A new politics? Lewisham Liberal Democrats

"Don't let anyone tell you that the only choice is the old politics", Nick Clegg, April 2010

Over recent weeks, I've been watching the leaflets fall through the door. Labour do a nice line in photos of Hilly Fields; every single thing that Steve Bullock has done has apparently been because of the Greens (rumour has it that the mayoral knight can't tie his own shoelaces without Darren Johnson having "campaigned hard" for it first); and if there are Tory leaflets, well, they must be too big for my letter box.

All the usual electoral fare. But, as we all know, what is different this time round is the rise of the Lib Dems. Sweeping all before them they promise change, honesty and a fresh, new politics.

So, why is their election material in Lewisham so negative - and their arguments resting on dodgy ground? Tamora Langley, the Lib Dem parliamentary candidate, berates Labour for having done nothing on violent crime. This is nothing more than low grade populism. Reported violent crime may have increased, but it's a big jump from there to saying that violent crime is up. As the British Crime Survey demonstrates, there are enough grey areas to make it almost impossible to say "violent crime is going up. Indeed, the Tories got caught out when they tried just this.

But Tam Langley ignores these nuances to make a blatant and sweeping partisan point that is helpful to no one and nothing but Liberal Democrat election prospects. As further evidence of her opportunism, she puts the blame on Labour. Last time I looked the Mayor of London was responsible for the Metropolitan Police, and if memory serves me correctly, he's a Tory.

Still, don't let something as inconvenient as the facts get in the way of a populist rant. This is an election after all, although I thought the Liberals were offering a "new politics".

It's also very hard to take their claims to be a new broom seriously when they draw so many of their candidates from the Westminster Village. Indeed, Ms Langley is a lobbyist with Weber Shandwick.

Now, some of my best friends are lobbyists, and it would be childish to write off Tam Langley simply because of her job. However, I'm afraid she makes that very easy for us to do when we see that she is blogging about her campaign for . . . er, lobbyists Weber Shandwick.

If the Liberals really want to offer us a new politics then they should stop publicly using their campaign experiences for the benefit of the private lobbyist companies who employ them.

Bookies back the Greens

A Green Party leaflet dropped through the door this week, informing us that, "The Green Party are the most likely challengers to Labour in Lewisham Deptford . . . according to bookmakers."

There's a delicious irony with the Greens claim backing from those they have spent so much time trying to hound out of the constituency.

Gordonbrock battle lines

The local blogosphere reports that Gordonbrock's headteacher and chair of governers have dismissed the Brockley Society's position as "unrealistic and misleading". I've written before about my perception that opposition to the plans is based largely upon aesthetic and heritage perceptions of the building's value, with discussion of the business of teaching appearing as an after thought.

Having followed the debate I see little reason to change my mind. Fundamentally, I trust the judgement of the education professionals. My interest at the moment is not educational - Gordonbrock is within spitting distance of my house and I admit the buildings are attractive - but given its proximity it's possible and even likely that it's where T will begin his school career.

In this instance I'm going to trust the judgement of those whose primary focus is the education of kids.

Transition Towns

I appear to be forming part of a local debate.

Fred Wedlock

Sad news from the West Country. Fred Wedlock - singer, comedian, local legend - has passed away. A fixture from childhood, our parents remember The Oldest Swinger in Town, while we recall HTV's The Good Neighbour Show.

My dad arranged for Fred to do a gig at Clevedon Bowling Club, sometime in the early '90s. He was great. As we saw him off at the end of the night (in a Volvo estate, if I remember rightly) he left us a couple of his tapes.

I'll have a listen tomorrow morning.

An orchard for Hilly Fields?

Brockley Central have suggested that an organisation calling itself "Transition Brockley" are working to plant an orchard on Hilly Fields.

I've said why I think that this is daft, but is this is some bunch of obscurantists beavering away at the very edge of reality, or is there a chance that someone somewhere has decided to turn my local park from open space to glorified allotment?

Gordonbrock School

A very nice man gave me a flyer for the "SaveGordonbrock" website while I was enjoying a pint in the Wickham Arms.

It's likely my boy will end up there (Gordonbrock School, not the Wickham Arms - well, perhaps not yet) so I'll claim an interest.

So, to the website I went, and I also followed the debate on the Green Ladywell blog. Those opposing the plans seem to be doing so from an almost entirely aesthetic standpoint. In fact, the campaign website makes no argument beyond that of putting some nice photos of the school up and asking for the Council to leave it alone.

I am passionate about the built and historic environment, but even I need reasons other than architectural to oppose the rebuild.

My son might go here in a couple of years. I want to know whether a new school building will improve his education and that of his peers. What the Victorian Society thinks might be a consideration, but it's a very slight one.

Downtime

I have not blogged for half the year. Not that anyone has missed me. Not that I expected that anyone would.

A few things have got in the way. I've moved house. From nearer the Ladywell Tavern to nearer the cemetery. This has filled many an hour, when I'm not with, T now two years' old and taking him round his manor, which extends from the tractor on Blythe Hill Fields to the train on Hilly Fields (and occasionally, the roundabout by One Tree Hill). Work is busy (although it might be about to get less busier - watch this space).

In short, I have had other things to do, but I hope to blog occasionally but more frequently in coming weeks. There's plenty to talk about. Lots happening locally, lots of places to see in coming weeks (including a welcome trip back to the West Country), lots happening politically, lots happening culturally.

EHRC

The controversy at the Equality and Human Rights Commission continues to fill the column inches.

I do not claim to know what the real issues are, other than what I have read, but there are some very telling comments being made.

Take the view of outgoing commissioner Ben Summerskill that: "Trevor is a brilliant communicator . . . but he has not been successful in running the commission . . . it's an issue about old fashioned management."

Really?

A failure of management does appear to be at the root of many of the EHRC's problems, as it's audit travails and resignation of its CEO show.

But this level of management should not, if my understanding of quango operations is correct, be the day to day concern of Trevor.

Has he been sticking his nose into the affairs of officers a bit too much, or have officers not had the strategic direction and support that would empower them to do their job properly?

Cockerel

Has anyone else heard the cock crowing in Ladywell? I think it's somewhere up Chudleigh Road.

Flintoff

Oh, Fred. Freddie. Why did it have to end like this?

Whether he was a great cricketer, or simply a very good one doesn't come into it. He's Fred. A huge, immovable lump of Englishness. A boozer, a bowler, a batsman.

I'm happily hetrosexual, but Fred's enormous frame almost excites me. Just to see him charging into bowl raises the hackles in a way I can remember no other sportsman can.

Well we ever see his like again?

Thanks for the memories, Freddie.

Ashes

One day to go. I have - twice - been offered tickets for the first test in Cardiff. They have been turned down because the inlaws have decided to visit. This has made me very happy indeed.

With the series no longer on terrestrial TV I expect to be spending a lot of the coming weeks in pubs, but with the exception of the Coach and Horses none of the local boozers have Sky.

Perhaps the Ladywell Tavern should invest in a big screen for the duration of the summer?

For now I will console myself with the memory of one of the greatest sporting moments it has been my privilege to have seen live - Gary Pratt's run out of Ricky Ponting.

People's Day

Well, I'll be watching the Brockley Ukelele Group.

End of the Quangos

Quangos need looking at. So says David Cameron, whom, we must assume, is blissfully unaware that Maggie promised the same, and so did Blair.

New Labour's beef was the supposed anti-democratic tendencies of the quango state, and its solution was devolution. By accident or design, this is what happened, at least in Wales, where the Assembly government brought functions such as tourism and arts in house. Something similar may have happened in England, but the voters decided that they didn't want regional government.

Cameron echoes Labour's democratic argument, saying that too many quangos are responsible for making policy. He has a point, but it only goes so far. Civil servants are, in many cases, the very worst people to be solely advising on policy. The cult of the generalist, and the relatively closed world of Whitehall sees to that.

In any case, civil servants and politicians will often need to call on expert advice, and often you want that to be arms' length from the state. So I can see a case for retaining NICE, or even the Advisory Council on Historic Shipwrecks

It's interesting that the Tories have begun to attack quangos. The previous tactic of alleging public spending was not delivering service improvement has been shelved - too vulnerable to Labour charges that the Tories will cuts schools and hospitals. But they still want to reduce the tax burden and attack the government. Quangos is the key to this.

It is fraught with difficulty. Maybe not politically and in the short term. The argument resonates with the public, and that is perhaps why right wing commentators are linking quango CEOs pay and benefits with the MPs' expenses row.

But will it deliver the savings the Tories seek? Unlikely. The Tories will find they need independent advice, and that function will remain.

As for executive and regulatory agencies, the question is not whether these functions are best done by a quango or directly by local or central government. If the Tories want to see savings then the question is whether the function needs to be done at all. Hiding behind the quango issue is the decision over whether or not particular services and functions should be cut.

The quango debate is, to an extent valid. Are certain functions of the state best undertaken directly or at arms' length? That is a question about efficiency and effectiveness, and sometimes democracy too.

For all Cameron says, this is not what the Tories are about. Unable to press home the attack on public spending in the manner of their choosing, they are doing so obliquely with an assault on the quango state. Politically, this is likely to be highly successful. In reality, though, the next Tory government will get nowhere the public sector savings it dreams off through shutting some quangos. Indeed, the bleating about "efficiency savings" across government has already begun.

However it is dressed up, cuts are coming.

Banal comment of the week

Razia Iqbal on BBC news reporting on the Gormley take on the 4th Plinth:

"As the Facebook generation know, everything can be art".

Brilliant.

Big fish

No, I wasn't dreaming. As walked by the Ravensbourne next to Cornmill Gardens I noticed fish somewhat bigger than usual in the water. Then I noticed there were a lot more fish than I'm used to seeing in this river.

I'm pretty sure they were trout, and as they were all struggling upstream, I wonder if they are spawning?

In any case, an impressive sight. Does anyone know if they were trout? If so, is this a recent occurence? Is the river cleaner of late?

Ladywell Fields: a house divided

Saturday afternoons are no longer filled with rugby, and I take T out.

These are busier times than my usual morning visits, and it's interesting to see how people use the park.

My usual route, established over the past year, is to enter the park by the station, take a left to look at the ducks in the river, down to the play area for the swings and slide, then up via the ship climbing frame past the cafe.

A month of doing this after lunch has confirmed as hard fact what was previously a mere impression.

More middle class families hang around by the cafe, and are less likely to venture to the play park at the bottom.

I wonder why?

Libraries blah blah blah

Once again the metropolitan literati wade into the field of local cultural policy making. Rachel Cooke has decided that libaries are in crisis. That they are statutory services, that she trots out anecdote not evidence, that she feels she and her column could and should trump local decision making - all of this is part of that same pattern of argument which sees cultural critics think that they're expertise stretches from judging plays and books to making a call on what local services should be delivered in particular local communities.

I've made this point before, and it would be tiresome to rehearse it again - tempting though it would be to pen an extended critique of Ms Cooke's article.

Suffice to say that Rachel Cooke's statement that Andy Burnham should be more attuned to her view because he went to a state school "before Cambridge" is patronising at best and dismissively arrogant at worst.

Councillors and local service managers meet local people and users every day of the week. They know more about what people want than Rachel and her ilk can ever hope to.

They just don't have newspaper columns to give free range to their views.

An open letter to the dog owners of Brockley.

Dear Cananists (although an abusive term for Onanists may be more appropriate)

Is it beyond reason that you clean up after your dogs? In particular, what is it about the top end of Tresillian Road? Why do you insist on letting them crap there? Why do you leave it? Why do you have to let them go in the middle of the pavement?

You people are the scum of the earth. Do you know how unpleasant it is to clean it off the wheels of a buggy by hand?

Yours, ever

WC

Tory localism

The past couple of years have seen a near consensus amongst Tories and Labour on the rhetoric of local government. Localism and double devolution, community empowerment and negotiated priorities have dominated the discourse.

Rhetoric and reality remain largely disconnected. Labour's local government reforms have tended in the right direction, but, as Simon Jenkins pointed out in yesterday's Guardian, without devolution of financial responsibility (i.e. revenue raising powers) localism remains merely an aspiration.

For all their rhetoric, the same charge can be levelled at the Tories. Their recent Policy Green Paper, Control Shift. Returning Power to Local Communities, is a major disappointment. Its proposals are remarkably similar to the government's, and in many instances merely semantic differences. What is the tangible difference between the current duty to promote economic, environmental and social wellbeing, and the paper's proposed "power of competence"?

If the Tories really want to put clear blue water between them and Labour, they should have sought ways to devolve financial powers to local authorities. On this, the paper was silent.

Instead, the paper is a agglomeration of small scale initiatives and partisan appeals to those worried about development in their back yard (who simultaneously bemoan the lack of affordable housing) and those encouraged to fury by the Taxpayers Alliance over public sector pay. It's more partisan than might have been expected.

Tuesday saw the proposals defended by Caroline Spelman on the Today programme. She took the partisan defence of the Tory position to another level. She defended a Tory commitment to localism with the bizarre statement that as more councils were now Tory, then power could be devolved to them. In short, only Tory councils deserved more power. As well as being a strange basis for localism, this view is also profoundly undemocratic. That she made it openly begs into question her intelligence and competence (as did her assertion that Labour councils could not be trusted because of the council tax rises they posted in the 1970s - the council tax didn't exist in the 1970s).

The Tories may have begun with a meaningful commitment to localism, but it's been lost in an appeal to their core vote in the shires, a stance on devolution that flies in the face of democratic principles, and a staggering level of incompetence and ignorance on the part of the shadow secretary of state.

Control Shift is more than a missed opportunity. It's a damning indictment of Tory thinking on local government. This is perhaps one area where I genuinely thought the Conservatives might have something to offer. Sadly, it's better the devil you know.