Full Council 4 - going through the motions

Should money from the sale of Council houses be spent on affordable homes?
The first memory of politics came as child in the early 80's when my parents were invited to buy their Council House.  It was a Conservative government and the then Labour party were opposed to such things.  A Labour canvasser knocked on the door and told my parents that they were doing a terrible thing as they would be taking an affordable home away from the next family who needed it.  My parents were quite offended by this.  

They took the view that if they carried on renting the property they would be living in it, so no one else could.  If they purchased it, they would be living in it so no one else could.  It would make no difference to anyone else whether they bought it or not except if they purchased it, the money could be used to build new council homes for the next generation.
Whether they were right or wrong,  council houses were sold on a massive scale and the rest were eventually transferred to Housing Associations.  As for all that money from sales, where did it go?  In simple terms, it ended up being invested, some in land to provide future housing, such as Manydown (you can't have a council meeting in Basingstoke without saying Manydown) and the rest in, mostly Government bonds, the interest from which part funds Council Services.
So in principle the motion was very sensible, it would seem right and just that the money from council house sales should be used for its intended purpose.  However in practical terms, doing so would mean the Council having to raise Council tax to make up for the lost interest, which has a hint of reckless about it.
Remembering that right now financial investments pay out less than inflation, it may be that building new Council houses would give a better and more stable, as well as socially useful, return
I supported the motion as it was worth a committee looking in detail at the implications. However the motion was blocked by the Tories.
Bus stops - for good.
Some motions result in action, they ask the Council to something within its power.  Others are more like public displays of frustration.  This fell into the latter category.  A motion from a borough Council demanding something of a bus operator and a County Council could simply result in them turning around and saying 'no'.  

It may not change anything, but it is important the local Council publicly put on record its anger at the way bus services are, over many years, annually culled without proper scrutiny.
At the moment you pay for buses.  You may never catch one, you may have a bus pass, but you still pay.  The bus company say that lots of the routes they run lose money and they only continue with subsidy from the local council tax payer, the more loss making routes we want to keep, the more the operator wants you to put in.
I wouldn't want to pay extra Council tax just so stagecoach can run an empty bus.  And If we were being honest how many times have you seen a petition signed by 200 people to save a bus and thought if just half those people actually used the bus on a regular basis, it would not be under threat?  Equally Stagecoach must make a lot of money from those peak time services that connect residents with there place of work which balance out the less used service that is critical to the small number that use it.
The problem I have is every year Councillors from all parties ask 'how many people use the service you are cutting?'  The response is normally 'that is commercially sensitive information'. How can it be - Stagecoach have no competition!  

As a matter of principle you have a right to know how your money is being spent, regardless of who is spending it.  The public, or at least their elected representatives, should have access to the records of any organisation that receives public subsidy.  
As mentioned at the start, it may not lead to any meaningful change in the relationship between the bus operator and those elected to represent their customers and financial backers.  I would have preferred a more constructive motion, but couldn't disagree with the principle of the motion and supported it.  
Manydown Again
I supported the motion that tried, once again, to get the large piece of land that was purchased for housing to be considered for housing.  No surprise that the Tories blocked it, including the Tories representing Chineham and Bramley, the area that will house a major development area as a consequence.  Apart from one Basing councillor (who was suspended for not doing it), the Conservatives have made it quite clear that they'll put party before people every time.  It is becoming clear that the only way  the people of the Loddon Valley can get any kind of justice is through the ballot box or the Courts.

  

Full Council 3 - Council Tax Discount

An annual event is discussing the level of Council tax that should be paid by the owners of empty properties.  I have blogged on this before (probably every year since the blog started)

The Tories always say - The council tax is a charge for services.  If no one is living in the property they are unlikely to use the same level of services, so are entitled to a discount, currently 25%  (though one tory even asked this discount to be increased!

The Lib Dems (and Labour say) - All the streets get cleaned, pavements and road need repairing, the street lights are on, the police and fire brigade respond and bins are checked to see whether they need emptying whether a home is occupied or not.  The other issue is the Councils (including County, Police, Fire Service) need a certain amount of money to run services, this means people who live in their one home have to pay more so those who can afford to have a spare empty home can have a discount.  It fails the test of fairness.

Of course, those with an empty home could choose to rent it out or choose to sell it.  They could leave it empty, but they should not be rewarded for doing so.

The issue that annoys Labour and Lib Dem councillors is we have a shortage of homes.  What sort of country leaves families in temporary B&B accommodation while family homes sit empty.   It is this argument that Tories try to avoid.  They are always banging on about trying to stop house building and yet fight against a tax change that would encourage empty homes back into use and reduce the new builds needed!

Empty homes are a national scandal and it is good that a net 21,000 have been bought back into use in the last year and the number of empty homes has reached a 7 year low, there are still far to many.

Consultation is already underway to give councils the option to remove the discount on short term empty homes, unless the owner is deceased or in care.  They are also consulting on allowing councils to charge a levy on long term empty promises.  

 

The government is paying out £19million to Councils next year for bringing empty homes back into use after the Liberal Democrats pushed for including the New Homes bonus to include empty properties.

There is also a £100m additional funding negotiated by Lib Dem Andrew Stunnell to help Councils and community groups turn empty properties into affordable homes.

In 13 years of government Labour did try.  They introduced Empty Dwelling Management Orders EDMO’s.  As of November 2010, these had bought just 40 homes back into use.

I am looking forward to working with the Labour group to implement the Liberal Democrat policies, but I still think the government should do more such as making sure that renovations that bring an empty property into use are eligible for the same VAT rates that a new building would get.

Sadly, here in Basingstoke and Deane we are at the mercy of Tory majority which means common sense failed and owners will get a discount for leaving much needed homes empty.

Full Council 2 - Councillor Allowances

I was disappointed that councillors were unable to build a consensus on this issue. There is a risk that in a desperate attempt to appeal to voters that you enter a bidding race and after a long debate find yourself paying to sit in the chamber!

In way of history, there was a consensus that councillors were the wrong people to set their own pay. Consultants were asked to review both the basic payment all councillors get and the 'special responsibility allowances (SRAs)' that committee chairs, cabinet members and group leaders get. The consultants came to the conclusion the existing basic rate was to low and gave a mixed bag of increases and decreases for the SRA's. Again everyone was in agreement that it would be wrong to have a rise in basic pay when all the staff are seeing salaries frozen. The consultants also suggested where, based on their study, certain SRA's were to low there would be a back dated payment.

Remembering that we should not be setting our own wages, the Lib Dem group agreed with the proposals, however opposed the £7k back payments as those post holders had agreed to take the post on the old terms and if these payments were for 2012/13, then a back payment was unjustified. (the Tories accepted this bit)

We also noted that the Chairman of Human Resources committee was set to receive £5504 a year as SRA for this post. Although other chairman get this rate and the HR committee no less important, it is only  scheduled to meet 4 times a year (other committees meet 8+ times). In fact in the last year it met on 3 occasions and these meetings lasted a total of 7 hours. Although I appreciate the chairman may have some preparation responsibilities and also introduce proposals and answer questions at full Council, the public could not be blamed for thinking the chairman is getting over £785.00 an hour for sitting at the head of the table. This is ridiculous. I couldn't get the Tories to support this.

As for Labour. Well they appeared to be in a confused position*. They didn't want us to set our own wages and oppose the current structure. They wanted an outside body to set the wages, but then dismissed their proposals in favour of the existing proposals they didn't support in the first place. What was odd is Labour, the party more responsible for the financial chaos than any other, was the only party that voted against cutting to cost of councillors.

We ended up following the proposals without the back pay which will save tax payers £15,000 a year. I am satisfied that the HR chair next year has had sufficient warning that the public would probably feel they should not draw the whole salary.

*the Labour group say they have consistently felt that councillor wages (even if they are wrong) should remain for the life of the Council plan.  As the Council basically has a 3 year rolling plan (and thus never ending) how does that work?

Full Council part 1- The bombshell

A delayed round up of last weeks full Council starts here, (due to the festive holidays it may take a while)

The Leader Andrew Finney (Conservative) resigned. Due to the Basingstoke Town football club consultation I missed his speech, but understand that his decision had been heavily influenced by the way debate in the chamber had become increasingly political and all too often polite discussion had been replaced by personal attacks.


Given the current Tory majority, we were always going to have a Conservative leader. If I had to pick a Tory to lead it would probably be Cllr Finney. Having met him in meetings away from the chamber, he is friendly approachable and would prefer to build consensus on many issues where possible. 


Although I disagree with many of the decisions he has made, I would not question his integrity or passion for public service. 

It seems he didn't enjoy the most political point scoring that has appeared, mostly from Labour since they became opposition at a national level, but his own side didn't exactly keep to local issues when the last government were being pelted and certainly not innocent to the charge of dragging down debate to a lower level.


There are difficult budget decisions coming up and the tory group he was leading have, in my view, made some errors in judgement over the LDF process and Manydown in particular, which could lead to legal action from campaigners.  I don't believe for one moment that Andrew has anything to hide, but when you stake much of your time, energy and reputation on a a role of public service for little reward and face a barrage of criticism for doing so, there is a strong chance you'll wake up one morning and wonder 'why do I bother?' I guess this is what has happened.

Was the media's EU failure even greater than Cameron's?

There's been much coverage on the EU treaty, Cameron’s veto and Clegg’s disappointment, but for all the coverage, little detail, little proper journalism and it has left the public in the dark.

Polling shows that people are generally pleased that the British PM ‘stood up for British interests’.  Ask the same polled public  ‘But what does it mean?’,  ‘What were these interests?’,  ‘What was so offensive about the EU proposal?’ and the polling would probably show the largest percentage in the ‘don’t know’ column.

A quick look at the BBC website and there is little in the way of detail, just the recycled line from Cameron. 

There is mention of new rules that mean national governments must have sensible budgets that don’t threaten the stability of the European economy again.  Not sure what is so bad about this.  If it prevents governments borrowing at a time of boom and plunging Europe into a debt crisis again when the economy dips it has to be good.  The Coalition  (and Labour) have recognised that the UK deficit needs to be cut, this just means the rest of Europe has to take the same path the UK has taken.  In other words it simply stops governments going a bit mad, so a good thing.

Another line is that national budgets should be shown to Europe to make sure they are sensible.  This obviously flows from the first thing.  How can you check a budget is sensible if you don’t look at it.

Perhaps this was the problem?  But as the UK government are dealing with the deficit and set sensible budgets why should we be worried? 

Of course it is the same old problem of governments, they will take your DNA, try to make you carry an ID card, scan your number plate, track your emails and watch your every move on CCTV.  When you challenge this they say “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”. 

When you ask a government for information, such as MPs expense claims, you have a four year fight and have to go through the courts!  If the government can watch me without my permission why can’t the EU can watch the government?

The only other thing I could find was this Tobin tax (or Robin Hood tax) where financial transactions are subject to a levy.  Now if you polled people, they would probably support this to a greater degree than they supported the veto that may have prevented it! 

With the UK’s big financial services industry the British government will be the big winner.  Would it make us less competitive?  Well probably not.  If banks need to trade in the EU and all countries were charging the same rate of tax, why would they re-locate? 

Let’s not forget that most of the European banks have either been (or may need to be) bailed out by their governments and could now be put under pressure to trade within the 'treaty area', which will be most, if not all, the EU countries except the UK.  Far from saving the city of London, we may have seriously damaged it with this ‘veto’

The other favourite line is 'the UK government made reasonable demands’.  Again the media have just recycled the official line, it is not clear to me what these demands were. 

Of course what may be reasonable to some, is not to others.  But for 26 heads of state, both left and right wing to unanimously agree that our demands were unreasonable is unusual to the point of suggesting the governments claim is unbelievable. So what were these reasonable demands.  Once again we're told not detail just words such as 'safeguards', either the media can't be bothered to get the detail, don't understand it or feel the British public can't be trusted with the truth as it might distract them from the views of the papers owner!  (the government in the BBCs case)

What we don’t know is;

Whether Cameron’s poor result was the least worst option.  Could he have done any better than failure?

And what the real implications are of his veto?

What seems more certain;;

if Cameron’s intention was to stop the EU setting new rules, he appears (at the moment) to have failed, these rules will happen anyway and we will have no influence over it.  Cameron got a poor result.

And in the absence proper journalism and biased reporting, the public are left at the mercy of government spin and that can’t be good.  

A victory for the Lib Dems and common sense

I have blogged previously on the 46% price hike for households buying both a residents and visitors permit HERE.

Cllr Parker challenged this when it was discussed at committee stage, we have since written to the cabinet and this week spoke at cabinet.  Thanks to Lib Dem pressure, the portfolio holder announced that plans to increase the residents permit for this year were scrapped and that the new charge for visitors permits was going to be at a lower rate of £5.

The net effect of these changes are as follows;

	Current charge	Original proposal	New proposal
Resident only	£24	£25 (4%)	£24 (0%)
Residents and visitors permit	£24	£35 (46%)	£29 (21%)
Visitors permit	£0	£10	£5

The Council have also agreed to waive the visitors permit fee for residents over 75

I still think the Council could find a fairer approach and I have proposed some that, accept the need to charge for visitors permit to cover the administration cost, but would result in a fairer 4% increase for most residents. 

However we have won significant concessions, once again, it is only the Liberal Democrats who will stand up for the large number of residents in Eastrop and Brookvale who are spared the higher ‘town centre tax’.

Note:  To my knowledge none of the Labour Councillors representing Norden have never publicly opposed the original increase, perhaps they agreed with it or they were relying on Lib Dems to the hard work for them, but the good news is, thanks to Lib Dem action, lower charges will apply to schemes in that area as well.

Clarkson versus Croydon Woman

Away from the pension strikes (which I’ll mention later) and the euro crisis, it was Jeremy Clarkson and the you tube film of ‘Croydon woman on a tram’ that caused debate last week, but who was worse.

Clarkson said striking public sector workers should be shot in front of their families.  I don’t think he actually wanted this to happen, but it could be added to the long list of stupid comments made by the Top Gear presenter.  He was forced to apologise and would have gone home to count all the publicity points he scored from his outburst.  It is what Clarkson does.  You only have to read his books or watch him on TV to know he is ‘shock jockey’.  If you want a carefully considered, well thought out arguments then Jeremy is not the man who’s views you seek.  Of course he has the right to his opinion and is free to speak it, but could have found a less offensive way.

Croydon women was little different, she has a view, not very well thought out or carefully considered and chose to tell a bus full of innocent people what her view was.  Of course we don’t know her so well, maybe this is what she does and is well known in her street for behaving this way.  In the long term she’ll probably get an agent who will negotiate a place for her on ‘strictly celebrity big brother get me out of desperate Croydon housewives’, with a ‘the only way is Croydon’ spin off on one of those satellite channels desperate to get noticed.  She may, of course, apologise.  But her fate in the shorter term is likely to be far harsher than Mr Clarkson’s.

Perhaps the big difference between the two is Clarkson knew why people were striking, they had all chosen of there own free will to strike.  Croydon women didn’t know whether everyone on that tram was non British or whether they chose of their own free will to live in this country.  I am sure some were bought here by their parents, some were born here, some may have sought asylum and many would have been British.  She does have the right to her opinion and the freedom to express it, but could have found a less offensive way.

I was personally more shocked by Croydon women, but if she was worse, it probably wasn’t by much.

When is a job not a real job

According to Sheila Gilmore a Labour MP from Edinburgh, the answer is – when it is in a supermarket.  I must admit I was stunned by her remark.  At a time when getting any job is difficult, it seemed very out of touch to effectively say that hundreds of thousand of hardworking people didn’t have a proper one.

It was by chance that last Monday I flicked through the channels and caught a debate on BBC Parliament about apprenticeships.  Ms Gilmore’s criticism was that the governments investment in creating jobs was not that good if it simply created jobs in supermarkets.

Supermarkets have their weaknesses.  They are accused of crushing local business, price fixing, swallowing up land and killing town centres and competitors alike, but the reality is they provide a service the vast majority rely upon.  And to their credit, in my experience, they are good trainers.  They are happy to employ people without the highest academic qualifications and will also promote staff because they’re good at what they do, not just because they have a degree.  It is possible to join a supermarket stacking shelves and end up running a superstore several years later with hard work, natural ability and a bit of luck. 

Universities aren’t for everyone and  the ‘start at the bottom and work your way up’ approach to careers should be a welcome and encouraged alternative in any business.  

Next time Ms Gilmore MP stands in the queue at her local supermarket and the light flashes and that queue becomes the slowest, it may not be bad luck, it may be the cashier wants to give her time to reflect on her comments.

In any case an MP is the worst person to suggest supermarket staff should get a proper job!

Why I couldn't support the strike

I am a public sector worker.  My pension is among the many facing changes due to government proposals, but I didn’t agree with the strike action.

I am not a member of a union (see below).   It is disputed that the strike action was inappropriate given negotiations are ongoing, but it was not that swayed me.

The fact is I need more money for my retirement. Not through greed or any desire for the gold plating that public sector pensions don’t have, but because I will live longer (statistically at least)   

The pot of money intended to support me for the 5-10 years of my retirement will probably need to support me for 15-20 years.  It does not take a genius to work out that I need to put much more money in, work for a lot longer or get a much smaller pension.  Lord Hutton (a former Labour minister) was charged with working this out.  

The government is proposing a bit of each as the fairest approach.  They have offered some security for those closest to retirement age and made the scheme more redistributive, those on low incomes will be see little change, the top earners will face the biggest pension reductions.

It is telling that none of the main political parties are backing the strikes.  They know they would be making the same decision if they were in power.  Even top Labour politicians have been restrained  (only the less able Labour badge wearer jumping on to the opportunity bandwagon, do you really think they will reverse the changes if they return to government?  No, of course not)

The alternative is to expect future generations to pay for public sector pensions.  Is that really fair?  They will have our £1.5tn debt, work even longer, with no final salary pensions of their own, a housing crisis, a knackered planet and not have the plentiful supplies of cheap fossil fuel that we’ve been used to.  Is it fair to expect them to pay for my pension as well?

Frequently asked question (or seen banner), Are public sector workers paying for the bankers mess?

No.  the financial disaster created by the bankers (that Labour didn’t regulate) has nothing to do with people living longer.  Labour may argue that the economic growth created by the bankers funded increased spending on the public sector, but it was Labours decision to spend this money and borrow even more rather than plan for a downturn.  We can and should blame the bankers and Labour for much, but I don’t believe this one is their fault.

My private battle with unions

I believe unions could be a cause for good, especially in the public sector.  For those in the private sector you can normally take your skills to a similar organisation if you feel your employer is not offering the rewards and conditions you feel are fair (though unions still have a valuable role).  

An experienced Social Worker, Nurse, Police officer etc is pretty much stuck with the same employer and a good union is important.  Despite that I do not belong to a union as they are not always upfront with members when it comes to 'the political fund'. 

I remember joining a Union many years ago and saying I didn’t want to contribute to the Labour party.  At first I was told the union didn’t contribute, then after further digging they accepted they did.  They then told me I had to opt out of the political fund in writing. 

I asked all my colleagues in that work place whether they paid the political fund, they all did and were appalled to find they were paying money to Labour (the union literature said the political fund was paying to promote the unions interests in Westminster).   

Eventually I was told I had to wait until January if I wanted to join ‘opted out’.   

I appreciate the historical link between the trade unions and Labour party, but it is historical and recruits should be invited to ‘opt in’ rather than have to ‘opt out’ of paying funds to a political party.  Until that happens I can only see unions primarily as fund raisers for Labour rather than defenders of the workers.  What would really impress me if the unions were open, up front and, off there own back showed some respect to there members and changed the rules off their own back.

If you are a member of a union, you are probably paying the Labour party, whether you support them or not.  If you’d rather not, ask your rep about opting out let me know how you get on.