Sheila Oliver's Campaigning Website

The Council Pravda
This excellent letter appeared some time ago in our excellent Stockport Express.  Spot on!

"Blatant LibDem propaganda
A couple of years ago I wrote to Dave Goddard, the leader of Stockport Council, and suggested that the Stockport Review was nothing more than a vehicle to promote his party and the frequency of which had no practical logic.

His reply was a quite condescennding, one along the lines of it's always nice to hear from local residents. I have always thought that producing this paper six times a year is way over the top - two a year would be sufficient - so I decided to get some stats to prove my point. Every two months they give us an A to Z list of councillors, which is unnecessary as in practice these change once a year at most.

During 2010 there were 112 pages in the six issues, including a few supplements, and contained within - excluding the 'Your council' pages, were 17 pictures of Dave Goddard and eight pictures of Councillor John Smith. Not too far behind was Councillor Helen Foster-Grimes......................The special edition in the March to April issue contained the
same story and pictures about getting active (and needless to say the almost obligatory picture of John Smith) as did the January to February issue.

But worst of all is the cost - a freedom of information request for the cost of the six issues published in 2010 showed the cost as £147,000 - an outrageous waste of public funds. Two a year would have meant an annual saving of £1m over ten years. What could they have done with this million pounds? This paper is just pure LibDem propaganda which is proved by the fact that it never publishes photos of a Tory Minister - onlyLibDems.... My advice would be to produce it every six months and remove all the blatant electioneering - i.e. the unnecessary photos of LibDem ministers and councillors such as John Smith with a spade (January to February issue)."

Well said that chap!

Below are just a handful of those photos of LibDem Councillors:-