It was with a great deal of sadness that we learned that Roger Ramage, business editor of the Woking News and Mail until 2006, died on December 1 and his funeral was held today at Guildford Crematorium with more than 100 people coming along to pay tributes to him.

I worked with Roger for four years at the newspaper and every time I hear his name now, I just smile – so involuntarily that I was worried this would be an inappropriate response in a funeral. Every so often, you meet someone who – despite them having a relative indirect role in your life – you just don’t every forget. Roger was such a person; he was all about communication and a zest for life.

It’s difficult to describe what it was like to work with him – someone with an endless enthusiasm for the things he loved, a loud opinion about the things he didn’t; a knowledgeable man who could hold a conversation on any subject but particularly if he knew nothing whatsoever about it; a raconteur with an endless supply of outrageous anecdotes on a life well-lived and a family well-loved. His laughter was raucous, his temperament about as laid-back as it gets, his imagination fertile and his generosity – both of the material and spiritual - his overwhelming moral imperative.

He could be a clown when others needed that but he was also a respected figure – among the attendees today were some of Woking’s most high-profile business names. The service was a non-religious one at which John Morris, a Quaker representative, led a serious of tributes – both planned and spontaneous – about Roger and his wonderful and full life. It was moving and heartbreaking as all occasions of death and passing are but it was also at times funny, joyful and a reflection that what his family and friends have lost is great – but the part of him that will remain with them is perhaps equally so.

It is no exaggeration to say that we could have recounted anecdotes about Roger for hours and hours but ex News and Mail reporter Rob Brown spoke some very well-chosen words on behalf of the paper that summed Roger up perfectly. He was someone whose life provided nourishment for the souls of everyone around him.

My thoughts are with Tricia, their two children and grandchild in particular. He’s been taken from you far too early and had so much more to give – but his legacy is one that forces many of us, even with only a few years’ aquaintence, to look at our own lives and aspire to live them as generously, as fully and as well as him.

Rog, it was a pleasure working with you – you’ll be hugely missed.

John Redwood addresses the Woking Conservative dinner

I have just got back from a superb Annual Grand Dinner for Woking Conservatives that was not only fantastically well-attended by councillors and party members alike but where there were some star turns too. Obviously none of them were on the record so it would be most remiss of me to report their words on here but it wouldn’t be much of post to talk about nothing so I’ll make some observations to which I’m sure none would object.

I’ll be honest, John Redwood (now added to blogroll) is a very able man but quite a bit to the right of me generally. His views on Europe are very well-documented and it’s no surprise that he kicked off his remarks on this subject. What I was pleasantly surprised at though was the time he took to speak about social issues; perhaps not something he is generally noted for. He spoke about the work Iain Duncan Smith (who spent this evening addressing Harlow Conservatives according to @halfon4harlow) has done and I think has a genuine committment towards opportunity and advancement for people. He’s not quite ready to join the Tory Reform Group yet, but I’ve seen another dimension to his hard-nosed image.

I sat on a table with Nirj Deva MEP and spoke to him and his political assistant at some length about Europe and European issues. I was pleased to discover that he is a big fan of Woking but also to understand a little more about the Conservative stance on the EU within the European group, which often gets overshadowed by Westminster debate. It would be unfair of me to recall the conversation in detail but needless to say the question of committing ourselves to a given position within or outside the current European “bloc” is a good deal more nuanced and sophisticated than perhaps I imagined.

And last of all, there was a very confident and concise speech from Jonathan Lord, who I saw address a large group for the first time since his selection. A few months ago, I said I would never work for a parliamentary candidate who was not local because I couldn’t see how they would know the area well enough to know its people. Apart from the fact that Jonathan is hardly an outsider anyway coming from Guildford, he has totally convinced me that not only is he working hard but enjoying it.

Apart from an engagement last night at Winston Churchill School, the Conservative Dinner tonight, he is at the Horsell and Woodham Branch coffee morning tomorrow morning followed by campaigning in the afternoon. He is getting every bit as stuck in as I hoped our candidate would – and I had pretty high expectations. Keep going Jonathan, you have really spurred on our enthusiasm with your infectious commitment, diligence and clear enjoyment of getting to know Woking and its people. As someone who went through that process myself abeit in a difference capacity seven years ago, I promise that both repay such an approach with interest.

I’m beginning to understand how annoying I must have been as a journalist. I often used phrases that were technically true but stretched the lexicographical boundaries of semantics and the great English language. They nearly always made for better headlines and more irrate PRs.

This week, the News and Mail have carried on the noble traidtion with Woking taxpayers fund energy for Milton Keynes. Let’s start with the first par:

“Woking taxpayers have invested more than £44m in a company that provides
energy to Milton Keynes.”

No, they haven’t. Money for Thameswey has largely come from borrowing and money for the subsidaries has entirely been taken from the money markets. Nothing has come from the council taxpayer ie through council tax to fund Thameswey operations.

The paragraph implies that the company only supplies energy to Milton Keynes – it doesn’t. Most of its activities are Woking-based, including subsidising cavity insulation for residents and providing information on energy efficiency. Furthermore, Cllr John Kingsbury and the Conservative executive have pledged to conclude operations in MK early at the end of Phase I and that no new borrowing be approved for further project. There has been no such pledge from the Liberal Democrats.

Bob Shatwell, always good for a quote, thinks the whole thing is “scandalous”, which is about as good as it gets from him. Chris Bore makes a much more valid point – that the lack of transparency about Thameswey – which Ray Morgan insists is just because he’s never gotten around to it – is it’s own worst enemy.

In good times, the company has failed to get across the message of its success. In bad times, the level of resentment is that much higher because people don’t understand what the big secret is and assume the worst.

When I was at the News and Mail, I tried to run a series of articles on Thameswey to explain its role to readers and spent several hours with Ray Morgan getting into the financial nitty-gritty. It was about as enthusiastically received as mouldy bread by editorial staff and stonewalled on the grounds that people weren’t interested. They can’t have it both ways!

The News and Mail leads this week with a “fears are growing for the…” story on the Marjorie Richardson centre, which has understandably caused alarm. There is a paper on this going to the executive on September 3 that asks members to consider whether to re-instate funding to the centre on the basis of its current grant, £15,285 rather than the £20,000 it wanted.

There are, it has to be said, a couple of things that the story omitted, which is understandable because the newspaper needs to focus on the people rather than the background.

At Horsell Village Hall, we don’t rely on the council for funding, although it’s nice when it comes along. We have to do our own fundraising, balance our lettings books and seek grant funding from elsewhere. There is nothing preventing the centre from doing the same thing, so by turning down funding, the council is not “closing” the centre, it is merely saying that it cannot provide the funds it has done in the past.

The centre has now submitted a business plan – and not before time. Any operating model that relied so heavily on one source of income (WBC) is clearly in need of review. The plan shows that the centre is making £20k a year on sales as well as a £15k WBC grant but is spending more than £25k on management! This I would suggest, not WBC’s meanness, is the real problem – it’s a pity no-one at the News and Mail bothered to look it up.

In addition, the story tells us that 45-55 people each day use the centre – which is slightly at odds with the 433 a week in the grant application. However, if we multiply 50 by 5 and then 52 to get a rough yearly figure, it’s around 13,000. This seems to imply that with 15,500 visits for the year in 2007/8 (not people using the centre as the newspaper implies), we have roughly the same 50 people using the centre each day with a few extra here and there.

£20k, or for that matter £15k, is quite a bit of money to spend on – let’s be generous – 150-odd active individuals out of 92,000 residents in Woking. No-one likes to see the axe fall anywhere and taking funding away from community groups is not what Conservatism is about. But if you think that Horsell Village Hall received £3,500 for its 2,000 individual users, it does seem to introduce some perspective here.

My understanding is that the Marjorie Richardson Centre could be given time to make the new arrangements – ie a proper rather than pie-in-the-sky business plan – work. But users and staff blaming the council for the state it’s in, aiding by some unquestioning journalism, doesn’t paint it in the most favourable light.