This week sees an extraordinary mass by-election in Norwich. Following Adrian Ramsay doubling the Green vote in this May’s General Election, Greens are now poised to take control of the council there.
I haven’t been able to make it to Norwich this year. But I hope to see plenty of happy Norwich faces at Green Party conference this weekend! Please help out if you possibly can.
1. Tory councillors pursuing a complaint against me since February 2009 just for putting some already public council webcast video clips onto YouTube. This has taken up a huge amount of expensive council officer time. I’ve appealed and now I hear the council are going to be hiring outside counsel to oppose my appeal. More tax payer money wasted.
3. We don’t know the exact figure but paying off the former directors who have been replaced by the new ‘strategic directors’ will cost the council up to £1 million. Once again, these costs were never approved by a full council meeting.
Conservatives nationally and locally are making ideological decisions not backed by any sound evidence or even common sense. Nobody’s perfect, but seriously, how much money tax payer money can they waste?
Licensing issues continue to be a key concern for residents in Brighton city centre, as previously noted. Despite the introduction of a ‘Cumulative Impact Area’ hours continue to get later and it’s a struggle to stop a race to the bottom. I’m really pleased that Police, residents and ward councillors have been working together more closely than ever on licensing issues. Unfortunately, that’s not always enough… For example earlier this week, despite very strong objections from the Police, the council noise team, residents and myself as ward councillor, a panel of licensing councillors agreed to extend the hours and operations for Jam (formerly the Water Margin) in Middle Street. Their decision seemed to run contrary to council’s own policies and furthers the rush to later hours, as it seems only a matter of time before other venues nearby try to extend their hours to keep up with the competition. There’s more in my release.
With limited Police resources, Operation Marble (which handles night-time economy issues Fri-Sat) can only cover so many streets and, at best, runs until 4am. However more and more premises are being allowed to open beyond that, meaning people leaving clubs after the visible Police presence has gone.
The Cumulative Impact Area (CIA) policy is supposed to go a little way to balancing the problem that each license application is supposed to be taken on its own merits. Without the CIA it’s virtually impossible to refuse applications just because there’s already too many licensed venues in an area already. However it’s not enough and East Street is a good example of where a high density of venues in one small area can cause serious problems. We need to preserve Brighton & Hove’s attractiveness for visitors, but we need to do that in recognition that it has an old town centre with a significant residential population.
Working with the residents I’ve created a film of what a Friday night is like for them. Along with the launch of this film I’m calling for a summit to bring together the council, Police, venue managers and residents to find solutions. We’ve already had some small wins by just improving communications between venues and residents. I know we can build on that. Until the licensing laws get properly sorted out by Parliament, we’re going to need a lot more of this kind of joint working to ensure that the needs of businesses, visitors and residents are sensibly and successfully balanced.
2025 update: See bottom of post for my revised approach.
I cannot claim that this method for pizza is authentic, handed down from Italians over the generations. I don’t even promise that you’ll like it. But it is what works for me.
It started about five years ago when my wife, observing that I was pretty good at making bread, suggested that I try my hand at pizza. This seemed like a huge culinary leap to me and my first searches for recipes revealed a level of pizza cooking snobbery that was quite off-putting. Could a humble home oven deliver the goods?
I think it can. This method has evolved over the years as I have gleaned more hints and ideas from newspapers, cook books and dozens of food blogs. It has also been informed by pizza tasting across Europe and North America, especially New York, Rome and Venice. The glaring ommissions in my foreign pizza tasting are undoubtedly Naples and Chicago, but I have had to make do.
The only equipment I think essential to this method is a pizza stone. This is a piece of ceramic you bake the pizza on in your oven – it helps deliver a crisp crust and sufficient heat to cook the whole thing through. They are very cheap and my one from Argos has lasted years.
As for the matter of toppings – this is fraught territory. This method will get you as far as a basic Margherita. If you want to do more, then here are some ideas from the list of favoured toppings in my household:
Tinned tuna, fresh garlic, red onion and black olives
Mushrooms, peppers and onions
Marinated anchovies, onions and olives
Pepperoni or ham, peppers and mushrooms
I find less is more with pizza toppings, but that’s just my taste.
To make about 15 pizzas you will need:
Olive oil
1kg Strong white flour (Type ‘0’ is best)
3 cups of warm water (1 part boiling to 2 parts cold)
Yeast
900g Mozzarella cheese
1 x medium onion (very finely diced)
4-5 large cloves of garlic
2 x 680g bottles of Passata (sieved tomato)
Oregano (dried)
Basil (fresh)
Put the pizza stone on the top shelf of your oven and crank the oven up to maximum temperature. If you can, close all the doors and windows in your kitchen so that it stays warm.
Depending on the type of yeast you have, you may need to activate it. Follow the directions on your yeast to make enough for 1kg of flour. Splash some olive oil into a bowl so that the sides are coated.
In another bowl put in the flour less 2 cups which you can save for later. Add a splash of olive oil, salt and if you have instant yeast add it too, then mix. Now gradually add the warm water whilst stirring with a wooden spoon.
Depending on your flour you may not need all the water, or you may need a smidgeon more so that the mix is one coherent ball that’s not too wet, not too dry and it holds together.
Dust a work top with some of the reserved flour. Knead the dough using the heel of your hands to stretch it. Keep adding flour to the worktop if you find part of the dough still sticky. Give it all a good knead but don’t overdo it – just enough so that it holds together and isn’t sticky any more when you stretch it with your heel.
Form a ball with the dough and place it in the oiled bowl. Roll the dough so it’s completely coated with olive oil. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and leave it in a warm part of the kitchen. It will need 30-45 minutes to rise sufficiently.
Meanwhile you can start making the tomato sauce. In a good sized heavy pot cover the base with olive oil and put in the onion. You want the onion to have been cut very finely so that it almost melts into the oil. Cook on a low heat, stirring occasionally so that the onion softens but doesn brown. When soft add a sprinkle of salt and crushed garlic cloves. Stir and cook for a few more minutes then add the two bottles of passata. Cook on a medium low heat until simmering, stirring occassionally. Taste and add salt as needed, you may also need to sweeten slightly depending on the passata – I like to use about a tablespoon of blackstrap molasses for sweetening. Gently cook the sauce for another five or ten minutes then turn off the heat and cover.
If you still have time you can prepare the toppings you want to use. For mozzarella, if you have bought blocks rather than the balls, slice the blocks in half lengthwise then chop into slices 5mm thick. For mozzarella balls, remove them from the water they are packed in and gently squeeze the excess liquid from them. You can then just tear them up for use on your pizzas.
Once the dough has risen you are ready to start making pizza. Take a small chunk of dough: More than a golf ball but less than a cricket ball in size. Make sure to keep the rest of the dough covered while you are working otherwise it will dry out.
Roll the dough between yours hands until it has formed an even ball shape. Then on a work surface dusted with flour begin to press the dough into a pizza shape. Depending on your energy and patience you can either do it all by hand or use a rolling pin to achieve the desired size and thinness. Be sure to keep dusting the work surface and turning the dough over so it doesn’t stick and is even.
Carefully remove the pizza stone from the oven and lay the rolled dough onto it. The stone will immediately start cooking things so you need to move quickly now!
Use a ladle to place some tomato sauce onto the dough. Use the back of the ladle to spread it across the dough. You want it to be fairly thin right up to about 1cm from the edges – depending on how much crust you like.
Now sprinkle on dried oregano, add chunks of mozzarella, some torn leaves of fresh basil and if desired, your additional toppings. Put the whole lot on the stone back into the oven.
Now is your chance to make up the next piece of dough and have a sip of wine!
Avoid opening the oven to check on things if possible. The key to a good crust is keeping the oven and the pizza stone as hot as you can, so work fast and avoid having the stone out of the oven for long.
The pizza is ready when the edge of the crust is brown and the cheese starts to bubble. You don’t want to leave it too long or the cheese hardens. Remove the pizza stone and, as long as there were no holes in your dough, the pizza should easily slide off onto a serving dish. Enjoy!
Veggie toppings on one of my home-made pizzas
2025 update:
I’ve recently re-started making pizzas using the very same pizza stone. Having watched the superb Searching for Italy with Stanley Tucci I now don’t make a pizza sauce as described above, I just use Italian tomato polpa for a fresher taste, with a sprinkle of oregano if you wish. I strongly prefer the best quality fresh mozzarella you can find, with lots of fresh basil. Oven temperature is the key to good results, the hotter the better.
From the Telegraph’s one-sided report you’d think the Commission were a bunch of no-good layabouts responsible for, among other things, the terror of the fortnightly bin collection which keeps all good Tories awake at night.
No doubt mistakes have been made by the Commission at times, and they have overpaid some top staff – but which public or private sector organisation hasn’t in recent times?
In my three years on the Audit Committee at Brighton & Hove City Council I have been struck by the conscientious, helpful and detailed work Audit Commission staff have done for the council. The Commission has also helped to make the performance of public bodies more accountable, such as with the OnePlace site which barely got the chance to get going before being canned.
All the staff are experienced and understand local government – because that’s what they do. They also are public servants and take their duties seriously. It must be especially galling that these highly skilled, dedicated staff have been given the axe in a way that, without any consultation or debate, goes against all that might be called ‘good governance’.
How on earth does Pickles think we are going to get the same kind of scrutiny of our public bodies from corporate auditors, inexperienced in local government, and who failed to prevent a litany of corporate fraud and failures? Furthermore, why are private-sector corporate auditors going to be any cheaper to hire in than the Audit Commission who didn’t need to make a profit from their work?
As public bodies continue to be rocked by the cuts and upheavals being rained down on them, I don’t think that now is a sensible time to also completely uproot the key scrutiny and overview body which works to ensure services are robust and money well spent.
If Pickles wanted some genuine savings he could have simplified the framework used to audit local government services. There would be plenty of people, including those in the Commission, with good suggestions on how to streamline the audit framework. Instead, as I understand it, he’s ditched the entire framework and now the Commission too.
I’m appalled by this political meddling in what is an arms-length commission to hold local government to account. This is yet another ill-judged, ideological and unnecessary cut which will end up costing us all a lot more in the long term.
(Updated 14/8/10 to include a link to the Liberal Conspiracy, and include paragraph on saving through simplifying the audit framework.)
This evening my colleague Sven Rufus and I sent this message to Taylor Wimpey. We’ve spent too long trying to get Taylor Wimpey to engage constructively with the community and the council’s adopted planning brief for the old Royal Alex site. They haven’t taken on board a single word we’ve said.
To: David Brown – Land and Planning Director
Taylor Wimpey South West Thames
Dear David Brown
Thank you for the invitation to participate in another meeting with you and your colleagues at Taylor Wimpey.
We have met and corresponded with you, your colleagues and contractors on many occasions in the hope of finding a positive way forward for the site of the old Royal Alexandra Children’s hospital. However these discussions have never led anywhere, you consistently have refused to take on board any of our suggestions to engage with the community or prepare plans centred on sympathetic conversion of the key buildings.
The planning brief is the preferred option for the council and the community. It is very clear in its requirements. We still hope you will offer an application that meets them.
Until then, we will see you at the Planning Committee meetings, and if necessary any further appeals you decide to lodge.
Sincerely,
Cllr Jason Kitcat & Cllr Sven Rufus
Green City Councillors for Regency Ward, Brighton & Hove City Council
Our party’s leaders must be serious, frontline politicians. Some have been arguing in the webosphere that Caroline and Adrian are too busy to do the job properly. I disagree. Of course they are busy, they are high profile, respected Green politicians – a credible and hard working leadership team, who’ve delivered results.
However they do not have a fraction of the office and staff support that other party leaders have. This is due to our more limited funds but also inexperience in supporting our leaders. We need to work to provide better support for them, not elect less busy leaders with less experience or profile! (Jim Jepps touches on this in his post)
Ultimately I believe that if they are to lead us as a party, they greatly benefit from being publicly elected representatives who understand the hard choices that need to be made when in office. And, as just two votes on the national party executive, they have a strong track record in improving the party’s position in terms of membership, finance, profile and elections (Peter Cranie makes the case in more detail).
Let’s discuss the support and structures we provide them at conference in September. In the meantime I’d encourage new and old members alike to vote for Caroline and Adrian, for another two years of growth and increasing influence.
Some super slides (well worth reviewing in full, links below) from leading computer security experts presented at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology’s workshop in Washington DC on however overseas citizens should vote. Choice quotes below. (via Ian Brown and FIPR)
It is not technologically feasible today to make Internet voting safe against attack.
Operating an Internet voting system safely requires expertise and money way beyond what election officials are likely to have.
There is no known way to audit Internet voting. UOCAVA votes might fall “under a cloud of suspicion.”
Remote voting is trade-off between franchise and risk
The risks of “internet voting” more than negate any possible benefits from an increase in franchise
Unsupervised remote voting vulnerable to vote-selling, bribery, and coercion.
We may view internet voting as voting on a contraption consisting of a collection of […] puzzle boxes, all connected by untraceable wires to every possible adversary on the planet.
We do not currently have the technology to make internet voting secure (and may never).
We can’t make such technology appear by wishful thinking, just trying hard, making analogies with other fields, or running pilots.
It is imprudent (irresponsible?) to assume that determined effort by adversaries can’t defeat security objectives of internet voting.
“What are best practices for internet voting?” to me sounds like “Pleash jush help me inshert the key in the lock, (hic), and I’ll be on my way…”
Online Consultation in a Democracy: Theory & Literature Review
I’ve just published the output from my never-completed doctorate: a review of government consultations online, models of democracy and a review of literature on researching online consultations.
Greens oppose Brighton & Hove City Council’s move to an ‘Intelligent Commissioning’ model, as I’ve detailed previously.
Commissioning creates a split between who buys a service and who provides it – which in the public sector is often rather artificial. Public services are not like the business sector and cannot be treated in that way. If I recall rightly, the council tried several times to outsource municipal waste collection before having to bring it back in-house after experiencing serious problems with managing the contracts with provide suppliers.
The report is fairly damning of Primary Care Trusts, the main NHS bodies tasked with commissioning. The committee also pulls no punches on the idea of commissioning itself. The report (which I highly recommend) finds that before introducing the purchaser-provider split (aka commissioning) the NHS had admin costs of about 5% of total NHS expenditure. Since then it has risen to be around 13.5% of NHS expenditure. That’s an absolutely huge increase.
A team at York University cited in the report note that old ‘Beveridge-type’ health systems have low transaction costs and that:
“In the English NHS, the purchaser-provider split, private finance, national tariffs and other policies aiming to stimulate efficiency in the system and create a mix of public and private finance and provision mean almost unavoidably that the more information is needed to make contracts, hence transactions costs of providing care have increased, and may continue to increase.”
(It’s worth nothing that despite commissioning the York study, the Department of Health never published it, the Health Committee had to winkle it out direct from the academics over protests from civil servants. The same civil servants were also rebuked by the committee for failing to provide accurate figures for costs themselves!)
The committee’s report concludes that unless some convincing, rigorous new data shows benefits for the 20 years of NHS commissioning, it should be abolished as a costly failure.
I find it hard to believe that the city council are going to be able to somehow avoid these risks and pitfalls. Commissioning would need to deliver some immense cost-savings (which nobody has the evidence to prove it can) to justify almost trebled admin costs!
I have asked, and will keep asking, for evidence to justify the council’s leap into ‘Intelligent Commissioning’.
Jason Kitcat 