A bit more information for residents regarding the flooding problem the bridge suffers during periods of heavy rain. Below is a link to a letter received from LCC. As you will see from reading this, the issue of who does what on the bridge is far from straightforward. I will do my best to make progress on this before the freezing weather arrives again this year.
Author Archives: gambba
Another piece of directed localism
More directed localism from government today, with George Osborne announcing a freeze on council tax. Last time I looked, it was individual councils, via it’s elected members, that decided whether or not their council tax should rise, fall or remain the same, not the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Of course central government has the power to cap councils that it feels are planning to levy an excessive increase in their council tax rate. However, it now seems that the Chancellor has decided that he knows exactly what every council in the country needs to keep providing services to it’s local taxpayers, even before those councils have started their budget setting deliberations for the next civic year.
Of course, any relief in the ever increasing rise in household bills is to be welcomed and any council that decided to increase it’s council tax levels after the Chancellor’s announcement, would be either very confident of it’s political support amongst it’s taxpayers, very foolish, or desperate. However, that’s not the point. This government has banged on and on about getting rid of ‘big government’ and giving power back to local people. Yet, in an opportunistic piece of political posturing at the party conference, George Osborne is now going to tell local councils that it is not their role to make this decision on behalf of their local taxpayers. So much for localism.
May says we’ve changed, Maude suggests not
Theresa May is making a valiant effort to shift the public’s view of the Tory Party, by being brave enough to go on the record, saying that the Party has changed and is no longer, ‘the nasty party’.
Unfortunately, Francis Maude seems hellbent on dispelling that view by laying in to the National Trust and by inference it’s many hundreds of thousands of supporters, including many Tories no doubt.
If you can’t bring yourself to read all of this pompous blurb, I’ve repeated the relevant section below.
‘………. Then, in the next breath, he is vowing to take on the unions, accusing the National Trust of peddling “bollocks” about planning reforms,……’
Time to target MPs on the NPPF
With the likes of Francis Maude thinking he can say what he likes about those have the temerity to challenge the National Planning Policy Framework CONSULTATION document, perhaps the emphasis should now shift towards individual MPs.
Members of those organisations currently being slated by various CLG ministers and others who should know better, should now start filling their MP’s postbags with letters of protest at the intemperate and now insulting language being used against those who are exercise their democratic right to comment on a government policy document that is, after all, only out for consultation.
That is of course unless the consultation exercise is actually nothing but, to quote Francis Maude, the new foul-mouthed fishwife of Westminster, ‘bollocks’.
David Cameron advises us to use local policies to fill NPPF gaps
David Cameron so obviously doesn’t understand the way the planning system works and has not read the NPPF. He appears on the Andrew Marr show this morning, trotting out the propaganda fed to him by those who have been promoting wholesale changes to the planning system.
More interestingly, he suggested that, just because something isn’t ‘specified’ at the national level, such as the control of roadside advertising hoardings, this doesn’t mean it can’t done at the local level. Taken to it’s logical conclusion, this could see the thousands of pages that will been thrown on the bonfire, by the introduction of the 50 odd pages of the NPPF at the national level, replaced by thousands of pages of planning legislation being created at the local level – some improvement to an over complex system that will be!
I hope all of those involved in the producing planning policies at the local level take note of this steer from the Prime Minister. I read this as: Where the National Planning Policy Framework is, out of date, indeterminate or silent on a subject, a local policy is to be used to fill the gap.
Cameron disappoints on the EU relationship
David Cameron happy to stay in Europe – that’s disappointing and immediately puts this country on the back foot when trying to tell the EU it’s got it wrong!
Continuing to tell us that it’s all about getting the relationship with right, totally ignores the fact that the whole EU bureaucracy is a corrupt and voracious monster. Trying to improve a relationship with something as self-serving and greedy as the EU, is like trying to reason with a boat load of gun toting Somalian pirates, as they are climbing aboard your boat.
An American abroad
Notwithstanding his role as the president of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), Bill Bryson speaks with great wisdom on the potential damage the NPPF could do to the English landscape.
If government ministers won’t listen to its own people – Francis Maude, a supposedly clever man at the heart of government, describing their concerns as ‘bollocks’ – perhaps they will listen to an American, who has personal knowledge of the damage done to his country through uncontrolled development.
Pickles talks his normal rubbish
Bizarre performance from Eric Pickles on BBC TV this morning. Constantly referring to refuse as what sounded like ‘refuge’. Also making an extremely poor pun with the comment, ‘we are treating people like adults and…… not like rubbish’, get it? clever – NOT!
Notice the sudden use of ‘we’ by Pickles in the last bit? Eric Pickles is constantly criticising local government, yet when it’s good news, in his opinion, it suddenly becomes we this and we that. Hypocrisy come so easily to this man, he probably doesn’t even realise he doing it. Actually, on second thoughts, he knows exactly what he’s doing, because he’s all about the soundbite.
Steppingstone Bridge Spalding
Minor progress of sorts on the lighting issue, although sadly no actual light at the end of the tunnel, because it still doesn’t work! At least I now know that it is a waste of timing asking either Network Rail or LCC to fix it.
I received a letter from LCC today, giving me some information on the situation regarding the lack of a working light on the bridge. It would seem that, despite being the county council and actually having responsiblity for the footpath that crosses the railway line via this bridge, LCC can’t get any more sense out of Network Rail than the rest of us. It’s difficult to believe that a company that relies so heavily on public money for its survival, can be so arrogant when it comes to addressing the concerns of members of that public.
Below is a copy of the letter I received today along with one sent to John Hayes MP.
Bottom line is, if I can find £3,500, the county council is willing to install and maintain lighting on the bridge. I will now be seeking some support from other Spalding members at the next Spalding Town Forum. This support could be by tapping in to the ward budgets, or maybe by seeking some help from the Spalding Power Station community fund. Watch this space.
Labour trying to cash in on Forces good name?
As an ex-serviceman with 38 years service in the RAF, I am of course a service pensioner. I was therefore very interested to read about the issue of service pension cuts being raised at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool. Apparently, Labour delegates are very concerned that ex-service personnel are suffering a drop in their pensions because of the government’s decision to change the way rises in benefits are calculated. The switch from RPI to CPI means that anybody receiving an index linked benefit, such as a public pension, will effectively be taking a cut in income year on year.
I of course have a vested interest in this subject and would be very pleased to see the link with the RPI restored. However, why has Labour waited until their party conference to make a fuss about this?
Also, why is it only service pensions that they are so concerned about? What about all the other public servants who are now, or soon will be, on a pension and are receiving a year on year cut in what may be their only source of income?
Could it be that the Labour Party is cynically seeking to cash in on the current high regard the military is enjoying in the public’s eye? If there were no servicemen and women returning from Afganistan dead, or suffering from horrific and life changing injuries, would this item of even been discussed at the conference, let alone appeared on an agenda?
Roger Gambba-Jones 