One nation? You're having a laugh.

As Bolsover Council embarks on its big consultation over who will suffer most from Council tax benefit cuts, their own lavish refurbishment of Clowne Arc, (their new stately home and former college), continues unabated. Have a look if you're down that way; the number of skips and the frequency they are being emptied is testimony to the priorities of this Council, spending £5.8M (which is nearly £200 per household) looking after number one

At a Committee meeting on Tuesday only one member of the Labour group was willing to break ranks, and ruin his "career" prospects by voting with me to oppose the closure of all three Community houses in the District. The other Labour Councillors wouldn't even wait for the finance staff to tell them how much money they cost to run before rushing to close them. Community houses that hadn't been staffed properly (or indeed at all) were described as "underused", whilst other centres with a thriving mix of activities were labelled as "victims of their own success". Heads you lose, tails you don't win. Even when the Domestic Violence Worker told them that a Community House was the safest and most discreet place for women suffering domestic abuse they decided that she didn't know what she was talking about and voted to close it anyway.

What was it  the one nation Miliband said "Have you ever seen such an incompetent, hopeless, out of touch, U-turning, pledge-breaking, back-of-envelope writing, make-it-up-as-you-go-along, miserable shower than this". Well now you come to mention it Ed.............."YES"............. It's the Council where the members take the highest basic allowances of any District Council in the country and pay for it by closing public toilets and community houses; reducing opening hours of contact centres and selling off our green spaces for supermarkets, come up and have a look sometime.

...one for each tree Dennis

I don't think anyone in Bolsover doesn't have a chuckle or two over Dennis Skinner's antics in the House of Commons, it's just a pity we don't see any of that same passion here in his constituency. Yesterday someone told me they had written to our MP on a local issue only to receive a reply saying he wouldn't get involved because his job was 150 miles away in London!

As its a long way to London we thought we'd make it easy for him by sending him a postcard for every tree that will be cut down if Morrison's gets built - that's 130 in all. Thanks to the Co-op who kindly offered us space at the back of their store, local residents were only to happy to put their own designs on the cards and you can judge the results for yourself:

I'm sure it'll look lovely on his office wall and it'll remind him where Bolsover is!

All Animals are Equal

The Orwellianly named “Optimisation Developments Ltd” (who are actually a subsidiary of Morrison’s) has just submitted an updated assessment along with some pretty minor revisions to both development proposals for Bolsover. I don’t know if they ever bother to check what they write but they state:

•      “In summary, the proposal will result in the demolition of an ‘Undesignated Heritage Asset’ within the Conservation Area and the development of an area of Identified Open Space. However, this will not impact on the special character and appearance of the Conservation Area and it will not prejudice the overall provision of open space in the town.

It’s the old smoke and mirrors act; here’s a green space; here’s a development on it; and....... abracadabra....... here’s a town that has not lost any green space. (Pause for applause and swooning). Who are they trying to kid? Some Councillors may be taken in but if the Secretary of State gets to appoint an Inspector he, or she, will expect to see slightly better reasoning than this desperate attempt to magic away a fundamental breach of the National Planning Policy Framework.

More interestingly in their rush to justify the sacking, sorry, development of Bolsover, they let slip that they produced designs back in December 2011 which kept both the Green and Sherwood Lodge. Obvioulsy they weren’t going to do anything so foolish as to share them with the public.

And the reason why they concluded they had to tarmac the green and demolish the lodge?......As we have said all along without their precious petrol station the site would be uneconomic. Their justification for which is on a par with the one that my children used to use.......”Tesco’s have one at Clowne”. Apparently it’s not enough that the store will be bigger than all the independent shops put together, they want their petrol sales as well. Next they’ll be demanding that the traffic is diverted to pass through the store as seems to have happened in Clay Cross I notice. Is this the society you want to live in where all the shots are called by big business and the elected Councillors simply go along with them?

However they have cleared up one little fact for us how many trees would be lost. And I’m the first to admit I got it wrong. Counting all the little circles on their map I made it 100 trees......in fact now they have been asked outright they have been forced to come clean and admit its 130. By a strange coincidence if the Caroline Spellman the former Minister is right every tree in an urban area confers £38,000 of economic and social benefits  http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jun/15/caroline-spelman-interview-green-growing-rio20?newsfeed=true It means that far from investing in the town they are not only taking out a million pounds a year if profit for their City shareholders, and the felling of 130 trees will at a stroke take another £5Million in benefit.

As for the other minor amendments it’s a little like being told, we’re going to shoot you, but we’ve heard that you don’t feel very good about it so we thought we’d consult you over the design of the gun we’re going to use. It makes very little difference

At the end of the day just like the banks Morrison’s are simply trying to make as much money as they can and to tilt the pitch completely in their direction. The purpose of an elected Council is to balance their interests with those of the residents and traders in the town and to avoid all the problems that occurred with the banks from being replayed here in Bolsover. However for some people, as Orwell observed, “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”

and it'll rain for 40 days and 40 nights....

Sometimes you can’t make it up. Bolsover Council have decided that the best name for their new posh pad in Clowne is the “Arc”. Unfortunately they haven’t quite got the spelling right but it’s a wonderful metaphor. Whilst the historic Sherwood lodge and green is buried under tons of tarmac and car exhausts the Labour Councillors batten down the hatches of their shiny new vessel in Clowne. Just like the original ark it’s even got three floors, but there seems some doubt whether it will have room for all God’s creatures. We hear that the Housing team may be left at the Riverside and that Environmental Health will be desk-sharing. At least residents will be relieved to hear that Labour Councillors will have their own office and won’t have to breathe the same air as Councillors from other parties. See even a recession has a silver lining.

Meanwhile as the Executive choose their flock wallpaper (that’s a joke by the way) they wave a cheerie Xmas goodbye to the hard-working staff in the cafe at Sherwood Lodge and residents are just waking up to find out that their Community Houses will be closed. The public toilets went last year, along with Saturday openings of the Contact centres, so what will come next year? I’d like to think that with the most savage benefit cuts the country has ever seen kicking in from April Councillors will start thinking whether they deserve a basic allowance that’s over £2,700 a year more than any other District Council in the country. Oh look I just saw another pig fly.

"Take a slice of your town centre, add it to our profit ledger"

Says is all really - from an excellent CD called Supermarket (of course) from Neil Phillips.

It prompted me to calculate just how much filthy lucre Morrison's will be hoovering up from the residents of Bolsover and passing over to support the exorbitant lifestyles of their executives and shareholders.

Although their profits are dipping Morrison's still made some £450M on sales of £8.9bn which is about 5%. Derbyshire County Council calculate the turnover from the store in Bolsover would be £21M a year.

That means that over £1M will be going from families in Bolsover straight back as profit to shareholders and investors in the City of London. This is what they mean by an "investment". Contrast this with the local shops they will put out of business when the vast majority of any profit they make is kept locally.

It used to be the Conservatives who supported market economics and the Labour party who supported co-operatives and social ownership. But it seems that Blue Labour in Bolsover is as enthralled by big business as George Osbourne in London. Good job there is still one party offering a genuine alternative to the Coalition.

Pig in a Poke

Pig in a Poke

I hear that the emails have started to light up between Morrison’s, Sharp Communications (sic) and Bolsover DC. Back in the spring when they concocted the scheme behind very thick, and much closed, doors it all seemed so easy.  Sharp Communications were “tasked” with getting the Civic Society on-board and sweet talked them in an exclusive preview to which everyone else (especially myself!) was barred.  They probably got the idea from the Council themselves who even one year later have not released any details of the process that led to the selection of Morrison’s in the first place or of the other offers made.

 However it hasn’t quite gone according to plan. In spite of the soft sell the Civic Society have objected to both scheme calling them unacceptable. Someone else who hasn’t learnt her lines is Joan Dixon the Labour County Councillor who by co-incidence works for an organisation that the Bolsover Councillor Leader Eion Watts Chairs. She has panned the designs as “brutalism” and “needless modern” and raised concern over the traffic impacts, it would be interesting to be a fly on the wall of her office. Meanwhile the Town Council have opposed the Middle Street office scheme intended to relocate the contact office and  Police; English Heritage have objected to the loss of the Green and Lodge; County highways have taken issue with the traffic report and requested further meetings and their archaeologist says that the applications have not been accompanied by the necessary archaeological reports!! All this wasn’t in the script.

But someone loves the Council, there is one solitary letter of support on the Council’s planning web-site. But it looks rather pathetic alongside the 80 plus letters of objection. It makes you wonder what Sharp Communications have been doing, but the real reason is that you can only sell a pig in a poke if the buyer is too scared to look in the bag.

It would be nice to report that Bolsover Labour Cabinet have come to their senses but they continue to throw good money after bad and have just deepened their financial hole by letting a contract to re-furbish the Council’s new white elephant, Clowne Campus. They haven’t even stopped to consider that in the post-Olympics euphoria the idea that the Council could asset-strip this site as well by selling for development the surrounding playing fields is becoming increasingly less tenable by the minute.

The good work in saving costs by sharing services with its neighbour in North Derbyshire has been undone at a single stroke by spending nearly £6M to buy and refurbishing Clowned Campus creating the farce of a Council with two HQs in Bolsover and man of its senior staff working based for long periods of time at a third office in Chesterfield or indeed the fourth depot and office at Doe Lea.

Almost makes you feel sorry for them, but this tragedy is all of their own making.

Facing the music

Firstly I’d like to thank everyone who took the time to come to Bolsover Council meeting last week to ask why Sherwood Green and Lodge has been chosen as the site for a new superstore. I had hoped that the members of the Planning Committee would also want to hear from local traders and residents but instead they chose to walk out of the meeting claiming that even hearing the questions would expose the Council to a legal challenge for predetermination.

The strange thing is that these same Councillors had just received training and should have understood the difference between an open and a closed mind. As Section 25 of the new Localism Act says “A decision-maker is not to be taken to have had, or to have appeared to have had, a closed mind when making the decision just because the decision-maker had previously done anything that directly or indirectly indicated what view the decision-maker took, or would or might take, in relation to a matter”.

There is no excuse for their actions. The law has made it very clear, they could, and should, have stayed and thus kept their mind open to what local people said. Their behaviour was not only discourteous but showed a lack of commitment to being “in touch” with the public.