ELECTION PLEDGES IT SEEMS HAVE A BEST BEFORE DATE

The Liberal Democrats both locally and nationally before the last election warned us of the proposed Tory VAT Tax bombshell. Nick Clegg during the Leaders debates clearly declared on the 8th of April 2010 that:

"We will not have to raise VAT to deliver our promises...Let me repeat that: Our plans do not require a rise in VAT"

Local Lib Dem's including parliamentary candidates Cllr Andrew Simpson, Cllr Paul Varnsverry, Cllr Scott Collins and Cllr Portio Wilson all campaigned throughout the election against the rise and accused the Tories of introducing a regressive tax which would hit the poorest the hardest.

So you would have thought it would have been easy for the same Local Lib Dem's at the town hall to back a Labour Group motion tabled at last nights Council meeting which read as follows:

“This Council expresses its concern at the increase in VAT announced in the budget on June 22^nd 2010, which will have a disproportionate impact on the poorest families in Northampton.

The Council recognises the Government’s need to bring down the borrowing deficit and the need to make decisions over tax and spending. The Council notes however that this should be done in as fair a manner as possible, should not have a disproportionate impact on the poor and should not risk economic recovery.

The Council further notes the report produced by the Institute of Fiscal Studies which says that the increase in VAT will impact those on low incomes the hardest and this includes pensioners living on savings.

This Council instructs the Leader of the Borough Council to write to the Deputy Prime Minister asking him to reconsider the VAT increase to 20%.”

But no they voted en-block against it !!

"The economy is in a worse state than we thought" they cried"

Not true as a) All the opposition parties are shown the red book way before the election and b) The deficit was expected on polling day to be £178bn but bettered to be only around £155bn post election a £23bn boost for the coalition government before a single cut has been made!!

"Its needed to balance the books" they bleated

Not true as the Institute of Financial Studies director Robert Chote pointed out to Mr Clegg when he told him that "the Coalition would not have had to raise VAT if Mr Osborne had not also cut other taxes, such as those on the profits of corporations".

"It won't be all that bad as inflation will fall" they squirmed


Not true as Sally Copley, head of policy at Save the Children UK recently outlined when she informed Parliament that "A 20% VAT rate means the poorest parents will see their VAT bill rise to at least £1,600 a year — affecting already overstretched budgets — and driving some into the arms of loan sharks," Copley said. "We mustn't forget that 3.9 million children are still living in poverty in this country — and that's just not good enough. The very poorest didn't create the financial crisis — so the most vulnerable in society should not be asked to pay the price for clearing it up."

I therefore last night pleaded with them to vote with their consciences and to stay true to their individual principles. I asked them to think about how shallow they will look if having campaigned against the rise in VAT before the election that they now are seen to be backing it.

All though to no avail, as en masse the Lib Dem with heads held low succumbed to the whip and the yellow sheep were safely shepherded in to back their Tory colleagues in voting the motion down

But one comment from Cllr John Yates summed up the whole sorry affair for me and reminded me why I struggle to trust any of the parties these days. His response to the debate speaks not only for itself but sums up the state we are now in. He said

"I don't see what all the fuss is about, all the political parties promise to do one thing before the election and then afterwards they have to think again and then change their minds and have to do something else, it's natural"

Indeed John indeed.

If music be the food of politics, play on no more

At yesterdays full County Council meeting, 14yr old Simon Williams pleaded with the Council not to carry through their threat to cut £238,000 from Northamptonshire Music and Performing Arts Service in next years proposed budget reductions.

His public address was clear, impassioned, reasoned and delivered on behalf of thousands of people who have signed petitions written letters and emails to councillors. all asking the County Council to think again.

The meeting was at the time discussing a Liberal Democrat Motion which called on the Tory Administration to do just that.

So far so good, but hang on whats that I spy creeping into the Council chamber? hypocrisy? deceit? party politics?

You see the Tory administration responded to the Liberals motion with an almost identical amendment seeking to do the very same thing. In other words to save the music service from themselves! It basicaly said "we the Conservative administration must do all we can to make sure that the cuts proposed by us the Conservative adminstration, are not carried out unless we can find the funding from elsewher! Political schizophrenia at its very very best.

I got my opportunity to address the Council, and Simon who sat in the public gallery, and I congratulated him on his speech, and I also apologised to him on behalf of the whole Council for the fact that he and thousands of others in the County had been taken for Fools by the Politicians.

I explained to this very intelligent 14 year old, that I believed that the Tory administration had no intention in the first place of cutting the funding to the music service, and that history will show that immediately after they had announced their draconian plans, that their own Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Northampton North Michael Ellis had come our fiercly and publicly to announce he would fight the plans to the end, I reminded the Council Chamber that it was indeed one of their administrations own back benchers that had gone on to propose an alternative plan to save the service at a recent Overview and Scrutiny meeting which had met to discuss the proposals.

And here, now, we had in full public view, in the Council Chamber the Tories and the Liberal Democrats trying to out do each other to see whose motion or amendment to save the service would be agreed first.

The Tories were obviously upset, it wasn't meant to happen like this, THEY were the ones who were supposed to come to the rescue of our young musicians at the eleventh hour, and here we were not too long past breakfast, with the Liberals stealing their plans from them without even a hint of irony.

I told the chamber that the Tories reminded me of my favourite Horse trainer Richard Hannon, who often puts three horses in a race, allows one to attract all the press and market speculation before bringing home a different winner at 33/1 under every ones noses. In other words the Tory Plan was a stalking horse, it was a smokescreen to grab the medias attention and to draw it away from the real serious threats to services proposed in the budget including further cuts to care for the elderly and vulnerable in our community.

I told them that their behaviour was unforgivable, and that they were both playing politics with the future education of our children and were fighting simply over who could grab the headlines first and claim in their pre general election leaflets that "WE SAVED THE MUSIC SERVICE"

There were a lot of bowed, lowered heads, a lot of people squirming uncomfortably in their chairs, and not one denial from any quarter of the chamber that my revelations and opinion were wrong.

Today's Chronicle and Echo does however carry half of the story, squeezed for space the Chron's reporter Wayne Bontoft (a very able and considerate scribe) struggled to get in quotes from 14 yr old Simon, the administration, and an opposition member Cllr Sally Beardsworth who ironically agreed with my assertion that it had all been a smokescreen. To their credit the Labour Party (also unreported) told the administration how despicable their deeds were.

So I never got a quote in the press, but hey ho I can live with that, neither did Andrew Simpson (Lib Dem PPC for Northampton North) who spoke as a member of the public after Simon, to crys of "Bring back the young lad he was better and more coherent than you" and Micheal Ellis was also there waiting to get a line in on the story. They were both to be disappointed, but no doubt they will write their own versions of events in the avalanche of election leaflets on their way to us in the coming weeks.

And for my part I get to inform you all, of what really went down on the day in this blog.

What I witnessed was a cynical, despicable manipulation of the publics concern over proposed cuts to services responsible for the education of our children, which were never going to implemented in the first place.

All delivered in the name of political spin, oneupmanship, electioneering and sleight of hand covering up other serious cuts which really will come to fruition and will affect the most vulnerable in our society.

And they ask me why I think our politics are broken, they ask me why I no longer trust any of the parties to serve the public with any dignity, and they ask me why I am now Independent of the whole lot of them.

If music is to be used as the food for political skullduggery, then as I say in the title to this piece, let it play no more.

Look at the Size of my War Chest

An attempt through the "Call in" process by the Independent group on the Borough Council to stop the sale of Archway Cottages. Abington Park unfortunately failed and fell on deaf ears on Wednesday night, but the outcome of the meeting is well worth sharing with the general public of Northampton. These wonderful grade II listed cottages which date back from the 1670's were gifted to the people of Northampton by Lady Wantage in 1892 (as was all of Abington Park) but the current ruling Liberal Democrats on the Council want to sell them on to the highest bidder.

Our challenge led by the Councils Heritage Champion and fellow Independent Cllr Jean Hawkins was based around real and evidential concerns that the Councils cabinet had not looked at all the other options open to it, and that their decision was directed and predetermined by the administrations own priorities. We argued that the cottages could be kept in public use and used for a variety of community purposes, or by the Council itself to house its Heritage team who are to be moved out of Cliftonville House. We also informed the committee that the Council had not followed published guidance from the government or English Heritage over the sale of listed buildings and that grants could be available for either the council or the Friends of Abington Park and or others who wanted to find a future public use for the properties.

As evidence of the above we presented information gleaned from a Freedom of Information request submitted by Jean which threw up some startling revelations. For instance we discovered that in October 2009 Phil Houston, the Youth Development Director for NAYC had made an approach to the Council about using the cottages for a "Youth drop in project" for local 13 - 19 yr olds. This idea was described as "a good potential use" by Cllr Andrew Simpson Lib Dem PPC for Northampton North in an emailed response copied into the portfolio holder Cllr David Perkins, but 'Perky' was having none of it. In a direction to officers dealing with the property he made the administrations position crystal clear when he wrote:

" We will only consider offers which releases capital back to NBC. I am sure that you will be aware that we are trying to establish a war chest of funds from the sale of non priority assets to assist us to manage our organisational change programme"

Despite the above evidence the call in committee decided that the decision to sell should stand and that our claim of a pre determined outcome was irrelevant.

The Borough Solicitor and Cllr Perkins summed up beautifully by telling us that there is nothing wrong at all about the administration on the Council having a set policy to sell assets and only consider options that they wish to consider, equally it was for others to come up with plans and apply for grants if they wanted to maintain the cottages in public hands, but of course following Cllr Perkins email we the public as owners of the cottages would have to buy them back from ourselves (or in this case the Council that is supposed to be looking after them for us) at the going rate in order that a capital receipt went back into the Lib Dem's said war chest.

And what is the "organisational change programme" which will be funded by this windfall? Well to you and me this means that the Council is building up a pot of money to fund the redundancy costs of staff put out of work as even more services are cut in future months.

So their we have it, all out in the open, Northampton Liberal Democrats champions of private market solutions and offloading valuable public assets in order to fund cuts in staff numbers, and all in their own words not ours.

The cottages will now be advertised and probably sold on at a knock down price because of the full cost of repairing years of neglect by the Council who where supposed to be custodians of Lady Wantage's gifted estate.

Doesn't it make you proud of our council? Lady Wantage will of course certainly be turning in her resting place, even the Tory grandees in charge of the Council when she made her gift were far more Liberal than this lot.