BOLTON ON ICE January 6, 2010

Had a good Xmas and New Year? If you did then good luck to you, but for enormous numbers of your fellow citizens the festive season was ruined by the callousness and total ineptitude of Bolton Council. For those with the misfortune to be elderly, disabled, or on a low income the Xmas period became a nightmare due to the Council’s decision to leave the town’s residential roads and pavements covered in treacherous snow and ice throughout the crucial two weeks of the holidays.

The first major snowfall came on the night of Friday the 18th/Saturday the 19th of December. Due to either 1) penny-pinching or 2) utter incompetence (or a combination of both) the Council found itself with inadequate supplies of grit and rock-salt and as a result had to restrict its activities to major roads leaving the rest of the town to suffer for its sins. By Tuesday the 22nd of December the meagre stockpiles had been used up and most snow and ice removal outside of the town centre ceased altogether.

Snow-storms in midwinter in a town surrounded by the West Pennine moors! Who could have predicted such a thing? Well, almost anyone with a brain that could think or a heart that could care. Being in possession of neither the Council’s grossly overpaid Chief Executive merely shrugged his shoulders and retired to his palatial house to count his money. On his salary he could have afforded to go home by helicopter.

Meanwhile, in the week before Xmas Day, the rest of us were left to our own devices. In many residential areas of the town normal bus services were suspended for a full five days and some areas also became “no-go zones” for local taxi firms and the Council’s own “Ring and Ride” minibuses – understandably given the atrocious condition of the roads. Where professional drivers feared to go the rest of us were expected to tread, or more accurately slip and slide.

The Council, of course, will claim that they were entirely blameless and make (at best) bland statements about “lessons being learned”. This will not do. If the Chief Executive and his underlings need to learn the lesson that ordering insufficient supplies of grit and salt and failing to authorise overtime payments to staff will result in an almighty mess, then they should resign immediately and offer a humble apology on their way out to everybody in Bolton. Why are we paying this man so much?

By the beginning of December the Council and its clueless senior officers should have had a more than adequate supply of materials (if the winter is mild it will still be there for the following year – it doesn’t go off!). They should also have had a contingency plan in place to pay as much overtime as it would take or have signed contracts with private firms to help distribute the material to every road in the town. If the Council really cared about “Health and Safety” they would do this as a bare minimum to satisfy their own rules.

For people without access to their own cars (still the majority) or the spare money to pay for multiple taxi journeys (if available) the Xmas of 2009 will be remembered as the one where they were unable to leave their own homes for two solid weeks. By the beginning of January the braver souls among them were finally able to pay a visit to the shops, provided that they were happy to walk in the middle of the road as 95% of pavements in the town were still covered in sheets of ice.

This respite, such as it was, remained short-lived. On the night of 4th/5th January another four inches of snow fell and the town ground to a halt again. Believe it or not, the answer to such a natural phenomenon is quite simple and not that expensive in relative terms. Three words – plough and treat. Communities all over Northern Europe and North America manage perfectly well in areas with three or four times as much snow. Perhaps we are spending too much on councillors’ expenses, executives’ salaries, and pet projects which meet no real need.

On a more sombre note, there were undoubtedly many serious injuries (and, in all probability several fatalities) as a result of the Council’s unrelenting dedication to being “unfit for purpose”. If you find it hard to believe that the Council’s incompetence has caused a few deaths this Xmas, then consider the following indisputable facts. Heart attacks and strokes are more common at Xmas than at any other time of year. A swift medical response can make all the difference in terms of survival. How fast were ambulances moving on residential roads?

This is far from being alarmist claptrap as some unfortunate families will sadly be able to testify. Confronted with such stark accusations our local Council will no doubt respond by saying that many other towns experienced similar difficulties. Yes, they did, but this merely proves that they are as badly run as Bolton and dominated by the same clique of tired old political parties and their pathetically untalented executive henchmen. We don’t want your excuses any more, we want you gone.

“Spartacus Bloggs”

on behalf of

The People’s Rebellion

P.S. If you were unfortunate enough to suffer a serious injury (or a death in the family) as a consequence of the Council’s inability to provide even the most basic protection to its citizens, then we advise you to sue them for as much as the law will give you. In normal circumstances we would never propose that people approach accident-claims companies (which are, without a shadow of a doubt, vultures of the worst kind), but in this case they are the lesser of two evils. If the Council won’t listen to its own people then they must be forced to listen by their insurers and the courts. Do it now while you’re still angry!