IT WAS an honour to have local actress Maxine Peake attending our Annie Kenney fundraising dinner at the weekend. Maxine is very vocal on the importance of raising women’s issues and fight for equal rights everywhere. So it was great to hear Maxine backing calls from Oldham campaigners for a statue honouring Annie, our local born Suffragette.

Continue reading “Maxine Peake backs our call to honour local Suffragette hero”

I very much welcome the announcement by Oldham Council to invest £2m in the modernisation of Royton’s historic town hall to form a new community hub.

Royton Town Hall was opened in 1880 and holds a commanding position on Rochdale Road greeting visitors from Rochdale and Oldham along the main road.

Established as the home of the Local Board it served local government in Royton until the creation of the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham which brought together Oldham and its surrounding townships.Continue reading “Let’s welcome Royton investment”

ENCOURAGING noises have come from the Treasury this week in favour of clamping down on ‘Fixed Odds Betting Terminals’ on the high street – dubbed the “crack cocaine” of gambling.
Continue reading “Chancellor to back down on gambling machines?”

TODAY I met with my colleague Angela Rayner and the Royal College of Surgeons to talk about children’s dental hygiene in Oldham.

Continue reading “Action must be taken on dental hygiene among Oldham’s children”

MY OFFICE has received a number of enquiries from retired and working age members of the Oldham Chronicle Pension Fund to establish if they will receive the full value of pensions in the future.Continue reading “Update on Chronicle Pension Fund”

IT WOULD be an understatement to say that Oldham’s schools are being unfairly treated under the Tory government. Oldham schools are receiving blow after blow, from failed experiments like Collective Spirit Free School, which those in charge have simply walked away from; to funding cuts of £480 per-pupil.Continue reading “I asked the Government to disclose the scale of the teacher shortage in Oldham. Their answer was shocking.”

IT WAS INSPIRING to see hundreds of protestors gather on Parliament Square today to take the fight against the cap on nurses pay straight to the Tory Government. It was even more inspiring to speak with nurses and others from across the health sector, and to be joined by many of my colleagues from the Labour Party. Continue reading “We’re taking the fight against the pay cap straight to the Tories”

I AM sick of Oldham being the test bed for the next big idea, when at the same time the basic educational needs are being cut to the bone.

Now I’ve uncovered the financial cost of the failed Greater Manchester UTC Tory experiment.

Continue reading “Uncovered: the true cost of the Tories failed Greater Manchester UTC experiment”