I hate to be boring but in this beautiful hot weather Surfers Against Sewage gives Budleigh Salterton a SEWAGE ALERT again.
But the Environment Agency information solar panel, displayed by the Longboat, says there is no pollution warning available.
Who is the bather to believe? I know which I do.
As I walked the dog yesterday I saw so many enjoying playing in the sea, especially children.
Meanwhile, the tankers full of “non-hazardous waste?” sewage still rattle along the Parade and destroy the surface of the High Street.
What is happening? I have heard so many different rumours. Do we have a crack in the Lime Kiln car park storage tank? Is there a blame game happening with SWW laying the this at the door of the LORP project? Who will pay for to have this mess sorted? (drawn- out litigation comes to mind) How long will BS and our vital tourism have to suffer?
Residents appear to have been posting their own alert that this could be an ongoing problem all summer !
A week ago Electoral Calculus (the gold standard for MRP seat by seat predictions) gave Paul a small lead over the Tories (30% – to 29.2%). Their latest poll shows David Reed, the blow- in Tory, bucking the trend and increasing his vote share to 32.4%, overtaking Paul who also continues to gain ground. Reform in this constituency appears static. Labour has dropped from 17.8% to 11.7% and is now given only a 2% chance of winning. Olly Davey, Green, has increased his vote from 2.8% to 9.5%.
Obviously these seemingly precise numbers are surrounded by substantial uncertainty. We need to read them with caution. In these small sample predictions what usually has statistical significance are consistent trends. So over three polls we have the Conservative vote going up and down, Labour has been falling consistently, Lib Dems and Greens have been rising consistently.
Overall conclusion This is a two horse race, too close to call at the moment, but onlyPaul Arnott can beat the Tories. Voting Labour or Green is likely to hand the seat to David Reed.
A correspondent received this communication from Greenpeace which is equally applicable to Exmouth & Exeter East – Owl
‘At this election, Honiton and Sidmouth could be a close race so your vote is powerful. To help you cut through the political spin, we’ve teamed up with Friends of the Earth to comb through the parties’ manifestos and reveal who’s really standing up for the future of our planet. Everyone has to make their own choice about how to vote. But if climate and nature is a priority for you, we hope you find this helpful.
Key points to know:
Across the main UK-wide parties, the Green Party tops our list for its climate and nature plans, followed by the Liberal Democrats, Labour, and lastly, the Conservatives.
A poll last week suggests it is most likely to be either the Liberal Democrats or the Conservatives that win in your area.[1]
We found a big gap between these two parties on their plans and have scored the Liberal Democrats over six times higher than the Conservatives on climate and nature.
Commitments from the Liberal Democrats that are particularly promising include raising money through wealth taxes to invest in green homes, better public transport, nature restoration and more support for developing countries. The party also has an excellent plan to tackle sewage in our rivers and seas. Sadly, they have not committed to an end to oil and gas licences or to ratify the Global Oceans Treaty – both areas they need to go further on.
The Conservative Party’s manifesto is worrying reading. They’re doubling down on oil and gas when increased dependence on gas will result in higher bills, more energy price shocks and an increase in our climate-wrecking emissions. It’s good news that they would ratify the Global Oceans Treaty swiftly, but there’s no credible plan to stop sewage in our rivers and seas.
Polling day is Thursday 4 July – use your vote and remember you need ID.
Want to get the full picture on where parties stand?
Read the guideRead and share this guide on voting for climate and nature at this election
Thank you for joining me in demanding a greener, healthier country for us all. In hope and solidarity, BeckyGreenpeace UK
P.S. Have you signed up to be a climate voter? Our movement will be holding the new government to account beyond the election and we need your help to do it. Join us here. [1] Polling from YouGov released on 19 June
A Devon Reform UK candidate appears to have posted controversial social media posts, including one alluding to prime minister Rishi Sunak’s Indian heritage.
Paul Quickenden, who is standing in the new Honiton and Sidmouth constituency, has a mocked-up picture of Mr Sunak with the heading ‘Dahl Boy’ on his Facebook page.
The image places Mr Sunak’s head on the body of sitcom wideboy from Only Fools and Horses, Del Boy, and also features Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and London mayor Sadiq Khan as ‘grandad’ and ‘Rodney’, respectively, from the show.
The famous yellow Robin Reliant is also in the image, but rather than ‘Trotters’, the surname of Del Boy in the show, it says the word ‘Traitors’, and has 666 as the number to telephone.
666 is a biblical reference popularly known as the number of the beast, or devil.
Mr Sunak is a British Sikh of Punjabi Indian heritage.
It’s unclear who originally created the image that Mr Quickenden is promoting to his Facebook followers.
The image came to light as part of an investigation by ITV which claimed that four Reform UK candidates belonged to a public Facebook group that regularly posts racist messages.
Mr Quickenden has also posted comments and shared Facebook posts, including one with 24,400 followers saying: “Cultural Jihad , happening now in plain site and encouraged by both main parties.”
Mr Quickenden uses this post to advance his campaign in Honiton and Sidmouth, inviting followers to vote for Reform UK in the constituency.
The ITV report also referenced two other unnamed Reform candidates who had posted potentially racist posts, with one allegedly commenting in 2016 that ‘Hitler founded Israel’, and then another posting the image of Mr Sunak, which has since been reproduced on Mr Quickenden’s profile.
Discussing the issue from a national perspective, Reform UK’s leader Nigel Farage told ITV it hired a vetting agency, vetting.com, to perform background checks on its candidates, but the firm said the speed with which the general election was announced meant its process had to be rushed.
“Our candidates are not sophisticates or Oxbridge graduates,” Mr Farage told ITV.
“Our candidates may have a sense of humour that is a bit rough and ready, but we believe in free speech.”
Mr Quickenden has a GoFundMe campaign to help him pay for election costs, and has raised £1,170 from 16 donations out of his £2,000 target as of 24 June.
A Devon spokesperson for Reform UK has not responded to requests for comment.
Multiple victims have been told by the force that he was arrested on suspicion of offences under the Online Safety Act and harassment. Labour is understood to have suspended him after it was notified of his arrest.
Earlier this year a high-profile MP William Wragg was suspended by the Conservatives over his role in the scandal.
He admitted giving the phone numbers of colleagues to the scammer after he shared explicit images of himself when they began talking on a dating app.
It came after Politico reported that political figures had received the unsolicited messages from someone using two unfamiliar numbers calling themselves “Abi” or “Charlie”.
The messages would include details of the MPs and staffers’ careers and campaigns they had worked on to build rapport with victims. They would then descend into sexually explicit messaging, with “Abi” or “Charlie” sending graphic images to victims and asking for nude photographs in return.
It is understood that two of the individuals targeted responded by sending an explicit image of themselves, with the attack described as an attempt at spear phishing. Spear phishing involves scammers pretending to be trusted senders in order to steal personal or sensitive information.
Other senior figures targeted by the honeytrapper included Conservative MP Dr Luke Evans, who said he had received unsolicited explicit images and messages over WhatsApp. It is believed that at least 12 men in political circles received the unsolicited messages.
In a statement, the Met said: “Police executed a warrant at an address in Islington.
“A man was arrested on suspicion of harassment and committing offences under the Online Safety Act. He was taken into custody where he remains.
“The arrest relates to an investigation being carried out by the Met’s Parliamentary Liaison and Investigation Team following reports of unsolicited messages sent to MPs and others.
“The investigation remains ongoing.” The investigation has seen officers interview all those who received messages from the scammer, which included Labour and Conservative MPs.
Historically, in Devon, there have always been tensions between the walled city of Exeter and the County beyond, though you may have to be a 300 year old Owl to know it.
Are we seeing an action replay in this election where Exeter labour activists seem to be under the illusion that they can “take over” the new constituency of Exmouth and Exeter East? Despite only a small fraction of Exeter’s suburbs being added to the Exmouth side of the old constituency.
Labour’s candidate in 2019 was Dan Wilson, an EDDC councillor for Exmouth Halsdon. This time he stands as an Independent.
Dan quit the party in March, citing amongst his reasons: Labour’s reneging on the Green New Deal and turning a blind eye to whistleblowing on candidate behaviour. Dan says “When I was in the Labour Party, that’s the kind of thing I expected of the Conservatives, and I felt [the Labour party] should hold itself up to higher standards.”
As has been reported and commented on by Owl, Labour have drawn false conclusions on their strength from polls attempting seat by seat predictions on small samples. Their illusion is beginning to dawn, though Owl can find no evidence of their campaigning cutting through in the constituency heartland in Exmouth.
Nationally, both Labour and the Conservatives are losing votes with Reform and the Lid Dems gaining.
Disappointing (but predictable?) that EEE Labour has switched off replies to this. Not only has Electoral Calculus projected the Lib Dems to beat the Tories, but now the FT – whose outdated figures Labour uses on its leaflets – has the LDs moving ahead to become the challenger.
Huge sums of taxpayers’ money literally has gone up in flames. – Owl
An estimated £1.4bn-worth of personal protective equipment (PPE) bought by the government in single a deal has been destroyed or written off, according to new figures described as the worst example of waste in the Covid pandemic.
The figures obtained by the BBC under freedom of information laws showed that 1.57bn items from the NHS supplier Full Support Healthcare will never been used.
They were part of a £1.78bn deal the firm struck with the government to supply masks, aprons, eye protectors and respirators in April 2020 at the height of the pandemic. It was the government’s largest PPE order during the pandemic accounting for 13% of the government’s spend.
Out of total of 2.02bn items provided by Full Support Healthcare in the deal, only 232m were sent to the NHS or other care settings, the figures show. About 749m items have already been destroyed and a further 825m of excess stock is being considered for disposal or recycling, the disclosure revealed.
The shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, described the deal as a “staggering waste”.
He said: “We know that billions of pounds were wasted during the pandemic on corruption and incompetence by the Conservatives, but this is the worst example I have ever seen.
“£1.4bn on one contract, paying for PPE that was never used, and Rishi Sunak’s fingerprints are all over it. That is money that could have been used to pay the salaries of 37,000 NHS nurses.”
Daisy Cooper, the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, said it was “colossal misuse of public funds”.
She added: “This is just the latest in a series of damning revelations on the Conservatives’ record of mishandling Covid contracts.
“Instead of this troubling pattern of waste, shortcuts and lack of oversight, the public deserve transparency on the true cost of these failures.”
The health secretary, Victoria Atkins, said the £1.4bn figure was “not accepted” but her department has not provided an alternative estimate.
She defended the government’s procurement of PPE during the pandemic as “the right thing to do”. Challenged on the disclosure during a press conference on Tuesday, she said: “The whole country wanted us to get the PPE that our frontline staff needed both in healthcare and in social care, and we managed to procure billions of pieces of PPE equipment.”
There is no suggestion that Full Support Healthcare, or its co-directors, Sarah and Richard Stoute, have done anything wrong.
The couple’s lawyers told the BBC: “Full Support Healthcare stock arrived quickly by summer 2020, much earlier than most and in larger quantities. It had either a two- or three-year shelf life. This means the PPE products are more likely to have passed their use-by date.”
The couple’s business is based offshore in Jersey, “solely to maintain privacy”, the lawyers told the BBC.
The couple and their company remain registered in the UK for tax.
Shortly after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced the election date, Scottish Secretary Alister Jack told the BBC he had made £2,100 after betting on June and July election dates. He claimed one of the bets was placed at odds of 25/1.
Last week, Mr Jack told the BBC the comments were “a joke… I was pulling your leg”.
Today, the Scottish Secretary said in a statement he “did not place any bets on the date of the general election during May”.
Rishi Sunak made his surprise election announcement on 22 May.
“I am very clear that I have never, on any occasion, broken any Gambling Commission rules”, said Mr Jack.
“I did not place any bets on the date of the general election during May – the period under investigation by the Gambling Commission.
“Furthermore, I am not aware of any family or friends placing bets. I have nothing more to say on this matter.”
A spokesperson for the Gambling Commission said: “We are not confirming or denying the identity of any individuals involved in this investigation.”
Alister Jack had been telling colleagues and journalists for at least a year that he thought a June or July election made the most strategic sense for his party.
He has represented Scotland in the UK cabinet since 2019, under the premierships of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.
Owl’s view is that tactical voters need to to stop following illusions and swing behind the other candidate with Claire Wright’s endorsement, Paul Arnott in Exeter & Exeter East as well
At tonight’s Axminster hustings (pictured above), Green Party candidate Henry Gent said, ‘Vote for the candidate best placed to defeat the Conservative’ – that is, for Richard Foord. Jake Bonetta. the Labour candidate, has previously said, ‘We cannot let the Tories win here’, but he did not make a clear statement like Henry Gent’s tonight. Yet that is what is needed – Richard is not sure of beating the Tory, who some projections still back to win. Every vote counts – as Henry indicated, there will be another day when it makes sense to vote Green or Labour, but not now.
My hearing aids stopped working four weeks ago, just before the Spring Bank Holiday. Chime at RD&E audiology repaired them that week and returned them by post on 30 May.
In Budleigh Salterton our household received no post, other than tracked post from the Bank Holiday until a huge bundle was delivered on 20 June, three weeks later. (Social media reported delivery desserts in Sidmouth over the same period).
Unfortunately, this did not include the hearing aids but, excitingly, did contain a letter from RD&E informing my wife of her RD&E appointment for the Monday June 3 – eighteen days previously.
Yesterday afternoon, the hearing aids suddenly turned upbutafter a lunch time delivery.
I have suffered over three weeks of unnecessary silence and am left utterly speechless at this failure of an essential service on which so many of us depend, especially as we get older.
Deaf Old Buffer
PS. What impact could this have on the postal vote?
[Owl adds that since 2011, Royal Mail’s universal service obligations have included offering to deliver letters Monday-Saturday and parcels Monday-Friday as well as offering two delivery speeds for its main universal service products: First Class (next day) and Second Class (within three days).]
English councils saw big cuts to their funding during the 2010s, with spending on some services down between 40% and 70% over the decade. And although like virtually all public services, funding for local government was increased during the 2019–24 parliament, councils’ finances are still under significant pressure. This reflects increases in demands and costs for key services that have often far outpaced economy-wide inflation, and has led to a growing number of councils requiring exceptional financial support.
Despite this, the main parties’ manifestos were virtually silent on their plans for council funding post-election. This means there is significant uncertainty about exactly what to expect over the next five years. This report therefore looks at a number of scenarios for councils’ funding – and what these might mean for service delivery and financial sustainability given the spending pressures councils face. It finds that, given the current fiscal environment and overall spending plans implicit in the main parties’ manifestos, cuts to some council services are highly likely unless spending pressures abate – even with big increases in council tax, and particularly in poorer parts of the country. There is also a real risk of significantly more councils being pushed to financial breaking point, joining the likes of Birmingham, Thurrock and Woking.
How might central government funding change?
The next government will have to decide how much grant funding will be provided to local government. None of the main parties has made commitments on this, unlike in 2019.
Existing indicative spending envelopes for 2025–26 onwards imply that ‘unprotected’ spending – which in the 2010s included grant funding for councils – could see cuts averaging 2% to 3½% in real terms per year, if the next government wanted to fully fund the NHS workforce plan and meet existing childcare, defence and overseas aid commitments. However, this may not provide a good guide for how grant funding for councils will change in the next parliament.
First, overall UK government spending totals are likely to be revised more significantly than suggested in party manifestos, when detailed plans are set at a post-election Spending Review; the trend since 2015 has been for budgets to be revised upwards. Second, the extent to which councils will share in any pain imposed is uncertain; in principle, they could fare better or worse than the average unprotected area. The public finance situation and major parties’ overall tax and spending plans mean that grant funding is likely to be more constrained in the coming parliament than over the last few years though.
Will reliance on council tax increase?
There is also uncertainty about the outlook for council tax, the biggest single source of funding for English councils.
Councils have increased their council tax by an average of 4.4% per year since 2019. But this has barely been enough to keep up with inflation, leaving council tax at the same real-terms level as in 2019–20 and just 2% higher in real terms than in 2010–11. In future, 5% increases (the overall maximum allowed without a referendum over the last two years) would mean a 3% per year real-terms increase in bills over the next parliament, the fastest rate since the 2001–05 parliament (when they averaged 6% a year).
Whether 5% increases in council tax are a good guide for the future is unclear though. On the one hand, both central and local government may feel uncomfortable with such above-inflation increases. On the other hand, an incoming government could decide to remove council tax referendum limits as part of devolution plans. Experience from Wales suggests that this could see bigger increases in council tax, especially by those councils that have traditionally set low tax rates.
Scenarios for funding changes
Uncertainty about both grant funding and council tax increases means that it is not possible to predict the funding councils will receive in the next parliament with confidence. However, it is possible to look at a range of more optimistic and more pessimistic scenarios using different assumptions about how both grant funding and council tax revenues may change over the next five years. This is done in Table A, which includes three scenarios for grant funding (flat in real terms; 2.7% real-terms cuts per year; 7.0% real-terms cuts per year), reflecting uncertainty about the priority placed on council funding by the next government, as well as two scenarios for council tax increases (5% and 3% per year).
The table shows that, in any of these scenarios, overall funding will increase by less than the average over the 2019–24 parliament (2.9% per year in real terms). These scenarios also show that across the local government sector as a whole, the increases that are made to council tax will likely matter more for trends in overall funding than changes in grant funding. This reflects the much larger contribution that council tax makes to overall funding (57% in 2024–25) than grant funding (15%) (with retained business rates making up the remainder).
Table A. Scenarios for English council funding
Real-terms change in grant funding each year
Increase in council tax bills each year
Average annual change in overall funding, 2024–25 to 2028–29
Cash terms
Real terms
Freeze
5% (3%+2%)
4.2%
2.5%
Freeze
3% (2%+1%)
3.1%
1.3%
2.7% cut
5% (3%+2%)
3.9%
2.1%
2.7% cut
3% (2%+1%)
2.7%
1.0%
7% cut
5% (3%+2%)
3.3%
1.6%
7% cut
3% (2%+1%)
2.1%
0.4%
Source: Table 2 in the main text. The first figure in parentheses relates to the increase in council tax for general services, and the second the additional increase for social care services.
Potential impacts of these scenarios
Councils in more deprived areas can raise relatively less in council tax than those in more affluent areas and in turn rely more on grant funding. This means that unless grant funding were redistributed towards deprived areas, councils in such areas may fare financially worse. For example, with cuts to grants of 7% a year and 5% council tax increases, councils in the most deprived tenth of areas in England would see overall funding increases averaging 0.6% a year, compared with 2.6% a year for councils covering the least deprived tenth of areas.
In order to offset this pattern, the government would need to redistribute grant funding from less deprived to more deprived areas. For example, under the scenario just described, councils in the most deprived tenth of areas would need to see their grant funding increase slightly in cash terms over the next four years, while those in the least deprived areas would need to see cuts averaging two-thirds, to equalise the cut in overall funding in 2028–29.
The impact of any future funding scenario on councils’ service provision and financial sustainability will depend crucially on the cost and demand pressures councils face. Recent Local Government Association analysis suggests that if recent demand and cost pressures continued, real-terms increases of 4.5% a year would be needed to maintain services – far outpacing the funding increases in even our optimistic scenario. Even with a significant slowdown in cost and demand growth, councils in more deprived areas could struggle under even our most optimistic funding scenario, given that they can raise less from council tax than those in richer areas. If grants are cut significantly and/or council tax increases are closer to 3%, councils across the country would need to cut back service provision and could potentially face severe financial stress, even if cost and demand pressures ease.
Several public services are at risk of suffering “sharp cuts” under either a future Labour or Conservative government, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).
The IFS said the manifestos of the major parties provided little information about the funding outlook for individual services, which makes it easier for them to stay silent on the cuts to unprotected budgets.
The IFS said it did not expect the parties to conduct comprehensive spending reviews for a potential five-year Parliament in their manifestos.
But it added parties could have provided more details on their priorities and rough minimums or totals for different areas of spending in a bid to “give a sense of what we can realistically expect from them” in the next Parliament.
Existing government departmental spending plans run until the end of March 2025.
The IFS noted the two main parties have provided costings for specific policies, such as Labour’s commitment to free breakfast clubs and the Conservatives’ bid to modernise GP services.
But it said the broad priorities of each party “do not tell us anything about overall spending on each public service”.
In a new briefing note, the IFS said: “At the time of the March 2024 Budget, the baseline day-to-day resource spending envelope for all government departments was growing at 1% in real terms per yearafter this year.
“Neither main party has changed overall resource spending plans in significant ways with their manifestos: Labour’s £5 billion top-up in 2028–29 means real-terms resource spending will now grow at 1.2%, rather than 1%, on average per year.
“The Conservatives left total spending plans virtually unchanged, topping up total departmental spending in 2029–30 by around £500 million.
“We have already discussed the fact that the lack of department-by-department plans after this year means that we are uncertain about the path of spending on particular public services, andthat we are unable to evaluate the ‘cost’ of committing to a given path of spending.
“But the lack of department-by-department plans also means that parties can commit in their manifestos to overall spending plans that imply sharp real-terms cuts to a range of areas, without spelling out where those cuts will fall or how they are to be achieved.”
IFS research economist Bee Boileau, an author of the report, said: “Both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party have made a lot of their fully funded pledges in the manifestos this election campaign.
“But, in practice, these pledges mean almost nothing for the funding that individual public services might expect in the next Parliament.
“We do not know how total spending will be allocated between public services after next March, and, with a few exceptions, neither manifesto offered much light.
“The manifestos did tell us that neither party is planning to top up total public service spending by enough to avoid very difficult choices for many public services in the next parliament.
“But the manifestos provided no information on which areas would actually bear the brunt of these choices, continuing the main parties’ conspiracy of silence when it comes to public service spending plans.”
Mark Franks, director of welfare at the Nuffield Foundation, said: “The public should be informed about whether the parties aiming to form the next government have credible plans for funding the essential public services that people rely on.
“In this election, voters are being asked to make their decision without adequate and clear information on this critical issue.
“This lack of clarity should be addressed, both in the remaining two weeks before the election and in future electoral processes.”
I hear the Mediterranean is revolting this time of year. It certainly will be for some this summer. A growing anger, from Barcelona to the Balearics, is threatening to turn the most popular holiday hotspots into hostile ground for the tourists they once welcomed.
The islands of Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera have already been hit by protests, with 10,000 locals marching through Palma. Earlier this month, sunbathing tourists on an isolated beach popular with Instagram influencers were jeered and forced off it so that residents could have it to themselves for a change. The Balearic president has declared that Mallorca’s 20 million tourists a year “is not sustainable”, and that measures to limit visitors can no longer be ruled out.
Then, last weekend, the mayor of Barcelona restated his opposition to the short-term letting site Airbnb – a lightning rod for protests about the “crime” of over-tourism – by pledging that there will be no rental apartments for visitors in his city by the end of the decade.
His refusal to issue new licences and not renew existing ones comes amid public outcries against the mass tourism that has seen a city of 1.6 million residents receive more than 30 million visitors a year.
In 2016, Barcelona became the first major European city to fine Airbnb for users letting out unregistered properties and, later, to ban short-term private room rentals altogether, as part of its campaign to crack down to dissuade tourists from using short-let booking apps and to push visitors back into hotels. Some 3,500 apartments are already said to have been returned to the city’s local housing market.
In clamping down, you might say Barcelona is taking back control of its private rental sector from the disruptor platform – and there are plenty of places in Britain that would like to follow their lead, too.
Since it launched across Europe in 2010, Airbnb has dramatically reshaped short-term lettings markets, depleting housing stock with a negative knock-on for residents’ rents. It has warped neighbourhoods, too. Family-run supermarkets that for generations have catered for locals have been inched out by tourist cafes, bike rentals and souvenir shops.
Yes, the app helped create new demand and enabled billions to flow into local economies. It has stretched the average tourist’s length of stay, which has only added to local incomes and enabled more than $10bn in tourism taxes to be generated around the world. But with hordes of visitors comes great irresponsibility.
The revolving door of tourists can shatter the peace, from the notorious “party pads” with hot tubs in quiet villages, to the unwelcome sound of wheelie suitcases being trundled down the corridor of a residential apartment block in the middle of the night.
Initially, Airbnb was sold as the place to find a room going spare or a sofa to surf. But the trouble with “democratising” travel is that everybody can do it. The freedom to live like a local and explore a neighbourhood like it’s your own means you can also misbehave like you own the place, too – to drive it like you stole it.
Just ask the residents of Britain’s prettiest seaside villages – if you can find them. Out of season, the likes of Robin Hood’s Bay in North Yorkshire, Whitstable in Kent and Mousehole in Cornwall are often pitch dark; nobody’s home, because few can afford to live there these days, thanks to all the holiday lets that no one much fancies in deepest February. These towns are becoming like a ghost town.
Meanwhile, in London, cash-strapped councils have accused holiday platforms of not doing enough to prevent local authority housing from being illegally sublet to tourists for vast profits – and at a time when thousands of people are on waiting lists for full-time accommodation. (One housing association tenant was reportedly found to have made £4,000 a week from subletting their property to tourists.)
There was a time when we used to love a market disruptor. In a similar way that the arrival of “no-frills” airlines in the 1990s rapidly brought down the price of return flights, and Uber ended black cabbies’ nice little earner, holiday rental app revolution – made possible by smartphones and sleek online booking interfaces – seemed to pull a rug from beneath hotels that could once overcharge for a bed for the night.
But there’s always a catch – and it’s not just the vast council tax shortfall involved. In my experience, Airbnb and its rival platforms are rarely fuss free.
Tim Dillon, a US stand-up and podcaster, has a nice line about the downside of staying in the spare rooms advertised on Airbnb, which has misanthropic echoes of Jean-Paul Sartre: “The problem is that people are terrorists – their homes are filthy and disgusting. There are 150 rules including ’Don’t wake the neighbour. She’s works nights!” Or dumb recommendations: ‘Try Claudia’s Pancake Hut – local fav!’ Just buy a van and sleep in that.”
I might do just that. These days, I am allergic to Airbnb, ever since I was kicked out of an apartment in Alghero in high season, for complaining about the gabba DJ broadcasting into the night at the open-air funfair next door, a facility unmentioned in the listing description.
You’d think I’d have learned my lesson, but this summer I’ve booked to go to Mallorca. I’ll be sure to pack an “Ocupem les Nostres Platges” T-shirt, just to throw the anti-tourist protesters off the scent.
More than 120 Conservative MPs, including Jeremy Hunt, Liz Truss, Sajid Javid and Gillian Keegan, paid £100,000 of taxpayers’ money to the Conservatives’ in-house web design services, it can be revealed.
The MPs used the Bluetree website service to design their websites. When billed by Bluetree, they would pay for the sites then claim back the costs from the public purse via expenses, prompting a complaint to parliament’s expenses watchdog about the practice.
Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) has denied Bluetree is wholly owned by the party and says it is a separate organisation, but repeatedly refused to deny the party receives income from the company, saying it has “commercial arrangements with CCHQ”.
Records show more than 330 invoices from Bluetree to Conservative MPs, including Hunt, Truss, Javid and Keegan, for web design services. Other high-profile Conservatives who have expensed services from Bluetree include Ben Wallace, Tobias Ellwood, Mark Francois and Helen Whately.
The company – which describes itself as the “Conservative party UK official website platform” and says it is run “inside the party” – has an address that is the same office as CCHQ and has been paid £100,695 in taxpayers’ money since 2019.
The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) has said it would not allow websites to be funded if it was clear they were being used for party political purposes – regardless of the services offered by the company. It said if any evidence was found that rules had been broken then it would work with the MP to make amendments or repay expenses.
Senior transparency campaigners said they were alarmed if MPs were using taxpayer funds that could end up with the Conservative party. Tom Brake, the director of Unlock Democracy, said the money should be repaid if any surveys from the website were used to give MPs information for campaigning.
“The rules are clear. Taxpayers’ money cannot be used by MPs for party political campaign purposes. Yet Bluetree’s promotional material about their websites makes it clear that that is their intended purpose,” Brake said.
“Running surveys on a website, paid for with public money, which elicit information about likely voting intention constitutes a breach of the expenses rules. Unless these activities have been separately funded by the MP, any MP using taxpayer’s funds in this way should be required to reimburse them immediately.”
Rose Whiffen, a senior research officer at Transparency International UK, said: “There are rightly strict rules governing what MPs can and cannot claim on expenses, including using public money for political purposes.
“Any allegations that MPs have used their taxpayer-backed expenses to fill the coffers of their respective political parties should be investigated. MPs should carefully avoid any expenditure that could be seen to be misusing public money to the benefit of their respective parties.”
The Labour councillor James Walsh made the complaint to Ipsa. He is running against Hunt in the Godalming and Ash constituency, though the Lib Dems are favourites to take the seat.
Walsh said the authority should investigate the expenses. “There would be nothing intrinsically wrong with any of the above if these website services were something the individual MPs or the Conservative party were paying for out of their own funds, but for those costs to be charged to the taxpayer in the form of Ipsa expense claims strikes me as an outrageous misuse of taxpayers’ money,” he wrote.
A Conservative party spokesperson said: “Bluetree is an independent organisation but is a preferred supplier of the Conservative party. MPs using Ipsa money for a website to promote constituency activity is compliant with Ipsa rules. Bluetree works closely with Ipsa to ensure guidelines are followed.
“Bluetree and the Conservative party have made it clear to candidates who were MPs that they should not be using any Ipsa-funded website during the election.”
The party said Bluetree was part of a registered company separate from the Conservative party but would not say what that company was. All contact details for Bluetree on its website are directed to CCHQ and Bluetree does not have a separate Companies House registration.
MPs have frozen their websites during the election campaign to avoid breaking rules on using the taxpayer-funded sites.
The website of Bluetree promotes features to be used by campaigners. It says it has “the only software designed to provide Conservative MPs with the features to campaign effectively online throughout the election cycle” and that “candidates who use Bluetree consistently receive a higher vote share than those who don’t”.
It says: “We have spent more than a decade working inside the party to provide tools that you simply cannot get elsewhere.” It also promises a site that is “compliant with Ipsa, the UK, Scottish and Welsh parliaments, the Electoral Commission and the information commissioner”.
The site directs any queries about sites designed by Bluetree to CCHQ and contains the Conservative imprint: “Promoted by Alan Mabbutt on behalf of the Conservative party.”
Paul Arnott, the Liberal Democrat candidate for Exmouth & Exeter East, is not only the tactical choice to beat the Tories, backed by the remarkable Claire Wright who came second last time, in an area where Labour have never been even second and the Lib Dems have far more votes in recent council elections. He’s also a formidable campaigner, skilled politician and generous human being, as I know from working with him in East Devon politics over the last decade.
Paul, who has lived in East Devon and Exeter most of his adult life, first got involved about 15 years ago, angered by the obvious corruption of the East Devon council after decades of Tory rule. Along with a few others, he set up the East Devon Alliance to challenge the abuse of planning powers, and turned this into one of the most successful Independent electoral challengers in English local government, which by 2020 had removed the Tories. Paul then took on the challenge of constructing an alternative coalition to reform and open up the council. At the same time, he actively backed Claire’s amazing campaigns.
Paul’s politics are driven by the need for justice and to challenge the dire effects of national Tory rule, especially on the NHS, to which he owes his own life – Paul was always there when we were fighting to save the community hospitals in 2017, and he was alongside me when they threatened to demolish part of Seaton Hospital late last year.
Paul’s national politics always inclined towards the Lib Dems and mine towards Labour, but we agreed on what needed to be done and Paul, more than anyone, made things happen. His style is consensual and inclusive – on the council, he brought together Independents, the Lib Dems, the Greens, and at times Labour. As a passionate supporter of Proportional Representation – which would make Labour and Green votes count in our area, but which national Labour has blocked – he is backed by the cross-party East Devon Compass group which campaigns for this.
Paul will want to represent everyone in the constituency and especially all those who are looking for change after 14 years of Tory rule. He’s not a tribal Lib Dem – he only joined the party after Richard Foord’s by-election victory proved that they were once again the national challengers in East Devon. He will stand up for local people and for what is right, in the end – I am sure – despite the party line.
However unlike Labour MPs who will be whipped to support Keir Starmer right or wrong, Paul will be able to challenge his government – for example, over increasing cooperation with Europe and the odious two-child rule – as well as supporting them on many issues. The phrase ‘local champion’ has been discredited by Tory chancers, but Paul would be the real thing. He is a worthy inheritor of Claire’s mantle, and the best person to stop Exmouth & Exeter East being saddled with an irrelevant Tory MP for five more years.
Martin Shaw is a former Independent county councillor and leading campaigner for community hospitals.
South West Water (SWW) has apologised for failing to lift boil water notices for additional groups of customers this week following a parasite outbreak in May.
The company said they “are seeing clear results” in Kingswear, but they had to lift the notice in line with advice from public health partners.
SWW has previously said it was still advising about 2,073 households in the wider Hillhead, upper Brixham and Kingswear areas to continue to boil their drinking water.
About 2,500 homes in the area were under notice after cryptosporidium, which can cause diarrhoea and sickness, was found in the water supply on 15 May.
South West Water added it would continue to “carry out intensive work in the Hillhead network”, ice-pigging water pipes, where an ice solution is pushed along pipes using water pressure to help clean them.
The company thanked customers for their patience.
On Monday, the company will be holding a drop-in session in Kingswear Hall for residents of Hillhead who want to learn more abut the process of ice-pigging.
On Tuesday there will be a session for residents in the Brixham area who “are still concerned about the quality of their drinking water”, in Brixham Town Hall.
Both sessions will be held between 15:00 and 18:00 BST.
Simon Jupp has made these strong claims in his recent election flyer (see images below). Are they true or false?
Owl sends in the ferrets.
What the ferrets say is that Simon Jupp couldn’t be bothered to turn up when the campaign was launched at a large public meeting on 3 November 2023. Nor did he turn up for any subsequent meetings.
So it is not surprising that he wasn’t chosen to be on the 10 member local committee. Since there are only 2 Lib Dems on the committee they can’t be described as “controlling” it either, indeed it is genuinely cross-party and includes conservatives. He eventually contacted one of the committee members, and in the end three of them had a zoom meeting with him.
But why should he be part of the campaign? Until the election was called, Simon Jupp was MP for East Devon. Seaton’s MP was Richard Foord, MP for Tiverton and Honiton. So this local issue lay outside his “Parish” – so to speak. He should have been devoting all his energies on sorting out his constituents’ problems in Exmouth, Cranbrook and Sidmouth.
The ferrets also question whether Simon (gofer in the Department of Transport) has any relevant experience in saving hospitals. It is Tory policies that are closing them and Simon is as loyal as they come.
“This government will have integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level.” – Rishi Sunak on being appointed PM
It looks like Partygate all over again – Owl
Harry Yorke, Caroline Wheeler, Gabriel Pogrund www.thetimes.com (Extract)
A senior Conservative official is being investigated by the Gambling Commission over allegations he placed dozens of bets on the timing of the election before it was announced publicly.
Nick Mason, the Tories’ chief data officer, has been informed by the watchdog that he is part of the inquiry. After being approached for comment, the Conservative Party confirmed he has taken a leave of absence.
He is the fourth Tory to be named since the controversy first erupted, with a police officer who was part of Rishi Sunak’s close protection team also under investigation.
[There is a moral in this image – never mess with an Owl]
Mason allegedly placed small bets each worth less than £100, but would have stood to win thousands of pounds based on the odds
Water company bosses have taken home more than £100m in salaries and bonuses over the last 10 years despite overseeing a major sewage crisis in the country’s waterways, new figures reveal.
Vote Tory to “Hold water companies to account”? – Owl doesn’t think so!
Research into the annual accounts of each of the water utility firms since 2013 shows that nine of the chief executives have paid themselves £114m, including £61m in bonuses and benefits.
According to figures shared with i, among the highest earners is Liv Garfield, chief executive of Severn Trent Water, who took home £3.9m in the 2021/22 financial year and £3.2m in the 2022/23 financial year.
The research by Labour analysed the annual accounts of each of the nine major water companies, showing the total remuneration of each of the chief executives, as well as breaking it down by salary, bonuses, benefits and incentives.
It comes as the party released separate NHS data that showed more than 10,000 people have been hospitalised since 2019 as a result of waterborne diseases as both Sir Keir Starmer’s party and the Liberal Democrats ramped up attacks on the “Conservative sewage scandal”.
Labour highlighted new analysis of NHS hospital admissions data showing the number of people diagnosed with diseases transmitted via waterborne infection nearly doubled during the past two years, rising to a record high of 3,261 cases last year.
The steepest increase was in the number of typhoid fever cases, which doubled to more than 603.
Typhoid fever is typically “uncommon” in the UK and more prevalent in parts of the world that have poor sanitation and limited access to clean water, according to the NHS.
Data from the Environment Agency for 2023 shows a 54 per cent increase in the number of sewage spills compared with 2022, and a 13 per cent increase compared with 2020.
There is growing anger over the polluted state of England’s rivers and coasts, with no single stretch of river classed as being in a good overall condition, and hundreds of pollution risk alerts issued for popular beaches around the country last year.
Labour shadow environment secretary Steve Reed said the NHS figures were “sickening”, adding the Tories just looked the other way while water companies pumped a tidal wave of raw sewage into our rivers, lakes and seas, putting the nation’s health at risk.
Meanwhile, the Lib Dems set out a plan to save chalk streams, which the party’s analysis suggested suffered nearly 49,000 hours worth of sewage dumping in 2023 – more than double the previous year.
The streams, which spring from underground chalk reservoirs, are one of the world’s rarest freshwater habitats and are found primarily in the south of England and Yorkshire.
Sir Ed Davey’s party repeated its proposal to launch a public consultation within the first 100 days of the next government, which could see rivers and lakes awarded a new Blue Flag status to protect them from sewage dumping.
Labour has pledged to ban water bosses bonuses if they fail to stop sewage spills in sufficient time, and will even bring in criminal charges for executives who persistently fail to meet environmental targets.
The Conservatives said in February that they too will block payouts for water chiefs if they commit criminal acts of water pollution, starting with bonuses from April 2024.
The party has also insisted it has quadrupled the number of water company inspections, meaning 4,000 inspections will take place a year by April 2025, rising to 10,000 a year from April 2026.
The Conservatives have been approached for comment.
Severn Trent water has also been approached for comment.
Land Adjacent To Hamlet House Nags Head Road GittishamRef. No: 24/1197/PIP | Validated: Thu 13 Jun 2024 | Status: Awaiting decision
East Devon Watch 