Wiki:
“A scorched earth policy is a military strategy which involves destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy while advancing through or withdrawing from an area. It is a military strategy where all of the assets that are used or can be used by the enemy are targeted, such as food sources, transportation, communications, industrial resources, and even the people in the area.”
“The protest in Market Place, which is being co-ordinated by the 38 Degrees group, will be one of hundreds of other similar events across the country.
Campaigners will be out from 11am and will be asking residents to sign a petition urging all candidates in May’s General Election to protect the NHS.”
http://www.devon24.co.uk/news/save_the_nhs_campaigners_to_stage_rally_1_3972186
… Contracting authorities are required to ensure that any new procurement opportunities, above thresholds, are published on Contracts Finder (in addition to, or instead of, any other portal or publications route they may currently use).
Once a contract has been awarded as a result of a procurement process, contracting authorities must also publish details of who has won the contract, the contract value, and for procurements below the EU thresholds, indicate whether the winning supplier is a small business or voluntary sector organisation.
3. Thresholds for publishing opportunities
The threshold for publishing is £10,000 contract value, for central government and £25,000 contract value, for non central government contracting authorities.
Click to access Guidance_on_the_new_transparency_requirements_for_publishing_on_contracts_finder.pdf
He said:
… “Astrology is a useful diagnostic tool enabling us to see strengths and weaknesses via the birth chart. And, yes, I have helped fellow MPs. I do foresee that one day astrology will have a role to play in healthcare.
He added that opponents to astrology were “bullies”, saying: “Astrology offers self-understanding to people. People who oppose what I say are usually bullies who have never studied astrology. They never look at it. They are absolutely dismissive. Astrology may not be capable of passing double-blind tests but it is based on thousands of years of observation.
Hippocrates said, ‘A physician without a knowledge of astrology has no right to call himself a physician,’ Astrology was until modern times part of the tradition of medicine. I think it is a great pity that so many scientists today are dismissive of right-side brain energy, such as intuition.
People such as Professor Brian Cox, who called astrology ‘rubbish’ have simply not studied the subject. The BBC is quite dismissive of astrology and seeks to promote the science perspective and seems always keen to broadcast criticisms of astrology.”
Bizarrely, Tredinnick, 65, who is chairman of the All-Party Group for Integrated Healthcare, went on to say people who opposed astrology were “racist”. He said: “The opposition (to astrology) is based on what I call the SIP formula – superstition, ignorance, and prejudice. “It tends to be based on superstition, with scientists reacting emotionally, which is always a great irony. They are also ignorant, because they never study the subject and just say that it is all to do with what appears in the newspapers, which it is not, and they are deeply prejudiced, and racially prejudiced, which is troubling.”
Last July Tredinnick caused a storm when he first spoke about the benefits of astrology, saying it had a “proven track record” at helping people recover from illness. He told MPs in the House of Commons: “I am absolutely convinced that those who look at the map of the sky for the day that they were born and receive some professional guidance will find out a lot about themselves and it will make their lives easier.
He even revealed Britain’s last governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, had an official astrologer. He said: “When I was in Hong Kong on the last Parliamentary delegation, I went to see Chris Patten, the last governor before the handover to China. I visited Patten’s official astrologer which he had as governor. He certainly would have been given advice.”
He went on to claim past world leaders, including Winston Churchill, legendary French general Charles de Gaulle and former US President Ronald Reagan, also used astrology.
According to Hugo Swire’s website, East Devon is “home to a large number of retired pensioners”.
http://www.hugoswire.org.uk/constituency
Is a ‘retired pensioner’ someone who is older than a pensioner and gets an extra allowance from the government?
Shame about mis-spelling “Budleigh-Salterton” (sic) too when it’s in his constituency…..
The motion:
This council strongly recommends a future district council (after 7th May 2015) to create a new committee to deal with development strategy for East Devon. Its primary ongoing role will be to ensure East Devon has an adopted local plan in place at all times and which will ensure that housing development takes account of local need, the desires of local people, and environmental and other constraints. The new strategic planning committee should as a matter of the utmost urgency address the previous administration`s failure to deliver an adopted local plan, which has placed East Devon under threat from rapacious developers, and has resulted in inappropriate development in many parts of East Devon.
Proposed by Councillor Ben Ingham Councillor, Seconded by Roger Giles and supported by Susie Bond, Trevor Cope and Claire Wright.
At the annual meeting of the Council, it was agreed that the Council’s constitution be amended to clarify motions on notice at Council and regularise good practice and current ways of working (New procedural Standing Order 10.3)
“Where a motion on notice has been submitted in accordance with this standing order, and prior to the despatch of the agenda, the Chief Executive may seek to clarify the purpose and/or wording of such a motion (such action may include recommending its rewording) so as to ensure that any such motion, if approved, is compliant with the Council’s legal and administrative powers.
Where the wording of the motion is not immediately relevant to the business of the Council, the presumption is that it will be referred to the relevant committee or Overview and Scrutiny Committee in the first instance to enable research to be properly carried out into the issue to facilitate a relevant and informed debate.
The Leader, at his discretion, may invite a Portfolio Holder to respond to a motion or a question (under Procedural Rule 9.2).”
In the light of the above and similar work currently being undertaken by the Corporate Business Think Tank and the Overview and Scrutiny Committee, this motion will be referred directly to that Committee for consideration.
Click to access 250215-council-agenda-with-report-and-schedules-and-minute-book.pdf
From a correspondent:
May I suggest you give some publicity to these two reports from today’s Western Morning News:
http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Calls-market-watchdog-investigate-broadband/story-26032197-detail/story.html
January 2014:
https://sidmouthindependentnews.wordpress.com/2013/12/11/change-of-tack-at-eddc/
And here we are – 13 months later – reinventing the same wheel. Nothing has moved on except a bit of shingle has been shifted around at a cost of £100,000.
Why bring it up again when in January 2014 there was a similar call for similar photographs after an exhibition about the beach management issue?
Well, it’s getting close to district elections and Sidmouth’s majority party (Tory) council is hoping people don’t have memories as sharp as this owl and think they are being taken care of.
100 rally to EDA cause
David Beasley
Article in Exmouth Journal 12 Feb
One hundred people rallied to the East Devon Alliance’s (EDA) first members’ meeting at the district council’s Knowle HQ.
Last week, EDA announced it had registered with the electoral commission so it could support independent candidates in May’s district council elections.
Supporters loudly applauded at the rally when chairman Paul Arnott lambasted the council leadership as ‘a small cabinet of councillors who exclude opposition voices’. He said they rejected people’s opinions ‘out of hand’ and he claimed that independent councillors had been ‘bullied’ at council meetings.
“We are not NIMBYs,” he said. “Many people in East Devon need affordable housing.
“But we must try to halt the lunacy of current planning rules, which is allowing massive overdevelopment on inappropriate sites.”
EDA’s leader, Cllr Ben Ingham, was optimistic of their electoral prospects with candidates of all ages and backgrounds intending to stand. “With will and determination, it is perfectly realistic to hope that we can break the stranglehold of one-party domination,” he said.
When respondents were asked who was responsible for driving good governance at their organisation, the most common responses were the chief executive and the finance director (both 25%).
The head of legal/monitoring officer was named by 19% of respondents (up from 14% in 2012/13).
Other key findings from the report included:
46% of respondents said they considered backbench members had no real influence over decisions;
84% said their organisations were now using or considering alternative delivery models;
59% said the transition to police and crime commissioners had not had a positive impact on local partnership working arrangements;
42% saw no difference in local healthcare governance as a result of councils’ new public health role;
The annual accounts and annual governance statement continued to expand in length, “making them even more challenging for people to read and understand, impacting on local transparency and accountability”;
Only 30% of cabinet positions in local authorities were held by women, while over half the survey said members did not adequately reflect the demographic profile of the local population;
Most survey respondents named external audit as their main source of assurance on the governance framework, rather than internal audit. “This raises concerns that some internal audit functions are not sufficiently strategic and are not providing the broader assurance required in a complex and challenging environment.”
Paul Dossett, Partner and Head of Local Government at Grant Thornton UK LLP, said: “Though 15 years have passed since the introduction of scrutiny committees it’s clear that the system has been a mixed success. Nearly one in five of the councils surveyed said that they had returned, or were considering returning, to the traditional committee structure. This could turn out to be a backwards step for effective scrutiny.
“Scrutiny committees can offer a valuable ‘check’ to the executive. Potentially, they can also offer a fresh perspective by taking both a long-term view of strategic issues and ‘deep dives’ into vital areas of council operations. We know that some councils are doing this with great success so it’s important that those who are struggling receive support to improve their processes so that they are not tempted to fall back in to outdated methods of scrutiny.”
The Grant Thornton report is here:
Click to access Local-government-governance-review-2015-All-aboard.pdf
It appears that the Editor of the View from … newspapers has been castigated for being partisan in reporting the news of the East Devon Alliance supporting Independent candidates in the forthcoming elections.
Independent councillors still have political views: some tend towards conservative values, some towards liberal or social democratic values, some to the right or left of all of these.
What unites them is their refusal to submit to party political voting and whipping when it comes to local issues and they refuse to submit to whipping on party lines.
Independent councillors will go to the ballot box for our next MP and could vote for absolutely anyone but at district level they see that there is no place for party politics. Isn’t that great!
Real Zorro is very unhappy:
“… Every time that there is some attempt be it by the electors or Councillors on EDDC to challenge the incumbent ruling Conservative majority on the District Council the political mudslinging starts.”
And here’s his big joke as reported in the Daily Mail:
“Joke of the night
Auctioneer Hugo Swire, a Tory MP, inviting bids for the flight, said: ‘For an extra £1,000 we will throw in a case of wine. For an extra £5,000, we will throw in Greece as well.”
The guests included porn barons, sex shop owners, Peter Stringfellow and people who had bedn jailed for financial crimes. No guest list was issued and no table places were marked in case information about the 1,000 plus guests leaked to the press. Only those entering by the main door were snapoed, others chose discrete entrances.
Good to see coverage of the EDA launch in today’s Midweek Herald:
From today’s Exmouth Journal:
New group “a breath of fresh air”
David Beasley
A brand new alliance for independent candidates is vowing to change the political landscape across East Devon.
On Tuesday, just 93 days before the national and local elections on May 7, the campaign group East Devon Alliance (EDA) revealed that, as far as the Electoral Commission is concerned, it is now a political party, unveiling a website and manifesto.
However, in reality, the EDA is a broad, umbrella group for similar-minded activists – and now more independent candidates are set to contest district council seats in East than at any point since 1973.
At the launch at the Axminster Heritage Centre, its leaders urged residents – tired of the old political parties – to rally to their cause.
Its leader is Woodbury and Lympstone’s independent district councillor Ben Ingham, with freelance BBC documentary maker Paul Arnott as chairman and Ian Mckintosh, founder of the EDA, and retired circuit judge, its president.
Councillor Ingham said: “For years the three main national political parties have been telling us what they want to do instead of listening and then delivering what we need to have.
“People are so fed up they have even been voting for the nationalist parties as an alternative, but these alternative parties prey on people’s gravest fears… they preach division and separation instead of unity, respect and understanding.”
He said it did not have to be like that and insisted that prospective parliamentary candidate Claire Wright, EDA’s council candidates and other independent councillors had a ‘very definite set of ideas.’
“Our campaign is like a breath of fresh air in a stagnant room,” said Cllr Ingham.
“So, over the next few weeks, all of us in East Devon should open the windows to change, breathe in deeply and take part in the most exciting political event to happen in East Devon for decades.”
Their policies range from ensuring that East Devon District Council (EDDC) is more open and accountable, supporting local businesses, preserving the environment, keeping local hospitals open and backing new developments – but only if they are `sensitive’ to what local people want.
Mr Arnott said: “We will allow vulnerable independent candidates to stand as independent East Devon Alliance candidates in May
“We know how hard it is for independents to stand without the help of a party machine.”
He said that the EDA had heard many complaints from residents about the way things were done at EDDC ‘because of national parties first standing in local elections 40 years ago, it has led today to an atrophied one-party disaster…’
“There’s no point just moaning from the sidelines…the only way to reform our council is through the ballot box,” he said.
“In May, the people of East Devon will be offered independent candidates across the district on a previously unknown scale.”
A new website that went live yesterday, has the answers!
EDA Chair, Paul Arnott introduces it, and addresses the question about Independents, here:
“The East Devon Alliance has been an influential campaigning group working in the context of what many believe to be a maladministered district for the last couple of years. But there’s no point just moaning about it from the sidelines. So we decided that the only way to reform our council is through the ballot box.
Therefore, we are constituting ourselves at the Electoral Commission so that we can support Independent candidates at the next district elections, who may if they wish stand as “Independent East Devon Alliance” candidates. This works both ways -the candidates have some protection and support, and the voter can carefully scrutinise what they stand for …
We know how hard it is for Independents to stand without both camaraderie and practical support in local elections. But we also know that if people are to be happy putting a cross next to an Independent on the district ballot paper, they’ll want to know much more about them than what gets said in the pub.
That’s why we’ve launched this website http://www.eastdevonalliance.org.uk which explains as much as we possibly can, and we hope sets an example to the current ruling party for transparency and openness.
In law, if an Independent, say Jane Smith, is to be able to have the words ‘Independent East Devon Alliance’ alongside their names on the district ballot paper we are obliged to register at the Electoral Commission as a party. However, none of us have any interest in climbing the greasy pole of national party politics, and I think our very name makes that pretty obvious.”
Thanks to website of Claire Wright: www.claire-wright.org for this report:
EDDC Leader of the Independents, Cllr Ben Ingham has teamed up with the Alliance and the group has registered with the Electoral Commission in order to provide a support network for dozens of hopeful district councillors.
The aim is to end the oppressive rule of the Conservatives at East Devon District Council, to be replaced by a fresh, new and progressive set of councillors.
This morning at the Thomas Whitty Centre at Axminster the atmosphere was excited and electric, as Alliance chairman, Paul Arnott and Ben Ingham outlined their plans for a new forward-thinking council.
Here’s Paul Arnott’s (Chairman EDA) speech:
A few weeks ago, some of the people in this room mounted a rather lovely evening. It was to launch this book, Literature and Landscape in East Devon. What was so lovely was that it was an entirely successful effort to give our District area, bordered roughly by the Axe to the east, the Exe to the west an identity from literature.
At a time when both the Leader and, perhaps more oddly, the Chief Executive of the East Devon District Council felt it appropriate to insult East Devon Alliance members in public, this wonderful publication, full of love for the landscape we know we are so fortunate to live in, confirmed that we are such a dangerous group of individuals that our militant wing is a Literary group. Oh yes. They know what we’re up to.
Photographing beauty spots, researching, reading books, we must be stopped …
But we won’t be silenced, EDDC apparatchiks.
Because we understand an idea which, if you you seem to have forgotten. Nobody has a god-given right to allow and faciliate the destruction of our precious landscape and environment. Or to stop people speaking truth to power.
What we understand is that when you live somewhere as astonishing as East Devon, you are stewards. We are but passing through. And we will be judged by what we leave behind. In terms of our landscape, but also in the quality of our democracy
Now many of the literary greats feature in this book, though nothing of William Shakespeare – probably because his beat was mainly the road from London to Warwickshire. He wasn’t an A303 kind of guy like us, more of an M40. So in recogniton of his absence, I’m going to use a bit of him now, and I’m going right to the top of his hit parade, Hamlet, to his most famous riff:
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
and by opposing end them?
This room is full of people with Hamlet’s dilemma. Just how many examples of outrageous fortune inflicted by our local authority are we meant to swallow. A celebration like today is not perhaps the moment to dwell on the negative.
But the straw which broke this particular camel’s back was the introduction last year of public speaking restrictions.
Just at the time when wonderful local groups and individuals were regularly appearing before the planning committee, saving the council from making terrible decisions, this same council decides to block more than a handful from speaking.
With no local plan in place – entirely the fault of the current ruling party – one of the most precious safeguards was removed. And in so doing it finally confirmed itself to be authoritarian and secretive.
So now I’m going to give you another one, rather more obscure, from a man who most certainly did not visit Sidmouth, Axminster or Honiton. Sophocles in the 5th century BC, and his rib-tickling entertainment, Oedipus Rex.
In which there was a blind soothsayer, a visionary, named Teiresias. I’m giving you this now, because this is my favourite ever quote. My children will be appalled, and would be happier of if I stripped to the waist and sang Katy Perry’s Firework verbatim – which I could. But for now, in English, because unlike Boris Ancient Greek is not one of my languages, Teiresias said this:
“To have perception, where the perceiver draws no profit, is a dreadful thing”
Or, in more prosaic terms, “If you can see what’s really going on around you, and you do nothing about it, you turn way, things are only going to get worse.”
So how do we react. Do we take our example from the comedians who have joined the national debate.
Russel brand, for example. Now what time is it, just after noon. I imagine he is getting out of bed about now and tousling his hair while a handmaiden reads great chunks out loud from his latest booky wook about Democracy Welll good luck Russel, and I mean that. But, when you say, don’t vote, why not? How about you pull your trousers up and stand for something. Start with a small council where you live. Actions speak louder than words.
Now the fray has been entered by the Pub Landlord, standing as a stunt against Nigel Farage. Again, Al Murray, possessor of an Oxford history degree in history, why aren’t you standing as yourself. What’s the point in just taking the mickey.
OR, do we take our example from someone in the room today, who has inspired many of us to real action – Independent Parliamentary candidate for East Devon, Claire Wright.
And only last week Claire made a point we would all agree with.
She said:“We have a conservative crime commissioner, a conservative MP and every council locally is Conservative. The county council…tends to be, fairly progressive, but the district council is…a dinosaur. It has always had a large conservative majority…getting things through is quite difficult because they block vote, and that can’t be good for democracy.
“People are tired of the old political parties, and May 7 has to be about getting a better balance on EDD, and [a greater number of] other councillors, especially Independents, because they don’t have to toe a party line and can vote with their consciences.”
Words such as that, which speak for so many, are why I am doing two things today I would normally want to avoid. I am wearing a name badge, in case I’ve forgotten who I am. It reads Paul Arnott,
Chairman, East Devon Alliance. I could not be more proud to wear that on my lapel. And for the first time since Charlton Athletic played Crystal Palace in the early 1970s, I am also wearing a rosette. I have never likeD these things – I feel rather like I have just won third best in show at Crufts. But I wear this today with pride too.
Because as you will have gathered by now, the East Devon Alliance has three announcements to be made today. The first, is that our new website, set up by a wonderful hard-working volunteer who is so busy with it that he can’t even be here today, has just gone live.
Why? Because today we also announce that we have formed an umbrella alliance to support independent candidates across East Devon who want to stand in the district elections in May. Two main reasons for this new site..
One. It can be very hard and lonely being an independent, and I think there is more than enough evidence by now to suggest that a large portion of the local ruling party are, let’s say, somewhat lacking in the milk of human kindness. We want independents to feel a sense of camaraderie and friendship.
The second reason is just as important. It’s great for independents to knock on doors and push leaflets through letterboxes, and they will often be well known in their communities.
But the voter is owed the right of being able to really check out what they will stand for – and as a first port of call, our website will allow them so to that. To see the issues in their own ward, an interview with the independent candidate, and a list of aims we have all agreed need to be addresses.
And the third and final Announcement is this. We are serious about this.
We want to help people to win this election. And to do that we need real leadership, political nous, experience, someone who knows where the levers are so that we can effect real change, actually make this awful district council obey some of the basic tenets of its own constitution, to set a new example all the way down the line to some parish and town councils too.
So we are delighted today to announce that we have appointed as our Leader a man with 20 years of experience as a councillor, the current Leader of the Independent Group, may I introduce our new Leader, Ben Ingham
