Tag: Gillian Beasley

The Man who Fed on Weakness

08:23 Monday 16th June 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

[P]AUL STAINTON: It’s a big night for Peterborough tonight. The City Council will appoint a Leader of the Council at its AGM tonight. The Leadership has been up in the air since those local elections in May, where the ruling Conservative group forfeited overall control after losing seats to UKIP. Speaking after the results, Conservative councillor for Eye and Thorney David Sanders called on the Tory Leader Marco Cereste to resign.
(TAPE)
DAVID SANDERS: It leaves the Conservatives very vulnerable indeed. I believe that at this stage Marco should consider his position and do the honourable thing and resign, and allow a new leader with new vision, new ideas, new focus and vision, and take the Council and Conservatives forward.
(LIVE)
PAUL STAINTON: Councillor Cereste reacted angrily to suggestions he should step aside. He told this show that he’d carry on as Leader, and the city would crumble to the ground if the Tories weren’t in charge. Here he is speaking to Chris Mann last week.
(TAPE)
Continue reading “The Man who Fed on Weakness”

Stewart Jackson – a Message to Marco Cereste

07:20 Thursday 29th May 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

[C]HRIS MANN: Arrogant aggressive and bombastic. Words used by the Peterborough MP Stewart Jackson to describe the Leader of the Council there Marco Cereste. It follows an interview councillor Cereste did on the Bigger Breakfast Show yesterday with me where he insisted he would stay as Leader, despite the fact his party lost overall control in last week’s local election. I asked him whether the results meant he should question his position as Leader.
(TAPE)
MARCO CERESTE: No. Absolutely not. What it is is a message that we’ve got to understand, and we as a Conservative Group understand it very very well. Because we are the only party in the country that is offering a referendum on Europe. We understand the message very well. We respect the voters’ views. And we will be working .. we will be working to make sure that we listen ..
CHRIS MANN: We’re talking about Peterborough City Council, not what’s happening in Europe, and the fact that you’ve lost overall control.
MARCO CERESTE: No. No. I disagree. No. No. No.
CHRIS MANN: Is that not a vote about you Marco?
MARCO CERESTE: Listen. Listen. If you want me to continue speaking to you, then you must let me speak. If you want to listen to yourself, you don’t need me on the other end of the telephone.
CHRIS MANN: Do you not agree that this vote was about matters to do with Peterborough City Council?
MARCO CERESTE: What I’m saying to you is that whilst the vote elected local authority councillors, throughout the entire country the same thing repeated itself. So it’s a national issue. That doesn’t mean that we locally don’t need to listen to the voters, because we absolutely do need to listen to the voters. And we as a party will listen to the voters.
CHRIS MANN: So how will you be doing that? What are you going to change?
MARCO CERESTE: Well what we will do is we will continue to do what is necessary for Peterborough, and that is to deliver good services efficiently, effectively, keep the council taxes low .. as low as we possibly can, and work within our budget, which is what we’ve been doing all along. And if you look at the record of our Conservative administration, it is phenomenal. We are outperforming most of the cities in the entire country.
(LIVE)
CHRIS MANN: So that’s what Marco Cereste had to say live on this programme yesterday morning to me. Listening to that was Peterborough MP Stewart Jackson, a fellow Conservative of course, and he joins me now. Morning Stewart.
STEWART JACKSON: Good morning Chris.
CHRIS MANN: What did you think of Marco Cereste’s attitude to what happened at the polls?
Continue reading “Stewart Jackson – a Message to Marco Cereste”

Gillian Beasley – A Question From Richard

09:53 Friday 21st February 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

[A]NDIE HARPER: Richard’s in Peterborough. Good morning Richard. What do you make of all of this? You live in the city, and Stewart Jackson was saying earlier it’s been dragged through the mud really. Just after the Dennehy case and this story and yet most people are decent. But what do you make of it?
RICHARD FROM PETERBOROUGH: Well that’s how it occurs to me. The Dennehy case is going to be wound up next week or the week after, when she and her accomplices will be sentenced. And I was just wondering, is it just coincidental that two such cases making Peterborough infamous have occurred so close to each other. You hear hearsay stories that Peterborough is used as a dump by other cities to get rid of their unwanted. And we can’t get a definitive answer on this. Maybe perhaps you can, preferably from the Chief Executive Gillian Beasley.
ANDIE HARPER: So are you making a link then between the Dennehy case, which after all she is from this country. Her victims, with one exception ..
RICHARD FROM PETERBOROUGH: Not from Peterborough.
ANDIE HARPER: No I take your point, not from Peterborough. But you are making a link between that case, if you like home-grown criminals, and people coming in from the Czech Republic or wherever. You think Peterborough is being used as a dumping ground, not just people from abroad, but from this country?
RICHARD FROM PETERBOROUGH: Precisely. I have heard tales of hearsay again that Cambridge .. dossers and beggars and unemployed of Cambridge are invited or leaned on to go to Peterborough. Can we please have an answer from Peterborough Council. Is this the case?
ANDIE HARPER: But people from this country are free to move wherever they want to. And so wherever Dennehy came from ..
RICHARD FROM PETERBOROUGH: But why is it so many of them seem to come to Peterborough?
ANDIE HARPER: Well that is I suppose a good question. So you feel that they are being attracted to the city, or sent to the city? What attracts them to the city then?
RICHARD FROM PETERBOROUGH: Well that’s the question I’d like Gillian Beasley preferably to answer. Does Peterborough agree to take all comers, whatever their histories, whatever their problems? Joanna Dennehy for instance, she was an unemployed unmarried mother who had abandoned her children. She already had drug and drink problems. And yet she winds up in a .. presumably a council property in Orton Goldhay Peterborough. How did she wind up there from Harpenden
ANDIE HARPER: Richard, we will try to find out for you.

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Another Financial Disaster For Peterborough Council

07:20 Wednesday 27th February 2013
Bigger Breakfast Show
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

[P]AUL STAINTON: City Council officials have admitted that the solar panel project on the old Freemans building in Peterborough isn’t working, and the Council still doesn’t know what’s wrong with it. Peterborough City Council borrowed just under a million pounds so they could fit these panels on the former factory in Westwood Peterborough, but the panels have never actually worked, since being installed, and the Council chiefs have been unable to say when it will be fixed. Well Johnny D. is at the site of the building this morning. Continue reading “Another Financial Disaster For Peterborough Council”

Full Marks for a Good Answer

08:25 Wednesday 18th January 2012
Peterborough Breakfast Show
BBC Radio Cambridge

PAUL STAINTON: Much talk about your salary Malcom. Are you worth £1000 a day?
MALCOLM NEWSAM: I would be the last person to be able to comment on that. I hope I am, but you’ll have to ask Cllr. Sheila Scott, and the Chief Executive and the Leader as we go on through this year. And I hope that I will be able to demonstrate that. What I do bring I think is experience of having done this in a number of troubled authorities. And we have been successful. I have to say that’s primarily not about me, it’s about the people who are inspired and engaged to deliver improvements, and there are already many many people in Peterborough who want to deliver that improvement, and have just been crying out for the leadership to actually deliver that improvement.

Stagg at Bay – MPs Want Answers

08:07 Tuesday 12th April 2011
Peterborough Breakfast Show
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

PAUL STAINTON: Now the MP for Peterborough says he doesn’t believe the amount of money being spent on salaries by Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service is sustainable. Stewart Jackson is joining two other Cambridgeshire MPs in calling for a review of how the county’s fire service spends its money. He’ll be meeting the Chief Fire Officer Graham Stagg to discuss the matter later today, with a couple of other MPs. He explained earlier his concerns. (TAPE)
STEWART JACKSON: When we’re all being told that we’ve got to tighten our belts and reduce public expenditure across a lot of areas, to learn, for instance, that this fire service, which serves 750,000 people, has four members of staff on £600,000 between them, has six people in their media and communications department, including a full-time web co-ordinator, a design and communications officer, a full-time PR officer, and a media and communications assistant, that they are spending £128,000 on car allowances for the coming year, for instance, and that they’re spending for instance £300,000 this year on new laptops and desktop computers, these are figures which would cause eyebrows to be raised in a very good benign year, but given the circumstances we’re in financially, I just don’t think they’re sustainable. (LIVE)
PAUL STAINTON: Well that’s MP for Peterborough Stewart Jackson. I’m pleased to say we can speak to the county’s Chief Fire Officer Graham Stagg now. Morning Graham.
GRAHAM STAGG: Good morning.
PAUL STAINTON: It feels like and seems like, from what Stewart was saying, that there’s an air of profligacy at the top of the fire service in Cambridgeshire. Continue reading “Stagg at Bay – MPs Want Answers”

Cereste Pleads Ignorance and Blames Others for Purdah Breach

08:06 Monday 11th April 2011
Peterborough Breakfast Show
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

PAUL STAINTON: The English Democrats have accused the ruling Conservative Party of electioneering ahead of next month’s local elections. It follows the news on Friday that Stanground College and Orton Longueville Schools would share £34 million pounds for major rebuilding works. Jonathan Lewis from the City Council broke the news on the show. (TAPE)
JONATHAN LEWIS: When we started the Building Schools for the Future programme, we put aside £40 million to support the overall building of the school, assuming then Government funding was coming on top. We still have around £34 million of that money left, and now we feel is the right time to start the build work with the money we have, and an expectation that there will still be money from Government, and you know, we’re fairly confident we will get something. But we want to get on. We want to transform the schools. And we want to make a difference. (LIVE)
PAUL STAINTON: However, Opposition parties have questioned whether this announcement should have been made at such a politically sensitive time. Earlier, we heard from Councillor Stephen Goldspink. He’s standing in Stanground Central ward for the English Democrats. (TAPE)
STEPHEN GOLDSPINK: They’ve known about this money being in the budget since back in February, when it was published. They were apparently going to spend £73 million on the schools. Now they’re only going to spend £34 million, and hope they get some Government money on top. But why announce it now? They’ve known all about this for a long long time, and there was no reason to announce it right in the middle of an election period. It came from the schools, but it also came from the Education Department. You’ve spoken to Jon Lewis. And they rang up the schools, told them the news last Wednesday, because I checked with the schools. They could have said to the schools, keep this to yourselves please. It’s an election period, and there’s a convention that we do not make major announcements during election periods. They didn’t do that. (LIVE)
PAUL STAINTON: We also heard from the Labour candidate Chris York in the first hour of the show. Also standing in Stanground central, John Swallow for the Independents, and Marco Cereste for the Conservatives, Leader of Peterborough City Council, who joins me now. Morning Marco. Continue reading “Cereste Pleads Ignorance and Blames Others for Purdah Breach”

Peterborough News 13th December 2010

A summary of the Peterborough Breakfast Show from BBC Radio Cambridgeshire broadcast from 06:00 to 09:00 on Monday 13th December 2010.

Topics:
The Government publishes its Localism Bill which claims to lay the groundwork for a new generation of locally run services, elected Mayors and devolved planning responsibilities.
As rail fares rise, First Capital Connect passengers should feel the benefit of extra coaches allocated to peak time services through Peterborough.
A demonstration by English Defence League supporters in Peterborough was attended by a much smaller number than predicted, but negative publicity resulted in a loss of trade for shopkeepers.
Continue reading “Peterborough News 13th December 2010”