SIMPLY A MATTER OF BINS AND BUGS - TOPICAL SHORTS (3)

There was a time in Local Government when if you had 10 Councillors in a room then you were sure to get a least 15 different opinions. Then somewhere during the mid 1990s all opinions blurred into first of all three camps (Tory/Lab/LibDem) and then into just one, not a Coalition but it seems at local level a Coatrition.

For this reason as an Independent I often found it nearly impossible to promote new ideas or even question the status quo at Council meetings and when I and other Independent colleagues did so our points of view were dismissed by all parties as scaremongering or trouble making we were left out on a limb, our concerns dismissed as negativity, and our comments often ignored in the press.

So thank god for the blogosphere, here we can say as we please within reason, and be judged on not just the opinion we express but also on whether or not we called it right at the time.

Today in the third of my topical shorts we revisit two earlier blogs from the past to give you an update as to how close we called it at the time:

WHAT A LOAD OF OLD RUBBISH

Most of you will remember my posts on "Enterprise Managed Services" the new company that took over all of the Borough Councils refuse, cleansing and groundworks contracts in a 14 year deal. Praise came from all round the Council chamber from the big three, and in my last post on this subject I reminded readers that even Labour's Leader at the time Lee Mason commented that she didn't care who collected her bins as long as they didn't change colour! The Lib Dems agreed the deal, the Tory's trumpeted it as their own when they came to power, even going as far as to hold a re signing photo opportunity for the agreement.

Only two Cllrs at the time, myself and Malcolm Mildren spoke out, We challenged the figures, said that Enterprise had put in a loss leader as a bid and could not afford to deliver the service at anywhere near the price set. We questioned the long term security of the staff who would be transferred, and warned that 14 years was along long time if they made a mistake. We urged the Council to make its own changes to the in house delivery in order to keep control of the service. And we were ignored.

The warning signs were there, at the time Enterprise told the Council that it couldn't raise the funds itself externally to buy new vehicles to run the new contract and asked the Council to lend them the money to do so! Again Malcolm and myself tried to promote caution but our comments were relegated to the wheelie bin

So Enterprise started the contract, to begin with we had the usual teething problems, and as a result some changes were made, some at times seemed to have an effect, but only over time would we be able to judge the outcome.

That time is now approaching, and it is approaching at break neck speed. Let me tell you what my contacts down at Westbridge have been telling me over the last few days. First of all it seems as if Enterprise have lost money on the contract (surprise surprise) the figure I was told was that they have lost £2.5m in the first year. As a result of the above 15 staff were made redundant last week, with more to follow, refuse collectors, street cleaners, groundworkers all being cut back. The emergency clean up team who was successful in clearing up the mess made by their own refuse and recycling officers gone. 5 of the shiny new vehicles which Enterprise borrowed money from the Council to purchase gone. The Councils flagship recycling unit at Westbridge Depot? Closed and the staff laid off and the waste now being diverted by road to other recycling centres in the country expanding further the carbon footprint.

None of the above has hit the ears of Cllrs at NBC yet, and there has not been as much as a sausage in the local press, but when your bins are not collected as often, or you wonder where the street sweepers have all gone, or why the grass is three feet tall again. You can say I read about this on a blog from a bloke who the council said was talking rubbish when he warned them that this would happen. Rubbish indeed!

FOUNTAIN OF ALL KNOWLEDGE

The other criticism I receive is that I must be a real anorak at times to know so much about the most inane of subjects. I hold my hand up to this one, when I get my teeth into something I can't let go, and a number of times on this blog and on the Chronicle and Echos website I have warned about the potential dangers of the Council's next to useless fountain on the market square. If you want all the gory details just click here.  http://tonyclarkeindependent.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/dont-go-chasing-waterfalls.html 

What a load of old tosh they said, its perfectly safe. And yet it seems to have been off more than it is on recently, and anyone who missed in the press the ridiculous exchange between the Chron and the Councils leader over why it was currently turned off will be tickled to hear the story which goes something like this:

Local newspaper contacts Council and says "Is the fountain turned off because of the hose pipe ban"?
The Council responds by saying No not at all and  announcing that  "the fountain would remain on throughout the drought as turning it off would not actually make any difference to the town’s water supply". "So why is it off now then said the Chron two days later"? The Council replied with the following gem

"The water feature on Northampton Market Square will be switched off during the hosepipe ban to avoid causing concern to members of the public who might think it’s wasting water, the fountain was constructed to be very environmentally friendly. It‘s full of water which simply recycles itself over and over again. However, it’s hard to spread that message to everyone who will come into town over the summer, so rather than cause concern, we’ve decided to switch the fountain off until the ban is over.”

The above was all from a spokesperson with not one member of the Councils administration willing to be quoted.

So is this really the reason that the fountain runs dry? or is not everything as it should be? You see following my concerns raised with the council about how all that recycling of water in an area where dogs, pigeons and even humans foul cannot be good for little mites running through the mist ingesting all and sundry the council at least promised to carry out regular testing for a whole range of bugs and nasty's  including TVC, E-coli & Coliforms, Pseudomonas, Legionella and of course Cryptosporidium.

For those who missed my earlier posts, my concern was that the above bugs and their spores are to be found where water has come into contact with animal faecal matter.

The Market Square Fountain is open to pigeon fouling, dog fouling and any organisms transported on the shoes of those walking through the area

These spores where present are easily ingested through the air in mist or through the mouth from contaminated water and attack those with low immune defence such as children and those with HIV

The jets in the Market Square Fountain are of course at just the right height to be ingested by small children playing in the fountain

These tests started in Aug 2010 and took place in Aug/Sept 2010 April/May 2011 June/July 2011and again in Sept 2011.

But no testing has taken place since. More worrying is that the last test for Cryptosporidium was way back in Aug 2010 some 20 months ago!

Of course since September 2011 you can count on one hand the number of times the fountain has been working, but surely nothing untoward was found at that time?

After all Cllr Clarke (as I was told by many) was just scaremongering, the fountain is perfectly safe. And the Council surely would have said something to us if there was any public health risk. And if there was anything untoward we would have read about it in the Chron surely? And Councillors would have been made aware and would have considered it a duty to tell us if there was a problem? So it must be safe.

Safe that is until you discover that the test for TVC, E-coli & Coliforms taken on Sept 2nd 2011 was proven as positive!

VOTE PENGUIN YOU KNOW IT MAKES SENSE

"Hi my name is Professor Pongoo, I am a six foot tall penguin, the cousin of Pingu and I have come from another planet to warn people about Climate Change. I am standing as your candidate for Edinburgh Council and if elected I pledge myself to attend every council meeting as your elected penguin"

An unusual, but not altogether bad platform to fight an election campaign on I guess, and it so nearly worked. Pongoo with 444 votes was well ahead of the Lib Dem candidate 370 and also the Green Party candidate  on first preference votes but in a seat determined by the alternative vote he eventually lost out to the big three in Scotland (well big two and a tiny bit) The SNP, The Labour Party and the Tories.

It was brave attempt for the Independent candidate, and the man inside the suit Mike Ferrigan, and a warning to us all that apathy and a total loss of faith with our current political system is still a leading issue even amongst the minority 30% of the population who can still be bothered to vote.

Pongoo's near miss was for me the highlight of a Local Election night that overall was a predictable and completely mind numbingly boring affair all round. OK the Labour Party won a whole shed load of seats lost in previous elections and in fairness they won more seats than even the Tories who were talking their chances up, had predicted, The Tories lost seats and the Lib Dems flat lined.  And as the local government pendulum swings against the government in situ we should by now be used to such changing fortunes.

Meanwhile down in the smoke Boris held off Ken on a "We know he is a Tory, but we quite like having a Mayor who is as mad as a goose" vote.

Proof positive if you like that even the big three revert to farce when their core vote abandons them. In fact I dare say if Boris had himself taken advise from Pongoo and dressed up in a penguin suit then his vote would have been even higher, but then if Ken had donned a Salamander Lizard outfit? who knows the Labour Party might have took the mayoralty as well?
But a 30% turnout! just where are we all heading? I recently researched party membership of the big three in Britain over the last 60 years and found that the Tory Party can lay claim to the highest ever party membership figures of the three main parties (2.9m in the 1950's) followed by Labour (1.1m again in the 50's) The Lib Dems of course are a modern phenomenon but in their various guises they always struggled to reach such dizzy heights (highest found figure 145,000 1980 SDP)

So how does that all fare against today's party membership statistics, surely given the massive rise in population since the 1950's the number of our citizens actively involved in political life must still be quite high? Not a chance, the last estimated  figures in 2010 have the three party memberships as follows;

                     Conservative: 210,000 Labour: 190,000 Lib Dems: 45,000
That's less than 500,000 members between the lot of them! or an even more alarming way of presenting it just 1.5% of the UK population between all three of them. And if you really want a sense of the size of the decline then look no further than a comparison with UK membership of the three biggest Conservation and Wildlife charities. The National Trust alone has more members than all three of the political parties combined total, and when added to memberships of the Wildlife Trusts and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds then the Big Three nature lovers at 5.5m members trump the party hacks by more than 5m paid up subscriptions. Maybe the RSPB vote explains Professor Pongoo's success?

Coming back to local politics, you also have to remember that we currently have 469 local councils in the UK as well as two parliaments (England and Scotland) and an two Assemblies (Wales and Northern Ireland) so given that you have to be a party member to stand for election then roughly around 30% of those combined party members would be current candidates and 10% (1 in 10) will end up being elected. You should also worry that all three of the parties amongst their membership include a proportionately high number of eccentric individuals (best written about in another blog)

New parties are also not making any in roads into the public interest. Of the most successful in recent years and also the most vile UKIP have only ever reached membership high figure of 26,000 in 2003 (now down to 16,000) and the BNP a high of 9800 in 2008 which most believe has now fallen to well below 4000

So to put it bluntly we have one of the lowest political participation rates in Europe, our political system and its parties are tired, irrelevant to most peoples everyday lives and less attractive to most voters than a six foot man dressed up in a penguin costume. One in ten of those in a party will be elected and three in ten stand for election. These are chosen by the other seven in ten who inevitably include amongst their number the politically naive, the retired and inactive and a small bunch who it is best to simply describe as socially odd, nice to be with but frankly as mad as a box of frogs

I am a socialist, those are my political ideals, I am now after 5 years out in the cold able to rejoin the Labour Party if I so wished, they along with the Greens are currently the only parties I could ever entertain signing any membership form for in the future. But before I took such a massive step I would need to know, what were their parties plans for re-engaging with a British public who are currently completely turned off to UK politics.

I don't want a debate with the 30% of the 30% who bother to vote in Local elections, I want to engage with the 70% who don't bother to vote at Local Elections and or say they never will or never have voted.

And fun as it may seem, I don't want to have to dress up in a penguin suit in order to do it.

"LAST WEEKS NEWS ONLY A POUND"

The Chronicle and Echo has been mostly silent on it's owners plans for the public executuion of our local daily newspaper since Johnston Press's announcement to move to "Platform Neutral Publishing", and so we still await the date for the final edition and still await details as to the wholly inadequate weekly supplement that will replace it.

I say supplement because in order to satisy the advertisers the Chron will now have to cram it's Property, Motors, Jobs, TV and Business supplements into one bumper addition, no wonder they say it will be over 100 pages thick, but how much news will be included? Well obviously none, as telling us what happened from last Thursday onwards in a Wednesday edition will not be news at all, just a reminder of past news and in spite of the best efforts of the staff I just can't see it working. Take an easy subject like sport, do I really still want to read a match report on last Saturdays game on the Wednesday following? and what point is a review of next Saturdays game on the same Wednesday when the news on who may play and who will not won't be known until the Friday?

And what about Local Democracy, by the time news outs on Council Meetings the agenda would have already moved on! results from elections will be 6 days old by the time they are printed and the chance to hold local Cllrs to account massively diminished by way of dilution, after all cramming six days news into one days copy is no easy task. And who wants to read about boring Cllrs and their antics when their are pages to be filled with pictures of Babies and Pets and aspiring local models to boost the companies photo sales?

Over at the announcements section the deceased will be six foot under the ground before their passing and funeral arrangements are noted in the Chron, and we willall  have to revert to sticking A4 black bordered notices to the local walls to let people know of the passing of loved ones. All in all it will not be a newspaper and it is wrong for Johnston Press to pretend otherwise, but the true acid test of how long the new edition will last will be the number of people who actualy buy it, and that will depend of course on the cost.

With the two FREE papers running a day later on the Thursday (although expect the Mercury to be killed off) what is the upper limit people will be prepared to pay for old news? Well I have heard, and the C&E can prove me wrong if they want, that they will be asking us to stump up a £1 for a copy. If true I would be interested to hear what peoples views are on that price and whether or not they will be prepared to pay it?

One thing though is less sure, given that I am told the nightly edition still washes its face as far as local advertizing income is concerned are Johnston Press Press confident that the same income is secure for inclusion in thier weekly edition and on a hidden file on a website?

Meanwhile the share price for JP shares, once at an all time of £5.50 on the London Stock Exchange has plummeted even further since this brave new world anouncement down from 6.8p to 5.5p.

I was criticized (nicely) for declaring in a comment on the Chron's website that I hoped the company went bust, I make no excuse for repeating the wish. In my view the future of our local paper and others would be better off in the hands of an administrator who could see the benefits of a local buy out or purchase of the business as a going concern rather than left in the hands of the people who have already asset stripped the company and will not be satisfied until they have repeated all of the mistakes that Heart FM made last year when changing a local profile business into a national fog of bland nothingness.

Here is the News, There is no Local News!

LOCAL DEMOCRACY WEAKENED BY PLATFORM NEUTRAL PUBLISHING

Those of us who blog do so partly to express our own opinion but sometimes equally to engage others in debate and to play our own little part in the wider public engagement needed for any healthy democracy. we of course are but amateurs, often picked up by our detractors  for our poor lexicon and spelling. 

The real gift it seems lies in the hands of local reporters in local newspapers who offer an insight in to all that surrounds us, not too distracted by the national headlines our locals give us the human life and labours existing right on our doorstep.  For it is with a mixture of dismay, loss and anger that the rumours of the Chronicle and Echo (Northampton's daily Newspaper) demise became the reality. 

In what must be one of its most confused stories in its very long history the paper informed us all that:

"Northamptonshire Newspapers – publisher of the Northampton Chronicle & Echo – has announced plans to re-launch the Chron in a move to “platform neutral” publishing."

before going on to tell its puzzled readers that:

"At the same time the websites will receive a light touch re-launch with improvements to the home page and improved social networking and commenting functionality"

It is a cruel irony that in recent weeks I have neglected this blog (partly because I was on holiday) and instead have been commenting online to stories published in the paper on their website http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk

The paper goes alongside another 5 daily titles the local Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph, the  Peterborough Evening Telegraph, the Scarborough Evening News and the Halifax Courier. More titles are expected to follow suit later this month.

This isn't news, its the end of the news, a disaster for the town, any town or city that aspires needs a nightly newspaper and this decision by the Johnston Group shows how little they care for Northampton and its staff, first they moved the print operation to Peterborough, then they downsized and put the building up for sale and now they propose a weekly. 

I am appalled at this decision and the staff should be up in arms. And an end of decades in fact centuries of daily news for the town. Johnson's have asset stripped the Chronicle and Echo and if we can't have a nightly Chronicle and Echo then it is best they close the whole damn show now as the proposals above are little but window dressing for a full closure. 

This is not a answer to modern technology and modern times as thousands of people still read the print version daily and then pass it on to thousands more! What good is a match report or preview for the Cobblers or Saints when it is either 4 days after the event or 3 days before?

So centuries of history from the Mercury and Herald first paper in 1720, through to the mergers with the Northampton Mail and the the newly formed Chronicle and Echo in 1931 have all come to nothing, or in fact they have come to this, a town with a population of over 210,000 and no nightly newspaper. If Johnston Press car nothing for our history and future then they should still have the decency to sell the title on rather than kill it off.

Although many of us have predicted this downfall since owners Johnston Press took over the newspaper even its own staff and ex staff have been angered by the news and in respect for the real journalists rather than us pretenders I leave the last words to one of their own 

Dirk Van Der Werff who wrote for the Hartlepool Mail who having heard the news said

I’ve been out of the JP morass for almost 10 years now, bailed out after Peter Mandelson and Tony Blair (allegedly) got ‘involved’ in the politics and news decisions of a good local editor and a good newspaper with 4 and 8 page pull-out editions of the Letter Page, so popular had it become as a campaigning local newspaper.

My guess is that the Hartlepool Mail where I worked for 25 years will be on the list of the next newspapers, along with others in the north east. I’m sure some of my ex-Management colleagues will feel differently, but that was the close-up view of editorial staff JP management, across the group and regions, were all so busy ‘making budgets’ and ‘making savings’ to ‘make bonus’ that they didn’t care about anyone who actually cared about the newspaper rather than ‘the product’
Generally, across the group, very few senior managers lived in the circulation areas, and much less cared about the communities they served.

Swathes of people and jobs slashed left right and centre by ‘managers’, who made their big fat bonuses and then moved on to the next ‘product’ on the next newspaper to make more ‘savings’ and make more ‘bonus’ for themselves… slapping their collective backs along the way.

Grand ideas about content that should and shouldn’t be on the internet, dithering and vague airy fairy ideas about ‘monetizing’ content at the same time as giving it away seemed way beyond the grasp of many of them who talked a good game, but who never played a good game. More ‘out of the box blue sky thinking’ than you could talk about in a month of Sundays .. They all just lost the plot, and lost it a decade ago, never mind recently.

I dearly hope that local newspapers will rise phoenix like from the ashes of the bonfire they have become, that local entrepreneurs and community businessmen will take it on themselves to create a new generation of hybrid newspapers for a new social media and digital age.

Democracy has taken a huge back seat in this country because of the demise of local newspapers .. no one full time keeping an eye on the council, no-one digging into crime stories .. no one making ANYONE accountable anymore, just PR fluff and awful ‘citizen photographs’ taken on an iPhone.

Today, I’m thinking about the many good people losing and about to lose their jobs.

What a mess JP made, what a mess.

PASTYGATE FUELS GOVERNMENT INCOMPETENCE CLAIM

It seems my concerns over the lack of political intuition inside of the Tory party as expressed in my blog on this months budget was just a taste of things to come?. No events can better illustrate how crass, irresponsible and out of touch this government really are than the happenings on what could be described as Cameron's Black Wednesday.

First Cameron himself and Francis Maude whipped up a nationwide frenzy over possible fuel shortages due to a days strike not yet announced and on which 7 days notice must be given, and then Maude suggested we all turn our homes into potential firebombs by storing fuel at home! Maude should resign for making such a stupid and dangerous comment. The Tory party made a deliberate attempt to but public sympathy against the Unite Union in the hope that some bad public bad feeling would rub off on the Labour Party.

And then of course we had pastygate. Having upset the pie eating public by slamming an additional 20% on their hot pastry based purchase, the politicians from all sides were falling over themselves to prove to us all that a daily nibble on a hot pie was an everyday occurrence.  "I bought one recently from the West Cornwall Pastie Company on Leeds Railway Station" said Cameron, leaving it to the Daily Mirror to point out that that franchise on the platform closed down five years ago! and the only other kiosk where a pasty could be bought went out of business last Friday, just after the budget.

On both counts, petrol and pies they failed miserably to get their point across and in fact acted irresponsibly and they have ended up discrediting their own fragile reputation even further. One foot note, I am told if you buy your pasty at a petrol station and pay for it cold, then warm it up in the provided microwave, then you can avoid paying the VAT at the point of sale. I remain unsure as to who is advising the government on its political strategy and media presentation, but it looks like Alastair Campbell is getting his own back. Anyone for a Pasty?

THE "CAN YOU ADAM AND EVE IT" BUDGET

I spent my lunchtime today listening to the Chancellors Budget Statement, enough to give those with the most hardiest of constitutions a stomach ache. After 8 years in the house listening to such drivel, you would have think I would have learnt my lesson, but no, I stuck it out. George Osbourne is no great orator and the story he had to tell was not a happy one. Therefore the whole experience was akin to watching the ombudsman episode of Eastenders on a Sunday, doom and gloom, greed and avarice, dodgy deals here and there all set against a background which in best Albert Square language means that the Country is still in a right “two and eight” (state) with half of the country either on the “rock and roll” (Dole) “on the floor” (poor) and over reliant on the “man from Cairo” Giro.


But what depressed me most is that here we are in one of the worst economic crisis’s the country has faced since the war all the Chancellor could concentrate his little grey cells on was reducing the higher rate of taxation for those earning over £150,000 a year and setting up means testing to withdraw Child benefit ( a universal benefit to which all contribute and all should be entitled) from households with one earner earning over £50,000 a year whilst still allowing couples earning £99,999.99p to claim it in full!

What happened to a “Budget for Growth”? where were all the measures to get Britain working again? What did he have to say about Banks who still fail to meet their lending targets to small business and then still give their senior executives massive bonuses for not meeting them? Would he announce new measures to get young people back into work? Or to kick start a still critical housing market? Perhaps he could have reduced national insurance contributions for employers taking on extra staff? Or announce tighter controls on companies still using tax avoidance schemes to siphon off their gains abroad?


But no, “Growth” (The Daily Loaf) to this government is still a dirty word, he quietly mumbled out his latest growth estimates conveniently forgetting to tell us that every estimate he has made to date has had to be downgraded and reduced, he warned us of another two years of public service cuts post 2015 if this awful government/coalition are re-elected and ripped the heart out of pensioners future plans by raising their tax bills by at least £3.2bn pounds in this governments term alone.


This Chancellor, and this government just don’t get it. They are a right bunch of Bengal Lancers (chancers) What do we care about the mansion tax and stamp duty on £2m houses when most of the country are currently struggling to pay their Burton on Trent (rent) or they are too “Boracic Lint” (skint) to pay the mortgage. What a bunch of Barclays Bankers this government really are!

JUST SAY NO

Anyone who watched the BBC Police Drama “Ashes to Ashes” will understand my concern that as a whole nation we may have been somehow transported back in time to the 1980’s The NHS is under threat from privatisation from a Tory Government, Unemployment  is at record levels, we have riots on the streets and tension between the UK and Argentina over the Falklands, and of course locally a Tory administration on Northampton Borough Council which wants to sell off our Council Housing stock!

For council housing the rot started when Margaret  Thatcher conned the country into believing that the "right to buy" council houses would create wealth and opportunity for all. Shelter ran an excellent campaign which pointed out that if the price of food had risen at the same rate as that of housing a chicken would now cost something like £25. We now have families told to use their living room as a bedroom, parents forced to share bedrooms with their children and families of five in one-bedroom accommodation told that they are not overcrowded. We have Council’s in wealthy parts of the country offloading their housing problems on poorer areas. We have a generation of sofa-surfers who do not even register on the homeless statistics. We have working people encouraged to turn on one another in competition for what little housing there is. And now we have a government that vilifies council tenants as scroungers, aided by the Mail, the Express and the Sun, in order to justify massive benefit cuts. It’s not less Council Housing we need, it is more! 

The 1980’s saw the criminal disposal of the vast bulk of the country's best council housing stock and an effective ban on new council house building. We have seen negative equity, homelessness and overcrowding rising relentlessly and house-price inflation that has put access to decent housing out of the reach of a generation. Our two Council’s Borough and County provide little service these days to tenants in Northampton, we can’t even afford street lights! But selling peoples homes from under their feet is the last straw.

The huge benefit of council housing that the some would have us forget is that it is democratic. If your council does a bad job maintaining your council homes you can vote them out. You cannot
do that to a private landlord, a bank or even a housing association. By destroying the welfare state and our rights to council homes the government Local and National are taking away democratic accountability. The Borough Council has now announced that they will spend £2m persuading,  or blackmailing council tenants to transfer to housing associations, or arms-length Housing Trusts. Housing associations can play a positive role as a minor co-operative sector, but they should not be the lead player in local social housing. 

The £2m the Council will waste on Consultation should be being spent on improvements to homes, but instead you wait and see all the propaganda sent out to tell you that only by selling out will you ever get your repairs seen to. 80% of Spring Boroughs residents are Council Tenants and the Council cannot sell your home unless they ballot you first and ask you to vote in favour of the sell out. . Like health, like social care, like education I believe that housing cannot be seen as a commodity but as an essential requirement for life. So when they ask you, I urge you all to respond, loud and clear with an unequivocal answer.

NO – OUR COUNCIL HOMES ARE NOT FOR SALE


(with thanks to Britains finest Red Top newspaper - The Morning Star)

ITS GOOD TO TALK, BUT POINTLESS IF NO ONE IS LISTENING

The Chronicle and Echo's live 'Webchat" with the Leader of Northampton Borough Council last Friday discussing the Councils controversial plans to demolish the Greyfriars Bus Station and build a new Bus interchange on the old Fish Market site was by all accounts a brave attempt at open and accountable democracy, and several people took advantage of the occasion to air their views to the Council Leader.

And at a time when the public have understandably lost trust in our politicians locally and nationally it gave us an opportunity for people to feel as if their views really counted.

Therefore the responsibility laying on `Cllr Macintosh's shoulders to answer the publics questions honestly and without the usual political spin was very great indeed.

The very first question at the very start of the webchat set the agenda nicely it read:

11:01:      Comment From Jon Knaggs  

"Has the decision been made, has the Fish Market's fate been sealed ? "

Cllr Mackintosh keen to get off to a good start and assure people that their views really did count was quick to counter:

1:02:        David Mackintosh:  

No, the planning application for the Bus Interchange will be considered at a meeting of the Borough Council’s Planning Committee in April. Members of that Committee will have the opportunity to hear from the public and finally vote to approve, reject or defer the application. Everyone will have the opportunity to go along again and make their views known

A little later on another contributor questioned once more the integrity of the process:

11:22:      Comment From Bus User  

Why are you bothering to ask us as it's obvious you have already made up your mind?

Cllr Mackintosh was a little slower in responding this time but was equally unequivocal with his answer

 11:34:     David Mackintosh:

Bus User - I am very supportive of these proposals. But the final decision will be taken by members of the Planning Committee in April and I am not a member.

That's all clear then, no decisions made, nothing will happen until the Planning Committee have met, and we all have the opportunity to make our views known?

So imagine the surprise when somebody party to Friday's webchat visited the town centre this morning and witnessed the following scenes outside the Fish Market and in Sheep Street on the site of the proposed but not yet decided upon Bus Interchange!

What on earth are you doing? he asked the workmen. Cutting down trees mate to make way for the new Bus Station. Unperturbed he phoned NBC and asked to be put through to whoever was responsible for tree works and asked the same question.

A very similar reply was given, "The whole areas coming down for the new Bus Interchange" they said, even the much acclaimed "Loo of the year" much loved by the public and Market Traders alike is to be levelled

"But it hasn't even gone before the Planning Committee yet to be decided upon" he said, "so aren't the Council jumping the gun by destroying some very fine trees?" he asked

"Nothing to do with us I am afraid,  you need to talk to Planning" they replied.

So there you have it, NO we haven't made our minds up really means YES we have, and the Planning Committee which is stuffed with Cllrs who have already spoken in the press in favour of the plan which has to decide on a number of issues including the loss of any good mature trees? has now been guzzumped by the Council who are carrying on with their plans regardless of the process.

Cllr Mackintosh has already been criticised this week for his ridiculous suggestion that a revamp of the existing Bus Station would cost a whopping £30m when we all know that to be a ridiculous estimate, but now as Leader of the Council I think he owes us either an apology for publicly misleading us all on Friday and/or an explanation as to why no one on the Council is listening to a word he says, as they are simply riding roughshod over the democratic process and sticking two fingers up to people of Northampton whilst they are at it!

Either way its a dark day for local government when the horrible truth of how the Council really operates is so easily and openly uncovered for all to see.

The Planning Committee meeting will be fun now, perhaps they should think to rename it the Post Decision, Rubber Stamp Committee?

"CANNE(S)" YOU BELIEVE IT

Regular readers of this blog will now that I have held long standing concerns over the Tory County Council's £2m annual spend on the Northamptonshire Enterprise Partnership (previously Northamptonshire Enterprise Limited) whose board of Directors includes one Jim Harker aka Leader of the County Council. http://tonyclarkeindependent.blogspot.com/2011/09/turning-lights-on-in-some-very-dark.html

Almost a year ago I was criticised by the Leader of the Council for suggesting that the County's £2m proposed new grant to NEP had little to do with economic development but more to do with saving a few red faces at County Hall, because without the £2m grant and having lost its other regional grants from the government office East Midlands NEL could have gone bust, leaving the Council a very heavy financial liability in potential pension payouts. Utter nonsense they all cried at the time.

And yet yesterday at the County Council full budget meeting the section 151 officer (Council bean counter) finally agreed with me! Both the Lib Dem and Labour alternative budgets proposed the scrapping of this over generous grant, particularly at a time when council staff are being thrown on the dole, streets lights have been switched off and PCSO's are being cut due to the continued savage cuts on Local Government spending. So in response to Labours' proposals the 151 officers report confirmed beyond doubt that without the Councils grant then the organisation could fold and the pension cost to the council (which last year they told us wasn't a problem) would be now be considerable! Perhaps it is only a problem when the opposition propose it?

As you would expect yesterday I supported both opposition motions, after all, I am sure we could all suggest better ways in which that money could be spent, after all what exactly does NEP do? Well for a start they have nothing to do with the £200m Northampton Enterprise Zone, government cash for that initiative was secured by SEMLEP (South East Midlands Local Enterprise Partnership) Nor are they responsible for the £25m redevelopment plan for Northampton's Castle Station that is being led by the soon to be no more WNDC (West Northamptonshire Development Corporation) The Grovesnor Centre expansion and new bus interchange?  No that's NBC (Northampton Borough Council) and L&G (Legal and General) So what exactly do NEP do with our money? Well there is that Brussels office they run of course to the estimated tune of £300,000 a year, and a look at their 2010 accounts (then as NEL) shows that over 50% of their income is spent on administration! Not much left for driving the local economy then?

Palais de Festival

But yesterday I asked Cllr Jim Harker a few more difficult questions regarding NEL and NEP.  For a start I asked him how he could justify at a time of such savage cuts to services giving money to NEP when for at least the past 5 years they have spent untold sums on a yearly fun in the sun trip to Cannes in the South of France to promote the Rose of the Shires at the annual MIPIM conference for Real Estate Executives?

Jim got very angry at this and informed the Council that NEP had never been there (Well they couldn't have done as this years event is in March 2012 and they only changed their name at companies house from NEL to NEP last June)

He went on to tell the  Council that I had initially not even  mentioned NEL in my speech even though I used the words "NEL and NEP" in my opening statement. He said that NEL was a "separate" "independent body"to NEP even though Companies House shows clearly that Northamptonshire Enterprise Partnership's date of corporation to be the 26th January 2006! and records the name change from NEL to NEP on the 1st June 2011. Two separate bodies? or just the same one? and who sat on the board of this company prior to and after the name change? You guessed it one Jim Harker.

Now gentleman Jim was keen to dismiss my concerns as "scurrilous" rumours,  he told the Council that he knew of no case of NEP officers going to Cannes,  technically correct, if we give him the benefit of doubt that the same officers went as officers of NEL even though they are one and the same. He also said that as far as he was aware NEL never went in it's penultimate year? would that be 2010? or 2009?

Either or really because amongst my scurrilous rumours were the details I gave about the event in 2009 where  guests attended a lunch to hear Kevin Mcloud from Channel 4's "Grand Designs" talk about sustainable housing details of which are here in investnorthamptonshire 2010 MIPIM web contribution http://mipim.investnorthamptonshire.co.uk/contact-us helpfully listing the names of the officers of NEL who never attended (all 8 of them)? They tell us where they can be contacted here at the Palais De Festival where the Cannes International Film Festival vies with MIPIM for floorspace http://www.palaisdesfestivals.com/sommaire.php3?lang=en or even better here at the La Mandala http://www.plage-lamandala.com/

La Mandala

As well as flights and hotel bills and swanky luncheons we can even wonder at the additional cost to NEL of the 2009 "communications strategy using digital marketing techniques including a specially designed microsite, video and email campaign and the integrated use of these digital communication tools" as provided to NEL by Ferrier Pierce Creative Group here http://www.ferrierpearce.com/portfolio/projects/47-Northamptonshire-Enterprise-Limited/

Now I had also been informed by a whistle blower in NEL/NEP that a cabinet or cabinet members had on occasion/s flew out to participate in the proceedings, I asked Jim about this and he said he personally never has done and that he knows of no other cabinet member who has done so.

So let me be clear and fair.  I am happy to take him at his word on that score and hope my informer can correct the impression they gave, if they do I will gladly inform Council of that fact and apologise for any wrong information given.  But do I care who exactly went on this annual works outing?  No not one bit, but I do care that at a time when services are being cut to the bone and when we can't even afford to turn on the street lights that we are giving £2m to a repetitious unnecessary Quango for them to spend half of it on running their administration and part of it on offices in Brussels and annual trips to Cannes on the French Riviera.

And if we can get ourselves all worked up,  rightly so about that "£3000 painting" celebrating Tory Chair Rosemary Bromwich's year as Council Chair, then what are we to make of many more thousands of pounds of Council tax payers money being used to support what even the Financial Times describes as a "famously excessive" "Jamboree" They also got it spot on about local council's though when they said in their pink paper that:

"Some things, of course, never change, including the presence of the local authorities, banging the drum for ambitious and often delayed regeneration projects. Under scrutiny for spending tightening budgets on a week away in France, it is unlikely that they will come away with much given that spending on regeneration is the last thing to return in any recovery."

"Canne" I add one other slight concern? given that all of the above fallout was recorded on the Councils webcast  http://www.northamptonshire.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/65967 (about 5hrs 17 minutes in ) and in front of the local press, am I alone in wondering why you are having to read this rather enlightening news here? and not in the local media?

LOCK EM UP AND THROW AWAY THE KEY

Is it just me, or did I detect a general feeling of glee, happiness and general well being amongst the great British public over the weekend at the news that  4 Bankers and 8 Sun Journalists had been arrested in police swoops on their homes facing allegations of either tax evasion or bribery!

It's not that we are fickle, or that we really wish them any ill, it's just gratifying in some pleasing way that these people acting as representatives of their own kind were finally getting their comeuppance.

Having personally been on the receiving end of  News International's attack dogs in the past, I can't even begin to feel sorry for them, and I feel that they should know that I am only writing this in the public interest, and that it would be far better if they told me their side of the story rather than leaving it to press to report it warts and all.

Likewise with the poor Bankers, lets have a bit more transparency from these troubled souls, after all the banks are only too keen to tell us it would be far better for us all if we let them know in advance of any difficulties we are having with our personal finances, so please don't wait for us to contact you, get in touch, talk to us, tell us why on such huge salaries you felt the need to evade income tax by stashing money away in offshore accounts. I mean I can almost understand why you didn't want to put it into a British bank at the moment, after all who trusts them?

Back to Fleet Street, or Wapping as it now is, Sun editor Trevor Kavanaugh is busy berating the local plod for "Stasi" like tactics, using his red topped rag to tell all that still had a stomach to listen, that his staff had been subject to a "Witch Hunt" and complained about their privacy being invaded at their homes, poor old soldiers! At least they will now also taste their 15 minutes of fame or infamy!

I am not sure what the collective noun is for a bunch of corrupt, seedy, greedy and unscrupulous Bankers and Red Top Hacks is?

But I am guessing they would be a brood, after all I can't remember a time when so many chickens were coming home to roost!