Kemptown Ben

Council Tax - how the Tory Government is holding a gun to head of town halls up and down the country

2011-10-22T13:46:00.000+01:00

Yesterday Local Tory leader Geoffrey Theobald had the nerve to ask the Leader of the Council Bill Randall whether he'd be accepting Government cash to freeze Council Tax for the next year - even though doing so would cost the council about £3m a year for ever more.

To my mind, this is about more than about an argument over one year's Council Tax settlement in one city - it's about a fundamental principle: whether local councils should be able to make their own decisions, informed, of course, by a local democratic mandate, about how much money to raise - and spend on protecting the most vulnerable from the impact of the cuts.

Basically, the Government's offer to fund a one-year Council Tax freeze is an attempt to hold a gun to the head of town halls up and down the country by making them a bit of a lose-lose offer: hand control of you financial decision-making to us, and set yourself up for even deeper cuts in the future, or else we'll tell everyone that you're imposing unnecessary tax rises on local residents to make a point of principle.

The fact is that, as far as we know so far, the Government's offer is for one year only - this means that, after inflation, the council tax base (the total amount of council tax collected by the council) will be 2.5% lower in every future year. In Brighton and Hove, that'll mean about £3m worth of EXTRA cuts we'll have to make in every future year - just to stand still.

That means there will be job losses - and service cuts - as a direct result of taking the cash.

Of course, Council Tax bills would be slightly cheaper next year, but that windfall wouldn't be felt at all by the thousands in receipt of Council Tax benefit, and it would be largest for those living in the most valuable properties in the city - usually (but not always, of course) the best off.

In other words, it would represent a transfer of wealth from the poorest to the richest in the city: a classic Tory tax wheeze.

Of course a council committed to reducing inequality - and protecting the most vulnerable from the impact of the cuts the Government is unnecessarily forcing on us - couldn't possibly countenance such a thing.

But of course the Tory spin-machine will describe this as ideology costing local taxpayers cash.

In other words, we'll be the bad guys whatever we decide! Clever politics indeed.

Of course, we're not the only council facing this issue, and I'm delighted that others have made similar arguments - and that, localy, it looks like the Labour group will be directed by their national political masters to support our position.

An interesting debate looms on the horizon, that's for sure...

Labour and Tory councillors join forces to feather their own nests..

2011-10-21T02:20:00.001+01:00

Today's meeting of Brighton and Hove City Council - amazingly, one of only six a year at which issues facing the city can be discussed by all councillors - saw one of the ugliest examples of local politicians misjudging the public mood I've witnessed in a while.

Topics discussed ranged from provision of ice rinks in the city, enforcing the law preventing driving and parking on pavements in Elm Grove, the future of the wonderful Saltdean Lido, using mobile devices to send 'Tweets' in meetings, academy schools, the Government's 'Developers' Charter', roadworks and public-sector pensions.

These debates were, as usual, dominated by party politics, but were pretty good-natured, and were certainly informed (on all sides) by honourable intentions and genuinely-held opinions.

But then we discussed the allowances paid to councillors. Personally, I don't think this should be a matter for councillors at all. There's an independent panel who decide what appropriate payments to councillors are, and I think we should listen to them. After all, they're the experts and, crucially, they're independent, and don't stand to gain - or lose - whatever they say. Most Green Party councillors agree.

Unfortunately, though, the Labour and Tory groups didn't. They presented, jointly, an amendment to the independent report to reinstate special cash payments of just over £2,000 to seven councillors the experts decided weren't really justified. The total cost, just over £15,000, will have to be met by making slightly deeper cuts to other budgets than the Government is already forcing us to make.

I don't know what I think is more shameful: that Tory and Labour councillors are so out of touch with the public that they think it's acceptable to divert cash from public services to their own pockets against the recommendation of an independent panel of experts, that they think it's acceptable for councillors themselves to be making these decisions, or that when it comes to feathering their own nests local Labour and Tory politicians are so quick to form a coalition to get their own way.

The latest Tory police cuts - this time to the Sussex Police helicopter

2011-10-14T13:56:00.001+01:00

Yesterday's meeting of the Sussex Police Authority discussed a crackpot scheme to cut the number of police helicopters by a third, nationalise the police air support role - and transfer control of the Sussex Police helicopter from Lewes to Leeds, in a move that would mean it would take 15 minutes to get to Brighton - and more like half an hour to reach Eastbourne or Hastings.

It would remove operational control from our local police to a national unit run from West Yorkshire - meaning it would be that much harder to get the Sussex Police helicopter to work with, for example, the Sussex Air Ambulance, or to protect the local coastline from illegal fishing methods - but it would save a few bob: as much as £800,000 a year.

It's hardly a surprise that this Government wants to erode local policing by replacing as much of it as possible with national structures, and it's hardly surprising the force is interested in doing so where there are cash savings to be had - after all, they face the near-impossible job of keeping Sussex safe in the face of £50 cuts over the next three years.

But I was a little surprised that debate yesterday focussed on where nationally-controlled air bases were located, and that I was the only member of the police authority to vote against the scheme and to express the view that this is in principle a bad idea driven by the need to make cash savings, not to improve policing.

I had - wrongly it transpires - imagined that Sussex Police Authority was firmly in favour of retaining control of all aspects of Sussex policing in the county. Looks like defending local policing from Tory cuts is a job that's being left to the Greens.

If you're interested, the whole debate is available to watch here.

An 'Armed Forces Covenant' for Brighton and Hove

2011-10-13T19:21:00.000+01:00

At this afternoon's cabinet meeting I outlined plans to develop an 'Armed Forces Covenant' for Brighton and Hove.

Ex-servicemen and women suffer some of the worst social outcomes of any group in our society.

They are more likely to be homeless, more likely to end up in prison, more likely to become addicted to drink or drugs, more likely to suffer long-term illness - and so on.

Of course the council has a duty to try and tackle these problems whoever is suffering from them.

The experiences of service men and women after they leave the service that leaves many of them so vulnerable, needlessly creates a group of people whose needs we have a duty to meet, which we of course will strive to do, in the same way we would meet the needs of any other individuals or groups that find themselves disadvantaged.

Of course you could argue that former service personnel are a 'vulnerable' group by virtue of the fact that they have, usually, been abandoned so spectacularly by the state that has asked them, often, to put their lives on the line, then tossed them aside when they are too old - or injured - to be useful.

Let's be clear - our heroes are being abandoned by an uncaring and under-resourced military that fundamentally views them not as people, but as a resource.

I think this is wrong: and that the first step towards improving the lives of ex-service personnel must be for the Government to stop sending young men and women into foreign battlefields to risk their lives for political ends in the first place.

The military could ensure that welfare officers work alongside careers officer - like those based in Brighton - to do two things: look after the welfare of ex-service personnel and to honestly explain the risks of later life exclusion to youngsters attracted by a career in the military.

Anyway, today outlined plans to develop an Armed Forces Covenant for the city, which will look at these questions but set out this council's duties to some of our most vulnerable citizens.

Using the 'standards' procedure instead of the ballot box is costing local taxpayers thousands

2011-10-12T21:48:00.000+01:00

Some of you may have noticed that I recently started blogging again, after a few months of 'blog silence'. There's a single reason I stopped - because I didn't want to worsen any punishment given to me for blogging about policing matters.

And there's a simple reason I have started again: because I have been cleared of any wrongdoing, and the threat of punishment lifted from over my head, after over a year, three meetings of the Sussex Police Authority Standards Committee and a lawyer's investigation.

Back in 2010 I was accused of bringing the police authority into disrepute for the threefold 'crime' of blogging about policing in Brighton, being a 'member' of a anti-arms trade campaign group (some of whose supporters have been arrested after taking direct action against the EDO arms factory in Moulsecoomb), and also for attending a peace demonstration.

It didn't take long for the charges to be thrown out - but the (anonymous) complainant appealed, and so it was considered all over again. Second time around the panel decided it needed to commission an inquiry to decide whether I had broken the members' code of conduct or not, so an out-of-town lawyer was engaged and a full investigation carried out.

The verdict: the rights of free speech and free assembly in the Human Rights Act mean that any member of the police authority is free to say what they want, and t to attend any demonstration he or she likes. Oh and the group concerned is a little bit on the anarchist side and doesn't seem to have any members anyway. the whole saga has been covered in The Argus and by the Brighton Politics Blog.

So that's the end of that then.

Except for the vast sums of money spent on the affair - money that, in my view, would be better spent on policing - perhaps offsetting some of the 1,000+ job cuts Sussex Police is being forced to make thanks to Tory cuts.

And for the rather sinister pattern that seems to be emerging out of recent use of the standards and complaints system locally: that people (usually Tory councillors) who object to the things elected officials are saying are making official complaints about them - complaints that seem to get thrown out on appeal, after vast sums of public money have been spent. Just look at the case of fellow Green Party councillor Jason Kitcat, for example: the complaint against him, for posting selective clips of council meetings on YouTube for all the world to see, was thrown out after a grand appeal hearing at a city centre hotel.

Of course I'm not saying we shouldn't have a system for punishing corrupt or dishonest councillors, or ones who, like former Tory councillor Peter Willows, made comments that denigrated minorities - just that there has to be a better system for doing so than we've got now.

Personally, I think cases of corruption, or abuse of minorities, should be dealt with by the criminal courts.

As for councillors who express lawful opinions some people don't like, I reckon the best system anyone's come up with yet for punishing them is the ballot box.

If your elected councillor is saying things you don't agree with - just vote for someone else.

Tory councillor storms out of community meeting after warning of racism...

2011-10-11T12:07:00.001+01:00

UPDATE... The Argus has now covered this story here ....UPDATE

One of the most rewarding aspects of my role as Brighton and Hove Council's cabinet member for Communities, Equalities and Public protection is chairing the quarterly Community Safety Forum.

It's a great meeting, bringing together representatives from Local Action Teams and other community groups from around the city, council and police officers, and, at yesterday's meeting, the city's Director of Public health Dr Tom Scanlon and the leader of the Council Bill Randall.

There's always a wide-ranging discussion about crime levels in and community safety issues facing the city. Yesterday we discussed the replacement of Sussex Police Authority with an elected Police and Crime Commissioner (the meeting thought, overwhelmingly, that it would be bad news for us here in Brighton and Hove), reducing alcohol-related harm in the city, the increased use of restorative justice in the city, the need for an LGBT-focussed 'umbrella' community safety group to deal with the police and the council, and Sussex Police's commitment to future partnership working with the council.

We also discussed the, generally improving, crime figures for the city.

But perhaps the most extraordinary moment of yesterday's meeting came during my opening remarks, when Tory councillor Tony Janio (pictured above) decided to storm out of the meeting in what appeared to be a huff after I reminded everyone present that recent discussions about Gypsy and Traveller policy had presented us with a serious community safety problem, that the police were investigating racist remarks and death threats, and that we all have a duty to minimise racial harassment by having informed, sensible debates about such emotive topics.

I reflected that some recent meetings organised by councillors and other politicians had made matters worse (naming no names) and said to all councillors present - of all parties - that we must do better in future.

At which point Cllr Janio decided to decry my comments as offensive and walk out of the meeting.

I can only imagine he felt embarrassed, thinking I was referring to him (for the record, I wasn't actually).

I later heard from The Argus that he told them he wouldn't return to a future meeting unless I apologised for my comments - something I'm not sure I can do without encouraging racism (but I have reproduced them all below so you can judge for yourself!)

I think that's a shame, a demonstrates a lack of commitment to the work of the forum - and its members from across the city. Worse, I think it's something of a dereliction of duty: we are all elected to represent residents on various committees, and I really don't see how he can be raising community safety issues of interest to his constituents if he won't turn up to meetings. Perhaps the Tory leader Geoffrey Theobald will give him a metaphorical rap across the knuckles and that'll be the end of the matter.

Anyway, here, as promised, is the text of my message yesterday which caused such umbrage. I think it's important, and, of course, I stand by it entirely.

Finally, I wanted to take this opportunity to say a few words about Gypsies and Travellers.

Balancing the needs of the travelling and settled communities is a key challenge facing this city, and indeed every council in the country.

And, although the evidence seems to show that there have been fewer Gypsies and Travellers visiting Brighton and Hove in 2011 than in previous years, the debate has begun to spiral out of control, to the point where racial harassment and violence towards travellers has become a major – some would say the biggest - community safety issue facing the city.

Some of you may have seen this on the BBC last week, but for those that didn’t, Sussex Police are currently investigating a series of racist remarks and even death threats made to both members of this council’s Traveller Liaison Team and some travellers themselves.

Of course the national shortage of sites can cause tensions between the settled and travelling communities, but I know that everyone here will agree that the debate about the council’s policy towards travellers must not stray into racial abuse or harassment, but I am increasingly concerned that some meetings and demonstrations in the city have fuelled exactly this sort of language and behaviour.

I urge everyone here today – especially the councillor members who really should know better, to bear in mind their responsibility to respect both the law – and the principles of community cohesion – when debating these issues.
A good test may be to substitute the word ‘black’ for the word ‘Traveller’ when discussing the issue: for example, a LAT meeting to discuss ‘The Issue of Travellers in the city’ would be as offensive to many as a meeting to discuss ‘The Issue of Blacks in the city’ – and it would probably be illegal too.
More than a fifth of Family & Friends of Travellers clients in Brighton and Hove experience racism: that is clearly unacceptable and we all have a duty to bring that figure down.

To help, the council has launched a consultation, available via the council’s website – and anyone who wants to participate in an off-line way can leave their details with Penny afterwards so we can make sure that can happen – to hear the views of everyone in the city about the council’s proposals – from the short-term toleration of some encampments to the delivery of a new permanent Travellers’ site in the city – designed to help resolve a set of questions that have blighted community cohesion in this city for decades.

Improving standards down at the take-away...

2011-10-11T10:09:00.000+01:00

You might be forgiven for thinking that use of licensing laws to decide whether a take-away should be allowed to stay open later is one of the less interesting aspects of a local councillor's role.

But I think you'd be wrong - for me, a local council's role in enforcing licensing rules is one of positively creating an urban ecosystem that balances the needs of everyone involved: visitors, residents, off-licenses, shops, pub and clubs - and, crucially, the political and philosophical priorities of elected councillors.

On Friday I was priveleged to attend a training session on the way the Licensing Act (and other relevant bits of legislation) can be used to create he local environment we want to see.

How we can seek to reduce alcohol-fuelled violence and other crime while celebrating fun and freedom? How we can maximise the social and economic benefits of a thriving night-time economy while protecting residents from noise nuisance, or protecting children from harm, for example?

Too many councillors see the licensing rules as tools to help the state intervene and ban things - to say 'no' a little more forcibly.

Balancing these complex needs can sometimes be tricky: a classic case is the recent application for extended night-time hours by a take-away food outlet in St James's Street: The Sussex Grill.

I have agreed to support their bid to open later into the night, despite the likely complaints of some residents, because I believe that longer hours for the take-away will, in the final analysis, make the area a safer, nicer place to live.

The applicants have agreed, for example, to improve their procurement practises and to use more environmentally-friendly packaging in their business.

They have agreed to hire a security guard at night, a trained individual who will be on hand at the bottom of the street, ready to intervene in any incidents of crime and disorder, as well as keeping customer noise down. Of course, by their very presence they're likely to have a deterrent effect too.

For those of you who don't know it, the business is almost of top of a bus stop serving a night bus service, the N7, a service which runs all night, and for which there seem to be people waiting (often noisily) at all hours. It seems to me that any addition to noise levels from extending the take-away's opening hours will be minimal by comparison and offset by the effect of the business - and its security guard - on noise levels already being generated by the buses and their customers.

But none of this is the clincher for me: that's the dialogue that we've managed to establish.

While the short-term environmental and social benefits are clear to me, the real potential prize comes in three parts.

Firstly, supporting a locally-owned business to protect St James's Street from further forays by the clone stores which are slowly but surely destroying the unique charm of the street: if the council said 'no' to the application and Sussex Grill was forced to close, I am prepared to bet it wouldn't be long until we saw another Sainsbury, Tesco or Starbucks moving in...

Secondly, the potential public health benefits. The dialogue that we've now established opens the door to future debate about the need to add healthier options to the Sussex Grill menu. The health and ethical procurement standards of the take-away sector can leave plenty to be desired, and if the licensing priocess alllows us 'an in' as local councillors to begin working with local businesses to improve standards in the sector, I think it's doing its job well.

And thirdly, there are the staffing issues. Staff in the take-away sector are often some of the lowest-paid, and most marginalised. I am hopeful that engagement with the Sussex Grill will encourage the business - and, crucially, others in the sector - to take part in the newly-formed Brighton and Hove Living Wage Commission, and to make the take-away food sector to new levels of ethical employment.

For too long the sector has been promoting often-unhealthy food with scant regard for the communities it serves: I really hope Brighton and Hove City Council can work more closely with the take-away trade that so dominates some areas of our city to help change that.

A flavour of my work on Brighton Council's Cabinet in September

2011-10-06T10:32:00.000+01:00

I've decided to try something of an experiment here, and publish a brief summary of my work in September as Brighton and Hove Council's Cabinet Member for Communities, Equalities and Public protection.

It's very brief, and by no means exhaustive, but I hope it gives a flavour of some of the work I've been doing.

Do let me know if you find it useful, or if you'd like more details about anything!

Cabinet member report: Communities, Equalities and Public Protection

September 2011

Ben Duncan

The Communities, Equalities and Public protection portfolio encompasses a wide range of council activities and services, across a number of directorates.

These include Environmental Health and Trading Standards, Licensing, Community Development, Community Safety (including partnerships with Sussex Police), Public Health (an emerging brief currently shared with the Primary Care Trust but due to become the sole responsibility of the council in 2013), Grants to other organisations, promoting Equalities and deepening Community Engagement.

In this role I chair the Community Safety Forum and the City Inclusion Partnership. I am vice-chair of the Stronger Communities Partnership and a member of the Safe in the City Partnership.

Throughout September my workload has been dominated by developing proposals for neighbourhood councils with devolved budgets (as per our manifesto pledge). A three-month city-wide consultation exercise has now been launched, with pilot schemes due to 'go live' in Spring 2012.

I have also been grappling with the future of community development work in the city – and the budget for such work in the future. The big question at the moment is how do we tie this work in to neighbourhood councils to ensure it is being spent to maximise opportunities for community-based decision-making.

Earlier in the month I launched a new policy committing the council to carry out best-practise Equality Impact Assessments on all its decisions, regardless of the Tory-led Government's relaxation of requirements to do this work.

Also in September I attended a conference in Birmingham to help try to win support – and considerable funding – for an on-line community engagement project for the city (called 'We Live Here') that could be used to widen participation in neighbourhood councils for those who prefer on-line engagement to traditional meetings with reports, agendas and so on.

And also in September I undertook the first of my 'community tours' – where I travel out to neighbourhood in the city to hear about issue s and problems first-hand. I spent the day visiting Coldean, Hollingdean and Whitehawk, where I met community groups, ward councillors and residents – very successfully I believe.

I have overseen a shake-up of the way the council gives out grants (worth about £1.5m a year) to ensure they are focused on promoting Environmental Sustainability, Tackling Inequality and wider access to the Arts.

Finally, I worked on the council's plan on how to deal with emergencies, responded to a Government consultation on the future role of councils in monitoring Trading Standards, and promoted the work of East Sussex Credit Union in diverting families from rapacious (legal and illegal) doorstep money lenders.

A Living Wage for all in Brighton and Hove takes another step closer...

2011-10-05T16:48:00.001+01:00

Some aspects of running a council are just about management of services, staff, budgets and so on. The stuff of plans and reports.

Some are about taking the big ideas at the root of our political philosophy and finding ways to turn them into reality - and in a way these are the most important. It's why we do this in the first place, to be honest, and it's why voters choose one party over another.

So here's a big idea at the heart of the Green Party's worldview: promote a more equal city by encouraging employers to increase wages paid to those tothose at the bottom of the pay hierarchy and to decrease salaries given to those at the top.

The evidence is pretty overwhelming now after all: more equal societies perform better for everyone, even the richest. The best way, for example, to improve community safety isn't to put gates up at the end of residential streets, but to improve pay parity. There's loads more examples on the Equality Trust website and in Wilkinson and Pickett's excellent 'The Spirit Level'.

It only took a few weeks to make a cracking start at the council: we agreed to pay all staff at least a minimum of £7.19 an hour and managed to get the council's Chief Executive to take a voluntary pay cut of 5%.

Persuading public sector parters (the police, for example, and the NHS) - let alone the private sector - to follow suit is a little trickier. But we've made progress here too, and yesterday was the first meeting of the Brighton and Hove Living Wage Commission.

Chaired by Brighton and Hove Chamber of Commerce Chair Julia Chantarey, the commission brings together many of the city's biggest employers - as well as experts on introducing a 'Living wage' from London and elsewhere, to try and make a Living Wage a reality in the city by next summer.

I hope it succeeds: if it doesn't, it won't be for good will or support from the city council.

Personally, I'm with Bob Black on work, when he observed that most of us work because we're forced to, either by violence, coercion, poverty or someone else's ethics, and the the best future for the workplace, as for the battlefield, is none at all - and that, when we've the choice, most of us play, or engage in leisure pursuits instead.

But that's no reason not to make sure that the least well off in our albeit flawed society aren't paid a bit more.

Its commitment to equality was once of the strongest reasons I joined the Green Party in the first place and I'm cock-a-hoop that it's taken just a few months for the first Green Party council in the country to make some real progress on the issue of low pay.

Mainstream media begin to notice three-week occupation of Wall Street

2011-10-04T09:45:00.001+01:00

As a regular reader of Adbusters - the Canadian magazine campaigning to protect our mental environment by reducing our exposure to advertising and capitalism's propensity to turn every moment of our lives into a marketing opportunity - I have been aware of their call to occupy Wall Street for several months.

On September 17th a few thousand people - most Americans but joined by a few sympathisers from around the world - marched on Wall Street, protesting in very general terms about the financial sector's freedom from democratic oversight, the excesses of the super-rich - and capitalism's failure to organise modern society in a fair and equitable way.

Many remain to this day: 700 were arrested (most released soon afterwards) over the weekend for blocking traffic on Brooklyn Bridge.

Mainstream media has begun to sit up and notice. Even the BBC covered the protest on the TV news last night - albeit in slightly mocking terms. It seems that the union movement in the US is beginning to take notice too now, and plans a solidarity march at the site later this week: with that the movement becomes 'political' and isn't just about a bunch of anti-capitalist hippies venting their rage. It's a legitimate story, in other words.

Obviously the protests won't bring down Wall Street, or the Federal Reserve - even less the US Government. But that's not the point. Like the so-called 'Spanish campers' at Brighton's Old Steine this summer (pictured left), the idea is to create a Temporary Autonomous Zone - a living experiment in real grass-roots democracy, and freedom from the institutions of the state and the greed of the few men at the top of the banking system who have caused all the tax hikes, public sector cuts - and house repossessions - blighting the lives of the vast majority around the world.

However the Occupy Wall Street movement ends, it will have been a success.

Human Rights and cars don't have much in common

2011-10-03T17:40:00.000+01:00

Here's a picture of some cars parked on the pavement in Elm Grove.

Now, I do have some sympathy for those car users who struggle to find somewhere to park anywhere near their homes. As a father of a young child, I am all too aware of how public transport just isn't always a viable alternative to a car when you need to lug a buggy, changes of clothes, food, bottles and so on - escpecially if you're heading to a remote location.

I live near to a car club bay, so it was quite easy for me to get rid of my car whilst retaining the ability to drive - it has saved me a lot of cash and it's rare that I need to walk more than a few minutes to pick up a car when I need it.

There are now more cars than people in many areas of this city and, in areas like Hanover and Elm Grove, there just isn't enough space to go round.

That said, pavements are for people. There have been regular reports of people driving on the pavement while hunting for a space, and pedestrians suffering real distress - and in some cases injury - as a result.

The answer can't lie in allowing car drivers to park on pavements, but in improving public transport, and making car club vehicles more widely available.

But as soon as the idea of enforcing the law by preventing drivers parking on the pavement became public knowledge, people (well a few, with load voices) threw up their arms in horror.

One letter in The Argus this weekend even suggested that to enforce the law outlawing pavement parking would be a breach of their human rights.

Well, last time I checked, human rights were about protecting our very lives, stopping dictators torture, enslave or silence us with impunity, or deny us our free speech.

They have not, nor ever have, had anything to do with parking. Cars and human rights just don't mix.

The Euro collapse should be making us sceptical - not of European integration but of neo-classical economics

2011-09-30T08:55:00.000+01:00

As Greek default looms ever more likely, and Governments around the world desperately print more money to shore an economic system that was designed to further the interests of bankers and financiers at the expense of everyone else, I think it's time to get more sceptical than ever.

But it's not the idea of closer integration with people who find themselves living in other nation states that should be in the dock - it's the illogical, growth-based, economic system itself.

Starting from the principle that the best way to overturn a dangerous economic system is to prevent it becoming hegemonic among students - the power-brokers of tomorrow - here's a manifesto aimed at economics students from kickitover.org. It says it far better than I could! Please feel free to print off and stick on the wall of a university economics department near you. (oops, I'll probably get in trouble now for inciting criminal damage!)

Is time running out for Brighton Police Station?

2011-09-29T23:39:00.004+01:00

UPDATE... This story has now been picked up by The Argus here... UPDATE

Today a meeting of the Sussex Police Authority's Resources Scrutiny Committee considered a report into the dire state of some of the county's police stations.

Since the Government and the Tory majority on the SPA teamed up to impose about £50m of cuts on the force last year routine maintenance has found itself somewhat out of the window.

Things look particularly bad for Brighton Police's John Street HQ: it was reported that steel cladding designed to protect the building from the elements has been taking something of a battering - and the necessary repairs could now cost more than £2m.

Rather than just patch things up, we all agreed it would make sense to investigate whether a more sustainable solution might be found - even if that meant thinking the unthinkable and moving out. Awful as that may seem, the alternative might just be an annual repair bill of hundreds of thousands of pounds, money that would surely be better spent on preventing crime.

So it looks as though the Tory cuts programme might not just have cost over 1,000 jobs in Sussex (half of whom have, we also learned today, already gone) - they might also have cost Brighton Police their home and created yet another development nightmare for the people of Tarner, whose lives have already been blighted by the construction of the American Express HQ (work that will be going on in some form or other for years). Good work.

I hope closer partnership working with Brighton and Hove City Council can help make sure that, whatever happens, Brighton Police can stay in the city centre, and that the impact of this latest local twist in the police cuts saga is minimised.

Are there plans for a new Tesco on London Road?

2011-01-14T13:53:00.000Z

We all know that successive Government policy has forced the closure of many Post Offices - some villages, and many urban areas, have seen their Post Offices close - often with devastating impacts on communities.

This is all set to get even worse, as plans originally championed by Peter Mandelson and the Labour Party finally received parliamentary support yesterday: the Royal Mail is to be sold off.

The Green Party's sole MP Caroline Lucas voted gainst the proposals, of course (we belive that the post is an essential public service a vital community hub, especially for older residents, and that it should remain entirely in public ownership), but her view didn't prevail.

But even before the new privatisation received MPs' go-ahead, the local community was rocked by the news that Post Office Counters hopes to close its store in London Road and re-open its old one on Preston Road instead.

The news is a massive blow for the thousands living in the area who use the Post Office but for whom travelling an extra mile is completely out of the question.

Remember that it was only two years ago the nearby Trafalgar Street PO shut, forcing many city centre residents (especially those in the Tarner area) to travel to London Road: now they'll be left with no local Post Office at all.

If you're appalled at the idea, I encourage you to sign the petition organised by the local Green Party councillors.

But the great irony is that business is booming at the London Road PO. It's well run, is used by many, and is in a great location - all of which begs the question: what pressure is being put on Post Office counters to move?

Is it, perhaps, that there are plans for the old Co-op building which houses the post office no-one's telling us about yet? Another Tesco perhaps, now they've being driven out of the New England area and abandoned plans to open a store on the site of the Lewes Road Community Garden? Watch this space...

Meet your new(ish) Green Team for Queen's Park: Me, Geoffrey and Steph

2011-01-04T12:46:00.043Z

Well New Year, New Start and all that. It's been in the pipeline for months now, and neither Steph nor Geoffrey will be entirely new to anyone, but I can finally announce the Green Party's candidates for May's local election: myself, Steph Powell and Geoffrey Bowden.

The Green Party holds all three council seats in the area which also includes the Tarner and St James's Street neighbourhoods.

If you're reaing this, you know me already: I'll be standing alongside youth careers adviser and community activist Steph Powell and Geoffrey Bowden, a journalist and healthcare communications consultant.

Steph has played a major part in the campaign to save a frontline youth careers service in the city from closure as a result of the Coalition Government cuts to local government.

Geoffrey has many years' experience of working with the NHS, patient groups and health professionals.

He has served as a Trustee of Pride in Brighton and Hove and is a former prison visitor.

Queen's Park councillors Rachel Fryer and Paul Steedman are standing down having spent four years promoting a greener city and defending the people of Queens Park and the wider city of Brighton and Hove from cuts and privatisation of public services.

I'm thrilled to have been reselected to fight Queens Park Ward for the Greens, and to have the opportunity once again to fight to make our neighbourhood a fairer, safer and greener place to live, defending the less well-off in difficult times.

I'm proud to showcase what Green councillors have achieved for local people over the last four years, in all walks of life, in spite of the savage cuts imposed by the Coalition after the legacy of financial mismanagement left by the previous Labour Government.

Queens Park is one of the most diverse and exciting parts of city.

Dynamic and responsive Green councillors have shown time and time again across the city that they trump the other parties - whatever their political colour - on the results they achieve for local people.

Voters just across the street in next door Brighton Pavilion constituency made history last May by electing the UK's first Green MP in May partly for that reason.

Whether it's improving road safety, winning funding for more police community support officers, helping tenants with housing issues, building stronger community networks and helping residents and public agencies set up the Local Action Team to make our neighbourhood safer and greener, Green councillors deliver.

I'm honoured to have two outstanding community activists with years of professional experience standing with me - Steph Powell and Geoffrey Bowden. Both have strong links with the lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT) communities in the city.

They'll offer flair, insight and expertise as first rate community councillors benefiting everyone in the neighbourhood.

Finally, I should thank my retiring councillor colleagues Rachel and Paul.

They've played a huge role in the life of this area over the last four years.

I think I speak for every fair minded person who's active in the community when I say that Rachel and Paul have been beacons of honesty and professionalism. They have really worked their socks off for local people and they'll really be missed.

It's a pretty dark start to the year: but the onward march of real democracy is the cloud's silver lining...

2011-01-03T17:05:00.001Z

2010 was a dark year - the culmination of several years of economic gloom caused primarily by the failure of Labour and Republican governments here and in the US to properly regulate the banking sector began to be translated into tax hikes, benefit cuts, job losses and public service reductions.

And, as the increasingly smug-sounding David Cameron said in his New Year's message, the worst is yet to come: a lot of the 'heavy lifting' will need to be done in 2011.

Cuts in local government funding will see hundreds of jobs go in Brighton and Hove, from the council and Sussex Police.

Those jobs that remain will be paid less than ever before, with thousands facing pay freezes or below-inflation rises. It would take a 2.5% hike - a privelege enjoyed by few - just to eliminate the rise in VAT which comes into force tomorrow.

A recent survey of private businesses has found that the news is hardly any better from that side of the fence: more than half are planning wage freezes or pay cuts this year.

Those on benefts are likely to fare even worse: Shelter has warned that families face homelessness thanks to government reforms of Housing Benefit - especialy those living in London and the South-East, including Brighton and Hove.

And with a wholesale review of all benefits and tax credits due too - a review that's bound to reduce spending on the neediest, not boost it - who really knows on which thumbs the screws are likely to tighten next.

Of course costs keep marching ever-higher too: just this week rail fares between London and Brighton have risen by about 8%, despite the Lib Dems pre-election promise to resist any increases in rail fares.

But there is a silver lining to all this - well, a political one anyway.

First, there's the local annihilation of the Liberal Democrats. They've only got two councillors left: one of them (David Watkins) has been deselected and the pair are reportedly not talking to one another, finding themselves on different sides of the right-left divide.

After the student fees debacle, and their lies over rail fare hikes for commuters (not to mention the whole propping up a Tory government thing), their days are surely numbered locally.

Secondly, and far more importantly, is the resurgence of popular engagement in the political process. Almost every week now we see protest and demostrations to try and prevent something or other, or defend the rights of someone or other.

It seems fewer and fewer of us are prepared to have politics be something we engage in once every few years, when elections come around. Where the Tories on the council see an unruly rabble, and the police see a potentially lawless public order situatuon, I've really enjoyed seeing a resurgence of botom-up politics.

(Oops, I'll probably get another official complaint made against me for saying that - it can only bring the office of councillor into disrepute, surely)

Just in the last fortnight, for example, internet campaigns have sprung up around rail fare increases (look out for the activists at Brighton Station over the next week), and plans for the new Sainsbury Local on St James's Street: it seems the commnuity-led campaign against the supermarket has materialised ver more quickly than I predicted.

And just to prove I'm not writing this in a bah-humbug way, here's my favourite pic anyone's send me today - Father Christmas working closely with the National Elf Sevice (groan) at the Tarner 'All Different, All Equal' event a couple of week's ago.

Ho ho ho!

Why the 'big three' parties are all wrong on the cuts biting in Brighton right here, right now

2010-12-18T09:55:00.000Z

Why cuts are the wrong cure from False Economy on Vimeo.

Here's a great video from the great campaign group False Economy.

It uses that old campaigning trick - getting diasabled people and children to tug a few heartstrings - but it does so in a way that illuminates, rather than clouds, the logic behind the message: that cutting public services is neither morally right nor likely to be effective.

The list of economic experts who have reached this conclusion is almost getting too long to list (makes a change from the time before the crash, which hardly any of the so-called experts saw coming!) - my favourite starting points are Herman Daly, Joseph Stiglitz and former Bank of England Monetary Policy committee member David Blanchflower. Most of the economic thinking undelying their position comes from John Maynard Keynes. Anyway, there are loads of really good links on False Economy's website if you want to dive into the economics behind what they are saying.

We are already seeing the implications of the cuts bite here in Brighton.

Bright Start Nursery is under threat of closure, 16-18 year-olds in their city are set to lose their Education Maintenance Allowance, University fees are set to treble, over 1,000 police officers and staff are for the chop, police stations are reducing their 'opening hours', homeslessness and unemployment, especially among the city's younger people, is rising, train fares are set to rise at mnore than double the rate of inflation, spending on social care for the most elderly is to be slashed in the name of 'personalisastion', NHS services are being farmed out to private firms who can deliver them more cheaply by employing fewer nurses... and all this is happening here in Brighton.

I could go on, but I won't, for now: I think my point is clear. This isn't about abstract thought, this is about poeple's lives, here and now. And it's a bloody disgrace.

What saddens me most is that all the 'big three' political parties agree. Yes, there are some arguments between Labour and the Tories about the speed and the depth of the cuts programme, but they all agree that the cuts are necessary, and with the basic principle that 'we are all in this together' - that recipients of public services (mainly the poorest) and public sector employees (mainly women) must bear the brunt of the problems caused mainly by the banking sector - and Labour's failure to properly regulate it in the first place.

Brighton Council action on reducing carbon emissions is pitiful

2010-12-17T14:32:00.000Z

Regular readers of this 'blog will know that, depsite being a Green Party councillor, I don't often muse on traditionally environmental topics.

But, given the cold weather that seems to have brought most of the country to a stanstill (for the fourth tine in a year!) I don't feel I can hold off from talking about Brighton Council's shameful record on climate change any longer.

Of course most of us imagine the symptoms of global warming to be increased desertification, rising sea levels, water shortages and so on, but scientific consenses these days seems to point to the increased incidence of extreme weather events and general meterological unpredictablity too. And that's exactly what we're seeing at the moment.

Of course, climate change isn't anyone's fault acting alone. But big employers and public service providers can make a real difference to the carbon dioxide emissions which are prety universally thought to be driving the climate chaos.

That's why the council together with its public secor parners (like the police, the fire and rescue service, the soon-to-be-disbanded primary care trust and so on) adopted the target of reducing CO2 emissions across the city by some 12%.

Figures reported to the city's Local Stratic Partnership a couple of weeks ago though show the progress has been pitiful - CO2 reductions are only about half that, at about six per cent - and most of those are due to recession meaning there's less stuff being made, bought and sold.

Could it just be that the council doesn't take its duty to reduce CO2 emissions seriously?

New Brighton Sainsbury's will be a disaster for local traders: I predict a wave of direct action

2010-12-17T13:03:00.000Z

So it's official: Sainbury's wants to open its 10th supermarket in the city on the old Job Centre site in St James's Street.

The store revealed its plan - to open a Sainbury Local on the site in Spring 2011, in a letter to me as ward councillor (in which the firm has asked for my support - fat chance!) - and it has been reported in today's Argus.

If it opens, the new supermarket will be the fourth in just a few shorth metres of St James's Street - and the sixth in a stretch running from Rock Gardens to the Clock Tower (about a ten-minute walk).

Let's be clear - a new Sainsbury's will be a disaster for the area and the wider environment: both for residents and local businesses.

It will reduce choice (after all, most of the supermarkets sell pretty much the same range of goods, mostly branded and trucked in in fleets of lorries), suck profits away from the town, undercut local businesses, drive local business rents up, and make the street look a little more like everywhere else in the coutry - reducing at a stroke the reasons why any visitor would want to come here.

Local residents - at least most of those at last week's St James's Area Local Action Team Meeting - are fiercely opposed to the coming of the retail giant.

Judging from the popular dissent at the opening, without planning permission, of a new Starbucks a little further up the road in 2008, and the increasing politicisation of people living in the area as a result of Government cuts in just about everything, I predict a wave of direct action against the store.

We can all start by boycotting their new outlet just a few metres away in North Street.

I think it's about time, we, and Brighton Council, started resisiting the onward march of Clone Town Britain: a good place is the excellent Re-imagining the High Street report by the New Economics Foundation.

Of course, the 'Londonization' (as the French call it) of Brighton is only to be expected, given the appalling Retail Study adopted when Labour ran the city, and the toothless way in which the Tories have tried to protect local businesses and communities too.

But just because resistance to the corporate onsluaght hasn't been as successful as we'd have like so far, it's no reason to stop trying.

Multinational support for community campaigns doesn't buy them carte blanche to act with impunity

2010-12-15T11:25:00.000Z

A thought-provoking letter in last Friday's Brighton Argus challenged me over my public involvement in the campaign to stop Starbucks opening a store in St James's Street and my condemmnation of the attitude of giant US bank American Express, which dominates much of the Edward Stret area, to its neighbours.

The author argued that, as the firms had donated more than £10,000 between them to the area's Christmas lights over the last two years, I should rethink my condemnation of them.

Of course it is good that both Starbucks and AMEX have made contributions to the St James’s Street area Christmas Lights.

I hope the display encourages residents and visitors to the city to visit the area and support local businesses – who have had a tough couple of years – in the run-up to Christmas.

But let’s be clear: both firms decided to donate some money to the lights only in the face of PR disasters, and compared to their bottom lines, the amounts donated in attempt to buy the goodwill of the community are pretty derisory.

Last year Starbucks was trying to tackle its public image as a ‘bulldozer’ which opened without planning permission and ignored public concerns – and local democratic opinion.

Having ‘bought’ the goodwill of some members of the community for a mere £3,000, it has declined to make any contribution at all this year.

As for American Express: it is an important local employer, but the construction of its new HQ in Carlton Hill is making residents’ lives a misery, and it is steadfastly refusing to compensate them.

I would have preferred to see the firm’s largess directed at its neighbours who are suffering daily road closures and traffic chaos, noise, dust, structural damage to their homes – and a complete loss of business for those who work from home.

The community campaign against Starbuck was about preserving the street for local business and residents.

So, no, whilst I am glad the firms concerned have helped the area fund its much-needed Christmas Lights, I haven't changed my view.

And while I'm delighted that our comunity campaign against Starbucks prompted them to give £3,000 to the fund, I'd much rather they hadn't opened here in the first place.

On a recent trip to London I came across this image of a good-old fashioned bit of 'subvertising' on a so-called 'Boris bike' which I though summed up the issue quite neatly really: sponsoring something for the community (be it Christmas Lights or a public bike-hire scheme) really doesn't give big business the right to act with impunity in other areas - whether it's opening a cafe without planing permission, refusing to compensate your neighbours for years of disturbance, or supporting the arms insdustry.

The streets of Brighton today: police everywhere, justice nowhere?

2010-12-05T17:26:00.000Z

Today I walked from Kemptown across Brighton to the BBC Sussex studio to take part in a live Politics Show debate about cuts to the police, and proposals to farm out some of the police's responsibilities to charities and other organisations in a bid to save cash.

The irony was remarkable: on the way there I passed at least 20 officers, and saw a gaggle of parked-up vans, doing very little. I think they were there in case there was a repeat of yesterday's protests against tax dodgers.

The phrase: 'police everywhere, justice nowhere' springs to mind.

The cost of the whole operation (given overtime bills and so one) probably topped six figures: certainly enough money to stave off a few of the 1,000+ job losses envisaged at Sussex Police. I wonder how many of the officers involved asked their superior officers whether the level of policing could end up costing them their own jobs?

Yesterday's protests targeted Top Shop to draw attention to the group's owner Tory advisor Sir Philip Green, who, by channelling some of his vast profits through his Monaco-resident wife's accounts, is able to avoid paying UK tax on much of his fortune - and therefore avoid contributing to the police bill in the first place. And the very same police who might end up losing their jobs want to prevent any disruption to his ability to go on doing so! The mind boggles.

I think if the police spend more time and money catching tax dodgers and a little less protecting the rights of the Sir Philip Greens of this world to sell stuff and enhance their personal fortunes it'd be better for all of us - not least the police themselves whose jobs are under threat.

Clone town Brighton - the latest chapter

2010-12-03T08:52:00.000Z

Regular readers of this blog will know that this is a line I have used before, but the simple fact is it keeps being true!

Clone Town Britain took another step closer to kooky Kemptown this week with the eventual closure of the Taj shop on St James's Street - and rumours that Sainsinsbury will move onto thew site.

If they do, St James's Street will boast one Sainsbury, one Morrisons, one Tesco and one (currently being extended) Co-op all in the space of about 200 metres.

That'd be absolutely terrible for the street - and the wider community. Consumers would have less choice (they all sell pretty much the same range of branded goods as each other), local businesses would suffer (not only from the inevitable rent rises but also the ability of multi-national superstores, with deep pockets, to undercut them until they go bust), visitors to the the city would have no reason to visit the area, and it would look just like every other shopping street in the country.

But it's hardly a surprise. The last Government (that's right, when Labour where in charge) oversaw the biggest increase in chain store domination of the British High Street in history, presiding over a system of tax breaks and hidden subsidies (remember, Sainsbury's largest shareholder, David Sainsbury, was a Labour peer!) for the retail giants. And when Labour ran Brighton Council they adopted the bizarre retail study claiming we needed supermarkets as big as NINE Churchill Squares around Brighton and Hove.

Remember the campaign to prevent Starbucks replacing the local firm 'Sussex Stationers' a little further up the street? It was Government intervention that overturned the locally determined (democratically) planning rules that would have prevented the new store.

And as for the current Tory council! Well, don't get me started, really. They have refused steadfastly to implement their own licensing rules which are supposed to stop new off licences and supermarkets with off-license sections opening up in the area (the so-called 'Cumulative Impact area in which there is supposed to be a presumption against granting any new license application). They are cutting cash for community development work, and have even undermined the city's Business Improvement District scheme.They don't spend as much time, money or effort promoting businesses in the area as they do elsewhere in the city (just look at the fiasco over the fact that Christmas lights have to be funded by American Express and Starbucks in a desperate bid to buy some good publicity!) - they're happy to promote car-based out-of-town shopping centres and ever more supermarkets on 'empty' sites (like the community garden in Lewes Road) - indeed their primary line of defence against Clone Town Britain seems to be a few faintly xenophobic sounding 'Be Local, Buy Local' stickers.

Meanwhile the Chief Constable of Sussex Police Martin Richards and Tory East Sussex County Council leader want to close police stations and house coppers in supermarkets in an increasingly desperate bid to save cash in thee face of Government cuts. The mind boggles.

It's no wonder the retail giants are winning, really, and local people, independent traders, and the 'feel' of our communities are losing. Roll on the May election.

Snow laughing matter: abandoned buses, shopping centres and even roads

2010-12-02T16:24:00.000Z

So it's snowed. Lots for the South coast. And chaos has ensued. Brighton Council gritters have broken down, so have a few buses (picture right) and shoppers have abandoned the pre-Christmas consumer-fest for a day or two.

In many ways it's a campaigner's dream: reclaiming the streets for pedestrians is easy when there are few vehicles out, and fighting rampant consumerism by persuading people to stop shopping is a cakewalk when it snows too (check out Churchill Square this morning - and only a fortnight before Christmas. The tills were hardly ringing!).

Seriously though the weather is causing real hardship to many. Heating systems in some communal housing blocks have endured problems, some shops have run out of staples (after just one day), commuters and travellers have been stranded, schools have closed, and as for the city's street homeless population - well it hardly bears thinking about. Oh and the switch-on of the Christmas Lights in St James's Street has had to be cancelled too.

Anyone suffering hardship should try and contact me by leaving a comment below - I'll help however I can. The council (God don't you just love the Tories) seems to have largely abandoned the idea of providing much help itself (although it has placed a large grit pile at the junction of Queen's Park Road and Elm Grove, and been gritting and ploughing major roads) and is instead encouraging a 'big society' response - asking for volunteers to help with gritting, sweeping up snow and driving key workers around. It's not like the snow hasn't been forecast for days (weeks even?) after all...

In Italy's student-led protests, it's culture itself that's resisting the cuts

2010-12-01T23:59:00.000Z

Students, schoolchildren and sympathisers took to the streets again yesterday: in Brighton and around the country.

Many were 'kettled' by police in freezing temperatures: Green Party member of the Metropolitan Police Authority Jenny Jones is planning to call for a review of the tactic - and the Met's whole approach to policing demonstrations - at the next authority meeting in London.

Anyone from Brighton who travelled up for any of the London demos, and has anything to say about the way the police there handled things, do let me know and I'll pass their accounts on to Jenny.

There have been fewer complaints about the policing here in Brighton - most comments I have received have been poking fun rather than expressing concern: that said there was some 'kettling', and even a report or two of young people being tasered - so do let me know and I'll make sure all complaints are properly examined.

Education cuts have sparked student demonstrations in Italy too - as this photo shows students wearing crash helmets (and presumably enjoying slightly warmer temperatures than we're seeing in the UK at the moment) were perhaps better prepared for any police violence they may have encountered.

But for me the really interesting thing about this photo was that it shows the protesters were carrying shields adorned with the names of book: Melville's Moby Dick, Plato's Republic and even the Wu-Ming Foundation's 'Q' were among the titles chosen.

By putting literature in the front line, the students and their sympathisers made the excellent point that it's not just the people - it's culture itself - that is under attack from education cuts.

More protest in Brighton as children, students, teachers and sympathisers take to the streets

2010-11-25T13:10:00.000Z

Well yet again protest has come to Brighton as popular dissatisfaction with the Government's completely unnecessary cuts programme spills onto the streets.

This time the focus was on education cuts: specifically the trebling of university fees, the withdrawal of the grants designed to help the poorest 16-19 year olds get to school and college for further education - and the withdrawal of funding for adult education. As part of a rash of demonstration and civil disobedience sweeping the country, as many as a thousand students, school pupils (some, reportedly, as young as 11) and sympathisers marched and, inevitably, some engaged in a little spot of good old-fashioned civil disobedience: Brighton Town hall was briefly occupied, and an occupation of some Brighton University buildings appears to be ongoing, more than 24 hours later.

I thought this photo told a story worth telling: a sole Labour Party sympathiser getting the mood all wrong: most of the placards and chants on display were focussed on the issues at stake (one of my favourites had to be: 'Tories put the N in cuts') while this chap rather missed the message, imploring students to just 'Vote Labour' as though that'd make a blind bit of difference! Remember, it was Labour that introduced tuition fees in the first place - and that Labour remain committed to making deep public spending cuts too.

For the record: the Green Party would abolish student tuition fees absolutely. Higher Education students would pay neither £9,000 a year, nor £3,000 a year, but nothing at all. They would be paid from the general exchequer, funded by increasing the higher rate of tax paid by the highest earners and closing the tax avoidance and evasion loopholes currently enjoyed by the likes of George Osbourne, Rupert Murdoch and Lewis Hamilton.

Anyway, enough of that party political nonsense: here's a video that made me laugh out loud, pilfered from the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts website. I hope you enjoy it.

Time for American Express to pay compensation to neighbours of new HQ building works

2010-11-20T14:32:00.000Z

Can you imagine one of your neighbours deciding to demolish their house and build a brand new one a few metres away - and to take five or six years doing year doing so - closing roads along the way, and generating noise, dust and disruption which keeps you up at night, kills your home working business stone dead, rattles the ground with pile drivers until bricks and tiles fall off your house, and then refuses to pay you any compensation for the misery you're suffering?

Well that's what's happened to Carlton Hill residents living in the shadow of the Brighton-based European American Express HQ.

The firm has made a few concessions to residents - washing their cars and windows, for example, but few (except perhaps AmEx's US bosses) believe the firm is at all interested in the local community in which is HQ sits.

As ward councillors we raised our objections early on in the process (of course they didn't prevail), and have been able to broker regular, open, meetings between residents and AmEx managers.

It could all be about to kick off a little. It seems some residents have been unable to sell their homes as a result of the ongoing work, and something of a house value blight has descended on the so-called 'Edward Street Quarter'. Affected householders are preparing to sue the American bank accordingly: it could end up costing the firm a generation of community goodwill and a few hundred thousand pounds if it ends up with residential community clubbing forces to take an American bank to court.

Meanwhile, the firm has donated a few thousand pounds to the fund to pay for Christmas lights in nearby St James's Street - the area's bad-PR slush fund (last year it was Starbucks who tried to use a small donation to the fund to buy its way out of the bad publicity generated by opening without planning permission in the area).

Of course the jobs AmEx provides to the area are welcome - but surely shouldn't give the firm a carte blanche to be a bad neighbour.

The principal beneficiaries of the firm's presence in Brighton are, after all, the bank's shareholders. That's the way the banking market works. remember, it's a bank, not a hospital or a school!

Standing up for local media - and jobs - in face of US onslaught

2010-11-18T13:27:00.001Z

Today and tomorrow journalists at The Argus are striking over plans by the papers' US owners to sack sub-editors and move the paper's production to Southampton.

I've just got back from a wintry morning standing alongside them outside the paper's Hollingbury HQ: I was delighted to see a really good turnout, of local politicians (here's a few, pictured: myself with fellow Green Councillor Pete West, Hollingdean and Stanmer election candidate Luke Walter and Ben Parsons, local NUJ rep).

Overturning the plan really matters, for three main reasons.

Firstly, decent local jobs must be protected, now more than ever. For a company (US-based Gannett in this case) to seek to cut costs by sacking staff might just be acceptable if that's the only way it can keep the business alive, and therefore protect other jobs - but there can be no excuse for it when it's simnply about increasing profits.

Secondly, to protect the quality of our city's journalism. I don't always see eye-to-eye with the Argus, but it plays an essential role in reporting what happens in our city, especially by the council and police authority members elected in all of our names.

It's essential in a functioning democracy that this oversight is provided by the media, and replacing skilled journalists who boast local knowledge with overworked, underpaid and remote replacements will make this function of the paper weaker then ever.

And thirdly, there is a really important principal at stake: the local media must be controled locally. An effective local paper must be part of the community it serves.

The Government should introduce strict new laws governing media control to ensure this: no UK local media should be owned by foreign or multinational companies at all. Otherwise their freedom - and therefore all of our freedom - is ultimately at stake.

Imagine (you wouldn't be far from the truth) if all local papers wree owened by foreign companies who viewed their role not as keeping the community informed but turning a profit for their shareholders.

This whole saga shows that we need tough new laws preventing foriegn ownership of local media, not rules that allow the Argus to be run by the same company that owns USA Today.

Boost for local bloggers as US-based Argus owners abandon Brighton

2010-11-17T13:59:00.000Z

The US media corporation Gannett, which owns the Argus, has sparked an all-out media war here in Brighton - a war it can't possibly win.

In the face of dwindling circulation (down from over 100,000 in its heyday to about 25,000 today, I'm told), and falling advetising revenues, it has decided to cut costs by sacking sub-editors and moving production of the paper to Southampton.

The move seems destined to further reduce the local flavour of the paper (to think, The Argus was once Brighton's newspaper 'of record'!) - and force anyone looking for real local news to look elsewhere.

They won't find it on the radio - with the exception of Radio Reverb, which carries little news - there's nothing on the airways which makes any real attempt to serve the city's community.

Neither the so-called BBC Sussex (so-called because it shares most of its programming with the equally so-called BBC Surrey based in Guildford) nor the pap music stations Heart FM or Juice FM even pretend to tell us everything that's going on in the city.

And they won't find it on TV either: Meridian sometimes fits a Brighton story in its few minutes of local coverage,, and the BBC has the contempt to split Brighton and Hove between its South and South-East news services, neither of which tells us anything much about Brighton.

Living in the BBC South area, I learn more about the goings on in Oxford, and even Bourrnemouth - than I do Brighton!

So where do they find it?

On the Internet, it seems. A growing number of local news services and blogs have sprung up in recent years trying to plug the gap: four of the biggest are (in no particular order): News From Brighton, Brighton and Hove News, Brighton and Hove Free Press and the Brighton Politics Blogger. Of course, there's this 'blog too, for occoasional comment.

I can't speak for the others I've named, but I can happily report that readers of this 'blog have been steadily increasing since it was first launched in 2008 and now peak at over 1,000 a week.

Of course some of those readers are just other councillors looking for something to complain about, but even so - if they are reading my 'blog then I presume they are not hatching plans to undermine public service delivery or sell off the city's council housing stock or anything!

So, it seems the (old) King is dead - suicide by US managers looks to be the verdict: long live the (new) King!

Will Brighton follow San Francisco's lead and ban McDonald's 'Happy Meals'?

2010-11-12T13:24:00.001Z

Last week San Francisco took a bold step in the defence of children's health: the city banned the practise of giving away plastic toys with junk food.

The move is a bold response to the growing problem of child obesity - and worries that today's children may be the first generation ever to have a lower life expectancy than their parents.

Latest figures show that a staggering 15% of US children are overweight or obese - about the same as the number of ten year-olds here in Brighton, according to a recent report by the city's Director of Public Health, Dr Tom Scanlon.

I've today asked Brighton Council's cabinet member for Children's Services Vanessa Brown to consider introducing the same scheme here in Brighton.

I hope she is supportive - but I'm not holding my breath: the Tories have hardly got a great record when it comes to pitting corporate interests against public health.

What's worse: breaking a few windows or undermining social mobility?

2010-11-12T11:34:00.000Z

On Wednesday about 50,000 people - several hundred of them from Brighton - marched through central London in protest at the Government's cuts in further and higher education spending that will see university fees treble, free adult education abandoned, and cash allowances to enable the poorest teenagers to stay at school - the Education Maintainance Allowance - scrapped.

By some accounts it was the biggest demonstration since the now famous 'Stop the War' march of 2003.

Of course the media have concentrated on condemning the actions of a breakaway group who occupied the Millbank HQ of the Tory party, breaking windows and setting off flares and bonfires.

But I think we all need to ask ourselves the question: what's worse - breaking a few windows or undermining the very idea of social mobility in our education system?

Let's be clear: the Government's plans will do exactly that.

The average university student will leave college with around £40,000 of debt: placing higher education out of reach of most poorer families.

Coupled with the decision to scrap the Education Maintenance Allowance, and the end of state-funded vocational training for adults, few are optimistic that these measures won't see the divide between rich and poor widen even further, and even more quickly than it did under Labour.

The prevailing wisdom, of coursem, is that any group seeking to change public policy should confine themselves to two routes to trying to do so: engagement with the political process, and well-behaved, orderly demonstrations.

I agree, in theory. But in practise, we have to remember that neither of these has worked at all, and that people are angry.

Many voted for the Lib-Dems in the mistaken belief that they could be trusted when they said they'd oppose any rise in tuition fees.

Labour, lest we forget, introduced tuition fees in the first place (as just one of the measures they took that saw the gap between rich and poor widen so much during the 13 years that they held the riens of power).

And as for the Tories: well even today, Simon Kirby, our local Tory MP, has told the media of his enthusiasm for higher student fees.

So much for the democratic process.

And as for orderly protest? Well, I was one of the hundreds of thousands who marched through central London in protest at plans to invade Iraq without a UN mandate. Fat lot of good that did - we're still counting the bodies.

Indeed you could argue that the last time protet really changed public policy here in the UK was when Lady Gaga - I mean Thatcher - abandoned the Poll Tax after rioting hit the streets of London.

Of course I'm not saying violent protest is the answer - I'm a confirmed democrat, obviously (I'd hardly be a councillor if I wasn't) - just that we should get things in perspective.

And, to my mind, breaking a few windows in anger is far less serious than either lying about policy to win votes - or introducing a set of education policies that are bound to undermine social mobility.

Brighton Council's latest attack on council tenants' human rights

2010-11-05T13:03:00.000Z

We've seen the budget deficit used as cover for an attack on benefits and the public sector over recent months, but Brighton Council has given us a new twist this week: using fraud as a cover for an ID-card scheme to make up for the national scheme ditched earlier this year.

On Monday members of the Housing Management Consultative Committee will discuss a plan that could require council tenants to carry ID cards to gain access to their own homes.

What next, one wag asked me today, compulsory bar-code branding for all living in social housing?

A national ID card scheme was a terrible idea. A local one, compulsory only for those living in social housing, is even worse.

This latest attack on basic human rights should be resisted at every turn.

When Labour ran this city they hatched a plan to privatise the city's entire housing stock: luckily tenants resisted and the idea was dropped after a hideously expensive PR campaign trying to persuade them to do exactly the opposite.

Now the Tories want all tenants to carry ID cards. I hope they resist just as strongly and effectively.

Green councillor cleared on all counts in free speech case

2010-11-03T15:47:00.000Z

UPDATE: Green councillor Jason Kitcat has today been cleared of all complaints made against him - and all sanctions imposed - in a case that has cost the taxpayer thousands.

All the details of the case are in my latest - and earlier posts.

It was bound to happen, really. Before today's hearing I took delight in mentioning the case to all and sundry - I couldn't find a single person who thought pursuing this case was either just or a good use of public funds. In fact, most people thought the case itself brought the council into disrepute. All the hoo-ha has definitely increased viewing of the original clip in question.

So now only one question remains: how much public money was wasted on such things as barristers and hotel rooms, not to mention hours of officer time, on the whole charade?

Oh and I should declare an interest: I myself am subject to another standards board complaint - as a member of the Sussex Police Authority rather than Brighton and Hove City Council - a my 6th in two-and-a-half years.

I have been told it vaguely relates to something I've said on this 'blog regarding EDO protests in Brighton - but in a Kafka-esque twist I'm not allowed to know either the detailed nature of the complaint - or who made it - until after a committee has examined it. Natural justice at work? You decide!

Tories in disarray after Pickles' throws his weight behind Green councillor in free speech row

2010-11-03T11:47:00.001Z

Today sees the latest installment in the saga of Brighton Council vs Green Councillor Jason Kitcat: his appeal against suspension for posting a video clip of a council meting on YouTube will be heard at the Hilton Metropole Hotel.

The swanky seafront venue will play host to the hearing - with the tab picked up by you, the taxpayer - even though I haven't been able to find a single person who thinks either the original complaint, the conclusion of the council's standards hearing, or the logic of suspending a democratically-elected councillor in a politically-hung council on the say-so of members of other parties was either just, sensible, democratic, or a good use of council officers' time or public money (and remember, were talking thousands here).

Jason was found to be in breach of the code of conduct after posting a clip from an official council meeting webcast onto YouTube.

Following an official complaint lodged by a Tory councillor (Ted Kemble), he was found to be in breach of the council's code of conduct by a Labour Councillor (Jeane Lepper) who admitted during the hearing that she hadn't actually seen the clip in question, and a Lib-Dem councillor (David Watkins) who appeared to some to be asleep during the hearing.

He was suspended from the council for six months but appealed against the ruling: hence the case that will be heard today, which the Standards Board for England has organised.

The council, and the Standards Board, are seeking to uphold the original ruling, despite the costs to the public purse of pursuing the case.

But Jason won over an unlikely ally last week in the shape of Tory Minister Eric Pickles.

Speaking in the House of Commons, of all places, he said: "I say to Councillor Kitcat: YouTube if you want to!"

The Hove Tories must be hopping mad.

With Pickles' weight behind him, how can Jason fail to have all the charges dropped.

I'll let you know the outcome when I can.

The 'Shock Doctrine' in action? Tory plan to use cuts as fig leaf to hand control of Sussex police stations to Tesco

2010-10-31T21:53:00.000Z

Like most public sector organisations, Sussex Police is in the throes of a cash crisis. Latest estimates, based on last week's Government Comprehensive Spending Review, suggest that it faces a shortfall of over £50million pounds over the next four years (that's on top of the millions lopped of its budget by the previous Labour Government), and the Chief Constable has warned that over 1,000 jobs (around a qauarter of the workfiorce) could be lost as a result.

Of course this is hardly a surprise : for months now senior officers and members of Sussex Police Authority have been working out how on earth they'll manage to keep crime (and, crucially, the fear of crime) falling, and keep safe neighbourhoods, in the face of all this.

And last Thursday, a meeting of Sussex Police Authority considered a round-up of their efforts.

Dubbed 'Serving Sussex 2015', the force has proposed a veritable smorgasbord of measures to cut costs. Some of them are just common sesnse - and perhaps should have been done years ago: making better use of technology, for example, and using police cars a little more efficiently.

Some of the ideas sound good in principle, but raise as many questions as they answer: offering officers more unpaid leave, for example. Sounds great in theory, but I really can't see how senior officers will be able to manage their staff rotas without recourse to paying officers overtime, something else that bosses hope to cut to save cash.

But some of them really fill me with dread: top of the list a review of the way police stations are run. Obviously there's little point in maintaining a front desk at a police station hardly anyone uses, and as long as there is proper public consultation on what's going on, it may well make sense to close some police stations and offer shared front desk facilities with, say, councils. Perhaps Hove Police station could close, for example, and the police could make themselves available at Hove Town Hall a few minutes walk away. It certainly can't hurt to ask people what they think, anyway.

But East Sussex Council leader Peter Jones suggested during Thursday's meeting that police stations could in future be offered at supermarket check-outs: looking out over the Tesco superstore that dominates the Lewes retail scene, the front-runner to be Tory candidate to run Sussex Police after the introduction of US-style sheriffs in 2012 said he hoped the chain could play host to Sussex Police front desk services soon in the future.

In the Argus, a spokesman for the firm seemed to positively salivate at the idea: after all, they offer pharmacy services, post office counters, opticians - so why not the police stations that would mean another public service would be offered under their roof rather than on the high street - after all, every little helps when it comes to a plan for retail domination.

To be honest, I can hardly think of a worse idea. Tesco has shown itself, time and time again, to have little or no regard for either the law of the land (especially when it comes to serving alcohol to children) - or the commnuities it supposedly serves.

Hardly attributes likely to help Sussex Police deliver effective neighbourhood policing.

But I don't see much evidence that delivering effective policing has got anything to do with this one: it's about achieving two things, as far as I can tell: cutting costs and shifting control of the public sector into private hands, regardless of whether doing so will actually work.

And this latest round of Government cuts is providing the perfect opportunity for proposing the idea: it's the classic 'shock doctrine' approach: enact controversial policy after the naysayers have been metaphorically kicked in the nuts.

No wonder people are so angry that almost 1,000 of them marched through the streets of Brighton in protest yesterday (pictured). If Sussex Police wants to avoid that anger being directed towards its review of police stations it had better drop this scheme. People might be able to cope with Hove or Hollingbury Police Stations moving, but not if they re-open in Tesco supermarkets.

Is it time for electronic voting in the House of Commons?

2010-10-30T15:35:00.000+01:00

Brighton MP and Green Party leader Caroline Lucas has certainly made a splash since her historic victory in the Genral Election back in May - diving into constituency casework, parliamentary business - and trying to fulfil her pledge to be the conscience of parliament with gusto.

But her latest campaign is hardly one I'd have expected before her election: to introduce electronic voting to the House of Commons.

In a recent BBC interview, she lamented the fact that a dozen or so votes in the Mother of Parliaments can take more than an hour and a half - hardly a good use of MPs' time, she argues.

It makes a lot of sense. I hope the other party leaders, and the Speaker of the House, who (weirdly) is the MP who traditionally gives the thumbs up (or not, as the case may be) to parliamentary reform, agree with her.

I suspect they won't though. When it comes down to it, they quite like these quaint traditions taking up so much time: it gives their party members less time to make mischief by putting their constituents' interests above their party leaders' interests (Peter Mandelson's 'this must be supressed' approach would be harder to sustain if MPs' had more freedom to get things done or, God forbid, speak their mind more often).

Tory cuts in Brighton bound to hit those who can least afford it hardest

2010-10-17T16:36:00.001+01:00

I am really worried about the Government's Comprehensive Spending Review on Wednesday.

Not just because the scale of the cuts in Government spending it will herald will be devastating, but because they are almost bound to hit those who can least afford it hardest, causing enormous divisions - and real hardship - in society.

The cuts in Government spending (which, better economists than I have dubbed counter-productive and set to plunge the UK economy back into a unemployment-led recession a la 1980s) will mean benefits are cut and public services dwindle. Meanwhile thousands of public sector workers will be forced to join the unemployment queues.

Already, the richest in society, who use fewer public services, are entitled to fewest benefits, and are much less likely to work in the public sector - are let off the hook.

As equality campaign group Fawcett has argued, cuts in the public sector will hit women hardest - and proposed cuts like the abolition of the Children's Commissioner, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission and other quangos charged with look after the rights of the vulnerable will mean they will be joined by children, ethnic and sexual minoroties too.

Early announcements of where the axe will fall at Brighton Council suggest it is children who will bear the brunt locally - much of the details about the cuts the local Tories are already making to children's services in the city will be discussed at a full meeting of the council this Thursday.

But not so, it seems, Sussex Police.

At a recent meeting of the Sussex Police Authority Resources Scrutiny Committee, and under Green Party questioning, Deputy Chief Constable Giles York agreed that the force will be shedding jobs (1,050 is the latest estimate) 'equally'.

During a discussion about how the force was unlikely to meet locally-set targets for improving the numbers on women employed by Sussex Police, Mr York pledge that all cuts would be 'equalities impact assessed' to ensure neither women, ethnic minoroty, or LGBT staff unfairly bore the brunt of the cuts.

With recruitment at a near-standstill, and widespread unemployment almost bound to lead to an increase in crime on our streets, it’s more important than ever that we build public confidence in the police.
I am delighted the force has agreed to assess the impact of the coming job losses on women and minority groups, not just because the law may require it and because it’s the right thing to do, but because doing so will likely result in better policing and safer neighbourhoods and communities too.

Now the trick will be to hold Sussex Police to Mr York's committment.

PS There's a special prize for readers who correctly identify the morphed cut-miesters in the picture above: answers on a postcard please...

£200,000 cost of policing peace protest: an outrageous waste of money in face of Tory cuts

2010-10-15T12:09:00.002+01:00

Blink and you might have missed it, but on Wednesday, it seems there was something of a peace protest in Brighton. According to The Argus, some 250 police, from across the region, were waiting for about 200 protesters.

There were around 20 arrests - mainly of people not doing what they were told - but everyone had been released without charge by this morning.

The whole policing operation, it has been reported, cost about £200,000 - an outrageous waste of time and money in the face of massive Government cuts, and in the face of warnings that over 1,000 jobs are for the chop.

The decision to spend so much money was one taken by the police themselves. But, as ever, it's the protesters who are singled out for blame, for not telling the police of their plans in advance.
This logic is not only naive and a little simplistic, it's vastly counterproductive.

If the police want to reduce costs for future demonstrations, they must take the lead in building trust with the protest movement. Blaming it for the cost of police operations does exactly the opposite.

The reality is peace protesters come in all shapes and sizes - from Christian grannies to balaclava-clad teens: there simply isn't an single individual or even group of people who has the authority or knowledge to tell the police what everyone's going to do.

Even if there was such a group to negotiate with they probably wouldn't do so anyway, yet: there simply isn't the trust there. For too long many peace protesters have viewed the police as likely to arrest them without warning, hold them accountable for the actions of others, and act as a private security outfit for the arms industry.

If we want to reduce costs in future, the police simply must concebntrate on rebuilding trust with the peace movment.

Here's two things they could do right away:

(i) Investigate whether crimes are being, or have been, committed at the factory itself: do the weapons components made there have the correct export licenses? Is enough done to ensure they don't end up in the wrong hands, and aren't ultimately used to commit unlawful violence, or against civilians?

(ii) Stop blaming the protesters! The cost of policing protests and demonstration is a necessary cost of living in a democracy, and if it's costing too much we must decide, as a society, whether to restrict our democtatic rights to take non-violent direct action, or whether to make the police to spend less money on them.

I agree with many of the commentators who have opined that £200,000 is too much money to spend on policing a peace protest. But I blame the police for deciding to spend it in the first place, not those who feel so strongly about the role a Brighton factory seems to be playing in conflict and war that they are prepared to take to the streets.

'Parliament is Curtailing Democracy', warns Lucas

2010-10-13T19:38:00.001+01:00

As the nights draw in and autumn tightens its grip, I'm drawn to thinking about Guy Fawkes' infamous plot to blow up the House of Commons.

He didn't pull if off, alas, so we're stuck with good old fashioned British Demorcacy - the big choice between elected dictators we indulge in once every four or five years.

Of course, our imperfect democracy remains the only one we've got so, while we must never stop trying to overthrow and reform it, we have to work within it if we want to get anything done. That's why I'm a councillor not a cherry-bomb thrower.

But I've never been able to completely relinquish my hidden anarchist: especially when I read an MP suggesting that parliament itselt is 'curtainling democracy'.

‘This place is essentially curtailing democracy,’ Green Party leader Caroline Lucas tells the New Internationalist this month, referring to the House of Commons which looms just out of sight of her office.

‘Once you get here, the processes almost beggar belief, with a chamber that can’t even seat every MP, archaic voting procedures and a Speaker who can decide which amendments get discussed and which don’t.’

New 'tardis' comes to St James's Street - a fig leaf for cuts or a great plan?

2010-10-13T18:05:00.002+01:00

A new Brighton Council inititative will see a Doctor Who-style police box taking up residence in a car park below St James's House in a bid to deter drug-taking, and provide a local point of contact for people unable to make the journey to Brighton's Main Police station at the end of the road.

It sounds great - and I hope it does what is expected of it: serves to cut both crime and the fear of crime as well as embedding the police in the community.

But the cynic in me doubts that it will have that effect for long - such initiatives usually merely push criminal activity elsewhere rather than actually preventing it, and the new initiative comes just as Sussex Police is planning on shedding 1,050 jobs and reviewing the way it delivers neighbourhood policing.

It reminds me of those schemes where cardboard cut-out coppers were stood by the side of motorways to deter speeding: a great idea, but no substitute for a real human police presence. I suspect total crime levels will be unaffected, and the new 'tardis' will be devoid of PCSOs and officers soon.

I hope I'm wrong, of course, but I'm not holding my breath.

Tory plans to abolish grants for poorer pupils will knock life-chances, and social mobility for all

2010-10-11T12:07:00.002+01:00

What with all the fuss about Tory plans to abandon the idea of universal Child Benefit, a far more worrying change to the way the Government administers benefits to under-19s could be around the corner: the abolition of Education Maintenance Allowance (EMAs).

EMAs, which are worth up to £30 a week, are means-tested benefits payable to 16-19 year olds to help them meet the costs of staying in education - and they work.

The evidence seems to show that EMAs increase participation in further education by about six per cent a year. By definition, those six per cent of learners are the least-well-off in society, and often the most vulnerable in other ways too. In some cases dropping out of education or training will mean dropping out of the formal economy altogether and be devastating for their longer-term life chances and the whole idea of social mobility.

EMAs are restricted to low-income households, and predominantly taken up by those with low achievement levels at school, those from ethnic minorities and those from single-parent families, so are a vital tool for increasing social mobility. EMA is also conditional on the young person turning up to college (or school) so if they don’t turn up, they don’t get their EMA.

And yet the Government looks set to abolish them entirely, at the behest of 'free-market ideology' - and the bidding of a number of right-wing think-tanks and pressure groups, including the Policy Exchange, the Institute of Directors and the Tax Payers Alliance.

More EMA recipients find themselves in Further Education (about 69%) than any other type of school or college: so cutting them is likely to lead to more drop-outs and course closures in the vocational and training sector than any other.

Here in Brighton and Hove, for example, more than half of all 16-19-year-old students at City College are in receipt of EMA: 47 per cent of all students in the age range receiving the maximum £30 per week award.

The impact on EMAs' withdrawal could be enormous for the college and anyone in our city concerned at the range of non-academic training routes available locally.

The net result will be, of course, more children from poorer backgrounds dropping out of education and employment entirely. Fewer vocational courses being offered to anyone at all, and lower social mobility - er, exactly the vision of a Tory society, I suppose.

Coming ahead of massive cuts to the Further Education budget, the careers and benefit services provided by Connexions, the closure of nurseries like Bright Start - and the downgrading of teachers' pensions announced last week - it seems like Tory Brighton is becoming a pretty nasty place to grow up, one way and another.

Help St James's Street get some Christmas Lights this year

2010-10-11T05:42:00.001+01:00

At a meeting of the St James's Area Action Group last week, it was revelead that the group needs to raise about £6,000 to pay for Christmas Lights in the area this year - £3,000 for new 'tree lights' and £3,000 to make good the shonky infrasructure from lastr year.

Of course the big multiples have shied away from putting their hands in their deep corporate profits: even Starbucks, who found £3,000 last year in a desperate bid to stave off the bad publicity it attracted by opening a branch on the street without planing permission, have backed away this year: the PR job's done, after all.

So, it's left up to local businesses and the community to do it. So, hat's off to the new Poison Ivy bar for hosting a fundraiser. Let's hope it's a busy one and it raises all the cash required for a cracking Christmas in Kemp Town.

Sussex Police to save cash - and the environment - by getting officers out of their cars and into communities

2010-10-02T21:00:00.000+01:00

It seeems Sussex Police are going to be driving their vans and cars around a little less in coming years.

On Thursday Sussex Police Authority's Resources Scrutiny Committee will consider a proposal to stop replacing police cars - and reduce the total size of the fleet by several hundred vehicles - and its journeys by about 1.5 million miles a year.

This review of the way Sussex Police uses its fleet of vehicles is welcome – and long overdue.

It will save over £2m - cash that can be used to protect jobs in the face of enormous Government cuts, massively reduce the police's fuel bills and exhaust fumes, which will both improve air quality and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and force officers to get out of their cars and into communities a little more.

It's a classic win-win-win, good for policing, good for the environment, and good for saving jobs in the face of Government police cuts.

Some might worry that with fewer cars the police will be less able to respond quickly to crime - but I think that logic needs to be turned on its head: if fewer cars mean there's more money for saving officers and PCSO jobs from cuts, and they're spending more time out of their cars and in the communities they patrol, there should be less crime in the first place.

10:10 Campaign pulls film warning of looming climate change deaths

2010-10-01T21:35:00.002+01:00

This video made me laugh - so I thought it'd only be fair to share it here.

It was made for the 10:10 campaign - which aims to get individuals and organisations to cut their climate change-fuelling carbon emissions by ten per cent this year - by slushy millionaire campaigning comedian Richard Curtis.

He's had his moments (Blackadder, for example) but generally, Curtis has had a wonderful knack for producing the worst of British soggy, soppy comedies - shows like the Vicar of Dibley, films like Notting Hill - and got very rich on the back of them.

That background makes this punchy little number even more effective, I reckon: it seeks (well, sought) to do one thing: attract some attention to the campaign, which, as 2010 enters October, is running out of time to sign up new supporters.

So it contains a few gory images to boost the shock factor - it even features England striker Peter Crouch and a chance to see former Spurs superhero David Ginola blown to pieces.

But just a few hours after putting it online, the 10:10 campaign withdrew it, citing complaints about the video being in bad taste.

Well, the cynic in me would say the whole saga seems a little contrived to me, and I imagine taking it down was always part of the plan to stir up some controversy in the hope of boosting the film's reach.

But good on 'em: climate change is already killing hundreds of thousands of people a year, and its set to get a lot worse.

I'm glad I've been able to play my part in getting Sussex Police to sign up to the 10:10 campaign and agree to cut its emissions by ten per cent, and that, collectively, Green Party councillors have been able to get Brighton and Hove City Council to do the same.

And I'm equally glad I've got a 'blog to post this film too, and that doing so helps it 'go viral' in some small way, which I'm sure is what thy are trying to do by taking the film down and pretending that anyone was genuinely offended by it.

Whatever happens to this film, our efforts to tackle runaway climate change just better 'go viral'.

Supermarket sweep - the onward march of 'Clone Town' Brighton

2010-09-30T09:54:00.003+01:00

The onward march of 'Clone Town Britain' took a step forward this week when Morrisons in St James's Street lodged a formal application to sell alcohol from 6am until 11pm, seven days a week.

According to coverage in The Argus, the chair of the local residents' group - the St James's Street LAT - is 'relaxed' about the application, but let's be clear: I'm not.

Along with my fellow Green Party councillors for the ward I've lodged an objection to the plans. Although the big-business-friendly Licensing Act 2003 only allows objections to be raised on the grounds of protecting children from harm, public safety or an increased threat of crime, disorder or noise nuisance, I think the dangers posed by increased availability of cheap supermarket booze round-the-clock reach far more widely.

Of course, Morrisons sits right in the heart of Brighton's so-called 'Cumulative Impact Area' and therefore, given residents' concerns about crime, noise nuisance and disorder, as well as children’s health, the hours extension really shouldn't be allowed, but it's the impact on smaller, local businesses, that really worries me.

Just last week it was reported that the locally-owned Tin Drum pub up the road was closing to make way for an extension of the supermarket next door.

Where will all this end? If Morrisons is granted its extension then Tesco will surely ask for the same thing – and probably be granted that too.

If we are relaxed about this sort of thing we’ll see most pubs closed, and most alcohol sold cheaply, round-the-clock, by supermarket chains: communities like ours will be left to pick up the pieces while our streets lose their distinctive ‘feel’, and the profits, instead of finding their way back into local pockets, are whisked away to shareholders and investors far away in the world’s financial centres.

The sooner the licensing laws are changed to allow local pubs and clubs to protect themselves from this 'supermarket sweep', and councillors to recognise that protecting public health should be a reasonable consideration when looking at new booze permits, the better.

Tory Brighton Council celebrates Democracy Day - but turns back on real democracy

2010-09-23T16:07:00.000+01:00

I've just got back from taking part in an event at Brighton's Jubilee Library to mark the city's Democracy Day: present were eight councillors and, when I had to leg it to collect boys from school, a sum total of two members of the public.

I chatted to one of them - she was an active member of a lobby group (Friends of the Earth) and already knew several councillors, at least by name. Hardly the target audience - you could argue she was already pretty engaged with local democracy!

But people care a lot about the issues that the council makes decisions about - and, believe me, many residents do get in touch with their councillors about them to try and influence local democracy at work.

So the real question is: why did so few residents want to talk to councillors at today's event? Maybe it was the timing (middle of the day), or the weather (drizzly), or maybe the location (back room, top floor).

More likely city residents, aware that the Tory-run council here doesn't care much for their views (just last week we saw Geoffrey Theobald - cabinet member for the environment - ignore a consultation that showed a majority of residents in Canning Street and Queen's Park Rise wanted to see residents' parking schemes extended to cover their roads) just have as little respect for local democracy as it seems to have for them.

We Greens believe in opening up decision-making to neighbourhoods, through participatory-budgeting and taking a much more transparent approach to the way choices are taken (for starters bothering to listen to the results of consultations) - if we get our way I hope we'll see more people taking part in future events like today's.

Elections are like Christmas - they don't come around that often and people start gettting obsessed with them months before they actually happen

2010-09-21T21:07:00.000+01:00

Well it's less than 100 days to go until Christmas - and already the cards are on sale, the official parties are being planned - but it's even longer (about eight months) until the local elections here in Brighton and Hove, and already the preparatons are under way.

The local institution that is the Brighton Politics Blogger has already started to call results in some seats - Goldsmid, Central Hove, East Brighton, Brunswick and Adelaide, though he hasn't got round to Queen's Park yet (my favourite is the post predicting gains for the Green and the end of the Lib-Dems).

I guess after the debacle that saw May's General Election result called more slowly than ever before (after count-room reports of mising ballot boxes and more tears and thumb-twiddling in the Brighton Centre than staff have seen since the Dixie-land banjo-fest came to town) the city's election supremo John Barradell will already be making his preparations.

Other senior council staff have privately confessed to me that work is now pretty much on hold: in the face of disappearing partner agencies, public spending cuts and politicians' focus turning to next May don't hold your breath for any new council work until June 2011 at the earliest.

The parties all seem to be busy electing their candidates - and there appears to be general jubilation at the news that Tom French, the student Labour activist who presided over the increase in the St Peter's and North Laine Green Party vote following councillor Keith Taylor's elevation to the European Parliament, has been chosen to stand here in Queen's Park.

Labour whip Warren Morgan was quick to celebrate his selection in a twitter comment to followers (he's blocked me for some reason so I only learned about it second-hand) : the Green Party activists among local residents and beyond seem pleased with the choice too.

In any event I'll be keeping my feet firmly on the policy ground, at least until the campaign 'proper' starts. I'll report any titbits of gossip here when I hear it, but my focus until April will be continuing to do what I've been doing since May 2007, representing the residents of Queen's Park as best I can, ensuring they get the best possible local services despite the best efforts of the Tories on the council, and two Governments, to undermine them.

The latest bunfight, of course, will be about the coming cuts. Sussex Police have already announced they'll be shedding more than 1,000 jobs - and the council will surely follow.

Questioning reality is far more dangerous than sex or swearing

2010-09-12T19:24:00.000+01:00

Last night I enjoyed a good old-fashioned Saturday night out with Charlie, my partner and the love of my life.

We went to see the film Inception, before enjoying a cocktail or two in the company of two thirty-somethings from London dressed as Smurfs for the night at the wonderful Brighton Rocks bar near St James's Street.

The film was fantastic, just the sort of dark, philosophical thriller - with just the right balance of humour and high-adrenaline action - that every Hollywood blockbuster should boast.

But it was only classified as a 12A - meaning even quite little children (and there were a few there) could go alomng if they were accompnied by adults.

I'm not really sure that the British Board of Film Classificatton, who come up with these ratings, should have a role in telling us what we can and can't watch, but they've clearly got a job in helping paremts decide what's approprioate for their kids to see.

And I just can't understand their logic really: some films get 18 ratings that are completely harlemss while others, like this one, are deemed acceptable for kids when they deal with issues, in a pretty scary way, that get right to the heart of the meaning of everyday experience.

I can't see how fucking on screen, swearing or even poking fun at religion or others' beliefs does much harm - but questioning the very nature of reality is about as scary as it gets. I certainly wouldn't recommend this film to kids or anyone with a shaky or vulnerable grip on reality.

Perhaps it's time the BBFC stopped being so prurient, and starte bein a little more philosophical in the way they make decisions.

Labour Party council candidates step down in Queen’s Park

2010-09-11T08:25:00.000+01:00

Usually, the bit at council or community meetings where last time’s minutes get signed off is over in a flash.

But on Wednesday, a meeting of the St James’s Area Local Action Team spent more than half an hour discussing the last meetings minutes – with a bitter row centred on whether they reflected residents’ concerns about the after-Pride street party or not.

One disgruntled resident said: “I’ve had a look through these minutes and, frankly, I don’t recognize the meeting I was at.

“It’s no wonder so many residents don’t come to these meetings when their views aren’t even recorded, let alone acted upon.”

I almost found myself feeling sorry for Chris Cooke, who has been selected by the Labour Party to stand against us Green Councillors in next May’s local election – when the talk afterwards turned to a vote of no confidence in him as chair.

But then I remembered that he used to be a member of the Green Party – and, it is rumoured, the local Tories – so he’s clearly a man who likes local politics but isn’t really sure what he believes in.

And then I heard that the other two Labour candidates for the ward have resigned, finding Chris difficult to work with.

And is if that wasn’t’ enough, I heard he wants to see smoking banned on the outdoor areas of the pier (for the record: I think the existing smoking ban goes quite far enough, and people should certainly be free to smoke outdoors if they so choose).

Chris undoubtedly joins a lot of community groups, but has a bit of a tendency to upset people and, often, walk away: I can only say if it’s true his personality means he’s unpopular with residents and is driving other Labour candidates away I’m glad he decided to leave the Green Party.

Anyway I do wish him well in next year’s election – I hope he manages a good fourth place behind the three Greens who already serve the ward so well (I would say that wouldn’t I!)

Panama: the latest frontline in the fight against climate change?

2010-08-16T07:19:00.000+01:00

Panama could soon be as famous for becoming the latest frontline in the fight against climate change as it is for its canal.

It has emerged (thanks to the excellent and vital work of NGO Minority Rights Group International) that half the 32,000-strong Kuna people are to abandon their now-uninhabitable central American homes in the wake of rising sea levels and increasingly frequent flooding and extreme weather.

The fiercely independent indigenous group is reportedly spending about £5m clearing forests for a new settlement: costs that really should be being met by the international community.

In the short term, relocation in the face of worsening climate change must be facilitated by an internationally-binding funding formula that ensures costs are met by those high-emission countries that are most to blame: principally the US, EU nations, and Australia.

Not only would this be fair, it would create a financial incentive that would focus the efforts of those richer nations with the capacity to fund emissions reductions programmes on actually doing so, perhaps using the globally just principle of 'Contraction and Convergence'.

The Green Ad everyone's talking about - but big media is trying to stop you seeing

2010-08-14T17:25:00.000+01:00

Blink and you might have missed it in the UK media - but there's an election going on in Australia right now - and the Greens are doing fairly well.

Looking at this clip - it's fairly easy to see why: combining the big environmental message (we need to put climate change at the heart of our decision-making) with a social issue (we believe in making dental health free), a liberal 'flag' issue (we support gay marriage), and a foreign relations issue (we would put people and rights at the heart of our immigration and asylum policies) the Australian Greens are portraying themselves as the left-leaning all-rounders of the election - just as we were able to do in the run-up to Caroline Lucas's election as England's first Green MP.

Naturally, the Greens wanted to show this clip again and again - using it as an election ad: but ABC - the 'big media' corporation that owns the rights to the clip, has refused permission for it to be re-shown. I guess the idea of the Greens doing well in elections is always going to ruffle a few feathers in the world of 'big media'.

I agree with Sarah (Palin, that is). No, really.

2010-08-08T13:12:00.000+01:00

Well, you heard it here first.

After years of thinking she's one of the scariest, most stupid and dangerous Conservatives ever to have walked the earth (she makes the Brighton Tories look like cute little puppies), finally, California's upcoming referendum on the legalisation of cannabis has provided the issue over which I agree with Sarah Palin.

Yes, thousands were prepared to say 'I agree with Nick' before it became clear quite how far he was willing to sell out liberal principles for a top job, and most are regretting it now, just a few short weeks later.

Similarly I'm sure it won't be long before I'm lamenting ever having said, and publically too, 'I agree with Sarah'. But, for the moment, and on this issue at least, I do.

As Pride comes to town, The Love Police say 'Everything is OK!'

2010-08-07T13:33:00.000+01:00

As Brighton celebrates with Pride (a carnival that used to be about demanding sexual freedom and human rights but now - thanks to the participation of American Express and, I kid you not, a Nandos Chicken - seems to be more about shopping), here's a montage of street theatre by a group calling itself The Love Police.

It made me smile, but contains a serious message./ I thought it was well worth eight minutes of my life, and I hope, if you do too, you enjoy it and find it inspiring.

Focus turns on Brighton Tories in YouTube row

2010-08-04T19:12:00.000+01:00

Last month I reported on how Green Party councillor Jason Kitcat had been suspended for six months - for trying to make Brighton council a little more transparent by posting clips of some of its meetings on video search site YouTube.

He was given 28 days to appeal against the bizarre-seeming ruling and has now launched just such an appeal: his suspension has been suspended while the Tribunals Service for Local Government Standards in England makes up its mind.

In my earlier report of the incident I mused that perhaps the Tories' enthusiasm for pursuing this particularly nonsensical complaint was simple political gerrymandering: Cllr Kitcat's suspension would change the delicate balance of council politics in the Tories' favour and give them back their majority in most meetings.

But a few weeks on, I wonder if in fact the Tories concerned - Mary Mears, Ted Kemble and Brian Oxley - were actually engaged in trying to boost transparency with an elaborate double-bluff: the media coverage of the original incident has boosted viewings of the clip in question about five-fold.

OK maybe not. To be honest I imagine they were motivated more by the simple fact that shortening clips from webcasts of counci meetings - and posting them on YouTube - is simply beyond their technical abilities, and if they couldn't manage it, they didn't want anyone else doing it either.

Who knows what motivated the original complaint, or how the Tories' complaint, and motivation, will be judged at the Tribunal (scheduled to take place on October 18th - I'll keep you posted).

But in the words of Cllr Kitcat himself:

"The Conservative councillors' pursuit of their complaint against me shows poor judgement. The public have the right to know what is happening in the council meetings they pay for: for the Tories to use a code of conduct complaint to try and block openness and transparency is extraordinarily disappointing."

Some might argue it brings the council into disrepute all by itself.

Tory government serious about boosting tax revenues and making communities safer? Time to legalise weed?

2010-08-04T17:43:00.001+01:00

California could make legal history this autumn when citizens vote on a referendum on ending the prohibition of marijuana and taxing and regulating it, just as the state does with alcohol and nicotine.

I hope Proposition 19 gets the majority support it needs to make the US state one of the first developed economies in the world to recognise that legalisation would boost tax revenues - and make communities safer by removing the criminal underworld from the supply chain.

We keep hearing how our new Tory Government wants to achieve the same ends: boosting tax revenues, cutting spending on policing and improving community safety all at the same time. Well if it's serious, isn't it time we considered doing exactly the same thing here?

The more I thinnk about this one, and talk to others about it, the more perplexing it all seems that it hasn't been done years ago.

Of course smoking weed has its down side, just as alcohol and nicotine do, but most of its negative impacts would be eliminated by better regulation - and taking criminal gangs out of the picture.

The only reason I can think of for not doing so is that many of the legislators at the top of the decision-making tree are benefiting enormously from keeping things exactly the way they are. Can that really be so?

And while you're pondering that one, here's a fantastic cartoon contrasting a world in which cannabis is legal with one (the one we live in) where it isn't.

Privatising the police in Brighton?

2010-07-30T16:13:00.000+01:00

I've just had a remarkable call from local rag the Argus suggesting that one idea identified by senior officers for overcoming the massive cuts faced by Sussex Police might be to get local businesses to sponsor PCSOs and even police officers directly.

Seriously: it has been mooted that companies with spare cash, and even wealthy individuals, could pay for police officers to patrol outside their businesses.

I can hardly think of a worse idea if I try, really: the police officer concerned would hardly be likely to arrest their sponsor for crinimal behaviour now, and those of us without the cash to buy our own privatised police would just have to wait our turn for a response if we became the victim of a crime.

It wouldn't just be raising the spectre of privatising the police - it would be doing it, wholesale.

Decisions would be taken by sponsors, for the benefit of themselves, their employees and their customers, rather than for those in their neighbourhood, let alone society at large. (Sound familiar - isn't this the principle behind academy schools?)

The richest would, effectiveley, buy immmunity from future police investigation - and their own private police force all at once.

I hope it never comes to this - but, actually, the idea of replacing comprehensive schools with privately-owned academies has support of Labour, Tory and Lib-Dem MPs and councillors. We Greens opposed that, and we'll oppose privatising the police too.

But if we remain a lone voice you can expect to see more police in wealthy neighbourhoods, and less in areas suffering deprivation, sooner than you think.

The reality of Tory cuts: police abandon localism in West Sussex

2010-07-29T21:16:00.000+01:00

Today Sussex Police Chief Constable Martin Richards has announced how he is going to manage the massive cuts imposed on the force by the government - £50m over the next five years, on top of millions slashed from their budget's by the previous Labour administration.

In a nutshell, the thin blue line is going to get a lot thinner, as the force is set to abandon localism, especially in West Sussex.

The two divisions managing policing in the county will be merged into one: a super-sized management unit will centralise decisions about policing in an area stretching from Chichester through Bognor and Worthing, north through Haywards Heath and Crawley to East Grinstead.

At the same time, major crime investigations will share resources - and their management - with the Surrey force.

There is a commitment to saving money by cutting carbon emissions by ten per cent each year - something I've been calling for ever since I took up a seat on the police authority in 2007. I hope annual emission reductions at this level can be sustained.

But any savings this delivers won't be anything like enough to rule out police and PCSOs losing their jobs - and the public noticing a real reduction in local police visibility (and therefore risking a reversal of recent decreases in fear of crime that is keeping many vulnerable residents of the city virtual prisoners in their homes after dark).

The truth is this Tory government talks a good line about giving control of police to local communities but these cuts will make the management of local police more remote than ever: coupled with Gov't plans announced earlier this week to replace police authority members representing local communities with a single US-style sheriff representing all of East Sussex, West Sussex and Brighton and Hove, today's announcement really spells the end of locally-delivered policing in much of Sussex.

The anti-theft sandwich bag: new trust-building kit for Sussex Police?

2010-07-28T12:24:00.000+01:00

Last week I spent four days conducting interviews for Independent Custody Visitors - the volunteers who drop in, unannounced, at Sussex Police's privately-run custody centres - to check that the police are following the rules, that detained persons (many of whom will end up being acquitted, or even released without charge) are being treated with respect, and according to the law.

The role is an essential cog in the machine of scrutinising the police, and, broadly, the police themselves very much welcome the visitors, and are happy to take any advice given and sort out most problems on the spot.

Everyone involved recognises that the system helps give the public confidence that everything works as it should do in the brave new world of privately-run suites of cells, ensuring both the police and the detainees have their rights protected.

With the recent death of a woman being held at Worthing custody centre, it could be argued that the scrutiny of the way prisoners are held in Sussex is more important then ever.

Whoever ends up being recruited to perform the roles, I think it's fair to say there's an urgent need to rebuild trust between the visitors, and among the police themselves, in Worthing.

We spent two days there, and found the fridge locked. Everything in the kitchen that could be 'borrowed' was, literally in many cases, bolted down.

It was clear that none of the police staff and officers using the training centre at the police HQ there trusted each other not to pinch their lunch.

Maybe some of theses bags would help!

A slap in the face for small business: Brighton Council to go head-to-head with local PR companies

2010-07-26T21:33:00.002+01:00

I can't imagine Tory Brighton Council's latest money-making wheeze will get past the regulators - but if it does there are serious implications for the future of public sector PR and communications across the country.

It seems the council is to launch its very own PR company and bid for work from other public sector organisations.

Local PR firms and communications professionals are already worrying about the implications of a state-backed competitor entering the market: in theory EU rules designed to protect firms from state-subsidised competitors should block the move but given the Tories' ammbivalence to the rules when it comes to making money out of public service provision I'm sure a loophole will crop up.

The only silver lining for local small businesses who are about to see themselves going head-to-head with Brighton Council's communications unit is that they don't seem to be very good: just last week a senior council officer was telling me how awful it was that the local paper only seemed interested in reporting negative stories about the council.

Well, in my experience, a local media outlet churning out knocking copy about a local council is caused by one thing and one thing only: a poor relationship between the organ concerned and the council''s communications team.

Direct police elections: a recipe for vigliantes, racists and homophobes

2010-07-26T11:23:00.000+01:00

Home Secretary Theresa May is set to unveil her plans to replace police authorities with directly elected or police commissioners today: a move that will cost the taxpayer millions and allow extremists to take control of policing in many of our communities.

I'm all for democracy and accountability of policing, of course, but do we really need another set of elections, just as millions are being slashed from police budgets?

We already elect the majority of members – I, for example, was elected to represent the Queen’s Park area of Brighton before being appointed to Sussex Police Authority – and these are balanced with independent members, including magistrates, lawyers and criminologists. This means the management of the police in Sussex is not dominated by party politics.

Introducing direct elections as the Government has suggested will mean an end to this. All elections to public office in this country are dominated by political parties and police authority elections would be no different. Before long, the appointment of senior police officers would be more about party allegiance than ability to do the job.

This is exactly what we have seen in London, with the last Commissioner Ian Blair resigning not because of a policing failure but a political one – that he did not enjoy the patronage and support of the new mayor. Is this what we want to see here?

Neighbourhood policing in Sussex has been a great success.

People like having a beat officer team to serve their communities, giving our police a human face – and the same one every day.

But just as we should be increasing our budget for neighbourhood policing, the Government has thrown the whole approach into turmoil by slashing existing budgets and proposing an expensive new tier of elections without explaining how they will be paid for. Will the millions of pounds it will cost be found simply by taking officers off our streets?

But perhaps worst of all, direct elections to Sussex Police Authority will allow single-issue campaigners to be elected on the back of vigilantism, racism or homophobia.

I daresay a “No Travellers’ Camp In Brighton” party would pick up a few votes, judging from recent coverage in The Argus, but it would hardly represent the views of the majority and would drown out the voices of our city’s distinct and vulnerable groups and communities.

Of course we need communities to become more involved in decisions about policing. The way to do that is to allow them to participate in spending decisions, with a more participatory style to budgeting.

The reality is that talk of these elections is a smokescreen designed to obscure the fact this Government wants to centralise and politicise decisions about crime, policing and human rights while slashing budgets - and is more committed to saving cash than to giving neighbourhoods any real control over policing.

If we want to make our communities safer we need more money for neighbourhood policing and some spending decisions should be devolved to the communities themselves.

Kissing goodbye to new council homes in Brighton

2010-07-23T12:54:00.000+01:00

The hopes of the 11,500 waiting for a council house in Brighton and Hove receded a little today when it became clear that Government cuts had brought to an end any prospect of building new council-owned homes in the city.

Cash earmarked to help councils fund the building of new homes has been slashed by £450 million - and the scheme closed to new deals.

Brighton and Hove's failure to submit any bids early enough means there will be no new council homes here - creating a perfect storm of future homelessness, as the value of Housing Benefit falls and housing associations' building programmes in financial meltdown.

Bill Randall, the Greens' Convenor on the city Council, warned the move would also hit the city's economy.

“The news will dash the hopes of homeless and poorly-housed people in the city who believed new council homes could offer them a housing lifeline. Tenant groups who championed a new building programme will be deeply disappointed.

“The shortage of good quality and affordable homes in the city is likely to be with us for a long time and jobs will be lost in the building industry. The implications for homelessness apart, the shortage will also damage the city’s economic prospects.”

Coalition to axe environmental watchdog: the greenwash stops here

2010-07-22T20:19:00.001+01:00

The Tory-LibDem coalition seems to have abandoned the notion of running a 'green' Government once and for all with the decision to axe its own environmental watchdog.

David Cameron today has said the Sustainable Development Commission is to be axed - despite its remit being to help the government cut its greenhouse gas emissions and save money by offering policy advice on efficiency savings as well as environmental matters.

The move will save about £3m a year- but cost a great deal more in lost efficiency savings (advice from the SDC has already saved the Government upwards of £10m in reduced energy, water and waste management bills, some say), and anger environmentalists along the way.

Friends of the Earth was quick to condemn the decision, and Green MP Caroline Lucas said the agency was essential if the government was serious about improving its environmental performance.

It was only a few months ago that we were promised the 'greenest government ever'.

Well, as the old joke goes, that was when Cameron was still trying to woo the Lib Dems - he was campaigning then. Now he's won and, it seems, the greenwash stops here.

'Crackpot' Brighton Council to suspend councillor - for posting footage of council meetings on the web

2010-07-21T00:01:00.004+01:00

I meant to blog about this last week, but this really is a journalists' dream yarn: a story that seems to mature, rather than diminsh, with age.

Brighton Council held its first ever standards board panel hearing last week, and it decided to suspend Green Councillor Jason Kitcat for the heinous crime of... wait for it... drawing attention to public council meetings!

Yes, you read it right. After a 21-day period for him to decide whether or not to appeal the decision, Cllr Kitcat will be suspended as a councillor for up to six months, or until he apologises to Tory Geoffrey Theobald for posing a clip of him addressing a city council meeting on the video search engine YouTube.

The move will, of course, leave Regency residents a councillor down, and the Green Group without one of it's finest speakers and value-for-money firebrands.

More importantly, it will give the Tories (who lodged the initial complaint) a working majority with which to foist public service cuts and hikes in charges on those living in the city.

That the decision was taken, effectively, by two councillors, one of whom admitted not having viewed the clip in question (Jeane Lepper), and another (David Watkins) who appeared to be asleep for some of the hearing, just shows how open to political interference is our fragile local democracy.

That the council can over-ride voters' wishes so easily, inappropriately using a standards and complaints system when the ballot box didn't give them the result they sought, is nothing short of a scandal.

If you're interested, here's the clip in question. It shows Tory Councillor Geoffrey Theobald speaking at a council meeting last year.

I have used the footage from the Argus report into the whole fiasco, so I'm pretty sure I'm safe from a similar complaint being made against me for telling the tale!

Brighton Tory proposes putting families on streets to cut housing benefit dependency

2010-07-20T11:41:00.001+01:00

I am rarely surprised by the attitudes of Brighton's Tories: just when I'm beginning to get lulled ito a false sense of security and think that, actually, their hearts at least are in the right places, one of them does something completely mad and quasi-fascist, lke calling for a bike ride to be banned, or declaring van-dwellers to be 'unacceptable' or something. They really are, when it boils down to it, just the nasty party of old.

I had one of these moments on Thursday when, at a public council meeting, cabinet member Maria Caulfield, during a debate on housing benefit, actually proposed ending benefit dependency by withdrawing housing benefit from the poorest in our city, even if that means families end up on the street

During a debate on the Government's plans to cut housing benefit limits (to the extent that, according to housing experts, the benefit will be insufficient to meet rent costs in the private sector by 2020), Green councillor Bill Randall called for the council to formally ask the PM, and the city's MPs, to abandon plans to cut the benefit, and instead work with housing and homelessness charities and the Citizens Advice Bureaux to make sure every family has a secure, affordable, roof over their heads instead.

Maria, all heart as usual, said that while homelessness in the city was falling the costs of housing benefit were more than society could afford, and that she couldn't support Cllr Randall's call to protect the benefit.

In the end she persuaded enough of her fellow Tories and Lib-Dems to scupper the proposal, and it fell.

I can't imagine that's what the folk of Moulsecoomb and Bevendean voted for - I bet they're delighted she's decided to abandon them in favour of seeking a 'safer' Tory seat in next year's election.

Jobs for the boys

2010-07-19T20:20:00.000+01:00

Brighton and Hove City Council has just announced who will get four new £125,000 a year director jobs wielding the knife delivering the Government's public spending cuts in the city.

Green councillors refused to take part in the selection process, arguing that the whole business of re-organising the council at a cost of more than half a million pounds a year (it seems even the job ads cost £14,000 - about as much as an experienced teacher earns in half a year) should wait until after next year's local election - and the full extent of cuts has been revealed.

So far we just don't know what the impact on local services will be - at a council meeting last week we learned that this year's budgets would be reduced by about £3.5 million - but we were given no details at all about which services - or, more importantly, people, would be affected.

Can it really be right to spend about a fifth of that sum on new strategic directors - even without considering the rredundancy cost of the curent directors, none of whom will keep their jpbs?

Local people are still picking up the pieces from the reported £500,000 redundancy package given to the last Chief Executive, Alan McCarthy, who trotted off to a new job running local NHS services after falling out with ever-more-out-of-touch Tory council leader Mary Mears.

But whatever the rights and wrongs of recruiting the new directors now, I can't help noticing that all of them are white, and all of them are male.

I thought the whole point was to buck the Status Quo? Nothing personal: I wish the new directors well in their new jobs, but I can't help thinking the appointments show the life at Brighton Council's King's House HQ will be pretty much the same as it always has been...

Anti-war protestors acquitted

2010-07-03T08:49:00.000+01:00

Great news: Nine anti-war activists have been acquitted of conspiracy to damage the Moulescoomb-based EDO/MBM arms factory after a three week trial at Hove Crown Court.

The judge agreed with the defendants that the £200,000 damage they caused to the EDO/MBM weapons component factory in Moulescoomb was committed in attempt to halt production of weapons being exported illegally.

And as such exports would have meant components from the factory would be likely to have been used by the Israeli army to attack - and even kill - civilians in Gaza, the defendants' actions were entirely justified as an attempt to stop a much larger crime taking place.

The ruling comes on the backof similar judgments in cases relating to damage to UK-made fighter jets being exported to Indonesia - and raises the question of whether the factory'ss days in Brighton are now numbered.

If the courts now accept that components made at the factory seem to be destined for illegal export for use against civilians in an illegal war, perhaps it's time to prosecute those responsible for that instead.

Meanwhile, I hope that Sussex Police and Crown Prosecution Service do some real soul-searching about their reasons for pursuing this case - which many had predicted could only really result in acquittal at the cost of thousands of taxpayers' cash - in the first place.

The case was, after all, pursued at great expense to the public purse, at a time when police budgets are being cut across the board.

All the money wasted on this could have been used to try to defend the neighbourhood policing style which is working well in Brighton and reducing both crime and the fear of crime - if the Tory cuts being imposed from on high aren't going to mean job losses, fewer police and an increase in crime, we're going to need every penny we can get.

New planning guidance could see ban on fast-food outlets near Brighton schools

2010-07-01T00:03:00.001+01:00

Planners in Brighton and Hove have received a new set of instructions today after a court judgement earlier this month overturned planning permission for a fast-food take-away yards from a London school with a 'healthy eating programme'.

The court found that a school's desire to improve the nutritional welfare of its students should have been viewed as a 'material consideration' - and the application for a fast-food joint turned down.

Coming hot on the heels of a decision by Bristol's planners to reject a plan for a newpower facility as its use would require the unsustainable import of biomass from around the world, it looks as though the environmental sustainability and ethics of planning decisions could be starting to have as much importance in the shape of urban communities as economic factors - and the occasional dodgy deals between developers and planners - have in the past.

I hope so: the new guidance issued to members of Brighton and Hove's planning committee shouldn't take too long to filter down into decision-making: shame this sort of thinking didn't prevail when the bizarre decision was made to allow a new supermarket to be built on the site of the community garden in Lewes Road.

Alas though it won't have any impact on McDonald's, should the rumours of their impending arrival in St James's St prove well-founded: the site at the centre of reports already has planning permission to operate as a restaurant, so they won't need to ask anyone's permission anyway.

Labour's crocodile tears over closure of Brighton community garden

2010-06-30T10:42:00.002+01:00

The Lewes Road community garden closed once and for all on Monday as activists dismantled the site and handed the keys back to the developer, so he can build a Tesco, a betting shop, and seven flats there.

It's a sad day for all of us - not just those of us who use the garden, but for all of us who want stronger, empowered communities, more green space, fewer supermarkets - and less traffic.

The sad truth is the law of the land and the political and commercial elites that have always run this country will always rule in favour of a development and an enhancement of so-called 'free' multi-national trade over local communities and anyone who advocates local control and 'living lightly'.

I do find it absolutely amazing that Labour Party activist Tom French has been claiming that it is the Greens who have allowed this to happen.

Few governments have been so 'pro' allowing the onslaught of 'big business' in our communities as the last Labour government - and that's not just a national observation, but a local one too.

Remember the privately-drafted Retail Study for the city drawn up (at great cost to the local taxpayer) in 2006, last time Labour councillors were in power here?

It called for new shops and supermarkets to spring up all over Brighton and Hove, covering a total area requivalent to NINE new Churchill Squares.

The sad truth is Labour remains the party of big business, not local communities, when their interests clash, and its activists' tears over the loss of the community garden are of the crocodile variety.

Tesco declares war on Brighton?

2010-06-30T10:06:00.000+01:00

With Tesco in the news for being 'anti-Brighton' after it made the factual observation that it was cheaper to holiday in Bulgaria than here, I thought the time was right for a return to one of my favourite clips by the King of political satire, Armando Ianucci. From the excellent Time Trumpet, it tells the story of what happens when Tesco really declares war on a community.

After BP disaster, oil exploration off UK's South Coast hots up

2010-06-29T12:43:00.001+01:00

The environmental and social catastrophe of BP's ongoing oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico hardly needs more description.

Many thousands of commentators have shown how the disaster is destroying local economies and unique cultures as well as devastating already threatened ecosystems.

The usually on-the-ball Naomi Klein has written of how all of this is, perhaps, just the inevitable result of an ongoing 'battle' between human society and global ecosystems (or nature, if you like).

Ever eager to find a way to make money from anything at all, the bookies are already offering odds on a range of outcomes: which endangered species will be made extinct first, for example? (Current favourite is the Kemp's Ridley Turtle)

BP has announced its direct costs have already risen above $2bn, and the firm has agreed a compensation package of some $20bn.

You'd expect all of this to lead to change in the law: either the introduction of a new international crime of ecocide to put CEOs of companies responsible for this sort of mess behind bars, or, intriguingly, a 'three-strike-and-your-out' rule that would dismantle any company that repeatedly broke social or environmental laws

At the very least, you'd think the oil companies would be shying away from new undersea oil exploration ventures while they work out the long-term implications of the BP rig explosion.

But exactly the opposite appears to be the case. Green Party Euro-MP Keith Taylor has today warned that oil exploration off our south coast is hotting up, with one Australian firm alone, Norwest, reported to have found seven new sites in the 'Wessex Basin'.

We know what the alternatives are - and are already investing in large-scale off-shore wind turnine 'grids' in exactly this area.

Wiser people than I have made two compelling observations about the BP disaster: first, that oil-damaged marshes, habitats and beaches may take generations to recover, if they ever do, and secondly, that when a wind-turbine fails, the cost is likely to be a splash.

Let's hope we learn from events 'over the pond' - and allow no new oil exploration (let alone drilling) off the coast of the UK.

Meanwhile, Brighton Tories try to pull plug on local business

2010-06-23T22:07:00.000+01:00

Worrying news: today the St James's Area Action Group heard that a voluntary scheme by which city centre stores each chip in to a £2.5 million pot to fund Christmas Lights, secrity patrols, clean-ups and even marketing is under threat - thanks to a last minute council decision to withdraw a grant of just £25,000.

Yes, you heard it right - seed mony that could bring in 100 times its value for local businesses has fallen victim to the first round of Tory cuts - a decision that could force some small businesses to close their doors and speed up the corporate take-over of our central shopping areas.

Already it is rumoured that multi-national bogeyman McDonalds could be coming to St James's Street. (Just today the firm has been fingered in the US for fulling childhood obesity - you couldn't make this stuff up!)

Remember 'Be Local, Buy Local'? It seems the Tories who run Brighton and Hove City Council don't.

Greens pull plug on Brighton Council privatisations

2010-06-23T09:07:00.000+01:00

Yesterday's budget was, largely, a pointless exercise in austerity which will see almost everyone worse off - and living in a city with fewer, and underfunded, public services.

Child benefit and public sector pay have both been frozen - representing after-interest cuts, VAT will rise to 20% - a tax hike that will affect the least able to afford it most - corporation tax is down, tax-setting powers have been removed from councils, and so on.

In short, it will see unemployment worsen, prices and the cost of living rise, benefits cut, taxes increase and the wide-scale privatisation of public services.

Almost everyone (except, perhaps, the beneficiaries of a new 'millionaire's allowance' which will see the first £5,000,000 in profits from share speculation taxed at a lower rate - yes, really - you couldn't make this up) will be worse off today than they were yesterday.

For different reasons perhaps, two people waking up with a bit of a headache today will be Brighton and Hove's very own privatisation champion, Tory City Council leader Mary Mears, and the man charged with delivering her vision, council chief executive John Barradell.

The Green Party councillors have refused to take part in the recruitment of four new directors (to be paid £125,00 a year each) to oversee the privatisation of council services across the city.

The truth is the 'intelligent commissioning' model of running the council - under which the council would stop directly doing anything, instead running a tender process for a private company or charity to take on the job instead.

Let's be clear. 'Intelligent Commissioning' isn't very intelligent - and 'privatisation' is a much clearer word to describe it than 'commissioning'.

It will end up wasting money (you've only got to look at the £600,000 a year its bosses will receive just for managing the process), removing democratic accountability from the delivery of public services - and collecting the taxes needed to pay for them - see pay and conditions for those working in the public sector fall, worsen services, especially in the care sector.

But perhaps the biggest problems facing Mary's vision is that's it's completely unviable anyway. Recruitment professional say there just aren't enough people out there who know how to actually do 'commissioning' - and third sector and voluntary groups say they are too busy working out the impacts of cuts on their budgets and workloads to take part in tendering process at the moment.

And as for the timing! To spend more than half a million pounds a year on fat-cat salaries for new 'blue skies thinking' directors (they won't, after all, have and departments to run - they'll all have been 'outsourced') as public sector workers demonstrate after being told they'll have their par frozen is just rubbing it in.

It reminds me of last time Mary Mears made the headlines for her unsympathetic approach to cutting pay: her cartoon depiction in Private Eye after she announced budget cuts while on a cruise.

The process will happen - with the support of the Tory, Labour and Lib-Dem councillors our refusal to endorse the vision - or the recruitment - won't come off the rails.

But the council constitution means we aren't allowed to discuss even changes of this significance in a council meeting (it's just a matter for the Tory cabinet and the Chief Executive) - so at least this gives us an opportunity to make our position clear.

You never know - if the Labour councillors find some bottle - the whole thing could come crashing down quite quickly.And if not, at least when it all goes wrong, we'll have done what we could to protect public jobs and services here in Brighton and Hove. In large measure, I think that's our job as councillors.

Sussex Police pledge to stamp out illegal hunting once and for all

2010-06-21T13:02:00.001+01:00

There has been much public debate about the future of the Hunting Act, the legislation which bans the barbaric practice of hunting foxes with hounds.

Although most people agree that the law really must remain on the statute books, some Tory MPs believe it should be repealed, and that hunting should be allowed once again.

I'm delighted that both Brighton MPs Caroline Lucas and Simon Kirby have pledged opposition to blood sports, and will oppose repealing the legislation when David Cameron eventually allows a 'free vote' on the matter in parliament, which he has promised to do.

But all this is fairly academic - the law is riddled with loopholes and has never been properly used anyway. Not a single hunter has ever been prosecuted under the act in Sussex, despite ample evidence that illegal fox hunting continues.

Part of the problem has been the police, who have viewed their role as one of preserving public order (that is preventing the hunters and the hunt monitors from beating each other up) rather than one of stopping the hunts.

But all that could be about to change. After I raised my concerns about the way hunts were being policed at a meeting of the Sussex-wide Neighbourhood Policing Scrutiny Committee last year, the police have adopted a new policy on hunting.

In short, they promise to fully investigate the five hunts operating in the county, and to prioritise stopping all wildlife crime.

A Chief Inspector will head the work, and more than 70 officers have already been trained up in how to prevent and detect wildlife crime, including spotting - and stopping - illegal hunting.

The new policy was presented to the Neighbourhood Policing Scrtuiny Committee last week. You can see the report here, and view a webcast of the debate here (about 1 hour 27 minutes in - follow the link from the 'index points' menu).

The proof of the new policy will, of course, be in the eating. I hope we see a complete end to the illegal hunting of foxes here in Sussex, any hunters who persist prosecuted, and the hunt monitors who selflessly give up their free time in support of the law and our wildlife afforded the repect they are due.

None of this is before time: it comes as a new hunting season is due to get under way next month or so, and just weeks after the Tory government appointed the bloodthirsty and enthusiastic hunter Nick Herbert to the job of policing minister.

Mr Herbert, who used to work for the British Field Sports Society and reportedly set up his own hunt while a student at Oxford will have to decide whether, in his new job, to back the law - and the police's decision to take it seriously - or not.

Brighton community groups gear up for yet another David v Goliath battle with Tesco

2010-06-21T10:36:00.001+01:00

Just months after walking away from a planned - but deeply unpopular - retail complex in the London Road area supermarket giant Tesco is facing another David v Goliath battle with Brighton community groups over its plan to build a superstore on the site of a community garden in Lewes Road.

Green councillors, local MP Caroline Lucas and regional Green Euro-MP Keith Taylor have called for a boycott of the supermarket chain after developers Alburn Ltd launched a court bid today to evict community groups from the garden.

Local councillor Pete West summed up residents' feeling perfectly, saying:

“Local people don’t want or need a Tesco, and I am deeply opposed to plans for yet another supermarket in a road that already has a Co-op supermarket, a Sainsbury’s, a Spar and a very good Turkish mini-market.

“The last thing the Lewes Road needs is another supermarket that nobody has asked for. I am asking residents to show Tesco that a new store would be a failure, by pledging to boycott it.”

Local MP Caroline Lucas has urged Communities Secretary Eric Pickles to do all he can to stop the building of yet another supermarket on the site and has called for a competition test to halt the unchecked growth of super-markets and the devastating impact it has on local businesses, local communities and consumer choice.

In a letter to Mr Pickles and Planning Minister Greg Clarke she said:

“The Competition Commission concluded that the dominance of any one retailer in a local area has a negative impact on consumer choice. It recommended a competition test to stop supermarkets opening a new store in places where they already control the local market. I am disappointed the Government is now delaying implementation of the competition test.”

Former ward councillor Keith Taylor, now an MEP for the South-East region, added his voice to the campaign:

"In my time as ward councillor I was happy to welcome the community garden, and negotiated with the site owner to allow continued use of the site.

"In its year of operation the garden has been a focal point for developing a real community spirit and has reflected the wonderful diversity and energy of the city.

"I don't think anybody wants another supermarket here and now that eviction is on the cards I support the garden as much as ever."

The 'guerilla gardeners', who created the garden on the disused site of a former petrol station just over a year ago, also have an unlikely ally in Tory Brighton City Council leader Mary Mears.

Unlikely because, when it comes to defending communities from powerful vested interests, she usually sides with the crypto-fascist voices of unreason. Just last week, for example, she criticised Sussex Police for failing to ban a cyclists protest designed to darw attention to bikers' vulnerabilities from cars, and for failing to arrest travellers and van dwellers, whose lifestyle choices she deems 'unacceptable'.

She said: "The issue of multinationals and their impact on local economies is one we cannot afford to ignore."

This might be the first, and perhaps the last, time I think she's spot on. But every little helps.

Fast food - Italian style

2010-06-12T11:24:00.000+01:00

The eagle-eyed among you (well those readers with time on their hands anyway) may have noticed that this blog was silent for a few days last week. I've been in Italy, celebrating a friend's wedding on the North-West coast, and seeing for myself the way the Italians are preparing for the World Cup, and sampling some of the wonderful graffiti on the streets - it's much more about politics and a lot less about tagging.

Anyway, I could go on all day about Italy really, but I won't: instead I thought I'd share some of the most mind-boggling photos I took. In Pisa, just yards from the leaning tower, I came across this 'Automatic Restaurant', where you could buy two courses of pasta, pizzas, drinks and processed desserts (check out the menu) - all from machines and with no human interaction whatsoever.

I don't know what amazes me more really - that someone has invented a way of eating that reduces the experience to an exchange of money with a machine and then a quick intake of processed calories on the hoof - or that I encountered it in Italy, the home of the Slow Food movement and, for some, the spiritual home of Europe's culinary culture itself.

Cameroon to win World Cup 2010 - you heard it here first

2010-06-12T10:27:00.004+01:00

OK, everyone's talking about the World Cup, so here's my tuppence'worth.

Pele's prediction that an African team will win the tournament before the end of the 20th Century will come true just 10 years late.

England will go all the way: they'll beat the USA (and win Group C), then Australia in the next round, Ghana in the Quarter Final and Cote d'Ivoire in the Semi.

But when they get to the final, they'll lose to 1990 superstars Cameroon, whose route to victory will see them win Group E, then coolly dispatch New Zealand, Denmark and South Africa.

The other losing Quarter Finalists will be Greece and North Korea, and other the remaining second round qualifyers will be Nigeria, Mexico, Algeria, Paraguay, Spain and Chile.

OK, maybe not. This prediction is based on who I'd like to see win each match, for all sorts of (mainly irrational) reasons, none of which has anything to do with footballing prowess. But if it happens, remember, you heard it here first.

Brighton's public spending cuts in action: six figure payouts for former Labour MPs

2010-06-11T13:45:00.001+01:00

As public spending cuts begin to bite, and millions are wiped from the budgets of Brighton and Hove City Council and Sussex Police Authority, it has been announced that the city's former Labour MPs are to get tax-free lump-sum bonuses of about £100,000 to make unemployment a little easier to bear.

It seems the three departing Labour MPs - two of whom retired rather than face defeat at the polls but all three of whom saw their seats won by candidates from other parties (one Green and two Tories) - are to receive so-called 'golden handshakes' of more than £110,000 between them on top of their generous publicly-funded pensions, the first £90,000 of which comes totally tax-free.

It seems as though the parliamentary authorities just don't get it. To paraphrase the late great Bill Hicks it'd be a little easier for us to tighten our belts if they were around some of these former MPs' necks.

Meanwhile the city council is to press on with yet another reorganisation which will see four new directors hired on salaries of about £125,000 a year for overseeing wide-spread privatisation of our public services and doing some 'blue skies thinking' (they won't actually have departments to run - that's the whole point of the reorganisation).

Am I alone in thinking this sort of reorganisation, with all the costs it entails, should wait, at least until our new Tory government reveals the full extent of local spending cuts in its Comprehensive Spending Review due in September?

John Barradell, the council's Chief Executive, has already apologised to rock fans after the advert for the jobs sat under the wry strapline 'Status Quo fans need not apply' (my sides are splitting) - when will the community groups who are going to see their grants cut, and the public sector workers who will see thier jobs lost, get their apology?

If you fancy checking out the advert (and no, despite the headline it really isn't a joke) - or even fancy applying for one of the jobs, you can see it in full here.

Brighton Kemptown's new Tory MP is already stirring up xenophobia

2010-06-09T13:03:00.000+01:00

I had the pleasure of getting to know Brighton Kemptown's new Tory MP Simon Kirby a little during the election campaign.

He always seemed an honest, straight-talking kind of guy - albeit one I didn't agree with very often.

But being a straight talker can be a double-edged kind of quality: it means when you insult someone, you can't talk your way out of it.

And when you choose to highlight the Euro-sceptic suspicions of Brighton residents by referring to an invasion of the city by the French over 500 years ago, as Mr Kirby did in his maiden speech in parliament, it sounds more like stirring up nationalistic sentiments rather than reflecting them.

How many of us really think the historical military relationships within Europe half a millennium ago are relevant to foreign relations today?

There's something to be said for taking the long view, but surely this is going too far?

Of course there's a good case to argue that we should all be given a say on future relations between the UK and the rest of the EU.

The Lisbon Treaty represented a real transfer from residents and elected representatives to unelected bureaucrats and multi-national businesses.

A single currency serving different countries and areas with wildly differing costs of living and fiscal policies is a pretty silly idea too.

But I hope if and when we do get a referendum on the future of EU-UK relations we can all stick to arguing about the economics and politics of whatever's being proposed, and not promote the kind of nationalism and xenophobia that comes of talking up ancient battles and long-forgotten wars.

More adverts and visual clutter - coming to a Brighton landmark near you soon

2010-05-28T15:57:00.000+01:00

Adverts and hoardings could be plastered in historic locations across the city in a desperate bid to raise cash to fund tax cuts, thanks to the latest ruling of Tory-run Brighton and Hove City Council.

A report considered by a meeting of yesterday's council cabinet said that new adverts - and sponsoring attractions (like stretches of our beach) could raise 'significant' sums of money.

And mindful of the Con-Dem government's plans to impose a local tax freeze on the council - as well to cut funding for services like planning enforcement, highway maintenance and noise nuisance patrols - the cabinet was quick to press ahead with the scheme.

Of course no-one likes paying taxes - and Council Tax should be scrapped in favour of a fairer system to ensure those who can most afford it fund local services - but cluttering our public spaces (and our mental environment) with adverts just isn't the answer.

It will make Brighton and Hove a less attractive city - and will exhort more vulnerable residents to spend money they haven't got on stuff they don't need, fuelling the debt-and-consumption based economy which caused the problems leading to public service cuts in the first place.

The irony of the fact that, just a few weeks ago, the Tory Council rejected a bid to allow a community centre to fund its services through placing an advert on one of its walls is incredible - it seems the visual clutter is alright if it meets financial holes left by tax cuts and Government borrowing, but not when it is going to fubnd community groups.

I think the council should take a leaf out of Sao Paulo's book. The conservative administration there recently went in the other direction entirely, and banned advertising hoardings in the city altogether.

Government plans for new academies give me the willies - both as a parent and as a politician

2010-05-27T17:58:00.000+01:00

The Con-Dem Government's enthusiasm for one of the scarier New Labour policies - the transformation of state schools into privately-run 'academies' fills me with despair.

As a local councillor I know that families want more and better chools, close to their copmmuninities, and, crucially, they want a say in how they are run.

Most don't want to get directly involved, of course, instead they want democratic accountability: they want to know that a public authority is responsible for standards and the way their childrens' school is run, as well as setting the overall admissions policy that makes sure every local child has access to a good local school.

If they don't like the decisions that are taken, they can, ultimately, vote to make sure the councilllors responsible for these decisions are booted out of office.

But the logic of academies and so-called 'free schools' turns that on its head: taking power away from parents, teachers and local councils, and handing it to sponsors - that is, anyone with a few hundred thousands to spend setting up a school in their own (not the pupils') interests.

Al this wouldn't be so bad if it improved performance - but the evidence suggests that it doesn't guarantee any such thing. Many academies end up failing.

As a parent of a six-year-old whose excellent primary school 'feeds' directly into Falmer High School - soon to become an academy - I worry that stamndards will fall, and that the school's specialisms, business and sport, will be completely irrelevant to his interests and educational needs.

Obviously, things change - and I really hope I'm proved wrong about Falmer, but at the moment I just can't imagine wanting him to go to school there.

The Green Party has always spoken in favour of greater freedom for the school to decide how it is run and the school curriculum.

But this does not and must not mean putting the running of the school into the hands of a private sponsor who may know nothing or very little about education, and taking the power away from parents and teachers who have little representation on the governing body at an academy.

Academies can see principals paid in excess of £120,000 whilst there is a high turnover of valued and committed staff lower down the pay scale as they are invited to reapply for their jobs on different pay scales.

Time and again Greens and others have asked why the freedoms and funding attached to academies cannot be given without the strings of creeping privatisation and millionaire sponsors attached. Yet no answer is given.

The Greens' Education spokesperson, local councillor Rachel Fryer, sums it up well:

“With the proposals of up to 25% cuts across local authorities, inevitably affecting front-line staff including teachers, we could be facing the situation of having new buildings without the teachers to go in them.

Let’s give the money directly to schools through greater investment, trusting schools and teachers to know the best way to spend money to improve education."

Green MP calls for a cross-party move towards a 'zero-carbon' UK

2010-05-27T16:22:00.002+01:00

I promise to talk about something else soon, but today I couldn't help but reflect briefly on Caroline Lucas's Maiden Speech in the House of Commons.

A lot of people have been waiting a long time for the first speech in the house of commons by a Green Party MP: it came this afternoon, and didn't disappoint.

Touching on the history of both Brighton and The Green Party Dr Lucas straddled the line of being a great constituency MP, by talking about some of the big issues facing the city, the high level of public sector unemployment, for example, and the transport and housing inequalities we face, and a great party leader, by promoting the Greens' wider agenda.

She ended by doing what no MP has ever had the courage to do before: calling for all parliamentarians to put their party differences to one side and work together to tackle the looming environmental crisis by working towards a zero-carbon economy within a decade.

Blimey.

Anyway, here's the text. if I can find a video or audio file later I'll post that here too, for posterity if nothing else.

Mr Speaker

I am most grateful to you for calling me during today’s debate.

The environment is a subject dear to my heart, as I’m sure you know, and I’ll return to it in a moment.

I think anyone would find their first speech in this chamber daunting, given its history and traditions, and the many momentous events it has witnessed.

But I have an additional responsibility, which is to speak not only as the new Member of Parliament for Brighton Pavilion, but also as the first representative of the Green Party to be elected to Westminster.

You have to go back several decades, to the election of the first Nationalist MPs in Scotland and Wales, to find the last maiden speech from a new national political party.

And perhaps a better comparison would be those first Socialist and Independent Labour MPs, over a century ago, whose arrival was seen as a sign of coming revolution.

When Kier Hardie made his maiden speech to this House, after winning the seat of West Ham South in 1892, there was an outcry.

Because instead of frock coat and top hat, he wore a tweed suit and deerstalker. It’s hard to decide which of these choices would seem more inappropriate today.

But what Kier Hardie stood for now seems much more mainstream.

Progressive taxation, votes for women, free schooling, pensions and abolition of the House of Lords.

Though the last of these is an urgent task still before us, the rest are now seen as essential to our society.

What was once radical, even revolutionary, becomes understood, accepted and even cherished.

In speaking today, I am helped by an admirable tradition – that in your first speech to this House, you should refer to your constituency and to your predecessor.

David Lepper, who stood down at this election after thirteen years service as Member for Brighton Pavilion, was an enormously hard-working and highly-respected Member whose qualities transcend any differences of Party. I am delighted to have this chance to thank him for his work on behalf of the people of Brighton.

It is also a great pleasure to speak about Brighton itself. It is, I am sure, well-known to many Members, if only from Party conferences.

My own Party has not yet grown to a size to justify the use of the Brighton Centre, although I hope that will change before long.

But I can say to honourable members who are not familiar with it, that it is one of the UK’s premier conference venues; and there are proposals to invest in it further to help ensure that Brighton retains its status as the UK’s leading conference and tourism resort

There are also the attractions of the shops and cafes of the Lanes and North Laine, the Pier and of course the Royal Pavilion itself, which gives its name to the constituency.

And beyond the immediate boundaries of the constituency and the city, there is the quietly beautiful countryside of the South Downs and the Sussex Weald

Brighton has always had a tradition of independence – of doing things differently. It has an entrepreneurial spirit, making the best of things whatever the circumstances, and enjoying being ahead of the curve.

We see this in the numbers of small businesses and freelancers within the constituency, and in the way in which diversity is not just tolerated, or respected, but positively welcomed and valued.

You have to work quite hard to be a “local character” in Brighton.

We do not have a single dominant employer in Brighton. As well as tourism and hospitality, we have two universities, whose students make an important cultural, as well as financial, contribution to the city.

There are also a large number of charities, campaigning groups and institutes based there, some local, others with a national or international reach, such as the Institute of Development Studies, all of which I will work to support in my time in this place.

Many of my constituents are employed in the public and voluntary sectors. They include doctors and teachers, nurses and police officers, and others from professions that do not always have the same level of attention or support from the media, or indeed from politicians.

But whatever the role – social workers, planning officers, highway engineers or border agency staff – we depend upon them.

I’m sure that members on all sides would agree that all those who work for the State should be respected and their contribution valued. In a time of cuts, with offhand comments about bureaucrats and pencil-pushers, that becomes yet more important.

There is also a Brighton that is perhaps less familiar to honourable members. The very popularity of the City puts pressure on transport and housing and on the quality of life.

Though there is prosperity, it is not shared equally. People are proud of Brighton, but they believe that it can be a better and fairer place to live and work.

I pledge to everything I can in this place to help achieve that, with a particular focus on creating more affordable, more sustainable housing.

Brighton was once the seat of the economist Henry Fawcett who, despite his blindness, was elected there in 1865. Shortly afterwards he married Millicent Garrett, later the leader of the suffragists, a movement he himself had supported and encouraged.

So he lent his name to the Fawcett Society, which is still campaigning for greater women’s representation in politics.

The task of ensuring that Parliament better reflects the people that it represents remains work in progress – and as the first woman elected in Brighton Pavilion, this is work that I will do all that I can do advance.

I said when I began that I found this occasion daunting.

Perhaps the most difficult task is to say a few words about the latest radical move that the people of Brighton have made – that is, to elect the first Green MP to Parliament.

It has been a long journey.

The Green Party traces its origins back to 1973, and the issues highlighted in its first Manifesto for a Sustainable Society – including security of energy supply, tackling pollution, raising standards of welfare and striving for steady state economics – are even more urgent today.

If our message had been heeded nearly 40 years ago, I like to think we would be much closer to the genuinely sustainable economy that we so urgently need, than we currently are today.

We fielded fifty candidates in the 1979 general election as the Ecology Party, and began to win seats on local councils. Representation in the European Parliament and the London Assembly followed.

Now, after nearly four decades of the kind of work on doorsteps and in council chambers which I am sure honourable members are all too familiar, we have more candidates and more members, and now our first MP.

A long journey.

Too long, I would say.

Politics needs to renew itself, and allow new ideas and visions to emerge.

Otherwise debate is the poorer, and more and more people will feel that they are not represented.

So I hope that if, and when, other new political movements arise, they will not be excluded by the system of voting. Reform here, as in other areas, is long-overdue.

The chance must not be squandered. Most crucially, the people themselves must be given a choice about the way their representatives are elected.

And in my view, that means more than a referendum on the Alternative Vote – it means the choice of a genuinely proportional electoral system.

Both before the election and afterwards, I have been asked the question: what can a single MP hope to achieve? I may not be alone in facing that question.

And since arriving in this place, and thinking about the contribution other members have made over the years, I am sure that the answer is clear, that a single MP can achieve a great deal.

A single MP can contribute to debates, to legislation, to scrutiny.

Work that is valuable, if not always appreciated on the outside.

A single MP can speak up for their constituents.

A single MP can challenge the executive. I am pleased that the government is to bring forward legislation to revoke a number of restrictions on people’s freedoms and liberties, such as identity cards.

But many restrictions remain. For example, control orders are to stay in force. Who is to speak for those affected and for the principle that people should not be held without charge, even if it is their own homes?

House arrest is something we deplore in other countries. I hope through debate we can conclude that it has no place here either.

A single MP can raise issues that cannot be aired elsewhere.

Last year Honourable Members from all sides of the House helped to shine a light on the actions of the international commodities trading group Trafigura, and the shipping of hazardous waste to the Ivory Coast.

There was particular concern that the media in this country were being prevented from reporting the issues fully and fairly.

This remains the case, for new legal actions concerning Trafigura have been launched in the Dutch courts, and are being reported widely in other countries, but not here.

Finally, I would like to touch on the subject of today’s debate.

I have worked on the causes and consequences of climate change for most of my working life, first with Oxfam – for the effects of climate change are already affecting millions of people in poorer countries around the world – and then for ten years in the European Parliament.

But if we are to overcome this threat, then it is we in this chamber who must take the lead.

We must act so that the United Kingdom can meet its own responsibilities to cut the emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that are changing our climate, and encourage and support other countries to do the same.

This House has signed up to the 10:10 Campaign – 10% emissions reductions in 2010. That’s very good news. But the truth is that we need 10% emission cuts every year, year on year, until we reach a zero carbon economy.

And time is running short. If we are to avoid irreversible climate change, then it is this Parliament that must meet this historic task.

That gives us an extraordinary responsibility – and an extraordinary opportunity.

Because the good news is that the action that we need to tackle the climate crisis is action which can improve the quality of life for all of us – better, more affordable public transport, better insulated homes, the end of fuel poverty, stronger local communities and economies, and many more jobs.

I look forward to working with Members from all sides of the House on advancing these issues.

Green MP's Alternative Queen's Speech - and the logic of entryism

2010-05-25T13:11:00.000+01:00

Members of the Green Party agreed to support an 'entryist' approach to targeting efforts at ensuring the country's first Green Party MP was elected to parliament earlier this month - and, of course, the approach worked and Caroline Lucas was duly elected as MP for Brighton Pavilion.

The logic of entryism is really very simple: boost the profile of the party in the shape of one of our most passionate and articulate advocates, in this case party leader Caroline Lucas, and hope that the increased knowledge of the party, and our values and abilities - not to mention our alectability - and see more and more Green MPs elected to join her.

I'm as sorry as anyone else that, here in Brighton Kemptown, I've now got a Tory MP on the form of local businessman Simon Kirby, but I hope that now the Greens have proven, once and for all, that the Greens can beat Labour, Tory and Lib-Dem candidates, I really believe we can elect a Green MP here next time.

I hope I get the job, but of course I'll back whoever the party selects to be its candidate.

But the logic rests on the ability of our single MP to catch the public - and the media's - attention.

So far, she's doing a pretty good job, and I thought I'd share with you her latest success: getting Channel Four news to broadcast her 'Alternative Queen's Speech'.

As the real Queen outlined the 22 bills that will put yesterday's public sector cuts into practice, Caroline argues that 'you can't cut your way out of a recession' - that public sector jobs need protecting - and that we should scrap Trident, and war, to save money while making the world a safer place.

Here it is.

Happiness in the workplace?

2010-05-18T11:51:00.000+01:00

Today I received an email from mental health advocacy charity Mind about their new campaign: 'Put on a Happy Face' - designed to get employers to take their responsibilities for staff welfare seriously.

According to the campaign - backed by this superb video - workplace stress costs British businesses some £26bn each year.

Managers, Mind argues, can prevent much of this by encouraging staff to address stress earlier - and to stop 'putting on a happy face' when things get too much.

Put on a happy face from Mind Charity on Vimeo.

Of course, I hope the campaign is effective, both at improving wellbeing at work and reducing the financial and social costs of workplace stress.

But, for me, the costs to businesses of failing to promote their employees happiness and wellbeing is one of the least troubling aspects of all this unhappiness.

No - I can't help thinking that work shouldn't be how we define ourselves, or measure our success, at all.

Like housing, food, companionship and freedom, I think happiness should be one of the core components of a good life - and reducing costs to business is quite incidental. where it contributes to these goals, great. Where it doesn't, I couldn't care less.

If good jobs promote happy citizens and help achieve these ends, great - but if they don't I'm not sure the job (or the business) is worth having in the first place.

Looking after employees' welfare shouldn't be about saving businesses cash, it should be a fundamental legal requirement.

The new economics foundation, a progressive think-tank, has published widely on the subject of how the economy should be more focused on boosting national happiness rather than national wealth, and has come up with a simple guide to reducing stress - and improving well-being.

Interestingly, none of its conclusions have much to do with the world of work.

So, if you're looking for a to-do list designed to improve your happiness, do give them a try:

(i) Connect - have more interaction with fellow human beings
(ii) Be active - a healthy body is a prerequisite for a healthy mind
(iii) Take notice - 'Be Curious. Take notice of the beautiful' Hey, and the ugly!
(iv) Keep learning - 'Learning encourages social interaction and increases self-esteem and feelings of competency'.
(v) Give - 'Look out as well as in'. Do something nice for a friend, or a stranger. Join a community group as a volunteer.

This last one calls to mind one of my favourite hippy-dippy bullshit quotes of all time, from Shantideva's 'The way of the Bodhisattva':

All the joy the world contains
Has come through wishing happiness for others
All the misery the world contains
Has come through wanting pleasure for oneself

Millionaires in the cabinet?

2010-05-17T14:55:00.001+01:00

As David Cameron announced his new cabinet this week I picked up a 'tweet' observing that about three quarters of them were millionaires.

I sent the message on, as you do, and two things immediately became clear:

(1) No-one had really done the research, and I just couldn't find a comprehensive list of how many members of our new Tory government really were picked from among the super-rich, and

(2) The observation proved extremely controversial, with many expressing shock and horror at how unrepresentative cabinet members' wealth made them - and a couple saying exactly the opposite, making the point that being a millionaire is a measure of success, and we should celebrate the appointment of so many successful politicians in our government.

Personally, I couldn't agree with this final point less: being rich isn't the same as being successful - countless studies have shown that, actually, well-being and health are far more likely to be the measures we use when we measure our own success and are more accurate measures of everyone else's too.

Being wealthy does make people happy, and does buy access to the best health-care - but the law of diminishing returns ensures that, once you've reached a fairly low threshold of wealth, and are able to meet most of your real needs, this is less true for every extra pound in your pocket.

The argument that having a cabinet stacked with millionaires makes it pretty unrepresentative of the population in general is, to my mind at least, far more true.

Of course you could argues that it just doesn't make any difference to the way a cabinet member makes decisions, but when it comes to making cuts in public services surely the personal perception of how much difference a few quid here or there makes to someone is bound to affect the way decision-makers think.

Here's a simple example: one of the first things the new cabinet did was cut its own pay by 5% - roughly £7,000 a year each. That sounds a lot - although it won't make much imact of the deficit, it seems like a grand symbolic gesture that the cuts will come from the top first.

But an annual pay cut of £7,000 for a millionaire is the equivalent of taking an annula pay cut of about £7 a year - or 14p a week - for someone living in a rented flat but with savings of about £1,000: not such a grand gesture after all!

Anyway, how true is it anyway?

Well, there are 23 members of the cabinet. I've listed them below, with a simple yes or no according to whether they appear to be millionaires or not. My sources are varied, but are based on various articles (mostly wikipedia) and lists published over the last two years available online. If any reader has better information, do please share it! I don't promise that my figures are absolutely correct, so I'll publish any corrections or different interpretations I receive.

But my cursory research shows that, of the 23, 16 of them are indeed millionaires.

I find that shocking - I guess whether you do to comes down to your take on the questions briefly discussed above.

So here's my list:

Prime Minister David Cameron YES

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg YES

Foreign Secretary William Hague YES

Chancellor George Osborne YES

Lord Chancellor Kenneth Clarke NO

Home Secretary Theresa May YES

Defence Secretary Liam Fox YES

Business Secretary Vince Cable NO

Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith NO

Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Chris Huhne YES

Secretary of State for Health Andrew Lansley NO

Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove YES

Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles NO

Secretary of State for Transport Philip Hammond YES

Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Caroline Spelman YES

Secretary of State for International Development Andrew Mitchell YES

Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Owen Paterson YES

Secretary of State for Scotland Danny Alexander NO

Secretary of State for Wales Cheryl Gillan YES

Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport Jeremy Hunt YES

Chief Secretary to the Treasury David Laws YES

Leader of the House of Lords Lord Strathclyde YES

Minister of State Baroness Warsi NO

Vision for a sustainable Brighton and Hove

2010-05-15T00:06:00.001+01:00

I've nearly finished working through all the piles of paper - and replyimng to all the tweets' and emails - generated during the general election campaign.

I've been deleting, recycling or throwing most of it away. But I just came across a few notes I made ahead of a hustings meeting organised by the STEPS centre at the University of Sussex's Social Policy Research Unit and held at Brighton's Jubilee Library - and I thought I'd post them here for posterity.

So, here goes: in less than two minutes, here's my vision for a sustainable Brighton and Hove:

Clearly we're interested in a geniunely joined-up approach: we dopn't think sustainability is just about low carbon (although that's clearly a necessary component); we don't think sustainability is just about low carbon, protection for biodiversity, low resource use and zero carbon either: there's a fundamentally human dimension too, about health, wellbeing, equality and community too.

We think you can't have sustainability in one country (let alone one city!) - or at one time - the concept requires global justice and justice between generations too.

On the local level that means:

1. Tackling environmental and health inequalities - eg making it easier and safer to walk and cycle (which is also low carbon). This may mean restoring and supporting suburban facilities, including shops, to reduce car dependence (that's one of the reasons we're not at all as relaxed about large, centrally-located, supermarkets as local Tories). Local shops tend to employ more people than supermarkets, pay them more, and generate less carbon per employee too!

Green Party policies for investment in the very services and technologies needed to reduce our carbon emissions and cut our energy consumption and fuel bills would, it has been estimated, create about 4,000 new jobs in Brighton and Hove alone.

2. Enhancing - and making more affordable - facilities, such as New England House, for small and start-up businesses in the digital and environmental industries, as well as supporting centres, such as Community base, for third sector organisations.

3. Changing the way we view the planning process to allow environmental improvements (eg installation of renewable micro-generation technology, insulation etc) to all homes and public spaces in the city: creating jobs and reducing the city's carbon footprint.

But that's just Brighton and Hove.

Greens are internationalist by nature. We beleive our place in the world is made more secure when the world's social and environmental problems are being solbved by successful international relations based on global co-operation.

And that means increasing financial support to the poorest in the world - as well as channelling it through new international institutions designed to democratise th way aid and development assistance is spent.

If you're interested in the debate, a webcast of the whole two-hour meeting is available to watch here.

City councillor resigns - to take up post as Green MEP

2010-05-14T10:03:00.003+01:00

Well I said yesterday there was almost no politics during a largely ceremonial annual council meeting - I may have misled you slightly.

The story of the day was that Green Party councillor Keith Taylor announced his resignation to take up the seat at the European Parliament vacated by Caroline Lucas after she was elected MP for Brighton Pavilion last week.

The resignation will trigger a by-election of course - and the local party has already started the process of finding the right candidate to stand.

Keith (left) said: "I've spent the last 11 happy and fulfilling years as a city councillor, striving for improvements in locals' everyday quality of life.

“Now I'm taking all I've learnt to Europe to try and enrich the whole south east region. I'll work tirelessly to achieve as much as I can.

“Although I'll be spending a great deal of time in Brussels , my home will always be here, in Brighton and Hove.

“It's exciting to be delivering inclusive politics based on hope, around a positive vision of building a just and sustainable world. With the consistent rise in support for the Greens' message it's clear that's what people want.

“A special thank you and best wishes also go to Caroline Lucas as she begins her historic term as the first Green MP at Westminster ."

Amongst many well-wishers, Caroline Lucas was quick to pay tribute to Keith.

She said: “Keith is an outstanding politician, a highly respected party member, and a good friend.

“He has served the people of Brighton & Hove with passion and commitment for many years and, as such, will bring a wealth of experience to his new role in the European Parliament.

“I have no doubt that Keith will prove to be an excellent MEP for the South East region, and I wish him every success for the future.”

So, yet another election to contest!

Does the Lib-Tory government mean the end of the Lib-Dems on Brighton and Hove City Council?

2010-05-13T23:35:00.002+01:00

Today I attended my fourth annual meeting of Brighton and Hove City Council since being elected to represent the Queen’s Park ward of the city.

And while much of the meeting is really about the pomp and ceremony of the mayoral office – nothing political takes place at all (well, almost nothing: Ted Kemble was sacked as cabinet member for major projects and former council leader Brian Oxley was brought back into the Tory leadership team) – it was interesting to chat to some fellow councillors about the impact of the national Lib-Tory government on the future of the council.

Specifically, with half the parliamentary Lib-Dem party now in the Tory government, and therefore accepting the doctrine of collective responsibility (that is, they promise not to criticise the Tories in public) it seems that the Lib-Dems and the Conservative parties have, effectively merged.

So what about the two Lib Dems on Brighton and Hove Council? Will either of them be joining the Mears administration? Will they be invited to attend Tory ‘whip’ meetings? Or will they walk away from the party, perhaps seeking membership of the Greens? How would the Green group of councillors react if they did? Of course, we can’t assume they’ll act in unison on this – maybe they’ll break in different directions?

Watch this space. If there are any developments – I’ll report them as soon as I can. And if any Lib-Dem members (I guess there must be some left) – or even either of their two remaining councillors – want to comment here, they’d be most welcome!