The new Devonshire Magazine has this report: http://www.eastdevonalliance.org.uk/news/20150331/return-of-the-good-stewards/
Category Archives: General Election
Marketing the Jurassic Coast…
….is a complicated business.
Latest aerial views keep us up to date with what’s happening, with EDDC planners’ approval:
http://futuresforumvgs.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/comparing-visions-for-development-of.html
And bodies such as the Environment Agency alert us to some of the problems..Has this one been solved?? : https://sidmouthindependentnews.wordpress.com/2013/07/16/east-devon-beaches-at-seaton-ladram-bay-and-budleigh-salterton-too-polluted-to-swim-at/
Hugo Swire’s jokes: not funny
Claire Wright 4 – Others 0
Very short trip through the rural roads of Ottery/Honiton area today: 4 very large outdoor posters for Claire Wright, none at all for Others. Several Claire Wright posters in house windows, none for others.
Fascinating!
Relocation approval rushed through “in indecent haste, at the fag end of an administration” that may soon disappear”
Richard Thurlow’s speech, at the Extra Ordinary Meeting of Full Council last week, explains : https://saveoursidmouth.wordpress.com/2015/03/30/a-huge-number-of-uncertainties-and-unresolved-problems-being-glossed-over-yet-council-has-approved-eddc-office-relocation/
Where to catch up with Claire Wright in April 2015
Check, as more venues may be added:
1 April 2015 Sidmouth election public meeting 20:00
St Francis Church Hall, Woolbrook
11 April 2015 Street events – Sidmouth, Newton Poppleford and Sidbury 10:00
Come and say hello!
At Sidmouth (outside Waitrose)
At 10am Newton Poppleford (near war memorial)
At 11am Sidbury (near Red Lion
12 April 2015 Day of action on planning – Sidmouth 15:00
Knowle gardens, Sidmouth
16 April 2015 Exmouth election public meeting 19:00
Exmouth Rugby Club
17 April 2015 Hustings – Exmouth (Christians Together) 19:30
Glenorchy Church Hall
28 April 2015 Hustings – Sidmouth (Vision Group) 20:30
St Francis Church Hall, Woolbrook
Sunday Politics South West this morning
Soundbites from Hugo Swire
… [yes we should have a secret ballot for Speaker] – why?
“the Speaker has not been favourable to us”!
Hugo thinks the Coalition has been a success
He tried to talk about his own Constituency but the presenter pulled him up – not what they are talking about
Hugo says people should know when they vote what the outcome should be (we wish: no-one mentioned the National Planning Policy Framework and its effect in giving us a developer free-for-all!)
Loves the “Growth Point”
Ben Bradshaw: the Speaker did a good job, he challenged the Government and Bradshaw called Cameron “arrogant and incompetent”.
There was a feature on Lympstone’s Neighbourhood Plan.
Bradshaw in favour of them, local communities must decide but must have mo no absolute veto.
Presumption in favour of development: Hugo says a Local Plan SHOULD (not WILL) stop inappropriate development. Ben Bradshaw pointed out that EDDC has no Local Plan and so is building up to the Exeter boundary whether Exeter likes it or not.
The programme then re-ran Hugo’s stupid joke. “Just a money raising gag”.
Ben Bradshaw said Hugo should realise he could be recorded and his remarks reinforced the view that some MPs are out of touch, the St Ives LibDem prospective candidate agreed with him.
It is on BBC iPlayer and begins about 38 minutes into the programme.
EDDC Tories out of synch – with ALL General Election candidates …
… at a recent hustings meeting in Sidmouth ALL General Election candidates agreed East Devon District Council should not have forced through a rushed relocation decision in the dying days of its dying majority.
Strange things can happen at a General Election …
Independent on the march
In East Devon the Liberal Democrats are the traditional runners up to the Tory safe seat, but with the slump in their fortunes nationally a local independent politician is making the running at the expense of the retired diplomat Stuart Mole for the LibDems. Claire Wright from West Hill is already a County and District Councillor and has a strong power base in the Ottery St Mary area, but the question is whether she can gain ground in the wider countryside during the campaign. Government Minister Hugo Swire enjoyed a majority of more than 9,000 in the last election so it would be quite a shock if Wright was to have a major impact, although strange things happen in election campaigns.
46 MPs rent out their homes in London and claim expenses for hotels
Does this press release conform to purdah rules?
“Pssst….know any good rubbish men?
The search is on for a suitable service provider for East Devon District Council’s new recycling and waste services contract – due to expire in March 2016.
The procurement process began with a ‘Get to know East Devon’ bidders day event at Knowle, which interested contractors were invited to attend.
The aim was to introduce the area of East Devon to potential bidders and to explain the importance of the contract, as well as its aims and objectives.
Most importantly, participants were given crucial insight into our core requirements: Meeting customer demand, keeping quality high, adding the collection of cardboard and mixed plastics as a minimum and reducing costs.
East Devon’s residual waste sent for disposal is the third lowest in the country and missed collections rate is a mere 0.0005%. The current service costs the householder only £1.30 a week
Full details of the service can be found on our website: http://eastdevon.gov.uk/recycling-and-rubbish/.”
Doesn’t it sound rather celebratory with the words “mere” and “only”, rather than plainly factual?
Maybe time to tighten up a bit – the owl is watching!
Stage-managed party politics
Timothy Garton Ash in today’s Guardian:
“One reason for this [political posturing] is that so many MPs depend so directly on the party leaders. At the last count, there were roughly 150 ministers, parliamentary undersecretaries and parliamentary private secretaries. If you add a similar number for those shadowing them on the opposition benches, that brings you close to half the lower house (even allowing for some of those ministers being peers). How many will step out of line to ask a critical question?
Everything is coordinated by an army of special political advisers – known as spads; hence “the spadocracy” – and heaven help the aspiring politician who departs from the script to say something original interesting or (perish the thought) honest.
… Between the childish Punch and Judy of PMQs and the PR Stalinism of the spads, the substance of deliberative democracy is lost. …
… The scrutiny of legislation in the lower house is often woefully inadequate. We depend on unelected lords and then on unelected judges to defend our civil liberties against badly worded and over-broad legislation. These bills have usually been produced as a kneejerk reaction to some event or popular outcry, on the lines of the great satirical syllogism: “Something must be done; this is something; therefore we must do this.” The best select committees do a fine job of cross-examining the powerful, both from government and the private sector, but they need more funding and staff.
And then, of course, there is corruption. When the scandal about MPs fiddling their expenses broke a few years ago, a cartoon showed a pinstriped gent fending off an angry crowd in front of the Houses of Parliament saying, “No, no, I’m a banker!” Call me naive, but I did find it shocking to see two former foreign secretaries caught on camera by a journalistic sting offering their services to a bogus Hong Kong-based company for about £5,000 a day. Yes, money howls still more loudly through American politics; but we don’t want to descend to that level, do we? … ”
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/27/parliament-lawmakers-pmqs-special-advisers
Inappropriate remarks about Parliamentary Candidate, by EDDC Chief Executive
Extraordinarily, there have been two Extra Ordinary Meetings of EDDC on consecutive days this week. On Wednesday evening (25 March), councillors attended a hastily-called decisive meeting about Knowle relocation. The very next afternoon (26 March), with similar rapidity, a meeting about the revised Local Plan was fixed, with the aim of approving it.
A correspondent tells us,
‘At the second of these meetings, Cllr Claire Wright had moved two very sensible amendments which the Chief Executive did not appear to like. The first was to ask the Inspector to allow two weeks more time for public consultation on the changes which were to be agreed at this meeting. The proposal had been to allow six weeks from 1st April. As was said by Hon Alderman Vivienne Ash, this would virtually disqualify many parish councils from commenting, because of the election ‘purdah’ period in which they would not be meeting. Councillors accepted the amendment, and so it was agreed to ask the Inspector to increase the public consultation period from six, to eight weeks.
Cllr Claire Wright’s second amendment was to invite the authors of the report on which EDDC was being asked to increase housing numbers, to a meeting in the near future to explain their findings and give members the opportunity to question them. Cllr Roger Giles backed the idea, adding that two opportunities for questions to the housing numbers experts, had already been missed this week (namely at the special Development Management Committee on 23 March, and ,indeed, at the current meeting (26 March).
It was at this point that the Chief Executive made what could be taken as totally inappropriate remarks. Arguing against Cllr Wright’s amendment, Mark Williams referred to “Councillor Wright`s parliamentary ambitions” and then veered off course, lecturing the rather bemused assembly about about the Exeter wards of Topsham, and St Loye`s being part of the East Devon constituency.
Cllr Giles made a point of order, and protested that what the Chief Exec was saying was irrelevant to the debate and inappropriate.’
Many of East Devon’s electorate, who will be living with the consequences of the Local Plan, would strongly agree with Cllr Giles.
Tribunal dismisses EDDC’s appeal: secret Knowle relocation papers must be revealed.
More to follow when we have details.
No massive business park for Sid Valley after all!
Hugo Swire is no longer our MP …
Parliament was dissolved today, so please newspapers and local Tories, immediately stop calling him our MP and call him a prospective Parliamentary candidates for East Devon – just like all the others, which is all he now is.
“When Parliament is dissolved, every seat in the House of Commons becomes vacant. All business in the House comes to an end. There are no Members of Parliament. MPs revert to being members of the public and lose privileges associated with being a Member of Parliament.”
MPs are allowed access to Parliament for just a few days in which to remove papers from their offices. The facilities that the House provides for MPs in Westminster during a Parliament are no longer available to them from 5pm on the day of dissolution.
Until a new Parliament is elected, there are no MPs. Those who wish to be MPs again must stand again as candidates for election.”
http://www.parliament.uk/about/how/elections-and-voting/general/dissolution/
Scrutiny: rotten from the top down and the bottom up
Here is what one of the 23 rebel Tory MPs said about William Hague trying to change the way the Speaker of the House is voted for – secretly instead of transparently:
“In a tearful speech, Tory MP Charles Walker, chairman of the Commons procedure committee, claimed he had been “played for a fool” by ministers over the issue.
Mr Walker said he had attended Mr Hague’s leaving drinks this week, spending 20 minutes saying goodbye to his special adviser and speaking to Deputy Commons Leader Tom Brake and Chief Whip Michael Gove, “all of whom would have been aware of what was going on”.
He said: “I have been played as a fool and when I go home tonight I will look in the mirror and see an honourable fool looking back at me and I would much rather be an honourable fool in this and any other matter than a clever man.
Labour MPs got to their feet and gave the Tory MP a round of applause – something that is not supposed to happen under Commons rules.”
…Labour’s shadow commons leader Angela Eagle said Mr Hague should be “ashamed of himself” for “going along” with what she claimed was a plot by David Cameron to get rid of Mr Bercow.
“It is a petty and spiteful act because he hates his government being properly scrutinised thanks to this reforming Speaker,” she told MPs.
In a statement, she added: “This is a humiliating defeat for David Cameron on the last day of this Parliament. Instead of talking about ways to improve the lives of working people, in the last week all the prime minister has done is play petty partisan games and arrogantly talk about his retirement plans. In today’s vote decency and democracy prevailed.”
Express and Echo report on latest news in EDDC’s relocation saga
Sidmouth Herald on Hugo Swire’s “jokes” and opponents comments
Swire’s benefits gag is no joke to election rivals
Hugo Swire’s election rivals have called on him to apologise after he was secretly filmed joking about welfare claimants at a Tory fundraiser.
The East Devon MP made the comments at the Cabout welfare claimants at a Tory fundraiser.
The East Devon MP made the comments at the Conservative ‘black and white’ fundraising ball last month, which raised millions for their election campaign.
The footage was part of a Channel 4 Dispatches ‘sting’ into election funding screened on Monday.
Before a wealthy audience, Mr Swire, a former Sotheby’s director, led an auction at the Grosvenor House hotel in Mayfair.
Mr Swire was trying to persuade wealthy donors to bid more, and at one point said: “£60,000 … Ian, persuade him … He’s not on benefits is he? Well if he is, then he can afford it … £55,000?”
Mr Swire told the Journal this week: “This was an off-the-cuff dig to raise money for the party. It was not an attack on the welfare state.”
East Devon’s Labour candidate, Steve Race, said: “These comments show just how out of touch he, and this government, is. I’ve been to a food bank, one of three operating in East Devon, and I know that poverty is no laughing matter.
“Ordinary people talk to me about the struggles they have to pay the bills.
“We need real solutions not these callous comments from an MP who thinks poverty is worthy of a cheap joke at a fundraiser with his millionaire pals. I hope Hugo Swire does the decent thing and issues a public apology”
Liberal Democrat candidate Stuart Mole said: “I was appalled by the sight of a wealthy Conservative minister mocking people on benefits at an exclusive Mayfair ball.
“He insults some of his most vulnerable constituents and shows the disconnect between some politicians and the people they seek to represent. I think he should apologise.”
Independent candidate Claire Wright said: “What is funny about people who face a daily battle trying to survive on benefits?
“It is not funny for those who struggle to scrape together the funds in an attempt to make ends meet.
“It shows him in a poor and callous light. His comments reflect a worrying lack of compassion that characterises this government. Mr Swire should apologise for his crass remarks.”
UKIP candidate Andrew Chapman said the comments were in ‘extremely poor taste’.
He added: “Mr Swire’s joke, albeit in private company, shows just how little people in the ‘Westminster bubble’ understand about the realities of life in the UK.”
East Devon? Where’s that?
Our local, current MP has used one of his final columns of this Parliament to extol the virtues of George Osborne saying he knows him ” pretty well”.
His ONE mention of the South West (not East Devon) is to say that Help to Buy ISAs could help 95,000 people to buy their first homes. (Surely not all of them in East Devon but you can’t be sure of anything about “economic growth” in East Devon these days!).
IT WILL NOT HELP IF OUR YOUNG PEOPLE DON’T HAVE JOBS AND CAN’T GET AFFORDABLE HOUSING!
Whilst general unemployment has dropped (thanks in large part to tax credits and part-time zero hours contracts favouring employers rather than employees) youth unemployment stubbornly refused to fall.
Still, Cranbrook, phases 1-100 will benefit local developers.
East Devon Watch 