Southampton Workers' Dispute.
Joe Cox, highlights Tory inadequacy


This month there have been letters from Labour supporters explaining how the Tory banking buddies ran our country into the ground. Local Tories tell us it was mainly Labour that overspent and borrowed too much. Both parties agree to financial cuts but Labour will not pledge to keep all the Tory cuts and tax rises (namely VAT), should they get in Government.

Tory cuts have lead to a stalemate between our council and the workers unions. We no longer have a seamless waste collection and rubbish has been and still is strewn around the city. The City Council hotline has a recorded message telling residents that refuse is being collected every two weeks, but more worryingly for our city it tells us that recycling is only being collected monthly, due to industrial action.
Here local Greens may be part of the solution. Our policy on waste is to ensure good recycling by collecting the recycling bin every two weeks and indeed make sure that the refuse bins are also collected twice a month.
Council leader Royston Smith has previously declared that the dispute is not costing residents anything. How untrue, it is costing the future of our environment as we all become unsure when and where our recycling is going. Many households are making special trips with their vehicles to the city’s household waste recycling centres with backlogs of refuse and recycling.

So I suggest instead of allowing uncollected recycling to pile up around the front of the sheds at the rear of some blocks of flats, we agree to try to implement Green policy. Residents will swiftly become used to putting out one bin one week and the other the following week. Hopefully recycling will increase and the city will save money. Should there ever be a tax on incineration as Friends of the Earth are calling for, then the city will be even more prepared to save further finances and resources for the future.

Finally, Tories should spend our tax payers money on giving council workers their rightful pay rather than by spending it fighting industrial tribunal cases. The potential £12 million published by this paper should the council loose some 1000 tribunal cases, would be catastrophic for the City. Far better to reinstate council workers on original contracts and then negotiate fair contracts for the long term future.