Believed to be arriving at Tiverton Parkway rail station at 1.10 pm. Lunching at the Tiverton Hotel.
Author Archives: East Devon Watch
Parliament: new inquiry into implications of leaving the EU announced today
“In the light of the outcome of the referendum on EU membership, the Foreign Affairs Committee is launching a rolling inquiry into the Government’s handling of the process of departing the EU and the ongoing implications of the decision for the UK’s role in the world. This will build on the findings of the Committee’s report, published in April 2016, outlining both the short- and long-term implications of the vote for the UK’s global role.
Inquiry: Implications of leaving the EU for the UK’s role in the world
Foreign Affairs Committee
Terms of reference
The Committee welcomes written submissions which address in particular:
The type of relationship that the UK, its Crown Dependencies and its Overseas Territories should seek to pursue with the EU in future
The implications of the decision for the UK’s strategic orientation, global posture, alliances and international trade.
The Government’s management of negotiations to determine the terms of the UK’s exit from the EU, including their political direction and the structures and resources to be put in place to orchestrate the transition.
The work of the FCO in the transition process, both in negotiations with the EU and in managing the UK’s broader global role including trade agreements
Because of the rapidly changing situation and the rolling nature of this inquiry, no deadline is being set for written submissions. However, submissions received by 30 September will inform the Committee’s work in October.”
The Jo Cox Fund
The Jo Cox Fund is currently around £47,000 short of its £1.5m target to fund charities concerned with combating loneliness and alienation, hate crimes and life-saving help for ordinary citizens trapped in the Syrian fighting. Donations are slowing down.
Surely, our Parliament and House of Lords could make up this shortfall?
It would be a generous and compassionate gesture from all sides of the political spectrum.
And what about a few of those ultra-rich donors to ALL political parties donating what, for them, is small change? And there are a good few millionaires in Parliament and donations would surely be tax-deductible.
This transcends party politics – or should do.
Perhaps Hugo Swire could donate another pot of honey – after all, the last one, auctioned for Conservative Party coffers, fetched £15,000.
MP’s rights and obligations
” … The tendency – reinforced no doubt by the 2009 parliamentary expenses scandal – has been to overlook the fact that MPs have long been, and should be now, the primary components of the unwritten British constitution.
It’s not just that the best of them perform a stupendously unrecognised social and public service, as Jo Cox was doing at the very time she was killed. It’s that while they are inevitably – and rightly – influenced by the party members and activists in their own constituencies, they are uniquely answerable beyond them to the wider electorate in those constituencies.
This is the absolute cornerstone of Britain’s system of representative democracy, including when it comes to deciding the country’s future or who should lead a party. MPs have to stand for election; they have to argue their case in front of the unconvinced – rather than merely the already converted – and they make their mistakes in public. …”
Though some MPs regrettably do not think of their wider electorate and some barely think of their narrower electorate – preferring the trappings of higher office which render them mute in Parliament about their constituencies.
Sidmouth: local architecture competition short list designs on display
Short listed designs can be seen here:
http://futuresforumvgs.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/plans-for-port-royal-and-eastern-town_29.html
‘Blue-sky thinking’ in Sidmouth architecture competition
“An open-air theatre, a pier venue and a marina are among the five final designs in a competition to re-imagine Sidmouth’s eastern town.
Ideas came in from around the world – from Japan to Peru and Brazil – with entrants letting their imaginations run riot to redefine the Regency resort.
A jury has whittled some 18 designs down to a shortlist of five – and now Sidmouth citizens can vote for their favourite.
The competition was dreamed up by Sidmouth-born architect Henry Beech Mole, who said: “The shortlisted entries represent a good variety of possible futures for Sidmouth – a pier, a marina, landscapes, ecological strategies, and new public spaces – any of which would be great additions to the town. We would now hope that, with local support, we can move towards trying to implement the winning scheme. This is an unusual chance for the town to think about what it wants to be in the 21st century.
“I hope that through the competition we can move away from the binary arguments of tradition and progression and take an holistic view of how the town can retain its charm and beauty while also evolving to become a more vibrant and successful place for the future.”
For now, these are just ideas – their implementation will be down to the landowners. The detailed designs will be exhibited until Tuesday, July 12, at Kennaway House, where residents can vote for their favourite.
They can also be seen online at sidmouthherald.co.uk
The winning entry will be revealed on July 13.”
Planning permission refused due to diminution of light to artists’ studios
” … The owner of a pub in East London has won a Court of Appeal battle over the grant of planning permission for a three-storey building on the site of a former nightclub next door.
The case of Forster v The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government & Ors [2016] EWCA Civ 609 centred on a planning inspector’s grant of permission to a housing association for the demolition of a single storey building in Stepney – previously home to Stepney’s Nightclub – and the erection in its place of a three storey building with commercial uses on the ground floor and six flats on the floors above. Tower Hamlets Council had previously refused permission.
In August 2015 Mr Justice Lindblom (as he then was) dismissed a claim brought by the appellant under s. 288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.
The appellant, the owner of the George Tavern, took her case to the Court of Appeal, where she argued:
There was a risk, unacknowledged by the inspector, that complaints from residents of the new flats might ultimately lead to the revocation of her late night music licence or the grant of an injunction in a private nuisance claim. This would curtail the activities that kept the George going;
There would be reduced sunlight and daylight at the George, which was used as a studio for artists and photographers and as a film location.
Giving the judgment of the Court of Appeal, Lord Justice Laws allowed the appeal on the light issue, but not on the noise issue. …”
Political paralysis – and no plan, or at least not a viable one
” … The root problem here, and the real reason why Britain looks increasingly ungovernable, is that the referendum allowed the public to give the thumbs down to the status quo, without providing assent for anything to go in its place. Indeed, if there was a “leave proposition” it was mendacious, involving the pretence that we could simultaneously, bolt the door, stop paying all EU fees, but continue to trade with it as advantageously as now. In the days since the vote, Angela Merkel has confirmed that it is simply not possible to have all three at once. One way or another, Britain is going to have to choose here, and it may very well be that there is no majority – among the public, or in parliament – for any of the realistic options.
If so, the UK will be snookered – condemned by the referendum to being out of Europe, but without any agreement on a way forward. It is a situation that cries out for serious leadership, to win popular assent for one imperfect path or another. Without it, the country could end up paralysed, and the people feeling betrayed. At Westminster, however, many politicians seem too consumed with betraying each other to care.
Brexit and housing
From Daily Telegraph Money/Property:
“What does it mean for the supply crisis?
While we don’t know whether immigration will be curbed, if there are fewer people allowed to work in the UK’s construction industry, it will exacerbate the already acute skills shortage. About 12 per cent of construction workers across the country are from abroad, and in London that rises to 23 per cent.
Construction costs could jump 12 per cent as a result of the vote to leave, according to Ted Macdougal, development director for Forrest, a housebuilder.
Our housing supply-demand imbalance will not be solved any time soon: the Government’s pledge to build 200,000 homes per year is still way off target. Investment in house building is on hold and until there are enough homes built, the lack of supply could cushion house prices, regardless of Brexit.”
The current political situation explained
Benjamin Timothy Blaine – Facebook post
“So, let me get this straight… the leader of the opposition campaigned to stay but secretly wanted to leave, so his party held a non-binding vote to shame him into resigning so someone else could lead the campaign to ignore the result of the non-binding referendum which many people now think was just angry people trying to shame politicians into seeing they’d all done nothing to help them.
Meanwhile, the man who campaigned to leave because he hoped losing would help him win the leadership of his party, accidentally won and ruined any chance of leading because the man who thought he couldn’t lose, did – but resigned before actually doing the thing the vote had been about. The man who’d always thought he’d lead next, campaigned so badly that everyone thought he was lying when he said the economy would crash – and he was, but it did, but he’s not resigned, but, like the man who lost and the man who won, also now can’t become leader. Which means the woman who quietly campaigned to stay but always said she wanted to leave is likely to become leader instead.
Which means she holds the same view as the leader of the opposition but for opposite reasons, but her party’s view of this view is the opposite of the opposition’s. And the opposition aren’t yet opposing anything because the leader isn’t listening to his party, who aren’t listening to the country, who aren’t listening to experts or possibly paying that much attention at all. However, none of their opponents actually want to be the one to do the thing that the vote was about, so there’s not yet anything actually on the table to oppose anyway. And if no one ever does do the thing that most people asked them to do, it will be undemocratic and if any one ever does do it, it will be awful.
Clear?”
Crime commissioner to go ahead with £400,000 office move
“Devon and Cornwall’s new police and crime commissioner is to go ahead with a £400,000 office move despite criticism.
Alison Hernandez says relocating her offices will save substantial sums of money within four years, which can be reinvested in front-line policing.
Devon and Cornwall Police’s Chief Constable, Shaun Sawyer has previously said the move “sends the wrong signal” financially.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-england-devon-36602052
Put this in your diaries for 2020!
Hugo and Neil: between a rock and a hard place
Gove: Brexiter, the man who always said he didn’t want to be Prime Minister and wouldn’t be good at the job
Crabb: Remainer, the man who thinks homosexuality is a disease that can be cured and is married to a French woman
Liam Fox: Brexiter, the man who resigned because he took his flatmate “informal adviser” Adam Wherry on too many of his Ministry of Defence jaunts
Andrea Leadsom: Brexiter, a woman and someone who took advantage of offshore banking
Theresa May: Remainer, a woman who said there were no grounds for investigating widespread phone tapping by journalists
Tough one, boys!
Owl’s guess (note: Owl has no political nous or nose whatsoever) Hugo for Gove, Neil for Theresa. But not going to the bookies to put a bet on after the Boris Johnson shenanigans!
A Progressive Alliance?
Letter in Guardian from Caroline Lucas, Green Party MP:
“Is there any waking up from this nightmare, a glimmer of light,” asks Polly Toynbee, at the end of her searing examination of the pent-up “seething anti-Westminster wrath” which found its expression last week, and which helps to explain the victory of the leave campaign (Dismal, lifeless, spineless – Corbyn let us down again, 25 June).
If there is to be any hope for progressive politics, the answer has to be yes – and the solution lies in Toynbee’s own analysis. As she acknowledges, our electoral system is responsible for the fact that the concerns of vast numbers of people routinely go unheard, while parties fight for the swing voters of the centre ground. That’s precisely why we urgently need to build a progressive alliance for electoral reform.
Having lost control in Scotland, and with constituency boundary changes on the way, it must be increasingly clear to Labour that they cannot win an outright majority at the next election, no matter who their leader is. Instead of indulging in months of introspection and infighting, this is their opportunity to recognise that a more plural politics is in both their electoral and political interests. And with the growing likelihood of an early general election, the importance of progressive parties working together to prevent the formation of a Tory-Ukip-DUP government that would seek to enact an ultra-right Brexit scenario is ever more pressing.
It’s no surprise that leave’s message to “take back control” stuck. Many people do indeed feel powerless. Ensuring that everyone’s voice is heard in our political system is the first step towards healing the deep divisions that this referendum has revealed. I call on other progressive parties to join us in fighting to achieve that.
Caroline Lucas MP
Green, Brighton Pavilion
And/or an Independent Alliance?
The law of unintended consequences strikes yet again
“The fallout from last week’s vote to leave the European Union is rattling business and finance, far and wide. One aftershock is being felt at the European Investment Bank.
The EIB is owned by the 28 member states of the EU. The UK, alongside Germany, France and Italy, is among its largest shareholders, with about 16%.
The bank provides finance to a wide range of projects around Europe, with a particular focus on areas like infrastructure, social housing, renewable energy and education. It invested £5.6bn (6.7bn euros) in the UK last year and has ploughed £42bn (50bn euros) into the country over the last decade.
But after the Leave vote, there may already be a freeze descending on some new investment.
The good news is that the EIB says that its recent deals in the UK should proceed as planned. Those include funding to an automotive parts business in County Durham, to Swansea University, to housing associations in Northern Ireland and to an off-shore windfarm in Scotland.
But the EIB told Newsnight that the uncertainty created by the vote to leave the EU means that some UK projects, which previously would have stood a good chance, are now less likely to be approved.
There are reasons why the EIB might be cautious. It is unclear whether the UK could or would remain a shareholder after it leaves the EU. That might depend on the form of its relationship with the remaining 27 members. The situation is unprecedented and the EIB’s statue doesn’t contain any guidance or provisions for a shareholder leaving the EU.
Where does the money go? EIB lending to UK 2011-2015:
Energy – 28%
Transport – 25%
Water, sewerage, solid waste, urban development – 25%
Industry, services, agriculture – 7%
Education, health – 11%
Small and medium-scale projects – 4%
Source: EIB”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36668129
Brexit: The law of unintended consequences strikes again
“Brexit will be biggest ever task for Whitehall, even though staffing is at lowest level since 1940s after redundancies”
” … Huge swaths of policy and legislation will need to be reconsidered and decided upon by ministers, government and parliament. All of this is required whilst maintaining our public services and carrying out business as usual.
“Many of our members have serious concerns about how we will implement this at a time of political and economic uncertainty. Many of these questions cannot be answered right now.”
The civil service is now at its smallest size since the second world war, employing about 392,000 full-time staff, according to the latest figures. It represents an 18% drop since the coalition government came to power in 2010. The government’s spending review has meant that departments have drawn up further staff cuts.
Lord Kerslake, the former head of the civil service, has called on the government to begin a rethink of government cuts to staffing levels because of Brexit.
“If they’re going to get through this mammoth negotiation, they are going to have to increase resources for a period of time – and they ought logically to put a stop on haemorrhaging people,” Lord Kerslake told the publication Civil Service World.
Senior officials believe the untangling of 40 years of EU legislation as the biggest task the civil service has ever faced. This will include deciding on what to keep, amend and reject from EU-related laws and around 13,000 regulations.
At the same time, the British government will be negotiating any new deals with the EU and the rest of the world.
Oliver Letwin, the prime minister’s close associate, is expected to coordinate the unit’s work across Whitehall.
However, former head of the civil service Lord Turnbull told the Treasury select committee on Tuesday that Letwin was “completely unsuitable to do that job in the longer term” because “he has been a kind of consigliere to the prime minister”.
Hannah Williams, the programme director from the Institute for Government, said that the government has failed to explain how the work will be completed. “The announcement today gives no further detail of how this new unit will be run, the expertise it will draw from, or how it will coordinate Whitehall’s Brexit efforts,” she said.
Olly Robbins, the civil servant who is currently responsible for policy on immigration, has been given the job of heading the new Brexit unit.
Robbins, 40, was the UK’s deputy national security adviser to the cabinet office. He told the high court in 2013 that the Guardian’s Edward Snowden revelations could lead to “widespread loss of life”. The government has not yet released proof to back up his claims. Robbins, who is second permanent secretary at the Home Office, was also accused of giving “extremely unsatisfactory” answers on the funding of the Border Force when he appeared before the Home Affairs select committee in April.
Keith Vaz, committee chairman, had asked him repeatedly whether Charles Montgomery, Border Force director-general, had been told what his budget was to be for the year ahead.”
“There’s more to life than the economy”
Speaking of an ” explosion” in best-selling books about the natural world, judge of a nature prize Fiona Reynolds (ex-National Trust) says:
“Even in these three years there has been an absolute flood of books in which writers are talking about nature and its meaning, and not just in a superficial sense. These are profound books, about a deep relationship and about the deeply spiritual questions which confront us in society.” “[They show us that] there’s more to life than the economy, or foreign policy – these writers are articulating beautifully the ways in which the human spirit needs to connect with the world around us, and to respect the world around us.”
Shame our district council hasn’t got the message.
Post-Brexit devolution: an end to the “gift from Whitehall” model?
“… Last week’s referendum was a turning point for the devolution agenda. Just as Scotland’s near miss on independence sparked the current round of devolution deals, so the decision to Brexit could spark a new wave of demands for change: and this time, the calls for more local and regional autonomy are likely to be sharper and angrier.
Commentators are rushing to point out that an out-of-touch London elite has not listened to the cries of pain from suffering regional towns and cities. Any plan to address the underlying reasons for the Brexit vote must start by recognising that the British model of economic development is not working for most people. While the capital and wider south east have boomed, regional centres like Birmingham have fallen catastrophically behind. The idea that our economic model can be fixed by the national elite that broke it in the first place seems fanciful. Politically, it will be hard to ignore the need for economic reform.
The need to fix regional economies will be compounded by the deep social divisions that the referendum has painfully exposed. Look at the map of the Brexit vote and London sticks out like a sore thumb; an island of Remainers in a sea of Brexit. Some will say that the capital’s sense of anger and grievance is due payback for decades of ignoring the rest of the country. This attitude will hardly reduce the emotional shock that many Londoners currently feel, an experience that will be replicated in cities like Bristol, Cambridge, Liverpool and parts of Manchester. At the same time, the shires are clearly on manoeuvres to ensure that they translate their political power within the Conservative Party into a more generous approach to devolution to counties, ideally without the troublesome requirement for a mayor.
There are two ways to make devolution happen. For the past few years we have been following what might be termed the Whitehall gift model. Local leaders negotiate with George Osborne and, if he likes what he hears, he passes them down a package of new powers. It is a model that is unlikely to work very effectively in a post-referendum world. Mr Osborne is arguably already a lame duck chancellor. Parliament and the civil service face years of Brexit-related legislative congestion. Why would devolution deals be high on their agenda?
If we stick with the gift model, then devolution will stall. Greater Manchester might have enough momentum to carry on, but places like Merseyside and the West Midlands may find themselves struggling to win more powers. The counties may find it even harder to make progress, especially if they remain mired in complex debates about local government reorganisation.
But Scotland did not win its devolved settlement by waiting for Westminster’s beneficence. Its political class mobilised the voters and civil society to forge a consensus for change, before steadily campaigning to make it happen. The SNP went even further, demanding the right to declare independence unilaterally though their referendum last year. The decision to leave has unleashed a sense of grievance across the country that will be hard to put back in the bottle. Local leaders have an opportunity to channel that feeling in the direction of greater local autonomy. The difficult truth is that leaving the EU will not in itself do much to address grievances rooted in two generations of de-industrialisation, especially if the process of leaving brings a recession with it. Parliament may be preoccupied with Brexit, but the country as a whole will be worried about jobs.
The time for gifts may be over, but the moment for building a genuine movement for constitutional change might just be arriving.”
http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/opinion/2016/06/brexit-turning-point-devolution
“Toothless Environment Agency is allowing the living world to be wrecked with impunity”
No chance for Sidford Fields then.
” … The Environment Agency no longer prosecutes even some of the most extreme pollution events. In 2013, a farmer in Somerset released what the agency called a “tsunami of slurry” into the Wellow Brook. One inspector said it was the worst pollution she had seen in 17 years. But the agency dithered for a year before striking a private agreement with the farmer, allowing him to avoid possible prosecution, criminal record, massive fine and court costs, by giving £5,000 to a local charity.
New rules imposed by the government means that such under-the-counter deals, which now have a name of their own – enforcement undertakings – are likely to become more common. They are a parody of justice: arbitrary, opaque and wide open to influence-peddling, special pleading and corruption.
I see the agency’s farcical investigation of the pollution incident I reported as strategic incompetence, designed to avoid conflict with powerful landowners. Were it to follow any other strategy, it would run into trouble with the government.
These problems are likely to become even more severe, when the new cuts the environment department has just agreed with the Treasury take effect. An analysis by the RSPB and the Wildlife Trusts reveals that, once the new reductions bite, the government’s spending on wildlife conservation, air quality and water pollution will have declined by nearly 80% in real terms since 2009-10.
It’s all up for grabs now: if you want to wreck the living world, the government is not going to stop you. Those who have power, agency, money or land can – metaphorically and literally – dump their crap on the rest of us.
Never mind that the government is now breaking European law left right and centre, spectacularly failing, for example, to ensure that all aquatic ecosystems are in good health by the end of this year, as it is supposed to do under the water framework directive. It no longer seems to care. It would rather use your tax money to pay fines to the European commission than enforce the law against polluters.
I’ve heard the same description of Liz Truss, the secretary of state for environment, who oversees the work of the Environment Agency, from several people over the past few months: “Worse than Owen Paterson”. At first, I refused to take it seriously. It’s the kind of statement that is usually employed as hyperbole, such as “somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan”, or “more deluded than Tony Blair”. But in this case, they aren’t joking. Preposterous as the notion of any environment secretary being worse than Paterson might seem, they mean it. …”
OK Hugo, who is your choice for PM? And Neil, what about you?
Will it be an old Etonian (Boris), a woman (May) a bloke from the working class (Crabbe) or Hunt – that chap you say you talked to a lot about our NHS but who doesn’t seem to have helped much?
How long will you sit on the fence? Or might you stand yourself? Or will you be campaigning to see which one will give you another ministerial post? Or the one offering you a peerage, perhaps?
Oh, the irony if you end up as just another common or garden constituency MP – who doesn’t have even a second home in it.
Owl feels your pain.
And Neil – now presumably so disliked by your Minister George Eustace for batting for the wrong side. And no hope of going back to the European Parliament!
Will the A303 now ever be completed … Will animal welfare continue to be protected by Brexiters? And forever destined to live with the fact that you were one of the 79 MPs who defied your party whip to force this Referendum.
But at least you do live in YOUR constituency.
Sidford: Environment Agency “not using new flooding figures to save developer money”
The Sid Vale Association is to take legal advice on the Environment Agency’s “incomprehensible” decision to support a planning application for a business park on a Sidford floodplain.
Here’s an extract from the Sidmouth Herald’s report :
” … The Environment Agency (EA) has defended its ‘incomprehensible’ support of plans for a 9.3-acre business park in Sidford – because using its new flood risk figures could cost the developer money.
A climate change report by the government body states that the region’s peak river flow is expected to increase by 85 per cent – four times more than anticipated – while surface water is likely to increase 40 per cent by around 2070, which is double the previous forecast.
In light of the increased risk to the flood-prone valley, representatives are calling for the agency to rethink its support of an outline planning application for the business park between Sidford and Sidbury, submitted by Fords of Sidmouth.
But the EA states it has not taken the new figures published earlier this year into account because the site is already allocated in the adopted East Devon Local Plan – a development blueprint to cover the next 15 years.
The EA’s policy states: “The advice will come into immediate effect. However, where local plans or development proposals and associated flood risk assessments are well advanced, the application of the updated allowances could significantly slow down completion or add to costs.”
An EA spokesman said: “We considered the plan and application to be well advanced and therefore reasonable to base advice on the existing allowances.”
The Sid Vale Association (SVA) has threatened legal action if the agency does not review its ‘short-sighted and potentially dangerous’ position on the matter.
SVA conservation and planning committee chair Richard Thurlow said: “Our letter [to the EA] reflects the comments of many Sidmouth and Sidford residents. We find it absolutely incomprehensible that the Environment Agency is not using its own regulations which came into operation in February. … “
Increased flood risk: SVA calls for Environment Agency rethink on the Sidford planning application.
Telegraph journalist on how to survive Brexit: longer working hours and plenty of immigrants!
Be careful what you wish for but be even more careful to check what you think you are voting for.
In an article in today’s Telegraph entitled “Now the vote is over, let’s move on with six steps to a bright future” here are a couple of the proposed steps journalist Matthew Lynn suggests:
… “We should scrap EU-mandated labour market regulations and social protections as fast as possible. There is no reason why we should accept European limits on how many hours people do in the office – so long as we have a minimum wage in place, which we do, then it is up to every individual how long a shift he or she wants to put in. Issues such as parental leave can be freely agreed between companies and staff. Employers who want to hire lots of young women, the best educated, most skilled part of the workforce, will be generous; others less so. But business can decide for itself.
… Finally, keep immigration at high levels. Many people who voted for Brexit wanted it to come down, but that is a debate for another day. Right now business is structured around a constant flow of new workers and although it can change that by improving productivity and using more robots, it can’t be done quickly.
For the first five years, the Government should aim to keep net migration around the 300,000 mark every year, even if it wants to change the mix to allow in more Canadians and Indians and fewer East Europeans.”
Matthew Lynn is a financial columnist and author. He writes for WSJ Marketwatch, The Spectator and Money Week as well as The Telegraph, and has worked as a columnist for The Sunday Tines and Bloomberg.
