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The end of June 2008
It's been a strange month. A year ago the floods did more damage to the city and its residents than anything since the Siege of Gloucester in the Civil War. The Citizen got a letter from Gordon Brown reassuring it about all the wonderful things that he was going to do to help the city as we recovered from the floods. So what's happened since?
- The flood defence budget for Gloucestershire (with the Environment Agency) has been cut by £5m
- The much trumpeted 110m Euros (for the whole of the country and Northen Ireland) of EU funding was reduced to £31m. Now it's been increased again, but no-one has the slightst idea how the money will be divided up or what we will get for Gloucester.
- Glos CC have a £25m road repair bill and £16m of government funding. Mind the gap!
- Almost 5,000 people in the county are still not back in their homes
- Sir Michael Pitt's report on the floods was issued
What did the Pitt report conclude?
That the county council had done a great job, that the emergency services worked brilliantly, especially the Tri Service centre, and that responsibilities for eg water courses needed clarification. There were c90 specfic recommendations for the government. I look forward to seeing some real progress on them - not just more talk from Mr Dhanda.
So how is the Labour government doing?
It has just lost its deposit in the Henley by election, coming fifth.
What about Gloucester - what's coming up which is important?
There are some important decisions. First up is the decision on Podsmead Post Office. Will it be kept? I'm no Mystic Meg but I can't see it surviving without cutting back the current service. The government doesn't believe Post Offices have a future. We want to make sure they do!
Next up is the decision on the proposed Regional Spatial Strategy. Why does this matter? Because the government's regional strategy wants lots of new houses in places like Whaddon, on the outskirts of Tuffley. I will be watching this carefully with Cllr Gerald Dee.
Then we have road tax - national issue but relevant to us all. If I sign up enough people sign my petition.
And in September we will see how Mr Dhanda has spent his allowances....
Are consultations worth the time and money?
Mr Dhanda recently answered a question on this in Parliament. They have had about 75 consultations this year: but don't know in how many of these the original proposal was supported and in how many the public view had its say and a different answer was achieved. Mr Dhanda said it would cost too much to find out .. I say this is ridiculous. We should be able to find out the analysis on such consultations. And I'm afraid the public will just assume this is Labour government just not listening. And they're right.
Richard
Bank Holiday 26th May 2008
Are things getting worse in Gloucester?
The numbers of homes being repossessed are up sharply: as are the numbers of people seeking CAB and other advice on spiralling household debt. Construction companies are laying people off and skilled workers (plasterers etc) are finding work hard to come by. As earnings falter, and tax and petrol costs rise (see earlier Thought for the Month), we all need to cut back on spending. The banks may be refinanced (by us taxpayers) but they're passing on the problem to our retail sector, businesses who can't get loans to expand and individuals who can't get loans to get on the housing ladder. No wonder that the Persimmon housing project on Barnwood Road is mothballed. It won't be the last in the county. If you didn't believe this before - and preferred the easy Labour propaganda that everything was fine, trust them, they knew how to handle things - well please do now. Things are bad and will get worse before they get better: and New Labour has no idea what to do.
What happened on the 10% tax rate Labour got rid of - haven't they re-introduced it?
No. But they have done a messy u turn. We were told that change was unnecessary (Brown) and that changing the budget was impossible (Darling), and then suddenly that they would compensate the over 5 million people who lost out. So the starting level for tax was lowered. That backpedalling on the end of the 10% tax rate cost the country over £2bn of more debt, is only valid for a year and won't help more than a million of those who lost out. Not a brilliant manoeuvre, and one that should never have been necessary.
Was this in able to win the Crewe by election?
That would be the cynic's interpretation. But if so it didn't quite work - Labour lost with a spectacular swing of 17% swing from Labour to Tory.
What did Gloucester MP Parmjit Dhanda say about this, given that Crewe shares some characteristics with Gloucester?
He said - like every government minister - that Labour should listen and learn.
And what has he learnt?
Well let's see. Perhaps he should start with the brochure he circulated about 18 months ago - '50 reasons to vote Labour'. Most were dodgy then, hardly any are valid now. The only reason Labour gave in Crewe to vote Labour was because the Tory was a 'toff'. Voters, it turned out, were looking for a bit more substance. But I expect Mr Dhanda, when it comes to a general election, will resort to similar tactics.
What does he offer of substance?
The day after the Crewe by election Mr Dhanda's column in the Citizen pleaded for the Urban Regeneration Company to move the railway station about 500 yards to the Railway Triangle (ie beside main line to Cheltenham/Bristol). There was no mention of what benefits this would bring - and the only major one is rail operators commiting more services to Gloucester. Has Mr Dhanda got this reassurance? If not what is the point of the expensive proposal?
And what would the cost of doing this be?
Gloucester would have to negotiate the land from Network Rail, build a new station, introduce new signalling, create a new road off Metz Way for access and introduce a connecting bus service between station and town (too far to walk, especially for elderly passengers). The cost would be many millions.
Who does Dhanda think will pay for this?
He proposes the creation of a new Business Improvement District (BID), another New Labour initative which has recently been compellingly damned by Labour MP and businessman Geoffrey Robinson when it was introduced in Coventry as a complete waste of businesses' money. Dhanda also proposes increasing the local business levy by the council in order to raise money for the new station. Dhanda is simply not listening to business if he believes that local businessmen want a new station at their cost and with no benefit to their activity. This is cloud cuckoo land, which is where junior ministers with no experience of business tend to live.
So who would benefit from the new station?
The only human beneficiary of a new station in the Railway Triangle without significant additional train services would be Mr Dhanda. He would bombard the residents of Gloucester with another glossy brochure, paid for by the tax payer, taking credit for another shiny new building (also paid for by the taxpayer). 'Look at what I have done for Gloucester - forward not back' etc.
Don't get me wrong: I like (most) shiny new buildings and I am a big fan of train travel (and unlike Mr Dhanda use the train a great deal every week). I just have the old or possibly new fashioned idea that public buildings should do something that makes a real difference to people's lives. There is no case for a new station without hugely improved services - but Dhanda goes for the shiny new building every time, it's so much easier than better services. If we can afford new buildings, let's have a new bus station at a fraction of the cost.
Hasn't the government got plenty of money?
It did, it raised taxes big time in 2001-5. Trouble is, that's all spent. The government is bankrupt, and the Olympics need cash (or will the government abandon this now the London Mayor is Boris not Ken?), so Dhanda won't get much money from his friends in the Cabinet.
I do anticipate an ill pitched effort to convert a school or two into a new academy before the county council elections next year. ''£25million for a new academy' he will trumpet - and let's read the small print carefully about which school he wants to close, whether the teaching will be better, and who pays when the project is over budget etc. Be prepared for the marketing pitch coming to us all soon - when something looks too good to be true, it usually is.
Meanwhile Mr Dhanda will try to get the councils and the businesses to pay for his new railway station.
Is this what he's trying with the Post Offices too?
Some Labour supporters will try and blame the county council for the closure of the Post Offices! Suddenly they have become a council responsibility. Of course there won't be any money given for this. Is it a deliberate plan? Since Labour has so few councils, it's happy to legislate for councils to deliver more services free (eg bus services for the Over 60s) while starving them of cash - and does Labour care if Gloucester city or Gloucestershire county councils fail now they they're not run by Labour? And yes the other technique is to encourage councils to take responsibility for services it doesn't want any longer (eg Post Offices). I'm afraid this government is more concerned with fighting itself and other parties to fight for Gloucester - whether it's flood defence work by the Environment Agency, road repairs by the county council or just funding for children's education: we will always lose out to the big northern cities.
What will Glos CC do?
Glos CC would love to help keep Post Offices but it also knows council tax payers can't go on paying more local tax. Flood defence and road repair work is already eating up their cash - and the money that Mr Dhanda trumpeted from the EU seems mysteriously to have dropped from 110 million euros to £30 million, and who knows what we'll get from this for Gloucester.
Meanwhile the GCC is looking at what Essex CC has been trying to do but been prevented from implementing by the Post Office not handing over equipment. It also depends on what the postmasters want to do. Some of those being closed are are so disillusioned that they may want out.
So what should the government do in this time of economic crisis?
It needs to understand that change is needed fast. Individuals and businesses have to live within their means, and for some with big debts this will be painful. It means in most cases shrinking the balance sheet short term. Government should be doing the same. Look at the adverts for public sector jobs - does anyone believe they're all necessary? Why are the numbers of ministerial advisors so much higher than they were in 1997? And why is pr spending up so much?
It should promote more about finance at an early stage so that the young don't get into the bad debt habits of the New Labour years. That's why I'm a strong supporter of the HSBC sponsored 'What Money Means' programme. It's started in several primary schools in the county.
It should kickstart activity by providing incentives and getting rid of unnecessary costs eg for first time buyers by exempting them from stamp duty. With prices in some cases 10% cheaper than a year ago there are opportunities to help first time buyers get on the housing ladder by cutting tax. And we've also called publicly for the abolition of the Home Improvement Packs (HIPs), an extra cost for the market and not accepted by mortgage providers, which have no practical value.
And it's vital that rather than strangle families on the lowest salaries by increasing taxes (ie the recent increase of their income tax from 10% to 20%), the government should be trying to find ways of helping them. Cancelling the proposed 2p hike in tax on petrol and diesel this autumn would be a good start. Almost half the cost of an ever rising petrol tank goes on tax - over 70p a litre - the highest of any other country in the developed world. Increasing taxes will only drive more people into debt.
It should reduce the ever increasing number of laws on businesses. These increase costs not least because they take time to understand and implement. The latest example of EU legislation is giving temporary workers the same rights as permanent workers, which will hit the UK hard and probably result in less temporary jobs for our young. We used to have an opt out of all this social legislation - but Tony Blair gave it away.
So what we need in Gloucester, in the county and across the country, is a government which is on the side of people and businesses - reducing taxation and new legislation, and providing opportunity.
And is new Labour and Mr Dhanda providing that for Gloucester?
We need MPs who understand what drives businesses and individuals that create jobs and pay taxes: and how the public sector ethos, freed by the plethora of new rules, can deliver better services. It is unfortunate that our MP in Gloucester has never worked either in the private sector or the civil service.
Where he seeks to save money he is disingenuous about the reasons - pretending that the regionalisation of the Fire Service Control will bring a better service, when all the evidence of the botched regionalisation of the Ambulance service has already shown us the opposite.
Where he seeks to boost economic activity this is always at the taxpayer expense - and now will be at the expense of local businesses as well - instead of providing help to private business to invest more or come to Gloucester.
Where he says nothing about controversial Labour legislation plans it's because he is in favour of it but knows residents aren't - so nothing at all said about the plan to detain people for 42 days without charge, nothing on the proposal to introduce ID cards. Nothing either about temporary workers getting the same rights as full time workers, even though this will probably mean less temporary jobs being made available.
All of this means Labour and Dhanda are letting Gloucester down. Costs are going up, tax is going up and the number of regulations and new initatives have spiralled at almost the same pace as Labour's debts.
We had to rescue the city council from large debts when electors voted out Labour's controlling party: we had to do the same with the county council debts; and we will now have to do the same with the government of the country. We'll have to rescue it from bankruptcy and help Gloucester's workers to get back on their feet and improve things for them and their families.
I've had to help turn around the company I work for when Nick Leeson made us bankrupt in 1995: it's hard work and takes time. But you can succeed: and we have succeeded. And we must succeed in Gloucester too.
May 2008
The city elections are come and gone. I am delighted that a positive campaign was rewarded with some success - a gain for us from both Labour and the Lib Dems, leaving us just short of majority control, with a higher share of the vote. It is good news that successful businessman Jim Porter, ex civil servant Gerald Dee and IT guru Gordon Taylor, one of the the youngest members of the Council, are all bringing his experience to the Council. And it is particularly good news that Yakub Pandor JP has been elected to represent the community of Barton & Tredworth.
Why are the Conservatives doing better?
I feel that working people are cheesed off.
They know that things are very tough. Inflation is higher than the government's official figure shows: good news that the cost of fridges are going down but how many do you buy a month?? Bread, milk and butter, if you can afford it, meanwhile are soaring.
Then the government costs are rising. More tax - especially if you're earning less than £18,000 and lost the 10% income tax rate: more tax on small businesses (the core of Gloucester business) and now more tax on many cars.
Some people think it ironic that as we hit the £5 gallon that the government is still charging more tax on petrol than anywehere else in Europe. And if you want to drink your sorrows away well sorry the price of all beer and cider went up sharply too..
Add to that a Prime Minister who says we should 'listen and lead' and an MP who thinks he can be photographed outside Kingsholm saying he wants to save it and then vote against the Tory motion to stop the closures - is it surprising people are disillusioned?
I'm afraid things will get worse. As I wrote in January this is an austerity year, in fact probably two of them now. China is exporting inflation now, not the other way round: earnings will shrin and lending will be scarce. The Bank of England will bail out yesterday's banking errors but the cost will be huge. Consumer spending, mortgage availability and retail sales - it'll be tough.
Keep debt low, plant veggies on any inch of garden you have, ride a bike where possible and watch out for all sorts of relaunches of Labour policies at your (taxpayer) expense (government pr expenditure - up many 100% since 1997 - is the key here). I wonder how that figure of 2.8 million people on disability benefits will alter. That's one to watch: the workers simply can't afford to pay for the students, the pensioners and then this number of disabled. There is only one way to pay for it - debt. Which is what this government is good at doing, running up a monster debt problem for a later Tory government to pay off - £160billion and rising fast.
Locally there is the matter of waste. This was used for some outrageous Labour spin during the local election - and I go into more detail on the government issues page.
Meanwhile please see the photo for April which shows Yakub Pandor JP after cleaning the streets with me. I am delighted that Yakub has now been elected Councillor for Barton and Tredworth and I know he will prove an excellent representative of all consituents in the ward.
April 2008
Here we are now in Gloucester, plunged into local elections. I did some campaigning in Westgate over this Heritage Weekend and met some interesting voters.
There was Henry Eighth, who told me his Danish wife (Anne of Cleves) was a bit of a trout, and that I shouldn't trust photographers (who'd sent him a great picture of her before they married). I asked about his other wives: 'to be honest' he replied 'I forget all their names, but I have seen one who takes my fancy, she's with the Crusaders, and you may find that Henry has a seventh wife soon..' Then he offered my son Rowland a knighthood. Assuming this was Blair's Britain, I asked how much? He said a hot sausage roll would do the trick.
I chatted up the Grenadiers who'd built the A9, General Wade's road, after the Battle of Culloden. Eight pints of beer a day was a soldier's ration in those days, when they were bayoneting scotmsen in kilts as easily as Gloucester beat Leeds. They might struggle though with the drink and ride laws of today.
Rowland handled a bren gun mounted with a 100 round belt for anti aircraft use in the Docks, not far from where some Victorian musketry was giving the Gloucester Yacht Club a pasting. The Reconnaissance Company in their desert combats of c1942 told us most people asked them: 'where are you serving now dear - Iraq or Afghanistan?'. Next door the Romano Brits were drawing with egg tempura and rubbing their hands by if not in the fire. Quite a lot of talk about how things had gone to the dogs since the Romans had pulled out, couldn't get decent underground heating any longer and the wine wasn't up to scratch.
The good news is that none of these characters - Guy de Beeson, squire in the Wars of the Roses, Captain Cook and even an aged Colonel Massey, our very own 22 year old Civil War commander - would voting Labour: all of them earned less than £18,000 in their time and so would be paying double the tax now. The bad news is that none of them have registered to vote in Gloucester at all. And then our car broke down. Still, King Henry got his sausage roll...and perhaps the girl from the Crusades, who knows...
More seriously we have the best new candidates in these elections, the best case for taking majority control of the Council and the best cause in giving the Labour Party a good kicking. Come and join us fight for a decent deal for those who work..
Here we are in Barton - Shadow Cabinet member Francis Maude, Council Leader Paul James and our candidates - Tarren Randle and Yakub Pandor. We rolled up our sleeves and cleaned up some streets - yes, a Shadow Cabinet member DOING things (5 sacks of rubbish).
March 2008
There isn't much more to be said about the horrible business of our Kingsholm and Podsmead Post Offices. The 'consultation' has ended and the decision will be announced - good lord whoever would have guessed - on the 6th May, days after the local elections.
Consultations have become a joke under this government. They have become purely a means of delaying the inevitable: and anyone who gives the wrong answer (like the Irish in an EU referendum) is encouraged to have another go and then fall in with what has already been decided and rubber stamped.
I'm trying a last ditch attack on the MD of the PO Ltd - without much optimism.
And I watch with the deepest depression our MP spreading lies that the Conservatives are trying to close the Post Offices. Does he really think that Gloucester has forgotten his posing for photos against closing: and then voting against the Conservative motion to stop the closures? Everyone in Gloucester knows what happened.
January 2008
Here's my youger son Rowly about to overtake me on the skating rink in Kings Square..
a wonderful city initiative over Christmas and the New Year.
It was good to see explicitly Christian lights on Debenhams too. I've never understood the nonsense about NOT recognising Christmas as a christian festival. Muslim, buddhist and hindu friends around the world have sent us Christmas messages, just as I send messages about Id ul Aidha or Diwali. In the case of Islam, the stories of Ibrahim and Abraham their sons and the ram are so similar that believers find they have much more in common than the other way round. So let's recognise, and be happy about, all the great religious festivals.
The other great Christmas/New Year must is a pantomine, and the GODS production of The Sleeping Beauty at the New Olympus Theatre was superb. Lots of exciting young talent, especially Will Browne and Vici Gough, while Marie Dickinson reminded us how convincing an evil part can be. It's all looking up for GODS with a bidder for the NOT who has said it wants to continue staging drama, and productions by GODS.
This would be very good news for Gloucester if it all comes through.Meanwhile New Year is a good time for resolutions (even if not kept), predictions (even if not accurate) and hopes (even if not realised). I believe in dreams - as Oscar Wilde said, 'we're all in the shit, but some of us are looking at the stars'.
So here are 16 (a rugby team and a sub) wishes for Gloucester for 2008:
- A Gloster Meteor, powered by the world's first jet engine and produced just outside the city, to be placed in Gloucester
- Gloucester to win boththe Guinness Premiership and the Heineken Rugby Cup, to be celebrated triumphantly on a bus around the city
- Severn Trent to provide a refund of water charges for residents who had to move out of their homes during and after the flooding (see December Thought for the Month below)
- City retailers to take the lead in declaring themselves plastic bag free zones and help us all to stop using them
- The city to considers a statue in Westgate of arguably our greatest defender - Colonel Massey, who led the defence of Gloucester during the long Civil War siege
- The government to drop its plans for ID cards - an unwanted, unnecessary and expensive new Labour project
- The MP for Gloucester to drop his plans for regionalisation of the Fire Control, which he plans to move from Gloucester to Taunton, recognising the damage done by the regionalisation of the Ambulance Service, and mindful that his government dropped the earlier attempt to regionalise our police force
- The Sea Cadets, aided by British Waterways, to have once again a berth in the docks and be able to train on the water here, and so maintain our tradition of links with the Navy which HMS Gloucester commemorates
- A TV series to be filmed in Gloucester, generating jobs and pride in this great city
- Plans to be drawn up for a new health centre in Kingsway and a new Armscroft Community Centre
- The % of Gloucester's recycling to rise sharply after the city council's plans for City Council plans for plastics and then cardboard recycling are implemented
- Plans for the development of Blackfriars to move forward fast, and ideas for the development for the Railway Triangle to become plans. It has sat unlovely and unused for too long.
- The government to change its way of paying benefits - so that only the people who really need them receive disabled benefits: so that there is no incentive for couples to live apart and so that mothers who want to go back to work do have an incentive. Families are the best hope for the future of our city - we need incentives to be together, not apart
- The government to stop restructuring our health and education systems. Professionals are fed up with being restructured. They want to get on with the job - patiensts' health and childrens' education, not an army of targets and paper directives. Let's focus instead on training and supporting good teachers and good doctors in Gloucester
- Banks to take the lead in helping the financial education of our young, backed by community groups, schools and above all parents
- All of us to 'waste not, want not' in a difficult year - by reusing more and throwing away less.
Thoughts on 2008
I suspect we're all - businesses, local government and charities alike - going to have to tighten our belts in 2008. The city and county councils have had the worst settlement from Westminster for many years. A cynic might think that the Labour government doesn't mind our local services getting squeezed, since they're run by Conservatives. It is odd that our MP has said nothing to support Gloucester's needs for decent funding of public services.
I believe Conservative councils can still deliver decent services without allowing the rampant council tax inflation that happened when the Labour Lib Dem run Gloucester and Gloucestershire's councils, but funding for good local projects will be very tight. So yes I'm gloomy about the macro side. Not surprising when the government and the Bank of England have fallen out, a bad sign, and to have us taxpayers bailing out over £50 billion to Northern Rock, the first bank run for 150 years - far more than our total defence budget - is ridiculous.
Old Labour would have nationalised the bank: Maggie would have protected the depositers and declared the company bankrupt. New Labour doesn't know what to do. And just as the housing market reverses, the government imposes HIPS on the sale of every house, even though morgage lenders want a separate survey. The only bit that is useful is the energy rating, which we will keep in a Conservative government and develop over time. Local estate agents agree that something needed to be done to speed up the process of buying houses: but not this, and not now.
Luckily there are plenty of good things happening in Gloucester to help offset the government's mismanagement. My optimism about 2008 comes as much as anything from how we came through last year's adversity. The city, like our rugby team, rises to challenges! Best wishes for a happy 2008
Richard
Richard Graham |
Council