Mick Grant

I have decided to move my blog to http://mickgrant.wordpress.com/ so for any regular readers please amend your bookmarks as I won't be updating this page any longer.

I was very pleased to hear the news yesterday that Corus has secured a new contract to supply rail track to France. Steel blooms made in Scunthorpe will be sent to Hayange in France to fulfill an order by railway operator SNCF. The local press has said the deal is worth £311-million and the steel will be used in the renewal and maintenance of the French tracks. This is obviously good news - an early Christmas present. It has been a rough year for the steel industry and especially the steel workers and winning this contract is a big boost to everyone. Bill Gray is right when he says 'the more orders we win, the better our chances of survival'.  I am hopeful contracts such as this will stop the axe from swinging on further job losses. I have blogged before about the cost of the re-branding exercise from Corus to Tata and I also hope that doesn't have any impact on jobs.

Every day I open the local paper and every day the Lib Dems are there making idiots of themselves. It's becoming a daily occurance with either the Lib Dem ward councillor for Ridge or his minion Gary Day writing some party political nonsense. Last Thursday Mr Day had a letter published claiming Labour had failed over school classrooms. The crux of his argument is that as we still have temporary classrooms the 12-year Labour government has failed.  He has a point in the fact that one temporary classroom is too many, but his argument falls apart when you look at the recent planning meeting regarding Messingham school.   The two schools wanted to merge to get rid of the temporary classrooms. The Ridge ward Liberal Democrat actually spoke out several times against the merger. He said, at a public meeting, it should not happen. In effect that means he would rather local children were taught in decaying temporary classrooms. Labour, who Mr Day claims has failed, members had voted in favour of the merger.  On top of that, more than £100-million has been earmarked by the Labour government to fund new or refurbished schools in the area.  

Gary Day is right when he says ‘no child should be impeded by their educational need not being structurally met’.  Maybe he should write to his ward councillors and bring this to their attention. After all, it was the local Tories and Lib Dems who wanted to keep children in Messingham in temporary school classrooms, not Labour.

To me the home is the most important thing - if we get people with a roof over their heads they have a base to be able to hold down a job and send their kids to school.  Despite the economic problems the world has faced over the last year I'm thankful we haven't had a return to the dark days of the Thatcher government where homes were repossessed and people were turfed out on the street.  I have no doubt, given the Tory party's national policies, we'd be ina  similar situation now if they were in government.  Thankfully the Labour government isn't interested in doing nothing. It wants to help people and ensure they have a home. The Kickstart Housing Scheme will see £30-million invested in the Yorkshire and Humber to get new homes built. Two estates in North Lincolnshire have been shortlisted to receive the funding and £1.6-million could come to allow more than 100 properties to be built in barton at Fox's Fold and the Lakeside development in Scunthorpe. If successful this money will bring forward these housing schemes and help us get new homes built. There is a housing need and the quicker we get these properties - which I understand are a mix of two, three and four bed homes - built the better. Half of the homes would be affordable homes to help people get on the housing ladder and it will also mean local jobs and the chance for local people to gain an apprenticeship.  It's a fantastic scheme that will benefit local people and must be celebrated.