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Letter: Costly stunts do not instil civic pride
By accusing Cllrs Ed Murphy and Nick Sandford of lacking civic pride, Cllr Wayne Fitzgerald provides further evidence of the crassness of the Tories on Peterborough City Council.
It seems Cllr Fitzgerald believes that reasons for civic pride are to be found in high-profile publicity stunts, such as spending £93,000 on welcoming the Olympic torch as it passes through the city, and a further £30,000 to mark the Diamond Jubilee of the Queen – one of the richest women in the world.
For most of us, however, civic pride comes from having clean and safe streets, a sufficiency of school places, good health care freely available to all, plenty of affordable housing, a vibrant cultural life, and high standards of social care for those children and adults unfortunate enough to need it. Sadly, Peterborough is famous for none of these things.
If we want to instil civic pride in the people of the city, we should be working to address all of these matters, but, instead, we have a city council that squanders money on feelgood projects and has made a fetish of keeping down the council tax, while stealthily cutting services and getting rid of people’s jobs over many years.
Of course, councillors are also willing to spend £1,000 a day to pay a consultant to clean up the awful mess they allowed to develop in the children’s services, in a somewhat belated and unconvincing attempt to assure the public that they take the welfare of our children seriously.
Characters such as Cllr Fitzgerald who, due to their lack of any coherent argument, resort to accusing others of lacking civic pride, simply reveal how bad public life has become in Peterborough.
As in many other places, the council chamber has become the playground of self-aggrandising careerists, who use public office to indulge their fantasies about fountains, water taxis and Olympic torches at the expense of everyone else.
It’s time to have done with this nonsense and move on to creating a city where we all feel real civic pride, because we have made a city we can all be proud of.
Ron Graves
President, Peterborough Trades Union Council
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Weather for Peterborough
Saturday 26 May 2012
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Temperature: 11 C to 23 C
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