Sandy 4 St Albans

Sandy Walkington campaigns with the Liberal Democrats across St Albans

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“Get your kicks on Route 66″ – would Anglicised lyrics include London Colney?

May 15th, 2012 · Sandy's blog

Entertaining article by travel writer Simon Calder suggesting that the A5 is the best UK candidate to vie for iconic status with America’s Route 66.  He writes mostly about the road’s beginnings at Marble Arch and Kilburn/Cricklewood and then of its spectacular route through Wales.

But before they were by-passed, London Colney High Street, London Road and Verulam Road in St Albans, and then Redbourn Road and High Street were all sections of this great Thomas Telford engineered artery as it charged between the Clock Tower and the Abbey.

It’s a nice conceit that there might be a song to celebrate it.  I’d love a budding lyricist out there to take London Colney, St Albans, Redbourn and give them the resonance of  “Amarillo and Gallup, New Mexico; Flagstaff, Arizona, don’t forget Winona;  Kingman, Barstow, San Bernadino…”

PS In his article, Calder writes of the A5 “skirmishing with the A41, a lesser highway” – well the A41 does go through Watford…

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Do we want to be “Belgium with the bomb”?

May 11th, 2012 · Sandy's blog

The coalition government is in the midst of a massive unilateral disarmament programme, as part of the Ministry of Defence’s contribution to balancing the government’s books.

In total the MoD has to find £74 billion of savings over the next ten years. The continuing impact on the army, navy and air force is going to be horrendous, even if the overall cuts are lower in percentage terms than in some departments.

It makes yesterday’s discussion on the future of Trident organised by think tank Centre Forum very relevant. The argument presented by Toby Fenwick in his pamphlet “Dropping the Bomb” is that replacing the Trident submarine launched nuclear weapons system at a cost of £25 – £33 billion is no longer the correct strategic choice for Britain in the first half of the 21st century.

Yesterday’s debate was held under Chatham House rules but essentially the argument comes down to whether Britain best projects its international power and contributes to global security by maintaing at least one nuclear-armed submarine permanently on station – even at the cost of maintaining our conventional armed forces with kit and resources – or by being able to put boots on the ground in terms of being able to deploy properly resourced conventional forces in hot spots as and when needed.  [As an interesting observation, the overall size of the UK armed forces in all the services is less than the size of the US Marine Corps.]

At the risk of over-simplification, the pro-Trident replacement argument was that the future is not predictable, how do we know there is no nuclear threat, and that the simple existence of Trident shapes the global strategic environment.  Human nature hasn’t changed, yet the major powers have not gone to war with each other since 1945.  How would the UK giving up Trident influence North Korea or Iran?

The response (again over-simplified) is that we don’t have a crystal ball but we do have finite resources.  It is far better that the UK keeps an effective ability to support the international community with conventional resources rather than turning into “Belgium with the bomb” with no clear idea of the target for such nuclear force.

In the end, this comes down to gut feel and belief.  Personally I remained convinced by the conventional forces argument.

There was a highly technical debate yesterday as to whether the UK could remain a “nuclear threshold” country, which is the proposition made by Toby Fenwick in his pamphlet.  Essentially this means that we retain the expertise, skills, and weapons grade plutonium to develop an aircraft delivered bomb with notice of about 12 months.  I suspect that this is like being half-pregnant, you either go all the way with nuclear or you don’t.  I hope we don’t.

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St Albans “smart”, Harpenden “somewhat less polished” – it’s official

May 9th, 2012 · Sandy's blog

Where do you see “Smart addresses such as St Albans” bracketed with Billericay and Slough, and Harpenden described as “somewhat less polished”?

The answer is the property pages of tonight’s Evening Standard in an intriguing feature on the top twenty commuter stations and how local property prices are performing.

The busiest station is Reading with nearly 4.7 million commuter journeys, an annual season ticket price of £4,516 for a 29 minute journey and an average house price of £242,526.

St Albans comes in at number four in terms of total journey numbers at 3,146,080 -  behind Reading, Chelmsford and Woking. We have the shortest journey time of the busiest twenty commuter stations (on the brave assumption that FCC runs to time) and an average house price of £377,797.

“Less polished Harpenden” (sic) does not make it into the top twenty but is quoted in the article as having an average house price of “under £325,000″ but shares top spot with Sevenoaks in terms of house price rises over the last seven years.

The whole article has the slightly nauseating self-congratulatory tone compulsory in property supplements but the league table makes for interesting reading.

And I wonder how the good folk of Harpenden will take to the idea that they are “less polished”?

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It’s the economy, stupid

May 9th, 2012 · Sandy's blog

It looks a bit of a curate’s egg of a Queen’s Speech.  There is some obviously worthy stuff – further legislation for the green investment bank, and separating casino investment banking from high street retail banking.  The now draft Communications Bill will be rightly scrutinised in detail for its civil liberties implications (though the Justice and Security Bill usefully seems to offer better scrutiny of MI5 and MI6).

I confess I can’t get worked up one way or the other about House of Lords reform.  It is odd and in principle undemocratic that we have an unelected second chamber but it seems to work as well as other countries’ second chambers.

It’s all irrelevant anyway if we don’t get the economy going.  To that degree Vince Cable’s role at Business, Innovation and Skills looks more and more important, getting the micro things right for the macro economy.

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Low voter turn-out should send a wake-up call to all politicians

May 8th, 2012 · Sandy's blog

It  wasn’t a brilliant night for the Liberal Democrats last Thursday (although a lot better than this weekend has been for Nicolas Sarkozy or most of the Greek political establishment).  As it happened, the local results for the Liberal Democrats in St Albans showed a slight improvement from those in 2011.

At the end of a series of hard-fought three-way contests in the wards lying within the St Albans parliamentary constituency (so excluding Harpenden and Redbourn), over 7,840 people voted for the Liberal Democrats over the course of Thursday – more than for any other party.

When the votes were counted that evening, the Liberal Democrats held onto five of the seats being contested in the constituency – again more than any other party.

So a measure of silver lining then.  But none of the parties can take any comfort from the low voter turn-out and the higher than normal number of spoiled ballot papers.  So far we have not seen an upsurge in extremist parties, but nothing can be taken for granted in these tough economic times.

Which is why I am pleased that Francois Hollande won the French Presidency.  If he can indeed demonstrate that it is possible to grow the French economy without spooking the markets and precipitating a currency crisis, he will be doing all of us a favour.

If he fails, Messrs Balls and Miliband will have to rethink their casual rhetoric.   Of course we all hope that an effective and sustainable growth strategy can be charted by Hollande and by Europe as a whole.  Everything depends on it.

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Eating curry for good

April 29th, 2012 · Sandy's blog

I thoroughly enjoyed today’s delicious curry lunch to raise funds for the St Albans-based KADECT charity, founded by local resident Mohammed Akhtar.  It helps deaf children in Kashmir and the Gambia.  I have blogged before about the importance of this cause – see my previous appreciation of the curry-making prowess of Muslim Mums.

KadectToday’s event was held at Abbey Spice in Stanhope Road, St Albans, in authentic monsoon conditions.  It was attended by around 100 guests, including fellow Lib Dems Chris White, Iqbal Zia, Liz Needham and Nik Alatortsev.

There was a slideshow on the charity’s extension into Gambia, speeches by various dignitaries including Anwar Choudhury, the former High Commissioner to Bangladesh and by Mrs Main, as well as a charity auction, a raffle (of course), and a brilliant concert to close the proceedings.

In my own speech, I said that there are far too many negative stereotypes about the Muslim community conspiring to cause terror.  Well I was delighted to be conspiring today with them to do good in such a benign and worthwhile cause.

It costs about £60 to provide a year’s schooling for a deaf child in either country – or less than 20 pence per day.  I hope readers might be inspired to give – visit www.kadect.org for more details.

PS My picture shows the talented and brilliant Roshanara Moni strutting her stuff at the end of the lunch – she brought the room to its feet, all the kitchen staff coming out to listen as well.  Great stuff.

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Lessons for the Park Street freight terminal decision from the BSkyB scandal

April 25th, 2012 · Sandy's blog

“It’s time for deputy heads to roll” was the excellent joke on today’s BBC World at One as they reported the resignation of Jeremy Hunt’s special adviser over his wholly inappropriate links with the Murdoch empire in the middle of a quasi-judicial process to determine the outcome of News Corp’s proposed takeover of BSkyB.

Certainly it stretches credulity that Mr Hunt knoew nothing about what his special adviser was doing – and the whole episode is another demonstration of disturbingly close links between the Conservative Party and lobbyists.

The people of St Albans and Park Street are waiting for the outcome of their own quasi-judicial process, namely the final decision on the Helioslough freight terminal.

Here too it turns out that there has been a wholly inappropriate exchange of views – or to use the technical term, “lunch” – between a Conservative-linked lobbyist and the Conservative transport minister – see my previous post.

While the Murdoch/News International saga will run and run – I suspect a number of senior Conservative and Labour politicians will be looking back at their appointment books and wondering whether they will be next in the frame – we are in the end game with the Park Street Freight Terminal.

I still think that changes in road usage following the M1/M25 widenings should have been considered.  But given no new inquiry and simply the request to review the implications of the new National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) for the proposal, St Albans District Council legal department has played a blinder in its submission.

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The way we were in Marshalswick

April 20th, 2012 · Sandy's blog

One of the genuine pleasures of political life is meeting people on the doorstep.  With only rare exceptions, they are always courteous and the conversations can be fascinating.

While door-knocking last week on behalf of Janet Churchard, I met a lady who with her husband had bought their Marshalswick home in 1957 when it was nothing more than footings and trenches.

Her husband worked for London Transport in vehicle assembly, and they had to move out from London to Hertfordshire when the huge bus depot and repair shop was built at Aldenham.

The show homes from which they chose their property were next to the Quadrant.  When they moved into Evans Grove they were able to look across the fields of cows belonging to Jersey Farm.  They paid the grand sum of £2,650 – read and weep!

She told me there were only three original inhabitants still left in the street, and her house was also one of the few which had not been altered.  She had never ceased to enjoy St Albans in spite of all the changes.  It was a lovely chat in the sunshine – shame about this week’s rain!

PS In separate canvassing a bit later for Chris White, a young man told me “I’m voting for Chris because he’s an accountant.”  I’ve heard many reasons why someone chooses a particular candidate , but that was a first for me.

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Unemployment dipping nationally and in St Albans – how do we keep it going down?

April 19th, 2012 · Sandy's blog

One month doesn’t make a spring but yesterday’s unemployment figures showed a slight dip in St Albans – both the total number out of work and also in the 16-24 and 50+ age groups.  That is welcome, but it’s not yet a job rich world.

As it happens I spent the first half of yesterday hearing about ways we might create a “job rich future” at a Policy Exchange conference in London.  I missed Chris Grayling’s widely reported ministerial exhortation to “hire a hoody”, but the sessions I was able to attend were deeply fascinating.

There was another Conservative minister (John Hayes) enthusistically citing William Morris and Hegel as though he had read them himself – and I am certain he had.  I learned the amazing and thought-provoking statistic that the lowest paid 40 percent of the NHS workforce deliver 80 percent of the patient contact yet benefit from only 4 percent of the annual NHS training budget.  And that 40,000 people leave UK schools each year functionally illiterate and/or innumerate.

All the speakers agreed that it is macro-economic policy and economic growth which is going to deliver jobs – but the micro-economic challenge is to create a workforce with the right skills.  It’s about competitiveness in a tougher global economy, it’s about individual self-esteem and satisfaction too.

One of the slow-burn things the government has done is hugely increase apprenticeships – not just in overall numbers but also in quality, with a new emphasis on those crucial literacy and numeracy factors.

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Which would you rather multi-millionaires spent their money on? Philanthropy or a new yacht?

April 12th, 2012 · Sandy's blog

Chancellor George Osborne seems to have shot himself in both feet with his decision to limit tax relief on large charitable donations.  Although it should make no financial difference to the donor, there can be no doubt that one of the incentives for some people giving to charity is that the Chancellor tops it up.  Otherwise why not just get that new yacht instead?

My charitable involvements are local and sadly I doubt that any are in the frame to receive million pound donations – but if anyone reading this does feel so inclined…

It is in everyone’s interest that universities for example get bigger endowments so that they can provide more bursaries for less well-off pupils.

This ill-thought policy seems to fly in the face of rhetoric about “the Big Society”.  If it is really the case that some charities are not really charitable, that is surely a matter for the Charity Commission to address.

PS It also beggars belief that the Chancellor was so surprised that very rich people dodge income tax, paying only around ten percent of their overall income through clever (and expensive) tax planning.  That is why it is so important to have a catch-all tycoon tax as suggested by the Lib Dems to make sure that everyone pays a proper share.

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