Forging ahead

June 17, 2010 — simonashall

The government today announced some more projects that would have to be put on hold in light of the economic circumstances we find ourselves in. Among them was the £80m loan to Sheffield Forgemasters, which sits very close to NC’s constituency.

Labour beatniks, keen to grab back Sheffield City Council from the Lib Dems and keep them out of the Sheffield Central constituency where the majority is now just 165 for Paul Blomfield, have already been condemning this move. But to say that it will cost jobs is just nonsense – no jobs currently exist; the postponement of the loan will mean that they won’t be created as planned. This money would be better spent avoiding cuts to the hundreds of other projects where cancelled government funding will mean private contractors losing revenue and having to lay off staff.

But as they are involved in the “leaching” industry of outsourcing away from union-backed in-house public sector workers, Derek Simpson doesn’t give so much of a monkey’s about them. Apart from anything else, £80m is simply far too much public money to spend on 150 jobs, whether in Sheffield, South Wales or Surrey.

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Thoughts on Southport

June 7, 2010 — simonashall

Catching flies - Miliband won't be the threat Tories fear

Labour held its leadership hustings today in Southport and according to the BBC, which seems to be intent on pretending that Labour is still in power, this internal Labour Party process was an event that merited live TV coverage. In fact, the reason that the hustings were held at all seemed to me to be all about David Miliband in particular getting some welcome exposure.

Yesterday, the BBC news lead with the bare-faced revelation that Miliband was accusing the PM of “hypocrisy” on spending cuts and “broken promises”. The sheer brass neck needed to occasion such a piece of naked and mendacious opportunism is difficult to quantify with words alone – suffice it to say that the corporation seems to have decided that Miliband is the next Labour leader and they are determined to make him PM in 2015. Personally, I can’t see the British people going for it but there we go.

Today however and in front of the GMB, comrade Miliband was talking about “our people” and building Labour up “workplace by workplace“. And he’s supposed to be the Blairite – can we assume that the likes of Ed Balls, brother Ed and Diane Abbott would wish to be seen as even more substantially left? No doubt the coalition has pulled the Conservative Party to the left and the Liberal Democrats to the right to end up somewhere in the genuine centre rather than the centre-right with which many Conservatives would be more comfortable.

Is the only place for Labour to go back to the left? From 1994 onwards, Labour had a go at being capitalists but forgot that supporting and spending the proceeds of economic growth also entails a measure of responsibility and after 15 years of profligacy the money has run out. They can’t go to the right, they no longer look credible in the centre ground and so with Miliband heading back to the comrades for support, they can only move to that left ground vacated by NC. Fine by me.

Until today, I think most Conservatives were hoping that Ed Balls might get the leadership in an attempt to saddle Labour with a leader even more unelectable than Gordon Brown. However John McConnell seems to be intent on taking on that mantle after some very ill-judged comments about Lady Thatcher. I admire her in many ways; but not in others as I’ve said before. But the idea of assassinating political leaders is either puerile posturing or dangerous nonsense from a man who wants to become Prime Minister (presumably). Leaving aside the poor taste, if the best answer Labour has got to Britain’s problems is time travel back to the 80s and taking out the then PM – who for a greater part was simply sorting out the last mess Labour left – then their ideas barrel clearly has sprung a leak.

If Labour is sensible it will elect David Miliband as leader – but I’m not sure Conservatives should be too worried by that prospect.

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Free to get on with it

June 3, 2010 — simonashall

Last laugh - The commission spent money countering his activities but is now being cut to size

When the Audit Commission was first envisaged and created in 1982, it fulfilled an important role in centralising and standardising the audit procedures of local and national government bodies. It is, in effect, the public spending watchdog – and as such it carries a great amount of goodwill among the public. It was the Audit Commission that uncovered the fact that between 1987 and 1989 council houses in Westminster were being sold at knock-down prices to potential Tory voters and forced Dame Shirley Porter to cough up £12million in payback to the council.

But since these days of simple auditing, the commission has been given far more wide-ranging powers to assess local authorities based on politically correct criteria that are part of the problem rather than the solution and meaningless targets that often detract from more fruitful work. The commission also requires councils to create its own silly targets – when I was at Surrey Heath Borough Council, I was forced to come up with a contrived way of measuring our media coverage for positive and negative balance in an attempt to find something to assess ourselves against. It wasn’t totally useless or harmful – but it was pretty irrelevant to most people in Surrey Heath and took time and effort away from other things.

Thankfully, Eric Pickles has announced a couple of good things about the Audit Commission in recent days – firstly that the new head of the agency won’t receive £240,000 a year. As far as I’m concerned, no-one in government should earn more than £150,000 – not because I’m a raving socialist but because very few public sector jobs are worth more than that (especially when taking into account other perks) and also because over-egged public sector salaries contribute to wage inflation in the private and public sectors, which ultimately costs the taxpayer money.

Secondly, the new Secretary of State has said that the over-engineered and painstaking Comprehensive Area Assessments will be scrapped forthwith. We don’t know what, if anything, will replace them but the hope has to be that the answer to that question will be “not much”. The Audit Commission exists to ensure that the Shirley Porters of this world aren’t allowed to get away with defrauding the taxpayer and that is a role that it should continue in earnest. But aside from that, local authorities should be entirely free to get on with running their communities in the way that they want to. If the public don’t like how they are doing it or want it done a different way, they have their say at the ballot box – that’s how democracy should work.

Under Labour it was the government, not the people, who dictated to councils how their areas should be run. No more – and that is a reason to be considerably happier today than this time last year.

PS I also ought to mention that Mr Pickles blocked the plans for Norwich’s unitary status within days of appointment. That’s fine – local people didn’t want it - but he does have to address the question of how the mish-mash of district, unitary, metropolitan and county councils in England and Wales can somehow be standardised. It simply doesn’t make sense to have so many different types of authorities.

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Sun never shines

June 1, 2010 — simonashall

Within a year of The Sun backing Blair in 1997, the uncomfortable re-alignment of the newspaper was broken by one of the most unedifying headlines of recent times upon the revelation that Peter Mandelson and then Nick Brown were both gay.

As a rather more right-wing than I am now Conservative student, I didn’t give the question “Tell Us Tony: Are We Being Run By A Gay Mafia?” as much consideration as I no doubt should have done but in the furore that followed, the newspaper pledged to bring its attitudes to homosexually into somewhere approaching the 20th century.

Now older, and questionably slightly wiser but certainly more liberal with a small “L”, I note with sadness that people rarely change and newspapers never do. Today, as One Nation Tory notes, the paper is asking its readers the question “Should gay people be cabinet ministers?“ Really.

All of which goes to show that in 12 years the Sun has gone nowhere on this, that Labour’s strategy of legislating to rid ourselves of bigotry is a total sophistry and that it is personal experiences that change values and attitudes. The experience of reading the Sun today is hardly likely to be helpful.

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A Classless stunt

May 29, 2010 — simonashall

A grim day for David Laws but also the relationship between the media and government

When the PM decided to make his big, open and comprehensive offer to the Liberal Democrats, it was done because he recognised the necessity in forming a strong government in the wake of an ultimately indecisive election. He knew that the British public didn’t want to be at the polls again in October, he knew that the country couldn’t afford – and probably wouldn’t accept – Labour being kept in power and that in order to form the only coalition government that could claim a mandate he would have to talk seriously, sensibly and flexibly to a party between whose activists there has at times existed a genuine hatred.

No matter – that quite rightly has been placed aside in order to get the best people into government. And if you look at the excellent line-up of the cabinet – the PM and NC working together, William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith, Ken Clarke, Vince Cable and others, you understand that the sacrifices both parties have made in their hearts and minds have been worth it.

David Laws has, for me, been the stand-out performer of the coalition. His handling of the announcement of the £6.2bn cuts last week was first-rate both in the house and in front of the media. His boss George Osborne was there with him but said very little and one hopes was watching carefully to see how it should be done. The point is it doesn’t matter whether he’s Lib Dem or Tory; if he’s got a mandate from the electorate and can do the job, the country needs him in place.

Enter the Daily Telegraph, whose view of the country is somewhat different. For them, the agenda is foxhunting, family values, favourable taxes and flag-waving. They don’t care much for Lib Dems – especially ones with secret gay lovers – and they’re not bothered about keeping the coalition together if it forces an election that could redress the result of May 6. Don’t get me wrong – I’m really disappointed that we didn’t secure an outright majority; but it was the failure to gain winnable Labour seats – not Lib Dem ones – that cost us victory.

The way in which the Telegraph has dealt with the David Laws story is bullying, immoral and reckless. What David Laws did was unquestionably wrong, although one can understand (just) why he did it. The money that he was taking from the taxpayer to pay his lover as landlord fell foul of regulations in 2006 that money could no longer be paid to “spouses” as “rent” (the fact it ever could be is bewildering). Had David Laws then not continued the payment, the question of why would have been asked – forcing him to reveal details of his private life.

Trouble is that £40,000 is a lot of money and he doesn’t need it any more than the PM. It creates the impression that a man asking the nation to make terrifying cuts across public and private fields is being less than austere with his own arrangements. For that reason, once the story became public, he has done the right thing in resigning – a very sad consequence of unjust parliamentary procedures in the first instance and social judgement in the second.

But for the Telegraph, there is no such mitigation. This angry, reactionary and backwards publication is an embarrassment to Conservatism and the nation it so very proudly wants to tell everyone it embodies. It represents exactly the kind of sneering, snobbish and bigoted values that the public reacted against in 1997 and brought Tony Blair into our lives. Why it felt it could not reveal the facts about David Laws during the original story is anyone’s guess and there is a rancid stench of spite and homophobia running through the decision to break it now – just as David Laws reaches the peak of his political career and achieves the platform to display his talents.

Who knows what’s behind it - there are of course powerful factions with an interest in removing a star in the making who wears the “wrong” colours (or the “right” colours in the “wrong” way) in both their political and private life. What amazes and disgusts me is that they, whoever they are, would choose to run so contrary to the national interest by fashioning the demise of potentially a key figure in the recovery and rebuilding of our economy.

The lowest nadir for UK journalism since the Sun decided it was in the public interest to publish topless pictures of the Countess of Wessex a few days before her wedding; and to trump the Sun on classlessness takes some doing.

Posted in David Cameron, Economy, politics. Tags: , , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Full text of Cllr John Kingsbury’s opening speech to council

May 27, 2010 — simonashall

Cllr John Kingsbury’s speech to council on Monday was the benchmark for the municipal year and come the elections in 2011, it will be on this document – containing as it did reference to our manifesto – on which the council will be judged. I reproduce it below for reference and comment.

Fellow Councillors, Thank you for re-electing me as Leader of the Council.  It is an honour to serve again in this role and I undertake to carry it out to the best of my ability.

We continue to face difficult local and national economic conditions.  The new coalition government has already started to reduce the budget deficit with the announcement today.  We in local government will no doubt face tough challenges to maintain core services whilst our residents always like us to do more for them.

Council management must continue to be of the highest quality to deliver the best value for money for services provided through the funding we receive from Council Tax, fees and charges, and diminishing government support.  Under this administration, striving to improve service delivery will be a fundamental aim of the Council, with all costs to be kept under rigorous examination.

While canvassing during the recent election campaigns, I frequently heard how pleased residents were with our initiative to introduce a food waste collection service where we are already diverting over 60 tonnes of food waste each week from landfill.  Also, residents were pleased with the green waste subscription service for which subscriptions approaching 9,000 are more than double our initial expectation in the first year.  It was also acknowledged that the Conservative Administration had met its pledge to keep Council Tax low for 2010/11.

However on the doorstep it was clear that our increased level of long-term debt continues to worry many of our residents, particularly our borrowing to purchase  the Wolsey Place Shopping Centre which has great benefits for the Council in that it is expected to produce a net profit after all costs of £1.5 million per annum.  Clearly this has not been understood and we must redouble our efforts to explain such good news to our residents.

In charting the way forward, I would like to outline our manifesto promises for 2010/11.

· Continue to deliver a low level of Council Tax and where possible generate income for the Borough.

· Invest in Woking Town Centre to provide a better experience for shoppers and businesses.  Already we are seeing the results of our earlier investment with more retail space being utilised and more planned expansion.

· Through the Local Committee of County and Borough Councillors, fight to keep essential bus services and improve the condition of roads and pavements.
· Work with residents to achieve a 60% recycling rate across the Borough.  Already, with the introduction of the food waste collection service, we are seeing a recycling rate of around 54% which is a remarkable achievement in such a short space of time.

· Work with the police to combat anti-social behaviour, littering and graffiti using neighbourhood officers and on-the-spot fines to help achieve these objectives.

· Continue to invest in new children’s play areas and youth play schemes.

In addition to these pledges, I would also like to comment on one or two other important issues.

Affordable Housing

Subject to the new government’s Coalition Programme not springing any PFI surprises, we look forward to making progress on the Moor Lane project which is now behind schedule.  Hopefully later this year the successful contractor will be chosen and the start of the project will only be a few months away.  In bringing forward further sites for affordable housing, we must always be sensitive to existing local residents and the ability of the infrastructure and local services to bear additional development.  Woking Borough Homes continues to acquire street properties and in the year just ended around 80 properties were purchased.  We look forward to the early completion of the 10 eco-friendly homes on Brookwood Farm.  The 2011 Business Plan for Woking Borough Homes will be carefully considered when it is put before the Executive in September.

Finance

It seems clear from the government’s Coalition Programme that Council Tax will be frozen at the current level for at least 1 year and possibly 2 years.  Accordingly it is vital that we seek to reduce our operating costs  further as well as our reliance on fees and charges which in the year just ended were  below budget.  Unless previously agreed, any new borrowing will be subject to approval by the Executive and must demonstrate clear benefits for Woking residents.  We will seek to improve Budgetary Control within the Council and try harder with officers to simplify the presentation of the Council’s finances.  We will not support any new investment proposals outside the Borough and all costs and modes of service delivery will be kept under rigorous examination to seek savings where possible.

I believe that in 2009/10 this Council made excellent progress through taking a number of cross-party decisions for the benefit of all our residents.  Since this approach is now being mirrored by our national government – we started it first in Woking! – I hope we can continue to work together to achieve an excellent level of service for residents and make good progress with our major projects, such as Hoe Valley, the leisure services project, and Wolsey Walk and Peacocks developments.  This Administration looks forward to working with  LibDem colleagues to achieve these and other goals.

In conclusion, with the new government commiting itself to a review of local government finance, abolishing Regional Spatial Strategies, agreeing to review the unfair Housing Revenue Account which is currently out to consultation from the former Labour government, abolishing the Standards Board regime, implementing the Sustainable Communities Act, abolishing the Comprehensive Area Assessment, and giving Councillors the power to vote on salary packages for Council officers, we are in for a busy and interesting year ahead!
John Kingsbury,
Leader of the Executive,
Woking Borough Council
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A Price worth paying?

May 26, 2010 — simonashall

Norman Lamont famously, or infamously, declared in 1991 that unemployment was a “price worth paying” to get inflation down (so much so that the Mirror ran a scare story on this back in 2008). With cuts in public sector jobs inevitable and the knock-0n effects of government cuts likely to be seen in the services area of the private sector, will rising unemployment in 2011/12 be a “price worth paying” to bring the deficit down?

This is a question that must be weighing heavily on the minds of George Osborne and David Laws right now – and probably too on the PM and NC’s as well. Perhaps Vince has got a solution up his sleeve but one suspects not – what to do with all these people whose wages Labour’s wrecked Britain can’t afford to pay right now?

Sending them onto benefits makes no sense at all and is equally ruinous financially. While there are schemes for re-training and skills, there is only so much they can do and in any case, who needs an extra 30,000 people with IT qualifications? There are plenty of other, more manual, jobs around but for most people that’s not something they want to consider. Part-time work and sharing full-time equivalents between two or even three people means that what income is available is more equitably apportioned but again, that’s not going to be able to cope with the scale of what we might be talking about.

My feeling is that as many as 600,000 jobs could be affected both in the public and private sectors during the next five years and even if 100,000 of them have the nous and entrepreneurial spirit to set up their own businesses, that still leaves half a million more people out of work. I firmly believe that this is the fault of Labour, who expanded public sector employment in a shabby vote-fixing exercise to bring more and more people into public pay and into the clutches of Unite.

The truth was we couldn’t afford them and left to their own devices they would have found other ways to contribute to the economy. Now, they will be forced to do so in circumstances not of their own choosing and with an economy that is not conducive to their efforts.

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Tip of the iceberg

May 26, 2010 — simonashall

One suspects that if Nick Clegg had decided after May 6 to take up Campbell and Mandelson’s grubby little offer and a Lib/Lab coalition was in power, the BBC would have reported David Laws – rather than Alistair Darling – delivering £6.2bn cuts. As it happens, no such favours are granted to the Conservatives by a corporation whose very skin has been saved by the votes that denied the PM a majority.

The savings identified by the Treasury include some really good things, such as the austerity measures put in place to stop ministers using cars all the time, the abolition of pointless quangos and renegotiating government contracts. The rest of the news emerging from the details is less welcome but regrettably necessary, not least because it goes further than the public sector. The £690m cut from the DfT means contracts put on hold, which has a knock-on effect in the private sector – the A23 scheme and the third phase of the Birmingham Box Managed Motorways project are both, for example, placed on hold and this means uncertainty for the consultants and contractors employed to deliver them.

So too Communities and Local Government, which loses £830m and will have less to spend on meeting its core objectives but also on schemes and projects that are delivered and help fuel a large – and growing – portion of the private sector. Companies like Atkins, Capita, Serco, Halcrow and Balfour Beatty are major employers and cutbacks in local government spending – further underlined by the £1.165bn in savings being expected of local authorities – will mean tougher times ahead for these businesses. The best, of course, will survive – but those who don’t can expect to shed jobs in addition to those that will be shed by the public sector.

And with an emergency budget in June and a Comprehensive Spending Review in October, the bad news is that £6.2bn is only the tip of the iceberg. The total deficit is £157bn and quite how this will be eradicated is anyone’s guess - even ten times what the government announced on Monday is only a third of what is needed. There is a great deal of pain to come and taking the decisions won’t be easy. Although there is a chink of good news in terms of a rise in GDP, the OECD is putting yet more pressure on George Osborne to raise interest rates and avoid cutting too quickly.

It all goes to demonstrate two things: firstly, that there has been – and will continue to be for a while – no real recovery, merely a plot by a Labour-staffed treasury to pump vast amounts of taxpayers’ existing and new money into the economy to delay the onset of recession and the necessity to make fiscal and spending adjustments until after the election. This may turn out to be more damaging than the recession itself.

Secondly, if you vote in a Labour government, sooner or later it runs out of money from which the only recovery is a Conservative government (or in this case coalition) to administer social and economic shock treatment. The only way Labour gets into power is when it promises to spend money - that is the central ethos of democratic socialism. In good times, it will always look more attractive than the more cautious Conservative within-means alternative. But there’s a catch; and we are about to find out exactly what that entails.

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Three times a leader

May 24, 2010 — simonashall

Cllr John Kingsbury

At the first council meeting of the municipal year, Cllr John Kingsbury was re-elected as leader of the executive, even if with no overall control he can’t quite claim to be leader of the council. John took over as leader of the executive in 2008, was re-elected last year and this is the third confirmation in his position, which makes it the longest tenure since Jim Armitage.

In him, Woking has both an experienced and gentle touch. I’ve known John for many years going back to my reporting days and no-one cares more deeply about doing the right things for the borough than him. A consensus politician in the best possible sense, John has friends across the chamber and it says much about him that in a situation where the necessity for cross-party working could not be starker, he is the person the council as a whole feels can best deliver that.

I believe that he is the best choice for Woking and that he has a strong executive team in people like David Bittleston, Beryl Hunwicks and Graham Cundy to support him.

No doubt there are those who would prefer a more robust approach and who believe that it is possible to force through more fundamentally Conservative policy. Perhaps if the elections had left us with different maths, there might be a case for that but at the moment the only way to keep things working at Woking Borough Council is compromise and negotiation – the electorate, after all, has spoken. The 80-odd votes in key areas that would have seen things emerge differently weren’t won and that is something that needs to be put aside now we are into the real business of the council.

In his speech to council, John was quite clear that those in local government at the present time face great challenges ahead over services and financial pressures. But he maintained that a focus on service improvement was the key guiding principle of the council and that he would look to deliver everything in the Conservative manifesto – low council tax, community investment, 60% recycling, green belt protection, youth facilities and community law and order – in co-operation with the other parties.

Both he and Lib Dem leader Ric Sharp referenced the national coalition, with Cllr Sharp finishing his speech by quoting the PM. It might not be the Grand Coalition but if John believes he can make it work for the residents of Woking, I’m more than happy to put my trust in his judgement.

PS I had a great deal of fun doing a live Twitter feed from the public gallery tonight, pity the council doesn’t have a better 3G signal or even WiFi.

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Coalition would be grand

May 19, 2010 — simonashall

On May 6, the local elections produced another indecisive result in Woking. There were gains and losses on both sides but despite no Labour representation to consider any more, the political scene in the borough continues to be ambigious. Even in 2007, the first year of overall control since 1998, the result was only 19-17, which when you take account of absences and mayoralty is not really a majority at all.

With the decision of Peter Ankers to go it alone, the numbers have stood at 18-17-1 and so it remains after the local elections. Just 70 more votes across Knaphill and Horsell West could have seen them 20-15-1 and shown a decisive shift – but that is not what the electorate wanted and the council has to listen to that.

It is my personal view therefore that with a Conservative mayor in 2010/11 and the numbers effectively at 17-17-1, the Conservative and Liberal Democrat groups should consider what the parties have done nationally and think about forming a Grand Coalition. 

This could entail three members each on a six-strong executive committee with a Conservative chairman and Lib Dem vice-chairman. Such an arrangement would also have the welcome side-effect – although it is not designed for that purpose – of removing the effective casting vote of the council from one independent councillor. No doubt Peter Ankers would use this reasonably – but how much happier that the total considered view of the council should be involved in the first place rather than just via one person’s judgement?

In normal circumstances, it would be up to the party with the mandate to take responsibility and implement its manifesto. But at present, neither party really has a proper mandate with the numbers that exist and the maths of the mayoralty suggest that unless there is broad agreement about the year ahead, a rather unseemly mess could result. That’s not good for the council, nor more to the point for Woking.

No doubt an agreement could be reached whereby some of the key problems can be tackled together and elements of both parties’ manifestos placed into the work programme. The PM clearly thought that it was silly (although I think “uninspiring” was the word he used) to have a minority administration trying to take decisions in the current climate. It appears that Nick Clegg agreed.

I don’t see how that situation is different in Woking given the close make-up of the council. Whether either side would agree to it is of course a completely different matter.

Posted in Woking Borough Council, politics. Tags: , , , , . 2 Comments »
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