set. I am committed to continuing to fight for Bridgwater’s interests in the face of recent decisions made by Sedgemoor District Council which have been to the detriment of the town. We in the Labour Group will do everything that we can to protect our local services in the face of stringent cuts which will affect the weak and vulnerable in our society disproportionately."

The new deputy leader of the Sedgemoor District Labour group is to be Cllr Julian Taylor (left) who represents the Bridgwater Eastover ward.

Contact
Shaun O’Byrne
Secretary/Agent
Bridgwater Labour Party
01278 732704

A TRIBUTE TO CLLR ROGER LAVERS

Sedgemoor Labour Leader, Roger Lavers, who died recently had been the leader of the Labour opposition in Sedgemoor for the past 10 years and will be greatly missed for his leadership skills, his compassion for the people he served and for his dedication to the cause of holding Sedgemoors Tories to account.

Roger was born in 1943 and grew up in Plymouth. His formal education included an Engineering apprenticeship at the Naval Dockyard. He later worked at a small shipyard at Hamble,Solent and then for CEGB in Plymouth, Didcot, and at Hinkley Point.

As an engineer he became a Union activist in the AEU, a shop steward, and a union delegate. In later years he became a manager concerned with performance improvement.

He first became active in the Bridgwater Labour Party in the mid 1980's and stood for the District in the 1987 election when Labour was at it's lowest ebb locally bedevilled by in fighting and in fact even stood candidates against itself that year. Roger stood in the Eastover ward but was unsuccessful as the Party was reduced to a mere 4 councillors.

2 years later Labours fortunes were reversing drastically and the party was bouncing back with a new and united determination to get rid of Thatcherism. In 1989 he stood for Bridgwater North in the County Council election and won a great victory with Labour taking 3 out of the 4 Bridgwater seats.

He remained as a County Councillor until 1997, and during this period, was also elected to the District Council seat to represent Bridgwater Victoria (1995 to 2007).

His wife Christine had won a sensational victory in their home village of Woolavington and when she stood down in 2007 Roger took over the seat and fought a hard battle to keep the Tories out winning by a close margin at a time that Tory fortunes were reviving.

At the time of the Labour landslide in 1997 Roger was adopted as the Parliamentary candidate for the Bridgwater Constituency and at the same time became Labour leader on Sedgemoor.

Roger was also the Chair of Woolavington parish Council and at one time theMayor of Bridgwater 1999-2000. in Millennium Year, and in his robes, he abseiled down the tower of St Marys Church. Almost definitely the only Mayor of Bridgwater ever to have done this.

His key achievements during his time as Mayor was to press the Government to change the status of the Charter Trustees in to a Town Council and as an aide to this, Set up the Bridgwater Forum.

In his final years Roger campaigned hard to save the Sedgemoor Splash in the face of relentless Tory pressure to scrap the much loved amenity and one of his last actions at council was to launch a blistering attack on the Electoral review body for presenting a sham consultation process -which won applause across the council floor.

Cllr Kathy Pearce, Roger's deputy, is currently acting Labour leader.

BRIDGWATER RESULT 02.32AM

To no-ones surprise, Tory incumbant IAN LIDDELL-GRAINGER has won the safe Conservative seat of Bridgwater and West Somerset. In a night when Tory swings ranged from 8-10% it is of great satisfaction to note that in Bridgwater they dropped by 0.1% - clearly local factors and a clear indication that outside the dyed in the brain tory faithful, ILG is NOT appreciated.

The vote was as follows;-
Ian Liddell-Grainger Conservative ..........24,675 .....45.3%..... -0.1
Theo Butt Philip Liberal Democrat ..........15,426 .....28.3% .....+5.7
Kathryn Pearce Labour .......................9,332 .....17.1%......-8.5
Peter Hollings UK Independence Party ........2,604 ......4.8%..... +1.1
Donna Treanor British National Party ........1,282 ......2.4% .....+2.4
Charles Graham Green ..........................859 ......1.6%..... -1.2
Bob Cudlipp Independent .......................315...... 0.6%......+0.6

It's a great shame to see such a high Fascist vote in the constituency for a candidate who doesn't live in the area and well, is a Fascist, and although we won't see her again she's certainly left a bad taste in her wake and a whole spawning ground for her evil creed to be nurtured.

It was also an inevitable by product of a dirty campaign by the Lib Dems that they hoodwinked the electorate into thinking people should vote for them in order to get out the Tory- that combined with the National lib dem mania has put them in an undeserved second place and inevitably the big promise of a lib dem victory locally and Nationally obviously failed to materialise.


Kathy Pearce had a great team of helpers throughout the campaign which was hard fought in the face of a very difficult time in Government for the Labour Party yet held the local vote up by a margin of 2% to buck the regional trend of a swing against labour which generally dropped by 10%.

and at 03.43 with the final election results as yet unknown we'll sign out.

THURSDAY MAY 6TH TODAY IS ELECTION DAY

Despite the drizzle (not to mention the volcanic ash) that covers Britain today the General Election 2010 is off -probably the most important one for a Generation. in Bridgwater & West Somerset KATHY PEARCE was up at the crack of dawn to cast her vote at Westfield church in Bridgwaters West Street before heading off to the Minehead end of the vast constituency and back again throughout the day.

"Tory and LibDem rosettes seem to be noticeable by their absence at the moment - which to me shows the Tories are less than convinced by their absentee candidate and the Lib Dems are relying on their x-factor style TV hype as they have absolutely no Party members active on the ground here! "

AFTERNOON UPDATE

Turnout in Bridgwater, like elsewhere in the country, is high. Very little sign of the opposition. Polling stations around the country opened at 7am and will close at 10pm - with the first results expected before midnight.

Bridgwater is expected to be declared at about 3am.

Final Opinion Polls showed Tories in the lead with 36% and Labour second on 29% and Lib Dems trailing on 27%. This would translate into a Tory minority Government and of course the Lib Dems failing to gain much more than 10 extra seats showing that in a First Past the Post election a Lib Dem vote is a wasted vote.

BNP candidate Donna Treanor hasn't been spotted at all-probably because shes standing as a council candidate where she lives in Croydon today as well! Which of course doesn't mean her candidature here hasn't unearthed a dodgy underbelly of racist supporters who have taken to the local blogosphere.

UKIP candidate was pictured voting early on but their campaign today has been dominated by ex leader Farages plane crash which occured this morning when he tried to take off with a 'vote Ukip' banner that got entangled in the planes tail and brought it down. His agent said he was 'drifting in and out of conscious, but still talking' (no surprise there). His injuries were declared as 'not life threatening'. Belgium has declared a day of mourning.

Every last available Lib Dem appears to have left the Bridgwater constituency (in a Mini Metro) to help in other areas where they have a chance of winning leaving Butt-Phillips wishing he'd been selected in the winnable consituency of Wells (where he lives)

Tory candidate Ian Liddel-Grainger appears to be trying to combat his non-visibility during the election campaign by driving at top speed around the constituency -but failing to stop for fear he falls victim to a similar stunt that held up his leaders photo op this morning when he went to vote. ( Two men, one dressed in a blazer and boater, unfurled a large banner at Spelsbury Memorial Hall in Witney, Oxfordshire. It featured a picture of the Conservative party leader with the slogan. "Britons know your place. Vote Eton - vote Tory." )

EVENING UPDATE

Polling stations are open until 10pm. Turnout is high.

Labour supporters have been greeting voters at almost all polling stations with seevral Tory, a couple of UKIP and only 1 LibDem presence . Response from the public has been positive.

The BNP have not put in a presence.

Kathy is having her tea break and is then touring the polling stations again.

The office at Unity House is staffed until 9pm.

The bar will be open late.

IF YOU HAVEN'T DONE SO THUS FAR PLEASE GET OUT THERE AND VOTE FOR KATHY PEARCE



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ABSENTEE MP BREAKS HIS SILENCE "GO ON THEN,VOTE LABOUR!"

Bridgwater's much criticised Tory MP, Ian Lidell-Grainger, has finally turned up on the doorsteps to 'meet the voters' but has run into a storm of criticism which he has responded to by giving his public short measure and not helped his chances of re-election one bit.

On doorstep number 1 the elusive little stranger is asked about what he is going to do for them. He responds about how he will look after pensioners (much to the householders annoyance as she isnt a pensioner). Householder is not convinced and then tells him she's already voted Labour by postal vote anyway, he completely blanks her and storms off down the path, muttering.

Doorstep number 2 sees Liddell-Grainger challenged again ( a few doors along and out of sight of the first one) this time about the fact that he has not responded to his letter of 3 years ago. L-G gets on phone immediately, says 'oh yes they did respond'. Householder says why didn't he get a copy then. This is now definitely a recurring theme in his method of dealing with the fact that he probably hasn't actually responded .

Next stop and The Right Honourable Ian is challenged as to why he is keeping such a low profile. Does not cope with the question well and his parting shot is ' "well go on and vote Labour then".

Labour candidate Kathy Pearce, who has been out canvassing today in Williton and Watchet said "I'm quite moved by what a good response we've been getting as polling day draws ever near.People are incensed at Liddel-Graingers taking them for granted and equally outraged at the LibDems blatant misrepresenting the voting figures on their glossy leaflets and the fact they could con people into splitting the vote and keeping him in. As Gordon Brown said, it is time for Labour voters to come home. There genuinely feels like there are people out there who want to vote true to their beliefs this time and vote Labour with a chance of ousting Liddell-Grainger."

As Traditional Labour voters appear to be swinging back to the party in these crucial last few hours before the country could potentially take a disastrous step back in time to Tory rule, this could boost Kathys chances in a bedrock Labour area like Bridgwater and combined with a tactical anti-Tory vote to oust the unpopular former MP, the Conservative stranglehold on the area could be finally broken.

On the 'Wheres Ian Liddell-Grainger'facebook page today, independent voter Laura Costello wrote "I hope that all the people that have joined this group and have vented their anger about Mr ILG will use their vote on thursday to do the only thing that will get him out of our area, which is to VOTE LABOUR.

I have to be honest and say that I am not Labour supporter in general and do not support some of their general policies and actions, but see voting Labour in our area IS THE ONLY THING THAT WILL GET MR ILG OUT.

I have to add also, that Kathy Pearce (Labour) seems the most likely do to the VERY BEST for our town and to WORK HARD; she has been bought up here and still lives IN THE TOWN (not in a posh pile in the countryside or out of the constituency) and she has shown she will work very hard on the LOCAL ISSUES we all most care about."

Her statement was supported by David Gliddon "Totally agree - and Kathy Pearce has been vocal about supporting Bridgwater and the loss of the Sedgemoor Splash. Where was ILG when the town needed him? "Helping" place the new pool at Chilton Trinity in 2012!! A more inappropritae site you could not have found."

'Wheres ILG 'facebook creator Tom Douglas had to apologise today for deleting pro-Labour comments from his website admitting "It was wrong to do that. Such feelings shouldn't overide freedom of speech". However, the LibDem lie machine stepped up it's attempts to split the anti Tory vote by diggin up the 'Electoral Calculus' website to suggest yet another way that the figures could be doctored in their favour.

Labour Party election campaign manager Brian Smedley clearly refuted this "The problem with the Electoral Calculus website: it assumes a uniform national swing and does not take any local factors in to account. Although the general election is partly about electing a new government, it's also about choosing who you want as your local MP in 650 very localised and individual contests which will be informed by the context and circumstances on the ground. Any website that doesn't take this into account is deeply flawed and best ignored. Kathy is a popular and elected local councillor already, with 10 years experience and was born ,lives and works in the area. The Lib Dems have been wiped out electorally in the local councils and their candidate is from Wells-even though he pretends his address is Cannington! Don;t trust them - vote for Kathy"

THE TACTICAL VOTE IN BRIDGWATER IS LABOUR

This week 'tactical voting' is all the rage. Several newspapers have printed their own guide to which party to vote for in which seat in order to stop Cameron winning and returning us to a new Tory Ice Age where climate change could only be a welcome relief.

Bridgwater is NOT mentioned in any of these 'tactical votes'. This is because it's considered a SAFE Tory seat and, not being a 'marginal', won't effect the General Election result . Of course things are different in say 'Taunton' where Lib Dems hold the seat by a just few hundred votes or in Somerset North east-a Labour seat with less than 1% difference between Labour and Tory -where a LibDem vote would let in the Tory.

So in this whirlwind of 'Tactical Voting' people are getting confused - especially by the deceptive Libdem leaflets which pick and choose statistics to make people think they can win here.

The key deciding factors in the BRIDGWATER & WEST SOMERSET constituency are the following;-

The last General election 2005;- Labour were in 2nd place to the Tories and therefore best placed as the party to 'lend your vote to' to get Liddel-Grainger out.

District Council Election results 2007;- Throughout the Constituency (thats west Somerset + the South part of Sedgemoor) Labour has 12 councillors-10 in Bridgwater but also 1 in Minehead and 1 in Woolavington. The Lib Dems have just 1 (in Carhampton).

County Council Election results 2009;-The County election vote swung to the Tories and they took most of the seats in the County wards within our constituency leaving the Lib Dems with 0 but labour with 1.

But the most important 'neutral' statistics to look at are on the BBC ELECTION 2010 website which shows that in Bridgwater Labour is the best tactical vote . This calculates the previous vote plus the 'Notional vote' which projects figures based on the boundary changes and shows Labour in 2nd place 25.6% to lib dem 3rd place on 22,6%. Combined this would topple the Tory projected vote of 45.4%. There are 4'other' candidates on the ballot paper - which combined are projected at 6.4% (Green, UKIP, BNP & Independent).

The Tactical vote in Bridgwater and West Somerset is LABOUR . Whilst the Lib Dems will try to con people that it's them, the truth is that if we want the Tory out people need to vote for KATHY PEARCE on May 6th