“Speaking to Radio 4’s Today programme, UKIP chairman Paul Oakden said he would check with the Electoral Commission to see who the party leader was and admitted it could technically be Mr Farage.”
Category Archives: Accountability
Where is the “centre ground”?
With the centre of the Tories now being much more to the right and the centre of Labour being much more to the left, Lib Dems not sure where they are except on Europe, UKIP – well, they can’t even get a new leader who can stick the job, and Greens tending towards Labour and with the major parties outdoing each other with spin, back stabbing and infighting – who do you vote for if you are a centre-left Tory or a centre-right Labour voter or Lib Dem Brexiteer or a disaffected Kipper or a non-left leaning Green or anyone else who doesn’t want to be button- holed?
Why, an independents, of course – who occupy the real centre ground by just doing what they believe is right by the communities they serve without allegiance to any of the parties and with no party whip!
Or, as Claire Wright would say: Free to speak, free to act.
Sovereignty or dictatorship?
David Cameron did not discuss EU referendum with his Cabinet before he called it, claims Ken Clarke:
“David Cameron never discussed his decision to call a referendum on Britain’s membership in the European Union with his Cabinet, former Tory Cabinet minister Ken Clarke has claimed.
The 76-year-old Tory veteran criticised how Mr Cameron ran his Cabinet meetings, which he said met for 90 minutes one morning each week.
In his book, which is being serialised by The Sunday Times, Mr Clarke wrote: “This was an almost comically inadequate time within which to discuss any important subject.”
In particular, he said Mr Cameron failed to adequately discuss “his startling and catastrophic decision to call a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU in cabinet”.
“… In my opinion, this is a disastrous way to run the government of a complex modern nation state,” he said. “It is a reaction to the hysterical constant 24/7 chatter that now dominates political debate.
“Media handling and public relations are now regarded as the key elements of governing, and a small army of advisers who are supposed to be PR experts but who are of frankly variable quality have far too big a role in policy-making.
“Next week’s headlines are given more priority than serious policy development and the long-term consequences for the nation.”
Yet another example of EDDC’s similarity to national government – secrecy and spin much more important than transparency and proper discussion.
Swire’s puzzling parliamentary questions on retrospective planning applications
Owl thinks the third question is most interesting – where he asks about fees paid by developers. Why “developers” rather than “people” or “applicants” or “homeowners”?
Just who is he representing? Local residents or developer pals?
1. To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what estimate his Department has made of the cost of retrospective planning applications to local councils in (a) Devon and (b) the UK in the last five years.
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2016-09-02.44219.h&s=speaker%3A11265#g44219.q0
2. To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what proportion of the cost of a retrospective planning application is covered by the (a) applicant and (b) local authority.
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2016-09-02.44220.h&s=speaker%3A11265#g44220.q0
3. To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, whether he plans to change the proportion of the cost of retrospective planning applications currently paid by developers.
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2016-09-02.44221.h&s=speaker%3A11265#g44221.q0
NB The answers from the Secretary of State are pretty useless!
Exmouth beach huts: to be or not to be? Depends whether you think the Development Management Committee makes decisions!
There is currently a planning application submitted – 16/2087/DEM to demolish the DJ’s Diner building on Exmouth Seafront.
At the DMC on 8th March Cllr Williamson (Littleham) proposed the condition (which was agreed) for the road move application that the cafe and the beach huts should not be demolished, nor any start to be made on the road, until there was a timescale, etc. for the water sports centre.
No timescale yet exists, yet the planning application seems to be completely ignoring this decision.
Unfortunately, the working that went in the final planning application is ( surprise, surprise) rather vague (approval document listed under application – 15/2487/MRES). However for those who were at the DMC, they are quite certain that the proposed condition was for no work – including demolition.
And of course there is also the issue of the town poll being ignored and EDDC ploughing ahead with leaving the area derelict regardless.
Boundaries, election boundaries, constituency statistics and more: interactive election and statistical website
Lots and lots of useful information including AONB boundaries, parliamentary constituencies, census statistics, etc.
How many hospital beds make 5?
Disquieting information here:
from ever-campaigning Claire Wright. It raises some very serious questions about where the “Success Regime” gets its ” numbers” from.
Well done Councillor Wright for not letting this slip through the net.
A Freedom of Information request needed here, methinks.
“Theresa May defends her plan to keep Brexit negotiation details secret from Parliament”
“Theresa May has defended her plan to keep key details of the EU exit negotiations secret from Britain’s Parliament.
The Prime Minister said that though MPs would be informed at “various stages”, they would not be privy to precisely what her negotiators were doing.
Last month Brexit Secretary David Davis told a Parliamentary Committee that he would “not be able to tell you everything, even in private”.
The approach is a stark contrast to the course being set by the EU, with plans reportedly being formed to keep the European Parliament informed with regular updates.
Questioned on the secrecy ahead of the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, the Prime Minister said transparency could jeopardise Britain’s negotiating position.
“First of all, of course parliament will be involved in this process. The Great Repeal Bill, Parliament will be having its say on that,” she told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.
“Of course at various stages we will be keeping parliament informed. This is not about keeping silent for two years but its about making sure that we are able to negotiate, that we don’t set out all the cards in our negotiation.”
“Because as anybody will know who’s been involved in these things, if you do that up front, or if you give a running commentary you don’t get the right deal. What I’m determined to do is get the right deal for Britain.”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is sovereignty.
It seems she has learned well from EDDC Jedi-masters!
Just substitute Diviani for May and Morai or “Greater Exeter” or devolution deals withe the LEP for Parliament and local democracy for sovereignty and it is exactly the same situation. We don’t tell you anything at all during negotiations, we tell you almost nothing at all after negotiations and then we tell you all how to vote about the negotiations! Or maybe we don’t allow you to vote at all!
Stuart Hughes suggests residents and businesses should pay to lure Tour of Britain back
“Would you pay for Tour of Britain to return to Devon
“Residents and businesses are being asked if they would like to see the Tour of Britain come back to Devon – and if they would put their hand in their pocket for its return.
The county council said this month’s stage, which set off from Sidmouth, drew record crowds, with an estimated 250,000 people lining the route.
But it said hosting the race again will require financing – and one option being considered is crowd-funding.
Councillor Stuart Hughes said: “With local government budgets increasingly being squeezed, it is prudent to investigate all opportunities. In 2010, when we hosted a stage in Exeter, we worked with local businesses. After talking with other towns, local authorities and stage partners, this appears to be an increasingly-common funding model. Any future Devon stage would likely need a similar cocktail of funding and we wanted to understand whether there was an appetite from the public for this. We’ve had a positive response so far, with over 90 per cent saying they’d like to see the Tour return to Devon.”
Residents can have their say by visiting https://surveys.devon.gov.uk/s/ToBftr/
http://www.sidmouthherald.co.uk/news/would_you_pay_for_tour_of_britain_to_return_to_devon_1_4717076
What if Honiton raised more money than Sidmouth? What if the Blackdown Hills raised less money than Broadclyst?
Sport being sold to the highest bidder.
Is that even allowed?
And here’s another £285 million squandered in Austerity Britain
“New claims have emerged that the government was warned the airport in St Helena, in the South Atlantic would be dangerous because of strong winds.
It is claimed that the Department for International Development (DfID), which approved the project, ignored a report by consultants a decade ago revealing serious concerns about the cliffside airport on the remote island.”
Lies, damned lies and retweets about housing figures from Hugo Swire
Swire retweeted this:
“Gavin Barwell MP @GavinBarwellMP
New figures released today show since 2010 government schemes have helped 330,000 people buy a new home #OwnYourHome”
NO! NO! NO! It has not helped 330,000 people to buy new homes!
When you follow the link it says: 185,000 people have bought new houses BUT, when you read further, actually it only talks about 91,000 of those homes having used various government schemes.
The press release says ”
The government is committed to helping people achieve their aspiration of home ownership, through the range of Help to Buy schemes, including: ISA, Shared Ownership, Equity Loan, London Help to Buy and Mortgage Guarantee.”
Remember that some of these schemes allow wealthy people to buy homes worth up to £650,000 for their children with huge discounts, that the ISA was revealed to only be helpful AFTER you had bought a home AND paid a deposit when people thought they were signing up for help WITH deposits, and equity loans grab a share of your home as does shared ownership.
Nowhere does Mr Barwell, or Mr Swire, explain where the figure of 330,000 comes from – except to say that it is “since 2010” when ?some ?all, ?most of these schemes did not exist!
Donald Trump, eat your heart out – post-truth politics flourishes here in the UK!
If devolution is the answer – what was the question?
Devolution doesn’t always mean taking back control
Since Tony Blair became prime minister in 1997, successive UK governments have fiddled around with ways of devolving power from Westminster and Whitehall. The most radical has been Scottish devolution, which continues to evolve. The least coherent has been the patchwork of schemes developed across England, ranging from a well-thought out arrangement for London, with a directly elected mayor and assembly, to the make-it-up-as-you-go-along “devolution deals” for the rest.
The coalition government of 2010-15 abolished – wisely – the regional governance bureaucracies. The first big replacement idea was Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), intended as “business-led” mechanisms for spending public money. The areas covered by LEPs were in some cases obvious, based for example on established city regions or former metropolitan counties. In others the rationale was less clear, perhaps nowhere more so than the Heart of the South West (HotSW) LEP, covering a massive area from Plymouth to the south of Bristol [1]. It’s tempting to think that after Cornwall decided to go their own way and Bristol wasn’t having any truck with its Somerset neighbours, that HotSW was the “bit left over”.
The performance of these fundamentally secretive and undemocratic bodies is not the focus of this post [2]. They are relevant because the LEP areas have in some cases – including HotSW – formed the basis of the subsequent devolution proposals in England.
The government has been inviting groups of local authorities to submit proposals for devolving decision-making in certain functions, particularly infrastructure and economic development, but not limited to these.
The rationale behind this approach is that increasing productivity, a key goal of government policy, is best achieved by local targeting of support measures through local authorities and business interests working together.
The government has made it clear that access to some central funding is dependent on devolution deals being agreed. Invariably, local authorities across the area commit to setting up a “combined authority” to take the decisions. Unlike London, this would not be directly elected but would be made up of the leaders of the constituent councils plus non-elected representatives of the NHS and the LEP. Initially, agreement to having a directly-elected mayor was a condition of a devolution deal but the government now seems to be less rigid on this.
One of the problems with this approach is that it was designed for large urban areas. Greater Manchester, for example, has operated as a partnership of councils across a coherent area since the 1960s when Passenger Transport Authorities were set up. Manchester is the trail-blazer in the current devolution game, and it clearly works for them.
What is less clear is that the combined authority structure will work well in those areas of England that aren’t part of a conurbation. A pretentious-sounding body called The Independent Commission on Economic Growth and the Future of Public Services in Non-Metropolitan England produced a report last year arguing for devolution deals for the rest of England [3].
It does make the useful point that LEP areas do not in most cases coincide with functional economic areas (a conclusion which should be enough to discredit the whole idea of LEPs), but is otherwise a typical product of this debate in that it focusses on structures and “partnerships” from which communities are largely excluded.
The councils within the HotSW area have submitted a devolution bid to the government [4]. The bid identifies 6 challenges for the area (low productivity growth, limited labour market, patchy performance in innovation and enterprise, an ageing population, health and care integration, infrastructure and connectivity) and 6 “Golden Opportunities” for improving growth and productivity (marine, nuclear, aerospace and advanced engineering, data analytics, rural productivity, health and care). The bid has a wholly economic focus: other than in references to care, the word “social” does not appear in the document, and there is no acknowledgement of the impacts of the plans on the natural environment.
If the bid succeeds – and at least some of the councils are treating the whole exercise with a degree of caution – decision-making on the plans and services covered by the bid will be sucked upwards from the councils and the people they represent. How the combined authority will balance the interests of, say, Plymouth with those of people in the Mendips will be discussed in officer-led groups behind closed doors – because that is the only way “partnership” working can be made to operate in practice. The need to prepare for joint meetings gives authority officers huge influence over agendas and decisions because of the need to coordinate positions and identify common solutions in advance of meetings.
The combined authority itself will be made up of leaders of the constituent councils and others. It will not be directly elected. Trying to influence its decisions will be next to impossible for individuals and community groups. The bid’s economic focus ignores environmental and community questions completely, so being able to provide a counter-balance is hugely important. As it is, the bid’s environmental credentials are defined by the partnership’s LEP-led role as a cheerleader for the new Hinkley Point nuclear power station.
Other devolution bids across England generate similar challenges. At a time when disillusion with our politics is at an all-time high, it is puzzling – to put it mildly – that decision-making is to move even further away from the people most affected
NOTES:
[1] The map of LEP areas at http://www.lepnetwork.net/the-network-of-leps/ shows just how large the area is.
[2] An excellent House of Commons briefing note (July 2016) provides a concise guide to LEPs including reviews of their performance – see http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/sn05651.pdf
[3] See http://www.local.gov.uk/non-met-commission
[4] The bid document is at https://new.devon.gov.uk/democracy/files/2016/01/Heart-of-the-South-West-Devolution-Prospectus.pdf
https://petercleasby.com/2016/09/30/devolution-is-not-control/
Police and Crime Commissioner’s ” cunning plan” falls apart
Our Police and Crime Commissioner was gushingly keen on using social media to report crimes:
Now we hear that up to 50 police officers and PCSOs have been removed from front-line duties in Devon and Cornwall to deal with a backlog of such calls.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-37510562
And who will call out this amazingly daft idea?
No-one. The Chief Constable says:
“”In response to the 101 delays, the force moved around 50 people including officers, PCSOs and other staff to assist the contact centre. “The significant majority of these were on restricted duties therefore were unable to undertake front line duties or their usual job role. “The team have been recording crime information, to release our call handlers to answer 101 and 999 calls.
“This is a short term position and we expect all the staff to be returned to their original roles by Christmas.”
Why is it short-term if people continue to report crimes this way? Or are they going to recruit 50 more civilians? If so, why were they not recruited earlier?
Will the Police Panel investigate? No, it is overwhelmingly Tory and needs to keep the lid on these things.
Hernandez is already banned from making political comments – will she be banned from making comments about this – her “cunning plan” when she sought election?
The Friday Smile: The “Dunning Kruger” effect
Just remember, Owl will moderate comments!
“This is the psychological concept known as the “Dunning-Kruger” effect — put very simply, when stupid people don’t know that they are stupid — in action.
Writing at Pacific Standard, psychologist David Dunning explains it as:
[I]n many areas of life, incompetent people do not recognize — scratch that, cannot recognize — just how incompetent they are, a phenomenon that has come to be known as the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Logic itself almost demands this lack of self-insight: For poor performers to recognize their ineptitude would require them to possess the very expertise they lack.
To know how skilled or unskilled you are at using the rules of grammar, for instance, you must have a good working knowledge of those rules, an impossibility among the incompetent.
Poor performers — and we are all poor performers at some things — fail to see the flaws in their thinking or the answers they lack. What’s curious is that, in many cases, incompetence does not leave people disoriented, perplexed, or cautious. Instead, the incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence, buoyed by something that feels to them like knowledge.”
Source: salon.com from Pacific Standard (author, David Dunning)
British public will pay decommissioning costs of Hinkley C
There will be some VERY happy nuclear-vested LEP members who will surely be hoping to cash in there when the time comes and their grandchildren are running their companies!
“The French and Chinese companies that are to build the £18bn Hinkley Point C nuclear power station will have to pay up to £7.2bn to dismantle and clean it up. [but read further – the cost is built in to the price we will pay them for electricity generated].
Documents published yesterday reveal for the first time how much the developers, EDF and China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN), will have to pay to decommission the plant, beginning in 2083.
The new reactors in Somerset will be unique in British nuclear history, as they are the first for which the operator will have to pay to make good the site afterwards.
“Waste transfer contracts signed today mean that, for the first time in the UK, the full costs of decommissioning and waste management associated with the new power station are set aside during generation and are included in the price of the electricity,” EDF said in a statement.
Decommissioning costs ate up around half the budget for the now-disbanded department of energy and climate change, after the liabilities for cleaning up old nuclear plants were effectively nationalised in 2004 and 2005 when two companies faced financial problems.
The Hinkley Point C decommissioning costs are estimated at £5.9bn to £7.2bn, with the dismantling of the plant expected to begin in 2083. The government, EDF and CGN anticipate the winding up of the new reactors will continue well into the 22nd century. The plant is expected to be fully decommissioned “from 2138” when the final spent fuel is disposed of.
Experts said the cost estimate was likely to be on the low side. “The reality in terms of decommissioning is that it always costs more than people say,” said Dr Paul Dorfman, of the Energy Institute at University College London.
He claimed that the precedent of the government taking ownership of the liabilities of British Nuclear Fuels Limited and British Energy more than a decade ago showed that the government would be forced to shoulder the costs if Hinkley’s developers had a shortfall.
The body charged with dismantling 17 of Britain’s old nuclear power plants puts the cost of cleanup at £117bn over 100 years in its latest annual report, more than twice the cost estimated a decade ago. A large proportion of the cost is due to the complexity of Sellafield.
The business department also admitted that large scale solar power and onshore windfarms could produce electricity for less than the price agreed for Hinkley, as the National Audit Office said in the summer.
But officials suggested there would be additional costs to the renewable alternatives. “There would be significant upgrades to the grid required (such as connection and planning costs) as well as increased costs to keep the system in balance,” said the ‘Value for money assessment’.
Greenpeace UK executive director, John Sauven, said: “We now have it straight from the horse’s mouth. Increasingly cheaper renewable energy sources do indeed offer better value for money to British bill-payers than Hinkley.
“The government tries to obfuscate the advantages of solar and wind by throwing in extra costs for grid upgrades and balancing the energy system. But there’s no evidence anywhere in the documents to back up their assumptions.”
PM must publish secret papers about refusing Brexit vote in Parliament
“The government has been forced by a senior judge to reveal secret legal arguments for refusing to let parliament decide when and how the UK should withdraw from the European Union.
In a preliminary victory for those challenging Theresa May’s power to trigger Brexit, a high court judge, Mr Justice Cranston, has swept aside restrictions on publishing official documents before the hearing on 13 October.
In the released documents, lawyers for the government argue that it is “constitutionally impermissible” for parliament to be given the authority rather than the prime minister and dismiss any notion that the devolved nations – Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales – will have any say in the process”.
They add: “The appropriate point at which the UK should begin the procedure required by article 50 [of the European Union treaty] to give effect to [notifying the UK’s exit] is a matter of high, if not the highest policy.
“It is a polycentric decision based upon a multitude of domestic and foreign policy and political concerns for which the expertise of ministers and their officials are particularly well-suited and the courts ill-suited.”
Responding to the release of the skeleton arguments, John Halford, a solicitor partner at Bindmans law firm which represents the People’s Challenge, a crowd-funded group, said: “The court’s order allows a floodlight to be shone on the government’s secret reasons for believing it alone can bring about Brexit without any meaningful parliamentary scrutiny.
“Those who were unsettled by the government’s insistence on its defence being kept secret will now be surprised by the contents, including submissions that Brexit has nothing constitutionally to do with the Scottish and Northern Ireland devolved governments, that parliament ‘clearly understood’ it was surrendering any role it might have in Brexit by passing the EU Referendum Act, that it has no control over making and withdrawal from treaties and that individuals can have fundamental rights conferred by acts of parliament stripped away if and when the executive withdraws from the treaties on which they are based.
“These arguments will be tested in court next month, but now they can be debated by the public too.”
Yet here in East Devon we are not allowed to know anything about EDDC’s negotiations with PegasusLife. Strange that.
“Working with the willing” in devolution deals
The post below cites former Labour minister John Healey as saying that his government got devolution wrong but this government has got it right by “working with the willing”.
Owl finds this a chilling phrase in politics. Working with those who are willing to do what exactly?
We have never been given the story of how a bunch of businessmen and women with vested interests suddenly found themselves working together as something called the Local Enterprise Partnership. There is no back story, no minutes of meetings where they were chosen (Were they chosen? Who by? When? How?), no paper trail about it all hooked up as a package that slipped into full being.
How come very quickly Cornwall decided to go it alone when its natural partner would have been Devon? How come Somerset decided to pall up with Devon and not Avon and Bristol?
The reason for that at least for that is clear. Devon businesses in the LEP are highly invested in nuclear activities or training for nuclear jobs or building houses around the nuclear sites or servicing the site through parent companies or subsidiaries. Whilst it might have worked better for Somerset to pall up with Bristol and Avon – Somerset was definitely “working with the willing”!
With Hinkley C having French and Chinese construction and personnel, it will be interesting to see whether those two partners are willing to work with each other, let alone Somerset or more remote Devon!
We can’t see the Chinese workers bedding down at the Premier Inn at Exmouth each night or the French workers choosing Honiton over Bristol for their nights out on the town!
Labour owns up to devolution mess when last in government – Tories continue it
“Former Labour minister John Healey has said that devolution under the last Labour government was “hamstrung” by efforts to develop proposals that could apply across the whole country.
The former Treasury and local government minister was speaking at a fringe event hosted by Core Cities UK, London Councils and the Mayor of London’s office at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool.
He said the current government had got the approach right by deciding to “work with the willing”.
He stated: “We actually hamstrung ourselves in our period in government when we looked at devolution, because we felt we needed to have a blueprint that was consistent right across the country.
“But eventually it won’t work, it can’t work, in the same way in all parts. We got too hung up on institutional arrangements, geographical footprints. The case we should make needs to concentrate on what we most want to change, be determined to do it and then make the case for the devolution that helps us do us.”
Healey said that his political imperative would be to show how a Labour council and a Labour-led city makes a difference and can reach devolution deals with Whitehall “rather than try to come up with a plan that is all encompassing, which I think is part of the problem that we had for a lot of the time we were in government”.
“Work with the willing” – willing for what we ask here in the Heart of the South West.
Hospital patients being discharged too early with dangerously inadequate social care”
“Patients are too often being discharged from hospital when it is not safe for them to leave due to poor levels of health and social care integration, according to MPs.
A report released today by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, found that a lack of integration, caused by the historic split between health and care, meant that interdependent services were being managed and funded separately. This “political maladministration” was causing suffering for patients and relatives, it said.
The committee was responding to work carried out by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, which it said highlighted “harrowing cases that illustrated the human cost of poor discharge”. These cases were not isolated but were persistent problems across the health service.
Poor patient discharge can take the form of delayed transfers of care, where patients are kept in hospital longer than is necessary, and premature or early discharge, where patients are sent home before it is clinically safe to do so, or without appropriate support in place.
Barriers to the implementation of best practice are prevalent at the interface between health and social care, the committee said. Pressures on resourcing and capacity were “leading to unsafe discharge practices”, and it called on health and social care leaders to ensure that person-centred care remained the undisputed priority.
The report found that while excellent guidance was available, good practice was not being applied equally across the system and more data was needed on the scale and impact of the failures.
Responding to the report, parliamentary and health service ombudsman Julie Mellor, highlighted the human cost that could arise when people fell through the cracks, and blamed the underfunding of social care.
She said: “We see too many cases where discharge from hospital has gone horribly wrong, particularly for older, frail people who often don’t have the right support in place at home to cope on their own.
“These shocking failures will continue to happen unless the government tackles the heart of the problem – the chronic underfunding of social care which is pilling excruciating pressure on the NHS, leaving vulnerable patients without a lifeline.”
Committee chair Bernard Jenkin said some hospital staff felt under pressure to discharge people earlier than was appropriate.
“Hospital leadership must reassure their staff that organisational pressures never take priority over person-centred care,” he said.
He stressed that staff needed to feel a level of trust and openness that enabled them to raise concerns about unsafe discharge.
The report referred to the Better Care Fund and the Discharge Programme Board as being “promising”, in bridging the gap between health and social care. But, it cautioned that these plans were far from implemented.
The committee urged the health secretary to establish a set of objectives for the board, with measures and timelines, so progress could be monitored. Also, it advised the government to set out a route map, by March 2017, to demonstrate how arrangements for sustainable funding for integrated care will be implemented.”
Exmouth regeneration: Councillor Andrew Moulding, comedian
BBC iPlayer, Radio Devon this morning, Simon Bates
From 1:05:15
After a fair amount of discussion about the badger set found under the Crazy Golf and some local “vox pop’, Independent EDA Councillor Megan Armstrong can be heard at 1:09:53 followed by Tory Councillor Andrew Moulding at 1:10:28.
By 1:14:30, when Moulding has said nothing whatsoever of interest or use, simply regurgitating old, old, information, Simon Bates feels obliged to cut into Moulding’s waffle (and it IS ultra-top-grade waffle) Moulding says “the water sports park will have open spaces in it” (1:15:28). He doesn’t even understand why what he said was so silly!
When Moulding says they have a developer for the water sports development and also HAVE (not had) a preferred developer for the rest of the site, Moirai Capital Ltd, Bates breaks into laughter. He then says really ruefully: “Well, Adrian I think that’s all we are going to get, don’t you?” to which Adrian (the on-site reporter) says, just as ruefully and with a big sigh “”I know …” at which point they both break into peals of laughter!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p046w538
Summary: 30 seconds of Independent EDA councillor being totally focused and on point, then roughly 5 minutes of Councillor Moulding saying nothing at all, waffling and being laughed at by two radio presenters!
By Owl’s reckoning that leaves BBC Radio Devon owing Councillor Megan Armstrong 4.5 minutes of air time for right of reply.
Though, to be fair, Moulding said nothing anyone COULD reply to!
East Devon Watch 