Wirral Residents Association, Newsletter No. 1. Please help!

Thanks for your contributions so far guys. Please give generously, and we can get this thing published and posted!

Hi, my name is Paul Cardin. I am a long-term resident of Wirral.

I speak for the recently formed Wirral Residents Association. It's my fervent hope to raise enough money to fund our very first newsletter. After just three months, we are going strong and have managed to attract over 300 members. One day, we aim to become a formidable group of many, many thousands, all speaking as engaged members of the public.

Our purpose is to raise awareness of the policies and actions of our local council - Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council - and also the decisions of our local, recently elected MPs. We will also be making our concerns known and regularly raising questions at Wirral Council committee meetings.

We'll be printing and distributing a newsletter which will ultimately be posted to people's homes across all 22 council wards. In our view, this is essential because the people of Wirral need to be made fully aware of what's being done in their name. With your generous backing, the money raised here will be used to fund this, our very first issue.

This newsletter will be letting local residents and council tax payers know in detail about the following issues:

1. All four of our Wirral MPs - not long after being elected in July 2024 - voted to remove Wirral pensioners' winter fuel payments. Most people don't realise that all 650 MPs enjoy their own taxpayer-funded winter heating allowance for second homes located in and around London. And these MPs are anything but vulnerable. Today - Budget Day 2024 - we learned that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is happy to send £3 billion overseas per annum to fund and fight a war, when half of this amount - £1.5 billion - is all that is needed to ensure our pensioners don't freeze or go hungry this winter. Are you or your parents / grandparents affected?

Other issues we will be highlighting in our newsletter are:

2. Wirral Council's decision to consider charging all car owners for visiting local beauty spots, a hiked charge for existing residents' parking permits and raised charges for parking at council-owned car parks. These actions will a. deter both locals and out of towners from visiting the coast and using the lovely beaches we have on offer, b. anger residents who are already paying inflated council tax for fewer and fewer council services, c. threaten the futures of local businesses by deterring people from visiting, shopping and spending their money.

3. The imposition of 20 miles per hour speed limits on the vast majority of Wirral's roads, regardless of location and road type. We feel that a more considered option would have been to apply these measures ONLY to roads in the vicinity of schools. Wirral has one of the LOWEST rates in the UK of persons killed on its roads, at just 5 per year. It's also been proven that tens of thousands of motorists driving everywhere in a lower gear actually boosts emissions and creates even greater levels of pollution. Wirral Council do not appear to have thought this policy through!

4. £Millions spent on new cycle lanes. Wirral Council has awarded a contract to promote its plans for a new cycle lane that will connect Liscard and Birkenhead. This will cost taxpayers £10 million. It's money we don't have being squandered on what looks like a huge vanity project. Councillors are refusing to learn the lessons of the failed Fender Way cycle lane which created huge traffic back logs for the people of Moreton. These problems were both foreseeable and avoidable then, and still are now!

I am a Falklands War veteran and a former Wirral Council whistleblower. I won my case against Wirral Council and left my employment there in 2003. In 2009 I won another dispute with Cheshire West and Chester Council and departed again. On both occasions bogus gross misconduct charges were brought, aimed at sacking me. I speak as I find, which is always the truth. Since then I have been raising awareness in my online blog and keeping the local public in touch with important events as they occur.

Help us to fund this newsletter and to get the message out there to your fellow Wirral residents. We want to recruit more and more members as time goes on. The more people we have, the less opportunity Wirral Council has to ignore us and to do as it pleases.

I have to say; only give what you can afford, and remember, your generosity will help us win!!

Thank you all so much,

Paul