Lies, Damn Lies and Lib Dem Speeches. – or Shirley Brown Part 3

Always beware, as my misquote of Disraeli indicates, of politicians using statistics. A case in point is a speech made by Lib Dem Cllr Comer at the last Council Meeting.

 

Let me set the context. The Tories put forward a motion about ‘unreasonable absence’ by councillors. This has been based in recent examples of councillors no longer being available to their constituents either by being ‘at Her Majesties pleasure’ or having moved out of the country for extended periods. This would, in the past, have caught a Lib Dem and a Labour member in it’s net. It could also be interpreted as an attempt to hook Ashley Councillor Shirley Brown (nee Marshall). Who, it is alleged, has resided extensively in the USA since her marriage.

 

Back to Cllr Comers speech. He produced a table that showed all those who had missed committee meetings during the year. He wasn’t naming names but the table did show that the top three absentees were not members of the Lib Dems. This table proved that the attacks on Shirley ‘gave a false picture’ and  ’the reality of the statistics’ corrected these false assumptions and ensured that ‘different standards’ were not being applied to members i.e. Shirley.

 

I must confess the contents of the table did surprise me. I had fully expected Shirley to be top of the non attendee list. So I did some digging.

 

Firstly his definition; he includes only committee meetings, not full council. He includes those meetings where a councillor has sent a substitute, a usual practice when a councillor is ill. So if a councillor is ill for an extended period,  which has happened to a Tory and a couple of Labour members, they would be near the top of Cllr Comers list.

 

Now lets look at Shirley and see if ‘different standards’ have been applied to her and if the ‘reality of the statistics’ corrects any ‘false picture’ of her attendance.

 

Firstly I can confirm that Shirley’s attendance at committee meeting is 100%.  That is because she does not belong to a single committee- not one – zero.

So the Lib Dems have attempted to spin the facts about a Councillor who they have kinivied to allow to take no part in council matters, whose attendance at full council is the worst on the city and has been unavailable to her constituents for months on end, into an attack on the attendance of sick Labour and Tory members. It’s almost brilliant! But oh so typical of those nice cuddly Liberal Democrats.

Here’s Johnny .. The Return of John Kiely??

 

I see that John Kiely – erstwhile slayer of all things not Lib Dem and chief annoyer of Lord Mayors and his own party leader – is attempting a return to Bristol politics. Those of you who are lucky enough to live in Easton will make the decision for us as he stands in the place of the retiring Abdul Malik.

 

One of the things that confuse me about John – and there are many – is why now?

 

Having been selected as Lib Dem parliamentary candidate for Filton and Bradley Stoke (FABS) I would have thought all his efforts would have been focused on winning that seat either later this year or by mid next. According to the House of Parliament Library FABs is the 3rd closest three way marginal in England (based on 2005 figures, amended for boundary changes, the seat is split 35.5% Con, 33.9% Lab and 28.4% Lib Dem). So it is a very winnable seat for the Lib Dems (particularly bearing in mind that the Tory candidate couldn’t even get himself elected onto the local council a couple of years ago). So why is John standing in Easton again at this time?

 

I must say this is a dream for the opposition parties in both Easton and FABs. John now finds himself in a double bind. In Easton we will attack him for being at best a part time councillor who actually would rather be in Westminster and could well desert his ward in less than a year. In FABS we will paint him as a part time candidate whose heart is not really in the area and has already given up any chance of winning the seat for the Lib Dems. It is very difficult to see how he can defend against either of these claims without upsetting the other electorate.

 

Not the move, you would have thought, of a smart political operator. Of course John has previous on this. He is the executive member who allowed the politically contentious issue of the privitisation of health care to come to fruition just before an election. Then had the poor judgment to let it become the defining issue of that election and of course lost his seat.

 

John is nothing if not a street fighter, and he is actually a nicer guy than he appears, but he really has got his work cut out with both campaigns because of this strange decision.

Better Longer Sex with Labour

On Saturday I ran a workshop with Labour Councillors, candidates and activists with the aim of finding pledges we could use in Bristol for the elections in June. To try and get some radical thinking I told the assembled groups to think up pledges we could use, but not to be restrained by any barriers. They then had to present their pledges as a headline in the Sun. The very first group called to give their headlines consisted of one of our local MPs, a constituency chair – who I know is a very proud grandmother – and two other members who shall we say are on the wrong end of middle age. Of course you now know what their headline pledge was because it is the title of this blog. I did ask for radical.

 

Now I ask myself a question; is longer always better?

 

Earlier this evening I attended the very first cabinet meeting of the new Liberal Democrat administration in Bristol. The meeting the Labour administration had set up had 6 items on it. This one had 3. The meeting (excluding public questions) lasted 14 minutes. This time was evenly split between 1 executive introducing the item and the leader of the council and 1 other exec member asking officers questions about the report. I can only assume that the leader had not had time to read the papers before the meeting or maybe she thought she was still in scrutiny. The entire contribution of four of the new executive members was to say ‘agreed’ three times. All of this webcast live for the adoring Bristol public. This from an administration that keeps stating that ‘openness is the key’.

 

When I was on the Labour cabinet each item had at least three exec members who would give their views on the decisions to be taken. So at the very least the people of Bristol had some idea why we had reached a decision before we made it. I can’t help thinking that letting people know how and why you have come to a decision is at least as important as making the decision itself. So I happen to think that in this case longer is better and a more open form of governance.

 

Back to our pledges for June.

 

A responsible party has to ensure that it’s pledges are plausible and have a good chance of delivery. We have discussed our sex pledge and are working towards a form of words that makes this more plausible and deliverable. The current draft working pledge we have is: ‘Better longer sex can lead to Labour’. You will have to wait a few weeks to see if it makes the final list.

 

P.S. I will be looking very closely at the number of hits to this blog to test a key hypothesis about the internet.

Sinn Féin has moved on … has the BBC?

The recent tragic terrorist murders in Northern Ireland have rightly appalled and frightened all of us. It has however highlighted two things to me; how politics in Northern Ireland have changed and how the media can get it wrong.

 

I listened to an interview on the Today programme a couple of days back. On the whole the interview was very good with both Labour and Tory spokesmen coming accross very well. It was the nature of the exchanges between John Humphries and John O’Dowd, a Sinn Féin  councillor, that caused a sharp intake of breath and has led to this blog.

 

In his pre-amble John Humphries quoted the views of a ’senior Northern Ireland politician’ that we were ’staring into the abyss.’ The interview started like this:

 

JH   I use the word murder. Is that a word that you would use on behalf of Sinn Féin ?

JO’D It is. ……….

 

Now I don’t know what it is about Northern Irish politicians but they do seem to be a combatative lot. Cllr O’Dowd then went on to criticise the media for trying to set traps for Sinn Fein. He then gave a rather good piece on how Sinn Féin  had moved and how the peace process in the Province had changed and they were not going back. John Humphries came back with (my paraphrase) – well Sinn Fein took a long time to condemn the original attack and it was all a bit weak. Cllr O’Dowd called this rubbish and I think at this point Mr Humphries lost his cool, coming up with the rather barbed ‘.. I remember what the Provisional IRA was doing.’ Having regained his composure JH tried to bring it back on track with  ’All I am doing is asking you, quite simply to say that this is murder and it is to be totally condemned’ completely forgetting the first answer given by Cllr O’Dowd.

 

Does all this matter?

 

Well yes. Firstly in the Northern Ireland context it matters because it appears that, even after all this time, the BBC and by inference the rest of the UK media, continue to have doubts over the full hearted commitment of Sinn Féin  to the peace process. By taking these lines they are, I am sure, giving ammunition to those in the movement who are ‘flakey’. If you want an understanding of the delay in the Sinn Fein response suggest you read Alistair Campbell’s blog on the matter.

 

On the wider front, my experience of the media (a couple of conversations with Torbin Lee and Linda Tanner) has shown me that the media are after 2 things; Conflict and Controversy – because they sell. As a local politician the media remains one of the key conduits through which we get our message out to the public. To be successful in that we have to play their game. So we generate conflict and controversy. Which inevitably leads to politics, even at the local level, dominated by conflict. We then wonder why the population of Bristol are fed up with politicians constantly bickering and doing nothing.

 

The answer – that’s a little tougher than the analysis, but answers we have to find otherwise I fear for our democracy.

Let All Bristol Decide

One of the joys of being a political insider in Bristol (fancy name for councillor) is that you get to see how the system works. Or more to the point how it doesn’t work. Having spent 3 and a bit years in the system as a back bencher, chair of scrutiny and executive member I am convinced that the biggest problem with politics in the city is the electoral system (I predict that there will now be at least 20 comments saying ‘oh no its not its the politicians’ – proving that original thought is dead on Bristol’s blogasphere).

I will go even further and say that the electoral system as it stands has, and will, hold back Bristol from becoming the great city it should be.

 

The current system, where 2/3rds of the city vote for 1/3rd of the councillors every 3 years out of 4, means that no party really has a mandate – and no one in charge can get on with the job without having one eye on the next round of elections. This leads to constant shifts in policy which leaves all those charged to deliver the key services to the city with no stable base on which they can take it forward.

 

The solution is quite simple – move to all out elections every 4 years where All of Bristol can Decide about all of Bristols future. By moving to all out elections every four years political parties and others will be able to put forward how they would like the city to be run. All Bristol will be able to decide if they like these plans. The new administration would have four years to deliver their promises, if they don’t all of Bristol will be able to kick them out.

 

And we can do it. (This bit gets a bit technical – but bear with it.) Bristol,as a non Metropolitan District Council, has an obligation under the Local Government Act 2000 (as amended by the 2007 Act) to elect a leader with a term up to the end of their period as a councillor, this could be as much as four years. This change must take place from 2011. The act further allows for the councillors of the city to call a special meeting to vote on changes to the electoral system which allow for all up elections every four years. It also specifies that Bristol, as a non metropolitan council, can hold these elections in 2011.

 

That all means that we have an opportunity to move to all out elections in 2011 but we have to have made that decision by the end of 2010 at the latest.

 

I must confess that I have yet to meet a non politician who thinks that this is a bad idea (with the possible exception of Chris Hutt – who never thinks anything new is a good idea!). A large number of politicians I have spoken to think it is a good idea. The Evening Post have given good coverage. Even Tony Benn thinks it’s a good idea!

 

So what can we do about it? Well if you think it is a good idea then sign the petition on Ask Bristol. If you have a Facebook account join the Let All Bristol Decide group. If you would like to help the campaign, receive updates or more information email letallbristol@btinternet.com.

 

If enough of us shout loud enough we can change the system.

Spys in the Bin

I see that Cllr Hopkins Bristol’s new Waste King has been putting forward the Lib Dem vision for recycling in the city.

 

Firstly let me say that there is an issue with the recycling rates in the city. They appeared to have plateaued around the 35 – 37% mark.

 

In response Cllr Hopkin’s big ideas are:

1.  Free starch bags for the masses so that they can more easily recycle food waste.

2. A door knocking campaign to pressure people to recycle

3. A ‘voluntary scheme’ to weigh the amount of residual waste and reward those who produce less.

 

I fail to see how giving someone a free bag to put food waste in will encourage anyone to start recycling food. If they are not in the habit of putting the food in a brown bin they are hardly likely to do so because it is lined with paper.

 

Door knocking campaigns can work but the evidence is that they stop working as soon as you stop knocking on the doors.

 

The voluntary scheme to weigh the amount of residual waste is fascinating. Who does Cllr Hopkins think is going to volunteer? The only people who will take part in a voluntary scheme will be those who already recycle. Make no mistake what Cllr Hopkins would like to do, but wasn’t got the nerve, is to put spys in the bin and fine those who do not recycle.

 

What would the Labour party have done? Well as Cllr Hopkins will know, if he has been briefed by officers, we would have taken a more radical approach. We would have changed the bin collection scheme so that all recycling, including all plastics, would have been collected on the door step in a new service which would have removed the need to segregate tins, from bottles, from cardboard, from paper.

 

I make a prediction; within the next few month Cllr Hopkins will announce this idea as his and the Lib Dems brand new strategy for dealing with waste, because when it comes to waste Cllr Hopkins (and his Tory supporters) have no ideas and no strategy other than dumping it in landfill.

My Future

Strange name for a blog I know, but this is a personal one. Last October I took a decision about my future which means that I will need to change the title of this blog. That decision was that I would not put my name forward for selection as a Labour candidate for election this June. This in turn means that I will no longer be the councillor for Avonmouth ward (or any other ward) after the June elections.

 

I have taken this decision because I do not believe, at the current time, that I can do a good job in providing for my family, (which is always my top priority)  do a good job as a ward councillor and play a leading role in the Labour party in Bristol . This does not mean that I will cease to play a role in Labour politics in the city and does not rule out, electorate willing, a return to the council at some time, but that is for the future.

 

Which you could characterise as ‘retiring to spend more time with my business’.

 

Don’t worry I will still continue to blog!!

The Joy of Politics 1 – Making Speeches That Make a Difference

One of the joys of politics is giving speeches. Now I happen to like making speeches and am arrogant enough to believe that I am quite good at it – but sometimes things can transpire that make you look a complete ass.

Very often we have to make speeches whose prime objective is to support your party and to embarrass the opposition. I made one such speech at the council budget meeting last Tuesday- or at least that was what I thought I was doing.

The Liberal Democrats had put down an amendment to our budget that would have diverted £300,000 to a number of initiatives that they thought were important. Our whips instructions were quite clear – VOTE AGAINST. So I made, what I thought, was a very good speech starting with the statement; ‘I understand that the Tories are going to vote for this amendment, which makes this speech rather futile – but as I like the sound of my own voice I am going to make it anyway…’ If only I had stopped after the word futile.

I then went on to do a rather good job of forensically destroying all the arguments and premises of the proposed amendment – I was even magnanimous enough to say that one of the proposals was quite good – all the rest of course were complete rubbish and of course our group would be voting against.

As I sat down I was somewhat surprised that I didn’t get my usual enthusiastic response and shouts of ‘well done Cookie’ from my pet cheer leaders. I was even more surprised that the Chief Whip was now sitting in the seat next to me. ‘Terry’ he started, at which point my heart sank as I knew what was coming next, ‘I’ve been sent over to tell you that we have decided to vote for this amendment. But don’t worry Pete is going to make a speech that will rescue you’.

Now Pete can be very good – but he is not that good. I had to spend the whole of the tea break breaking every rule in the book by showing officers and members of the opposition a copy of our whips note that still said VOTE AGAINST.

If you are sad enough to want to watch this whole debacle you can find it at http://www.bristol.public-i.tv/site/player/pl_compact.php?a=22142&t=0&m=wm&l=en_GB  at 1:50 and at 2:55 to see my response. (I really must get James Barlow to show me how to edit this webcast into clips). 

Lisnen t’ de yeuf

Met on Thursday evening with 25 young people in the Avonmouth  and Kingsweston Neighbourhood Partnership. Had youth representatives from Sea Mills, Lawrence Weston, Avonmouth and  Shirehampton. The meeting was set up to discuss how young people can become involved in the decision making in their area  – and it was brilliant!!  

This initial meeting concentrated on finding out their views about their areas and guess what – they are not a lot different from the views of the adults. They feel intimidated by drunks and drug addicts on the streets. They are worried about all the shops closing. They want somewhere to hang out where they are not harassed by adults and the police. (Alright most adults don’t raise this one)

We agreed next steps to be setting up of youth forum groups linked to the youth parliament in each area. We have also found some money to take them away on a residential weekend where they and the youth workers (who have been brilliant) can develop their plans and importanly build their confidence to articulate them.

I am convinced that we need to do what we can to reduce the inter-generational lack of understanding that unfortunately fuels a lot of the tensions in our communities. Not all the kids in our communities are yobs, neither does wearing a hoddy mean that you should be feared by anyone over the age of 35. The starting point for reducing that tension has to be for the two ‘sides’ to meet. So I am hopeful that as we equip our young people with the confidence to enter the local community world – which is dominated by the 50+ – we can at least bring some understanding that we really are not that different.

Why Did Labour Resign?

It was about time that I broke my silence on this blog and I know find myself with a big issue to blog on and a lot more time! The reason (as if you didn’t know) was that the Labour cabinet resigned on Tuesday night. I will attempt below to coherently set out the reasons why.

The full council met for the annual budget meeting to agree how it would raise and spend the proposed £338 million revenue budget and the capital budget for the year.(papers can be found at http://www.bristol.gov.uk/item/committeecontent/?ref=ta&code=ta000&year=2009&month=02&day=24&hour=14&minute=00 ) There were 7 amendments tabled to the proposed Labour budget, 1 Tory, 2 Green and 4 Lib Dem. The amounts of money movement in them ranged from the max of £1.5 million and a minimum of £54,000 which in the scale of budget we are talking about are not huge sums of money. We, candidly, could easily have accepted 4 of the 7 amendments.

The three that we would have had difficulty with were the:

• Tory amendment which proposed removing the City’s capacity to deal with community cohesion at a time of severe economic depression
• The Lib Dem amendment that removed our proposal to increase the number of staff dealing with housing benefit claims at a time of severe economic depression.
• The Lib Dem amendment on removing funding that would allow us to complete the initial stages of phase three of the West of England waste strategy.

The first two amendments fell. The third was passed by a Lib Dem/ Tory pact. Which led directly to our resignation. Why?

Phase three of the waste strategy addresses how we will deal with the current and future waste that cannot or is not recycled (known as residual waste) for Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset. It is the stuff that currently goes to landfill.  The Government and the EU currently levy huge tax / fines on all waste that goes to landfill and these fines will increase dramatically over the coming years. The three authorities have agreed to approach government for up to £90m of PFI credits to fund a solution to this problem. The government have set aside a tranche of PFI credits for authorities to deal with waste and decisions will be taken on the allocation of this money within the next month. There are no other tranches of money or credits available.

By passing the waste amendment the Liberal Democrats and Tories have removed Bristol from this process and this means that

•  We have no solution for dealing with our residual waste – it will now all go to land fill.
• We have no money to build a solution even if we had one – Bristol Council Tax payers will now have to fund any solutions directly – where will this money come from?
• We have opened ourselves up to a large and growing unnecessary council tax burden in paying landfill fines. This could see our council tax rise by in excess of 10% or see dramatic cuts in services.
• We have destroyed any trust anyone will have in working in partnership with Bristol, because we have not just stopped our plans we have destroyed the plans of our partners.

We resigned because we could not accept a situation where we would open the people of Bristol to the risk of a huge financial liability and at the same time destroyed any trust in Bristol as a reasonable partner to work with. The partnership point is hugely important as whether we like it all not modern politics is dominated by partnership working. All the big infrastructure funding from Government for things like road infrastructure,  building new homes, public transport and large scale economic regeneration is given to groups of authorities working in partnership. Who is going to want to work with Bristol when we destroy trust in the way we did on Tuesday night?

You will have noticed in all of the ramblings   above I have not mentioned ‘Incinerator’ or ‘Avonmouth’. That is because they are not the point. The strategy agreed and the funding applied for was not based on any final technology or any site. I know that there have been fears about both technology and sites but I have to ask are these fears grounded? And can sending all of our residual waste to landfill be a better option? – Perhaps I will do another blog on this subject.

Finally let me be clear we could have continued in power.  But we believed that the destruction of trust in Bristol as partner and the risk of huge financial liabilities on the people of Bristol brought about by this LibDem/Tory pact decision we had no option but to resign.