Stephen Hodgson

Archive for the ‘Local Politics’ Category

My congratulations to Councillor Jill Vincent, who was elected as the Mayor of Charnwood for the council year 2010/2011 at last week’s Full Coucil meeting of Charnwood Borough Council.

Jill will make both an excellent chairman of Full Council and a great First Citizen of Charnwood. Already at last week’s meeting Jill showed she has the skills and the respect of councillors to make a great success of her new role.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to extend my appreciation to Councillor Roy Brown, who served as mayor for the year 2009/2010. Roy has been a committed and enthusiastic mayor and he now goes on to serve as deputy mayor supporting Jill Vincent in her role during 2010/2011.

There has been a lot of bleating in the last few days by Labour politicians about the role of Conservative Party Deputy Chairman Lord Ashcroft in financing the Conservative campaign since he revealed that he is a ‘non dom’ (someone who doesn’t pay UK tax on overseas earnings because of overseas heritage). Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, has even said that the idea of a non dom donating money to British politics is ‘unpatriotic‘. All this despite the Labour Party being far more reliant on non dom donors than the Conservative Party. Labour’s high-rolling non dom donors include Lord Paul, Lakshmi Mittal, Sir Ronald Cohen, Sir Christopher Ondaatje, Sir Gulam Noon, Mahmoud Khayami and Dr David Potter. Since 2001 Labour have received £10m of donations from wealthy non doms. In the same period, the Conservatives have received £5m from Lord Ashcroft.

Between 2001 and 2008 wealthy Labour non dom Lord Paul claimed £281,000 in Lords expenses. During that time Lord Ashcroft didn’t claim a penny in Lords expenses (regardless of the fact he attended the Lords).

Labour politicians would have the public believe that Lord Ashcroft has untold power and influence over the Conservative Party, especially in marginal seats like Loughborough. Loughborough MP Andy Reed has repeatedly said that Lord Ashcroft has a big influence in Loughborough (in fact, he said it again just yesterday). Last year Andy Reed even accused one local Conservative prospective MP – Ross Grant in Leicester South – of ‘laundering’ money on behalf of Lord Ashcroft!

The truth of campaign funding in Loughborough was revealed in an article in Saturday’s Independent (27 February 2010, published online in part).

The Independent revealed that just 18 percent of money spent by the Conservatives in marginal seats is funded by Lord Ashcroft, with the other 82 percent being money raised locally.

The Independent print edition even lists local party spending for the years 2007 and 2008 (combined) across the 55 most marginal seats in the country. The Independent’s findings in relation to Loughborough are as follows:

Loughborough Conservatives Total Income: £45,676
of which donations from Lord Ashcroft: £11,778

Loughborough Labour Total Income: £51,430

Loughborough MP Andy Reed also claims the Parliamentary ‘Communications Allowance’ expense. He has claimed an average of £9,348 of the £10,000 annual allowance producing and distributing his annual report. The cost of the local Conservative candidate’s annual report has to come out of general donations. That puts like-for-like spending for the time period examined by the Independent at:

Loughborough Conservatives: £45,676

Loughborough Labour: £60,778 – £70,126*

* A range is given because the Communications Allowance was not introduced until the 2007/2008 financial year

Labour politicians can complain all they like about Lord Ashcroft’s money but the Labour Party receives more non dom money than the Conservative Party and, in Loughborough, the local Labour Party has, on a like-for-like basis, outspent the local Conservative Party by as much as 53 percent. This must make Labour’s repeated local election defeats in Leicestershire even more frustrating and bitter.

David Cameron has said that if the Conservatives are elected they will change the law so that all politicians sitting in the House of Commons and the House of Lords must pay full UK tax. Gordon Brown hasn’t made any similar promise. The Conservatives have also pledged to scrap the ‘Communications Allowance’ which allows sitting MPs to produce and distribute literature at taxpayers’ expense.

My congratulations go to Iain Bentley – the newly elected Conservative councillor for Birstall Watermead on Charnwood Borough Council. Iain was elected in yesterday’s local by-election.

The full results were as follows:

Iain Bentley, Conservatives – 674 votes (48 percent)
Hayley Winrow, Labour – 452 votes (32 percent)
John Oatley, BNP – 288 votes (20 percent)

Labour’s own polling suggested that Labour would poll ahead of the Conservatives with 30 percent of the vote against the Conservatives on 20 percent of the vote. I questioned the reliability of this polling at the time and, in the event, the Conservatives saw a slight improvement on 2007 performance in this ward (up from 47 percent of the vote to 48 percent of the vote).

Congratulations once again to Councillor Iain Bentley.

In a letter to the Leicester Mercury, the Labour candidate in the Birstall Watermead by election, Hayley Winrow, shares the results of recent Labour polling in the ward:

…I and my team had spoken to over 1,000 voters in Birstall already.

I’m pleased to say that nearly 300 of them told us they wanted to vote Labour.

Rather fewer would commit to the Tories and even fewer for the Lib-Dems.

It is difficult to believe this polling is accurate and, if it is accurate, the implications are worrying.

If we assume “rather fewer” means a third fewer votes and “even fewer” means a third fewer again then the numbers released by Hayley indicate the following result on 18 February:

BNP : 36 percent
Labour : 30 percent
Conservatives : 20 percent
Lib Dems : 14 percent

As I reported on Friday, the Lib Dem nomination for this by election is invalid so the election is actually a three-way contest between the Conservatives, Labour and the BNP. The outcome of the election may therefore be determined by the decision of Lib Dem voters in the area to transfer their votes to other parties.

However, door-to-door polling by political parties is at best only semi-reliable and it is possible that so far Labour have focused their door-knocking efforts in mainly Labour-voting streets, rather than a full cross-section of Birstall Watermead, which would skew the results.

In the May 2007 local elections, the Conservatives polled 47 percent of the vote in Birstall Watermead so it is difficult to imagine the Conservative vote share dropping to less than 30 percent now, especially when the Conservative Party’s national poll rating is hovering around 40 percent.

If Labour really is now polling strongly across Birstall Watermead it certainly begs the question why Labour failed to field a single candidate in this two-seat ward back in 2007.

In any case, the possibility of a BNP councillor being elected in Birstall Watermead should certainly motivate Conservative voters to come out and vote on 18 February and I wish Conservative candidate Iain Bentley the best of luck.

Nominations for candidates for the Birstall Watermead by election closed today and the returning officer has published the statement of persons nominated. The candidates are:

• * Iain Bentley – Conservatives
• * John Oatley – British National Party
• * Hayley Winrow – Labour

This was previously a Conservative seat following a two-way fight between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats at the borough elections in May 2007 and no other parties stood in Birstall Watermead last time round. The by election was triggered after the Conservative borough councillor for Birstall Watermead, Rick Astill, decided to stand down because of increased work and family commitments.

It was initially thought by some that Labour wouldn’t field a candidate in this by election but they have defied the critics by putting Hayley Winrow on the ballot paper. I first came across Hayley via Twitter many months ago when we had a discussion about MPs’ expenses. Hayley remains a prolific tweeter with the name Haylz_Lou.

The ballot paper therefore contains a couple of surprises:- (i) Labour have fielded a candidate and (ii) the Lib Dems don’t have a candidate because of a technicality. According to the statement of persons nominated the intended Lib Dem candidate George Collingswood has an invalid nomination because one of his ten nomination signatures is not someone registered to vote in Birstall Watermead.

This by election is already interesting and nominations only closed a few hours ago!

Loughborough Conservatives were in Dishley and Hathern this weekend going door-to-door to hear people’s views about the state of the country, the current government and the upcoming General Election.

We received a very warm reception from the people we spoke to and it was particularly pleasing to find that now we have entered the year of a guaranteed election people are keen to talk about politics and express their opinions. Many people we spoke to feel badly let down by Labour on a range of issues but believe the Conservatives offer a positive change. Some people we spoke to who said they had previously voted Labour told us “never again” and said they know only a Conservative government can fix the current economic mess such as record youth unemployment.

Most pleasing of all the majority of people we spoke to said they will be voting for prospective Conservative MP for Loughborough Nicky Morgan at the General Election.

Leicestershire County Council is pushing ahead with its bid for £80m of government funding through the “Building Schools for the Future” (“BSF”) programme which will shake up education in Loughborough. The county council’s consultation options both include closing Burleigh Community College, Garendon High School and Limehurst High School. Whilst it is understandable that many pupils, parents and teachers at the schools proposed for closure will be apprehensive about major changes, the county council’s bid must be looked at as a unique opportunity to modernise and improve education in Loughborough.

Leicestershire teachers that I have spoken to about the county’s education system seem to agree that the current three-school system, which is alien to many parts of the country, is not optimal for children’s education and that it creates unnecessary costs – money that could otherwise be spent on better education resources with a direct benefit for pupils.

Attempts by campaigners (including Loughborough’s current MP) to slow down or derail the County Council’s BSF bid because of a personal preference for particular schools present a real risk to the vital £80m of funding the County Council needs in order to reform and improve education in Loughborough. This is not an opportunity that will come again.

Page 4 of tomorrow’s Loughborough Echo (15 January 2010) has a good summary of the recent events surrounding the BSF bid along with commentary from the affected schools and other interested parties. I think it’s useful to look at where different schools stand on the bid proposals:

• * De Lisle Catholic Science College – welcomes the proposals
• * Garendon High School – “shocked” by the proposals
• * Burleigh Community College – sees a fantastic opportunity
• * Limehurst High School – “extremely concerned”
• * Humphrey Perkins Community College – embraces the proposals
• * Rawlins Community College – welcomes the proposals
• * Woodbrook Vale High School – welcomes the “considerable opportunity”
• * Loughborough University – “pleased be involved”

It is pleasing to see so many schools recognising and welcoming the BSF proposals. Leicestershire County Council is undertaking a consultation with the option of submitting an online response, as well as holding a series of public meetings (meeting details on the consultation link).

The “OneThroughSchool” campaign is supporting the County Council’s bid.

I personally wish the bid every success.

I’ve just returned from the Full Council meeting of Charnwood Borough Council. The “highlight” of the meeting seems to have been a heated 45-minute debate over whether the Plans Committee would be renamed the Development Management Committee. One person described the debate and the subsequent vote as possibly the most exciting thing that has happened during his time on the council but I’m not sure I’d personally go quite that far!

It was proposed in the annual review of the Council’s constitution that the Plans Committee would be renamed to better describe what it does – which is a mixture of reviewing and approving planning applications and carrying out other local planning authority functions like enforcing planning decisions and, generally, doing what could be described as “development management”.

Labour councillor Geoff Gay proposed an amendment to scrap the proposal to rename the “Plans Committee” the “Development Management Committee”. A number of councillors then made passionate arguments about why we should stick with the name “Plans Committee”. The reasons given included making sure the committee’s name continues to be understandable to members of the public and avoiding unnecessary change.

After a tense vote, the amendment was passed by a vote of 25-23 and the Plans Committee will now continue to be called the Plans Committee.

I am proud to say that I voted for the amendment. It seems to me to be a vote for common sense. The name “Plans Committee” is widely recognised and understood by councillors, officers and members of the public, and whilst the Plans Committee might have a wider role than just looking at planning applications, almost every member of the public that comes into contact with the committee does so in relation to a planning application – either as an applicant, as an objector or as another interested party. The name “Development Management Committee” also smacks of the kind of government newspeak jargon that we can do without.

On the same day that Labour Equalities Minister Harriet Harman came up with the term “the wellderly” to describe healthy older people, I definitely didn’t want to be party to the popular government pastime of imposing what might be termed a “modern”, “forward looking”, “dynamic” name on the good old Plans Committee!

It would appear that Labour borough and county councillor Jewel Miah started using Wikipedia recently*. Wikipedia is a free online encyclopaedia to which anyone is free to contribute. Unsourced or inaccurate contributions or edits are eventually weeded out by other Wikipedia users or dedicated Wikipedia editors.

Contributions to Wikipedia are governed by a set of rules and guidelines, which, unfortunately, Councillor Miah doesn’t seem to have read. One of the ‘five pillars‘ of Wikipedia is that all articles should have a ‘neutral point of view‘. This fundamental rule prohibits Wikipedia users from engaging in what is known as ‘page blanking‘ – a form of Wikipedia vandalism in which parts of a Wikipedia article are ‘blanked’ (deleted) for the sole purpose of skewing the point of view in an article.

In the space of just half an hour this week Councillor Miah managed to engage in Wikipedia page blanking no fewer than five times: three times in relation to the ‘Loughborough‘ article and two times in relation to the ‘Andy Reed‘ article. Each of these acts of vandalism was rapidly identified and reverted by Wikipedia editors.

Councillor Miah’s page blanking was as follows:

(1) 21:24, 28/12/09
Removed the reference to BNP activist Mark Collett from the ‘Loughborough’ article (section: ‘Notable people’)

This edit appears to be politically motivated.

(2) 21:35, 28/12/09
Removed the reference to Reel Cinema from the ‘Loughborough’ article (section: ‘Economy’)

(3) 21:37, 28/12/09
Removed a paragraph about Reel Cinema from the ‘Loughborough’ article

The two Reel Cinema edits are unusual but could be motivated by local business rivalry.

(4) 21:44, 28/12/09
Removed the entire section ‘Party loyalty’ from the ‘Andy Reed’ article

This edit appears to be an attempt to cover up Loughborough MP Andy Reed’s history of loyalty to the Labour whip and his record on the Iraq War.

(5) 21:47, 28/12/09
Removed five of the six paragraphs in the section ‘Expenses claims’ from the ‘Andy Reed’ article

This edit appears to be an attempt to cover up Loughborough MP Andy Reed’s record on expenses claims. I’m not surprised a Labour councillor and activist might want to hide some of Andy Reed’s disgraceful and obviously embarrassing expenses claims.

Regardless of whether Councillor Jewel Miah has read Wikipedia’s policies and guidelines, I believe it is unethical for Councillor Miah to edit Wikipedia to try to rewrite the history of Loughborough and to try to hide the voting record and expenses claims of Loughborough’s Labour MP Andy Reed. On this occasion the edits were spotted and reverted by Wikipedia editors but there seems to be no reasonable explanation for Councillor Miah’s edits other than an attempt to abuse Wikipedia for personal political gain, which is surely not right.

* Note: This post refers to a Wikipedia account called ‘Jewelmiah‘. A quick Google search suggests that the name Jewel Miah is most likely to be Councillor Jewel Miah of Loughborough.

The Loughborough Echo reported last week that three Charnwood taxi drivers successfully challenged Charnwood Borough Council’s decision to suspend their licences for refusing to take a BTEC course in how to load luggage and be polite that the council made compulsory for all taxi drivers in 2007.

Under current rules imposed by the council, all cabbies in Charnwood must pay £120 to attend 12 weeks of evening classes, which finish with a multiple choice test for a level 2 BTEC qualification.

But at a hearing at Loughborough Magistrates’ Court on July 16, a judge ruled that suspending the drivers for refusing to take the course was unreasonable and ordered the council to pay the trio £5,713.55 in costs.

This is a victory for common sense. When I was elected to Charnwood Borough Council in May 2007, two of the first pieces of casework I was involved in related to two experienced Charnwood taxi drivers who contacted me because they were concerned about the council’s (then) new policy mandating a BTEC course for all drivers. Sadly, I quickly discovered I could not offer much help because the council’s licensing committee had agreed to the new rules just weeks before the election was called and for me, as an individual councillor and someone who doesn’t sit on the licensing committee, there was nothing I could do except to apologise to the taxi drivers for the way the council was treating them.

The print edition of last week’s Loughborough Echo has done a fantastic job exposing the unnecessary waste and expense associated with the taxi driving BTEC course by printing examples of some of the topics and exam questions for the course.

Quoting from the online edition of the Echo again:

Solicitor David Leigh, who represented the drivers, ridiculed the multiple choice questions on the course, adding: “There was an entire evening on the carriage of parcels by taxi – something that could be taught in all of 30 seconds.

“One has to wonder what the council were thinking – I don’t think they bothered to even look what was being taught.

“One might speculate that the only people to gain anything out of it were the course organisers.”

Well said. To force taxi drivers with decades of experience to spend hundreds of pounds and tens of hours of their spare time to be told how to be polite to their customers is frankly insulting. It’s great that these three taxi drivers stood up for common sense and that Loughborough Magistrates’ Court came down on their side.

People across the country overwhelmingly backed the Conservatives in the English local elections on 4 June and voters in Leicestershire were no exception. The Conservatives at County Hall in Leicestershire have increased their majority from seven to 17 after gaining seats from both Labour and the Lib Dems. This is an excellent result for the Conservatives and a well-deserved result for the successful Conservative administration. (Leicestershire County Council has just won Council of the Year 2009.)

However, closer to home in the Loughborough constituency, Labour have held on. Whilst the Conservatives gained from Labour in Shepshed, where hard-working Shepshed resident and borough councillor Christine Radford was elected, and gained in Loughborough South, where Charnwood Borough Council Cabinet member David Slater now becomes the county councillor, Labour retained Loughborough North, Loughborough North West and Loughborough East. This means of the four seats that Labour held onto at County Hall, three are in Loughborough.

This raises the question of what these results mean for Conservative prospective MP for Loughborough Nicky Morgan. The current Labour MP for Loughborough enjoys a majority of less than 2,000 votes and Loughborough is a key target seat for the Conservatives at the General Election. I’ve looked at the results across the eight electoral divisions that make up the Loughborough constituency in a pseudo-scientific manner and if 4 June’s results were repeated at a General Election the good news is that Nicky Morgan would be elected MP for Loughborough with a majority of just over 4,500 votes.

The results would be as follows:

Conservatives: 18,975
Labour: 14,380
Lib Dems: 8,746
BNP: 6,276
Others: 1,087

I hasten to add that I carried out only a rudimentary estimate. There are obviously lots of factors that cannot be taken into account in such an estimate, especially with how quickly things are happening right now in the increasingly unstable Brown Government.

The numbers look good for the Conservatives but Labour retained three county council seats in Loughborough and the Conservative majority in newly-won Loughborough South is only 25 votes so there is absolutely no room at all for complacency.

Having said all that, Nicky Morgan is definitely on track to be elected as the next MP for Loughborough. What a shame Gordon Brown doesn’t have the guts to do the honourable thing and call a General Election.

Congratulations to Councillor Roy Brown on being elected mayor of Charnwood for 2009/2010.

What a shame some Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors chose the annual meeting of the council, which is usually reserved solely for the business of electing the new mayor and giving thanks to the outgoing mayor, to launch personal attacks on Conservative cabinet members.

Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors took the unusual step of putting down an amendment to replace some members of the Conservative cabinet with Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors, apparently forgetting that (i) the Conservatives on Charnwood Borough Council won a clear majority in the last election in 2007 and (ii) the annual meeting of council is traditionally a civic ceremony and, as such, it is an inappropriate meeting at which to launch political attacks.

The councillors putting down the amendment suggested that it was borne out of the perceived need for councillors to work in partnership, across party political divides, during the recession. Perhaps, if they are so keen on partnership working, they should have approached the Conservative administration before the meeting, rather than springing an amendment at the meeting just minutes after the new mayor had taken office. Or perhaps, perish the thought, some councillors were less interested in ‘partnership’ than they were in hijacking the council’s annual meeting for their own political purposes!

Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors made the argument that they had no choice but to make the amendment at the council’s annual meeting because this is the only council meeting in the year where such an amendment is possible. The Chief Executive made clear, at the request of one Liberal Democrat councillor, that a similar amendment or motion could have been made at any other council meeting in the year.

Needless to say, the amendment was defeated. Some Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors, who were clearly displeased with the amendment, chose to abstain from the vote.

Which brings me full circle to the election of the new mayor, Roy Brown. Not many mayors in Charnwood have to contend with heated debate, amendments and points of order in the first meeting of council that they chair, which is usually just a civic ceremony! Roy had to deal with all of these things and I have to say he did so with some style! Congratulations again to Roy on his election as mayor – if his first few hours in office are anything to go by, we can look forward to a great year with Roy as mayor.