brennon

I see in today's local newspaper that some members of the public continue to be unhappy about the leader's comments about the current level of remuneration for district councillors.  One of the writers is a long time critic of all things local government, no doubt based on his previous insider knowledge and now rather outdated experience.

These critics may well be right in their belief that the whole thing is getting out of hand and that those elected to represent the people of a ward or division, should do it for the love of it!  However, rather than targeting those actually doing the ‘job', they should consider directing their anger at this government and its predecessors, which have forced many lead members to become virtually full time representatives of their councils.  As such, is it fair to expect lead members to continue to be grateful for what they get?

Political commentators often remark these days on how the job of leading MPs has changed dramatically in recent years, with them having little or no time to do anything else.  It would appear that our political masters now feel that all levels of government should suffer the same fate!   

I'm no good with figures (as my bank manager will tell you),  but I'm sure some bean counter (that's my rather rude description for accountants) could produce a nice little chart showing what percentage of the council tax was available to be spent as the council saw fit 20 years ago, compared to today.  I'm sure I heard some ridiculously low figure of less than 10% now, compared to over 40% pre-1974.

The upshot of this is that, if the council wants to actually ‘do' anything other than collect the council tax, empty the bins and now catch stray dogs, they have to go to all sorts of different government agencies, quangoes, panels, boards, bodies, committees, etc, etc, etc, to plead for the cash. 

The government keeps telling us that councils are at the heart of their communities and that they should be leading on just about anything and everything - health improvement, binge drinking, crime reduction, ASBOs, global warming, carbon footprint, place shaping, community cohesion, equality and diversity, the voluntary sector - you name it, we should be leading on it!

Don't get me wrong, I think these are all important issues and that those of us who are directly elected should be the ones responsible for making the world a better place for people to live in, in any way we can - bring it on!

However, somebody has to keep running around with the South Holland begging bowl and making the case for giving us the money that central government keeps waving under our noses - be good boys and girls and you can have a share of this particular pot - but only if you really convince us that you deserve it!

So, unlike in the good old days, when elected members were able to make some real decisions on how to spend the money raised via council tax and government grant, they are now required to go begging for it.  Sorry, I meant ‘bid for it by making a case based on a well evidenced business plan, ensuring that it addresses all those areas that the government consider to be a priority'.

Whether we like it not, elected members and in particular leaders (coz they won't listen to anybody if they don't have leader somewhere in their title, I'm told) now have to scurry around the various corridors of power, making the case to get a share of some particular cash pot, on behalf of the people they represent.    

So, until the government stops being control freaks and starts passing on the ‘tax dollars', without making everybody in local government jump through hoops, every time they come up with a new priority, the situation is only going to get worse.

The debate rumbles on and the first casualty, if you can him that, has been recorded.  No doubt he had his reasons for choosing to do what he's done, but if he'd stuck it out he could of been far more influential in the outcomes.

The Civic Society continues to rail against the principle of selling the land that the Castle Sports sits on to fund a new sports village.  Their main reason seems to be more to do with the loss of the green open space than the displacement of the Castle Sports to another location. 

Others keep telling us that we're not listening, or paying attention to the results of the consultation.  Unfortunately, these people are being very selective about the sticks they pick up to beat us with i.e. 'we want it to remain where it is or be very close to the same place', whilst ignoring some of the other 'sticks' that don't suit their case, i.e. 'we want the place to remain open whilst the new one is being built'. 

I was going to put the following questions into Survey Monkey, but given the response to my Wygate Park community centre survey - zilch! I'm just going to list them below and people can come back to me if they want to answer them.  Then again, if you want to answer them as a survey, follow this link and fill yer boots!

Click Here to take survey 

Questions about the Castle Sports Complex (CSC) and Leisure Options

1.  Should the CSC be refurbished or replaced?

2.  Should the CSC remain where it is, even if it is replaced?

3.  Is the fact that over 25,000 of the 78,000 people who live South Holland, live in Spalding, a good enough reason for the CSC to remain in the middle of Spalding?

4.  Is it fair to the rest of South Holland's taxpayers that the CSC is in the middle of Spalding?

5.  Would you care where the CSC moved to, if the useable green space remained available for Spalding people to use?

6.  How should the refurbishment or replacement of the CSC be paid for?

7.  Whatever happens to the CSC, should the Halley Stewart Field remain closed off to the public, or should it be opened up for everybody to use as a public park?

There's been a newspaper debate going on recently about a local issue and the ‘reaction' to it by certain parties has struck a chord - with me anyway!

The issue I'm talking about doesn't really matter and I won't tell you anyway because then you'd know who I was talking about and I might get in to trouble with you know who!  Actually you probably don't know who, but you might work it out eventually - so I'm still not going to tell you!

Anyway, as I was saying, this issue was raised at a council meeting by one member and completely dismissed by the one being questioned - big mistake!  Whoever raises an issue, even if they're total plonkers (not that I'm saying the questioner in this is) you should always be careful not to dismiss them out of hand, even if the issue sounds trivial to you.  Incidentally, I actually agree with what he was saying, so he can't possibly be a total plonker can he?

On the face of it, in the great scheme of things this might seem like a trivial issue, but it was obviously important enough for somebody to raise it with the member and for him to ask the question at the council meeting.  Worse still, for the dimisser, once the story and his response hit the local newspapers, more members of the public decided to put their hands up and write in, saying that they had also clocked the issue and thought that it should be sorted out.  This also gave them the chance to take a swipe at a couple of other longstanding gripes, but that's another story (or two).

So, having taken some stick in the letters pages, the dismisser, as I have now christened him, decided to tack another "don't bother me with trivia" response on to the end of his newspaper comments about another ongoing issue - bigger mistake!!

Now I've finally gotten to the point of this entry - about time to! I hear you cry (if you've got this far).  Telling people that an issue is too trivial to bother you with and that you have far more important strategic things to deal with, is both short-sighted and more than a little arrogant (in my humble opinion!). 

The dimisser has actually used something that all elected members are told from time to time, as a reason for his attitude.  Problem is, in my humble opinion (see you can't accuse me of being arrogant can you) he's used it in completely the wrong way.  Members are always being told that it is dangerous to get involved in the operational activities of the council and to stick to the strategic bits.  However, this does not mean that we're supposed to keep our noses out of things that go wrong and that effect the public, far from it, that's the bread and butter of being an elected member, so using it as an excuse for doing nothing is dangerous to say the least! 

Operational means internal staffing issues; how the staff are managed, how the staff are disciplined, how the staff are recompensed, etc, etc, not how the council deals with the public or responds to public concerns over what seem to be ‘trivial' issues.

The dismisser seems to have started to believe his own publicity and to think that his grand title and extensive portfolio somehow allows him to ignore what the little people think - very dangerous indeed!  However, given his ‘standing in the community' and I use that term very loosely, he'll probably be safe at the ballot box.  This seems to be the way things work around here when you're a local local (local, local I said, not local yokel!) it seems only us incomers are vulnerable to being punished at the ballot box if we speak out of turn - politics!

The debate over the best way to update our leisure facilities is rumbling on, with some people making a fuss about things still yet to be decided.  This is okay because people do need to be involved and they do need to let the politicians know what they think.  Unfortunately, some of the comments made are not really dealing with the facts as they exist on the ground. 

One letter in the local newspaper berated us for considering building over the green space that is a 'jewel' in Spalding!  for a start it's not a very shiny jewel and worse still, the writer completely ignores the fact that the current facilities are actually paid for by all South Holland taxpayers, not just those living in Spalding, so easier access for all those who live in South Holland should be seen as of great importantance.

As it stands, the only thing that has really been decided, is to look at the issue in detail.  You could argue that as politicians, having made a public commitment (as part of our election manifesto no less!)  to update the leisure facilities, we'll find it almost impossible to then say, oops, sorry, can't be done!

Unfortunately, no matter how committed (pigheaded) we are, a reality check will be needed about affordability as well as availability, before we can proceed much further.  Can we as a council afford to build a new facility?  Will the place we end up looking to build it actually be available?  If the answer to either of these questions is no, then any election manifesto promises are as about as much use as......Gordon Brown's promise to look after the poorest paid people in our country, by introducing a 10p income tax band!

If anybody wants to discuss the affordability issue, then send me a comment on this blog and I'll go in to it in more detail.  However, one point I do want to deal with here, is the claim that Spalding would be loosing a ‘jewel' of some kind.

Yes, if the area of the Castle Sports field was a wide open expanse of grass, freely available to all, for playing on, walking on and doing all the other things that people do in parks (some of them more legal than others!) then I might agree that this is an area to be preserved and improved.  As it stands, the major open area is marked out as a sports pitch, contains no form of landscaping and certainly doesn't fit the role of a public park.

If you look at the images below, you'll see the size of the Castle Sports field and the size of the Halley Stewart.  So, if you accept that the green bit of Castle Sports won't get any bigger, were we to retain the area and just refurbish it, what would the people calling for it to be retained have gained for the people of Spalding?  I think you know the answer to this one - nowt!  That's nothing to us Southerners!  The existing sports pitch will still need to be a sports pitch, or things would actually be worse than when we started and the vast majority of the free space will still be tarmac.

So, if Spalding is to ever have a real public park, in the town centre, where people can roam free and do what they want (legally!) then we have to figure out how to free up the Halley Stewart, as this would a lot cheaper than digging up the bus station!. 

We could of course evict the football club, knock down the walls and the grand stand and all the other stuff that makes it look smaller than it is and then lay it out with paths, flower beds, benches etc.  Unfortunately, there's probably little or no money available for such a major project in the foreseeable future and I don' think the football club would be too impressed either!  Give them the chance to move to a new pitch, as part of a new facility, seems to be a better idea.

Some boring but noteworthy figures for the land areas involved are:

Overall usable area of the Sir Halley Stewart Playing Field is approx 1.75ha or 17,500m².
Overall usable area of the Castle sports field is approx 3.14ha or 31,400m².
The area of the Castle Sports field that is currently available for the public to walk on when the pitch is not in use is approx 2.14ha or 21,400m².
When the pitch is in use, the public useable area of the Castle Sports field is approx 1.4ha or 14,000m².

The debait about gramer skhols is otin up agin!  Sorry, just proving I'm not biased - I went to a comprehensive school and the new Labour (new in both senses) push by some 50 MPs to try to kill them off is yet another demonstration of reverse snobbery.  The reason I think I must be so thick and uneducated is because I simply don't understand why they hate grammar schools so much.  Yes, they only take pupils who have passed a test and then go on to a certain type of school because of that, so what? 

Why can't the kids who don't pass the test get the same quality of education at the comprehensive or secondary school they end up at, as those kids who go to the grammar school?  Surely not just because the grammar school exists?  That can't be true can it? 

Why can't these Labour MP's stop fighting the old class war and concentrate on pushing up the standards in the non-grammar schools, thereby ensuring that the kids who go to grammar schools gain nothing but a fancy uniform? 

Perhaps these MPs are fed up with being shown up by the performance of the grammar schools and they want to drag every kid down to the same level of mediocrity we are now seeing amongst the children leaving many of our non-grammar schools.  Perhaps they're embarrassed by the never ending stories of bad behaviour, exclusion orders, PC governing bodies that over-rule their own headmasters and reinstate the yobs and equally yobbish parents that are more ready to attack the teachers than discipline their precious little Wayne or Stacey.

This new attack is nothing but pseudo 'working class' envy of the worst kind and the worst example of the old Labour political dogma infecting the new.  Hopefully those running New Labour will realise that this issue is a miserable attempt by the outdated old guard of their party to step back in time.

Then again, maybe I am just fick! - so please somebody educate me.  Both ex-comprehensive and grammar school kids are welcome!