Hypocrite Labour Oldham leader Jim McMahon stated at the Labour Party Conference this week that “Devolution is a Labour value It’s about distributing power from the powerful to the people” yet Mr McMahon was openly against allowing a public referendum for the Greater Manchester Mayor because it would have threatened the Greater Manchester devolution agreement, you know, the one that the public also had absolutely no say on. “Power to the people” has placed a Manchester Mayor in office without a public vote and this Manchester Mayor will eventually take control of many devoluted departments including control of the housing fund and house building policy across all Greater Manchester. Let us remember that Jim McMahon and his Oldham Council nodding dogs have gone against the wishes of residents at both the Foxdenton site & the new Saddleworth School site. This kind of railroading will continue in a devoluted Greater Manchester but local Councils will apportion blame to the Mayor and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority which is a Council collective that has consistently delivered prime new employment and schemes for the City of Manchester and South Manchester and very little for Oldham, Rochdale and Tameside.
At the Labour Party conference the Labour Oldham leader also pulled out his much used socialist call to arms of protecting his two children and Oldham’s 50,000 other children from the Conservatives cuts. This always serves to rally up the tax credit funded socialist masses which costs tax payers £166 million per annum in Oldham alone. Strange that Mr McMahon does not bother to tell the Labour faithful that in the last forty two years the Liberals and Conservatives have only controlled Oldham Council for four of those years yet socialist Oldham in 2015 has the greater Manchester highest: Council tax, birth rate, average tax credit payment, crime increase, universal credit claim rate, migrant percentage increase and issued forced marriage protection orders. Also missing was that Oldham has suffered a decade of the lowest average wages in all Greater Manchester a fact that the Labour Council promoted as a positive until June 2014 or that the Council has to find an average of over £24 million of public finances each and every year for the next twenty five years to pay back PFI and other similar loan debts.
Oldham’s economy ruled and constrained by the huge benefits bill.