New supercouncil ‘on the block’

Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Warrington are joining forces, oh dear, I was hoping I’d never have to write that.

This will make it even easier to extract even more cash from their hard-pressed residents and businesses. They’ll say no, the money will come from Westminster – but just to be clear – where does Westminster get its money – oh yes, us.

Unsurprisingly, the news has been welcomed by the leaders of the region’s three councils: Cllr Louise Gittins, Leader of Cheshire West & Chester Council; Cllr Hans Mundry, Leader of Warrington Borough Council; and the Leader and Deputy Leader of Cheshire East Council, Cllr Nick Mannion and Cllr Michael Gorman, who said: “Today’s announcement is good news for our residents, communities and businesses.”

What that really means: it’s bad news for residents, communities and businesses – but great news for councillors and councils who’ll discover even more ways of lavishing our money in other parts of the region that we will never see!

“Cheshire and Warrington being part of the priority programme shows that government is confident in Cheshire and Warrington’s ability to seize the opportunities that a devolution agreement could bring. It puts us at the front of the queue for significant power and funding and we want to seize this opportunity.”

The government has no confidence whatsoever in our ability to climb out of the fiscal black hole we’ve created so we’ll form a new one which will give us access to even more money and power, power, power! Oh yes, and we will draw a line in the sand on past mistakes. Lessons will be learned! And did we say it would give us give us even more power!

“Devolution would allow us to make more decisions here in Cheshire and Warrington, rather than decisions about our region and its almost one million residents, being made in London.”

You’ve seen a raft of appalling fiscal decisions and schemes from Cheshire East over the past years, wait until you see what the ‘new kids on the block’ can do!

Check out our post on the subject last month

And Westminster’s reaction on the creation of a third tier and misleading statements on council tax.