If anyone needs convincing that Regional Development Agencies are a waste of time, space and money, one should look at the Rochdale Development Agency. The Times reports this morning that the Rochdale Development Agency has been advertising Rochdale by using pictures of Manchester.
Yes. They advertised Rochdale by showing pictures of a completely different area fifteen miles away. Why? The development agency said it was to “reflect the aspirations of Rochdale’s citizens”.
It’s a fraud, a complete fraud to show pictures of one area and advertise it as another. It’s not an aspiration to show Manchester as Rochdale - it’s a lie to the people. But faced with these blatant facts Paul Rowen, the Rochdale MP and as leader of Rochdale council commissioned the false advertisements, said the development agency would “not apologise”.
Don’t be surprised. Since when have we expected a local government apparatchik-and-newly-made-MP to apologise for a blatant waste of taxpayers’ money? The fact is they won’t, even when faced with something so clearly wasteful because their careers have been advanced through these white elephants and is dependent on them.
These people need to be woken up. From behind their taxpayer funded desks in town halls far from the concerns of ordinary people, they won’t hear us until we shout loud and clear that we’ve had enough. So get active. Write to the Rochdale Development Agency and their local papers expressing outrage at how they can lie with our money:
The address for the Chairman of the Rochdale Development Agency is:
P Ewbank
Chairman, Rochdale Development Agency
Partnership House
Sparrow Hill
Rochdale
OL16 1QT
Email: [email protected] (in your subject area stress it is for the attention of P Ewbank)
The address of the Rochdale local paper is:
Letters Editor
The Rochdale Observer
Observer Buildings,
Drake Street,
Rochdale,
OL16 1PH,
United Kingdom
Email: [email protected] (put in your subject area that this is a letter for the Rochdale Observer and Rochdale Express)
Write in and give the bureaucrats what for!