Thursday 15 December 2011

Environmental

Two little snippets today on environmental issues. One local, the other on the big stage.

CORY Environmental Services

A few weeks ago Cornwall Council announced that its waste collection contract for all of Cornwall had been won by Cory Environmental Services.

Now in the West of the Duchy, in fact, the old Penwith, we have ‘wheelie bins’. Now much as I moaned about Penwith this has proved to be one of the best things ever done, no black bags being ripped open overnight by rats/seagulls, rubbish being blown down the street, street cleaning costs down.

So you can imagine how upset I was to hear on the grapevine that Cory had no way to collect from ‘wheelie bins’. This was taken up by a Cornishman newspaper reporter and the answer appeared in today’s paper.

“Rubbish in west Cornwall will have to be put into black plastic bags before you put them into the ‘wheelie bins’ from April. This new rule means that Cory will be able to sort all waste in the same way once it is colleted”.

So good news we still have the ‘wheelie bins’. The rest just does not make any sense.

TESCO

A quick question for those of you that travel the high-ways & by-ways, when was the last time you saw one of these, think about it?



Some time ago, yes.

Well there is a reason for this TESCO’s decided to drop this marketing opportunity some time ago and now uses plain white lorries. The reason, well I think, the thinking goes, that if you see a lot of TESCO lorries going up and down the highways you just may think about “food miles” and just how many of our lorries are on the road, so its better to let people think that the food gets to our stores by magic” Good environmental thinking there then.

Saturday 10 December 2011

New Head OF HMRC

Most of the blogs I write are about local matters, but on this occasion I’m writing about something that is happening at a national level, but may have an effect on the thinking of those in power at a more local level.

So here goes, Her Majesties Revenue & Customs, HMRC,  today it was announced that the new head of HMRC was to be Ms Lin Homer , Ms Homer will take up the post in 2012. A top job for a top person, maybe?

 Sir Gus O'Donnell, head of the civil service, welcomed the announcement and said 'a wealth of experience working in the public service in central and local government' would allow Homer to excel in her new role.”

Well Ms Homer does have a lot of experience working in Local Government; she qualified as a lawyer in 1980 whilst at Reading Borough Council. In 1982 she joined Hertfordshire County Council where she stayed for 15 years, rising to Director of Corporate Services. She then left to join Suffolk County Council as chief executive in 1998. After four years at Suffolk, Homer went to be the chief executive of Birmingham City Council in 2002.

Birmingham City Council, Chief Executive, 2005: That rings a bell, Chief Returning Officer, Ms Lin Homer. Election year.

 John Hemmings (then a Lib Dem councillor and now MP for Yardley) launched an election petition which led to the first Election Commission in one hundred years.

Hemming’s allegations were that the Birmingham Labour party were involved in the corruption of the postal ballot rules on an industrial scale. Several Labour councillors were accused of serious electoral malpractice.

The allegations were really beyond belief. It appears that the Kashmir war was being re fought on the streets of Birmingham. Postmen, carrying postal ballot forms were threatened with having their throats cut if they didn’t part with the goods. Heads of households, acting like latter day moguls, were signing off whole families to vote Labour whether they liked it or not. Two were found, late at night in a factory unit in front of a table groaning with postal ballots, pens and tippex.

The night of the council elections were a total fiasco. Ballot boxes were lost or turned up too late to count. After the elections a couple of Tesco carrier bags full of uncounted votes were found in a very senior council executive’s office. He resigned.

Needless to say the Election Commissioner look a pretty dim view of it all and made the famous remarks that in electoral terms Britain had become, “a banana republic”. He ruled that Labour had been responsible for, “massive, systematic and organised postal ballot fraud.” But some special words were reserved for the Chief Returning Officer, also the chief executive of the council. She had, “thrown the rule book out of the window”. Very sensibly our Lin thought it was time for a career change.

So her old mates in Labour helped her out. She became the new head of the UK Borders Agency.

How strange that she left to become Permanent Secretary at the Department of Transport this year during the holiday season, when it appears the rule book had been thrown out of the window by relaxing checks on those entering the UK.
Lin, is now to be made the Chief Executive of  HMRC.
Just what do these people have to do to get the sack?

This just goes way past “Peter Principle”

Thursday 1 December 2011

Cornwall Council, Mr Lavery

A second post in one day about Cornwall Council, I posted earlier today about officers running the council, contrary to member’s wishes and now we know where this culture comes from, the very top.

Mr Kevin Lavery, ex-Serco golden boy, ex Newcastle City Council, parachuted in to run Cornwall Council on the tidy sum of £200,000 plus benefits a year.

Has taken the (very well paid £16,000) post to be returning officer for the election of a Police Commissioner for Devon & Cornwall, this despite the council telling him not to, for political reasons. Mr Lavery of course does not have to worry about this as he runs Cornwall Council PLC a small branch of SERCO, a non political organisation, with just a small board of 10 to keep happy.  So ignoring his employers he has taken the job on a personal basis.

So it’s a bit like you or me doing a bit of bar work in the evenings to make ends meet?

Mr Lavery, had to attend an interview for the job in London on the 1st Sept, a Thursday. Now in my world this could be a bit tricky, to take a day’s holiday or maybe pull a sickie, sneak up to London quick interview and back.

Now I don’t know how Mr Lavery, got the day off from his real job, but he’s not too bright, because he then charged the cost of getting to Newquay Airport on that day to his employers, 40 miles for travelling from home to Newquay airport and back, as well as taxi fares totalling £25.50. The reason on his expenses claim form was: "Flight to London – interview re Police Area Returning Officer."

Now I say he’s not to bright, because even the lad who washes the glasses in the pub where I do a bit of work on the side, isn’t stupid enough to do that.

It’s not yet known if Mr Lavery, also charged the cost of the flight to his employer, but I hope we soon find out. His employers said that they would have to ask Mr Lavery but could not because he was "out of the county" and unable to be contacted.

Unable to be contacted, can’t afford a mobile phone then or may be just run out of credit, now that sounds more like it, the lad who does the washing up has used that one.

Sainsbury's Sec106, Benefits to Penzance

Last night Penzance Town Council had a Special Full Town Council Meeting to discuss the Section 106 agreement and Food / Other goods split regarding Sainsbury’s Supermarket to be built on the heliport site.

[Section 106 of the Act, in conjunction with DoE Circular 5/05, allows for Local Planning Authorities and persons interested in land to agree contributions, arrangements and restrictions as Planning Agreements or Planning Obligations. Applicants can offer such agreements unilaterally or negotiate and agree them as support for their application to make it accord with local planning requirements, but without some of the rigorous controls of Planning Conditions under s 70(1).
It relates to monies paid by developers to Local Planning Authorities in order to offset the costs of the external effects of development. For example, if a developer were to build 100 new houses, there would be effects on local schools, roads etc., which the Local Authority would have to deal with. In that situation there might be a Section 106 agreement as part of the granting of planning permission. The developer might agree to make a contribution towards the provision of new schools.]

The Town Council are rarely if ever consulted on these agreements, but this time we were to be consulted because when this application came before the Strategic Planning Committee at Cornwall Council part of the resolution proposed and passed was that Sainsbury’s had to negotiate with Penzance Town Council & Ludgvan Parish Council on the retail split and sec 106. (Something I wrote about in a previous blog…. Here).

So all is good……… Sadly no, in fact a very big NO.

The first big problem is what the resolution of Cornwall Council was….?

Having viewed the web cast of the meeting many times (available here   at 2hrs 52mis to 2hrs 57mins)

My reading of this is “to pass the application with the condition that Sainsbury’s negotiate the retail split with Penzance Town Council & Ludgvan Parish Council proposed by Cllr A Wallis, and the section 106 agreement added by the chairman of the meeting, and a failure to do so, the application was to return to the Strategic Planning Committee”.

The Minutes of the Meeting do not reflect the above resolution.

Representatives of Penzance Town Council & Ludgvan Parish Council were asked to a meeting (in Camborne), by officers of Cornwall Council, the purpose of the meeting was to consult, the Town Clerk and two members attended along with two members from Ludgvan. Two officers of Cornwall Council, Sainsbury’s representative, a representative of JBP planning and a rep from British International Helicopters, were in attendance. The meeting was not productive, with Cornwall Council and Sainsbury’s making it very clear that they were not prepared to vary their original proposals. The Councillors and the Town Clerk were then put under pressure to make a decision on behalf of the Town Council but where steadfast in not doing so, and in fact had no mandate to do so. Remember this meeting was meant to be about consultation not negotiation.

A long way to get to last nights meeting, in fact this was the first chance the Town Council had to discuss the Section 106 agreement, the details of which where only made known to the council the day before the Strategic Planning Meeting.

So what are we talking about….


SAINSBURY'S SUPERMARKETS LTD & BRITISH INTERNATIONAL
HELICOPTER SERVICES LTD
PROPOSED MIXED USE DEVELOPMENT ON LAND AT PENZANCE HELIPORT
PA10/08714
S106 HEADS OF TERMS

Transportation

Item 1. Dedication to Cornwall Council of land with access rights through the Sainsbury's site for the purposes of constructing a Park and Ride facility (250 spaces).
Financial contribution to Cornwall Council to cover the cost of constructing the Park & Ride. (£1,200,000)

Item 2. Financial contribution to Cornwall Council to cover the cost of constructing two double length bus stops on Jelbert Way and pedestrian links to the Sainsbury's site before the store opens for trading. (£213,000)

Item 3. Financial contribution to subsidise a reduced price fare stage on public buses between the application site and Penzance town centre. (£75,315)

Item 4. Financial contribution to cover the costs of linkage improvements on A30 Eastern Green including a new at-grade crossing of A30 Eastern Green with the works to be completed before the store opens for trading. (£225,000)

Item 5. Financial contribution to cover the cost of replacement signage on the A30 Chy-an-Mor roundabout as required by the Highways Agency. (£20,000)

Town Centre

Item 6. Financial contribution to cover the costs of setting up the Penzance Business
Improvement District. (£35,000)

Item 7. Financial contribution to cover the costs of free or subsidised parking events for town centre car parks between September and May inclusive. (£152,000)

Item 8. Advice and support to Penzance Town Council on a strategy to promote the vitality and viability of Penzance town centre. (£15,000)

Item 9. Free in-store advertising space for town centre businesses.
A055583/SC   17 October 2011


A total of £1,935,315 that is a lot of money, all of the above was negotiated with Sainsbury’s by officers of Cornwall Council without any reference to any elected member and what a good job they have done for the highways department.


Item 1 & 2.  A Park & Ride for Penzance cost £1,200,000.

£1.2 million to turn a car park into a car park? Does Penzance need a park & ride? I was not sure about this so I sent an e-mail to the officer concerned to ask on what data was the decision made that Penzance required a Park & Ride (remember Cornwall Council are spending £9.5 million on a Park & Ride at St Erth just up the road), a week later I got a reply, well I didn’t in fact, I got an e-mail saying something else, so by return I sent a further e-mail asking the same question, 16 days later and no reply, I submitted a Freedom of Information request,( FOI’s cost you and I £350), why can’t you just answer an e-mail. Still waiting.
But this money is just for the building the Park & Ride, where are the funds coming from to operate it?

Item 3. £213,000 to build a bus stop.

WHAT, and that sum does not include any land cost, this is going to be some bus stop.

Item 4. Subsidise a reduced price fare stage on public buses between the application site and Penzance town centre. £75,315

Cheap bus to get you to and from their Supermarket. Big benefit to the town.

Item 5. Linkage improvements on A30 Eastern Green £225,000.

A roundabout on the A30 so you can get to our store.

Item 6. Replace signs on roundabout. £20,000

Going to have to anyway, they say that there’s a heliport down the road.

Town Centre

Item 7. Financial contribution to cover the costs of setting up the Penzance Business Improvement District. (£35,000)

Penzance has not decided if it wants to be a Business Improvement District. If it did this money would go to Cornwall Council.

Item 8. Financial contribution to cover the costs of free or subsidised parking events for town centre car parks between September and May inclusive. (£152,000)

I’m not sure what this means, but I do know that the money goes to Cornwall Council

Item 8.  Advice and support to Penzance Town Council on a strategy to promote the vitality and viability of Penzance town centre. (£15,000)

Thanks guys.

So let’s get this straight of the £1,935,315 for Penzance 98% goes to Cornwall Council and you tell us how to spend the other 2%.

Not such a great deal for Penzance.

We had an interesting meeting, I’m not going to post here (yet) what our plans are, as I wish to keep Cornwall Council Officers as much in the dark as they like to keep us. But I can assure you this is going to run and run.

Update: Penzance Town Council did return to the table and you can read  the outcome  Here 

Friday 18 November 2011

Penzance Harbour

I left last nights Public Meeting in Penzance ( I should say before the end, I could take no more) in a state of despair, totally saddened by what I saw and heard. People, who I know in other aspects of life, as sensible, intelligent and forward looking, were sat in their trenches taking pop shots at each other.

The Penzance Harbour Management Board in a genuine attempt to engage with the people of Penzance came to the table with no preconceived ideas, no ready made set of plans, no options A B or C in fact they came with a genuine open mind, which is much more than a lot of the audience did.

After a brief introduction and a presentation as to where we are now, the chairman asked for questions from the floor, did we get questions? No, did we get sensible ideas? No, what we got was one after another, making statements as to why their scheme was the only scheme that would work, demands that could not be met and people with totally closed minds.

It was obvious that most had not listened to one word that had been said, and were just waiting to pronounce on their own entrenched position.   

Just what is wrong with these people? What went on in the past is just there, in the past, forget it, its over, move on, this is a different situation.

What we have is a limited amount of money, if you call £8 million limited, but more importantly a limited amount of time, the money is only available from Europe in the time frame set out, and looking at what is happening in Europe, there will be no more for a very long time, I suspect, if the past was left there, this would be seen as an opportunity, a chance to enhance the harbour area, to deliver better facilities to those using the boat service to the IOS, secure the future of the harbour for all users, look forward, re-engage the town with the harbour. This should be seen as the start not the end, an opportunity.

 My only hope is that now they have got it out of their systems, they can see this as the opportunity it is, that there is going to have to be some compromise and that they do have a genuine opportunity to have a positive input to the final scheme, because if not the future will be very bleak indeed.  

Sunday 6 November 2011

Who runs Cornwall Council?

This past week I spent no little amount of time watching the web-cast from County Hall of the Budget Overview and Scrutiny  Committee meetings and what a sham they were.

When this single overriding Council was first formed, I had some fears that too many of the 123 Councillors elected to serve, had little and in some cases no experience of  the work of councils, and that officers would dominate, sadly after two years this would appear to still be the case.     

The budget papers given to councillors by the officers were poor, some had pages unnumbered, other councillors had no papers at all, the whole thing was an utter shambles, and remember this is the Council budget for next year, in these papers and numbers, somewhere, are the plans of which non revenue earning, non-statuary services the Council are going to try to offload to anyone else foolish enough to want to run them, hidden in here are the black holes were guesstimates of revenue income are little more than a officers dream.

Yes, many of the councillors did try to ask questions (when allowed by the chair) and yes, they did get some answers from the portfolio holders and officers, but the answers in most cases were not to the questions asked, and many have posted Blogs at their frustration: Cllr Andrew Wallis   Cllr Jeremy Rowe  Cllr Jude Robinson

But my anger is not with the Officers, it’s with the Councillors, where was your passion, your anger? Anyone who has heard me speak at a Town Council meeting on a subject that I feel passionately about, will agree that I have a bit of a style of my own, and I will be the first to admit that sometimes I overstep the mark, I will also state that I never hold a grudge against opposing speakers, in fact I welcome it, it’s only when you have an argument that you find your true feelings, but if I see a spade as black, trust me you will hear about it. I’m also the chair of committees, so I do understand the issues and would not enjoy chairing me.

So, faced with a Budget without the details, no papers, poorly prepared papers, a failure of officers to answer questions, what can a councillor do?
Now I should state at this point I do not have a set of Cornwall Council Standing Orders for the conduct of meetings, but this has never stopped me in the past.

 Stop the meeting. Assert your authority. You are the council not the Officers.

As Chair, I would have stopped the meeting, asked the officers to leave, and asked the committee what they wanted the Officers to present to the meeting and when.
As a member I would have proposed to the chair a resolution for the above to take place.

Win or lose the vote, the point would have been made, we are the council, we pass resolutions, you carry them out.

Now I know this is easy to say, sat as I am in my living room on a sunny Sunday morning, but at some point in the very near future the councillors are going to have to take some control of the council and officers are going to have to carry out the will of the council. Until that time comes we have a council of only 10 members and a group of officers running Cornwall, against the will of members.


A case in point….  Graham Smith

Thursday 27 October 2011

Christmas Lights & More

I was interviewed live (when I say live it was 7:30 am so marginal) on Radio  Cornwall about Christmas Lights in Penzance yesterday morning, and prior to the interview I spoke with one of the assistants, who asked me a series of questions I think as a bit of a trial run,  one of which was ‘how can you justify spending £18,000, as Penzance does, when there are cuts to social services etc', well first thing the town does not have responsibility for the areas that the question was implying, but that was not the point, so I gave the question a little more though and this is what I came up with:

All government be it national, regional or town & parish has only one job to do, and that is to make life better for people, quite simple really, this is achieved in a verity of ways, at a national level we have a National Health Service no one would argue that this makes peoples life better, the Police Force this makes life better for the vast majority, welfare, state pension, road & rail network and so on.

At a regional level its Social services, local roads, fire service, schools, planning waste disposal etc.

At a town & Parish level it’s different again, we do not have to supply any big services in fact we have no statuary duties to do anything, so the small amount of money that we have is used to truly make life better for people, here in Penzance we run a Park with children’s play area, an Art Gallery, skateboard park, we support The Golowan Festival and many others, we run allotments, we organise events or assist others with theirs and we help with Christmas Lights. All things that directly make life better for different groups within the community.

So, why all the arguments?

I think it’s because a lot of Councillors and MP’s have forgotten the reason they are there, to make life better for people, we currently have a financial crisis, and cuts have to be made we are told, so look at what you are doing apply the test is this making life better for people, do all levels of government at this time, need to be spending millions on peripheral things, that would be nice to have or would benefit few, but are not making peoples life’s better? That’s not to say they cannot be done at a future date, its just now is not the time.

So to end Penzance will have Christmas Lights, not just because the town Council is paying but because of all the volunteers in Mousehole & Newlyn who do a brilliant job in raising the money for the lights in those parts of the parish, to the traders in Causewayhead who pay for the lights in that part of the town and this year the Town Council are organising a big event for the switch on Saturday 26th November from 11 am – 6.30 pm, we will have Bands, Choirs, Christmas Craft and Produce Market, Lantern Making and lots, lots more, because it makes life a little better for people.

Friday 21 October 2011

Tesco's and Sainsbury’s

In the council chamber at the Tory led Cornwall Council today the outcome of two planning applications were heard by the Strategic Planning Committee with two different outcomes.

Tesco's  were applying to extend their store in Penzance, Tesco's have to some extent fallen foul of their own success, in that when they built the store they underestimated  the popularity of the store and now need to extend, I’m sure also that they have an eye over their shoulder at the Sainsbury application, currently Tesco's are limited to the range of goods they can sell at the store, being restricted pretty much to foodstuffs, expanding would enable them to increase the range of other goods on sale (more on this later), the problem for Tescos is that the only way to expand was onto a greenfield site Ponsandane field. Penzance Town Council had voted against the application. Greenfield site building by supermarkets is always going to be a hard one to win and in due course the application was refused.


Sainsbury’s application was different, a new store on a brown field site, (I know the heliport is actually a green field) so the issues on this application are different, it may come as a surprise to some people (including a few councillors) but building a new supermarket next to an existing one are not grounds to turn down an application, that’s a commercial decision for the applicant, the main point of discussion was what the store would sell, what! you may be thinking, but what the store intends to sell is very important as it will affect its impact on town centre shopping and this may well be grounds for refusal, as mentioned above Tesco’s range of goods is restricted by size, this will not be the case with Sainsbury’s,  and they wish to have a 60/40 split, that’s 60% of floor space given over to food retailing and 40% to other goods, its these other goods that have the most impact on town centres, there was a lot of discussion over the numbers with Cllr Andrew Wallis, Helston South & Porthleven, http://cllrandrewwallis.blogspot.com/, determined to get the number down to 80 – 20 which would be a very good result for the town centre, at one point asking the Sainsbury’s rep if he would be happy to lose the application by not going to this 80 – 20 split, this rather took the wind out of the rep’s sails, in the end saying he could not answer. Another area for debate was the Section 106 agreement (or planning gain) this is something negotiated with the applicant to offset their impact on the location they are building in, this had been negotiated with the applicant by officers at the Tory led Cornwall Council without any consultation with the Town Council, the information of the detail only being available to the Town Council the day before the meeting, it so happened that the town, by good luck, had a planning meeting that night, voting in favour of the application, but voicing concerns over the fact that 85% of the planning gain in value was going into a roundabout (to allow access to the store) and other highways work, not a lot of gain for the town in that. The town decided to send a member to the meeting to voice these concerns and Cllr John Pender did a very good job in presenting the towns position.

A lot of quite honestly in places poor debate followed, the problem with a single council is that a committee like this one, has many members who have very little if any knowledge of the town they are making decisions  about, after 4 hours debating the two applications, Cllr Wallis proposed that the application be approved on the condition that Sainsbury’s hold discussions with the Town Council regarding the food retail split and the section 106 agreement, before the Officers had a chance to realise what was happening the resolution was passed.

Now I should say at this point that the town council was also so surprised that we have asked for a copy of the precise resolution, because if it is as detailed above it’s a landmark decision, giving the power to the town council to negotiate directly with the applicant on two very important issues, something that the towns have never had a chance to do.

I look forward to the trail of Cornwall Council officers from planning, highways and legal making their way to Penzance Town Council to watch as the Town negotiate. This will be localism in action, but not I expect as the Tory led Cornwall Council and its officers ever imagined.  

Thank you Cllr A Wallis, you may have just made a precedent that will give localism its true meaning.

Wednesday 19 October 2011

Toilets Part 2

As feared the Tory lead Cornwall Council Environment and Economy Overview and Scrutiny Committee today voted to recommend to the Cabinet that those toilets recommended for closure should be closed.

Penzance will lose the following:

Penzance Penalverne
Penzance Clarence Street (St Clare)
Penzance South Pier
Penzance Superloos (Bus Station, Railway Station & Harbour Car Park)
Penzance Newlyn Fore Street
Penzance Morrab Gardens
Penzance Wherry Town
Penzance Mousehole Harbour

But this by no means the end of the story, the document produced by the working group also states:

This would potentially allow the remaining 134 public conveniences to stay open, if they were all managed and operated by Town & Parish Councils.’

So if the town & parish councils refuse to manage and operate the remaining toilets these will also be closed. The Tory lead Cornwall Council will then wheel out its media machine to ensure that Town & Parish Councils get the blame and not them.

Throughout the document produced by the Tory lead Cornwall Council its plagued with inconsistencies:

If a Town or Parish wishes to take over a toilet or toilets then
there is possibly a TUPE situation and the Town or Parish Council
will need to take the current operative over.’

This means that if there is a cleaning contract in place the Town or Parish will have to continue with that contact.

‘It is estimated that Town and Parish Councils cleaning costs would be significantly lower than those incurred by Cornwall Council.’

These two do not seem to go together, and wasn’t the reason to create the Tory led Cornwall Council in the first place ‘The savings of scale the new council will bring’.

‘There is no statutory obligation for Cornwall Council to provide public conveniences’

This is true, but there is also no statutory duty to: Run an airport, give £50,000 to Plymouth's bid to host world cup games, set up a solar power farm, PR, web casting, stadium for Cornwall et al


Already protest groups are gearing up to fight the closures, but please, please remember it’s not your Town and Parish Councils it’s the Tory lead Cornwall Council.

p.s. You may not want to visit a beach in St Ives next summer, they have lost all their beach toilets.

Tuesday 18 October 2011

Toilets

Toilets, after dogs, the one subject area that as a councillor I try to steer well clear of, but the plans of the Tory led Cornwall Council to close the majority of public toilets in Penzance will be moving this most contentious of areas to the top of the political agenda for some little while I fancy.

This could well turn the Battle of Battery Rock into nothing but a small skirmish, in the Tory led Cornwall Councils flapping around to cut as many services as it feels it can get away with, this could well be the one that will be remembered and lead to their downfall.

In Penzance the plan is to close EIGHT (8), yes you read that correctly, they plan to close 8 public toilets, this number is only matched by St Ives with 7, it makes you wonder what we have done to upset them.

As a comparison our capital Truro 4, the largest town in Cornwall St Austell 1, Camborne, Redruth And Pool  3 between them, Falmouth 1. In total the plan is to close 114 of the 248 public toilets in Cornwall. I’m so pleased we are all in this together, but even more so in the west.

I will not list here the full list but one that I will comment on the one listed as ‘Superloos’, to those not familiar with Penzance these are the toilets in the block at the Bus Station, Railway Station and Harbour Car Park also known as ‘The Transport Interchange’, right next door to the abandoned Tourist Information Office closed by the Tory Led Cornwall Council, so whether you come to Penzance by Train, Bus or Car you will be welcomed, well actually you won’t be, by closed toilets and  Tourist Information Office.  

The Tory led Cornwall Council hopes that the towns and parishes will take over the running of the toilets proposed to be closed, on the figures listed by the Tory led Cornwall Council without cleaning costs, the cost to Penzance Town Council would be £87,527.91 now that would really blow a very large hole in the towns (in comparison with the Tory led Cornwall Councils) budget or we would have to raise the council tax, but you have already paid for this service once to the Tory led Cornwall Council, so in effect you would be paying twice, the same applies to even the smallest parish council losing the only public toilet in the village, the cost to them will still be a very high proportion of their budget, I’m so pleased we are all in this together.

I’m sure I will be writing about this again, until then keep them crossed.

Saturday 8 October 2011

Lies, Damn Lies and a failure to understand.


I like numbers, you can do a lot with numbers but if you don’t do it properly they will make you look silly.


‘Every Little Helps’

In a local supermarket, which shall remain nameless as they all do the same, a pack of Ham which a few weeks back cost £1.98 is today still £1.98, no change there then but if you look at the pack and have a good memory you will see that a few weeks ago it weighed 142g and this week it weighed 132g in fact 7.5% less for your money,

A national news headline in September

‘Almost 400 job vacancies advertised by Jobcentre Plus go unfilled in Penzance the second highest total in four years.’

Not quite the full story. I went straight to the website for Job Centre Plus Penzance where only 280 jobs are listed, of these 91 are classed as regional including Bristol, the Midlands and North East. 44 are temporary, 2 self employed, of the remaining 131 only 54 are full time.

“A lost generation”

The grim stats are that about 750,000 18-24 year olds are unemployed, a rate of about 18%.
But on raw numbers, the 1990s were higher despite a smaller population. Fact.
Was that also a lost generation?
The youth unemployment rate is higher now. But the rate is not the unemployed share of all youths. It's the unemployed share of youths excluding those in education or otherwise unavailable for work.
So, oddly, if more go into education, the rate goes up, since the unemployed are a bigger fraction of the smaller number that remains. On raw numbers the 70s, 80s, & 90s where worst.

Thursday 22 September 2011

Acting & Pantomime


What a week in my escapist world, two casting readings, two parts.

The first is playing Richard in ‘Tea for Two’ for St Peters Players, Newlyn, for performance in November. Tea for Two is a comedy/farce; I told you that there is a cross over with being a Town Councillor.
Richard is drunk throughout the play, this is not a piece of type casting as I’m almost tea total, in truth coffee total as I don’t drink tea, not that I have anything against a drink.  I just don’t do a lot of it, I think this comes from the fact that my parents where publicans as I was growing up, enough to put anyone off for life. It also gives me an advantage in that being sober on nights out I have spent a lot of time observing drunks.
For all of that a nice part to play.

St Peters Players have been going for fifty years this year and is one of a very few amateur drama groups still going in West Cornwall, but we as with all groups have problems recruiting new members, I wish I knew the answer but its very hard to attract new young members.

You would think that with so many at college studying drama a few would like to get a little on stage, in front of an audience experience, the song and dance groups seem to do well but not the non musical groups.

The second reading was with Rosudgeon Pantomime, a group I was asked to help with last year, after many successful years the past couple had not gone so well for them, a small group of us from St Peters went along to help, and great fun it was too, I had not done pantomime for a good few years, after playing dame for many years. Pleased to say that all went very well, with good audiences for all the performances.  

It was great to be cast as the baddy ‘Sheriff of Nottingham’ for last year and ham it up I did, Alan Rickman would have been proud. Most of the smaller children in the audiences should be coming out of therapy by now.

Pantomime is a fantastic medium, for the vast majority of people it’s the very first live theatre that you get to see, I know it was for me and gave me a life long love of live theatre of all kinds.

So was looking forward to casting this year for ‘Beauty and the Beast of Rosudgeon’ and even better to see a lot of new faces, young and old. Doing a bit of re-writing of the script so that all the youngsters get at least a line or two, what part did I get……… The Queen!
Yes its back to being the dame, talk about being type cast.

Tuesday 20 September 2011

Penzance Town Council Meeting Part 2

Penzance CCTV

This was the other item that raised passions last night, and a right good old ding-dong it was.

A bit of background, at the moment the CCTV in Penzance is not active and has not been for a little while, various reasons for this, cost of an upgrade, no monitoring contract in place, move from district to County.

A group of West Cornwall town councils (St Ives, Hayle, Camborne, Helston & Redruth) have now got together to form a new partnership, with County paying for the upgrade. The question is does Penzance wish to join this group.

This has been discussed in committee over the past few months with various questions being asked regarding cost, contracts and so on and meetings held with the other towns.

The item came to the General Purposes Committee, of which I’m chairman, for a final time in this cycle of meetings.

Now I should state at this point that I’m not a fan of CCTV, I question it’s usefulness as a crime prevention measure, I have issues over right to privacy, displacement of crime, that it can lead to lazy policing i.e. less on the beat as we have CCTV, cost, an over reliance on CCTV etc.

At the General Purposes Committee, questions where again raised and a recommendation passed that, following receipt of the information requested, consideration of the issue be deferred to the next Full Town Council meeting.

There where five questions to which we had asked for further information, two where a bit technical the other three where:

  1. Information regarding the number of recorded crimes in the period that the cameras where not in operation compared to the previous year.
  2. An assurance that CCTV footage was not sold or used for television purposes.
  3. Availability of police resources to follow up on reported incidents covered by CCTV.


The debate starts, and first to his feet is yours truly, starting with the replies given to the above questions.

  1. There was no answer, this is the norm, I have never been able to establish any real data for CCTV’s effectiveness, not even in the limited scope of this question.
  2. Cornwall Council will remain the data owners and controllers. All data will be subject to the guidelines in the Code of Practice and CCTV Operations manual. This covers the use of data and restricts its use for specific purposes – these do not include media use.
     
    I’m not sure what this answer means, restricts its use so can’t be used in the media or does not cover the use of the data by the media. Our town clerk was not sure either when he received it, so he asked for further information and got a lot of legal jargon for his trouble, from this it would appear that Cornwall Council can very possibly sell the data to a TV company. Well the argument goes do nothing wrong and you have nothing to fear. Consider this, lady in Market Jew Street falls through railings on the Terrace, shopping goes rolling down the street, great fun, sold to TV station so all can join in the fun. But in the background is yours truly, on the pavement having a laugh and a joke with Alec Robertson (Leader Cornwall Council), that could well be the end of my political career and/or marriage, and I’m sure it would not do a lot of good for his political career either.
  3. A Sergeant and other officers have received training and are able to interrogate recorded images for evidence and down load it.

    This was not what was being asked. Personal experience has shown me that if an incident takes place, in this case a broken shop window, that may have been caught on CCTV, unless it was seen at the time by the sole operator monitoring the CCTV from the six towns, then the police do not have the resources to review the CCTV images. So even if CCTV catch the offence, unless it is a major incident, which very few are, CCTV is worth nothing.     


Much debate now follows, one of our dual hatters (Penzance Town and Cornwall Council councillors) even managing to get comments about the comfort of the new children’s swing seats, into the debate, in a previous blog I did mention she can be a bit random, others speak in favour expressing the view that the cameras will increase safety in the town and if not safety, the fear of crime would be decreased, then reading my briefing notes I notice this paragraph:

Within the next two years, Cornwall Council would be providing a centrally monitored service from a new purpose built building.

   What for CCTV? No for everything Fire, Police, Ambulance is this true?

Now we come to the tears & laughter I promised in part one.
I’m on to my feet at the first sign from the Mayor that I can speak.
With tears rolling down my cheeks, not sure if they are of fear or laughter I should say, the very thought of Cornwall Council even contemplating a joint control room is just too much for me, I’m sure there are some very good officers at Cornwall Council, as I’m sure there are some very good civil servants, but the record of government bodies and IT is not good to say the least, as today’s news only confirms Cost of control room(strangely, I even mentioned £500 million, not a bad guess)  and demand that should Penzance enter into a contract for CCTV it ends before the centrally monitored service is introduced , with the town making no commitment to continue.

After all the above we come to the vote, does Penzance Town Council join the CCTV partnership, and this could be close, and it is 8 – 8.

This should now go to a casting vote of the Mayor, this is not a good place to be in, in two terms as Mayor I had to use my casting vote only once and you can never win.

Town Clerk to the rescue, there had been a second proposal earlier, to not join the CCTV partnership, as this was a direct negative to the first vote it would have fallen, if the first had been in favour, as it was not in favour it still stood to be voted on, second vote, not to join, vote  8 – 7 against 1 abstains (saves Mayor).

Penzance joins CCTV partnership.

What a night.

Penzance Town Council Meeting


In truth Full Town Council meetings can be pretty dry affairs, just ticking off resolutions passed in the committees, where most of the work is done, but last night we had a Full Town Council that had it all, tied votes, some of the finest pre election manoeuvring, tears & laughter.

So what could have brought about all this, on the face of it very little, yes the main item did concern the link to the Isles of Scilly, but not anything too controversial, some background.

 After the collapse of Cornwall Council’s funding bid, Andrew George and Penzance Town Council along with other groups got together to rework a new bid, Cornwall Council where invited to join but declined, this bid will be lead by the Town Council, to this end a committee was set up, of which I was a member, and within this a working group.
Meetings have been held, work done and on the 1st September a meeting was held, attended by the Mayor and Deputy, reps of Penzance Seafront Forum, The Isles of Scilly Steamship Company with DfT and the Department for Communities and Local Government. Meetings have also been held with the Isles of Scilly council and chief executive.http://www.scillytoday.com/2011/09/20/council-building-bridges-with-penzance-over-route-plans/
We now move to the next stage of the bid process which is the formation of the Penzance Harbour Scheme Management Board, this is what was under discussion last night, it should be noted that there is broad agreement within Penzance Town Council for this to go ahead, but who was going to be on the board, that was the question?

The proposed make-up of the Board was the Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Chairman of the Finance/Property Committee, Chairman of the Planning Committee and one other councillor, three members of the Penzance Seafront Forum, a representative from the Isles of Scilly Steamship Company, one rep from Cornwall Council(if they wish, officer or councillor), a representative from the Department for Communities and Local Government.

So five members from Penzance Town Council (as lead body), three from Penzance Seafront Forum (a wide based community group), Isles of Scilly Steamship Company, one rep from Cornwall Council and a representative from the Department for Communities and Local Government (funding body).

Now we come to the problem, one other councillor, straight to her feet is one of our two dual hated councillors (Penzance Town and Cornwall Council councillors). Proposing that she should be the one, not sure of the reason given, it was a bit random and I was losing interest, and that the Deputy Mayor should be replaced by her colleague (the other twin hatter), who had graced us with her presence for the first time for some while, that woke me up, I should have known something was up, a two pronged attack, but why the sudden interest ?

Then it hit me, this should nicely be coming to an end in an election year, now call me a cynic if you want, but I’ve been doing this for a good few years and I can spot a bit of pre election manoeuvring a long way off. Our two County Councillors are going to save the harbour.

Well this kicked off a right old debate, during which I managed to keep my own council, should the Chairman of Planning be a member as he’s also the chair of the Civic Society, (probably a third of councillors are involved with other groups, certainly the active one’s), and so on.

How did it end? Well councillor one, got part of her way and got the seat, the Deputy Mayor retained his seat, her comrade in arms talked her way onto the group also, but non voting, sure that won’t be mentioned in the election blurb.

I admire their cheek, but I am still not sure, whatever their motives that having two councillors from County on the board is such a good thing.