Mobile phone mast protest

We've been fighting a mobile phone mast application in my ward in Bournemouth.  There's an article in the Daily Echo today about it.  

The link is here.

The proposal is to build a mast at a busy junction in the middle of a residential area.  We've suggested an alternative site, about 800 yds away, which would give similar coverage but would be well away from any local housing and close to the masts built by other companies.

It reminded me of the protests we held last May opposing the mast proposed for The Clump in Broadstone.  I was pleased to see some of the people who were involved in those protests last weekend.  Permission was of course refused for the mast at The Clump.

Hopefully we'll have the same result in Littledown and Iford.  When will the mobile phone companies learn that rather than taking the easy option they should properly consult with local people first to ensure that they are taking their opinions on the site in to account.  It would cause them (and us) a whole lot less trouble!

Success for Parkwood Road

News reached us at the end of November that Dorset County Council has agreed to our local campaigners' requests to take positive action along Parkwood Road on behalf of its residents. The road, located near to Rowlands Hill and the Quarterjack Surgery, has been suffering parking problems and vehicle-caused obstructions for some years now. This has resulted in a situation where waste collection lorries, and even emergency vehicles, have been unable to drive along the road because of some residents' rather problematic parking.


However, back in 2005, the chairman of Wimborne Minster Town Council's Planning and Environment Committee, Cllr Michael Hodkinson, raised the issue with Dorset County Council and called for double-yellow lines to be installed along the majority of the road to alleviate these problems. He began to compile evidence and photographs, and then in early 2007 Cllr Richard Booth joined Michael's campaign and began to canvass residents along Parkwood Road to ascertain their levels of support for such a scheme. Nearly everyone backed Michael and Richard's campaign.


This was passed onto Dorset County Council and now action will be taken. The installation of double-yellow lines has been sanctioned and copies of these plans can be found in the Wimborne Minster Town Hall.


I am pleased that this situation will soon be resolved, but in the future I will be ensuring that such processes are handled with more attention and efficiency by Dorset County Council – clearly too much time passed between the issue being identified and positive action being implemented by the County Council.

Conservatives confirm opposition to ID cards

The Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis MP, has today written to the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell giving formal notice that an incoming Conservative Government would scrap the Government's ID card project.

David has also asked what provision, if any, has been made in the relevant contractual arrangements to protect the Government - and public funds - against the costs that would be incurred as a result of early cancellation of the scheme.

A similar letter has also been sent to the likely major contractors warning them of our intentions.

This is the text of the letter to Sir Gus...

"I am writing to you in relation to the Government's planned roll outof its national identity card scheme, commencing this year. You will be aware that there is a long standing convention that one Parliament may not bind a subsequent Parliament.

As you will also be aware, the Conservative Party has stated publicly that it is our intention to cancel the ID cards project immediately on our being elected to government. You are now formally on notice of our position and fully appraised of the contingent risks and associated liabilities arising from the national identity card scheme.

In light of these risks, I urge you to consider very carefully the government's position, in advance of the roll-out of the scheme later this year. As a matter of financial prudence, it is incumbent upon you to ensure thatpublic money is not wasted, and contractual obligations are not incurred, investing in a scheme with such a high risk of not being implemented. In particular, I would be interested to know what provision, if any has, been made in the relevant contractual arrangements to protect the Government - and public funds - against the costs that would be incurred as a result of earlycancellation of the scheme.

The Conservatives will be a launching campaign against Labour's ID Cards proposals tomorrow."

Hat Tip: Iain Dale

Bournemouth Borough Council Post Offices Meeting

Straight off the plane this afternoon and down to the Town Hall to attend a meeting of the Developing Communities and Tackling Crime Scrutiny and Review Panel. The meeting was about the Post Office closure programme in Dorset and a number of councillors and members of the public attended.

I'm delighted to report that a motion deploring the closure programme was passed by the panel unanimously. They also called for Bournemouth Council to approach Poole and Christchurch to organise a joint approach to any proposed closures, starting with Bournemouth offering support to Poole over their opposition to the closure of the Post Office at Adastral Square, Canford Heath.

The motion now goes to Bournemouth's Cabinet for their approval and action.

No to ID Cards

Averil King (no relation), who is the chairperson of Mid Dorset and North Poole UKIP has a letter in tonight's Daily Echo making some very good points in opposition to the Government's plans for ID cards.

Good for Averil.

I'm opposed to the ID card scheme. It will be a huge intrusion in to our privacy and it wastes money which could be so better spent elsewhere (for example, helping the Home Office keep track of convicted offenders).

Development in Back Gardens

Development in the back gardens of houses is an issue across the two boroughs of Bournemouth and Poole. 'Back filling' as it's known is being encouraged by the Government through their classifying back gardens as brown field sites, thereby making it much more difficult for Councils to reject planning applications on them.

Bournemouth's Conservatives have been fighting this form of development for some time. The Council is currently run by the Liberal Democrats and, reacting to public concern back in July the Council passed this motion:




AT A MEETING OF THE BOROUGH OF BOURNEMOUTH COUNCIL, 25 JULY 2006

c. Residential Development in Bournemouth

Councillor Garratt moved and Councillor Brandwood seconded:

‘That the Council recognises the deep concerns of many residents about the impact on the character of residential areas that redevelopment of house sites as flats may have. The Council further recognises the concerns arising from the loss of back gardens to housing development.

The Council also recognises the similarly deep concerns of many residents that the high cost of housing to buy and rent locally could mean that as their children grow up they will have to move away from Bournemouth in order to afford somewhere to live.

In order to address issues of the loss of character the Council resolves, as part of the preparation of its Local Development Framework, to consider the development of Character Assessment policies.

In order to address the issue of the loss of back gardens the Council resolves to:

1. support calls for garden land to be reclassified as green field land;
2. welcome the commitment of Bournemouth’s MPs towards securing this;
3. express its support for the specific provision within the Local Government and Planning (Parkland and Windfall Development) Bill sponsored by Lorely Burt MP, which would require the Secretary of State to issue guidance to local planning authorities to the effect that ‘the gardens of private houses should be regarded for development control purposes as green field sites.’

In order to address the need, in particular, of local people growing up in Bournemouth to be able to afford a place to live, the Council resolves to confirm that affordable housing both to buy and rent is one of its top priorities.’

The motion was carried, 34 in favour, 6 against, 3 abstentions.





Simply enough, no?





Then why is there an advert in the latest edition of the Council's magazine, delivered monthly to all residents, for a company offering to buy up back gardens in order to develop them?





Why has the Council not vetoed advertisers who specifically advertise services to which we are opposed?





My own business advertises in BH Life, we have been told that there are waiting lists for advertisers in the magazine throughout the Spring as only a certain number of adverts are accepted. The excuse that accepting adverts keeps the cost down and they have to take adverts from whichever source they can therefore doesn't pass muster.





We should be practicing what we preach and ensuring that adverts of this type are not allowed in Council publications.

Youth Crime

Attending the Crime Reduction Parnership meeting made me think about one of the common concerns raised there, that of youth crime.

I therefore have spent some time today looking out some information from the party and elsewhere about the issue. The figures are quite astounding. The shocking statistics were obtained by Conservatives under the Freedom of Information Act.

· Across the country, a third of all muggings last year were on 11-16 year olds. They are seen as easy targets by muggers seeking mobile phones and MP3 players. In turn, 11-16 year olds were responsible for 40 per cent of all robberies.

· The Government, despite claiming street crime is a top priority, does not properly monitor the level of youth muggings.

· There were a projected 113,000 robberies on 11 to 16-year-olds last year across England & Wales. This is equivalent to over 600 muggings a day for each of the 195 school days.

· In Dorset 23%, or 55 of 239 personal robberies reported were on 11 to 16 year olds.

These new statistics reveal a worrying area of crime that has gone unrecognised. This is likely to be the tip off the iceberg given how few crimes are actually reported.

Secondary school students and their parents will immediately recognise the picture of life these crime figures paint. Having mobiles and ipods routinely stolen, being marched to the cashpoint, seeing their friends mugged – this is the everyday life for too many of our teenagers. Too often these crimes are carried out by people of their own age.

Youth-on-youth crime could be a serious long-term problem and the Government are not properly monitoring it. I believe young people have a right to expect violent crime against them to be taken seriously by this Government.

For that reason I want to work with our local Crime Reduction Partnerships to identify both the victims and perpetrators of these crimes. We should be offering support to the victims and looking for Community involvement in the identification of those who carry out the attacks.

Helping with the cost of living

The official inflation rate at the moment is 2.7%, I think it's pretty clear to all of us that this doesn't reflect the true increase in the cost of living in the past twelve months.

I've certainly found that the combination of increases in utility costs, the mortgage rate, council tax and fuel duty have hit my pocket.

As many of you may know, I'm one of the owners of Rubyz, the cabaret restaurants in Bournemouth. A night out with us is one of those luxuries people tend to cut out if money is tight, and we've noticed in the last six months that many of our regular customers aren't coming as often as before. The answer from most is that money is tight and therefore they simply don't have the spare cash to go out as much as possible.

Talking to other people with small businesses this seems to be fairly common.

I'm therefore very pleased that the party is recognising this fact with the second update of their 'Sort it' web site. The publicity for the site says:

Life is expensive and the cost of living is increasing faster than our salaries, making our pockets feel ever emptier.

But don’t panic, there are ways to cut the cost of living and live your life for less.

Just click below to check out the sort-it website’s latest issue – ‘live life for less.’

http://www.sort-it.co.uk

The site has links to a number of different web addresses where you can compare the cost of utility companies, find out where the cheapest petrol is in your area and even compare the cost of your weekly shop between supermarkets.

Save Dorset's Post Offices - Update from Oliver Letwin

Oliver Letwin MP, who of course represents West Dorset, is in the process of establishing a task force to look at ways by which sub post office incomes can be increased, thereby enabling them to stay open.

Here's what his office has to say:

Oliver Letwin, who has campaigned vigorously against post office closures both locally (at Toller Porcorum and Bradpole) and nationally, is now seeking to establish a task force. This will consist of representatives of all levels of local government and local bodies, others with expertise in the field, and volunteers willing to lend their support. Their role will be to prepare plans to increase revenues or find imaginative ways of sharing costs for sub-post offices that are threatened as a result of the Government’s new proposals.

It's an excellent initiative and one that hopefully can be extended to the rest of the County.

Save Dorset's Post Offices

Be they in rural areas or those like our own sub post offices provide a vital service to the community.

This Government has progressively transferred services away from the local Post Offices thereby cutting their income and making them increasingly less viable financially.

To my mind the current Social Network contribution of £150million is a small price to pay for the service those remaining offices provide. When you consider that the government spent £1.1 billion on the services of consultants alone last year it puts this amount in to perspective.

At a time when the government is also cutting subsidies to our local authorities which in turn cause them to cut back their support for public transport, I would have thought that we should be investing in businesses which provide local access to a range of services.

Sub Post Offices provide services to both residents and businesses. If we are to retain vibrant and diverse rural and suburban areas then Sub Post Offices must be part of that picture. The alternative is to force more and more people in to their cars in order to commute to obtain the services they need.


We'd be very grateful of your support for the petition, please sign it by logging on here and following the on screen instructions.

Campaigning against NHS cuts

Thanks to everyone who signed our Stop Gordon Brown's NHS Cuts petition on Saturday. We spent some time in Wareham, Poole Town Centre and outside ASDA at Canford Heath and collected over 500 signatures to boost the petition.

If you didn't get a chance to sign out petition, you can do so online here.

Why are we campaigning on these issues?

The Royal College of Nursing estimated in August that 18,000 jobs have been cut from NHS hospitals in recent months, 81 community hospitals are still threatened by cutbacks or closure, according to the Community Hospitals Association; 2,036 bed losses have occurred since April

This is on top of the 2,500 beds which were lost from NHS hospitals in 2004-05 and the 6,000 beds cut from NHS hospitals in 2005-06. In just three years, therefore, the NHS is set to lose 12,500 beds – a cut in capacity of 7 per cent.

We want an end to Labour's interference, the NHS has just gone through its tenth reorganisation since Labour came to power nine years ago. We believe decisions affecting local services should not be taken by distant politicians, but by the patients and frontline staff who use and work in our local NHS.

Too much money has been diverted from patient care by an NHS bureaucracy which has swelled its ranks by over 100,000 people since 1997. Gordon Brown's financial mismanagement is forcing short-term decision-making. Hospitals are closing their wards to patients without replacing them with the services needed in the community.

We believe that short-term cuts in the NHS at the expense of building services for the future are unacceptable, and that this short-sightedness will prove even more costly in the long run.

I have a number of friends and family members who work in the NHS, their experiences bear these comments out. We should be very proud of our health service, the dedication of the staff working within it is examplary. It's such a shame that it's the politicians who have let it down, it's time it was freed from being a political football and placed under the control of an independent board.

Finally, it was good too to see our local Lib Dems campaigning at ASDA as well, I support wholeheartedly their campaign for more funding for our local police force. I wish them luck with their campaign and I hope we'll be seeing them campaigning as often as we are on these vital issues.