March 23rd 2010: Gordon Brown costs St Neots £2k...
There's a by-election pending in Eaton Socon. Fine, you say, there's the district
council elections coming up on the 5th May, and probably a general election too - it
has to be in the next two months, give or take a few days, and it makes perfect sense
for the government to combine the two. So it makes even more perfect sense for us to
combine all three. Surely? After all, there's all the halls to hire for polling stations,
all the people to give out papers and count them afterwards, and the British reluctance
to make the effort to turn out more than once in a year - even the 66% who do turn out
at all resent a double intrusion by our elected representatives.
Will he, won't he?
Except it's not that simple. A very obscure piece of election law - obscure enough
to pass us by, at least - says that you can't have more than two elections on a given
day without a specific Act of Parliament to enable it. And it has to be a fresh one for
any given year. That in itself isn't a problem - it's done regularly, fairly recently
to combine towns, counties and Europeans, for example. It's not hard, and it saves
a lot of money. The last town by-election in St Neots cost the Town Council around
£2000, and that's just one ward in a market town, maybe 4000 voters.
But 2010 is different. We have a general election coming up. We have a deeply unpopular
Prime Minister, and an Opposition of which the public is still very suspicious, and the
polls are suggesting that it will be the tightest result in many, many years, perhaps
even inconclusive. So naturally Mr Brown wants to grab every little advantage he can
raise. And one he has up his sleeve, one not available at any other level of power,
is the ability to choose the date of the General Election. And here's the rub -
an Enabling Act for parish elections, which would let us hold our bye-election on
5th May, would mean showing his hand before the very last minute. So no Act,
and we will probably have to go to the polls twice, on the 5th and the 27th May.
If there is one thing that can't come too quickly, it's an end to the permanent
bias where ruling parties at Westminster can call elections when it suits them.
The rest of us get called to account every four years regardless of whether we think
the circumstances at the time leaves the public with a fair reflection of our time in office;
why should they be any different,
able to gerrymander the date forward if things are going well, or delay on the off-chance
that something might turn up if not? And that includes elections early in the term;
if we end up with a hung parliament this time round, then this power condemns us to
months or even years of potential instability with the leading party just waiting for
(and trying to engineer) a moment when they can try to ditch their partners and go
it alone. If we could lock them all in together and say, for the next four years you
simply have to learn to get along and make the best of it, it would be a Good Thing.
20th March 2010: Raspberry of the week: Not so luxury travel
Away from commuter-time, St Neots has three bus services - 62, 63 and 64 -
which merrily go round roughly circular routes taking in most of the town, and in particular
patches where other serices don't get to. Each runs once an hour, spaced apart so
that where they share the same route, they form a nice even 20-minute service. And they
are pretty popular - particularly with the demographic groups who tend not to drive to town,
the elderly, the young, and parents with buggies. It's not uncommon to see them pretty full
at times.
Stagecoach run two of them, normally with a pair of dedicated
"Solos". These not only look
pretty swish, they have low floors, a wide entrance, and plenty of room up at the front
for wheelchair users - contrary to apocryphal stories, they do use the bus, I have seen
some! - or for that matter large amounts of shopping, heavily laden pushchairs, guide
dogs, or whatever.
Not the most accessible (click to enlarge)
So this raspberry goes to the operators of the 63, Whippet, for providing a
top-of-the-range coach to run their part. Very swish, again, and perfectly evolved for
what it was intended for - taking people long distances in comfort with their suitcases
stowed away underneath. Not well adapted for anyone who can't manage the very high steps,
and don't even think of packing anything large away underneath - you'll be all day
getting round if you have to get the driver to open the boot at each stop.
It might not be such a big issue, were it not that the 63 only uses one bus... so
if it's this one, and you live in the parts of Eynesbury where it's the only one, then
you're a bit stuck.
19th March 2010: Raspberry of the week: So near and yet so far
Last year, when the flood defence work was carried
out around the Riverside Park, a lot of effort was made in putting in sloped
paths so that disabled people could still access everywhere across the newly
constructed mounds.
Epic fail, as my kids would say (click to enlarge)
Sadly the March weather doesn't do the scene justice, but your starter for
ten is: what does the more recent addition - the post carefully inserted
in the middle of the path -
actually achieve, except to force anyone in a
wheelchair or scooter off into the ditch at the side? Answers on a postcard please,
to your District Councillors. (The sharp-eyed among you will, of course, note that
they have remembered to make it obvious to the visually impaired.)
18th March 2010: What does it take...?
As I write I have in front of me the News & Crier's
final conformation that we've lost the next stage of a saga we've been trying to fight
off for as long as I can remember. For those further afield, St Neots has two free car
parks on the outer edges of the town centre - one at the Riverside Park, one in Cambridge
Street. Proposals to introduce charges have come and gone over the years, but this
time Huntingdonshire District Council has gone that step further and cabinet has
approved charging. It's not a done deal formally, but the final stage, a public consultation,
will only tell them whan everyone has been saying all along.
It's certainly focussed minds - councillors at all levels in the town have reacted
as one, with uncharacteristic cooperation. Yet letters, petitions, media campaigns,
none has been listened to. Attempts to find documentary evidence of a covenant on the
land which lots of people seem to remember has peculiarly turned up nothing.
Everything meets the same answer - HDC needs to save money.
Strange, then, that when rebuilding their offices no expense was spared, replacing
everything from epensive furniture right down to the pencils. That when discussions on
pay come round, senior officers earning as much as a Prime Minister don't get asked to
forego a little in recognition of the size of the hole they are in. That reserves were
eaten up over many yers to subsidise artificially low council tax, with no apparent
recognition that capping would intervene to prevent a sustainable rate being introduced.
So why are the car parks so important? There are others in the town that are already
pay and display. But the two free ones provide an incentive for people not to drive
through the centre of town - an area that consistently fails air quality checks - and
over the single bridge which seems to be a permanent traffic jam. The Riverside offers
access to the jewel of the town, the river and the beautiful areas along it, a jewel which
should be open and free to all. And both
draw shoppers in out of convenience, who would otherwise go off to Bedford and Cambridge,
or even Tesco on the bypass -
with a relatively restricted range of shops St Neots needs every last advantage it can get to keep
its High Street flourishing.
Of course some people will be determined not to pay - and no doubt we'll be
forwarding complaints from residents of the Paddocks, of East Street and Avenue Road,
who can no longer get easy access to their own houses as their streets are turned into
an impromptu extension of the car parks, in the same way as we currently
see around the station. That issue has been another running sore for years.
But there's more. What do I read? "Cllr Rogers said the move would save around
£100,000 and that free parking for three hours meant nobody would pay in reality."
Well, if noone is going to pay in reality, how will any money be saved? Has anyone
added up the cost of vandalism to the machines, or of enforcing a very unpopular imposition
that I expect will be flouted? Did the sums assume that the two parks will remain pretty full
as they are now? And all that for £100k at best - when the hole is £6M deep and growing.
It's not even as though HDC are looking forward to a plan to introduce sustainable
alternatives to car travel in town, as they too feel the brunt of cuts. But that's another
story.
PS: during the campaign, Cllr. Bob Farrer threatened to resign from the Conservatives
if they went ahead with the charging plan. Bob, if you're reading this, it was a
very noble gesture...
7th March 2010: Something to kick up a stink about
It's time to start work in the garden again, getting stuff planted up for spring.
Normally this meant a trip down to the Tidy Tip, where a very convenient arrangement
worked itself out: our District Council collects up all our organic waste - the
dead bits of my efforst in 2009, plus our food waste (fortunately having teenagers
in the house means there isn't much of that!) from our green wheely bins, nicely rotting
down after a fortnight. Off it goes to the composting plant. Having turned into pretty
good quality compost - certainly good enough for my tomatoes - it returns to the Tidy
Tip in 100 litre sacks and is sole back to us at £2 a time. Everyone wins. HDC don't
have to pay landfill tax on a mound of waste. Local jobs are created. Cambs County
make a bit of money from the sales. I refill my raised beds far cheaper than I
ever could at B&Q. My kids get fresh veg for tea. And the environment is the better
for it all.
But that virtuous circle is no more - since the County moved all its facilities off
to their new recycling centre in Marston Road, they don't sell the bags of compost
any more. The waste is still collected, to what end I don't know as there's not a
great deal of point recycling if you just end up producing a stockpile of something
that noone is using. I'd like to think that someone, somewhere is benefitting from the
sacks even if
they no longer venture south to St Neots... just when I thought all our authorities were
cooperating, they throw it all away.
3rd March 2010: Pouring money down a hole
One of the things I believe very strongly in is that we all - individuals, organisations,
councils - should take good care of what we've laboured long and hard to obtain. This
is all the more important when it's something essential, and still more so when other
people's money is concerned.
Great North Road, Nelson Road. Within a week of this being
repaired, it was back in the same state.
So, when the 2009 County Council elections came round, one
of the key parts of my campaign was where road maintenance was concerned. Budgets were
being cut back, minor repairs were being left undone, shortcuts were being taken. My
message was, get the basics right. It struck a chord with many people on the doorsteps -
though not enough, clearly. The Conservatives won and it was business as usual at
County Hall.
Winter came, and this year it was three months of rain, frost and snow. By February
I was regularly cycling to the station, and one thing a small-wheeled cycle makes you
very aware of is bumps in the road surface. And there are lots of them - some a few
inches across, some feet long and four inches deep. And they hurt
A whole collection (click for large view)
It became clear that there was a pattern to the holes. There aren't many on roads where
the original surface is intact. They proliferate where there's been work done - Great
North Road being the worst, a long strip where a pipe was dug up is now nearly a mile
of trench. Why? Once the surface is broken, it needs to be sealed up properly, otherwise when
water gets in to the cracks and freezes, it expands, forcing the surface up and off its
base. Winter 2010 was a continuous cycle of rain and show, freezing, thawing, freezing
again. Now every little repair job that was skimped on is coming home to roost. And
more are appearing faster than the hard-pressed maintenance staff can fill them.
And there's more (click for large view)
I'm not simply upset about my sore backside. This is a much bigger issue that costs us
all. In tax - because repeated repairs cost much more than the amount saved the first
time. In cash - every time your car hits a hole, it's a bit more wear and tear on
the way to a big servicing bill. In lives - a small hole might send me reaching for the
aspirin; a large one can easily unseat a rider in the middle of traffic. And let's not
get started about the tax you pay to treat the victims of accidents. Ultimately it's
down to County Councillors to decide on their priorities - pay now to do a really good job,
or pay much more later. Ours took the easy way out in the past, and we're stuck
with the consequences now.
If you see a pothole anywhere in Cambridgeshire, you can report it online
here.
1st March 2010: Overhaul in progress.
The site has been a bit neglected of late. Gaps will be filled in due course - where
have you heard that one before? - but I thought I'd make a start now and at least keep
up future posts! Anyway, a new year brings a new look. Appropriately enough,
Pantone have declared turquoise to be Colour of 2010.
"It is believed to be a protective talisman, a colour of deep compassion and healing, and
a colour of faith and truth, inspired by water and sky." Well, that's good enough for
me. It also seems good enough for the Liberal
Democrats, although I will claim that it complete coincidence!