Frank Branston - Blogging for a Better Bedford

I should have been surprised to find the Tories and Lib-Dems ganging up to turn down planning for Riverside Square. After all, they had both had representatives on the town centre working group, but neither had objected before.

The only issue the Lib-Dems had brought up was patio heaters at the restaurants which would have been easy enough to sort out.

But I wasn’t surprised. The fact that both groups voted together is not the first time they have done this even though there is not supposed to be any whipping or advance discussions of planning issues.

I suspect the real reason was their ‘revenge’ for having lost the mayoral election.

Contrary to the impression given by Cllr Headley, the scheme would have been far greener than the Government’s minimum standards which demand a 10 per cent reduction in energy use and carbon production. Riverside Square is calculated at 50 per cent.

Architect Tony Mackay, a long time opponent of the scheme, claimed Riverside Square would be bigger than Buckingham Palace. I can only assume he means higher - it certainly couldn’t be wider or deeper. And so what? The Town Hall is higher than Buckingham Palace, as is the BT building, the Park Inn (the one on the river, not the one in Kimbolton Road), and even County Hall, the one Mr Mackay likes even if nobody else does.

Mackay is so insufferably superior. Did I not realise, he asked recently, that the Romans used concrete? Yes, old boy, I did, but they used it for civil engineering purposes, not for public buildings.

Bedford has more than its fair share of mediocre modern buildings - mediocre being the kind word to use - yet the likes of Mackay and Graham Wright want more.

I hope the developers appeal and win. And if they win costs against the council I will see the public knows which political parties to blame.

During the recent election Christine McHugh’s election leaflets repeatedly claimed it was a two-horse race and she and I were neck and neck with the rest nowhere. Judging by the results it must have been a giraffe race.

The Lib-Dem web-site told a slightly different story. It admitted that I was going to win but said McHugh would definitely come second.

As it turned out, she came third.

Which drives home the lesson, never believe a word the Lib-Dems tell you.

The Lib-Dems have refused a place in my cabinet for the third time.

I hope this time they are honest with their own membership about it. The first time was after I was elected in 2002 when they were offered a place and their leaders put in a list of conditions clearly designed to be rejected (one demanded that the other parties on the cabinet accepted the Lib-Dems policies …in writing!), then when I turned them down told their own group that I had refused them places.

It all came out during a council debate and you should have seen the panic on Cllr Hodgson’s face as the plan unravelled.

Back at the keyboard, I see that Michael Headley, the Lib-Dem group leader, is getting all po-faced about out little spoof when the county council launched its somewhat daft ‘I love Bedfordshire ‘ campaign. It seemed a good moment to reveal our ‘Back the Borough’ message on trucks which trundled past the county’s hoarding. Headley reckoned this wasn’t quite the thing.

You can’t please everybody. County leader Madeline Russell was quite amused. But then she has a sense of humour and (sometimes) of proportion, things of which Headley has never been accused.

Having recovered from a count that went across three days, I can look at what the election meant.

One of the targets of the directly-elected mayor system was that it would lead to increased voter interest, hence larger turnouts. Compared to the first mayoral election in October 2002, that hope was certainly realised. Then the turnout was 23%. This year’s was 40.1%. In the count of primary votes I picked up 35%, with Conservatives and Liberal-Democrats neck-and-neck on 23% with the Tories nosing ahead.

The Lib-Dems had forecast a close race, but I don’t think they meant it quite that way.

The Mayoral race was across the whole borough while the election for councillors went across 18 wards so one might have expected those wards where there were two elections to have polled substantially higher, but this wasn’t so. The councillor vote was practically the same as the mayoral turnout at 41.34%.

Leaving aside the fact that I won, the whole election seemed fairly satisfactory.

The final total of rejected papers was lower than early rumours had indicated with 2116 (4.64%) in the Mayoral election and 484 (1.2%) in the council election.

I am glad of that as it means nobody can argue that the rejected papers had dramatically changed the outcome of the election. The most one could say is that maybe the Lib-Dems would have come second, or maybe the Tories lead over the Lib-Dems for second place would have been bigger.

Elections lead to heated arguments and bruised feelings but the important thing is to remember we all have work to do to save the borough and there is no time to lose.

It is 2-35 am on Saturday May 5 after an election count which started at 10.30 on Thursday night and finished less than an hour ago - probably the longest count in Bedford’s history.

At the end of it I won a second term as Bedford’s mayor. I am too knocked-out to say much now other than to thank all those who helped me. Without them I couldn’t have done it. I will write more later.