Live: Stoke-on-Trent City Council leader Mohammed Pervez's cuts debate

“Is it me -or does this 'official' Photograph of 'our leader' come across to you too as completely phoney -in his pose to attempt to portray an image of 'concerned gravitas'?

What I see is a smarmy arrogant man -lost in his own sense of self importance, his enormous ego blinding him to reality and making him completely unaware of this aspect of himself. A novice trying to be a professional in a culture he only half understands.”

“Will Perez cut his and his cronies wages and expenses? Surely we are not rewarding failure like the banks have been doing? That would be a massive mistake, oops too late, we have been rewarding these failures for a long time now and it will happen for the forseeable future unless these conmen are kicked out.”

“Incidentally Sentinel, why can't I watch the webcast?”

“Oh Dear, just as Mr Pervez is putting all OUR eggs into the Hanley basket, retail shopping appears to be dying on it's a**e. How will you fill all those empty new retail units, Mr Pervez.

When this tragic debacle finally turns out to be the folly that most rational people already see it as, will you do the honorable thing and resign?”

“Mr Pevez, you need to listen to the people who pay you for your Council part time job and who you are supposed to represent. There is no real business case for a new Civic Centre, certainly not for putting us and our gandchildren who are not yet born, all into debt for decades to come when the existing Civic Centre is under-utilised and is certainly fit for purpose for the ever reducing number of people who will directly work for this Council. How can you justify this gross borowing when you are drastically cutting or out-sourcing services and thus needing fewer people working for the Council?”

“I've only one thing to say to Mr Pervez, do Stoke a favor and resign.”

“Just posted this on the Disney closure but probably just as appropriate here.

"Shop closures for whatever reason should be a wake up call for this council.
Grand plans for Hanley to be a rival to Birmingham, Manchester or anywhere else for that matter are just ego trips for those who close their eyes to whats happening on the high street.
Internet shopping is increasing year on year. We buy more on line than almost any other country and the trend is not going to go into reverse.
Large shopping centres in 10-15 years time will be a thing of the past, what will replace them? I,m not clever enough to know, I dont have a crystal ball.
What I do know is that its sheer stupidity to ignore whats happening and to continue to throw hard worked for TAX at white elephants just to satisfy all those egomaniacs.
If the council is really intent on improving the city I can think of lots more deserving cases than a new shopping centre and business districtand relocation of council offices.
If the new shopping centre ever gets off the ground all thats going to happen is whatever spending power is there just gets spread more thinly and everyone losses.
More empty shops more dereliction more despair, an ever increasing downward spiral.
Sure, we need to attract more real jobs.
Give the WHOLE city a makeover, make it a really nice place to come and work and live. Revitalize run down areas, theres certainly plenty of scope for improvement.
Help the shops we do have to thrive rather than wasting money trying to bring in more big names. Theres more than enough choice here already.
Come on councillors, wake up and serve those who put you where you are and stop being so pig headed.
Its takes real guts to admit youre wrong but people will respect you more for doing that.
At the moment I dont know anyone who will give this council a good name."”

“Ask Mr Pervez how it feels to be the man who puts the final nail into the Stoke town coffin and waste a couple of million in the process.
Why should I bother paying my council tax, it'll only be spent on Pervez's new office. It's a disgrace!”

“Questions to ask of Mr Pevez;
1. In the current Potteries Shopping Centre there are already a number of empty units, soon to be joined by Jessops, Disney, and possibly HMV. Why do we need another shopping centre when they cannot fill the existing one?
2. Same theme. In addition there are empty shops in abundance outside the Potteries Shopping Centre - so again why do we need another Shopping Centre (with a stupid mis-spelt name too).
3. Why build a new Civic Centre when a) the current one is perfectly good and is totally under-used. b) The current one will be even less used as more people are made redundant as services are either cut or outsourced. It makes no financial sense to do this. To borrow £55 million + the addition cost of at least £19 million for interest and other charges, giving a total of at LEAST £74 million to be borrowed. This will put even our grand-chldren yet to be born into debt and for what good reason?”

“cut your 40k a year part time wages”