Tag: brighton

Categories
notes from JK

Speech: Maternity Services in Brighton & Hove

This speech was presented to the Full Council meeting of Brighton & Hove City Council on 18th March 2010. It was to propose a Green notice of motion on maternity services, which was passed by the meeting:

Amidst much downbeat news on the NHS, it is doubly worth celebrating, as this motion does, the local Primary Care Trust’s plans to introduce a midwife led birthing centre in our city.

For far too long the majority of mothers have had to trek to Crowborough for a midwife led birth or go to the Royal Sussex County hospital for a ‘standard practice’ birth. An increasing number have been wanting to have home births but the resources have not always been available to support this. Furthermore Crowborough birthing centre only has six beds – so the choice has not been a reality for many families.

Of course good, trouble-free births do happen every week at hospitals. I support the good work our local hospital does, this motion is about offering families meaningful choices.

For so-called “normal” pregnancies home and birthing centre births are just as safe, if not safer than the hospital environment. For it is in hospitals, where birth still tends to be overly medicalised, that unnecessary interventions with unintended side-effects still happen too often.

Much obstetrician thinking is still too male dominated. Doctors tend to treat birth as something that happens to a women, in the way disease happens to someone, rather than an incredible thing that women do and have been doing for millennia.

We celebrate the advances in medicine which have dramatically reduced childbirth mortality rates. But traumatic births, due to inconsiderate and inappropriate medical interventions, should be avoided wherever possible. For the trauma of a difficult birth has lasting physical and psychological impacts on mother and child, hence their partners and surrounding family too.

Women being offered epidurals, “because the anaesthetist is around now”, being strapped to monitors which restrict their movement in the critical stages of labour and being given epistomies because mums are made to deliver lying in that most unnatural position, on their backs. These are all examples of unnecessary interventions which still happen in NHS hospitals. These are actions which have a lasting impact on the wellbeing of mothers.   Medical interventions often require additional recovery and healing, hindering mothers from caring for their children in those precious early days.

Such interventions are extremely rare in midwife led-birthing centres. Midwifes have a different, more nurturing model of birth which trusts women in their ability to deliver safely and naturally. Of course they have the training and skills to deal with the complications which can occur, but most births can and do proceed without major intervention.

Birth is a life changing moment for all concerned. The mother in a state of anxiety, pain and intense physical vulnerability and the father trying to make himself useful in one way or another. A midwife is in a unique position of experience and skill to empathise with and support the expectant family.

When my wife was expecting a few short years ago, we started off with different midwives at each checkup. After a few months we were fortunate enough to be assigned to one midwife who stayed with us until a week after the birth. However for the birth itself, none of the midwives or other staff were known to us. This made a difficult situation that much more stressful. A familiar face would have made a world of a difference.

The NHS need to find a way to resource greater continuity of maternity care. This also applies to post-natal care. Midwives generally stop seeing a mother 5 to 10 days after birth. Health visitors pick up the baton from there, yet they are suffering from increasing caseloads where 70% of health visitors in one survey saying that they didn’t have time, due to their caseloads, to help even the families that are most in need. The number of health visitor home visits are in decline as are the number of clinics they run.

This leads to an increased risk that child development problems and post natal depression are less likely to be picked up. Unless parents are proactive in accessing services, they are likely to get only very occasional visits backed by postal surveys. This isn’t enough to form the bond needed to spot problems in the early days of parenting.

A good relationship with a midwife and then health visitor is vital. These are tender, challenging, vulnerable times. For the mother who wants to discuss problems she may be experiencing, for example the physical after-effects of giving birth or during breastfeeding, there must be a level of trust and understanding for them to share these concerns.

That’s why this notice of motion calls on the PCT and the Health Secretary to support greater midwife provision and post natal care. Offering counselling after a traumatic birth received near unanimous support in the PCT’s survey. Such counselling can prove vital in speeding psychological recovery. There is plenty of evidence that when not dealt with birth trauma can have an impact for years, on the mother and her relationship with those around her.

Let’s work to try and eliminate as many unnecessary birth traumas as possible, but where they do happen, let’s support parents with the best services we possibly can.

I urge you to support this motion. Thank you.

Categories
notes from JK

Speech: Opposing proposals to transform council meetings

Presented to the Full Council meeting of Brighton & Hove City Council on 18th March 2010 in relation to Item 68 of the agenda which aimed to dramatically cut the amount of time for councillors to speak and ask questions:

Sat together this evening in this chamber, we 54 councillors represent the over quarter million residents of our wonderful city. They have entrusted in us the great responsibility of the stewardship of the city and its public services. It is a duty we must undertake with humility, dedication and honour.

When seeing the proposals before us to restrict debates, limit member questions and guillotine meetings; one must ask — is the duty of public service too great for some? Are eight meetings of this council a year too many? Are a few long meetings too much to take when debating this city’s wellbeing?

The proposals suggest four hours is the most we should endure in a council meeting. That equates to less than half a second for each resident of this city. Is that really the most we can offer? On this side of the chamber we feel matters should be debated fully and properly.

I believe the sterile, unopposed cabinet system is seeping too far into this Council’s constitution. Despite their very public wailing and gnashing of teeth, Labour and Tory councillors forced through the new cabinet system. Now full council meetings are the only forum in which members have an absolute right to speak. At every other meeting we can only speak with the chair’s permission, leaving full council the last preserve of free debate between members. Yet these proposals, which both Labour and Tories are reportedly happy to wave through, further reduce the opportunity for dissent and debate.

We are not clerks trying to speed up some repetitious process. We are democratically elected representatives. We follow in a long line stretching all the way back to the elected senators of ancient Athens where discourse was a thing of note. I believe we should aspire to greatness in this chamber instead of this appalling streamlining.

Let us examine the report presenting these unwelcome proposals. We must first reject the notion that more motions or more questions are inherently something to be avoided, in my view they reflect a healthy interest in the workings of the council.

I must say the appendices are deeply misleading and unhelpful. They cite no councils with our status of no overall control, nor our diversity of elected parties. For example Westminster City Council is overwhelmingly Conservative, with a few Labour councillors and no other parties. Southampton: Again Conservative majority with two other parties. Same again for West Sussex.

If one looks in appendix 2 at the number of notices of motion per council meeting, it is notable that we seem to be unique in having so many of our scant meetings taken up with special business which blocks such motions, these meetings include the budget and the mayor making. Greens strongly feel that the most sensible way to spread the load would be to have more full council meetings. This is especially vital given they are the only place where we can all debate issues freely.

Cllr Fryer will speak to our amendment 6. We are withdrawing amendment 5 as officer clarification has shown it to be unnecessary. I shall address the remainder now in reverse order.

Given the importance of freedom of expression we oppose the reduction in speaking times and propose an amendment accordingly. We must allow ourselves 10 minutes to develop an argument properly, anything less is only going lead to a poorer quality of debate.

Similarly, capping the number of notices of motion allowed merely acts to limit our freedom of speech. It is impossible to know which issues will arise and sometimes two motions won’t be enough to deal with the matters at hand. Opposition councillors have scant opportunities to formally seek support for issues they consider important, we must defend this avenue hence our amendment on this issue.

On the matter of questions, an issue dear to my heart, the picture is more mixed. I welcome the opportunity for a system of written questions akin to that used in Parliament. However, the proposed oral questions procedure is half baked. Limiting members to only one oral question each, plus a supplementary, will block comprehensive attempts in holding an administration to account.

Members each have their own areas of expertise and ward interests. At certain times, say of industrial action or a heat wave, their knowledge in asking pointed questions is valuable to the whole council and residents in getting to the bottom of an issue.

If the concern is about the time questions take, perhaps the Conservatives would pledge to stop asking pre-arranged questions of each other? This offer has not been forthcoming; so again we propose amendments to the recommendations on member questions.

Finally with regards to automatically closing meetings after 4 hours. As I mentioned, I don’t believe a few long council meetings a year is too much for our residents to ask of us. And of course the meetings continue to have rule 17 to allow a closure motion if absolutely necessary. Automatic closure is unnecessary and undemocratic in our view.

All these items come back to the question of what are we here in this chamber for: Is it for the efficient despatch of business or to properly deliberate matters on behalf of residents? We believe it is the latter and this requires a decent amount of time.

Who of us here tonight hasn’t referred to one of Churchill’s great speeches or bemoaned the increasing focus on soundbite politics? Yet if these proposals go through there will be no time for Churchillian speechifying, all we will have time for will be the soundbites most claim to decry. If these proposals are approved, we will be doing a huge disservice to ourselves and those we are elected to represent.

I urge you to reconsider this matter and support the Green amendments. Thank you.

GREEN GROUP AMENDMENTS

ITEM 68 – Proposals for Transforming Meetings of Full Council

Council Meeting 18th March 2010

Amendment 1.

To remove the automatic closure of council meetings after 4 hours, ensuring matters of importance to the city are fully debated.

DELETE 4.3 and REPLACE with “4.3 Members should note that a meeting can be closed by use of Council Procedure Rule 17.”

Amendment 2.

To remove arbitrary limits from member questions so that issues can be fully explored and administration Councillors can be properly held to account.

DELETE 5.4 (a) and DELETE the final sentence of 5.4 (d) so that it reads:

“5.4 (d) A Member asking a question (but not others) may ask one supplementary. No Member may ask more than one question.”

Amendment 3.

To remove the proposed limit in the number of Notices of Motions that can be submitted, thus keeping freedom of expression for all Councillors.

DELETE 6.2 (i) and (ii) and REPLACE with “6.2 Members should keep in mind the length of Council meetings when submitting Notices of Motion.”

Amendment 4.

To retain existing time limits for speakers at Council meetings to allow proper debate.

REPLACE 8.2 (i) with “8.2 (i) Speaking time limits will remain unchanged at 10 minutes for proposers and 5 minutes for other speakers.”

Amendment 5. [WITHDRAWN]

To require cross-party support for second extensions for speakers so that the administration party cannot keep voting extensions for their speakers.

ADD 8.2 (iii) “Second extensions of speaker time will only be granted with the agreement of the Council including at least one member of another political party or an independent member.”

Amendment 6.

To split the mayor-making from the standard business of the annual Council meeting so that debate can be held on appointments and other business.

ADD a new recommendation 2.2 (iv):

“The annual Council meeting will be held in two parts. The ordinary business including agreement of leadership, committee and external appointments will be held first. After a 15 minute break during which guests can be seated, the Mayor-making will commence.”

Proposed by: Cllr Jason Kitcat

Seconded by: Cllr Rachel Fryer

Categories
current affairs

A new, rather tame, waste strategy is approved

Waste management is rather magical for most people. No matter what they throw out, as long as it fits in the bins, disappears each week. But of course it doesn’t disappear, it just becomes someone else’s problem. We shift the waste into our countryside or we truck it to incinerators or ship it overseas.

This gives residents a false impression that the problem is dealt with, but of course it isn’t. It’s in someone else’s back yard or in the air they breathe. As a developed, modern society there is no need for us to be doing this – we have the skills and technology to make better use of nearly all our ‘waste’ and to do so locally.

Brighton & Hove’s municipal waste strategy is one part of how we can achieve such a vision. Well it could have been if the Conservatives weren’t in control. What we had was a worthy but overall weak and unambitious strategy. I accept that commercial waste is beyond the council’s legal responsibility, and this makes up a huge amount of the total waste mountain. However as the political leadership for the city, as the largest employer and as the municipal waste authority we have a huge opportunity to show leadership on waste issues, locally and nationally. We’re a forward looking city, I know residents would support such an approach.

I’ve covered this ground many times before but it really is disappointing that not even a food waste collection pilot is on the immediate cards. Below are my comments on the final draft of the strategy. There’s lots of hard work in there, and plenty of worthy ideas, just no big picture ambitious vision.

—-

This important strategy is very welcome, a strategic take on our waste challenges is vital. I suppose we must say better late than never given how long we’ve been waiting for this.

As I’ve said previously, the targets continue to lack ambition, they not only come in below national targets, but they also defer large increases in recycling rates until the more distant future: A 2.8 % point increase in the current period then an 8 % point increase targeted for the following 2 years. National targets look for more steady progress rather than spurts of improvement. The Sustainability Appraisal echoes these concerns and refers to a review of targets in 2011, when will we learn more of this review?

I must note that Greens remain opposed to the notion of incineration of waste at Newhaven and we are disappointed that this strategy schedules so much waste to go there.

There are lots of good ideas in this report, like the food waste reduction campaign with the Food Partnership; promoting online re-use schemes; a very important trade waste analysis and toy recycling. I warmly welcome the proposed trial of communal recycling and a study to better understand the challenges faced by city centre residents. The report notes that where waste is contained, recycling improves. Communal bins are totally uncontained and are a serious problem for addressing waste reduction.

I’m delighted the garden waste collection scheme may yet come forward as many including the Older Peoples’ Council and Greens have long been calling for such a scheme. I look forward to a positive outcome.

Food waste is a key issue, given that it makes up 35% of our municipal waste. The strategy’s arguments on this issue are somewhat circular. Page 21 says a reason for not pursuing food waste collections is that refuse collections are weekly. Page 25 then says that weekly collections will be maintained because food waste collections are not being planned. Which is it? What’s the problem? Food waste collection or weekly collections?

Many other authorities have solved these problems. Ultimately section 8 on residual waste seems to dodge around the critical issues a waste strategy needs to tackle. We should be leading on these matters, not waiting to follow others. Fortnightly collections are immaterial in the city centre where communal bins are emptied almost daily. We need to be piloting a full range of approaches to understand what works. Communications and enforcement campaigns have had limited success thus far and I’m sorry to say will not alone get our waste levels to where they need to be.

So, in closing, I welcome the ideas, studies and pilots proposed in this strategy. But overall it is a missed opportunity which I fear won’t make the progress on waste reduction we need to. I congratulate the Environment Directorate officers who have obviously worked very hard on this, the background documents are impressive pieces of work. Sadly the political leadership to tackle waste in this city doesn’t seem to be forthcoming from this administration. Perhaps next year’s review of targets will provide an opportunity for this council to up its game?

Categories
current affairs

This evening’s budget council meeting let the city’s residents down

Tonight was the night for the full council to decide the budget for the next year. The opposition parties could, if they had worked together, have amended the Tory budget to remove the harshest cuts and reallocate spending. I will copy the detail of the Green amendments below so you can get a flavour of the cuts we wanted to reverse, and the ideas we proposed. I’m disappointed that other than £10k for piloting digital tools for older people with Age Concern, none of our proposals went through. One of the LibDem amendments to go through, providing energy meters on loan in libraries, is something I first suggested over two years ago but didn’t think to include in this budget, so I’m glad they picked it up and go it in.

But the whole process is what I want to reflect on here. Firstly, and I welcome this, the Tory administration published a first draft budget much earlier in the year. This was very helpful and for the first time the scrutiny committees got to meet and discuss the budget. As a result of this and other feedback a number of proposed cuts, such as to the History Centre and respite care, were rolled back way ahead of the budget meeting.

Meanwhile the Green group of councillors were working up a range of amendments with our own ideas and priorities. Fully aware of the potential of joint opposition working, we for months were approaching the opposition parties trying to initiate a collaborative approach. They kept delaying meetings or asking us to wait for their amendments to be ready. Two weeks ago we put forward a suggested set of joint amendments. Labour refused saying they would continue with how they have worked on previous budgets: That is submitting a set of their own amendments without reference to what the other groups were doing.

The problem is, you can’t spend the same money twice. So without jointly figuring out what our various priorities were and how we could fit them together into a balanced budget, it was going to be difficult to make successful amendments to the Tory budget work.

The Council’s Chief Executive also called a number of Leaders’ Group meetings (where the leaders of the political groups on the council get together with lead officers) ahead of the budget meeting to try and broker some deals. Other than offering, at the last minute today, less than £80k to support a few minor opposition amendments, no deals were forthcoming.

Whilst the amendments Labour submitted weren’t as good (in our Green view) as our own, they still undid many of the worst Tory cuts. So Greens were willing to support them in the hope of getting a less bad budget for the city. Labour refused to support our amendments, even ones similar to their own. The two Liberal Democrat councillors sat on their hands on votes for many opposition amendments, even when we supported Labour amendments. With the Independent councillor supporting the Tories, without LibDem votes the Labour amendments fell.

So the only opportunities to prevent the cuts passed by. The meeting ended with the budget passing after Greens were the only party to vote against the Tory budget full of cuts and frankly bizarre capital spending priorities. As councillors buzzed around at the end, it became clear to us that Labour had asked the LibDems not to support their own amendments! This ensured their amendments would not be carried. Deals clearly had been done with the Tories to support the status quo and stop the Greens from getting too much influence. So to be absolutely clear about this — while Labour pretended to amend the budget, from what I overheard they had already made sure their amendments could not succeed by getting LibDems to not vote in favour of them. Alternatively the Tories did deals with both of them directly. How else could ‘progressive’ parties fail to stop cuts to critical budgets such as social care?

The cynical political plotting by the parties has left the city with a worse budget than it needed be. It’s sorely disappointing. Meanwhile the debate suffered from mostly being based on fighting battles from the eighties or silly point scoring about national outcomes after the general election. The two amendments I’d been championing around food and garden waste were opposed for the most spurious reasons. Labour claimed home composting would suffer with a green waste collection, yet clearly many households are never going to be able to home compost plus much garden waste isn’t compostable without being chipped. On food waste the irrelevant spectre of fortnightly collections (which Tories are terrified of) reared its head when in the city centre communal bins are emptied almost daily!

The current political culture in our city council is excessively plotting, bitter, cynical and does not serve the best interests of this city’s residents. I wish I could think of suggestions on how to improve the chances of joint working. But we Greens spent weeks and weeks trying to get engagement from other parties without any clear interest from the others. If they’re going to do deals for their own personal benefit (perhaps Official Opposition status again next year which brings with it large additional allowances for several councillors) ahead of what’s best for the city, I really don’t know what to suggest.

I’d love to offer an alternative analysis but I feel we saw the worst of the councillors tonight. And once again, divisions on the left of the political spectrum let the right win through.

Green Group Amendments

(I don’t have a digital copy yet, the full details will be published on the council website soon enough, so I’ll just type out the rough basics of our proposals)

  • £10k to fund 50% of an Age Concern worker to develop a WiredAge pilot project involving older people with online tools.
  • £150k to fund up to 900 families in lower council tax bands getting home insulation
  • £25k for an additional noise patrol shift per week
  • £180k to fund enhanced sustainability measures at each of the 9 secondary schools in the city (£20k each)
  • £69k to temporarily increase the discretionary grants budget this year
  • A cost neutral green waste collection service paid for by participating residents. Estimated cost for residents of £90 per annum based on 4,000 participants.
  • £100k to re-start Valley Gardens transport project – feasibility & design work.
  • £150k one-off transfer to the winter maintenance reserve.
  • Reverse £126k cut to Youth Offending Service.
  • Reverse £137k of £332k cuts to home to school transport budget.
  • Reverse £137k of £300k cuts to adult social care services commissioning cuts.
  • Remove £100k annual increase in winter maintenance budget.
  • Reduce the budget for mowing grass verges by £100k.
  • £40k to fund a detailed study in to running a viable food waste collection trial.
  • £20k to fund a travel plan for Varndean, Stringer & Balfour campus.
  • £490k to bring around 15 empty council properties into use.
  • Reduce the seafront maintenance budget by £50k.
  • Remove £500k for the new transport model (which has no business case to support the £1m cost over its 5 year life).
  • Change resident parking permits to base the cost on CO2 emissions of the vehicle, raising £240k in the first year and £490k in later years.
  • £32k to improve downland management through collection & composting on priority downland areas and bringing forward sheep grazing.
  • Reverse £208k of the £410k cut in Adult Social Care relating to personal budgets.
Categories
notes from JK

Speech: Supporting Green environmental amendments

I had the task of speaking to our budget amendments which dealt with environmental issues. Unfortunately none of them gained enough support to go through.

—-

Budgets always present difficult choices — we can’t possibly afford to address all the issues we’d like to. The Green Group feel that the proposed Conservative budget does not best address the most urgent issues facing our city’s residents.

We are proposing four simple, cost effective measures that will improve residents’ quality of life. These measures will also contribute to safeguarding our environment. The proposals I’m speaking to are:

  • Free home insulation for 900 families in lower council tax bands.
  • Protecting people from noise disturbance with additional noise team patrols.
  • Promoting garden and food waste collections.
  • A downland protection fund to preserve our unique countryside landscape.

Despite recent small drops in fuel costs, overall household fuel bills have been on the rise for the past few years. Our home insulation proposal will save money for families on lower council tax bands whilst also reducing the emissions from heating their homes.

With regards to noise, the recent studentification scrutiny panel highlighted the need for more support for residents when faced with noise nuisance. The 2003 Licensing Act has also unleashed far more disturbance on the city’s residents. More shifts from the noise team will allow more residents to seek relief from noise and get a good night’s sleep.

It costs us, as a Council, more to ship waste to landfill or incineration than it costs to recycle it. So it makes financial as well as environmental sense to seek alternatives. Our amendments seek to bring in a garden green waste collection scheme at zero overall cost to the tax payer. Residents will pay to subscribe to the regular doorstep collections, at a substantial saving compared to commercial green waste collections. Where possible we would encourage people to compost at home, but many are unable to do so and need an alternative. This measure has had great support from the Older Peoples’ Council.

Whilst garden green waste is 10%, food makes up 35% of our municipal waste. To make a significant impact on our waste levels and meet our recycling targets, we need to tackle food waste. Our proposal aims to update work previously done to ensure the viability, logistics and detail of a food waste collection in the city. Many people, especially in flats, don’t have room to home compost so municipal food and garden waste collections are essential.

Finally we are proposing a Downland Protection Fund to preserve our unique countryside landscape. This fund would support a number of measures to protect precious downland ecosystems and has received widespread support from local associations. Measures include mowing, composting and bringing forward sheep grazing, which we support.

I urge you to support our amendments.

Categories
current affairs

Rogue Kindle Survey is not a Political poll

The Argus play an important part in Brighton & Hove’s community and political life. I have it delivered every morning.

So it’s particularly disappointing that they’ve published the results of a survey in the guise of a proper political poll. What do I mean by that? Well respected political pollsters like ICM, MORI etc use agreed procedures set by the British Polling Council. They weight results using measures to make the result more representative and a better predictor of election results. They also put a huge amount of thought into the questions to improve the likelihood that the results are accurate predictors of electoral behaviour.

Of course polls make mistakes and there are elections where pollsters collectively get it wrong (e.g. Major’s surprise 1992 victory over Kinnock). But the results The Argus quotes are clearly way out of line. Greens scored 22% in Brighton Pavilion for the 2005 General Election, so a 12% Green vote-share is completely incongruous with Greens’ 31.4% in the 2009 Euros, 41.6% in the 2007 Regency by-election and 35% in the Dec 2009 ICM poll (see all the graphs). Furthermore, while I’m not keen to promote Tory chances, it’s absurd to suggest Labour are 10% ahead of the Tories in Brighton Pavilion in the face of a clear national Conservative poll lead of 6-10% and all recent local elections having Tories in a firm second place. This is a rogue survey, it doesn’t deserve to be given the status of poll.

For these figures The Argus cites a survey by Kindle Research, who look to be a small technology research consultancy, not political pollsters. From the information I’ve seen Kindle did ensure demographics were representative of the constituencies – they asked 336 people in each of the three Brighton & Hove parliamentary constituencies. This is a small sample size compared with 533 for the Dec 2009 ICM poll. They also didn’t prompt for ANY political parties. Political polls habitually prompt, because that’s what a ballot paper does when electors come to vote. Kindle also failed to filter out non-voters, which is a basic first step in political polling. I also understand that the political questions were tagged onto the end of a set of completely unrelated questions on a different topic. Kindle admit to having a 10% margin of error (compared to ICM’s 4.3%) but I think it’s even greater than that given not only the small sample size but the type of questioning without prompts or mention of the constituency.

In Brighton Pavilion Greens are fielding Caroline Lucas our high-profile leader, an MEP for 10 years and we have more than doubled our number of councillors in the city since 2005. The results The Argus cites just aren’t credible and do them a disservice.

The full Kindle Research results for Brighton Pavilion:

Labour 26%

Conservative 16%

Green 12%

LibDems 5%

UKIP 1%

Other 1%

Would not vote 11%

Undecided 19%

Refused 7%


Categories
notes from JK

Brighton Pavilion: A graphing battleground

Which graph do you think best describes the chances of parties in the fight for Brighton Pavilion constituency? The most recent election, poll or perhaps the last general election in the constituency? In their attempts to woo voters both Labour’s Nancy Platts and Conservative Charlotte Vere are making some interesting choices with their graphs.

Why do election graphs even matter? Because our perverse electoral system means you just need a majority of one vote to win the seat. Many people don’t want to see their votes get wasted by voting for third or fourth parties who don’t have a chance of winning. So we have tactical voting – people voting for the least worst winnable option in their opinion. As a result all the parties vie to show how good their chances of winning really are.

Personally I think you’re only as good as your last electoral test. Yes different voting systems and types of election will influence how people vote – for example, UKIP do vastly better in Euro than local elections. However, for the same place, each election does build a picture of the relative strengths of local parties.

So let’s look at the tale of Brighton & Hove Green Party’s support in the Brighton Pavilion constituency. In 2005, when all the parties had different leaders (Blair, Howard, Kennedy and Greens yet to elect their first leader) and Brighton Pavilion had a different boundary, Keith Taylor brought home a record 22% of the vote for the Greens.

2005 General Election result, Brighton Pavilion

The May 2007 council elections saw us just beat the Tories into first place across the constituency. The December 2007 by-election in Regency ward (which elected me to the council) saw the gap between Greens and other parties widen dramatically. This was repeated in the 2009 Goldsmid by-election, but as it falls outside of Brighton Pavilion is not included here.

May 2007 Council Election results, Brighton Pavilion
December 2007, Regency council by-election result

Next we saw the June 2009 European Elections. Unfortunately we don’t have constituency-level results for these but city-wide Greens came top, beating all the parties for the first time, a feat we repeated in several other cities across the country.

June 2009 European Elections, Brighton & Hove city-wide result

Finally in December 2009 the Green Party commission an ICM poll which showed the same pattern once again – Greens in the lead followed by Tories then Labour.

December 2009 ICM Poll Result, Brighton Pavilion

Some have criticised the poll result – yes it was commissioned by the Green Party – but ICM are a member of the British Polling Council and so are bound by its standards. It’s not like they bucked the trend – the graphs above show results have been pointing in this direction for quite some time. Furthermore the new boundary for Brighton Pavilion includes all of Hanover & Elm Grove ward, which is represented by three Green councillors and has had a strong Green vote for a very long time indeed.

All this to say that the electoral statistics are not easy to address for Caroline Lucas‘ opponents. Still it’s interesting to observe how they handle the challenge. Labour’s Nancy Platts goes for ignoring 5 years of history and suggesting that a Green vote will let the Tories in.

Graph of 2005 General Election result in a 2010 Labour leaflet from Nancy Platts
2005 Election Results, from Nancy Platts' website

This is Nancy’s only option, the most recent graph which shows Labour ahead in the constituency. Sadly, if anything, thanks to our electoral system a Labour vote is likely to let the Tories in this time around. Labour have been trying the old ‘Green vote lets the Tories in’ trick for years in Brighton & Hove, I think people are pretty sick of being told something which evidently hasn’t been held out in recent elections.

(On a side note in writing this post I’ve noticed that different online sources cite the 2005 Green result as either 21.9% or 22.0% — it’s not just a rounding issue, the actual voter numbers differ e.g. BBC vs UK Polling Report. Not a massive difference but just wanted to flag up that I’m aware of it.)

Charlotte Vere treads a rather unusual path with her graphs. First this gem from her most recent leaflet:

2005 General Election result, from 2010 Charlotte Vere leaflet

My scanner may not be the best in the world, but the graph really is that jagged and blocky on the leaflet itself! Notice anything missing from the graph? Yes – Green and LibDem votes! In my view, it really is an extraordinarily misleading graph.

The same leaflet also includes a graph showing remarkable levels of support for the Conservatives:

Pulse GP poll, from 2010 Charlotte Vere leaflet

Pulse, a news rag for GPs, conducted a poll of some of their readers. I’m told by GP friends that the paper is heavily funded by pharmaceutical companies and isn’t considered much of a serious news-source. Regardless, given that most GPs are well into the top tax bracket it’s no surprise they support Tories. But unless there has been a rush of GPs moving to live into Brighton Pavilion, this poll is unrepresentative and bears no relation to what’s happening in the constituency. Is it there for any reason other than to mislead?

While we continue to suffer under our simplistic, winner-takes-all electoral system I’m afraid these kinds of graphing horrors are likely to continue. Whoever people finally cast their vote for, I hope they do so informed by facts and not the graphing skills of the local Labour or Tory activists.

UPDATE: Of course all this talk backed by GP polls from the Tories about being the party of the NHS is deeply misleading as they’re planning to break it up into further private ‘marketisation’ so when they say ‘NHS’ they mean something completely different to what most people understand – more info

Categories
current affairs

Preston Street: Ready for Regeneration

Preston Street needs help. Working with the traders association, chaired by Angelo Martinoli, we’ve tried petitions, meeting with cabinet members and their officers as well as press work in The Argus. Progress has been minimal I’m afraid, other than a few minor tweaks here and there and one vacant shop now with council-provided boarding.

This video highlights some of what the street is going through – I had to cut many other examples and comments from traders to keep it a reasonable length. The main three issues I hear again and again are:

  • The need for something like the i360 tower development to come forward to bring more people into the area;
  • Improved street-scape as the current setup is unattractive, riddled with double-parking and unworkable — ideally pedestrianisation or shared-space as on New Road is needed;
  • The recognition that many tourists drive to Brighton but parking fees discourage people staying in that part of town when other car parks elsewhere are cheaper.

As a Green, parking is a tricky one for me, but I don’t like waste and the council’s Regency Square car park currently stands mostly empty every day. Since this film was made the council have approved new 1 hour and fixed evening fees for Regency Square (before 2 hours was the minimum charge). These are yet to have been implemented and were brought forward without any consultation or discussion beyond the initial petitions I presented flagging up the poor use of the car park.

We’ll be sending this video to key decision-makers in the council. Please do support Preston Street and if you have any comments or ideas get in touch.

Categories
current affairs

My Green view on last night’s council meeting

Another long full council meeting last night. I tried tweeting between the parts I was most involved in and was pleased to see others following the meeting through Twitter. Sadly the webcasting is still quite unwieldy so perhaps Twitter is a good alternative for some.

I shall try to review the key parts of the meeting from my perspective. I won’t cover everything because, well the agenda was immense, and not all was within my remit or expertise.

Questions

As usual, I asked some questions of councillors. Unfortunately Cllr G Theobald refused to rule out shipping some of the city’s waste to landraise sites in East Sussex. I also continued my attempts to see the final city municipal waste strategy document before it gets rubber stamped. Cllr Theobald either doesn’t understand my point or chooses to ignore it by saying I will see it at the meeting which will approve the document – rather too late to be of any use in my view.

I also pressed Cllr Smith who had promised to engage directly with Brighton’s Sailing Club at the last full council meeting. They are very worried about the implications of the proposed Brighton O development. However since the last council meeting there have been no meetings. His responses to my questions were very unsatisfactory – claiming that a question from a sailing club member to Cllr Theobald at a public Cabinet Member Meeting was equivalent to dealing directly with the club. Neither I nor club members at last night’s meeting agreed with that view at all.

The main agenda

The council agenda had a number of very important and worthwhile reports from scrutiny panels. While implementation of their recommendations is mixed, I do think scrutiny panels are one of the highlights of how our current council constitution is working — unlike much of how the cabinet operates.

So it was a great pleasure to be able to speak to the report on Brighton’s privately contracted GP-led health clinic which I contributed to as a panel member and helped to initiate in the first place. I shall post my speech separately, but I chose to highlight ongoing concerns over such private contracts and as usual the other, privatising parties, were quick to moan about ‘politicising’ a panel report. It’s such a silly criticism, of course they’re political, full council is political and we’re all politicians — what do they expect!

Blocking fee increases for farmers markets & street traders

The next item I played an active part on was approving the licensing fees for 2010/11. For whatever reason the Conservative administration had decided to increase the annual fees for street traders and farmers market stalls by 10% – a big jump no matter what the economic situation. But recently the George Street farmers market has closed down and we know markets at Upper Gardner Street and elsewhere have struggled. Greens strongly felt that they should be supported and so submitted an amendment to freeze charges for street traders and farmers markets, removing the increases. They make up a very small part of the overall licensing regime so there were no major budgetary implications.

Then suddenly just before the meeting began the Tories produced an amendment reducing the fees from 10% to 1% claiming it was a drafting error to have put 10% in. I wasn’t convinced – if it was a genuine error it could be corrected in the Mayor’s communications at the start of the meeting, as indeed an error in another report was corrected yesterday. The fee report had 10% in the main body and the appendices. I think this 1% amendment – which was a Conservative group amendment, not an officer amendment – was some quick backtracking when they realised 10% wasn’t a particularly smart idea.

So after speeches, some of which entirely missed the point of the amendments, the meeting accepted our amendment and we had a Green win – farmers markets and street traders won’t see an increase in license fees this year!

12 month review of the constitution

Another item I have a great interest in is the progress on amending the council’s constitution. It was changed almost two years ago, against loud Green protests, and we’re in a continual process of reviewing and revising its workings. The recommendations from the 12 month review were all well and good, but quite timid. One amendment we proposed last night was to split the Environment & Community Safety Scrutiny committee into two. Its agenda and remit is so large, Environment being the largest department in the council by far, that it struggles to cover enough ground. We feel Community Safety deserves its own committee. However the other parties resisted for various reasons. We proposed to fund this by abolishing two of the little used Cabinet Member Meetings – which is where the members sit in a public meeting to declare decisions they have already made.

Cabinet member Cllr Ayas Fallon-Khan then chose to speak in one of his now trademark outbursts attacking all and sundry (well the Greens) for cutting some Cabinet Member Meetings in our amendment. What he failed to mention is that his own Cabinet Member Meetings were already being cut in the main Conservative report!

The Green amendment wasn’t supported but we will keep plugging away at trying to improve the council constitution.

High Pay Commission

The highlight of the evening, for me, was this motion which I was seconding with Cllr Bill Randall as the proposer. Bill very graciously (and without warning me) set me up as knowledgeable in these matters leaving the bulk of the speaking to me. My speech (which I will post separately) was well received, I hope.

Labour councillor Kevin Allen then treated us to one of his very humorous speeches which lacked much substance. However it did reveal that Labour are so worried about Green chances in Brighton Pavilion that they’ve asked campaign group Compass (who launched the campaign on a High Pay Commission) to block our candidate and party leader Caroline Lucas from taking part in any more Compass events before the general election!

Cllr Allen proposed an amendment which basically congratulated the Labour government for all their work on this issue (yet the gap between highest and lowest paid continues to grow) and removed all the substantive points from our motion.

Ok, well the Labour group do that to us quite often. However the Conservative group voted to support the Labour amendment. Which just goes to show how similar Tories and Labour are – both not that interested in narrowing the pay gap it would seem. This left the motion far from our initial intention so Greens abstained but it was still carried overall.

Other motions

There was good debate on other motions including Cllr Rufus commenting on Labour’s foreign policies in relation to a fairtrade motion, Cllrs Wakefield-Jarrett and Fryer responding to the bizarre and inconsiderate Tory motion on van dwellers and more from Cllr Rachel Fryer and Cllr Pete West on licensing.

I opened my council email today to find an outpouring of support for the Green motion on Sussex University job cuts. So that went down well with unanimous support in the chamber if I recall rightly.

My final memorable moment was on a Green motion about neighbourhood policing. Green Cllr Ben Duncan, the council’s only elected representative to Sussex Police Authority, is a bit of a target for the other parties at the moment. They can’t stand that he’s the only representative nor that Ben doesn’t universally praise the police or criticise protests. Throughout the meeting there had been digs at Ben. The Tories proposed an amendment to his motion to:

ask the Council’s solerepresentative on the Sussex Police Authority to relay to his fellow members the Council’s view that the proactive use of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders and a tough stance against benefit fraud has had a significant positive effect on reducing both “crime and, crucially, the fear of crime” in Brighton & Hove.

This was a direct attack on our view that ASBOs don’t work and criminalise people who need help. We’ve also been concerned about the public statements Conservative members have made around benefit fraud, though of course we don’t condone fraud in any way. Bizarrely Labour supported this amendment too. Leaving us once again unable to tell Tories and Labour apart.

It was a long night but with some good results for the city and a clutch of excellent scrutiny reports which offer plenty of recommendations for us all to be working on.

Categories
current affairs

What about the policies?

The last few months have been instructive as we’ve seen both local Tory and Labour activists engage in negative, personal attacks on the Green candidate for Brighton Pavilion, Caroline Lucas.

Sadly this is nothing new, I was subject to personal attacks when campaigning to win the Regency by-election in 2007. In both cases the salient fact is that the other parties don’t seem able or willing to engage with Greens on issues of policy – which is what I suspect voters would rather see us debating.

The personal attacks seem to come out when they recognise the Greens as a serious threat to their electoral cartel. Back in 2007 we were best placed to win, and we did — hence it will be my honour and duty to attend this afternoon’s full council meeting.

Again in 2010 Greens are tipped to be in a position to win Brighton Pavilion at the General Election. I know Caroline Lucas will serve my constituents with energy and passion, as she has done for 10 years as our MEP.

To win voters over we’ll stay focussed on issues, policies and good old fashioned hard work. We’ll ignore the attacks – they’re a sign of policy weakness in my view – but we’ll rebut any falsehoods with vigour.