Moving

I am moving this weekend, therefore blogging will be light for a few weeks. Don't worry I will still be living in Bracknell.

U-turn if you want to. the papers are not for turning

Government consolation appears to consist of listing out some proposals which though controversial to those of the right, but may well be good practical ideas. The next part of the process appears to be listening to right wing newspapers concerns and then not going forward with those proposals.

Is this really a good way of governing, perhaps Cameron should grow some balls and not conceed so much to the british press or is this his master plan to sure but his agenda?

Fake shop forms part of fake high street

Harrow council has been a bit creative and had this fake shop front produced (I wonder how much it cost?) in an attempt to regenerate their high-street.

How long before our high-streets are full of these fake shops (not long if you read the details on the company that do these fake shop fronts http://www.shopjacket.co.uk/news/ ). Nice though it is, it's one better than filling shop windows full of local council paraphernalia.

Of course plenty have complained that our high-streets all look the same. Well here is the solution, if you can't help independent shop makers setup with reduced rates etc, then why not paint them in, problem solved.

Im going to say it, Lansley has been fair

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has had quite a ride with his Health and Social Care Bill. I think given that this is his baby, I believe Andrew Lansley has done a good job of listening and compromising. Hopefully this will result in better legisation and therefore better government.

At least with a coalition the details of disagreements are much more open then internal party disagreement (not that these don't still exist.)

I am of course a typical Lib Dem and I am fully signed up to the changes voted on at the Lib Dem conference (See the Social Liberal Forum details here.) But I also don't think us Lib Dems should drop any gloating or victory signs. At least until the election campaigning starts when all guns can start firing again. After all this is a coalition government and not a Tory or Lib Dem one. Its not a battle, its just a way of developing policy given our different outlooks on the world.

Save Bracknell's South Hill Park arts centre and sign the petition

Please do support South Hill Park arts centre which is losing its grant from the Art Council due to the government cuts. From £216,745 for 2011/12, to £100,000 for 2012/2013 and zero from 2014. see save_south_hill_park_say_protesters

 

This funding helps to pay for events such as the Big Day Out festival, it also helps funds those parts of the arts that do not bring in large amounts of funds to the arts centre.

The petition to keep some of the funding can be found at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/save_our_south_hill_park/

Hopefully this cut won't mean the loss of our arts centre, however I'm sure it will lead to a loss in some of the arts or an increase in ticket prices. I guess we will soon find out.

 

Subway madness!

A guest post by Dan Haycocks

Firstly, I'd like to thank Daz for allowing me to make a guest post on the Bracknell Blog.  I don't run a blog myself, and I admire the effort and commitment it takes to keep a blog current as Daz and many others do, so having the opportunity to reach a wider audience through his hard work is very much appreciated.

Right, on to the story at hand.  Regular readers might remember me – I'm the amateur film maker/thorn in the side of the elected, who stood in the general election against MP's abusing their expenses, and in particular, our ex local MP who helped himself in royal style.  I've been concentrating on work since then, but something recently caught my eye, so I had to investigate.

Visitors to Bracknell town centre might be delighted to note the new mural that has been painted on the subway between the town centre and Bracknell and Wokingham College.  Much like a visit to Sea World in Florida but without leaving Blighty, residents can enjoy an 'undersea tunnel' of fish, turtles, sharks and rays as they make their way through to the shopping area, and I'm sure the children in our community enjoy it greatly.  What follows calls into question the wisdom of this work, but I want to be clear from the start – I have no objection at all with making our environment a nice place to be – if we have the funds of course.

One thing puzzled me, though – when cuts are being made to social care for the elderly, teaching places for local schools, social support for the vulnerable and many other services that I think most compassionate residents would consider 'essential', is it right that we're spending big money painting subways with such elaborate paint schemes?  So, inevitably, a Freedom of Information request was submitted, to understand what the cost to the taxpayer was.  Here's the initial response: FoI1 LINK

From my observations, it took the company performing the painting about 4 weeks to complete the job, and there were between two and four decorators working at any one time.  I calculated that if it took four people four weeks, and they were paid £500/week each, it would come to around £6,000 in wages, and then some more for the materials and paint – still a silly amount of money to spend, but I thought I must be overestimating.  You can imagine my surprise, then, when the final figure came through - £16,635.  Or, in real terms, a teaching assistant for a year, a community nurse, or perhaps two part time carers for the elderly or vulnerable.  And all for one subway?!

Now, I could do a Victor Meldrew as I did with the Andrew 'Fingers' Mackay episode and have a good rant about the stupidity of this and try and shame the council, but I don't think that would make any difference.  In the cold light of day, it's pretty clear that this funding was allocated to the responsible department, and they were spending their budget, as they're told to, in isolation from other departments.  So I thought to myself, do something positive – get a meeting with the head of the department responsible, explain in simple terms how I understand things to be working with regards to departmental budgets, ask him or her to acknowledge that spending this much decorating a subway while we're reducing the 'essential' public services seems a bit loopy (a polite way of acknowledging the madness), and then ask him or her to join me in making an effort to change the way council funding is controlled.  Clearly, if departmental budgets are the reason that spending this much renovating a subway is OK during times of austerity, then the process has to be changed.  I can't, as a compassionate human, believe anyone would think that having our elderly die alone through lack of resources, children not getting the education they need, or social workers being too busy to save the abused child, is acceptable when £16,635 is spent painting a subway.

I did pass the FoI response to a few friends and asked them to comment.  My good friend Dom suggested alternative ways of achieving a revamped subway, such as allowing the art department in the college to take ownership of it and allow the students to use it as a gallery for their work.  I loved this idea, and it reeks of 'Big Society' so I contacted Lorraine Zutshi, the head of the Arts team at the college.  She informed me that they used to be invited to decorate the subways, but this time round they weren't consulted at all.  She also noted that she'd be delighted to be given the opportunity again, as they have a Community Art element to their syllabus – perfect!

Or perhaps having the long term unemployed engaged to paint them, allowing them to gain work skills, a bit of confidence, the feeling of doing something worthy with their time, and something to add to their CV's.  I also had many people comment that a coat of paint would have sufficed, if indeed the subway painting is that important.  Some also suggested using Community Service to get the job done and get them giving something back to the community.

For me, however, this issue runs deeper.  I do appreciate that this is one small spend the council have made that seems to defy logic – I'm sure there are plenty more, and to be frank, I don't have the time or patience to uncover them all.  But that doesn't matter – the important thing here, in my opinion, is to have the council think about how they organise their budgets, and make sure that this type of spend occurs after those services we all need (rather than those we would like) are funded.  I think most other taxpayers would feel the same – at least my straw poll seems to suggest that's the case.

I therefore made an appointment to meet with Steve Loudoun, the Head of Environment and Public Protection, on Monday 6^th June at 3pm.  I took my camera along, and a copy of the memo sent by Bob Neill MP, the Under Secretary of State for the Department for Communities and Local Government, a link to which is here.  In his memo, Bob makes clear that for open, transparent politics, it's perfectly acceptable for local bloggers and citizen journalists to film meetings with council staff, and to publish the film online.  I genuinely had no intention of putting Steve on the spot, so I asked him for permission to film the meeting, which he declined.  I then brought up the memo and he dismissed that straight away too.  When I then asked if we could plan a subsequent meeting where he would be happy to talk to camera, he also refused.  Hmmmm – so much for transparency and open government!  Perhaps I broke the rules by filming him refusing to be filmed, but I did do the right thing and switched it off once it was clear he was not going to agree to be filmed that day.  I wanted to be sure I'd given him every opportunity to decline and meet at a later date if that was his preference, with evidence of the same. 

One other oddity with the brief meeting I had with Steve – he presented me with a response to question 4 of my FoI (FoI2 LINK), after the compliance officer had declared that the data wasn't held by the council and couldn't be provided – why is it one has to insist and be pushy to get answers to FoI requests?  Or are they just routinely dismissing requests as a matter of course, showing more contempt to the residents of the borough?  I think he probably thought he could hand over that answer to question 4, and that was his final word on the matter.  Why are questions so difficult to deal with for public servants?  You can see for yourself that there's nothing in his response to suggest he's thinking of anything outside his own remit.  Oddly enough, he also mentions that 'there is no specific budget to repaint any other underpasses in the current fiscal year', yet the same company are painting the one outside Easthampstead House as I type!  Has he got a grip on his own department?  Who knows….

I don't want to get on the bad side of Steve.  I'm convinced that as a compassionate man, he can, in his heart, see that spending £16,635 on subway decorating is madness when we're cutting essential services, but he's doing what he needs to do to be an effective Head of Environment and Public Protection.   He might have a family, children to feed, the pressures we all have in our daily lives, so maybe he doesn't feel he can make that much difference without risking his position.

However, what he's not doing, along with other departmental heads at his level, is arguing that if the system allows this to happen, then the system must be broken and needs to be fixed.  I wanted to suggest to him that this wasn't a witch hunt, or an embarrassing episode online to shame him into acting, but he refused me that opportunity.  I honestly wanted to find an ally in the management hierarchy at BFBC who I could work alongside to try and change the systems and processes that can allow this to happen, and simply out of what I think is a reasonable, responsible, mature and compassionate need to see the right thing being done with the limited resources the council has, but Steve had decided before I'd even been given the chance to explain that he wasn't going to play ball.

I should know by now – video cameras and those spending tax payers money aren't happy bedfellows, and I can appreciate that he might not want to be 'on the record' with this somewhat controversial FoI response, but then what about open government?  What about accountability?  If Steve is comfortable spending this much money in times of austerity, why isn't he happy to talk about it on camera?  I'm assuming he has nothing to hide?  And lets not forget who actually pays for this – you and me, and Steve if he lives in Bracknell!!

I'm going to send Steve an email, asking him for another meeting, this time on camera.  I'll also send him the memo from Bob Neill in the hope that he'll have a change of heart, and join me in a campaign to redress the processes that can allow this to happen.

I'm also not daft – if Steve isn't happy about talking on camera, then obviously he feels uncomfortable with being accountable and transparent which, as a public servant, is his responsibility, so I'm also planning to write to Bob Neill, and ask him to remind Steve of his obligations.  Anything less than complete openness would be an insult to those who have lost essential services, contempt for the council taxpayer, and ignorance of central government policy.  And I can't believe Steve is naïve to all that!

If you'd like to join me in an effort to turn the big BFBC ship round to serving the community, rather than it's own processes and methods, then please pipe up and drop me an email – the more of us shout about this, the more BFBC can't ignore, dismiss and refuse to engage.  After all, do you feel happy losing your important public services so that you can have fancy subways?  Me neither….

comeonstevedotherightthing@stoprippingmeoff.com

Dianne Abbott’s racism is embarrassing!

Below is a guest post from Walaa Idris who blogs at http://www.walaaidris.com/blog/












I am black and I am a Conservative and very proud of both. And although at first glance one has nothing to do with the other if we look closely the two are intertwined - have always been in harmony and very much complement one another. Black culture whether African, Caribbean or American is conservative by nature and in my case it’s double because I am half Arab – so being a conservative comes natural to me as it does to most black people and the notion that they can only support socialist ideals and left of centre views is a myth.

The basic values of work hard look after yourself and your own help your community and those who can’t support themselves, give whatever you can from your time and money to those who need it and share your knowledge with the young and those who can utilise it, are all basic black traditions. My ancestors in Africa - where there is still little if any welfare state to fall-back on - employed them for centuries and continue to until today. Slaves too, carried these strong traditions and values with them to the Americas, and today Caribbeans and Africans brought them and continue to practice them in the UK. The strong sense of religion and the Church being the centre of most communities is at the heart of conservative ethos.











So when I read that Dianne Abbott, the first black female MP in the UK has told a young black woman - who after showing her admiration and appreciation to Ms Abbott asked if she can be of any help – to go and work for a white conservative, “You obviously don’t do the black thing, that’s part of being a black conservative”: said Abbott. Initially, I too was mortified at the comment – however, this time around I was not so shocked by Abbott’s callous thoughtless remarks. It’s not the first time nor will it be the last time for us to hear this type of oblivious bigotry from Dianne Abbott. Plus it’s a Labour thing all this ‘divide and rule’ and ‘us and them’ business - it’s what they always resort to when they lose the argument - even though, in this occasion; there was no argument to lose. Nevertheless, the racist Abbott could not believe a young Tory supporter can show her adoration, shower her with praise yet at the same time not share her political believes - because in the Us & Them rulebook everything is cut and dry.

What does skin colour have to do with helping out in a constituency or Westminster anyway - one wonders what criteria Dianne Abbott employs when hiring her own staff, or advising constituents …...!

Walaa












My thoughts are that while historically black voters may of been more likely to vote Labour, this perception is changing. That's a good thing as it shows an integration of values in our society.

No longer can you define someone who is Black or Asian as a natural Labour voter or a natural socialist. Just like racists voters don't just vote BNP.

So it is crazy to believe that being black means you can't be a Conservative or a Republican. The people Diane have moved on, perhaps you should to.