Criticism over David Miliband’s comments on Telford council HQ
Thursday 7th April 2011, 3:07PM BST.
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“Silly talk” by former Labour leadership candidate David Miliband could put the creation of up to 2,000 jobs in Telford from the £250 million Southwater development at risk, it was warned today.
The former Foreign Secretary, who lost out to brother Ed in the race to replace Gordon Brown this year, was in Telford yesterday as part of a push to support Labour candidates standing for local council elections on May 6.
Mr Miliband went door to door in Webb Crescent, Dawley, and criticised the planned new development in the town.
He said: “A Labour council would not be spending £40 or £57 million on a new council building, that is not what we need in these tough times.”
But Andrew Eade, leader of the Conservatives in Telford, said Mr Miliband did not have the “slightest clue” about Telford or the new development.
He said: “The cost of building new offices is only a fraction of what he stated, but more importantly the new development is paid for entirely by the sale of our existing offices to Asda at no cost to the taxpayer whatsoever.
“Silly talk by Miliband could shake investor confidence and cut at a stroke the 2,000 Telford jobs this development will create for the future. Clearly economics is not his strong point and I hope that he managed to catch the right train back to London.”
Speaking yesterday before the start of the tour with Telford’s Labour MP David Wright, Mr Miliband said: “I’m here to support the local election campaign.
“It’s a council at the heart of middle England where Labour and Tory are strai- ght against each other, we want to make sure we have the maximum effort here.
Telford MP Mr Wright said it was good to have the support of Mr Miliband and claimed the May elections would be a close fought contest.
He said: “It’s great to have David out here campaigning in the area, its fantastic.
“We’ve had a good door knocking session with people raising local issues, talking about the nuts and bolts of local politics.”
By Peter Finch
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Residents who are interested in voicing their concern about the spending of public cash on the new offices can sign the petition here: http://www.petitiononline.com/TWCLPAT/petition.html
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Haha, no one is interested because its not public cash. That petition is completely hopeless. Everyone in the town is waiting for the high street to be laid down and the first buildings to go up. How long has this petition been going for? 200 out of 170,000 people is a joke.
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Isn’t there a paper copy as well going round? I think so….
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How exactly isn’t this public cash? Who do you think owns the current civic office site? I’ll give you a clue, it’s US.
Until Eade comes clean on exactly how much this who project is costing, instead of hiding behind the spurious ‘commercial’ reasons then people will continue to be suspicious.
Good luck with your High Street, you’re going to be waiting a long, long time.
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or lack of spending public cash on new offices, seeing as they arnt spending any
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mp’s walking the street again shaking hands with us little common folk.
must be election time again.
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Love him or hate him, at least he’s not so naive to believe that this “free”, “no cost” council offices scam, is not going to cost the tax payers of Telford a bean…unlike some who comment on here.
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Just to correct this fallacious Labour myth about the southwater development consider the following quotation of a letter posted by shropshire star in November 2006 “Despite public opinion being against it, the labour-led Telford and Wrekin Council is doing exactly the same as their counter parts at westminster in ignoring the wishes of the electorate.” Blah blah Blah…………..
Labour squander wealth same as , they always have and Labour always cost us dear.Its the socialist disease they’ve run out of spending other peoples money! The new Offices were Labours finest squander the Tory’s having been left this appalling legacy have made the best of a bad job to ensure a productive and economically viable investment for the borough to secure private sector jobs and private sector investment in Telford. You cannot trust Labour.
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isnt it telfords tory administration who are buidling this thing?
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It may be the Tories who are now in the majority, but this whole project to sell the Malinsgate office site to ASDA and build new ones was started by the previous LABOUR administration!
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Gosh. Maybe the right Miliband WAS elected Labour leader, after all?
Clear he failed to notice all the waste in spending when Labour was in power in Telford and Wrekin.
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Is the answer to the desperate problems we all find ourselves in to wheel out some half baked union elected politian that has no idea what he is talking about.
We need jobs we need investment we need to tighten our belts financially. We need people with vision not failled people bound by trade union idealism.
If you need an example look at Germany forging ahead then compare Ireland, Greece and soon Spain.
The Southwater development will cost the Telford taxpayer NOTHING but will bring 2000 new jobs.
Give us your solutions Milliband to the vast problems you and that awful man Balls left the once great UK in.
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Ron,
What we need is to make wealthy corporations and wealthy individuals pay their fair share in tax. Instead, foolish people like you are prepared to conveniently forget that almost half of our current debt was caused directly by greedy, risk-taking bankers – the same bankers who provide at least 50% of Tory party funds. I’d sooner have a democratically-elected union-backed man than a Tory in the pocket of the bankers any day.
Instead, foolish people like you are prepared to stand by and see our public services attacked whilst the obscenely wealthy get away scot-free, and are even given extra breaks by way of reductions in corporation tax (which they won’t invest in UK jobs), a likely reduction in the 50% tax rate, and the easing of what few restrictions there are on shipping corporate profit abroad to avoid paying UK tax.
Wake up – and understand who is really ripping us off…!
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Andrew Eade talks of spending £205 million on building and refurbing schools across Telford. That’s not money from the local council or money from the Tory-led government, that’s money from the BSF programme instituted by the Labour Government and slashed by Michael Gove.
The local Tories need to stop taking credit for successful Labour projects.
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Conservatives conserve , what do you think they are Ben? Don’t believe labour that Conservatives don’t care , they are the only government who responsibly govern which is why they are the oldest democratic party. Labour governments always make a mess of public finance and it is always the majority led Conservatives who have to make the tough decisions afterwards From the national government of the 1930′s to todays’ coallition . This council office ploy is nonsense , what Telford needs is private investment when public finances have been squandered, we need less public sector workers and restrictive public spending to manage the public debt. Conservatives are doing this and deserve commending for doing so.
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Well said. He’s forever claiming credit for this.
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This Council is to big, I have been told based on the number of council staff per head. New building was financed through existing sale of current HQ. I have serious doubts regarding the public spending for this Council, in many ways. I want to know, current staff levels, in various departments, average cost of staff per population, or proporation of cost per head,strategic planning based on need for services, business planning regarding procurement of services and cost value or Value for Money.I understand recent inspections have taken place, but not by people living in Telford, so is over to you Telford and Wrekin and the Shropshire Star to get local people to inspect the books and see whats going on.
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Why would you want to do that? Surely you have something better to do with your time like work or social life……….oh ok maybe not!
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its torys who run telford, they are the wasteful spenders
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Who do the Civic Offices belong to? Do they belong to Andrew Eade or do they not belong to the people of Telford? Where should the money from their sale be spent? The £50 million needed to build new civic offices is YOUR money – were you asked if you want the council to blow it on lavish new offices or would it not be better spent on other capital projects around the borough? This is a council reducing it’s workforce – is a centralised palace at Southwater really the answer? Indeed, one could easily make the case for decentralised office structure as being a more cost-effective solution to housing an ever dwindling number of council staff. There is no shortage of office space throughout the borough. The council’s involvement in Southwater is nothing more than a vanity project. How Andrew Eade and Victor Brownlees sleep at night whilst actually people live adjacent to the disgrace that is Brookside centre, or in the shadow of the appalling edifice that is the derelict Manor Heights in Hadley – to name but two examples – is quite beyond me.
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I’m from Brookside and I’m quite happy for the council to be spending money on new offices. The town centre has been starved of investment for years.
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Good for you.
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Rude, just plain rude.
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