Blog of Lesley Delves
The Road to to the Town Hall
"The council is downgrading and marginalising Southport in favour of Bootle" that is the opinion of Southport Civic Society secretary Martin Perry who is under the misapprehension that moving the Tourism Information into the new Southport Arts Centre will stop tourists coming to the Town.
The argument is senseless, the TIC is a point of call that most visitors make once they are already here and centralising it to these newly refurbished facilities can only enhance the visitor experience.
The Tourism Service of Sefton Council is an extremely valuable one and the decison has been made to retain it, but Southport, although it needs this valuable support has already rallied in the face of these Whitehall driven Tory and Lib-Dem cuts which Southport councillors need to take responsibility for instead of blaming Sefton labour who have been forced to implement these savage cuts. The last visitor guide was cost neutral to the council tax payers as it was supported by the businesses which benefit from the visitor economy.
It astounds me that people continue to use the old tired and frankly ridiculous argument the Southport is being affected detrimentally by investment in Bootle which is an area of social deprivation, high unemployment and a poor standard of living-we have two Town Halls and one of them is in Southport full of Tory and Lib-Dem councillors making the decisions about the Town-Labour has a small majority in Sefton so if the Con-Dem councillors can't make a difference that what use are they?
Every week day commuters pile on the train from Southport Tory and Lib Dem wards and pile off again at Bootle Labour held wards where they make a living or in Labour held Liverpool only to bring their pay packets home to Southport where they spend their money.
So in reality Bootle is funding Southport!
On May 3rd there will be local elections in Sefton, the Tories and Lib Dems have been comfortable in Southport for far too long kept in place by misguided tactical voting because the people in Southport thought that Labour couldn't win-they voted Lib-Dem to keep the Tories out-but this time because of the betrayal by the Lib-Dems and the Tory led co-alition government many more will be voting with their hearts and their minds and voting Labour.
Lesley Delves
Labour Party Candidate Norwood, Southport.