The Last Post

Although I have no intention of ceasing blogging (unless any future employment precludes it), this particular blog will need to close for the simple reason that its address (URL) includes "medwaycouncillor" which is no longer correct.

Therefore I shall post no more here (apart from in response to comments on old posts) but instead am starting afresh on a new 'blog HERE. I shall leave this 'blog in a "closed" state so that anyone finding it can link through to the new place.

Meanwhile, I have had over 20 comments arrive in response to my previous article, so I shall try to deal with them briefly here, in the hope of making the situation clearer.

First, I couldn't stay on as an Independent (which I had considered) as the unelected quango called the Standards Board would (based on a recent similar case) disqualify my from being a Councillor, full stop. Note that this overrides the electorate's wishes...

Next, I wonder which Labour councillor was on? A few of them are as described in the comments, as it happens! Most of them are fairly unsavoury, one way or another, when you get to know them. No wonder their numbers shrink at every election here...

I shall not be spending time with any grandchildren. I'm not even a parent (so no hand-outs for me!)

Um, I have all the "logs" of Medway Council meetings since they first went on-line from October 2001, but they don't make very interesting bedtime reading :-)

I might head Down Under, though I doubt they'd have me at my age. I'd also have to get a passport - - something I haven't had since 1982...

I'm not giving up my Qercus column, and indeed have today spoken to the Editor about this. We're now trying to come up with a new name for the column, and I shall have to think of either a new slant, or perhaps a reminiscence of what I had done in the past but hadn't included in the column. I'll think of something! There are still two or three of my articles "in stock" at Qercus HQ, so there's some time for this.


Overall, I wish to thank all who have supported me -- although, as I think it now better know, my intent was to stimulate debate on finding a better way than the extreme one I found on the 'Net last September and copied to my draft. As I wrote in another recent article here (though on a different subject) I prefer "carrots" to "sticks", and brainstorming the nation should enable a better solution to what is clearly a very widespread issue to be found -- before dithering Gordon leaves it too late (as usual) and then panics and introduces draconian legislation. With the economic crunch coming, he will fairly soon find himself backed into a corner, and that will be dangerous for all of us. Let's find him something he can use instead.

Although the circumstances that meant I posted the incomplete article (it was then really just quotes and one link) have resulted in my effectively unavoidable resignation, the debate I wanted to start is now being held far more widely around the country that I could ever have envisaged. It has been a price worth paying!

Apart from the comments here, I have received dozens of emails, phone calls, and letters during the past couple of days or so, nearly all supporting both me and the necessity of having this debate. It has been a good exercise, in spite of everything.

Finally, I do hope that those who have come here for the first time for just this one item will at least glance through some of my other posts, as they might also be of interest.

UPDATE: I notice the latest commenter (yet another 'anonymous', unfortunately) seems to have missed what I was trying to achieve; but I blame the media coverage rather than the commenter.

Incidentally, I found a photographer had been waiting for me to emerge in order to take "grab shots" (as they are known) before I could stop him. I think he was a bit non-plussed when I offered to pose for him, as I thought it might make for a better-quality shot. I wonder what his Picture Editor will decide to put in tomorrow's Daily Mirror (to whose reporter I was even more kind, yesterday!)

Weight off my Mind

I have today, after a lot of thought, resigned from the council.

I wasn't going to do so originally, but in today's Soviet-style Britain, with all the pressures coming down upon us from on high and with yet more to come (as I recently reported HERE), all the indicators are that recent events have, funnily enough, afforded me an opportunity to 'get out from under' before even more bureaucracy hits local Councillors.

Just think of it: no more Government-imposed 'Performance Indicators' (a mere 168 of 'em!), no more having to explain why we can't do something because tens of millions of pounds has been deducted from our funding every year, no more Codes of Conduct and all of that, and no more briefings on this week's new legislation. Bliss!

Anyway, this means that this 'blog (which was initially just an experiment anyway) will probably close very soon.

As for me: I look forward to the next adventure in my life, wherever that should turn out to be -- just as I did when I moved here eleven years ago, not knowing what lay ahead of me then.

Carrot and Stick

Which is better, the carrot or the stick?

Actually, both have their uses, but in human society it is generally found that in most cases offering an incentive (the carrot) works better and is kinder.

That's the Conservative way, by and large, as is of course very well known. There will always be exceptions, such as how to deal with crime that has already happened, but most desirable behaviour for living within a society will be far better being encouraged rather than enforced. This is only because of the needs of others in one's society: a hermit living alone in the middle of nowhere need not be so concerned about all this...

The so-called Nanny State that we have in Britain today tends to try to do it the other way around, with endless rules, laws and regulations in a perpetual stream of legislation pouring out of Whitehall. We saw this during the Blair years, and there is no sign of any slow-down under Gordon Brown's premiership. Indeed, the large number of 'policy reviews' that the present Prime Minister has initiated in his few months in office will inevitably lead to a torrent of new legislation.

Earlier this week I was at a briefing session that tried to explain upcoming changes in how local government works, as far as local Councillors will be affected, when it comes into effect next year. Even before that, though, a further White paper on the same subject is already being prepared, and is expected to be published later this year. It just never stops...

Far, far better would be just to set a very basic and simple framework and let us get on with it, as only those on the spot can know how best to deal with their local situation and needs. This top-down one size fits all approach of heavyweight ruling from on high is not a good way to go.

I do hope that after the next General Election (which is looking increasingly likely to result in a Conservative overall majority in the House of Commons) the incoming Government will produce a much leaner and less prescriptive framework for local government in their first review of the subject (whenever that might be) and then just leave us alone to get on with our jobs.

That would be the carrot of incentive, rather than the stick of regulation, and is almost certain to work much, much better!

Sheer Brilliance!

This week's Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) session was interesting (as they often are, though not always) and included some brilliant stuff by David Cameron, starting at eight minutes 35 seconds in. It's a classic!

Watch it all (or just part[s], by dragging the bar) HERE.

Holding to Account

At least once a year, usually around this time, every one of the Portfolio Holders in Medway Council's Cabinet comes before the Scrutiny Committee that scrutinises their portfolio. This is to give an account of what they have achieved during the past year and to answer questions from members of the committee. In a couple of cases, the one portfolio spreads across two committees so they are called to both.

One such is the Leader of the Council, Rodney Chambers (pictured here) whose portfolio covers both Regeneration and Democracy & Governance. Last night was his appointment with the Regeneration and Development Scrutiny Committee, and I was there as a substitute for an absent colleague.

It is no doubt tempting to ask a pre-arranged "friendly" question -- as Labour MPs so often (and rather obviously!) do at Prime Minister's Questions in Parliament. I don't believe in that, though, and prepare my own questions which are often quite challenging. The clue to this is how quickly and glibly the Portfolio Holder answers, especially at the start of his/her reply. When I ask a question, there is usually a lot of obvious thinking going on to formulate the answer. This happened last night, as usual...

As always at such events, I tried to think of something appropriate to ask, on this occasion bearing in mind that I was not a regular member of the committee. Thus I was able to answer a general question that could shed some light on why so much is happening now and did not do so before we took over running the council. I am sure that many people now living or working in Medway who were not here while places like Chatham began a long period of decline would find that interesting.

Indeed, I reasoned, as a relative newcomer here myself, it must seem strange that so much is going on at once, with disruption to places such as the aforementioned Chatham, whereas if this had been done earlier -- when traffic was not so heavy -- there would have been less pain. I commented that I was aware that all the preliminary work toward much of this (including Chatham and Rochester Riverside) was done by the early 'nineties -- and that would not have been conducted (at Council Tax-payers' expense) if there were no realistic prospect of taking those projects forward. This point was important as, with the change of political make-up of the former Rochester-upon-Medway City Council in 1991, these projects suddenly stalled.

I think the Leader was being rather generous in his reply, in that he did not blame the Labour administration of the period from 1991 to 2000 for sitting on all this while Chatham in particular fell into ever greater decay. He suggested that a city-sized council couldn't have afforded to invest in the necessary land assembly. I pointed out that the predecessor council had some £210 million is reserves in 1991 (most of which had gone by 2000, by the way!) but as Cllr Chambers came from the Gillingham half of the constituent parts of what became Medway Unitary Authority he couldn't verify this.

A second aspect to my question concerned the rate of progress we were making relative to other parts of the Thames Gateway region. Although all parts of the Gateway had already had substantial sums of capital investment funding made available to them, at around the same time as us, only we had made any real progress until very recently. Indeed, the Leader quoted the case of Thurrock in Essex who were setting up an Urban Development Corporation (UDC) to deal with their regeneration; but they had taken a year just to decide where the UDC would be housed. Similar tales apparently abound throughout the Gateway.

The Leader explained that the key difference is that we are leading, driving, and delivering our regeneration ourselves -- that's the Medway Renaissance Partnership, with us as the Administration of Medway Council being the lead partner. What has now become known as the "Medway Model" has been recognised elsewhere; and the Leader was able to tell the meeting that other councils were thinking of adopting it themselves. Indeed, Southend Council were due to visit us shortly for this very purpose.

Meanwhile, the Government Minister had recently visited and HERE is a short video made during that visit.

All fascinating stuff -- both the question and the response -- and I think it was well worth bringing this to public awareness right now. There was a press reporter in attendance throughout the meeting, but this part might not be considered worthy of reporting, so I have put it here for the benefit of anyone who might be interested.

As one would expect, the questions from the regular members of the committee were more to do with specific issues and details, and were also interesting in their own way, though most of it has already been aired in recent months so need not be reported here. It will probably appear in this Friday's local newspaper anyway...

The Final Chapter

So, the Cabinet decision to proceed with the Strood Academy School was "called-in" (as the jargon has it) to the relevant Scrutiny Committee, by six members of the Labour Group on Medway Council, and that committee met earlier this evening to discuss this issue.

Regular readers will recall that I have already written about this issue twice, first HERE and a couple of weeks later an update HERE.

The call-in meant that the decision was in effect suspended until after this meeting.

Indeed, it soon became apparent at the meeting that the sole purpose of the Labour members' actions (of which this was just the latest in a whole string of tactics) was to delay and defer getting on with the Academy that everyone else wanted (though details differed) and had agreed on the basis of the Government Minister's negotiated methodology, and accepted by the Council's Leader.

Everything that the Labour spokesman proposed, claimed or implied was obviously formulated with that end in view. Most of it came across as lame at best, and desperate at worst. I mean: to suddenly claim (when all else had clearly failed) that because there might be a change of Prime Minister before the new Academy was built and formally opened in its new home, this meant that anything already agreed might no longer apply, was really clutching at straws.

The documents both proposing and accepting the agreed way forward are in the public domain and effectively form as solid a contract as you are ever likely to find in this arena. They had even been accepted as part of the official record of the last Full Council meeting, which is of course the highest authority in Medway (Cabinet operated entirely under powers delegated to it from the Council as a whole).

Why, then, did the two Labour members on the Scrutiny Committee try so hard to have the implementation of the Cabinet decision to go ahead with the Academy delayed still further by moving to have the decision referred back to Cabinet? They tried all sorts of tactics, including the aforementioned "change of Prime Minister" argument, to achieve this end.

Fortunately, the Conservative members on the committee voted to delay no longer, and gave the final go-ahead to proceed with the Academy. This cannot be called-in again, so that is effectively the end of Labour's tactics to derail this initiative.

Meanwhile, no doubt the Labour spokesman will achieve his primary aim, which is getting himself quoted and pictured in the local newspaper(s). Why has he been so fanatical about this in recent years? Well, he knows just as well as I and my colleagues do that we are likely to take his seat on the Council from him at the next local elections here in Medway, just as we did with the other seat in River Ward just ten months ago. He surely has to make himself appear valuable, so that he can be selected to stand in a safe Labour ward in 2011. He knows that to re-stand where he is now would be political suicide.

Thus we see a pattern emerge that is so obvious with hindsight. Yes, everything and everyone is being used as pawns in a purely personal pursuit of political ambition. There is little if anything genuine about the individual concerned, as many of us have known for several years. All that is needed now is for the Medway public to wake up to what we already fully realise, just as they have woken up to other matters in recent years. Then he'll be able to be consigned to the political dustbin, just as several of his former colleagues were in 2003 and 2007; and Medway will be better off as a result.

Bean / Forgotten

One of the most memorable quotes from the House of Commons' Prime Minister's Questions sessions of 2007 was Vince Cable (then acting Leader of the Liberal Democrats in the Commons) quoting a line from elsewhere that referred to Gordon Brown as "having gone from Stalin to Mr Bean".

Everyone remembers the "Mr Bean" part of that line, but the "Stalin" reference is rarely mentioned beyond being part of the quote. In today's Britain, we would all be well advised to re-visit this aspect of that reference.

Taking an analytical approach, one would be hard pressed to perceive any substantial difference between today's Britain and the former USSR. We have already seen huge centralisation of control with local opinion being marginalised, public services pursuing State-imposed targets rather than doing their real jobs, and profligate waste of the people's money. We are now well aware of the propaganda, control of the media and "spin" in general that has dominated the public image of the New Labour Government, as well as their propensity to feather their own nests at public expense.

We must all by now have realised how the distortion of "rights" has been so severely slanted in favour of groups of people preferred by the Government, to the detriment of all the ordinary decent folk in our nation, has led to a country of cowed subjects who dare not speak or behave in anything other than a very restrained and severely restricted manner. This is artificial, skewed and grossly unfair. It is also unnatural, as is the behaviour that is now permissible.

All of this will be very familiar to students of the Soviet Union of yesteryear.

So, what will come next? Well, those of us who have been watching what has been going on in this country for some years will already have our own predictions, based on what a Communist (or similar) dictatorship would need to do in order to effectively guarantee its future in power.

One obvious requirement would be to indoctrinate the next generation of voters -- partly in case any extant electoral system hasn't been eliminated, and partly to reduce the risk of revolution against the ruling classes. This means dominating the school curriculum.

Couldn't happen here, you say? Wrong! It is already happening! Modern history as taught in schools is to be re-written to suit our national Government. See HERE.

It is interesting to note in passing that it is the Teaching Unions that are opposing this, despite their long-standing association with the Labour Party...

This move by Brown's Government is if anything potentially even more dangerous than anything that has gone before.

The only safeguard we have is our own alertness, combined with the sheer incompetence of our own "Mr Bean", who is making fairly heavy weather of clumsily stumbling through the introduction of ever more Stalin-esque (and/or similar far-left State domination) policies. He is hampered by the differences between the limited media access to information in the twentieth century and the far broader and more open capabilities of the twenty-first. There have been several announcements of attempts to control even those (which is a total give-away of their true intentions!) but these are being strongly resisted by those non-governmental outfits that would need to be complicit in such exercises.

In this truly Orwellian age, we all need to think ahead and realise just how serious our position has already become. It is not far from being too late to do something decisive about it, so we must all (yes, that means you as well, dear reader!) remain alert to the dangers present and future, and ensure that we never again allow any political group to hold such power over us. No-one who promotes the kind of State control over our lives that I have outlined here should ever be given such authority again.

Thus, using logic (and, no doubt, Occam's Razor) this means that no-one but no-one should ever vote Labour again, and certainly not in a General Election. This is vitally important! No excuses and no exceptions, whatsoever. It's as clear-cut as that.

Budget Response

Others all over the mainstream media and in the Blogosphere have commented on how boring the Chancellor's budget was yesterday.

Taking my cue from the Pet Shop Boys' "We Were Never Being Boring", I am instead featuring David Cameron's truly outstanding (and devastatingly accurate) response for the Conservatives HERE (click the button under David Cameron's photo).

Post Mortem

We in my ward are very much aware of the effect of Post Office closures. We have suffered two already, though at least the one on the Davis Estate will be replaced by a new Post Office Counter there, due to open next month.

When the branch on the corner of Pattens Lane and City Way closed a few years ago, we ferried older folk who lived nearby to and from another branch every week, on a day and at a time of their choosing. My ward colleague Councillor Nick Brice did the driving, and I assisted in my own small way.

The ladies pictured here with Nick were very pleased at this personal service, and we miss them now that one has died and the other has made alternative arrangements.

More recently, Post Office closures in Britain have been if anything stepped up to a new high, and questions have understandably been asked of Government Ministers in Parliament. Only a few weeks ago, the Conservative MP Nicholas Soames asked the following at Prime Minister's Questions:

The Prime Minister may be aware that the Post Office earmarked four post offices for closure in the Mid-Sussex constituency. It invited a detailed consultation for six weeks, to which there were more than 6,500 replies—all unreservedly in favour of retaining those post offices. On Tuesday, however, the Post Office announced that they are all to be closed. Why does the Prime Minister allow his Government to be party to such a rotten deceit of the public in respect of that consultation?

This was on 30th January 2008. The Prime Minister's reply was:

We have made £1.7 billion [available] to help post offices in this country and we will continue to make money available for Post Office services. There is a process of consultation and an appeals system, although I do not know whether it was taken up. I urge the hon. Gentleman to meet the Minister in charge of the Post Office. We are listening to what people say, but the fact of the matter is that many post offices are not used in any great detail. We will continue to put the money in to help the Post Office service.

Interestingly, according to correspondence that the Leader of Medway Council received from the Post Office's National Consultation Team, just two weeks after the above question was asked and answered, there is no appeals procedure. The key phrase is at the start of the second paragraph on page two of their letter, which can be found HERE.

Not only does this whole "consultation" come across as false, there isn't even any recourse available to the public-at-large, including Post Office customers. Oh, there is a possibility that the so-called "watchdog" Postwatch could ask for a case for closure to be reviewed, but interestingly did not do so for any of the four recent closures in Medway. Make of that what you will...

The whole thing seems to be rigged; but it transpires that at least part of the reason for all these closures is one that has not been publicly stated by the Government (nor by the Post Office itself, but this is a Government matter), and this is that the heavily-subsidised British Post Office is anti-competitive under EU directives. Thus the Government would be being forced to severely cut back this subsidy, in order to open the market up to competitors on a more level playing field. I am grateful to the excellent Dizzy for posting THIS, from which I gleaned this information.

Yet another example of the EU helping to destroy something of value in Britain, and yet another reason why the sell-out over the EU Constitution Lisbon Treaty is so very serious for our nation!

Desperation

At last night's meeting of the Full Medway Council (which I have dubbed the "minus one" meeting as each of the three political groups was minus one member) the Labour and LibDem Groups' sheer desperation to make something they could use out of every single item on the agenda became almost farcical at times.

The Conservative Group, though, performed very well, with some excellent contributions by several of our recently-elected members. Over half of our 32 members present contributed to the debates -- 18 of us in total. We provided the positive messages, whereas the opposition tried to derail anything we were proposing -- sometimes by putting forward tiny and silly amendments, which were generally intended to delay or completely scupper new projects; or just by speaking and voting against all the worthwhile ideas that we were putting forward.

This did rather demonstrate that they hadn't much of a clue as to how to run a Council, as came out clearly during the debates. I don't know whether this will be reported properly in the local media (hopefully so), but there were several members of the public in the gallery and they will know. Although it soon became apparent that a number of them had been drafted in by the Labour group, and at least one of them misbehaved (always a sign of a Labour-driven and "loaded" public gallery, by the way), there were at least three separate more independent people up there "in the Gods", and those three stayed right to the end, even including the last item which was on Members' allowances, of all things.

That was an interesting item, as it turned out, and symptomatic of whole the whole meeting had gone. Every year we have simply accepted the findings and recommendations of the Independent Remuneration Panel (even if the Leader had difficulty saying "remuneration" until last year -- in previous years it came out as "renumeration"!)

This year, as had been happening throughout the reports section of the meeting, the Labour Group proposed an amendment to tinker with one aspect of the proposals. It would have made very little difference in terms of money saved, yet would have gone against the principle of letting the independent panel decide -- not us. What they had proposed was that the Special Responsibility Allowances, such as the one I receive for being vice-chairman of one of the Scrutiny Committees, be frozen rather than increased in line with staff salary percentage increases that year (the normal method). Labour claimed it was "a gesture". Notably, most of this would impact Conservative members, so it was hardly a "gesture" on the part of Labour members...

The reason for this wheeze was obvious: it was to get a cheap headline. I stood up (when called by the Mayor) and explained that I had given up a lot in order to be able to take on the mantle of Scrutiny vice-chairman, and I put a lot of work and effort into doing my job, and earning my modest allowance (£3,648 per year, with tax and national-insurance deducted from that) which a couple of Labour members also receive but don't bother to do much to earn it.

I added that, on the other side of the coin, I had already been making my own gesture for almost eight years, in that I had never claimed anything for travel, subsistence or any other costs, from the day I was first elected. I quoted a couple of examples (one regular, the other occasional) that showed this included some reasonably expensive travel costs -- but in all cases I have personally absorbed all of it.

The difference here was that I had never sought publicity for this, and indeed I think that was the first time I have mentioned it in a public meeting. I finished my speech by wondering how many members of the opposition did the same as I do. They were very quiet...

Then one of them decided to tell the meeting that it "hadn't been their intention" for anyone to state what they themselves did or didn't do -- obviously a pop at me (and another of our Group who had said something along much the same lines as I had) and an attempt to recover from a very obvious and visible backfire of their purely party-politically-motivated amendment.

It didn't work: anyone present could see who had started this, and why, and the way that my colleague and I responded was completely appropriate. I was tempted to stand to make a "point of personal explanation" to mention this, and the cause-and-effect nature of this: "If you don't like the effect, don't instigate the cause" would probably have been my way of sending a final message to the opposition members. I let it go, on this (admittedly fairly minor) occasion; but one day, when they try something similar with a more important issue, I'll have 'em!

Thus ended the often convoluted and sometimes rather tortuous formal business of the meeting. As I had discussed with a couple of our newer members before it all started, the universal rule of Council meetings is that they will invariably go on for far longer than they need to, and usually longer than they really ought.

That was certainly borne out again last night. Plus ça change...

Sold Out!

The British House of Commons has yesterday, as widely reported (and not exactly unexpectedly) voted-down the Conservative motion for a referendum on the EU Constitution Treaty.

This, if fully ratified, would mean that the original Constitution (carefully re-worded and re-cast to make it look like something significantly different, though few have been fooled) will be implemented without having been put to the people of this nation, despite all three main political parties' manifesto promises.

We have, as a nation, been sold out to the Eurocrats.

Fortunately the story doesn't end here, as the next stage is in "another place" -- the House of Lords. What will happen next looks like a different story, probably involving a degree of "ping-pong" (where each House sends its comments and proposals to the other House, back and forth a few times). Some months hence, the issue will come up for a final decision. It looks like the Lords will be favourable toward holding a referendum.

Therefore, the referendum isn't necessarily dead, and all of us campaigning for one should not let up just yet.

Keep the pressure on!

"You're All The Same!"

How often have we heard or read that, eh? Especially at the moment, politicians (who, as a group, are not generally held in particularly high esteem at any time) are coming in for that kind of attack more and more.

Although the present wave of sleaze allegations, of which some at least appear to have a basis of truth in them, is eroding further the public-at-large's trust in and respect for elected representatives, it would be a mistake to generalise here as in any other walk of life.

Put the boot on the other foot. Say I were to ask you what your profession is. If you were to reply "Builder" I could easily claim "Ah! A builder. They're all cowboys, aren't they?" Or, say you were an Estate Agent: my response might be "Oh yes, they're all dishonest, as is well known!" Again, if you were a teacher: "They're just a load of lefties who are producing the druggies, vandals and spongers we see amongst today's youth." And so on.

The moral of all this is that just about any profession can be tarred with one's broad brush, if one falls into that all-too-easy trap.

Probably the daftest thing about the current spate of sleaze allegations against MPs (mostly, though not entirely, Labour MPs including Ministers and an MSP) is that much of the difficulty has arisen from over-complex reporting requirements introduced by the Labour Government. It is now fairly well known that the motive behind this was to try to "catch out" Conservative MPs, but Labour has been hoist by its own petard.

Okay, the system of MPs' allowances and all the rest of it has become so involved, and rather silly in places, and I am tempted to side with those who have suggested doubling the basic "salary" (actually an allowance in itself) and scrap all the other allowances -- possibly apart from (as one commenter has thoughtfully excepted) travel by public transport, but with receipts of course. Any incidental costs or whatever would be expected to come out of the additional salary/primary allowance (or whatever you want to call it). This would also eliminate a chunk of bureaucracy recording and processing the present claims, saving public money.

As someone who could also be lumped in with my counterparts at Westminster, I am of course very conscious of all of this. It doesn't help what I am trying to do here in Medway, if my activity is being perceived in the same light as those elsewhere who have not behaved in a proper manner.

For the record (and in our case it is a public record, I believe) I personally have never made any kind of expenses or other such claim since the day I was elected. I absorb it all, no matter what or how much, and always have done. Besides anything else, I hate filling-in claim forms anyway!