Frank Branston - Blogging for a Better Bedford

I have just returned from a week’s holiday - in Iceland. It was an interesting trip, visiting a lot of old geysers and swimming in thermal waters where the part that’s in the water feels like you are in a hot bath, while your head freezes. Silicon mud is guaranteed to make one’s skin as soft and smooth as that stuff which made ‘the hands that do dishes as soft as your face’.

Normal blogging service will be resumed shortly, and at the weekend I will publish the text of my speech on sustainability at the Borough Debate. You know you can’t wait.

We have all looked at that apparently anonymous black door in Downing Street and wondered what lies behind it.

Nowadays you are not even allowed into the street unless you have a special pass but in my reporter days I had occasionally doorstepped there waiting for some bigwig to come out and give a comment on an issue of the day.

But on October 19 I had a pass to take me inside when the Prime Minister met ten of Britain’s elected mayors.

Inside it is Tardis-like. At one point I looked to my left and could see into an office that must have been at least 50 yards away. As I went upstairs the pictures of prime ministers of the past gazed upon me. Only two are still alive, Margaret Thatcher and John Major, the smallest number of living ex-Prime Ministers I can recall.

The meeting room allocated to us had windows overlooking Horseguards Parade. I sat opposite them and for a few minutes felt history’s wings.

We stood when the Prime Minister came in, because whatever one thinks about some of his actions and policies, he is the PM and deserves respect for his position. Given the flak he has taken recently, he looked incredibly relaxed. He put on glasses to read, I noted.

As well as the mayors, there was Ken Livingstone, London’s Mayor, who is never counted with the rest of us, I suppose because his powers are so much greater. Also present was Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago. His father, anoither Richard Daley, was also Mayor of Chicago, but his name was infamous among liberals for the brutal way he crushed demonstrations during the Viet Nam War.

This Richard Daley seemed to be of a completely different breed. Concerned about crime and violence, he mentioned proudly how many guns he and the police had taken out of use in Chicago. It totalled tens of thousands.

This in what was once mobster city.

Mayor Daley also spoke proudly of the fact that in the past year he had opened four new libraries and that in the current year he would spend £1billion on new schools. He sounded a bit like the Prime Minister with his mantra of ‘Education, education, education’, but maybe Mayor Daley has more funds with which to achieve it.

He mentioned that he worked with 50 aldermen (equivalent to councillors). Fifty! Bedford Council has 54!

The press has written up what I had to say - that Bedford needs to be and deserves to be a Unitary authority. The Prime Minister took note of my comments and mentioned them in his winding-up speech.

I hope we achieve Unitary status before a Mayor of Bedford is next invited into Number 10. Whenever that might be.

My message to all the people of the Borough: Shana tova, or in other words, Happy New Year.

No, I’m not out of synch. We’re in the first weeks of the Jewish New Year, which I was reminded of when I opened the Jewish Way of Life Exhibition in the Sports Hall of Bedford Modern School and runs for six weeks.

The Jewish community is one of our smallest. In fact, I am not sure whether it counts as a community as it has no synagogue or regular place to meet. Some years ago they used to meet for a service in a church hall but I haven’t heard of that happening for ages.

Bedford Modern gave room for a travelling exhibition at the request of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and asked me to open it. I am sure they were not aware that I am Jewish (non-practising). I pointed out that while Bedford is certainly one of the oldest boroughs in the country, having been chartered in 1166, it had to wait a long time before getting its first Jewish mayor, Cllr Judith Cunningham in 2002. I succeeded her. Isn’t that always the way? You wait 836 years for a Jewish Mayor then two come along at once.

If you are interested in one of our many faiths go along and see the exhibition. It’s very interesting and won’t take too much time out of your day.

THE county council’s executive agreed today to loan Nirah another £200,000 - just 20 per cent of the £1 million it had pledged in order to bring its contribution up to the same level as the East of England Development Agency with which it was supposed to be equal partner.

To be fair to the county, Nirah had pared its needs to the absolute bone and £200K is what it had asked for. But the county will have to pay half of the balance of £800,000 to EEDA to equalise their contribution.

Never mind. The two stars of the day were Connie Joy and her friend Eleanor Bishop, both 10 year-old pupils of the Alameda School, Ampthill, who had collected hundreds of signatures on the support Nirah petition. At the other end of the age spectrum was Mrs Harris, the pensioner whose offer of a £50 donation at the first support Nirah meeting sparked the ‘buy a brick’ campaign. That fund now stands at nearly £25,000, equivalent to the purchase of 500 bricks. It is still gathering interest in a solicitor’s client account and will not be used before the planning application goes in.

Connie and Eleanor and Mrs Harris presented the petition of 12,232 signatures which had been gained in just three months. And I know there are still petition forms out there which haven’t yet been handed in.

There was one wonderful moment of humour when Cllr Richard Stay referred to the firm of solicitors advising the council as Mills and Boon. He meant Mills and Reeves.

One of their solicitors was present through out the meeting until that item had been dealt with. I estimate his fees for the morning at more than £1,000 and he didn’t have to say a word, at least, not in public. I would like to bet that Mills and Reeves’ total bill for advice will be not much less than the amount of the loan to Nirah.

I was glad to hear Cllr Stay’s round condemnation of some of the unpleasant tactics used in trying to kill off Nirah. He said that if some of the innuendo used against the Nirah board had been used against him he would be consulting his lawyers by now. As it happens, I know lawyers are being consulted by Nirah, and not before time.

Council leader Madeline Russell let a cat out of the bag when she mentioned the threats by other commercial interests to take legal action against the council for supporting Nirah. She said that one of them was a company with leisure interests in the area. Now who, I wonder, could that be?

Before I close this item, I would like to thank some of the people who have fought for this cause for weeks on end, mostly without pay: in no particular order: my PA Phil Lotan, Jacquie Manners from Manners PR who, although she will be paid has put heart and soul into the fight, Jan Steel likewise, Ray Hostler and his partner Sue Hayhurst, Better Bedford Cllr Doug McMurdo and many, many more.

As I told the Look East television reporter after the money had been allocated, so many people were excited by the idea of Nirah, and the feeling of betrayal was massive when it looked as though Bedfordshire might lose the project for a comparatively small sum. That’s why more than 12,000 people signed the petition.

And that’s why they braved the aggressive and intimidating tactics of the ‘animal rights’ activists on Saturday when they were collecting more signatures. I am glad to say that many people signed deliberately to show their contempt for the ‘friends of fish’. Good for them. It made me proud.

THE best thing about being an Independent is that one is able to appreciate the contribution people make even when they hold different views.

When Shan Hunt lost her seat in May Bedford and Kempston lost a doughty fighter. On Thursday I presented her with the deed of conferment of the title ‘Honorary Alderman’. In my speech I recalled that she had been my deputy for two years, and in that time had always supported me loyally.

Sometimes she had to fight her own party to do so. She didn’t always win and when that happened she let me know so that I wouldn’t get any unpleasant last minute surprises.

The deed of conferment contained a long list of positions Shan filled, far too long to list here. Whatever her party allegiance, Honorary Alderman Hunt did well by the people of Bedford and deserves the honour she has been given.

I HAVE commented before on Lib-Dem leader Michael Headley’s strange obsession for moving the council’s cash reserves around. He’s a financial Grand Old Duke of York, except with pounds instead of men.

Last time, he wanted to move £2million from general reserves into the housing reserve even though there was nothing to spend it on and once in you couldn’t get it out.

He was at it again at Wednesday’s council meeting but in the opposite direction, wanting to move £250,000 set aside to provide ten year’s maintenance for the proposed moveable bridge. I suppose he thinks it gives an impression of good financial management. Actually, it shows he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Two years ago the East of England Development Agency (EEDA) launched a competition for a landmark project for the East of England. A company in London which had been doing work for the borough offered the idea of a moveable bridge based in Bedford. It would carry the borough’s name and could be transported by water or road to any place which had need of a temporary bridge. When not in use it could stay in Bedford and provide the third additional footbridge consultants say we need.

Temporary bridges are expensive to hire. The one we use for the river festival costs £12,000 for a week. In addition to providing another route from north to south, the proposed bridge would have a platform from which music or drama could be played which would make it a tourist attraction.

It was an intriguing idea and was one of four winners of the EEDA competition and probably the cheapest to realise. The proposition was that EEDA would pay to build it if the borough would set aside £250,000 for 10 years maintenance. In doing so we are not committed to the bridge. If when its design is finalised we don’t like it, or it doesn’t work or proves too expensive we can say ‘No thanks’ and not a penny has been lost.

The other three ideas seem to have fallen by the wayside. I recently wrote to EEDA to ask what is happening to the moveable bridge and await an answer. Meanwhile, the £250,000 is gaining interest at the rate of £12,500 a year. If the bridge is accepted and built, the maintenance fund will continue to gain interest until it is spent. In addition, it will save the borough £12,000 every two years (at today’s prices) because we won’t have to hire a temporary bridge for the river festival. And anybody wishing to use the Bedford moveable bridge will have to pay to move it and a hire fee which will at least contribute to the maintenace. And finally it will be an intriguing advertisement for our borough. The actual annual cost would work out at about £6,500 less hire fees which sounds to me a good proposition, especially as we don’t have to have it if we don’t like it.

In doing what Headley wants we would be signalling to EEDA that we aren’t interested in its bridge, rejecting the prospect of a free asset worth £1million, tourist interest and a considerable amount of free publicity.

The Lib-Dems are the party of small minds, just what Bedford has been suffering from for far too long.

WHEN politicians pass resolutions concerning actions of the Government, it is not difficult to work out whether they do it in hope of bringing about a change of policy or whether the real motive is propaganda.

If the former, they avoid making party political points because they don’t tweak the nose of a government they are really trying to influence; if the latter, they do the exact opposite.

So when Tory mayoral candidate Nicky Attenborough proposed a ’save the hospital’ resolution which included a paragraph attacking Labour’s NHS record she was making it perfectly clear that the possible fate of the hospital was not uppermost in her mind; likewise the Liberal-Democrats supporting her.

What they were both hoping for was a vote against their resolutions by Labour and Independents.

Labour, naturally enough, defended their own Government’s record but would have backed a ’save our hospital’ resolution. We Independents also wanted to support the hospital and didn’t want to throw away this opportunity with an attack on the Government which would have consigned our protest to the shredder.

So for different reasons Labour and most Independents abstained.

I had already written to Helen Nellis, chair of the hospital trust, protesting against the proposed redundancies and expressing dismay at the threat to the future of the hospital. She has agreed to attend an executive meeting soon to explain what is going on. A reasoned resolution from the council might, just possibly, have helped secure the hospital’s future.

Alas, that opportunity has been thrown away because of petty political calculation. How sad.

GOOD days in local government are as rare as hen’s teeth. Most of the time it’s a matter of plodding on like a donkey with a carrot held in front of its nose. That carrot is the prospect of some real achievement but it’s always dancing along the ever receding horizon.

But sometimes you get a good feeling that something will be achieved. On Monday we had the first meeting of the borough’s sustainability sub-committee which of itself is not an achievement. But there was genuine enthusiasm among officers and councillors for the objective, which was to make Bedford a beacon authority on the green agenda.

Goodness knows, the prospect of global warming is so huge that the temptation is to tune out and leave it to the statesmen in Kyoto or some such place, but we all contribute to the trauma of our planet so we all need to do our bit in repairing it, and that’s what our sub-committee proposes to do.

It is a small body, just three members, Cllr Peter Hand, the portfolio holder for sustainability issues, Cllr Chris Black, portfolio holder for planning and housing, and me. One Tory, one Labour and one Independent. Two other councillors, one Labour and one Tory also attended to make contributions. We identified some issues where we could try to make a difference, among them using recycled vegetable oil as fuel for some council vehicles, taking steps to ensure that the council was seen to be setting an example of fuel conservation in its own buildings and setting high standards in this field for developers to follow.

Everybody left the meeting enthused with a bundle of tasks and agreement to meet in a month and see how far we had got.

ON Monday night, Max Lyons, architect of the bus station redevelopment, came to talk to the Better Bedford Supper Club about the new scheme. The supper club takes place monthly except for August and December and generally attracts an attendance of between 45 and 55. More than 60 tickets were sold for this one, such is people’s interest. Max spoke briefly then we had a long question and answer session which ranged over the whole gamut of the development.

Most of what he said went down well but the supporters of preserving Pilgrim’s Progress were unable to get more of a commitment than ‘We are looking at ways to preserve it’. But there were gasps of pleasure when he showed the Italianate design of the new department store destined to anchor the development at the Greyfriars/Midland Road crossroads.

I am hoping to get the architects of the other two schemes along to future supper clubs. Max is also the architect for the Church Lane redevelopment, but that is at too early a stage to justify such a discussion.

I HAD also had an enjoyable morning at a trade fair for our partner town of Rovigo, organised by the Bedfordshire Chamber (an amalgamation of Chambers of Trade and Commerce).

Most of those present were business people of Italian origin and while they make up an important part of our business community it is a small one in terms of numbers. The Italian visitors from Rovigo showed high quality olive oils, pasta, wines and rice, as well as beautiful shoes. We had speeches before a buffet made by students from Rovigo who had come over specially, so it was a pity it wasn’t supported better by local business.

What was even more of a pity is that two of the visitors appeared to have fallen victim to local thieves. One young woman had her bag snatched at Bedford Station and a man lost his wallet. While it cannot be said with certainty that the latter was a victim of thieves, the lack of local interest and these two incidents made me feel a bit ashamed of our borough even though the council was not the organiser.

However, it inspires me to think of getting an exhibition ourselves and taking it first to Bamberg and then to Rovigo. I guess it would take about 18 months to organise but I am sure it could be made quite interesting and the people of both town are so enthusiastic about our twinning that I think it would be worthwhile - provided their misadventures here have not put them off.

MORE praise comes the borough’s way. If it goes on like this we are going to end up like one of those Russian generals with so many medals they could double as armour plating.

Bedford came second in the town section of Britain in Bloom, which is pretty good at our first time of entry.

Our environment services have also received a Charter Mark.

And on Tuesday a visitor from the Ombudsman’s department to the General Purpooses committee praised Bedford as being the best council in the county based on how few complaints we get and how expeditiously they are dealt with.

Everybody looked pleased except for Lib-Dem member Christine McHugh. I don’t know why she didn’t share the general rejoicing. I’m sure it couldn’t be because she will be a candidate for Mayor next May and any praise from independent bodies makes it more difficult to explain just why there should be a change in May. she just doesn’t seem like that sort of person.

Sometimes the things going on in this town surprise even me. On Wednesday and Thursday we have a council Open Day at the Harpur Suite and the annual beer festival just round the corner at the Corn Exchange. Which to visit first?

Common sense ruled, and I spent some time at the Open Day which more than one thousand people visited on Wednesday alone, with at least 90 per cent saying it as a worthwhile exercise.

After that it was off to the beer festival. My capacity for drinking beer isn’t what it used to be and even four halves out of the dozens of beers available left me feeling that discretion was the better half of valour.

I had to sample the Charles Wells brewewd Youngs which used to be one of my favourite beers when in London. I was hoping that the distinctive Young’s taste would not have been lost in its journey up north from Wandsworth. I think it’s all right, but I’ll need a few more tastings to be absolutely certain.

I’ll also have to give some consideration to the cider on a future visit, but not this time. Cider and beer are two drinks which definitely do not mix.

I have just returned from a long weekend in Cornwall and on Monday we went to the Eden Project.

I had been once before, shortly after it opened but it was my wife’s first visit and she was gobsmacked. So was I, because although it is my second visit the impact of those two biomes, plus the surrounding planting, is still amazing. It is so much better now that early plantings have filled out.

‘And just think,’ I told my wife. ‘Nirah is scheduled to be four times the size of this’.

When I checked my emails after arriving home, I found that a colleague had come up with a new conspiracy theory, that the county council was favouring Center Parcs over Nirah because if CP had received planning permission it would open in 2008, just in time for the next county elections in 2009.

I’m not one for conspiracy theories and think she is wrong. In any case, Nirah has never opposed CP. But if you look at Eden and imagine that in Bedfordshire, with hotels and a magnificent water park, you could imagine that Center Parc’s friends in Bedfordshire could be worried about Nirah.