Mary Reid

The charity Computers4Africa will again be collecting unwanted computers in the Chessington area soon. They wipe the hard disks and then donate the computers to schools in Africa - details here.

You can take your old equipment to Unit 4, Silverglade Business Park, Malden Rushett on 8th or 9th May, from 9am-5pm.

They do ask that all the equipment should be in good working order, less than 5 years old, and they will accept:

• PCs and laptops - Pentium 4, IGHz or better (Laptops must include power leads)
• Mice
• Keyboards
• Monitors
• Power leads for PCs, laptops and monitors

I've just received a pretty convincing email from a company called Globalguidebook. All the links in the message appear genuine, and it gives a postal address in Chichester.

But I was still not entirely happy so googled the name. And I found this article in the Mirror:

Email from Globalguidebook? Hit the delete button.
By Andrew Penman on Jan 16, 09 10:17 AM in Junk mail

Looks like Richard Bayliss has discovered new technology.

We first came across him in 2002 when he was inflicting rubbish on the country's fax machines.

"5 Days to a flatter tummy" was a typical heading on the junk faxes he churned out.

His company Insiders Limited was put into compulsory liquidation by HM Customs & Excise in 2007.

Now, trading as globalguidebook.net, he's moved into spam.

His firm Global Guidebook Limited is based at the same address - Forum House, Stirling Road, Chichester, West Sussex.

And his capacity for inflicting unwanted cack on the rest of us is unchanged. One of his spam messages this week read: "Never get another speeding ticket. All speeding tickets cancelled. Parking tickets written off. All congestion charges cancelled."

Clicking through the website you get impossible-to-check endorsements such as "Really Useful!" - A.M. St Albans.

Cut to the bottom line: £27.50 will buy you a Speed Camera & Parking Report. Got any questions? Bayliss's outfit says it is happy to offer free advice "once you have ordered".
...

Now the email they sent to me offered the Insiders Guide to Airfares and Hotels Summer 2009.  The website offers a long list of expensive books and courses, most of which look worthless to me, plus fax downloads at premium rates - and the cabbage soup diet...

And, of course, the email was spam because I didn't ask for it. I have now hit delete.

I spent yesterday morning in the Royal Courts of Justice. The Council's High Court challenge on the Somerset Avenue appeal was being heard. The Council lost.

I didn't write about it straightaway because I was confused and upset, and needed time to get my thoughts in order.

Just to recap: there were two planning applications for the site, which covered a pair of semis in Somerset Avenue, plus part of the garden next door. One application was for eight houses and the other for seven.

This was taken last summer, in front of the site

The Council, quite rightly, turned down both applications. The developer appealed, and an appeal inquiry was held back in July.

72 residents, including me, turned up for the inquiry and we all stated our opposition to the development. In his decision, the Planning Inspector dismissed the plan for eight houses but (to our fury) permitted the one for seven.

Colin Sparks had been leading the local protest, and he was not prepared to give up at that point. Eventually, in a highly unusual move, Kingston Council challenged the Inspector's decision, and hence our visit to the High Court yesterday. I say 'our' because I was there with Colin and five other local residents.

The Council was only able to challenge the Planning Inspector's decision on procedural grounds. In other words, the High Court could not decide on the merits of the planning application itself. So the grounds for the challenge were twofold.

First, Kingston's view was that the Planning Inspector did not consider properly the evidence given about the impact on traffic. The issue was not so much about the additional cars that would come with the new houses, but the danger of poor sightlines and unexpected traffic at the access road. It seems quite daft to place a new road at the apex of a difficult 90 degree corner at the bottom of a steep hill, with intense residential parking on either side. 

The judge questioned the barrister closely on this, and implied that the council had not pursued the traffic issue as vigorously as it might have done at the appeal inquiry. I was deeply unhappy about this opinion; one of the residents, a policeman, had tried to present detailed evidence about the traffic issues at the inquiry, but had been cut short by the Inspector. The Inspector also told him that he should have brought his evidence in triplicate, which is not normal for an informal inquiry. I wonder whether any of this evidence was taken into account by the Inspector.

Second, the inquiry was not conducted properly during the site visit, so the Council was claiming that there was a procedural irregularity. The Inspector adjourned the meeting from the Hook Centre to the corner of Somerset Ave, but then did not allow me or the local residents on to the actual site, although the developers and council officers were allowed. Unfortunately, a recent case established a precedent, and the Council's barrister decided at the last minute not to pursue these grounds. It seems he would have to show that 'substantive prejudice' arose from the irregularity.

So the outcome is that the challenge failed and that planning permission for the seven houses is upheld.

Of course, there has to be a question mark over whether the developer will want to go ahead now, given the marked change in economic conditions since last summer. We will wait and see.

Something very unusual happened at the end of Othello last night at the Rose.

The audience sat there, stunned by the intensity and honesty of Othello's final speeches. Then the murdered Desdemona got off the bed, and the cast took a bow. I was just wondering how on earth I was going to make the transition from the raw emotion in the theatre to the normal chat of the real world, when Iago came on, and the audience started booing - in pantomime style, you understand, not as a comment on Conrad Nelson's acting. Then Lenny Henry appeared, to cheers, and he produced his familiar twinkle for the first time.

It was a telling moment, acknowledging the relationship between actor and role, which was particularly complex in Lenny Henry's case.

Both men turned in astonishing performances, but they astonished for very different reasons. Conrad Nelson managed to convey every nuance of Iago's manipulative and dissembling character - a viper indeed. He was quite brilliant, and rather sadly overlooked with all the media attention on his fellow actor.

Lenny Henry's first stage role was always going to be seen as a challenge, though I could not understand why people found it so remarkable that he was a decent actor, given that he is the master of comedy, that most difficult of disciplines.

The production inevitably emphasised the racism in the plot, but it was given extra resonance by Henry's presence. Isn't this our national treasure? - how dare they demean him in that way! And isn't he married to the equally loved Dawn French? - how dare they suggest that such a marriage is unworthy!

For the first time, I really felt Othello's pain and was aware of the strength he was drawing on in order to remain in control. When he finally tipped over into irrational anger, it was the culmination of all those years of insults and casual racism. It was a remarkable performance.

Tickets were sold out at the Rose weeks ahead, but it is having a three month run in the West End from September, so there is another chance if you missed it.

It's great when a campaign really does make a difference - and to this week's success over the Tesco site can now been added the launch of Springboard Mark 2.

You may remember the widespread concern in 2007 when the local Primary Care Trust (now rebranded NHS Kingston) announced that it would be withdrawing funding for Springboard. As I said then:

Springboard is a Kingston based NHS service that provides commercial work in a supported environment. It has printing, bicycle repair, woodwork, poppy (yes, poppies for the Royal British Legion) and other workshops at Tolworth Hospital, as well as a café at Roselands Resource Centre. The service offers formal vocational training as well as employment. Some people regain confidence and learn skills at Springboard, and then move back into regular work; others need its support in the longterm. 

Those of us on the Health Overview Panel insisted that the proposals were put to public consultation. This provided a breathing space during which our local MP Edward Davey was able to bring together a number of charities that work with people with learning difficulties and mental health problems. Together they commissioned a study looking into alternative ways of providing the service, and then went back to the NHS to ask for some funding.

And it worked! Today a new service called Kingston Eco-op was launched. Three local charities are involved: The Fircroft Trust, Kingston Voluntary Action and Mind in Kingston.

It provides a number of permanent workshops for furniture repair (through the Community Furniture Project), cycle maintenance, computer refurbishment, gardening and packaging. The latter operates as a social enterprise and its main customer is the Royal British Legion, for whom it assembles poppies.

The people who used Springboard have transferred across to the new projects, and have stayed together as social groups.

The launch today was a joyful occasion. Ed Davey even thanked the PCT, who had been cast as the villain of the piece, because, once they realised the level of public concern and the viability of the proposals, they had indeed provided some funding.

I carelessly forgot both my camera and my mobile, so have no pictures of the event. I'm hoping someone will send me some so I can post them for you to see.

Tesco has today withdrawn its highly controversial planning application for the site near Tolworth Roundabout! This is really excellent news.

If you've been following the story you will know that they had applied to build a superstore plus 562 flats on the Toby Jug and ex-MOD site between Tolworth Station and the roundabout. It was wrong for dozens of reasons.

The huge local campaign against it, led by our MP Edward Davey, has been energetic and - now - successful!

What a relief..... and well done to everyone.

There has been a lot of concern recently about the pressure on primary school places in Kingston.

Now I too would be worried if I had a young child. But it's easy to assume, wrongly, where the fault lies, and there have been some rather wild and unconsidered accusations flying around.

The number of babies born to women living in the Royal Borough is hardly a secret, and it has been known for some time that the number of births has increased over the last five or six years. In Kingston the effect was rather patchy, with fewer children in the Chessington area than elsewhere.

The birthrate is indeed the key piece of data used when planning school places. But children do not appear on application forms for primary places until four years later, and the problem lies in predicting what will happen to their families in between.

There has, in the past, been a tendancy for a proportion of parents to move out of the borough before their child reaches school age. This trickle away has been pretty predictable in the past, but in the last two years it has slowed down, leaving more children than expected in the borough.

The other factor has been the number of children going to independent schools. Not surprisingly, given the economic woes, this number has reduced significantly and suddenly.

So the net effect has been that more children have been applying for primary places than could have been predicted even two years ago.

Now if Kingston were the only council with this problem then it might be fair to suggest that it had not done its research properly. But the fact is that 25 of the 33 boroughs in London have all found themselves in the same position, with a total shortfall of 2,250 places.

All of them use the same formula and the same data to calculate future need; all of them got it wrong for 2008. Clearly something unusual has happened.

Unfortunately, the machinery of government funding is not good at responding to sudden changes like this. Councils have to submit their predictions two or three years in advance, and the funding for schools is calculated then. No-one was predicting the credit crunch.

Our own MP, Edward Davey, initiated a debate on this very subject in Parliament last month. You can read the argument on Hansard.

The umbrella body, London Councils, has now started a campaign on all this.  It reckons that London needs an extra £740 million to fund new buildings (not just temporary huts) to house the additional children. They believe that by 2014 an extra 18,300 places will be needed.

So I am incensed by the response of the Department for Schools, Children and Families when they say, complacently, that they have increased school funding across the country and that they have already agreed and allocated funding for schools for 2008-2011.

So what? Don't they know a crisis when they see one?

The Independent had a good assessment of the issue yesterday. Sadly, the online version of the article omits the case study, which features Surbiton councillor Liz Green.

It's not easy to live in this country on £10,000 a year - and really difficult if you earn less than that.

I've just been talking with 'someone close to Nick Clegg and Vince Cable' (as they say) about their tax announcement today. The top line news is that Liberal Democrats will pledge to cut income tax completely for people earning less than £10,000.

It will take 4 million people out of income tax altogether!

Raising the personal income tax allowance by £3525 to the magic figure of £10,000 will do the trick.  But it won't just benefit the lowest paid, it will also benefit people on low to middle incomes - the vast bulk of us, in fact. The new personal allowance will result in a tax cut of £705 for EVERYONE earning over £10,000.

This will be a major tax switch, away from the wealthy towards those on low and middle incomes.

But how can we pay for this, I hear you ask?

Well, the Labour Government reckons that tax avoidance by wealthy individuals and by businesses costs the country - all of us - between £10 billion and £40 billion each year. Shocking!  If we could reduce that figure by, say, £3 billion, it could immediately be used to help the lowest paid through the Lib Dem proposals.

To be specific, we would tackle land tax and corporation tax avoidance as a priority.

But more would be needed to fund the £17 billion cost of the tax switch, if it is, as we intend, to be tax neutral. Other sources are:

• Reverting to the position on Capital Gains Tax under Nigel Lawson (ie taxing CG at marginal income tax rates)
• Giving everyone the same level of tax relief on their pension contributions
• Charging National Insurance contributions on benefits in kind

The change which interests me most is our proposal to switch avaiation taxes from per person to per plane. Yes!!! This will give the airlines a big incentive not to run half empty planes around the world, but will also generate more in tax. A green win-win.

(Some 'lifeline' flights would be exempt, that is, those linking otherwise inaccessible parts of the country)

But another perfectly valid question is: why should the super wealthy get another £705 per year when they don't need it?

The answer is that they will be paying extra tax through those schemes I've mentioned. The exact impact on each will depend on how many flights they take, how big their pension contributions are, how much Capital Gains they are liable for, and, of course, whether they have been using tax avoidance techniques.

Finally, it may seem odd to be reducing taxation in a recession.  Surely, if we are in a period of zero inflation, or even deflation, then people can manage on what they have already?

But the truth is more complex. Inflation is still rising for those on low and moderate incomes, because the prices of basic goods are still going up. Deflation is only a reality for those on higher incomes, where the costs of property and luxury goods have dropped significantly. People on lowest incomes are the hardest hit by the economic problems, and they need to be protected from the worst effects.

A good piece of work this morning by the Liberal Democrat leadership - and you know that I don't say that sort of thing unless I really mean it!

Updates

The Independent: Liberal Democrats - a party ahead of the pack

The press release from the Liberal Democrats on these proposals is here.

Spotted in church this morning, a poster created by the children with the prompt: "A good shepherd is someone who is ...."

First reponse: "vegetarian".

When I was in Mexico last week I visited Chichen Itza. I have to admit that the name didn't mean much to me, but when I got there I realised that I had seen many, many images of it in the past.

Why had the name been so unfamiliar? Perhaps it is just the sinister magic of the place.

Chichen Itza is the site of the greatest Mayan remains anywhere. The ruins are spread over a vast area and much is still being excavated.

This is the  Pyramid of Kulkanan (Quetzalcoatl). The four sides, each with their 91 steps, represent the four seasons and the pyramid is orientated to the solstices and equinoxes.

Bizarrely, there is another pyramid temple inside. The lunar and solar calendar cycles meet after 52 years and at that point it was thought necessary to renew and rebuild.

The Temple of the Warriors has rows of pillars that stretch far into the forest on either side. At the top of the steps is one of the most disturbing remains - a Chac-Mool, which is a statue of a reclining man. You can just see it, but I have nicked the photo below from Wikipedia as I couldn't get close enough.

It isn't just a powerful, Henry Moore-ish sculpture. Human sacrifice was practised at Chichen Itza by the Toltecs who took control from the Mayans, and the heart of the victim was placed on the tray resting on the Chac-Mool's stomach - or so we were told.

Which brings me to the Ball Court. A thousand years ago they played an highly organised team ball game in this huge court (over 500 x 200 feet). Along each of the side walls in a platform where the captain of each team ran.

The team players would try to pass the ball up to the captain who then lobbed it through a very high hoop. (You can just see one of the hoops above the man in the bright blue shirt). The first team to score won the game.

But - wait for it - the game was played at each equinox. And immediately afterwards the captain of one of the teams would be sacrificed. The WINNING captain. It was a great honour apparently .... but no wonder some games took three days.

The ball players were all men, of course. So to equal things out a virgin was sacrificed at each of the two solstices.

On 07.07.07 Chichen Itza was announced as one of the New 7 Wonders of the World.

So said one of my fellow councillors at Neighbourhood Committee last night.

Do you know the odd triangular site near Chessington North Station? It used to be a garage, then a drycleaners and now houses a car wash. 

Would you think it was possible to build 10 flats on that site, all but one with three or four bedrooms? And include parking and a garden? Could you really fit homes for at least 45 people in that small space?

We unanimously rejected a planning application for just that. I don't think I've ever seen such a badly designed development.  The only shared 'amenity space', ie garden, was immediately outside the windows of one of the ground floor flats; there were only five parking spaces (and you know how crowded North Parade can get); the front windows were right up against the pavement; the side and back windows of the flat next door would have been seriously overshadowed.

The sad thing is that the developer was trying to build much needed social housing. Most of us agreed that, in principle, we didn't mind the site being changed from commercial use to housing, but we cannot house families in cramped conditions like that.

So this is a message to all developers - you are entitled to pre-application advice from Council officers who will tell you frankly whether your plans are likely to be acceptable or not. If you heed their advice you will be saved a lot of time and expense. You will also keep the neighbours happy and avoid any antagonism.

It is so much better for everyone when sensible planning applications arrive on our agendas after good local consultation. It means that sites aren't left derelict and new buildings that enhance the area can be erected as soon as possible.

I've written before about the care for people with Alzheimer's at Amy Woodgate House, the Council-run home where my mother is a resident. But it is not often that such an all-embracing philosophy can be given physical expression in a new building.

Last week - while I was away, sadly - the new Amy Woodgate House was officially opened in Merritt Gardens, Chessington. The residents actually moved in a few weeks ago, and I have visited many times since then, so I have come to appreciate the attention to detail in the design.

Here are some random examples.

• The door to each resident's room is modelled on a front door, with proper house numbers.
• There is a memory box on the wall beside each door with pictures and momentos recording the resident's earlier life.
• The reminiscence corner has photos of film stars from the 40s and 50s, above a dressing table with beads, and a hatstand complete with feather boas and a bowler hat.
• The handrail around the walls in the corridors carries continuously across each of the doors leading to cupboards or exits, so that residents never get lost of stuck.
• The garden has circular paths, for the same reason, plus a familiar postbox (which someone will have to empty from time to time).
• The 'snoozlums' are being fitted out in each unit - these are multi-sensory rooms which provide ever-changing lights, sounds and smells in a relaxing environment.

All this is in addition to an excellent standard of accommodation for each resident, in a decent sized room, with a fully adjustable bed, ceiling hoist tracks, and an ensuite wet room.

There have been a number of TV programmes recently about the care of people with dementia. You may have seen Terry Pratchett's programme when he visited a care home in the States and said how he would love to live there when he needed that level of support. But it so reminded me of Amy Woodgate - we do have that quality of care in this country and some of the best is provided by local councils, like ours.

You can see some photos from the opening ceremony here.

I've been in the sunshine in Mexico attending my nephew's wedding.

Congratulations and much love to Martin and Teesha.

There will be a public consultation meeting on the planning application from Tesco for a superstore and houses near the Tolworth roundabout.  Everyone welcome!

The meeting will be held on Thursday 23rd April at 7pm in Tolworth Girls' School.

More details about the Save Tolworth, Stop Tesco campaign on http://www.everylittlehurts.co.uk/.

What really happened during the protests in the City on Wednesday?

Tom Brake, Liberal Democrat MP for neighbouring Carshalton and Wallington, was at the Climate Change protest and was detained within the police cordon. Here's his video report.

The Twitter April Fool in the Guardian today was delicious ... but this post is totally unrelated to the day.

I'm really looking forward to singing in the Kingston Choral Society concert on Saturday (4th). We're doing Britten's strange but wonderful 'Rejoice in the Lamb', Tippett's brilliant arrangements of 'Five Negro Spirituals' and Howell's agonisingly sad 'Requiem' (which was written on the death of his nine year old son).

If you love choral music do come and hear us. The concert starts at 7.30pm in Kingston Parish Church.