Frank Branston - Blogging for a Better Bedford

WHEN one raises money for medical purposes one usually thinks no more of it after handing over the cheque. But the sad news that Gordon Brown’s baby has been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis reminds me of an exception.

In the early days of Bedfordshire on Sunday we used to have an annual appeal and the first of these was to buy a machine to isolate the cystic fibrosis gene. It came about because a local family had two children with cyctic fibrosis and I was so moved by their story I decided to make the appeal. The target was about £5,000 or £6,000, not much these days but allowing for inflation I suppose the equivalent of £30,000.

We bought the machine and I delivered it to a doctor working on the problem at a London hospital. He told me that it would be an essential tool in his research and for a few years kept us in touch with progress.

The reports on the Brown baby said that a quarter of a century ago a child with cystic fibrosis was unlikely to live beyond his teens. Now the life expectancy is 30 and rising. I like to think that maybe all those who gave money are just a little bit responsible for this happier outcome even though the machine we bought will have been junked long ago.

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UNLESS another last second glitch has occurred, the Nirah outline planning application will be handed over to the county council at a press conference at Stewartby tomorrow (Thursday Nov 30).

It will mark a significant milestone in the history of this iconic project and one that many of us had almost despaired of seeing given the obstacles being put in our way. We couldn’t have done it without the massive support we have received from the public: 13,000 signatures on the support petition and £26,000 in donations to the founders scheme.

That money is safe in a Bedford lawyer’s interest bearing client account until it is needed.

To quote Winston Churchill after the battle of El Alamein; This is not the end; it is not even the beginning of the end; but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

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LITERALLY!

The architect working for Frontier Estates, owner of part of the land behind the airship sheds at Cardington, has found a novel way to commemorate the R101.

In his design for development on the land he has included an oval public space in the precise dimensions of the mighty airship which crashed on its first flight near Beauvais in France.

A spokesman for Frontier Estates said: “Soon the last people to be involved with the R101 will have faded into history and young people will have no conception of airships. This will show them how enormous they were.”

If Frontier gets planning permission for its development it has promised to refurbish Shed 1 at a probable cost of about £6million. The R101 wood will run the full width of the site. Surrounding it will be private and social housing, maisonettes and flats.

By law I have no powers in planning matters but, without wishing to prempt the planning committee’s deliberations, it is good to see imagination being exercised in proposed new developments.

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THE more I find out about renewable energy the more fascinating it is.
On Friday I went to see the Bedfordia Bio-Gen installation near Twinwoods and was impressed with its scale and scope.
John Ibbett, a director of the company, has been enthusiastic about renewables for 25 years, and just as well. It has taken him that long to jump all the hurdles placed in its way.
It has cost £3 million, a sum of money which requires a decent return and the interesting thing is that the return can be made in different ways.
Before I get to that, here’s a brief outline on how it works.
The centre of the plant is a group of tanks which act as an enormous stomach into which all sorts of organic ‘foods’ enter. Microbes chew them up, produce methane which is burned to generate electricity. The residue after burning becomes fertiliser for spreading on the company’s fields.
In the past I have tended to refer to this as power from pigs rear ends, but that is only part of it. A hundred yards or so away are pig raising installations. The slurry from these falls through gratings and is transported through a pipeline to the digesting plant.
Where I had gone wrong was in assuming the slurry to be the principal food stock but its main purpose is to get the reaction going.
So how does this plant make money? One way is by providing an alternative to landfill for disposal of organic waste. With landfill taxes biting, it makes sense to pay for Bedfordia Bio-Gen to do the disposing. Then there is the electricity which is fed onto the national grid for which Bedfordia Bio-Gen is paid at a green energy rate. And last year the fertiliser residue saved Bedfordia about £60,000 a year in fertiliser made from fossil fuels to spread on its substantial land holdings.
And what about smell and flies, etc? A few yards away from the plant there was no smell despite the fact that the ‘dish of the day’ was reject cat food. Inside the door of the area which received the foodstock, it smelled like a very, very ripe Brie. Once that door was closed, one could walk round the digester tanks without noticing more than a faint trace of smell.
This plant can make enough electricity to power 800 homes, enough for a large village, and John and his manager Andrew Needham told me this was just the beginning and more capacity was on its way.
My congratulations to Bedfordia on its initiative.
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After spending most of the day sorting our paperwork for the taxman - a job I hate; not the tax, which I accept as a necessity, but the sorting - it was a pleasure to do battle for the honour of the mayoral office in the annual Neighbourhood Watch quiz at Police HQ.

This is a fiercely fought event and until last year a team calling itself ‘The Usual Suspects’ had won three years on the trot. We first entered in 2003 when a carelessly incomplete answer cost us three points and equal first place. Last year we won, so we were there as defending champions.

At half way our team of historian Richard Wildman, lawyer Nic Davies, my wife, Marlies, and I were lying second by one point, but then we had a horrific round on the first careers of celebrities in which we got 6 points out of 20 and thought we were done for. But it appears we weren’t the only team which didn’t know whose first job was a coffin polisher and in the end we won by four points. ‘The Usual Suspects’ came equal second and dropped to third after a tie-breaker with ‘The Thespians’.

So we retained the Ace Security’ silver salver, and to cap it all my wife won a bottle of scotch and Richard a box of personal stationery in the raffle and we went out into the night savouring our victory.

Next year we’ve got to go flat out to equal ‘The Usual Suspects’ record of three-in-a-row.

The die is cast; my hat is in the mayoral ring.

On Tuesday night 70 members and supporters of Better Bedford were present to launch my campaign to win re-election in May 2007.

The meeting was chaired by community safety portfolio holder Cllr Margaret Davey who delivered a splendid appraisal of the work we have done since my election in 2002. As I said at the time, I don’t think I’ve ever had so many compliments in my entire life. Thank you, Marageret.

When it was time for me to speak, I recalled that after I had been in office only six months one councillor had complained that I had achieved nothing. I commented that he had been on the council for a decade or more and only achieved a greater beer belly. At which former Labour councillor Chris Whitehead strolled in to the meeting. It couldn’t have worked better if it had been arranged.

After listing just a few of the projects that were in action or on their way to being completed, I pointed out that we had no room for complacency; that both Tories and Lib-Dems were making a determined stab at winning and that the Lib-Dems in particular would be treating it like a Parliamentary by-election even though their candidate’s record in working for Bedford was non-existent.

The electoral system, particularly on postal votes, favours the political parties over independents and small parties, so we had a hill to climb just to reach a level playing field.

But I was buoyed up by comments such as those from local businessman, and one of the saviours of the Blues, David Ledsom (see below).

This is the text of a letter from David Ledsom, one of Bedford’s best-known businessmen, which was read out at the meeting.

Dear Frank,

I am sorry that I cannot attend the launch of your Mayoral campaign this evening due to a prior commitment.

I can confirm that I am wholeheartedly behind your re-election and will be happy to support your campaign.

I would like to take this opportunity of congratulating you on moving so many beneficial projects forward within the borough which otherwise would have remained bogged down in local politics.

I feel that, no matter what one’s national political persuasions are, an independent mayor with the well-being of the town at heart is the only positive way forward.

I wish you every success, both this evening and throughout the forthcoming campaign.

Yours sincerely,

DA Ledsom

My blog is now up to 1220 hits this month and the number increases every week.

But what puzzles me is the 28 hits from Bulgaria.

A Bedford ex-pat? Or somebody trying to learn about the workings of local democracy in Bedford?

If my Bulgarian fan(s) reads this, do use the comment button to let me know.

While I was at the opening of Mid-Bedfordshire’s offices on Friday (see below) somebody mentioned that there was another event that evening, a celebration of 75 years since Mid Beds became a constituency, or, according to some, 75 years in which it has a Tory MP.

Whichever it was, it took me back 25 years to the 50th anniversary which took place during the Falklands War with Margaret Thatcher as the guest of honour. As the editor of Bedfordshire on Sunday I had been invited to the dinner so I told my wife she needn’t make supper for me.

We waited around for ages for Mrs T to come, by which time I was ravenous. When I got into the marquee I discovered that there was no place setting for myself or my photographer Jeff Katz.

Waving my invitation I pointed out to the press liaison officer from the constituency that I had been invited to dinner, not a couple of curled up British Rail sandwiches. He muttered something to the effect of ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’ but a waitress took away the sandwiches and laid the table for a meal. A few minutes later she was back, took away the cutlery and the curling sandwiches returned.

I decided enough was enough and sent Jeff to the nearest Indian takeaway for some curry. The press liaison man got in a panic and asked the special branch people to stop him coming in. They were also fed up because they had not eaten and said: ‘If it doesn’t tick, we can’t stop him’.

By the time the food came, the diners were on their desserts. Noses twitched and bigwigs stared as the smell of curry drifted across and the late Ian Dixon came to enquire what was going on. He roared with laughter and sent across a bottle of wine.

Word got out and 10 Downing Street was flooded with press inquiries. Bernard Ingham, Mrs T’s formidable press secretary, was heard to say: ‘We’re in the middle of a war and I’m being asked about curry’. The press liaison man got a rocket.

Could that be why I wasn’t invited to the 75th anniversary dinner?

I could have done with some royal travel arrangements (see below) at the weekend. I went to London to attempt to buy something for my daughter’s new home, but had to leave early on Sunday to get to the Phoenix Theatre Company’s cycle of plays at Mark Rutherford Upper School.

Phoenix is a group which gets young people engaged in a theatrical experience by producing plays relevant to them. Inevitably, it is short of money and I had given it £10,000 from the Mayor’s Charity. Since I became Mayor I have raised more than £32,000 which has been mostly spent on projects for young people.

Getting back from London usually takes me about an hour-and-a-half, but knowing there were major road works on the North Circular I made an ill-judged attempt to find a route round them.

Despite Phoenix holding up the action in the hope I would get there for the start, by the time I arrived all the plays (there were four of them) had finished.

One was about war and after the show as over the children broke up into groups, each with a British Legion veteran to tell them of their experiences. I made mention to one group of having been an evacuee which resulted in having to explain what an evacuee was.

As everybody left, I was asked to autograph a programme. Pretty soon I was autographing lots of them, but any thoughts of self importance I might have had was diluted when I heard one of the children for whom I had just signed saying: “Who is he? Is he important?”

That’s children for you; guaranteed to bring one down to earth.

The royal travel arrangements were fascinating. The Queen and the Duke came up by royal train to Arlesey, but the train had to go further north to come back south so that the royal party did not have to cross the footbridge. They were met by an enormous Bentley which had come up from London to meet them and take them to their various parts of call then to the council offices.

To return they went to Sandy where, I heard, a similar juggling arrangement had to be gone through to get the train on the right platform.

The view was that this was because the Queen had a bad back and would have found the car journey uncomfortable and couldn’t walk across the bridge. After all, she is 80.

Set against this, how tedious they must find these visits. After a while, they must become indistinguishable from each other. But she smiled gamely all through. No wonder she charms everybody who meets her.

TO Chicksands to the opening of the new council offices by the Queen accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh.

Wags are calling it ‘Quicksands’, alluding to the amount of money sunk into it, some £15 million, but I understand it was built to budget so it seems a bit unfair. Anyway, compared to Bedford’s dreadful Town Hall, I envied Mid Beds.

I didn’t see that much of the building other than the council chamber, which had been cleared out for the official lunch, and the reception area for the ’second class’ lunch.

The ‘first class’ lunch was for the great and good, among whom I seem to be numbered, the second class for people lower down the pecking order, and there was some kind of arrangement for a ‘third class’ lunch, probably for the people who actually do the work in this place.

It is many years since I last saw the Queen and I had forgotten how tiny she is. She looked well and cheerful, like everybody’s favourite granny. Edinburgh looked like enjoyed living up to his reputation as a crusty old stick.

I wasn’t in the line-up to shake the royal mitt, which meant I had plenty of time for chatting. The two subjects of conversation with everybody I spoke to were Unitary - as in was Bedford going for it and if so what was my preferred arrangement for the the rest of the county - and Nirah.

I confirmed that Bedford would most certainly go for Unitary status; for the other part of the question I agreed with whatever the person I was speaking to proposed. Some were for splitting the county in half, with Bedford and part of Mid Beds in the north, the other half of Mid Beds joining South Beds. Others proposed Dunstable and Houghton Regis going in with Luton, Mid Beds taking over the rump of South Beds as one Unitary, us in the north being the other, and the third option was the county running Mid and South and Bedford keeping more or less its present borders plus the Wixams.

Actually, I don’t mind which solution is chosen provided the Borough of Bedford gets out from under the county council.

I was pleased to be able to tell the Nirah enquirers that things were moving forward and it was expected that the outline planning application would go in at the end of the month or the first week in December at the latest. Just think, ten months have been wasted because of the county council reneging on its pledges.

A majority of those I spoke to seemed to favour the Center Parcs application. I have not got involved in that fight, but I have to say I would be very doubtful about allowing such an application in the Green Belt. It seems to me like the thin end of a very large wedge.

I suspect that the reason for the county council getting cold feet over Nirah may well have been a fear that Center Parcs - owned by a bunch of American venture capitalists - might try to take legal action, although I think it just bluster, but it doesn’t endear Center Parcs to me.

Nadine Dorries was there, looking quite fetching. She cut me dead. Ah well, into each life some rain must fall.

The speaker of the borough, Andrew McConnell, exchanged a few words with Edinburgh and came away looking bewildered. “So who are you then?” asked the Duke. Andrew explained his role. The Duke barked, “Bedford, is that a town or a city?” and didn’t wait to hear the answer.

Outside the rain was bucketing down, and I thought wistfully of the overcoat I had left in the civic car at the other end of the car park. But the mayor’s officer. Barry Tappenden. had anticipated our needs and brought the car up ready and we left shortly after the royal car.

GOT my wrist slapped by the Scrutiny committee yesterday. That’s the cross-party committee which calls the executive to account.

I have had my problems with this committee because it has always been chaired by a group leader, which I think is wrong, but that wasn’t an issue on this occasion. I was hauled up because members of the committee didn’t like my choice of a ‘jury’ to decide on the design of the foot and cycle bridge from St Mary’s Gardens to the new Riverside Square development. I had chosen the three ward councillors and some members of the executive. This left out the Lib-Dems who are not on the executive because they made unacceptable conditions.

In the initial questions and answer session I pointed out that I did not need a jury at all. I could make the decision myself. Instead I had chosen a jury, not on the basis of political allegiance but because I knew some liked traditional design while others were modernists and I was looking for a synthesis.

I think the jury came to the right decision with a slimline modern bridge, but there is no guarantee that any other method would have come up with a better answer because we are talking about individual preferences. I don’t like the Butterfly Bridge between The Embankment and Mill Meadows very much, although many do and it has won an award. The problem with a jury, however selected, is that it might simply result in the lowest common denominator being chosen.

That seemed to matter less to the Scrutiny members than that each party should have its say. Nicky Attenborough, Tory candidate for Mayor next year, was adamant that the Lib-Dems, as second biggest party, should have been on the jury (that’s the second time in recent weeks that she has been cosying up to them). She said the bridge would last for generations and it was important to get it right. I agree with that, but she didn’t explain how a wider jury could guarantee that.

Anyway, the Scrutiny Committee recommended that in future I should choose a jury from across the political spectrum which - as a matter of fact - is what I generally have done on previous major developments.

I would have been more impressed if it had answered the conundrum of how that would guarantee a ‘righter’ answer than any other method, although it would have the benefit of spreading the blame if the design turned out to be a ghastly mistake.

I AM flattered by the number of people asking whether I intend to stand again at the end of my term next May and urging me to do so.

All will be revealed at a public meeting on Tuesday, November 21, at The Swan, on The Embankment at 7-30pm.

What do you think? Should I stand; should I not?
And in either case, why?

If you wish to give your opinion, go to comment at the bottom of this entry.

MY idea of running some of the council’s vehicles on recycled cooking oil ran into a snag when my sustainability sub-committee had a presentation on the subject yesterday.

We were warned that the purification system that we had been looking at had some problems. One was that it would release toxic substances into the atmosphere; another was that static electricity might cause an explosion and the third was that quality would be inconsistent.

Ah well, back to the drawing board.

I am not giving up. There are safe methods but they are more expensive. We are going to look for partners to share the costs.

As so often, it is the simplest ideas that look most workable. A cover stretched across Kempston Pool at night could save, conservatively, about 20 per cent of fuel costs.

And reorganising the lighting in one part of the Town Hall complex will also save power. With the cost of electricity soaring they will provide practical savings while reducing CO2 emissions.

FOR me the Remembrance season is over. It now extends over three weekends.

One week before Remembrance Day it is the ceremony for Scottish soldiers at Foster Hill Road cemetery in the section reserved for dead from two World Wars. Included here are the graves of Scots soldiers who came to Bedford on their way to France in 1914. They never got there, having succumbed to influenza – often fatal in those days – here in Bedford.

We marched from the chapel to the war section to the sound of keening bagpipes, then back to the cemetery chapel for tea and biscuits. Personally, I wouldn’t have objected to the traditional Scottish dram.

On Saturday, the anniversary of Armistice Day, there was a commemoration which started in the Mayor’s Parlour and continued in Midland Road, and on Sunday morning we had the ceremony at the war memorial on The Embankment.

This ceremony seems to get bigger every year. There was no cannon to mark eleven o’clock because, apparently, it has gone to Iraq or Afghanistan (what does that say about the adequacy of the equipment of our soldiers), and a volley from three rifles marked the beginning of the silence.

They had to be risk-assessed by health and safety of course. Just think what a safe place the world would be if every country had risk-assessment procedures like ours. You would never have a war. It wouldn’t be safe.

On Sunday afternoon there was another service in St Peters Church, of which more below.

THE other services follow a well-worn pattern. At the main ceremony I speak the verses about beating one’s swords into ploughshares from the Book of Micah.

Two years ago I decided to try something different at the St Peters ceremony that takes place in the afternoon of Remembrance Day and read a couple of poems, Dulce et Decorum by Wilfred Owen and To a Dead Statesman by Rudyard Kipling”

I could not dig
I dared not rob
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies have proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall help me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?

Kipling, as those who watched the moving television programme about him on Sunday night, started the 14-18 war as a jingoist. He got his son into the army despite the fact that he was underage and his eyesight was so weak he had originally failed the medical. John Kipling was killed the first time he went into action and his father became bitterly hostile to the people who ran the war.

The poems went down well with the members of the British Legion present so I did it again last year.

This year I told how I had decided to use a poem from World War II and went to the Imperial War Museum to get a book of poems from that era. While I was there I saw a book called Worlds End by Donald Wheal. I bought it because knew it must be about Worlds End, Chelsea, where I grew up because Wheal had attended my school.

I was shocked to find from the book that one year before I arrived at Worlds End (a few weeks after the end of the war) there had been a bombing raid which had killed 70, mostly women and children – and I never knew about it. Before reading the poem I compared that silent stoicism with the way in which we almost wallow in grief from the 7/7 bombings. I am not saying it is wrong to do so; perhaps it is better that we acknowledge the pain of violent death, but I found the contrast difficult to deal with.

The poem I read was called ‘These are Facts’ by Ruthven Todd and it was about the Blitz.

I decided not to extend my Remembrance a third weekend; I could have gone to Kempston or to London for another ceremony. Bit I didn’t want to get blasé. I will be represented at the Kempston ceremony by the Speaker, Cllr Andrew McConnell.

I KNOW I am no oil-painting, but pictures of me in the papers get worse and worse. A couple of weeks ago I was just a blurred shape when I was snapped speaking to the Prime Minister aboutBedford’s need for Unitary status.

The one of me speaking at the Borough Debate on November 4, made me look like a bad-tempered man in an overcoat, and last week the snapper caught me choking on chief executive Shaun Field’s chilli-con-carné (not coq-au-vin, contrary to the headline) when we exchanged places with canteen staff to raise money for Children in Need.

Shaun, who is super competitive, sneaked in at 8-15am intent on wowing everybody with the chilli, coq-au-vin and potatoes dauphinois. I arrived at 10-30 intent on simpler dishes, pasta in home-made tomato sauce and a dessert.

Serve him right when he put the potato dish in the oven without checking whether it was on and was wondered why it hadn’t browned.

I haven’t heard how much we raised but I think it was about £500 and we worked darned hard for it, I can tell you.

The canteen staff we exchanged with enjoyed themselves. Any unpopular decisions over the next few months I will blame on them.

This is reproduced without editing from Nadine Dorries’s blog:

Private Eye

Posted Wed, 8 November 2006 at 13:04
I am not quite sure how Private eye gets away with printing such awful rubbish! Maybe people realise that it’s all tosh which is why their readership is so low.
I understand from an esteemed journalist, when they are sued they don’t pay up. I reckon they print nonsense in the hope that they will be sued to give them the publicity they need to keep up their readership. If they didn’t print such rubbish and weren’t sued where would they be?
What Private Eye don’t realise is that in Bedfordshire we have a pernicious, cruel, up to the wire, rotweiller of a Sunday Newspaper called the Bedfordshire on Sunday who, in a way because of its fericiousness (sic), ensures that I never slip below my own level of probity.
The BoS demonstrated just what they can do to an MP who falls short of acceptable standards – I don’t ever want to be there.
The Mayor of Bedford needs to realise that you don’t have friends in politics. Not a week goes by without my office receiving a telephone call informing us of some comment or other he has made. He really does need to be very careful!

FORMER deputy prime minister Roy Hattersley and Ian Nicholls, former deputy Labour group leader on the borough may not have much in common other than political failure, but neither like directly-elected mayors.

Hatters, who acquired fame as a tub of lard in Have I got News for You, says the Government is trying to find undemocratic ways of imposing directly-elected mayors in scrapping the need to hold a referendum by councils wishing to go down the mayor route.

Well, sorry Hatters, but the old system wasn’t exactly democratic either. Let me remind you how it worked in Bedford. The old-style executive considered the issue and decided it didn’t want an elected mayor. No consultation at all.

It was only when a group of people decided they didn’t like being dictated to and took the laborious route of getting signature of five per cent of the electorate that they were able to force a referendum. The voters decided they did want a mayor, an election was held and I won against seven other candidates including the parties who had opposed a directly-elected mayor.

A number of other councils have gone down that route. Most failed, because the big guns were with the councils, who didn’t want the change, but some succeeded. Many councils lied repeatedly in their efforts to stop the mayoral bandwagon in its tracks, making ludicrous claims like an elected mayor would cost taxpayers an extra £2 million a year. In some places that tactic worked. It is worth noting that I have brought the cost of the mayoralty DOWN since I have been in office.

Nicholls claims I have done nothing in my period of office. So no development of Castle Lane, no getting advance funding on the Western bypass, no getting a one-stop shop for advice at 7a St Pauls Square, no getting Bedford made into a Business Improvement District, no answering the plea to make more of our river by designating Riverside Square for quality restaurants and wine bars, no getting Nirah to Bedfordshire, no clean-sweep blitzes in some of Bedford’s most deprived areas, no getting more police and community police support officers (CPSO) in the town centre, no increasing the number of street rangers and CPSOs in problem areas, no fitness centre for Kempston at Hillgrounds (in co-operation with Cllrs Will and Sahn Hunt) and so on.

Hattersley sneers at Stuart Drummond, the man who stood for election in Hartlepool wearing a monkey suit. He won by about 400 votes. Once in office he took the job seriously and in May this year was re-elected and increased his majority 17-fold.

Both Hattersley and Nicholls profess to believe that three attempted referendums on going back to the old system will sound the death knell of elected mayors. Two of them are being organised by people with a personal dislike of the mayor involved and one is the result of a Labour-controlled council going through the motions to fulfil an electoral promise. I bet none of succeed.

One final point: If elected mayors are so bad, why are they commonplace throughout the world, including in Germany, France, USA, Australia etc. The answer is simple.

Elected Mayors work.