COLE NOT DOLE

Doncaster's elected mayor Martin Winter received a rapid response to his selfless gesture of accepting a 50 percent wage rise last month (Eye 1099).

In a by-election for the Mexborough ward, unknown candidate Sue Philips doubled the Lib Dems' majority to a stonking 800 votes. The Liberals had made gleeful capital of Winter's fat-cat rise and freebie car deal (Eye 1093).

Moreover, they also cited his spectacular own goal when he failed to pick up on a likely planning refusal for a children's hospice, A local charity had raised millions of pounds, only to have the intended site rejected because it would spoil the tree line.

Winter didn't notice the problem until the damage was done, and his clumsy attempt at intervention merely underlined his omission.

Last month 1,000 people turned out to protest at Winter's pay hike, and 10,000 signed a petition against it. Meanwhile Newsnight ran an item on Winter's various public-funded "business" ventures (only two years behind the Eye - see issue 1049). With Winter's gift for bad publicity, the local Labour mafia is beginning to panic. Alternative candidates are being sounded out for next year's mayoral election, the most insistent of whom is Phil Cole, husband of home office minister and Don Valley MP Caroline Flint. Cole has in the past taken to taken to lecturing the council on its shortcomings and there is growing support for the idea of dropping him in it.

Private Eye No.1102 19th March 2004

CORDEN BLUE

Hats off to Doncaster’s mayor Martin Winter, who has introduced 50 “community safety wardens” to patrol the streets of the Beacon of Sleaze.

Duties range from reporting graffiti and litter to “having a quite word” with youngsters involved in vandalism or street drinking. In cases of persistent or marked anti-social behaviour, they can issue reports to help the police and courts decide whether to issue an anti-social behaviour order (ASBO), which if breached can lead to imprisonment.

Such a report was issued last month by wardens who were subjected to an unprovoked aggressive rant in the street. “It was the worst example of threatening anti-social behaviour I have witnessed,” one of those on the receiving end, safety warden Paul Boardman, told the Eye. Unfortunately for the mayor, the aggressor happened to be one of his Labour councillors, Tony Corden.

When warden Boardman and his colleague Barbara Hall saw Cllr Corden approaching them they expected some awkwardness, for they had recently complained about Corden having used photographs of the wardens in a “party political” way in a Labour newsletter – the wardens insisting that to maintain community trust they must not be identified with any political party.

“Cllr Corden asked us what we were doing and why we had not reported to him the details of jobs so far carried out,” said Boarman. He replied that some matters were confidential, but everything was reported to their manager. Corden “insisted that he had a right to know all the details because we worked for him, as the local councillor”.

When Boardman said the wardens were not directly answerable to individual councillors, he alleges that Corden became “very aggressive… he walked up to me as close as he could get and started shouting very loudly. It was very difficult to tell what he was saying. His face was about an inch away from mine.”

Boardman says he feared an assault and backed away. Leaving the councillor continuing to shout after him. The warden decided that had they encounter such aggression from anyone else, they would have filed an “anti-social behaviour” report, so that is what they did. This being Doncaster, however, nothing has happened, other than that the wardens have been told by managers to keep their mouths shut. Boardman says: “there should not be one rule for councillors and another for everyone else”. He has therefore reported Corden to the Standards Board for England.

Cllr Corden tells the Eye: “I deny these allegations. I am confident that any independent inquiry will clear me.”

Private Eye No.1106 14th May 2004

• In the last Eye we reported on how an "antisocial behaviour report" had been issued by community safety wardens employed by Doncaster Council after they were subjected to a torrent of verbal abuse in the street by a Labour member of Doncaster Council. Tony Corden. after the Eye and local papers reported the incident the council acted swiftly to put things right - by suspending the wardens from duty and taking no action whatever against Corden!

Private Eye No. 1107 28th May 2004