Tacky, tacky, tacky – or enhancing the view? Wonder what it has cost to ruin the view?
http://www.devon24.co.uk/news/controversial_jurassic_sculptures_are_making_waves_1_3979232
Monthly Archives: March 2015
The missing voters: EDDC may not be looking after us but other people in the area are!
Knowle bidder revealed by Herald
The Herald can reveal that Pegasus Life Ltd is the preferred bidder for the East Devon District Council-owned site, and has offered ‘between £7million and 8million’ for the land.
The company is proposing to replace the existing offices with ‘retirement and extra care living for over 100 people’, according to council documents.
The controversial relocation project would see EDDC use the money from the Knowle sale to fund a move to vacant offices at Exmouth Town Hall and purpose built facilities at Honiton’s Heathpark.
http://www.sidmouthherald.co.uk/news/breaking_mystery_knowle_bidder_revealed_1_3978943
MPs £67,000 is just peanuts to this University Vice-Chancellor!
Government changes to make judicial review harder thrown out
Police and Crime Commissioner staff – a comparison with South Wales
A good comparison for the type of area that our local Police and Crime Commissioner covers (Devon and Cornwall) is South Wales. It also has a mix of large cities (Cardiff, Swansea), large and small towns and coastal and very rural areas. It has a similar number of police – 3,556 in Devon and Cornwall and 3,148 in South Wales.
Here our Commissioner needs a staff of 23 or 31 (depending on who is counting). In South Wales, their Commissioner manages on a staff of 16, including the Commissioner.
Planning Inspector tells it as it is to EDDC: no ” political sensitivity” – get on with it!
EDDC tried to pull the wool over our eyes by saying that they could not deal with public consultation on the (second) draft of the Local Plan because it would be “politically sensitive” before district council elections in May 2015 and Leader Diviani sent out a long press release giving his reasons:
We reported this here:
We noted that Mid Devon was consulting on its Local Plan (albeit without important housing figures) so it was “politically sensitive” in East Devon but not in Mid Devon:
Then we heard that East Devon had done a complete about-turn and now WOULD be releasing consultants’ figures AND putting the Local Plan out to consultation after all – with a subtle mention that the Planning Inspector had forced them to change their minds:
We found EDDC’s letter of 6 February 2015 to the Planning Inspector attempting to justify their first move on file in the EDDC website:
Click to access lettertolocalplaninspector060215.pdf
But, oddly, not the letter FROM the Planning Inspector which led to the U-turn. Thanks to reader who requested this information, we now have Mr Thickett’s response to EDDC’s letter of 6 February which our reader tells us was not on their website yesterday but, after the request for a copy, IS on EDDC’s website today:
Click to access letter-no-11-to-east-devon-090215.pdf
Interestingly, the reply from Mr Thickett was dated 9 February 2015 but never made it on to the Local Plan website until today, nearly a month late.
Mr Thickett’s brusque response makes it clear that he will have no truck with “political sensitivity” and he wants this out there and sorted. He says (again) that he had anticipated re-hearing the Local Plan in October 2014 and appears less than happy with how things have turned out.
Same here, Mr Thickett, same here.
Claire Wright a real threat to Hugo Swire according to William Hill bookmaker
Press Release:
CLAIRE WRIGHT CONFIRMED, AGAIN, AS MAIN CHALLENGER TO HUGO SWIRE
Claire Wright, the Independent candidate for Devon East, has been confirmed, again, as the candidate most likely to oust the current MP, Hugo Swire in the General Election.
William Hill say that her odds are 7/1. She is followed by UKIP at 16/1, the Liberal Democrats at 33/1 and Labour at 100/1. The current MP’s odds are 1/9.
An experienced spokesman for William Hill said that she was the only independent candidate in the country with odds in single figures and the next best, the comedian Al Murray, had odds of 50/1. “This means that she has the best chance of any independent of being successful.
“I believe that it is unprecedented for a genuinely independent candidate, not already in national politics and not identified with a single issue, to have such odds.”
Earlier Ladbrokes quoted Claire Wright at 6/1 and said that she had the best chance of any independent in the country of success.
Responding to the latest odds, Claire commented “What a boost it is for the campaign to have such great odds on winning the East Devon seat. It is really motivating! I am talking to people every day during my campaigning and they tell me time and time again that they are looking for someone who is going to properly represent their views, with none of the excuses the current MP makes for not doing so.
“The positive feedback I am continually receiving feels as though there is an ever-increasing energy to get me elected. We will be working hard to ensure that, when the General Election comes, the people of East Devon will have an MP who will put their interests ahead of a party.”
Claire Wright is running a very active campaign across the constituency and her next public meeting will be on Tuesday 10th March, at the Unitarian Church, at the junction of All Saints Road and Sidmouth High Street.
Other events are already scheduled for Budleigh Salterton, (18th March at the Masonic Hall), Ottery St. Mary (27th March at the Institute), Sidmouth (Woolbrook) (1st April at St. Francis Church Hall) and Exmouth (16th April at the Rugby Club, Imperial Road). All the meetings begin at 7.00 except the one at Woolbrook which commences at 8.00.
Pity DMC’s concerns aren’t consistent
The agenda for today’s meeting of the Development Management Committee at EDDC includes an officer recommendation for a representation to the Mid Devon Local Plan consultation:
5. That potential commuting patterns, especially for work
purposes, of the future residents of Cullompton are
accurately assessed. This is especially significant noting the
ease of car travel from Cullompton to the strategic
employment sites in the West End of East Devon (e.g. a drive
time of 11 minutes from M5 Junction 28 to the Science Park).
There is quite a lot more including a reference to the A373 Cullompton to Honiton road being ‘narrow in places’.
An EDWatcher comments, “It’s intriguing that EDDC are so concerned about the traffic implications of commuting from Cullompton, and yet no similar concern was expressed for the impact of our 1400 job industrial estate between Sidford and Sidbury, where the road through the village is much narrower than the A373.”
EDWatch says, “We’d burst out laughing, if this were a laughing matter!”
Ottery General Election upset on the cards?
An increasing number of people seem to think so…http://www.heart.co.uk/exeter/news/local/ottery-general-election-upset-on-cards
Police and Crime Commissioner staff levels in the rest of the south west
See pist below – ours has 23 or 31, depending on who is counting!
Dorset: 15 plus 30 volunteers
Click to access OPCC%20Office%20Structure%201.10.14.pdf
Avon and Somerset:21
Click to access OPCC-Staff-Structure.pdf
Bristol: 21
Click to access OPCC-Staff-Structure.pdf
Gloucestershire: 16
Click to access Office-of-the-Police-and-Crime-Commissioner-as-October-2014.pdf
How many Police and Crime Commissioner staff does it take to change a lightbulb? 23 or 31 …
23! Or, according to a sharp-eyed reader, 31 (a recent newspaper said 23, the organisation chart below lists 31).
And see link below for the details of what the 23 or 31 (or more?) staff “do”.
Truly, truly shocking when you think we managed without him in the past with a panel that cost us a fraction of what he costs – not including the cost his £500,000 relocation to Middlemoor next year (something he said he would never do):
West Seaton and Seaton Hole Association – public meeting on Thursday
A public meeting to officially launch the West Seaton and Seaton Hole Association will take place in Seaton Town Hall on Thursday 5 March 2015 at 7 pm.
The problem of “starter homes”
Broadband connections failing rural South West, says Somerset MP
“… Tessa Munt, Liberal Democrat MP for Wells, Somerset, said the coverage of “super-fast” connections “hardly meets the needs of rural businesses and residents”.
According to the latest data published by Ofcom, just 44% of Somerset gets the fastest hook-up. Devon is also in the slow-lane, boasting just 45% coverage. Cornwall, meanwhile, is up to 72% – principally thanks to extra EU cash.
However, London boroughs can expect 100% coverage and even Plymouth is up to 94%.
MPs on the influential Environment, Food and Rural Affairs select committee already fear getting the connections to 95% of the country will miss its 2017 target. Some MPs are also concerned about the dominance of telecoms giant BT, which has scooped all 44 regional contracts under the Broadband Delivery UK programme.
Campaigners have further voiced their fears over scrapping an open tender process to get broadband to the final 5% hardest-to-reach areas in Devon and Somerset.
The move will effectively hand the second phase of the roll-out in the two counties to BT under the Connecting Devon and Somerset programme.”
Still time to register to vote
Takes 5 minutes and all you need os your National Insurance number:
Is OUR MP worth £360,000 a year?
A comment on a previous post:
“Are any of our MPs worth £68k (plus all their expenses of course)??
From IPSA MP salary from April 2014 is £67,060 plus up to £36,465 in living expenses (e.g. for maintaining a second home) plus £159,950 for running their office (i.e. sometimes with salaries paid to members of their families such as husbands or wives).
If they are members or chairs of select committees they can earn a further £14,876. Or if you are a minister you can earn between £89,435 and £134,565 extra.
So that means that Hugo Swire gets a tad under £200,000 payments for himself (inc. living expenses) and a further c. £160,000 to run his MP’s office – so he costs us £360,000.
So the question I would ask is whether Hugo Swire is worth £360,000 per year?”
Are some of our MPs WORTH £67,000?
“The Lib Dems want to impose an additional 8% rate of corporation tax on UK banks, which they say will raise an extra £1bn a year towards cutting the deficit.”
No problem, the banks just put up our bank charges or interest rates on lending to cover the cost! Then it costs them nothing, their bonuses stay the same, the shareholders get their dividends, nothing changes – their increased income covers the tax, but it costs US the £1 billion in extra charges or interest.
Yes, the deficit goes down but so does our disposable income so and the banks don’t pay it off, we do as a stealth tax – real smart!
Rather than asking: can MPs manage on £67,000 should we be asking if some of them are worth that money?
Housebuilders already trashing Cameron promise of 200,000 discounted houses
Campbell Robb, chief executive of housing charity Shelter, said: “The bottom “line is that you don’t solve an affordability crisis by getting rid of affordable housing. Our housing shortage has been decades in the making, and all those struggling to cope with expensive and insecure private renting are bearing the brunt.
“200,000 homes over the course of a parliament sounds good on the surface, but in reality this is giving with one hand and taking with the other. Removing the requirement on developers to build affordable housing is extremely worrying, and won’t help those currently struggling with sky high housing costs.
“Politicians of all parties need to convince voters that they can solve this crisis once and for all. More piecemeal schemes won’t do – we need a big bold plan that will fix our broken house-building market for the long term, and finally put a stable home back within reach for generation rent.”
Backbench majority councillors labelled “kicked dogs” by their former Leader!
Cardiff Council is having major problems and there have been calls for the sacking of their Leader. One councillor said.
“… in an explosive leaked email, Coun Cook told the embattled council leader the cabinet should have paid more attention to the views of its backbenchers.
The email added: “I am surprised that you seem unable to appreciate that if you kick a big dog enough times and ignore its growls of displeasure, it will eventually rip the aggressor’s throat out.
You and your Cabinet (and the Group Officers) have signally failed to heed our warnings, some of you have completely failed to understand and live up to your responsibilities and collectively the entire Cabinet as well as the Group Officers have failed to convince me that any of you have the ability to take this Group and Council forward out of the hole into which you have lead us.
“The call from beyond the Labour Group is for you to stand down, privately I support that call.”
Contrast this with Conservative East Devon District Council where their own backbenchers do as they are told by block voting with the Leader (whilst insisting they are not whipped).
Less barks from a big kicked dog, more like little squeaks from a tiny, ignored chihuahua frantically licking the Leader’s … throat.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-31690755
East Devon Watch 