Was Was 'Ere

The Green Budgie

2012-02-16T18:41:00.002Z

I think we're about to see the most dishonest budget proposal put to the electorate for many a year.

No. Not Labour's one. It's the Green bid to increase council tax!

That's some going when it comes to that accolade. Labour's 12 year budget record saw the council budget rocket by three times the rate of inflation and there were plenty of reasons to disagree with what they did but at least they knew what they were doing.

Filled with fire and brimstone (or more likely Dosa from Cafe Madras) Rob White declared war on Labour at the Cabinet meeting on Monday.

Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to understand the first thing about setting council budgets and has resorted to filling in the figures of a generic Green Party press release.

For starters, year on year reduction of costs is normal. You renegotiate contracts, do things in a better way, so the Green budget is for waste and inefficiency. And you know you are seeing the wool pulled over your eyes when you see the use of the dodgy insurance sales pitch "for only 87p a week". Why not be transparent and just say an extra £45 a year? It's budgeting à la wonga.com.

And their argument that an increase is okay because the poor get council tax rebates beggars belief. You know why the poor get council tax relief? It's because council tax is too bloody high. Oh. who pays for this relief? The council tax payer. Using the Green economic logic we should put up council tax by 1000% because then only the really really rich will pay it and the rest of us will all get council tax relief! Yay!

But that's not why I chuckle at their amateur half hour economics...

Their claim that 3.5% is "a lot less than inflation" is a giggle. It is if, like the Greens, you think a lot equals 0.1%. But they are being also far more dishonest than that.

The Bank of England has forecast that by the time the Green's 3.5% council tax rise would be implemented in April, it will be an above inflation increase.

In their published figures, the Green's "below" inflation increase is predicted to be twice the rate of inflation that it will be this time next year.

So if we believe their own press release that they "understand these are difficult economic times" and the Green's would set another "below" inflation rise then next year they wouldn't get their 3.5% increase, it would be 1.8%.

Under those circumstances the total extra revenue raised would be £1.97m not the £5.64m they claim.

That means that the Greens would have no choice, despite what they say, they would be forced to set a two year above inflation increase.

Rob was pretty clear at cabinet. They don't like the Labour budget. Not just disliked, they have strongly denounced it.

So will we see them waggle their arms and legs in the air over the budget? We heard last May of how much the Green's were going to hold the council to account and have seen precious little evidence of it so far. Are they going to stick to their guns and hold out for their council tax increase?

After all they say Labour's budget is "unacceptable". That language can only mean one thing if they are not to let down their electorate. Voting any other way would be a betrayal of their principles which they have been at pains to tell to the press about this week.

Or are we going to see them walk mmeekly into the Labour group room and roll over.

I know what I'm betting on!

Tangled Webs Part 217.

2012-02-15T19:17:00.000Z

The latest Katesgrove Banner is out!

Now here's a funny thing. The Tesco Express story has no reference to his writing in, successfully obtained or any of the other things Matt Rodda has claimed in the past to have done and defended in the press with such vigour.

I look forward to the Planning Inspectorate's investigation of his accusing them in the Reading Post letters page of maladministration .

And the 'To Let' sign Rose Williams is standing next to, er isn't there! That was pointed out to me by a neighbour.

Kerbside Parking - Taxing the motorist? So Labour scrapped it after the election, did they? Cobblers, the plans were "scrapped" before the election when Labour councillors refused to consult with residents over which streets should be exempted. Oh, and Labour intend to introduce the fines in Tilehurst. They'll introduce them in Katesgrove. And parking meters across the town. I bet they won't put that on their leaflets.

As for Lib Dems taxing the motorist, Labout have increased the revenue they expect from bus lane fines to an eye-watering £1.4m, up an extra £1/2m whilst also refusing to change the misleading signs. No conflict of interest there.

And the reinstating of extra visitor permits? I did that before the election. I have the email from Richard Willis, the former Lead Councillor for Transport, to prove it.

Can't fault their Kennet Arms campaign... jump on a pre-existing residents' campaign and pretend it's theirs. Classic Labour. The residents don't like it though.

Labour taking credit for the Crown Street lay-by for the Tesco Express in London Street? That was approved at TMAP on 13th January 2011... when if I remember rightly, Labour weren't in power.

He's probably got the local papers to send their photographers to Southampton Street to claim credit for the long standing Lib Dem campaign to demolish the derelict buildings and create a community garden there. I welcome the return of the never drunk bottle of Labour bubbly to the Chronicle picture pages.

The local Labour Party are beyond satire. Long may it continue!

Cold Tuna Call

2012-02-01T12:23:00.000Z

Now that was a wierd call. number withheld but obviously from a call centre.
"Hello, I'm from the Industrial Workers Organisation. I have information that a member of your household has worked in industry before."
"No. I'm a web developer."
"What's that?"
"Someone who develops web sites."
"Is there anyone else in your house who may have worked in industry."
"Only my cat"
"What industry was that?"
"Tuna eating."
"How many tins of tuna does she get through a day?"
"About two"
"And how old is your cat?"
"Fourteen"
"And what is her name?"
"Matilda"
"Well, could you wish Matilda a very good day and thank her."
"I will. Goodbye"

Anatomy of an Inexactitude

2012-01-25T17:33:00.002Z

...or Matt Rodda's - A Series of Unfortunate Events

December 2010 Planning Application

Application for an extension to 77-81 Whitley Street to create a unit that will be more than twice the size of existing shops.

[I'll skip out my year of discussing this with my neighbours, local businesses, council officers and senior directors and managers in Tesco]

22nd November 2011 Appeal Public Hearing at the Town Hall.

No Labour councillors or 'supporters' present. It was just me, some local businesses and a local resident. There was no written evidence provided by Matt Rodda or anyone else from Labour.
The hearing was suspended, pending evidence for a technical matter.

28th November 2011 Letter

Myself and the one local resident who attended the hearing were written to saying that we were entitled to send further written submissions up to the 9th December.

9th December 2011 Hearing closed to evidence.

16th December 2011 "Labour speak to residents"

Labour when canvassing in Christchurch Road finally started raising the matter with local residents (yeah, I spoke to them) This was a week after the period for evidence had closed and a month after the end of the hearing.

20ish December Labour's Kategrove Banner

Article: Tesco Plan for Whitley Street
Matt says: "I want to hear residents' views."

5th January 2012 Planning Inspectorate Decision Notice

Appeal dismissed.

6th January 2012 Letter to residents from Katesgrove Labour

Matt Rodda writes: "I encouraged residents to write to the inspector and wrote in myself. I also successfully pushed for residents to have extra time to write in"

11th January getReading - No go for Reading's 14th Tesco
From the Reading Post:

Fellow Katesgrove councillor Matt Rodda said: “I hoped I helped as I successfully pushed for more time for residents to feed in comments. I also wrote in myself raising concerns with the inspector.”

12th January 2012 Reading Chronicle

Picture of Labour supporting "residents" celebrating the decison with a bottle of bubbly in The Chronicle.

25th January 2012 Freedom of Information request from the Planning Inspectorate

I have retrieved the appeal file and confirm that there is no correspondence either from or on behalf of, or addressed to Matt Rodda contained on the file.  Furthermore, no further correspondence was received after the hearing on 22 November 2011, other than correspondence from the Appellant and Council regarding the technical appendices from the Appellant’s statement; no correspondence was received from any members of the public.

So what are we to make of the statements made by Labour to local residents and journalists as truths stating that:

They had written to the Planning Inspectorate with their concerns
They had succeeded in getting an extension to the hearing

Neither seems to be supported by the facts.

Someone in the Labour party needs to tell Pinnochio that the first rule of politics is not to get caught.

Maid Redundant

2012-01-13T11:25:00.000Z

An interesting slip by Jo Lovelock at last night's Personnel Committee. She said that one of the justifications for the removal of the Chief Executive position was because there was going to be a significantly smaller number of council staff.

A significantly smaller council? The council has around 2,500 employees outside education. Given that Labour have been responsible over the years for significant reductions in the number of council employees with the connivance of the unions, this has to be bad news. I wonder exactly when they are planning to tell staff about their impending hatchet job?

The difficulty facing the council is not, as Labour are trying to hide behind, the cuts to grants from central government but a dismal failure to tackle council spending increasing by greater than 16% per annum. Expect a significant increase in debt to finance their inability to stop spending.

By Jiminy Cricket!

2012-01-12T16:31:00.000Z

I've obviously got this ward councillor thing all wrong.

You see, after working for over a year on the planning application for 77-81 Whitley Street, meeting with residents, talking to businesses, working out through my own research that the application was actually for a Tesco Express, going through planning policy documents, speaking in person to the Communities and Government Director of Tesco, managing expectations of local businesses, attending and speaking at the public hearing, exchanging emails with Tesco's Head of Property Communication, delivering updates to residents and businesses, discovering "inexactitudes" in the applicants submission and working with council officers in the planning and highways departments to put the strongest case possible to the Planning Inspectorate... I was obviously a bit of an idiot.

I should have learnt from Labour's Little Book of Laissez-Faire Campaigning that all I needed to do was let someone else do all the work and then claim credit for it.

After all, how otherwise can you rationally account for the complete non-attendance at a public planning hearing and yet claim total credit for its findings?

But I perhaps do Labour a disservice. Their approach was even better than letting someone else do all the work.

It involved sitting on the fence until splinters in the bum became an occupational hazard. Yes. they could see both sides of the argument but once the result of the appeal was announced... they were "pleased".

I bet they had a "Great news as Tesco invest in Katesgrove" press release ready as well!

However, my faith in my constituents and local businesses in undiminished. This is a genuine exchange today from a conversation with a local shopkeeper after showing them the report in The Reading Chronicle with a picture of Labour Ausländers celebrating a Lib Dem win as their own:

Me:	What do you think about this article?
Shop:	[Points at picture] Who are they?
Me:	Labour.
Shop:	Never seen them. [Reads article] **** off! I’m going to tell everyone who buys this that this is rubbish. They did nothing. I’ve never seen them before. How can they lie like that?
Me:	That’s politics!

But obviously I conceed that this could is an isolated case, apart maybe from...

Labour claiming sole credit for the Lok 'n' Store objections when the councillor didn't bother turning up at the hearing. Even more hilarious as if they'd mentioned the work of David Sutton and Richard Stainthorp they'd have had a lot of credibility as it was clearly, as far as residents were concerned, a cross-party piece of work. In contrast, I personally thanked Pete Ruhemann of his work!
Claiming credit for cleaning up the alley way behind Elgar Road when residents knew it was myself and Gareth who got it cleared and ridiculed Labour's leaflet.
Claiming credit for removal of double yellow lines in Collis Street when is was again over a year's worth of work by Gareth and myself.
Failing to mention that Lib Dems helped clean up Whitley Street Estate when the Neighbourhood Action Group had a litter pick [NAGs are meant to be apolitical - it is part of their constitution].
Claiming credit for the allocation of parking permits to Boults Walk and Compass House residents when it had been agreed before the election after work by the Lib Dem councillors.
Claiming credit for the doubling of residents permits which in fact I had pressured for and obtained the agreement of Richard Willis to restore the allocation before last May's election.
Attacking Lib Dems for a cut LABOUR had made to student waste collections.

Oh, there are more I could mention.

There is a term for these sort of tactics. It's called "The Big Lie". Orwell put it quite well:

The key-word here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts.”

And again:

“To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed....”

Perhaps I should not mention the instance when a Labour councillor collected a petition against a licencing application, didn't turn up at the licencing hearing, didn't answer calls to a developer concerned about it... and never quite got around to mentioning to residents that he was a trustee of one of the organisations that was resident in the building making the application!

There is however a big problem for Labour. I have discovered the heartening fact that people remember what you do for them, not the lies published in political leaflets.

Labour are a parasitic organism leeching off those responsible for the actual work done.

The reverse socialist dream. Kind of apt!

FIT for Purpose

2011-12-22T16:15:00.000Z

I have found it quite enlightening reading comments from Labour apologists on Twitter - including someone claiming to be a freelance consultant (Read: "Labour stooge") about the Feed in Tariff scheme.

Here's some basic facts.

1) I gave officers a directive to pursue projects to maximise renewable energy and take advantage of the Feed In Tariff scheme. The report presented to Cabinet in August was basically my report which was little changed from the January version
2) I obtained an undertaking from the Head of Finance (Read: new Chief Exec) that any economically viable scheme would be backed with capital financing on the basis of cost benefit analysis.
3) The report was presented in January 2011 with a deadline for action before the 1 August deadline.

That Labour screwed it up and lost 5 months on my original timetable is their problem not the Lib Dems. On my timetable we'd have hit the Government targets and Reading would have been able to implement my initiatives.

I was just as pissed off with the changes at Government level as anyone. That doesn't mean that there is a conflict here. Labour dropped the ball.

I had a "no holds barred" meeting with Reading Friends of the Earth and I think that they were quite clear with my commitment to the green agenda. Ironically, Green support for Labour in Reading has seem a backwards step in promoting the (little 'g') green agenda as their support for the 'green waste' as opposed to the mixed plastic collection shows.

Of course, being annoyed with Government policy doesn't create a conflict with real politics. Reading Labour claimed that they were against the Labour Government's plans to close Post Offices, or renew Trident or kill 250,000 Iraqi civilians.

Unfortunately we didn't get a majority government. I can deal with it. Labour can't. We are punching above our weight. A full Lib Dem government would not be required to take decisions required to keep the Tory nutters under control.

You see when Blair and Brown were screwing over the wishes of Labour members, it wasn't a coalition, it was a full Labour government. Yet, hypocrisy is their raison d'etre. They ceased to be a political party after they abolished Clause 4!

Secret Squirrel

2011-12-19T16:19:00.000Z

No surprise here but the Labour group just cannot keep their gobs shut.

The latest Labour blabber mouth appears to have given away in a public place..,

http://civicmindedrdg.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/senior-staff-on-the-way-out-at-the-civic/

Senior staff on the way out at the Civic

December 14, 2011
Whilst browsing the supermarket aisles yesterday I happened to overhear something that caught my attention from a nearby Labour councillor – what are the chances! If my ears do not deceive me, the Labour group met in secret a few days ago in a highly confidential meeting, to discuss the “departure” of a very senior member of staff at the council.

Now it would be wrong to comment on the personal circumstances of an individual employee, so I will refrain from doing so, what I will add is that the leading politicians have got “their storyline” well and truly sorted.
The officer in question has “come to the understanding that s/he will be mutually parting ways with the council as soon as possible”. The reasons for this may well be something to do with his/her “lack of support for the council’s transform agenda” – but it’s always more complicated than meets the eye with these local council matters.

Keep your eyes peeled when reading future editions of the local paper, but remember, you read it here first!

Original blog post has now been marked as private.

...the news that certain senior staff are facing the chop. I happen to know what they are planning but I think I owe the civil servants involved a duty of confidentiality so I won't go into further details to reveal personal information. Labour don't appear to give a damn about the feelings of those involved and are prepared to tell all and sundry... or at least the Waitrose supermarket queue.

It is absolutely true that Labour has had a series of meetings which were out of cycle and it was abundantly clear that they were up to something and that something is, it would appear, is to axe officers who they deem as uncooperative.

One thing that has become increasing apparent is that many of the officers who I thought were highly competent have been slipping out the back door. Labour's rain of terror has been taking its toll. I feel sorry for the dedicated officers who were bloody good at their jobs who have decided to take their talents elsewhere.

Now the question, given the nature of their hatchet job on council staff is how far outside the Cabinet have they been leaking things for political ends? We know, for example, that Anneliese Dodds was regularly given pre-briefings about internal council matters before it was announced to elected members and ward councillors so was this a cabinet member or a lowly lick-spittle?

If the former, then it would appear to be a breach of the member-officer protocol and serious disciplinary action could be taken against them.

If it was a non-cabinet member then it would seem to be a prima-facie breach of the member-officer protocol and the cabinet member who leaked it plus the member involved in blabbing could face serious disciplinary action.

And staff haven't seen the end of Labour's hatchet job. I hear that one of the things being done to reinstate the green waste collection (which is a misnomer if ever there was one, being as environmentally dubious as they come) is to decimate curation at the museums in-year, i.e. outside the budget cycle. Yes, under Labour the arts are being slashed to pay for their incompetence at running a budget. It was ever thus if you look into the redundancy figures over the last 10 years.

Of course, the last time a similar senior staffing situation existed at Reading Borough Council we had a catestrophic failure in oversight of the allocation of Section 106 monies because senior staff responsible were too busy to monitor what Labour were up to. during that period. Far from Labour's trumpeting of a "clean bill of health", it was actually found as "impossible to determine" by an independent investigation. Perhaps that's their motivational factor? Get rid of anyone who knows what they get up do and buy a bigger carpet paid for by staff posts to sweep things under.

I find it worrying the exodus of certain capable officers who I had the good fortune to work with. However, after the Green's put Labour back in control, it's not been a case of rats deserting a sinking ship but more one of sensible people deserting sinking rats.

Turing Machine

2011-12-07T16:20:00.001Z

There's a petition to have an official pardon for Alan Turing.

It's easy to dismiss revisionism as not worthy of consideration. I have some sympathy with that as I am not a fan of the idea of the 'sins of the fathers'. It's very un-Catholic!

However, whilst I firmly believe that we are responsible for our own actions but it doesn't excuse us from understanding history.

When I was 15, one programme made a huge impact on me. Horizon broadcast "Now The Chips Are Down" probably the most life changing TV programme I ever watched.

I was at the time interested in electronics so it wasn't a great leap to venture into the world of computing. But it was a different world then. The MK14 was the height of sophistication. The ZX80 was the stuff of dreams.

I couldn't afford a computer. I wrote programmes and "dry ran" them on paper which was beneficial when I started work with ICL as a kernel dump cracker (think working out from the Microsoft Windows blue screen of death why your PC had crashed and scale it up to a mainframe!)

But as a result of the programme I was responsible for my school starting to run a computer science course which was also also notable because our teacher (David Sayers) hated computers!

So why is Alan Turing such a hero to me?

Sure he was involved in Bletchley Park and helped shorten the Second World War. ☺
To the LGBT community he is a symbol of persecution and the unjust way society treated people. [Dirk Bogarde in Victim made a similar impact on me when I saw it on TV in the 70s.☺

These are both important in their own way but not why Alan Turing deserves place amongst the greats. Tim Berners-Lee did good things but he was not as ground breaking as Alan Turing.

Turing was the person who made computer science a science. Separate from mathematics and more akin to philosophy. A real dscipline in it's own right. The World owes him a debt.

Sign the petition. http://t.co/7O5soOUG to honour a real British hero.

The Green Deal

2011-12-02T13:19:00.001Z

It will be very easy post election to work out of there was a deal between the Greens and Labour over Park ward in exchange for allowing them to take control of the council. Follow the money!

How?

Earlier this year, Labour spent the most fighting the election in Park, so now it will be more than interesting to see whether they think putting resources into the ward is a good use of their money. After all, they can pretty much depend on the Greens to roll on their backs and waggle their arms and legs in the air and back them in power whether or not the Greens wish to admit publicly to that agreement. In that respect a penny spent in Park, is a penny wasted for Labour.

This is all the more likely now when, in the least surprising news of the year, Jon Hartley is standing down to spend more time with London. I suspect that many in the Labour group are quietly cheering. Indeed there have to be questions asked as to why he was appointed as a lead councillor to a made up post in the first place. Perhaps the local party didn't want to upset his girlfriend who just happened to be the Chair of the local party.

He's made no impact in the role and given his previous track record when the SACRE committee wanted to chuck him off for failing to attend three meetings in a row you have to wonder whether we were seeing not only nepotism at work but that we will discover that his position was more the result of him having pictures of the rest of the Cabinet in compromising poses!

When it comes to the value for money and service he is meant to have championed, Jon Hartley has failed to deliver any having failed to attend the last three Cabinet meetings, all the time whilst trousering the £3,816 Special Responsibility Allowance paid to lead councillors. That's a failure to attend 50% of the meetings which he is paid to attend and this seems to be being tolerated by his colleagues. I think Council tax payers can quite rightly ask whether he should be forced to pay back monies paid to him for services not-rendered.

However, after the obvious election deal with the Greens, would Park residents' notice any difference if they had all Green councillors? Very doubtful for pretty much the same reason.

Their group leader can't be bothered to represent them at council meetings for which he is paid a bonus of £2,147 to attend, consisting as they do his extra duties as Green group leader. What exactly does he do to justify that money? What responsibility does he actually take?

Does he turn up at Cabinet to put forward the Green agenda? No.
He's been seen there once once out of six meetings. Couldn't even be bothered to turn up to speak on the item on abandoned trolleys which no doubt will be laughingly referred to as a Green win. Got to be in it to win it.

Does he turn up at Personnel Committee to stick up for the workers? Nope.
A complete no show all year, leading to the squirmingly embarrassing motion he put forward to the last full council meeting demanding that RBC adopt a minimum wage policy at a rate which was below that actually in force and asking for a policy that was already in place and had the full backing of all previous administrations.

Does he pontificate about councillors receiving perfectly permissible and lawfully declared gifts whilst at the same time asking for free inkjet cartridges paid for by the council that do not appear on any list of declared expenses. Oh yes!
There is of course nothing wrong with him doing so. It is an allowed expense, but he seems to be selective as to what he sees as acceptable. In the case of Reading Festival tickets there is no cost incurred to the council. In the case of printer cartridges there is an actual expense incurred. Perhaps to avoid accusations of hypocrisy, he should pay for his own home printing in future and come into the Civic where the Greens already have a perfectly good full colour laser printer in their group room.

And for a Green he did not attend a single Environmental Scrutiny Panel last council year to make the Green case for anything.

There are some people who complain about the Council gravy train and about how they believe councillors get elected solely to get the allowances. That is demonstrably nonsense unless people genuinely think that being a councillor should be the preserve of the rich and retired. There's a lot of work required. I can safely say that in the vast majority of cases the rates paid by RBC are below the minimum wage for the work put in even for those I may have in the past tagged as "lazy". That tag I am more than happy to state is a relative term.

On the other hand, Special Responsibility Allowances are paid specifically for extra work and responsibility. If you are not doing that extra work or taking any responsibility, it is tantamount to obtaining money under false pretences and perhaps there is a case for Councillors Hartley and White being asked to pay some of it back!

Another Fine Mess

2011-11-02T11:27:00.003Z

There was an interesting letter in last week's Post all about Labour's rusty sword of truth which contained a bending of the aforementioned substance worthy of Stalin. It was also illuminating in that it shows how twisting facts beyond all recognition is a campaign tool so ingrained in the local Labour party that they wouldn't know the truth if it sat up and bit them on the backside.

At Monday's cabinet, Daisy Benson drew attention to a massive hike in bus lane fine revenue which Labour are banking on to get them out of their economic black hole. You have to remember that this is the same Labour party that called introducing kerb parking fines in problem streets a "tax on motorists." They continue with their false allegations about "no consultation" when what actually happened is that they failed to fulfil their constitutional duty towards their constituents (for which they get paid allowances) and refused to co-operate with any consultation.

So what are the 'sticking up for the motorist' party doing? Can we judge them by their actions? Well the kerb parking "tax" would have raised £25,000 and now Labour are planning to charge motorists more than 20 times that amount. They have proposed a massive INCREASE of £575,000 to take this year's budgeted bus lane fine revenue to £1,395,000. It is nothing less than highway robbery.

Of course, Brother John Ennis couldn't help issuing a barefaced lie during Cabinet by claiming that Lib Dems were in favour of people driving in bus lanes. Balderdash!.

Each fine issued is a failure to keep the lanes clear. It is not an indicator of success.

Bus Lane Fines Issued by RBC

Before the current Labour administration there were roughly 3,000 fines issued per month. That's 3,000 too many but it's been remarkably consistent over the last few years. Now there are nearer 12,000! Labour has presided over a 300% increase in people driving in bus lanes since they took over in May and what we actually asked was what were they planning to do to reduce the amount of fines issued to get cars out of the bus lanes.

Their reaction was far from wanting to do something about it, but to resort to calling people "stupid" and how they were happy to take their money. We already know that's how they view the electorate because their previous leader called the public "morons"!

If bus lane fines are there to deter people from using bus lanes then it isn't working. The council should be alarmed by these figures and be doing everything they can to reduce them not rolling around in the revenue. They may have the bare minimum legally required signs up but let's face it, we know that they aren't interested in reducing the number of people using bus lanes because they actually need to encourage it to raise revenue.

In fact, there is another name for Labour's scheme. It is called congestion charging. Access for cash.

Their message is: if you have enough money then please feel free to use the bus lanes. The council wants you to because we need your money. What Labour have done in effect is to turn the centre of town into a congestion charge zone where the rich can afford to drive and you can even pay a reduced fee by paying up pronto.

Tony Page's comments are revealing in that they show that he doesn't give a monkey's about drivers using bus lanes, he is that desperate for their money and that's because his actions have lost £225,000 from the budget and he needs to make up that loss and we know that Labour has always hated motorists... One Way IDR anyone?

Remember that when Labour put in more bus lanes. I know as a fact from my time as a director of Reading Buses that some of the bus gates and lanes around town were not asked for by the bus company and were put in by the Council's Highways department. Expect more when they need to raise more cash.

Yet what is even more astonishing is that Labour are building a budget based on criminal behaviour. Now that really is broken Britain!

National Self Service

2011-10-26T12:29:00.002+01:00

Here's little tale of one person's interaction with the NHS - mine.

Went to optician (which strangely enough isn't free at the point of use) for an eye test.
Referred by optician to my GP
Received a letter asking me to make an appointment at an eye clinic. Instructions contained online booking instructions.
I go online and fill in all the fields on the online booking system... only to be told at the end of all that that this particular clinic doesn't take online bookings and I need to call them direct.
I call clinic and they tell me in order to make an appointment they need to pre-register my request for an appointment and that I need to call call back in a week's time to actually book it. We arrange the day for me to ring.
A few days later I get sent a letter telling me that they don't deal with my condition after all and I'm being referred to a clinic in High Wycombe.
Clinic in High Wycombe sends me online booking details, login ID and password... for a woman who lives in High Wycombe!
I get sent new instructions to make an online booking using my original login details.
When I log on to the website and put in my details I'm told that the login has expired.
I go back to my GP who re-refers me.
I get sent new login details.
I book an appointment for Monday 24th at RBH.
A week later I get sent two identical first class letters telling me that my appointment for the Monday has been cancelled and it has been moved by them to Friday 28th.

Phew! It was a bit of a marathon and it took over a year but I got there... or did I?

Today I get letter from the RBH eye clinic telling me that I have another appointment next Tuesday at less than a week's notice. Identical letters were sent by first class post - to be sure, to be sure.

However, unlike the previous notification there is no letter telling me that the Friday appointment has been cancelled. Do I assume that Friday's appointment has been cancelled? I have no indication that it has been. This means that I will have to ring them to confirm it is actually a change of date rather than a referral appointment. If I'd booked a day off work to make Friday's appointment and unable to change it to next Tuesday I'd be screwed. So much for putting the patient first.

I know of one constituent who has been denied a hip replacement because she is "too young" to qualify, she is in constant pain can't walk far and would get a longer term benefit from any operation done now and require less prescription drugs. It's nuts even for a cost-benefit analysis nut.

The one common denominator in this. Our GP. At no point have we been let down by him. He knows what the patient requires and the process works well up until that point. It's when "the system" takes over and starts rationing care and resources without focusing on the patient and outcomes that things start going wrong. Basically, I trust my GP to look after my health and to know what's best. I do not trust Trust managers who are bean counters who can only count human-beans

If you believe Labour, they left the NHS a perfect system, state owned and free at the point of use. Stop laughing at the back.

We have an expensive online booking system that may as well not exist. Hospitals owned by private companies under expensive PFI contracts. Many of the services already contracted out by Labour. Their market system forcing PCTs to stop services and close wards. A £20bn cost for a failed IT system that one of the consortium consultants was sacked for having the temerity to tell Labour that it would never work. I'm sure you can find other websites detailing all their "successes".

They left a shambles. Whether promised or not, something has to change. The current structure is clearly not fit for purpose and for all the good things it does, it has its fair share of failure which affect real people.

I'm a big believer in the NHS and the core principle behind it - health care free at the point of use. I refused to join my previous company's health plan because I felt that we would all be better off it they paid more in National Insurance than private health plan subscriptions but for Labour to continue the fiction that the coalition government inherited a system that in places isn't verging on a basket case is disreputable.

However, clearly the Conservative remodelling went too far. You have to watch these Tories like a hawk or before you know it a new NHS baby-eating unit will be opened. It's why I'm pleased to see Nick creating his Signal Passed at Danger team. We spotted this one just in time and have made significant changes to the original proposals and clearly our team in the Lords will be making more changes to ensure that the Tories don't acheive the same objectives of their baby-eating units by simply replacing them with baby-out-with-the-bath-water units. It's why Lib Dems in Government are important. Labour had 13 years of "understanding" ordinary people and failed them at almost every level imaginable. It's up to us to prove that unlike the other two parties we are on your side.

I certainly have more faith in Dame Shirley William's making amendments to the health bill in the Lords than in any amount of Labour health ministers suckered by consultants selling them snake oil.

Steal Yourself for a Rough Ride

2011-10-25T10:42:00.000+01:00

It seems that stealing someone else's work is rife in the Labour Party. Tony Blair stole Margaret Thatcher's policies; Gordon Brown stole the Tories' finance plans not only perpetuating PFIs and flogging off the NHS but actually making it worse; and Ed Miliband has stolen Kim Jong Il's grip on reality.

So it should come as no surprise to see local Labour bloggers completely bereft of original thought and left passing off other people's work as their own.

Email from Ed Balls to Labour members

A year ago this week, George Osborne announced the biggest spending cuts and tax rises of any major country.

He boasted that Britain was out of the danger zone. And he claimed austerity would boost confidence, jobs and growth. Do you remember how Tory MPs cheered and waved their papers in glee?

Well I can’t hear anybody cheering now. Because the evidence is mounting day by day that this reckless Tory plan is hurting but it’s not working. Our economy hasn’t grown since this time last year.

Families and pensioners are being squeezed by soaring inflation. And here’s the real scandal: there are now more people out of work than for 17 years – when the Tories were last in. And the result? More people out of work and the dole means it's going to be harder to get the deficit down. In fact, there’s going to be £46 billion more borrowing than the government planned.

There’s got to be a better way.

And that’s why Labour has set out a five point plan for jobs and growth – to help struggling families, get young people into work and support small businesses. If you’re out campaigning this weekend help us get the message out there.

Ed Balls

Jan Gavin's thoughts on the economy

A year ago this week, George Osborne announced the biggest spending cuts and tax rises of any major country. He boasted that Britain was out of the danger zone. And he claimed austerity would boost confidence, jobs and growth.

Do you remember how Lib Dem and Tory MPs cheered and waved their papers in glee?
Well I can’t hear anybody cheering now. Because the evidence is mounting day by day that this reckless Tory plan is hurting but it’s not working.

Our economy hasn’t grown since this time last year. Families and pensioners are being squeezed by soaring inflation. And here’s the real scandal: there are now more people out of work than for 17 years – when the Tories were last in.

And the result? More people out of work and on the dole means it’s going to be harder to get the deficit down. In fact, there’s going to be £46 billion more borrowing than the government planned.

There’s got to be a better way.

And that’s why Labour has set out a five point plan for jobs and growth – to help struggling families, get young people into work and support small businesses.

How many more jobs must be lost and businesses go bust before this out of touch Prime Minister and Chancellor realise it’s time to change course?

Back our campaign and help us show families and pensioners across the country that there is an alternative – a better, fairer, Labour way to get our economy moving again, get Britain back to work and so get our deficit down.

Jan Gavin

Reading Labour: don't have the Balls to tell people who really wrote it... one of the men responsible for dumping the country in the doo doo in the first place.

Unsolicited Credit

2011-10-18T13:23:00.001+01:00

I've had a good laugh at the official council press release praising the efforts of the council in reducing greenhouse gases. I shall take that as an admission from Labour that I did a bloody good job last year.

I embarked on the solar panel strategy, commissioned the business plans and obtained agreement for the capital financing for the project.

I commissioned reports on massively increasing the recycling rates in Reading (which unfortunately thanks to the Greens, Labour appear to be abandoning).

Now we see the results of the 10:10 challenge which seems to have avoided mentioning the fact that the council's best performance was achieved the one year Labour was not in charge.

Here's one reason for the difference. The year before (and before that and before that) the Labour council missed its 10:10 targets by miles and you can still see the excuses they used being trotted out by them. "There was an exceptionally cold winter." That's true there was but what it actually showed was that the insulation wasn't good enough and I told officers as much so I am pleased that they acted on my directions.

Before 2010 the then Labour administration was complacent and unfocused and more intent on making up excuses for failure than doing something about it. It's no coincidence that with all the work I put in on progressing the Lib Dem agenda now finally coming through to implementation that the council can claim to be greener. It simply wouldn't have happened under Labour.

So I'd like to thank Paul Gittings for his officially press released ringing endorsement of my work. Nice to see Labour recognising who it was who made the real difference,

Let's just hope he doesn't mess things up again and set the council backwards and lose all the hard work acheived last year by going back to the complacent and laissez-faire attitude Labour showed in all those previous years.

And whilst I'm having a laugh as people claiming unwarranted credit for their inaction, how about the Greens?

How many times did Rob White attend an environment scrutiny panel last year? Zero.
How many times did he ask for a meeting to discuss environmental matters with me when I was lead councillor? Zero.
How many green initiatives did he ask me to consider? Zero.

He didn't tell the rest of the local Green party any of that because their members seem genuinely surprised when I tell them the true facts behind the "Green pressure". The simple fact of the matter is that there was no green pressure. Nada! Claiming credit for things they haven't done seems to be the order of the day for the Greens now. Not much integrity in that is there!

I said last year that I wanted to be judged on what I achieved. I only got 9 months in control which was never going to be enough but this and other recent glowing council press releases is proof that there was a culture change and real results.

It's just a shame that the Labour/Green council now appears to be doing all it can to unravel these achievements.

Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine

2011-10-13T18:05:00.000+01:00

Yesterday's planning committee took an odd turn. There was a Lib/Lab alignment and a Con/Green one over a planning application to demolish the building on the corner of Oxford Road and Wilson Road and build a new church in its place.

It got off to a bad start when the applicant referred to it being a political decision (which I felt had to correct him on) so I had to laugh after making that point quite strongly at the apparent sight of a political carve up when committee members seemed to be lining up on party lines.

The fact is that in this instance it was a co-incidence.

My reading is that the Conservatives wanted to make a statement about equal treatment towards mosques and churches. In my eyes, that wasn't predetermination but a predisposition. They are quite different matters. I didn't see a problem with their reasoning as they came up with cogent arguments based on the evidence in front of us and voted according to their arguments.

One of them was a little off-colour when he referred to turning down the application as being an attack on that particular church community. Now, if we want to talk about pre-determination that comment was made by someone who describes himself on one website as "Baptist, Christian" (and who apparently likes Italian and Chinese food)!

Similarly the members of the Labour group who spoke did the same. Gave perfectly reasonable explanations and voted consistent with those reasons.

However, Graham Hoskins used the word "we" when referring to the committee's deliberations. The Green committee member jumped on it and agreed with the Tories that it constituted pre-determination.

Piffle! Mountains and mole hills. In the context it was used it was perfectly reasonable.

The Labour group may want to reflect on Tony Page and Pete Ruhemann's outbursts when they accused Conservatives and Lib Dems of colluding over an application for Denbeigh Place. What goes around comes around. I can't speak for the Conservative group, but neither myself, Kirsten Bayes or Chris Harris (the then Lib Dem planning committee members) had spoken with each other about it let alone with another group about that application. In fact, it was my first ever planning committee meeting and I had only received the papers on the day of the meeting.

I can definitively state that there is no pre-determination from the Lib Dems on the committee. Unlike the other two groups we don't have a pre-meet. In this particular case, Pete and I hadn't discussed the application at all so the fact that we both voted the same way was because we saw the plans presented to the committee on the night and independently came to the same conclusion. That's the way it is meant to work. I have no reason to believe that any other member did otherwise based on the debate.

Either you thought it was over development of the site or you didn't.

I hope the church group has another look at their plans. Their aims were laudable but converting a 300 capacity church into a 300 capacity church, shops, offices, conference centre and flats seemed to me to be excessive on that site. I hope they look at the committee decision and come back with better plans. I quite liked the new Oxford Road frontage they proposed.

I'll leave the other parties to sort out their bun fight over the application and hurl their accusations, but they don't stand up to scrutiny.

The Tory Horror Picture Show

2011-10-11T16:54:00.001+01:00

It would seem that I've hit a raw nerve with both Tory Central Office and Reading East Conservative Association over a little joke I wrote last week. It was apparently far closer to the mark than I realised when I wrote it!

It's happened before when I wrote a gag on a Sunday about a "safe" football manager being sacked. It was printed on the Tuesday. He was actually sacked on the Friday and my fanzine went on sale on the Saturday. I looked a comedy genius!

It's called serendipity, which I think is appropriate from someone given my background!

Aside: According to George Allegiah's BBC documentary I should be now start calling myself mixed-race, then it got a bit wierd. He was born in Sri Lanka, left in the same year as my Mum, is a Catholic and went to my secondary school in Portsmouth. However, he is not a long lost older cousin... unless his Great-Grandmother was called Mariai in which case I'd really like him to get in touch!

I won't begin to tell the Tories how far off the mark their witch trial is because it is greatly amusing. No doubt their Mole-hunter Pursuivant is threatening all and sundry after my joke but how about this... no-one sent me any email and that's the truth. I heard a rumour. I got lucky!

They may find it hard to believe because they prefer to go mole hunting than address what is really going on but I've known about the various factions in the local Tories for years. It's hardly an open secret. Like which leading local Tory said far too loudly coming out of the Civic after the budget non-appearance fiasco in 2010: "That's it. He's finished" about Andrew Cumpsty? [CLUE, he stood for deputy leader of the Tory group a year later and lost - or wasn't I meant to know about that either?]

What Tory Central Office really need to think about is if their local agitators are sanctioned by them to upset their ordinary members in the way that they treated a hard working and well-liked local councillor then what do they expect? Try interviewing ALL your members if you want to know who may have let slip the red in tooth and claw nature of the Reading East Conservative Association.

The scenario now playing out reveals the understanding at the heart of the Reading Lib Dem/Tory coalition. I can say one thing for definite. If we had the Wokingham/West Berkshire strand of Toryism leading in Reading there would have been no coalition and if the current RECA Junta take over there will never be the prospect of one ever again. Why? Because there were a lot of lefty liberal Tories in the local party.

It's just a jump to the left...

Protecting services to the vulnerable and standing up for the environment were absolute lines in the sand for Lib Dems and what was clear is that the local Tories were willing to allow us to champion those objectives. It's why Daisy Benson was allowed to be lead councillor responsible for adult care, health and housing and I was allowed to direct the environment. There was no way that these services would be bludgeoned whilst we held the portfolios and they weren't. That is not the case in the surrounding unitaries where slash and burn is the order of the day. For goodness sake the Tories allowed us to build council owned properties which Labour hadn't done for over 13 years! We brought in equal pay for staff (although it also has to be said despite Labour and trade Union opposition)!

At Lib Dem conference, I went to a fringe event because one on my heroes Bob Worcester from IPSOSMori was speaking. Also at that event was Dr Daniel Poulter MP, a Conservative. It was clear to me and most people in that room that when he spoke he was in the wrong party. I put it to Dr Poulter that his choice of party really came down to if you want to influence events you have to be in power and that there was a natural home for people like him in the Lib Dems. His answer I shall not divulge to save him from a Tory Party witch hunt but the overlap in the centre of politics between Labour, Lib Dems and Conservatives is a lot bigger than any of the parties wish to acknowledge and that includes several members of the local Labour party.

I can name a good number of the local Tories who could quite comfortably be members of the Lib Dems. They want to protect the old, the young and the environment. They also realise that you can't be progressive from a position of bankruptcy and that high council tax hurts the poor far more than the rich.

...and a step to the right.

There is also a strand that doesn't believe in these as objectives as being worthy in their own right. That balancing of the books is a means to an end. Power is all. It isn't.

What we are now seeing is that post-coalition the Wokingham strand of Toryism seeing its chance to make a move on Reading and it is no co-incidence that the Swaddles are leading players in this.
I think we are approaching a watershed moment in Reading politics. Leading local Tories have to make a decision whether that will allow themselves to fizzle out and fade away and have no influence or whether they are prepared to put up a fight. Putting up a fight would mean leaving the Tory party - but the right has taken a decisive step to take over your local party and it ain't ever coming back.

Of course, it may be a difficult step for some to make but just think of the prize:

A majority centre party that looks after all residents, not just trade unionists and those with money.
One that protects services to the vulnerable.
Believes in public services.
Stands up for business.
Makes a real difference to the environment.
Returns power back to the citizen.

There are also several Labour councillors who would be far more comfortable in the Lib Dems as they take a lurch to the left fuelled by union money. Think about it, you've wasted £1/2m delaying budget savings which you know have to be made in the end. Wouldn't that have been better spent saving the sheltered housing wardens instead of political posturing?

Back to the IPSOSMori meeting I attended. The majority of voters are left-centre/centre/right-centre. Whether Labour or Conservative don't let the extremists dictate direction.

Reading Lib Dems are nice people. Work with us.

Big Bus-iness

2011-09-27T11:52:00.001+01:00

Last night's Reading Borough Council Cabinet demonstrated that Labour in the short four months they have been in charge have turned a £400,000 surplus into a £300,000 budget deficit - and keeping the deficit at that level is only achievable by Labour praying for an outbreak of lawlessness to help pay for it.

They are betting £575,000 on a massive INCREASE in bus lane fine revenue. That's an eye-watering £1.4 million in fines to Reading drivers required this year. That's after they had the cheek to complain about the introduction of fines for kerbside parking which was to be introduced to solve a real problem in some areas of town. The bus lane fines which we now see Labour see as a cash cow to bale out their incompetence.

All this whilst they let Tesco park their lorries without any form of sanction in the bus lane in London Street to make deliveries to their Crown Street store.

Update: Quelle surprise. After penning this post, what do I find Tesco doing? Illegally loading from the London Street bus lane. To get past it, a number 9 had to swerve out into the opposite lane during rush hour.

Despite complaints from me nothing has ever been done about it. It seems Labour has one law for Tesco and another for the motorist and visitors who will be paying through the nose for Labour's budget overspend.

Tesco lorry parked in a bus lane in London Street.
Registration number: CN 56 FSC
27 Sep 2011 18:10

Labour will need that £575,000 and more to get themselves out of the mire they are landing the Council and council tax payer in. By delaying measures in last year's budget they have already needlessly cost the council tax payer an extra £490,000. That figure is the cost due to the delay. Any budget reversals such as the Green Bin collection (£180,000) comes on top of that. This is getting on to a near 1% increase in council tax without even addressing the savings that they will have to make. We have already seen that they are making people redundant to pay for these "promises" so where are the unions in fighting these Labour cuts?

I'm estimating that by the time the budget setting comes around Labour will by their (in)actions have to make up at least a £2m hole that they have created unnecessarily, with the delays and policy reversals that steal from the poor to give to the rich.

They will have two choices. Increase the money they will have to borrow to pay for their runaway budget putting the council even more into debt or hike up council tax to eye-watering levels. They will try to blame it on the national government, but the simple truth is they are incompetent and not fit to run a whelk stall.

As Nick Clegg said, it's not polite to say I told you so. But I told you so.

They Must Think You're All Mugs

2011-09-25T18:48:00.000+01:00

Listening to Labour supporters right now is the equivalent of watching a mugger being interviewed on TV after demanding anonymity, then failing to apologise for whacking their victim over the back of the head with a sock filled with snooker balls, refusing to give back the money they stole but complaining vociferously at the parsimonious attitude of the Criminal Injuries Board in handing out compensation to their victim.

That theme is strong at their party conference. The latest comedy stylings from mBand in announcing a policy that will reward the richest the most and then stating that it probably won't be in their next manifesto anyway is certainly the shape of things to come.

He didn't stop there. Ed claimed single handedly to have beated Murdoch into submission by the innovative tactic of eating his canapes and drinking his champagne all whilst ignoring the fact that he called for the sacking of the one person who was actually responsible for stopping Murdoch's take-over of BSkyB.

Two can play at that game and I have it on good authority that Ed Balls will be announcing at conference a unicorn for every family in time for Christmas 2015 if the public elect another Labour government.

Labour's outgoing General Secretary Ray Collins was also in smug mode in his final speech where he proudly declared that he had "put Labour on a solid financial footing". Yeah, by selling them lock, stock & barrel to the trade unions. A shareholder with a 95% stake would normally be referred to the monopolies commission. Still, if Ed the Elder follows Ed the Younger's tactics, he'll be at the Unison fringe meeting scoffing prawn sandwiches paid for union members who have paid handsomely to be betrayed by their union's leadership.

And if anyone still thinks that Labour has changed, how about this from the NEC Chair: "Given what I said in my speech is there anyone who would dare be against it? That's unanimous." The old Stalinist tendency is still there, rubber stamping their paymasters and ignoring the wishes of ordinary members.

Judging by the outbreak of sniggering the one time they dared try to articulate a real policy don't expect them to announce any more between now and May 2015.

Leopards don't change their spots and Labour can't change their base instincts.

As Blair's best buddy Dubya said: There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.

Getting My Bearings

2011-09-06T18:54:00.000+01:00

I do like Political Compass. The left / right axis isn't the only thing that defines politics like Guardianistas would have you believe. The Authoritarian/Libertarian (note this is not the same as economic neo-libertarianism) axis is what has always interested me.

It does help explain Labour's fondness for micromanaging individuals lives whilst simultaneously pretending to be left wing, which saw their 2010 election manifesto place them dangerously close to the BNP and the DUP in political outlook. It also helps explain why some Tories can be very liberal in response to civil liberties questions yet vere into neo-con nutter territory when it comes to economic measures.

Anyway, I thought it would be interesting to see how my political views may have changed and it came up with this:

It shows I've been moving dangerously moving from Dalai Lama to Nelson Mandela territory over the years!

That's Entertainment

2011-09-02T11:32:00.000+01:00

Reading Festival is over once again and even the BBC have given up the pretense of covering Leeds festival!

When I saw the original line-up I admit that I was slightly disappointed. I was already seeing Pulp in Hyde Park and Muse aside, it didn't look to be a classic. However, unlike last year, it exceeded expectations. The Strokes were good but they suffered from following on from Pulp who played more of an MFP Greatest Hits set than they did in July and so were hard to compete against. I watched the Horrors and White Lies instead of My Chemical Romance, but from the BBC3 coverage it looked like they put in a good set.

My personal highlights were Muse, Pulp, Interpol, The Horrors, White Lies and Warpaint.

As usual we got the annual sanctimonious claptrap about "freebies" from the Greens. The tickets are not free. Geddit? No, they don't. They have no resale value, cannot be passed on and as local councillors we would normally have the right to ask to be able to monitor an event on such a scale in our town. What's Rob's proposal? That only wealthy councillors get in to monitor the festival? That councillors should get free admission and sign a waiver promising to not enjoy any of the bands? The lack of visibility by councillors had to be a major factor in the council's decision to stop the festival for several years which led to the rise of that travesty called Glastonbury becoming so big.

In fact it is more essential than ever that councillors, whether they like the music or not, attend. I was critical of the "Them Crooked Vultures" tunnel and the positioning of the NME/Radio1 stage, the vast amounts of combustable material left lying around at previous festivals and the monitoring of the campsite area. These have all been addressed and you don't get that sort of detail sitting on your arse at home. Not everyone likes the mosh-pit so different views are essential to make an event (that councillors are ultimately responsible for) which generates a huge amount of cash and puts the town on the global map be as successful as it is. This year crime was down and the layout of the festival better than ever, and that was in part down to councillors inputing their observations into the mix.

However, it sounds more like Rob didn't want to dip his hands into his pockets and shell out the compulsory charity donation. Think of the trees, won't somebody think of the trees?

I met up with my friend Sharon who works for Universal Records but missed my friend John who was mixing Cults in the Festival Republic tent... he had to hot foot it to Leeds thanks to the split day line-up. They were both at Portsmouth Poly with me on the Entertainment Committee. Sharon was Ents Officer during 1987-88 and 'Punky' John mostly did sound engineering, although he also played for a local punk band called Ad-Nauseum. I was sound engineer for his spin-off band Sod Noz on their world tour (which consisted of just the one gig, although they did make up tour tee shirts!)

Ad-Nauseum - John's playing bass

That was my 16th Reading Festival out of 25. The first was in 1987 on a guest pass from Entec who were a major sound and lighting company which also owned the Marquee. Reading therefore always brings up "what if" thoughts as John was not the only person from PortEnts to go on to work in the music business. In the end I decided not to go to New York to take up a job as a lighting engineer but I did learn a lot doing gigs which has come in useful later on.

Like when the committee voted to buy an 'ESP Interface' after the techies presented a motion saying that it would allow them to mix bands from the bar on the opposite side of the building! In fact the techies pulling a fast one on the rest of the committee seems to be a recurring theme and a valuable lesson...

Never get yourself into a situation where you rely entirely on consultants for advice!
We also prided us on fast get outs at Pompey Guildhall, so when the Cocteau Twins played we were left twiddling our thumbs during the get out and we weren't sure what the next item of gear to load was, our stage manager Paul the Bastard asked their road manager:

"What's the next flight case?"
"Cable nose."
Puzzled looks from Paul. again: "What's next?"
"Cable nose."
More puzzled looks: "What's that?"
"Ask Cable. Cable knows."

That's what happens when you don't factor in a Dutch road crew to your calculations. Cue next Ents meeting when a motion was put forward for Paul to order 144 Cable Noses!

There's plenty more where they came from. I may just write them all down one day.

Ents Outing Summer 1984 - play spot the Was

Holidays in the Sun...

2011-09-01T11:53:00.002+01:00

...please don't be waiting for me!

Strewth... I hadn't realised that I had been off the blog for such a long time. Don't worry, I've got plenty of stuff stacked up.

I blame it on my first holiday for 4 years - I don't count party conferences as holiday! It was nice to have a drink with a fan of @matildathecat and visit the scene of the crime for the first time in 18 years :-D

Speaking of party conferences, I got my accreditation email last week:

Just to confirm, we have received information from Greater Manchester Police that you have been successfully accredited for the upcoming Liberal Democrat Autumn Conference 2011

At the time of application I didn't even have a valid passport but it was quite painless if you followed the simple instructions. That hasn't stopped a stream of disaffected members queuing up to complain about marching into a police state or some other half-baked excuse to moan.

What did they expect? We have the Deputy Prime Minister and other ministers of the realm attending. Did they really think it would be an open house, expect the party to uphold an individual's right to bear blue paint or require a police officer to doff his cap and hold the door open for them at the utterance of "Don't you know who I am?"

In fact at the heart of many complaints seems to be the idea that some Lib Dem's are more equal than others and shouldn't be subject to the same security checks as lowly members. The days of casual attendance and relaxed entrance procedures may be a regrettable consequence of being in Government but I would rather have the opportunity to debate Lib Dem policy with those in power and meet Ministers than tilt at windmills.

Some of the questions being moaned about are in the Lib Dem data part of the registration process not the police section and the registration web site is also quite specific in stating that the data collected by the police will be handled under conditions required under the Data Protection Act and will not used for purposes other than for which it was collected:

The information supplied by you will be provided to the relevant Constabulary for storage on a computer system in connection with the policing arrangements for the Party Conference. The information will be retained and/or passed to other police forces in the future to assist with the accreditation of subsequent political conferences only. Details of the data stored may be obtained in accordance with the provisions of the Data Protection Act.

It's one thing to be paranoid enough to not trust this categorical assertion but if anyone has evidence that this is not the case then they should report a criminal act to the Information Commissioner.

Wrapping it up as some bogus civil liberties issue does disservice to real civil liberties issues like the disgraceful treatment of Gary McKinnon and when there is so much to do to ensure that the Tories don't run away with the coalition agenda by keeping our eye on the political ball, this is the equivalent of contemplating fluff accumulating in the navel whilst being attacked by a man with a machete.

This is not a civil liberties issue, it is an inconvenience.

Chronic Indigestion

2011-08-03T09:56:00.000+01:00

Only two factual inaccuracies from the Midweek Chronicle and a quote from a man who gave evidence on oath that wasn't believed by a judge.

It was still better than some of their recent output.

Update: The next issue wasn't much better. Yet another inaccuracy introduced by making editorial comment and drawing an incorrect conclusion rather than concentrating on reporting the facts.

English Standards

2011-08-02T11:04:00.002+01:00

Attempts by the Reading Labour Party to use the local Standards Board as an instrument of suppression and oppression look to have finally come shuddering to a halt after a recent set of embarrassing rulings from Standards for England.

Labour has been abusing the Standards Committee for years by reporting opposition members to it for the most bogus of reasons (curiously I note that the panel has let Labour members off for hurling offensive insults at other councillors during council meetings!)

Over the last year there has been a string of referrals about me from Labour councillors, union officials and their election candidates where I have exposed their hypocrisy, double standards, bare-faced lies and borderline illegality. These referrals have been made with only one aim - to shut me up.

Their latest attempt has now spectacularly back-fired when, after they discovered that they did not have the power to disqualify me as a councillor for making a political protest at the Annual Meeting of the council, they referred Tony Page's quite pathetic and politically motivated complaint to Standards for England.

I have always and consistently maintained that I have had the right to political expression and freedom of comment, especially when it comes to this blog, which obviously causes problems to an oppressive and authoritarian party like the Labour Party.

The good news for lovers of civil liberties and the rights of the individual is that my long held assertion has been upheld by Standards for England.

Article 10 [of the European convention on Human Rights] gives a high degree of protection to political comment, the postcard and blog entries provided are clearly about specific matters of political and public interest. [My highlighting.]

Bearing in mind that on a previous similar complaint the local panel ruled: "Whilst the comments were critical it did not consider them to be unfair, unreasonable or demeaning of these people within the context they were made" their decision to refer matters in this instance was rather perverse.

In this respect Standards for England again found that I wasn't engaged in personal abuse for its own sake in finding: "the comments are not serious enough insults about the personal qualities of the individuals concerned nor do they amount to mere personal abuse such as to justify a finding that there has been disrespect under the code."

So how did the local Standards Board get it so spectacularly wrong?

Easy, the clue is in their referral to Standards for England where they refer to "underpinned by a persistent pattern of behaviour which attracted complaints."

Yes, we have it in black and white. The local Standards Board considers the quantity of complaints as being a factor, not the quality or motivation. Not a single complaint against me ever got to the stage where I could give mitigation or make a defence. All were of matters of political and public interest. And all were made by members of the Labour Party who were pursuing a monkey faeces policy of throwing as much as they could hoping some would stick and in the eyes of the local panel it was successful.

But by taking it as far as they did, Labour now has blown it in terms of oppression as in addition to kicking out their malicious complaint, Standards for England has also ruled that councillors are not subject to the code unless as acting as representatives of the council. It is not enough to be acting as a member and that new advice now calls into question all their previous findings against me when acting in a political situation about matters of clear political and public interest and especially the ability of them to pontificate over my blog entries.

One curious aspect was that Tony Page made a complaint to the local Standards Boards on behalf of the Greens. Yes, that's right, Labour made a complaint on behalf of the Green Party. I spoke to Rob White about whether he was involved and I got a slightly evasive "can't remember" rather than an outright denial.

I will err on the side of caution and believe that Rob knew nothing about it. However, given Labour's arrogance, it is perfectly conceivable that they felt that they could speak on behalf of their junior partners. If Rob wishes to position his party against Labour, he needs to start being a little less evasive in his answers and a little less reliant on abstentions to make his case that the Greens are an independent party.

I hear that Labour are determined to continue with a local Standards Board despite the Localism Bill stripping them of any material power. That will mean £2,500 of council tax money to continue to pay for the chair of the committee, as well as tens of thousands of pounds in support services and wasted officer hours for a toothless structure simply so that Labour can continue making threats to councillors who dare to stand up against them. I wonder which member of council staff they will be making redundant this time to pay for their political posturing?

Of course, there have to be some rules but when the rules are being used to stifle political debate and undermine the democratic process then there is something seriously wrong with the state of local democracy.

I have written to Eric Pickles about Reading Labour's continual abuse of the standards process and asked for assurances that locally constituted boards will have no right to interfere in the political process and asked about what steps he will take to prevent abuse now and into the future.

Rave from the Grave

2011-07-27T08:37:00.000+01:00

Looking through my old posts for something else I found a piece I wrote about Andy Coulson two years ago.

http://waswasere.blogspot.com/2009/07/murdochs-poodle.html

Ce n'est pas la change!

Spam Spam Spam Spam...

2011-07-24T19:53:00.004+01:00

We can finally see exactly what a steaming pile Labour's "consultation" amounts to. With the quite laughable phrase " an (almost) Premiership football team" it's clear that this has been a back of a fag packet job from the Labour stream of consciousness as channeled through Jon Hartley.

This sham consultation has been exposed as a simple harvesting exercise so that they can sell your details to third parties. Of course, like all RBC exercises there is an amount of duplicity in this. The web site form says:

This data will be stored securely and electronically, and will not be shared with any external organisations,

Yet the leaflet you pick up at the Civic Offices not only details that they want to be able to send your details to third parties, but the default option is that you agree to having your details available for sale to marketing companies. You have to opt out!

The consultation leaflet reads as a piece of Labour propaganda funded by the council tax payer which I can't believe was nodded through by officers even though it should fall foul of ultra vires being a clearly partisan reading of the financial predicament Labour left us in.

The sham extends deeper and is a supreme exercise of passing the buck about the financial mess Labour left the town in. Residents are not being given access to all the information required to respond to, as they put it, "difficult budget decisions".

For example, how many residents, pleased they have benefited from Labour's restoration of "green" waste collections, realise that their £22.50 windfall will mean that at least two jobs are being axed from Arts, Museums and Libraries? Grass cutting and leaf clearing is being mown down? The planning department is having its in-year budgets slashed? These aren't "savings" they are additional cuts which Labour refused to reveal properly in their cabinet papers and they have done all they can to keep the details of these cuts secret. Yet we know that 91% of people were willing to pay the charge so these cuts to jobs and services are completely unnecessary.

How many knowing these facts would now feel happy about their "free" collections and that's without even considering that the green credentials of the scheme are quite bogus. How many more jobs are residents prepared to see Labour chop for no good reason?

Labour's way is to steal from the poor to give to the rich. It was they who bailed out the bankers. It was they who removed the 10% tax band from the poorest. It was they who gave non-domiciled billionaires a huge tax break and now we see 25% of the wealthiest people in the town (because let's face it, you need a big back garden to justify having a 240 litre green bin) being subsidised by the poor. Staff are losing their jobs and services are being slashed to pay for Labour's uncosted election bribes, just as I predicted.

But that's Labour's way of reacting to having no money. They will desperately try to blame it on the coalition whilst wielding the axe but these are Labour's cuts and Labour's alone. Why do we know that? Because the axe isn't falling in the Environment department. It's other departments which are suffering because Labour cannot balance the books in Environment to pay for their uncosted promises and they are denying residents the information required to make informed decisions.

If Labour have suddenly decided to be honest with the public, let's see them publish the full list of budget options currently being worked on right now by officers. They should be public documents to allow residents to make in informed choice. Without them, it's a consultation worthy of complete contempt.

Just a thought...

2011-07-21T11:18:00.001+01:00

I see that Kelly Edwards has declared an interest in Green Issues Communiqué on the council web site still without mentioning that she is lead manager on the Tesco and Bellway accounts. She may not be employed on projects within the Borough herself but as a partner, shareholder and manager on those accounts she does have a beneficial interest in her clients being successful. She should have named them. She has done so on the Green Issues communique web site!

Interestingly her declaration of interest document is "dated" 24th May 2011. I published her involvement as lead manager on the Tesco account on the 20th June 2011. The properties of the PDF file reveal that it wasn't created by Councillor Services until the 22nd June 2011. It may also be of interest to readers that Green Issues Communiqué did the community "consultation" for the controversial Lok 'n' Store planning application. The local residents haven't forgotten, it was they who reminded me!

Ms. Edwards declaration of interest also reveals another interesting nugget. Her election expenses were part-paid for by Unison and the T&G Union. Putting aside the fact that the T&G doesn't exist anymore and they've just pensioned off Derek Simpson with a £1/2m pay off whilst bleating on about "fat cats", it does reveal a nice little dodge that Reading Labour appear to be using to avoid putting union money through their books. It's legitimate, as it is perfectly permissible to donate directly to a campaign but it does avoid an observer from creating a direct link from union donations to Labour to their receiving payment in kind through the facilities agreement. It would be interesting to know whether the Unison money came from their General Political Fund although I suspect it wouldn't make much difference. The GPF is used to campaign for Labour anyway.

At least Kelly's link with Tesco is in the public domain and she is not on any body that could directly influence a decision but if you are clever enough, there is a loophole in council policy and one which is almost impossible to unravel.

If you are a self-employed councillor providing consultancy services, you don't have to reveal your client list. If you don't have to declare your client list, there is no way to independently check on potential conflict of interest. There is no requirement by the council which forces you to do so.

I guess that's okay with people?

RCRE Employment Tribunal Judgement

2011-07-19T11:59:00.003+01:00

I shall have to think very carefully about how to respond to the findings of an Employment Tribunal heard in mid-June. I have much background information and complete notes from the hearing not yet in the public domain that will make uncomfortable reading for many.

What the judge led Tribunal determined was that RCRE ran a personal vendetta against one of their employees for daring to disagree with them. Recognise that scenario?

In May 2010 I chaired an internal RCRE grievance panel to hear the same evidence considered by the Employment Tribunal and came to the same conclusion, namely that Mr Deva was owed money by them. Straight away senior RCRE members did not like my conclusions, conspired to over turn them on the day I gave them my panel report and then deliberately and with malice aforethought embarked on a campaign of character assassination to cover up their actions.

The evidence given to the tribunal by senior RCRE figures was given under oath. None of the members of RCRE took a religious oath and instead made a 'general affirmation'. I have, from my notes, many examples of where their evidence bordered on, if not constituted downright perjury. I suspect the latter because during a lunch break the current chair of RCRE threatened me in the lift with: "It's just your word against many". As my witness statement was backed by documented evidence, there was no need to take anyone's word for it. Was he suggesting that he was prepared to lie to the Tribunal to discredit me?

If could be that I was just be being over sensitive to their aggressive gestures but then here are three statements made by the Judge in his findings about the evidence they gave:

In his witness statement Mr Sophal states that as well as following the procedure he was trying to encourage a meeting between the Claimant and Mr Abdoul as a "way of resolving the matter without escalation." The Tribunal do not accept this evidence.
Dr. Elahi is wrong in his evidence.
The Tribunal therefore do not accept the evidence which has been given by Mr Raichura on this issue.

That's three senior RCRE figures who have given on oath evidence that was not credible and rejected by a judge.

On the face of it I have paid a heavy price for my decision to find in favour of Mr. Deva in May 2010 against the wishes of the RCRE Executive but I have no regrets. I would rather have my integrity than crawl on my stomach in the dust like others who have sucked up to them for the sake of political expediency and personal vindictiveness.

I want to thank my local party for their full support throughout this quite distasteful episode. The Tribunal finding calls into question the actions and motivations of many senior people in several organisations over the last year. As I said, I will need to have a period to think about what to do next because right now I would be quite happy to publish and be damned about what has been going on behind the scenes. That may not be long term in my own best interest.

I am just so desperately sorry that I couldn't do anything a year ago when I saw what they were doing to Mr. Deva and for the stress and harassment he suffered at the hands of an organisation that is supposed to defend equality and human rights. For that he has my full and sincere heartfelt apology.

You may read the full findings here: RCRE Employment Tribunal

Busman's Holiday

2011-07-12T11:08:00.001+01:00

Labour have moved swiftly to reinstate their former iron grip on Reading Transport Limited which has to be bad news for Reading. Their last controlling era resulted in the ethanol bus fiasco, which was forced on the company for a few pictures on Labour's election leaflets and nearly had catastrophic consequences.

Thanks to the Greens, the current board make-up is a politically unbalanced Labour: 3; Trades Unions: 1; Conservative 2; Business Appointees; 2. With David Sutton in the chair this gives Labour complete control and with Tony Page no-doubt planning to resurrect his role as a shadow director there are good grounds for concern over political interference in the company's future operations.

Labour also closed the Station Hill approach which meant that the long standing ambition of Reading Transport Board for a fully integrated interchange was nobbled before it could get off the ground. The long term effects on the company are yet to be known.

I have to say that I've enjoyed my time as a director of Reading Transport Limited. James Freeman is an excellent Chief Executive for tough times and I thank him for his open mind to new ideas. There is a good team at Great Knollys Street and I give a big thanks to all the staff who made me welcome.

I think I made a difference. At my very first board meeting I brought up the issue of the effect of that flat fares had on the inner town area and was met with a ferocious attack from one Tony Page, who at that time was double-dipping as a director and lead councillor for Transport. Data from the transport department was showing that residents in Battle ward were driving their cars to work whilst those in Tilehurst were using the bus! His position was clearly untenable but he couldn't help but puff himself up and rail against the temerity of someone having a new idea that wasn't his.

Three years later, an inner zone in the guise of the '£1 to Town' fares is being rolled out across the network and my idea for a discount irregular user card became the EasySaver 10. I also trialled using Twitter during the 2009 snow problems as a method of customer communication and was pleased to be successful in getting it adopted as a standard customer service tool. I still get a "I did that" feeling when I see the buses go past with their @reading_buses twitter feed adverts!

I shall have to check carefully as an ex-director what I am now able to say about previous episodes as my main concern would be to protect the reputation of the company but Labour control of the board does not bode well given their previous interference.

I also wonder whether Trish Thomas will be trousering the £6,000 that the company normally pays to non-executive directors who are not councillors. I've been told that Mike Townend will not be claiming it so a statement that Labour are not using directorships to financially reward yet more of their former councillors with company cash would be welcome.

The Fourth Council Estate

2011-07-11T16:45:00.007+01:00

The News of the Screws has brought to public attention the long running cosy relationship between the media and politicians. It also highlights what happens when you are slightly "off-message" with the establishment and just how far they will try to squash you in order to keep their self-serving agendas on-track.

Resitance is futile!

I hold no brief for Andy Coulson. He is a Spurs fan responsible for some quite vile news stories. I have written several jokes about him whilst he was editor of the NotW but it is as clear as day that he has been thrown to the wolves by Murdoch in order to keep his Borg Queen in place.

In 2003 Rebekah Wade personally admitted during a Select Committee paying police for stories but so far she is only being called on to give evidence as a witness. Obviously it makes you proud to be British to know that we have the best police force money can buy.

The most damning revelation has been the hacking and deletion of messages from Milly Dowler's phone. It was the story that caused the tipping point in public perception. She ran the story yet is getting the full might of News International behind her. Why isn't she being hauled in to have a not innocent even if proven not-guilty DNA swab taken?

When Vince Cable "declared war" on News International, to their shame, we saw the Conservatives react by marginalising him.

Yet even more digracefully Ed 'The Hypocrite' Miliband demanded that he be sacked for daring to hint that Rupert Murdoch wasn't a fit and proper person to control so much of the national media. In the next few days his (in)actions will be in the spotlight.

Pre-Dowlergate the establishment tried to deal with him in the only way it knew how, to smear and trash. Labour, in contrast to their sudden revulsion with Murdoch, were some of their biggest cheerleaders. Now that The Times and Sunday Times are beginning to get caught up with the scandal as it is now revealed that someone from those papers tried to illegally obtain Gordon Brown's accounts, Miliband may regret his defense of Tom Baldwin on Andrew Marr's show when it seems he had done exactly the same as Cameron: "Are you lying?" "No" "Well, that's all right then."

But the reaction to Vince is just typical of the politics and media in this country. Scare people until they are unwilling to stick their heads above the parapet and want to bring to account vested interests for their actions. It's why most people are turned off by politics when telling it like it is is something to be attacked by the media. The best advice I ever saw for a whistleblower was to have courage and be prepared to never work in your industry again. I might have to take that advice!

At national level you have a press whose direction is driven by owners' agendas rather than principles of good journalism, whilst at local level, financial pressures on journalists reduces them to regurgitating press releases. There is simply no longer the time available to properly research a story or dig. That's why nationally shortcuts were taken and locally we have seen the death of investigative news. We've seen one lie from the Labour administration communicated by the RBC press office and printed as fact with no checks by journalists [although it probably says more about RBC who have allowed council facilities to be abused for political purposes].

In Reading the council spent years denying that there was a problem over Section 106 receipts, despite knowing that there was an internal report suggesting that there was one and a quite serious one at that. The council gave incorrect information to councillors and Labour is now trying to bury the report. It has taken over a year to get this far and there is more to discover. Yet an ordinary journalist on local paper deadlines would never have been able to research the story and would have been fobbed off way before uncovering anything.

It is not a criticism of the local media, that's just telling it how it is and is especially true now that many local papers derive a considerable proportion on income from local authority publicity spending. What is in for them in biting the hand that feeds them?

Oscar Wilde wrote:

"In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralizing. Somebody — was it Burke? — called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time no doubt. But at the present moment it is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism."

This is still true at both national and local levels. The national picture shows what happens when the press run the agenda and corrupt it to the purposes of their owners. The local picture shows what happens when the local press can no longer be called the custodians of enquiry and holding the elected to account. Different ends of the same spectrum but the same spectrum all the same.

There is something quite rotten at the heart of politics when power is involved. We saw what happened with the expenses scandal when the press failed for years to do their duty as they cosied up to smooth commercial takeovers and garner influence. We've also seen locally the same effect but for other reasons. There is a rotten heart at the centre of this town and that rotten heart is the local Labour party. But they wouldn't get away with it if they weren't aided and abetted in that by a willing host of partners keen to get their hands on council tax money or protect their own self-interest.

Like nationally where people failing to care got the tabloid journalism they deserve, locally the failure to engage with the political process has got us the self-serving council we all deserve. I saw a good analogy somewhere. People sit down on Sunday morning reading their paper, eating bacon and eggs and don't want to know what goes on in the abbatoir.

It's time for people to stand up and be counted and restore politics to the people. Give a damn!

Recycled Gags #73

2011-07-07T10:16:00.007+01:00

Typical Guardian trying to take all the credit for exposing Andy Coulson and Rebekah Wade's dodgy practices. Up the Arse! exposed their shameless pursuit of circulation figures in March 2006!

I do like the sychronicity that it refers to Harry Potter on this the day of the last film's premier. Ce n'est plus la change!

Up the Arse! Exposes News of the World Arselicking Shocker

Up The Arse! has been given details of sordid and perverted activities being carried out by two major British newspaper “editors” acting under the directives of a foreign national who has come over here to take our jobs, steal our women and drink our beer. We cannot reveal the identity of the duo engaged in these sordid activities, so we’ll call them Rebekah and Andrew to protect us from libel.

One of the people who have come to the notice of UTA! is rumoured to be very fond of the bizarre sexual practice of coprophilia which involves sticking one’s nose as far up the arse of an Australian business man as is humanely possible and showing off the resulting brown-nose in public. Stories have come to our notice that the Spurs supporting man in question will stop at nothing in his pursuit of what he refers to in his twisted mind as “improving circulation”.

One of the “editors” caught in the act of preparing to give Rupert Murdoch a surprise arse licking.

The other is a drunk and violent thug who likes nothing better than giving defenceless men a damn good fisting because they know they will never be able to report the crime to Police for fear of being thought a soft-touch. She is also known to police as a serial publisher of pictures of 15 year old stars of Harry Potter films with suggestive headlines whilst running an anti-paedophile campaign. Both without any shame of being thought a hypocrite.

You have been warned!

Bin There. Done It.

2011-07-05T08:40:00.000+01:00

We are now beginning to see how the Road to Damascus conversion by Labour to consulting residents over matters that effect them will actually work in practice. There was no conversion and there isn't going to be any. Instead they have come up with a scheme designed to give them the answers they wanted all along. So no change there.

Last year I had a look into the idea of providing a more flexible refuse collection service for residents in areas where there were problems with the existing alternate weekly collections. There was never any intention to impose it on residents, a clear majority needed to be in favour and there were certain criteria laid down to ensure that it was needs driven rather than politically. There are already streets in Reading that have weekly black back collections and my experience was that there were probably more where it would be beneficial to residents and the refuse collection service alike.

To acheive that I was going to assert the role of councillors as community advocates, as promoted by the Centre for Public Scrutiny and provided by the council's constitution. And the way I was going to do it was to take the lead councillor out of the equation and allow ward councillors to consult directly on options for residents based on their ward experience in a neutral fashion.

Of course, I had to junk that idea when Labour councillors refused to co-operate with the efforts to stop kerbside parking which is not only inconvenient but downright dangerous when emergency vehicles are blocked. Such consultation doesn't work if councillors are more intent on using if as party propaganda and fail in their constitutional obligation to represent all residents. Instead Labour put out misinformation and used scare tactics and refused to consult with their residents. Their non-cooperation meant that the scheme had to be put on hold and a hugely expensive consultation considered.

It was clear from their shameless behaviour that that any attempt to involve ward councillors in an honest and fair consultation would be met with hostility and yet more false propaganda.

So what do we see them doing about consultation over weekly bin collections? Yep, they want to implement the very idea which they themselves wrecked. Well, I'm sorry. If they didn't back consultation by ward councillors last year, why should they be so keen on it this year?

Simples. Being Labour it's not about doing a proper consultation at all. It's a means to an end and that end is getting the answer they wanted all along. Already you can see them putting out statements designed to gerimander the result.

There have to be serious questions asked about the conduct of one Labour councillor who has already written to residents over what is meant to be a neutral consultaion exercise at the same time telling them that she has "big reservations" over it. The timing of her letter is suspect as well as she posted that she had already started delivering letters about her "consultation" on the 1st July at 17:03 - the first day that the cabinet papers had been made available to all councillors and which aren't delivered until early evening. There has clearly been some pre- briefing from the lead councillor going on here. That's hardly unbiased consultation is it? No, it's shoddy politicing on the rates.

As a reminder, for a party has set itself so dead against weekly black bin collections, it was only in 2007 that Labour were putting on their election leaflets pleas to residents that if they wanted to get black sack collections to call their Labour councillor. Of course, we know since that date that if a Lib Dem asked for a street to go on the weekly collection list they would reject it out of hand. That's the Labour way.

Labour are in a complete mess over how to consult because quite frankly they have no idea how it is done unless it gives them the answer they wanted in the first place. Their idea of consultation, like the Shinfield Road, is to decide what the answer is and manipulate the answers until they get what they want. A few loaded questions here and there and ignoring the ones they don't like and hey presto, you get the Shinfield Road fiasco à la Labour.

Labour simply cannot be trusted for as long as their idea of consultation is to slant the questions and warp the responses. Anyone who believes in local democracy should keep well clear of this sham.

If Labour truly believe in local democracy then the only way now for residents to feel that their consultations are fair, honest and completely unbiased is for council officers to be responsible otherwise Labour risk bringing the council into disrepute.

They won't of course. An independent consultation might give an answer they don't want.

Sectioned

2011-07-01T15:18:00.003+01:00

Sometimes you should be careful what you ask for. I should know I've warned people about that myself before.

Yesterday I was finally given a copy of the Wokingham Borough Council report on Section 106 receipts. The problem? It is a blue paper report which means that I will be in breach of the councillors code of conduct if I reveal its contents. A cunning move there but I can't complain, I did ask for it!

I am deliberately writing this before I read the report so that I can't be accused of leaking confidential information. I will then have to decide what I am to do in the light of reading its contents.

What do we know that is in the public domain?

Reading Borough Council used Section 106 monies to pay for things that a reading of the law suggests should have come out of the revenue accounts and were not capital items. I've already reported that it included fixing leaking roofs and gas main repairs.

We know that the records kept in the Parks department were poor but at least shed some light on where some of the money was meant to be spent even if it wasn't. We know that the Education department kept no records worth speaking of.

My understanding from what I have discovered so far is that Section 106 monies were put into the capital accounts obstensively to accrue interest. So far so good. However what I believe actually happened to that money that should have been returned for earmarked capital projects wasn't and that a significant proportion was leeched back into the ordinary general fund to pay for operational costs like the aforementioned repairs.

The scandal is that no one actually has a clue where some of the money was spent and Labour and officers have no interest in getting to the bottom of it, an attitude which leaves the Council open to legal action. There is clearly an attempt to sweep the whole thing under the carpet and the laissez faire attitude is just wrong.

Jo Lovelock has taken great pains to say that there was no "wrongdoing". Well, that depends purely on your point of view and your definition of wrongdoing. No one has alleged embezzlement or corruption for personal benefit so by that definition she is correct. However, if what she is trying to do is suggest the money was spent in accordance with legally binding agreements then she is wrong. Finacial competance is what it is really all about.

In fact what we have here is the tip of the iceberg. I know of one area where reserves were over budgeted so that they could be used later in the year by Labour to help shore up the inevitable budget variances and whole sections of the Streetcare budget were not actually under the control of the department but were instead cross charged from central finance leaving me little scope to do something about them. When I asked finance for access to the below the gold book figures I was told by officers they didn't exist - and I was the lead councillor!

If an audit of the capital programmes was conducted and the Council's debt was properly analysed, rather than the superficial and carefully controlled data that is given to councillors, a whole new set of questions would come crawling out of the woodwork. It's why I believe what is going on now amounts to a whitewash.

Jo Lovelock has promised to release the report... but edited. So much for transparency! What you won't see though is the second part of the report - the legal advice. I still haven't been given a copy of that myself. The council is classing it as legally privileged so that they don't have to release it under Freedom of Information.

Astonishingly, the reason given is that publishing it may expose the council to legal action from developers! Well, excuse me. If there was no "wrongdoing" as Jo Lovelock claims, how on earth could publishing it result in legal action unless it suggests that the council didn't act correctly.

As long as the report is only released in a redacted form and/or the second report is kept secret, I think council tax payers have a legitimate reason to wonder about what exactly is being covered up and by whom.

I am now going to read the report. If you don't hear from me...

How RBC Works - Part 287

2011-06-30T14:26:00.002+01:00

I and my ward collegues had been working on an ongoing parking issue on behalf of local residents. After no response from the council I quite reasonably asked for an update to see where it had got to.

On the 18th April I sent in my query.
It wasn't logged on the system until the 28th April
It wasn't allocated to a case officer in the transport department until the 12th May.
The officer didn't respond until the 28th June
I was sent a response to it today.

In the meantime the issue I raised has appeared on Labour propaganda claiming it was they "what did it". Complete balderdash as it was a previous decision made after lobbying from Lib Dem councillors but I expect nothing less from them.

If I was a cynic I'd say that this delay was quite deliberate.

Luckily I'm not a cynic, I'm a skeptic.

Shredded Tweet

2011-06-29T17:07:00.004+01:00

The Mayor got all hot and bothered yesterday about councillors tweeting in the council chamber. She stopped the meeting several times to tell the miscreant off. The horror!

I know that she is only in the job thanks to the two-faced previous Mayor and not had the advantage of shadowing the Mayor for a year but perhaps to get her up to speed on procedures someone should have told her that it is perfectly legitimate for councillors to tweet during meetings to keep people in touch with what's happening in their name. As long as it remains council policy that meetings should be webcast and made accessible to all it is a perfectly reasonable thing for elected representatives to do.

Here's the crux of the matter for the technologically challenged Luddites in the Labour group. The council has an existing policy on webcasting.

Definition of webcasting: A webcast is a media file distributed over the Internet using streaming media technology to distribute a single content source to many simultaneous listeners/viewers. A webcast may either be distributed live or on demand. Essentially, webcasting is “broadcasting” over the Internet.

From twitter.com: "The Twitter Streaming API allows high-throughput near-realtime access to various subsets of public and protected Twitter data."

Facebook also has a streaming API, so for the purposes of existing council policy, tweeting and posting on Facebook are allowed by the previous motion.

Which makes me wonder how did Jon "Snitch" Hartley know that someone was tweeting before crying to mummy? He couldn't have been following the debate on Twitter because that would surely make him a hypocrite so I do hope he wasn't getting texts from his chums in the public gallery. You see, texting isn't streaming media and doesn't come under the amended Open Source motions provisions. Mind you, he's the councillor who took photographs during a council debate so a 'do as I say not what I do' attitude from him will be no surprise to anyone.

There's some social media guidance from the council but that's all it is guidance. I have no problem with the view of the Commons committee report that says it should be used "with decorum and regard for others". I don't think any posted last night fell outside that test unless you were a Labour activist looking for something to moan and bellyache about.

The only finding from the standards board of any relevance was about being disrespectful to members of the public. Well, I don't mind being found guilty of being disrespectful to Basher McKenzie. I was. However, to make out that he was some sensitive little flower hurt by the thought that only silver bullets could stop him was funny. Poor little diddums. However, to keep on side I'm happy to restrict tweeting to the debate in hand, I'll just lay off their stooges until after the meeting.

The bottom line is that informing the public about the conduct of debate via Twitter is absolutely covered by existing council policy, subject to the normal rules of councillor conduct.

Of course the real reason that Labour don't like tweeting is that is gives people the ability for the opposition to put over their points direct to the public in a contemporaneous fashion without a filter. Most residents have never been to the council chamber and have no idea what goes on in in their name and the nature of meetings is that column inches to cover the debate properly is limited to a few soundbites. So until meetings are routinely broadcast, it is the best way of showing the democratic process in operation.

In that respect, tweeting is being embraced by councils up and down the country, the Houses of Parliament and now the Courts are looking favourably on it as a way of communication during public sessions.

Labour's attempts to put the genie back in the bottle are as laughable as they are ludicrous.

Promises Promises

2011-06-27T15:23:00.003+01:00

Remember that concrete promise from Richard McKenzie that Labour would instigate immediate legal proceedings against Wokingham Borough Council over Maiden Erlegh admissions? The parents do. There was a lot of bluster and talk of betrayal and the usual tosh from Labour and faux ansgst.

Well, they're in charge and what have they actually done on now they are in power. Yep, another Labour climb down on yet another bogus election promise.

John Ennis is going to write a strongly worded letter.

That'll learn them.

Pravda

2011-06-23T12:14:00.000+01:00

I had to laugh at the "Volunteers keeping it clean" press release from Matt Rodda in the Post. Actually giggle would be more accurate!

It was a press release worthy of the old USSR. Whilst it was nice of him to pop over from Caversham, he miraculously managed to leave out the fact that all three ward councillors were there and that apart from myself and the Lib Dem candidate from the May elections there only appeared to be one other Katesgrove resident there.

NAGs are also meant to be politically neutral and residents know that when I was secretary I bent over backwards to preserve that separation so it remains to be seen how local residents will view Matt's efforts to politicise the Katesgrove NAG like his Labour colleagues have done with the Redlands NAG.

Still, I can't blame him for trying.

A more interesting line of enquiry at the moment for me is whether I can get to the bottom of what appears in the face of it to be a complete and flagarent breach of the Data Protection Act by one of the Labour lead councillors that could result in a fine for RBC if it is as it has been reported to me.

Ignorance is no protection from the law!

Every Little Helps

2011-06-20T17:16:00.003+01:00

Now I have no problem with the application for the Tesco distribution centre on the old Courage brewery site. I have every intention of judging it on its merits and ensuring that it is a fair process in accordance with planning regulations and laws.

However, you have to wonder about new Whitley councillor Kelly Edwards involvement in the process. Tesco tell us that they have engaged the services of Green Issues Communiqué to be the PR consultants for the process and to that effect residents and councillors have been sent a letter detailing a couple of PR events being run by that company.

Now I knew that Ms Edwards worked for them and I asssumed that she was "hands off" but I'm staggered to find that she is actually the lead manager for the Tesco account at Green Issues Comminiqué.

It makes me wonder why, as an Abbey resident and former Redlands candidate, did she switch from a seat that Labour always told us they were going to walk to stand as the Labour candidate for Whitley. Was it to represent her consituents or her client?

It'll probably be blamed on the Council but I note that she hasn't published her declaration of interests yet.

From the Green Issues Communiqué web site:

Team – Kelly Edwards, Executive Director

Kelly Edwards has worked at Green Issues for seven years and is Executive Director in charge of operations. Kelly is based in Reading and is the lead manager of two of the company’s key accounts in retail and house building: Tesco and Bellway. She also has particular experience in renewable projects.

Kelly is a councillor for Reading Borough Council and was a General Election prospective parliamentary candidate in 2005 for the Labour Party in Hertsmere, gaining over 11,500 votes. Before joining Green Issues, she spent six years working at the House of Commons as a Press Officer to an MP and as a Senior Parliamentary Researcher and assistant to a several ministers. This experience, combined with her former role as a council LEA school governor, means that Kelly has a thorough knowledge of both national and local authority politics.

Update: I was reminded this morning (25/06/11) by a resident that Green Issues were the company responsible for the PR for the Lok 'n' Store development

Equal Pay Lawyers 4U ~ No-win, no-spree

2011-06-17T10:46:00.000+01:00

The news that Reading Borough Council has lost an Employment Tribunal over its failure to implement equal pay under a Labour administration and that it took a no-win no-fee lawyer to do so is not only a major embarrassment to the Reading Labour Party but a damning indictment of the council's unions that are meant to represent low paid staff.

For over 12 years Labour knew that there was a problem, it was an agenda item in 1998 on the then equivalent of the Personnel Committee. So what did they do about it? Bugger all, that's what.

Labour swept it under the carpet each year because they needed the money they had earmarked in the previous year's budget to balance their appalling record in managing the in-year budget rather than to pay staff what they were due.

To give some idea of the scale of the problem, in 2009 they had put aside over £2m to pay equal pay. They didn't implement it then which means that staff who were not paid it are entitled to claim all that that £2m now. Except it's worse than that because many of these cases go back for many more years than 2009.

Labour knew that they were liable to pay out this money and compounded the problem by dragging out the implementation of equal pay even when they knew all about the increasing year on year risk. It took Labour to lose control of the council before staff finally got equal pay and that was against the backdrop of opposition from their unions.

We can see that Labour clearly knew they didn't have a leg to stand on because their last budget saw the council put £3m into its reserves to hedge against losing the tribunal cases. But in typical Labour fashion they used an accounting trick in the Local Authorities Capital Finance and Accounting Regulations and they didn't put any real money aside, it was a dodge. Put simply, they took the risk that if the cases were found against the council, they could add it to the £200m debt they already owed by capitalising it.

Well, the chickens have come home to roost.

I would estimate the total liability Labour left the council tax payer with is nearer to £8m. That would require a 13% increase in council tax to pay for their previous years' negligence. Of course, Labour would be banned from increasing council tax by that amount so the inevitable consequence of their previous in-actions will be massive cuts to compensate.

Remember that when Labour start to slash services to pay for these claims. This is not down to the coalition, the greedy bankers or any "ideological reform" of public services. It is down to more than 12 years of burying their heads in the sand, fiscal irresponsibility and a supine set of local union leaders.

Disgracefully the unions were against inplementing equal pay. We know that because Unison said: "the trades unions have not agreed to any part of the Pay and Grading (P & G) scheme" and so equal pay had to be implemented by the coalition over their heads.

The sad aspect of this, for someone like me who is a great believer in effective union representation, is that the lesson for council staff is that they best represented by a no-win no-fee lawyer rather than those who take their union subs under false pretences and not only lick Labour's boots but still give them the money to buy those boots.

If council staff require effective representation, it's clear that it's no good asking the unions to act. they had over 12 years to do so and failed. Staff could no worse than cancel their union subs and start looking at the no-win no-fee adverts on telly. In fact I would encourage all staff to put in a claim now, if they haven't already, and demand what the law says they are entitled to. It's Labour's mess, let's see them clear it up themselves.

At least we can be grateful that Labour have finally started being honest about the real funders of their local party. In a new submission to the Electoral Commission, the address of the largest donor to the Reading & District Labour Party has listed their address as being: Civic Centre, RG1 7AE.

A long awaited admission that the council tax payer really does fund the local Labour Party.

Redundant Labour

2011-06-14T09:23:00.000+01:00

One of the attacks that Labour used on the coalition at the last election aided and abetted by their local donors, was the number of redundancies they were claiming were being made.

Their literature referred to 300 job loses and a decimation of council staff. It was of course all designed to panic staff and cause as much fear as possible. They deliberately left out the fact that 150 of the 300 "jobs" were posts that had remained unfilled for a year and the Performance Improvement Programme (PIP) which they started and presumably supported was going to account for the majority of post reductions.

Well, I now have the actual figures for last year. There were 49 redundancies above the figure due to their own PIP programme.

Yes, 49 in a council employing nearly 2,500 people (excluding Education). Only half of that number were not agreed by staff which means that in the first year ever that the council had frozen council tax and saved £18m, the evil coalition (© Reading Labour) had only six more non-agreed redundancies than Labour had done the year before and Labour had done that whilst the unions looked on approvingly and completely failed to get Labour to implement equal pay for the Council's lowest paid staff.

I wasn't happy having to make a single redundancy. I agonised over every single post made redundant in my area. It was not something I wanted to do but it was forced on me by the perilous state of the finances when I took over the environment portfolio.

However, the total rank hypocrisy of the Labour group is revealed when we see that in 2007 they made 25 people redundant. In 2008 11. In 2009 30.

Let's see how many the "worker's" party sack this year. They have a track record of doing so which their union masters are happy to turn a blind eye to.

Waste Collection on the Fourth Estate

2011-06-13T13:27:00.001+01:00

I've always been a little suspicious of The Chronicle after I did an interview many years ago which mentioned Martin Salter and where I commented on some verifiable facts, indeed I even provided sources for them. They spiked it on the grounds that it was "controversial" rather than factually inaccurate. The Post printed the one I did for them.

Sadly the Chronicle is an establishment paper and for too long that establishment has been Labour. Therefore I wasn't surprised to see them make up a headline: "Lib Dems caught out attacking their own budget cuts" and use the words "The Lib Dem opposition has been left red-faced" based on some rather fallacious remarks from Tony Page and no independent evidence that either statement was true. There was no budget cut so no-one could be caught out or left red-faced.

"Labour claim..." would have been fair but editorially I guess that's repetition and was not necessary before publishing what appears to have started life as opinion piece.

The disappointing part is that I patiently explained to their reporters that there was no cut, why it was not a cut and pointed them to the gold book which contains the budget options where any budget cut or saving would be listed. They still went ahead and published it with a misleading headline and content. I'll be charitable and put it down to them not understanding the subject matter rather than never letting the facts get in the way of a good story.

This appears to be the bit that their reporters and editor can't seem to grasp. For there to be a budget cut or a budget saving... it has to be in the budget. Not even the council press statement referred to changes as being part of the budget. The Chronicle simply made up the idea of it being a budget cut to get a sexier headline.

I guess I should be grateful that they at least printed my comment, even if it didn't set alarm bells ringing about the veracity of their story.

I've been looking further into what happened and had a meeting in Friday to discuss what went wrong. The March decision by officers was not to scrap additional collections but to do them during the week rather than pay out extra for overtime. That might have annoyed some staff, but residents were still going to get extra collections under the coalition administration and the resources in terms of staff and vehicles to do so were protected budget items.

An analogy of what happened is that the coalition gave Streetcare enough money to buy some Heinz beans from Morrison's and they discovered that they could buy the same tin cheaper at the local shop. Only an idiot would have a problem with that. I guess Labour policy would be to send them back to get it from Morrison's at the higher price!

It is clear from my meeting on Friday to discuss the matter with council officers that at the time that decision being made there was no cut envisaged. Equivalent service means no cut. Geddit?

So far so good.

How then do we explain to Labour's behaviour? Given that, as explained, there was no cut proposed, how did we get to Jan Gavin, Keith Jerome, Graham Hoskins, Tony Page, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all shrieking on about Con-Dem cuts? The only explanation that holds up is that they took a decision to cut the service and planned to blame it on the coalition. It's why once caught out they had to lie about their actions and try to displace the blame.

What is the real story?

We now know conclusively that it was Labour who scrapped the extra collections because it was the Labour administration that told the Redlands NAG they had been scrapped. Even more damning, their own council press release confirmed it to be a Labour cut when it stated that the end of term collections would be "dealt with through the usual scheduled collection." Those were the first mentions ever that the extra collections were not going to be made.

The question then is when did Paul Gittings make his decision to scrap the coalition's extra collections? His press statement is quite clear that Labour were going to handle the end of term collections only using the usual scheduled collections. That was never the intention of the officers' decision made in March and it is shoddy of Labour to put them in the firing line making them take the blame for a cut that they made themselves.

The swift restoration of the coalitions plans for end of term student collections shows up Labour's words on this subject for what they are - lies. If the coalition had left no capacity in the system to deal with these collections and as they have publicly claimed got rid of the vehicles then Streetcare couldn't possibly have been able to reinstate them so quickly. The capacity was there all along. I know, I left it there.

To clear the extra waste using the alternate weekly collections alone was clearly an additional cut made by Labour and I believe made to compensate for the £26,000 they are losing each month because of their uncosted promises in Streetcare. It's also their first use of their strategic plan to blame every unnecessary cut they make on the coalition. Shame it's all unravelled for them so quickly.

I'm not going to waste my time asking for apologies for their bullshit because most people understand that they simply cannot be trusted.

University Challenged

2011-06-09T14:42:00.005+01:00

I've got a meeting about the end of term collections tomorrow so I'll not delve too far into this now but a few things need to be stated before the Labour lie detector spins out of control.

Jan Gavin has put out a statement that the loss of collections is due to budget cuts in Streetcare by the coalition. She lies

There was nothing in the coalition budget saving papers that require this saving to be made. There were no redundancies in the bin collections team as a result of budget savings. Go on, look in the gold book. There's nothing about stopping these collections as a budget saving option. I'll go further, it wasn't even in the full set including rejected budget options. There probably a reason to make it now that Labour are losing £26,000 per month of income in the Streetcare budget, but if there is a reason now that is totally Labour's fault. You see, Jan, is directly responsible for this cut to an important service that her residents rely on each year to keep their streets clean.

Keith Jerome is abusing the Redlands NAG for political purposes again by emailing residents referring to the NAG meeting which he chairs urging them not to sign a petition to reinstate these collections accusing them of being "con-dem" cuts. He Lies

There were no redundancies in the budget for refuse teams and the weekly collection proposal adopted by the Lib Dem and Conservative administration actually required extra capacity which was budgeted for and could have been used for these collections. If a cut has been made it was not as a result of the previous administration.

And if they were, as he says, "Con-Dem" cuts he wouldn't any problem with reinstating them would he? Except they're not. They are cuts by the new Labour administration, end of story.

Sarah Hacker claims that the decision was made by Streetcare, not Labour. She Lies

Er, who is in charge of this council? You are. Get with the programme. Labour run Streetcare. A Streetcare cut is a Labour cut. You are responsible for this one Councillor Hacker. A pathetic attempt to pass the buck.

Labour members wriggle and squirm, spam the #rdg tag and peddle the big lie that the nasty coalition made us do it, but we didn't. We left the council with the capacity and the budget to do the university collections. It was not even an option discussed and rejected.

What is happening is that their uncosted promises and never ending reviews are costing hundreds of thousands of pounds in unbudgeted expenditure across the council every month as they fail to introduce changes that were made to protect services such as this and this failure to realise income is starting to hurt residents as they have to slash services which we protected.

This is one guarantee I can make, a Lib Dem in the administration would not have made this cut. It is completely unnecessary.

The reason they squeal so loudly is that Labour don't like it when they are caught red-handed. They don't like it up 'em you see.

I Like It When a Plan Comes Together.

2011-06-08T13:14:00.000+01:00

It's good to see Paul Gittings so thoroughly approving of my scheme to generate income for the council and protect regulatory posts. It's a shame therefore that such enthusiasm is spoilt by his voting against them in the budget.

JD Wetherspoons, AB Walker, Greene King PLC and Majestic Wine are now signed up to take advice from RBC which will save them money and generate income from the council and more importantly will protect staff positions and services.

It is recognition that Reading provides first class services of a national quality in these areas and I'd like to thank the officers in this area for their hard work (you know who you are) and Michael Coughlin for his whole hearted and full support for my initiative to bring this to fruition.

Let's make one thing clear though. The money that this raised was going to be ring-fenced to protect this important area of work for the council and to sustain jobs and services to local residents. If Labour start dipping their hands into this pot and use it as general income stream to pay for their incompetence elsewhere then they will deserve contempt.

Puppet Government

2011-06-07T19:50:00.001+01:00

The First Cabinet meeting has seemingly established the pattern for the year with Labour complaining about "Punch and Judy politics" then resorting to the language of the playground. It was immensely amusing.

What is becoming abundantly clear that a deal has definitely been done behind closed doors by the Greens with Labour. Jo Lovelock as good as admitted it when challenged to reveal Labour's agreement with them she said: "We have published all there is to be documented" rather than there is no agreement. We know that even the Labour group are not stupid enough to commit to promises in writing so I actually believe her when she says that there are no more documents to be published.

You see, it's the verbal promises that we're interested in. The little "we'll see what we can do" accompanied by the nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more.

The alternative scenario Labour would have us believe is that the Greens are so incredibly stupid that they handed over power to them for absolutely nothing. Are we really to believe that Rob White is as dumb as to not only give them the Cabinet for no agreement but to lie on record about who he was going to vote for as Mayor and then change his word and lose any claim to integrity he felt he had simply for a pat on the head?

In fact there was evidence of an unwritten agreement when Rob White walked out of the Cabinet meeting before the agenda item discussing the most important thing for the council over the next year - the finances. You can't help the poor and vulnerable if you don't have any bloody money. Thanks to the Greens a call-in of any cabinet decision requires all opposition councillors on the committee to vote for it - including them, which is never likely to happen.

His walk out before the discussion on the budget item was therefore very telling. It is so obviously part of their secret deal that the Greens will ignore any financial papers and leave it clear for Labour to rubber stamp their own budget without any scrutiny. Because if it wasn't part of any deal, it was a staggering abdication by Rob White of his responsibility from someone taking public money to scrutinise what the administration are doing. We know what that really signified. The Greens will see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

You can see how future budget discussions will go. The nervous glances from Rob to Jo to make sure he is saying the right thing. The pre-briefing to make sure Labour and the Greens use exactly the same rhetoric. The charade of "sitting on their hands". Must have been worth at least a tummy tickle.

As for the rest, the price of failure for Graham Hoskin has been that Labour are now woefully lacking in talent, with only John Ennis and Mike Orton looking like they will be able to hold their own over the next year.

Morning star and Reading West candidate Rachel Eden would be lost without her script to read. The trouble was, when the pesky opposition don't actually make the points she thought they were going to make made her pre-written ramblings look very very silly.

Jon Hartley, I have to say, is putting in a bravura performance as dead man walking before he loses his seat next May. All very reminiscent of that other Park coward, John Howarth and his final year's blustering before it ended in ignominy. It won't help you Jon unless you start stabbing the Greens in the front.

Perhaps that's the deal. Hartley leaves Park with only a whimper to allow perpetual loser Richard McKenzie to stand again and so allow the Green's to win a third councillor in exchange for Green abstentions throughout the year. After all it makes no difference whether Park has a Labour or Green councillor. One way or another Labour can count 100% on their support.

Green at the Gills

2011-06-06T11:13:00.003+01:00

The first direct consequence of the Greens propping up Labour has been revealed... the end of year student collections have been stopped.

Of course, Labour and the Greens didn't come out and announce this to the public via a press release. they let it leak out via a Neighbourhood Action Group. As a ward councillor affected by this decision, I've not been told about it. Shear cowardice.

These collections are essential in student areas like Katesgrove, Park and Redlands to prevent the build up of rubbish which are a natural result of students packing up to go home. It's not the students' fault but is something that really winds up residents if it is left around for weeks on end as used to happen and let's be clear, the Greens have let it happen.

Why can I blame Rob White for this cut? Simple, it was not in my budget savings. A coalition administration would not have cut this service. Labour have and Rob White let Labour form the administration. He is just as much to blame as Paul Gittings. In fact even more so because his negotiations with Labour demanded the reversal of the charges for green waste collection. Cause and effect.

In the Greens' world of pestering Mummy at the supermarket checkout for sweets she can't afford, their "victory" has come home to roost and will directly impact the residents of Park ward. Nice one Rob. Labour's Caversham and Norcot based councillors have also been remarkably quiet about this first unnecessary cutting of services to their constituents. Fingers on the pulse as ever in their homes miles away from their wards they claim to represent.

The delay to the implementation of the green waste charges has already lost the council £80,000. This is not theoretical, it is real money that pays for staff salaries and has to be found from somewhere else.

We also see the first example of how Labour react to budget pressures, as I predicted, by slashing services. They are incapable of keeping to a budget and you will see throughout the year even more services cut to pay for their financial ineptitude and short-termism - the majority of which will be unnecessary and caused by their own incompetence.

I made some pretty tough decisions to protect the long term future of council services but which would not only guarantee their long term future but would also have enhanced the services offered by the council. I had constructed a 5 year business plan that protected waste services and allowed for the introduction of kerbside glass, mixed plastic and eventually food waste collection as a sustainable services by reconfiguring the service to make the environmentally dubious green waste collection pay more for itself and to create alternative income generation streams by commercialising the trade waste collections which are currently overpriced and underused. The irony that the Greens will be ultimately responsible for the council's failure to introduce these new recycling streams would be laughable if it wasn't also so bad for Reading residents.

The Green's don't like responsibility. They are incapable of making any decision so it is hard to work out whether the Greens behaviour has been a case of lambs to the slaughter or Labour's obedient sheep but which ever it is, in this case the losers are the residents of Katesgrove, Park and Redlands.

In the Green's little world they believe that an absence of decision making absolves them of culpability. Wrong. Threatening to squweam and squweam and squweam until they're thick will not abdicate them of that responsibility. Every cut, every stopped service and every closure is just as much their fault as it is Labour's and I will hold them to account for each and every one of them.

Update: The Lady doth protest too much. I've said this before but how can you tell when Jan Gavin is lying? Her lips move or she blogs something.

This pretty much sums her up:

The Lib Dem Councillors in Redlands have accused Labour of scrapping the end of term extra rubbish collections in students areas in a blatant twisting of the truth. Their lies are breath-taking. They accuse us of taking decisions behind closed doors .. they must have very short memories, it was their decision to cut Streetcare Services not ours!

There is no twisting of the truth by the Lib Dems. Scrapping the end of term collections was never an option put to me. I would have fought to keep them. I've seen no decision book entry to confirm it so "behind closed doors" describes the decision exactly. I don't need to have a short memory to forget this as I have my budget options papers where there is no mention of this Labour cut.

This is simply the first in a long line of Labour cuts that are caused by their unaffordable election commitments. There is only one liar here so no wonder she is wriggling like a worm on a hook after being caught in public letting down her Redlands constituents from her home in Norcot.

Let's be clear here. This is a cut by Labour for which they and the Greens are wholly responsible. It would not have happened with the Lib Dems in a coalition administration. It will hit her constituents who must be kicking themselves for falling for her lies and she is responsible for it as much as any other Labour or Green councillor.

I always knew their election lies would unravel eventually and we will see more and more in the near future. I'm just surprised it's only taken a matter of weeks for her to get caught out.

The City State of Reading

2011-06-02T16:39:00.000+01:00

City status. I remember voting against it in a council meeting last year and given exactly the same circumstances I would do the same again. That may surprise people given that I also back the Lib Dems change of mind about supporting the bid but it shouldn't. The simple reason is that the facts have changed and people who refuse to change their opinion in the light of new information are fools.

The basic heart of the matter a year ago was what would the council get from city status? At the time it was an increased stationary invoice and an unquantifiable bill for council tax payers.

The minority Labour administration had shown itself incapable of sticking to a budget and exhibited a penchant for pissing other people's money up the wall on grand schemes like their ridiculous WOMAD replacement (which I subsequently discovered they had kept details from me when I was vice-chair of the Culture and Sport Scrutiny Panel and they lost tens of thousands of council tax payers monies in the process).

Simply put, at the time of the Council motion there was no reason to think Labour wouldn't have done exactly the same left in charge of any bid.

A year on and those reasons are no longer valid. What happened in between was that the Lib Dems were in joint control of the Council so any idea that public money would be wasted in any quantity was clearly not going to happen.

Reading CIC ran with it and did a magnificent job at putting to gether their bid so whilst there is still a cost to the council it has proved to be marginal and under those conditions the only reason to not support it would be a desire to throw a childish tantrum.

But then we know for some that is their raison d'être. Their only goal is to be against something simply for the sake of it. I blame it on a sixth form debating society view of politics where it doesn't matter what the argument is, the aim is to take a contrary point of view, regardless of merit.

I'm more than happy to admit when I'm wrong, PCSOs for example, but in this case it is simply that facts have changed and I'm happy to change my mind accordingly. I'm still not convinced that city status will make much of a difference without the inclusion of the Greater Reading area but I have no intention of raining on anyone's parade and I wish the bid all the best.

It's all very well playing Don Quixote charging around on a quest to slay imaginary giants but that's the mark of a political pygmy. Reading has enough of those in the Cabinet.

A Day That Will Live in Infamy

2011-05-26T12:36:00.001+01:00

Last night's Annual Meeting finally answered a few questions. No real surprises, but absolute confirmation of what everyone suspected.

It is a fact that Gul Khan is now in the eyes of many a dishonourable man, although even I didn't think he would manage to top his failure to live up to his public comments. But he did, in the most spectacular foot-in-mouth fashion, when he made the most mean-spirited final speech I've heard a mayor make.

After a year of loyal service his deliberate lack of thanks to Jenny Rynn has to be the mark of a man with no grace or with a shred of dignity left. And that after Jenny stepped in to deputise for him when he rather conveniently couldn't manage to find the time to attend Reading Pride last year.

He couldn't even say the word "dignity" choking on the word several times as he tried to say it.

But if you think that Gul sold his soul cheap (£2,400 to be precise), that is nothing compared with the Greens who from a position of strength managed to get absolutely bugger all in the most ham-fisted set of negotiations since Spain gave up Gibraltar for nothing in 1713.

The Greens failure was all too easily predicted (I did) but we learned a few home truths along the way. Like Rob White is a man who cannot be trusted. He makes up facts to tell his group and the media. I think I'm now entitled to snigger when he uses the word integrity to describe himself. He has none. A charlatan in a suit.

The Greens could have got their wish for a Labour administration and the respect due for keeping their word to vote for Jenny if they'd spoken to me but Rob had already decided to back Labour at that point and they didn't. Because of that Rob is damaged goods and confirmed as Labour's little lickspittle but there is hope for the Greens if they get behind Melanie who is so far untainted at this point by his duplicity. The problem is that so far all Rob has allowed her to say in public is "abstain".

She will discover that the council is nothing like what Rob has told her. I hope she finds her voice soon or the Park Ward Residents Association will have sweet FA to go to the voters with next May if she leaves it down to Rob to win concessions.

If anyone is wondering what the contents of the Green Party Bag were, it was:

20 pieces of silver (the Green's treachery costs less than Judas Iscariot and these are challenging times for the budget)
A Gordon Brown Face Mask
A Backstabber

And a red rose each for them to wear when they think no-one is looking.

Apart from the lessons about individuals, the battle over the Mayor is over. Debbie Edwards is Mayor albeit under distasteful circumstances but that's not her problem. That's politics. I wish her success in the role and a good year ahead.

Squeaky Bum Time

2011-05-25T16:22:00.000+01:00

Just a few hours left for Gul Khan to show that he is a man of honour after all and won't be cow-towed by his spiteful colleagues.

And only a few hours for Rob White to retrieve his tattered reputation and restore integrity to his name by voting for Jenny Rynn as he promised he would do.

I feel sorry for Melanie, who from her silence has been kept in the dark about what has really been going on.

I've explained why a Conservative Mayor makes no difference to the Greens. Let's just hope they show some of the backbone that was distinctly lacking in their negotiations with Labour.

I've heard that Rob White made a request to not be seated next to me during the annual meeting. I hope he gets his wish.

There's already been one famous green whose mouth has been operated and words spoken by someone else. Let's see if Rob White doesn't wish to be remembered as Orville the Duck 2.

The Price of Honour

2011-05-24T10:38:00.003+01:00

As the squalid manoeuvering over the forming of a Labour administration becomes public the exact price of Gul Khan's treachery towards his loyal Deputy Mayor is becoming clear. Members of public heard Gul Khan's comments at the Katesgrove May Fair when he said that he was an honourable and non-partisan Mayor who was determined to keep politics out of the position. So what could be the price that pursuaded him to sell his honour?

The public needs the tooth, the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth. It's not 20 pieces of silver but £2,400 - the price of a new set of teeth, sorry Deputy Mayor's allowance. Yes, I've heard that Gul Khan is planning to have several thousand pounds worth of work done to his teeth. That surprise allowance jackpot will come in handy to pay those dentists bills so I hope residents will remember the reason why he will be grinning quite so widely in the coming months - his new treacherous grin.

Then we have Rob White whose blog is now actionable under the Trades Description Act. "Fairness, integrity and the environment".

Integrity my arse! There is documented evidence of him giving his word that he would vote for Jenny Rynn as Mayor and a voicemail recording of him saying that he's changed his mind.

In addition Andrew Cumpsty said on BBC Berkshire: "Rob White has personally said to me that he would be voting for the current Deputy Mayor Jenny Rynn."

Rob White's sudden volte-face to allow the election of a Labour Mayor shows exactly how much integrity he has got. Absolutely none. He has shown himself to be as two-faced as the Labour party he has climbed into bed with.

His statements on radio also make him out to be economical with the actualité.

Rob White: "We have been talking to all the different sides. None of the talks have been totally satisfactory."

All the different sides? Pull the other one.

In the interests of transparency Rob should publish a full account of all the conversations and meetings he had with "all the different sides", after all he's published a record of his talks with Labour. No doubt he also has a detailed record of his talks with the other parties and what he felt was unsatisfactory.

I doubt we'd see anything of the sort because he didn't talk policy and spent two weeks coming up with excuses not to have meetings. The fact is that the Greens only spoke to Labour in any detail so any attempt to portray a willingness to listen to all parties is as bogus as their claims on integrity. I wonder if he bothered telling his local party about all the promises he was making on their behalf?

It takes more than a slogan on a web site to bestow integrity on an individual. Actions speak louder than words and Rob White has shown himself to be duplicitous and untrustworthy. Labour are welcome to their partnership with them.

We also are finding out the full extent of Labour's complete disregard for the residents who elected them.

Jan Gavin has now put out a begging plea for "Street champions" to send her reports of things they want her to take action on. What's up, the journey from Norcot too bothersome? She is being paid £8,385 a year to find out what her residents problems are, maybe she should start earning it instead of begging them to do it for her. Nice money for nothing if you can get it.

And Matt Rhodda obviously also finds the long round trip from Caversham too tiring. Pre-election he made cameo appearances at a few local meetings. Post election, it's Matt Who? He couldn't even be bothered sending apologies to the Katesgrove Residents Association meeting let alone attend. See you next April then.

Labour's treachery is fully documented and well known about. The Greens have now stooped to their level and exposed their claims of integrity as shrill and hollow. They are no different from those they criticise so it's about time they stopped their charade.

The word of a Green has now been proved to be worthless. It didn't take long.

Splinters in their Bum.

2011-05-23T13:31:00.000+01:00

The Green's press release is probably more revealing than they intended.

They said from day one that they wouldn't join in a coalition so that is not news but if they wanted to give the impression that they were genuinely sitting on the fence they wouldn't have used the language of Labour (Con-Dem) to describe people they are trying to give the public the impression they had been genuinely holding open and honest talks with.

I say give the impression because any similarity to open and honest talks with the Greens is complete bollocks. They've not spoken to anyone other than Labour about forming an administration. They've been trying to work out for the last two weeks how they could present their wholehearted support for Labour as a neutral act. With this press release we see it unravelling.

Far from withholding support from both sides, they have explicitly stated that they could not support a Lib Dem and Conservative coalition and the only conclusion is that they fully support a minority Labour administration. Their language could have been written by Labour... and probably was.

But it gets worse. The word of a Green isn't worth the recycled paper it is written on. Why? Because just after the election Rob White said that he would be supporting Jenny Rynn as mayor. This is not a 'would think about it'... there is a record of him making that pledge, something he apparently didn't bother telling the rest of the Green Party about.

So what did they sell their soul for? From what I've seen they had exactly the same sort of promises I said the Lib Dems received in 2008. Nothing in writing, just a series of platitudes. If they had anything concrete they would have published them so that they could hold Labour to account for non-delivery.

Now every Labour cut, every closure, every penny of increase in council tax is their fault just as much as if they had voted for it. A person who sees bad things being done and stands by and refuses to stop it from happening is as responsible as the person doing the harm. It's s shit-sandwich having to make tough decisions and not something that anyone would want to do given the choice but if you are elected to stand up for your residents you need to do more than hold your hands over your eyes and ears. The Greens have proved themselves incapable of stepping up to government when they had the chance.

The Greens will find that if you sit on the fence for too long you get splinters in your bum. I'll bring some germolene to the Annual Meeting for them.

But there will be one legacy that won't be forgotten. Gul Khan - the man whose year as Mayor ended in shame. Forget all that honourable man stuff he likes to project, if he votes against Jenny Rynn it will be the Right Dishonourable Mayor of Reading and a disgrace on his year when he was offered every courtesy his position demanded.

If he doesn't do the honourable thing in Wednesday and vote for Jenny, I hope my fellow councillors disgusted by his tarnishing of the position of Mayor will boycott the Mayor's reception.

A Green Deal

2011-05-22T18:21:00.000+01:00

Looks like the Greens have just done a deal to put Labour into power if what I've heard is true.

As far as I can work out they have only held substantive talks with Labour and have fobbed off any attempts to talk to the other parties. I know that they ignored my offer for a chat and have never seriously considered any other option other than to let a minority administration take power.

They've freecycled their bed and will have to lie in it.

On the other hand it did make me laugh to see one Labour blogger state that "We are currently in discussions with the other groups". For that to be true implies talks with more than one group. Absolute balderdash, they have only spoken with people they think they can dupe. the word should be group singular.

Labour have flogged their bed and just intend to lie!

Burlesque Review

2011-05-20T13:52:00.000+01:00

Taking a look at Labour's plans now that they privately believe that the Greens have agreed to back them to form an administration, they are threatening a hell of a lot of reviews and reports to make up for a lack of real action. Well, it beats having to make a decision.

If they are to be believed, most of these are quite substantial and will require large amounts of time and money to implement.

This is what they have publicly stated they would do:

Reorganise the Council.
Create local consultation structures.
Sue Wokingham over Maiden Erlegh.
Scrap charges for green bins.
No new parking meters
No kerbside parking fines until there has been another review
Commission a report into the budget gap.
Stop the new grants allocation process.
Halt the current programme and commission a new community care report.
Reinstate free bus passes to OAPs.

Just taking one promise, the act of halting the adult care reorganisation, will cost the council over £100,000 per month which would have to be found from elsewhere. Labour know that can't actually afford to do any of these things but a thin veneer of review has to put in place otherwise the electorate might think that they had been deliberately lied to.

I estimate that if they kept their "promises" that Labour would run up a £5m in-year budget overspend. This would then have to be added to an estimated funding gap of £10m to find £15m savings for 2012/13.

When you take into account their previous tricks, such as using Section 106 monies to pay for boiler repairs, have been knocked on the head, they really are going to struggle.

It will be interesting to see exactly how many senior officers leave if there is a Labour administration.

On the one hand I'd love to see Labour screw it up and end up discredited once and for all. The trouble is that that would hurt so many residents that I can't really in all conscience actually want it to happen.

Sectioned

2011-05-18T18:32:00.000+01:00

Has Alok been reading my blog?

I've still not seen a copy of the report despite being present at the meeting that called for it and publicly calling for it to be published. I can only conclude that it's being deliberately kept from me. Is there something to hide?

I've got more questions that Alok could have asked:

1) Was Labour using the Section 106 money to pay for non-capital projects and/or for projects not covered by their legal agreements.

2) A 2009 report identified 2 critical areas for immediate management action. What did Labour do to address it?

3) Who was controlling where the Section 106 money was being spent? The lead councillor for Planning and Transport? Or did it just go in Labour's magic pixie pot?

4) Why was no-one able to provide members with a straight answer as to what was going on? Parks was all over the place. Who knows what happened with Education money... they even didn't keep a record.

5) Was Section 106 money spent on the Multi-Games Area without a proper legal justification for doing so?

6) Was the council using Section 106 monies to fund maintenance to gas mains and repairs to the Hexagon roof and boiler. Hardly a leisure "gain" for the developers.

7) Why were "Decision Book” and Cabinet decisions apparently not consistent with how the monies were spent. If Labour were telling the opposition one thing about how money was being spent and it wasn't, this raises serious questions about political oversight and accountability of the previous administration and whether there was a deliberate attemnpt to mislead.

From the press release put out it would appear that the council are sitting on the report until officers know who is going to be running the administration. Expect it to be buried if Labour take over.

Minority Report

2011-05-17T13:49:00.005+01:00

It was good to see a dose of Sunday afternoon comedy gold as Jo Lovelock vented her spleen on the BBC Politics show and said more than she should have.

Not withstanding that Jo seems to have a poor grasp of how local democracy works - without a majority, the largest group has no more right to rule than a coalition, the simple maths of the results means that Labour has no more legitimacy to run Reading than a minority coalition. Labour got 39.8% of the vote, the coalition parties got 46.8%.

On the other hand, if Labour agreed to form a coalition with the Greens then that would have legitimacy by being a majority administration. Labour has never had any intention of doing so and Jo states quite categorically that they are in discussion with the Green Party to form a minority administration only.

She then gives away the game away about negotiations by saying that they are "mainly talking about policy". I've heard that sort of talk before.

Labour will offer some guff about shared policy objectives. The Greens will be asked to hand over a list of goodies they want and will hear nice words about how there is much common ground... but here's how it will really work:

There will be pathetically few firm commitments. There will be a caveat of subject to budget and it being fully costed. There will be a we'll see what we can do.

Why do I think so? Because it's how their negotiations with the Lib Dems were conducted in 2008. Been there done it. It why in 2009 the Lib Dems voted against allowing Labour to form a minority administration.

Put more bluntly, Labour simply cannot afford to give the Greens anything that can be put on a leaflet in Park ward as a Green policy win no matter how small which means that unless they insist on a formal and publicly available document listing in detail what has been promised by Labour in return for power, they will find that once in charge any promises made will not get a veggie sausage to show for it.

Why? Labour are terrified of losing their totemic ward of Park completely to the Greens. Sure Jon Hartley will come up with some bogus reason why he will be stepping down to dodge personal embarrassment but Labour will fight like rats in a sack to avoid losing Martin Salter's heartland ward. It means there can be no Green initiatives that can be put to the electorate.

What is also clear from the interview is that Labour cannot afford to make it seem that there are alternative coalitions available. They made up a completely bogus charge about why they couldn't work with the Lib Dems. The "some of the things they were saying about the Labour group in the run up to the local election" was not spelled out but I can say that whatever may have been said by Lib Dems wasn't in the same ball park as Labour supporters making homophobic dog whistles to Asian voters.

However, the real 'fall off the seat laughing' moment was "our door is open". Pure balderdash... well apart from the bit where Tony Page was blabbing on about the Greens prior to their meeting... with their door open.

I also love the point at which she says that she can't talk for the Greens, then tells Peter Henley: "They don't seem to interested in forming a coalition with the other two parties." Thanks Jo. I was waiting for Rob and Melanie to tell me what the Green's position is but I guess we just need to contact the Labour Party to find out now.

The real Labour plan for their minority administration is to slash and burn services on the basis that "The nasty coalition made me do it." They will not spend more money on anything apart perhaps from on their union chums and Ejaz and Rajinder for services rendered in Redlands.

It's also worth bearing in mind that if the local elections were decided proportionally, this is what the result would have been: Labour 18, Conservative 16, Lib Dems 6, Greens 5, Common Sense 1

Night Mayor

2011-05-14T08:59:00.004+01:00

Blogger seems to have had a hiccup and deleted my original post "Night Mayor". I'm trying to recover it. In the meantime, This is a "holding" version of the post which may remain permanent if I can't find a cached version.

Perhaps I should ask the Lib Dem press office for a copy ;0)

It has been a tradition in this town to rotate the post of Mayor between all the parties and the position of Mayor is seen by most people as a non-political position adding to the civic tapestry of the Borough. I voted for Gul Khan last year because it was his turn after spending a year as a loyal and capable deputy to Fred Pugh not because I was told to for political reasons.

I know that Gul Khan also likes to view the Mayor's position as non-political. Why? Because he has told me as much. On more than one occasion.

Labour councillors are now publicly piling the pressure on Gul Khan to vote against his deputy Jenny Rynn. In fact it would seem that the pressure for him to stiff his loyal deputy is also coming from the top echelons of the Labour Party.

I speak to Gul quite regularly and he likes his reputation as an honourable man. Even as recently as at the Katesgrove Residents' Association May Fair on May 2^nd and in front of others he re-iterated that he had done his utmost to keep politics out of the position of Mayor. Well, now is his chance to show that he is an honourable man and stand up and be counted.

He should vote for Jenny Rynn who has served him well and supported him throughout the year in a clear statement to the town that he still believes that the position of Mayor as being apolitical. Indeed it would be a shame for a man who so protects his honour and reputation to end his year as Mayor being remembered as a hypocrite. I know he is better than that but his legacy is totally down to him and him alone.

Regardless of Labour's partisan posturing, or whether Gul capitulates to pressure, the Greens could also show what's left of their independence as they find themselves being dragged slowly but inevitably into the clutches of Jabba the Hutt, er, I mean the Reading Labour Party's pit. The "casting vote" scenario would only come into play when they have decided not to take a position in Full Council on a matter of policy. Any policy changes they back one way or another wouldn't need a casting vote and it would only come into play if the opposition is united, they abstain and don't give a stuff about the outcome. However, if the Greens backed Labour's unprincipled land grab for the ceremonial position of Mayor it would have to be interpreted as a political act.

Jo Lovelock's attempt to justify putting up an alternative Labour candidate would be worthy of Pol Pot. The "precedent" she quotes for having a contested election for Mayor two years ago had nothing to do with it being a hung council. It was an act of pure political spite against Fred Pugh.

And let's not dignify Labour's position excusing it as being purely politically motivated, as I've explained, the mathematics makes it irrelevant. It is petty tribal politics at its worst. If they they had any shame they would be ashamed of themselves. They don't of course.

Let's hope Gul Khan does the right thing. I still believe he is an honourable man. Now it's his turn to prove it.

All the Colours of the Rainbow

2011-05-11T16:04:00.000+01:00

Those who know colour theory know that when you mix red and green light you get a nice yellow.
When you mix red and green paint you get a mucky brown colour.

Well, it would seem that Labour are opting for the second option if reports from their group meeting is anything to go by.

What we got was the same old Labour up front in Jo Lovelock and Tony Page and the same old Labour behind the scenes thanks to John Howarth doing the maths (heaven help Reading!) with his election presentation to the assorted masses from the Reading Labour Party and trade unions and even the ghost of Christmas past David Sutton put in an appearance. The unelected puppet masters are back to pull the strings!

Labour have ruled out a coalition with the Lib Dems because it would mean giving up a Cabinet position and they haven't contacted me as of now so I guess I've been ruled out as well!

As a consequence of that, the main plan they discussed was how to dupe the Greens into backing their minority administration whilst giving them nothing to show for it. Expect warm words on blogs and public statements about Rob and Melanie but what is more interesting is what they say in private.

Their two faced attitude can be seen in action where John Ennis has described the Greens as "good people" on his blog - the old smoothie chops. However, locked away in the privacy and comfort of the tribal gathering, he called the Greens "class enemies". I suppose in the crazy world of New Labour good people can also be class enemies but just make sure you don't tell it to their face or they might not want to trust you.

Previous experience shows that once any minority administration is in place Labour will simply stick two fingers up and get on with their own agenda whilst sniggering behind their backs about how easy it was to fool everyone.

Yet even a minority administration has to set a legal budget so the Greens or Lib Dems are in a position where they could demand and get a lead councillor role out of any negotiations. They have no intention of talking to the Lib Dems so that leaves the Greens. If they are told by Labour they can't have a lead councillor then they are being conned.

Last year Labour offered the Lib Dems nothing. They will do the same to the Greens because they are incapable of sharing power, or more accurately losing control of the cabinet agenda, letting other parties know what they are up to and gaining equal access to information which is what coalition means.

Make no mistake, the Cabinet is where the power is, not the Full Council. Attempting to moderate decisions during full council has no effect. Full Council only sets policy, it doesn't run the council. For that you need to control the Cabinet. It's why Labour will fight tooth and nail to keep it all to themselves.

What the Greens do is completely up to them and their members and I know how much it is a difficult decision to make so I don't envy them. However, I think a warning is not out of order.

Reading Labour are duplicitous. Watch your step.

Bully Beef

2011-05-11T07:34:00.016+01:00

It's an interesting definition of "serious", but hey, who am I to judge?

And here's an another interesting nugget, yesterday I had two visits from the Crossrail internet pipe run by my former employer Fujitsu Services.

I wonder if Crossrail has any HR policies about reasonable use of the internet during the working day to send threatening emails?

Might be worth checking with their personnel department.

I don't often link to the The Gruaniad, but this article and this one from a leading Lib Dem says pretty much all that needs to said about the real Lib Dem attitude to policing of the internet and threats of libel to stifle free speech.
.

More coincidences... this time from Lib Dem Voice

Smithson’s view: So what’s the betting on Henley?
Daniel Bowen
Posted 27th August 2009 at 5:55 pm
Politico – it is unsurprising that Labour are using that line in Reading West. They have more sense than to bother in Reading East where they have totally collapsed and know it is Gareth Epps breathing down the Tories’ neck.

Chris Fox appointed new Lib Dem Director of Policy & Communications
Daniel Bowen
Posted 10th December 2008 at 11:05 am
A dangerous appointment from someone associated with particular factions in the past. Mark Littlewood mark II?

In Two Minds Over Schizophrenia

2011-05-10T15:36:00.006+01:00

I have to laugh at the sheer naked bravardo on display here in this comment on getReading:

getReading: Beer and Cider Festival Extended 13th April 2011

However, I don't like cowards who hide behind pseudonyms to abuse forums like this by knocking anything positive or just hurling abuse at people. As someone pointed out, it's the curse of the Internet.

Who is Daniel Bowen?

I'm indebted to another commenter on getReading for raising my suspicions after I noticed his increasing and obvious personal attacks on me. As it happens I did know a "Daniel" or at least a likely suspect with it as a middle name. Searching for Bowen came up with it being the name of a rather famous Welsh tartan.

However, just to be sure I did a little more background checking and lo and behold:

from ancestry.co.uk

Very amateurish. The main trick when using a sock puppet is not to get outed or all your comments may come back to haunt you.

In December 2008, Daniel, er I mean Gareth asked me to write an internet strategy. He didn't like it. Perhaps it was this recommendation that he had a problem with:

DONOT post using an email address made up on the spot just to comment. Commentunder your own name, on your own blog or don't comment at all. Thinking thatyou can keep it a secret is naive beyond belief.

Now, what was it that Daniel was saying about hurling personal abuse at people? Must check those back posts on getReading!

UPDATE: In the interests of fairness, Gareth Epps has got in contact and denies that he is posting as Daniel Bowen.

I am happy to accept given this public denial, that on the balance of probabilities^*, it is a complete and utter coincidence that out of all the possible first names and surnames that can be selected at random to generate an alias that someone posting critical comments about me chose to use his middle name and his mother's maiden name.

* There are approximately 25,000 surnames in the UK and 4,500 first names. This makes the balance of probablilities 112,500,000 to 1

Not that Interesting Chris

2011-05-10T08:00:00.006+01:00

Now why did Councillor Maskell remove this from his website? It's quite tame by Labour's usual standards of bile. I love the idea of him claiming a "reliable source". It was tweeted to the whole world within minutes of it happening.

This is an interesting one

May 9, 2011

From a reliable source, kind of.

“Tonight both the Reading Lib Dems and Labour parties elected their Group leadership team. My sources tell me that the Lib Dems elected an all-woman team with Cllr Daisy Benson as their new leader and Cllr Rebecca Rye as deputy leader. Both Daisy and Rebecca are decent honorable individuals who are fully signed-up “members of the human race”.

Shouldn’t this read: “who are fully signed up members of the Conservative Party? Keep digging Daisy. Many thanks.

Update: reformatted the post to stop people who had problems understanding that I was reposting Chris Maskell's deleted entry.

The Night of the Long Knives

2011-05-09T18:40:00.003+01:00

I have heard that tonight's Labour leadership election will be contested.

Exciting... not!

UPDATE: Jo Lovelock wins to be leader (Yeah!). Rumours place Graeme Hoskins as the other candidate, but I can't confirm if it went to a vote or whether there was a withdrawal.
Tony Page reconfirmed as deputy leader.

The People Have Spoken...

2011-05-06T16:52:00.000+01:00

...but blaming the electorate is a pretty dumb thing to do.

If people are happy with what you are doing they will vote for you. If they are not, they won't.

That is the only lesson anyone should draw from election results.

Charity Doesn't Begin At Home

2011-05-05T23:17:00.001+01:00

Just how far can senior members of a charity go before publically compromising their neutrality?

RCRE Director Rajinder Sophal and Chair Ejaz Elahi were both seen out campaigning for Labour on election day in Redlands.

As far as I'm aware, none of them live in Redlands. In fact, if I remember correctly, Mr Sophal lives in Tilehurst.

Getting Nasty

2011-05-03T10:54:00.000+01:00

The local Labour Party are clearly getting desperate. I've heard stories about them dog-whistling during this election campaign but yesterday I found out first hand it was no rumour and that they really are that despicable.

I managed to get the identity of the group responsible and they are clearly linked to the local Labour party, indeed two of their councillors (including one of their candidates) are former leading members. I am continuing my investigation but no matter how low you think they've sunk in the past, this is up there with the worst in a national context. Time and time again we see that Labour don't mind exploiting prejudice as long as it gets them votes.

In related news, RCRE "election" meeting on Saturday showed that organisation's unique approach to fighting for equality and campaigning against all forms of discrimination... by holding it in a room with no disabled access!

What is she scared of?

2011-04-30T10:01:00.003+01:00

Another letter from the mysterious J Lake in support of Labour published in the Post.

Who could this masked fighter for the oppressed be?

Surely not well known Labour member and activist Jill Lake? It couldn't be, for that Jill would no doubt be proud to lend her name to the fight against the forces of evil.Come on Jill, what have you got to hide?

I don't have access to any personal data but even I know that you live in Alexandra Road, like I know the local Labour chair lives in New Road. These are not secrets so why invoke the name and address withheld every time you write to the Post? If you stick your head above the paparet, you can no longer can claim anonymity because no one forced you to do it.

Jill seemed happy enough for her address to be used for Labour Leaflets to hide the fact that their candidates in the last election and this don't actually live in Redlands.

My questions are:

1) Why is Jill so coy about letting people know it's her (even to the extent of hiding her first name) who is writing these diatribes? Something to hide?

2) Why does the Post continually allow letters from a well known Labour activist like Jill to be published without an address? Everyone else has to give one unless there is good reason and there is nothing in her polemic aside from bile that justifies that status.

Sour Pusses

2011-04-29T14:07:00.002+01:00

Peter Hain and Polly Toynbee's tweets during the Royal Wedding say everything there is to say about the narcissistic left. People don't care. Go and rain on someone else's parade.

Saturday's Guardian (Early Edition)

Waste of Space

2011-04-26T17:45:00.001+01:00

There are times when you really have to wonder.

Labour have clearly succeeded in conning people into thinking that their green waste scheme was actually a green waste scheme. In that the waste is green I suppose they are correct. Except some of it is brown. And some of it isn't. But I digress.

What we see here is Labour telling a lie so big that people believe it. They convinced a shadow minister to come to Reading, read from her script without engaging brain first and weep for the plight ofthe amazonian rainforests. "Why won't somebody please think of the parrots?"

Even the "Greens" have fallen for Labour's fairy story. Shame on them. But then Rob White has been spoon fed by them since he got on the council, attending briefing sessions and even on one occasion I've been told acting as a door man at a public meeting, whilst Labour got on with the real politics of the meeting leaving him on the sidelines. Rob, they are not your friends. They lie to you.

So what does happen to all the green waste so dilligently collected by residents? Yep, it ends up on the landfill site. Putting it in the green bin is as "environmentally friendly" as putting it in the grey bin. It will decompose in the same place. Except you have to have a extra fleet of lorries racing around polluting the streets and everyone pays towards it regardless of use.

Why do we have one? When Reading started alternate weekly collections, Steve Waite was told that he could add a green waste collection for "free" with the surplus capacity. I suspect it was a move to keep Labour's chums in the T&GWU sweet. It also explains why when councils were making the move to alternate weekly collections across the country to save hundreds of thousands and even millions of pounds, good old Labour Reading Borough Council saved a massive £40,000 from the Streetcare budget.

So why did I think Reading needed this change? I could have left it alone.
The current cost in landfill tax of each tonne is £48. i discovered that the cost to RBC for disposing of the "green waste" is £90 a tonne. This is the economics of the mad house so no wonder Jo Lovelock and Paul Gittings are so proud of it. It's staggering in fact.

The green waste collection costs twice as much as sending it to landfill, it provides negligible environmental benefit and if you take into account the extra lorries chasing around the streets there is probably a net negative effect on the environment. And just to top off Labour's solid grasp of economics, apart from churn from new residents, anyone ever likely to buy a green bin already has bought one.

In any case, residents aren't being charged full cost recovery, the service is still subsidised to an extent. Labour controlled Oxford has introduced a £35 a year charge. They didn't tell the shadow minister that did they?

If it was simply about saving money, maybe people would have a point but it wasn't. Providing the green waste collection at such a massive loss prevented any other type of recycling scheme from being implemented, even if it was better for the environment.

Green Waste:
Cost of service: £750,000 per annum.
Coverage 25% of residents.
Total possible tonnage: 2,500 per annum

Glass Recycling
Cost of service: £530,000 per annum.
Coverage; 100% of residents.
Total possible tonnage: 3,500 per annum

I would have preferred to have had a glass collection service start up at the same time as the green waste changes but you can't start up a new scheme from scratch overnight complicated by Labour signing us up to a 25 year PFI deal which means that RBC doesn't actually own its own rubbish.

Before it could start there needs to be budget approval, somewhere for it to go and vehicles to be bought or leased and also agreement with our partners. that I had been working on but the cost of the green waste service needed to be addressed. Others may take a different view but I felt a subsidised but sustainable green waste collection and a new borough wide kerbside glass collection service would be better for the environment and better service for residents.

I'll make one easy prediction though. Labour won't reverse this charge they just hope enough people are dumb enough to think they will, Go on. Ask them for a direct promise to reverse it. They won't give you one. It is a con.

Is There Something Labour Isn't Telling Us?

2011-04-25T15:11:00.001+01:00

It's fairly self-evident from the wide field contesting the RDLP annual Most Offensive Smear Award (Pete Ruhemann 5 times winner and 3 times runner-up) that Jo Lovelock is counting down her days until retirement as Labour leader, but did the local party try to send a sublimal message to supporters in September? ☺

The Reading Schools Catering Workers posted this on their web site on the 17th September:

Workers Speak at a Joint Labour Party Meeting

Last night workers from across Reading schools spoke about their experiences working with Chartwells in Reading schools. In the audience were a wide range of Labour Party members including the leader of the Labour Group on Reading Borough Council and former leader Cllr Jo Lovelock along with Cllr Jon Hartley, Labour Group Education spokesman and many more. One of our workers spoke for the first time in front of such a large audience but the message she made was clear and robust. Exciting times ahead.

New Developments at the Council

2011-04-22T09:53:00.004+01:00

Whilst I was putting together my list of things that I found as lead councillor that the previous Labour administration did that I thought were possibly illegal, were at a minimum iffy and some of them clearly had the smell of dubious practice about them, I had a dig through my old emails from the good old days when I used to get told what was going on.

There was one interesting one detailing the setting up of an independent investigation that the new administration demanded after finding serious discrepancies in the allocation and spending of section 106 receipts by Labour.

I have a very simple question. Where is this report? The terms of reference were sent on the 4th February. It was due to report the first week of March. It's been awfully quiet hasn't it.

Why? Is someone trying to protect the previous administration by withholding it until after the election so that, as Labour hope, it can be quietly buried with a nothing to see here and secrecy? Does it embarrass council officers who would prefer to keep the whole matter quiet?

I have always suspected that Labour used this money as a helpful source of cash to balance their notoriously piss-poor administration where massive variances to the published budget were the order of the day and money had to be sloshed around from one department to another because they just could help overspending at every opportunity.

Now we know officer knew something was wrong because there had already been a report about how they administered Section 106 money in March 2009 which found one Critical and two Essential management actions required because to be honest the system in place was a complete and utter shambles. It was also practically impossible to work out where the money was being spend. The Parks department at least kept a spreadsheet but even that showed money being spend on legally dubious activities like fixing the roof of the Hexagon. Section 106 money cannot be used for maintenance, it has to be spent on capital programmes linked to the development.

An internal investigation was meant to get to the bottom of things, but if anything it threw up even more questions. The figures still didn't add up. Section 106 cash was being allocated to projects that it wasn't intended for and decision book and cabinet reports detailing where the money was going to be spent were overridden or it would seem deliberately ignored. If the opposition are scrutinising decisions and reports in the belief that they were correct only to find later that in some cases the money was being spend elsewhere isn't that maladministration?

The money was instead moved around in a way that meant that it was not practically possible to audit the spend and hypothecate it to the receipt. Education didn't even keep track of the money and it looks like £0.5 million allocated to education use disappeared into Labour's pixie pot of gold and may not have been used for the purpose it was intended.

And what plan did they come up with to "correct" these little accidents... reissue the audited accounts with corrections!

A cunning plan when you are in control of the council and the opposition don't have full access to information. However, slightly prone to going tits up if you ever lost control of it. I'm beginning to think that why Labour never wanted to form a coalition with the Lib Dems - they had far too much to hide.

So what do you do when faced with a denial that there is something that looks dodgy going on? Correct at the back, good to see you have been paying attentioon - commission an independent report. So the new administration did and asked Wokingham Borough Council to do the work. I have a copy of the Terms of Reference.

Terms of Reference

1. To note the report of the May 2009 carried out by the Reading Borough Council’s Internal audit section a copy of which is annexed in Schedule 1

2. To note the briefing paper entitled Use of Section 106’s produced by ***********, **************** which is annexed in Schedule 2

3. To note the report by ******************** contained in Schedule 3

4. To establish and thereafter review the current practice regarding how section 106 receipts are assigned to, and spend approval obtained for, individual projects and how this corresponds with the Council’s Capital Programme and spending priorities. This should also include a comparison between the purpose of S106 and how it is spent. The review should consider how the Council’s year-end closing processes could be enhanced to optimise the use of S106s and ensure compliance and transparency, whilst providing assurance to councillors and services that local amenities that need to be improved because of developments will get improved.

In particular, the review should:

Investigate difference between Decision Book and Cabinet Report spend approvals, and actual spend. Please find examples in Schedule 4.
Investigate the issue of the Multi Use Games Area (Muga). This should include consideration of:
- Planning Report and unilateral agreement
- Cabinet reports re spend approval
- Actual funding by allocation of Section 106 receipts
Investigate the mismatch between published, planned spends by the Parks Service and the final allocation of relevant S106 receipts to other, less local schemes.
To review and make recommendations regarding the above procedure

5. Request a legal view on the appropriateness of use of Section 106 receipts for "maintenance" of community facilities such as leisure venues and educational buildings. Please find examples in Schedule 5

6. Request a legal view on the legality or otherwise of correcting errors in the allocation of S106 receipts in the Council’s Accounts.

7. Request a legal view on the current methods used to allocate spend. This may require a number of schemes to be identified or random sampling to be undertaken

8. To make recommendations for implementing future processes if and where appropriate.

It is the report based on these terms of reference that has mysteriously gone quiet, conveniently just before the local elections. If, as I suspect is the case. the council has the report they should publish it now. After all the report was meant to be delivered over 6 weeks ago and it was budgeted as being 14 days work.

Unless it is made public, some may start suspecting a cover up... to save either officer embarrasment or Labour's . Oh, and before Labour go trying to gag me by threatening me with the Standards Board (again) over compromising officers inpartiality, I haven't named anyone so if anyone is feeling hot and bothered perhaps that's a good thing. And if Labour don't like me stating that there are a small number of officers acting against the interests of the administration perhaps Councillor Orton would like to name the individual who gave him a copy of a draft internal options paper and I'll happily withdraw that comment.

The more you look at how Labour ran RBC either it was a totally hands off council with the officers doing as they pleased or fiscally mismanaged. There are instances where events seem to back up both options as being eminently plausible. Take your pick. you have a 50:50 chance of being right.

And as for the clean bill of health Labour keep claiming from the auditors... the accounts wouldn't need to be rewritten if the auditors scrutinised to the level required to uncover this sort of thing. They do little more than check the columns add up.

Audits don't uncover things unless they know what they are looking for. Enron got a clean bill of health from their auditors... and Harringay was passed as "Good" wasn't it Mr. Ruhemann?

Tributo a The Cure

2011-04-21T23:51:00.000+01:00

Can't let Robert Smith's Birthday and the 30th anniversary of my first ever gig go unmarked. Thanks Bob for all these years of reminding me that there is always a more miserable ****er than myself out there somewhere and to bloody well cheer up!

21/04/81 Portsmouth Guildhall
22/04/82 Southampton Gaumont
06/05/84 Portsmouth Guildhall
11/08/90 Crystal Palace
19/01/91 Wembley Arena
13/06/93 XFM
01/06/96 Earl's Court
22/04/00 Wembley Arena
25/05/00 Dallas Starplex
09/07/02 Hyde Park
11/12/03 Islington Academy
09/07/04 Move Festival
01/03/06 RAH
20/03/08 Wembley Arena
27/02/09 O2

Highlights
Picture tour. Stayed behind after school. Got to front of stage when the doors opened and stayed there the whole gig. No support. Instead The Cure had a film called Carnage Visors made by Simon Gallup's Brother.

I took what seemed to be half of the Portsmouth High School for Girls sixth form to The Top gig. Funny how the boys who'd taken the piss out of me for wearing my Cure jacket to school (with a hand painted logo) suddenly became Cure fans.

Crystal Palace Bowl hosted The Garden Party with James, Lush and All About Eve supporting! There was a lake between the fans and the stage.

The Dallas gig was a real laugh. When I found out the tour date, I managed to persuade Fujitsu that I needed to stay one more week to finish off a web site. I discovered that an English accent meant that I didn't have to present ID to get a beer and that apparently walking back into town on your own through Deep Ellum at 12am is not recommended by the locals.

Islington Academy was a benefit gig. Dom Joly was there and as a collectors item the band played The Lovecats.

I'm seeing them at Bestival this September.

Three Wheels on Their Wagon,,,

2011-04-21T08:25:00.000+01:00

Are the wheels finally beginning to come off?

It would seem that others are belatedly beginning to pick up on the financial mismanagement of the council budget by the previous administration. That there was is not in doubt and in my experience it was pretty widespread. The only question to be answered is, was it because of fiscal incompetence or deliberate and calculated disregard of the law?

The latest news to leak out is how the Labour administration took Section 106 money and used it like raiding a child's piggy bank (and in the case of Bugs Bottom literally) to fill their ever increasing black hole in the council's general finances. This is illegal and a senior council officer admitted that this was happening. It is being investigated by an outside body which is necessary because quite frankly I wouldn't trust an internal audit as far as I could throw it.

This isn't an isolated incident. The previous administration used taxi licence fee money in 2009 to pay for the taxi marshalls when other funding sources ceased. This, according to Darlington council officers, is illegal use of taxi fee receipts because it is not allowed by law.

I was told by one senior officer when I asked about a mysterious transfer of £10,000 from a transport account to be careful about asking because I wouldn't get to the bottom of it because of multiple transfers being used to hide its origin and that by investigating it "they" (unspecified) would know that I was onto them.

Then we have the payment of union officials and their being allowed to use paid time for political activity (or policy development as it was euphemistically called) courtesy of the tax payer which was effectively hidden from councillors, again by the trick of if you don't know what to ask for you won't get it.

A request by me for ALL the subscriptions and memberships paid for by the council in a year had the one organisation I knew should have been on there (Nuclear Free Local Authorities) missing from the list I was sent. No-one would have found it anyway because when I complained and was finally sent it, it was listed as Manchester City Council. If the one I knew was on there was missing, what else wasn't I told about? So much for transparency.

When I asked for below the orange book financial figures when I was trying to prepare the budget, I was told that they "didn't exist". Yes, they jolly well did! Took several months and escalation to senior management to get them.

And the use of overstated reserves was another wheeze I discovered that was used by Labour. Put in a far higher figure in the budget reserves than reasonably required for prudence and leech it back into the general accounts to pay for poor-budget management in other departments later in the year. No questions asked.

And these are just some of the things that I happened to bump into.

There's more if anyone had the time to dig properly... but don't get excited, under the council's freedom of information policy an email ceases to exist the moment it is deleted from the council's email system and they will not retrieve copies from the back-ups. I know this to be the case because I was sent a copy of an email from Martin Salter to a senior officer which was missing from those sent to me under my FoI request and even that censored list had to be wrenched from their cold dead fingers after two and a half years by a ruling in my favour from the Information Commissioner.

It appears to have been endemic across the board and I'm happy to say that these practices were stopped the moment they were discovered. Alas for poor council tax payers, I suspect there is a whole lot more that would come out if anyone could afford to conduct a forensic audit of the pre-2010 accounts.

Under Labour the policy was to keep things hidden and create a situation where if you did not know what to ask for you would not get it. No wonder a few council officers are privately hoping that Labour will come riding to their rescue so that they can continue business as usual. Reading deserves better than that.

"Everything's packed, I've got to go..."

2011-04-19T22:11:00.002+01:00

I think this page says all that needs to be said

STATION ILL

2011-04-19T09:05:00.006+01:00

And so it begins...

The closure of Station Hill to through buses is another sad and sorry legacy the town has inherited from the miserable excuse of an administration that was Labour.

Let's be clear about this. The decision was made by Labour without any regard to the impact this would have on bus services or public transport. They didn't even have the decency to take into account the bus company's opinion before making the decision. Sure it was cloaked in "consulation" but the option to reverse the closure was never on the table. It was a fait accompli.

In August 2008 it was Reading Transport Limited's policy to push for an integrated transport interchange. I attach a paper produced by RTL discussing its response to the Station Hill¹ proposals. It clearly sets out the case for a fully integrated transport interchange and why failing to do so would be folly.

In February 2009 the board were informed that Station Hill would be closed. There was no opportunity for the company to change this decision. That was it, end of discussion.

At this point the bus company as a wholly owned part of the council really had no choice but to make the best of a bad situation because at this point the council's plans would decimate the network. For example, they had laughable plans for buses to wait in King's Meadow/Napier Road during the standing time that is required to allow late running services to catch up on the timetable.

And when is an interchange not an interchange? When it is designed by Reading Borough Council. Their original proposals had the even more ludicrous plan of having three interchanges! Highways ovbiously uses a different meaning for the word interchange... or bus shelters as the rest of us would call it.

During a full council session when Lib Dems objected to the scheme in its current form, Tony Page tried his usual weasel tactics by trying to imply that as a member of the RTL Board I had agreed with the decision. Balderdash. The board minutes clearly show that I objected to the closure. I made representations to Highways. It was a lie to imply otherwise but a standard tactic from him to obfuscate the facts.

Since 2009 an enormous amount of work by Reading Transport has gone into trying to sort out the pigs breakfast left by Labour, spurred on by the experience of what happened to Newbury Buses during the extensive work in Newbury's Market Place which wrecked the town centre traffic and had a severe impact on bus services which Newbury buses have never really recovered from. If the new layout ends up with a half workable system, then the credit must go to RTL who have put a massive amount of work into changing the Council's plans from their half-baked fag packet plans.

The question I asked was who exactly was it who was behind this initiative? Everyone has been remarkably coy about admitting to making such a bold decision.

The land is not in the Sackville Properties redevelopment area.
It was also not owned by Network Rail whose land stopped at the perimeter of the station.
It was in the interests of the council as the owner of Reading Buses to create an integrated transport hub.
The road at Station Hill is fully under the control of Reading Borough Council.

So who exactly did decide to shut the road?

No-one will admit to it. However, I was told that Sir John wanted a continental style pedestrian piazza to deliver passengers direct into his development and a source in the council told me: "What Sir John wants, Sir John gets." Now there is nothing wrong with a developer asking for such things. What is wrong is a council that cravenly bends over backwards to fulfil the developers wishes without due regard to the best interests of the town.

So whose interests was screwing up the bus network and throwing away the once in a generation chance for a properly integrated transport hub?

Using Occam's Razor, the only sensible conclusion that can be drawn is that the Labour administration was so desperate for the millions of Section 106 cash from Sackville to fill the hole in their general finances that they were prepared to sell the future of integrated transport for present and future generations down the river. No-one has ever come up will a plausible alternative suggestion.

If an application for a whelk stall comes up for Broad Street, I hope that the licensing committee refuse the licence if the proprieter is one Mr. A.W. Page. He is not a fit and proper person to run one, let alone a town like Reading.

1 RTL Station Hill Consultation Response March 2007

Massive Respect is Due

2011-04-14T21:16:00.001+01:00

I have to admit that I was taken by surprise to discover The Arsenal suddenly decide to give up the balance of terror that has been in place for the last few years but the news that Danny Fiszman sold his shares only two days before his death explains a lot. We knew he was ill but it was still a bit of a shock.

It's a strange state of affairs when a satirical fanzine like Up the Arse! has never had a bad thing to say about the architect of our recent fortunes when directors are such an easy target for fun from humourists. Usmanov on the other hand...

It's also indicative of how much regard the stewardship of the club has been valued by fans when all around have been flogged off as play things for the rich and authority dodging charlatans. Despite the change of ownership Arsenal are still probably the last proper football club left in the country and a lot of the credit for that must go to Danny Fiszman.

I'm sure that he would absolutely agree with calls for Arsenal supporters to hang onto their shares.

Thanks for the new stadium. We'll be rasing a glass or two to you on Sunday. Cheers mate.

RCRE isn't a black and white issue.

2011-04-13T10:27:00.007+01:00

I wasn't intending to do another post on RCRE but they are beginning to get quite vicious and nasty with their defence of their gravy train, acting like ferrets in a sack, swinging punches at anyone who disagrees with them and playing the racist card to the maximum.

All the council has done is ask them to justify the spending of hundreds of thousands of pounds of council tax payers money on them which has caused them to cry foul when asked for some accountability and above all verifiable outcomes. Instead, we've seen smears, attacks and lies used to justify their existence.

The irony of RCRE accusing local bloggers and commentators of hiding behind anonymity isn't lost. How about RCRE publishing a deliberate and knowing falsehood on their website?

"Apart from some officers and some Councillors who are keen to see RCRE close..."

Who could they be talking about? It certainly isn't me. I've never said that I've wanted to see them closed and I have publicly stated that RCRE does some valuable work.

So if it's not me being referred to who could they be talking about. I can't think of anyone. In fact, I don't know a single officer or councillor who is "keen" to see RCRE close. If they are so sure that that is a fact then go on, name them? They can't. It is just smears, libel and slander where questioning value for money results in unfounded accusations of racism and intolerance.

The council is still providing funding for their accommodation and some of their projects yet they insist on implying to their supporters that the council is cutting all funding for them. What is so wrong with being accountable? They have never given a reason for why they should not have to do what every other group asking for public money is obliged to do... justify it. One possible answer is perhaps that they can't.

My reward for pointing out that at least one of their valiant band of "courageous" supporters was lying was to be reported to the local Standards Board by them. My suspicions were aroused because the "supporters" claim was the same untruth told to me by a fellow board member when I joined the board which I previously discovered had turned out to be false.

This is the same organisation that chased the Labour Party's racist NI35 Preventing Violent Extremism cash when the Muslim community came out and totally opposed Reading's participation in it. An organisation who were involved in organising a meeting about Gaza to which Jewish organisations were not invited. There are many questionable aspects about RCRE's definition of what is racist and their actions serving a very narrow agenda.

And that is without asking wider questions on the conduct of senior board members one of whom thought that I would be able to help him in a meeting with planning officers about a planning application despite representing a ward that was nowhere near where he lives or where his business is based?

There was another particularly distasteful episode where there was obvious collusion between board members and an attempt to compromise my impartiality when I was chairing a grievance hearing by asking me to delay its end so that legal papers could be served on the person with a grievance. I refused. They were not happy. Perhaps that's why they have been so vituperative about me?

There is a place for organisations like RCRE but for them to think that they are above local accountability is quite shocking. They made malicious complaints about me without foundation. I worked with RCRE for two years as a critical friend and was saddened to see after all my hard work for them to find that they hold malice in their hearts. Perhaps the problem is not with the organisation but the management.

Some might be forgiven for thinking that they are actually the Reading Campaign for Rajinder's Employment.

How Reading Politics Works... #257 - The Local Press

2011-04-12T12:05:00.002+01:00

Odd isn't it, when RCRE put out a quite vindictive press release about me knowing full well that I could not respond to their complaint once it had been made to the local Standards Board the local press were falling all over themselves to get quotes and print their malicious allegations.

However, when the local Standards Board ruled two weeks ago that there is nothing wrong with my posts, the silence has been deafening.

For the record, my posts about the "grassroots" campaign, which in at least one instance used a lie to support RCRE's case, solicited the following ruling from the local Standards Board:

"It did not find that the comments were critical of or 'belittled' the persons responsible for sending the emails on the grounds of their gender or race, not did they do so in relation to any other person referred to"

"Whilst the comments were critical, it did not considered the posts to be unfair, unreasonable or demeaning of these people within the context they were made"

The local press are proving quick to denounce and trash but slow to vindicate. I have my own thoughts as to whose agenda that supports. I even gave them a 'quote' for a change.

Still they're no different from my own party who have acted with indecent haste and failure to apply even simple rules of habeus corpus or any semblance of natural justice on similarly supplied malicious and false accusations so maybe I shouldn't be too harsh.

There are, however, strict rules in place covering charities and political campaiging. I wonder if the Charities Commission would like to hear about Registered Charity No. 1133358 use of Bet Tickner in their media campaign.

The Carpetbaggers

2011-04-08T10:23:00.001+01:00

Reading Labour Party's latest work of fiction sneers at the Tories for not fielding local candidates. So how does Labour's record stack up?

They have 15 candidates and a piss-poor 4 of them actually live in the ward where they are standing. The Tories in fact have 6 candidates who live in their ward. Greens 7, Lib Dems 8. The Common Sense party are only fielding 6 candidates, but only one of them lives in the ward they want to represent.

But back to the 'do what I say, not as I do' brigade of brigands:

Chris Maskell (Battle) lives in Norcot
Paul Gittings (Minster) lives in Battle
Pete Ruhemann (Southcote) lives in Kentwood.
Miss Norcot has to negotiate several wards and the IDR to get to Redlands... luckily it's not one way, eh Jan?
Kelly Edwards' previous commitment to represent Redlands looks to have been complete hogwash as she obviously prefers to campaign for green issues in Whitley.
Their Katesgrove candidate will be campaigning strongly for a third Thames bridge

Yet, if Labour reassigned their candidates to actually stand where they live, they could have 8 candidates standing up for their local area.

But of course it's not about fielding local candidates for them. It's about taking the electorate for granted. Complete hypocrites but you didn't need me to tell you that.

Apology... what apology?

2011-04-07T11:13:00.002+01:00

So Reading Labour have published an "apology" for using a copyrighted picture without permissions... except their apology is a lie.

"thought we had permission" - complete bullshit and they know it (as too I suspect do the Post). All political campaigners from any party know that you have to pay a fee to use pictures from the local paper. I love they way they also admit that they have been breaking the law for several years.

They really can't help it can they.

Also after 23 years in power they don't seem to understand how local government finance works. After looking at their budgets, that is not a surprise. They were either incompetent or guilty of dubious practices.

I'll be nice to them and assume it was incompetence... but there is still the matter of the mystery £10,000 transfer between cost centres that I was told not to investigate too deeply, payment of £20,000 on a contract that Darlington City council officers suggested in a report to their members would probably not be legal and the small matter of what exactly were Labour up to with Section 106 payments?

What a Load of Rubbish!

2011-04-06T10:36:00.003+01:00

I never got to introduce them myself but I'm pleased to see the council going ahead with my initiatives:

First community based compact fluorescent lightbulb recycling scheme in the UK.
Weekly collections for priority areas
Kerbside battery recycling
Enhanced shopping districts

I also know I can count on Ricky to finish off the work I started on adding mixed plastics, glass and food waste to recycling streams in the face of continuing Labour opposition and the moronic contractual straight-jacket they left Reading with.

Of course, I need to thank council officers for their excellent work and support in working my ideas into real and practical initiatives, so thanks peeps.

I wish Ricky all the best. It is a monster of a portfolio but one where you can make the most difference.

Going Green

2011-04-05T08:56:00.004+01:00

I'm spitting feathers about the complete lack of warning to residents about the waste charge. This has been known as an option within the council for months [it was published in the Cabinet papers in the first week of February] and information for residents should and could have been prepared well in advance. To not let people know about it with plenty of notice is in my opinion unforgivable.

But this is not an isolated case, the lack of notice about the changes to the free bus passes is another that is fishy.

In fact there seem to be a lot of stories designed to make it awkward for the administration being generated by the council at the moment. I'm sorry but "internal processes" does not adequately explain what is going on here.

The great majority of staff are consciencious and neutral in performing their duties but there are beyond any question of doubt some staff working against the administration and deliberately causing trouble for political reasons.

It is a fact that there have been leaks of sensitive and draft internal documents to the Labour group.Internal investigations never seem to get to the bottom of who is doing the leaking.

And this is a comment on the Reading Forum: "My mother has phoned to say she just got her letter – phoned up and cancelled – also had a go at them and was told if you don’t like it then vote them out!!" That is out of order for a public servant to say to a resident even if they personally believe it.

Then of course the Facilities Agreement allows union officials council tax funded time to work against the administration but we'll never know what they are up to because they are unaccountable to senior management. However, the sight of all of them trooping in loyally for an audience with Jo Lovelock in the Labour group room strikes me that it's pretty self-evident what they are up to.

I expect more politically sensitive council stories to come out over then next few weeks. I don't believe there is any co-incidence involved.

Labouring a Point

2011-04-03T09:18:00.008+01:00

There seems to be a curious co-incidence about the recent flurry of complaints to the local Standards Committee about me...

Richard McKenzie - Labour Park ward candidate and all round bad egg.

Duncan Bruce - Labour Thames ward candidate and sensitive soul who doesn't like being reminded that Labour Party members are complicit in the unecessary deaths of 250,000 Iraqi civilians and according to a pre-invasion warning from MI6 culpable for the increased threat to the UK from islamic terrorism.

Jo Lovelock - Labour leader for the next five weeks who continues removing specks from the eyes of opponents, yet seems paralysed when it comes to dealing with her husband who Labour party internal emails show was responsible for lying about opponents and guilty of defamation during the last election and more recently for calling opposition members nazi collaborators.

Rajinder Sohphal - Former Labour Party councillor and someone I know for a fact last April was in regular correspondance with John "One Way IDR" Howarth, also a former Labour councillor and printer of discounted Labour leaflets.

Gloria Jack - COHSE and Unison Branch secretary and regular speaker at Labour Party conferences. I don't have access to the Labour membership list but I have a sneaking suspicion that she may be a Labour party member. If she isn't she has a close association with them and can be described at the very minimum as a supporter.

Detect a pattern here? Yep. All Labour members or supporters abusing the standards process for what can only be described as 'for political purposes'.

Why can I say so? Because they blogged, tweeted and press released their "anonymous" complaints to the standards board. The person being complained about is not able to comment once it has been lodged but they persisted in making malicious comments in public and to the press. It's why the standards process stinks.

Oh, and if you want to know what the standards board said about Rajinder Sohpal and Gloria Jack's complaint on behalf of RCRE?

"Whilst the comments were critical, it did not consider them to be unfair, unreasonable or demeaning to the people within the context they were made."

I can't help but think that it was a move to bully me in an attempt to stop me revealing more facts, like the details of a phone call I was asked to take in Rajinder's office last year just before a grievance hearing...

An April Shower

2011-04-02T11:06:00.002+01:00

Congratulations to those who worked out that my Friday morning blog post was an April Fool. I left enough clues in there... and none so obvious than that the first letter of each paragraph spelled out APRIL FOOL!

And shame on those who were so desperately hoping that it was true that they fell for it hook, line and stinker. I know who you are. Even worse were those who believed it it to be true without having read it! I might pass the names, emails and voice mails to Mick Spreader for public humiliation :-D

But it does raise a serious issue, that people are more willing to suspend their disbelief when they read something on the Internet. The accidental or deliberate failure to apply context to what they read and let us not forget that old favourite malicious intent.

It's the reason why so many people get viruses and trojans on their PCs, a willingness to uncritically view what their computer says as the truth or letting their eagerness to confirm their prejudices to override common sense. I can do no better than to recommend Rob Rosenberger's post on False Authority Syndrome or point you to what another of my favourite sites Snopes has to say on the matter.

More parochially, one area where the truth is murdered on a regular basis is in the reporting of council meetings. To be fair to the press they are unlikely to be able to condense a five hour debate into a few sentences and blogging councillors can twist what they like out of it. Rachel Eden has produced a particularly entertaining piece of fiction after Tuesday's Full Council meeting but to be fair to her she doesn't assert that it is the truth so caveat lector applies.

The big difficulty for the ordinary citizen is separating the fact from the spin. That's why I've been a long time campaigner for the web casting of council meetings, not just live but archived so that residents can go back to previous meetings and work out for themselves who said what. People will be still put a biased interpretation on proceedings but at least it would stop them being able to lie about matters of fact.

I recorded audio for most of Tuesday's Full Council meeting on my Android. It needs cleaning up in terms of sound quality but I've got a professional audio suite which should help. I think it would be in the interests of democracy to release it. There can't be any reason not to stream it because after all it is council policy to web cast meetings agreed unanimously by all parties.

Unless, of course, one them wouldn't like it if a few big fat lies were nailed.

Complete and Utter Garbage.

2011-04-01T12:01:00.005+01:00

Those who like to paint themselves green should distance should themselves from the charlatans in the Reading Labour Party as quickly as possible. And if you are a Labour councillor that includes you if you want to be taken seriously.

Reading WILL get a greener recycling scheme and it won't be any thanks to Labour. In fact they fought tooth and nail with a sprinkling of vitriol when Lib Dems tried to get glass recycling, anaerobic digesters and meaningful cuts in CO² levels implemented in Reading and their actions when in power of following national Labour party dogma rather than doing what was best for residents and the environment made it even worse. I had to spend a great deal of last year trying to unravel the unholy mess that they had left recycling in.

In 2007 Steve Waite put out a bragging press release about how Reading's recycling rate had gone up to a massive 35% - which many people pointed out was almost completely due to the introduiction of the larger recycling bins. When I took over three years later, it had actually gone down to 31%. What the **** had he and Paul Gittings been doing in those three years? Resting on their laurels and falling for their own hype it would seem.

Why was the organic waste scheme introduced? To fiddle central government stats. There was no other reason. Did anyone bother to ask whether there was anywhere for the green waste to go (apart that is from Lib Dems because we did and were fobbed of with crap answers)?

Yet, if I am being fair, the question of whether there was a valid destination for it depends completely on your political point of view. Yes, it is if you think getting it mulched then spread ON TOP OF THE LANDFILL to get Gordon Brownie points counts as recycling. That's because Labour government policy said that sending reprocessed waste to landfill didn't count towards the figure so if your motivation was hitting national indicators rather than doing what was right then bingo.

I have a green bin so I am affected just as much as anyone else but it is not a free scheme and never was. If we wanted to start it from scratch it would cost RBC £¾m. Everyone pays for it regardless of use. In fact it was yet another one of the schemes Labour set up where the poor were subsidising the rich.

The result? Reading Labour implemented a scheme that made it more expensive to dispose of green waste than if it had been put in the landfill bins in the first place for marginal benefit to the envirionment.

Think about it - as councils across the nation moved to alternate weekly collections to save large amounts of money (typically £½m-£1m per annum), Reading saved a massive £40k by introducing them. Keeping the existing crews and expensive compacting vehicles going at large expense had nothing to do with keeping the Transport and General Workers Union happy did it? Then again the £4,600 donated to the local party by the union must have come in useful.

Except there was an alternative if at the heart of your core values was a desire to be green and with the advantage of no need to reduce staff levels. If Reading had taken the opportunity to introduce new recycling streams and more options for residents with the money we had saved moving to fortnightly collection, we had a win win... but (and try not to weep when I say this) Labour had signed up the council to a 25 year Private Finance Initiative that would mean that we would pay the price if we wanted to change the deal.

I've seen some residents ask an eminetly reasonable questions. Like why can't we use the revenue for recycling to pay for it all? I can tell you why! All household waste in Reading is "owned" by the PFI not RBC. If there was a market for green waste (and there isn't) then we wouldn't get the money anyway because Labour signed it away. I had Deloites looking though my options for revenue generation and they had to give up when they realised that if we found a company that would have paid for recycled egg boxes in gold RBC wouldn't get a penny.

Oh, did you know that there is a glass collection area all along at Smallmead? I didn't either until I took over the department. Labour kept quiet about that ever beeing an option when we campaigned for glass recycling on behalf of residents.

Glass and food waste recycling would have been a far better use of the money saved from the end of weekly collections. It would have benefited everyone across the borough and been environmentally responsible. Labour were just not up to the job. They bottled it.

If you want Reading to be a greaner place, Labour are the problem - or more accurately the particularly perverse variant of Labour we have in this town. What's saddens me is listening to genuinely commited people who appear to have fallen for their lying bullshit.

I hope that the newer Labour members are simply being gullible when they come out with some of their comments about waste recycling. I'd hate to think they are fully aware of the background and yet were prepared to make knowingly untrue statements about the situation. Or lying as the general population would call it.

Every Individual is the Architect of His Own Fortune.

2011-04-01T00:34:00.021+01:00

For those who missed it, this is the April fool post. However, there is one bit that is true... the bit about the laptop. Hee hee hee!

After long deliberation, I have resigned from the Liberal Democrats. Sadly, I came to the conclusion that that was the only course left open to me after finding out what has been going on behind the scenes at national party level. Now I know how mushrooms feel... left in the dark and fed on manure.

Perhaps I should have acted earlier once I discovered what was going on. It was tricky keeping quiet, but intelligence has to be carefully considered before it is used. One foolish person handed me back a laptop which had been used to log into emails and store sensitive internal party documents. Idiot. Never give a computer hacker a PC that hasn't been securely deleted. Even NTFS files can be restored if you have access to the right tools and the administrator password. And I have both - it was originally my PC!

Reading some of the hundreds (literally) of email complaints to region and the national party (mostly from one person it has to be said) about me over the last two years and the endless correspondance between senior party figures inevitably meant that their minds have been made up in advance of any investigation so I guess they had no reason to ask me for my side of the story, which they never have. All my tweets have been trawled through and several selected to add to the charges including one where I innocently used the term "nitty-gritty" when apparently it's a derogatory term used on slave ships.

It became obvious that I was about to be hung out to dry when I read one email from the Lib Dem press office which suggested that if they handled the "situation" properly, it could even be used make Nick Clegg look less unpopular by diverting attention and giving the impression of decisive action.

Looking forward, I still have one year to go as a councillor and I have no intention of resigning from the council. I enjoy helping residents bash their way through red-tape - after all it's why I got involved in the first place.

For me, the main question is whether I would want to carry on beyond that and as it was clear that I was not welcome in the Lib Dems any more I'm giving serious consideration to approaching the local Conservatives. I've had nothing but support from my constituents, including the local Nigerian community who said that they would personally support me not the party if I stood again.

On the other hand it could be fun to form a fourth council group with the Greens. It's quite clear that they are being led up the garden path by Labour who have told them a complete load of tosh and they've fallen for it. I know where the bodies are buried. They don't.

Of course, I expect a certain amount of vitriol from my former colleagues, but that goes with the territory. It happens when anyone leaves a party so I'm ready for it. As I said, I've got numerous internal documents and reports that would make uncomfortable reading if they were put in the public domain, but I'm not going to be hasty about it. The noblest kind of retribution is not to become like your enemy.

Let them hate so long as they fear, Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC)

Golly Gee

2011-03-31T13:16:00.001+01:00

RBC Refuse Truck 2008

I've been looking through my old archives and came across this astonishing story from when Jo Lovelock was in charge.

I'd forgotten Reading Labour's track record when it came to race relations! This is one to the Borough's refuse trucks under a Labour administration taken in August 2008.

Even the black shirt supporting Daily Mail thought it was beyond the pale. Perhaps Cllr Lovelock should have resigned over this quite disgraceful episode. Yeah, I know, fat chance of that.

Up The Arse! Issue 70

2011-03-31T12:12:00.000+01:00

Up The Arse Issue 70

Out Saturday 2nd April - Arsenal vs Blackburn
Guest editor: Colonel Gaddafi
Featuring:

Manuel Almunia Clown School
Denilson's Crab Collection
Spurs 50th anniversary Programme
Professor Brian Cox's Wonders of the Premier League
Premier League News

And all the usual crap!

Reading Labour Guilty of Breaking the Law.

2011-03-30T13:12:00.003+01:00

I can say that without contradiction. They have used a copyright photograph without obtaining permission from the copyright holder in their Reading Banner. That's a £6,000 fine or six months imprisonment thank you very much.

You see they believe that the law doesn't apply to Reading Labour as the postal votes fraud in Redlands showed. There's more to that story than ever came out in public if my sources are to be believed and I believe them more than the local Labour Party.

They lie and smear in their leaflets. They accept cheating as a way of life when campaigning. The Katesgrove Smear warns about hundreds more parking meters in residential areas in an attempt to suggest that Katesgrove residents will get parking meters in residential streets. It is completely fabricated bollocks.

Their tactics are to throw as much monkey shit as they can and hope it sticks but they are the ones with smelly hands.

During the last election they responded to a complaint about a completely fabricated lie in their Reading Banner by ignoring the complaint, hoping that whilst it was an actionable statement some parties simply don't have the money to pursue it legally. They were right.

Their election agents use the argument that "I never saw it" as a defence. Firstly, that's pure balderdash and second legally irrelevant. Tony Page in response to an accusation of making a deliberately fictitious election statement defended it with "I overheard it". Again . If that's the case then I've "overheard" him say many things that he can't prove I didn't... like when I was in the group room and he was wandering outside speaking on his mobile phone not realising I was there.

Yet the slightest comment from their opponents that they think can be used to bully and harass them no matter how nebulous and they use their vast union funded muscle to fund their threats and intimidation.

They will get respect when they deserve it. Bullying hypocrites deserve none.

UPDATE:

I hope Duncan Bruce has got permission from the Chronicle to use their photograph and written permission from the parents to use it on his blog:
http://duncanbruce.blogspot.com/2011/03/talking-film-with-kids-of-rdg.html
It would be a terrible shame to see him appear in court before the election or have to face down angry parents.

Labour have form on this. They used a photo of a tree planting in Katesgrove featuring local children taken from the Post in 2008. Angered parents and didn't do David Sutton any good.

Bob's Your Uncle...

2011-03-28T13:19:00.000+01:00

Well, he was mine actually!

My cousin dug this up!

Serial Drama

2011-03-24T15:41:00.000Z

We rather helpfully know what the Government thinks of the standards board:

Andrew Stunell:
"The Standards Board regime ended up fuelling petty complaints and malicious vendettas. Nearly every council had investigations hanging over them - most of which would be dismissed but not before reputations were damaged and taxpayer money was wasted. Frivolous allegations undermined local democracy and discouraged people from running for public office.

"That's why we are axing the unpopular and unelected standards board regime. Instead we will legislate to ensure that if a councillor is corrupt and abuses their office for personal gain they will be dealt with in the criminal courts. If a councillor behaves ineffectively or irresponsibly then it's a matter for the electorate not an unelected quango.

"This Government is freeing councillors from central prescription and top down bureaucracy so they can get on with their job. In the future councillors must expect to be judged at the ballot box by an electorate with real access to their accounts and personal interests in a new transparent era."

Eric Pickles:

"The standards board regime became the problem, not the solution. Unsubstantiated and petty allegations, often a storm in a teacup, damaged the reputation and standing of local government, as well as wasting taxpayers' money."

Wasting taxpayers money indeed. I really hate it when I end up agreeing with Eric Pickles!

The Chair of the local standards board gets an allowance of £2,385. All complaints have to be formally assessed by a senior council employee. They then might require further investigation. I would estimate the cost of the panel to be at least £10,000 per year if you take into account all the resources and officer time required.

Our local panel has already determined that it is okay for Labour councillors to use offensive language in the council chamber "in the cut and thrust of debate". The High Court has determined that they have no right to rule when a person is not on official council business. The national standards board is being abolished with the localism bill.
Maybe I should keep quiet that I'm the editor of Up the Arse! - Arsenal's Premier Spurs Bashing Fanzine.

They really wouldn't like it one little bit!

Guilty Party

2011-03-23T17:34:00.001Z

Poor old Duncy-Wunky. Crying into his Mummy's apron because a nasty person said horrid things about him.Tell you what. If you don't like being accused of being an accessory to the illegal murder of 250,000 civilians, resign from the Labour Party and I won't mention it again.

This is not a song about killing Arabs...

2011-03-20T22:41:00.003Z

I can turn and walk away or I can fire the gun.
Staring at the sky, staring at the sun
Whichever I chose it amounts to the same
Absolutely nothing
I'm alive
I'm dead
I'm the stranger
Killing an arab

That's pretty much what a sticker on the Boys Don't Cry album I found in the New York Virgin Megastore had on it. Fat Bob himself has taken to changing the lyrics in the live set.

My ex-fiancee studied L'Étranger in sixth form and took my copy of the original 7" single of Killing an Arab for the class to listen to. It remains the most advanced book I've ever read in French (with a companion dictionary - my French reading level is barely above Asterix standard).

It's a brilliant book in any language so changing wording of a song about it simply to cater for the most wilfully ignorant or maliciously motivated is not something I'd agree with.

But now I can understand why Robert Smith does.

I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.

Oh Meursault.

The kiss of treachery...

2011-03-20T19:38:00.001Z

If there is one thing you ever need to learn in your life, this is all you need to know:

Oh I miss the kiss of treachery
The shameless kiss of vanity
The soft and the black and the velvety
Up tight against the side of me
And mouth and eyes and heart all bleed
And run in thickening streams of greed
As bit by bit it starts the need
To just let go, my party piece

Oh I miss the kiss of treachery
The aching kiss before I feed
The stench of a love for a younger meat
And the sound that it makes when it cuts in deep
The holding up on bended knees
The addiction of duplicities
As bit by bit it starts the need to just let go, my party piece

But I never said I would stay to the end
So I leave you with babies and hoping for frequency
Screaming like this in the hope of the secrecy
Screaming me over and over and over
I leave you with photographs
Pictures of trickery
Stains on the carpet and stains on the scenery
Songs about happiness murmured in dreams
When we both us knew how the ending would be...

So it's all come back round to breaking apart again
Breaking apart like I'm made up of glass again
Making it up behind my back again
Holding my breath for the fear of sleep again
Holding it up behind my head again
Cut in deep to the heart of the bone again
Round and round and round
And it's coming apart again
Over and over and over

Now that I know that I'm breaking to pieces
I'll pull out my heart and I'll feed it to anyone
Crying for sympathy
Crocodiles cry for the love of the crowd
And the three cheers from everyone
Dropping through sky
Through the glass of the roof
Through the roof of your mouth
Through the mouth of your eye
Through the eye of the needle
It's easier for me to get closer to heaven
Than ever feel whole again

I never said I would stay to the end
I knew I would leave you with babies and everything
Screaming like this in the hole of sincerity
Screaming me over and over and over
I leave you with photographs. pictures of trickery.
Stains on the carpet and stains on the memory
Songs about happiness murmured in dreams
When we both of us knew, how the end always is

How the end always is...

Robert Smith

Walking in the rain just to get wet on purpose.

2011-03-20T10:31:00.003Z

Quite an interesting position to be in... as in the Chinese curse definition of interesting!

Both the local and national Lib Dems are looking for a futile gesture at this stage to raise the whole tone of the war and are encouraging me to pop over to Bremen in a crate and not come back. I've even been given the crate! However, if anything it's quite liberating to not have to answer to anyone or follow orders anymore. On the upside, I now have a far better idea of who my friends are in the local party. Not that many ;0)

I got involved in local politics because what I was digging up when writing muckspReading showed evidence of a Labour council that stank to high heaven. Since becoming a councillor, if anything, I've found it to be worse than I thought.

Here's one to try for yourself - name organisations wholly or partly funded by Reading Borough Council that have former Labour councillors in senior positions.

Labour's tactic of abusing the role of the standards committee is to try to imply that I've been compromising council officers. Codswallop. Council officers were only following orders and policies laid down by the Labour party which has reacted in the way that you would expect any organisation to behave when confronted with the possibility of inconvenient facts becoming public knowledge - shoot the messenger.

Morituri te salutant!

Standard Response

2011-03-19T14:07:00.005Z

Seems the local Standards Board has determined that councillors have a specific exemption from human rights legislation of being allowed to have any personal opinions.

They also make a completely unfounded accusation that I blamed council officers... unless of course they are inferring that union officials who do not report to any manager in the council and are free to conduct politicking paid for by council tax payers are council officers. These are not independent council officers. They attend the political General Committee meetings of the local Labour Party as representatives of the unions.

They refer to me not providing any evidence about comments in my personal blog, made in my own time... except you can't provide evidence to the Standards Board because have no right to represent yourself or be heard by these unelected guardians of public sensibility.

They did however find on a previous occassion that it was perfectly acceptable for a Labour councillor to accuse another member of being a twat in a public council meeting.

Just in case they were not paying attention. This is my blog written in my own time as personal comment. They have no right to censor my opinions when I am not acting in an official capacity. They have exceeded their remit.

Fact: In 1997 the unions asked the Labour council to fund three full time posts.
Fact: Prior to that they were not fully funded posts - they were allowed reasonable time off for industrial relations work.
Fact: The Labour council acquiesced to that request and agreed to fund the salaries for full time union work in 1998.
Fact: These union officials do not report to any council officer like anyother member of staff.
Fact: The facilities agreement allows paid time off to work on matters that specifically includes developing union policy which solely favours the Labour Party.
Fact: The unions donate rather generously to the local Labour Party.

The whole complaint is Labour bullying of the worst kind and an attempt to sweep whistle blowing under the table with threats.

If they were so proud of it why did they not tell anyone about the facilities agreement for 13 years? Did they feel it was something they needed to hide?

Use of the standards committee is a shameful abuse of council resources.

A Suspended Sentence

2011-03-16T15:03:00.000Z

As Ali-Gate continues I thought it would help the debate if I put in the public domain the communications I've received from the party.

Nothing. Not a sausage (apologies for any casual racism towards any German readers).

Of course, that may be because I don't have friends in high places willing to pull strings for me. Some people in this party are more equal than others!

Diverse Opinions

2011-03-14T12:42:00.003Z

Lib Dem conference seems to be going down the Labour route of quotas and "positive" discrimination. This is a shortsighted policy and counter productive to the actual aims.

It is also extremely illiberal.

What is at the heart of the lack of diversity is the culture resultant from being an activist led party. Unless Liberal Democrats stop choosing candidates on the basis of how much shoe leather they can wear out or financially contribute to the party, there is little hope of changing the situation.

Right after conference and without irony Tim Farron sent out the following to party members:

If you're only going to take one thing away from Spring Conference, let it be this: where we work hard, we win.

Now go home and work your socks off and win!

Well that's the disabled off the list. Women with families. People who already spend a lot of time involved with community associations or religious congregations.

This is also not helped by the party sweeping bullying and harrasment under the carpet when it is reported to them. Lib Dems are a volunteer party. You do not become a Lib Dem because you are after power. No-one has to do it and people being bullied can simply walk away. And they do.

The diversity question is not a problem with discrimination. It is a problem with the campaigning culture and the macho-activism that goes with it.

And Now The End Is Near

2011-03-07T20:04:00.001Z

It's the end of an era and Reading politics is really going to miss Jo Lovelock's incompetent performances as leader of the opposition. I wish her well in her retirement from front bench politics but from of the sound of it local Labour member's wish her a happy retirement as soon as possible as well. What's that you say? You haven't heard the announcement. Of course not, but we all know it's inevitable.

It didn't help her campaign to retain the top job emailing the administration her strategy for the crucial budget meeting but hey, we've all sent things over the Internet that maybe we shouldn't have!

Today she was summoned to Unison HQ to get her orders. How times have changed, eh? Having to meet up with Tony Jones who flounced out from the Labour Party because of behind the scenes stitch up for leader and deputy leader didn't go the way his ego wanted. [Foolishly I believed his official reason that it was over political differences. A union insider put me right on that!] Delicious irony.

Well, that's what happens if you run a bankrupt party and have to go cap in hand to the unions for money. If only the unions had worked that one out whilst Labour were in charge. RBC staff may have been paid equal pay by now!

Still the members got their chance to ask the chief architect of the failure by Labour to implement equal pay for an equal days work. I hope it didn't descend into a political meeting. They obviously have spent far too much time being political if they couldn't get equal pay from a Labour council after 13 years of Single Statutory Pay being on the agenda at Personnel Committee.

It can't be all bad though. Unison can obviously still afford free scoff and gambling in these times of austerity which presumably is why they are so upset about the loss of free money from the Council. Must be a bit of a no brainier for them. £12,000 to fund Labour's local election costs. Use of the General Political Fund to run a bogusly "non-political" anti-coalition campaign. £90,000 grand from Labour per annum courtesy of the council tax payer to fund union officials salaries - Priceless.

I guess that betting must be starting on the next Labour opposition leader.

Rachel Eden is obviously ambitious and has to be a contender because to be honest there isn't that much talent to go around but she'll probably be too busy getting herself in position to stand in Reading West.

No, if Labour have any sense, they'll go for John Ennis replace Mrs. Ruhemann. I've got a lot of time for John. He has the ability to attack the opposition without being unpleasant about it afterwards, unlike a lot of his colleagues. Although quite why a socialist (or indeed former communist) would want to be seen leading a party of class traitors is another matter!

Healthy Debate

2011-03-06T10:44:00.000Z

The NHS always gets people going. It's an emotive subject where everyone seems to be able to give good examples and bad examples of care but basically the majority of people have no desire to see it become an insurance based system. But whilst we're here, let's not kid ourselves that National Insurance is a hypothicated tax. It is an employment tax which goes into the general taxation fund. the NHS is funded by general taxation.

As examples of treatment I have two cases:

A 63 year old man was admitted to hospital having suffered a sudden stroke. A known alcoholic and prolific smoker with no family in attendance and it being late at night, he was not treated by doctors as a priority when admitted and was left overnight to wait for the duty consultant. He went into a coma. The family arrived next morning after traveling 150 miles to discover that he had just been shunted into a ward on admission. The doctors had not administered the appropriate medicine or care that is essential in the early treatment of a stroke and later one of his daughters was taken to one side and told that the best thing that could happen to him would be for him to die - sensitivity awareness not apparently part of the training. At the same hospital was a naval medical team who told the family that the hospital should have called them to attend. Over the road was a private hospital with state of the art equipment that he had attended whilst covered by his employer's health insurance. Unfortunately it had been several years since he was declared unfit to work and was on incapacity benefit. He died two weeks after being admitted.

A 66 year old woman was diagnosed with breast cancer and treated at her local hospital. It was caught at an early stage by her GP referred in a matter of days and a belts and braces treatment of surgery and chemotherapy was undertaken. The first surgery was only partially successful at removing all growths and a second operation was required. During treatment the chemotherapy drugs caused a heart problem which required further surgery and a stent. During the course of treatment the hospital was closed and transferred to another doubling the journey time and quadrupling the cost of attendance as she was deemed well enough to not require ambulance travel despite the drugs making her weak and tired and not capable of walking any significant distance. There was no financial help available to cover the travel costs despite being a pensioner with no savings of note. She has made a full recovery from the cancer but is now on constant medication to cope with her heart problems.

These aren't some abstract examples. They are my Mum and Dad both treated during Labour's "golden years" of massive investment. I'm not using them as examples to knock the NHS or indeed Labour (that comes later). They are simply real world examples that show that the NHS provides a service that we will all rely on one way or another. It is also not perfect and is unlikely to be.

However, the NHS is the jewel in our nation's crown. [Yes, I'm a reluctant monarchist... President Cowell by phone-in vote is a scary thought, You think I'm being alarmist? All I'll say to that is: Boris Johnson.] The principles on which the NHS is run are undoubtedly held by all by a few in this country and treatment according to need rather than ability to pay is a fundamental cornerstone of the service and a national touchstone. However, to think that the current system is fit for purpose and should be protected from change at any cost is plain stupidity.

It's a fair enough to raise concerns and fight against short-sighted decisions, but it is not enough to shout "fire" and point the finger without making the case for an alternative. It is bust, not because of principle but becuase of a demographic timebomb. Nor is is sufficient to rail against the private sector. What needs to stop are the riduculous print your own money PFI contracts being handed out by successive governements and the end of guarenteed profits to private providers. They need to work for them.

Once upon a time the NHS ran its own computer centres, with its own staff. So where were the unions when Labour proposed spending £7bn on a privatised computer system funded using PFI? They seem all to ready to spread scare stories now but were remarkably supine when Labour were trying to cut costs?

The problem with that computer system was that it was a centrally determined and specified piece of snake oil as a result of paying too many consultants. I worked for Fujitsu Services who ran the southern cluster. Our head of the project was sacked when he dared mention in public that it wouldn't work. Everyone in the computer business knew it would be a waste of money but a lucrative waste of money for them. This was confirmed when the PFI contractors dream of constantly changing requirements and the addition of local changes to the system meant that the 'partners' could get the open chequebook out. This was not the fault of private enterprise, it was the fault of a government that didn't know what it wanted and had no way of telling when it had got what it thought it had asked for, The reality is that proper funding for local systems would have given a better return on investment with any (smaller) national programme concentrating on interfaces. The crucial part here is the failure was because of a disregard for local requirements and forcing a top down design on the PCTs.

I don't know if the current proposed changes will work. I also don't know that they won't. I do know however that letting health expenditure continue on its current course will bankrupt the country. Some of the proposals, like changes to the blood donor service, make me queasy but dental services were effectively privatised and eye care taken out of the universal system decades ago. No government since those changes has attempted to restore them to free at the point of use. In any case, prescriptions aren't free and dispensed mainly by the private sector through Boots and Lloyds The Chemist.

Labour's current dogma of "Public good. Private bad" is not evident in their track record which has been to privatise services by calling it something else.

The core Conservative belief in privatising services is still there but tempered by the knowledge that any attempt to construct an insurance based system will be electorally disasterous.

The public on the other hand are not that dogmatic. They want treatment free at the point of use. When working for Fujitsu, I asked to be opted out of the private health scheme they ran as a matter of principle but I wouldn't have minded one little bit if the NHS hospital had driven my Dad across the road for treatment.

The principle of allowing the money to follow the patient is the right one and whilst I have reservations about some of the other proposals, that is what allowing GPs to direct funding of services will do.

Flammable Underpants

2011-03-04T08:44:00.000Z

Pete Ruhemann is suddenly a sensitive soul.

It is a fact that he used the word "Quisling" personally against the Lib Dem group leader pointing his finger whilst he said it. All pretty unambiguous you would have thought. Except he seems to be wriggling like a worm on a hook. His defence seems to be "but sir, he called us names first".

Well sort of, when I made a comment I directed it against the Labour Party as a whole, not individuals. And more crucially in my own time, not whilst on council business. The findings of the courts in the case of Ken Livingstone "Nazi guard" jibe made it clear that when not acting on council business you are entitled to freedom of expression. Cllr Ruhemann made his comment during a council meeting whilst acting in his capacity as a councillor in the council chamber. They are not comparable.

He also refers to another comment I made where Labour reported me to the Standards Board, again made in my own time and in a personal capacity using a words that the Irish Daily Star thought was fit for a front page headline.

I have thought better since then about insulting individuals without good reason, but Labour haven't.

But let's use another word that applies to Peter Ruhemann. This is from an email by Roger Sym:

From: Roger Sym [mailto:Roger@******]
Sent: 02 April 2010 14:15
To: Roger Sym private
Subject: Actions from the EC Meeting on 1st April 2010
...

d) Pete Ruhemann is producing the next Reading Banner to go to the Borough Wards.

...

The Reading Banner mentioned contained an untruthful statement about an election candidate that at the time it was made was known to be incorrect and of the sort that Labour were guilty of during the last election campaign (cf: Phil Woolas) and from Labour's own internal email we know that particular Reading Banner was written by Peter Ruhemann.

I hope Labour don't mind me therefore in my own time whilst not on council business using the factually correct word to describe Peter Ruhemann: LIAR.

Music Hall Jokes

2011-03-03T13:10:00.001Z

Yvette Cooper has the accolaid of being the subject of the only joke on the 10 o'Clock show that I've actually laughed at so it will come as no surprise to other to discover that I've turned down my personal invitation to see her in the flesh. The purpose of the visit is apparently to ask people what they want in the next Labour manifesto. You would have thought after being in government for all those years that she might have some idea what her party stood for and not have to get off the train waving a blank piece of paper in her hand.

The problem that Labour has at both national and local level is that not only did they get us into this mess, they know there is no money. Why? Because they spent it all... and even spent money they didn't have.

Now we have them harping back to a golden age, blaming the coalition for the death of Music Hall when the nation is tuned into X Factor. Worse than that, they were the ones who allowed the only buildings suited to hosting variety shows to be demolished and then bemoan the coalition's lack of support for traditional forms of entertainment.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, the claim by the more dillusional of their union chums that the country didn't vote for cuts is complete codswallop. Conservatives, Lib Dems and Labour all said that there would be serious cuts. What the coalition has had to do is live in the real world and do what needs to be done. What Labour has done is dupe groups and double count figures to promise spending they know they can't deliver on.

Even more extraordinary is the consistent fact that Labour councils up and down the country are slashing services whilst attempting to blame the coalition of having an idealogical agenda. The scorched earth policy of Labour is as cynical as it is a complete failure to face up to what they have done. There is one party slashing public services for idealogical reasons and it is the Labour Party.

Spending is not back to some Victorian level, it only back to 2006 levels. In fact in Reading the overall budget has gone up by £1.5m. If anyone can tell us what great improvements we had under Labour from 2006-2010 then they may have a point, but spending that extra money increased the gap between rich and poor, child poverty got worse and educational outcomes of the poorest got worse.

Putting Labour in charge of public money is like handing the keys to the drinks cabinet to a drunk. "Washant me Guv'. It was the pixshies."

An Open Goal

2011-03-01T15:56:00.000Z

Damn and double damn! One slip up and months of hard slog thrown away in minutes.

I'll be absolutely fair to Birmingham though. They were up for it. Arsenal weren't.

May You Live in Interesting Times

2011-03-01T01:14:00.000Z

It's a very strange situation to be in, So much being said, much of it complete rubbish and not being in a position to comment.

I can't see that continuing!