HALLOWEEN HORRORS

TWITTER YE NOT

David Palethorpe's "twittered" resignation as Leader of Northampton Borough Council was a shock, after all it is only six months since his crowning after the Tories election win. But those of us who were in the know as to to the way the votes stacked up in the Tory Group at the time for deputy leader knew very well that trouble may well be ahead.

It seems the group has splits plural rather than a split singular and its difficult to ascertain just who is in whose camp? Whats is also troubling is that any new leader will now have three ex leaders breathing down their neck telling them just where they are going wrong. As to some of David's reasons for leaving as expressed on his blog i.e. too many of his group not up for a fight with their County Colleagues over at County Hall and his fear that Jim Harker's crew are arrogant and plotting a takeover of NBC?

Well some of us did see this coming and it is one fight in which I will be happy to stand in David Palethorpe's corner, and any NBC Tory Councillor who thinks differently should give up their Borough seat now and show us all their true colours. The very thought of any NBC Councillors holding a view that Northampton would be better served by a unitary County rather than a Unitary Northampton authority should be enough for them to consider their position

CORONATION OR CONTEST?

Meanwhile tonight's big leadership battle will take part between it seems just two candidates? Cllrs David Mackintosh and Chris Malpas! I wonder if they asked the rest of their group before deciding to declare nominations closed and inform the press of the final big brother vote being a two horse race?

There will certainly be egg on someones face if another candidate comes out of left field and takes the crown. The Mack will start as odds on favourite of course simply because whilst Chris Malpas is a thoroughly nice geezer none of his group will see him as a serious leadership contender.

Its a bit like having a stalking horse with no one waiting in the wings for the second round of voting? So Mack it will be? If so the other fear I have is that David Mackintosh whilst very able has been built up far beyond any sensible level as the new messiah and leader either of NBC or NCC for some time both by his supporters and the local press. But will he be able to make the jump from contender to champion?

My view? "He is not the Messiah he is just a very naughty boy"

JUST THE TICKET

Still no sign of a letter or email from NCC following my victory over Residents Parking back in August. see http://tonyclarkeindependent.blogspot.com/2011/09/traffic-wardens-become-lawbreakers.html but much merriment over them digging themselves into an ever deeper hole. You will remember the tribunal saying that the ruling was "final and binding on both parties" well it seems that the legislation does allow an appeal under exceptional circumstances within 14 days of written receipt of the ruling the tribunal state that

"The grounds for review are narrow. A party might consider making an application for review if, for example, they believe that:

• the Adjudicator made a mistake about the law; or
• new evidence has come to light, the existence of which could not have been anticipated at the time of the original decision"

 So on the 29th of September (exactly 14 days after receipt) they wrote to the tribunal stating that

"NCC is not seeking a review"

Well that's that then surely? not quite you see they wrote again to the tribunal on the 17th October this time asking if their letter of the 29th of September when they said they were not seeking a review could now be considered and "submitted as a review application"

I have now discovered that despite initially dishing out tickets to people illegally after they knew the scheme was not enforceable (15th September) that they have now ceased to enforce the areas (from the 27th September) So can anyone ticketed in between get their money back with an apology? And if they are now not enforcing the residents parking schemes then why are they still selling permits to residents on the pretence that they are? I will keep you updated as to progress and eventually I guess at some point the Council might even make contact with me?

BLOGTASTIC

Regular readers of my missives may be interested to know that as the world's population reaches the 7 Billion mark the number of all time individual readers* of this blog is fast approaching the 30,000 mark * = (separate isp computer log ins since May 2009)

Not surprisingly 21,000 of those readers are UK based but we have had a healthy readership of 2806 from the USA, 567 from France and 553 from Germany. Amongst the "others" for some unknown reason we have had 287 separate log ins from tiny Luxembourg and a regular readership of 69 from Iran.

As to stories I always try to keep the blogs a mix of the local and national but the number one read blog of all time was a fairly recent one (numbers have risen as the readership broadens)

"WHATS A GREEK URN IN BLACK SWANS"June 2011   http://tonyclarkeindependent.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-many-black-swans-does-greek-urn.html

Local and London based readers pushed "CLYDE LOAKES DIRECT NO WIN NO FEE" from March 2009 into second place http://tonyclarkeindependent.blogspot.com/2009/03/clyde-loakes-direct-no-fee-no-win-100.html and

"MORE TOPICAL SHORTS" from November 2010 takes the bronze medal http://tonyclarkeindependent.blogspot.com/2010/11/more-topical-shorts.html

I look forward to the next 30,000 new visitors!

IF IT SMELLS LIKE RACISM - AND LOOKS LIKE RACISM - THEN ITS PROBABLY JUST ANOTHER HOME SECRETARY'S SPEECH

Einstein once said that the secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources, and the blogasphere has it's fair share of copied, repeated and rehashed stories, this in itself in part is one of them, but how far should you go?

Shouldn't the creative writer at least attempt to reshape a story? or add their own twist to the tale?

And how far should a Minister of State stoop to copy someone else's work in order to get a cheap laugh at conference? and does it matter that the person you are copying from is often thought of as a sandwich short of a fascists picnic?

Well back in July, during a national speaking tour promoting his then new book Fighting Bull,  UKIP's ex leader  Nigel Farage was at the Eastleigh Railway Institute spinning a line regarding an immigrant whom he claimed was a convicted killer who had used the Human Rights Act to avoid deportation by claiming ownership of a cat.

He said a court had decided that the man:

“..Should not be deported because … (and I really am not making this up)… because he had a pet cat!”

And so it came to be that last week at the Tory Party conference Theresa May matched Farage almost word for word, including the pregnant pause when she told the blue rinse faithful about a convicted immigrant who she said:

“.. Cannot be deported because – (and I am not making this up) – because he had a pet cat!”

Of course both were wrong, both were manipulated half truths made up to shock the masses into thinking that Britain's judiciary was a soft touch and the Human Rights Act a left wing plot to bring down Blighty. BBC's Question Time last Thursday asked whether her comments were "Childish and Stupid" following widely spread criticism from Ken Clarke on Theresa's speech. I wanted to shout at the scream "NO they were not "Childish and Stupid" they were simply "Racist and Disingenuous"

The Times reviewed Farages book "Fighting Bull"  and let me plagiarise Camilla Longs view of the ex UKIP leader manner and his oratory/written brilliance when she said he was "Somewhere between Alan B’Stard and a frog" and that he was "pretty odious: a shifty saloon-bar lizard" and that the book has "moments of unparalleled pomposity"

I just think that it is rather apt that the Sunday Times once also told us that Farage is also known in political circle for his rather severe and problematic halitosis.

And now it seems that the same foul smelling garbage is being espoused from the Home Secretary's mouth too!

"I warned you that this would happen" Karl Marx

Of course the above quote can't be attributed directly to Marx himself speaking on the current state of capitalism, mainly because he died in 1883.

Likewise the following quote widely attributed to Marx on the Internet is also not taken from his exact words

"Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalised, and the State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism"

The above was actually said by a guy called Pat Caulfield speaking to an American audience and citing Marx's work in Das Kapital from the late 1860's. It's a very good precis of Das Kapital volumes 1 and 3 where Marx explores the plight of the working class (volume 1) and the dangers of credit (volume 3)

For those of you interested enough to read for yourself Marx actually said

"A larger part of their own surplus product, always increasing and continually transformed into additional capital, comes back to them in the shape of means of payment, so that they can extend the circle of their enjoyments; can make some additions to their consumption funds of clothes, furniture, &c., and can lay by a small reserve-funds of money. But just as little as better clothing, food, and treatment, and a larger peculium, do away with the exploitation of the slave, so little do they set aside that of the worker. A rise in the price of labour, as a consequence of accumulation of capital, only means in fact, that the length and weight of the golden chain the wage-worker has already forged for himself, allow of a relaxation of the tension of it." Volume 1, Chapter 25

He went on in Volume 3 to comment extensively on the role of credit and roughly translated saying that the falling rate of profit from non-performing loans, in this case, leads to a seizure in the credit market between banks, which leads to companies no longer financing their operations, which leads to layoffs - in turn generating the social tension that leads to some form of crisis conflict and alters the mode of production. It may not alter it into communism, but it does need to reduce the concentration of capital, to re-inflate the rate of profit.

A fuller explanation of Marx's theory on crisis can be found here 
http://www.marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/yaffed/1972/mtccs/mtccs3.htm#ref3b
But it is hardly easy reading.

So having celebrated the foresight and cerebral brilliance of the great thinker himself let me unclutter your mind with three fairly recent quotes from two people not fit to tie Marx's shoelaces (not that his spirit of equality would allow him to let them)

The first from our greater leader himself, just call me "Dave" PM in April 2011 telling parliament and the wider world that:

"The British economy is growing once again, manufacturing is up, exports are up, and we are seeing a re balancing of the economy so we are not over-reliant on private consumption.That is good news." 

Also from "Dave" was his brilliant analysis of UK PLCs economic recovery back in October 2010 when he told parliament

"You have got to take Britain, as I think we have out of the danger zone of economies in Europe, I think George Osborne's Budget did that."

Of course despite all of the above "good news on the economy" stories from the PM himself the governor of the Bank of England last week felt it neccasary to announce a further dose of "quantitative easing" announcing the creation of £75 billion of new money to be fed to the every hungry speculators and banks. £75 Billion! £4000 for every household in the UK! £1250 each! For god sake give it to us spend not the banks! that will boost the economy! How about giving us all vouchers? £4000 for every household to have solar panels fitted on our roofs to cut energy bills and our carbon footprint in one fell swoop!

And for our next quote lets just remind ourselves what that the chancellor himself George Osbourne said back in  Sept 2009 about quantitative easing

"quantitative easing is the last resort of desperate governments when all other policies have failed".

I couldn't have put it better myself! but then earlier this year on this blog http://tonyclarkeindependent.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-many-black-swans-does-greek-urn.html I did say:

"Cameron and Co have gambled heavily, and with growth still flatter than a Lincolnshire mountain range his numbers just haven't come up, we now face heavier borrowing to pay for waste, not jobs and we face for the first time in a long while the prospect of unnecessary unrest on our streets bought about by political stupidity of the highest order."

"Bankers of the world unite. you have nothing to lose but your bonuses" would seem a more apt quote for the times we live in and of the current state of the world economy. Karl Marx must be turning in his Highgate grave.

THE SNORING AND THE BORING - BLANK STARES AND EMPTY CHAIRS

So riveting are Full Council meetings of Tory controlled  Northamptonshire County Council that it seems a high number of Tory Cllrs will go out of their way to not be present in the first place whilst others obviously feel that sleeping through proceedings is the order of the day. Particularly it seems when members of their own cabinet are speaking!

I will refrain from naming the Tory few who "dropped off" in class, but I am sure if they are your Cllrs you will be refreshed to see them working so hard on your behalf!

Our first sleeper here actually managed to get through a number of her colleagues and opposition contributions before being awoken by her neighbour.

I remember very well a few years ago when I worked for the County Council that the then shared "Members Room" reminded me very much of many of a residents lounge within our residential care homes for the elderly with all the chairs placed around the perimeter and floral curtains and haberdashery everywhere.

But now it seems as if "gods waiting room" has moved to the Council chamber!

SO for the insomniacs amongst you who want an alternative to counting sheep the whole 5 hours and 32 minutes of proceedings of last weeks full council meeting can be found here http://www.northamptonshire.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/65169

But if you want to skip straight to the edited highlights! Then the motion submitted by the Independent group on the £2m of Council tax payers money that the leader of the Council proposed to be paid to a private company on which he sits on the board can be found 4 hours and 54 minutes into the webcast.

Happy snoozing......er I mean viewing

GET ON YOUR HYPE AND FIND A NEW JOB

This weeks announcement by the coalition government that it has awarded full "LEP" status to the newly morphed Northampton Enterprise Partnership was warmly greeted in the local media and by Tory local politicians with all the usual trumpet fanfares  and hurrahs promising us all good times just around the corner and promising new work a plenty for all followers and believers.

70,000 new jobs for Northamptonshire was the latest promise from NEP.

http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/business/local-businesses/breaking_news_70_000_new_jobs_could_be_created_in_northamptonshire_following_new_quango_creation_1_3086095

WOW really! That's ok then, spend a plenty, hire new staff open another overseas office, no need to explain yourself any further were all sold on the idea already!

But hang on a minute? Don't we already have some new jobs already promised and already on the way? For instance  WNDC (West Northamptonshire Development Corporation) has promised us 37,500 new jobs for the county before 2021! and then SEMLEP (South East Midlands) when it was formed earlier this year  promises in it's publicity to provide 8,000 new jobs a year for the area it cover meaning around 3,000 each year for Northamptonshire, a total of 30,000 new jobs by WNDC's target date of 2021. But hang on a minute I forgot someone, NNDC (North Northamptonshire Development Company) Let's see what they promise on their website? 47,400 new jobs in the same period!

That's 114,900 new jobs in the next ten years! Brilliant. and now to top it all another 70,000 new jobs from the newly formed NEP by 2026 That's 184,900 new jobs for the county in fifteen years! An average of 12,396 new jobs a year! Break open the champagne, Fantastic news all round! Daily Mail readers will be particularly pleased given the right wing rags recent headline declaring that 3 out of every four 4 new jobs created go to foriegn workers.

In fact 184,900 new jobs is incredible news given that currently Northamptonshire has only 210,900 full time workers between the ages of 16 and 74.  And with an unemployment rate in the county of just 4% we can get every job seeker back into work in under 12 months! We can even re employ all those public workers and shop workers who have lost their jobs in the recent reccession

FULL EMPLOYMENT by Christmas 2012, these "enterprise" people are saints!

And then just to keep pace with their extraordinary job creation powers most of us in the county will have to take on two jobs and work from dawn to dusk to ensure we that we pay homage to these great gods of job creation!

Of course we could just double the population, but even the most ambitious of house building programmes in the county will only see the working population rise in single figure percentages.

And if we need to build enough homes to service the 184,900 new jobs in the economy then we will need to create even more new jobs within the building trade to accomplish this massive feat and the problem of where to house these new workers will grow even bigger!

What a dilemma!

Of course all of these quangos and economic engines might just be exaggerating a tad? Or perhaps even trying to lay claim for the credit for creating the very same jobs that their competitors have already promised to create? Surely though the press wouldn't fall for such smoke and mirrors and corporate spin.

So are they real about their plans for NEP? No surely not? this must all be a misprint after all this is the same Tory party that promised us a bonfire of the quango's so they wouldn't support even more being set up would they,  that would be too embarrassing a uturn and a duplication of tasks that we can hardly afford in the present economic climate.

Imagine us funding more than one organisation to perform exactly the same duties as others already in situ can we be serious? And to think of the wasted time of all those top business leaders involved as board members and consultants servicing all these double entry, publicly funded bodies, when are they ever going to find time to lead in business! When will they find time in the real world to create the very jobs that they have already created as advisors to the job creators

No duplication just wont do

Then again perhaps it will? This is after all Northamptonshire a county which has at least four tiers of local government (parish, town, district/borough and county) and eleven planning committees (7 district/borough, WNDC, WNJPU, NNJPU, and the county)

So why not more jobs for the boys (or girls) after all it's just we need, who needs front line local government staff like home helps, sheltered wardens and youth workers when we can hire more planners and tourism officers? Who needs street lights and care homes when we know that a fully staffed economic engagement office in Brussels is much more of a priority.

So let's have a local enterprise partnership for every street in the county! We could all apply for European grants to help us pay for our own street lights, after all when we are all working double shifts day and night to keep up with all these new jobs NEP has created, we will need to see where we are going!

It makes me tired just thinking about it, I am off to my bed to get some rest before I start my two new jobs!

TRAFFIC WARDENS BECOME LAWBREAKERS

Remember this?

"DO THEY HONESTLY THINK THEY CAN SILENCE ME"

http://tonyclarkeindependent.blogspot.com/search/label/parking%20services


Or this?

 

Borough Council Election 2011

"PARKING MAD" 

If not then don't worry the story is a simple one to follow. Two and a half years ago I asked the County Council to review the residents parking schemes in the Borough as it was becoming increasingly difficult for residents to park (too many permits not enough spaces) and the traffic wardens were giving out tickets like confetti. The schemes were old and needed updated, the regulations when they were first introduced were different to now But they ignored me!  I then put in an official complaint to the Council and we resolved it by them agreeing to review the schemes, But they didn't! So I complained again, and this time they got all clever with me by saying that they only promised to review the schemes, but never said when they would do it!

So I decided to fight fire with fire. Over a period of 6 months I picked up 10 parking tickets in the Billing Road area and refused to pay any of them, stating lack of maintenance and poor signage and lining as my reasons. During this period I felt victimised as my car was ticketed at any opportunity it was even towed away at one point (although I was told for a totally unconnected reason!) All this happened at the time that my brother was in hospital and unable to drive and I was helping him run his company using his vehicles which the Council wouldn't give me varied permits for.

Anyway I continued to fight all ten tickets and submitted a number to the Traffic Tribunal Service for them to pass judgement. At one point the council tried to withdraw all the tickets but I refused. All I wanted, I told them was a review. The adjudicator adjourned the first hearing and asked us to settle the row between us.

I offered the Council £300 for a charity of their choice to settle the outstanding tickets (10 X £75) if they in return reviewed the scheme. They refused!

So we went the whole distance. The hearing was eventually heard by the Chief Adjudicator for England and Wales Caroline Sheppard, two weeks ago I am delighted to say that she found in my favour in all cases! The council lost in all of it's challenges

She told the Council that their "Permit Holders Only" signs were inadequate as they failed to display the times of the scheme on each and every sign. Furthermore she told them that they could not have a visitors permit scheme which operated for different hours than the residents (currently our overnight visitors even with a permit  have to park in two hour bays the night before and move their cars at 10am into a residents bay or at 8am from a residents bay into a 2hr limit and then move again at 10am we call it the pyjama run)

She told them that they could not evidence the state of the markings because they had submitted no evidence, but that the latest changes following resurfacing had only made things worse. she told them to cancel all my tickets, and to cancel the rest that they had issued to me over the period.

The next day they were outside ticketing as usual, knowing that the scheme was unlawful. In the two weeks since the hearing they have not contacted me once to discuss the case and they told the Chronicle and Echo that they were waiting for the official notice before taking any action. Today after they had got the official notice they had no comment to make

The official judgement came earlier this week, all eight pages of it! I include below for your pleasure some of the adjudicators comments therein.

"The signs do not comply with regulations 18"
"The County Council has failed in its duty to sign the effect of the TRO" (Traffic Regulation order)
" The alleged contraventions did not occur"
"The signs used have no times of operation"
"This is hardly surprising as there are three sets of applicable hours within the TRO"
"The CPZ (Controlled Parking Zone) signs do not govern the parking places"
"The County Council may not rely on the CPZ zone to inform road users"

Amazingly the Council tried to defend their ignorance by saying they thought the signs were ok when they put them up and the regulations had changed afterwards! The adjudicator said

"I cannot accept that argument"

They then said that as a Councillor I should know what the regulations were! The adjudicator said

"It is all very well to submit that Cllr Clarke knew what restrictions were intended but the test is not a subjective one, it is an objective one applying to" persons using the road" that means persons in general and not just Cllr Clarke"

Ms Sheppard then criticised the Council for misleading disable blue badge holders who wouldn't know when the scheme was or was not operating.

She then said that in summary

"Northamptonshire County Council at the time the Parking Places Order 2001 came into force failed to comply with its duty under Regulation 18(1)(a) of LATOR to adequately sign the various operational times that applied to the permit bays."

So what does it all mean? Well for a start it means that none of the Residents Parking Schemes in the Town are legal or valid, as none of the TRO's which govern the schemes, the Signs which police the schemes, or the CPZ's which give notice of the schemes are valid.

This means that the Council will now have to review not just the individual schemes but also review the whole policy and look at how to reprovide for issues such as visitors permits and how to display times (perhaps they should look at my suggestion for scratch cards?) It means that they have to draw up new TRO's send them out to residents for consultation and then they will have to replace all the signs in the town at huge cost. It means a Council which can't even afford to keep the street lights on will  face a massive bill to correct their own incompetence. (And if you get a ticket in the dark because the street lights are off I am also told you have a good chance of having those quashed as well as the signs would be not readable)

And it also means that the residents like me who have paid our £25 a year will now have no scheme operating leading to potential traffic chaos caused by the Councils stubbornness and arrogance and unwillingness to work with one of their own Cllrs to find a sensible compromise and to listen to residents concerns. At one point (about a year ago) they even had the gall to say, Tony if you win this case then we wont be able to enforce the scheme anymore and it will all be your fault! For the record I said fine then lets settle things here and now with a timetable for proper review.... They of course declined my offer.

As for the current residents schemes I wonder if we will all get our £25 back? One bit of bad news for those already ticketed is that I understand if you have paid a ticket you cannot recover the money? But if you have one outstanding in a residents  bay, you now know what to say!

It is not for me to encourage people to park where they will, and I hope people will respect the need for residents to continue to use the permit bays until the council sort out the mess they have created. Nor should people think that this covers them for other offences outside of the regulations above, but one issue that really still grinds with me is that the Council has known for two weeks that the schemes were not enforceable, So why have they let their wardens continue to issue unlawful tickets? If they say they were waiting for confirmation then it came earlier this week, so why are they out there today (now) still ticketing (till 1am in the morning)

The answer? They (the council, not the wardens) don't give a fig about serving the public, they just want your money and until they were found out they were creaming in over a £1m a year including a large sum from PCN's within the residents parking areas. My message to them is to send them out of our side streets and onto the main roads where they can do what they are paid for, keeping the roads clear, ticketing people blocking bus lanes, ticketing lorries unloading outside of hours and causing mile long tail backs!

Anyone wanting a full copy of the Traffic Tribunals decision can email me at tony.clarke@email.com

For more on this story see tomorrows Chronicle and Echo.

TURNING THE LIGHTS ON IN SOME VERY DARK CORNERS

Earlier today the Independent group on the County Council submitted the following motion for debate at this months Council meeting (29th September)

That this Council notes the investigation requested by the Independent Group for the Head of Paid Service, the Section 151 Officer and the Monitoring Officer to look into:

1.     The alarming increase in the deficit in the NEL pension fund from £421k to £1.46mn between March 2009 and March 2010

2.     The potential breach of either the procurement regulations and European Directives in the buying £2m of services from NEL/NEP without going out to tender when the shareholding of NCC was below 20% or the breach of the council grant allocation procedures.

3.     The principle of NCC members of the Board of NEL/NEP in determining liability for the deficit to the pension fund to NCC, without declaration of interest either way during any relevant debates or decisions in NCC meetings or at the NEL/NLP board

4.     The failure to record any decision by NCC to underwrite the NEL/NEP pension deficit or any other loss

5.     The omission of the liability for the pension deficit from the NEL accounts without a concurrent inclusion of the same liability in the NCC accounts for 2010,

Furthermore this Council resolves to receive the Officers’ report at Full Council for open debate.

We are very grateful to Liam Costello (a fellow Independent candidate and Parish Cllr from Wooton and EH) for his tireless work and his submission of freedom of information requests to help us get to the truth of this whole sorry saga. At a time when the Council can't even afford to keep the lights on in it streets it seems that they are happy to find money for private ltd companies to spend on plugging holes in their pension funds and it also seems as if they care not what the price?

The following explanation owes much to Liam's narrative:

NEL (Northamptonshire Enterprise Limited was formed in 2006 by the merger of 6 companies that all lived off government grants delivering government programmes such as economic development, tourism, training etc. they made their money by slicing off a hefty management fee from funding programmes delivered through EMDA. Five years ago the County Council under Jim Harker's leadership brought them all together under the NEL umbrella.

When NEL was formed, this company quickly became Jim's baby. He seemed keen to hive off as much council business to it as he could. Things such as Single Regeneration Budget funding were passed over by NCC to NEL to administer etc. NCC seemed to be doing everything it could to build up the name and standing of this company.

NEL then became a member company of the Local Government Pension Scheme and its employees became eligible to join.

The articles of association of NEL stated that the borrowings of the company could not exceed the amount it receives in annual grants from the Government, or from other organisations. Essentially this limits the working capital of the company to the value of the funding programmes that it was delivering. It should therefore not be capable of going into debt if the directors abide by the articles. It has no shareholders, no equity, therefore no dividends can be paid. It makes its money by top slicing management fees from grant programmes and paying what some might consider to be fat cat salaries.

When NEL published its accounts for the year ended 31 March 2010, they showed that the company had run up a pension deficit of nearly 1.6million in 5 years. This may have been a bit of an unfortunate consequence of the recession caused by the banking crisis, but given the strict articles, the company should have considered the risk before becoming a member of a final salary pension scheme. Prior to joining the LGPS, the company paid into money purchase pensions where the risk to the company is non-existent.

The 2010 accounts state that the company considered the size of this deficit to be an ‘unwelcome surprise’, but go on to say that NCC gave a simple but unequivocal undertaking to underwrite any future deficits in the pension scheme at the time of the formation of the company. A blank cheque if ever there was one! They do however go on to acknowledge that NEL has primary legal liability for the deficit despite the alleged NCC undertaking.

We have searched the NCC website for any such mention of this undertaking in the Pension Committee minutes but surprise surprise cannot find any. Liam then made a FOI request for a copy of the Admission Agreement between NEL and NCC, and despite a statutory requirement that these agreements are made public they have refused to supply him with a copy. A complaint was made to the Information Commissioner in January this year and he has just received notification from the IC that NCC has been ordered to supply the document to him.

Jumping back to 2010, shortly after their year end, there was a change of government and the announcement that Regional Development Agencies, such as EMDA, were to be scrapped along with the funding streams they delivered through bodies such as NEL. NEL was essentially up the creek without a paddle. It had a pension debt of just under £1.5M and its funding streams had gone.

NEL is not the only company to have found itself in this situation, Visit London has a 2.1 million deficit which they are in dispute with the GLA over, and there was a piece on Look East about an east anglian tourism body that had folded leaving a LGPS deficit of £1million. We are sure that there are others across the country.

So the Council it seems devised a cunning plan to rescue NEL, and their own embarrassment. They decided that despite other Councils in Northamptonshire agreeing to support a new "South East Midlands" Local Enterprise Partnership (SEMLEP) as agreed by the government that they would form their own new body called the Northamptonshire Enterprise Partnership, (NEP) and allocate it a £2m budget for the next 3 years. £1.3 million was to go on back office and administration and £700k on actual economic development, including the infamous Brussels office. (The Northamptonshire European Investment Office)

Cllr Bill Parker at the 24 Feb council meeting said of the NEP partnership

“The sum of £2million would be invested in a Northamptonshire Enterprise Partnership comprised of NCC, business and industry, the skills sector and voluntary sector”.

Yet we now find that the partnership as described by Cllr Parker which should have included the skills and voluntary sectors has not been formed, and instead NEL has now been morphed into NEP. Companies House records and confirms the change of name of NEL to NEP on June 1st 2011

This whole affair we believe was just a cover to give £2million to the former NEL to get it out of financial trouble. One problem they faced however (apart from the name of the organisation) was that because of the value of the services that they were procuring, they should have followed normal public procurement processes. This would have involved a tendering process, advertising the contract in the European Journal etc. This would have attracted great interest from other companies and it would have been difficult to award the contract to NEP. Any company it would seem could have beat NEP in a tendering process to deliver £700k worth of economic development in return for £2million.

There are of course circumstances in which the normal public procurement process can be bypassed, and these were clarified in a Supreme Court judgement recently. these are called the Teckal exemptions. NCC know about these as they referred to them in the report on The future of Direct Services to Adults and Carers in May this year. Essentially to apply the exemption the council must have such control of the company that is proposing to award a contract to, that it could be considered the be a department of the council. One of the factors in establishing whether this control exists is the amount of control that a council has over the contracting company, which should be 20% control. But the articles of NEL limit the voting power of local authority members to less than 20% (article 18). So essentially this service should have been put out to tender, and what they have done may be seen by some as being on the cusp of unlawful. 

Instead however it seems that they spent an untold sum on legal advice to tell them that the money should instead be paid as a"Grant" But the Council also have strict procedures for grant allocations and we believe a lot of local charities and other organisations will be very interested to look at how NEL/NEP were treated by the Council when awarding this "special" grant when matched against their own experiences of late. And just who made the grant application NEL? NEP? and when?

So the new partnership it seems was just a mirage to cover up giving £2million to bail out NEL which is now NEP. Not only does this quango duplicate the work of SEMLEP, (although it was SEMLEP not NEP who delivered the recent Northampton Enterprise Zone)  but is has also been given £2million of Council Tax payers money for three years by way of grant which helpfully covers the same size hole left in the companies pensions deficit.

So where do we start with this one? Well some answers to the questions we raise in the motion above might help, for instance if NEL state in their accounts that they had an unequivocal undertaking to underwrite any future deficits in the pension scheme at the time of the formation of the company then why can we find no record of any decision taken by NCC to do that?

Furthermore if as we state in the motion if NEL had removed the liability for the pension deficit from the NEL accounts in 2010 why is there no concurrent inclusion of the same liability in the NCC accounts for 2010? or in 2011's budget? And can it be lawful for a local authority to underwrite the pensions deficit of a limited company?

And whilst it may be just a standards board issue, why does it seem that certain people who were or have since become directors of  NEL or NEP not declared their interests when proposing or discussing any of these issues over the previous months?

We believe a lot of people have a lot of questions to answer? We hang back at present from calling for anyones head or even singling out individuals for censure, but we do believe that the Council. (The whole Council) has a duty to receive the requested reports and ensure clear answers and accountability's are given.

We look forward to debating these matters further on the 29th of September

A BAD (WEEK) AT THE OFFICE AHEAD FOR NCC

Since reluctantly vacating my seat on the Borough Council I have had the opportunity to spend more time looking into affairs across the road at County Hall. A case of David Kennedy's gain being Paul Blantern's loss I guess? Anyhow for those who have wanted me to post some more local political stories I offer you up a treat in the days ahead and here's a small trailer of whats to come.


CARRY ON CARRILION?

Remember all those promises made by the County Council after the Carrilion fiasco? assuring us that future contracts will be let more openly and with far more transparency and democratic accountability? Well what would happen if it happened again, but with another private company? and how about we throw in a few undeclared personal interests into the pot and stir it all around with a spoonful of financial confusion, pension deficit and undemocratic practices? Hubble Bubble, someones in a lot of trouble! More to come on Thursday.


PARKING UP THE WRONG TREE

Sometimes, just sometimes you have to be prepared to stick your neck on the block in order to see fair play and to garner a response from a large unwieldy authority like NCC. But imagine your delight if you had been complaining to the Council through all the right formal channels for 2 years without any success? Imagine then if you had to take such drastic action to prove your point that it could have a devastating financial comeback on you if you lost the case? Imagine then your delight if you were to be proved right on all counts leading to a lot of red faces on the authority and a huge bill to rectify years of incompetence. Imagine no longer and look forward to thier being thousands of relieved residents who will at last see fair play from the Council, not through the Councils own grace but by having to be dragged kicking and screaming to the alter of justice! More on this story here and in the Chronicle just as soon as the official notices land on the doormats.


CHARGE OF THE STREETLIGHT BRIGADE

News reaches me of a potentially wonderful example of direct action being planned by person or persons unknown. It seems that they have got themselves fully trained in turning on streetlights turned off by NCC and intend to do just that.

Now should a County Councillor support direct action being taken against the authority? Yes I should in this instance as in my book the Council has no moral or democratic authority to turn them off in the first place. The decision taken by councillors allowed for full consultation to be held between local Cllrs, the Police and residents groups before the switch off was implemented, and the County Council undertook no such consultation. In a response to Joe Joyce Chair of Spring Borough residents the Council tried to suggest that the consultation on the budget back in December was sufficient, and also suggested that any comment on consultation between the Police and NCC was a "security" matter and the detail shouldn't be disclosed. Well let me disclose that no such consultation was held. as a result for the first time in five years the number of Sex Workers working in Castle Ward has increased not decreased.

So to those who plan to take their own action I have this advice. Make sure you are completely safe and that you are qualified to carry out the task in hand,  this is not a task for the DIY enthusiast, do not put yourself or any others at risk, ensure that all lamp boxes are securely locked after you have visited them. Stick to the above and you have my support and my thanks for making the streets of Castle Ward and elsewhere safer places to be.

WHAT HAVE THEY DONE WITH MY PEOPLE

I am, was always, and will always be proud to identify myself as working class, despite being told so often and now reluctantly accepting that my people have now been all but extinguished, eliminated or assassinated which ever description best suits you.

And as such I sit here today, a working class refugee trapped in my own "CAMP GUARDIAN" a strange land full of Liberal Middle Class wannabees whose lives, values and aspirations are all so alien to me.

But how do I define the working class of my birthright and ancestry?

Well I guess I would first of all want to add the important additive of "Decent" to the tag "Working Class"  to explain my chosen heritage, and I would also describe my lost tribe as follows:

We were hard working decent folk with proud family and community roots, our hard graft and no nonsense outlook on life meant we had good job security, and for good measure we had strong trade unions to protect our employment status and rights.

We worked hard and played hard, not all drinkers by all means, but all willing and some more eager than others to spend thier fair share of time in the Working Men's Clubs and Local community pubs, mixing with our neighbours and participating in a wide range of community events and pastimes, a Monday to Friday toil followed by Friday or Saturday nights out, the football terraces on a Saturday afternoon, and then re enacting the same games ourselves on the parks on a Sunday morning.

We were the age of the "Likely Lads" the younger generation carbon copies of Tony Booth and Una Stubbs (Mike and Rita) from "Till death do us part" we were far closer to "Steptoe and Son" than "Mumford and Son" and we ruled the TV screens in the kitchen sink dramas of the 60's and early 70's

We also then had a Political Party of our own who understood us and believed in what we believed in decency, fairness and social justice. May it Rest in Peace

We lived both on council estates and in private housing in communities which were both mixed in their tenure and diverse in their wealth.

And before the far right sense an opening for their vile hate of anything non white we all danced to Tamla Motown in the 60's and Northern Soul in the 70's as Mods and Skinheads we moved to the sounds of Reggae and Ska. We rocked against racism and celebrated the "Red Wedge" between the racists and the realists

So what happened? Where did it all go wrong?

Well clearly Thatcher did for any community stability that mixed housing tenure provided by turning home ownership into a must have and moving the rented sector into terminal decline. By not investing in Social Housing for rent we created ghettos of state dependent families in some parts of town whilst at the same time trapping others into mortgage dependency in others.

She also destroyed the trade Union movement as we knew it and the natural  increase in labour mobility as the world became smaller drove down wages and created unemployment amongst the masses.

Once again before the far right try to blame immigrant labour we should remember that most economic migrants came from a lot closer to home than the wider commonwealth, as pits closed in the North then so the North South divide grew wider and the job market upped and moved to Middle and Southern England. Even "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" speaks with a Scottish Accent these days.

And of course their are many middle class office workers who have also been replaced by overseas call centres and UK Doctors and Engineers who cannot compete in wage terms with overseas trained graduates. So migration of labour wheresoever the migrants come from is not a simple class specific phenomenon

You see its never been about race, but it has always been about class.

We now have a so called "Underclass" left to fend for themselves and carry the blame for all of society's ills on their shoulders without having been afforded the education to understand why they are being blamed in the first place.

We have an Upper Class which just gets richer and richer and a great mass of people (probably as high as 70%) who all consider themselves to be the aspiring middle classes, the epiphany of  Mondeo Man and Worcester Woman all scrambling over each other to climb up the slippery pole. They compete over school places for their young, creating an educational market that rewards conformity rather than celebrating diversity. Gone are the Grammar Schools which provided a vehicle for the bright youngsters from the wrong side of town or even the Comprehensives which provided an education for all built on community and place, rather than exam results and offsted reports.

So here I sit, alone in a crowd, my people all but extinct, with no party to represent my views and few neighbours who understand my loss. I don't want money, (beyond what I need to live on) and I would rather my children were happy in work with a roof over their heads than chasing dreams and collecting lifetime debts to try to out do the upper classes in the hope of supplanting them in the British hierarchy. As if!!

A quick look around the House of Commons when I was their between 1997 and 2005 taught me that not much has changed, and anyone watching the current documentaries on the British army in Afghanistan will have noticed that today's Army Captains come from the same schools and families as they did 100 years ago.

Perhaps John Lennon hit the nail on the head in "Working Class Hero" when he wrote

There's room at the top they are telling you still,
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
If you want to be like the folks on the hill,

 And so that is where I am, I can't go back to my past, it has gone forever, I now live in an alien world amongst people who are probably just like me, but mourn the past less, I don't blame them, everybody is entitled to dream, "this time next week Rodney we will be millionaires!" But I do despise the people who have abandoned me and my people and left us to find our own way in the new world we now have to live in and I can't forgive those who divided the working classes and in doing so have left people behind with so little meaning in their lives all trapped at the bottom whilst seeing little chance for their escape.

And I  remain determined to fight back against those from the Bullingdon Club and high society who want to proclaim that we can all be just like them, when most of us would rather stick red hot pokers up our jacksies than stoop so low as to be so empty and shallow as they are, the idle and feckless rich.

We still get together at times, us refugees, at the greasy spoon cafes or at the football, but we all know deep down that really the lives we had are now gone forever.

THEIR BLOOD ON OUR HANDS

Lets not try and hide the truth, the murderous events unfolding in Libya this week are a direct result of Western intervention in what was already a very volatile situation.

I have said elsewhere on this blog that I am no fan of Gaddafi, and that Libya will be much better for his passing, but at what cost to the people of Libya must we want his head so badly as to rush the country head on into Civil War?

NATO’s mandate in Libya was to protect civilians, not to take sides in a civil war between secular nationalists on one side and Al Qaeda Islamists and CIA backed-exiles on the other
Without any shadow of a doubt the British government has breached UN resolutions meant to secure a no fly zone and protect Libyan civilians, instead the RAF and troops on the ground have been used to aid the advance of rebels and support the overthrow of the regime at any cost.

Even the western media have involved themselves in the overthrow by telling us almost hourly that the Rebels are now in control of this town or that city, and the NTC are on the brink of setting up a transitional government.

Meanwhile more and more young men and women on both sides die, more and more civilians are drawn into the conflict and the infrastructure of the country crumbles.

Its no good the RAF bombing compounds and Gaddafi strongholds and clearing the way for the rebels to advance if the rebels who advance lack any military training or discipline when they reach their targets.

I firmly believe that the uprising and assault on Tripoli last Saturday and Sunday was led by UK and other special forces, it was supposed to be the end game, I am also sure that western media were primed to broadcast the downfall of the regime and the success of the rebels, but here we are a week later and still the struggle goes on still the death count rises and still the west try and pretend that they are nothing but innocent bystanders and protectors of the weak.

Who are we trying to kid? Hospitals are now closed, with 100's of bodies lying in deserted beds, the law of the gun is the only law and order in town, and vital services are cut off or destroyed.

One day soon Gaddafi will fall, it is inevitable, and if the rebels are too incompetent to achieve it then NATO led forces will finish the job off.

But what of the future? will the differing factions currently engaged in hand to hand combat really agree on how the country will be run? Will their really be no retribution for those who backed the old regime? And will Libya prosper any more under a Puppet Government than it did under a Local Dictator?

I believe passionately in the rights of people to rise up against their dictator and take control of the own destiny, but this whole sorry affair has a bad taste of the grand old Duke of York to me, and I am left wondering just how many Libyan civilians on both sides will have lost their lives since we stepped in to defend them?

I have no trust anymore in our governments intention, I don't believe that NATO is acting in  the best interests of the weak and I fear that UN resolutions have become toothless edicts which can be manipulated by the Western powers to meet their own needs at any cost to human life elsewhere. And even more disturbing in some ways I have lost faith in the BBC and others to report the news rather than a government sponsored version of what they want the news to be

Shame on us all  for not speaking out with a much louder voice