A127 Signs & Pub Landlords

We have a project, Basildon Council that is, to improve the signs and add features to the Basildon stretch of the A127. The project has come from our business community, who are not well-served by the road signs that we currently have, and is being paid for by the Homes and Community Agency. Now the reason why the HCA is involved is because Basildon's business community is very large and very significant, with 45000 people employed in what we call the A127 corridor. So, the success of Basildon's business has a huge effect on Essex, where Basildon is 20% of the County's entire economy. Making Basildon's business areas as good-looking and efficient as possible is therefore a very worthwhile aim, because in the final analysis that equates to jobs, both keeping them during the recession and growing them as we come out of it.

All right you are thinking but so what, oh and what is the pub landlord thing? Well, it is this, one of our Councillors was harangued by a pub landlord about this project, and I have had some similar feedback from Basildon District residents. The cause of the excitement appears to be the large 'Basildon' sign that we are thinking of sticking next to the main turn off from the A127 in the large letter style of the famous Hollywood sign in Los Angeles. Objections seem to start from people not knowing why we are doing this and then move on to thinking that money is being wasted on the whole exercise. Well, it is about jobs, and it is probably worth mentioning that the business community is 100% behind the project. Also, this isn't Basildon taxpayers' money, and no, we can't spend it on anything else. Government departments don't give you cheques for £70000 for you to use on anything that you fancy. You build a specific proposal, and if they think it is worthwhile you get the cash.

Let me reassure Basildon District's pub landlords. This is really worth doing. I want Basildon's people in work, and when we come out of recession, I want even more business in Basildon. This is part of doing just that.

Works in Basildon Town Centre

Good news, a flurry of activity in Basildon Town Centre. The Council is starting on cleaning and repairs to the iconic Mother and Child fountain, new lighting, and the lift to High Pavement. If you live in Basildon then this makes sense to you. If you don't then the point is a local Council taking responsibility for its largest town centre and doing very necessary works to maintain its essential appeal and competitiveness. Basildon Town Centre is doing relatively well in this recession, but that doesn't mean there aren't any empty shops and we have to ensure that as and when there is an economic upturn that they are filled again. I have encountered some who think that such things should be left to private business and the market. However, that is a silly position when you are able to do something to improve an aspect of your community, which is at least one of the things that Council's should be about.

Sporting Village gets the goahead

On Thursday Basildon Council voted to sign contracts for the construction of the Sporting Village. For those that don't know, this is an excellent public sporting facility with a 50m pool, AAA standard athletics track, gym, regional gymnastics centre, large sports hall and so on. The project should deliver in time for the Village to support the Olympics and it gives Basildon excellent sports facilities that are as good as any in the region. Now, when we began the project the funding was all in place. With the recession land values have fallen, which has affected the value of the sites we are going to dispose of to help pay for the project. So, we have had to close the gap with some additional sites and borrowing, which does represent a risk, albeit a calculated one. There is a risk of not doing the project though, because we would not get Olympic legacy grants again and our existing facilities need millions of pounds of work. So, we are going ahead.

Not everyone is in favour though, especially the local Labour party. Their main objection appears to be that the Sporting Village will be so successful that it will be overrun by people from all across the region so that local people don't get a look in. Their thesis appears to be that we should have rubbish facilities that no-one would want to travel to. I am not making this up. As I told them on Thursday, the Conservative administration is prepared to deal with the consequences of a Sporting Village so good that demand threatens to exceed supply. Certainly nothing built by Basildon Labour party has ever had that problem.

All-party condemnation of government over ALMO funding

At full Council last night we had a motion on the government's betrayal of our tenants in withdrawing the offer of funding to St. George's Community Housing, our Arms-Length Management Organisation to run the housing service:

1. This Council condemns the Labour government for breaking its repeated promises to Basildon’s Council tenants by:

i) Withdrawing its offer to fund vital improvements to their homes starting from this year as part of the Decent Homes initiative.
ii) Making the last 5 years of hard work by tenant representatives, officers and Councillors to transform Basildon’s housing service in expectation of government funding pointless.
iii) Making the over £1m spent from tenant’s funds in support of the Decent Homes initiative a waste of money.
iv) Pretending that a press release with no details whereby Councils can bid for money to build new homes at some time years in the future is any substitute for giving tenants decent homes to live in right now.

2. This Council expects the Leader to write to the Housing Minister expressing it’s outrage at his decision and calls upon him to reverse it.

It was passed unanimously. Labour Councillors described the government's decision as 'indefensible' and so they very sensibly did not try to defend it. So, we had Labour Councillors voting to support a Conservative motion condemning the Labour government, something that must have been very painful for them and something that is certainly a first for Basildon Council. If there is one thing that Basildon Labour have been entirely consistent on for decades it has been their support for Council tenants and so the government ratting on their promises to those tenants outraged them as much as it outraged us.

Of course we can make a great play of this politically as yet another illustration of how useless and untrustworthy Gordon Brown is, but frankly I would take a government keeping its promises to our tenants over political advantage any time. I cannot believe that a Labour government led by almost anyone other than Brown would have done this. Think about it; the current Labour government is supporting Bankers' bonuses while at the same time withdrawing funding from Council tenants. You couldn't make it up.

Some very good points were made in the debate, including one by my colleague Cllr. Sullivan. He said that it is all very well talking about how awful the BNP are, but it is decisions like these that attack the traditional working class that have let the fascists get a foothold in our society. You cannot keep kicking people and then expect them to vote for you, and for some traditional Labour supporters the BNP can seem like a viable alternative.

I fear that this appalling lack of integrity from the Labour government may cast a long shadow in Basildon.

John Baron MP presses Secretary of State over ALMO decision

MP says Government decision is ‘kick in the teeth’ to Council tenants across Basildon District

John Baron MP is pressing the Rt. Hon. John Denham MP, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, over the Government’s decision to pay for new social homes by raiding ALMO’s Decent Homes budgets. This will mean St. Georges Community Housing has now been denied £142m for its Decent Homes Programme, despite having spent £1m in preparing its bid.

John said:

This decision is a real kick in the teeth to the many Council tenants across the District whose housing is in desperate need of renovation. This is a body blow to them and St Georges which spent £1m in bidding for funding which has now been withdrawn.

The Government’s commitment to ALMOs has been questionable. In addition to the stop-start nature of the funding over the years, Parliament learnt earlier this year that during 2006-2008 £29m had been transferred out of the Decent Homes ALMO Programme into the Olympics budget.

Meanwhile, I’m sceptical that the diversion of this money to social housing will achieve the Government’s new build targets given the logjams that are slowing down the construction of new homes for rent. It is a sad fact that the number of social houses built in each of the 18 years of the last Tory Government exceeds that built in any year since 1997.

Norwich North

Fantastic win for the Conservatives with a 5000 Labour majority turned into a 7000+ Conservative majority; but what does it mean? The talking heads have been at it all day, with Labour spinning that 'yes it was bad for us but 2000 fewer people voted Tory than in 2005 you know' and the BBC going long on Ian Gibson's treatment by Labour over expenses as an overwhelming local factor. This is an attempt to create the impression that this result doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things and that a general election is a totally different animal. Well, if all of the opinion polls didn't show a substantial Conservative lead then they may have a point, but the polls are consistent and they don't. A lot of the things being dwelled over are irrelevant. Turnout is lower in by-elections so absolute numbers are meaningless. Likewise, local factors only go so far, especially a local MP's or ex-MP's personal popularity, which is always over-estimated by the political professionals. Ian Gibson may have been a fine MP, but that probably equated to no more than 1000 votes maximum when weighed against the main issues that decide the majority of votes. Here it is: people largely vote based on their own world, and that means employment, education, health and other things that directly impinge upon them. Right now the big issue is the recession and the reaction to that. Most people think that the Conservatives are being straight with them and are better qualified to run the economy. That is the key reason for the current Conservative place in the polls and the result in Norwich. So, no comfort for Gordon Brown. Labour lost because of the big picture, not the political microcosm of one constituency and that means that this result is a good indicator for a general election.

I think that Philip Collins in The Times summed up Labour's prospects the best:

YOU ARE GOING TO GET SLAUGHTERED

Labour betrays Basildon's Council tenants

Something quite terrible has happened in Basildon. The Labour government has reneged on its promise to fund major improvements to our Council housing as part of the Decent Homes scheme. Now, you have to either know a bit about housing finance or be a Council tenant to really understand just how awful this is, but I will try to explain. Basildon, like many local authorities, has problems in maintaining its Council housing to the standard that most ordinary people in a developed country would find acceptable. Years ago, Labour came up with 'Decent Homes', a scheme whereby if a local authority aligns itself to supposed best practice in housing management very considerable sums would be made available to bring up the standard of public housing. In Basildon we have had to jump through bureaucratic hoops over a number of years and then set up what is called an Arms-Length Management Organisation, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Council with a mission to deliver the housing service. This has all cost millions, but at the end of it we have a good ALMO, St. George's Community Housing, and the promise of £142 million from government if St. George's achieves a good rating in an inspection that is currently in progress. I know that this sounds like a lot of money but what it translates into is decent kitchens, bathrooms, windows and other improvements that most people would consider normal for a house in Britain in the 21st century.

Then, on Friday, we got a letter saying that there won't be any money until 2011 at the earliest and telling us that the government's new idea is to build council houses instead. We were not the only ones. First, there is the betrayal of trust. We thought that we were in partnership with the government in order to deliver better houses, and better lives, to thousands of our people. Instead that has all been swept away. Years of work, millions spent and they just go and change their mind. Second, the new policy is a contemptible smokescreen that should fool no-one. It takes years and costs a great deal to create any substantial project to build new homes, and if a Council goes down that road there is no guarantee they would get any money. We invited to 'bid' for it, though there are no details at all, which makes me think that this policy has hit the streets well before it has been thought through or even before there are any Civil Servants even working on it. So, money for our tenants which we could have got as early as next month has been replace by some money for something else in the far future that we might not get at all. Let us not forget that there is the little matter of an election next year as well, so new policy created now has a very high probability of not happening at all anyway.

The thing I cannot get is that in kicking our Council tenants in the face, the Labour party is victimising a group who they have historically always tried to look after. Their party is meant to have a focus on those who need the most help, and many of our Council tenants fall into that category. So, you would have thought that they would be reluctant to get Councils to waste large amounts of money that that could otherwise be used to improve housing on the promise of providing funding to improve Council houses and then rat on their part of the deal, but apparently not. Our Council tenants join the the long list of people who have been shafted by this Labour government. That Council tenants are Labour's core vote in Basildon makes this crazy in political terms as well as being despicable.

Brown's Labour is incoherent in both political and policy terms. The trouble is that it is when a government starts acting as if it doesn't care if people vote for it or not then it is at its most dangerous. To all of us.

John Baron MP slams shortage of helicopters in Afghanistan

Troops must be given the support needed to minimise casualties

Yesterday, John Baron MP spoke out in a Commons debate to condemn the shortage of helicopters for British troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. John’s intervention came as the head of the Army General Sir Richard Dannatt said British troops "needed more".

John said:

The shortage is serious for a number of reasons. Not only must commanders on the ground be given the option of moving troops by air as well as by road – as we saw in Northern Ireland – but if there are not enough helicopters many victories on the ground will become pyrrhic if we do not dominate the ground afterwards. That is what we are currently seeing in parts of Afghanistan.

Afterwards, John said:

Air power is needed to dominate the ground we take in Afghanistan and minimise casualties, and yet our troops are now paying the price for Gordon Brown’s decision to cut the helicopter budget by £1.4 billion in 2004

The number of our troops in theatre has doubled since 2006 but the increase in the number of helicopters has simply not kept pace. It is wrong of the Government to send our troops into battle without giving them all the support they need.

Astonishing article from Simon Heffer

Astonishment, nay shock at Simon Heffer's latest column. Was is the radical policy? Was it the breathtaking political insight? No; it was the fact that he referred to David Cameron as 'Mr. Cameron'. You see almost since David Cameron became Conservative leader he has been the subject of a stream of vitriol from Mr. Heffer, who took to referring to him as 'Dave' as a mark of his particular contempt. This was at a time when 'Simon' was particularly impressed with Gordon Brown and when he was convinced that the Conservatives would never move into the position as a credible challenger to Labour under David Cameron. To be fair, Mr. Heffer has changed his mind about both and now has dropped the playground insults in favour of political commentary, which is of course is his job. The advice he gives here is that public sector jobs will have to go.

There is no easier way to save money than by sacking people from the public payroll. This will entail more than cutting a few quangos: a defence expert recently told me that 25 per cent of the 100,000 civil servants at the Ministry of Defence could go without any detrimental effect to our defence capabilities. That is just one example. How many bureaucrats are there in the Department of Health dealing with a target culture that does nothing to improve hospitals? How many are there in the schools department who are helping achieve the stunning levels of mediocrity that so distinguish our state education system? And what about the growth-like-Topsy of our local government, where some county council leaders now have entourages and vast private offices, and where business is run by a "cabinet"?

He actually has a point, but it is the sort of point that someone has when observing that large mammals defecate in forests. Anyone who knows anything about organisations knows that about 75% of the cost of a typical office-based operation are staff costs. So, calling for David Cameron to cut civil service jobs is about as useful as suggesting that someone cashes in a winning lottery ticket. It is pointless and obvious, given that the Conservatives have already committed to a very sharp reduction in government spending. That it hasn't been spelled out in lurid detail is neither here nor there. It is going to happen, because it must.

I suspect that Mr. Heffer is paid to provide a rather higher degree of political insight than that.

Your data managed by Google?

This government has a long, proud record of hugely expensive IT projects that deliver poor solutions late. Even among these, the centralisation of NHS records is a standout, delivering a solution at least 10 years out of date at an eye-watering cost of £12.7 bn. Speaking as a fairly senior IT professional, I cannot figure out exactly how this project costs as much as a fleet of nuclear ballistic-missile submarines. Even at the most expensive consultancy rates and even with the obsolete monolithic architecture they have settled on, the price should still be only a fraction of this staggering sum. Someone is clearly making a fortune out of the UK taxpayer on this one.

Fortunately, the Conservatives have better ideas. In 2009 it makes no sense to build huge systems from scratch just to manage data. There are established standards and services for this that could deliver electronic NHS records at a cost that is orders of magnitude lower than that the government is shelling out. The Conservative suggestion is to use facilities already being run by Google and Microsoft, and why not? Provided there is a framework that puts the onus on the private companies to keep the data safe then there is no more of a security issue that with a government system, less probably given the government's record of data mishaps. So, patients and health professionals get access to their data, it's presented using existing web standards so further applications are straightforward and it's cheap and available today. That has to be better than lining the pockets of IT consultancies and it has the overriding virtue that it would actually work.