Freedom Central

'Irresponsible Tories'

Newswire — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 07:59:33 +0000

Vince Cable has accused the Tories of “playing fast and loose” with the economy as they try to frighten voters into electing a Conservative government.

The Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor said David Cameron and George Osborne were being irresponsible with their warnings about the risk to sterling in the event of a hung parliament.

In his keynote speech to the Lib Dems’ spring conference in Birmingham Vince said: “We must and will be fiscally responsible. Unlike the Tories and their cronies who want to create a financial panic and run on sterling to frighten people into voting for them on May 6.

“Playing fast and loose with the financial stability of this country for political gain – destabilising the markets – is dangerous, irresponsible and wrong.

“It is also irresponsible to engage in a phoney war over cuts weeks before an election that will affect the lives of millions of people.

He lashed out at Gordon Brown for ignoring Lib Dem warnings about household debt and house prices ahead of the financial crisis.

And he likened the Prime Minister to Ashley Cole – the Chelsea footballer whose singer wife Cheryl has recently left him – in pleading for “another chance”.

“The Government’s economic record speaks for itself: remember the phrases ‘no more boom and bust’, ‘prudence’, ‘Golden Rules’ – all abandoned,” he said.

“And standing amid the wreckage of the economy Gordon Brown sounds more and more like Mr Ashley Cole saying – give me another chance.”

Porn or politics? #ldconf

Peter Black — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 09:55:03 +0000

For some reason the media appear to ignored last night’s very successful Liberal Democrat Conference rally with Nick Clegg, Paddy Ashdown and Shirley Williams and sought to focus instead on the selection of the party’s candidate for Gravesham in Kent.

Anna Arrowsmith is a successful entrepreneur. It just so happens that her business is of the sort that makes headlines in tabloid newspapers. However, as Nick Clegg pointed out last night, at least her business is legitimate. She has not just be arraigned in the courts accused of fiddling her expenses as an MP.

Ms Arrowsmith herself seems very bemused by the attention, as well she might. She tweeted this morning:

Sorry I know it’s all ‘me,me,me’ at the moment but have you seen the front page of The Times?! I was pleased with front page of The Sport…

Even Lembit only gets the inside pages of The Sport, though admittedly he is paid for his contribution. Nobody at Conference can see what the fuss is about. She will make an excellent MP and after all, despite the tut tutting, she only makes money because people buy her work.

The Guardian though has more serious questions which they want Nick Clegg to answer. It is not who the Liberal Democrats will align with in a hung Parliament but how the party will behave. Will it be deal or no deal:

Ahead of the election, he is right to leave his options open, and right to say that voters will shape the circumstances, not politicians. The party is an independent and strong force, and should be treated as such. Its manifesto will be in many ways the most attractive on offer. It would be a shame if the party found itself losing support during the campaign as voters come to fear the consequences of an inconclusive election. At the very least the Lib Dems need to say that they would respect the will of voters and put stability first. For all the excited talk of coalitions, it likely that a hung parliament would lead to minority government by the largest party with some degree of outside support from the Lib Dems. Mr Clegg has at times come close to saying as much. But for as long as he leaves more room to manoeuvre, people will keep asking him where it might lead him.

I think that we can be pretty sure that Nick Clegg will deal and I am sure that at some stage during the campaign he will give some indication of the types of arrangement he is interested in, but surely nobody can expect him to commit himself on what he is and is not going to do prior to talks if, and I stress if, no one party gets an overall majority.

Are PCSOs on the way out

Peter Black — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:56:52 +0000

The Police Federation claim that an exercise at the four Welsh political conferences involving bags of chocolate coins shows that funding for police community support officers is low on political parties’ list of priorities:

Each of the bags represented a separate policing priority: 999 response; local police stations; counter terrorism; police training and equipment; administration support; PCSOs and police officer numbers.

But delegates, which the Police Federation said included Assembly Members, MPs and government ministers, were only allowed to choose four.

Steve Williams, a detective for 27 years and now the organisation’s secretary for Wales, said if they took up the option to take a fifth bag, they were asked to lift up a policeman’s helmet and take whatever was underneath, which was a bag of coins labelled taxation.

He said the simple game had been an “eye opener” as delegates were practically unanimous in their support for frontline policing – 999 response, police officer numbers, equipment and training and counter terrorism.

But PCSOs were only either the fifth selected item or not selected at all.

Given the past ambivalence of the Police Federation to PCSOs one would have thought that such a result would not give them much cause for concern, especially as the exercise itself was completely uinscientific and offered an unsophisticated black and white picture of the budget choices faced by Chief Constables.

What is disturbing however is the news in the same article that ring-fenced Home Office funding for the PCSOs is due to end next March. After this the money will be absorbed into the general police grant leaving it up to chief constables as to whether they continue to invest in PCSOs or divert funding to the recruitment of more police officers.

It is likely that the very valuable PCSOs will continue to patrol our streets after this date but their future will be far from safe in the face of public spending cuts and I suspect that the continuance of many posts will depend on other public bodies putting in funding for them.

Don't write off council collaboration because of one failed project

Rodney Berman — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 06:58:51 +0000

On Tuesday (9 March 2009), WalesOnline carried an article by Martin Shipton reporting on the collapse of a plan to develop a shared service of HR, payroll and training between local authorities in South East Wales.

In my view, the main reason the project collapsed was because of a drive from certain quarters amongst the council officers involved to deliver one huge, exemplar project between all ten local authorities in South East Wales, even though the finances didn’t particularly stack up.

We should simply have never have tried to get one shared service up and running between nearly half the councils in Wales.

My alternative suggestion of developing two or three collaborative projects based on smaller clusters of local authorities working together within the South East Wales region was not pursued. Ultimately, this has turned out to be a huge mistake because had we followed that approach we might just have got something up and running.

From Cardiff Council’s own perspective the maths were quite clear. If we had taken part in the South East Wales Shared Service Project, we could have looked to save £618,000 a year but only after the service had been up and running for seven years. By making our own internal efficiencies in these services, we calculated that we could save £1.03 million a year after just a three-year period. For us it really was a no-brainer. Collaboration is supposed to be about making savings. There is no point in doing it just for it’s own sake if you can make greater savings by not collaborating.

In my view there may be more to be gained by collaborative projects between different providers of public services in the same geographical area. For instance, Cardiff Council has established a shared occupational health service with the South Wales Fire & Rescue Service. We are also in discussion with the Cardiff & the Vale University Local Health Board about taking forward joint working projects with them.

The problem with trying to get savings out of services like HR and payroll is that we don’t spend that much on them in the first place in comparison to more public-facing services like schools or social services. In relative terms you can’t make that much of a saving from something you don’t spend all that much on at all to begin with as a percentage of your overall spend.

There is also lots going on elsewhere in the sphere of collaboration between local councils. The Welsh Purchasing Consortium now covers the majority of councils in Wales, for instance, enabling us to work together on getting maximum value for money from procurement. This is already delivering huge savings. And there are also a plethora of collaborative projects that are taking forward various waste solutions the length and breadth of Wales. Cardiff Council, for instance, is involved with four other local authorities through ‘Prosiect Gwyrdd’ which is seeking to procure one regional residual waste treatment solution to serve all five authorities.

It is wrong to get hung up on one project – that was probably doomed to failure from the start – as indicating that collaboration isn’t happening.

And while I’m on the subject, I wonder if many people know that early in the life of the Assembly they looked into the idea of Cardiff Council running their payroll for them as a shared service. In the end, however, the Welsh Assembly Government decided not to bother!

Councillor Rodney Berman is the Leader of Cardiff Council

Welsh speakers should have the right to be tried before bilingual juries

Newswire — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:42:42 +0000

The BBC report that the UK government has decided against selecting bilingual juries in certain cases on the basis it would outweigh the principle of random selection.

The decision follows a consultation looking at, for example, trials where large amounts of evidence are in Welsh.

It has been met with dismay by politicians who believed it could play a part in an increase in bilingualism in Wales.

Eleanor Burnham, Welsh Liberal Democrat Shadow Heritage Minister said:

“This a clear set-back for the promotion of the Welsh language as one of the official languages of Wales. People should have the right to be tried in front of bilingual juries.

“The 1993 Welsh Language Act makes clear reference to Welsh and English having equal treatment when administrating justice in Wales. If we are to have a truly bilingual nation, the Welsh language should be treated on an equal basis in all aspects of Welsh life.”

Minister must take action on worsening ambulance response times

Freedom Central — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:00:10 +0000

The latest statistics on ambulance response times show that only 58.5% of emergency ambulance calls were responded to within the eight minute target. This is the second successive month that these figures have worsened.

Welsh Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Minister Peter Black said:

“It is disappointing to see yet another fall in performance on the part of the ambulance trust. Patients are continuing to be let down by the failure to respond to emergency calls within the target times and lives are being put at risk.

“I asked the Minister for Health during Ministerial Questions to tackle this problem urgently. She is in receipt of a review of the ambulance trust that recommends targeted additional investment to help it meet its targets but is refusing to put that money in to the pot.

“She also acknowledges the impact on response times of bottlenecks at accident and emergency departments and the shortage of acute beds, however these problems have been evident for some time and no progress appears to have been made in resolving them.

“The minister needs to knock heads together to get this sorted and quickly.”

Strike brings National Assembly to a halt

Freedom Central — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:05:35 +0000

A two day strike by civil servants has led to the cancellation of today’s Assembly Plenary session. It is understood that the House of Commons will be meeting as usual.

Although it would have been possible to go ahead with the Plenary session a number of Assembly Members and Government Ministers refused to cross picket lines and have withdrawn all business. This is despite the fact that it is their government that has provoked the dispute by unilaterally changing the working conditions of civil servants.

The Senedd and the rest of the Assembly estate will be closed to the public on health and safety grounds.

Welsh Liberal Democrat leader Kirsty Williams has urged that a way to avoid future cancellations should be found, saying: “The National Assembly for Wales is a legislature that serves the people of Wales, therefore unions and government must do all they can to reduce the impact on the work of this place. I hope that future strikes can be avoided to prevent disturbances to Assembly business.”

The future of social care

Freedom Central — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 07:42:07 +0000

The Times reports that months of squabbling may be coming to an end with the drawing up of a blueprint up by social care experts from all political parties.

They say that leading figures in the social care debate from Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have signed a document of principles for a long-term solution, based on a mix of state payment and individual contributions:

The blueprint, published today and seen by The Times, focuses on ten principles for reform of the care system to ensure that there is enough money to cover the rising care costs faced by the country’s growing elderly population. It proposes a funding model based on contributions from the state and individuals, with the heavy financial burden of future costs shared out through general taxation or an insurance plan.

Signatories include Stephen Dorrell, the Tory former health secretary, and Lord Warner, the Labour former health minister. The document makes implicit criticism of the controversial offer by Gordon Brown of free care at home. It concludes that any system “must be predicated on choice”.

The signatories said that the blueprint, which builds on the Social Care Green Paper drawn up last year, stripped back the politicking and insubstantial proposals of recent months. It also discounts the Green Paper’s option of a comprehensive payment model — where everyone would pay a flat sum towards their care either at retirement or as a levy at death — as a starting point for reform, though such payments could be involved for contributing to an insurance scheme.

Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, and his opposite numbers, Andrew Lansley of the Conservatives and Norman Lamb of the Liberal Democrats are to meet on Wednesday to try and find some consensus on this important issue.

Fighting to win Swansea West

Freedom Central — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:47:19 +0000

The nationalists and the BBC

Peter Black — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 05:11:54 +0000

I missed this when it first came out but it seems that Plaid Cymru and the SNP are so upset at being excluded from the Prime Ministerial debates that they are threatening to take their toys home.

The BBC report that each of the parties is to look again at their broadcasting policy and their support for the license fee in response to what they call a ’stitch up’ over live Prime Ministerial TV debates:

SNP Westminster Leader Angus Robertson MP argued that broadcasters, “in cahoots” with the three political parties who would be taking part in the debates, are attempting to exclude entire countries from them.

He said: “A stitch up between the London based BBC management and the London parties has disenfranchised voters in three countries.

“With the cavalier attitude of London establishment continuing, we must devolve broadcasting to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly – where the interests of Scottish and Welsh licence payers will be a priority, not an afterthought.”

So the Nationalists want to take over the BBC so that they can dictate what they broadcast. How democratic. As for the withdrawal of support for the licence fee I bet the BBC Trust are shaking in their boots.