I have a confession to make. I voted for Margaret Thatcher. It is worse, I voted for her twice! I was even a member of the Conservative Party.

However my political redemption came in 1984. I was at an academic conference in Italy and I saw, what became an iconic newspaper photograph:

Source: BBC  Credit: John Harris 1984

At first glance I thought it must be an Italian newspaper – then it became apparent the war against the striking miners in England had turned very nasty. Riot police were striking out, almost indiscriminately, in this case against a miner’s wife who very narrowly avoided being struck on the head.

I had supported the control of irresponsible and insufficiently accountable unions. What I could not support was a war against entire communities, waged by a hastily assembled national police force. As a student in County Durham from 1969-72 I had learnt about the humane and fair way that the mining industry had been rationalised there.

 Communities were not told to “get on their bikes” they were retrained, rehoused and the environment was restored to green fields in a fair, planned and humane way. Families may not have liked to hear that their mines were going to close and their villages would, eventually be bulldozed away. But they understood the need and they were provided with an alternative way of life. None of this seemed to be on offer in 1984.

I joined the Social Democrats, and after the “Alliance” election voted to merge with the Liberals to form the Liberal Democrats. This became my political home because it is the party that interprets “fairness” the same way that I do.

No political party is going to stand on a platform of “the unfair party”, so in the coming election voters will have to interpret what fairness means when discussed by each of the main parties. I feel most comfortable with our definition: Fair taxes, A Fair start, A Fair green economy and Fair votes. As announced in January in the Liberal Democrat policy launch of Four steps to a Fairer Britain.

Nothing the Conservatives have said or done in the run up to this election gives me any confidence that what they think is “fair” bears any relation to anything I believe in. I am afraid that the “nasty party” is, somewhat unsuccessfully trying to dress itself in new clothes, which are no more than PR spin.

Now Gordon Brown promises “A Future Fair for All”, a message that would be more convincing if his party hadn’t promised that in 1997 and missed so many of their aspirations. Nevertheless imitation is the sincerest form of flattery so it will, at least make the electorate consider what they consider to be “fair”.

Anyone living in Lymm will be aware that much of our street lighting is, in the jargon, ‘time expired’. Many roads seem to have 57 varieties of street lamps in various states of repair or disrepair. It is clear that our street lighting has been neglected and underinvested in for decades.

When I was elected to the Executive Board, one of the first decisions I was involved in was to approve the lighting maintenance budget of about £ 500,000. It wasn’t until after the vote that I asked some questions and did some calculations. Perhaps I should have done that before the vote, but there wasn’t any more money whatever my results.

It turns out that Warrington Borough Council is responsible for about 26,000 lighting columns, each of which costs on average £2000 to replace. That is £52 million pounds worth of equipment being maintained with a £ 1/2 million pound budget. I challenge anyone to make that work, I calculated that that is enough money to keep only about a third of our lighting stock working.

I started to look around at what other authorities have done and found that some, Leeds in particular, had used the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) to provide the funding for new more eco-friendly energy efficient lighting to replace their worn out energy greedy stock.

 I don’t like PFI, nor do Liberal Democrats generally. It is a way of hiding public spending, passing the cost onto future tax payers and in the end paying more. Unfortunately under the present, and the last, government there is no alternative. In fact the government offers PFI credits, a subsidy to encourage PFI deals.

When our new head of highways, David Boyer arrived in post, I mentioned my concern about street lighting to him and the initiatives I had heard about elsewhere. He has followed this up and the Executive Board approved an expression of interest in a PFI funded project to update Warrington’s lighting. As worn out lights are highest on the priority list much of Lymm should benefit.

We heard this week that our application has been successful. The Department for Transport has provisionally allocated £ 45m of PFI credits to enable Warrington to upgrade street lighting. We now have to put in a final proposal and the deal needs to be approved by the Executive. However, at last, there appears to be a way forward that will stop the lights in Lymm going out

I have had a letter from the officer dealing with this matter to tell me that the proposal will be going to the Traffic Committee on a date yet to be fixed.

Since completing the table of responses two more survey forms have come in strongly in favour of the double yellow line proposal.

However it is clear that the issue which most people are worried about is the speed of the traffic on Booth’s Hill Road. Vehicles coming into the village from the west (from Warrington) are most likely to be speeding. Vehicles leaving the village accelerate as they pass the end of Highfield Road.

Double yellow lines will remove parked vehicles so those coming out of Highfield Road will have a better view of the traffic coming in and out of the village. However objectors to the scheme, and those wanting other measures as well as double yellow lines, are concerned that the absence of parked cars will encourage cars to speed up earlier and could make matters worse.

It will be up to the Traffic Committee to hear these arguments and decide whether the scheme goes ahead or not. It is very important that both those who want double yellow lines and those who have doubts are heard at the committee so that a sound decision can be made.

However one thing that most respondents seem to agree about is that the A56 running through residential parts of the village needs additional traffic calming measures to ensure that the 30 mph speed limit is respected so that residents. visitors and cyclists are not put at risk.

I will make sure that everyone who has expressed a view is told of the date of the Traffic Committee as soon as I know when it will be.

A new group of volunteers is working hard to bring the Youth Club building back into use. ClIr. Bob Barr says, “I welcome this because the only way to get new community facilities for people of all ages in Lymm is to show there is a demand. Space in all the other centres is often booked up. I wish this group well and I am pleased that the Property Services Department at Warrington Council is working

with them to make this possible.

 In the future

The longer-term future of the Youth Club Building is under review because the Borough Council has a legal obligation to ensure the best use of Council assets. The building itself is reaching the end of its useful life and can no longer be justified on such a central and attractive site. If the community makes full use of the building, over the next few years, ¡t will be much easier to make the case for a new facility in the future.

[ This item first appeared in the Autumn 2009 edition of FOCUS – an update will be posted later this month ]

Thank you to the 17 residents who returned our survey sheets about the proposed parking restrictions on Booth’s Hill Road, at the junction with Highfiled Road, last Sunday and the 10 of you who replied on-line. Here is a summary table of the results.

The proposal for going ahead with double yellow lines immediately is supported by almost half of you, and a further quarter favour double yellow lines with additional traffic calming on Booths Hill Road. A significant number of those favouring the parking restriction have experieinced near misses due to traffic speeding along Booths Hill Road which they couldn’t see clearly.

Almost a third either do not want double yellow lines, or would prefer to see alternative traffic calming. A number of those objecting to the double yellow lines have suggested strongly that the absence of parked cars may encourage cars to drive faster on Booth’s Hill Road, making matters worse

I have passed these responses to the Borough solicitor Tim Date and hope that he, and the director of Sustainable Transport, David Boyer, will take another look at the proposals.

Before going ahead, the proposal, associated risks, and alternative solutions to this problem should be dicussed with those residents who are most affected. If there is still disagreement the matter should be passed to the Traffic Committee for their decision.

Incidentally, the Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy defense, that  adequate notice of the proposed restriction was provided by placing a notice in the Warrington Guardian and on the odd lamp post is unaccaptable. It took me and Ian Marks little more than an hour  and a half to ensure that 130 homes in the vicinity of the proposed restrictions were leafletted and informed of the proposal. In future Council officers should do the same.

This announcement appeared in the Warrington Guardian on the 31st December and time is running out for residents to make their views heard.

 It has come to my attention that some householders on Booth’s Hill Road and in Highfield Road were not individually mailed a copy of this proposal. If you have any views, for or against the proposal, it is vital that you write to the Borough Solicitor, Tim Date, as instructed on the notice.

 Please bear in mind that only traffic issues or issues of due process are relevant. So if you know of accidents or near misses that would have been avoided with this measure, or you feel you have not been adequately informed about why the measure is proposed or what alternatives have been investigated these are all valid reasons to write in.

 Do not bring in other matters such as the potential impact on the price of your property which are not valid Traffic reasons for supporting ot objecting to this proposal.

If you don’t want to write, just fill in the survey on the left and we will tell the Council what you think.

When a General Election is coming up, or at times of national crisis, anyone who is politically active and aware should check to see whether their chosen allegiance is still appropriate for them. Under our electoral system those who decide to switch their vote, in constituencies which have a sufficiently close balance of votes between the major parties, have a massively disproportionate effect on the outcome of the election. Warrington is just such a constituency.

I am very happy to see that I will not be switching my allegiance, I will be campaigning more strongly than ever for Warrington South to return  Jo Crotty as the Liberal Democrat MP for the constituency.

How can I be so confident? It is because Nick Clegg has published the principles that will underly the party’s election manifesto – Four Steps to a Fairer Britain. I urge everyone to read it, particularly if you voted for Helen Southworth, the somewhat ineffectual New Labour MP who has decided she has had enough of Parliament and has abandoned the seat. I think you will find the political realism and commitment to fairness you might have hoped the current government would deliver in Nick Clegg’s principles.

Labour have now chosen a candidate to fight the seat – a serious policy wonk called Nick Bent. Rather than choosing a local candidate they have chosen a Manchester and London based lifelong politico, who should at least make for an interesting election.

I told you all a few days ago about my wife’s very unfortunate experience while buying a car. It hasn’t been recovered yet so may be lost for good, or may return in a state we will not want to buy it in.

However, in order to tax the car we needed an insurance certificate. Our own insurer would take a couple of days to turn that around, but they have a scheme with car retailers where they will give anyone seven days insurance in return for the opportunity to quote for the policy and will provide a valid insurance certificate by fax.

Even though we are already insured with this company, we had to take advantage of the offer to tax the car. Imagine how surprised we were when our own insurance company was quoting us a price which is almost £200 cheaper than they are currently charging us. To be fair this was for a stripped down form of cover with a high excess and no frills. Nevertheless when I checked I found we could save over £100 with our own insurers for cover comparable to what we have now.

It has clearly become normal business practice to overcharge existing customers so long as they remain captive and don’t ask for a reduction. Banks leave savings in accounts paying next to no interest, utility companies don’t offer the best tariff, insurance companies and phone companies don’t offer the deals available to new customers. Sadly the only way to avoid this, as a customer, is to check, check and check again. If you don’t have access, or are not confident using the Internet this isn’t easy. If that is the case it is a good idea to get a friend or relation to help you.

And where does all this overcharged money go? To shareholders, and in political donations to parties willing to allow companies to continue exploiting us…

Source

The Tories clearly intend to fight this election by blaming Labour for the budget deficit. Nobody disagrees that our national deficit and debt are serious issues that the next government will have to address, but is it fair to blame Labour?

David Mowat and I had a brief discussion at the 2007 local election count. I suggested that National Debt was substantially below what was left by the Tories in 1997, he claimed it wasn’t, it was higher. Neither of us had the facts, but now, two years later, I have found them, and they come from the newly independent Office for National Statistics which is regulated to ensure its political impartiality.

The graph shows that in 2007 I was right, and the Tories accusation that Labour didn’t put money aside for a ‘rainy day’ was wrong. Labour paid off National Debt for its first four years in government and then borrowed, they would say prudently, to invest in hospitals, schools, universities and transport.

While that investment may not always have provided the best value for money at least it was there. I remember the worn out schools, inadequate hospitals and clapped out railway system the Tories left at the end of their period in office. I have no faith in the Tories’ ability or willingness to protect these vital public services.

The graph also shows the shocking extent of the bail out for the banks. If you remember the queues outside Northern Rock branches, imagine what it would have been like if that had been every bank. Imagine if your money stopped coming out of the cashpoint and your savings disappeared. That was the cataclysmic situation that our government and most other governments in the developed world faced when the modern banking system was in danger of collapsing

Weakly regulated international financiers, who benefited from the deregulation encouraged by Mrs Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, had invented means of lending money backed by assets that didn’t exist. Real people borrowed that ‘imaginary’ money to buy overpriced houses and consumer durables, that didn’t turn out to be all that durable. So as consumers spent money that wasn’t really there, often on manufactured items from China which were cheap enough to keep down inflation, a day of reckoning had to come. The graph shows how devastating that day of reckoning has been and how much the government has had to put into the banks to prevent collapse. The recession triggered by this disaster has inevitably led to much higher spending in addition to the money the government had to lend to the banks.

Politicians will oversimplify and distort this story. So far only Vince Cable has been straight with electors about the nature of the problem and the difficulty of resolving it. If ever there was a national disaster that called for a government of national unity, this is it, and neither of the old political parties that rely on passing power between themselves every decade or so, is offering that. A vote for the Liberal Democrats is the only vote for real change, I hope I will convince you of that in the coming months.

 Happy New Year

 Bob