Categories
notes from JK

Tories try to get me suspended for putting council meetings on YouTube

In haste, because I’ve got a busy afternoon working on some great upgrades for Netmums, this morning I had to attend a standards hearing due to a Tory complaint. Tories weren’t happy that I put clips of council meeting webcasts, which are already online, onto YouTube and then my blog.

The panel decided I had breached the code and agreed some sanctions – I’ll type the details up later but in essence suspension hangs over my head for just putting some video on YouTube to make it easier for residents to see. So the Conservative attack on our local democracy continues – they forced through the cabinet system early, they have cut speaking times, the number of questions and motions councillors can put and now they’re trying to block our making videos more accessible. So much for their priority of openness and transparency!

I’m grateful to officers that, after my request, they have already published all the papers for the panel online. My presentation to the panel is copied below, more later. I will be appealing this decision.

UPDATE: Perhaps the oddest thing of this whole bizarre episode is that, in spite of their obvious unhappiness with the putting of Council webcasts onto YouTube videos, they haven’t asked me to take them down!

My presentation to the Panel

The Standards Committee’s Assessment Panel considered that Cllr Kemble’s complaint against me could be considered as being under three points of the code:

  • Failure to treat others with respect;
  • Failure, when using the resources of the authority –
    • To act in accordance with the authority’s reasonable requirements; and
    • To ensure that such resources are not used improperly for political or party political purposes.

I will argue that I have not breached the code under any of these three points. And just to clarify, the videos I put online were not edited in any way, just cropped down to be shorted. Full details of the meeting they were taken from was included next to the videos on YouTube.

I will address these three items in turn, briefly as most of the arguments have been covered in the papers.

Failure to treat others with respect

The investigating officer does not find that I have failed to treat others with respect. Cllr Kemble complained that I had been “underhand and devious”.

Given that the council meetings are held in public, broadcast to the world via the Internet, and I merely put portions of them on another part of the Internet (and so still in public) – my actions cannot have been underhand or devious – as they were clearly there for all to see!

If these had been videos of speeches delivered at private events I would accept the need to request permission before publishing the videos. But these videos were already published and the meetings already very clearly public.

Furthermore they did nothing more than show what happened at the council meetings. Anything “malicious or bullying” at the meetings themselves would have been ruled out of order, as well as the being subject of their own standards complaint. Merely pointing to sections of a meeting cannot be taken as being malicious or bullying.

So I refute this aspect of the complaint fully, and have done so in more detail in my letter to Mr Foley of 4th August 2009.

Failure to act in accordance with the authority’s reasonable requirements

Again, as the investigating officer notes, at the time of the complaint the webcasting protocol did nothing to restrict my actions in terms of putting clips on YouTube. The protocol did however encourage openness as do the Ten General Principles of Public Life included in the code of conduct and promoted by the Committee for Standards in Public Life.

I believe I acted completely properly in this regard and so agree with the report that there isn’t a case to answer with regards to failing to act in accordance with the authority’s reasonable requirements.

Failure to ensure that such resources are not used improperly for political or party political purposes

Section 6(b)(ii) of the code is the nub of the matter where I disagree with the investigating officer’s reasoning.

I would like to clarify my understanding of the word “political”. In my view everything I do as a councillor is political and politics is the ‘trade’ I am in when acting as a councillor. So when I said that I posted the clips onto YouTube for political reasons, that is because I believe council meetings and everything relating to them is political. However I do not believe my usage, as will be addressed late, was ‘political’ in the sense meant by the code of conduct.

In the investigating officer’s summary report he accepts that “there was no material loss” to the council – so it is arguable whether any resources were used at all. The report also mentions that facilities and resources can only be used properly if justified as being part of their roles as a councillor. The Independent Remuneration Panel’s definitions of formal councillor duties includes attending full council and cabinet meetings, which is exactly what I was doing in the clips published – hence their use was proper.

Of the 5 clips this complaint covers, one is just myself speaking to second a notice of motion on pre-pay energy meter charges. This was a motion jointly proposed with the Labour group – it was not party political. Furthermore, as the House of Commons allows MPs to post videos of their own speeches on YouTube without difficulty, I do not see why my own speech should be cause for concern under this complaint.

That leaves the four other clips involving questions about communal bins from myself with responses from Councillors Mears and Theobald.

Communal bins were at that time being rolled out in my ward, as they were in neighbouring wards. All councillors whose wards were being affected asked questions in council and cabinet meetings, as did those with an interest in the Environment Cabinet brief. At that time I was not the Green Group’s waste and recycling spokesperson, I was purely acting as a ward councillor as were others from all parties when asking such questions.

Furthermore, in his interview, Cllr Kemble alleges that I had placed the videos on my blog to further my ambitions for the European elections. I didn’t post anything on my site relating to the European Elections until 12th May 2009, more than two months after Cllr Kemble sent in his complaint.

Long before and long after Cllr Kemble’s complaint I have been posting on my blog reports of my council work including text, sections of meeting minutes, photos and videos. So his accusation that these clips were posted for those reasons do not stand up.

Finally, if webcasts were deemed political they should have been taken down during the election ‘purdah’ periods but they were not this year nor last year. The videos just show members undertaking their democratic duties, as is right and proper.

So, the clips were not posted for political or party political reasons because members from all affected wards and all parties were asking similar questions. I was not campaigning for European Parliament at that time and I was not the Green Group’s spokesperson on this matter at the time, Cllr Rufus was.

So on that basis I do not believe I have broken 6(b)(ii).

However I also would argue that I have not broken this section of the code on the basis that I have not used the council’s resources. So not only was the act not political, but furthermore no council resources were used to post the videos to YouTube.

As repeatedly stated, and agreed by the investigating officers, I used my personal computer and broadband to view the webcasts as I often do to refresh my memory before writing a blog post.

On seeing some pertinent sections I screen grabbed the video for posting on YouTube. Technically this did not touch the Council’s servers further whatsoever. To view the webcast the video file is downloaded to your computer over the Internet. Rewinding to view sections already viewed just retrieves the video from your computer’s local memory, no further Internet access is required. Hence the video capture used no council resources in terms of computers or broadband beyond what I used to view the webcast normally. Viewing the webcast alone cannot reasonably be considered a breach of the code!

Furthermore digital files like the webcast videos are what economists call ‘non-rival goods’. That is they are unlike a cake, for example. If I eat all of a cake then you cannot eat it too, but with a digital file I can use it and so can you with neither of us being any worse off.

Indeed, I can copy a digital file online a thousand times at zero cost for all my friends and the original will still be in perfect condition. A cake cannot manage that feat – you would need to bake a new cake, with the costs of all the ingredients, to copy it even once.

So in my copying the video for use on YouTube I did not deprive anyone of the ability to view or save the webcast in the future. In fact I made it easier for people to view certain points of interest from council meetings.

The final argument made by the investigating officer is that the webcast’s copyright is a resource of the council. As a matter of principle I disagree. These webcasts show elected members, officers and residents participating in public meetings which make up the workings of our local democracy. If they belong to the council they only do so in trust for the good of the entire city. Indeed if one were to take the idea that the copyright is a resource of the council then should each person shown on camera not get a royalty payment for each sale of the webcast covering their recorded performance?

There is no serious commercial market for these webcasts, they are a public good. A £35 charge is made for copying them onto disc, that is to cover the cost of someone actually doing the job of retrieving the archive, getting a disc and delivering it to the member of the public who wants the disc. This £35 charge is in no way a meaningful source of income for the council.

In Form A (ii) the investigating officer rebuts this argument claiming good authority for intellectual property having financial and commercial value. However the citations provided relate to the world of commerce – of course Apple or Hewlett-Packard have plenty of value in their patents, copyrights and other intellectual property. But this council and its members are owned by the people of this city and acts on their behalf.

Parliament, despite complex TV licensing agreements for video coverage, already allows MPs to post videos of their own speeches on YouTube and is shortly going to allow all clips to be posted by anyone on sites such as YouTube.

Indeed minutes from council meetings are already regularly copied onto local blogs by councillors and members of the public. The council has, as yet, not been seen to pursue any of these bloggers for breach of the council’s intellectual property. If the investigating officer’s line of argument was to believed, these bloggers too are depriving the council of financial resources. But no action has arisen, because of course these are resources for the good of the whole city. In addition, copyright law has a provision for ‘fair dealing’ which permits the use of limited excerpts, even in commercial works, without recompense or license to the copyright holder.

So, I have already made the case that these clips were not political, and so the charge of “Failure to ensure that such resources are not used improperly for political or party political purposes” falls. I have also argued that technically, I did not use any additional IT resources beyond those needed to view the clip. So I did not breach the code on that count. Finally I have detailed how I did not deprive the council of any intellectual property or implied financial resource because digital goods are non-rival, the council has not previously chosen to enforce any intellectual rights on previous copying, they have no meaningful commercial value and there is a fair-dealing option under copyright which covers reasonable excerpts.

Thus, I respectfully put to the panel that there is no case for me to answer. I have not breached the code with regard to:

Failure to treat others with respect


Failure to act in accordance with the authority’s reasonable requirements

Failure to ensure that such resources are not used improperly for political or party political purposes

I thank you for your consideration, I urge you to reject these charges and am open to your questions.

[ENDS]

Categories
notes from JK

Links 30-06-10

Categories
notes from JK

Why Greens refuse to participate in the council’s ‘Intelligent Commissioning’ reforms

This week, on the day of George Osborne’s emergency budget and Brighton Trades Council’s anti-cuts protest, Greens announced our opposition to a council restructure process known as ‘Intelligent Commissioning’. We will also not participate in the recruitment process to find new ‘Strategic Directors’ to push this process forward.

As I spoke about this to the gathered protestors there were strong cheers of agreement. The unions understand that, as has happened in the NHS and the education system, commissioning tends to result in privatisation, poorer working conditions and reduced democratic control of public services.

However the other opposition parties, while they have been critical of the £125k + benefits packages for these new directors, were quick to criticise our position. They felt we should be ‘inside the process’ of recruiting these people and so on.

I don’t agree. When the council’s new Chief Executive John Barradell was recruited, Greens participated in the process. Barradell spoke then, I’m told, of his desire to improve the council’s reputation amongst residents, make it more customer service orientated and more efficient. Who could disagree with that? After starting work he continued to expand on his ambition to improve the council. We share that desire.

However it wasn’t until recently that he explained that he wanted to do this through a process of ‘intelligent commissioning’ led by a set of new directors, a series of delivery units and so abolishing the existing council directorates. As I’ll explain below, we oppose commissioning in the way proposed. We won’t get to vote on these proposals as the Tory cabinet supports them and Chief Exec Barradell doesn’t need council approval to re-organise his staff. So to show our opposition to this process, to make our stand clear, we have refused to participate in the recruitment process.

I have no strong desire the retain the directorates as they are. However the thinking behind commissioning is flawed. As I understand it from the reports I’ve read and how it works in our local NHS, this is the proposal: A service is defined, such as waste collection, day care, tourism promotion or licensing enforcement. What the council wants delivered for that service is specified and then put out to tender. Council teams can bid to run this service (alone or in partnership with other groups), private firms can also bid as well as the ‘third sector’ such as charities and co-operatives.

What’s ‘intelligent’ about this process is the way the service is specified with ‘customers’ in mind, that it will be results orientated, that charities and other groups can get involved and we could jointly tender for services (so pooling budgets and saving money) with other local public sector organisations such as NHS Trusts.

What could be wrong with that? Well as the Health Overview & Scrutiny Committee found with local NHS commissioning, these processes tend to favour large corporations who can afford to participate in these complex bidding processes. The staff used to provide the services are usually on less secure, less well paid contracts with worse pensions. Quality can also be an issue.

Additionally, the evidence so far with NHS contracting, is that the costs are often higher. This is because the tender process is not that competitive (the same big players are the only ones pitching around the country for the same types of contracts), the tender process itself is time-cosnuming and costly plus for some services private companies demand premiums for the risks involved which the public sector would have otherwise regularly borne.

Of course there are cases when partnership working makes sense, and using the expertise of private companies and the third sector can absolutely be the right thing to do. But government, the public sector, is about providing those services for all sectors of society which a market has failed to do, need to be managed in the general public interest or that individuals alone could not possibly afford, such as expert social care or careful management of our seafront.

Furthermore, as we’ve seen time and again in the NHS, once the services are contracted out it’s much harder for democratically elected representatives to hold them to account. We get told basic information is ‘commercially sensitive’ or that we’ll only find out more once a formal target review is held. We can’t hold managers employed by private firms to account. If things go wrong there is little option other than trying to terminate the contract – which can prove very costly. We’ve been here before locally, our waste collection contract went to two private firms before being returned in-house for a much improved service.

I believe that we should be focussing on running a council that is proud of its staff: A group of people expert in what they do, striving for excellence and delivering public services at decent value for the tax payer.

By keeping services in-house we can give staff the job security they need to do their best work, develop their skills and also train new generations to serve their city. Sometimes it will make sense to go for private help, such as for expert restoration of specific historic artefact or construction of a major project. However, as I saw when a private consultant was used to negotiate rents for seafront traders, once an in-house surveyor was hired a much more reasonable and long term approach was taken.

It’s my view that we can take this city from good to superb only with a strong commitment to council staff. They do many wonderful things already. But I believe they can deliver even more. To get there it would help if they were removed from being under the constant threat of tendering that ‘intelligent commissioning’ would bring.

Categories
current affairs

The budget cuts in Brighton & Hove and the continued failure to empower local government

For no good reason other than showing how tough they are – a sort of budgetary chest thumping – we have cuts being imposed now. Even if you accept the need for cuts (which Greens do not), it doesn’t seem to me that we are getting the best value or service quality from rushing through in-year cuts. During the general election only the Tories were arguing the cuts should happen this year. How the LibDems have changed their tune.

At a recent Cabinet meeting I called for the local Tory administration to publish details of their budget plans as soon as possible, with councillors from all parties being involved in the process. This fell on stoney ground.

All we know at this point is what officers have been able to glean an announcement by Eric Pickles about 2 weeks ago. In summary for this year the council is obliged to cut £3.55 million from the budget already balanced and passed at the February budget council meeting.

That we’re being asked to change a budget in-year is less than ideal, it is threatening many long-planned projects and adds a great deal of uncertainty to council staff. Currently they are being told to carry on with planning but implement as little as possible.

However, and here’s the kicker, as long as the Tory cabinet manage the budget reductions within departments and don’t push money across departmental lines then none of the cuts will have to come to full council for decision. Instead they can sign them off at the Tory-only Cabinet-level meetings. In any circumstances, but especially for a council of no overall control, this is not the inclusive, democratic decision making that I believe residents deserve.

Additionally, pushing these cuts onto local government is confirmation that the Tory/LibDem government are intent on continuing the emasculation of local councils that the previous Labour and Conservative governments undertook with relish.

All the talk of ‘localism’, devolving power and such like from Tories and LibDems is immediately shown to be completely false. If they truly believed and understood these issues they would not have imposed swingeing cuts on local government without also granting new local powers. Let us not forget that local government had nothing to do with creating this budgetary deficit and have been delivering Gershon efficiency savings of 2-3% a year.

Local government haven’t been showered in cash the past years. The least the government could have done is offered local councils some new powers, perhaps alternative models for fundraising or a fairer local taxation system before cutting off our funds. Certainly the government’s only gesture to councils of removing the ring-fencing from a motley collection of grants is not much of a tonic in the face of these cuts.

Greens will oppose the cuts all the way, but it looks like the Tories will make sure we won’t even get a chance to vote on them. What sort of open politics is that?

Categories
voting

Why can’t I vote at my ATM? Hansard Society Debate

This evening the Hansard Society hosted a panel debate in Portcullis House, Westminster with the title “Why can’t I vote at my ATM? – the practicalities of the ballot box.”

I along with Electoral Commission Chair, Jenny Watson and Tom Watson Harris MP made up the panel. The audience was filled with a wide variety of interesting people including current and former Electoral Commission staff, civil servants, Lords and activists.

While we didn’t all agree on the reasoning, there was a fairly general consensus that electronic voting shouldn’t be pursued at the moment. There was lots of interesting debate on issues of access and turnout. I hope the society will put online a podcast or summary of the event in some form. I post below my opening speech for the event.

——–

Thank you for inviting me here to participate this evening.

I come to this issue as a programmer, as someone who has observed elections for the Open Rights Group and who, as a local councillor, has had a very personal interest in elections.

As an observer the ultimate compliment one can pay an election is to say that it was ‘free and fair’.

What does an election process need to do to be considered free and fair?

There are three key properties that ALL must be met. An election must be:

  • Secure
  • Verifiable
  • Anonymous

By secure we mean that the results cannot be changed, that only those entitled to vote actually do so and people can only vote one time.

Verifiable means that candidates, agents, observers and voters can check the result and have confidence that the result reflects the will of the people. Voters need to be sure that their intention was accurately recorded and counted.

Finally to prevent coercion, vote selling and bribery voters absolutely need to be secure in the knowledge that their vote is secret and that people cannot know how they voted. I am aware that the UK currently doesn’t have a completely secret ballot, we should, but that’s a debate for another day.

  • Secure
  • Verifiable
  • Anonymous

A properly run paper-based election can meet those three requirements.

However with current technology electronic voting cannot meet those three principles. It just isn’t technically possible to have an electronic system which is secure and anonymous whilst also being verifiable.

When the Open Rights Group observed electronic elections in the UK we were unable to declare confidence in the results, because we just couldn’t properly verify the counts at all, it was hidden behind the technology.

Online banking is a completely different problem, the transactions are not secret, we can see them in our statements and merchants collect lots of personal information about us to push through their anti-fraud systems. Technology is great for so many things, but not voting.

If you’ve heard the complaints from the music and movie industries over recent years, then you’ll know that computers are good at copying. With electronic voting we risk undetectable ballot stuffing on a massive scale.

Currently the very nature of paper – that you need a vehicle to move around lots of it, that it’s logistically challenging to deal with thousands of ballots – limits fraud and increases the chance of fraudsters being caught. With electronic votes the fraud can happen in a computer, where none of us can see inside, with millions of votes changed or copied whilst controlled by someone on the other side of the world.

I’ll save more details of the technical problems with electronic voting and counting for the questions, if people are interested. But there is a broad consensus in the computing world that these technologies should not be used. The Association for Computing Machinery and the British Computer Society as well as scores of academics have voiced their opposition. So far e-voting has been cancelled in Ireland, Netherlands, Germany, Italy and the province of Quebec. There have been serious problems found with e-voting systems in India, Japan, France, Belgium and of course the United States.

I might add that these systems are hugely expensive, costing many times more than traditional paper-based elections. In a 2003 e-voting trial in Sheffield, for example, the cost was £70 per e-vote cast versus £1 per paper vote. And on average turnout still declined during the UK’s electronic voting pilots between 2000 and 2007.

On turnout, we need to be very careful. Much of the over £50 million spent on UK pilots in the last 10 years was based on blind faith that online voting would boost turnout. It didn’t, simply because ease of voting is not the main factor for why people don’t vote. Indeed there are studies showing that people who live furthest from their polling station are most likely to vote!

People choose not to vote because they feel all politicians are the same, that their vote doesn’t count or they don’t know enough about the issues to vote. That’s a challenge for the political system to address, one which electoral reform could help with as there’s data clearly showing higher turnouts in countries with fairer electoral systems.

That being said, politics aside, what should we do about our electoral processes? We absolutely and urgently need individual voter registration and that could be tied in with an online electoral roll. That’s a place where technology could help voters, election administrators and party activists.

We need to clamp down on postal voting, it’s the source of most allegations of fraud. It will need to still be available, but in a much more controlled and secure manner.

We need to review polling day. I know the Electoral Commission have done quite a bit of interesting work on this. Moving elections to the weekends, perhaps all weekend, is one option but the consultation responses to this were, I understand, rather mixed. What we could do is declare a public holiday on election day, we could also consider offering, before polling day, early voting in town halls.

Finally, I think counts need to stay open, be manual, paper based and easily scrutinised. It’s only by watching piles of ballots add up, by observing them being sorted and checked, that we can have confidence in the result. What could help would be more standardised procedures for the counts. This would assist with training of all involved – at the moment every count across the country can be done in a different way. Let’s not stamp out local innovation, but let’s make sure there are minimum standards so we can have confidence in a modern, paper-based electoral system.

In closing, I believe electronic voting & counting are not the way forward, let’s update our existing electoral system whilst keeping it secure, verifiable and anonymous. The real challenge for engagement and turnout lies with our political culture and the fairness of our voting systems, not election administration.

Categories
notes from JK

Thoughts on incineration after visiting Rabbit Skips

Last week I had the opportunity to visit the facilities of Rabbit Skips in Lancing.

They are an independent local company who service many businesses, particularly construction and events, in the Brighton & Hove area.

I was very interested to know about how they are reducing their environmental impact. I was impressed with the clear passion with which staff did their work and pride in what they had achieved.

Rabbit’s process is a microcosm of what the city council, to an extent, do with residents’ waste.

Waste comes into the site and is sorted. Most of the sorting is done using a variety of electro-mechanical systems and magnets very similar to the Hollingdean Materials Recovery Facility used by the council. The difference being that while the council only put recycling through their system, Rabbit put everything through theirs (other than obviously re-usable large items like doors and girders!)

The sorting is impressive for what it can retrieve from the waste: Soil, wood, metal (even the tiniest screws, springs and nails), plastics, aggregrate and so on. Many of these materials, such as metals, plastics, are sold onto the market for recycling or re-use.

The remaining ‘residue waste’ is broken down into small pieces for use in an incinerator. I’m told it was the UK’s first incinerator using waste to be classified as using biofuel due to the amount of wood-chip and other organic materials that goes in there.

That a relatively small, independent local company managed to get through all the legislative hoops and pull together the financing to build these facilities – which are highly automated – is in itself impressive.

It seemed to my untrained eye that the incinerator has more machinery to clean the exhaust than anything else. Currently, when running both lines, they can generate up to 2MW which is sold as green energy onto the national grid. They would like to sell their heat too, but so far have not found any buyers.

While the majority of waste, when the mix is right, is burnt, they are still left with several tons a day of residue which has to be handled as hazardous waste. They also have a quantity of ash collected by filters which goes into road building – so it’s not a totally zero waste affair.

Let’s be clear, in my view incineration is very much second best to some other waste systems such as digestion technologies and pyrolosis. No process is perfect but in terms of efficiency and emissions they are clearly preferable to incineration. In my view incineration is not much different from landfill, you stick it in the air rather than in the ground, but at least you recover some energy in the process.

It is my goal to see Brighton & Hove using the most efficient, environmentally friendly waste processes possible. Nevertheless firms like Rabbit have a role to play because councils do not handle or process commercial waste. If incineration is to be pursued (and I hope not) it’s certainly better to have smaller, local installations than large mega-sites as for Veolia’s in Newhaven where emissions will be heavily concentrated in one area.

What I can support wholeheartedly is the waste sorting Rabbit are using. We could be using it on the bulk of our waste to push far more of it into the recycling market. The technology is there… but is there the will from the the Tories locally or nationally?

Categories
food

Friccassee de Poulet with Balsamic Vinegar

A few years ago it was another hot summer Sunday and I was planning something like a quick chicken teriyaki for lunch. But my mother-in-law dropped in and that would have to change. No, not the start to a joke, but the beginning of my falling in love with Provençal cooking all over again.

Usually my wife and I eat Japanese vegetarian food for our everyday meals, and a bit of decent quality organic meat for one weekend meal. But my Polish mother-in-law really finds Japanese a bit too strange for her tastes. No problem, I had plenty of good organic chicken in the freezer after overbuying for a BBQ.

I’m not sure why but I pulled down my yellow Provençal cookbook of shame. I say of shame because it is in English. Many years ago I bought it in a  shop in Avignon where both English and French versions were available. Despite French being my mother tongue the culinary terminology scared me into getting the English copy and I still regret it to this day. Silly really, especially as I’ve only used one recipe for ratatouille from there in all this time. (You can get the book from Amazon France in French or English)

Anyway, for reasons unexplained I reached for the Provençal book and flicked through thinking of something that I would enjoy cooking and everyone would enjoy eating. Well with only one chicken recipe in the book the choice was made!

Based on my own memories of Friccassees past I made some changes to the recipe which made it a bit more rustic. I served it with mashed potatoes (using a splash of milk and white pepper) and a green salad.

Many Friccassee recipes are extraordinarily involved. This recipe is straightforward and easy giving you a delicious country dish in under 40 minutes.

Don’t be scared by the vinegar in this recipe, it works. Just make sure you have a good balsamic vinegar which isn’t too tart, there should be some sweetness to its flavour.

Ingredients

1 chicken (1.8-2Kgs)

5 leeks

500ml double cream

200ml balsamic vinegar

4 shallots

8-10 crimini mushrooms (small portobello)

50g butter

1. Cut the chicken into eight pieces and lightly brown in a large pan using the butter. When the chicken has become golden brown, put in a dish to one side, discarding any remaining butter from the pan.

2. Finely chop the shallots and sweat them in the pan for a few minutes until they are becoming translucent.

3. Return the chicken to the pan along with sliced mushrooms and pour over the vinegar. While reducing the vinegar by half over a medium heat turn the chicken a few times to ensure even absorption.

4. Stir in all the cream and simmer gently for 10 minutes. Remove the white meat and continue cooking the legs until done, around 10 minutes.

5. Cut the leeks into 10cm (4 inch) lengths, discarding the loose, dark green leaves at the top. Cook in salted water, cooling in ice water when done.

6. In a serving dish lay out the leeks topped with your chicken which should have taken on a gorgeous brown from the vinegar.

7. Keep simmering the sauce until it has reduced a bit further then pour it hot over the chicken and serve.

Although I’ve played with his recipe, I can’t argue with Christian Etienne’s advice: “Serve this dish with a good wine.”

We had it with a wine which never fails to please during the summer months, Rosé d’Anjou.

Note: All Amazon links for books will pay a commission to me if you purchase the book.

Categories
notes from JK

Why are Labour incapable of straightforward campaigning?

I’ve just seen the first leaflet from Labour’s by-election candidate for St Peter’s & North Laine, Tom French.

Does Tom offer any new ideas for the area or the city? No.

Does he use misleading statistics to support his candidacy? Yes!

Rather than quote figures from the last council elections, recent council by-elections in neighbouring wards or even the recent Parliamentary results in the constituency the ward is in, he comes up with a new metric… Tom aggregates the general election vote across the three constituencies (and thus includes the parts of Lewes district in Brighton Kemptown) to suggest Labour are in a close second place. If that’s how any of these elections worked – maybe, but that figure is of no relevance to anyone as it’s not restricted to the Brighton & Hove municipal boundary, it was for a different electoral arrangement and resulted in Labour winning no MPs whilst the Greens did win one.

Tom also writes that he’s “stood shoulder to shoulder with students, teachers and parents against the cuts in Higher Education” – which is intriguing given that the cuts higher education institutions in this city have experienced so far were all brought in by the Labour government.

Tom – You just can’t walk away from Labour’s record of 13 years in government nationally and over a decade on the local council.

And sadly calling Labour the opposition to the Tories is demonstrably untrue. I’ve sat in the council chamber and seen Labour vote with the Conservatives to end our committee system, award themselves additional allowances, to support health privatisation, curtail councillor speaking rights and much more.

Greens will keep putting forward positive proposals, such as for 20mph residential streets, and we’ll fight elections on the back of our ideas for the future. Let’s have a battle of ideas – that’s what would benefit this city at election times.

Categories
current affairs

Labour’s astounding hypocrisy on cuts

So word reaches me that Labour are campaigning locally to ‘stop the cuts’ that are affecting our great city.

Well I agree, we should fight unnecessary cuts (as most of them are) and campaign for the best deal possible for our city as the guillotine falls. This is exactly what Greens have been doing for a long time, whether it’s fighting privatisation, university closures or cuts to respite services. In fact almost the first thing I did on being elected in December 2007 was to have a run-in with Cllr Ken Norman over his plans to close the Vernon Gardens residential care home and day centre (which Tories steamrollered through).

Labour were never against the cuts the Tory/LibDem government are pushing through. They just wanted them next year instead of this year. A valid point if cuts must be made, as we don’t want a double-dip recession. But Greens campaigned on the fact that most of these cuts simply aren’t needed. With a rebalancing of government spending away from the military, ID cards and road building plus a reformed tax system, we could protect vital services whilst making our society fairer.

Indeed it was the Labour government, before they were turfed out, which began the cuts to our local educational institutions. As a result Sussex university want to close some degrees and fire staff, Brighton university are having to retrench losing the valued ARTHOUSE and associated staff contracts and City College Brighton, who a few years ago thought they were about to develop a gleaming new campus, are now cutting back after the funding they counted on just didn’t appear despite repeated government promises. Furthermore childcare facilities at both universities have been put at threat.

It was the Labour government that had been giving Brighton & Hove City Council some of the lowest block grants (a key source of funding) in the country, year after year. That the Tories have not spent this wisely is also true e.g. £100,000 on trimming verges more often.

Labour also presided over the skyrocketing of top civil service pay along with spiralling IT outsourcing contracts.

Labour created the regulatory system which allowed banks to get ‘too big to fail’ and it was Labour that chose to run up a huge deficit to bail them out. It was Labour who used PFI deals to push debt off the government books. International accountancy standards now require most of these to be, quite rightly, brought back into the government accounts and so we’ll see the government finances look even worse than the previous sanitised picture Brown and Darling painted.

So, yes, let’s stop the cuts. But until Labour renounce their policies which brought us here and began the cuts, they are opportunistic hypocrites of the first order to try to make political capital of their ‘opposition’ to said cuts.

Categories
food

Bob Blumer’s Beetrot Salad Recipe

Bob Blumer (a.k.a The Surreal Gourmet) came into my cooking life thanks to my cousin Sophie who gave me his wonderful book “Off The Eaten Path“.

I’ve always enjoyed beetroots but I know that many don’t so when I saw a recipe called “Gee, your beet smells terrific” I had to give it a try. It all comes down to roasting the beets which is a brilliant idea. It makes complete sense given how beets are packed with natural sugars, yet I’ve never seen this suggested anywhere before. Everyone who has this salad is stunned when I say the beets were roasted – they taste good.

There are so many clever flavour combinations packed in here so I haven’t modified his recipe much, just tweaked a few quantities.

Ingredients

3 medium size beets (tops removed)

3 teaspoons walnut oil

2 teaspoons good balsamic vinegar

3 teaspoons freshly squeezed orange juice

2 teaspoons fresh tarragon (finely chopped, stems discarded)

50g strong, crumbly French goats cheese (diced into 1/8-inch cubes)

3 tablespoons toasted walnuts (to toast just pop nuts in the oven until starting to brown and get them out quick as they’ll burn in a blink)

1-2 Belgian endives

salt & black pepper to taste

  • Place the beetroots whole, unskinned on a rack to bake at 200 C for 1.5-2 hours. Use foil to catch the drippings below. (Increase time if beets are big)
  • Remove beetroots from the oven to cool. Don’t worry about the exterior blackening, the inside is wonderfully tender and sweet.
  • Once cool peel with your hands and then finely dice the beetroots.
  • Combine all the remaining ingredients in a bowl adding nuts and cheese last before gently mixing.
  • For fancy presentation or as an entree spoon the mixture into whole washed endive leaves. Alternatively use just 1 endive and chop the leaves into 2 inch lengths and mix into the salad.

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