Categories
food

A method for making pizza

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.

Categories
current affairs

Conservatives risk good governance with plans to axe the Audit Commission

A version of this post appeared on the Liberal Conspiracy

I was astonished to learn today that Eric Pickles will be axing the Audit Commission. Or more precisely, according to the leaked memo on the FT site, the commission will be privatised. Pickles is notorious for being ideologically wedded to cuts as shown from his time as leader of Bradford Council.

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.)

Categories
notes from JK

The Old Royal Alex site: A letter to Taylor Wimpey

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

Categories
notes from JK

Why to vote for Caroline & Adrian

[Apologies to non-Green party member readers, this post is about the Green Party’s leadership contest, which is held every two years]

Caroline Lucas and Adrian Ramsay are seeking re-election as the Green Party’s leader and deputy, and I’m supporting them in their campaign.

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.

Categories
e-democ / e-gov voting

Links 9-8-10

  • 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)

Prof. David Wagner (UC Berkeley):
http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/UOCAVA/2010/Presentations/WAGNER_UOCAVA2010.pdf

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.”

Prof. Ron Rivest (MIT):
http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/UOCAVA/2010/Presentations/RIVEST_2010-08-05-uocava.pdf

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…”

Categories
notes from JK

More reasons to be wary of commissioning

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.

It’s much harder to manage and monitor contracts than many people realise. Which makes the House of Commons Health Committee’s March 2010 report on Commissioning [PDF] very interesting reading.

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’.

Categories
voting

Answering eDemocracyBlog’s case in favour of e-voting

eDemocracyBlog has recently put forward some arguments in favour of e-voting in response to the Hansard Society’s debate on the subject.

The blog’s author (whom I can’t identify) takes issue with a number of my views which I aim to defend here.

I tend to argue from first principles which requirements any electoral system should meet. These are that elections should be secure, verifiable and anonymous. eDemocracyBlog argues that because not all existing electoral systems, such as postal voting, meets these then my views on e-voting are flawed. I don’t agree at all.

I did actually mention at the Hansard event my concerns about postal voting. But when asked to debate e-voting I focussed on the challenges there, that isn’t to say that existing electoral arrangements are perfect — they aren’t. But just because that is the case in no way makes the case for e-voting. It just further re-inforces our need to focus on fixing the current setup.

The eDemocracyBlog writes:


Related to the security point was Kitcat’s comment that delivering PINs to anyone wanting to vote electronically would create a further threat to security. Yet banks generally seem able to handle the process.

Kitcat also said eVoting could enable “ballot stuffing on a massive scale” which the need to photocopy and complete postal ballots makes more difficult. But for a would-be fraudster it should be far harder to get hold of a large number of PINs than it is to get hold of a blank ballot paper and photocopy it.

Banking is a completely different process to voting: It isn’t anonymous, it’s easy to verify because you receive monthly statements and losses are just a cost of doing business – not the outcome of a binding political election where the stakes are much higher.

eDemocracyBlog is apparently unaware that paper ballots have security marks such as stamps, or watermarks which means you cannot photocopy them. This is why fraudsters try to collect postal ballots, because they can’t produce fresh ballots themselves.

Any smart hacker isn’t going to try to break the system by intercepting PINs (for example) in the postal system. They will crack the computer systems centrally and manipulate the authorisation credentials there or just directly manipulate the results. It’s much easier to change the result on one central computer then thousands of postal ballots, for example. We’ve seen electronic voting results cast in serious doubt in the US, Canada, Japan and many more countries.

eDemocracyBlog continues:

As for the possibility of somehow hacking into the system and creating false voting records, it may be possible that details of voters can be held separately from the details of votes, and then matched again during the counting process with each voter told how their vote was registered so that they can report if it was changed without their permission.

If such a process was enabled the vote would no longer be secret, breaching the Human Rights Act (plus our European and UN human rights committments). This would leave people open to abuse, intimidation and family voting. This is not theoretical – it happens with postal voting.

I think Andy Williamson made a telling point that wasn’t rebutted when he noted that banks manage to verify cash machine transactions without ever knowing the cardholder’s PIN.

As I understand it they don’t verify the transactions. They just verify the cardholder details via the PIN. So it’s not the same and it’s very much not anonymous (wave to the camera in the ATM!)

It is also worth pointing out that the current paper-based balloting system is not anonymous either, so again this would seem to be a case of making demands of eVoting which are not equally applied to the existing system.

Only in the UK is our paper voting system not anonymous. In all other modern democracies it is. And citizens of those countries are appalled when they hear of our antiquated system which is a holdover of the Australian system from the 1860s. The Australians switched to anonymous votes before we even adopted the secret (but numbered) paper ballot here in the UK.

Another question is whether any system can be both anonymous and verifiable anyway? If it is genuinely anonymous then who is to tell whether any ballot was cast by a legitimate voter rather than, say, dumped into the ballot box by a corrupt council employee before it is sealed?

Ah, it seems eDemocracyBlog is beginning to come to terms with the difficulty of the problem. It is very difficult to build a digital system which is anonymous and verifiable – in fact I believe it’s not possible with current technology. With paper it is possible, if the paper has security marks so you can trust its source and prevent ballot stuffing.

eDemocracyBlog then goes on to attack the Electoral Commission for failing to set up a certification process for e-voting systems. But it would be up to the Government to empower the Commission to do such a thing, and to provide funds for it to be conducted. It’s my view that certification, while necessary if technology is to be used, doesn’t resolve many of the serious problems with e-voting.

Later on the Commission are again criticised by eDemocracyBlog for failing to develop a strategy for voting modernisation. But this is not a task for the Commission – it is for government to set out their view, try to pass legislation and consult the Commission on the approach.

People do not need to know how something works, or even be entirely confident in its security and privacy policies, in order to use it in their millions. I could perhaps mention Facebook at this point.

This was the same argument made by VoteHere’s Jim Adler against me in the Oxford Union debate on e-voting. Jim argued that people don’t need to understand how a plane works to fly in it. But this misses the fundamental point. With a plane, or Facebook, the results are self-evident. You fly to your destination or your post on someone’s profile appears. With a vote, because it is secret, how do you know it was accurately counted as you intended?

With paper and a public count you are fairly certain, thanks to the known properties of pen and paper, that the outcome will be valid. With an e-vote you can’t have the same confidence.

eDemocracyBlog continues defending e-voting by suggesting the costs will be lower when used on a greater scale than for just the pilots. No doubt, there were one-off costs for the pilots. However I know that several of the providers swallowed significant losses for the pilots just so that they could stay in the market, hoping to win a juicy national contract.

Furthermore the contracts were agreed centrally by the government, not by councils as eDemocracyBlog suggests. So, especially when suppliers provided for several areas, there could have been economies. £58m for weekend voting across our country would be a fraction of the costs e-voting would involve.

There is no need for e-voting to happen. Certainly in the current times of tight budgets, e-voting is extremely unlikely to happen. However I’m sure that it won’t be too long before the spectre arises once more, just because people seem to like the idea of applying technology to everything they can. Thankfully more and more people are becoming aware of the great risks e-voting presents for very limited benefits.

Categories
current affairs

What evidence that Lansley’s plans will improve NHS results?

As I’ve been appointed the local Green finance spokesperson this letter, which I submitted to The Argus, was my last as local health spokesperson:

While the current NHS structures are by no means perfect, Conservative minister Andrew Lansley’s plans for the NHS threaten at least three years of massive change, disruption and uncertainty, with no evidence to show any improvements will be the result.

These changes are being foisted on us because they ‘feel right’ to Lansley. That feeling has probably been helped along by financial contributions to his office by the head of Care UK – one of the firms that stands to most benefit from these reforms.

The sad fact is that the majority of GPs won’t have the necessary skills to organise commissioning and so will end up hiring those who do, the sacked managers who will be selling back their services to the NHS at inflated rates as independent contractors.

GPs aren’t keen on becoming managers running half-year long tendering processes, they are more interested in making people better. NHS workers certainly don’t want to see their pay and conditions threatened by being transferred to private providers. And I see no reason why taxpayers should stump up for corporate healthcare firms’ profits when we are being treated by our great public health service.

Greens firmly oppose these changes, which take Labour’s health privatisation schemes to their distasteful conclusion.

Sincerely,

Cllr Jason Kitcat, Green Group Health spokesperson

Categories
notes from JK

Council meeting roundup – 15th July 2010

So that’s it, we’ve had our council meeting and there won’t be another one until October. In spite of that Conservative and Labour councillors voted to axe proceedings at 9pm with two motions still to be debated.

The meeting started with my challenging the minutes of the 18th March meeting. Back then the Conservatives, backed once again by Labour, voted to defer the Independent Remuneration Panel’s report on councillor allowances (full background info). Four months later and the report still isn’t before us. In the meantime there are 34 councillors instead of 25 receiving additional allowances, which for a full year will cost the council £25k more than if the panel’s report was implemented. Back in March I had made a point of order noting that the deferral of the report would have budgetary implications. This point was not minuted and I asked for the minutes to be amended accordingly, but the Mayor refused to accept this. Not good.

Our new Green Cllr Lizzie Deane was introduced to the chamber and took her seat – well done Lizzie!

Next for me was the new system of questions. I can put as many written questions as I want to the administration, but they aren’t discussed at the meeting. You can read them online along with the rest of the agenda.

The replies were not particularly marvellous. For example in asking for an update on recycling figures Cllr Geoffrey Theobald gave me numbers for 2005/6 and 2008/9 but nothing for 2009/10 or a part of that financial year, which is several months behind us now.

I specifically asked for details of the licence under which the council’s financial data will be published. I would like it to be a very open, permissive licence that allows for all sorts of re-use and mashups. This point was not even acknowledged in Cllr Young’s reply. I also asked when they would start publishing the data, again no hint of dates was provided.

Asking about the council’s website, which has been due a rebuild for years, I received a lot of waffle about resident needs etc. The council website was supposed to be upgraded years ago, and every year it seems to slip a year.

Onto oral questions, which shamefully are limited to only one per councillor. I asked the Leader of the Council:

“In the face of drastic budget cuts which both Conservative and Liberal Democrat councillors on East Sussex County Council are calling ‘unavoidable’, what policies does the Leader of the Council propose to put in place to prevent even greater inequality amongst Brighton & Hove’s residents?”

To which I received a rant about the Green Party but as far as I recall, no response to my question. I followed up by asking what evidence the Leader could provide to support her preferred approach of ‘Intelligent Commissioning’ would be able to meet the challenges this city faces. She could provide none, saying that because it hadn’t started yet there wasn’t any evidence. Which rather implies, as I suspect, that there is no solid evidence from other councils in the UK or elsewhere to back up the Intelligent Commissioning approach.

Next we debated a report on budget cuts. However all the report contained was a list of the reductions to grants that central government are applying. There were no details on when or how these cuts would be managed by the administration. The report was completely inadequate to facilitate any proper debate or scrutiny. It did emerge through the meeting however that the administration clearly do have plans written up, they just weren’t willing to share them to the full council. In the face of repeated questioning on several specific grants to community grants, the Leader started reeling off which funds were definitely secure. Cllr Mears knows the detail of what’s going to happen — she just refuses to share it with councillors.

I made the case that we should be open, inclusive and participatory in handling these budget changes. It’s only by engaging the entire city are we going to be able to find a path out of these unnecessary cuts imposed on us by ideologues in the coalition government.

A number of important reports were briefly discussed before moving onto Notices of Motion. We supported Labour’s motion calling for a return to the committee system of running the council. Labour have a bit of a cheek proposing such a motion after having tried to foist a directly elected mayor and several forms of cabinet system onto this council. Still it was good to see councillors agreeing that we all want a more democratic, collaborative form of governance if possible.

Next the two Green motions addressing cuts, first housing benefit and then cuts more generally as well as proposals for ‘Intelligent Commissioning’. Most of the way through the housing benefit motion, the Mayor activated the new guillotine motion supported by Tories & Labour in March. All debate ended and the motions were voted on. Both Green motions fell, without my having even been able to propose the one I had proposed.

Conservative and Labour councillors continue to show their preference for expediency over proper democratic discourse. They do their voters a disservice by their desire to shut down meetings rather than open them up with guillotine motions, limiting questions and speaking times. I have copied below the text of the speech I would have delivered if I had been given a chance. It is shameful when elected representatives are denied their right to speak because others just want to be home before the ten o’clock news begins.

Speech to Notice of Motion: OPPOSING CUTS AND ‘INTELLIGENT COMMISSIONING’ AS THE RESPONSE

In 1988 Eric Pickles, using the casting vote of the mayor, took control of Bradford council. On Tuesday 25th October, in a 12 hour budget meeting, Pickles forced cuts of £5.8 million from the council budget that night and cut £13 million within 6 months. His 5 year plan was to remove £50 million from the budget and restructure the authority to become a “holding company” that signed contracts with private providers.

By the end of that long October 1988 meeting Pickles had received a personal message of support from Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as protestors roared outside. And now, the wheel has turned and Eric Pickles is a minister, unleashing his same awful vision on all councils in this country.

The cuts being imposed on this council are ideological – that is, they are completely avoidable. The country is solvent and credit rating solid, however Conservatives are committed to pouring yet more money into defence whilst failing to apply sufficient tax the wealthiest people and firms.

Let us not forget that Tories, LibDems and Labour all agree on the need for cuts – their only quibble during the general election campaign was when the cuts should start. Greens were alone in opposing cuts and offering an alternative path out of the mess, fully costed by economists.

Our motion speaks for itself on the cuts. We absolutely deplore them and believe it to be grossly unfair that the British government can find the resources to bail out banks and fight foreign wars, whilst dramatically cutting services to its own most vulnerable citizens.

Furthermore it is our view that Intelligent Commissioning is not the answer to coping with the cuts. We have yet to see evidence from any other councils that it works. Commissioning large corporations, who often have legal departments many times the size of ours, is a fraught business.

Only at yesterday’s health committee did we hear that a private contractor for the SOTC made an extra £750,000 profit last year, because of NHS commissioning which means they get the same fee regardless of how much or, in this case, how little work they deliver.

It cannot be good for staff morale, and it certainly isn’t good for the budget, for Intelligent Commissioning to require new directors at inflated salaries. We should be moving to a smaller gap between the pay levels of our staff, not a greater gap.

Of course there are times when a specialist product or service is needed from a private provider, we shouldn’t be re-inventing the wheel when, for example, software to meet our needs is readily available.

It is our view that the best possible value and service for this city comes from a different approach. It comes from dedicated officers, with decent pay and conditions, who are treated with respect and dignity by the leadership of this council. Constant reviews and the threat of being ‘commissioned into the private sector’ are not, in my view, the way to motivate people to deliver their best.

We and our MPs must fight these cuts as fiercely as we can. Furthermore locally I believe our response is for the council to come together, not to be split apart. We should focus on our positive spirit, that together we can meet these challenges and provide the best services possible locally, with public servants paid decent, but not excessive wages. We oppose these cuts and believe Intelligent Commissioning is not the way forward. Please support this motion.

Categories
notes from JK

Release on my YouTube hearing

Further to my previous post, here’s the release I’ve put out on the whole matter. Due to the procedures, I’ve not been able to discuss this publicly in detail since the complaint was filed in February 2009. Feels good to talk about it now!

For immediate release: 09 July 2010

From the Green Group of Councillors, Brighton & Hove City Council

TORY COUNCILLORS TRY TO BLOCK GREEN FROM PUTTING COUNCIL MEETINGS ON YOUTUBE

Open government in Brighton & Hove was dealt a blow today when Conservative councillors attempted to stop Green Cllr Jason Kitcat from putting clips of a council meeting on YouTube.

Cllr Kitcat was subject to a standards panel hearing over his use of YouTube, after a complaint was made by Conservative Cllr Ted Kemble (a Cabinet member at the time of his complaint) supported by Council Leader Cllr Mary Mears and Deputy Leader Cllr Brian Oxley.

The complaint centred on Conservative members’ unhappiness with how Cllr Kitcat had put clips of council meetings on YouTube. These clips are already published for all to see online, but in a less easy-to-access format through the Council’s website.

“Many residents don’t want to sit through entire three or four hour meetings nor watch the whole thing online; they want to jump to the bits they’re interested in. When I found I couldn’t reliably link to sections of the webcasts, I put them on YouTube for ease of access by residents,” commented Cllr Kitcat.
“Most of these clips featured my questions on behalf of residents about communal bins. This seems to have caused Conservatives to try blocking my actions through a politically-motivated Code of Conduct complaint.”

“Rather than celebrating and encouraging openness, transparency and greater resident interest in the workings of our council, the Conservatives seem to prefer that the webcasts of council meetings stay restricted to the less than user-friendly council site.

“Putting clips of these webcasts on sites like YouTube makes them much more accessible and easy to use. As a councillor I am committed to being as open and accessible to my constituents as possible, hence my use of a blog, Twitter and YouTube.”

Despite one member admitting to not having even viewed the videos before attending the hearing, the panel decided that Cllr Kitcat had failed to treat Cllr Geoffrey Theobald with respect and had used the council’s resources improperly for political purposes.

The panel decided that Cllr Kitcat should be censured for his actions and be suspended for up to six months if he does not write an apology to Cllr Theobald and submit to re-training on the roles and responsibilities of being a councillor.

“The panel completely failed to understand the arguments I made, that putting a video on YouTube does not deprive the council of any resources whilst also making its working more open,” says Cllr Kitcat. “Furthermore, the investigating officer and Cllr Theobald felt there was no breach of the code with regard to respect. Additionally the officer report accepted that there had been no material loss to the council through my actions. Yet the Conservative complainant and the panel chose to pursue this complaint when clearly my actions benefited the people of this city at no detriment to the council.”

“I shall be fighting this case at an appeal Tribunal, it has been a complete waste of council officer time and money investigating this matter and I refute the panel’s findings,” concluded Cllr Kitcat. “With Conservative-led changes to the council constitution including cutting down speaking times, the number of questions councillors can ask and limiting the number of motions at council meetings – this complaint is a another step in the Tory attempts to close down democratic debate in our city.”



NOTES TO EDITORS

* Cllr Jason Kitcat can be contacted for comment on 07956 886 508

* At Cllr Kitcat’s request the papers and (once ready) the minutes from the panel hearing are available to the public online at http://bit.ly/bqUmdS

* Cllr Kitcat’s YouTube channel can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/user/jpkitcat

* Cllr Kitcat’s statement to the panel will shortly be available on his blog at http://www.jasonkitcat.com