Frank Branston - Blogging for a Better Bedford

One of my frustrations is the frequent adverse comments I get about the state of Bedford Bus Station.

I KNOW it is often a tip, but it is not the borough’s tip. It belongs to Stagecoach. Every now and then we forward comments by members of the public and sometimes it results in a short-term clear-up but things are soon back to noisome normal.

But if it is not our property, we can’t march in and clear up however much we might like to.

We also get comments about Allhallows car park and again I know it’s not the nicest car park in the borough. The other three multi-storeys cost the taxpayer nearly £6million to improve. We can’t spend that sort of money on Allhallows because it is due to be pulled down and replaced by other parking in the bus station redevelopment.

Unfortunately the credit crunch has put a temporary (I hope) stop to that but I doubt if the taxpayer would thank me if we spent the same sort of money on Allhallows only to pull it down in a year or two.

A member of the public recently challenged me on the state of the loos there and said I should try sitting in the cubicles for ten minutes or so. I thanked him for his suggestion and declined. We do what we can with temporary measures and increased security but there is only so far we can go.

Most of us on the borough council are saddened by the death of Bob Elford on Monday even though it was not unexpected.

He had been ill for some time and we had been discussing whether we should bring forward the ceremony of making him an honorary alderman, the award given to somebody who has served on the council for more than 20 years.

Doing so would have meant a ceremony round his hospital bed in which I would have said what he meant to the council before presenting him with the commemorative document. The argument against was that it would have said to somebody as perceptive as Bob that we did not expect him to recover. On the other hand, that might have made him determined to do so just to show us. You could never count on Bob to do what was expected of him.

It was sad that he lost his seat in the May elections because he transferred his allegiance from the Labour group of which he had been a member for 35 of his 36 years to Independent. He was unable to canvass for himself but his family did their best for him. He had always said he would serve as a councillor until they carried him out; he missed that by about seven weeks.

I had known Bob for 40 years, almost as long as I have lived in Bedford. We had been in business together; we had been in politics togetherr. And both of us enjoyed tickling up the pre-1974 borough council with its line-up of aldermen who thought they governed as of right.

Bob’s father is still alive, heading for his 100th birthday. I offer my condolences to him and the rest of Bob’s family.

While I am writing of old stagers who have passed on, the death of Gilbert Beazley two or three months ago, was never adequately marked.

Gilbert was a predecessor of mine as Mayor of Bedford. In fact he has a place in mayoral history. At the 1974 local government reorgansiation Bedford initially decided not to apply for borough status to placate the former members of Bedford Rural District Council who had been dragooned kicking and screaming into the borough area as it now is. The mayoralty was reduced to a toy town mayor for the old borough area which was purely urban.

After a couple of years it was decided to seek the restoration of borough status which was done at a time when Gilbert was chairman of the council so he became the first mayor of the borough as now constituted.

Gilbert was a very clever operator and networker. Sometimes his pronouncements were a bit delphic and required him to amplify what he was saying so that lesser minds, such as mine, got his drift. He was particularly alert to the meaning of changes in the transport system.

Although not from farming stock, he acquired Bartlemas Farm in Pavenham. During the golfing boom some years ago he converted part of it to a golf course although I suspect it was one of his few duff business decisions. He was also an estate agent, mainly for rural properties and was involved in many aspects of rural life. I last saw him when I went to Pavenham on the first of my rural rounds earlier this year.

His family was determined to have a private funeral and to have as little fuss as possible, which doesn’t surprise me because Gilbert loathed fuss. I always thought he looked uncomfortable in mayoral roabes. It was one of the factors which made me determined never to wear them.

So belatedly, I salute the memory of the present Borough of Bedford’s first mayor.

I am told Nadine Dorries was on the Sunday’s BBC East politics show and bad-mouthing Nirah yet again.

Let’s have a test. If you had to choose between an organisation supported by JUlian Pettifer, television reporter, presenter of nature programmes and former chairman of RSPB, Harvard Professor Edward O. Wilson, father of the bio-sciences and a number of other distinguished academics, Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, architect of the Eden Project, Keith Edelman, who got the Emirates Stadium built on time and to budget, as well as 14,000 local people,

or

Nadine Dorries who got elected promising to defend the green belt then supported a 300 acre development on it and who has still not satisfied everybody by her confused and rambling explanation of her expenses,

Which would you choose?

You’ve got five seconds to decide.

In the increasingly shrill and desperate bid by supporters of three-tier education to defend middle schools I have been accused of lots of things, including supporting two-tier because I want to have a primary school named after me (!!!).

Recently the frenzy has been over who takes the final decision, myself alone or the executive composed of nine members from all groups plus me as chairman, or by full council. Three-tier supports are arguing for full council.

As I have pointed out many times, to individual correspondents and the media, I would also prefer it taken by the full council of 36 members plus me. In the event of a tie, the Speaker would have the casting vote. In other words my vote would be one among 37.

This is not an issue which has been faced by any directly-elected mayor so it was decided to seek counsel’s opinion. It has now come back and I can’t help smiling at the irony.

The recommendation has to go to the executive. Any decision to change will go forward to full council. But if the decision is for status quo it can be taken by the executive and would be final.

In other words, if I and the executive were to take the decision it would signify that supporters of three-tier had won. If it goes to full council, it will still be to play for.

The middle-school defenders should remember the old saying: be careful what you wish for.

Ever since becoming mayor in 2002 one of the issues I have had my eye on is that of public transport, especially in the rural areas where a surprisingly large number of people have no instant access to cars.

The problem was that until April 1 this year it was a county function and all I could do was watch various initiatives in demand related transport chew up money. Meanwhile Stagecoach had the county in its jaws and shook more money out of it by announcing that such and such service was not paying its way and would be withdrawn unless the county increased its subsidy.

This was bad enough in the urban area but it made life much more difficult for the transport poor in the rural area if the increased subsidy was simply transporting air around the county in empty buses.

When I formed my cabinet after April 1, I split public transport from the environment portfolio and took it on myself. The county’s officer in charge of public transport, Chris Pettifer, frustrated with the county’s unwillingness to look beyond the obvious, was raring to go.

Three months later the ideas are beginning to flow and we are looking at ways of trying them out. One demand has been for more late buses in the urban area. At the moment one can go into town in the evening by bus but not home again. We are looking at running buses up to 11 pm during the week and to 6pm on Sunday.

We also have school buses which are laid up between the morning and afternoon school runs. Using them outside those times for general transport would cost more in staff time but provide better use of the buses,. perhaps in support of door-to-door services for the elderly and disabled.

What excites me most is the idea of using taxis for rural areas paid for by a version of the oyster card prepayment system used in London to access all forms of public transport (except taxis). Different types of card would have to be used for concessionary fare bus pass holders to avoid fraud but that should not be impossible.

This system is ready to be trialled in four test areas as soon as the card readers can be bought and if it works it should be a real lifeline for the transport poor of rural areas and young people in town for a night out who have left themselves without the money to get home.

I am very excited by these projects which offer great prospects of making life a lot easier for many people. It will also help taxi drivers who constantly complain of too much competition whittling away their profitability (although there is rarely a shortage of applicants for licences). Watch out for announcements in the local media and do use the new services; it’s use them or lose them.

Nadine Dorries’s moved the adjournment on in the Commons on Monday with a motion that Bedford’s two-tier/three-tier issue should be settled by referendum. Apparently I got a mention (as mayor) several times with Nad claiming I wanted two-tier as my legacy.

‘What was the point of that; the government is never going to order a referendum?’ asked somebody who had watched the debate.

Silly man. The point was to get Nad more publicity in which it no doubt succeeded. Peasy.

More interesting, Nad claimed that I had not attended any of the consultations nor engaged with any parents. Not true. I attended, and answered questions from the public at a well-attended scrutiny meeting and have corresponded with many parents and teachers, mainly three-tier supporters. I have also attended eight parish council meeting in recent weeks and this has been on the agenda of six of them

This is in contrast to Nadine herself who, despite having three wards of the borough in her constituency appears not to have engaged with any of our officers on the issues on which she chose to speak in Parliament.

Well, we went to Bletsoe and left with our skins more or less intact.

In fact a packed parish council meeting, while not happy with the result of the gipsy and travellers’ site appeal, were mostly courteous and seemed to accept that the borough had done what it could to support them. Only one appeared to be fixated on the idea that we could have changed the planning inspector’s mind if only we had designated the proposed site at Meadow Lane earlier than we did.

I explained that the site, while council-owned, was leased to somebody else who had to agree to vacate it and the existence of rare birds was hardly our fault. Eventually he fell out with the chairman who had to tell him to shut up.

Paul Rowland, in charge of planning, was quietly courteous and explained everything in detail making no promises that we could not keep. People seemed to appreciate the fact and that we had gone there prepared to face the flak. The applicant only got a three year permission and provided other sites are identified in time, Bletsoe should be restored to its previous state of calm at the end of the period. Meantwhile, Paul said he would be in talks with applicant Tommy Allen as to the best way of implementing the conditions.

I am pleased to have discovered the root of the failure to notify the media of the inquest on David Ledsom.

It took place in March, you may recall, and there was no report of the proceedings until May after I had idly asked BoS editor Steve Lowe when it would take place. That enquiry yielded a sketchy report in the following week’s paper and the revelation that, despite having made their perfectly legitimate interest clear, the usual sources had not informed the media of the date of the inquest.

I have been plugging away at this mystery, fearing that it was another step down the ladder of news censorship.

Which it may have been, but not caused by coroner David Morris, nor Dave Ledsom’s widow Lesley, who between them had taken steps to deal with what they had assumed would be major media interest. They even delayed the start of the inquest when no media arrived assuming the wrong time had been given.

It seems that the coroner had followed his normal practice of passing date and time on to the police who had passed it on to the press office which, if normal procedure had been followed, would have passed it on to the media. But it didn’t.

Chief press officer Jo Hobbs, a former BoS journalist, said it was an error and added defensively that it was not the press office’s duty to pass date of inquests to the media, which begs two questions: one, whose duty was it? and, two, what information did the press office consider it their duty to pass on? Remember those jokes about the shortest books in the world? I suspect that one would be a front-runner.

So most of the mystery is solved. The coroner did what he could to meet legitimate media needs. The remaining question is what else was going on in the press office to make the most important inquest in years so forgettable?

Having got this far I will now drop the issue in deference to the pain Lesley has suffered and is no doubt still suffering. I would have preferred not to have gone down this road but in an age where every jack-or-jacquie-in-office tries to control information to the public I think it important to resist where one can.

John Bercow describes Nadine Dorries as ‘an oily opportunist’. Oh, sorry, it’s the other way round. Easy mistake to make.

She also describes the election of Bercow as an act of vindictiveness by Labour. She must be right. Nobody can teach Nadine anything about vindictiveness.

And she says Bercow isn’t fit for the job of Speaker because his wife is a socialist. I’ve no idea whether that’s true but I thought we had moved away from that kind of linkage. Are we to assume that Mr Dorries is bonkers because she appears to be?

Sunday proved to be one of those days when being Mayor is almost pure pleasure. I entertained world champion boxer Joe Clazaghe, his trainer father Enzo, and a large tribe of Calzaghes - many from Bedford or nearby -in the council chamber of the old Town Hall. The trip was Joe’s father’s day gift to his Dad.

Enzo, 60, came to Bedford aged two or three with his family when his father worked in the brickworks. They lived in Dudley Street and he went to Goldington Lower School until the family moved away a decade later. They now live in South Wales.

To hear Enzo tell it, his Bedford days were idyllic (apart from frequent acquaintance with the cane at school), and he often recounted them to his family. At a presentation in the mayor’s parlour he said he had often longed to come back to Bedford but never dreamed it would be as an honoured guest.

I presented him with a limited edition of Bedford Portrayed (reproductions of painting of Bedford by various artists) and an address of welcome; he gave Bedford a display set of a picture of Joe winning his WBC world crown and the buckle of the belt which went with it.

At the buffet lunch which followed, I asked Joe if there was any likelihood of him making a comeback. He said not. Comebacks rarely worked out well. He had retired unbeaten and in good health and that meant more to him than money. Very wise, too. No comeback for Calzaghe - yoiu read it here first.

The family has another, less pleasant, connection with Bedford. They are suing Frank Warren, once the owner of Bedford blues for £2 million from fights promoted by him. “You had some problems with him, as well,” said Enzo. I told him that Bedford had cost Warren a lot of money; he hadn’t made any here. “Good,” said Enzo.

This court battle is due to come to a climax soon. Enzo asked if I knew why the earlier stages had received little press coverage. I said maybe it was because Warren had a reputation for suing the press and that sports reporters were often reluctant to risk annoying good sources of copy like Warren.

After the buffet we all went to the newly refurbished bandstand in Mill Meadows for the firstr Sunday concert performed by Bedford Town Band. I inbtroduced the Calzaghes, father and son. Enzo again got emotional about Bedford. The family stayed for the first half of the concert before leaving for another family engagement.

There was more music after the concert ended. The Salvation Army was back playing on the Embankment. I haven’t seen them there for several years.

There will be free concerts at the bandstand every Sunday between three and five pm until August 24. We have new deckchairs; it’s like old times

My wife and I used to walk a lot until she had a hip replacement a couple of years ago. Ten or 12 milers were fairly routine and once we did 20 miles. Although the operation was a success we had got out of the habit.

So I decided to buy a couple of bicycles for exercise and we took our first ride towards Sandy on Saturday. Marlies sailed through it, but for me it was a bit of a disaster. I came off on a bend after a footbridge, scraping a knee and putting a hole in my trousers, fortunately old ones, and nearly did it again negotiating one of those narrow gates designed to keep out motor vehicles.

This was the first bike I had ever owned although I had ridden one in my youth, and it must be at least 25 years since I rode regularly. Perhaps 70 is a bit late to take up cycling?

We shall see. Fortunately I can get to Borough Hall from my home using only a short stretch of public road so I hope to get some practice that way.

I expect you have had one of those charmingly mis-spelled and sub-literate letters, usually from Nigeria but sometimes from other African countries, promising to make you rich if you’ll just lend your name and bank account to transfer large amounts of money out of the writer’s country.

Anybody who tries it soon discovers their bank account has been cleaned out.

Yesterday I received one of these propositions with a new twist. It purports to come from somebody in Hong Kong who has the job of dealing with the estate of a Mr Branston who died intestate, with no discoverable relatives to inherit his £15 million. If the money is not distributed soon it will disappear forever to be shared out among the directors of the bank where it is lodged.

To prevent this tragedy happening the writer suggests I pose as a relative of the dead man, I will get a third of his estate. I suppose the scammer must have done some research and found that Branston is a fairly rare name.

At least the writer of this letter is literate; the only mistake he makes is to address me as Branston Francis Joseph, Chinese style where the family name comes first …or maybe that’s another cunning ploy to make himself look genuine

Often with these offers, I’m tempted to play games by sending false information and demanding they give proof of their identity. But perhaps not this time. Triads, tongs, etc.

There should be nobody left in the world to fall for this scam, but just in case your name is Throckmorton or Scrimgeour and you get news of an unknown stiff with a similar name in Hong Kong, don’t be tempted. Remember the financial health warning: ‘If it seems to good to be true, it is’.

Every couple of months I get a catalogue for Christie’s jewellery sale. This is not because I am a regular in the sale room but because when I was looking for something that I could afford to buy for my wife on our ruby wedding I asked for a catalogue of its next sale and I’m still getting them.

They are, in their way, a fascinating read. The catalogue for Wednesday’s sale was particularly so. A quarter of the booklet was devoted to a sale of handbags, mostly by Hermés, at eye-popping estimated prices.

Who, for God’s sake, would pay between £20,000 and £25,000 for a ‘fauve’ matt brown crocodile ‘Birkin’ bag, whatever that may be. To me it looks just like an ordinary handbag, smart, but £20,000 plus? They’ve got to be kidding. On the facing page is another crocodile ‘Birkin’ bag, described as ‘exceptional’. At £16,000 bottom estimate that must be the understatement of the year.

True, there were other items for as ‘little’ as £500 (an evening bag by Gucci and a ‘Rio Pochette’ by, yes, our old friend Hermés) but the BOTTOM estimates for 29 bags was £157,000, an average of more than £5,000 each. For TOP estimates add about 20%.

Isn’t there something obscene about people being prepared to pay this sort of money for a handbag while others are losing their homes for less?

Apparently Posh Becks (I don’t know her real name so I have to use the Sun-given one) has 100 Hermés bags in all shades.

It’s probably lucky that the unemployed are unlikely to see this catalogue; it could be a ‘let them eat cake’ moment. One would hate to see Posh and her ludicrous husband perched with a few other Hermés buyers on their way to Tyburn in a tumbril, wouldn’t one?

What’s that? You’d pay good money to see it. Come to think of it, so would I. Maybe they would put out a Hermés bag for the heads to drop into.

Reluctant as I am to criticise my successors at BoS, I had difficulty in believing what I read about the borough elections which it relegated to an inside page.

The headline was ‘Few new faces as borough sees no shocks or surprises’ and the intro quoted me as saying the biggest saurprise was that there were none.

At the time we spoke maybe that was true but by the end of the day it certainly wasn’t.

No surprises? Just Bedford going the opposite way to the rest of the country; just the Conservatives losing four seats while England was turning into a sea of blue; just the Liberal-Democrats becoming the biggest party for the first time in Bedford’s history; just Labour holding on to its share of the seats when everywhere else it was in meltdown; just the Independents taking two Tory seats to achieve parity with one of the major parties for the first time.

It was one of the biggest political upheavals in Bedford’s history yet the BoS attitude could be summed up as: ‘Small cataclysm in Bedford; not many interested - especially us’.

One man for whom the maverick result in Bedford will have provided a boost is Bedford and Kempston MP, Patrick Hall. If Labour held its position, might he yet pull off a stunning victory come the General Election, especially as he is handbag carrier to Caroline Flint?
She is the good-looking ex-Minister who resigned the day after polling day in the local election, accusing Gordon Brown as using her for window dressing.
Hall is prone to fits of the glums. In the last General Election he seemed beaten from the start and it was only in the last few days he pulled out the stops against Richard Fuller, one of the Tories given financial backing by Lord Ashcroft.
He won that time. He must be thinking maybe he can pull it off again.

Bedford’s Tories may prove to have been the Tory tide’s worst result. Where the map was changing to blue all over England, Bedford Tories lost 40 per cent of their seats (adjusted for the changed numbers of the new unitary council).

The fact that Thursday’s borough elections were for 36 seats rather than the previous council’s 54 means there are no straight comparisons but that can be balanced with a bit of elementary arithmetic.

Thirty six is two thirds of 54 so all we need to do is calculate two-thirds of the seats held by the groups in the previous council (to the nearest whole number) to work out what would have been a standstill result. Anything lower means a loss of seats; anything higher means an overall gain. So:

Below are in turn group seat numbers in the old council, followed by standstill numbers (figures in brackets) followed by the number of seats each group holds in thenew council

Conservatives 20 (13) 9
Lib-Dems 15 (10) 13
Labour 11 (7) 7
Independent 7 (5) 7

From this we can see the Tories suffered a huge loss.

Lib-Dems gained three on their standstill figure.

To most people’s surprise, Labour maintained a standstill.

Independents gained two.

The Independents made a 40% gain on its standstill; Lib Dems gained 30%; Labour neither gained nor lost; Tories were down 41%.(because groups started from different bases the total does not add up to 100%)

Why are Bedford’s results so at odds with the rest of England? It may be that the splits in the Tories had an effect. It is received wisdom that voters punish disunited parties. They may also have suffered from the expenses scandal - Nadine Dorries’s comments on it may have percolated through, especially in those parts of the borough where she is the MP, such as Elstow and Wilstead where ex-Tory Barry Huckle beat the unpopular sitting Tory Lyn Faulkner.

The Lib-Dem machine was as efficient as ever. They held Harrold (which they had gained as a result of a Tory split in 2007) and may have benefitted from the Tories aiming their guns in the wrong direction.

Labour may have gained from Patrick Hall being identified as one of the ’saints’ in the expenses scandal.

The Independents gained from having some popular candidates. Doug McMurdo won back Sharnbrook with 56% of the vote. He had lost it in 2007 to a combination of over-confidence and a smear campaign.

In Riseley Ian Clifton was never troubled. As one wag put it: “They found somebody had voted against Ian; an inquiry is being held”.

Veronica Zwetsloot put the wind up Tom Wootton in Roxton where the Tories usually weigh their majority. If she decides to stand again she will have a very solid platform.

Labour came out of it smiling having held on to their pre-poll standstill and the Lib Dems are equally happy to have taken control of Brickhill where they also control the urban parish council.

But, after weighing all the factors, the result is probably down to Bedford cussedness. We have a reputation for going against the flow and we’ve done it again.

Former councillor Simon Cocksedge has asked me where is my list of expenses I promised in an earlier blog.

The answer is that I only have part of what I promised, ie only the 2008/9 expenses. I am happy to provide that.

I was paid my current salary as full-time directly-elected mayor of £49,372.66 plus an additional £5122.54 for being on the Implementation Executive which was the body charged with managing the move from two tier authority to unitary. All members of the Implementation Executive received the same amount.

I drew no expenses during 2008/9.

As soon as possible I will publish the full figure for the period since I became directly-elected Mayor of Bedford.

I am about to go out to vote and I realise that what little I know of the Euro candidates is gleaned from a quick scan of my wife’s postal voting paper. It’s full of ‘parties’ and people I have never heard of. During the so-called campaign I have received nothing to tell me what the ‘Jury’ party may be, nor the Christian something or other, nor even what sort of Independent the Independent candidate is.

Which means that the only candidates about which I know anything are the usual suspects. Surely the EU, with all its resources, could give each candidate 50 words to say who or what they are. Otherwise we could be voting for crypto-communists, fascists or men (or women) of straw.

My researchers predict an Independent win. This is on the basis of three people telling me that is where they have or will put their cross. None knew anything about him other than the description Independent.

I agree that three people are not a scientific sample so don’t bet the farm on it.

I confess to a touch of amivalence about the departure of Hazel Blears undere whose remit local government fell.

I have always admired her as afeisty lasy with a sense of humour and - more important and understanding of what local government was about. She faced tough questions with a smile and gave as good as she got to such fearsome inquisitors as Jeremy Paxman..

I am not all that sure that what she did was particularly heinous. Most people with second homes make a careful calculation which to nominate as their main residence for tax purposes. I am one and I am lucky that it is a ‘no brainer’. Changing the designation of my main home would leave me with a potentially huge tax bill. That is not, of course, the same as flipping second homes to make a profit on resale as some MPs have done still less claiming for a non-existant mortgage.

There’s no dofficulty in being upfront when it’s in one’s interest to be so. If Hazel hadn’t made her ‘You tube if you want to’ gibe against her boss she might have survived.