Women in Oldham constrained by religiously endorsed misogyny won’t be helped by Labour’s contrived crowdfunding for a statue

Posted By: Chronic-Oldham March 11, 2017

Labour Oldham MP Jim McMahon’s crowdfunding appeal to raise £8,000 for a statue of suffragette Annie Kenney outside the old town hall cinema is little more than a contrived publicity stunt aimed at promoting the same coop agenda that is consuming thousands in Oldham council finances every month and that created the half a billion financial black-hole in the co-op bank. Oldham’s “community kitchen” at the foodbank followed the same model and when it reached the target in double quick time we were told about the generosity of the Oldham public. A nonsense claim because in actuality half the money was raised by First Choice Homes and Santander of the rest it was easy to connect the majority of donations to members of the council, Labour party and businesses with lucrative local government contracts or that were beneficiaries of local business grants. Under Jim McMahon’s steerage the old town hall cinema went from an initial £10 million cost projection to current actual spending of £39.2 million all of which came directly from public sector finances and loans. If MP’s McMahon, Abrahams, Rayner and Oldham council leader Stretton feel so strongly they should fund it themselves from their sizable salaries after delivering the cinema at four times the original costs and after squandering endless resources on failed schemes such as the Oldham energy share deal, Hotel Future, Our House and Princes Gate.

If MP’s McMahon, Abrahams, Rayner and Oldham council leader Stretton feel so strongly about womens equality they should not have remained silent when Arooj Shah was ousted as a councillor by mysoginist members of the Oldham Labour party after she revealed to the media she had been subjected to discriminative intimidation tactics in pursuit of political office.

Did Annie Kenney and others like her go to prison over a hundred years ago so that in 2015 Labour Oldham’s Jim McMahon and Debbie Abrahams could sit in gender separated political meetings or so those hard fought voting rights could be converted to stay at home postal votes controlled by an expanding male dominated misogynist underculture?

Did Annie Kenney envision an Oldham a hundred years in the future where multiple wards would contain over 62% of women who would still be economically inactive within society?

Did Annie Kenney envision an Oldham a hundred years in the future where female attainment and economic standing through education could be substituted with a lifetime of family tax credit, child and housing benefit giving women access to finances well above the minimum and even median local salary level in return for voting loyalty?

 


If Annie Kenney was alive today I am quite sure she would be disgusted with Oldham.