Mr. Davey gets ANOTHER new job

Lib Dem MPs have new party roles

A reshuffle of the Liberal Democrat shadow cabinet last week saw local MPs Edward Davey and Susan Kramer stay on in the cabinet (sic) but change their responsibilities.

Mr Davey held on to his role as campaigns and communications chairman, but swapsped (sic - new Lib Dem verb!) the trade and industry portfolio for the position of chief of staff.

He said: "I am delighted with my new role".

Source "Surrey Comet"

He hasn't exactly distinguished himself in his short stay at Trade & Industry, shadowing a department his party wanted to abolish. I wonder what his 'new role' will involve this time.......

Surbiton Hospital latest blow

Read this link from the Surrey Comet of this week.

http://www.surreycomet.co.uk/display.var.1062905.0.nhs_hits_trusts_deficit_with_2m_interest_charge.php.

Kingston PCT now has a new Chief Executive. We hope he can turn things around - but things like this are hardly helpful.

KU grammar KOed by apostrophe

'Private Eye' 7th December carries the following from a Kingston University advertisement:-

Kingston University is recognised as one of the country's leading modern university's.

O tempora! O mores!!

The end of an era

The Conservative office at 200 Ewell Road is now closing for the last time. Kingston and Surbiton Association will move into temporary accommodation until such time as they can fulfill their long-held desire to move into somewhere more suitable to the needs of a 21st century campaigning organisation than a 4 storey Victorian mansion with massive overheads.

I can't help feeling some nostalgia as I have been associated with the building one way or another since 1989. All organisations need to move on, however, and it is a pity we were prevented from doing so 2 years ago, as we had planned.

The Berrylands Trial

Some people are concerned that my Conservative colleagues and I subjected the proposed new waste collection trial in Berrylands to such scrutiny that the matter was sent to full Council last Tuesday and the start thereby delayed. The reasons are:-

1. The location and nature of the trial should have been disclosed to the Scrutiny Panel at a meeting devoted exclusively to the future of waste management on 5th September. They weren't and, indeed, it subsequently transpired that even the Executive member didn't learn about them until the following day.

2. The trial involves changing the frequency of collections and changes in what can be collected and how. We presume the intention is to roll this out across the Borough in due course. We were not satisfied that there had been adequate consultation with the people affected by a more complex system than they are used to or that the bins intended for use were adequate for the purpose.

3. It is intended that the general waste bins should be fitted with readable microchips. While these are usable, as stated, merely for counting bins to ensure none are missed, it is disingenuous of the Administration to suggest that this is their sole purpose. They can also be used for charging by weight the householders whose bins they are. This isn't going to happen yet but it could in the future. The Liberal Democrats were VERY insistent that this proposal should not be dropped, as the Conservatives' motion to Council proposed.

4. The area selected is not typical of the cross-section of dwelings in Kingston as a whole, causing concern about the applicability of any 'results' which might be forthcoming from the trial.

5. We were concerned that Council resources had been committed to the implementation of this trial before any elected member knew of it or even the Executive had debated or approved it. That has to be the implication of what we were told at Scrutiny, when the matter was called in, by the Executive member herself. This goes much deeper than the question of the trial itself and raises grave questions of accountability and transparency in the way the Council is being run.

6. Our reference to Council gave Berrylands members an opportunity to vote on the matter in public, instead of behind closed doors in the obscurity of a Liberal Democrat group meeting.

Bus stop in Thornhill Road

It's 12 days since we contacted RBK officers and TfL/London Buses about the desired adjustment to the site of the stop at the junction of Douglas and Thornhill Roads. This would involve moving the planned stop about 5 metres to the East to make the bus stop alongside the garden wall of no. 180 instead of alongside the lounge wall. There are 4 buses an hour in each direction.

We had a very positive response from London Buses,who were very willing to accommodate the change but say it was vetoed by the two Liberal Democrat Neighbourhood Co-Chairs. This surprised me at first as I thought they were well disposed.

I wrote 12 days ago setting out the position - not for the first time! I hoped for a response from the Borough to match that of London Buses. Sadly we have had no response at all from Kingston's officers or the Neighbourhood Co-Chairs to match the attitude of London Buses or from our Liberal Democrat MP, Edward Davey, who was also very supportive at first.

We have written again today and hope to report progress soon.

A little bird tells me........

........that it was announced at a meeting of the Alpha Road Residents' Association last week that boarded up windows on the estate are to be replaced with glass.

No great shakes, you might think, except that we have been trying to get similar windows in School Lane replaced for the last two years and have been told there isn't money to do it. The Lib Dem councillor (elected last May, only Lib Dem gain in Kingston - VERY marginal - smallest majority 6) who give out this info was apparently very embarrassed at having blurted it out. 'I wasn't supposed to have said that was I?' was a fairly accurate quote. Why ever not, pray, if it's all open and above board and all estates are to be treated alike?

Which might lead a person of a suspicious cast of mind to speculate on whether it was a pure coincidence that the Neighbourhood Committee was not given any breakdown of how it was proposed to allocate the sums on repairs and maintenance for next year in the Report to the Neighbourhood Committee on Housing the day after the residents' meeting.

Spooky?............Perish the thought!

ID card debate

See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6120220.stm.

Tony Blair has really gone to town on this issue in the last couple of days. Is this going to be the famous 'legacy' he wants to leave behind?

I'va always been opposed to ID cards myself but others may not share this view. Have a good read of the article and then feel free to comment.

ANOTHER 3G MAST APPLICATION IN OUR AREA

Hutchinson 3G want to put in planning application for a 15m mast at the junction of Ewell Road and Kingsdowne Road, near the tree stump and the traffic lights.

The Informer, reporter Robert Cumber wishes to help high-light this issue to a wider audience. An Informer photographer is coming on 8th November at 9:15AM to the proposed Location.

• If you want to comment on the application, look on the Council website at www.kingston.gov.uk , find the Planning section and look in the Unitary Development Plan (UDP) and base your comments on what you find in there. The Council has to abide by what the UDP says
• Write to your Councillors to make your views known and reasons you have found in the UDP why they should reject the application.
• Contact the Surbiton Planner at RBK: Paul Bradbury 020 8547 5414. email: paul.bradbury@rbk.kingston.gov.uk
• Contact Hutchinson 3G: Gareth Coombes-Olney 01628 767803 or e-mail gareth.coombes-olney@three.co.uk
• Come to the meeting of the Neighbourhood Planning Committee when the application is being discussed.

Chip 'N Bin - the sequel

The Scrutiny Panel met on Tuesday and spent 3 hours of its 5 hour meeting scrutinising the proposed trial in Berrylands (see 'Chip 'N Bin - Tories intervene' below).

It emerged that the scheme had been in the planning stage since June and yet the Executive member says she knew nothing about it until 6th September. Conveniently this was the day after the Scrutiny Panel on the 5th. She continued to defend, with more doggedness than conviction, her contention that the trial had, even so, been discussed and approved on 5th September. None of us who was there can remember this.

Whatever - It is incredible that communication is so parlous between the Executive Member and her officers that they would not at least brief her on it at all stages of its development.

The Panel decided to refer the trial scheme to the next available meeting of the full Council, where all the elected members will be able to have their say.

Too many cameras?

We even have a car advert now which draws attention to the fact that 'you're caught on someone's camera 200 times every day' and advises you to buy a Peugeot to 'give them something to look at.'

This news item from Sky (http://uk.news.yahoo.com/02112006/140/britons-most-spied-world.html) is worth a read. Speed cameras, CCTV everywhere - are they just a cheap substitute for policemen? Do they really deter criminals or merely provide the authorities with a cover for their growing failure to tackle crime and disorder while infringing the personal freedom and privacy of citizens who are merely going about 'their lawful occasions'?

Madonna's inter-country adoption

See http://uk.news.yahoo.com/31102006/344/madonna-set-appear-newsnight.html

I'm just curious about this. I sat on the Kingston Adoption Panel for about 5 years and inter-country adoptions such as this were very carefully scrutinised by the Panel (mostly lay and independent people) and professional legal, medical and social advisors. Surely this must be a legal requirement and it should have happened in this case too.

Surbiton Hospital -latest

Meeting with CEO's of the Primary Care Trust and Kingston Hospital took place last night. It seems that Surbiton Hospital is not now expected to complete its refurbishment until 2010 or thereabouts, though plans for discussion will be around shortly. It seems the lead-in period gets longer each time I hear about it. We were talking 2008 at one time!

As reported yesterday, the CEO has got a new job elsewhere and will be leaving shortly. At the current turn over rate it will be the CEO after next who sees the job completed. Quite apart from the insane Government 'targetry' beloved of 'new' Labour, this constant changing of senior personnel can't help the cause of effective public services either - can it?

Hospitals

Seeing the CEO's of the Primary Care Trust and Kingston Hospital tonight. I note the CEO of the PCT is off to another job and has already got a successor. That will make (I believe) four holders of the post in about 6 years.

See www.pauljohnston.info for recent postings on the problems of Kingston Outpatients as seen through the eyes of one sufferer - this one! And feel free to add your own comments, either here or there.

‘CHIP ‘N BIN’ – TORIES INTERVENE

Conservative Leader and Scrutiny Panel Chair, Cllr Howard Jones, has delayed the implementation of the Berrylands waste collection trial so that the Scrutiny Panel can check the Lib Dem Administration’s plans before they are put into effect.

We Tories were incensed that no mention of the planned trial (due to start on 6th November) was made at the detailed Scrutiny of the Waste Disposal Strategy by the Council’s Scrutiny Panel on 5th September.

Plans for such a lengthy and far-reaching trial, due to start only two months after the meeting, must have been well advanced by September 5th – yet no mention of them was made to the Panel by any of those who gave evidence, including Cllr Liz Shard and Cllr Derek Osbourne.If the plans were genuinely thrown together in haste, there’s a real risk that they haven’t been carefully thought through and that the scheme will prove an expensive failure.

The Executive decided to proceed with the trial on 3rd October. The Council’s Constitution allows any 100 citizens or three Councillors or the Chair of the Scrutiny Panel to call in any such decision within five working days of the Executive minutes being published. If the decision is not ‘called-in’ it can be proceeded with without further ado.

Howard Jones called in the decision after the 3rd October minutes were published – only to be told that resources had already been committed. His reaction? ‘I was flabbergasted to be told that Cllr Shard had evidently authorized the commitment of resources, although she must have known what the Constitution said about the decision making and implementation process. In reality she must have committed resources ahead even of the Executive’s endorsement of the action she intended to take.’

Last week Howard Jones tried many times to resolve the situation by letter and email, agreeing to scrutinise the decision without holding up its implementation on condition that Cllrs Shard and Osbourne apologise for acting ultra vires and promise not to do so again in future. He also wanted assurances that the Executive would take on board Scrutiny Panel concerns about the implementation of the trial.

In my view these might range around the micro-chipping of bins, fortnightly collections of waste and provision of adequate bins for separating out recyclable materials.

Instead of apologising for the failure to follow the Constitution, Cllr. Shard embarked on a feeble defence of her actions, trying to suggest that the trial had been discussed on 5th September after all. Howard pointed out to her, ‘If you failed to take account of (our right to scrutiny) in your planning, that is your fault and so is the possible dislocation resulting from our decision to exercise it.’

The final position, reached on Friday 20th October, was that the full Scrutiny will go ahead at the next meeting of the Panel on Tuesday 31st October and that all work on the trial will cease until that has taken place.

The Lib Dems have needlessly created a mess as a result of their arrogance. We tried honestly to help them out of it. All they had to do was to say ‘Sorry’ – but that word seems not to be in their vocabulary.

The perils of a slight majority

The Lib Dems got an unexpected flavour of their true predicament in the new Council on Tuesday.

They assumed that they would be able to change the Constitution at will (as per usual) as they wished to send the all-party Grants and Awards Panel into oblivion, keeping all say over major grants to the Voluntary Sector in the exclusive hands of the exclusively Liberal Democrat Executive.

One of their members didn't turn up and another went home early. The arithmetic was thus Lib Dems 23; Conservatives 21; Labour 2. The Conservatives and Labour voted together to preserve all-party involvement. One Lib Dem had a sufficiently open mind and strong conscience to abstain. So the vote was For the proposal 22; against 23; abstentions 1. And the mayor didn't even get to use her casting vote.

Sorry England

I'm not one to comment over freely on football. Playing it from memory at age 35 (first time in 16 years) has left me with a badly damaged left knee which the wonderful NHS has failed conspicuously to do anything about.

However I do recall what I thought was the softest own goal of all time. It was in the 1978 'Home Internationals', Wales v Scotland, when a back pass to the Scottish keeper bobbled slowly and inexorably into the Scottish goal. Why? The fool of a fullback had failed to look where his keeper was, i.e. a good 12 metres to his right about 10 metres off his line.

People who weren't alive and/or kicking at the time may feel grateful to the two England players who contrived a near replay in giving Croatia a second goal last night.

The spirit of Sven lives on......

Straw and the Veil

Jack Straw has obviously touched on a raw nerve but he has also garnered quite a lot of support.

His comments about veiling of the face have ignited a debate about Integration vs Multiculturalism generally. The newspapers have quite a few articles on the subject today and there has been increasing concern about the growth of minority ghettoes in parts of Britain for some time.

What is remarkable about Straw is that he has been part of the government that has been most at pains to promote 'celebrating diversity' at the expense of integration for the last nine years - for four of them as Home Secretary - and he seems to see no connection between what he identifies as a problem and the policies of his own government.

I taught in a school in London which was very ethnically diverse but where the Christian religion formed a common ground among all the pupils. Attempts by some pupils to create little ethnic blocs very quickly foundered on this rock.

Don't get me wrong; I would not wish to impose a common religion on all people in Britain - that policy led to some very gruesome consequences in the past. But we must find a common ground as a society - a set of values around which all can unite to perform the same function as religion in my school. While acknowledging diversity as a fact of our national life we must not let it dominate in the way that it has. We must think more of the things that bind us together and less about our differences one from another.

Bournemouth 2006

Have spent the last few days in Bournemouth at the party conference. Quite a bit of the time was spent visiting the Accreditation Office. I received my pass on Sunday evening. Daphne didn't get hers until Tuesday morning. This put something of a restriction on our doings and enjoyment of the occasion. Someone has blundered BIG TIME!
This was David Cameron's first Conference as leader and there was a distinct air of difference from times past, and not only that we didn't get our passes on time this time. What's refreshing is that there is definitely more openness, a greater readiness to 'think outside the box' than at previous conferences. However some of us have been thinking outside the said receptacle for some time, taking a very pragmatic look at the problems our communities face and trying to devise ways to deal with them which are not constrained by ideological shibboleths.

The Tory Party has done this since Robert Peel was a lad. So in a sense Cameron is in an authentic Tory tradition, if this is what he is about.
But he must avoid picking up some new shibboleths of his own in his eagerness to ditch the perceived ones of the past. Let him emphasize protection of the environment, but not make a fetish of it. By all means be economically prudent, but also recognise that this government has tried tax and spend solutions to the problems of the public services to destruction and they haven't worked. Finally, Blair stands discredited as I always believed he ultimately would. Now above all is not the time to run up to him shouting 'me too!'

Travails of Tony 3? - no Gordon surely!!

The Labour Conference in Manchester is over. There were full and frank exchanges of views everywhere. So full and frank that people were even stabbing each other (figuratively) in the chest - and Mr. Wolfgang managed to go through the whole thing without being thrown out once or even arrested for being unkind to Margaret Becket.

There were two undoubted stars. First was Bill Clinton, one of the most persuasive tricksters ever to occupy the White House. I actually prefer George W. Bush - at least he's a WYSIWYG president. Bill wowed them as he's done before. This is becoming fashionable - to have American politicians at British party conferences - I think it started when Caspar Weinberger addresses a Tory fringe meeting in the late 1980s.

The other star was undoubtedly Tony Blair. Perhaps he felt lifted by the prospect of never having to do it again. He was certainly more relaxed than Gordon Brown and more fluent than Alan Johnson - and nicer than John Reid!

But listening to Gordon Brown I was reminded of the performances of David Davis at Blackpool last year and I'm not in the least surprised that the odds against him succeeding Blair are lengthening. This could really mark the start of the travails of Gordon. Stay tuned!

My personal award for least convincing ministerial speech goes to the former chairman of the Young Liberals, Liberal candidate for Putney and menace of cricket pitches, Peter Hain. This is for his pathetic attempt to portray devolution as a Unionist policy and his suggestion that Tory objections to Scottish and Welsh MPs being able to vote on English issues while they (like English MPs) can't vote on a whole raft of things that affect their own constituents in Scotland and Wales was 'creating second class MPs' and damaging the United Kingdom. Is the man so purblind that he really can't see that the damage has been done by the constitutional dog's breakfast his ham-fisted master has created?

Curbing Livingstone?

See link http://uk.news.yahoo.com/19092006/143/tories-remove-mayor-s-powers.html.

This is a very welcome policy announcement from Jacqui Lait. Livingstone has been doing under the new dispensation exactly what he did as GLC leader 20 years ago - trying to expand his own powers at the expense of the Boroughs and citizens in general.

He's now even beginning to behave like a sovereign power, making treaties with fellow Leftie Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. We'll be back to 'nuclear free zones' and all the other apparatus of the 'Loony Left' before long unless he is curbed - and the Greater London Assembly, hampered by the effects of PR, is in no state to curb him effectively.

I'd be prepared to consider going a stage further - and get rid of Blair's Mayor altogether.

Behaving ethically

Last night we had a training workshop on ethical behaviour. It was quite well attended and it was good that the lay members of the Standards Committee were there as well, though, considering that the Code of Conduct covers all who hold office under the Council, it would have been good to see more advisory members of Panels there.

The most entertaining part revolved around the question ethical standards and when thay apply and of 'personal' and 'prejudicial' interest.

It seems it was OK for Mayor Livingstone to indulge in anti-semitic remarks ('Hate Crime'?) when walking home tired and emotional after a function, because he wasn't acting in an official capacity at the time. Presumably the immigration 'judge' who employed an illegal immigrant as a cleaner (and was consoled by her other attributes) will be able to plead the same defence if anyone questions his fitness for his office.

The other fascinating discussion ranged around interest, especially in planning. One must enter a meeting with an open mind. If a firm you work for or have dealings with, or an organisation you belong to, has a planning application in you should declare a personal and prejudicial interest and leave the room. Fair enough. But what if a rival firm or organisation has an application in, the granting of which would/could give them a competitive advantage over yours, surely you would have a prejudicial interest in refusing the application. Apparently not.

We are told that the government is, like Fagin in 'Oliver' 'reviewing the situation'. So it should, and soon, because, although the intention behind the original legislation was undoubtedly good, there would appear to be glaring anomalies created by their failure to think it through properly in the first place.

Now where have I heard that before?

Sorry?

See http://uk.news.yahoo.com/16092006/325/pope-sorry-remarks.html.

The implication of the heading of this article isn't quite borne out by what follows. Benedict's regret is that his words have been distorted and their meaning misunderstood.

What we need now is for the people who have distorted and misunderstood them to come clean as to their reasons for doing so.

Pope Benedict and Islam

See news story http://uk.news.yahoo.com/15092006/325/muslims-deplore-pope-speech.html.

On Tuesday Pope Benedict gave a rather academic speech in Regensburg University, where he once lectured. In it he quoted a 14th century Byzantine Emperor's comments on the spread of Islam.
This is what he actually said in the course of a long lecture:-

"APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO MÜNCHEN, ALTÖTTING AND REGENSBURG (SEPTEMBER 9-14, 2006)
MEETING WITH THE REPRESENTATIVES OF SCIENCE
LECTURE OF THE HOLY FATHER
Aula Magna of the University of RegensburgTuesday, 12 September 2006

Faith, Reason and the UniversityMemories and Reflections

..................The university was (in the late 1950s when he started teaching there) also very proud of its two theological faculties...... It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the "whole" of the universitas scientiarum, even if not everyone could share the faith which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole. This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God. That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.

I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor. The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole - which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.
In the seventh conversation (*4V8,>4H - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably ...................................'

The Emperor could speak with knowledge of the gradual conquest of the Byzantine or Roman Empire in the East by Islamic forces over the previous seven or so centuries. Readers of this can judge the Pope's words for themselves and in the context in which they were given.

I a nutshell, what Pope Benedict is asking for is 'Jaw, jaw, not war, war' between religions and mutual tolerance and honesty. This should give offence to no-one, unless they are either (a) looking for something to be offended at or (b) not in agreement with the propositions that 'spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable' and that 'God is not pleased by blood - and acting unreasonably.'

The National Assembly of Pakistan and others please take note.

What's this then?

Someone was paid £40,000 to produce this, it would seem. There's money in 'back of an envelope' logo design. It looks better with the word Conservatives
in big, bold letters alongside it.

If we liked the oak tree as an emblem, why not something with clearly oak tree features, perhaps along the lines of the pleasing logo of the National Trust. And could we have something where the green didn't almost squash the blue into the ground?

It may be that younger people will like it, in which case all's well, I suppose. But, to my mind, it does not convey an impression of durability - of being 'built to last', to coin a phrase - and a Conservative logo surely should.

It's a matter of taste, I suppose. Perhaps I'm too Conservative. I wasn't too keen on the hand and torch logo at first. Conservativehome.com has a much better tree motiff in blue. Perhaps this 'tree' will grow on me over time. I hope it grows on the country.

Selection for the Ashes

I enjoyed reading Andrew Flintoff's autobiography - though I expect a few more volumes to be forthcoming ere long! Good luck to him as England Captain in Australia and to the rest of the team selected.

Two things bother me, though. Though Flintoff's captaincy in the Subcontinent last winter was impressive - much moreso than I had expected - he still seemed to perform less well in his own game than when not burdened with the additional strain of the captaincy. Andrew Strauss's batting has noticeably not suffered under the same pressure and, from a spectator's point of view, I would say that there's not much to choose between the two in the area of strategy and tactics.

The second concern is around match fitness. Flintoff, James Anderson and Ashley Giles have been out through injuries for a considerable period and it will take quite a while out in the middle for their reactions to quicken up sufficiently to meet and beat a fit Aussie side, especially on their home turf.

I am delighted they are taking Panesar and Mahmood. Monty will wow the crowds in Australia just as he has at home and Mahmood can be a lethal bowler if he keeps his radar under control and has shown no mean talent with the bat against Pakistan, particularly in the last ODI.

Travails of Tony II

So the TUC gave Tony Blair a hard time. Some like RMT leader Crow even held up placards saying 'Go NOW!' Others staged a walk out - they're good at that.

If the Brothers keep this up, Tony's popularity ratings will soar. Those who remember the 70s will shudder at the prospect of the over-mighty Unions appearing again. Those who don't remember the 70's would be well advised to read up on it or ask those who do - then they can join in the shuddering too.

The leader of the First Division Association seems to have tried to preach 'quiet calm deliberation'. For those who think this organisation has to do with football, let me put them right. The FDA represents senior Civil Servants - Sir Humphrey Appleby types - powerful, permanent administrators, supposedly impartial. So what exactly is the FDA doing at the TUC Congress anyway, being addressed exclusively by politicians of one party?

Cricket lovely cricket II

See 'Cricket lovely cricket' below.

What a good one-day series ended at Edgbaston yesterday, and how appropriate that in should be drawn 2-2.

How appropriate too that the Man of the Match yesterday should have been Sajid Mahmood, an Englishman of Pakistani origins. As he's a Lancastrian he is bound to appeal to myself.

But it is really very sad that he should be subject to abuse from Pakistan supporters in the crowd. They should rather look to him as an example of what can be achieved by a man of talent in Britain regardless of his ethnic or religious background and, in the words of the New Testament 'go thy way and do thou likewise'.

That butler again

See http://uk.news.yahoo.com/11092006/140/diana-s-ex-butler-hits-princes.html.

Am I the only person in UK who is tired of the outpourings of this self-appointed guardian of the 'sacred flame' of Diana's memory?

The lady aroused strong emotions both for and against. She died in not very edifying circumstances 9 years ago. I hope she has found peace in the loving arms of her Creator. It is surely time to let her sons get on with their lives, and for the media to stop pandering to the maudlin outpourings of a man who seems intent on using her memory to draw attention to himself.

Helen Mirren got it just about right when she said that the 'Diana maniacs' were like junkies deprived of their daily fix.

The travails of Tony

See link http://uk.news.yahoo.com/07092006/325/blair-quit-year.html.

I could almost bring myself to feel sorry for Blair. His premiership is ending in a way that reinforces Enoch Powell's jeremiad about 'all political careers ending in tragedy'.

Don't get me wrong. In my book he's the worst PM this country has had in 100 years, and he has had this distinction ever since May 1997 - indeed he had it before he ever took office. He has always been more interested in image than substance and such a person is bound to be seen through sooner or later.

The wonder is that so many were taken in for so long, both in Britain and overseas, especially in my much loved USA. I can only assume that the 'commentariat' here had invested so much emotional capital in the overthrow of Thatcherism and its Major offshoot that they were prepared to support almost anyone who was (a) presentable and (b) visibly not connected with either. Blair at first was a blank screen onto which they could project all their own desires and imagine to themselves that he felt like they did. He was at pains to foster and sustain this illusion throughout.

Americans saw in him the ultimate 'Friend of Bill' who was able with astonishing ease to become the faithful shadow of George W. Bush. That this inconsistency spoke volumes about his attitude to politics was ignored as he made all the right sounds about 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Yet look at the substance. He has engaged in more foreign adventures requiring the commitment of troops than any PM since WW2. At the same time he has presided over the shrinkage in real terms of the Defence budget, putting the same forces under massive strain facing mortal danger with antiquated or inadequate equipment - Result ? increasing and avoidable casualties.

Blair claims to support the family as an institution. Evidence? He has 4 children. Yet the incidence of state interference in family life is on a scale never seen before, while we have daily examples of escalating violence being perpetrated by youngsters in primary school. They are often aware of their 'human rights' but have no conception of their responsibility to respect others' rights. Blair calls for 'a respect agenda' but his government's social policy seems designed to prevent the imposition of 'respect' by parents or teachers upon youngsters. Instead it sees salvation in another massive, costly and vastly intrusive Children's Index database and an Orwellian system of cameras.

How's that lot to be going on with - and I haven't mentioned the 'Open Door' and 'multiculturalism' yet

Scrutiny on Waste Management

We had the third meeting of the new Scrutiny Panel this evening. It was the longest so far but we gave the future of waste management in the Borough a very thorough airing, hearing nine separate witness statements on the situation as it has evolved over the last four years and the way the Administration intends it to develop in the future.

It would appear that the statistics on recycling, which purport to show a leap from about 18% to just under 24 % in a little over a year are a little less flattering than was thought as the basis of calculation was not the same each time. We have been comparing apples with pears, so to speak.

The future seems to centre around a partnership with three other London Boroughs (Merton, Sutton and Croydon) which will handle the problem of disposal in new ways as opportunities and permissions for landfill diminish. This will undoubtedly involve a largescale capital outlay - rather more than the theatre has cost - so far!

The contribution from Friends of the Earth was impressive, especially in pointing out what might be done (or have been done already) to minimise waste in the first place. It was pointed out that many small local businesses were only too willing to help, especially those which mend things like shoes and electrical appliances etc.

The constitution of the partnership of Boroughs and negotiation of new and probably very long term contracts will be a legthy process which we shall monitor continually over the next 2 years. It was a long meeting but I think one that went well as the Panel (the Conservative side anyway) got its teeth into the meat of the problem. The Lib Dems were a bit disappointing; they seemed a bit touchy and defensive over the Administration's record and didn't really make much of a contribution over the plans for the future - perhaps they'd already done so in their private Group meeting.

Cricket, lovely cricket........

See link http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21082006/323/pakistan-cricket-legends-slam-mini-hitler-umpire.html.

I've done a fair bit of umpiring in my time both as a schoolteacher in London and Bristol and at Club First Division and Schoolboy County Cricket levels. So I've got a lot of sympathy for Messrs Hair and Doctrose and rather less for the petulant attitude of the Pakistan team and less still for what I see as the attempts to excuse their petulance by commentators who ought to know better.

I don't know whether the ball was tampered with or not. Nor do Botham, Hussain et al. It will be for an ICC investigation to determine whether it was or no. The umpires on the field and with the thing in their hands evidently thought it had been, so they changed it and the game continued for over an hour thereafter. The real issue is not, then, the decision on this. The real issue is that, after an hour or more off the field for bad light and the tea interval, the Pakistan team decided, for reasons best known to themselves, not to resume play when invited to do so - twice, as it happens.

If they felt they needed to launch a protest they had bags of time to do it during the time off the field. They aren't an Under 12 School XI. They are experienced, professional cricketers and they know (or should know) the Laws and that the Umpires have no choice but to act in accordance with them. Once a decision has been made and the game has resumed under the new circumstances created by that decision, the decision cannot be revoked. For instance, once a batsman has been given out and a new one has taken his place, the original one cannot be put in again if someone (even the umpire himself) convinces the umpire that he made a mistake in giving him out in the first place. To use Blair's expression 'you move on' and the original decision has to stand.

The Laws, accepted the world over, provide that, when resuming after an interval the same procedure applies as at the start of play - the umpires check the time and call 'play'. If there's no-one to bowl, or no batsman has appeared, the match will be deemed by the umpires to have been forfeited by the absent side. There's no provision for a side not appearing because it feels hurt by a decision made 2 hours earlier. Pakistan know that fine well - so do all those commentators on TV and in the press who are happy to make out that it's all Mr. Hair's fault, or the ICC's fault... or anybody's fault......except Pakistan's.

It's a dreadful way for any match to end, but the cause of cricket will not be well served by the kind of cringe that we've been getting from commentators.

......On the subject of building projects

See link http://uk.news.yahoo.com/01082006/325/wembley-fa-cup-final-2008.html.

This is worrying. Not very long ago they were confidently assuring us that the 2006 Cup Final would be played at Wembley. Now even 2007 seems out of the question. It's of a piece with the Scottish Parliament and numerous other projects - horrendously late and seriously over-budget. One wonders how deep is the involvement of this, the most incompetent government this coutry has ever had, bar none!

Let's hope that Seb Coe and his team can do a better job on the 2012 Olympics........

Amateur theatricals

The big political issue since the local election in May has raged around the Kingston Theatre.

The Lib Dems, having scarcely mentioned the topic in their election material only three months ago, decided that the deal whereby GMH ( owned by local resident Mr. Auchi) was to put up the remaining £3.4 million to fit out the theatre was no go. Mr. A's advisers were trying to impose over-onerous conditions. When exactly the Administration members knew this was going to be the case remains a matter of some doubt, but what emerged a very short time after the election was that they had decided that the Council would find the necessary funds itself from wherever. Our Scrutiny Panel, now Conservative dominated, called in the Executive's decision and found that it had not fulfilled its fiduciary duty to the CT payers in taking on a new commitment with budgetary implications which was risky and for which there was no electoral mandate. The decision was referred back to them, they having already decided on a reference to full Council. The full Council debate showed in a recorded vote a united front in favour of the spending proposal by all the Lib Dem councillors and against it by all the Conservative and Labour ones.

I hope that the theatre will now produce the revenues which will enable it to fund its own running costs and to meet the other financial obligations which have been taken on. I am sincere in hoping this, but I am also sincere in having some doubts about the prospect of this and fears that the theatre will find itself looking to the CT payers to bail it out of financial difficulties in the future ad infinitum. I just can't help recalling that we were told in 1998 that we could have this theatre without any financial commitment of public funds by the Council and that this proved an all-too-forlorn hope. Supporters point to a newspaper article last year which said that the theatre would bring £11million a year into the Borough. I read the article and looked in vain for convincing evidence in support of this assertion.

We shall see what we shall see.

Now the dust has settled.............

Having taken on the job of agent for all 48 of our candidates at the Kingston Borough election I inevitably found myself with a pretty full time job for a month getting their election expense returns completed, signed and returned. At the same time I have been working to update my knowledge of matters environmental to fit my new role as shadow to the Executive member for Environment and Sustainability. This means, among other things, listening to the people she doesn't listen to as well as the ones she does. We are to start a major scrutny of the waste management programme next month, so quite a bit of August will be taken up with getting that up and running.

Waste strategy

See http://uk.news.yahoo.com/13062006/140/rubbish-bag-tax-boost-recycling.html

This is an interesting idea but not a new one. I discussed it with officers when in our minority Administration in 2001.

The problem is, does one charge by bag or bin-load or by weight of rubbish? And what would be the administrative costs of such a scheme? To weigh each household's individual waste output each week or however often would require a revolution in the way of working of our waste contractor, SITA. In my street the common practice is for waste bags to be collected in a heap ready for rapid loading onto refuse vehicles with no regard being paid to the house of origin. Most blocks of flats - there are many in my ward and their number increases annually - use communal 'paladin' waste bins which sometimes accumulate rubbish block by block via a chute. Again a charge for individual householders would be very difficult to administer fairly.

If the Government is interested in pursuing this idea it will need to tackle these problems and others to make it worthwhile for refuse collection agencies to take it up.

The wettest drought ever?

See http://uk.news.yahoo.com/hot/w/water-crisis.html for background info.

As one who vividly remembers the Great Drought of 1976 I thought I detected symptoms of something similar this year.

I remember that January and February as being very dry. On January 6th Chew Valley Lake (the biggest reservoir to our then home in Keynsham) was down to levels more appropriate to August. One could even see the old bridge in the village which had flooded when the River Chew was dammed to create the lake reservoir. This followed on a hot, dry summer in 1975.

January and February were very dry here this year and hosepipe bans were introduced in April. A repeat of '76 was threatened (or promised - depending on one's point of view).

Here the similarities have ended abruptly. By this stage in 1976 we were experiencing a heatwave which lasted until the end of August. As I write this on 21st May the wind is howling outside, it is cold for the time of year and it is raining heavily for the 5th day in succession, we lost an ash tree to the storm at the side of our house on Friday and the Kingston Guardian wanted to talk to me that same day about flooding in Browns Road. Some drought!!

New ASB initiative

See http://uk.news.yahoo.com/15052006/140/dial-101-new-non-emergency-number.html

This move by some police forces to create a new emergency number with a lesser status than 999 could be a good move. Some of my constituents, confronted by anti-social behaviour, seem reluctant to contact the police about it. Sometimes it's because they just can't find the non-emergency number they need. So this should be a reassuring move.
However, it will need to be backed up by resources and action if it is to help vulnerable citizens feel there is protection they can call upon when they feel threatened. When we see things like Surbiton Police Station not being manned full time and Mew Malden Station sold to Witherspoons for a new pub and no Police desk in the new Community Centre for Hook and Chessington, there's bound to be a suspicion that this may be an 'eye-catching initiative' in the best Blairite tradition and little more. We wait in hope............

Election result

For full details of the election results see www.kingston.gov.uk. You will notice that The Conservatives made 6 net gains from the Liberal Democrats and they gained 1 seat from Labour. The Liberal Democrats now have an overall majority of 2 seats, whereas previously they had 12. The biggest swing of the night was in Chessington North and Hook, where the Conservatives achieved a 23% swing against the Liberal Democrats, reducing their majority from over 1100 to a mere 18. Across the Borough the Lib Dem administration is supported by a few thousand fewer people than voted for the Conservative opposition - what price proportional representation now?
One ward stands out like a sore thumb as uncharacteristic of the the rest of Kingston. That is Berrylands, where the Lib Dems contrived a dramatic increase in their vote to unseat our Leader, Kevin Davis. Edward Davey MP seems to have involved himself far more than usual in the campaign, though I don't remember deeing him at the count of votes. There were recounts in Berrylands, Canbury, Norbiton, Old Malden and Alexandra wards.
In my ward of Surbiton Hill the Greens beat Labour into 4th place and my majority over the nearest Lib Dem rose from 66 in 2002 to 552 this time around, rather exceeding my hopes and expectations. I am sure my Anonymous correspondent will be characteristically generous in his congratulations!

Postal voting

See link http://uk.news.yahoo.com/26042006/140/woman-arrested-election-fraud.html

We should all be seriously concerned about this.

Although the article above refers to postal vote malpractice in Birmingham, where it was famously detected 2 years ago, I feel the prevalence of postal voting nowadays is an open invitation to electoral malpractice by politicians on a scale not seen since the mid-19th century. My own Borough, Kingston upon Thames, now has 15,515 people entitled to vote by post, whereas only a few years ago the number would have been measured in hundreds.

This dramatic change is because anyone can now have a postal vote on demand, whereas previously one had to be able to give a reason why one couldn't attend the polling station in person. If the reason was illness, the application had to be countersigned by a doctor. Other reasons may have been the nature of one's employment or, in my case in 1983 and 1987, being a candidate at the General Election in a constituency far from home, or having moved to another part of the country. In the last case no postal vote was allowed for local government elections.

Nowadays innumerable ballot papers are issued to people who are dead or have left the address to which the paper is sent or just not bothered about voting or basically ignorant of the system. Such papers are an easy prey for activists locally who might collect them and mark them according to their own wishes.

Someone may have asked for a postal vote in your name to be sent to an address other than yours. You might not find out until you turn up at the polling station - and if you stay away from it, you won't find out at all. And don't say it doesn't happen here. In Birmingham it was proved to have happened in 2004 on something approaching an industrial scale - a system that would 'disgrace a banana republic', as the Judge remarked at the trial.

Can't the electoral officers in our Town Hall check to see that all the papers returned are 'in order'? In theory they do and my experience is that they are conscientious and diligent people - certainly in Kingston they are - but they are also very few and are now dealing with 10 or more times as many postal ballots as they were 10 years ago, but with the same number of staff. So do the maths yourself.

The perpetrators in one Birmingham ward were caught and punished, but they were the tip of the iceberg. There's a serious threat to the integrity of our elections going on here and Blair and Prescott are doing nothing about it. I wonder why.

Out of FOCUS II

At last the Lib Dems have put some 'literature' through my door. Previously I have had to comment only on what was delivered elsewhere.

The latest effort is called the 'Surrey Express'. They must think people are simpletons and believe that this is a bona fide newspaper commenting objectively in a 'FREE Local Election Special' (sic) - as though people would otherwise have to pay for it and would willingly do so.

Interestingly they do admit that there is a 'neck and neck race' for control of the Borough. Considering they are defending an overall majority of 12 and currently have twice as many councillors as the Tories and 10-times the number of Labour, this is quite an astonishing admission of how vulnerable their deplorable administration of the Borough has made them.

Again they try to change the subject and divert attention from their failures into a campaign for a 'fair deal for Kingston'. They completely fail to note that the funding imbalances to which they draw attention are nothing new. Outer London Boroughs have been significantly worse funded by central government since the present London Local Government set-up was established in 1963. They therefore emphatically do not explain why a party with such overwhelming power as they have had has so signally failed to get a grip on the Borough's finances.

We have also further attempts to smear the Conservative Minority administration between 1998 and 2002. They don't admit that it was a minority administration and that THEY, year on year, kept it in being. This time they produce some figures about responsibility allowances paid to our Leaders during that time. What they don't say is how much was paid in responsibility allwances to Derek Osbourne and Roger Hayes (their leaders) during the same period. Not much less actually. Nor do they point out that from 2000 onwards their members chaired the Overview Panels, one being Labour, and were paid responsibility allowances at the same rate as Cabinet members.

But most risible of all is a call from the ineffable Edward Davey MP to 're-elect a Council that's kept its promises.' What about its promise not to sink any more public money into the Theatre project - broken shamelessly last year to the tune of £3,000,000 or £250,000 a year in interest alone? All this without ever once allowing the elected representatives of the Council Tax payers a single opportunity to debate the issue in the open in full Council.

Mr. Davey should be ashamed of himself for putting his name to such hypocritical nonsense as this.

Progress Report

For our latest In Touch see www.ksca.org.uk.
We've been canvassing some of our weaker areas coupled with a one or two stronger ones. The results are most encouraging. Nick Kilby was positively ecstatic about the response in one of the former Tolworth West roads canvassed last Saturday morning. Last evening's team also had a great response in a formerly uncanvassed road where the Lib Dem rejection of massively supported petitions on local road closures was particularly resented.
Am particularly delighted that we have carried our point on Arlington Road and that it is going to get a safer pavement sooner rather than later. I'm sure the officers of RBK hadn't looked at it before Jane and I went down there and, with the help of residents, made a fuss in Committee. One up for local representation!
So far we have not seen or heard anything from the opposition apart from a rather scrappy leaflet from the Greens some weeks ago and a couple of responses to matters on this blog from an out of touch Lib Dem (I presume) called 'Anonymous'.

Running scared

Could have been called 'Out of FOCUS II'.

With 3 weeks to go to the Borough elections the Lib Dems have already got nasty and personal. They usually wait until much later. This is distributed in Berrylands ward and is a grotesque attack on our Group Leader Kevin Davis. This from the same group of people who credited Edward Davey with presenting a petition against a phone mast which I actually presented in full Council before 30 of their Councillors! There's much play on what happened when the Tories 'ran' the Council - that famous myth (see http://pauljohnston.blogspot.com/2006/03/deceitful-voice.html) .

They are obviously rattled and are running scared!

Out of FOCUS

One annoying and less than engaging characteristic of the Lib Dems is their pretence that elections are about something that they aren't about at all.
In 1994 I fought St. Mark's Ward. It had and still has a large student population. Students were annoyed at the time at the Major government's replacement of student grants with a system of repayable loans. The Lib Dems put out FOCUS leaflets encouraging the students to vote Lib Dem to 'send a message to Major' that grants should be restored and the loan scheme be scrapped. The students obliged by voting for the Lib Dems who won the ward and the Borough. Result? The loan scheme wasn't scrapped. It's still there and has been made more arduous for students by Blair's imposition of tuition fees which will soon be increased by 'top-up' fees. Of course the Council in Kingston has not and never has had any say whatever over such matters and the Liberal Democrats knew that all along.
Now they're at it again. 'Axe the Tax' they say. They're embarrassed by their failure to tackle Council spending and the resultant hike in Council Tax to the point where Kingston residents are paying the highest Council Tax in London. So their FOCUS leaflets are now encouraging voters to vote for them again to abolish the Council Tax altogether. But again this is blatant deception. They know that Kingston Council has no control whatever over the system of financing local government and that Blair is as unlikely to be influenced by the return of a Lib Dem Council in Kingston as Major was in 1994. But they also know that they have had power over the level of the Tax in Kingston since 2002 - and that's what the election is really about.
In fact they encouraged us to vote Edward Davey into Parliament to 'axe the tax' a year ago. He got in but the tax is still there.
There is a desperate need now for politicians at all levels to tell the truth as they see it if respect is to be restored for those in public life. I wish the Lib Dems would show that they understand this too.

Fruitcakes

I have actually very little time for UKIP. Since 1997 its principal objective seems to have been the prevention of Conservative victory in parliamentary and European elections. Its interventions have helped Labour and the Liberal Democrats by splitting off enough Conservative votes to enable candidates from those two parties - often, in fact usually, far more enthusiastic about the EU and all its works than the defeated Tory candidate - to be elected on a minority vote. That is how Edward Davey came to be our MP in Kingston & Surbiton by 56 votes in 1997. In 2004 they bit deeply into our vote in the European election and lost us, in London, an excellent MEP in the person of Richard Balfe. Last May they almost certainly did contribute to the loss of or failure to gain about 27 seats in Parliament. None of this has advanced by one inch the stated UKIP claim of bringing about the separation of the UK from the EU. UKIP actually helps the victory of the Euro-enthusiast left and thereby achieves precisely the opposite of its stated aim. I cannot believe that its leaders are unaware of this.

So do I agree with David Cameron's remarks about 'fruitcakes' or Michael Howard's earlier comments about 'political gadflies'?

No. Both were ill-judged and did UKIP more good than harm, partly by gratuitously boosting their importance at a time when they were hardly even registering on the national political consciousness. Anyone who has studied the political history of contemporary Britain must be aware that such name-calling can severely backfire on the people who do it. Who was the Labour minister in Attlee's post-war government who rashly referred to the Tories as 'vermin' - only to see a number of Tory MPs proudly sporting badges with 'VERMIN' written on them

Whatever one might think of the leaders, the ordinary folk who vote for their candidates do so for the most part from a sincerely held conviction that the EU lies at the heart of much that distresses them about contemporary Britain, such as our seeming impotence in the face of criminality and the erosion of our civil liberties, the collapse of discipline in schools and families and all that is involved in political correctness. These are not fruitcakes or gadflies. They are decent people who have traditionally looked to the Conservative Party as their natural home.

If we're going to win power, we want them back - and we must realise that there is no contradiction between getting them back and earning the support of the 'middle ground' in British politics. Anyone who thinks there is is just plain wrong.

Campaign launched

We had a great pre-campaign dinner in Surbiton last night, mainly for candidates and friends in the Kingston and Surbiton constituency. The largest dining room in the building in Surbiton Crescent was packed. We had warm-up speeches from Kevin Davis, our Leader, and Tony Arbour of Richmond borough and the GLA. Our main speaker, Steve Norris, was unable to make it for family reasons, but his place was filled extremely well by our newest Member of the European Parliament, Syed Kamall. His main theme on the Conservatives as a party of achievement and opportunity was a good reminder to us all of why we are in politics - to help people achieve things for themselves and their communities. Let's hope that in our own small way in Kingston we can do do this in the next four years.

Client state?

Two emails have reached me in the last two days which put the finger on one of the biggest problems currently strangling enterprise and efficient local and national government in the UK. I refer to the bloated state of the public sector.
We know that more than half the jobs 'created' under 'New' Labour since 1997 have been in the public sector and many of them administrative, not delivering services, not wealth creating and often of highly doubtful utility in growth areas such as the various inspectorates set up to monitor the achievement of Brown's 'targets' - the modern version of Stalin's five year plans and just as distorting of effort as they were. And of course we have the ones tackling various 'problems', whose whole career structure depends upon ensuring that the 'problems' should never be solved but that ever more 'problem' areas should be identified requiring ever more solvers........and so on ad infinitum.
The latest local government enormity I heard about in the emails, one of which came from the Sustainability Officer(sic) of the Council was of the existence of a Council Travel Awareness Officer, supposedly encouraging bus travel and discouraging car use.
So all you people paying the highest Council Tax in London and/or being means tested for the cost of domiciliary care can rest easy in the knowledge that your Liberal Democrat Council is making good use of your money on such schemes and personnel as this.

Private Sector Housing Forum

This is intended as an interface between the Council and private sector housing providers. It met last night.
Subjects for discussion included the new Tenancy Deposit Scheme and the Local Housing Allowance.
The TDP is supposed to come into force on 6th April, but not all the Regulations are as yet in place, so there is some confusion as to how it will operate and how landlords and tenants are all to be informed about it. Landlords' organizations such as the National Landlords' Association will do sterling work, but there are reckoned to be 750,000 landlords in Britain, the vast majority of whom belong to no organization at all.
The LHA would be funny if it were not so tragic. The ostensible intention of the Government is to make 'vulnerable' households (means in this context families in receipt of Housing Benefit) more financially responsible by paying the benefit to them instead of, as with current Housing Benefit, direct to the landlord (thus avoiding rent arrears and consequent eviction). The LHA is also differently calculated, using a formula (as I understand it) based on family size>no. of rooms required x median cost of renting said number in the local housing market. One flaw is that half the available accommodation will cost more than the median and in many cases much more. Families will be free to rent fewer rooms than the family size formula indicates they should have. This might mean they get accommodation for less than their assessed LHA. They will be free to pocket the difference.
All of this seems to me to be a recipe for

• rent arrears, to avoid which
• landlords will be less than ever inclined in high demand areas like Kingston to rent accommodation to people on benefits, while
• such people will be encouraged to go into overcrowded accommodation as well.

The government has been trialling the scheme in half a dozen 'pathfinder' (sic) areas - not Kingston. It has produced a glossy booklet finding that such prognostications as the above are not justified, though, reading between the lines, there is an element of back-pedalling. Times for introduction have been lengthened and there are signs of nibbling at the edges of the scheme. But basically the Government is desperately trying to persuade itself that the scheme is good and well thought out. It didn't succeed last night in convincing anybody else, except, perhaps, the one Labour councillor present........

Davey gets a new job........

Sir Menzies Campbell, having been elected Leader of the Liberal Democrats, has moved our local MP, Mr. Edward Davey, from his Education portfolio to the front bench spokesmanship on the Department of Trade and Industry. Just a few months ago the Liberal Democrats were wanting to abolish this Department outright.
So is Sir Menzies' move a promotion - or a demotion - for Mr. Davey?
Time will tell.

What a waste...........

This photo shows me, as Cabinet Secretary for Environment four years ago, surrounded by some of the 'fridge mountain' created by the EU's directive on CFCs and (moreso) by DEFRA's tardy and totally inadequate response to it.

In Kingston, thanks to some excellent work by the Environment Contracts manager, we were able to be just about the first local authority to make adequate arrangements to cope with the disposal problems the Directive created. Our success showed that 'where there's a will, there's a way'.

By the time I left office in 2002 we had nearly finished work on a complete waste management strategy, on which an all-party group of councillors had been working for years, with extensive meetings that seemed to make little tangible progress. After I took on the portfolio, the lead officer and I pushed things forward considerably by devoting whole afternoons to the issues involved so as to cut down the time spent in the working party. The whole thing was nearly complete by March 2002. Then we had a change to single party Lib Dem control and the strategy document seemed to disappear from view, the final version not appearing until 2004/5. One thing that emerges from this is that the volume of waste recycled in the Borough appears to be less now than 4 years ago. We had added tins, plastic bottles and textiles to the paper recycling scheme we inherited from the Lib Dems and they have since replaced textiles with glass.

Even so we are not recycling anything like enough and it's costing us about £1m in landfill tax each year. That's why we proposed at Budget Council to introduce a weekly recycling collection, the cost of which would be substantially offset by savings of landfill tax by encouraging people to recycle more and put less in the dustbin. The idea was - to coin a phrase - rubbished by the Lib Dems. I hope they might change their minds - or Kingstonians might change them for them.

The A3 Bus Gate

Visited the A3 bus gate referred to on www.pauljohnston.info with Priyen Patel our researcher. We met Paul Saunders and other residents. Paul has a very impressive archive with photos and press articles from years back detailing the dangers posed by this bus gate when it was opn in the past. Priyen and I took some of our own while we were there. We witnessed a near concertina collision as a couple of cars had to brake sharply as a bus slowed dramatically to get through the gate. The approach to the gate is obscured by a pedestrian footbridge and any driver behind a bus would believe themselves to be on a 50mph (80kph) 6 lane dual carriageway and would not expect a bus to take a sudden lurch to the left, apparently through the crash barrier that runs along the full length of the road.

We observed buses going down the slip road, completely occupying an advisory cycle lane. Any cyclist using it would have no chance against an oncoming bus. The only 'safe' place for cyclists is, thus, the footway.

One bus overshot the gate completely (it was going far to fast to make the turn) and carried on down the A3. It still managed to stop at the same stop it would have used if it had used the gate.

This is a piece of arrogance by TfL who refuse to listen to the people who know. My hope is that someone doesn't end up paying for it with a limb or even their life.

Budget Council - the Outcome

It was a long Budget Council, reminiscent of the days of 'no overall control' - surprising when there's an Administration with an overall majority of 12! At the end of the Leader's speech we finally got to see what the Lib Dems had been cooking up. Instead of a 4.7% council tax hike, they are going for a 3.59% rise financed largely by raiding the Reserves to the tune of £800k, regardless of the Director of Finance's strictures against this in paras 59-62 of his Report to Executive. There are some lame and uncosted proposals for raising extra money in the Leader's motion, but essentially no fundamental issues are tackled and this was a 'vote now pay later' Budget.
We Conservatives put forward a reasoned and costed amendment which would have produced a CT increase of just under 2% and introduced a weekly recycling collection instead of the present fortnightly one. This has to be done if we are serious about increasing the amount of recycled materials from households. It's just too easy at the moment for householders to put tins etc in the dustbin rather than have them hanging about the house for up to a fortnight.
Our proposal did not find favour with the Exec Member for Environment, partly, one thinks, because her side hadn't proposed it. If such a scheme works it would significantly affect the recycling rate and significantly reduce our liability to pay Landfill Tax, currently just under £1m per annum.

The Ming Emperor

The Lib Dems have now ditched troubled but youthful Charles Kennedy and replaced him by veteran Sir Menzies ('Ming') Campbell. http://uk.news.yahoo.com/02032006/325/campbell-named-liberal-democrat-leader.html.
Before I'm accused of ageism I must say that I've been feeling a bit upset since Michael Howard went that all the party leaders were younger than me. In DC's case considerably so. So well done the Lib Dems for giving us one leader again who is a War Baby and my senior by at least 3 years.
Of course you're as old as you feel and I'm taking time to get accustomed to the fact that people don't think of me as 'young Johnston' any more. But Ming has a bit of an air of Alec Douglas-Home about him - basically decent, a cultivated Scot, quite an expert on foreign affairs. Sir Alec was one of the nicest men I ever met in politics but he wasn't an election winner. I don't think Ming will be either. Only time will tell whether he's as nice as Sir Alec.
There is, though, one important question both the Lib Dems and Labour will have to face (assuming Brown succeeds Blair): in post Devolution Britain, can a Scottish MP be a credible Prime Minister?

Budget Council

Tonight should see the culmination of a rather bizarre process. The Administration will finally reveal its Budget proposals for the coming year. For some reason the budget process this year has been different from all the previous years I have been on the Council.

• Because of delays Overview Panels were not able to comment on the draft policy budget as it concerned them, so members specialising in areas of Council activity have had no chance until today to discuss in public the Administration's proposals. There must have been discussions inside the Lib Dem group, one feels, but the rest of us (and the public) don't know what goes on there.
• Overview Panel chairs did get to attend a meeting of the Community Leadership and Resources OP (see My Other Blog at www.pauljohnston.info) but time was necessarily restricted and only three Executive members turned up. Where were the other four?

Whatever, it looks as though we may well end up with the largest rise and the highest Council Tax in London. Doubtless some of the Lib Dem bloggers will find a way of presenting this as a cut. We shall see!

Bird Sanctuary in Oakhill

Went with Janet Bowen-Hitchings, Christina Gardiner, Marie-Claire Edwards and other officers to look at the bird sanctuary and open ground in Oakhill yesterday morning. The actual bird sanctuary at the top of the slope is protected by a formidable pallisade fence but the area below is in grave danger of becoming overgrown with brambles, elder etc and we might lose some of the specimen trees there if we're not careful. Some local residents have also complained about nefarious activities (unspecified) by individuals being carried out there.

The outcome of our deliberations was that we should carry out a species audit of the 'public' area with a view to an ecologically sensitive management programme, starting probably in 2007, after consultation with nearby residents. This will involve clearing some of the undergrowth and crown-lifting some of the trees so as to let more light in. The bird sanctuary should be left very largely alone.

Deceitful 'Voice'

Have received a Lib Dem publication calling itself the 'Voice'. It abuses 'statistics' in a way which calls to mind the saying about 'lies and damned lies'.

• The Lib Dems came to office and power in 2002 with the biggest majority anyone has had since 1982 at least (LD 30 C 15 Lab 3). Since then the Council staff have increased from 3750 to 4518 - 500 of that increase in the past year alone. They are NOT all extra teachers and care assistants by any means.
• The Band D Council Tax has, in the same time, soared from £1060 to £1471 - yet the 'Voice' claims the Lib Dems have kept it down.

They draw grotesquely distorted comparisons between the 'brave new world' they would like us to believe we live in now and the previous period of Tory 'control'.

• From 1998-2002, when the Conservatives formed a minority administration in a Council of 21 Conservatives (from 2001 18 Cons and 3 Independents) 19 Liberal Democrats and 10 Labour.
• The Lib Dems and Labour refused to form a coalition and even when the Lib Dems became the largest party in the summer of 2001 they refused to take office.
• The Lib Dems and Labour imposed their own choice of Mayor in 2000 and 2001 and controlled the Overview Panels.
• The budgets of 2000 and 2002 were most emphatically theirs not the Tories'.
• They exercised 'power without responsibility and were keen to keep it that way.

The Tories have not actually controlled Kingston since 1994, and then only by the Mayor's casting vote between 1990 and 1994.

The voters of Kingston gave the Lib Dems an unparallelled opportunity in 2002 and they have done remarkably little with it.........hence the 'Voice's' rather strangled, desperate distortion of the past and the present. Sad, really.

Cameron sets out his stall

Much clamour today about the publication of David Cameron's fundamental statement of principles, see www.conservatives.com for full details.

Newsnight was getting excited last night about 'Clause 4 moments', 'ditching Thatcherism' etc. and hoping for an instant thunderbolt from the Iron Lady herself, or at least from the High Priest of the Thatcher cult, Lord Norman Tebbit. As DC himself has said, 'we don't have a Clause 4'. The Tory party is also very adaptable. Maybe it is time to redress the balance a little as we have always done from the time of Robert Peel onwards.

Only time will tell whether this latest offering will come to rank alongside the 'Tamworth Manifesto'. Personally I see it as being more in the genre of 'Putting Britain Right Ahead' produced in not dissimilar circumstances by Edward Heath and friends in 1965 (when I was chairman of Lancaster Young Conservatives.) I hope that DC has studied the subsequent history of Edward Heath - and learnt from it.

Surbiton Hospital - the shape of things to come?

The reaction to the PCT plans for the future of Surbiton Hospital, announced at their Board meeting on 30th September last year and further elaborated at a public session on 11th November, seems to have persuaded the members that the Surbiton Hospital site MUST have a future as a healthcare facility for Surbiton, and nothing else.

This point was made by me on 30/9 and by both myself and Nick Kilby on 11th November. I know that Ed Davey MP agrees with our stance, though sadly he was at neither meeting and his Lib Dem councillor colleagues attended only the second one.

Surbiton Conservatives, along with organisations like the Southborough Residents' Association, are developing thoughts about the shape of things to come on the site.

Here are a few thoughts of my own to be going on with.

Essentially I feel we need to look to rebuild as the old 1930s buildings are not really fit for purpose. We need to keep the spacious grounds around the built area, complete with trees etc. It would be good to relocate the three doctors' practices now bursting out of the Oakhill Health centre in less crowded conditions there. As the PCT itself is reducing its admin staff to save costs (lesson here for RBK??) the remainder might move out of their expensive accommodation on Hollyfield Road to a block on the hospital site. There must be outpatient facilities such as x-ray, minor surgery and physiotherapy - why not a gym to extend the physio work? And I believe we must get back the inpatient beds that have always been at Surbiton.

Something really good for Surbiton can come out of what might easily have been a repeat of the fate of the Eye Hospital. But we all need to get involved as a community in the plans for the future.

I have moved

I began blogging on readmyday.co.uk/PaulJohnston or at www.pauljohnston.info , where earlier postings can be seen. Readers can respond either there or here. However I have decided to follow my leader Kevin Davis onto this site as of today.