Frantic rearrangement of EDDC’s schedule (“Nothing to do with the election” , said Cllr Paul Diviani at this evening’s Cabinet meeting) has prompted a correspondent to send us this:
‘I trust that when the next set of EDDC councillors control the army of Knowledge communications officers, the EDDC website will continue to provide as much amusement (and possibly a bit more information) for local residents. See eddc-press-release-manageable-growth ‘
The post below, in which Independent councillor and potential Parliamentary candidate Claire Wright speaks of people having to choose between “eating and heating” reminds us of this post which appeared in November 2013 (NOT, of course, an East Devon Watch post!) at the time o the MPs expenses scandal was at its height. He had become Minister of State at the Foreign Office on 4 September 2012.
It is believed that Mr Swire currently pays his own energy bills from his £100,000+ salary.
Source: http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/mp-energy-expenses-fuel-poverty.html
Note:
Ministerial salaries:
and here is a list of ALL their perks:
Press release:
The Independent Claire Wright is making ground fast in the race to represent Devon East after the next General Election. Her odds, originally quoted at 66/1, have improved and now stand at 9/2 according to William Hill. Hugo Swire’s odds have deteriorated again. In late February, he was standing at 1/12 and is now at 1/6. This further confirms Claire Wright’s position as the main challenger to the Conservative who has held the seat since 2001 but who has been widely criticised for neglecting the constituency. UKIP remain in third position, at 18/1, followed by the Liberal Democrats at 40/1. Labour trails in last place at 100/1.
Claire Wright, already regarded as the independent with the best chance of success in the election across the whole of the UK, welcomed the latest confirmation of her position.
“My team and I have been working hard to show that I have the best chance of unseating Mr. Swire. The local press has been full of supporting letters, not least in refuting some of my opponent’s ridiculous and patronising claims. For example, he wrote about independents ‘popping up’ and being ineffective in Parliament. I am delighted to have ‘popped up’, just like Mr Swire. We are both exercising our democratic rights. His claim that, effectively, a vote for anyone but him would lead to chaos, is preposterous. If independents can do nothing in Parliament, I cannot understand how a vote for me could lead to chaos!
“I started my campaign last June and my manifesto was launched in January. It was based on my experience as a town, district and county councillor and also on a survey that I undertook to find out what concerned local people. Since then, in many hundreds of conversations with local residents and representatives from local businesses, several key points have emerged repeatedly.
“Many voters are tired of the main parties, the system under which they operate and the absurd claim that ‘we are all in this together’. As I meet elderly people, now denied readily available hospital beds or local buses, I become angry.
“Eight supporters have given the Conservative party £12.2 million so far during this Parliament. Is it right that so much is given to so few to rule so many?
“I find it offensive that in this country, which has the fifth largest economy in the world, some people have to choose between heating and eating. It is clear to me that voters want significant change. They are angry and frustrated with Conservative-led government at central and local level. They want to be represented by someone who lives in the constituency, knows about its problems and will always be free to speak and free to act. If I am fortunate enough to be elected, I can promise that I shall listen to my constituents and work hard for them in Parliament.”
From a correspondent. Imagine if you are a new “silver surfer” when EDDC says most of its services will be offered online only!
“I started to look for where the minutes for the last Overview and Scrutiny meeting and agenda for the next one could now be found.
Answer – Nowhere!!!! Or at least not at first sight.
On the home page as it is displayed you can go to:
Planning
Recycling & rubbish
Licensing
Environmental maintenance
Council Tax
Benefits and support
Under this list is a full width slider with colour photographs advertising:
View a planning application (on your mobile)
Countryside education
Countryside volunteering
Local and Community Nature Reserves
Home safeguard
Open for business (a self-advert for this new website)
and below that some links to News and Events items.
Could I find ANYTHING about Committees? Heck no.
But eventually I found a “Show A-Z of more Services” line which when I clicked gave me some more headings:
Building control
Business and investment
Cemeteries
Community safety
Consultation and surveys
Council and democracy
Countryside
Customer services
Dogs
Elections and registering to vote
Emergency planning
Environment
Feedback and complaints
Food hygiene and safety
Freedom of Information and Data Protection
Grants and funding
Health and safety
Homelessness
Housing
Jobs and careers
Noise
Parking
Parks, gardens and recreation
Pest control
Property services
Public toilets
Regeneration projects
Seaside
Sidmouth folk week
Visit
Did you spot it? No sign of the word Committee – but with some intelligent guessing I clicked on “Council and democracy” (“Find out who your councillor is, how the council operates and agendas for meetings”) and then “Committees and Meetings” and then “Overview and scrutiny committee” and then “Minutes” and then the date and hey presto, like magic (a very slow, and unimpressive type of magic though) there they were.
What exactly does this say about the importance of councillors and the meetings they attend which make the decisions when they are buried like this. And I am pretty Internet savvy and yet I had difficulty finding the link – so how will people who are not experienced with navigating websites hope to find it???
Of course I could have put “overview scrutiny” in the search box and found the O&S Committee quickly by that route. And some people will use search immediately. But some doddery old fools (like me) will try to navigate to the page and have significant difficulties in finding it when it is hidden and so many levels down.
The “old” web site may have looked tired, but the alphabetic index at the top was intuitive and enabled you to find what you wanted fairly quickly. By comparison, this “new” website may be built on new technology, but is ease of use is very poor indeed.”
And there is nothing anyone can do about it.
All he has to do is attend one full council every six months – although even if he doesn’t, provided his colleagues accept his reason, he can still continue and get his £10,000 allowance plus expenses (which theoretically might cover his airfare and maybe even hotel accommodation). He can do this till 2017 when county council elections are next due.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-31831665
Thanks to Independent Councillor and Parliamentary candidate Claire Wright who campaigned to keep them from the very beginning and liaised with Defra and Devon Wildlife Trust to ensure that, in line with local public opinion, they would be allowed to stay, if healthy.
Hugo Swire merely noted on his website that he was pleased to hear the news they might be allowed to stay.
Naming no names, but have some of them heard there will be local elections in May? Some obviously have and are closely covering the issues and the candidates. Others? Newspapers are supposed to cover NEWS. Are elections not news?
The (unofficial) newspaper “purdah” period will start in early April, when newspapers voluntarily agree to keep election information unbiased and balanced.
This is similar to, but not the same as local authority purdah when councils avoid controversial decisions which would bind the next council. Hence the undue haste for the decision on Knowle relocation. The majority party (Conservative) dare not risk leaving it to the next council to decide – even though they will be bound to the decisions and costings. Maybe they know something we don’t … nothing new there!
But, with some newspapers, we really won’t notice the difference.
Thank heaven for bloggers!
From a computer-savvy correspondent:
This morning is when EDDC are making another attempt to switch over to their new and improved (??) web site.
We should expect several things:
1. Links to documents on the old site will now be broken;
2. Links to documents on the new site before the switch over may now be broken;
3. A whole lot of information will no longer be available online – even relatively recent items (like minutes from over 12 months ago) and no longer available online – you will have to go cap in hand to (un-)democratic services to get hold of them.
Which is just what democracy needs in the run up to an election – an absence of the information needed to hold the current administration to account.
There was a warning on the old web site for a few days that it would be down from 10am, but they appear to have ignored that and started early.
Note: how (in)convenient that this should take place just before major meetings and local elections?
The planning system is in urgent need of reform
SIR – How many communities across the country have fought hard and continue to fight against inappropriate development only to be swept aside by a planning system that is now so heavily weighted in favour of developers and development? The Government’s complacent response to the Communities and Local Government Committee’s (CLG) recent report on the operation of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) seems to reject the suggestion that there are problems.
One particular concern of ours is the over-harsh application of the presumption in favour of development, when according to the Government many councils do not yet have an up-to-date local plan in place and are deemed not to have a five-year land supply. The Government believes that this will force all councils to accelerate their local plans and to a certain extent this is true, but at the same time they badly misunderstand local party politics. Councils do not suffer from rampant opportunistic exploitation by developers; it is local people and communities who suffer, but little is currently being done to protect them or the environment, pending the adoption of a new local plan.
The CLG supported our concerns, saying that “the NPPF is not preventing unsustainable development in some places” and that “inappropriate housing is being imposed upon some communities as a result of speculative planning applications”.
A key recommendation was that “the same weight is given to the environmental and social (dimensions) as to the economic dimension”. Whilst not agreeing with every aspect of the CLG committee report, we can at least see that it did understand the need to reform the operation of the NPPF. The Department for Communities and Local Government completely disregarded the point and clearly thinks that everything is going well.
In the run-up to the general election we are asking all political parties to publish their manifesto position on planning and, in particular, to state their position on the CLG recommendations. We also invite them to say whether, and how, they will protect people and communities from inappropriate development.
Above all we urge voters to vote only for party candidates who support proposals to rebalance the planning system.
Signed by COVOP members
covop.org
East Devon Watch 