Politics for the Thinking Person27 April 2008

Politics is a boring subject. But if you don't pay attention, it can do for you. The local elections on 1 May deserve reflection.

One in the eye?

The current Labour Government is clearly coming to the end of its life. Its demise will be a relief to many. The Conservatives, partly restored to electability by David Cameron, are likely to be put into bat by a weary and cynical nation when we next get the chance in a general election. Meanwhile it may be tempting to think that a vote for the Conservatives in local elections will be one in the eye for the Government. That makes no sense in Elmbridge, where there are no Labour councillors to get rid of, no Labour candidates within reach of being elected.

Absolute majority = absolute dictatorship

The key choice here is: do you want Conservatives to rule Elmbridge without having to heed the views of others? At present they rule the Borough with a minority, which means that dubious policies can occasionally be restrained, amended or even defeated if Residents' Group and Liberal Democrat parties together oppose them. This is quite a healthy situation. But in office, the Elmbridge Conservatives have shown an undemocratic tendency to pre-cook policy behind closed doors then vote it through by party whip. With many a glib word to convince you of the benefits of this, they now seek an absolute majority within the Borough. This will enable them to do what they like without having to test their decisions against the full Council which, at present, they don't dominate absolutely.

The pork barrel

The Conservatives also adhere to a strongly partisan approach. Fair minded residents find pork-barrel politics objectionable. The Tories' electoral message disguises this with the euphemistic idea that 'only by electing a Conservative can you ensure that things will be done.' The practical experience for many residents over the decades has been exactly the opposite! However, you have seen the current Elmbridge administration remarkably lively when it comes to increasing car park charges by up to 40% and their own allowances by a similar huge hike. That sort of high-handed action will likely spread to other policy areas if they gain the dictatorship they want. Because they did not have an absolute majority this time round, Residents were able to prevent them from hoisting charges in Ashley Road and other village car parks by a whopping 78%.

With a free hand, what will they do?

The Conservatives, unrestrained, are likely to:

◊  sell off community assets. Their leader has stated that he wants to sell off the community's Xcel Leisure Centre. Their wish to increase carpark charges to 'commercial levels' presages potential sale of our valuable car parks to NCP or some other company. They are even believed to be contemplating selling off rights over parts of our commons to private individuals. Consultants are assessing other valuable real estate. In Thames Ditton, Conservatives tried to sell off to developers the former Youth Centre: now, thanks to residents, retained by the community and restored to community use as Thames Ditton Hall. Who will benefit from the sale of Elmbridge's family silver?

◊  reduce representation. They have already stated their wish to see councillors reduced by a third, making Elmbridge one of the least representative Boroughs in the country. Last year, they also tried to close two of the three polling stations in Esher, coincidentally in an area where there was a lower density of presumed Conservative voters. A petition defeated this. They want to raise councillors' salaries and allowances to the point where to be a councillor can be seen as a lucrative career option rather than putting something back into the community.

◊  favour profitable development schemes over the heads of those who care about the green belt, school playing fields and other green spaces, and how Elmbridge looks; or who will suffer loss of amenity.

So what do the Elmbridge Residents' Group want to do?

The answer to that, issue by issue, is here. We should preserve a healthy balance of views across the Council, and above all keep party politics and party politicking out of local Councils where we should all be working together for the community, consulting residents and accountable only to them, throughout the year and not just at election times. We don't think that local representatives should be accountable first to a party, nor that trying to gain partisan advantage for one interest group is a wise way to proceed in good local administration.

The candidates

Turning now from the issues to the candidates. Conservatives and Liberal Democrats - and Labour, if they had a chance in Elmbridge - use local government as a 'climbing frame' for national party purposes. Their local party organisations remit funds to headquarters in London. The Conservatives in particular are tightly controlled from Central Office and all Tory councillors are required to join their national association for Conservative councillors - an additional means of imposing central discipline. They might think for themselves, but they are restrained from voting or speaking independently of their party if they wish to retain its endorsement. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, along with Labour, have suffered from declining membership and they want parliamentary legislation to spend more funds from the taxpayer to support their parties directly. They also want to increase pay for councillors - your money again - so that their politicians may have a well-remunerated political career.

It is for you to consider whether that is a good thing or not. Can such people truly represent you if their first loyalty, and increasingly their income, is attributable to their Party office? Is that what you want your tax used for?

In Thames Ditton and Weston Green, Residents' councillors and candidates have a firmly-established record of community service to these wards, and of accountability to you only.

In Thames Ditton, Ruth Lyon's record of achievement for our community and for Elmbridge is unsurpassed. She faces Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative candidates (the latter is schooled in politics).

In Weston Green, Lorraine Sharp is another excellent and dynamic candidate who already has a consistent record of effort and achievement for Weston Green and Thames Ditton. She faces one rival: a Conservative politician who made five public 'pledges' to voters when he stood unsuccessfully last year. Yet in the past year we can find no evidence that he has put in effort, or achieved anything, on any of those pledges. He resurfaced a few weeks ago with an opportunist web 'blog' largely devoted to attacking the Residents' Association. He has written that he is passionate about politics, illustrating this passion with derogatory remarks about Cllr. Maureen Sheldrick - who is retiring with a fine record of 16 years' service to Weston Green and as a past Mayor of Elmbridge. With the appearance two weeks ago of a whole website devoted to himself you may wish him well enough with his personal ambitions in politics. But not at the expense of the residents of Weston Green.

And so...

Over to you. Please don't stay away from the polling station. Whichever way you choose, and however you may regard the choices offered to you, it's important not to let voting - or local administration - become an activity for a tiny minority. Thank you.

A policeman's lot4 April 2008

Comment

It is the season of the year when, as any top management in the public sector knows, you have to joust for funds. A process that became more intense when Margaret Thatcher rightly imposed management disciplines on the public sector. Sadly, the process has become bureaucratised to the point of unreality.

We now face a situation with the county police budget where our police force, that by independent review is soundly managed and efficient, is asking for a 9.7% rise in funding from our Council Tax. Why? Partly because the Government has imposed new requirements nationwide, for example in police provision for contingencies such as terrorism and civil emergencies. Partly because Government has also adopted a policy of directing funds to where they are most needed within the country - and our area has one of the lowest crime rates nationally. Superficially this doctrine of 'relative need' sounds laudable: but it is a policy that shows no understanding of human nature. It means that a police force like ours that does well, becomes more effective and reduces crime, will get less funding as a 'reward' for doing so. A police force where there is a higher crime rate, by contrast, will get more money. The funding formula also means that little account is taken of 'cross-border' crime. Yet half the crime in the county is committed by brigands from London.

Unsatisfactory it may be - but it is the law of the land, and you may question the wisdom of the Surrey Police Authority, the local body politic that oversees our policing, in making a stand when it well knew that the Government's regulations would result in capping the increase in tax at 5%. We shall see whether it succeeds in getting the Government to cave in and give Surrey more money, and we hope it does. For a failure could add additional costs in readjusting tax already being taken.

Where it matters most

According to Police documents made public, this year the force will employ 1,900 police officers, 1,499 operational police staff (including PCSOs), and 722 support staff - 4121 persons in all. Some 85 per cent of officers will be employed on operational duties. Two years ago, 1996 officers and 1845 other staff were employed - 3841 persons in all.

Over the past two years, Surrey have invested considerably in neighbourhood policing and Police Community Support Officers. Residents welcome and support our PCs and PCSOs on the beat, and are very glad to see them around. It is clear that these measures are having a positive effect on the everyday concerns of residents. They are helping to reduce casual crime including robbery and yobbery. They reduce those smaller misdemeanours that hitherto, left unchecked, emboldened the evil or senseless in our community to take further liberties and slide towards more serious crime.

We residents also support very strongly the elements of consultation and communication with the local community that have withstood other pressures on police time. Surrey Police and its Police Authority are threatening to reduce neighbourhood policing if the Government does not meet their demands for the full increase. This would in our view be the wrong decision.

Governments guilty as charged

Wasting police time is an offence. And one that Governments, especially the current one, have been guilty of. Contingency planning for merging Surrey with other neighbouring police forces, later abandoned, cost us a million pounds. But it goes far deeper than that. The cumulative weight of legislation and regulation imposed by governments, often for reasons of exaggerated 'political correctness,' has left the policeman's lot a far from happy one. I worked alongside our representatives from Police and Customs in four posts overseas, and I saw how under first, Conservative, and later, Labour Governments they became progressively so enmeshed in British regulations and paperwork that they lost much of the effectiveness that earlier had come from being able to take commonsense initiatives.

Pondlife, and life in ponds

It has got worse in recent years. Do you recall that a policeman in Nottingham together with three colleagues were taken off frontline duties that "might bring them into contact with members of the public" for many months while a disciplinary committee deliberated whether to sack them? The offence - the constable had referred to a career criminal as "pondlife" in a private conversation with another officer. Apparently the criminal "might have been offended" had he heard the remark, although he was not present at the time. And do you recall that last year a senior policeman told a coroner that because PCSOs are not trained to do lifesaving in ponds they shouldn't enter the water to save a drowning ten year old?

Did you know that if, following reports of milk being stolen from kitchens by a male intruder, our PCSO's ask questions of a drunken vagrant sleeping on a bench in Summer Road rec, then they have to spend an hour filling out forms in case he complains? Can you think of better ways to inhibit our police from carrying out duties with due dispatch and commonsense? Demoralising it must be. Improvements in the digitisation of such records, likely to result from the Flanagan Report, will but scratch the surface.

At the end of January, David Cameron said: "In the British police service (sic) there were problems with racism, there were problems with attitude. That needed to change. I think it now has been changed."

Changes in the priorities of our rulers are now required. They should enable our police to do more efficiently the job in the community that we want them to do. They want to do it; residents are happy to pay for it. And we do.

What do you think? - email us your views

"Lies, spin, fiddles and broken promises" 2 April 2008

At the beginning of March David Cameron, with the freedom that comes from not yet having held office, acknowledged at a party conference the breakdown of trust between voters and the national political parties. This is to his credit. He stated:

'Trust in Parliament fell from 54 per cent in 1983 to 14 per cent in 2000. Since then it's got even worse. Our Parliament is scorned. Our parties are shrinking. Our membership is ageing. It’s getting harder to find candidates willing to stand in council elections. As far as the public is concerned, politicians are all the same. Not because they all say the same thing, but because they all do the same thing. Let's be clear what they think of us: "you lie and you spin, you fiddle your expenses and you break your promises." '

He is surely right. That's what many think of politicians. And with good reason.

Mr. Cameron went on to outline useful measures that might help reduce public mistrust, including "No more MPs voting on their own pay" - we wish his party's representatives in the Cabinet of Elmbridge Borough Council would take that on board: they voted themselves an increase of over 30 percent in December - and "Honouring promises."

Hear, hear! These are things to which we can all nod vigorously, and we wish him well in overcoming party stalwarts of whom many are reportedly opposed to what they see as an anti-establishment agenda. According to William Hague and David Davis it is "only inviting more media scrutiny of MPs' behaviour and doubling the political cost of future failings whenever they are discovered."

Alas the portents are not good. Mr Cameron laudably tried to bring about changes in the Conservative Constitution in 2006, but the establishment's grip was too firm and unfortunately he has not been able to democratise the party - yet.

We would all like to see greater engagement by ordinary citizens in a democracy that has, regrettably, become far removed from the original concept of local representation, local responsibility, and local accountability. And far removed from reality, by the preoccupation with 'politics' and politicking, and the politicians' belief that if they say something often enough, people will believe it. But in truth, only they believe it.

It will take longer for the national political parties to earn the people's trust than it took to lose it.

The source for the above? Conservative Home, a good and lively website established by conservative individuals independent of the Party Board. With the possible exception of Mr Cameron himself, who has his own difficulties battling entrenched party interests, it has done more to revitalise the Conservative Party than the establishment has done. If you don't know it, go and visit, see for yourself.

This country needs a serious national opposition as well as, at the moment, needing a serious national Government. Let's hope it eventually gets both.