Frank Branston - Blogging for a Better Bedford

I mostly write about local politics but here’s an observation.

The United States has overtaken Britain as the land of the queue.

Yes, it used to be observed of this country that people seemed to like queues, especially nice orderly ones. It is a matter of observation that you don’t often see people queueing at bus stops nowadays. They stand around in a loose knot and surge toward the entry point then their bus turns up.

Our place in the queue has been usurpoed by the United States. I have never seen so many queues. In New York, when I asked about a long line formed up outside our hotel I was told it was for cheap theatre tickets. On a Friday afternoon I interrogated a queue outside the Rockefeller Centre. It was for the television show Saturday Night. Tickets would be given out at 7am on Saturday, then they would go home, have a bath and rest up until 11pm when the show would start. Incredulously I asked why didn’t they just watch it from the comfort of their armchairs, but apparently the lure of celebs in the flesh was too much for them. I seemed as alien to them as they seemed to me.

Back at the hotel, we decided to go for a cocktail at the revolving lounge on the top floor. I was stopped from getting into the lift and told that I had to ’stand in line’. I looked around and caught the hostile glare of a queue. Frank Branston does not queue to get a drink so I went elsewhere.

I now read that there is a bunch of nutters prepared to queue for a week to buy one of the first iPhones, the latest gizmo from Apple. Apparently one of these beasties would allow me to do everything I could ever want. But nothing at all that I did want. In any case, why queue to buy something which would undoubtedly be purchasable from a shop near you in a matter of days?

So, if Johnny Foreigner ever jibes about England being the land of the queue, tell him he is on the wrong side of the herring pond.

IT is generally journalists who are blamed for ignoring good news in favour of the bad.

You can add politicians to that, especially Bedford Borough Council’s party politicians.

Some months ago the council asked members of the executive to report on their activities. While I would not make it a rule that they should do so it was worth doing so on a voluntary basis.

I delivered mine first, then Margaret Davey, portfolio holder for community safety presented hers.

Now by common consent, Margaret has done a pretty good job with the police, especially as the borough has no representation on the police authority and can only use the power of persuasion to get increased policing.

The Tories, in particular, rounded on her for a perceived lack of policing in the rural areas. In vain, Margaret pointed out that she could not order the police to do anything. The hounds of hell, otherwise known as the political parties, were enjoying themselves ripping her to pieces (although she is made of stern stuff and gives as good as she gets). If the League Against Cruel Sports were to attend a Bedford Council meeting it would turn its attention away from foxhunting.

There was good news in the council agenda, with the borough getting lavish praise for its performance and value for money from Government inspectors.

Did the councillors mention this and offer praise to those responsible?

Now you’re being silly.

I wish all those people who voted for political parties while proclaiming their dislike of party politics in local government could have been at Wednesday’s meeting of Bedford Borough Council.

It went on for four-and-a-quarter hours. And what was achieved? Nothing.

Questions, reports, attempts to neuter me and my cabinet, round the houses we went.

Goodness knows what the members of the public thought of it. Usually meetings are attended by only one or two people, but this time the public benches were packed by opponents of ‘adult entertainment’ establishments who wanted the restrictions on where such clubs could be operated tightened up to the point where they would be impossible in the urban area. There are two such clubs in St Peters Street. One is utterly sleazy - I was taken there by a uniformed police sergeant while on a fact-finding tour of Bedford’s nightlife; the more recent one I know nothing about.

Cllr Peter Chiswell proposed the motion, which I voted for, but legal advice was that it was unsustainable. A different motion was put which was passed. Unfortunately for the protesters, it would have absolutely no effect unless would-be operators had a bad record of operating such places, in which case police objections would probably see them off anyway.

Lib-Dems and Labour tried to pass a resolution which would involve a special council meeting being called any time the executive needed to spend £25,000 more on a project than was originally estimated.

Bedford has a very good record for the accuracy of its estimates, but that could still amount to an extra two or three meetings a year. Each one would involve hiring the Harpur Suite, and bringing in dozens of councillors and officers to ratify spending which, in local government terms, is not very much.

The Lib-Dem leader, Michael Headley, let the cat out of the bag when he said: “We don’t have much power so vote for this resolution”, meaning give him a bit of extra nuisance value.

One would have thought the Lib-Dems had learned their lesson. Just before the election they caused a completely unnecessary council meeting by not listening to what they were told by the director of planning. Clearly it gave them a taste for it, but then the Liberal-Democrats are much more interested in petty politics than they are in the future of our borough.

Fortunately they were defeated by a combination of the Tories, the Independents and the votes of the Executive which was the real target for this nonsense.

It gets worse. There was a long discussion over whether Britain should have a new bank holiday in October, to be called a community day, or another in April to celebrate St George’s Day.

This was debated as though the council had any influence over such a decision. It doesn’t. It’s the government which decides on national holidays.

Kempston Tory Jez Parma made a long speech under the guise of a question about Bedford celebrating Indian Independence Day. The speaker, Cllr Randolph Charles, twice tried weakly to shut him up and failed so we got ten minutes or more of this. Honestly, you couldn’t make it up.

The last item on this agenda called for assurances that the borough would not impose fortnightly waste collections. As we have already rejected that idea once, and as I have committed to keeping collections weekly unless it could be shown that a majority wanted them fortnightly (and pigs might fly), it was yet another waste of time brought about solely so that the Lib-Dems could pose as saviours of weekly collections.

After that resolution was disposed of, the meeting ended at 11.15 pm, four-and-aquarter hours after it started. And a good time was had by nobody except a few ranters to whom the sound of their own voices is more inspiring than the music of all the composers in history combined.

One of the anniversary events to celebrate the 30th anniversary of twinning with Bamberg was to be a commemorative walk.

I think this idea arose because Bamberg has an annual fun run in which a Bedford representative takes part. It has usually been Cllr Apu Bagchi, portfolio holder for twinning (He pays his own fare and his accommodation is paid for by Bamberg).

It was suggested that we do something similar, but I put my food down. I was prepared to walk quite a long way, but I wasn’t going to run. I suggested a 10 mile stroll which woulkd be 16km, but in the end it was reduced to a walk from the butterfly bridge to the canoe slalom and back via the northern shore of Priory Lake to take place on Sunday June 24.

It is true to say that the people of Bedford did not take this event to their heart. When I arrived at the start point near the Butterfly Bridge, there were only six people hardy enough for the walk, Nick, the walk leader, a regular hiker, my wife Marlies, myself, Cllr Lyn Faulkner and two lady members of the public.

It took us just over an hour to do the walk by which time the rain had stopped for a while.

I think it will take a few years before this walk becomes a regular part of the social calendar.

Sunday June 24 was the 30th anniversary of our first, and still most successful twinning, with the Bavarian city of Bamberg.

We welcomed visitors from Bamberg and there was a two-way giant screen conversation with Andreas Stark, the present Oberbuergermeister, the fourth since twinning started. Bamberg, of course, has had directly-elected mayors, for many years.

There have been some rumblings within the council that we should extend out twinning arrangements from the present two.

One suggestion was to resume our twinning with the Polish city of Wlocawek, another wants to twin with a town in India from which many people emigrated to Bedford.

I will not be supporting them. Council taxpayers do not like councillors travelling Europe and the World at their expense whatever the reason. To me no twinnings are valid unless there is a real interest from our community. I reduced our connection with Wlocawek for precisely the reason that there were few takers in Bedford for exchange visits.

We are twinned with Rovigo where there is a great deal of enthusiasm, but some of our Italian population argue that we should twin with a town in the south (Rovigo is in northern Italy) from where most of our population of Italian stock originate.

We have had an invitation from China, and arguably that could have some benefit as China is obviously going to become the world’s leading economy sooner or later, but in the end I think the people have to decide on twinning. If they believe it is just councillors having a holiday at their expense - even though they often involve a lot of hard work - I would prefer to limit our twinning to our present two fraternal towns.

Let me know what you think.

Coming home from Cambridge on Saturday I could see a heavy black cloud over Bedford and feared yet again for the annual kite festival.

It is now in its fifth year and since its inception has been plagued by a lack of wind. It seemed that this year it would be no wind but plenty of rain, but when I got to the site in Russell Park, the rainstorm had blown over and I was delighted to find that the kite-flyers, some of whom come from as far away as Japan and China, were proclaiming what a good day they had had with lots of kites in the air.

After I welcomed them to sodden Bedford one responded by saying how much they had enjoyed it and they intended to return next year.

My pessimism had proved misplaced. Congratulations to borough events officer Andy Pidgen on another success.

That Richard Wildman, he certainly knows how to party.

Bedford’s premier local historian is 60 this week (on June 26), and came up with a super wheeze for a party. It was held at a disused, but still consecrated, church in Cambridge, built in the 1860s sand decorated by William Morris and other artists of the period.

Richard’s brother Stephen, a distinguished art historian, gave a lecture on the history of the church and a friend, whose name I didn’t catch gave another on the Tractarians which my dictionary tells me was also known as the ‘Oxford Movement’.

Then some went to look at another church while the irredeemable among us went to a pub.

I can’t wait for Richard’s next major birthday and I hope I will stay on his guest list.

Meanwhile, happy 60th, Richard.