Spying is good says Sir Christopher Rose

Daily Telegraph letters today included the following:

SIR – It is unfortunate that you repeated (Leading article, August 10) the criticism of local authorities for using their Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act covert surveillance powers against dog fouling. This is, at best, a half truth.

It is unlikely that the use of those powers would be necessary or proportionate in relation to fouling a pavement. But fouling a children’s playground is much more serious, as dog excrement contains a parasite which can cause blindness in children.

I suspect that many people would welcome the use of these powers to reduce that risk.

Sir Christopher Rose
Chief Surveillance Commissioner
London SW1

Check out the signature. Sir Christopher Rose's job is to make sure the large number of agencies who made the more than half million communications intercept requests and engaged in other surveillance activities stay within the law. On the evidence of this letter he brings the wrong sort of enthusiasm to his role, arguing that surveillance by Councils for trivial reasons is absolutely fine. Now, a standard method to try and justify the unjustifiable is to suggest a lurid risk, usually involving children, that can only be mitigated by an extreme but sadly necessary course of action. There are two components to a risk: threat, what might happen, and probability, how likely it is to happen. Because probability is poorly understood by many people, I give you the National Lottery, then the risks can often be wildly overestimated especially when someone wants to support a weak argument. What is the chance of a child going blind from dog excrement? The answer is very, very small. In fact, based on the 2003 figures the chance of someone being diagnosed with the damaging infection at all was a tiny 0.0037%, and many people so diagnosed have only mild symptoms. So, while dog owners clearly should clean up after their pets, this cannot possibly justify the use of covert surveillance. In fact if you use Sir Christopher's line of argument that even a very small chance of public harm justifies spying on the public then all of us should be watched all of the time. Given that is almost what this country has come to he must be pretty happy.

Sporting Village in the news

BBC coverage here.

John Baron MP presses Planning Inspectorate over Western Road Development

MP complains of over-development and traffic problems

John Baron MP continues his opposition to the proposed development at 43 Western Road, Billericay, and has written to the Planning Inspectorate in Bristol asking him to turn down the developers appeal against the Council’s decision to refuse planning permission.

John said:

Having visited the site, I do feel that the proposal to build 12 apartments represents overdevelopment and will be totally out of keeping with the surrounding area. I also believe that such a development would result in traffic problems, as the approach is difficult.

In general, I am concerned about the wider problem of overdevelopment in residential areas which I believe is totally unfair on local residents.

I also believe there is something undemocratic about decisions regarding residential developments being made by outside organisations such as The Planning Inspectorate in Bristol or the Government. Local residents should have the final say, given they have to live with the decision.

If you know this site then you know it has a long and complex planning history. Basildon Council Planning Committees have repeatedly rejected plans for large flatted development in an ordinary residential street, but it does appear that this saga is set to continue.

Obama, Healthcare, Hannan and the NHS

There is a frenetic debate going on the the US on healthcare. This was a key part of President Obama's election campaign, particularly addressing the problem of tens of millions of Americans who lack health insurance. But it is proving a very divisive issue, because while it is anything but equal the US healthcare system is oriented towards excellence and if you get treatment then the statistics for outcomes are some of the best in the world. Those opposing the President are using the NHS as an example of what not to do, and this has been reinforced by Daniel Hannan MEP's criticism of the service. In turn that has been used by the Labour Party as political ammunition against the Conservatives despite the fact that Mr. Hannan has no brief for healthcare whatsoever.

Let us try and reduce the argument to its fundamentals. In the US enormous numbers of people either have no access to decent healthcare or are bankrupted by trying to pay for it. This cannot stand in a developed country and President Obama is right to address the issue. That does not mean that his proposed solution is automatically perfect though, but critics at least must acknowledge that there is a problem and join a debate on fixing it. Pretending that the current system is fair an reasonable is ridiculous. Moving on to the the NHS, this is a vast organisation and has many successes against a much smaller number of failures. Speaking personally, I have had nothing but exemplary care for my serious health issues, but that does not mean that the system could not be improved. In particular the Labour government has returned to a very centralised model and that does not work for anything particularly well, be it tractor production or making people well. Conservatives would keep to the principles of the NHS but move the service on to the 21st century. That is what John Major's government was doing in reforms stopped by Labour, so there is a lost decade of reform to make up there. Daniel Hannan has made some measured criticism of the NHS, but this has been blown out of proportion by parties in the US who find it useful to portray the NHS as a disaster and Labour in the UK, who are desperate for anything that might damage their opponents. Daniel Hannan tries to put his comments into context here.

This whole row typifies the problem with the healthcare debate in the UK. Because health is so important and affects, well, everyone it is easy to replace rational debate with emotive nonsense that improves the lives of patients not one jot. Suggest change and Labour politicians in particular will try and shift the argument to who cares the most as opposed to who will make people live longer. Frankly, I would rather be alive than know our leaders really, really do care.

Reality of War in Afghanistan

This country is at war in Afghanistan. It is a war that we have stumbled into, led by a government that subscribes to the worst of liberal woolly thinking on military matters, but it is a war nonetheless. In April 2006 then defence secretary John Reid said:

We're in the south to help and protect the Afghan people to reconstruct their economy and democracy. We would be perfectly happy to leave in three years time without firing one shot.

This neatly sums up the attitude that put our soldiers into battle with too few numbers, too few helicopters and vehicles that shreded when struck by a bomb blast. There is a sort of left-establishment consensus that force achieves nothing and that wars against guerilla armies are unwinnable anyway. So, Reid and Brown committed our soldiers in the hope that they would spend their time building schools and handing out aid parcels and they thought that inadequate forces didn't matter because war doesn't work, so why resource it properly?

Meanwhile, reality is a little different. First of all, while war is concentrated horror and any sane nation must apply itself to the avoidance of conflict, it can be an effective tool of foreign policy. There are plenty of military actions that when the ghastly tally of death and loss has been made it still has been as the right thing to do. World War Two is the classic example, but more recently the Falklands and British intervention in Sierra Leone fall into that category. Moreover, guerilla armies are often on the losing side in conflicts, lately the Tamil Tigers have been defeated and the insurgency in Iraq has retreated into occasional urban terrorism. Any casual reader of Afghan history would have figured out that foreign intervention was likely to cause a very violent response in the south of that country and anyone with common sense would realise that aid could not be effectively delivered to the Afghan population unless they were guaranteed security. A government with a grip on reality would either have kept British soldiers out of Afghanistan or provided enough military power to win the inevitable conflict quickly. Instead Brown and Reid decided on military intervention without enough strength to win the war. The result has been a military stalemate and a ghastly procession of coffins back through RAF Lyneham.

The government and the nation needs to decide where we go from here. We should fight like we want to win, or we should get out. Anything else is a betrayal of our brave fighting men and women.

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.