Frank Branston - Blogging for a Better Bedford

I may not now blog before the New Year - although in Bedford you never can tell what might happen - so I wish all my readers, friend and foe alike, a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Do you know what a halcyon day is? Today was one for me.

My wife and I took a walk round Longholme lake and up to Cardington sluice and back through Priory Country Park. During the walk we spotted - or she did being sharper eyed for country matters than I - a cormorant, a green woodpecker, and - which is what makes it a halcyon day - a beautiful kingfisher. She also spotted that first, sitting on a branch gulping a small fish before it darted off in a flash of blue.

The old name for a kingfisher is a halcyon, so a halcyon day is one where you see a kingfisher. I have only seen three ever, one in France and two in Bedford, one of which was where the Ouse flows near the sewage farm (which does take the shine off it, I admit) and today’s.

Further along on our walk we saw a heron and lots of grebes in Priory Park.

But it is the flash of the bright blue kingfisher which I will always remember.

Old headline writers never die; they only get their typefaces mixed.

Although it is a long time since I wrote headlines I can’t help but think of 2007 as ‘the Nearly Year’: the year we nearly held on to the rugby world cup against all odds; the year Lewis Hamilton nearly became Formula One world champion in his rookie year (an opportunity he has now lost for ever); the year Ricky Hatton didn’t become world champion in another weight and gain the title of best pound for pound fighter in the world; the year Paula Radcliffe came second in her comeback race, although she made up for it in her first marathon since becoming a mother.

In football it wasn’t a nearly year because we were knocked out of the European Championship ignominiously early.

Locally, and more promisingly, we are at the nearly stage of unitary. The county’s judicial review is expected mid-January. Soon after that, we hope, the Minister will make the final decision most of us expect and want.

So, let’s hope that 2008 becomes the achievement year with Paula winning the OLympics marathon in Beijing and a host of other medals coming our way.

Sadly the county council has failed to take the opportunity to get itself off the hook it impaled itself on over unitary status.

As reported below, the Government has continued to be ‘minded to’ allow Bedford to become unitary in the teeth of all the spin the county has used in its attempt to make him change his mind.

The county claims this means he hasn’t yet made up his mind.

The truth is that the minister cannot give a final decision until he has had the case for Central Bedfordshire from Mid and South Beds and the judicial review has been heard but the fact that he is still saying ‘minded to’ in Bedford’s case means that he has seen the county council’s claim that it would do better than the borough for the nonsense that it is.

After a government announcement that Exeter and Ipswich will not now go forward as unitaries, it has been confirmed that Bedford’s march continues.

Exeter and Ipswich were always vulnerable because making them unitaries would leave their county councils - Devon and Suffolk - in being. Far from leading to savings, this would quite likely lead to increased costs.

Making Bedfordshire an all unitary county, on the other hand, would eliminate the nororiously inefficient county council, hence the Secretary for Communities and Local Government, Hazel Blears, continues ‘minded’ to make Bedford a unitary.

With this new setback to its daydream of being allowed to reign as a county unitary, will the county council now stop its judicial review and do what we all promised - co-operate for the good of the residents of Bedfordshire no matter what the result?

It would be nice to think so.

ALess than a week after I wrote here that banks ought to employ historians to prevent history repeating itself in adverse circumstances (see below), I note that a similar suggestion is being made to Government.

Professor David Cannadine, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Professor of History at London University (phew) says historical advisers should be appointed to every government department, with a chief historical adviser for the cabinet.

They would be able to point out where things have been tried and failed before.

But would the Government take notice?

Banks should employ historians because without them they have no memory.

In my adult life there have been three banking crises. In the early seventies it was the ‘tertiary’ banks. These were small banks offering high rates for savers, but they overstretched themselves and the Bank of England had to step in just like it has with Northern Rock. The bank most at risk was nationalised until it could be stabilised and sold back into the private sector.

The late eighties crisis had echoes of the present one. House prices went through the roof, people overstretched themselves to get on to the property ladder, interest rates went up in an effort to rein in inflation. Many homes were repossessed and sold by the banks at auctions where they often fetched little more than half the price they were previously thought to be worth. The banks then pursued the luckless owners for any shortfall.

The current crisis has elements of both the previous ones with the new factor that there has been so much hot money around that some banks were lending more than the property was worth. The other new factor is that this crisis is international.

As banks now seem to be run by people who would otherwise be used car salesmen, the role of th bank historian would be to say: “Hold on. The last time this happened, these were the consequences.”

On second thoughts, they would probably be ignored by the teenage bank managers pursuing impossible targets.

David Donnelly is head of Compass, the Bedford estate agents which deals with much of the borough’s newbuild property.

At a dinner last night he told me that all but one of the 87 homes in Castle Quays (possibly better known as the Castle Lane development) have been sold off the plans even though work will not be finished until August next year.

Not only that, but he has had more than 40 expressions of interest in Riverside Square before the plans are even available. One lady is desperate to buy a river front apartment and pleaded to be told as soon as they came up for sale.

Bedford town centre has been in decline for decades yet it is quite clear that people are desperate to live here if the right kind of accommodation is available.

And it seems many of them do not share the jeremiads of the architects who loathe the classical design of Riverside Square.

As I have observed before, there is a planet Architect whose inhabitants have values not shared by many of the population.