John Bryant's blog

My personal criticism of the UK Border Agency

2012-01-05T07:34:00.001-08:00

I have not blogged for several months because my last blog, about the joys of being newly married, were interrupted by the UK Border Agency which insisted my wife had to return to Ghana to apply for a settlement visa from there rather than from the Agency’s offices in Croydon.

This should have been a simple enough task, especially as the initial application was done online before my wife left for Ghana, and we had compiled an impressive list of original documents for her to present to the High Commission in Accra.

We had systematically found documentary evidence to support every assertion made in the application, managing to include my birth certificate, a reference to my flat purchase in 1998 to prove I owned a property, a copy of my last tax return to show how much I earned (with supporting bank statements), my wife’s degree certificate and journalism certificate plus a statement from NARIC, a recognised agency in the UK, that guaranteed that a degree from the University of Ghana was equivalent to a Batchelor’s degree here.

The most important piece of evidence was a job offer letter that my wife had received from an employer where she had volunteered for 5 weeks before returning to Ghana. The job offer was conditional, of course, on her obtaining a settlement visa.

The tone of the application form for such visas is one of hostility, with references throughout which imply “we hope you are not coming here to claim benefits”. Well no, I was earning enough to keep her anyway, and we had the proof that my wife wanted to work and had a job offer in an institution where her background and knowledge of community languages in Ghana could prove useful.

So we thought it should be plain sailing. But no.

The processing of settlement visa applications is done in a strict chronological order, and my request for my wife’s application to be fast-tracked because of the job offer was deemed to be “not a compelling reason for fast tracking”.

My wife had been told in Ghana it would be 12 working weeks from the time of submission to get an answer, which put the likely date for her visa to be processed into early January. The answer I got three times from a civil servant in Accra was that it would be resolved by 31^st December.

Extracts from an email exchange with this official in the High Commission in Accra are rather telling. I wrote - “You still have not responded to my email messages. Is it the official policy of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to fail to respond to email messages from UK citizens?

The reply I got (eventually) was this - “For your information, the UK Border Agency’s publically (sic) available guidelines state that correspondence should be replied to within 20 working days of receipt.

I appreciate that this may not be the response you were hoping for.”

It was bad enough getting the same stonewall answer again, but to hide behind a pathetic response deadline of 20 working days at a time of electronic communication suggests that our old colonial outposts need to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the culture of the 1960’s into the 21^st century. In local government we have made great strides to improve response times to enquiries. Ten working days is often the target and the actual response times, such as in Camden, are often shorter.

However, not to be brushed off like this I tried to use the good offices of a number of local and national politicians to see if they could intervene on my behalf. Being used to intervening on behalf of constituents as a councillor I found it a frustrating experience asking for help in this way and finding a poor response from most. Glenda Jackson my local MP has very polite staff who tried to help, but when Glenda phoned me directly after a few email exchanges she appeared to me to be both unhelpful, and rather dismissive.

Various Members of the House of Lords who were listed as part of the parliamentary committee for Ghana were tried. David Steel, Navnit Dholakia and Paul Boateng were all either dismissive or too easily accepting of the status quo.

A letter to the office of the Deputy Prime Minister went unanswered for weeks until I get a composite reply, which referred to the other enquiries made on my behalf by others. The only politician who appeared to take the issue seriously was Sarah Ludford the Liberal Democrat MEP for London, who rightfully challenged the first response she received.

Why was I so angry? Besides missing my wife which was torment enough, applying for a settlement visa as a spouse of a UK citizen involves not only filling in an application form with supporting evidence, but a fee of around £850 payable in cash in the local currency. It occurred to me that if any Commission had a backlog of applications they also had a lot of fees collected which could be used to appoint more temporary workers to clear the backlog or to offer overtime to existing staff. But that it seems is too logical, too modern, too concerned about improving systems. That would be about an agency accepting that it is providing a public service rather than simply administering a legal procedure.

The UK Border Agency has been under attack a great deal in recent months, with one senior official resigning after a spat with the Home Secretary about apparently relaxing border controls in the summer.

In my experience it requires a serious root and branch review of all its systems.

To complete the story, my wife was asked to collect her documents, including the visa, on 28^th December. When she received her passport back it was clear the visa had been approved on 23^rd December, too close to the Christmas break to allow her to enjoy Christmas in the UK with her new British family.

My wife arrived at Heathrow on the morning of 2^nd January and I am now a much happier man, but my criticisms of the inefficient UK Border Agency are still legitimate and should be pursued by politicians in Government, or by those aspiring to represent us.

What I did on my holidays - got married...

2011-09-06T03:07:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted for awhile because the summer has been taken up with preparations for my wedding to the lovely Nana who flew in from Ghana on July 30th. The fact that she did not turn tail and fly out again, lived with me for four weeks and then went through with our wedding, demonstrates either extreme foolhardiness, or amazing patience or her genuine love for yours truly. I suspect it's all three actually.

What has surprised me is that after a gap of 22 years of happy bachelorhood I appear to have taken to married life again rather well. So all those cynics out there who thought I was destined to be a crusty middle aged man for the rest of my days, will need to change their opinions fast.

It was an obvious surprise to many of our wedding guests on the 26th August that I had ever married again, but love (and the daily assistance of Skype video phone calls for 18 months) has conquered all. I have received a number of messages after the wedding to say we both looked gloriously happy. And yes we are.

Nana's subtle influences on our living arrangements are beginning to show. Early on it was decided that my business needed to move out of the flat, which took place in mid-August, and since then the use of a table-cloth, and the arrival of a bathmat in the shower room, offers a glimpse of the feminising touches to the flat that I accept will increase over time.

My large black and white mounted picture of a young Naomi Campbell (before her nose-job) which used to be on display above the bathroom wash basin has been banished and is now displayed in the office. I suspect some football related items might need to follow.

We are taking it in turns in cooking dinner, and the steady increase in exotic ingredients found in the kitchen cupboards proves Nana has found her way round some of the independent shops in Kilburn High Road and discovered the basics to produce some wonderful Ghanaian dishes. I have always enjoyed a wide range of food, and this simply offers further delights to my palate. It provides an extra bonus I did not take into consideration when deciding to marry, but hey, I am not complaining!

I used to tell a joke - "I believe in marriage. Everyone should get married at least once, because everyone needs to experience some misery in their lives..." As I said in my wedding speech - that one is being deleted from my memory bank.

Happy times.

Didn't we do well, or did we?

2011-07-08T01:15:00.000-07:00

This is the latest article I have sent for publication to Liberator magazine.

"John Bryant argues that while the campaign led by the Social Liberal Forum has secured some significant changes to the Health and Social Care Bill there remain some lingering doubts...

Since my last article on the fortunes of the Health and Social Care Bill after the Liberal Democrats Spring Conference in Sheffield, we have had an official pause in the Bill’s legislative journey, a listening exercise, a report from the Future Forum, and publication of amendments to the Bill.

Liberal activists have also attended the Social Liberal Forum’s first one-day conference on 18^th June, which received feedback from Evan Harris, one of the key campaigners for change.

My own modest role in the campaign for change was to convince Camden’s Health Scrutiny Committee to make a submission to the listening exercise, setting out support for the 25 amendments that the Social Liberal Forum was promoting at the time. Since then there have been various claims that the vast majority of these suggested changes have emerged as formal amendments to the Bill.

So that’s all right then?

Well I think the gushing self-congratulations that have been published in recent weeks need to be tempered a little.

Not everyone in the NHS family of interests has declared its happiness with the result of the listening exercise. For the second time this year the BMA voted at its annual conference (following a critical emergency meeting in March) to support a motion calling for the Bill’s withdrawal, despite a call from its leadership not to be too critical now the Bill was to be amended.

At the SLF Conference Evan Harris was critical of the Future Forum’s report as it was littered with anecdotal references without a coherent analysis of the feedback it received from the many respondents to the listening exercise.

There was also an example of the classic bureaucrats’ answer to every problem by creating more committees. The Future Forum argues that, “there should be a strong role for clinical and professional networks in the new system and multi‐speciality clinical senates should be established to provide strategic advice to local commissioning consortia, health and wellbeing boards and the NHS Commissioning Board.”

A clinical senate may well be a useful adjunct to the more formal commissioning landscape, but something similar already exists outside of formal NHS structures. One example is “UCL Partners” which is a research body bringing together clinical leaders in Foundation Trusts in my part of North London to think through the best way of providing clinical pathways for specialist acute services. Its work in helping to shape the development of Hyper-Acute Stroke Units has led to the new “HASU” based at University College London Hospital. This is now reported to be the third best performing HASU in the UK with rapidly improving survival rates compared to the old regime.

So while such innovations as “clinical senates” may be useful I am not sure that giving them a statutory role will make their contribution even more valid than it is at present. The key to progress here is to ensure that clinical recommendations on patient pathways from such informal bodies are given effective scrutiny in public by scrutiny committees either at borough or regional level.

I am not entirely convinced by the Future Forum’s statement “We have heard many people saying that competition and integration are opposing forces. We believe this is a false dichotomy. Integrated care is vital, and competition can and should be used by commissioners as a powerful tool to drive this for patients.”

In developing an integrated care pathway for Stroke patients in North Central London the clinicians presented a case for UCLH to be the HASU, while other hospitals such the Royal Free in Hampstead would develop and expand their rehabilitation service for supporting patients in the period following the first three critical days after a stroke. Had a competitive approach been followed both UCLH and the Royal Free would have had good claims to be the HASU and a lot of time and money would have been wasted to judge between competing bids. So in my own local example working together to create a well-organised integrated care model produced the desired improving health outcomes, without competition being involved.

The Future Forum report later backtracks on the competition issue with this -

“Most importantly, the Bill should be changed to be very clear that Monitor’s primary duty is not to promote competition, but to ensure the best care for patients. As part of this, they must support the delivery of integrated care.”

Without specifying clearly how integrated care models are to be created by using competition, it begs the question that this report was surely designed to please both Conservative and Liberal Democrat members by providing a fudge between the different forces in favour of either competition or integration.

The more detailed report on Choice and Competition sets out some principles for a new Framework which are - Delivering choice; Encouraging collaboration and integration; Market making; Improving outcomes; Personalising care; Reducing health inequalities; Enabling informed citizens.

The most worrying of these for me is the principle of “Market Making”. The later section devoted to this talks about new entrants to the market, but concentrates on the creation of new social enterprises rather than admit the existence of the elephant in the room - the possibility of many more services being commissioned from the independent sector.

The Government’s formal response to the Future Forum appeared to take on board of many of the fears of Liberal Democrats, ruling out cherry-picking and competition on price. However it is noticeable that the summary on Choice and Competition also states “we will phase in the extension of Any Qualified Provider”. What the “extension” might entail could be anyone’s guess, but if you are naturally sceptical of anything the Tories put forward with regard to competition in health services I would remain alert to future interpretations of this throw away line.

One of the big worries regularly expressed by both providers and patients is that competitive tendering by clinical consortia (even on quality rather than cost grounds) could put some well-loved institutions such as Foundation Trust hospitals out of business, because without a certain level of core business they may become unviable.

So even assuming that most of the new amendments to the Bill are supported across the Coalition and are welcomed in the Lords, there is still more that Liberals should be doing.

As this Liberator was being prepared, Liberal Democrat conference representatives were being urged by SLF activists to put their names forward in support of a new motion for the Autumn conference. This was drafted by Charles West and calls for all the new NHS structures created by the Bill to have a common duty when commissioning services to “avoid the risk of a transfer of such income or case-load as to undermine the ability of existing providers to provide emergency, complex case and intensive care services, and to provide education, training and research.”

It also suggests that Monitor's duty to prevent anti-competitive behaviour, which is against the interests of patients, is matched by a duty to prevent anti-collaborative behaviour for the same purpose.

So what else should Liberals be doing? Besides supporting SLF motions at conferences Liberals can be doing some useful work at a local level too. Many principal local authorities have created shadow Health and Well-Being Boards and it is through these that Liberal Democrat councillors can argue for better integration of health and social care providers as they redefine patient pathways. They can also argue for much greater transparency of decision-making by all local providers, including Foundation Trust Boards.

Members of Scrutiny Committees could also challenge Board members of emerging clinical consortia to avoid engaging arms length organisations from the independent sector to carry out commissioning functions. PCTs were forced to shed around half their staff this year because of Andrew Lansley’s decisions to cut management costs, but the remaining postholders should be those with the expertise to understand the intricacies of health contracts. Retaining the transactional task of commissioning as an in-house function of consortia by them directly employing their own (hopefully ex-PCT) staff is something that Liberal Democrat councillors could and should be arguing for.

Liberal activists not serving on Councils should continue to make their voices heard through their local press, urging local editors to spend some time on investigating the various interests that are hovering in every community to get a slice of the NHS cake.

I ended my last article on these issues by alluding to a “reasonably managed muddle”. I am not yet convinced we will achieve anything better than this, despite the good work done by campaigners on improving the Bill. The Future Forum report attempts to look in two directions at the same time and while many of the amendments to the Bill are welcome, it is the behaviour and motivation of the key players in every locality which will need to be closely monitored over the coming months.

JOHN BRYANT

(John has been a member of the Liberator Collective as “William Tranby” for about 20 years. He is currently a Camden councillor and Chair of its Health Scrutiny Committee, and is also Vice Chair of the North Central London Joint Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee.)"

People already vote preferentially

2011-04-26T12:01:00.000-07:00

The arguments advanced by both the Yes and No campaigns in the AV referendum concentrate on the perceived benefits of both systems currently under scrutiny, but neither of them consider the evidence of what people actually do when they have the opportunity of expressing different choices on the same ballot paper.

In a minority of Councils there are all-out elections every four years. This is the case in London, and last year on the same day as the General Election the 32 London boroughs held elections, usually for three councillors in each of their wards. Electors are told they can vote with crosses for up to three candidates that are listed alphabetically by surname.

Most of the parties nominated three candidates in each ward and encouraged their supporters to use all three of their votes for their listed candidates. No party campaigned on the principle that voters can and should vote for candidates from different parties on the same ballot paper. However, although no party made this suggestion, thousands of voters across London made the decision to split their votes for candidates for two or even three parties.

In my own ward of West Hampstead in the London Borough of Camden voters had to make a single choice for their preferred MP, but on the same day and within seconds of completing their ballot in the parliamentary election, many voted for a "pick and mix" slate of Council candidates. In West Hampstead our Liberal Democrat campaign managed to secure 1,316 supporters who voted for the three Lib Dem candidates. But the counting of the Council election voting papers then went into the more complex procedure of counting the split ballots, where voters had decided to vote for a combination of candidates (or only one or two) which did not match the party slates.

On the split ballots I received an additional 745 votes which placed me at the top of the poll with 2,061. But that means around 36% of those who voted for me also voted for a candidate from another party. And don't forget this was at a time when every party was saying "only vote for us". No one was advocating splitting votes. No one mentioned this in conversations on doorsteps or in campaign leaflets. This was the electors making their own sophisticated judgements about the mix of parties they preferred.

I think this demonstrates there is a clear appetite for voters to choose to vote preferentially for candidates from different parties. Just think what would happen when candidates in an AV election had to reach out to attract "2nd preference" votes from other parties' supporters.

The appetite for preferential voting is already there and it's about time the politicians learned a lesson from the voters.

Why the Secretary of State has damaged our health

2011-03-24T11:01:00.000-07:00

(The following article has been submitted for publication in Liberator magazine)

The Liberal Democrats Spring Conference in Sheffield was much enlivened by a first class debate on a motion entitled “Updating the NHS: Personal and Local”. The Liberal Democrat Health Minister Paul Burstow was forced to accept two amendments to avoid the humiliation of losing a vote by an overwhelming margin. Both amendments in their different ways aimed to increase the accountability of local institutions and were in line with the party’s manifesto commitment to democratise local PCT’s.

Strengthening the role of scrutiny by local Councils had been a message heard loud and clear by our Health Minister in official submissions from local authorities to the earlier White Paper and from individual councillors (like myself) at the Liverpool conference. Paul has listened to this point and the Bill now does provide greater scope for scrutiny as a separate function from that envisaged by Health and Wellbeing Boards within Councils. The motion at conference stressed this by welcoming the proposals to enable local authorities to effectively scrutinise “any provider of any taxpayer funded health services”. So far, so good.

The amendments at conference wanted to strengthen all this further by making sure that democratically elected individuals were involved in every stage, not just in scrutiny, but through “councillor-led” Health and Well Being Boards and with places on GP Commissioning Consortia too.

The debate in Sheffield also highlighted a widely shared hostility to the concept of “any willing provider”, which is possibly the most controversial concept in the Bill. There is a great concern that private operators will cherry-pick the routine operations to make money out of high volume work, leaving complex and serious conditions to be catered for in the public sector.

The last Labour Government had already promoted this private sector entryism into the health market by guaranteeing fees to private operators that were above the standard tariffs agreed for NHS hospitals. The conference was relieved when this was criticised by Paul Burstow but one has to remember that the fixed tariff system only covers around 30% of current procedures, so there is still room for the profiteers from the private sector to make money in any newly created health market.

Openness and transparency was another theme highlighted by the amendment sponsored by the Social Liberal Forum. This called for meetings of GP Consortia to be open to the public. But one has to remember in calling for changes of this sort that we have secretive GP practices now. Each practice acts as a separately traded business with no openness with regard to its business operations. While General Practice accounts need to be registered with their local PCT they are private and confidential and no one really knows how much the partners are paying themselves, and how much they are re-investing in their practice facilities, except the PCT which is not at liberty to reveal all. (There may be some principled GPs in the country who are willing to reveal their accounts but it is not the norm in my part of London.)

Paul Burstow and Nick Clegg might well feel emboldened by the clear messages from conference to seek major changes to the Bill, bearing in mind this top down reorganisation was specifically ruled out by the Coalition Agreement, but I fear the real damage to our health service has already been done by another decision of the Secretary of State which I presume had Paul Burstow’s blessing.

My local PCT in Camden was ordered by Andrew Lansley to make 54% cuts in management costs this year. That meant that by the end of the financial year about to close as I write this, 54% of the staff were to be made redundant. There would be some natural wastage and some voluntary redundancies of course. But anyone reading this with any experience of local government efficiency savings, where 10% cuts in staff in one go are just about manageable, could only describe cutting out half your staff in one go as anything but “slash and burn” on an epic scale.

There are several risks involved in doing this. Some staff with commissioning experience might jump ship and start working for the “any willing providers”, helping them to find the corners to cut. Others might be so disheartened by yet another health reorganisation that they seek employment in another field entirely or retire to look after their gardens, their expertise lost forever.

The remaining staff are required to soldier on with the specific task of helping the GP Commissioners take on their responsibilities while at the same time looking forward to losing their own jobs by 2013, which is hardly a great incentive to go the extra mile.

Health if anything is a people business. For successful commissioning we need to have the right people with the right skills carrying out the right tasks to secure good and improving health outcomes, while achieving good value for the taxpayer.

This will not be achieved in my view by a bunch of well-meaning GPs with little training, without a team of experienced commissioning staff who know and understand the intricacies of health contracts. What cannot be guaranteed by this imposed revolution from the centre is that we will end up with commissioning teams that secure both improving health outcomes for patients and good value for the taxpayer because the transfer of the right people in an orderly fashion from the PCTs to the GP consortia is not guaranteed.

It does not matter if the final Bill passed by Parliament establishes that the award of contracts will be on quality rather than cost, because if the contract specification is not written correctly the snags will emerge after the contracts are in place. Anyone with local government experience will know that out-sourcing contracts for services like refuse collection and recycling, or housing maintenance, are fraught with dangers. The so-called “best value contractor” will often be commissioned but when the operation appears not to be working the contractor nearly always has an excuse along the lines of - “what you have now requested is not in the contract but we can now do it for you, but it will cost you extra...”

Having councillors added to commissioning boards might bring some worldly wisdom to these decisions, but it is whether commissioners secure the expertise of those who can write watertight contracts which will determine whether this whole experiment will succeed or fail, and with half the available staff already lost from PCTs I think the die is already cast.

Another area which is fraught with difficulty is the way in which specialist and low volume treatments will be commissioned in the future. In recent years in London the treatment of cardiac arrests, major trauma and strokes have been significantly improved through commissioning on a regional basis. For example one of the great success stories now emerging demonstrates that creating eight Hyper-Acute Stroke Units in the capital has radically improved survival rates. The proposals were developed by Healthcare for London, an off-shoot of the strategic health authority which was answerable to the joint committee of PCTs in London and scrutinised by a pan-London Joint Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee (JHOSC) on which I served as Camden’s representative.

How will proposals for improving specialist acute services be developed in the future? It may be that the NHS Commissioning Board might create local outposts to lead on these developments, but where will the boundaries lie with GP Commissioning Consortia? And how will these developments be scrutinised? Local authorities are increasingly stretched for resources to undertake their scrutiny duties as they are now. If the Government is serious about strengthening scrutiny, and to create quality pathways for acute services, then there is more work to be done and more resources are needed.

I suppose the summary of what I am saying is that if the conference decisions lead to real improvements to the Bill then that is to be welcomed. But, as the saying goes, “if I wanted to get there I wouldn’t have started from here”. Sacking half of the PCT staff before embarking on this change to the commissioning arrangements was clearly the wrong step in the wrong direction at the wrong time.

We might be able to muddle through. The NHS has made great improvements in the past, often despite the meddling of Secretaries of State and not because of them, but does the service have the capacity to do this one more time?

And do we as Liberals in Government for the first time in 70 years want our first term legacy to be a reasonably managed muddle?

Stop the World I want to get off..

2011-03-20T13:46:00.000-07:00

Since the turn of the year, I cannot believe how busy I have been. January is usually a slowly paced month, planning for school meetings that normally become congested in March. But I had a rude awakening on 4th January, the first day of the spring term with a succession of phone calls and e-mails announcing the suspension of my friend Alan King as the headteacher of Furness Primary School.

This set off a flurry of activity for the Governing Body with three special meetings in quick succession and a protracted correspondence with Brent's Director of Education. Not only was the headteacher suspended (and at the time of writing still is), but the Director decided to apply to the Secretary of State to dismiss the Governing Body as well. I had already decided that if that happened, I would not offer myself to clerk the Interim Executive Board that would succeed the Governing Body, and so it is with some regret that I now believe I have ended my association with the school after being its clerk for 22 years.

It is a great pity. I do not believe the current investigation into the headteacher's management of the school will uncover anything of any great seriousness and I reckon the Governing Body's performance was no worse than many others in this area. Alan King always had a great line in conspiracy theories, which always appeared to become more outlandish as the rounds of drinks quickened at his local. And so after knowing him for over 20 years I usually took a lot of what he said with a pinch of salt. This time perhaps his theory was right all along.

Anyway that is what kept me busy in January, and the ever complex health agenda also provided a lot of extra work in the opening months of the year. I confess I also took my usual winter break in February to my favourite hotel in Lanzarote and managed to read five hefty novels of varying seriousness while I was there. But one downside this year was the impact of now owning an iPhone on which I can now screen my e-mails. A holiday is not quite the same when you are still in contact, on an hourly basis, with work and colleagues back home.

Since being back, I have returned to a frenzy of work with the more usual high number of governing body meetings taking place. The Council's budget-setting process created a flurry of activity within the Liberal Democrat Group, so much so that I was checking a suggested budget amendment at midnight while standing at baggage reclaim in Gatwick after returning home.

Is the world speeding up? It certainly feels like it. Many people tell me they think the years get faster as you approach retirement. But why do we have this frantic obsession with activity that keeps us moving like manic hampsters on spinning wheels?

Why indeed do I have massive feelings of guilt when I sit idly for 20 minutes? I have always juggled a number of plates in the air, keeping my schools business, Council work, and social life on track through careful diary planning, but what I have never done is build in "lazy time".

Should I now begin the slippery slope towards deliberate downsizing? Not in the sense of moving down the property ladder, because anything smaller than my flat would be a bedsit, but downsizing the number of things I intend to do and plan for in the diary? But could I ever get used to a diary page with blank spaces in it? And what exactly is being lazy? Is that the first step towards staring vacantly into space, and falling asleep in the afternoons? My grandparents used to do this, leading to low sniggering from the rest of the family, but now my parents do too.

How soon will it be my turn?

The Minister listened!!

2010-12-15T06:30:00.000-08:00

I have been a particularly ebullient critic of the Coalition Government's White Paper on Health in the last few months. (see earlier blog entries.)

Today the Government published its formal response document to the consultation process. I was involved directly, taking part in a Consultative session with Paul Burstow at the Liberal Democrats annual conference in Liverpool and in a private session with him later on, and I also helped to frame the official consultation response by Camden Council.

In the published response today Camden get a specific mention -

"Some respondents, for example Camden Council, wanted the Government to “require local authorities and health commissioners to pool resources”. Although we do not think this is practicable, we understand the sentiment. As Solihull Care Trust suggested, “local authorities will struggle to co-ordinate commissioning without a commitment from partners to joint/pooled budgets”. However, we agree with Suffolk and Great Yarmouth LPC when they say that “integrated working depends on the quality of local working relationships and although the Department can outline areas where integrated working is required this should not be too restrictive to prevent local innovation to occur”. This is backed up by the Lesbian and Gay Foundation’s suggestion that “lead commissioning and other flexibilities should be explicitly promoted and supported by the Department for the delivery of high quality community based specialist services”. Staff at Norfolk PCT echoed the views of many NHS respondents when they welcomed “the opportunity to increase dialogue between services and join services together for the good of patients”. The Bill will therefore place a duty on GP consortia and local authorities, through the health and wellbeing board, in drawing up the joint strategy, to consider how to make best use of the flexibilities they have at their disposal, such as pooled budgets. To reinforce this duty, the Department has also decided that the NHS Commissioning Board should be placed under a duty to promote the use of flexibilities by consortia. These duties do not require flexibilities to be used, but they signal the importance of maximising the use of the tools available.

And the views of Southampton City Council were identical to ours on the need for "compliance" of GP Consortia to follow the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (or JSNA). The relevant sections in the response paper today are these -

"In the reformed system, the process and product of the joint strategic needs assessment takes on much greater importance. The health and wellbeing board will have a role in helping meet the need - expressed by the NHS Confederation and others - for GP consortia to have “access to public health expertise so that they can take a population health viewpoint, in particular access to epidemiological advice and insight into parts of the population that are either unregistered or invisible to general practice”, through for example the Director of Public Health being a member of the board. As Southampton City Council has suggested, the focus on the JSNA will help “ensure that GP consortia take commissioning decisions based on the overall needs of the population in future rather than the needs of their current set of patients”.

5.20 The Government fully agrees with the view of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services that “all commissioning should be driven by the JSNA or shared assessments across local authority boundaries, whether these are GP commissioning, council commissioning or joint commissioning”. Many respondents, for example the Association of Directors of Public Health, Nottingham City Council, Oldham PCT, and Peterborough City Council, felt that the value of the JSNA could be enhanced by clearer expectations about its use within commissioning plans. The point is well made. At present JSNA obligations extend only to its production, not its application. To remedy this lacuna, the Government is therefore introducing in the Bill a new legal obligation on NHS and local authority commissioners to have regard to the JSNA in exercising their relevant commissioning functions.

Added to this was a commitment to strengthen the distinctive role of Scrutiny Committees, including the ability to scrutinise the decisions of GP Commissioners.

So we made some progress. And it's good to note that the Coalition actually listened to the responses and adjusted their approach accordingly.

JOHN BRYANT

Let's stage a World Premiership instead!

2010-12-05T10:45:00.001-08:00

The huge disappointment of England not being chosen as the 2018 host for the World Cup has led on to some angry criticism of FIFA and it's internal workings. Corruption of officials appears to have been fully uncovered by the Sunday Times and BBC's Panorama programme.

However the argument that investigative journalism should be restrained out of patriotic interest is in itself suspect. If we had won the nomination through a corrupt process, then how could we then be proud of the outcome? England offering a friendly against Thailand in exchange for a vote is as corrupt in my book as a brown envelope stuffed with cash to a FIFA representative.

The exhaustive ballot process is also inefficient and suspect. I noticed that in the vote for the 2022 tournament Qatar actually lost a vote between two stages. Use of the Alternative Vote would stop all attempts of later stage tactical voting, as the losing country's votes would automatically transfer to later pre-registered preferences.

Given the total lack of confidence many nations (at least of a democratic variety) now have in FIFA, it is time for English football to replicate its own previous rebellion when the leading clubs rebelled against the Football League and set up their own tournament.

Surely it is time the English FA formed a World Premiership tournament to take place in England during one summer when the Olympics and World Cup will not be taking place - perhaps in 2013? We already have the stadiums and training facilities to stage a tournament. It could be by invitation only to the world's top 16 footballing nations, taking account of the most recent regional tournaments such as the African Cup of Nations, Euro 2012 and the South American and Asian equivalents.

For some countries it might prove to be a useful trial run for the Brazil World Cup in 2014, but it might find its own momentum as a genuine alternative to FIFA's suspect package. After all we had significant splintering of the world titles in boxing some years ago and so the precedent is set for staging an alternative to the "official" tournament.

If FIFA threaten to exclude the top nations who choose to take part in the World Premiership then the top nations should walk. The TV companies know where the money will be and they will choose to show the best football they can to their subscribers.

So does anyone in the English FA have the guts to lead on this?

Who is ready for a public meeting?

2010-12-03T10:10:00.000-08:00

It was curious to note that although we had around 80 residents who turned up on a cold night for the Area Forum in West Hampstead on Monday hardly anyone had been attracted to come by reading about the event on Twitter or Facebook. While most of our citizens are using e-mail these days there still seems to be a generation gap between those who are attracted to attend a traditional public meeting to keep up to date with current affairs, and those who aren't. The latter appear to be under-45, and are ready to post their opinions on social networking sites, but won't push through the doors of a community hall of an evening.

The same generation gap is sadly affecting the active membership of traditional residents and amenity groups too. I attend a fair number of community meetings as a councillor but I know there is a significant demographic I rarely come across. Within the boundaries of West Hampstead ward we have a higher than average number of people in the 25-34 age group compared to the population as a whole, but these are precisely the people we don't see taking part in community groups.

Many will be transient because of their work, so do not settle in the area, and therefore take less interest in local affairs. Those who put down their roots by buying a property or by having permanent tenancies are those who tend to join in. The only exceptions to my thesis are those who have children of primary school age and get involved in the local schools as Parent Governors or members of Friends Groups. But I suspect these are also the "settlers", and given the trend to have children later in life, many of these will be approaching 40 before they get stuck in to organising the school tombola or joining the Governors' Finance Committee.

I am not sure whether I should be worried or not. We have gone twenty years or so since a younger generation was catching the headlines with direct action with demonstrations and sit-ins. More recently the demonstration against the Iraq war also caught the imagination although this was across all age groups.

The recent unrest about student tuition fees, although in my view largely misplaced (See my earlier blog) at least shows us that when the right cause comes along the young can still get worked up about it. They are the ones who do use the social networking sites to organise their activities, but it tends not to be an invite to a public meeting in a draughty hall...

The NUS has got it wrong

2010-11-14T12:13:00.000-08:00

I have not been blogging for a while because a lot of work has got in the way since last month. In that time the tuition fees issue has taken the headlines in a big way.

I am one of those fortunate enough to have enjoyed a free university education in the 1970's and an almost complete maintenance grant. Grants were means tested then according to your parents' income, and coming from a modest background I qualified for the full grant for my first two years.

Since then we have had the introduction of tuition fees, the withdrawal of grants except for a very small number of poor applicants, and the introduction of top-up fees too, each change made by a Labour Government following manifesto pledges against such moves.

So am I arguing that because Labour reneged on manifesto commitments it's all right for the Liberal Democrats too?

Well there is a big difference between the two parties. Each time Labour made a promise they failed to keep they had secured a working majority in the House of Commons at the General Election that preceded their decisions. So they had the power to fulfil their promises but chose not to do so.

In 2010 the Liberal Democrats did not win the election.

They did not secure the power to implement their manifesto in full, which included in case any reader has forgotten, to phase out tuition fees over six years. Not immediately, but over longer than a parliamentary term.

At the election we secured around 23% of the vote and got about 10% of the seats. Both Labour and the Tories support tuition fees, so whether the Liberal Democrats had done a deal with either party, securing a phase out of tuition fees just wasn't going to happen.

The Coalition Agreement secured the option for Liberal Democrat MPs to abstain on any vote to increase fees, and in practice I expect many will vote against the increase. This is the position taken up by our new party president Tim Farron who was my choice for the role.

However our instincts for fairness has led to the party securing a better deal for graduates than the Browne report (commissioned by the last Labour Government) envisaged. The repayment scheme now being proposed makes sure that the third of graduates taking on the lowest paid jobs (such as in Social Care) will actually pay less back than they do now, and those graduates in the top third of jobs on the highest pay (such as those in financial services) will pay back more. It is the closest one can get to a Graduate Tax without calling it such.

So why is the NUS trying to unseat Liberal Democrat MPs?

I don't think they have thought this through. If we have fewer Lib Dems in the next Parliament we are likely to have more Labour and Tory MPs who actually believe in fees and are not interested in making the system fairer. Labour is very publicly split over the concept of a Graduate Tax already, and as they are a party that has twice reneged on tuition fee commitments when in power they cannot be trusted. The Tories are waving the flag of fairness at the moment, because while they are in coalition with us they have to. But give them a working majority and the fairness principle will soon be lost.

So by supporting the NUS campaign to unseat Lib Dem MPs students will be making sure the opportunities for their fellow students from poor backgrounds are diminished further for another generation.

In fact the opposite would be a better way forward. If students actively campaigned for the Liberal Democrats to win more seats we could extend the fairness principle further.

Whether we can ever recreate the conditions that applied when I was a student, when I was the first person from my family to ever go to university, will always be difficult given the higher proportion of students now qualifying for Higher Education, but it's still a campaign worth pursuing.

So I think the NUS needs to reconsider its position. It would be usual for students to blame the older generation for mistakes that impact badly on them, but this time they could be making it worse for themselves....

We were right, the other parties wrong

2010-10-09T07:02:00.000-07:00

Before the General Election Chris Philp, the Tories' candidate for Hampstead & Kilburn led a silly campaign which he described was to save the closure of the Stroke Unit at the Royal Free Hospital. He changed tack several times when the fact of the proposals from Healthcare for London were explored. Rather than shutting, the Royal Free's unit was to have an increase in beds. The excellent rehabilitation work was in fact to expand there. However the new "Hyper Acute Stroke Unit", or HASU, was to be centred on the UCLH site to serve a large part of North Central London rather than at the Royal Free.

Philp was determined to keep his campaign on the road so he managed to get a resolution passed at a full Council meeting, with the support of the Labour and Green parties, critical of the proposal to use UCLH as the HASU.

The Liberal Democrats stood alone in support of the new HASU, largely because we had done enough to study the proposals in detail and recognised they represented a step change in future survival rates from strokes.

Now we have the first figures after the new HASU has been in operation for six months. Some 2,675 patients have been taken by the London Ambulance Service to HASUs across our area. The transport time from home to HASU is less than 30 minutes in 93% of cases. The HASU established in UCLH in April is now ranked second best in the country in the recent RCP audit.

The number of people receiving thrombolysis in our area of London has doubled due to centralisation. Thrombolysis is a lifesaving treatment which can only be given within a strict time period. Previously patients waited up to 72 hours to see a specialist- now they are at the specialist unit in 30 minutes. The in-hospital mortality rate for patients treated through the UCLH HASU is now strikingly low - 6% against the national average of 27%.

This means in practice that if these proposals to centralise emergency stroke care in the HASU at UCLH had not gone ahead, as the other parties wanted, dozens of local people would now be dead. So those that whipped up a stupid frenzy of petty parochialism earlier this year should now hang their heads in shame. Their views were not even supported by key staff at the Royal Free, the hospital they purported to support.

There are times when politicians should properly examine the clinical evidence for change and show leadership on matters of health policy. I am proud to have to got this one right...

The Health White Paper is flawed..

2010-09-12T11:43:00.000-07:00

At the end of May I attended the Special Conference of the Liberal Democrats that endorsed, with an overwhelming majority, the Coalition Agreement.

As a Liberal Democrat I was supportive of the principle of democratising PCTs and pleased that this featured in the Coalition Agreement. It specifically mentioned stopping “top-down reorganisations of the NHS” and also promised “We will ensure that there is a stronger voice for patients locally through directly elected individuals on the boards of their local primary care trust (PCT). The remainder of the PCTs board will be appointed by the relevant local authority or authorities”. That appeared to follow the spirit of the manifesto we fought the General Election, so hats off to the negotiating team The Conservatives had made much of maintaining funding for the NHS above the rate of inflation whatever else happened to public spending, so bringing these two promises together made sense.

Two months later and the Health White Paper describes one of the biggest structural changes that the NHS has ever faced in its history, at a time of constrained budgets and after a General Election during which both coalition parties gave no messages that such a restructure was likely or indeed warranted.

So who then decided that the Health White Paper should propose top-down reorganisation, including the creation of an NHS Commissioning Board which will take decisions on the allocation of funding to GP practices, a centralisation of a power currently exercised by PCTs locally, and who decided that within two months of the Coalition Agreement that PCTs should be abolished?

While local authorities are given the welcome leadership role in conducting Joint Strategic Needs Assessments (JSNAs), the majority of decisions on commissioning services will be undertaken by GP Consortia. There is no proposal as yet to require GP Consortia to comply with the JSNAs when they commission services.

The needs identified through a JSNA in an authority like Camden would rightly consider the health needs of the many thousands of people who are not registered with GPs because of their transience within the area or because of their uncertain status in the community. These are the people who will attend A&E departments for treatment when necessary, but will not be part of the registered patient lists that GP Consortia will be commissioning for. So there could be a dangerous mis-match between what the Council believes is necessary and what is actually commissioned by GPs.

The White Paper talks about public accountability but proposes to absorb the functions of overview and scrutiny committees into the Health and Well-Being Boards. This new hybrid animal appears to have a mix of roles, which in my view are not compatible with each other. It will have strategic decision-making functions with regard to JSNAs, will be a body to promote “joined up thinking” between health and social care, and have scrutiny functions too. Who scrutinises the Boards is left dangling in the latest consultation paper - “Local Democratic Legitimacy in Health” for in paragraph 50 it states - “A formal health scrutiny function will continue to be important within the local authority, and the local authority will need to assure itself that it has a process in place to adequately scrutinise the functioning of the health and wellbeing board and health improvement policy decisions.”

So scrutiny committees are disbanded and then recreated to scrutinise the Health and Well-Being Boards. That does not look very joined up or logical to me. The separation of Executive and Scrutiny functions within local authorities eight years ago continues to have its critics but this latest proposal blurs these distinct roles, and the loss of effective scrutiny will, in my view, be the result.

Creating GP consortia to undertake commissioning on behalf of patients may have its virtues but there is no evidence that GPs have the inclination or the expertise to undertake the role successfully without themselves delegating many of the commissioning tasks to a range of unaccountable bodies from the voluntary or private sectors. I am not clear how this squares with the Coalition Agreement’s declaration that - “We will significantly cut the number of health quangos”. We might need to redefine what a quango is in this context but if something looks like a duck and quacks like one it will be seen by the general public, and by local politicians as their community champions, as another class of body which spends public money but is unaccountable to the local community.

The recent example CAMIDOC going into liquidation, the GP co-operative that ran out-of-hours services across four boroughs, is not a great example of GPs financial competence. Camden's Health Scrutiny Committee discovered this on 1st September, and this appears to have influenced the way politicians of all parties have grown more sceptical about the GP Commissioning role envisaged in the White Paper.

General Practitioners are the only part of the NHS that cannot be required under current legislation to attend health scrutiny meetings. So if the commissioning of a large part of the NHS is to be transferred to GP Consortia then their public accountability should be through a rigorous scrutiny process conducted by local Councils. Retaining Health Overview and Scrutiny Committees distinct from any decision-making bodies within Councils charged with carrying out public health functions is essential, and any subsequent legislation that flows from the White Paper should retain and enhance local Health Overview and Scrutiny Committees.

So if nothing changes when the White Paper is converted into legislation GP Consortia are to become compulsory in that every GP will have to belong to one to secure a new GP contract. The existing PCTs are expected to ease the transition to the new structure at a time when they have been told to reduce management costs by an average of a third and in NHS Camden's case by 45%. No stress there then.

Another feature of the top-down restructure clearly proposed by the White Paper, (although rigorously denied by the Coalition Agreement), is the creation of the NHS Commissioning Board, which will carry out the function of commissioning specialist services.

In London the recommissioning of stroke and major trauma services across the capital, which has led to 4 identified major trauma centres and 8 Hyper-Acute Stroke Units (HASU’s) followed a rigorous scrutiny of the plans by a pan-London Joint Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee (JHOSC) on which I served. The resultant report highlighted a number of issues that the commissioners needed to take account of when proceeding to implement their proposals.

The reported health outcomes after the first few months of the HASU’s being in place show a significant improvement in survival rates. So how under the new system of commissioning would the important role of scrutiny be undertaken to examine regional or sub-regional proposals for change? Without existing scrutiny committees in place to come together to form JHOSCs, how would such proposals be examined in public?

The title of the consultation document “Liberating the NHS: Local Democratic Legitimacy in Health” suggests that there might be a real democratisation of health functions at local level. Sadly the proposals fall far short of this.

The document openly admits the following - “The Coalition Programme proposed directly elected individuals on the primary care trusts (PCT) board as a mechanism for doing this. However, because of the proposed transfer of commissioning functions to the NHS Commissioning Board and GP consortia, the Government has concluded that PCTs should be abolished.”

I have already commented on the blurred roles undertaken by Health and Well-Being Boards but their composition cannot be described as an advancement in local democratic decision-making. Like the previous Government which created the separate roles for Children’s Trusts and Safeguarding Boards in which the membership is overwhelmingly made up of appointed officials rather than elected representatives, the Coalition Government has fallen into the same trap. The Boards will have some elected councillors but they will be joined by a range of appointed officials

The consultation document states, “the boards would bring together local elected representatives including the Leader or the Directly Elected Mayor, social care, NHS commissioners, local government and patient champions around one table. The Directors of Public Health, within the local authority, would also play a critical role. The elected members of the local authority would decide who chaired the board. The board would include both the relevant GP consortia and representation from the NHS Commissioning Board (where relevant issues are being discussed).”

Later it states, “For the board to function well, it will undoubtedly require input from the relevant local authority directors, on social care, public health and children’s services. We also propose a local representative from HealthWatch will have a seat on the board, so that it has influence and responsibility in the local decision-making process. We recognise the novelty of arrangements bringing together elected members and officials in this way and would welcome views as to how local authorities can make this work most effectively.”

Novelty indeed. This hybrid arrangement has little to do with democracy. If it was ever proposed that key decisions of the National Government’s cabinet would be undertaken by Cabinet Sub-Committee with a mix of ministers, and a built in majority of senior civil servants who had equal voting rights it would be deemed unacceptable by democratically accountable MPs and rightly so. I have no problem with key service Directors having the duty to attend Board meetings to provide proposals and advice but democratic decision-making should mean that only elected councillors should have voting powers on Boards.

Finally the transformation of LINKs into HealthWatch bodies with changed powers (another top-down reorganisation proposal) is not accompanied by any detail on how these bodies can be seen to be truly representative of patients. Presently those who want to be registered as members of LINKs can do so and local committees are largely self-appointed because of the lack of widespread membership. The White Paper suggests a HealthWatch representative would get a seat on Health and Well Being Boards. Most members of Camden’s Health Scrutiny Committee had to convince over 2,000 constituents in their wards to vote for them this year to get elected to the Council for an opportunity to serve on the Committee or become a member of the Council’s Cabinet. How many votes would be needed for a Health Watch representative to gain a place on a Health & Well Being Board?

In conclusion I would strongly argue that the White Paper fails on the twin tests of increasing localism and democratic decision-making. It is a top-down reorganisation which will create more quangos than it abolishes, and it proposes that decision-making powers should be concentrated in the hands of GP Consortia which will not be publicly accountable or subject to the priorities established by Councils’ Joint Strategic Needs Assessments.

Without significant changes when the expected legislation is laid before Parliament this will be a great opportunity missed, and the first example of a Government Department specifically ignoring the Coalition Agreement so successfully negotiated between the coalition parties only two months earlier.

Reflections on Ghana - Four

2010-08-25T09:39:00.000-07:00

My final blog about my visit to Ghana is about the politics of the country. While I was there the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) was choosing its next presidential candidate to contest the next elections due in 2012.

It appeared that party members were engaged in primary elections based on regional voting across the country. This resulted in a final gathering of party representatives in a public park on a Saturday evening in Accra for the final declaration of results after they had been faxed in from the regions.

The NPP is a centre right party whose avowed aims is to extend human rights and property ownership to Ghanaians while maintaining a strong sense of public accountability. The government party is currently the National Democratic Congress (NDC) which is a left of centre party with ambitions of socialism, but with weak Government machinery it cannot finds ways of implementing its lofty ideals.

As I travelled in taxis and minibuses during and after the final election day I was struck by the animated conversations my guide had with several taxi-drivers and the interest shown by fellow travellers when the bus radio was tuned into a talk station. The eventual runaway winner for the NPP was Nana Akufo-Addo who managed a resounding 79% share of the vote against four rivals for the role. His nearest competitor, Alan Kyerematen, could not even get a clear majority in his own region, and he along with the other losing candidates conceded gracefully.

It was the first time the grassroots members had been trusted to vote in such an internal election and all candidates appeared to be proud of the exercise and the way it was conducted. What struck me was that I was 3,000 miles away from England but the speeches made by the NPP's leaders could all have been made by any party's representatives here after an internal election of this type. For example it was reported in the Daily Graphic that Alan Kyerematen had "pledged to support Nana Aku-Addo in his bid to win the 2012 presidential election and urged all his supporters to also work tirelessly for the party's flag bearer to ensure victory".

The newspapers and airwaves were littered with such statements for several days. A sense of deja vu struck me. I had heard all this before. Politicians the world over still tell the same stories...

What was more striking though was the lack of policy differences between the declared candidates. This contest was surely concentrated on the personality of the contenders.

Although Labour back here in Britain is conducting a similar exercise, I can find little difference on policy between the competing candidates, and where there may be some there is little interest from the press or the public anyway. Only Diane Abbott appears to be trying to seriously broaden the policy debate but as she is favourite to lose we can predict now the "rally round our new leader" speeches at the final declaration. Was it ever thus?

Reflections on Ghana - Three

2010-08-18T02:19:00.000-07:00

Once you get over the regular sight of people (mostly women but some men) walking around with goods on their heads on the streets of Ghana, one becomes ever more curious about what it is they are actually carrying.

Travelling in a mini-bus or taxi you are besieged at every traffic light stop or general traffic jam by an array of vendors hoping to catch the eye of the traveller interested in an instant bargain. Some goods on display are obvious and instantly useful such as bags of plantain crisps, nuts, a range of cakes, bags of chilled water and so forth. Given the slow speed of traffic at peak hours these instant snack items are useful and popular with travellers.

But what was more surprising and indeed almost surreal on occasions were the other objects carried by street sellers. It was puzzling why these people on the margins of society had chosen the goods they were hawking around the streets. Some of the more bizarre included a wardrobe collection of kipper ties, three pairs of garden shears, a full length mirror, a selection of discount vouchers, or a variety of combs and brushes. One woman had really taken the message of diversification from the marketing people to heart when she offered the option of packets of biscuits from her hands with a selection of girls' underwear from the basket on her head.

I reckon if you stayed in a car at a junction anywhere in Accra for long enough you could do your complete week's shopping, and renew your wardrobe, through your car door window. It might seem like the ultimate convenience store was coming to you but there is a dark side to this enterprising culture.

I learnt while I was there that many young people from the north of the country had left their villages to seek their fortune in the big city and ended up on the streets as vendors making as little as 5 cedis a day - worth about £2.25. Even in a cheap city like Accra that would give them only enough to buy food to keep them alive, but nothing for a room or clothing. What was even more telling was that the street hawkers were all of an age. I saw very few who I would guess were over 25 years old. Indeed I saw few people anywhere who would be of middling years or older. This is a young country certainly but one wonders what happens to people when they reach 30?

Reflections on Ghana - Two

2010-08-15T08:12:00.000-07:00

I was determined to try out the local food in Ghana, and my guide helped me by interpreting menus and making recommendations. She also took me to restaurants which the locals patronised rather than the places designed for tourists.

One key feature of Ghanaian eating is that cutlery is not used. Fingers were made before forks after all, and eating food this way adds a further dimension to the pleasure of eating.

In one restaurant I went to the standard table setting included a bottle of liquid soap, as the adjacent picture demonstrates. The waitress delivered a plastic bowl of warm water so I could wash my hands at the beginning and end of the meal.

My guide was an expert in eating this way of course and could strip the flesh off a Tilapia fish (a local staple) using only one hand. I had to use two hands to strip the flesh away from my chunky portions of goat's meat. The sauce managed to spread up to my elbows, so I really needed a stand up wash after finishing lunch.

The standard dish was a portion of a starchy food, which looked like mashed potato, with a spicy soup and added meat or fish. The starchy foods came in different combinations. Banku was a blend of cornmeal with crushed cassava, and FuFu a mix of cassava with plantain. Both were excellent when dipped into the soup usually spiced with chilli.

Another delicacy was palava sauce which is a thick dark green potage made up of cocoyam leaves with palm nut oil, onions and tomatoes. It reminded me of Sag - the equivalent Indian dish made from spinach.

Although not a great lager drinker Star beer was the most palatable of the local brews, while wine was relatively expensive, being imported from South Africa.

Service in restaurants was friendly although the concept of eating courses in a particular order was obviously a foreign notion at my hotel because food arrived to the table when it was ready. So a portion of bacon and eggs would arrive before a portion of cornmeal porridge. (The latter incidentally was called Koko - so now you know what the famous club in Camden Town is named after!)

With locally sourced fruits making up part of my breakfast I ate well every day and very healthily too. The standard Ghanaian diet is low in fats, high in natural fibre and includes plenty of fish, so I think I lost a few pounds during my week.

Which I am sure won't do me any harm...

Reflections on Ghana - One

2010-08-15T08:08:00.001-07:00

After spending seven mind-boggling days in Ghana this is the first of a short series of blogs about my impressions.The country is lively, welcoming and developing quickly but in a rather haphazard way.

The enterprise culture is embedded in the country and not just in the parts of the economy one would expect to be controlled by the private sector.

The transportation system is the first obvious example. The train system no longer operates. Although there is evidence of a single track threading its way through a market area of Accra, and also at its linked destination in Kusami, 272 kilometres north west of the capital, it is clearly and sadly redundant.

The roads in part are in a good condition with several dual carriageway roads and motorways within Accra carrying huge numbers of vehicles, but as you get to the outskirts of the city and on all major routes between towns, sections of road built to good European standards are suddenly interspersed with dirt tracks. The Ghanaians seem to have built their roads in sections but have yet to join them all up.

Another feature is the way that bus services have grown with little co-ordination by the city authority. Mini-buses are the most popular and the cheapest way of getting around. The vehicles are not always registered with the authorities, are often in poor condition, and run by teams of two, mostly very young men. One is the driver and the other is the fare-collector who manages the sliding-door access to the kerbside. This means in practice that he is bellowing the eventual destination to passers by, trying to attract custom as the bus makes progress. The standard fare is 60 pesewas (about 25 pence) which would be enough to take you several miles.

The city authority is trying to introduce a better standard of bus on recognised routes with a standard fare of only 40 pesewas, but when I took a trip on one of these I noticed that the bus stood at its stop for about 20 minutes to fill up with passengers before setting off.

The idea of keeping to a timetable appeared to be laughable...

The third option is to use a taxi. These are plentiful but again the condition of vehicles has much to be desired, and it's advisable to negotiate the fare before setting off. It's also better to use a local guide who can negotiate in the local language of Twi. Casual racism in trying to rip off white tourists persists. On one occasion a negotiated price of 6 cedis (about £2.75) suddenly rose to 25 cedis when the taxi-driver spotted me with my guide. His kind offer was refused and he lost the fare.

There and back...

2010-08-01T07:06:00.000-07:00

I have just had an interesting week in the south of France, travelling there by train. This was my fourth trip on Eurostar and I must say the interior of the carriages are beginning to look a little outdated given the improved rolling stock on mainline routes within England.

This time I changed trains at Lille for my onward journey to Cannes. I had forgotten how long French trains are and the fact the TGV trains are double deckers. I had booked my tickets well in advance through the Rail Europe office in Lower Regent Street. This is highly recommended because whatever you estimate the cost will be after checking prices online, the staff at Rail Europe will always save you more even after taking account of their £8 commission fee. And you can guarantee your window seats too.

The one drawback of large double-decker trains is that while they get up some terrific speeds on the long stretches, they take at least 10 minutes at each stop to get everybody off and on with their cases.

The journey from Lille to Cannes could be described in two ways. The first half travelling through northern France is monotonous with a largely flat, factory-farmed landscape. The south is entirely different with a great deal of variation on the horizon. The only place we went through which looked seriously grotty was Marseille with huge tower blocks of poor standard social housing, and extensive ugly graffiti.

Travelling along the south coast, one saw no evidence of a recession and when I explored both Cannes and Nice on foot during the week, I could find no bordered up shop fronts or other vacant business premises. The main tourist centres were very busy of course and the main restaurants in Cannes were all packed to capacity by 8.00pm.

As a sole traveller this time, I did my usual trick of walking into my restaurant of choice as they opened at 7.00pm. While everyone was friendly and obliging the waiting staff knew that a table for two converted into a table for one is one less cover for the evening, and so my service was often rapid so they could get their table for two ready for service again. Fine food can be fast food when it is in the restaurant's interest!

I had done some research before I went. One restaurant - Mere Besson - had been highly praised by one reviewer, and after my visit on the Monday I could see why. So much so that I planned my last dinner on the Friday to be a return visit. Sadly a stomach bug took a grip straight after Friday lunch and I was confined to my room for the rest of the day. What was even more annoying was the cheery disposition of my hotelier who asked me on the Saturday morning whether I had enjoyed the civic firework display on Friday evening, an event I had slept right through!

Travelling back I was mightily impressed with the time-keeping of my train from Cannes to Paris Gare de Lyon, a journey of 5 hours 10 minutes, which it completed exactly to time. I was also impressed with an announcement at one station when the station staff apologised for a train running 5 minutes late. It wouldn't happen here.

My final journey was from Paris Gare du Nord to St Pancras. What really needs updating is the passenger facilities at the Paris Eurostar terminal. There are too few waiting room seats and the refreshments on offer are pathetic. They are a disgrace given the usual French hospitality standards, and the gents toilets were the worst I have encountered since my childhood.

The train back was only half full surprisingly. Perhaps those that had packed into my outgoing train were staying longer on the continent than my one week.

Back in the flat I had nearly 200 e-mails waiting for me, mostly instantly deletable, but a few will need proper digestion and response.

So I have been there and back and it almost feels like I have not been away at all...

Gove is getting it wrong..

2010-07-19T03:50:00.001-07:00

The Coalition Government has already done a lot that traditional Liberals like me would welcome, and not just from the Liberal Democrat side of the Coalition. Theresa May's cancellation of the ID card scheme and Ken Clarke's utterances about the effectiveness of short prison sentences compared to community sentencing demonstrate that this will be a genuine Liberal Government in terms of extending and defending our liberties.

Michael Gove's rush to introduce a new cohort of Academies, converting existing community and voluntary aided schools by September, is foolish, unnecessary, and undemocratic. I attended a meeting of the Education Law Association on 14th June shortly after the Academies Bill was published and I have to say that the Education lawyers were shocked by the minimalist detail contained in the bill, and were privately rubbing their hands with glee at the possibility of making money out of judicial review proceedings to question the first few school applications.

The Bill lacked sufficient detail on the transfer of staff to the school's governing body when a community school converted, no detail about the level of financing that was guaranteed as a minimum funding level for the new institution, and no requirement for the school's governing body to consult either staff, parents or pupils before making their applications. All that was required was a single resolution of the governing body to say yes.

Under existing school government regulations there are requirements for governing bodies to consult parents and staff on forming a Soft or Hard Federation from existing schools, including the publication of the proposed size and make up of the new governing body.

There are no such requirements to consult in the Academies Bill. It would appear Gove does not understand that schools are learning communities in which all voices should be heard and indeed that the best schools are those that have open and interactive forms of communication between all those who make up the school.

Pushing through a status change with so little information immediately available (or now being made up "on the hoof") does not bode well. And pushing it through half way through the financial year is fraught with difficulties for both schools and and their local education authorities. They need to extricate their accrued spending, their bank accounts, and future funding arrangements straight after a summer break. Well that will mean chaos, and quite a few school staff will no doubt not get paid properly and in time for the first month under the new regime. That will be good for morale!

It is not surprising that only a tiny number of schools have broken cover in either Brent or Camden to even register any interest in becoming Academies. I don't blame them. Until we see the detail no school headteacher or governor should respond to Gove's kind invitation to join his silly revolution.

I am afraid both New Labour and now the new Conservatives have become obsessed with structures, believing that by changing these you drive up standards. No, it is the quality of school leadership, the quality of the teaching in the classroom, and the adequacy of the facilities available that have the biggest impact on learning outcomes. Who funds the schools and by what formula, who holds the cheque book for schools' spending, and who oversees the quality of the service provided, are all secondary to the what happens in the classroom.

Leave the existing structures alone and provide a loosened grip on the curriculum from the centre, and cut the number of mind-boggling initiatives and circulars from the DFE, and heads and their staff might just come up with the goods.

The Liberal Democrat contribution to the Coalition Government's education policy is to insist on the pupil premium to give extra to schools providing for disadvantaged pupils. That in itself will do more good in Brent and Camden than any structural change offered by the Academies Bill.

In praise of lists

2010-07-12T02:30:00.000-07:00

One of my most annoying, or perhaps comforting, attributes is my persistent time planning and list writing. Some people are obviously baffled, some irritated, and some in awe at my pride and persistence in writing lists of tasks in my diary (colour coded of course).

My time planning is often done three months in advance, once my school meeting dates are settled. For example now all governing body and main Council meetings are in place for the autumn term I will soon be working through the days on which tasks are performed to prepare for each meeting - when I make contact with the school to set up an appointment to meet the headteacher, when to prepare the draft agenda and other papers, when the ideal day for the agenda-setting meeting will be, the day of printing and posting the completed agenda, and the post-meeting tasks of writing action sheets, minutes and follow up letters on behalf of the governing body. In the middle of any term there are about six meetings in some stage of this planning and post-meeting process so it makes sense to spread out the tasks in manageable chunks on each day.

But my lists also include the days I will set aside time for reading Council meeting papers, cleaning the flat, buying stuff and packing bags for holidays. I today made an entry for "holiday shopping" which will include a bulk buy for suntan lotion and mosquito repellant. It is somewhat satisfying when you know you are close enough to a break to even put this into your diary!

Of course I also have on my computer packing lists for every holiday and weekend break I have taken in the last ten years. This allows me to have a list template that only requires a little tweaking to have a ready made list for the next jaunt. Sections are set aside for the main suitcase, my hand luggage, and (yes I know this is sad!) what I will be wearing on the journey. This is because you need to juggle the space in suitcases for shoes which are an awkward shape to fit around clothes and books, so I often choose to wear trainers to travel in and put squashable sandals into the case. If you take a further pair of proper shoes you need to pack socks inside the shoes to save space.

I revealed my system for packing lists to Nick and Liz recently in the new local. Nick thought it was a bit nerdy (that's rich coming from him!) but Liz was most impressed. You can tell who is the organised one in that partnership.

I devised some time ago my own business spreadsheet for tracking all my spending, and associated with this a monthly personal budget profile that takes account of my likely spending totals against different types of expense (mortgage, Council Tax, household bills, health club subscription, credit card standing order and so forth), plus my income from the business and the Council. This profile includes a calculator which provides a weekly "pocket spending" figure which covers supermarket spending plus cash in the pocket for day to day expenses. I can adjust the predictable spending totals and my known income to set my personal spending target. And can then plan for different income scenarios in the future too.

This process has been applied to my eventual retirement. I have been juggling my possible retirement date for some time, but sadly the prospect of copying my sister in retiring early has been fading in recent years. The critical facts are when I will pay off my mortgage (currently when I am 63) and when my various private pensions can be started to make sure of a basic income before my state pension will kick in. Two decisions of the Coalition Government and TfL have come into play. Last Saturday I was reminded during the drinking session after the CCLSC AGM that my official retirement date has been moved to my 66th birthday, and today I read in an article from TfL that a decision was made earlier this year to move the date for receiving my freedom pass until I am 65.

Both these decisions are sort of reasonable given the ever aging population and the budget crisis we have, but it proves yet again that those born in 1949 (like my sister) had the best of the post-war rise in opportunities and public spending which those who were born later will miss out on. And it means my retirement planning has to change again. Now where did I store that spreadsheet...

A diary entry of random musings

2010-07-01T11:55:00.000-07:00

It's been a tough couple of weeks since I last got round to updating my thoughts here. I notice my last blog was about the misery of following my home town team, and since then all England fans have experienced that Coventry City moment. England falling out of a World Cup only happens every four years, and not often with such embarrassment, but Coventry provides its fans with displays like that seemingly on a monthly basis.

The news from the home front is that our clever new manager has announced that he has brought back a fans favourite and local boy Gary McSheffrey as his first new signing. This will endear the fans to him for at least half a season, and will give a boost to season ticket sales, but if it goes pear-shaped (and knowing Coventry it will), he will have to come up with something else to maintain positive reviews after Christmas.

Work wise I have been extremely busy, and there is one new phenomenon that has occurred this term that has never happened before in my 20+ years working with school governors. In three different schools across Brent and Camden I am aware of formal grievances being issued by staff against their headteachers.

I think it is a sign of the times that staff are falling out with their school leaders, and when the inevitable cuts dig in across the public sector, the way in which people are identified for redundancy will create a whirlwind of hearings, appeals and employment tribunal cases. Whenever there is human grief there is often work for some to be found. Employment lawyers and HR professionals are going to be extremely busy for the next two years.

On the politics front a lively although rather meaningless Council meeting took place on Monday. The new Mayor Jonathan Simpson proved he could chair a meeting although he was far too lenient with Labour colleagues and needs to balance this out in the future if he is to avoid criticism of helping the home side.

What made my night was the extremely skilful speech made by our new Deputy Leader Matt Sanders, covering for Keith Moffitt, following a plodding and amateurish opening attempt from new Council Leader Nash Ali. Matt proved to me that I was right to promote him behind the scenes to take on the Deputy role in our Group. He is a star of the future (and you heard it here first!!).

The coming weekend involves helping out at the Jester Festival, where my principal role is one of lifting things - carrying assorted goods and furniture from Flick Rea's house and then carrying some of it back again. With my wheat allergy, working on a cake stall is hardly ideal employment but Flick has found a different role for me this year. I am to provide the squash for the darling children of my constituents. Really looking forward to that....

Disappointed - now you know what it's like....

2010-06-19T11:24:00.000-07:00

After a heavy week of schools' work in Brent the solid grind has only been punctuated by the occasional break for the World Cup. While I have watched the England games throughout, my occasional "over the shoulder" glimpses of other games when ironing shirts or writing governing body minutes suggests there has been more excitement and better football displayed by other teams.

Germany's demolition of Australia, and the exciting 2-2 draw between the USA and Slovenia put the England performances into the shade. My latest "glimpsed" match was Ghana against Australia, which although it appeared to be a comedy of errors, at least had some drama and excitement.

I turned to catch the latest news headlines on TV a while ago and tried the Sky News channel for a change. Their sports correspondent was reporting live from Cape Town and suggested that the thousands of England fans there were having a great time in the city, their enjoyment only punctured by the 90 minutes of football they had to endure.

It reminded me of my regular Saturdays during the home season when a select band of Coventry City supporters travel to home games from Euston. We have a splendid lunch in a genuine Tudor-framed building converted into a CAMRA pub, enjoy the banter and camaraderie that is unique to seasoned supporters, only to have our otherwise perfect day out spoilt by yet another desultory performance from our home town team.

It was ever thus. The three seasons of glory are long past. 1963 - Third Division champions; 1967 - Second Division champions; 1987 FA Cup winners. And nothing since.

Nevertheless one has to remember that with so few real honours to win each season for the 92 clubs in the fully professional divisions, most supporters of most clubs start each season with the hope that "this year it will be our year", but are disappointed by the end.

So for all those who have shelled out to get to South Africa, and are now shell-shocked after two poor England performances, just try being a Coventry City supporter for 46 years. Not so much an excitement, more an exercise in lifelong character-building.

Remembering Martin Davies

2010-06-12T09:50:00.000-07:00

I first came across Martin Davies in 2002 when I first got elected to Camden Council. We were both appointed to serve on the Overview and Scrutiny Commission chaired at that time by Janet Guthrie, a respected and thoughtful member of the Labour Group.

Martin's attention to the details of the scrutiny reports before the Commission and his thorough and effective questioning of Council officers made him a favourite with everyone. Always well prepared, thoroughly researched, and seemingly on first name terms with everyone, he set the standard for an effective scrutineer.

His day job was running Age Concern Westminster and it was through this that he became an authority within the Council on Adult Social Care. We often hear about so-called "compassionate Conservatism", but he was the only example I could readily cite who embodied those implicit principles. When he spoke on Council policy in his area of expertise I trusted his judgement. Indeed I cannot think of another individual from another party who I would so instinctively trust.

We served together for two years on the Council Executive. Friday mornings meant a breakfast meeting at 8.00am, an unnaturally early hour for me. Martin rarely changed his demeanour. Even at that hour he retained an infectious sense of humour and his trademark thoroughness meant that he had mastered his brief and could intelligently comment on others' papers too.

Martin was always well dressed. Most people probably saw him in his well cut suits at meetings, but even when he was wearing his occasional "dress-down Friday" jeans and T-shirts he still looked smart, probably because his clothes fitted properly and looked freshly laundered.

In more recent times he made himself available to attend Health Scrutiny meetings and welcomed questions from committee members. He was always a confident speaker in meetings, largely I believe, because he was so well-organised.

I have no doubt that Martin, like the rest of us, had his moments of wild excess. Others who knew him socially might feel free to fill in the details in their tributes, but what I find most shocking is that someone so apparently fit has been taken away from us in such an unexpected way.

His last public duty on the Council was to speak, as the new Conservative Group leader, in support of the election of the new Mayor. It was an affectionate and warm speech, just as you would expect from such a polished performer.

His sudden death has touched many across Camden, from all parties, from all communities. He was much loved and well respected as his huge personal vote in this year's elections testifies.

We have lost one of the good ones, a genuine public servant.

Back to Normal?

2010-06-12T06:32:00.000-07:00

This week has felt more like "back to school" than so many since the beginning of April. I could almost say I welcomed the return to normality. After my half term break to East Yorkshire, Monday was dominated by visits to schools in Brent planning agendas for future Governing Body meetings. My zig-zag route through the borough culminated with a meeting at St Josephs Juniors in Wembley where the Governors, with amazing fortitude, were taken through the mind-numbing detail of the documents to refresh the "Financial Management Standards in Schools".

FMSIS is one of those initiatives set up by the last Government which was welcome in theory but has been a bureaucratic nonsense in practice, with anything up to 30 documents being required in a comprehensive folder to regulate the financial management of schools. In my view this could be reduced to the acceptance of some clear financial regulations written by Local Authorities, a local agreement for the delegation of spending decisions to the Headteacher and Finance Committee, and one annual statement signed by the Chair of Governors to say that the school has abided by the Council's regulations and that procurement decisions have followed Best Value principles.

A bonfire of bureaucracy is what is needed and I trust our friends in Coalition Government starts doing what it promises on this sort of thing.

On Tuesday I attended the Lithos Partnership meeting in my ward where there is further progress being made to set up meaningful engagement with the local residents, and where the police and the Housing Associations that share the management of the estate are prepared to work together to tackle the small number of ASB issues.

On Tuesday evening I attended the first Pensions Sub-Committee since the election and was glad to see Peter Brayshaw has lost none of his chairing skills with a four year break. He was fulsome in his praise for the work carried out by the committee in restructuring the Pension Fund under my leadership as Chair, which shows what a decent man he is. Now I am in opposition on the committee I put a cat among the pigeons to suggest that the 5% of the Fund we had provisionally set aside for "Alternative Investments" could possibly be allocated to "Ethical Funds".

As I explained on Tuesday I first proposed this when I was a member of Humberside County Council's equivalent "Investment Committee" 25 years ago. Then I was cautioned that there was insufficient knowledge on how such funds would perform to invest in them. We had to be confident that we would get a reasonable return for the taxpayer.

Well 25 years later it is clear that, as with all types of investments, there are good and bad funds in terms of their returns and the science of selection would be the key. Our officers came out with the same cautionary tale as those in Humberside 25 years ago. We await a further report on this issue but whether the committee will have the stomach for anything nominally called ethical will no doubt be the topic of a future blog.

On Wednesday I attended my second Governing Body meeting of the week - this time at Kensal Rise Primary School. Here the initiative to get fathers included in the school life of their children goes from strength to strength with another packed Fathers Week of special events about to start, including a day trip to Littlehampton sponsored by the Variety Club.

On Thursday I started a new role as the Liberal Democrat Group's representative on the Governors Liaison Group, which is used to thrash out a way of appointing Local Authority Governors to schools in Camden. After a lot of hard bargaining we only have one disputed school to try to resolve.

Friday was the annual "Works Outing" for primary school headteachers in Brent. This year we had a day trip to Whitstable with yours truly in charge of the travel arrangements and the lunch booking. Thankfully everything went well. I can certainly recommend the Duke of Cumberland in the High Street for food well above the average for a "gastro-pub".

It was on the way back to Kilburn that I had a phone call from my colleague Nancy Jirira which left me truly stunned. Martin Davies had died. I could not believe it. As I got out at Kilburn High Road station I came across Mukul Hira and he was as shocked as I was. More of this in my next blog.

I started these reflections by saying that this week was like being back to normal. Well as normal as my life ever gets I suppose, with highs, lows, and mind-numbing moments in equal measure.

Visiting Old Haunts

2010-06-05T10:40:00.000-07:00

I spent the last three days revisiting Hull and Beverley where I spent 16 years as a student, worker, councillor, and husband. I stayed with my last remaining friend from the area, Ann, who I have known since 1980. She has recently bought a small cottage in the village of Seaton, a couple of miles inland from the small coastal town of Hornsea.

I was bowled over by the size and design of the back garden, the sensitive work of the immediate past owner who sold on the property before seeing the garden in full bloom for the first time. The weather was stunning, echoing what was happening elsewhere in England, but this was still unusual for me because I have few memories of hot sunny days in Hull, as they were very rare when I lived hereabouts.

We travelled first for a visit to Beverley viewing the landscape from the top deck, a patchwork of grazing land for sheep and the vibrant yellow of rape fields. The town itself seemed to have changed little. Where new in-fill developments have blossomed they blend in beautifully with the skyline and brick colour of the older buildings, a living tribute of some good work by the local Planning Committee.

I photographed the County Hall building where I spent four exciting years as the leader of the Liberal Alliance Group on Humberside County Council, noting that little had changed except the plate now displaying the East Riding of Yorkshire as its Council's name.

The one disappointment was that "Nellies" the original gas-lit pub next to the bus station (officially called the White Horse Inn but affectionately re-named by the locals in honour of its long departed landlady) was not offering lunches. So we had to change our midday feasting plans to visit the Dock and Duck, which offered traditional pub fare served by very traditional big-bosomed barmaids. The hot weather drew us back to Seaton for a lazy afternoon taking in the sunshine in the garden.

The following day we visited Hull. First to the scene of my greatest triumph as a local councillor, the pelican crossing I had installed in 1985, to connect the good citizens of the east side of Beverley High Road to its western side for a safe passage to the Haworth Arms pub. Although the original name is still on the side of the building the protruding signs called the place "Scream" presumably to attract the younger clientele from the nearby university, which is where we went next.

After a photograph taken outside of 17 Auckland Ave, one of my former student houses, I ventured forth into the university grounds to see new halls of residence taking up what used to be a green space next to the Social Services building, itself now subject to the close attention of the builders.

The Brynmor Jones Library and the central pathway though the heart of the university was a joy to behold. The manicured lawns on which revising students were stretched to take in the sunshine were better than ever, and I noted walking back towards the main entrance that the Arts building in which I spent a few hours in lectures during my undergraduate days had now been renamed the Larkin building after the university's former librarian and poet.

The Newland Avenue area seemed little changed from 20 years ago when I lived there, although there were more coffee houses than there once were, and even a Polish delicatessen demonstrating at last that there were now enough immigrants in the city to patronise an ethnic retailer.

But it was the people on the street here, and even more obviously on Holderness Road through which we passed later in the day on the bus, which reminded me of why I wanted to leave the place in 1989. Hull was always predominantly a white working class town where the aspiring middle classes in the professions and at the university were newcomers (like me). Mostly low skilled work kept the long term residents in their place, with little ambition other than to frequent the local boozer and chip shop, and to make an annual pilgrimage to Bridlington for their holidays. These were easily contented but uninspiring people: a big city with a suffocating, small town, narrow-minded attitude.

After taking my pictures in the city centre and old town area, we took the bus through East Hull, the empire lauded over by John Prescott from 1970 until this year. Here the lampposts were laden with signs encouraging the locals to engage with NHS Hull over the nature of the health services being provided.

Ann and I kept an eye out from our top deck vantage point for "normal" sized people on the streets. The only ones we spotted were the rare immigrants in this part of the world, with the obese locals tending to waddle-walk while herding their equally obese children towards vendors of fizzy drinks, or towards roadside benches to eat chips out of the paper at three o'clock in the afternoon. It seems that NHS Hull has an uphill task if it is to address the deep seated health problems in this part of the world.

In conclusion, it was interesting going back to visit my old haunts but I did not feel any emotional string-pulling. I was proud of what I did there between 1973-89 but it was clear that I made the right decision to leave. Hull has progressed and in many ways looks better than it once did, but you still cannot shake off the narrow ambitions of the place even now.

It was, and is, simply too small for me.

In Defence of Dan Brown

2010-06-01T03:10:00.001-07:00

My sister recently took a look at my blog and her first comment was to query why I listed Angels and Demons as a favourite book. While it is fashionable these days to sneer at Dan Brown in literary circles he has two things I admire in an author. He is the consummate page turner, and his plot driven novels can all be described in these terms.

But what makes him stand out above his peers in the thriller stakes is his skill at systematically denigrating the Roman Catholic church, an institution which continues to demonstrate, even today, it's institutional corruption. The Vatican State has been a law unto itself for centuries and its defence of its wealth and power goes unabated. In the 16th century a Pope led his own army into battle, and earlier still, the Crusades against the Muslims were an example not of a peace-loving, all forgiving religion but of a blood-thirsty campaign to crush its enemies and forceably convert people to its point of view. Religion by force makes a mockery of the essence of Christ's gospel. The modern equivalent would be the control of the population by Orwell's thought police.

In recent times the scandal of child abuse by Catholic priests continues, and while the Pope and an array of Archbishops wring their hands about their past and present mistakes they are not taking steps to either report their knowledge to the local Police or to defrock the priests in question.

What all of this demonstrates is that organised religion like the Roman Catholic church (only one of many I have the same problem with) is man-made and is designed by its leaders to control the lives and behaviour of the population at large. The Christian church is based on four contradictory gospels written around 80 years after Christ was on the planet. So the inevitable distortion of details derived from word-of-mouth stories, passed through at least three generations, means we have a highly stylised version of events relating to Christ's life.

The fact that we don't have a written text from Christ himself is telling. He was a very clever young man who purportedly could take on the elders of the church in debate in Jerusalem. He had apparently a number of followers, some of whom no doubt could also read and write, and who could therefore have received the written text for safe-keeping to inform the first Christian church as it was created. But we have none of this. Either Christ wasn't as clever as now thought and never wrote anything, or any text has been systematically suppressed because it was inconveniently modest in its ambitions, and/or his life and works have been exaggerated to serve the interests of the Church's leaders 2,000 years ago, and ever since.

So anyone like Dan Brown who can turn the tables on the Vatican through a work of fiction (with a few elements of truth) is only doing what the gospel writers did 2,000 years ago. You pay your money and you take your choice, and I know what I would rather take to a beach this summer...

A good night out

2010-05-29T23:31:00.000-07:00

For the last two years I have been discovering the delights of pub theatres across London. They represent incredible value when budgets are tight and offer a far more intimate dramatic experience as an audience member. You can be just inches from the actors, especially if you opt for a front row seat as I always do.

I say seat, but in most cases you share a bench with others, often having to squeeze up if the theatre has sold out. My last visit to my nearest regular haunt, the Cock Tavern Theatre in Kilburn High Road, resulted in me having to make room for the last audience member to arrive, the playwright Charlotte Eilenberg whose play "Shrunk" was about to start. The rest of the audience it appeared was made up of friends and family of the cast and production team because I was the only one in the audience Charlotte didn't know.

I explained that this was my nearest theatre and I came regularly. I also pointed out that as each production took over the space so the set got better. We now had a proper door as the main entrance to the stage where previously there had been a black curtain.

At the end I congratulated Charlotte on her play, a dramatic comedy about a woman visiting a pyschotherapist, who turns the tables on the usual patient/therapist relationship when she draws a gun. You can see what happens next if you make a date to see it before it completes its run on 12th June.

Last night I went to another favourite of mine, the Finborough Theatre in Earls Court. This like the Cock Tavern has a theatre space above the bar, although in this case it is more an upmarket eatery and wine bar rather than a traditional boozer. I saw a play called "The Man" by James Graham which is essentially about a young man trying to fill in his first tax form as a newly self employed worker. He enacts telephone conversations with Lisa, a woman from the Inland Revenue's help desk in Wrexham. Lisa is played by an actor sitting near the back of the audience.

He is trying to work out whether any of the receipts he has collected over the past year can be claimed as business expenses or not. The receipts themselves have been handed out to audience members randomly as they enter the theatre, so the order of the play will be unique for each performance as the man collects them back in one at a time and remembers the events which occurred to generate them. This is a bitter sweet comedy which is also extremely touching in places, and is another current production which is highly recommended.

Other regular favourite theatres are the White Bear Theatre in Kennington where I first came across The Good Night Out company which now runs the Cock Tavern Theatre, the Lion and Unicorn Theatre in Gaisford Street in Kentish Town, The Southwark Playhouse (not so much a pub theatre but still on the fringe) and Hampstead's Pentameters Theatre, where I recently saw the Duchess of Padua, Oscar Wilde's almost forgotten and never previously seen tragedy.

So if you can't afford West End prices, or prefer to get up close to the action, look out for a pub theatre near you.

In support of David Laws

2010-05-29T00:34:00.000-07:00

I find the piece published in the Daily Telegraph exposing David Laws' sexuality via his expenses claims both vindictive and deliberately politically motivated to destabilise the Coalition Government, which the paper clearly despises. They have had this material for months but the paper chooses now to publish it. Not before the election, or during the election campaign, not even during the negotiations between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, when Laws was a key negotiator, but now when the Coalition has been launched with a positive public reaction.

Reading the Twitter feed on this it is clear that there is huge support for David from both Tory and Lib Dem sources alike. Most tellingly were several who mentioned the actual rental claim was unbelievably low for renting a room in Central London. It appears that because of a rules change in 2006 the previous arrangement was no longer valid, but admitting more about the relationship he had with his partner was an intrusion into his privacy.

This is not a resigning issue in my view. Rather more important, we should question why the Telegraph decided to publish this now.

If the Telegraph thinks it is in the public interest to "out" gay MPs in this way, then it is in the Telegraph readers' interest to know who writes for the paper. I challenge the Telegraph to list all of its editors, journalists, international correspondents and columnists describing in detail their sexuality and home-living arrangements. If it is important to reveal these details of a member of the Coalition Government it is equally important to know the details of those who seek to bring him down.

I think we should be told....

As you were...

2010-05-26T22:40:00.000-07:00

Went to the Annual General Meeting of Camden Council last night and acquainted myself with a new regular seat in the chamber: my fourth since 2002. Its last inhabitant was Jonathan Simpson who was elevated to the position of Mayor last night. He is the first gay Mayor for some years and it was ironic that the supporting speeches from the opposition groups were from two more gay men who had tails to tell. But enough about that.

It was somewhat strange that after all the political turmoil in recent weeks I start the new Council with the same committee responsibilities as before - Health Scrutiny, Pensions and Staff Appeals - and even more bizarrely I am the only councillor out of 54 who starts the new Council with precisely the same responsibility as I had before the election, in Chairing the Health Scrutiny Committee.

It was also noticeable that for the next year at least I will be regularly joined by two other councillors on the same committees. Fellow Liberal Democrat Paul Braithwaite and Labour's returning Peter Brayshaw will serve on Health Scrutiny and Pensions with me. The latter was also nominated to serve with me on the Joint Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee, which may still need to sit to consider the reconfiguration of acute services in the North Central London area's hospitals.

One noticeable absentee last night was Keith Moffitt who had obviously suffered a turbulent 24 hours of emotions since Tuesday night. He was jubilant at the Haverstock count, having put in many hours in support of the campaign there, only to discover his brother was gravely ill in Sheffield where he had since travelled to be by his bedside. The whole Council appeared genuinely concerned at this news when it was announced at the meeting by Russell Eagling.

The post-AGM gossip included speculation about the deferred election of the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group on the Council, deferred because Janet Grauberg had sadly lost out in Kilburn ward on 6th May, and we were waiting for the full Group to be available before making a decision. I had made my pitch to support Matt Sanders at a dinner before going to the by-election count for Haverstock ward, and by the time I spoke personally to Matt to explain why I wanted him to do it after the AGM, he had already heard about the "rumour" from both Keith Moffitt and members of the Labour Group. He was at least pleased to know it was me who had initiated the idea with Jill Fraser and Flick Rea at dinner, although I had also suggested this to Keith some time before.

Nancy Jirira wanted to generate a contest for the post, arguing that it would be a better balance if we had a woman as Deputy Leader. I was more concerned about getting someone from the new generation who offered a better geographical perspective. Time will tell on this one but I think Matt has already garnered a head of steam for his campaign.

I always follow Jimmy Greaves' motto - "equalise before the other side scores" - when I think something should be done, so my taking the early initiative in promoting Matt for the post should make him successful.

2010-05-25T23:27:00.000-07:00

Liberal Democrats in Camden know how to win by-elections, although as the polling stations closed last night we were less confident than usual that we had secured all three seats. An army of over hundred Labour activists appeared on the streets in roving gangs knocking up their voters, and their teams always looked bigger than ours. While we went round in 2's and 3's they appeared in 5's, such was their plentiful numbers.

At the count the nervousness continued. The first hints that we were doing well came when we told that Jill Fraser and Matt Sanders were leading the "split votes" where voters decide to split their vote between candidates of different parties. But what about our new candidate Rahel Bokth? Did he have sufficient local support to withstand the Labour onslaught?

As the count continued I retold the story of my lift entrapment from the previous week for the benefit of Richard Osley who had yet to read my blog. I also managed to send him a picture taken inside the lift on my ancient mobile to his more modern gadget, so no doubt that will appear somewhere in the blogosphere.

As the piles for the block votes started building up my squinting eyes spotted that there were more for the Liberal Democrats than for Labour so there was a chance we had won all three seats even after the split votes.

Jill and Matt started smiling a lot at a distance but I could not work out Rahel's expression. It still seemed to be too close to call. Then we heard that Labour had requested a bundle check - a very good sign. Theo Blackwell had already admitted in passing that the "yellows" had won, but the final figures demonstrated how close it had become with Rahel squeezing in by 34 votes!

A sensational night after a lot of hard work by an amazing team. Liberal Democrats in Camden know how to win by-elections....

2010-05-24T12:42:00.000-07:00

I had a phone call over the weekend, out of the blue, from a former councillor colleague on the now defunct Humberside County Council. Bill and I served together in a perfectly formed Group of Four Liberals between 1985-89, holding the balance of power between 36 Labour people and 35 Tories.

Back then council committees did not have to reflect political balance by law and Labour tried to negotiate a position where they had a built in majority of one on every committee. The Tories were more pliable (it must be in their genetic make up) and they agreed to perfect balance on all committees, a substitute system, and the ability of all named Committee spokespeople from each of the three Groups to list items on agendas. What fun we had in driving forward our agenda!

The four big policy changes we pushed through during our four years were to significantly expand the role of the voluntary sector in the provision of commissioned services so that they became a realistic alternative to the private sector or Council-provided services; to expand the Social Services budget which was severely under-funded compared to other Councils with similar characteristics; to start up a Performance Review Committee which for the first time aimed to set performance targets for each Council department (which just did not happen back then!), and to make the first attempt at considering environmental issues in Council procurement, for example in buying school furniture which used wood from sustainable sources.

The four of us held it together for four years, holding the balance of power in an authority that had an annual turnover of £1bn in 1989 and 17,500 employees. When we had finished we had three broken marriages, two redundancies and two failed businesses between us. We went our separate ways after that.

I came to London, Tim Wright stayed on the Council for another four years but then moved into social service contracting and I lost touch with him. Frank Parker moved first out of the County and now lives in the Republic of Ireland, and Bill Tuffnell, my long-lost caller now lives in a tiny hamlet in the Burgundy countryside.

To say we scattered to the four winds appears to be the correct analogy. I think I might be the only one who re-entered active politics (in 1998 when I rejoined the Liberal Democrats), and who has had a second spell in public life. Actually, this time round I have lasted longer than when in Hull.

It's even more bizarre that Bill tracked me down via the Camden website to give me a call, for only a week earlier I had decided on a short break to see my only surviving friend who lives in the East Yorkshire area at the beginning of June. I aim to revisit my old stomping grounds in Hull and Beverley, along with a pub or two, since I have not been back for about 15 years. Whether I will get misty-eyed when I recall my earlier minor successes only time will tell. But I am sure that will be a subject of a future blog...

2010-05-20T02:21:00.000-07:00

Another good canvassing session in Haverstock ward last night with a large team out from Hampstead & Kilburn constituency.

Not everything went to plan however. I got stuck in a lift in Shipton House with Jill Fraser, Keith Moffitt, Gillian Risso-Gill and 2 local voters. We had not quite made the 5th floor when the lift came to a halt. Some local teenagers on the outside called the fire brigade for us while Jill called the Council's after hours hotline. Keith made contact with our team elsewhere in the block to explain why we weren't completing our canvassing. Meanwhile yours truly tweeted for support. Lord Bonkers of Liberator fame suggested we canvass the two local voters, which we already had done. They were Lib Dem supporters and agreed to take a poster for their window. Very generously they indicated their trolley contained their food and drink for the week, so we could survive a few days.

The Fire Brigade duly arrived and as is always the case in Haverstock Jill recognised the officer in charge of the rescue operation from his voice. (Is there no one in the area she does not know?) One scary moment came when he asked whether there were councillors inside, hinting that the speed of his rescue might be affected. We said there were real people inside too so the banging and crashing continued apace until the doors were prised open.

The sauna like conditions inside gave way to some fresh air outside the lift, although calling London air fresh is probably an overstatement. I think we were stuck for about 20 minutes in total, but that was enough for me. However I much a get on with my fellow Liberal Democrat colleagues, getting that close and personal in a lift has its limitations.

Later on we congregated in the Enterprise pub emblazoned with Lib Dem posters, which made me reflect that we had seen plenty of ours in the ward, and only a few Labour ones. We probably outnumbered the Labour posters by 4 to 1 in the area we had canvassed. A good display at this stage with less than a week to go.

2010-05-19T02:40:00.000-07:00

Team canvassing in Haverstock last night seemed like déja vu, although it was only a couple of weeks before when I was pounding the streets of West Hampstead. There was noticeable campaign fatigue from both the voters and the canvassers, although the latter were cheered by the friendly response when ever we mentioned Jill Fraser's name.

The warmer weather today is lifting the soul, as are the clear messages coming through the media that the Lib Dems are pulling their weight in Government. Preservation of the Human Rights Act appears to be another red line the Tories are fearing to cross while our DPM has set out a clear message of reform in advance of a major speech today. As I mentioned in an article submitted to Liberator magazine yesterday the Tories are more concerned about getting power than preserving their principles or key policies so they become chameleon-like in partnership arrangements.

I will soon be off to the dentist to repair a broken tooth. I will be a few pounds lighter in the pocket thereafter so you can hold a whip round if you like...

2010-05-16T12:51:00.000-07:00

Back from Birmingham where the party faithful were in high spirits and 99% supportive of the coalition deal. Not sure why the session was declared to be private when the party was so united behind the leadership.

Two standing ovations before the obligatory ones for Clegg were offered to Simon Hughes and Uncle Vince, who was upfront about the cuts being "horrible". A sense of realism about the risks involved in the deal was coupled with genuine excitement about being in Government after about 70 years.

Chris Huhne reminded us that the last coalition Government ran from 1940-1945 and that it worked. "We won the war".

M'lords Greaves and McNally, who could not come from more widely different backgrounds, were both enthusiastic supporters, although it was never explained why Tony had lost two front teeth in his excitement over the deal, and so shortly after a "robust exchange of views" with his Lords Leader..

On returning I notice that Nash survived as Labour Group leader on Camden Council; that Theo has become Mr Cuts and my old sparring partner, Pat Callaghan has secured Health and Adult Social Care. The health lobby will be pleased I am sure with the latter, but Theo has the poisoned chalice.

2010-05-15T22:56:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my first blogpost. I have just completed a hectic week after being re-elected to Camden Council on 6th May for West Hampstead ward. It was with some relief that the campaign finished as I had suffered badly from the physical exertions involved. Both of my knees are affected by arthritis and so the regular leafleting to addresses involving steps to basement flats had been particularly painful.

Sadly not all of my Liberal Democrat colleagues were returned. The Labour surge in London impacted on Camden, as it did in Brent and Islington too, and so the next four years will be spent on the opposition benches. This might not be such a bad place to be. The expected cut-backs in local government spending now likely to help clear the national deficit will mean there will be real cuts in services in Camden which the Labour Party will have to impose. There is some justice to this state of affairs because it was Labour's carefree relationship with the financial services industry while in power which created the mess in the first place.

We still await the outcome of the Labour Group's machinations at the end of the induction session yesterday afternoon. Will Nash Ali remain it's leader? Or will Theo Blackwell take the crown?

But I have more important things to concern myself with. I need to travel to Birmingham for the Liberal Democrat Special Conference to debate the national coalition.

We live in interesting times.