CCarpe diem* as they say and this is certainly what the Labour Party and their financial backers, the trade unions, appear to be doing.

With a Conservative controlled government, sitting on a slim majority and seething with rebellious ‘Remainers’, both open and hidden, the unions have decided to kick off at one of the most sensitive times of the year.

More specifically, they’ve chosen some of their most militant elements, ASLF, along with the RMT, to lead the charge, in arguably the most politically sensitive part of the country.

With the government’s eye firmly off of the ball and clearly distracted by their internal turmoils and the secretive Brexit preparations – and probably Boris Johnson – the Labour Party and their urban guerrillas, their union members, have indeed seized the day.

Regrettably, at this point in time, Theresa May doesn’t seem to have the stomach for the sort of stand we saw Margaret Thatcher take in the 80’s. I’m not suggesting the sort of confrontation we saw in the miners’ strikes, that was Scargill’s doing, but her current stance seems untenable.

If May doesn’t focus on these internal issues and park the whole Brexit diversion until these are dealt with, Labour and its foot soldiers will undoubtedly feel emboldened. They will also see this as the perfect start to their campaign for a return in May 2020 to what was, at one time seemed an impossibility, a Jeremy Corbin led Labour Government.

*A Latin aphorism, usually translated “seize the day”, taken from book 1 of the Roman poet Horace’s work Odes (23 BC).

Just to complete my paranoid episode, I might even postulate the following scenario. The Remainers, no matter their political persuasion, are so incensed at the potential loss of the EU comfort blanket, they are prepared to line up behind those seeking to undermine Brexit at all costs and even against the government that has made a commitment to deliver it.

The theory behind this is as follows. If the UK did stay in the EU, its tentacles would continue to creep into every crack of our constitution and daily life, as the ambition to form an all encompassing European superstate became a reality.

As such, the colour of the particular party running individual member states would have little, or no impact on the big picture.  All the important decisions would be taken by Brussels and the faceless, unaccountable, supposedly elected ones, fortunate enough to be riding on that much bigger gravy train.

It’s possible that even a system of government, where socialism and workers rights are so well entrenched, but supposedly not out of control, is more palatable than the prospect of going it alone on the world stage.

As such, even some of the most right wing in the Conservative Party, are more wedded to the EU superstate than the UK as a sovereign state. So who knows how far my paranoia could take me with this conspiracy theory?

Although the both the wider sailing and Paralympic sail communities have been up in arms about this since it was announced, I’m not sure many of us luck enough to be able bodied, were even aware.  Applying criteria for the inclusion of a sport in something like the Paralympics, seems unnecessarily bureaucratic, when you think about the benefits inclusion brings to its participants.

Those who know about these things, say that sailing is a tremendous leveller and once you are in the boat, no matter your disability, you can soon become the equal of, or even better than those with fewer issues.  Of course the Olympic committee should always be seeking to avoid the inclusion of sporting elites, where only the elite few compete.

Paralympics are very keen to avoid being seen as in need of special treatment and want to viewed as equals in sporting terms, wherever possible.  However, this should not be used as an excuse to rigidly apply the rules, when there are clear reasons to sometimes do something differently.

incidentally, how is football, seven aside or otherwise not seen as widely represented and therefore another sport to be dropped in 2020?  Likewise, isn’t the somewhat elitist and extremely expensive sport of showjumping, one that is more likely not to be commonly practiced in many countries?  Do at least 24 different countries compete at every Olympics?

Copied from online magazine Triton

Sailing dropped from Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games

Posted on Feb 6, 2015 by Dorie Cox in News |

The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) announced last week that it planned to drop sailing as a sanctioned sport in the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games.

The games for handicapped athletes run Aug. 25-Sept. 6, 2020, and will feature 22 sports, though a maximum of 23 could be allowed. The other water sports included are canoe, rowing and swimming. Both one person multihull sailing and blind match racing sailing were excluded.

“To reach this decision, the IPC undertook the most extensive and rigorous review process ever of all the sports, which started in November 2013,” IPC President Sir Philip Craven said in a statement after the Jan. 31 decision. “All were assessed against the same criteria and our aim all along has been to ensure that the final Tokyo 2020 paralympic sports program is fresh and features the best para-sports possible.

“The board’s final decision was not an easy one and, after much debate, we decided not to include two sports – football 7-a-side and sailing – from the Tokyo 2020 program for the same reason: Both did not fulfil the IPC handbook’s minimum criteria for worldwide reach.”

The IPC Handbook states only team sports widely and regularly practiced in a minimum of 24 countries and three IPC regions will be considered for inclusion in the games. For individual sports, they must be practiced in a minimum of 32 countries in three IPC regions.

A final decision on the medal events program will not be made until 2017. More than 13,000 people have signed a petition to reinstate the sport. Read it here:

https://www.change.org/p/international-paralympic-committee-reinstatesailing-for-the-2020-paralympics

and visit https://www.facebook.com/ReinstateParalympicSailing2020?fref=ts

At London 2012, the games involved a record 4,237 athletes from 164 countries who took part in 503 medal events across 20 sports. A cumulated global audience of 3.8 billion watched the games, whilst 2.78 million tickets were sold, making the Paralympics the third-biggest sporting event in the world behind the Olympics and FIFA World Cup. Sailing has appeared in the past five paralympic games.

The International Sailing Federation (ISAF) reported the news and said it was “extremely disappointed.”

“At the London 2012 Paralympic Games, 23 nations from four continents were represented across the three paralympic events,” according to a statement from the ISAF. Every effort will be made to reinstate sailing to the Paralympic Games.”

Tom Hubbell, president of US Sailing, the national governing body for sailing, issued this statement: “Yesterday’s news about Paralympic sailing being dropped from the slate of sports at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games is highly disappointing. Our sport attracts a diverse group of disabled athletes across the world, as demonstrated by the three fleets of sailors from 14 countries competing in Miami last week at ISAF Sailing World Cup Miami. US Sailing will join ISAF, IFDS and the national governing bodies of our fellow Paralympic sailing nations to lead an appeal of this decision in the fight for reinstatement of Paralympic sailing at the Tokyo 2020 Games.”

Having been one of the four so called experts responsible for wreaking havoc across the development management process, with the creation of the NPPF, John Rhodes has now turned his attention to the development policy making process, by becoming a member of the expert group looking at the plan making process.

It seems that the hundreds of thousands of pounds and thousands of hours councils have spent producing new local plans, has been wasted.

According to John Rhodes, one line of perfect wording in the NPPF, does the job – who’d have thought it?  What a clever chap he must be, what a bunch of muppets we’ve all been over the last five plus years.  We didn’t need the SHMA, SHLAA, SCI, EIA, OAN, SA, WPVA, oh and let’s not forget the other appparently unnecessary document, the strategic flood risk assessment.

So providing the developers get the message, that one line of text means don’t built houses that are too small, too close togeather, too expensive to live in, likely to flood, overshadow the neighbours, all look the same, are ugly to look at and provide community benefits where appropriate, job done.  Do you think we can trust developers to do all this, based on one line of text in the NPPF?

Simplify plan-making to make NPPF work, says NPPF creator
Copied from The Planner – by Simon Wicks

Simplified local planning and consistent application of policy are needed for the plan-led system to work, one of the architects of the NPPF has argued.

Politicians also need to simply let planners do their jobs, said John Rhodes, a member of the four-person team that wrote the National Planning Policy Framework.
“What we really require is consistent application of policy rather than planning reform,” the founder of Quod told an audience of solicitors and barristers at the Cornerstone Barristers annual planning day on Monday (7 November).
Indeed, he said, the NPPF could almost be boiled down to the single statement in paragraph 14, that spells out the presumption in favour of sustainable development.
“It’s a single paragraph national planning policy and it contains everything you need to know about determining a planning application,” he said, adding: “Or at least it did until the government added a footnote.”
Reviewing the process of distilling thousands of pages of planning policy into the NPPF, Rhodes stressed that its strength was in its simplicity. “Planning policy doesn’t need to be that complicated,” he said. “But it doesn’t mean planning decisions aren’t enormously sophisticated.”
The progress of local planning, however, was held back by the sheer weight of material that resource-starved planning authorities were expected to compile as evidence. As a member of the Local Plans Expert Group (LPEG), Rhodes has also been part of an inquiry into methods for making local planning more efficient and effective.
Some inspectors, the panel had found, had to hire storage units to keep all the paperwork relating to local plan inspections. And, because only 31 per cent of local authorities had a post-NPPF approved plan, many were relying on out of date figures to underpin their housing projections.
Added to this, said Rhodes, the interventions of politicians had created uncertainty around the application of policy. This was particularly evident in ministerial interference with green belt reviews which, he said, sent the message to local authorities that the government wasn’t serious about applying NPPF stipulations around green belt development.
Rhodes echoed the recommendations of the LPEG inquiry with a variety of ways in which to make plan-making more efficient and effective and to restore the integrity of the plan-led system, including:
Make it a statutory duty to create a post-NPPF local plan. “If you don’t produce a plan your existing [pre-NPPF] plan will dissolve and others will come in and write your plan for you.”
Streamline the process of assessing objectively assessed need (OAN) for housing. “There must be a simpler way of doing this. Why don’t you just have a formula that that tells you how to work out your OAN at the touch of a button?”
Reduce environmental impact assessments to a short “assessment of environmental capacity” and a statement of how environmental considerations have been incorporated into the plan
Enforce the duty to co-operate. “The duty to cooperate is useless. A duty to chat is what most people called it [during the LPEG inquiry]. It’s not being properly enforced.”
Limit policy change and alterations to the National Planning Practice Guidance (NPPG), to let the NPPF properly establish itself. “Could we have less change please and simply more application of policy and stop fiddling with the NPPG? It’s not there for politicians, it’s there for us lot as practical guidance on policy.”
Ease the soundness test by altering the phrase “most appropriate strategy” in paragraph 182 of the NPPG to “an appropriate strategy” to allow for greater flexiblity in approving plans and greater speed in plan-making.
Impose a statutory schedule on creating a local plan, which Rhodes suggested should be two years.
“You can’t expect the NPPF to be successful if it’s not fully reflected in local plans,” Rhodes stressed. “Imagine a world in which we had a full suite of local plans consistent with the NPPF planning to meet housing needs. You could not make a more serious statement about the intention to meet housing needs. That’s the way the national crisis would be addressed.”