Save our Gloucester Park

We have a local campaign with the aim, from its Facebook site, as follows:

We aim to try and stop the building of 500 house's[sic] in Gloucester park at the location of the old swimming pool site and surrounding parts...

The key point is the 'old swimming pool site', to which should be added the 'old car park' and the 'old tennis courts'. Put simply this is a brownfield site, which has been identified for development since at least 2007 in the Basildon Town Centre Masterplan, if not before. The point of the development is to both build much-needed housing and to kick-start the redevelopment of Basildon Town Centre proper, which really, really needs it. Good quality housing close to the Town Centre will also serve to increase the footfall in the Town Centre, which is critical for local businesses.

Now these 'local campaigners' do have a plan, which is that all of the land should be turned into parkland. So, they want the Council to spend a small fortune on clearing the site, it's anything but grass at the moment, and also to forgo the income from the site, which is already factored into the public finances. The estimated cost for this little venture is a bit of a guess, but I'm going with a figure of around £8m. Our good friends in the Labour Party didn't factor this into their alternative budget, which they tabled at the Council's annual budget meeting earlier this year. Why is this important? Well, most of the support for the Facebook group 'Save our Gloucester Park' seems to come from card-carrying members of the Labour Party, judging from the postings on the group. The leading light, for example, stood as a Labour candidate in the recent elections and Labour Councillors are enthusiastic posters.

So, we don't seem to have a broad-based popular movement against developing the brownfield site on one edge of Gloucester Park. We seem to have a campaign got up by the Labour Party because, err, they don't like Conservatives? Who knows?

All in all I find it depressing that local Labour acts like a pressure group instead of a political party, though it actually works for the local Conservative Party in political terms.

They may want to think about that.

Basildon Sporting Village Royal Opening

His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester officially opened the Basildon Sporting Village yesterday. The Sporting Village had already had its public opening, but this set the seal on the final completion of this most successful project.

To recap: Basildon Borough Council, working with excellent public and private sector partners, has built and opened the best public sports facility in Essex. In so doing it has saved the schools swimming programme for Basildon Borough and guaranteed that the key sports will be available for everyone by fixing the prices at inflation increases only. It has provided a base for sport that runs from casual usage all the way up to elite standard, which has been confirmed by the Japanese Swimming team signing up to train and base there in the run up to London 2012. The project cost £38.8m, not bad for a Council with an annual budget under £30m, and finished on time and on budget. Everyone involved is to be congratulated.

The Sporting village represents something more than just an excellent sports facility; it is an expression of the differing political philosophies operating within the Borough. Labour historically has been against excellence, and especially against the idea that anything should exist in Basildon that might be made use of by people from outside the Borough. In fact, they are pretty twitchy about anything that might be made use of by people in Basildon Borough but who live north of the A127. They have had an insular approach to Basildon New Town and policies to provide average facilities there while simultaneously complaining to all and sundry about problems with deprivation there in the hope of scooping up public funds. All in all it has been a strategy for division within our community and to present the worst possible image for Basildon outside of our community. When they ran the Council all it achieved was a sort of managed decline for Basildon New Town and a desire for the rest of the Borough to split away.

The Conservative philosophy is to provide the best for Basildon Borough, and if that attracts people from elsewhere then so much the better. We want infrastructure that supports a confident, vibrant and growing community that attracts investment and jobs from accross the private and public sectors. That gives us the capability to actually fix problems such as poorly-designed 70s housing estates and to support those parts of of our community that need it, all without presenting Basildon as some sort of basket case. We explicitly reject the idea that all our community can do is decline.

Of course, the voters have had many opportunities to decide which of the two visions they prefer. Conservatives have been running Basildon Borough Council since 2002.

Basildon Borough Elections

Basildon Borough's election results are in, and it has been a good night for local Conservatives. I was re-elected in Billericay West, and, as ever, it is humbling when a community puts its trust in you to represent them for another four years. My ward voted as follows:

Geoffrey Bores, Labour, 583
Terry Gandy, UK Independence Party, 665
Stephen Horgan, Conservative, 2416
John James, Liberal Democrat, 407

Overall, Basildon Conservatives held every seat that we were defending. Jilly Hyde in Laindon Park and Mo Larkin in Pitsea South East both had great campaigns and saw off the Labour challenge. The most interesting result of the night was in Nethermayne, where a fall in Liberal Democrat vote resulted in a Labour win.

One thing that marred this election was leaflets put out by a community group in an effort to bash the Conservatives. These were a farrago of, well, lies. They also broke election law in a number of ways and they have been reported to the police. I genuinely do not understand what they thought they were playing at.

So, a good night for the Conservative administration, but, as ever, we have to be mindful of the responsibilities that come with electoral success. The public have a right to expect that we keep on top of our game, and we will.

Royal Anglicans awarded Freedom of Basildon Borough

There was an Extraordinary Council Meeting last night, just before the last Full Council meeting of the municipal year. The agenda only had one item of business: the proposed award of the Freedom of Basildon Borough to the Royal Anglican Anglian Regiment. Basildon has spend most of its relatively short history as a District Council, not a Borough Council, and one of the differences is that Borough Councils can make this award while Districts cannot. Now that we are a Borough there was the issue of which body or individual would be the first to be honoured with the award of a Freedom, except it wasn't much of an issue. The Council's view is that such an award should be infrequent and should represent a truly outstanding contribution to the community. We are working on protocols and so on that reflect that. However, our Regiment doesn't have to wait for the paperwork. When the vote was taken there was unanimous support across the political spectrum and moving speeches from all parties. Basildon Councillors have been accused in the past of being able to start a fight over almost anything, so this is far from a normal event and reflects the unswerving support there is from all sides for our soldiers.

The Regiment is readying for deployment and so won't be available for ceremonial events for a while. That's fine, we will be ready when they are. Until then, here's hoping that this award shows these brave men and women that the Basildon Community is right behind the Regiment.

Nuclear Disaster in Japan, no-one dead

We have been treated to blanket coverage of the Nuclear accident in Japan. While most of these has been reasonably balanced in themselves, the number of stories has been quite incredible for an event where no-one has died and no-one has been seriously hurt, by the Nuclear part that is. People have died in the area of the plant from the one of the largest earthquakes in history followed by a devastating Tsunami. Hang on you say. Weren't there a few chaps rushed into care because of radiation injuries to their feet? Well, as widely reported there were. As was not widely reported they were discharged after no ill-effects were found. That's it for nuclear casualties by the way.

Did you catch the bit about one of the largest earthquakes in history followed by a devastating Tsunami? Under the worst of circumstances none of Japan's Nuclear plants has suffered a severe incident, despite the earthquake and tsunami being much worse than they were designed for. No Chernobyl here. The Fukushima plant is being shut down and the radiation leakage is at very low levels. This is because the nuclear engineers are using sea water for cooling as opposed to any direct leakage from the reactor. Key fact: when talking about radiation the level is all-important. At low levels radiation is irrelevant, we experience it all the time as a consequence of living on planet earth. The output from the plant would be dangerous if you bathed in it as it was expelled from the facility, for a while that is. Otherwise, not so much.

Now this is serious because nuclear hysteria can affect policy. We need nuclear power or else the lights will be going out as coal-fired power stations get taken offline. I also thought we wanted to reduce carbon? Nuclear power is carbon-free.

So, for God's sake let ask the media to engage its brains, if they have any.

Good article on this matter here.

St. George's Community Housing to be Folded into Basildon Borough Council

The decision was taken last night to wind up St. George's Community Housing and return the housing function back to Basildon Borough Council. The reason was very simple, by combining the two organisations a saving of £1m can be made to both the Council's General Fund and the Housing Revenue Account. Moreover, the former Labour government's policy of requiring a separate housing organisation in order to access vital housing loans under the Decent Homes programme.

So, any reasonable person would think that reducing the duplication of having the two bodies and saving cash all round must be a good thing. To be fair the Labour Party voted in favour, as did one of the three Liberal Democrats, but the Council debate still turned up some very silly arguments against. The worst of these was that the Council must be rubbish at running social housing. This was stated by a number of speakers as if it was a well-known fact of equal standing with the world being spherical. The problem is that it isn't, the Council thing that is. The world really is round. Sorry guys.

That Councils have been bad at running housing in the past is as true as some Councils being bad at running services in general. The Staff at St. Georges were originally nearly all transfers from Basildon Council in the first place, and, of course, the same staff will be transferring back. Their IQs did not go up when they went to St. George's and they won't go down when they come back to the Council.

This doesn't mean that there isn't a great deal of hard work to do, and that there doesn't have to be a continued focus on housing in Basildon Borough. The trouble is that if you accept the argument that Councils can't run housing then you have a ready-made excuse for failure.

Our tenants don't need excuses. They need decently run homes.

Cameron shows how it is done

David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy have shown how it is done. Despite foot-draggers and nay-sayers they have managed to get a UN resolution authorising action in Libya. This is not just for a no-fly zone, but allows strikes on military targets as well. It provides for all that is needed in order to stop Gaddafi slaughtering his own people, and it comes just as Gaddafi told the world that the freedom fighters in Benghazi could expect 'no mercy' from his genocidal army and air force.

Getting a UN resolution of this type is not easy. Either Russia or China could have vetoed it. The US under Obama have veered between inactivity and indecision. The Arab League could have been quicker. In the UK the political vultures were gathering, ready to rip into Cameron if he failed to pull it off. Some commentators were quietly advising him not to bother, as if political embarrassment was more important then soldiers for democracy stopping bullets and shell fragments. Fortunately, our Prime Minister knows the difference between right and wrong, and has the political and diplomatic skills to match.

Gaddafi was betting on the whole UN process being just too difficult. Well, he was wrong. His spokesmen are already back-peddling as if his bicycle has a reverse gear.

Too late sunbeam.

Extraordinary Council Meeting Redux

So, we have had the meeting and the proposals for Direct Action on Dale Farm were voted through. The meeting was at the Towngate Theatre with an audience of around 200, both pro and anti-clearing the illegal Dale Farm site. Councillors kept the debate measured and there was no trouble, though there was a considerable police presence just in case.

One thing that was a little depressing was the content of some of the opposition speeches. Firstly, they quoted getting emails supposedly from disgruntled members of Basildon Council staff who were concerned that a decision on Dale Farm could mean that they lost their jobs because of the cost. Conservative Councillors had such emails too, but had the wit to check to see if the people were really Council staff. Guess what? They weren't. It was a deception that the Conservatives at least were too bright to fall for.

Secondly, a couple of the Labour Councillors tried to directly link the use of reserves at Dale Farm with supposed Council cuts to services. Now it should be understood that reserves are capital, and are not used for day to day expenditure, and that Council services are provided from the revenue budget, which is not affected by the monies required to clear Dale Farm. So, I listened with some surprise at a couple of the Labour speeches. Do they really not understand the difference between capital and revenue? You might expect that from ordinary members of the public, but from elected Councillors who want to run the Council one day it would verge on the tragic.

This whole matter has created a great deal of press interest, which has been handled by the Leader to my relief. I head him on Radio 4 this morning for example. The press coverage has been generally neutral to supportive and I am very glad of it. This isn't because I think that the people of Basildon Borough need persuading that their Council is doing the right thing; the vast majority want Planning Law applied fairly and so support the Council's position. This is because the coverage should make government sit up and listen.

We are in this situation because of failures of national policy, and only government can sort it out.

Blair and Brown didn't care, let's hope that Cameron and Clegg do.

Extraordinary Council Meeting

As I write this I am waiting for an Extraordinary Council Meeting to start. This is on a long-running Planning Dispute, as reported here. One of the key aspects of the decision tonight is the cost of the action, which could reach £8m. This is a great deal of money and the issue is if it is worth it, especially as Basildon Borough is acting as the fulcrum for a failure in national policy in this matter. My view is that it is a balanced decision, but that Planning Laws have to be enforced, not for any box-ticking reason but because such laws are there for very good reasons. That they have been ignored has hurt both the Travellers and the settled community.

This cannot continue.

Politics of Police Cuts

Tom Winsor has concluded a review of Police pay and conditions for the government with a recommendation that savings of up to £60 million are achievable. By a bizarre and disturbing coincidence on the very same day the Association of Chief Police Officers have published a report saying that government reductions in spending will cost 28000 police and back-office jobs over the next four years. Apparently they couldn't have put this out last Friday or tomorrow, it had to be today, on the same day as a detailed report on police practices, some of which seem more appropriate to the Bow Street Runners.

Just how stupid do they think we are?

There was a time when the police in the UK had very high public support, but shenanigans like this one are at least part of the reason why this has decreased markedly. In the past no government would have dared to tamper with the arcane overtime practices enjoyed by the police, but after the War on the Motorist, a senior police officer standing up at an inquest and stating that it is no part of the police role to control the streets, two women bleeding to death because a police firearms team was too worried about Health and Safety to do their job and things like that idiot firearms officer putting song titles into his inquest evidence about his shooting a man dead then public support has waned somewhat. In the latter case the excuse put forward was that the firearms officer was too stupid to do something complicated like inserting song titles into his statement. He was apparently bright enough to be trusted with battlefield-class weapons and to make split-second, life and death decisions though.

Again, this is not a matter of how stupid he was but how stupid the police think we all are.

We need to get back to a point where respected police services deliver both public safety and criminals to be prosecuted. The coalition plan for elected police commissioners is desperately needed. Of course, the police don't like it, being perfectly happy with the current situation where the Chief Constable occasionally reports to a committee of people whose names you have never heard of.

Accountability will be better for the police and better for the rest of us. I cannot believe that most of the abuses of the last few years would have happened if there was someone to carry the can for them in an actual election.

Democracy actually works you know.