Category Archives: Government

Andrew Mitchell – nasty as well as arrogant

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Hardly a surprise to find out that this man is a ‘nasty’ piece of work as a career choice. No wonder he was chosen to be the chief whip. I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t get rewarded by Cameron, rather than being punished, as a way of sending a message to the Party’s rebellious back benchers.

From today’s Daily Telegraph – POLITICS
How I felt the full force of chief whip’s rage, by volunteer, 21
By Steven Swinford

THE Conservative Chief Whip accused of insulting a Downing Street police officer flew into a rage with a young party volunteer who was critical of an aid trip to Africa, it was claimed last night.
Lucy Kinder said she received an angry telephone call from Andrew Mitchell when, as a 21 year-old, she drafted a newspaper article about a Conservative Party trip to teach English to Rwandan teachers in August 2009.
She claimed that Mr Mitchell accused her of betraying his trust before contacting her father and saying that he “did not blame” party members for threatening his daughter with violence.
Miss Kinder, now a trainee journalist with The Telegraph, was invited on Project Umubano after doing work experience in Mr Mitchell’s private office. She was one of 100 volunteers who paid up to £2,000 each to go on the trip, led by a delegation of senior Tory MPs including Mr Mitchell, Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Nick Hurd. While not a Conservative Party member herself, she wanted to improve the lives of Rwandans and told organisers that she planned to write an article about her experience.
On arrival, Miss Kinder said the group faced an uphill struggle. She claimed that they were given just one day’s training and the Rwandan teachers did not receive an allowance from the country’s education ministry as promised to cover their food and travel. This meant that they had to walk up to 10 miles each morning to attend class. The ministry eventually gave them a lump sum, but only after the course had ended, she said. In an article submitted to The Independent newspaper, Miss Kinder wrote: “I found myself in a class of 45 who could barely speak a word of English. Progress was frustrating and the ministry of education did little to make this easier. It made a mockery of our fortnight. We have been instructing teachers who were hungry, tired and disillusioned.”
She praised the volunteers’ enthusiasm and the Conservative Party for the “impressive feat” of attracting so many to Rwanda. Mr Mitchell, however, was unimpressed. After learning of the draft article, he telephoned Miss Kinder at around midnight when she was on a coach journey to Zanzibar.
“He was furious,” she said. “He accused me of going behind his back and betraying the Conservative Party. He told me he couldn’t believe I had written such a damaging article and that he would make sure it wouldn’t be published. I tried to tell him it was a first draft and could be changed, but he wouldn’t listen.”
Mr Mitchell then allegedly called Miss Kinder’s father, with whom he had studied at Cambridge. “He said, ‘You know your daughter is writing this story? I can’t believe you would let her do that,’ said Miss Kinder. “He was really, really angry. He then sent him a text which said, ‘They are threatening her with physical violence and I can’t say I blame them.’”
Miss Kinder, now 25, said she felt intimidated and was forced to leave the group on her own when they arrived in Zanzibar for a week’s break.
A friend of Mr Mitchell said: “The volunteer was the daughter of one of his oldest friends. Yes, Andrew was angry but what he said was quite obviously figurative and he does not believe it could have been taken in any other way.”
A Conservative Party official said: “Hundreds of MPs and activists have worked on Project Umubano under Andrew Mitchell and this is the only time anyone has ever complained. There are two sides to every story, suffice to say that a lot of people felt very let down by this volunteer’s behaviour.”

Rubbish recycling companies are playing dirty

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An important letter to all local authorities from the Local Government Association.

Judicial review of Waste Regulation: Recent press coverage

Dear Colleague,

As you may be aware, there is an important judicial review case currently under way involving a challenge to the current legal basis for waste and recycling collection.

The claimants in that case – UK Recyclate and a number of other recycling contractors – want some councils to be forced to change their arrangements at significant cost. The LGA is also a party to the case and is arguing that councils are legally entitled to retain a level of discretion to choose the appropriate arrangements for their areas.

A recent article in the Municipal Journal (MJ) by the claimants contains a number of factual inaccuracies and misleading statements. It appears to be designed to spread misinformation and persuade local authorities that the judicial review has already been decided and that they are at legal risk. The case has not been decided, and the purpose of this letter is to put the record straight.

What is at issue in the judicial review (UK Recyclate v Defra) is whether EU law requires every council to impose separate source collection of waste on its householders, outlawing co-mingled collection, or whether it permits co-mingling in appropriate cases. As you know, every local area is very different, and being forced to change to a single collection approach could have significant cost implications for many councils, and may well not be appropriate in many local circumstances.

The Government has recently made amended regulations in order to put the legal position beyond any doubt. Those regulations continue to allow for co-mingled collection where appropriate for local circumstances. They are the law of the land unless a court says otherwise. The LGA’s lawyers, and the Government’s, believe this approach is correct under EU law.

In the recent MJ article, the claimants’ lawyers attempt to tell councils that a judgment has already been made by the court and that councils which use co-mingled waste collection are now in a legally dubious position. This simply isn’t so. The judicial review is ongoing, but as yet there has been no hearing before a judge, and no finding made by the court.

As you will know, it is unusual for parties to litigation to run their arguments outside the courtroom while the case is ongoing. The MJ article therefore appears to be an attempt by the claimants to stir up local authority concern before the case even gets to a hearing, and suggests that they are arguing from a position of weakness.

It is of course in the commercial interest of the claimants that councils should move away from co-mingled collection. The LGA’s strong view is that the law permits councils discretion to make their own decisions in the light of local circumstances and in accordance with the clear legal provision made by the amended regulations.

Councils should certainly not be influenced by an inaccurate and misleading article written on behalf of parties with an obvious commercial agenda.

You may be asking yourself if there is anything you can do to influence the situation. The LGA is a party to the case and if you would like to follow events more closely and contribute, should the need arise, to developing evidence further, please do put an officer in contact with Abigail.burridge@local.gov.uk.

The LGA has also communicated with your officers about this case and will be happy to provide further information on the position.

Yours faithfully,

Cllr Mike Jones
Chairman of the LGA Environment and Housing Board

Personal note: I trust that when the dust has settled on this issue, all local authorities will consider very carefully, whether or not the companies involved in this legal action would make good partners in any future ventures.

Does this remind you of anybody you know?

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Reproduced with thanks from The Daily Telegraph 15 August 2012

Confidence is key to success, but don’t trip on your ego

By Hannah Furness

THE secret to career success is not talent, hard work or education, but sheer, unashamed confidence, a study has suggested.

Although workers with big egos will often perform poorly and make more mistakes, their colleagues consistently fail to spot their errors and continue to believed they are “terrific” or “beloved”.
Their personality means they are often promoted over those who are more competent, as colleagues mistake their confidence for talent.

A study of more than 500 students, academics and workers, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, showed that those who appeared more confident achieved a higher social status than their peers.

Within a work environment, higher-status individuals tended to be more admired, listened to, and had more sway over group decisions.

Prof Cameron Anderson of the University of California, who led the research, said that, as a result, “incompetent people are often promoted over their more competent peers”. He said those who were overconfident often sought power, fame or success and that overconfidence was encouraged by the prospect of increased social status, respect and esteem.

“Our studies found overconfidence helped people attain social status,” he said. “Those who believed they were better than others, even when they weren’t, were given a higher place in the social ladder, and the motivation to attain higher social status therefore triggered overconfidence.”
The researchers found that many of their subjects believed sincerely that they were more physically talented, socially adept and skilled at their jobs than reality reflected. In one study, 94 per cent of college professors were found to believe that their work was above average.

Prof Anderson said: “In organisations, people are very easily swayed by others’ confidence even when that confidence is unjustified. Displays of confidence are given an inordinate amount of weight.”
In a series of six experiments, the researchers found evidence that companies should be sceptical of individuals’ confidence. In one test, they found overconfident individuals talked more and participated more extensively in group tasks, even when they were less competent.

In another experiment, a general knowledge test, those who made loud claims to know the right answers were held in highest regard, even when they got the answers wrong.

Prof Anderson, of the university’s Berkeley Haas School of Business, said: “Group members did not think of their high status peers as overconfident, but simply that they were terrific.”

Two final studies found it was the desire for status that encouraged people to be overconfident.
The study, entitled A Status-Enhancement Account of Overconfidence, concluded: “The individuals among us who are elevated to positions of status wield undue influence, have access to more resources, get better information, and enjoy a variety of benefits.

“Although we may seek to choose wisely, we are often forced to rely on proxies for ability, such as individuals’ confidence. In so doing we, as a society, create incentives for those who would seek status to display more confidence than their actual ability merits.”

Fly tipping initiative

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Reproduced from: http://www.rsnonline.org.uk/index.php

Wednesday, 01 August 2012 14:38
Joining forces against fly-tipping
Written by Ruralcity Media

LANDOWNERS have joined forces with a local authority to make it easier to remove fly-tipped waste from private land.
The partnership between the Country Land and Business Association and Suffolk County Council aims to solve waste issues at a local level.
It builds on work already undertaken by the local authority on tackling trade waste.
CLA president Harry Cotterell said: “It costs around £800 to deal with each incidence of non-toxic fly-tipped waste on private land.
“Although we would like to see waste taken to local tips free of charge, we understand this is unlikely without a change in the law.
“However, the partnership with Suffolk County Council should help identify the barriers preventing fly-tipping from being dealt with.
“There must be a long-term sustainable solution, so we are pleased Defra is seeking to provide funding for the joint effort and, if successful, the outcome could be rolled out to other local authorities.”
One idea the CLA is keen to explore is a ticketing scheme for victims that uses a reference number to trace the crime, from the point of reporting the fly-tipping to the police or local authority to disposing of it at the local tip.
Mr Cotterell added: “The CLA will also continue to lobby the government to remove the potential for landowners to be prosecuted purely because they have not removed waste tipped on their land.”
The partnership was announced at a recent government summit on fly-tipping, chaired by Defra minster Lord Taylor of Holbeach.
The summit was a key government commitment to bring organisations across all sectors together to galvanise support for regional action on fly-tipping.
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Seb Coe for ……?

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The Conservativehome website has a post suggesting that Sebastian Coe should be considered as a successor to Boris Johnson as the next London Mayor.

Let’s not get carried away. Sebastian Coe was found wanting as an MP and would be even more out of his depth as a replacement for Boris Johnson.

There’s been a few banana skins for him as the face of the Games, not least his dismissive approach to the tickets farce. It’s extremely fortunate that much else has been so good and that the security issue was saved by the intervention of the military, as well as all the good feedback heard about the volunteers, who it appears are well named as, Games Makers.

Will we ever know the full story on how much the London Games owe to the role of Seb Coe? I somehow doubt it, these things have a way of taking on a life of their own and turn into a fog of myth and hype, that can propel people into roles that often prove beyond their capabilities. Which of course takes us full circle to Coe’s selection as an MP; too much hype and not nearly enough substance seems to have been the propellant there.

Forget the mayoral job and just make him a saint, he’ll do far less harm.

Don’t get misled by the facts

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There’s a piece in the latest Local Government Association (LGA) First magazine, that could easily prove extremely misleading to elected members, given that it suggests that, despite all the budget cuts and threats to services, councils’ are doing okay.

The article is actually extracted from something written Neil Wholey, Head of Research and Customer Insight at Westminster City Council – whatever that is, the job, not the council. Whilst the piece may not be inaccurate in any way, the author obviously knows his stuff and the facts are the facts, it’s certainly likely to offer a misleading picture to those who, when reading it, don’t bother to separate out the elements that make up a council.

As a LGA publication, it’s difficult not to see the magazine as primarily a vehicle for communicating with elected members, as opposed to the professionals and this where the misleading bit begins.  The article called, Residents’ Views, tells the reader that, despite all the hardships being visited on taxpayers by government, local government’s reputation is doing surprisingly well.

I’ve no reason to doubt what the author is saying when it comes to public opinion, especially if the questions were asked in a way that avoids any reference to the politics of the council.  The problem comes when an elected member reads this and either misses, or completely ignores, the basis on which the questions were asked.  The public are expressing a view of their experience of the council, not the councillors.

I wonder what the answer would have been if, instead of asking, ‘overall do you think the council is providing good services in your area?’ they had asked, ‘how well do you think the (insert political group name as appropriate) are running your local council?’.  By inserting politics into the question, you immediately invite a biased response, based on the politics of the person being asked the question. Taken a step further, even if the council is performing well, the fact that it is controlled by one, or other of the political parties, will be far more influential when it comes to an election, than any public satisfaction survey, however rosy a picture it paints.

 

My point is, that any politician reading this and taking it at face value, could be in danger of deluding themselves in to thinking that taxpayer satisfaction with ‘the council’, is the same as satisfaction with ‘the councillors’.

Desperation or inappropriate favouritism?

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The latest bright idea from the coalition government, liberalised gambling laws, has an uncanny parallel with a similar bright idea of the previous Labour Government – 24 hour drinking.

The changes to the licensing laws have been an unmitigated disaster for our town centres, making them no-go areas at weekends, unless you are one of the thousands of 18-30’s determined to become hopelessly intoxicated and dangerously aggressive.

Changing the gambling laws won’t have the same type of negative impact as the changes to the drinking laws. However, making it even easier for the public at large to gamble to excess, will prove just as damaging in the long run. I can’t workout whether this is an idea born out of desperation to find a further source of deficit reducing revenue, or a sign of some sort of inappropriate favouritism, where looking after the financial interests of those who fund political parties and campaigns, takes precedent over everything else. I wonder how many expensive lunches it took the gambling industry to persuade ministers this was a good idea.

These proposals have been dressed up as localising control, giving councils the power to determine what happens locally. If its anything like the licensing laws, all it will do is impose yet another function on councils that are already struggling to maintain current services. The one thing it won’t do, is, as with the licensing laws, give councils the ability to say no, simply because they believe it would be bad for their community.

Whilst on the subject of lobbying, how long do you think it will take before ministers start releasing media statements, saying how good it would be for everybody if we retained the changes to Sunday Trading laws, currently only in place for the Olympics.

The death of local government?

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Localism, community right to challenge, independent schools, neighbourhood planning, community panels and of course, directly elected mayors. A common thread here, or to use the current jargon, the golden thread, is community. You could actually translates the term community into, ‘non-local government’. I say local government, because central government has made sure that none of the plans put forward for the reform of public services, have threatened their continued existence.

There’s been a concerted effort by the likes of Eric Pickles and George Osbourne, to make local government the villains of the piece, in taxpayers’ eyes, when it comes to the cost of providing public services. This ‘official’ campaign is under-pinned by the long held and media fuelled public perception of local government – It’s full of pen pushing bureaucrats; they all have a job for life so do as little as possible; what they do do, is always done at half speed; there’s too many managers, getting inflated levels of pay; when they retire, it’s too early and they all get a gold-plated pension. Oh! and while we’re at, those bloody councillors are a waste of space and get too much in expenses! They actually mean allowances, as expense are simply the refunding of what’s been paid out for things such as travel, whereas allowances are what councillors receive for being councillors.

Given this unremitting assault on local government from all sides, one has to wonder how long it will be before local government becomes pretty much extinct, which it’s difficult not to see as the ultimate ambition for Whitehall – why? Think about it – a large amount of tax revenue is currently diverted to local government through the grant process. Leaving most local services to be provided and therefore funded by the communities that use them, would give government a very large pot of money that wasn’t available before. Those services that are left for local government to provide, such as emptying the bins, will be funded from the perpetually frozen council tax, the partial retention of the business rates and possibly CIL. There will of course be a few other roles for local government to fulfil, because the government either can’t be bothered with it, or need to deflect blame away from themselves by putting somebody else in the firing line. Public health and the universal credit being the current ones.

Adult social care and the growing concerns surrounding the cost of provision suggests that this could still be the elephant in the room. However, given how duplicitous central government has been towards local government to date, I suspect they already have a plan that will leave local government further sidelined and weakened, whilst also being blamed for its failings.

Be patient, we’ll be gone soon enough

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Those taxpayers who think councillors are a waste of their council tax and should be done away with, just need to be patient for a few more years, if the local government press is to be believed.

Apparently, the bill for adult social care will increase at such a rate, whilst local government funding will be reduced at a similar rate, that there will no money left to do anything else. It’s estimated that the adult care bill will absorb 90% of the available funding, with the remainder being used to empty the bins. If this forecast is accurate, then I think there will be little need for elected members in whatever remains of local government.

As well as helping to formulate policy for the wide range of services councils currently provide, councillors also set the tax rate that partly pays for these services. Just as importantly, councillors help local taxpayers deal with the effects of those policies, especially when they don’t work as advertised, or even don’t work at all. It therefore follows, that by starving local government of funding, apart from those needed for adult care and emptying the bins, elected members will have little or no policies to formulate and very few issues to help taxpayers with. No policies = no problems = problem solved.

Central government will be able to keep the masses distracted by continuing to promote elected mayors, so there’s something local for them to vote for every few years. Local democratic energies will be absorbed by the outcomes of localism. Local people will need to spend their time running the services they value and that used to be run by councils. This may ultimately lead to the creation of a group of community leaders, trusted by the public to steward these services and charged with making the best use of their communities hard earned money. Indeed, they may even be called councillors.

Local Government and Public Health

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Some of my councillor colleagues told me that they weren’t interested in attending yesterday’s workshop on public health, because ‘it was a county council problem’. The county council are the ones with all the resources and have been involved with public health for the last few years, but that doesn’t mean districts will be able to leave them to it – the game has changed it seems.

The first speaker at Tuesday’s event was from the Strategic Health Authority. According to the programme, after this presentation, ‘Members will better understand the government objectives through the health reform policy…’. Well, I must of missed the bit where that became clear. I now now know how my fellow councillors feel, when I’m trying to explain the technicalities of our planning policy!

What I did understand, was that the current system is fiendishly complicated. It has lots of people with wonderful job titles like, Clinical Commissioning Group Chairman and enough acronyms to fill a a decent sized book. Some of these acronyms describe the various boards, panels, groups, herds, gaggles and flocks, these people attend to wring their hands over issues such as, how fat we are all becoming.

Britain used to be the sick man of Europe, now, apparently, we are the obese man of Europe. Well if the footballers and tennis players can’t do it, at least us fatties are stepping up to the mark to claim first place in something.

The new system, that local government will be wrestling with, appears to be as equally fiendish in its complexity and bewildering terminology. The only difference will be, that instead of the NHS being the ones getting the blame for us all eating, drinking and smoking too much, it will be local government.

A spokeswoman from the Local Government Association then gave us a presentation, promoting the opportunities the new responsibilities will offer local government – opportunites? She told the audience, that local government was extremely keen to take on these new responsibilities, offering confirmation by telling us that, ‘no council had said no thanks, we’ve already got too much on our plates’. Cynic that I am, I suggested that saying no, at a time when local government was being subjected to a form of genocide by central government, would be like turkeys voting for Christmas.

Of course unitary and upper tier (county) councils would say yes please, we can do that. It will help them justify their continued existence. It also gives them a further opportunity to claim that they are essential, whilst district councils are an unneccesary expense that should be scrapped. Maybe they’re right, time will tell and that time could be sooner than many of us think.