A Wirral councillor recently defected from the Labour party to the Conservative party and there has been no indication of a by-election despite calls to do so.

This must rankle so much for all of those Labour supporters who voted for him, especially to see him on the Town Hall steps shaking hands and cuddling up to his new ‘friends’.

He claimed his reasons for jumping ship were because of his party’s bungling in a recent high profile public closure program, which he incidentally, was very much part of its being pushed through!

So it seems that seeing trouble ahead he has decided to abandon his colleagues and join the ‘other side’, instead of remaining in the party to fight for principles which have been eroded by its current leader, or to become independent and fight it from a position of honour from the outside.

He claims people voted for him, not his party, but that is just not true is it? To every person who has seen the election process, when was the last time a candidate said - this is about me, not the labour party(or whichever other party)? It is ABSOLUTELY about voting in a candidate for their political affiliations and to claim otherwise is insincere at best.

Our wonderful cash-strapped Wirral council has announced plans that it wants to create its own bank.

What would this mean? Firstly it would give them a new source from which the bumbling fools could use to balance their inept budget. Secondly, it would give them a chance to lose some more of Wirral residents’ money. Thirdly, becoming bankers would make them only one letter away from the truth.

These councillors cannot be trusted to secure funding for a few school crossing patrols, or to keep millions of pounds of tax payers’ money safe because they wanted to gamble with it on the international stock market, how much less then can they be trusted to run a bank?

The lure of so much additional revenue for the council will probably make these plans to become a bank too tempting to turn down, but the Wirral Residents’ Alliance will not be depositing a farthing with them and urge others to make serious consideration of the competence of this council to look after any more of their money.

The Wirral Residents’ Alliance welcomes the idea of an elected mayor for Wirral.

We believe, especially in light of the way the public were treated in the recent Strategic Asset Review, that there must be a move to bring in direct accountability and the removal of the bureaucracy that prevents the people of Wirral from having their voices heard.

We welcome any discussion on the idea of an elected mayor.