During the North Sea Oil bonanza, Margaret Thatcher blew the proceeds on tax cuts. Norway created a  sovereign wealth fund instead. 

The Green party is calling for the creation of a “green sovereign wealth fund” to tackle the climate crisis. What will our current Government do? – Owl

Jillian Ambrose www.theguardian.com

The Queen and the Treasury are in line for a multibillion-pound bonanza from renewable energy, after a major auction of seabed plots for windfarms off the coasts of England and Wales attracted runaway bids.

The crown estate, which manages the monarch’s property portfolio, holds exclusive rights to lease the seabed around the British Isles. With its first auction of windfarm licences in a decade understood to have reached record highs, the Queen’s income is expected to leap by at least £100m a year, while the takings will generate over £300m a year for the Treasury.

Two windfarm sites within the Irish Sea have reportedly attracted the most frenzied bidding, with energy firms offering to pay as much as £200m for each – a total revenue of £400m a year. Awards for another three areas have yet to be decided. The licences are for 10 years, meaning the auction will raise at least £4bn over a decade.

The vast sums involved have prompted calls for the revenues from Britain’s renewable resources to be kept by the public in a “green sovereign wealth fund” that could be used to invest in tackling the climate crisis.

“Rather than being squirrelled away in Treasury coffers, how much better would it be to use this renewable windfall as initial capital for a sovereign wealth fund that could then be invested for future generations, similar to what we’ve seen the likes of Alaska and Norway do in the past with their oil wealth,” said the Green party co-leader, Jonathan Bartley.

The crown estate declined to comment on the confidential process which requires all participants to sign ironclad non-disclosure contracts to prevent leaking commercially sensitive details about the process before it has concluded.

The identity of the winning bidder is not known, but market sources told the industry journal ReNews that it was likely to be a large oil producer. Companies including BP, Shell and Norwegian oil producer Equinor have all taken an interest in offshore wind as oil revenues decline and pressure rises to pursue green energy portfolios.

The crown estate’s profits from the multibillion-pound windfall would more than double the property manager’s £345m earnings in the last financial year. The money is handed to the Treasury before 25% is returned to the royal household in the form of the sovereign grant.

The sovereign grant was increased in 2017, from its previous level of 15%, to pay for extensive renovations at Buckingham Palace. It will stay at 25% at least until the next five-year review in 2021-2022, meaning the royal household should benefit directly from the money raised from the new windfarm leases.

The Crown Estate was given the renewable energy exploitation rights to the seabeds around Britain in 2004, under an Energy Act passed while Tony Blair was prime minister. MPs voting through the legislation at the time are unlikely to have predicted the sea change in energy provision now leading forecasters to predict wind will become the dominant energy source in the UK.

The prime minister, Boris Johnson, has set a target for every home in the UK to be powered by offshore wind by 2030.

An industry journal reported this week that windfarm developers were left dismayed at the runaway auction which will lead to “bonkers” revenues for the Queen’s property manager.

The initial auction rounds held earlier this week revealed a winning bid of around £150,000 per megawatt a year for two separate 1.5GW windfarms in the Irish Sea, according to ReNews, or five times higher than the top bids expected in the early rounds.

The winners of the Irish Sea sites will be required to pay the crown estate about £200m a year in “rent” for each licence area, while building the offshore windfarm, or a total of £2bn for each windfarm site over the 10 years it usually takes to develop these projects.

In total, the auction will award leases from 7GW worth of offshore wind power capacity in areas around the English and Welsh coastlines, with the potential to deliver clean electricity for more than 6m homes.

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Traditional renewable energy developers are understood to be unhappy about the aggressive auction bids, claiming that the process risks distorting the UK’s green energy market by inflating costs which could ultimately be shouldered by energy billpayers.

The crown estate was forced to overhaul its proposed auction process in 2019 after the industry warned that calling for “closed envelope” bids would lead to excessive prices. Instead, it promised to use daily bidding cycles to make the process more transparent. However, the first round of the auction was still “closed”, leading to an aggressive start.

The auction is ongoing, and the results will be confirmed only once it has closed.

The Government’s intention to go ahead with the local elections in May has been widely reported. 

[Until, of course, they cancel them. Last minute cancellations is a neat way of impoverishing the small parties and independent candidates.]

No one knows whether any form of canvassing or even door-to-door leafleting will be allowed. Currently they would not constitute a valid reason to break lockdown rules. Any leafleting may have to be done through existing commercial delivery firms. So it doesn’t looks like a very level playing field.

Voters will have to take their own pencils to the polling station to make their mark. No pencil, no vote?

Chloe Smith, constitution and devolution minister, said:

“Democracy should not be cancelled because of COVID.

“More than ever, local people need their say as we build back better, on issues ranging from local roads, to safer streets, to the level of council tax…….

“We will work with political parties to ensure that these important elections are free and fair.”

Already the balance is tipping against independent candidates. 

Nevertheless, despite this, Owl has reasons to be optimistic that the Tories across Devon will lose seats.

Owl will develop this theme over the coming months.

Or more parochial interest (to Owl, if no one else) is: which “Division” in East Devon will be the lucky one to have Cllr Ben Ingham as its Conservative candidate.

Having been “Independent” Leader of EDDC Ben has turned Conservative and set his sights on the County. As reported by Owl  in October, Ben had a pop at ousting that old stalwart Cllr Christine Channon for the Exmouth and Budleigh Coastal Division but failed. (Owl thinks veteran Cllr Channon will struggle to find support in the Exmouth half of the the significantly redrawn boundaries).

Owl doesn’t know if he has been successful elsewhere but is convinced he will be trying, and Owl understands that the Tories are having difficulties finding candidates.

If not then Owl wonders whether he might even try to run under a different label such as an “Independent Conservative”, a “Conservative Independent”. He could even re-brand himself a “Real Conservative” or an “Alternative Conservative”. 

Though on past form Owl thinks a “Provisional Conservative” might be the most suitable description.

Some, like a recent correspondent, think you have to look no further than EDDC:

“For those of us in East Devon, this was very similar to the outbursts under the “old guard” so hardly  a surprise!“

Honiton Nub News does not seem to have featured Jackie Weaver and the “goings on” at Handforth Parish Council to date. 

Given the series of explosive meetings and fallings out within the Honiton Town Council over the past few months, Owl is surprised. This news surely wouldn’t have escaped Honiton Forward. Owl’s advice: press record!

The Hansworth meeting is still being dissected nationally with particular emphasis on the display of male aggressive behaviour. Some welcome the move to online Zoom meetings because it eliminates the physical intimidation that can occur in council chambers.

In the Observer Gaby Hinsliff reports this and suggests, in lighter vein, there should be a statue to Jackie Weaver. Owl thinks many would agree with her:

Don’t mess with Jackie Weaver, boys. She’s got a mute button and knows how to use it 

Gaby Hinsliff www.theguardian.com 

Some day, there will surely be a statue to Jackie Weaver.

Women will take their small daughters to see it and deliver homilies about the importance of standing your ground with pompous and aggressive men in meetings, which their daughters won’t understand at the time but will remember with startling clarity once they actually start work. And just as MPs entering the Commons chamber used to touch the bronze foot of Winston Churchill’s nearby statue for luck, aspiring politicians will stop and offer silent thanks to Jackie, the patron saint of women who are having absolutely none of your nonsense.

Well, we can dream. But if nothing else, the heroine of last week’s most unexpected viral content has given everyone something other than Covid-19 to think about. Weaver was the host of an extraordinary (in every sense) Zoom meeting of Handforth parish council’s planning and environment committee, footage from which ended up on YouTube, after it had descended into a terribly British form of naked power struggle.

First, she removed the obstreperous chairperson from the online meeting despite his protests (“You have no authority here!”). Then the incandescent vice-chair stormed off his sofa in solidarity (“Read the standing orders! Read them and understand them!”), leaving the studiedly calm Weaver to lead more mild-mannered colleagues in getting some actual work done. Nevertheless, as the saying goes, she persisted……………..

And then there are discussions of the legal and constitutional issues involved with what appears to be a poorly written, ambiguous and possibly contradictory set of Council Rules.

Did Jackie Weaver have the authority? – the law and policy of that Handforth Parish Council meeting

A blog by davidallengreen.com 

Who concludes:

This viral incident is an insight into the reality of one local government meeting.

On balance, it would appear the disruptive councillors were wrong to say the extraordinary meeting was invalid.

And, on balance, the exact manner of their exclusions was not in accordance with the Standing Orders – though, in the circumstances, the disruptive councillors can hardly complain.

You would not get any of what really happened from the official minutes.

This is a useful reminder to all – including historians and legal commentators – that formal documents often do not give the full story.

As such this video is a boon for public transparency of council meeting.

This is why all council meetings should be streamed and available on video.

And in conclusion, on the face of the Standing Orders, Jackie Weaver did not seem to have the authority to call the extraordinary committee meeting – but she did not need to do so.

Weaver did not have authority as ‘Proper Officer’ – but she did not claim that she had such authority and she did need not any such powers for clerking.

Weaver did not appear to have the formal power to exclude the disruptive councillors – but, given that this exclusion was then accepted by the new chair, and that the disruption was plain, that does not seem to practically matter.

And these conclusions can be offered on the basis of reading the Standing Orders – reading and understanding them.

Soaring numbers of properties sold under the Help to Buy scheme are being snapped up by buyers who earn more than £50,000 or even £100,000.

David Byers www.thetimes.co.uk 

Campaigners complain that poorer families are being forced to remain in rented property while middle class buyers take advantage of interest-free government loans.

Some 58 per cent of Help to Buy properties in England were sold to people with household incomes of more than £50,000 in the six months to June last year, compared with 29 per cent when the scheme was launched in 2013. One in 14 properties went to buyers with a household income of more than £100,000, compared with one in 30 when the Help to Buy loan scheme was launched.

It was targeted at first-time buyers, but the Ministry of Housing figures show that about one in five homes were bought by people who had previously owned a property.

There has been an increase every year since 2013 in the proportion of Help to Buyers with a household income above £50,000. This shows that the government is increasingly throwing interest-free loans at middle-class buyers who might be able to get on the property ladder without them, campaigners said. They also criticised the scheme for driving up property prices — and builders’ profits in the process.

Meanwhile poorer families are being marooned in the rental sector.

The Help to Buy equity loan scheme lends buyers 20 per cent of the property price (40 per cent in London) interest-free for five years. You need to raise a 5 per cent deposit yourself and have to be buying a new-build home. At the moment loans are available on homes worth up to £600,000 in England, but lower regional price caps will apply when the scheme changes on March 31.

The 20 per cent loan allows buyers to get the cheaper mortgages that are available to those with deposits of more than 1 5 per cent.

It is thought that one reason for the increase in high-earning buyers using Help to Buy is that property prices have risen faster than wages, leaving more people unable to afford a home without help. It is also thought that many lower income buyers find it impossible to raise even a 5 per cent deposit, leaving more properties for wealthier buyers.

Lindsay Judge, a research director at the Resolution Foundation, a think tank focused on improving incomes for lower earners, said: “The scheme is clearly benefiting many who could have bought a property without financial support from the state. The time has come to restrict the scheme to those who need it most. At a point when there are so many other demands on the public purse, a household income cap would reduce the deadweight.”

Almost half (47 per cent) of the buyers who have used the loan scheme since it began had a household income above £50,000, and 5 per cent earned £100,000 or more.

About 279,000 homes have been bought under the scheme for a collective total of £75.06 billion. The government has lent a total of £16.46 billion. Reuben Young from Priced Out, a campaign for affordable house prices, said the government was “literally taking public money and investing it in rising house prices”. He added: “These stats are yet another nail in the coffin for Help to Buy. It is helping many who already could have afforded homeownership to simply buy larger homes than they otherwise would have.”

The average price of a property bought with Help to Buy money was £269,385 in June last year, about £33,000 more than the national average house price.

In 2019, 55 per cent of those who used Help-to Buy had a household income of more than £50,000 and 6 per cent earned more than £100,000. In the same year the National Audit Office, the public spending watchdog, calculated that 63 per cent of buyers who used the scheme could have afforded some sort of property in their area without it, and almost a third could have secured a big enough mortgage to buy the home that they wanted.

The government has made changes to target those who most need help. From April 1, Help to Buy will be available only to first-time buyers in England. Scotland is scrapping the scheme and Wales has extended it for a year. Builders and buyers want the existing scheme to be extended because of construction delays caused by the pandemic, however. Buyers hoping to get a loan fear that they will miss out on the homes they want because they will be caught out by the new price caps.

Mark Finch, a mortgage adviser specialising in newbuilds in the northeast of England, said the Help to Buy scheme continued to have an important purpose.

“The property market has been affected by a lack of mortgage availability for first-time buyers, and there are close to zero deals in the 5 per cent deposit bracket at the moment.

“If you have no family help, you have no choice but to use Help to Buy to get on the ladder.”

The Ministry of Housing was contacted for comment.

Help to Buy: the key numbers

278,639

Home sales since the scheme started in April 2013

143,038

Buyers who took out a Help to Buy loan with a household income of more than £50,000

13,114

Buyers who took out a loan with a household income of more than £100,000

49,743

Buyers using the scheme who had bought property before

49,020

Equity loans had been repaid by April 2020

1.93%

Interest rate payable from April 1 on a loan issued before December 31, 2013

Figures for England to June 2020. Source Ministry of Housing, Homes England

Has the government failed to control Covid because effective pandemic measures are incompatible with their ideology?

Claire Jones westenglandbylines.co.uk

When the pandemic hit, the UK was already battered by Tory austerity cuts. Hospitals were 40,000 nurses short, available beds were down from 22,000 to 13,000 and public health spend per head had been reduced by nearly a quarter. The UK had the third lowest number of beds, doctors and nurses in the EU. Tory underfunding and cuts meant that the UK was ill prepared from the very start.  It’s clear that with a socialist policy of proper funding the country would have faced the pandemic from a stronger vantage point.

Johnson’s balancing act

The government’s ensuing incompetence is also regarded as a significant cause of the UK’s world beating death toll. This is true in the respect that Johnson, through weakness of character, has been dogged by his inability to make unpopular decisions. When pushed by huge public pressure (e.g. the school meals scandals) he has taken firm action but only at the last minute. In the main, when decisiveness is required he has opted for disastrous ‘compromise’ policies instead.

Two opposing voices have caused Johnson’s allegiances to spin like a weathervane. On the one side is his hard line, business first, back bench rebel contingent, including the European Research Group (ERG), the Covid Recovery Group (CRG) and Sunak. On the other side is the scientific advice, the unions and public opinion. Where public opinion is itself divided Johnson gets away with vacillating feebleness, a case in point being whether schools should close. But, in a narcissistic balancing act aimed at preserving his popularity with both sides, he has generally produced ‘loose’ Covid strategies that are partly fashioned by the ideology of his back bench.

Throughout the pandemic Johnson has been pressured by the backbench to ease or remove lockdown restrictions. Their argument is that strict lockdowns damage the economy and ultimately lead to even greater loss of livelihoods, deteriorating health and increased pressure on the NHS. But this argument is weak – whilst Johnson’s initial dithering was perhaps excusable, by the end of the first lockdown it was clear that robust measures with the goal of maximum Covid suppression were the most effective ways to control Covid. The government was warned by Independent Sage and others that half measures such as a natural herd immunity strategy were doomed and that suppression was likely to be the only successful route. This view was born out by the success of nations that went for early suppression such as NZ, Australia, Thailand, South Korea, Taiwan, Finland, Singapore, Norway and Vietnam and also by Sweden’s failed herd immunity approach.

Certainly, robust suppression would have caused some short term pain. But Johnson’s half baked, bet hedging measures caused far more protracted economic damage, far more unemployment, far more Covid deaths, far more non-Covid deaths, far more mental health issues and far more Covid circulating in the population than a robust, early Covid suppression would have done. So why did the rebel back bench doggedly persist with their pressure on Johnson to temper restrictions, despite the lethal implications?

Backdoor Business and compliance

The ERG and CRG support free market capitalism, the mission of which is to shrink the state, lower taxes and deregulate business. So one reason why full Covid suppression was resisted is because it is an anathema to this libertarian ideology. Full lockdown is a “dystopian”, “draconian” tactic that smacks of state control. High Wycombe MP Steve Davis describes it as “devoid of any commitment to liberty”. In terms of business, the “liberty” in question is for businesses to make money and create profit. But  keeping as many businesses open as possible, whatever the risk, is a “liberty” too far. One example is that controls at the UK’s borders have been woeful for almost a year. Whilst this might be simple ‘incompetence’, it is more likely to be driven by the motive of profit before people – closed borders would have curtailed business travel and the tourism industry.

In particular, keeping businesses open meant that the government could save money by not having to support them properly. Unlike in Europe and America, assistance for many UK small businesses took the form of loans which they will struggle to pay back, whilst a wide range of self-employed people slipped through the furlough net altogether.

Backdoor business was also promoted by the conveniently leaky definitions of ‘key worker’ and ‘essential business’, expanded in lockdown 3 to include everyone from bankers to estate agents, the DVLA, car factories and flower shops. Many people are working who shouldn’t be. The problem here is that effective suppression of Covid requires strong compliance. However, this loose terminology enables businesses in our zero hours gig economy to operate with no government plan to introduce proper financial support or legal protections for employees regarding Covid safety.

For example, employees tend not to report breaches of safety rules (e.g. lack of PPE) because they fear losing their jobs. (99% of employees don’t make a formal complaint). Complaints that are reported are not acted on. At the time of writing there have been 2,500 reports of employers breaking lockdown rules but not a single one has been dealt with (Dr Emma Runswick, Chair of the People’s Assembly, at the Zero Covid Conference on 28 November 2020).  Similarly, employees are being forced to return to non-essential jobs on pain of being fired. Some are even issued with a ‘letter’ stating falsely that they are doing essential click and collect work in case they are stopped by the police (BBC News interview with Birmingham employee in high fashion retail). Employees currently have no effective, quick legal protections against practices such as these.

A consequence of this lack of legal protection is that self-isolation compliance is catastrophically low – 18% according to Robert West from Independent Sage at the Zero Covid Conference. So many more are working who shouldn’t be. This could have been mitigated by financial support from the government. But, financial aid packages for people self-isolating have only just been introduced. Sick pay stayed at £95 pw, again forcing potential Covid carriers back out to work. Here the UK government’s approach contrasts sharply with other countries, e.g. Portugal – 100% of basic salary for 14 days, Germany – 6 weeks of full pay.

Examples such as these suggest that the government, driven by the free market, libertarian ideology of its back benchers, has no real intention to control business, to protect workers’ rights or support people unable to work as this would negatively impact business and the economy. Inaction here is a double whammy for the government since it simultaneously both saves money and increases profit. The upshot is that Covid has continued unsuppressed.

“The UK government’s [Covid response] is a very concrete expression of the idea that left unchecked, the market will rationally distribute resources to where they are needed. it is the traditional pillars of the Thatcherite economy – principally large businesses and landlords – which have so far benefitted most from the government’s largesse”.

Tom Hoctor, LSE British Politics and Policy (1 September 2020)

Effective compliance requires the introduction of a raft of socialist measures such as legal protections, increased wages and financial support none of which the government has been prepared to do. As Dr Emma Runswick and Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet argued (also at the People’s Assembly Zero Covid Conference), the government had an opportunity to attack the deep inequalities exposed by the pandemic but the chance was ignored. Instead cronyism has ruled – vast amounts have been spent on handing deals to Tory donors whilst big pharma and Serco make huge profits from Covid.

The conclusion is inescapable

I have suggested that stringent Covid measures are inimical to Tory ideology. The back bench has dictated our pandemic journey by pushing a weak Prime Minister into taking a compromise position which has, in turn, dangerously weakened our ability to resist the virus. Failures of policy have kept Covid circulating in the community and led to avoidable deaths. The new vaccine programme is a wonderful thing but it also masks the fact that right wing ideological unwillingness to tackle systematic inequalities has, up until now, fuelled viral spread.

The Tories could have avoided our shocking landmark death toll by biting the bullet and introducing some fundamentally socialist policies. But they chose not to.

“Jumping Jupp Flash” rehearses what we already know as he plays the “Dick Barton” gambit. 

Doesn’t mention the woeful state we’re in: economy, death rate etc. – Owl

Simon Jupp www.midweekherald.co.uk

The vaccination programme only started a few weeks ago and nationally 6,221,850 people have been vaccinated, as I write this. 157,181 people have had the jab in Devon. It’s a remarkable achievement!

 We have an exit plan with the vaccine. Everyday we get closer to lifting restrictions and closer to be able to hug our family once more. As I mentioned in my last column, I want to shed some more light on the vaccination programme here in East Devon.

 The opening of the new NHS regional mass vaccination centre at Westpoint last week highlights the community spirit in Devon. Over 800 people have volunteered to help at Westpoint alongside the staff from the RD&E and Network Rail. I was invited by the RD&E to visit Westpoint and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved, including the volunteers who’ve given up their time to help.

 Westpoint will increase the capacity to vaccinate on top of those already being offered at the RD&E, Exmouth Tennis Centre and local GP surgeries. The team at Westpoint are inviting those aged over 75 to book a vaccination. If you get an invite but don’t want to travel, you can still be vaccinated by a local GP service. Please do not worry or contact your GP, they will contact you as soon as they can. Once you have been vaccinated, you’ll still need to follow the restrictions. 

In my mailbox this week, I’ve been alerted to a scam email doing the rounds. This particular scam says that you have been selected for the vaccination on “the basis of family genetics and medical history”. Once you accept the vaccination, they ask for your card details. 

 You will never be asked for your card details to receive the vaccine. It is free of charge for everyone. Please share awareness of this scam with those you know and do contact me if you receive any other scams and I’ll highlight them in future columns. The police are aware of this scam and I hope those behind it are brought to justice.

Last week we revealed Government had cancelled all orders with Abingdon Health for antibody lateral flow tests because it had failed to gain approval from the MHRA for home use of those tests. 

Today, an explosive story in the Daily Mail reveals that “On April 6, Mike Batley, the Department of Health and Social Care’s deputy director of research, wrote to senior colleagues warning that although Lord Bethell and Mr Hancock already seemed to have approved the deal, ‘this all happened over the weekend without any engagement with us’. It was, he added, ‘no way to do business’.”

You can read the full story here. 

We have long thought the award of contracts to Abingdon Health was unlawful. That is why, some months ago, we took the decision to bring judicial review proceedings. However, Government continues to resist those proceedings and so we must continue to pursue them.

If you are in a position to do so, you can donate to our legal action here. It’s only possible to take this case thanks to the support of hundreds of people.

Thank you, 

Jolyon Maugham QC

Director of Good Law Project

A man was left so frustrated by the poor finish on his new build home, he forced Persimmon to tear down the walls and rebuild them from scratch.

Laura Clements  www.walesonline.co.uk

Andrew Higgs bought his five-bedroom family home in June 2019 but was so disappointed in the standard of workmanship he launched into a battle with the house-builder.

He endured months of negotiations before the national firm moved him and his young family into temporary accommodation while it replaced every single external brick.

Mr Higgs said problems started appearing from the day he moved in to his Charles Church house in Old St Mellons, Cardiff with his wife and two children, aged two and five.

From the off, Mr Higgs made his dissatisfaction known to Charles Church, which is an upmarket house builder owned by Persimmon, but says he was repeatedly fobbed off.

“There was a long list of snags from day one and each week we would notice additional issues of poor workmanship,” Mr Higgs explained.

While some of the issues were reworked “multiple times”, Mr Higgs said it took more than a year of discussions before Charles Church agreed to knock the walls down and rebuild them brick by brick.

“Our main concern was the external brickwork which we felt was of a very poor standard aesthetically,” Mr Higgs said. It included inconsistent mortar joints, chipped and damaged bricks and wonky mortar beds.

The full list of issues he claims ran into the hundreds, including visible plasterboard joints, cracks appearing in the walls and ceilings, damaged roof joists and drainage issues to the front garden.

It was only after contacting one of the directors directly that Mr Higgs was able to get any response, claimed the 41-year-old dad of two.

Charles Church commissioned an independent survey by CD Grey and Mr Higgs walked the director for Charles Church East Wales around his home pointing out the outstanding issues.

While the house builder confirmed many of the issues, Mr Higgs says it “downplayed” them. The CD Grey report said that while there was no indication of any structural movement there were notable aesthetic issues.

“They did accept all the issues and looked to get them addressed but the brickwork I felt was so poor I insisted it all be replaced in line with building codes of practice,” Mr Higgs said.

“Eventually they agreed to replace all four external walls or potentially compensate.”

Even so, despite the verbal agreement, it took several months before builders arrived on site to begin the reconstruction. Even then, Charles Church insisted on a further survey, this time from the NHBC – the National House Building Council.

Mr Higgs’ concerns were confirmed again and the report, carried out in May 2020, advised repairing the defects.

“There are areas where the builder hasn’t complied with all of our Technical Requirements,” it said, although it fell short of instructing a complete rebuild.

Mr Higgs was insistent: “I kept on and would not back down on the agreement that was previously made, replace the walls and rebuild as per the codes of practice.

“A number of internal rework snags they had already done were of a poor quality and we were extremely reluctant to allow partial patch repairs to the external walls, especially when they already agreed previously.”

Eventually, Charles Church backed down and agreed to replace all four external walls in October 2020. In a letter sent to Mr Higgs, it said despite his “unreasonable” request, they would rebuild all four walls and elevations. The action had been agreed as a “gesture of goodwill” it added.

Exhausted from all the negotiations, Mr Higgs instructed a solicitor to manage proceedings. While Persimmon agreed to find the family alternative accommodation and commissioned Fox Moving and Storage to manage the temporary move, Mr Higgs says it was far from smooth.

“During the pandemic I had to move my young family out of our home,” It was just weeks before Christmas and Mr Higgs was desperate to get his family back home for the festive period.

“We were issued a six-week completion date, which was then pushed out to eight weeks, then we were notified that all works was complete on December 1 but in fact was nowhere near complete and Fox refused to move items back until December 5,” Mr Higgs said.

When they did eventually get home, Mr Higgs claims the construction work had led to damage throughout his property, including his carpets, his CCTV cameras, the alarm system and the large family fridge freezer.

Persimmon reimbursed the family for the alleged damage but Mr Higgs says his CCTV cameras captured workers for Fox Moving and Storage being careless with his property and taking personal military belongings out of boxes.

Fox Moving and Storage said it had spoken to one of its young porters, who was told his behaviour was “careless” and “not in keeping” with its standards of customer care.

It denied any breach of confidentiality or privacy and said: “There were no damages attributed to Fox and no insurance claim was made, confirming this position. In our view this confirms a careful and professional service was performed in the moving of hundreds of items of household furniture and effects in two separate phases.”

It added it had examined the CCTV and Mr Higgs’ allegations were unsubstantiated. It said: “Fragile items were not thrown down the stairs. The loft ladder was flimsy and therefore items were passed and sometimes dropped to the floor. The young porter could be accused of not being careful and there is a degree of poor manual handling.

“The young porter was interviewed and told his behaviour was careless and not in keeping with our high standards of customer care.

“A written apology was made directly to Mr Higgs.”

It took several weeks for Persimmon to take the old walls down and rebuild them to a better standard (Image: Andrew Higgs)

Every single external brick was replaced (Image: Andrew Higgs)

Mr Higgs is adamant some issues remain “outstanding” to this day.

“Having returned we’ve noticed most cracking issues have reappeared and are now suspicious there may be movement occurring with the timber frames,” he said.

In a letter to Mr Higgs after the works had been completed, Persimmon’s legal team wrote: “I can confirm all minor snagging issues you have raised have been noted by the site team already and are in hand. The cracking you report appears to be entirely normal settlement and are to be attended to shortly.

“With regard dates for the expected completion of works, it is not unreasonable for those to be extended, on notice to you due to matters beyond our control. Communication with you remained open, you were always informed of the anticipated dates and the progress of works which were carried out on your insistence. You remained in alternative accommodation at our cost for the duration.”

“I own two local businesses,” he said. “If I treated my customers the way Persimmon do I would be out of business within a week.

“If you purchase a new product you expect it to be of an acceptable standard. We were expecting our new build Charles Church house to be of a high standard but it has taken 18 months to get it to an acceptable standard.

“My family has endured immense stress and upheaval over the past 18 months, no thanks to having to move home during the pandemic and be given two completion dates that were not honoured.

“Persimmon repeatedly remind us we are having ‘gestures of goodwill’ but these are all issues that should have been right in the first place.”

A spokesman for Charles Church East Wales said: “We have been in constant dialogue with Mr Higgs to try to address his concerns. We have at all times endeavoured to ensure Mr Higgs was happy with his home. We therefore agreed with him that we would go beyond the specific actions identified by the independent assessment of the property to resolve the situation.

“We will continue to liaise with Mr Higgs through his solicitor and remain committed to ensuring all customers are pleased with their homes.”

The Political Thriller of the Decade

You might have think you’re read enough about the Handforth Parish Councilt by now but if you haven’t seen this, then you really do need to watch one more thing. Because it’s magnificent. (Especially for those living in Honiton)

It was the distraction the nation didn’t know it needed: a poor-quality recording of an online meeting of a Cheshire parish council, called by two councillors “following the refusal of the council chairman to call such a meeting”.

 ‘Good on her’: how Jackie Weaver became an internet star 

Helen Pidd www.theguardian.com

Normally such a congress would struggle to raise a quorum, let alone an audience of millions. Yet against all odds, December’s Extraordinary Meeting of Handforth parish council’s planning and environment committee went viral on Thursday night.

It made a star of its doughty clerk, Jackie Weaver, who dealt with argumentative male councillors by kicking them off the Zoom call and barely blinking when being yelled at to “read the standing orders! Read them and understand them!”

She kept her cool when one man dismissed her by saying “you don’t know what you’re talking about” and ignored the gales of laughter from the remaining men when a female councillor asked them to show Weaver some respect (she soon got her revenge with another remorseless click of her eviction button).

By Friday morning, Vice had produced a 3,300-word analysis of the fateful meeting, T-shirts were available saying “You have no authority here Jackie Weaver” – the words of the council chairman, Barry Tolver, before she booted him off – and Weaver was holding court on BBC’s Woman’s Hour.

Weaver – employed not by Handforth parish council but the Cheshire Association of Local Councils, apparently parachuted in to run the meeting amid accusations of poor behaviour by councillors – told the BBC she felt proud to have stayed calm in the face of what she described as bullying.

“It’s harsh to take some pleasure from that, but I’m afraid when you are being bullied, if you can see that the other person has lost it, then there is the sense of: ‘I did OK there because I managed to hold it together,’” she said.

“There is an element of bullying and bad behaviour in local councils and a lot of us are working very hard, and that includes central government, to try and do something about that.” She said at least 99.99% of parish council meetings were not that dramatic. “They are often less exciting than we might hope,” she said.

But Tolver was unrepentant, saying he had a “reason to be angry”. He told the PA news agency that Weaver “had no status to speak other than when invited”, adding: “I cannot think of any other council meeting anywhere, that was taken over by an unqualified member of the public like this … Removing half the councillors from the meeting denied half of the voters of the village from being represented – it was an appalling attack on their democratic rights.”

Quite how this niche meeting ended up being dissected across all mainstream TV channels and radio stations is largely down to the determination of a few Handforth residents who were appalled at the conduct on show.

For the past two weeks, Anika York had been trying and failing to get media interest in the affair, wanting a wider audience for what she calls a “communication breakdown” between Handforth parish council members, which she thinks have been getting in the way of helping the community.

“When personality clashes and belligerence get in the way of the council doing positive things for a community, their approach has to be questioned,” she said.

Perhaps because the original recording was one hour and 20 minutes long, it was only when comedian Steven Morgan edited it down to 18 minutes and put a terrible bit of Clip Art on the front that it began to go viral.

Morgan’s montage caught the attention of Shaan Ali, a young Labour member who says he likes to look for videos of council meetings in idle moment: “All of these videos are usually absolutely hilarious – old councillors struggling to use Zoom and amazing arguments.”

He shared it with a group chat of other political activists, and one, Janine Mason, cut it to 30 seconds: perfect for a 2021 attention span. Add to that a boring Thursday night with all the pubs shut, and a viral sensation was born.

The TV presenter and novelist Richard Osman tweeted: “Am busily writing Jackie Weaver into the next Thursday Murder Club novel,” while the Radio 1 Breakfast presenter Greg James described it as “The best British comedy in decades.”

It was left to women in public life to point out the obvious: “Beyond the humour, the behaviour Jackie Weaver experienced is common place in all levels of politics,” said the Labour MP Rosena Allin-Khan. “Good on her for sticking to it, but people doing their best in local politics, especially women, shouldn’t have to put up with that.”

Owl is raising this comment on employment priorities , made in response to the Heart of the South West Local Enterprise Partnership’s remarks about investment in the South West to a full post,

It was made by Peter Hill Labour’s contender for Tiverton West division in May’s council election. This lies outside Owl’s normal hunting ground but the views expressed resonate with Owl and offset the predominant caravan park culture of East Devon. 

[This post, first seen on EDW, is being used as the basis of a press release]. 

I think that there is an over emphasis on bringing more tourism to the South West. Unfortunately tourism brings lower paid service sector jobs and like all of the service sector has proven to be fragile during the pandemic.

The tourism sector has benefited from staycations during the pandemic but as soon as people that can afford to holiday in the UK can ski, visit France in the summer and attend concerts the demand for staycations will probably drop significantly. It will become “so last year” and I am sure “staycations” will become a feature of stand up comedy routines especially if the weather in summer 2021 doesn’t live up to summer 2020.

Fortunately the South West has always been a highly productive area in terms of food and drink production plus manufactured goods. these are the industries we should build on to bring highly skilled, rewarding and better paid jobs to the south West.

We should discourage home workers from moving from other regions to the South West as they push up housing prices and consume local public services without bringing jobs to the area or contributing to the local economy or participate in the social activities of their local communities as much as people that work locally in manufacturing, agriculture, food and drink production or local services.

Regards,

Peter Hill Labour Party Tiverton West and director of a local manufacturing company

Boris Johnson is planning to reverse controversial reforms of the NHS in England, a leaked document reveals.

Goodbye Lansley? – Owl

BBC News www.bbc.co.uk

The changes would see a reduced role for the private sector, while a system of contracts being put out to tender, with health groups sometimes competing against each other, would be scrapped.

The draft policy paper also says the health secretary would take more direct control over NHS England.

It would sweep away reforms introduced by David Cameron’s government in 2012.

The 2012 Health and Social Care Act, brought in by the coalition government led by then-Conservative Prime Minister Mr Cameron, alongside his Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, put NHS England at arms length from the secretary of state.

It gave more control over budgets to GPs and other clinicians, while greater competition with the private sector was encouraged.

However, the changes were controversial and attracted criticism from opposition MPs and professional bodies representing doctors, nurses and other NHS workers.

The government’s draft White Paper says there will be “enhanced powers of direction for the government” to “ensure that decision makers overseeing the health system at a national level are effectively held to account”.

The document was published by health news website Health Policy Insight.

Instead of a system which required competitive tendering for contracts – sometimes involving private companies – the paper says the NHS and local authorities will be left to run services and told to collaborate with each other.

What is described as needless bureaucracy standing in the way of NHS organisations will be removed under the plans.

There will also be more focus on GPs, hospitals and social care services working together to improve patient care.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said changes were being considered to drive forward the integration of health and care services and details would be set out in due course.

Remember:

https://eastdevonwatch.org/2020/05/01/fix-potholes-while-roads-are-empty-councils-are-told/

Problematic potholes in Devon increased by 10,000 last year

The number of potholes reported in Devon has halved, but the number of repairs increased by more than 9,000 last year.

Anita Merritt www.devonlive.com 

In 2020, Devon County had 28,600 potholes reported, compared with 50,309 the previous year.

However, it repaired 59,553, which includes potholes identified through assessment following public reports and potholes found on routine safety inspections and comprises safety, non-safety and pothole patches.

The number in 2019 was 50,309. The previous year 72,338 repairs were carried out.

A pothole which previously caused trouble in Bampton Street (Image: Lewis Clarke)

Last year, 872 compensation claims for damage caused by potholes. The council paid out £113,320 due to personal injury and damage to vehicle claims, but not all the payments related to incidents which occurred in 2020.

Only around a quarter of potholes reported to the council last year were repaired. Each pothole has to meet its required intervention criteria. In 2020, there were 11,343 assessed as having safety defects which is around 39 per cent. The number in 2019 was 9,765.

Targets are set when potholes must be repaired by after they have been assessed. In 2020, 53,640 – 90 per cent – met the target time. The number for the previous year was 43,099.

The average number of calendar days to repair potholes instructed in 2020 was around a week.

The longest wait for a repair was 170 days which DCC says was due to an ‘integration error’ between its reporting system and its contractors system.

Once the error was discovered it was repaired in four days.

It is currently estimated that there are some 42,675 miles of UK roads classed as being in poor structural condition, costing an estimated £11.14 billion to bring them up to a level which they could be maintained cost effectively going forward, according to Asphalt Industry Alliance.

Potholes are continuing to cause problems across Devon’s roads this year and not all residents are happy with how promptly they are dealt with.

DCC declined to make a comment.

Potholes can be reported to the council via its website. It will repair potholes that are deeper than 40mm, wider than 300mm and have a vertical edge.

A new report from the UK’s largest road safety charity, IAM RoadSmart, discovered that three in four motorists (75 per cent) now perceive potholes to be a bigger issue for road users than they were three years ago, and more of an issue than driver distraction and traffic congestion.

Its annual Safety Culture Report, which surveyed more than 2,000 motorists, also discovered that around nine in ten (89 per cent) drivers have been affected by potholes over the last year.

Meanwhile, just over one in three (31 per cent) drivers had changed their route to avoid a pothole with more than half (54 per cent) having had to steer away or brake hard to avoid impact and damage.

Neil Greig, IAM RoadSmart director of policy and research, said: “The pothole situation on UK roads has now become much more than just irritating; it’s a significant threat to personal safety.

“We simply can’t have vehicles swerving into oncoming traffic or slamming on their brakes without warning to avoid them. Deteriorating roads also put pedestrians and cyclists at greater risk.

“It is clearly a sign of the times when motorists perceive potholes to be a bigger growing concern to them than drink driving and texting.

“While the statistics show that the devastating impacts of using a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol or using a mobile phone when driving still remain, it does highlight that it is time for government to take potholes seriously and fix the UK’s road network.”

An extract from another satire on the Council Meeting of the moment.

Fleet Street Fox www.mirror.co.uk 

*logs on*

The extraordinary meeting of the Not Taking The Blame For Any Of This Committee of Her Majesty’s Government of Handforth Parish Council, Friday February 5, 2021.

Cast: Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Cabinet Minister Michael Gove, Chancellor Rishi Sunak, Head Girl Priti Patel, and assorted ne’er do wells.

In charge of proceedings: Head of the Be Civil Service and parish clerk with 25 years’ experience, Mrs Jackie Weaver.

Boris Johnson, HERO OF THIS PARISH: Can we start this illegal meeting now?

Offstage, sotto voce : F*** off.

Jackie Weaver: We can start the meeting, Prime Minister, and can I just suggest everyone turn their microphones off.

[Nobody turns their microphones off, someone hits record]…………

Now use this link to read on and see the accompanying images

I once worked with a Freemason.  ……………..

Seth Ferranti www.vice.com

I always assumed he was quite a bad Freemason, because, despite having a yearning ambition to be a higher-ranking member of his Lodge – Grand Wizard, or whatever they are called; “Baron Nonce” – he was still, after 20 years, a low-level humble mason grunt, like that strange large kid at your school who was still a white belt in judo all the way into Year 8.

I also assume this was due to the fact that, every time he got drunk after work (despite being in his fifties, he was doing the same temporary admin job as me, which I figure added to his “not being taken seriously by the mason” thing, because all masons are comfortably mid-ranking senior police officers or suspiciously wealthy residential GPs), he would get bleary on three pints of warm real ale and tell me all about his secret society. 

“No it’s good, like,” he’d say, weaving backwards and forwards, glasses askew, growing ever more puce, breath coming heavy through his nostrils like a horse. “It’s… we do these little plays.”

I’d ask him to elaborate. Plays? “Little moral plays, and that. You have to learn your lines – perfectly – or you can’t go up the hierarchy.” I assumed, watching him pore over his lines as he ate sandwiches out of tinfoil every lunchtime, that he was spectacularly bad at remembering, but still he soldiered on. 

“So you don’t, like, wear gowns and cut up alive women as a human sacrifice?”, I’d ask, and he’d hic at me and lean in and say: “We don’t wear gowns, idiot. We wear sashes.” I imagine he’s still out there, at his little masonry lodge, ambiently smelling of metal the way people with high blood pressure do, fluffing his lines, rolling the legs of his trousers up and letting all the other masons smack him on the arse with a cricket bat. In a way, I hope he’s happy. In… in a way. 

I was thinking of The Freemason I Used To Work With in light of the Handforth Parish Council video, which struck deep-down nostalgic chords within me: I remember how baffled I was, how taken aback, by the sheer small-timery of this massive hushed cloak-and-dagger secret society; the sudden reveal that a powerful understructure that uses shadowy hands to manipulate the upper echelons of public office is actually just a load of men in a block-booked church hall playing dress up every Wednesday. 

I thought parish council meetings were just six people who loved the church too much and loved “leaving their village” too little, sharing homemade lavender cake, bitching about the local headmaster (“loves himself, doesn’t he. That new tie”) then spending a year-and-a-half slowly deciding how to spend £600 of public money. Instead it – well, no, it is all that, obviously. But it’s also a chance for people to project their most nightmarish and base and feral emotions onto the blank placid canvas of “Jackie Weaver”:

I have some questions, and yes I do have the authority to ask them:

A NOTE BEFORE WE START:

I think it’s important we set-up a rough “key” with which to refer to the major players in this coup, because it’s all obviously blurred by the psychotic chaos of a dozen 50+ year olds all trying to be on Zoom, from various different devices, at various different angles beneath the chin, under various different names – I feel there is an ancient, stirring anti-energy deep in the heart of the galaxy, something primal and unknowable, that stops people born in the year 1970 or earlier from really knowing how to use an iPad; the Greeks would have recognised this energy as a god, and given a name to it – which makes it hard to keep exactly up. And so:

JACKIE WEAVER is how we are going to refer to “Jackie Weaver” – 

BRIAN is how we are referring to the self-appointed “clerk”, i.e. that bloke with the airy and terrifying voice of a scarecrow cursed to live a human life while his feet are still strapped deep into the dirt, telling children stories of old in a barren field, come closer boys, come closer and take this dirty old rag off my face – 

ALED, owner of Aled’s iPad, is how we are referring to the vice-chair who goes absolutely tonto near the end – 

ALED’S DAD is how we are referring to the man in the maroon v-neck who tries to stop his son from having a rage heart attack because the exact letter of the parish law was not quite kept to – 

A SECONDARY NOTE

I will be primarily focussing on the 30-second viral “read them and undeRSTAND THEM!” clip from the Handforth Parish Council meeting, and not the extended nine-player 18-minute version, because i. the 30-second clip sums up the state of our society and our completely insane fragile mental state right now better than anything else going, and ii. there is no art I can possibly create about the 18-minute version that will be even one fraction as beautiful as the phrase “Julie’s I Pad” – 

And so:

WERE POMERANIANS BRED NOT DOWN FROM WOLVES?, OR: THE IMPOTENT RAGE OF THE MODERN MAN

I’ve moved to a new place in east London that has a lot of tiny dogs in the locale, and every time I go outside and see one I think, simply, “Dogs used to be hard”. 

 This is just a fact. Dogs used to be hard. They always used to be on pub roofs, being hard, or running double-speed round a park chasing after a kid on a dirt bike, or terrorising chicken coops down at the allotment, hardly. As a child I was scared of dogs, because dogs used to be hard. But then I see, for example, two pugs jostling at each other in an attempt to breathe, and think: this dog isn’t hard. I see a shiba inu elegantly shuddering while it defecates, and think: you’re struggling with the physical exertion of shitting. You are not hard. 

This is possibly my most Brexit-y, boomer opinion going: just like everyone in their sixties who has never lived through conflict or served in the army thinks millennials need a war to toughen them up (“that’ll knock ‘trans rights’ out of you, won’t it? Artillery fire!”), so I believe dogs these days need to be a bit harder. Toughen up, dogs! Just work harder and stop moaning!

Anyway: just as pomeranians used to be wolves, so Aled’s ancestors used to be conquerors. 

It’s weird, isn’t it. Every one of us has a murderer back in our family history. Someone who has set fire to a whattled cottage, or something. Someone who crossed a sea just to pull a piece of land up for themselves. There, back in the hazy story of our blood, there’s someone who broke moral boundaries before moral boundaries were invented: bashed in the skull of a rival primate with a rock, ran through a nearby village screaming “fire”, slit the throat of one man and took the wife of another.

We evolved up from that, and now we don’t know what to do with the primal, lizard-brain emotions that comes with it – anger, despair, red hot rage – because we’re too busy wearing cardigans and writing letters to the BBC for putting same-sex couples on Strictly. We are just as neutered as the tiny dogs that shit outside my building. We just don’t see it yet.

I think Aled’s quite iconic meltdown is a testament to that: Aled is a man of soft furnishings and petty griefs, but deep inside him lives the hard-edged emotions of ancestral England, and he doesn’t know what to do with them. He doesn’t know how to be angry in a cool way because he’s never had to use anger as a weapon before. (You know this because he is on the parish council – nobody on a parish council is doing it because they have lived a fulfilled life – and, not only that, he has kissed the requisite parish council arseholes to scramble up the ladder to become vice-chair at what is – relatively, in parish council terms – a young age). 

 So when something primordial rises up within him – for example, when Jackie Weaver kicks out the parish council chair for obfuscating about the legality of the parish council meeting that he is literally chairing and currently in, right now – it comes out like this: first, the almost-cool smartarse interjection of “illegally!” when Jackie Weaver attempts to explain the reason for the meeting, and then the instant-onset calmed-down-by-your-own-dad anger of “read the standing orders”, rising quickly to “read thEM AND UNDERSTAND THEM”. 

His heart is pulsing blood through his body. Adrenalin spikes in him so high he doesn’t sleep for days. A week later, his throat still feels rough from shouting at Jackie Weaver. He is not made for this. His body does not know how to deal with the anger his heart feels. Anger he feels because someone did a parish council meeting slightly wrong.  

LOCAL POLITICS: AS EMBARRASSING AS NATIONAL POLITICS, BUT ONLY JUST

I think what’s striking about the petty bureaucracy of the Handforth Parish Council video is the fact that, within it, is a microcosmic portrait of our own national politics, and it doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence re: getting out of the pandemic alive, for example. The sheer fact of politics is: anyone who wants to participate in it should be banned from doing so as a fundamental prerequisite. And yet we keep letting people who want to be in charge, be in charge. That is a broken system. 

I looked up what parish councils actually do, and it’s nothing – odd leftover jobs that no other level of non-voluntary politicians want to cover. It’s all about announcing whether a footpath is an actual footpath, or what water belongs to which stream, or whether the town centre should have an unglamorous Christian festival of some sort that year. The fact is, up and down the country, hundreds of these meetings are being held every single year, achieving nothing more than the wasting of time and the soft illusion of power. 

None of the people on the Handforth Parish Council are doing anything, or have ever done anything. But what they do is meet every month, pore over an ancient list of rules and sub-clauses to try and win arguments against each other about, like, playgrounds, and talk to each other in the ye olde manner of which they have become accustomed, getting angrier than I’ve ever been in my life about whether someone who calls themselves the “clerk” is actually the “clerk” or not, because we didn’t vote for a “clerk” and, as vice-clerk, I need to sign off on a clerk, so actually, you’re all going in the book! You’re all going in the book!*

Does this soup-like level of non-entity local politics not fill you with a deep and unshakeable dread? Work your way up the greasy ladder and this is all politics is, higher and higher, it’s just that more scoffing journalists write about it. This is all politics is: people who think “voting Lib Dem” is a viable ideology, playing at being grown-up, calling people “the right honorable member”, adjusting their glasses, fuming about nothing.

These people aren’t in charge, but their analogues are in charge, and that terrifies me. There are Aleds stalking the halls of Westminster. People have voted for a number of Brians, all who serve uselessly as a Conservative MP for 40 years then retire to the House of Lords. This isn’t politics, but it is politics. Do you not see? These are the people who are in charge! We’re fucked!

JACKIE WEAVER IS RIGHT

The name “Jackie Weaver” started trending on Twitter last night, and I do see why her powerful demeanour chimed with people: in the face of two or three streams of impotent male rage, she remained calm and placid while dispatching each errant council member to the Zoom naughty step, never allowing emotion to inflect a petty dispute (unlike Aled, whom I reckon got so angry he cried off-camera), sticking to her guns, not allowing mealy-mouthed apologies from either the chair or vice-chair to allow them to wiggle back into the room. 

All of this I respect. She was, simply, trying to get through an agenda of boring pointless stuff about bike shelters or whatever, and having someone who can’t even frame his own face in a webcam chuntering about whether the meeting itself was legal or not for five minutes before the meeting even started was stopping everyone from doing that. Jackie Weaver is a woman of action. If the meeting can’t go ahead with the current chair, kick out the chair and vote in a new chair. She knows the standing orders. She has read them and undeRSTOOD THEM – 

JACKIE WEAVER IS WRONG

That said – and do bear with me – I cannot help but feel that Jackie Weaver might have been acting a little above her allotted station. 

The thing is, from the rage of Aled and Brian, you have to assume that a number of Handforth Parish Council meetings have gone extremely off-piste when two blokes who shag rule pamphlets start talking about esoteric rules they’ve learned this month. And from the exhausted eye-rolling demeanour of Jackie Weaver, you do feel like her patience has been tested over these Zoom calls (and in-person meetings) over a number of months. She is herding cats, and each of those cats has their iPad at a psychotic angle in accordance with their face, and only six of those cats know how to turn their microphone on, and two of those cats are really angry about something no one can tell the actual reason for and another of those cats is posing mutely in front of a wall full of guitars. I can see how her patience has been exasperated.

But in ejecting the chair for petty rule-breaking, you are instantly making the rest of the meeting about petty rule-breaking, which derails the meeting just as much as the petty rule-breaking. I am not about to go through a parish council rule handbook to check the exact accuracy of Jackie Weaver’s behaviour, but in enacting it she knew there would be pushback. Part of me sees her actions as heroic – a woman pushed to her limits, hitting the “Kick Member?” button at the end of her wits and starting life anew, unencumbered by “Brian” talking about “legality”.

Another part of me sees the streak of jobsworthiness that runs through this petty country like a stick of rock: I feel like I have met a number of Jackie Weavers in my lifetime, been gently chided at them for non-existent and unenforced rules (Jackie Weaver has followed me back to my car and told me I didn’t put the trolley back in the right place at the supermarket; Jackie Weaver has gone to the bar at 7.01PM and told the landlord that the children in the garden should be ejected from the play area in accordance with the law; Jackie Weaver has left a two-page handwritten note, signed anonymously but you know it’s her, because you put the black bin out during a green bin week). 

Jackie Weaver was in the right, here, based on 30 seconds of context. And she is right according to the letter of the law. But I wouldn’t want to ever get on the wrong side of her, because she will grind down my life until I have to move to another village entirely just to get away from her. 

LOCKDOWN AS AN INFLUENCING FACTOR 

Would this insanity have happened without lockdown? On one hand, yes: this is England, and these are English people, and this is the most English thing I’ve seen since we all kicked ambulance roofs in during the World Cup.

That said, no: it is impossible to separate the artist (an unprecedented second lockdown) from the art (this video). This would not have happened to the same degree if we weren’t all locked in our houses, forbidden from taking more than one walk a day**. That it did is an uncomfortable foreshadowing of what is to come.

When is lockdown over? It’s impossible to see the end of it, and I can’t help but feel that this video – these actions – are a natural endpoint awaiting us all. After middle age, and after a comfortable life spent in small-town domesticity, 60 percent of us end up as either a Brian, an Aled, or a Jackie Weaver: we take our meek powers and form them to a sharp point and spike them into the petty disputes over the placement of a temporary fence between two allotments.

This is the reality awaiting so many of us: older than we ever thought we’d be, peering through our bifocals, long since overtaken by the rapid rise of technology, arguing with someone 16 houses over about whether or not a body of water is a “pond” or a “small lake”, and whether we need to write an extremely long letter to Ordnance Survey correcting them on that. 

I think lockdown has accelerated our descent into this kind of small-worlded madness. With the doors shut off to us and the walls ever closer, the reality of the world is pressing up hard against all our psyches. You are finding yourself doing this too, right: having insane high-spike emotions about things that do not matter? The other day I went raging because a recycling box was in the wrong place on the floor. I walked in the kitchen barefoot and a packing peanut stuck to my sole and ruined the next four hours of my day. 

There is nothing left to do in this world, and so we are contained in our own boxes of emotion, and all the simple primal urges come out: rage we don’t know what to do with, giddy happiness at absurdities, laughing at fools. The Handforth Parish Council video wouldn’t have happened without the government spending the last 11 months on a special social experiment designed to send us all insane – yes. But the video itself wouldn’t have gone viral without us, the insane people, going insane at it. Don’t you see? You are not the Jackie Weaver in this scenario. You are Brian, or you are Aled, shouting out of your window, your sanity dwindling with every circle of the sun. You fools. You fools! 

@joelgolby 

* It’s worth noting that none of the parish council players will ever, even in their deepest rage, resort to swearing: you’ll get embarrassingly angry about someone being ejected from a Zoom call, but you’ll still never utter a word of sin in front of God, no matter how low Jackie Weaver sends you. I think that’s really funny. Just say “fuck” now and then, man. It might help you get something out of your system. Instead you’re going maroon in a cardigan and calling everyone who’s muted on Zoom a “fool”, like you’re Gandalf warding off a troll.

 ** Everyone in this video – everyone in this video – would call the police on you if they were your neighbour and you left the house two times in one day. Every single one of them. Just be aware of that. Every single one of them would put you in jail if you forgot to get milk and popped out for milk.

People living in rural areas could face a further delay in getting next-generation full-fibre broadband unless the government stops dragging its feet and removes financial barriers, the chief executive of BT has warned.

Mark Sweney www.theguardian.com 

Millions of homes face being last on the list to receive rural broadband because they are commercially unattractive for operators to reach with full-fibre broadband, which could put rural residents at risk of becoming “second-class” citizens in the digital revolution.

Philip Jansen said that exemption on a form of business rates, charged on the new networks once they are built, would be worth £1bn to BT, money that could be spent on connecting about 3m homes.

The BT boss has said that the government and telecoms regulator Ofcom need to remove financial and regulatory barriers to help firms building full-fibre and gigabit networks or rollout targets would be missed.

He said that while the government has “said a lot”, there is now an “urgency” to act if it is to have a hope of meeting its goal of 85% coverage of all homes in the UK with gigabit speed broadband by 2025.

“The biggest contribution the government can make are on cumulo rates, essentially business rates charged on the new networks once they are built; it risks significantly slowing our progress,” he said.

“Exemption on these rates would be worth about £1bn to BT alone, equivalent to [getting full-fibre broadband to] about 3m premises. Without it we may need to rethink the pace and shape of our fibre build and those living in rural areas may need to wait longer.”

BT is investing £12bn to roll-out full-fibre broadband to 20m premises by the mid- to late 2020s. In November, the government diluted its target from Boris Johnson’s election pledge of a full-fibre connection for every home by 2025, to 85% coverage with gigabit speed coverage, and said it would look to spend £1.2bn of a £5bn commitment to subsidise expansion in to commercially unattractive rural areas. 

Earlier this month, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), parliament’s spending watchdog, criticised the government for a catalogue of failures relating to the rollout saying it would miss its 2025 target.

“Look at the PAC report, the government has said a lot but we would like to see extra money to build in really rural areas quickly,” said Jansen. “We want to go as fast as we possibly can and build as much [in] rural [areas] as we possibly can, the government can help us on cumulo and not tax us on the build.”

But he also implored Ofcom to introduce what it believes are fair regulatory relief measures to encourage investment in the rollout in its Wholesale Fixed Telecoms Market Review which will be published next month.

These include price controls for 10 to 15 years, to protect the return on BT’s £12bn investment that it said would take 20 years to pay off, and not to be too quick to step in to regulate.

“We are not looking for some super-normal return, just a fair return,” said Jansen. “BT is ready, willing and able to build like fury and fibre up the UK but we need Ofcom to come good on creating a climate that encourages investment and the government to show some urgency in removing barriers. There has been plenty of time for talking now we need to turbo charge the move to the next generation of connectivity.”

After the attempts to block the change in regime last year in EDDC nothing surprises Owl. 

Follow the link below to watch the video clips.

[The Clerk explains: update on BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-55946252 ]

Sarah Grealish www.thesun.co.uk 

Pandemonium broke out at a meeting of the Handforth Parish Council after the Chairman told the Clerk that she “has no authority.”

Footage of the meeting has gone viral on social media with people comparing the clips to an episode of ‘The Thick of It.’

Chairman Brian Tolver lashed out at the clerk saying “you have no authority here Jackie Weaver, no authority at all” before she chucked him out of the meeting.

Vice-chairman Aled Brewerton then branded the meeting “illegal” before Clerk Jackie asked the group to elect a new chairman.

Enraged Aled then bellowed: “No they can’t because the vice-chairman is here, I take charge.

“Read the standing orders. Read and understand them.”

In a second bizarre clip the vice-chairman goes on an indecipherable rant while in a third the Clerk asks to be referred to as Britney Spears……….

The meeting took place in December but the footage only picked up pace online last night.

Calls have been made to review the “absolute bargain” charging regime for motorhomes and camper vans staying overnight in Exmouth.

Daniel Clark, local democracy reporter www.radioexe.co.uk 

Camper vans and motorhomes are able to stay in the town for up to three consecutive nights for just £11 for 24 hours, in three long stay car parks.

The scheme introduced in 2018 also saw the vehicles banned between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. along sections of Imperial Road and Queens Drive, as well as a 24-hour restriction on motor caravans along sections of Queen’s Drive.

An East Devon District council car parking committee has agreed to ask officers to review camper van and motorhome policy, and called for tariffs to rise, potentially to £30 a night.

Andrew Ennis, East Devon’s service lead for car parks, told the meeting that East Devon is seeing more and more camper vans and motorhomes on the highway and they are appearing in their car parks and the Exmouth pilot – which allowed overnight parking in Imperial Road Recreation Ground, Queens Drive Echelon, and also Maer Road has been broadly successful and there is a significant and growing demand from our visitors for short duration “aire” style facilities throughout East Devon.

His report proposed that the council should begin a consultation with Ward Members seek to introduce a revised policy that welcomes over-night stays in specified car parks across East Devon unless there are local circumstances that would mean that there would be an unacceptable negative impact in the vicinity.

The tariff will allow an overnight stay in approved car parks (where no other facilities are provided) of one, two or three consecutive nights only (with no return permitted within 24 hours), but motorhome and campervan customers will not be eligible for purchasing our standard car park permits and will only be permitted to use our pay and display car parks on a “pay as you use” basis.

And officers would also like to explore the possibility of creating dedicated motorhome / campervan pitches within a site with appropriate facilities to allow longer stays, and for which a premium overnight rate of say £30 per night could be expected.

Cllr Jack Rowland said that it was a difficult subject to get the right balance on. He said: “We want to attract tourists into the area, but on the other hand, I wouldn’t like to think we are providing the facilities and charging that may undercut the businesses that provide the full facilities in the area. I wish I could come up with an easy solution to this but I don’t think there is one.”

Cllr Maddy Chapman said that the summer before last, she counted 38 camper vans on the seafront parked less than one metre apart, and that there should be certain car parks designed for certain jobs as ‘if they can park willy-nilly, it will cause massive problems’.

Cllr Andrew Coleman said that the £11 a night to park on the seafront was “too good of a deal”. He added: “£11 for 24 hours is very cheap for the seafront and it should double, and would see some of the problem going away.”

And Cllr Olly Davey said that as local campsite charge around £14-18, the £11 on the seafront is an absolute bargain, adding that most places he goes to are around £20 a night.

With the coronavirus pandemic potentially leading to restrictions on foreign travel, Cllr Ben Ingham added that East Devon was likely this holiday to see people visiting in motorhomes ‘on a scale that we hadn’t envisaged before the pandemic’.

He added: “I am convinced we will see more this year as people wary about travelling abroad. £11 is not high enough, as we have to tie in with the private sector and make sure that people don’t just park in the car parks to get the cheapest deal and undermining local business. We should be raking in the money rather than giving it away.”

Cllr Mike Howe said that everyone agreed that the charges should be increased, but that he was wary of then charging too much. He added: “We don’t want them to be ripped off and that they do want to come back year after year. They are way too cheap at the moment but they need to be value for money and attractive so they come.”

The committee unanimously agreed to ask officers to investigate further and draw up a report on the issues around camper van and motorhome parking in East Devon, which would look at the success of the pilot sites in Exmouth, whether it should be rolled out to the rest of the district, how to manage ‘daytime’ parking in the car parks, and how pricing levels the tariffs should be set at.

Mr Ennis added: “There is a debate to be had there about whether spaces are worth £20 or £30 a night, but we will need to do further work on what is an appropriate pricing structure.”

The committee asked for the report to come back ‘as soon as possible’ so everyone can benefit from its recommendations.

More than 200,000 people in Devon have had their first Covid-19 vaccine, the highest in the South West, latest NHS England figures show.

Daniel Clark www.devonlive.com

The statistics, which provide the position as of January 31, show that there have been 217,344 vaccinations in the county, with 204,815 of them being the first dose.

The figures for Devon, which will have risen in the most recent days, are the highest number of vaccinations for any of the regions within the South West, and they show that 20.5 per cent of the population had received their first jab. This is up on the 14.5% as of January 24.

With the adult population of the Devon STP area being 999,049, the 204,815 who had received their first dose, means that as of Sunday, 20.5 per cent of Devon’s residents had received at least one dose of the vaccine. Those numbers will have risen since, and are up on the 145,148 as of the position on January 24.

The statistics show that as of Sunday, of the 79,525 over 80s within Devon, 72,831 had received their first vaccine – a total of 91.6 per cent, with 10,838 – 13.6 per cent – having also had the second dose.

While the 91.6 per cent figure is lower as a percentage of the total cohort than anywhere else in the South West, Devon’s population of over 80s is significantly higher than every other region – more than double in some instances

Of those aged 75-79, 39,993 people have received the first dose of the vaccine – 72.7 per cent of the cohort – while 12,708 of those aged 70-74, 16 per cent of the cohort – had as of Sunday had at least one dose.

And 79,283 under 70s, primarily those employed in health and social care settings, had received the first dose of the vaccination as of Sunday – 10 per cent of the total under 70s.

There are now five methods by which the vaccine is being rolled out across Devon.

All four of the county’s main hospitals – in Plymouth, Exeter, Torquay and Barnstaple – are giving the vaccination to priority groups in line with national guidance, while GP practices are working together in groups to set up local vaccination centres, and across the county, 20 centres are now in operation, serving all of Devon practices.

GP-led facilities are delivering the vaccine to residents and staff in care homes, while pharmacies have started to deliver the vaccine, and last Tuesday, the mass vaccination sites at Home Park in Plymouth, and Westpoint Arena just outside Exeter became operational with thousands of vaccines a day to be delivered.

Every Devon care home has been vaccinated as well, except for those where there were active outbreaks.

A correspondent writes …

It seems that local elections might take place in May 2021.  Is it a coincidence that many DCC councillors rarely heard from are suddenly popping up with columns in newspapers all over Devon?  And is it coincidence that our (unimpressive, overpaid) Police and Crime Commissioner now promising more police?

Should councillors up for re-election (and the Police and Crime Commissioner) have their newspaper columns marked “This Councillor/PCC is up for re-election in May 2021 and any claims made in this column should be fact-checked/researched by readers/voters”?

Or, as with some US newspapers, given a “Pinnochio alert” of 1, 2 or 3 Pinnochios, depending on the “creativity” in the columns?

Owl reported yesterday Alison Hernandez “on manoeuvres”