He Who Shouts Loudest...

An old friend of mine is up in arms over what he sees as the wilful destruction of some twenty or so mature trees and saplings by the Powys County Council. The reason? Yes, you’ve guessed it, ‘Health and Safety’.

He has a point, the trees were located on a council run estate called ironically, Orchard Gardens, here in Llandrindod. From his point of view a few of these trees needed appropriate pruning of their lower branches, but wholesale removal was neither necessary nor justifiable. To add insult to injury, the local residents including my friend were never consulted, and this in a ward of a county councillor who claims to be always guided by his extensive consultation.

This is was he wrote in his complaint to the Council’s Biodiversity officer:
“I came here sixteen years ago, then flocks of birds came regularly onto the estate, all the garden birds and I identified pied flycatchers, tree creepers and woodpeckers. In recent years there has been a gradual erosion of natural habitat, a few years ago the silver birch trees were severely pruned and their natural cover was destroyed; only a few garden birds visit now.”

The mealy-mouthed response from the Biodiversity officer is patronising in the extreme:
“From discussions with my colleagues it appears that the County Council has a difficult task in balancing the wishes of members of the public regarding the management of trees. Whilst some residents favour the retention of trees for their amenity and wildlife valuer, others feel that management is essential to resolve a particular problem. In addition, the County Council must also undertake tree management to safeguard public health and safety and this reason is not always obvious to residents and visitors.”

In other words, what right have you to question our experts? We are experts therefore we are right and even if we're wrong, we can always rely on the ubiquitous excuse of 'Health and Safety. The real problem here is that the Philistines shouted loudest.

The Emperor Has No Clothes

Since Budget Day, the Conservatives have engaged in a frenzy of Brown-bashing and Darling-drubbing over the state of the economy. Regardless of the merits of their case, I for one, am heartily fed up with their concerted efforts to blame Gordon Brown for every misfortune that Britain has ever suffered since the year dot. I don’t want to hear any more on how bad Labour are, I know that already. What I really want to hear is what Cameron and his colleagues are going to do to address the problems besetting the British economy.

So far we have had not one single indication of the existence of substantial economic policies from the Conservatives. What would they do differently? Nobody knows. Vince Cable and the Liberal Democrats have given a clear indication of the economic policies that they would like to implement to get Britain out of its current mess, and although I am clearly biased in their favour politically, economically they have both a coherence and a substance that is appealing.

The Conservatives on the other hand, seemingly have no policies at all. They have only their extreme and negative rhetoric and look like going into the next general election of a platform “vote for us because we are not Labour and therefore we must be better than them”. It is part of the Great Conservative Con Trick based on their historic and misplaced assumption that they have a divine right to govern simply because they are Conservatives.

The question is – how long are the British people prepared to let them get away this duplicitous position, egged on by the less discerning print media? Is there no one in the Conservative Party honest enough to tell the Emperor that he has no clothes?

Nostalgia Is A Seductive Emotion

Imagining the past through rose-tinted images gets more and more seductive as one grows older. The effect of the rose tint is to edit out the unpleasant but retain the fond memories and sometimes embellish these fond recollections.

One of our local papers’ most loyal correspondents has called this week for the return of national service. He has done this in the light of the excesses of New Labour ministers and his revulsion at reports of ubiquitous knife crime being carried out by 10 and 11 year-olds. This is his chilling message: “Nowadays I honour just a few, my family first and a few Christian friends who have their hearts in the right place. I reckon it’s high time we replaced the yob culture with national service which never failed us in the past.”

It is easy to understand this call as an attempt to re-live a golden past when we all lived in an ordered world with everyone having a place and knowing where that place was, everyone who wanted a job had one and therefore everyone who didn’t have a job was, by definition, a parasite. It is an appeal for an ordered society rather than the chaotic one in which we currently inhabit.

In that context, a system of national service to train our young men to fight for Queen and country in far-flung parts of the empire, quelling the periodic revolts of uppity natives and ‘making men’ of them in the process has an understandable attraction to ‘Little Englanders’ everywhere. However, one has to remember that this ordered society was based on a kind of institutionalised brutality, the brutality that was common in parts of the armed services, the brutality of the borstal and the approved school. The brutality meted out to homosexuals, unmarried mothers and the mentally ill. Indeed, society was ordered then precisely because of way marginal groups were ostracised, excluded and kept in their place. Minorities were brutalised as social pariahs in order to salve the consciences of the rest, the upright members of society.

A call for the return of national service, even if the general staff would countenance such a scheme, is but a short step from tugging our forelocks to the lord of the manor, the restoration of hanging and flogging, and the locking up of anyone who as the temerity not to confirm to society’s ‘high moral standards’.

Recollect the past by all means, but remember the complete picture and not simply some neatly edited version of it.

Ashfield Community Enterprise

Over the past few months I have had the privilege of being involved, albeit on the periphery, of the setting up of a Community Land Trust. The Ashfield Community Enterprise (ACE) comprises a group of very enthusiastic people who want to acquire a house and a few acres of land from another charity who are keen to realise the value of this asset use the proceeds for some other purpose. The land in question is in the village of Howey, close to Llandrindod Wells and was set up as the Radnorshire Support Project in the early 1990s. It was used to provide meaningful activities related to horticulture for people with severe learning difficulties. Now however, the charity who own the site no longer wish to carry on with such activities and are wanting to sell the site on the open market.

The newly-formed Ashfield Community Enterprise (ACE) is seeking to acquire the site and not only restore it to its original use, but also to promote a range of ‘green’ enterprises and find ways of involving the wider community in projects broadly promoting social inclusion and permaculture. To do this clearly ACE has to raise a serious amount of money, has set itself up as a community land trust and is about to launch a share issue.

I have nothing but admiration for those responsible for creating ACE, the principal people involved have worked extremely hard to get this project to its current state and have managed to convey their infectious enthusiasm to everyone with whom they have come into contact. Even I have been persuaded to subscribe to the share issue with no real prospect of getting any reward in this life but no doubt storing up ‘brownie points’ for the next one.

So if you have multiples of £20 to spare and are looking around for a worthwhile project in which to invest, look no further. ACE is… well, ace, and you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you have contributed to a really worthwhile project involving people with all sorts of learning disabilities and supporting a wonderful group of people motivated by nothing other than altruism.

So forget about the budget and our depressing economy and checkout the ACE website and take it from there.

No Wonder Nobody Was Listening

A Great Conference But What I Really Wanted Say Was...

Mark Cole on Facebook calls it ‘post-conference blues’, and I guess I have similar symptoms after the superb Welsh Lib Dem Conference last week-end. With me however, it is the angst of worrying about what I would have said if only I had been able to get my Speaker’s Card to the top of the pile.

I was called during the debate on Tackling Alcohol Abuse, and I hope that I successfully made the point that alcohol abuse is more than simply about binge drinking. Binge drinking is a social problem which has social and medical consequences. Alcoholism is qualitatively different and is currently more likely to dealt with as a social nuisance rather than as the serious medical condition it actually is. Most local authorities, including Powys County Council seem to think that imposing Designated Public Places Orders is the most appropriate way of addressing serious alcohol abuse when this neither addresses the real problem, the causes of alcoholism, not is it particularly effective in addressing the social nuisance caused by group of drinkers in public places. DPPOs, applied to a particular area, merely causes the drinkers to move elsewhere, as we are finding to our cost in Llandrindod.

With regard to the debate on Bringing 21st Century Jobs To Wales, the point I would have liked to have made was this. Part of rural Wales, certainly it is the experience of Powys, is suffering from a particularly iniquitous form of rural depopulation. One might almost call it the ‘Powys Paradox’. The overall population of Powys is rising but economic activity is falling. This is the result of the constant influx of retired people, usually from across the border, which is greater than the numbers of young people leaving to seek both higher education and work opportunities elsewhere. So in spite of Harold Nicholls’ consistent claims that Llandrindod is being drowned by ex-cons and drug dealers being brought in by the County Council’s Housing officers, the truth is much more serious. Rural areas like Powys are losing their young people and with them, their skills and earning potential and of course, the money that they would have ploughed back into the local economy if they had stayed.

A proper digital infrastructure in Wales as called for in the motion, would go some way to addressing this problem allowing for the creation of small, high tech businesses able to employ some of our suitably qualified young people and encouraging them to stay in the area.

Of course, this sort of policy crucially depends on there being a decent business advice service to support new and growing businesses, and therein lies another tale. Business Advice services in Powys have collapsed due to the crass incompetence of the One Wales Government who engaged a contractor who claimed, after winning the contract that they didn’t understand the rules. This is the point I would have made if I had been called to speak in the topical debate Helping Small Businesses Through the Recession.

The other debate I would have liked to have spoken in was that on Making Housing Affordable To All. This debate failed to point out the real iniquity of the Right To Buy legislation. The effect of this legislation has been not only to remove property out of the public rented sector and to force them into the private rented sector, but it was done to boost the incomes of private landlords, motivated only by greed, who were able to get away with offering poorer quality accommodation at inflated prices. Moreover, this greed has fuelled the so-called ‘buy-to-let’ market which, supported by reckless lending by dodgy financial institutions, has precipitated the current crisis in affordable housing. The lack of affordable homes has reached such an extent that many families face severe problems in securing a roof over their heads. As the recession deepens, and more and more families are forcibly evicted by their creditors and their landlords, housing officers will struggle to keep up with demand for shelter from all sorts of people including families with young children. Under these circumstances, continuing with Right-to-Buy legislation appears increasingly untenable.

An Offer That Might have To Be Refused

Interesting front page story in today’s Brecon & Radnor Express. One of the Young Turks of the main group of independent councillors on Powys County Council, Cllr Stephen Hayes, has apparently written to all the Welsh Lib Dem councillors on Powys County Council suggesting that the two groups should form a coalition. The implication of this is that, if it is accepted, the council will have to do away with the so-called fourth option for unitary authorities which allows for a politically balanced executive board to take almost all the decisions made by the council and replace this structure with a cabinet style of executive which is not at all politically balanced.

What is not clear at this stage is the extent to which the rest of the Powys Independents are behind Stephen in this initiative. Lib Dem group leader, Cllr Leslie Davies has agreed to take this proposal to the next meeting of the Lib Dem group and it is quite difficult to predict how the Lib Dems are likely to respond.

I would urge extreme caution. In my view some, (and I emphasise the ‘some’) of the so-called ‘independent’ councillors are either card-carrying Conservatives who have not yet found the courage to admit that fact to their electorate, or else their Conservative sympathies are so strong that they might just as well take the honourable course and join the party. Under these circumstances it is the reliability of their support that I would be concerned about. It is quite clear that the two Conservative PPCs in Powys are able to exert considerable influence over not only the Conservative group of councillors, but they also seem to pull the strings of certain members of both independent groups.

The idea of a coalition is fine in theory, but as we have seen with One Wales, the practice of coalition can be a little more problematic. All coalitions have to achieve a fair degree of consensus and this necessarily involves compromise, the difficulty is that sooner or later one or other of the partners in a coalition are put in a position where they are asked to make one compromise too far, and when this happens all hell can break loose and the electorate suffers. So take care, you could be entering shark-infested waters.

Q-Ships Could Stop Piracy

As a one-time Merchant Navy officer I have been following the piracy stories off the Horn of Africa with more than passing interest. The recent stand-off with the US Navy over Captain Richard Phillips, master of the Maersk Alabama, who had been taken hostage in a ship’s lifeboat and his dramatic rescue involving the death of three of the pirates must have sent a shiver down the spine of all merchant seamen, current and retired, all over the world.

Pirates are no respecters of nationalities and the appeal made by the Maersk Alabama’s Chief Officer, Shane Murphy, to President Obama for firm and concerted action against piracy made that very point. The Maersk Alabama wasn’t targeted because it flew the American ensign, it was targeted because it was thought likely to command a decent ransom if it could be captured.

One possible way to combat piracy might be to use the methods employed by allied navies during both World Wars in their fight against German U-Boats, the Q-ship. Q-ships were heavily armed merchantmen with concealed weaponry, designed to lure submarines into making surface attacks. This gave Q-ships the chance to open fire and sink them. This was a very successful tactic in wartime and might be considered a little too drastic in peacetime, however, desperate circumstances need desperate remedies.

For unarmed merchant seamen there has to be zero tolerance for piracy, it is the most heinous of crimes and if left unchecked will undoubtedly escalate as shipowners feel that they have no choice but to pay huge ransoms to retrieve their ships, crews and cargoes. If law and order cannot be quickly returned to Somalia and the pirates stopped by that state’s legal system, then a couple of Q-ships may be the only way to stop this ruthless criminal activity before innocent and unarmed merchant seamen are killed.

A European Reality Check

A sobering article on the European project in today’s Guardian from Ulrich Beck provides a challenging read and a stark message. For all the Euro-sceptics this is the reality check they may not like but they certainly need. It is a wake-up call for all those who might be tempted to vote for UKIP and even for the Conservatives at the European Parliamentary elections on 4th June.

“If the EU did not exist, we would have to invent it today. Far from being a threat to national sovereignty at the beginning of the 21st century, the EU first makes it possible. In the world risk society, faced with the menacing aggregation of global problems that resist national solutions, nation-states left to their own devices are powerless, incapable of exercising sovereignty. The pooled sovereignty of the EU provides the only hope for every nation and every citizen to live in freedom and peace. Those who harm the union harm themselves. If the members renounce their European responsibility and solidarity in a frenzy of national reflexes, everyone loses. Each nation on its own is condemned to global insignificance. Those who want to regain sovereignty in our corner of the world risk society must will Europe, think Europe and work towards its realisation. The unit of political action in the cosmopolitan era is no longer the nation but the region.”

The article not only cautions against member states seeking to hide behind national borders and hoping the crisis will go away, it exposes the absolute bankrupcy of nationalism in any shape or form. When you measure the independence ambitions of Plaid against the reality of the mutual dependence of nation states on each other in practically everything they attempt to do, you begin to understand how completely irrelevant Plaid and its ambition for an independent Wales has always been.

Beck concludes: “The choice is between more Europe and no Europe. This imperative of possible failure justifies hope in a falling market: only an EU rejuvenated by the crisis - hand-in-hand with the US openness to the world under Obama - can build on the seeds of a united global solution that were sown at the start of this month”

Can their be a starker choice for the member states of the EU?

Duelling Without Drawing Blood

I have two problems with the recent outbreak of ‘smear politics’. Firstly, it is essentially negative, and negative campaigning serves only to increase the electorate’s propensity to cynicism about politicians and politics in general. Secondly, smear politics is about personalities rather than policies and as such, appeals to the baser side of political rivalry. It is the politics of the playground.

The trouble is that both the Labour and Conservative parties are addicted to this type of juvenile allegation and counter allegation. A smear from one side gives an opportunity for righteous indignation from the other, so in Wales Nick Bourne’s ‘dirty dossier’ leads to that video on the Aneurin Glyndwr website and shamefully endorsed on television by Peter Hain but not endorsed by Rhodri Morgan, apparently.

Now Damian McBride’s e-mails to Derek Draper and leaked to Guido Fawkes raise the stakes to a new level, allowing for much righteous indignation from the Conservatives and demands for an apology from Gordon Brown. Where will it all end?

Well, it won’t, at least not in my lifetime. This is because smear politics is a feature of all liberal democracies. Indeed unpleasant as these tactics are, they can be regarded as an indicator of a well-founded democracy, the mutual smearing of your opponent’s character can be regarded as a modern day equivalent of duelling.

However, as we approach the phoney war leading up to the next general election it might be interesting to keep a ‘smear count’ to establish which of the two dinosaurs of British party politics has the greater tendency to resort to this particularly nasty form of campaigning.

Windfarms - The Hot Debate in Rural Wales

The very mention of wind farms around here is bound to raise hackles faster than the speed of light. People either love them or hate them. There seems to be no middle ground. Whenever I have thought about wind farms, they are usually a long way away on some distant horizon and their very distance allows me to selfishly regard them as someone else’s problem. On the odd occasion that I have been forced to give wind farms serious consideration, I have taken the view that wind farms are hardly desirable anywhere but specially not in areas of natural wilderness. Arguably there are very few such areas left anywhere in the United Kingdom. The closest I think I have ever been to natural wilderness was on a four-day hike in Northern Sweden nearly 20 years ago.

However, as the prospect of huge wind farms across Mid Wales comes ever closer, and the debate about them approaches boiling point I wonder how long I came hang on to my fairly neutral position. One of the Guardian’s art critics, Jonathan Jones recently blogged on the subject, and a point he made has certainly resonated with me, citing George Monbiot he wrote:

“… opponents of wind power in Britain have virtually won their case. This alternative energy solution is being driven out of the fields and seas. But if opposition is grounded in love of the traditional landscape, that is baloney. When you look at all the truly disgusting things being done to the British landscape now – the grinding cavalcade of traffic that dwarfs Stonehenge, for example – to single out as obnoxious something that actually aspires to save the landscape in the long term is ... well, it's pretty stupid. It's hostility that does not have art or imagination on its side.”

Whether or not the case for wind farms in parts of Britain has been lost in Mid Wales at least, there seems to be a sense of inevitability about the imminent arrival of several large wind power projects here. The issue therefore is not whether we like them or hate them, but how to find a way to accept them into our countryside and embrace the clean energy that they will generate.

A Question For European Parliamentary Candidates

Here is a question for all the European Parliamentary candidates who will be asking for your vote in the near future.

“What are you going to do to reverse the EU directive that requires internet service providers (ISPs) to store details of e-mails and on-line telephone calls for at least a year?”

Allegedly this data is being gathered and stored in order to help in the fight against crime, but in reality it is a particularly iniquitous aspect of ‘intelligence-led policing’. The message from European government to European citizens (subjects in our case) is absolutely clear – you are all suspects now and will remain suspects until you are proved innocent.

This action by the government in response to an EU directive is a gross infringement of our civil liberties, and we are allowing our government to treat us with contempt. One would have thought that after recent revelations about what her husband spends her parliamentary allowance on, Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith should be re-evaluating the concept of privacy and thinking long and hard about why it is important for most people, apart from dedicated celebrity-seekers, to keep their private lives, private.

The Treasury Has Done Its Bit, Now Its Up to You

It is nice to know that after the debacle of the near collapse of the banking system, the Treasury has taken an enlightened view of the proposal to increase in the Uniform Business Rate (UBR). Right up until yesterday the Government seemed firm in its resolve to increase the UBR by 5%, the amount by which the retail price index rose in September last year. However, suddenly it was announced yesterday that the increase for 2009 – 2010 would be reduced to 2%, and I am sure that this will be welcomed by businesses across the country.

The task now is to ensure the small local businesses on our high streets survive the anticipated economic downturn, but they will only do so if we all make a conscious effort to support our local businesses. So forget about the high street chains, they have sufficient cash and dominant market position to survive. Make the effort to support your genuinely local small businesses, those businesses that are the backbone of your communities for without them your retails centres will become boarded up ghost towns.