Right of Reply

One of the plus points of a blog like this one is that it is interactive. You the reader are allowed to join in. You can disagree, challenge, expand and discuss in the comments section of each post. And some of you do. Blogger has recently added a new facility which means I now know exactly how many comments there are here. There are 7,028 comments and 1,299 posts.

Of course there are some bloggers who don’t publish comments they don’t like (you know who you are). But what irritates me more than anything is that some blogs do not allow comments at all. Especially when they make outrageous statements without supplying any references or evidence to back up their claims. Here’s an example from the Ilford South Labour Party blog that really got my nadgers in a tizzy. Here’s a Snip of the page just in case it gets changed.

The London Borough of Redbridge is run by a coalition of Conservatives supported by the Liberal Democrats. Between them they have only 3 councillors of the 27 who represent Ilford & the wards in the south of the borough. It is no surprise that the council spends more on the north of the borough rather than where it is most needed. But Labour councillors here in Ilford South are working hard to compensate for this unfair allocation of resources by listening to local people and liaising directly with council officers, the police & other services. [My emphases]

Whoever wrote that seems to have forgotten about the two new Primary schools in Ilford South and the new Academy due at the Cricklefields site. Not that the local Labour Leader approves of his own party’s flagship policy. And that’s without the brand new Loxford school building and the new Polyclinic in Ilford Lane. Not that these additions are sufficient to cater for the demands placed upon Redbridge council by those in the south of the borough. Then there is the sterling work done by our Street Scene team in dealing with all the grafitti and fly-tipping reported by Wilson on a daily basis back when he was interested. We do get some up here in the pampered north but nowhere near the levels reported on Wilson’s blog. OK, you’ve lost your swimming pool and you don’t have as much green belt as us, but hey, that green space is there for you too, and you are welcome to use the Barkingside pool. The Redbridge Museum and Local Studies Archive are in Ilford South as is the Kenneth More Theatre. Sponsored events like the Redbridge Carnival are held in Ilford South. Oh, I almost forgot your new library in Seven Kings.

I’d say you’re getting a pretty good deal, mate, so please stop blaming us.

Now, would any Ilford South Labour Party councillor care to comment on that?

Come to that, would anyone from the ConDem administration care to to put in their 2d?

Brothers in Arms

Far be it for me to comment on the internal machinations of a political party, but the Leader of Her Majesties Opposition has a rather important role in our democracy [sic!].

Brother Eddie gets the job.

Based on the groundswell of support for Brother Ed amongst local party members [via Facebook] I had suggested to a portly Labour veteran in the New Fairlop Oak last Wednesday evening that he might well win. Oh no, no, no, he said. Brother David has the MPs. And so he did. He also had the members. He lost because Brother Eddie took the affiliated section – the Trade Unions – by a larger margin. [Note: As I understand it this is no longer a Union block vote. It is individual votes of those Trade Union members who pay the optional political levy.]

Now, I also noticed that some Local Labour Party members also had a vote in the affiliated section, ie two votes. So, I suppose that if an MP is also a member of a Trade Union they get three votes – one in each section. I don’t know - perhaps someone can advise?

However, I am curious about the large difference between the member and affiliated sections. One would assume that those who had a vote in both sections would vote the same way. We can also assume that not all party members will be Trade Union members. This means, according to my dubious logic, that there must be a large number of voting affiliates who are not full party members. Maybe they just object to paying twice, while others are quite happy to do so – and get to vote twice? Whatever, the affiliates are still members, they have paid a form of subscription and should therefore be entitled to a vote. Although the tradition of one member, one vote, might be simpler and easier to justify.

There will no doubt be accusations that Her Majesties Leader of the Opposition has been elected by the Trade Unions. While it may be technically true that Trade Union members swung the vote in favour of Brother Ed, the notion is unfair and unreasonable. We all know about the historic link between the Labour Party and the Trade Unions, just as we know about the less democratic links between big business and the Conservative Party. As a shareholder I do not get a say on political party donations.

Turning to Brother Ed himself. I was quite impressed with him when he visited us here in Redbridge at Fairlop Waters a couple of years ago. And not just because a government Cabinet Minister used the tube to get here as opposed to some of our council cabinet members who insist on taxis for visits to central London [so I’m told]. He seemed to me to be honest and understood the issues surrounding the environment and climate. Not just the technicalities but he was refreshing in his explanation of the political difficulties in achieving any progress. I also noted, rather ominously, that he had the backing of the last Labour Party Leader to lose two consecutive general elections.

Finally about an hour after the result was announced I received an email from Baroness Warsi [we are on first name terms you know] suggesting that we all hold the new Labour Party Leader to account for his role in our current financial difficulties. Sorry, Sayeeda but I think you will find that it was your mates in the City who buggered our bank balance and it’s now Brother Ed’s role to hold YOU and YOUR government to account. We, the people, have a vested interest in the success of both of you.

October Comes

My, doesn’t time fly. It’s nearly October, Nature is busily preparing for Winter and it’s time to get out those Damart Thermals. So settle down with a blanket and I’ll tell you about some of the goodies on offer next month.

We kick off on Friday 1st with a feast of music - from the Celtic sounds of Irish jigs, film music, classical, jazz, gypsy, to the tangos and bossa novas of South America, yes it’s 10 String Fever returning to the Redbridge Green Fair Live Music Club, at Ilford Sports Club Cricklefields. Details.

From a feast of music to a feast of food. On Saturday 2nd it’s the World Food Day event at Holy Trinity South Woodford Hall. This is part of the Woodford Festival and offers the chance to sample culinary delights from around the world. It does what it says on the tin. Details.

Maintaining the food theme we have the Forest Farm Open Day on Sunday 10th. Debbie the resident medical herbalist will be there and there will be apple juice pressing and tasting as well as children’s activities, and chutneys, jams etc available for a donation. Details.

There is also the Abundance Project which does not have a specific date. This is where volunteers harvest fruit that would otherwise go to waste, or householders allow those volunteers to pick unwanted fruit in their garden. It will then get used in the production of jams, juice, chutneys and preserves. Details.

Moving on we have the inaugural meeting of the Wanstead Transition Initiative on Friday 15th. What’s that all about? See previous post and also see their explanation flyer here. The first meeting has a showing of the award winning film “The Age of Stupid” starring Pete Postlethwaite. You don’t have to live in Wanstead to attend. Details.

The following Wednesday 20th sees the opening of a new exhibition down at Redbridge Museum in the Central Library, Ilford. It’s about the “largest multinational business the world has ever seen” – The East India Company – and it’s 400 year association with Redbridge. Well, all right, it wasn’t called Redbridge then. Details.

But don’t pop down there on Thursday 21st morning. That’s when you should be at our coffee morning when we have the Deputy Leader of the Council, Ian Bond, as a our guest speaker. I’m sure you can come up with a few searching questions for him in these austere times. Like did Cllr Cleaver stand down as group leader merely to avoid all the obvious jokes? Tea, coffee and toilet facilities available. Details.

And that appears to be it. No Area Committee 3 or 4 meetings in October. The cllrs are all having a well earned break but will no doubt be keeping a keen eye on the government’s spending review. Except to say……

The month concludes with Halloween. Some like it, some don’t. There’s a poster here to download if you don’t want to be disturbed.

And to note that the end of October sees the conclusion of the excellent summer Green Waste kerb side collection service, to be resumed, funds permitting, in April. In the meantime you can still book a collection or use the Sunday service at Craven Gardens Car Park.

Roll on November.

Where did our Money go?

Surviving and Thriving in the Great Transition.

The New Economics Foundation is holding a meeting next month 27th October on this. As they say:

Two years on from the biggest public bail-out in history, the banks have returned to business as usual. Meanwhile the rest of us pay the price for a massive, private-sector failure. With oil prices rising, climate crisis looming, food prices volatile and the economy unstable, there must be a better way. In towns and cities across the UK and beyond, people are discovering new ways to survive and thrive in times of crisis.
A great cultural transformation is stirring - from urban gardens to local currencies and making, mending and sharing, to the resurgence of music and storytelling, we are rediscovering how to do things for ourselves and moving from passive consumers to active producers.
Take part in the continuing tale of how we can still make it turn out right, because there is no Planet B.

Yes, good question that. A new blog, Bright Green Scotland, has written a rather long, but very readable piece on how the “left lost the plot”. Our friendly Norwegian Green disagrees but if you ignore the left issue and just look at the way Adam charts how the debate has shifted over the past two years and how public attitudes have also changed it makes a very reasonable point. From a situation where it was the Free Market speculative bankers who were public enemy number one, it is now the bloated apparatus of state.

The bankers get to live again while the poor, and not so poor, get to pay twice. First with their savings and second with their jobs.

It makes me wonder. We keep getting these booms and busts, but we still go back to the same old ways, business as usual - like a drunk returning to the pub in the morning.

There are those who argue that infinite growth on a finite planet is just not possible, and there does seem to be some cracks in the system already apparent. But what is the alternative? Does Steady State Economics have a future and what does it look like? Economic growth and economic health are two very different things and the former has been shown to be not very healthy. As I’ve said before, a substantial portion of recent past economic growth has been the result of cost of failure. Our economic “success” is based on mistakes – that can’t be right.

Jeremy answers some FAQs on a Post Growth Economy over on “Make Wealth History”. I’m not so sure that a post growth economy necessarily excludes wealth, it just depends on how it is measured. But one bit stands out for me:

Nature draws no distinction between ideologies, and the world doesn’t fit into our political constructs. Something is either sustainable or it isn’t, and neither capitalism nor socialism is ‘the answer’.

The Streets of Redbridge

Last Wednesday, Ilford resident and community champion Wilson Chowdhry was up at City Hall receiving yet another award. This time it was in the “Building Bridges” category at the London Peace Awards, presented by Boris Johnson and organised by Week of Peace. According to the blurb Wilson “founded the Redbridge Neighbourhood Watch Association and solves community anti-social behavior by acting as an interface between communities, ASBO and Police Teams in Redbridge.”

As part of London Peace Week the Redbridge Neighbourhood Watch Association has arranged a Barbecue for Saturday 25th September 2010 at the Vine United Reform Church Car Park, Riches Road, Ilford with funding from the East London Community Foundation. The aim is to highlight the futility of Knife Crime and to encourage better community cohesion. The mother of Kashif Mahmood will be speaking at this event and will be holding her own memorial for her son at the location of his stabbing in a youth knife crime incident 5 years ago.

Meanwhile:

Her Majesties Chief Inspector of Constabulary says that the Police have lost the streets. Sir Denis said the basic task of keeping the peace had become a ‘second order consideration’ as officers became obsessed with hitting crime targets. Inspector Gadget gives the front line take here a) “we have plenty of cops, they are just not deployed correctly” and here b) “Society can blame the police, teachers, social workers and parents as much as it wants. The basic fact is that in the days before all this feral behaviour, if someone went before a Magistrate, they were dealt with. Now, with every yob diagnosed as some kind of victim of something, they are treated more like medical patients.”

Elsewhere:

Last Tuesday Cranbrook Community Police team used a speed gun on The Drive. We don’t know for how long but we do know they caught a number of anti-social behaviour drivers. This could be done pretty much everywhere with similar results. How many more uninsured cars are there out there and how often do you see someone using a handheld mobile phone whilst driving?

17 Days

Is the length of time that the 2012 London Olympics is scheduled to run. By that time we will have elected a new London Mayor which is probably an each way bet on either Bouncy Boris or Cudly Ken. What we won’t have is Crossrail to get visitors from Heathrow to Stratford. But the railway from the channel tunnel up to London via Stratford is, I think, pretty much there. Unfortunately services are limited and the proposal by Deutsche Bahn to run high speed trains from London to German cities doesn’t start until a year later in 2013.

Image credit: wikipedia on Creative Commons

Which leads me to a fascinating article by the European Tour Operators Association [Hattip: Ray Frensham].

Dreams of Olympic tourism could be a nightmare

All is not well with the Olympics. Predictions for visitors have always been overestimated and the UK, in particular, is vulnerable to a downturn in tourism over the rest of the country as a result. For those who yawn at the word Olympics - if London is full up, then a trip to the UK without London on the schedule is not going to be very attractive. Those who are here are here for the sport and are not going to be interested in the normal touristy things. So, the wider London service economy of restaurants, shops, attractions and theatres is expecting a downturn in custom.

Who was it that sold this pup to us? Lord Coe wasn’t it? At least he can leg it away fast.

In a Pickle

So, I’m in Brentwood babysitting the grand daughter and there’s no beer in the fridge, Mrs blogger does the driving. This is not a normal occurrence, me boy usually looks after his old dad. Pah! So, I’m off to Sainsbury’s to stock up, where I notice the front page of the Brentwood Gazette with an image of local MP Eric Pickles.

It seems that Eric is having a wobbly over the excessive salaries of Town Hall Chief Executives and in particular a Ms Joanna Killion, who is Joint Chief Executive of Brentwood Borough Council and Essex County Council, and trousers a staggering £285,152 pa. Eric wants her to lead by example and take a 10% pay cut.

The Gazette goes on:

Hitting out at fat cat chief executives with "ludicrously" high salaries, Mr Pickles has labelled it a symptom of the "Premiership manager syndrome".
He said: "It is completely out of kilter with what the job is worth. "Anybody who earns over £200,000 should take a ten per cent cut and any over £150,000 should take a five per cent cut.

I suppose there could be a perceptual difference between restricting the pay of top earners and the alternative which is progressive taxation [that is increasing the rate of tax as earnings increase] but I’m not sure what it is. Whatever, it sounds very old Labour to me and from a Cabinet member of the ConDem government! Whatever next? Here’s George Harrison on the subject.

Discuss.

What Goes Round..

.. Comes round.

A green habit that dates back 30 years:

Cameron considers reintroducing

the 'money back bottle'

- Daily Mail

Precisely what this blog and many others have been saying for ages. Why Recycle when you can Re-use? See the Waste Heirarchy.

So why has it not been done? What’s the problem? Well, apart from the Supermarkets throwing a wobbly it would upset a few pen pushers in Westminster. You see, if we start re-using our bottles and cans that’s less stuff that gets recycled, so the percentage of recycled waste goes down and local councils don’t meet their targets. This is what’s known as setting the wrong target.

The real target, the one we should have,
is reducing the absolute amount per household
going to Landfill.

And do Daily Mail readers agree with Cam? The Poll shows 85%. [If it doesn't it has changed since I looked]

Councillor Moth

I had noticed this site getting hits via Google searches on “Harry Moth resignation”. Redbridge Council has now issued a Statement.

"The Council has been informed that Councillor Moth has resigned from the Conservative Group. Councillor Moth remains an elected Member of Redbridge Council and sits as an independent Councillor."

We understand this is for personal rather than political reasons. It is therefore left at that.

Claybury Tales

We had a splendid turn-out for our Claybury History lecture on Saturday. Whilst it was pleasing to see so many of our members there, it was also gratifying that the audience was drawn from all over the borough and beyond. Approximately 130 in total.

We also had the pleasure of the Redbridge Mayor, Cllr Jim O’Shea, in attendance. He lives on the Repton Park estate and was very interested in the subject matter. The bucket for the Mayor’s charity raised £106-54 and this will go to The Alzheimer's Society (Redbridge Branch) and The Dream Factory. The Mayor said: “I was delighted with the number of people at the library on Saturday to listen to the three speakers about the history of Claybury. I learned much especially how things were run at the time the hospital existed. It left us feeling there was still much more to be learnt. I greatly appreciate the generous donation to my appeal.”

The three speakers gave fascinating talks but we didn’t get time for any question and answer session or for those connected with the Hospital to share their memories. There was just too much to cram into two hours but we did manage to get a cup of tea.

In the smaller room Tony Cranston was telling “Tales of Claybury Woods” to the youngsters, some of whom were not quite so young. Teenagers aren’t all hoodies. When asked they all said they enjoyed it. The book and CD are available from The Nature Conservation Team.

John Sharrock said: “I am indebted to the support of Ilford Historical Society and Barkingside 21 for organising this event and Redbridge Council for their sponsorship. After the cancellation of the Fun Day in the park intended for the previous Saturday there was no other event to which the public were invited and able to celebrate the historic importance of the official opening of Claybury Park.”

Caption Competition VIII

Picture credit: Philip Booth

Something Must be Done

I am about to make a very controversial statement. Pause while you put cushions around your chair in case you fall off.

Our Local Councillors are human beings. There I’ve said it, or for the pedants written it. They all have feelings, emotions and they all bleed emotionally as well as physically just like you and me. OK, maybe some more than others but that’s true for us too. So, why am I pointing this out? Settle down and I’ll tell you.

There is one thing that really annoys me; it’s when local residents turn up at council meetings and try to use emotional blackmail. It usually goes like this:

"It’s an accident waiting to happen."
"So you’re going to wait for a child to die before you take action."
"You’ve got blood on your hands."
"What value do you put on a human life?"

These are mostly, but not exclusively, when deputations turn up asking for some form of traffic management or calming. Everybody thinks that they are the only ones who suffer from speeding traffic in their road or by the school their children attend. Some of them have been known to me personally and are quite reasonable and rational people, so why do they do it? They want their request implemented ahead of everybody else’s. They want their scheme given priority. They all want favourable treatment.

The councillors are not really in a position to respond to these tactics and don't, but I am. So, I’m going to rephrase that last question and direct it back to where it came from.

How much of your income, be it earned or benefits [including having your council tax paid by the state] are you prepared to give up to save that human life, not just where you live but where everybody else lives? Are you prepared to give everybody else the same treatment you expect? Because if you do you ain’t gonna be able to afford to eat and would probably have to sell your organs to pay the bill.

Accidents by their very nature are unpredictable and random. If they were predictable they would not be accidents. If they were not random they would be predictable. Random behaviour produces clusters [chaos theory]. So an accident black spot may not necessarily be down to the infrastruture or lack of it – but something must be done, it doesn’t matter if it’s completely ineffective. We have to be seen to be doing something, anything except taking personal responsibility for our own safety. True we could be in the wrong place at the wrong time when a driver has a heart attack and careers off the road into a queue at a bus stop. Shit happens, it’s the luck of the draw. But if you do something there you have to do it everywhere, because that driver could have had his or her heart attack at the next bus stop or the one after that or…..

Going Bats

It’s that the time of year again when the bats come out to play. It’s the mating season and some people like to watch. This annual ritual of voyeurism takes place in the evenings around dusk usually in secluded spots like parks. And as our local multi-cultural council like to cater for all tastes the Nature Conservation Team has organised a number of outings to reduce the risk of arrest, but you need to book in advance, anonymously if you wish.

Join the rangers for a chance to see night flying mammals that live in Redbridge flying around the park and feeding. Bat detectors will be included. Suitable for 7 years+, FREE, Bookings essential.

Thursday 9th September
Valentines Park Bat Walk
7.30pm to 9.00pm

Thursday 16 September
Goodmayes Park Bat Walk
7.15pm to 8.45pm

Tuesday 21 September
South Park Bat Walk
7pm to 8.30pm

Friday 24 September
Goodmayes Park Bat Walk
7pm to 8.30pm

Tuesday 28 September
Valentine’s Park Bat Walk
6.45pm to 8.15pm

Your Choice

The hour is nigh and Redbridge Council have commenced their second Big Conversation. This time they are faced with making £25million worth of cuts to their budget and they want your help to decide where to apply the scalpel. It’s a bit like asking someone which arm or leg do you want cut off. Or this?

Only on Monday at the Overview Scrutiny committee meeting there was a delegation protesting about the potential closure of the Ley Street day centre. And the Cabinet Member for Highways bemoaning the fact that she doesn’t have any money to repair the roads.

I’ve not actually been through the You Choose Survey yet, so I can’t tell you what to look out for nor how long it takes. However, I can report that the borough wide public forums on the Redbridge-i website have been opened up to post moderated operation and members can once again create new threads, albeit within themes defined by the council moderators. Here you can debate the consequences of the cuts, discuss options and priorities etc. Except that the forum is suffering from Gants Hill syndrome. It has been out of action for so long that the punters have all gone off and found somewhere else to play and hardly anybody passes by now.

UPDATE: I have now completed the You Choose survey. The thing to watch out for is that there are two sections. The first section is about where or where not to spend money. The second section is about where revenues could be increased. So you may wish to look at section 2 before you make any “cuts”. You can of course go back and adjust your “cuts” if you end up with a council tax reduction of 20% like I did.
Another piece of interesting information is that you can look at the statistics. As of now (Thursday 9th at 14:37) there have been 343 submissions with an average council tax reduction of 5%.

Lucky Weather for Duke

From L-R: The Mayor Cllr Jim O’Shea, The Duke of Gloucester, The council leader Keith Prince, Cllr Sue Nolan and Mrs O’Shea.

We were very lucky with the weather on Monday morning for the official opening of Claybury Park with the Duke of Gloucester. It p*ssed down in the afternoon. I was pleased to see that the event was not restricted to VIPs and that there were quite a few volunteers present who work in the park itself. Below the plaque in situ.

The Leader, Cllr Keith Prince comments on his blog.

Free Range Milk

Photo courtesy: NotinmyCuppa

At first I thought it was a film set for the new Doctor Who series with a spaceship disguised as a lorry landing in Central London out of which pour loads of orange cow aliens intent on steeling his sonic screwdriver. Or maybe the local LibDem Focus team turning up to do some canvassing? But no! They are human beings [at least I think they are] dressed up as cows. Reason? I’ll tell you.

It’s a campaign stunt by WSPA – World Society for the Protection of Animals. The campaign is Not in my Cuppa and it was a protest to highlight a planning application by Nocton Dairies for the first “intensive Dairy farm” in the UK somewhere up north in Lincolnshire. This is battery farming for cows, or milk to be more precise. There’s a campaign video below, but I warn you, if you have any respect at all for animals some of the scenes from the USA are not pleasant at all.



So, you know what the labels free range eggs and chickens mean. Now you may also have to look out for free range milk too. On the other hand….

The results of a recent Ipsos MORI survey, commissioned by the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) show that while 90% of adults across Great Britain buy milk at least once a week, a staggering 61% say they would never buy milk produced in large-scale indoor dairy sheds. So there! But it still leaves 39% who would.

Note: Before the jokers among you get going in the comments the alternative headings considered for this post were: Silly Cows, Udder Nonsense, Free range breakfast, Keeping abreast.

Wasted Years

The problem of London’s waste has been known for a long time. We produce quite a lot of it. Too much, far too much.

Cue the London Mayor’s New Waste Strategy Consultation the results of which were, apparently, expected on Friday 3rd September but are not known as yet. But we do know that London Assembly Member Darren Johnson will call on the Mayor to set a target date by which all London councils will be required to offer households a food waste collection separated from other waste. It is estimated that 370,000 tonnes of municipal food waste go to landfill each year.
It appears that 10 London Councils do not provide any separate food waste collection for residents, resulting in food waste being mixed with general waste and sent for incineration or to landfill. Sixteen councils provide separate food waste collection, with seven of these offering the service to the vast majority of their residents.

As Darren points out the public generally supports separate collections for food waste as well as for recycling. The trouble is there is no norm across London for things like food waste or even cardboard or plastic. I know of some who swap their recycling when they visit relatives or friends in other boroughs, that’s how much demand there is out here.

Food waste really should not be going to landfill [there’s the small matter of the Climate Change gas - Methane] or incineration – it’s organic and should either be composted, turned into organic fertiliser or converted into green energy in anaerobic digestors.
Now, Darren says that the Mayor is planning to build two new anaerobic digestors, but to deal with our current levels of food waste we actually need another sixteen by 2015 - blimey that’s a lot of wasted food. Perhaps we should also be looking at the other end and reducing waste in the first place. Not much waste food leaves this household, we grew up with rations.

Councils that provide no separate food waste collection, nor a combined food and garden waste household collection - Barking & Dagenham, Hammersmith & Fulham, Havering, Hillingdon, Kensington & Chelsea, Lewisham, Newham, Redbridge, Southwark [doing a trial], Wandsworth

Councils that provide separate household food waste collection - Bromley, Camden, City of London, Croydon, Ealing, Hackney, Haringey, Hounslow, Islington, Kingston upon Thames, Lambeth, Merton, Richmond upon Thames, Sutton, Tower Hamlets, Westminster.

Councils that provide combined household food and garden waste collection – Barnet, Bexley, Brent, Enfield, Greenwich, Harrow, Waltham Forest

You will notice that Redbridge is once again lagging behind in matters environmental. I shall be speaking on this at the Overview Scrutiny meeting tomorrow [Monday] and may report on it after that.

Love Food Hate Waste.

Foot in Mouth

When I read the letter from newly elected Labour Party Councillor Ross Hatfull in last weeks Ilford Recorder [27th August] I was minded to reply but didn’t. I could feel the heat coming from certain other party rooms in the Town Hall. And true to form responses appeared the following week [2nd September]. Here they are, what do you think? Click on the images to enlarge.Perhaps Cllr Hatfull should have been thinking more carefully about who to vote for in his Parties leadership election. Not that I have a vote, but I did try Vote Match to see who I would vote for if I did have one. It gave the wrong answer, and I expect the Labour Party will too.

Economics: Science or Quackery?

It appears to be generally accepted that the nation’s finances are in a bit of trouble, although there is some debate about how much trouble and what should be done about it. Whether you agree with the Con Dem cuts agenda or the alternative - investment in a Green New Deal, I doubt anyone would argue against state provided services being made to operate efficiently and cost effectively. Trouble is that for the last 50 years successive governments have heralded a drive to cut out waste and bureaucracy, to strengthen and modernise our public services, to reform the way things are done and make them better than they were before – and what’s happened? We don’t seem to be any better for all that effort which was in itself a complete waste of time, energy and taxpayer’s money.

Two recent reports have caught my eye which illustrate the problem perfectly.

First Community Care report that agency staff are costing local councils £70 million per year more than if permananet staff were employed to perform the same roles. Yet councils are laying even more of their staff off now due to their government grants being slashed. It just doesn’t make sense.

Second, the Morning Star [no, I don’t read it, I got it from one of the lefty blogs I read, can’t remember which] report that private companies are making vast profits doing the very same things that were previously done by the public sector. Er? What? Look, so why can’t the public sector do the same and make a profit for the taxpayer? Why does the taxpayer have to fund profits for the private sector when we could have it all for ourselves?

Where have all the Mutuals gone?
Can anyone explain?

Green Build Skip Challenge

Last week Mrs Blogger was telling me about a programme on BBC TV – The Great British Waste Menu. Time has almost run out to watch the programme on the BBCs internet player but the gist of it is this: Four top chefs are charged to produce a banquet for 60 top VIPs using food rejected by the supermarkets on behalf of the rest of us – the choosy shopper. A year ago, almost to the day, I posted on an ITV3 programme – “From Bin to Banquet” which followed much the same theme. But food is not the only commodity that ends up in skips.

The computer station I am sitting at right now was recovered from a skip by our own B21 chairman, just for me – he knew Mrs Blogger wanted something a bit more, well, decorative. Mine and my son’s compost bins are made from wood recovered from skips. Today I have made a new lid for my compost bin from a pallet from next door’s building site. The Doctor has been turning some wood on a home made lathe and Adrian over at Green Construction UK has built an access ramp outside his parent’s home from bits and pieces found in the garden. He has also built a “French Drain” – I’ve also got one of those but I didn’t know it was called that.
The thing is you don’t know how pissed off I get at what I see in builders skips. Last week I saw about 20 perfectly good 14 foot lengths of 6x2 roofing beams being sawn into smaller lengths so they would fit in the skip. Criminal!. Roofing tiles being thrown off the roof to smash in the skip instead of being re-used or recycled. Whole sheets of Celotex [~£40] just dumped in a skip. Perfectly serviceable kitchen units, toilets, sinks, baths, showers, radiators doors, flooring……… you get my drift. And that’s without the surplus bricks, tiles, guttering, down pipes etc that just get thrown away – into landfill. Builders are, let’s face it, crap when it comes to anything to do with the environment.

You could build and fit a new house with that lot and that’s exactly my challenge to the TV companies and the Mayor of London Boris Johnson, who this month is looking into delivering more quality affordable housing. Meanwhile Policy Exchange has a report on “Making Housing Affordable”. Well, if we stopped chucking all those materials into landfill…….