New beginnings

June 17, 2010 — simonashall

On June 29, this blog will be one year old. During the election campaign, I experienced quite a bit of traffic as the Rosie vs Jonathan battle heated up but with the elections over and everyone fed up of politics, those readers have gone and the number of repeat visits – mostly I suspect from Lib Dem activists checking what I had written – reduced.

During the next 10 days, I will be busy preparing to get married and am going to take that time away from the blog to think about how to make it better for readers in future. I want to move it away from being nominally a Horsell blog because there wouldn’t really be enough to write about on a daily basis and now Horsell has The Resident blog, I’d rather contribute to the debate on that site that try to match it here. So a change in name is probably in the offing, which I know is terribly confusing but it’ll hurt me more!

I’d still like to be able to give a view of what’s going on in the Woking democratic process from the perspective I get working quite closely with the Conservative group and association. I think that’s something you probably can’t get elsewhere and could be useful (but not too useful, obviously!). I’d also like to be able to talk, within obvious boundaries, about my experiences as a magistrate because again, that’s something that isn’t necessarily available elsewhere.

As I go through my CIPR course (I got a distinction for my first assessment, by the way!) I’d also like to start talking more about Public Relations as a influential factor in our society and politics and picking  up on instances of bad PR and where it has had a subtle effect. For example the Daily Mail carried a story today about a Piranha being caught in a Kent lake. Not at all tied in to the Piranha 3D movie, released in August, I’m sure.

What I don’t want this blog to become is a commentary on national politics, because there’s a load of other blogs that are better than me at that. You know my position, liberal Tory, finding out what someone thinks of every issue gets tedious unless they’ve anything unique to say. So those are some of the thoughts going round in my head. When I get back after my marital mini-break (we’re not honeymooning until September), they’ll be a redesign using the superb WordPress 3.0 and a re-launch along slightly different lines.

Posted in Community, Mundane occurances, Other blogs. Tags: , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Horsell hit by burglaries

May 20, 2010 — simonashall

The Surrey Ad is carrying a story highlighting the fact that residents along Horsell Moor have been hit by a series of burglaries and thefts from vehicles. I met Josh Parish, the Horsell beat officer, at the May Fayre and his team is doing a great job to target offenders and get results in the courts.

But he can’t win them all and occasionally the law is stacked in the favour of the criminals. We had a similar thing in Grange Road last year and these people tend to work a patch, looking for soft targets like open windows and unlocked cars. Don’t let yourself become a victim – make it not worth their while by taking all the simple security measures.

You’ll not only thank youself but Josh will thank you too because it’s his job to keep the crime figures down and one spate of thefts can damage months of hard work.

Posted in Justice, Law, Police. Tags: , , , . No Comments »

Centre-Righter’s block

May 14, 2010 — simonashall

So now Gordon and his merry men are out of Downing Street and DC has become PM, what is there left to write about? It wouldn’t be so bad if I could switch attention onto the Lib Dems but they are now our partners so I can’t write anything about them either (plus they are all such nice people, of course).

Thankfully, Woking Borough Council fires up in six days with the first Muslim mayor of Woking, Cllr Mohammed Iqbal, being sworn in. I’ve known Cllr Iqbal for a number of years and he cares about his community. He has worked very hard to bring about positive changes in Maybury and Sheerwater and is a very approachable man with a great sense of humour and humility.

He will make a superb mayor – and it is about time that the Muslim community in our town should be represented among the roll of those who’ve served this town as council Chairman and later Mayor. I’m particularly proud that they should come from the ranks of the Conservative Party, though I know the other parties will share our enthusiasm for this development.

In addition, we wait to see what form the council will take this year. Although the election results produced no net change with 18 Con, 17 LD and one independent, our tenancy of the mayoralty this year means that the numbers are effectively 17-all with Peter Ankers having the casting vote if parties follow the whip. I have my doubts as to how healthy this situation is but perhaps more on this another time.

While I would obviously have preferred to have been sitting in the chamber around the benches on May 20, I was sworn in as a magistrate on Monday afternoon by the Lord Lieutenant of Surrey Sarah Goad, High Sheriff Robert Douglas and Mr Justice Critchlow at Guildford Crown Court in a short but memorable ceremony. I was particularly delighted that my parents were able to be there and I could see Mum welling up as I read the oath!

In all honesty, I have several months of quite intensive training and sitting ahead of me and it would have been ambitious to have combined it with the duties of a councillor. My father thought I was completely mad to have even considered it – perhaps he was right and some things happen for a reason.

That said, I have got a meeting of the Horsell and Woodham Conservatives this evening where I have to explain away our failure to win (joke, they are all extremely supportive) and we have got plenty to do in Horsell to make sure that people’s lives are improved and that they are represented well in council. As I said a week ago, councillor or not, the community is always there to be served.

Posted in Community, Woking Borough Council, news. Tags: , , , , , , , . No Comments »

Visit The Resident

April 13, 2010 — simonashall

The Horsell Residents Association newsletter The Resident is now online in the form of a WordPress blog and I have added the link to the left hand side.

The current editor Sarah Johns took over from me last year and is doing a great job of making the magazine’s format even more attractive, broadening the scope of the news stories and taking it online. There is also a Twitter feed @HorsellResident.

Well worth a visit or a follow.

Posted in Community, Other blogs. Tags: , , , . No 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 »

Not winning here

April 9, 2010 — simonashall

Winning where, exactly?

On the junction of Grange Road and Woodham Road, the Liberal Democrats have decided to put one of their large posters up. That’s okay, they are allowed to do that and it doesn’t bother me – while posters are good to keep up the morale of activists, I don’t believe a single vote changes hands because of them.

What’s more difficult to understand is the Lib Dem slogan “winning here” on the orange background. Winning where, exactly? Certainly not in Horsell East and Woodham, where I cannot recall a Lib Dem councillor ever having been elected. In fact, the Lib Dems haven’t won a single election in Horsell in four years and we’re obviously working hard to try and make it five.  Nor can the poster refer to Woking constituency, where they have never held the parliamentary seat and according to the excellent Times Election 2010 website, there’s only a 10% chance that they will this time. So they aren’t “winning there” either.

Don’t get me wrong, there are places where the Lib Dems have won. I wouldn’t argue with the poster in Goldsworth Park, for example, nor in South Woking where they won last year. But putting up a sign on the Woodham Road saying that they are “winning there” is bogus and total nonsense. I prefer the one being used outside a house in Wheatsheaf Close that advertises Rosie Sharpley’s name – at least it’s honest and doesn’t give a totally false impression of the local politics.

Posted in Lib Dem lies, politics. Tags: , , , , , . 3 Comments »

Great turnout

April 7, 2010 — simonashall

Despite the Question Time fever, the finale of Masterchef and the Man Utd v Bayern Munich game, we ran clean out of chairs at Horsell Village Hall this evening for the Horsell Residents Association AGM. Sometimes these evenings can be a draining experience but never with HRA – Rob Harris keeps a firm hand on the tiller and ensures that all the official business is dealt with in 30 minutes or so before we welcome a guest presentation.

Last year, it was Marilyn Scott of the Lightbox, this year Paul Rimmer and David Robbins of Horsell Common Preservation Society gave the audience a good grounding in the history, management and natural aspects of the common. HCPS is a superb organisation that does a lot of work for our environment in Horsell that one suspects would be a good deal less well done if left to other authorities to achieve. Membership is only £10 and can be attained here.

I addressed the meeting for a couple of minutes on the LDF character studies that I think could be important in helping to preserve some of the more unique areas of the village. Given that the old Urban Areas of Special Residential Character, which gave some form of assurance to those in areas of urban heritage merit, are disappearing, I think it’s vital for us to put our views forward about the areas that we consider important now. If we don’t, it makes it very difficult at a later stage to oppose planning applications in areas on the grounds of urban heritage and preserving the streetscene.

The old UASRC are a good place to start – The Ridgeway, Grange Road, Heath and Castle Roads, but not necessarily exclusive. Waldens Park Road, Kettlewell Hill and Manor Road are also areas with historic properties in them that speak about the village’s history. It would be a shame if we did not act now to give them the best possible chance of being preserved. I’ll be totally honest with you; my experience of the planning system is that it is an inequitable rich man’s game - a system where central government dictates the rules to local residents via their planning authorities to the benefit of big developers. Developers can afford agents, planning experts, legal advisors and to play the appeals process - residents can rarely match this.

But what we must do is make sure that we give ourselves the best possible chance by taking advantage of what democratic elements the system does afford and that is what I would like to see happen.

Finally, if anyone’s not a member of HRA, please consider it - we really would like to be able to do more but need more members and income in order to give residents a better service.

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

Sir Alec Bedser

April 5, 2010 — simonashall

Some very sad news to taint an otherwise bright Easter weekend – Sir Alec Bedser, one of the greatest cricketers of his generation and long-standing Horsell resident, died yesterday aged 91. Many more senior residents will remember the heyday of the Bedser twins (his brother Eric died in 2006) in the 1940s and early 50s and his exploits for England, when he carried the attack at a time when there was precious little support as England emerged from the cricketed hiatus of the Second World War.

There are a variety of very good obituaries to him in many of the nationals today. But many in Horsell will have known him personally, living as he did in Carlton Road for so long. I was lucky enough to meet both twins at the Surrey History Centre in 2003 launching an exhibition on Surrey County Cricket Club but had no further contact with them until I wrote the obituary for Eric in the Woking News and Mail three years later. Most people would want silly reporters somewhere else on the death of a loved one – not Sir Alec, who phoned the paper up personally to make sure that we got his brother’s factsright.

After, I met Sir Alec on various occasions and he espoused everything good about sport. Eric bequested an amount of money to Horsell Residents’ Association, which the association uses to fund achievement prizes for the village’schools. For some time in the 1970s, Sir Alec ran a youth and sporting club at Horsell Village Hall, where signed potraits of the twins are now on permanent display. Generous with his time and wisdom, there was nothing of the modern-day sporting prima donna about Sir Alec. He would talk with gusto about the modern game and while, yes, he was very definitely of the old school, he never left you in any doubt what he meant. And that’s less common than you’d think.

Both twins were passionate about their sport and also believed in the value of community, of selflessness and that sport was an act of athleticism and competition, yes, but also of pleasure and entertainment for the paying public. Their sense of duty to Surrey, England and those around them was a rare thing and Horsell and Woking have been blessed to have the Bedser twins play the part they did in our story.

Posted in Community, Cricket, news. Tags: , , , , , . No Comments »

More rhetorical questions

March 31, 2010 — simonashall

When I outlined my idea of a Community Question Time for Woking, I had no idea that BBC Question Time would be coming to Woking on April 7. It is the same evening as the Horsell Residents’ Association AGM, which I will be going to instead. It goes without saying that I’m more bothered about dealing with Horsell issues than bearing witness to the ongoing BBC operation to stop the Conservatives winning the general election.

It will, though, be interesting to see who sits on the panel. There are five panellists on QT and the balance is usually one member of each of the political parties, with two extra panellists. Here’s my tips for the best choices:

Conservatives

Best Choice: Phillip Hammond, Michael Gove or Jeremy Hunt from the Conservative front bench team as they are relatively local.

Worst: John Redwood, the BBC having confused Woking with Wokingham.

Labour

Best Choice: Barbara Follet, local government minister, to explain why Surrey’s funding disadvantages it so much and prevents the county’s residents from getting the same level of service enjoyed in Labour-voting areas.

Worst: Jack Straw, because that will show that they just don’t care.

Lib Dem

Best Choice: One of the south London MPs – Ed Davey, Susan Kremer or Vince Cable.

Worst: Sarah Teather, same reason as Jack Straw.

The two other panellists usually consist of either two left-wingers or one left-winger and a right-winger who’s easily dismissed by the BBC illuminati as extreme (eg Peter Hitchins, Melanie Phillips, Richard Littlejohn). I feel we need a Muslim panellist to reflect Woking’s population and the fact that it was among the first places in Britain to have a settled Muslim population. Among other choices could be Harry Hill, Eric Clapton, Delia Smith or Paul Weller. I’d be interested in Zac Goldsmith or Jonathon Porritt being on the panel to say what they think of Woking’s environmental agenda.

More likely though, we’ll get someone from a left-leaning think tank and a silly actor who doesn’t know anything about Woking and lives in London. Hopefully, I’m wrong.

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

Assessment of Horsell Village Centre

March 25, 2010 — simonashall

Let's keep the development in the town centre and out of Horsell

I attended a meeting tonight on behalf of Horsell Residents Association at Woking Borough Council about carrying out Character Assessments for the Local Development Framework Core Strategy. What this means is that I will be filling in survey details – quite a few of them, actually – about an area in order to provide the council with information it can use when putting together future planning policy.

The area I have chosen is an important one – Horsell High Street between the village school (where Church Hill ends) to the junction with Bullbeggars. This obviously includes the pubs, the village hall and all the shops and so getting the information right is going to take a little while. Among the questions on the survey are positives and negatives about this area and this doesn’t just include planning and built environment issues. I know that we need better parking arrangements in the village centre both to allow people easier access to our shops and make the pavements and roads in the village safer for other cars and pedestrians.

But if there is any other feedback on the character of this area of Horsell that anyone would like to raise, please let me know either by commenting here or emailing me.

In addition, I think that Horsell could benefit from some more surveys being done by residents in conjunction with Horsell Residents Association, particularly in areas of urban heritage value. The whole process should take around three or four hours in most instances, depending on the size of area. All the areas not completed by HRA or residents will be done by the council – they won’t be done badly, but it would be nice to have some control over the information that goes back to the council in the areas of Horsell that we care about most.

So if anyone else would like to do a survey, please get in touch with HRA or Woking Borough Council’s planning department.

Posted in Community, Woking Borough Council, planning. Tags: , , , , . No Comments »
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