A very long night (part 1)

May 7, 2010 — simonashall

During the past few days I have been too busy campaigning in Horsell West to blog and of course I’m disappointed that having got more than 1,800 votes in the ward – the largest number by some way that I can recall the Conservatives getting - this wasn’t enough to win. The Horsell campaign team – Ben Carasco, Tony Branagan, Michael Gammon, Beryl Hunwicks, Alex Smith, Matthew King, Tim Read and others – worked extremely hard to try and secure a result in the ward and I can’t express enough gratitude for the work they have done.

As John McCain said, the failure is mine, not theirs – but I also have to pay tribute to the Lib Dem effort too. We didn’t see much of them but there was clearly some work being done somewhere as you don’t pull 1,850 votes out of Horsell West by just turning up to the count. It’s quite an achievement and congratulations to Ann-Marie Barker for being elected to replace Richard Sanderson in what was a closely-fought and intense battle with turnout at a furious 77%.

We all care about these things very much, otherwise we wouldn’t be doing them and to say that I’m not disappointed would be untrue. But I’m also philosophical – I knew Horsell West would be very, very close when I put myself forward for selection and I certainly didn’t get sucked into envisaging myself as a councillor on May 7. It’s a ward where nothing can be taken for granted and victory really is only for four years. Let’s also not forget that this was a Lib Dem seat with a majority of around 150 in 2006. So I walked into the hall not a councillor – and I walked back out not a councillor, the only thing it has cost me is the time and energy of the campaign.

And the campaign has been a real blast, a chance to get to know the area even better than you ever believed you could (you start to remember the names of houses and their order on South Road and the location of hidden front doors) as well as meet people from all over the village. I couldn’t honestly say I look upon that as a “cost” – more like a benefit and an experience that will help greatly in the future. It won’t be much of a surprise to learn that I’m not giving up and see highs and lows as part of the political process.

Being a councillor is a great honour but it’s not a requirement for contributing to the community. I will be continuing to do this and – after a suitable break – we’ll see what next year brings.

Meanwhile, congratulations to Dorothy Farrant, new-elected councillor for Byfleet and terrific news for Carl Thomson, who unseated Norman Johns to be the new councillor for Mount Hermon East. Well done, Carl.

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One word missing?

April 26, 2010 — simonashall

A couple of weeks ago I blogged that Lib Dem canvassers on the doorstep  had been misleading voters in Horsell West about the size of the existing Conservative majority in Woking. It’s not that the size of the majority is particularly important because it’s the vote on May 6 that counts but my feeling was that people deserved to know how a majority of 6,612 was being misrepresented as 2,000-4,000 to manipulate the psychology of the election. Clever – yes, honest – no.

I did not name the culprit as reported to me because I don’t think it’s hugely fair or relevant – the Lib Dems can’t simply cite one “rogue” doorstepper as any canvassing operation is a carefully organised process. That didn’t stop the Horsell Lib Dem candidate and her sidekick from challenging me on this allegation and demanding proof. Fair enough – I’d have done the same, although I am at least aware of what my team are telling people on the doorstep.

What I’d like to know is that if the Lib Dems really are serious about stamping this misleading information out, if they are taking it so seriously, why is it repeated in their latest leaflet?

Unless of course it’s a typo and the word “thousand” has been missed out between “few” and “votes”. Come to think of it, that’s probably the explanation. It would be no great surprise to learn that their proofreading is as bad as their maths.

Posted in Lib Dem lies, elections. Tags: , , , . No Comments »

Majority halved

April 14, 2010 — simonashall

I’ve just been out and come back from a Horsell Village Hall meeting and on my way I was told by a resident that they had been canvassed by the Liberal Democrats. Unfortunate enough at any time but particularly as this canvasser, who shall remain nameless, tried to tell the resident that the current Conservative parliamentary majority was “two or three thousand”. When challenged, they upped this to “three or four thousand”.

For those Lib Dems that don’t know and aren’t sure, perhaps you ought not to be misleading residents on the doorstep. It’s actually 6,612.

It’s little stunts like these that make me realise that while the Lib Dems like to profess ethical social views, their election tactics can be anything but.

Posted in Horsell West campaign, Lib Dem lies. Tags: , , . 7 Comments »

Horsell Action Day

April 10, 2010 — simonashall

There’s nothing better than a bit of politics when the sun’s shining, people are in and willing to talk and the parliamentary candidate is getting greeted on the street by people who recognise him from literature. But so it was this morning when we held an Action Day in Horsell for my campaign along with Jonathan Lord.

I’ve read an awful lot of baseless rubbish about him elsewhere and in some election literature, which I have addressed previously. While our opponents campaign on the importance of locality because they have little else to recommend their candidate, Jonathan is interested in meeting people to demonstrate the broad portfolio of personal and political skills that we believe would make him a strong and effective MP for Woking. It seems that people in Horsell High Street this morning understood this.

Far from quizzing him about where he lives – as Lib Dem activists have been asked to do if he calls – they are concentrating on the big picture. That is that we need someone to stand up in parliament and argue Woking’s case to the highest democratic authority in the land and that person needs to be charismatic and credible. He was greeted warmly both on the doorstep and in the street this morning by people from all parts of the village who can see what he would offer Woking as our representative if they back him on May 6.

It’s a common theme of Lib Dem literature to erect barriers - a barrier between Jonathan and his party, a barrier between Jonathan and Woking or between anyone else and the people they want to represent. Well, those barriers are all very well as election tools but they don’t exist in reality. As Conservatives, we must not talk the language of barriers, problems and disconnects but of accessibility, solutions and relationships – and watching Jonathan’s reception in Horsell this morning demonstrated to me the value of that approach and why I believe that ultimately it will win through.

Posted in Horsell West campaign, Lib Dem lies, Woking PPC, elections. Tags: , , , , , , , . 4 Comments »

Rhetorical Questions

March 23, 2010 — simonashall

Firstly, it’s good to see that Ann-Marie Barker’s nomination as my Lib Dem opponent in Horsell West is now official (unlike her, I am happy to afford my opponent the courtesy of using her name!). Richard Sanderson has left big shoes for whoever replaces him to fill and I look forward to a good-tempered if hard-fought final six weeks.

I’m also glad to note that she’s been reading my blog judging by her comments on Community Question Time and I’m delighted to discover that she’s in agreement with me over developing and expanding the Community Question Time into something more meaningful:

The funny thing is a local Conservative [that's me by the way - Simon!] is now suggesting that a quarterly or twice yearly event that moves around the borough would be a good idea. It’s a great idea and one that was put in place under the theme ‘Tune In’ through a local Liberal Democrat initiative.

Let’s make one thing clear – Tune In was never given a budget to do anything. So its travelling around the borough raising residents’ expectations of what might be achieved was a particular exercise in futility and one that as a journalist and then a press officer at a participating local authority I looked upon on in amazement. The only thing that Tune In was able to do was shift money from one budget heading to another and push some things further up the work programme.

The idea that “working in partnership” is the answer to everything needs to be challenged. Partnership working can be a useful tool in some regards but having six different organisations trying to make decisions together is seldom successful. Very rarely do they truly gel as one “partnership” and the individual interests – usually budgetary – almost always prevail. What you need is the right balance between operational matters that are best worked on together with the support of the community and those that really should be left to one organisation and its professionals to deal with.

My idea of a Community Question Time separates the democratic elements of community dialogue and council accountability from the bureaucratic rhetoric of partnerships and any false expectations of delivery. The views of residents should be constantly expressed at every level by members and every single year, voters have the chance to show their feelings at the ballot box. They are entitled to ask the questions in public that will give them the information they need to inform their vote. I believe that few are interested in how well various slices of local government are working together or not – so long as the outcomes are there.

I agree with Ann-Marie that Tune In was meant to be much more but I believe the only way to achieve it is by little steps. The idea of Question Time standing alone is meant to be that first step - it is distinctly not trying to emulate the flawed Tune In model.

Posted in Community, Horsell West campaign, Woking Borough Council. Tags: , , , , , . No Comments »

Hard Graphed

March 23, 2010 — simonashall

 

Now all I’m going to say is this; the sound of the Liberal Democrats moaning about graphs on Conservative literature and claiming unfairness/inaccuracy/irrelevance is sweeter than new spring lamb with mint sauce.

How man dozens of dodgy Lib Dem graphs have we had to suffer?

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Nearly there…

March 14, 2010 — admin

I continue to be sorry for the lack of activity here – I’m struggling through my mock Critical Reflection Test for my CIPR diploma in the midst of making sure that I’m doing everything I can for Horsell West. The CRT is nearly done and when it is I’ll post a link to it so that you can see what on earth I’ve been up to in the evenings for the past two weeks – if you really want to read it.

Then I get a break for ten days before the actual CRT, during which I have to research and write two 3,000-word essays in four weeks. That is due on St George’s Day, after which I have a clear run for a little while. But I will try to maintain blogging during that period and the run-up to the elections (it’s what we’ve been waiting for, after all) not least because if I don’t, the Lib Dems will and it’s not fair that they should have the cybersphere to themselves.

So apologies for not being able to do as much as I’d like during the past couple of weeks - and thanks to Denzil Coulson for DMing me on Twitter with his understanding sentiments. I hope he is enjoying trying to seek the Lib Dem population of Fleet; it’s a bit like searching for Conservatives in Goldsworth West, I should imagine.

Posted in Mundane occurances, news, politics. Tags: , , . No Comments »

Wobbling over Wolsey

February 26, 2010 — admin

The purchase of Wolsey Place has attracted a lot of debate in various places, including local Lib Dem blogs and a dismal Facebook group set up by UKIPpers, who have taken a break from blaming everything on Europe.

I’m disappointed that having agreed to it in council, some Lib Dems in Horsell are trying the old “we don’t have to follow the party line” gag just as they did over county hall. No – you don’t have to follow the party line on a Horsell issue such as development in the village or bus service cuts. But this is nothing to do with Horsell specifically and it’s a major financial commitment that the council has signed up to on a cross-party basis. For local activists to now try and wriggle out of their party’s official position on Wolsey Place is opportunistic and disingenuous. If they were so concerned, did they lobby their leadership against cross-party agreement?

For what it’s worth, Horsell West councillor Tony Branagan voted against the purchase but now the matter has been resolved he is committed to defending the council’s position, even though it wasn’t his own. How very easy to abdicate responsibility in the face of hard questions – to me, elected representatives need more fibre than that and Tony has it in spades.

I’d prefer a world where Woking Borough Council was debt-free, as it was six years ago under Jim Armitage. But that isn’t the council we’ve got and only a firesale would restore that position. In the circumstances, the best place to spend the borrowed money is on appreciating assets and generating revenue. So let’s look at Wasteful Woking and see just how inaccurate the UKIP information is.

“Not only do they splash out 68M for Wolsey, they also just announced a 2.5% council tax increase. It’s time to take some control back!”

And just think how much more your council tax would be without £1.5m in revenues next year from Wolsey Place. This is a totally misplaced statement based on the notion that Woking Borough Council itself has written a cheque for £68m.

“It will take the council 50 years to pay back the loan for Wolsey Place, a development that will probably be beyond it’s usab…le life within 20 years. That means a major capital expenditure to either rebuild or upgrade the current site. “Invest to save” is a phrase usually best applied to upgrade work or repairs that will lower future bill and fixed cost base. Not buying a leaky old shopping centre and half occupied office.”

What is wrong with taking 50 years to pay back the loan? People with mortgages usually pay them back over half that and they usually borrow a good deal less than half the money. As time goes on, the value of the repayments will decrease while the rental income keeps pace with inflation ie the value of income over repayments will increase hugely over 50 years. If the centre is sold on, the loan could be paid back or if the site is sold in say 15 years, it will be most likely be worth a great deal more than was paid for it and will cover substantially the amount of the loan outstanding.

Whatever the author’s view of the shopping centre, actually looking at the books (rather than guessing wildly) revealed a sound basis for buying. In addition, there is potential for development in the future, although that’s not something I think would be considered for some time. For the record, floors one to five of Export House are empty, with six to 15 occupied. The internal decor and facilities are very good and I know that because I work on the 14th floor.

Elsewhere, we’ve had concerns about maintenance, unforeseen legislation and all sorts of other things that really scrape the barrel. There are always risks associated with everything – given all the information available, councillors on all sides took the view that this was worth doing.

Finally, there are Lib Dem concerns about the process, about the fact that the deal was done with press and public excluded (Part II). I’m no fan of Part II and as a journalist I fought tooth and nail to find out what was going on “behind closed doors”. But consider this – councillors are elected by the people to take decisions. As residents, we’d no doubt prefer everything to be decided in public but just because the press and public are excluded doesn’t make the process less democratic. These are still the same councillors making the same decisions under the same constitution in the same way that magistrates confer in private rather than open court. And the Lib Dems, who have to a person all been involved in Part II items in the past, know that perfectly well.

In his blog Denzil Coulson claims that the Lib Dems have helped rescue us from a financial disaster this year by backing Wolsey Place. If that makes him happy, so be it - but he is right that the financial outlook for 2010/11 is a lot better because of this purchase. Remember that net of repayments, net of tax, net of maintenance the council will get £1.5m a year from the Wolsey Place purchase – it pays for itself and a lot more besides.

So t’s time that UKIPpers stopped spreading rubbish about the deal that was done for pure electoral gain and that Lib Dems locally had the bottle to agree – as Denzil seems to want to say – that this deal was the very best of the bad job that Woking’s borrowing is.

Posted in Economy, Woking Borough Council, elections. Tags: , , , , , , , , , . No Comments »

Wasted opportunity for change

February 25, 2010 — admin

The debate tonight in council over whether to change the voting system in Woking to one all-out election for councillors every four years instead of the contrived thirds system we have at present was a frustrating experience. I had hoped against hope that the sensible cross-party voices of David Bittleston, John Kingsbury, Peter Ankers, Ric Sharp and Richard Sanderson would pursuade some of those with fears about all-out elections to take the plunge.

It was a big ask and needed a two-thirds majority (24 out of 36 councillors) to get through – in the end it was defeated 16-17 by those wishing to stick to the current system. There were some really good points, ranging from the structural ie that all-out elections provides a period of election-free space to encourage longer-term thinking and decision-making by councillors to the equitable ie that resident in three-member wards such as Horsell West get to vote three times as much as those who live in one-member wards like Brookwood.

There are also questions of clarity for voters, of being able to spend less time electioneering and more time engaging with residents and of the £100,000 three-years-in-four cost benefit. But the sticklers, of whom the “radical” Liberal Democrats formed the backbone, won through, obviously worried about their seats and the prospect of four years in the wilderness. Denzil Coulson told the chamber that in 2011 he was sure the Conservatives would be unpopular and thrown out of administration – and then proceeded to defend the thirds system by way of it being more “democratic” because it forced people to work together and gave councillors contact with residents.

Lib Dem leader Ian Johnson too said that the council was best when it worked together on projects and made out that all-out elections would somehow preclude this, allowing one party to bully its agenda through. Other thirds supporters opposed the idea of too radical a change in the council’s makeup after a four-yearly election, with it taking time to retrain new councillors. Yet successful authorities like Guildford, Elmbridge and all the Berkshire unitaries – as well as all London boroughs – are elected this way and seem to overcome these issues.

More to the point, the strong leader model adopted by the council tonight also seems to point to the need for a all-out election, as the leader’s four-year term should co-incide with the council’s. By keeping thirds, members have essentially nullified the strong leader idea and kept the system we have now. Woking is a good council but it is not helped by its marginal and shifting control. It needs a stability and permanance that at present only the officers of the council enjoy.

A number of members felt that those in safe seats were more in favour of all-out elections because they were less likely to find themselves booted out for four years. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again – as someone who is standing for election in a marginal ward, I’d rather lose the seat and not have the opportunity to stand again as a consequence of the best system than win it and have to work within a second-best model that hinders strategic thinking and bold decisions.

It’s a shame that I have to get party political but I think that the Liberal Democrats have let the borough down by not being bold enough to embrance this change. It is only fair for me to mention Cllrs Ian Eastwood, Ric Sharp and Richard Sanderson as the honourable exceptions to this – they voted against the rest of their party in the free vote and also Independent Peter Ankers for coming down on the visionary side too. Interesting to note that Lib Dem PPC Rosie Sharpley, your agent of change if the Lib Dem literature is to believed, didn’t feel able to vote for it on this occasion.

The next opportunity to get rid of our thirds system is 2015. By then I hope the case will be clear.

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Consultation on the LDF

November 9, 2009 — admin

The consultation questionnaire for the new Core Strategy of Woking Borough Council’s Local Development Framework is now available to be filled in. It’s a fair attempt at a consultation online, although necessarily some of the questions invite certain answers and others have limited options to choose from, which may or may not represent your point of view.

Probably the most contentious point will be the housing allocation options, which give three alternatives. Option A entails a small amount of development in Woking Town Centre but almost a third of new houses being provided from infilling. I don’t think many people in Horsell will welcome this approach as infilling is the quickest and surest way to ruin a streetscene – creating ugly new entrances and packing houses together tightly.

Option C would mean a small urban extension ie Green Belt release to provide new homes. While there is merit in considering this, we simply don’t have to do it – there is plenty of land available in Woking to provide the houses that we need. So having eliminated those two options, the only one left is option B, which concentrates development on the town centre, gives less infill and keeps the Moor Lane and Brookwood Farm developments on the agenda (as do all options). It’s not perfect but I’m sure it will be the preferred route.

There is also a question about protection of areas of character at the expense of other areas. With the LDF comes the abolition of Urban Areas of Special Residential Character, which in Horsell included The Ridgeway, Heath Road, Castle Road and our end of Grange Road. We need to ensure that we still have ways of protecting areas of special character – the old rules used to state that nothing in a UASRC could be built that did not materially improve on what was already there and it was a useful stick to wave at developers.

For the record, now that Danesfield has been developed and so too Robert Beldam’s old house next door to us, I don’t think Grange Road quite cuts it anymore on the “must keep” list. I’d prefer to see Manor Road and Waldens Park Road in Horsell West on the list instead.

I’d encourage anyone with views on the subject to get involved and have your say; these decisions will be affecting people across Woking long after most of us have forgotten about the consultation.

Posted in Community, planning. Tags: , , , , , . No Comments »
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