Twitter

OK, so I'm going to move this blog over to twitter to allow for more regular updates. Please follow me on #CllrLyon. Brevity is beautiful.

What's in a name?

Whenever you encounter some bizarre rule in local Government it is always interesting to see just why it came about. At today's seminar on building and planning regulations Rushmoor councillors were politely informed by officers that although they can see the case for consulting local councillors and residents on what to name new streets and developments, that it just doesn't happen anymore.
This is of course ridiculous- councillors are elected by residents on the basis that we will represent you and will have a pretty good idea about what you want. Just in case we forget what you like we have elections every four years to remind us.
As elected representatives we have the profound responsibility and honour to be able to serve and to enact changes that matter in people's lives. This can vary from the seemingly big stuff which you notice once a year- cutting council tax, reducing the costs of council services and opening new facilities, to the small things which do matter because we see them every day.
There is something hugely important about local names- Cody, Invincible, Empress- all of these things mean things to Farnborough and can remind us of who we are, and why.
So on what basis are councillors denied the chance to help name new roads and developments? Well yes, every opportunity to serve others is also an opportunity to serve yourself- so it turns out that one of the most common uses of this power in the past was for councillors to name streets after well known local citizens... an unusually high proportion of whom just so happened to be those same local councillors at the time!!!
So in this case you can understand the rules but I still think they need to change. Today we pressed for councillors to at least be consulted- who knows, we may actually have one or two good ideas! Anyway, let's see what happens...

Weeds!

Hampshire County Council are now in the process of spraying for weeds around Farnborough. If you know anywhere that needs particular attention let me know by tomorrow and we'll get on to it!

A-Level Results

Congratulations to all Rushmoor students who have achieved such excellent results in this year's A Level Exams. I have to admit that I am surprised at how much local students and teachers manage to achieve, despite the incredible levels of bureaucracy in our state run education system.
I will very soon be bringing a motion to council calling for parents in Hampshire to have the power to set up their own school and receive the money that would have been spent on their child's education in a failing school on education that best suits them.
If you look at the way this model has worked in Sweden you will see that it only takes about 10% of people to get involved in this kind of way to improve school performance for everyone. Competition works so well in improving standards in every other field of life. Surely it would be strange not to try it in the area that matters the most- education.
Please do turn up at the next council meeting to see what I hope will be a well informed debate on this issue.

Town Centre

It has been a busy time recently in the council and things are only likely to get more busy!
The town centre is looking very good right now, as anyone who has been past it in recent weeks will have noticed, and I have been assured by the developers that despite the recession, they expect the development to be finished soon and up and trading well in time for Christmas.

The new town centre is more important now than ever. The town centre will bring jobs, it will bring investment and it will bring more visitors into the centre. It will revive the nightlife of the town centre and act as a deterrant to crime. In short, it will be the ideal antidote to all of the set backs that Farnborough has faced as a result of the national economic mess we are in.

In the council's Development and Control meeting on Wednesday I spoke in favour of a motion that will allow the developers to delay their contributions to local leisure and ammenities development under their section 106 obligations. We are still going to insist on the payment of this money but this is exactly the sort of pro-business, common sense measure I am happy to support in the short run to ensure that we get the town centre we have all been waiting for for so long.

The motion passed unanimously.

The next update will not be so long coming!

Saving our post offices

There are several kinds of council meeting, there is:

- The dramatic high tension set piece, frayed tempers and confrontations a plenty- not always resulting in the best policy, but certainly fun to watch.
- The unpleasant setpiece, when all the key decisions seem to have been taken in advance and all discussions seem to mean something more than what meets the eye
- The sleepy consensus, when no one is able or willing to grasp the key issue or to challenge the asumptions

But in the case of today's Post Office Task and Finish Group meeting it was a clear and decisive policy making forum in which plenty of ideas where kicked around and in which politicians of all parties worked together to the same goal.

We have yet to report back so I cannot reveal the details at this stage but I was very impressed to see the consensus that is developing around my idea of expanding their role in providing council services. This is an area where we can achieve savings and efficiencies for the council and ensure the continued running of sub-post offices where they are needed most.

This is exactly how government should seek to operate more often- enabling and encouraging, divesting power and providing choice and moving away from the old centralising, bureaucratic imposition politics of the 20th Century.

More to follow...

Neighbourhood Watch Returns

Hello again faithful readers!
You might well have been wondering where I have been of late and what I have been up to. Well truth be told it has been a fairly busy few months in Rushmoor Council-

• We have been working with St Modwen on the new town centre to make sure that despite the recession that the town centre development will go ahead as planned and to schedule. This has been quite a success- St Modwen have promised us that we will get the cinema, Sainsbury's and store units we are expecting, and on schedule. We are of course still waiting to see who fills them but we are feeling positive.
• We have been working hard with the local beat officers to achieve the ward priorities on cycling, neighbourhood watch expansion and Queen Elizabeth Park (where a new CCTV camera is due to go in soon)
• We have been working on the council budget to ensure that council tax rises are kept to a very minimum- the Westminster government is up to its old tricks of using unfunded mandates to make us pay for more of what they promise, thereby taking more money out of the pockets of council tax payers in Rushmoor- so we are trying to find local economies to compensate
• And a lot more...

For the near future though our top priority will be setting up neighbourhood watches- especially in the Marrowbrook area and the streets off it.

The police have quite a backlog of watches to set up but we are not going to be resting on our laurels and are still striving for 100% ward coverage.

So the chances are, if you live in that area you'll see me on your doorstep again sometime soon!

Bike Security

Below is the text from a bike security event that our local police officers have scheduled for tomorrow. This is a great opportunity for cyclists and I will be taking part myself.
See you there!


If you’ve got a bike, make sure you come along to
Blunden Hall to get it security marked for FREE!
If it gets stolen one day, it might help us to return it to you.
© Hantspol Reprographics 22416/10/08
Got a bike?
Get it security
marked!
H A M P S H I R E
For more information call Hampshire
Constabulary on: 0845 045 45 45 and ask to
speak to your Safer Neighbourhoods Team.
In an emergency always call 999
Blunden Hall
Sunday,
11th January 2009
from 10am until 2pm
PC Lee Jeffers and
PC Bev Woodhead
PC Liz Asplin and
PCSO Lynn Anderson

New Year- Same Challenges

Happy New Year!

This is the time of year when political commentators are expected to come up with some fresh new insight into how the political world has changed or is changing.

In some ways it is. At a local level we are making efforts to reduce the impact of the recession on local residents and business, we are working with the police force to increase neighbourhood watch coverage and community safety and we are working to improve the transport infrastructure.

Let us be clear- we know that more is needed. We are working on ideas to reduce the burden of government on taxpayers, to bring our community closer together and to reduce our impact on the environment. Watch this space because more is coming...

BUT

Let us not forget the bigger picture.

We are in the grip of one of the most financially incompetent governments of modern times and the economy is going nowhere fast. The Prime Minister has failed on society, he has failed on public services and is now failing on the economy.

So if we have one New Year's Resolution let it be this-This year let's everything we can to change the government and bring about the change we need.

MERRY CHRISTMAS RUSHMOOR!

Merry Christmas! Have a great day!
Gareth

Money for nothing? (or worse?)

Hands up anyone who enjoys political propaganda so much that they think they should be charged for it?

...

?

What? Where is the crowd of happy punters throwing their cash around with gleeful abandon?

OK, before the men in white coats come along I'd better explain what I'm getting at.

During last night's Community Government Task and Finish Group at the council I was astonished to hear the argument being made that the taxpayer should actually pay for councillors to have websites through which they can air their views, make political points and generally tell the world how wonderful they are.

Now I can see the case for councillors maintaining websites (or better yet blogs!) and even for these being linked to from the council website with a suitable disclaimer but why on earth should we pay to hear from our elected representatives?

Readers will know how critical I am of the established party system and of the way in which politicians "communicate" with their constituents or prospective constituents around election time. Imagine actually being charged for such drivel!

Any person who takes themselves seriously as a politician should be able to broadcast their activity and views through means such as blogs without burdening the taxpayer. But even accepting the idea that the council should pay for websites they must be policed in such a way to stop them being abused.

The disgraceful Labour MP Paul Flynn has just demonstrated why there is a need to police taxpayer funded communication.

Now we are in a recession it is more important than ever to be careful with taxpayers' money. If we are looking for savings this should be one of the first.

In the meantime what is wrong with free blogging of the sort practised by myself, David Clifford and Brian Parker?

The Emperor Has No Clothes!

Here Boris Johnson says it like it is.

The outrageous hubris of this government seeking to blame George Osborne for the fall in the pound can only really be compared to the idea of the royal courtiers and tailors in The Emperor's New Clothes blaming the little boy for the fact that everyone is laughing at the Monarch.

Gordon Brown and his cohort of identikit incompetent ministers have denuded the pound of any value and made the UK a truly dreadful place to do business.

When no one wants pounds because there are no British goods to buy and when no one wants to keep their savings in pounds because interest rates have had to be slashed to their lowest rate for fifty years it really takes some gall to blame the Shadow Chancellor for pointing out that something's not quite right here!

Get a grip Gordon! Preferably on something with a considerable voltage going through it and let someone who knows what they're doing take over- NOW!

UPDATE- At last! Since Brown never intended to stick to his borrowing projections it's about time that we ditched his spending plans! Good work DC- now let's see those taxes going down and spending re-entering stratospheric levels!

Traffic Calming?

What is expensive, ugly, bad for your car, bad for the environment and completely ineffective and unfit for purpose?

OK, so you've probably named about twenty things that fall into that category just now. so let's narrow the parametres a little to exclude members of The Cabinet and other senior Labour Party figures. This leaves us with one particular nuisance that we can get rid of- speed bumps.

Rushmoor already has a policy in place against such "traffic calming measures" on the simple basis that the don't work, are bad for the environment, damage people's cars and end up creating more noise than there was in the first place.

Avenue Road is extremely bad in this regard- forcing people to practically crawl down the hill or to take a massive detour round through Rectory Road.

Most people accept that speed bumps are, to use the technical term "stupid" but not many realise just how bad they are. A study in Canada has now shown that because people speed up and slow down more often between speed bumps, that consumption of fossil fuels is actually worse than if people were maintaining a higher speed straight through.

Yes, I know we should try and control speed and yes it would be nice if people didn't speed up and slow down as well all know they do. But surely we should legislate for the world as it is, not as we imagine it ought to be?

In some places we do need to control speeds- Marrowbrook Lane is an example of this- with some people using it as a rat run in the mornings. It is in these places that it actually makes sense to deploy speed cameras or speed visors to enforce a safe speed. There are plenty of speed cameras around- we just need to take them away from their more profitable but less useful locations on the main roads and actually use them to protect residents.

All of this is to say that I will be making a big issue of this in council. We have already accepted that speed bumps are no good- so let's get rid of them!

I'm due to meet traffic officers soon and will bring this up with them. You'll read about the outcome here first.

Starbucks in Farnborough?

Good news for fellow coffee drinkers out there- following a decision of the Development and Control committee on Wednesday we are now due to get a coffee house/cafe in a prominent location right in the heart of Empress Ward.

One area that I have constantly been saying that we need to improve in Farnborough is the appearance of the town when people are arriving in it. One of the worst offenders in this regard is the old HSBC building on the corner of Victoria Road and Farnborough Road.

Listed by Historic Farnborough as one of the worst eyesores in the borough, this building has been standing empty for over a year and is frankly depressing. As the building was designed and built in the 1960s I can only speculate on what substances those involved may have been on at the time when they decided that people might like to live or work in this Soviet style concrete elephant of a building!

Luckily, we have now approved an application for a hotel to revamp (its a pity we couldn't demolish it and start again) and reuse the site. In addition to this they will be building a cafe in the space currently occupied by the concrete stilts that the building is on.

As this area is currently a site for antisocial behaviour and youth drinking I think this is a fantastic idea. It will also provide a much more pleasant spectacle for people driving in to Farnborough and will be great for those of us who like coffee!

We do not yet know who will occupy the cafe but we can only hope it is one of those commercial chains like Starbucks who so annoy the whinging left but who happen to serve good coffee in a nice environment.

Farnborough is taking off!

Start your clocks...

Amidst all excitement about potential cuts in mortgage rates (for that is all they are so far) it seems churlish to point out that the economy is heading to hell in a handcart but as John McCain has shown- the right aren't in this game to be popular.So here goes:

First up- the interest rate cut. Expect to hear calls from generous government ministers (they are so good at giving other people's money away) for banks to pass on the interest rate cut to householders. Neither the proper banks nor their nationalised emasculated counterparts will pass anything like the full cut on- they've got to make up their losses somehow. The government will howl with outrage about this and subsequently blame much of the downturn on the banks (and of course on Norman Lamont, Dominic Lawson, Harold MacMillan and William Pitt)

Next- the pound. Having lived in a country whose currency was so weak that even some official bodies refused to accept it I can tell you that what is going to happen is not pretty. The government's excessive borrowing, the public's excessive borrowing, the absolute unproductivity of the UK workforce (more regulation anyone?) leading to a pathetic balance of payments situation means that there will be very little demand for pounds but huge oversupply. For anyone who doesn't understand economics out there or who is a Prime Minister who pretends to- that is what we call a BAD THING. It leads to a collapse in the price of the currency. This in turn makes it very very expensive to buy things from overseas. In the UK that is everything unless you were wondering.

Currency value induced inflation has historically been subject to constant fluctuations. Not any more. The weak pound is here to stay for as long as economy is managed the way it is.

OK, so that's the mild part out of the way. Now for the real problems:

All that borrowing needs to be paid for- we need to borrow from someone. Most UK national debt is now held overseas. To increase borrowing we need to persuade lenders that it is worth their doing so. The thing is- with government interest rates so low and the pound being the currency equivalent of a man walking round town with a sick chicken fewer people will want to lend to the government.

This leaves the government with the unthinkable option of cutting spending, or the Brownite solution- raise taxes. This is of course bad in its self. It will be worse because it will further undermine productivity and enterprise.

And just around the corner is the real kicker- inflation. It takes a special kind of genius to achieve both recession and inflation at the same time. It is called Stagflation and we had it in the seventies and it is not pretty. Friedman demonstrated it to be the inevitable result of Keynesian economics, common sense reinforces this. The trouble is that a lot of left wing politicians and economists had already fallen in love with Keynes and big government by then.

Reflating the economy on credit as the government is trying to do is just the same as printing money- it won't mean that any more goods or services are produced. Unfortunately, as the economy tanks more people will end up on benefits- leading to ever more government spending which we can't afford.

The result= we end up where we also end up under Labour- going to the IMF cap in hand. Mark my words- it is now a matter of time. Start your clocks now...

Taxation- My views explained

One of this blog's regular readers- Jo has pointed out that my last post might imply that I am in favour of a universal poll tax to replace income tax. For the sake of clarity I thought it would be best to state out the Lyon Tax Plan in full:

I operate from two clear principles:

1. Taxation is a bad thing. It might seem surprising to have to state as much but given recent governments' addiction to expensive programmes and their unerring certainty that they must be the best people to decide how money is spent.

We must never forget that people work hard for their money. We are able to tax them because government has a monopoly of organised violence in a country. We don't know what they would spend it on otherwise but I'm sure we would all agree that violence is a bad thing and that we should avoid using it, or threatening to use it, whenever we can. We should therefore tax only when absolutely necessary.

Taxation is most reprehensible when it denies people the means to pay their own way, or when it endangers economic activity that could allow people to do so.

2. We do need some taxation. This is unfortunate but we need a police force, courts, armed forces and various other odds and ends. These cost something.

We must therefore:

CUT- Capital Gains Tax, Stamp duty and similar (these are a tax on enterprise and investment)

INCREASE- VAT, specifically on goods and services which have "negative externallities," that is, things which damage other people as a side-effect.

REDUCE AND SIMPLIFY- We should take as many people out of income tax as possible but not use the tax system to hand out "credits" as the current unelected regime does. The band below which people do not get taxed should be raised to well above a living wage (say £20k) and a flat tax should be instituted on those above it.

Ideally we should not tax anyone on income at all (A tax on work? Which brainbox thought that one up?) but as long as we need one lets reduce and simplify it. This may put a load of pointless civil servants out of a job (kind of like how living longer puts undertakers out of work) It will however cut costs, allow further tax cuts and make it easier to calculate how much tax you owe- thereby further raising the tax yield.

As this applies to the story below it would lead to cuts in the bills for all payers (even the big earners) and mean that fewer people had to pay it.

The sooner we accept that taxation is a bad thing the sooner we will come round to my solution of reducing it for everyone and eliminating it for as many people as possible.

Taxation

I have just received this as an email forward. I am genuinely impressed. This is a point that really needs to be made a lot more often and a lot more clearly:

Bar Stool Economics

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. 'Since you are all such good customers, he said, 'I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes, so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free.But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?'

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings)
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free.

But once outside the bar the men began to compare their savings.'I only got a dollar out of the $20,'declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,' but he got $10!

''Yeah, that's right,' exclaimed the fifth man. 'I only saved a dollar too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!

''That's true!!' shouted the seventh man. 'Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!

''Wait a minute,' yelled the first four men in unison. 'We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!'

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

Fireworks!

For anyone interested in attending, St Peter's Church, Farnborough, will be having a fantastic fireworks display on Saturday 1st November behind the church. Tickets are available from The Triangle bookshop in the town centre.

The buildings are a thousand years old so they are really showing a lot of faith in one of their elected representatives in letting me help with firing the rockets- I can't give any guarantees about which direction they'll be flying in!

It would be great to see you there. There will be huge bonfire too and some great food.

One quick point is that is you see me running around with a fuse this should not be taken as a sudden conversion to the views of Guy Fawkes!!

Neighbourhood Watch

As promised in my election materials- one the top priorities that I and my fellow councillors have is to secure 100% Neighbourhood Watch coverage for Empress. The benefits of this will be not just safer homes but also closer communities and a stronger deterrent effect against petty crimes and anti-social behaviour.

I have already started going round the Marrowbrook and the streets off it and have been impressed at the levels of engagement shown. We are also starting from quite a high level of coverage and I do think that this aim is

In many areas people believe that they have a Neighbourhood Watch because they have signs on their streets but a lot of these have died off as people have left the areas.

Neighbourhood Watches are exactly the sort of community involvement that I have been arguing for over recent years- they show that people can take responsibility for their own areas and do things effectively without the need for government legislation. For this reason, as well as all the benefits they can deliver, I am determined to make this succeed.

So whilst I'll be going round most evenings and weekends there is also a challenge to you. Can you be a coordinator for your area? If so let me know and I'll link you up to our excellent beat officers who will do all they can to help.

Break's Over

Dear Reader,

As you may have noticed, things have been pretty quiet on this blog of late: between password difficulties, an amazingly busy couple of months and various internet problem this blog has been about as much use as a nationalised bank. But there is one thing we can learn from politicians of the left- relaunches.

I prefer to talk about positive, inspiring and useful things- so will not refer to the Prime Minister, there is a better example out there anyway...

Thats right... break's over, big issues to tackle- Neighbourhood watch to set up in Marrowbrook, parking reforms needed in Union Street, a town centre to finish and unfunded mandates to fight and a need for new cycle routes.

You'll hear about it here first.