The Secretary of State has considered carefully all the representations before him.  On the basis of the submissions received, he is of the view that there are no substantive issues which require the Inquiry to be re-opened and he has therefore decided that he is in a position to re-determine the appeal on the basis of all the evidence and representations now before him… The Secretary of State will issue his decision in this case on or before 5 April 2012.

This is the bald wording of the official letter just received by me as one of the witnesses at the most recent Public Inquiry into the Helioslough proposal to build a lorry terminal at Park Street.

So yet again we are in an end-game and one that looks pretty final.

It all now depends on one man, Eric Pickles, and the advice he receives from his departmental lawyers.  Will he uphold his previous decision to overturn the Inspector’s recommendation that the terminal should be allowed? – which was then challenged in court by Helioslough on a legal technicality.

Or will he cave in?

I was pleased to see in the bundle of final representations included with this letter that the St Albans Civic Society had endorsed and underlined the previous representations from David Parry and myself about the impact of motorway widening on the local road network and also the alternative opportunity offered by Sundon north of Luton.  Our view remains that these matters could have been best explored in a re-opened Inquiry but that is not to be.

The Secretary of State took his previous decision on the basis that there is an alternative better site at Colnbrook on the Great Western mainline near Slough with better rail connectivity in terms of access and loading gauge than our own Midland Mainline.

For now the residents of Park Street and south St Albans – and the Thameslink commuters who will be massively impacted by the alteration works to the Elstree Tunnel – can only hope that Mr Pickles stands by this judgment against the flurry of competing lawyers’ letters.  The waiting will be over in less than nine weeks.

Not many people know that St Albans had the third printing press in England after Caxton’s Westminster press and a press at Oxford.  The St Albans press was set up in 1479 and housed in the school, then part of the Abbey.  One of the earliest printers was in fact described as “the St Albans schoolmaster”.

It was the first printing press in England to do three-colour printing – black, red and blue.  It was also the first to have a printer’s mark – now a legal necessity for any book or publication.

The most significant early book produced at St Albans was the famous “Book of Hawking” – written in English with beautiful woodblock illustrations. Published some time around 1486, its full title was “The Boke of St Albans: Containing Treatises on Hawking, Hunting and Coat-Armour.”

Oddly after this early flying start, Donald told us that no books were printed in St Albans between the 1530s and the early 1800s.  Hertford became a more important Hertfordshire centre for publishing through the 18th and earlier 19th centuries.  Watford eventually became the print capital of Europe.  There were however significant printing presses in the city when I first came in 1980 – now sadly almost all gone.

Of course books with St Albans associations continue to be churned out in spades.  One of the city’s most famous sons, educated at St Albans School, is Stephen Hawking.  Copies of his “Brief History of Time” decorate many shelves and some have even been read.  So we’ve gone from the Book of Hawking to the book of Hawking.

PS One questioner wondered whether the shop steward in a printworks being called “Father of the Chapel” had any connection with this early press being housed in the Abbey.  When I went home, I looked in my Brewer’s Phrase and Fable and found the following – “This use of the word possibly derives from the earliest days of English printing when presses were set up in chapels attached to abbeys.”  So there it is.

As a boy, I knew the last chief printer on the old Scottish Daily Express, Roddy Mackenzie.  He told me that when he arrived for his first day of work at the age of 14 or 15, he was asked “Do you belong to the chapel?”  “No sir,” he replied, “but I’m in the Boys’ Brigade.”

PPS I knew we had several mayors from the Gape family but am indebted to Donald’s slides of various locally printed handbills for telling me that the one for 1830 had a town clerk called Blagg…

(The “doughnut” of the title is the new GCHQ building at Cheltenham to which they moved after my father retired.)

He offers me red wine and an olive on a stick.
His narrow terraced house
Beneath the old viaduct and opposite the chapel
Nicely tucked away where no one will ever find him.

On the walls hang medals of various noble ancestors
Who fought on the North West Frontier
Or flew over the trenches of France
In biplanes made from canvas and string

And one who was later shot down in his Halifax.
His bookcase on the intermediary landing
A shrine to the memory of Lawrence,
The wilderness of Zin and Colonel Newcombe.

And he, eager to find some other new enigma to crack
Twiddles his long fingers incessantly.
Chewing no doubt on some sweet morsel from Cheltenham
He liked the challenge, the intuition

Like playing bridge or chess
An international cross word puzzle
But the stakes were always higher.
‘People’s lives were at risk you know

And you often had to forget what you had just learnt.
Or guess at the un-guessable.’
Such names as Hugh Alexander and ‘C’
Were conjured up and passed across the table,

Like the anchovies. ‘All ex-Bletchley Hut 6 or 8.
You did not always know, exactly whose traffic
You were trying to decode.’ He could even do it
Upside down sometimes, if push came to shove.

‘There were a lot of women there,
Very useful – their minds worked in different ways.’
He sips a can of beer,
Old gunner ways die hard.

‘Not many of us left’ he said
And looked me in the eye.
Turkish was his speciality loukoum
But that was all he let slip.

James Crowden

We placed my father’s parachute regiment red beret on top of the coffin for the service – then to be cremated with him – and all four of his children talked about our own memories.   I also read the passage from Pilgrim’s Progress relating the death of Mr VALIANT-FOR-TRUTH:

Then said he, ‘I am going to my Father’s; and though with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage; and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought his battles who now will be my Rewarder.’

When the day that he must go hence was come, many accompanied him to the riverside; into which as he went he said, ‘Death, where is thy sting?’ And as he went down deeper, he said, ‘Grave, where is thy victory?’ So he passed over; and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.

PS For more information on James Crowden and his beautifully produced books of poetry, visit http://www.james-crowden.co.uk

He chose to concentrate on the inadequacies of service provision for the mentally ill.  It was not an obvious crowd-puller for a new leader and therefore provided an interesting perspective on Nick as a rather unusual politician.  I had to meet him at the station and drive him to the venue – no ministerial cars then.

The audience were struck by his passion on this issue and that he should have chosen such a relatively unsexy subject.  Their reception was warm, but doubtless they thought that this was yet another set of noble aspiration from a third party leader who would never have the opportunity to deliver on them.

Last year he came back to the same conference and was able to tell them how – even within huge constraints on public expenditure – the new coalition government was determined to tackle this issue with its “No Health Without Mental Health” strategy targeting an additional £400 million to ensure better access to psychological therapies.

It was reported yesterday that the Department of Health has provided £16 million as part of this initiative for the Time to Change campaign, aimed at children in schools and youth clubs and via social networking websites.

I don’t think that ultra high speed rail makes much sense in a crowded island.  We are not France with its huge empty swathes of agricultural land.

And with increasingly good broadband access on the move, one of the main arguments for HS2 that it helps business people also feels suspect.  Many business people appreciate train journey time as a chance to catch up on e-mail and reading, using increasingly sophisticated mobile handheld devices.

This is not to say that we do not need more rail capacity.  The Chilterns may not excape unscathed.

But building new parallel conventional railway lines would be cheaper, less brutal to the landscape, and not by-pass intermediate towns with the risk that they are accelerated into relative economic decline.

The money saved on lower construction costs could then be spent on “un-bottlenecking” the existing network, improving loading gauges for high capacity container wagons and even for double-decker commuter trains.

Why do politicians love grands projets so?  Look at the obsession with Trident at the expense of providing our armed forces with appropriate conventional kit for the challenges they are facing here and now.

HS2 feels like the domestic equivalent of Trident, a massively expensive white elephant looking for a problem.

The Fleetville Community Centre didn’t know what had hit it.  I hope this becomes an annual fixture, do check out the St Albans Liberal Democrat website for information.

And to learn more about St Albans District Liberal Youth aka “SADLY”, just visit their Facebook page at http://on.fb.me/wkVbQs

The figures quoted in today’s BBC story seem to bear out my claim with St Albans annual season tickets coming in at 31 pence per mile travelled.

Of course there are the oddities – the absurdly expensive Heathrow Express and the infamous tube journey from Covent Garden to Leicester Square which was always supposed to be more expensive per distance covered than Concorde.  My concern is for standard commuter journeys which people have to use every day.

As I told the BBC, we are paying Rolls Royce prices but not getting the Rolls Royce.   I welcome any thoughts on the appropriate car model which best describes the Thameslink experience!

PS I blogged before Christmas about my meeting with rail minister Norman Baker, where I put on the table a dossier compiled by two local commuters on their recent daily experiences of First Capital Connect.  Norman promised to pass it to Tim O’Toole, chief executive of First Group, the parent company of FCC.  This has resulted in a five page letter of explanation from Mr O’Toole which Norman Baker forwarded to me today.  When I have digested its contents, I will report on them here.

We certainly should not seek to talk – or write – ourselves into a new great depression.  But the world is facing profound economic challenges, and it is increasingly apparent that those in charge of the international financial system, however much they are trying to do their best, are flying pretty blind.

[Who was it who said that if every cloud has a silver lining, pilots should be very worried?]

We are also living in “interesting” global political times as the next stages of the arab spring work through.  There are new and unusual stirrings of unrest in Russia.  The global balance of power continues to shift away from Western Europe and North America, with Brazil now the latest country to surpass the UK in the size of its economy.

Facing up to these challenges won’t be easy, but we are far more likely to come through unscathed if we seek international co-operation, apply principles of solidarity at home and abroad, and promote a green agenda for the long term.

Happy New Year.

What this means is that they have issued an “OJEU Notice” – ie it has been advertised in the Official Journal of the European Union, as is mandatory for all public procurement.

This minimum seven-year franchise will:

• include all services that are currently operated by the First Capital Connect (FCC) franchise from September 2013;
• at a point between April and December 2014 the franchise would include some services currently operated by Southeastern. These services would be all those that are jointly operated by FCC and Southeastern at present, and some further current Southeastern services which may be transferred to enable the implementation of the full Thameslink service operations;
• include all the services operated by the current Southern franchise at some time between July 2014 and July 2017;
• operate until 2020 (unless the Secretary of State exercises her contractual rights to extend beyond this date) allowing for the Thameslink programme infrastructure works to be completed, the new Thameslink programme rolling stock to be fully deployed, the new train control systems to be commissioned and the future Thameslink timetable to be implemented.

Using 2010/11 data, the APTU calculates this will be a £1bn per annum business from the time current Southern services are included.  We will have to see whether First Group decides to bid – if so, their many manifest failings must be put under the microscope and any promises to reform examined as rigorously as possible.

I also know (because they have contacted me) that Dutch railway operator Abellio is interested.  They already have the Northern Rail and Merseyrail franchises in the UK, and are about to take over the Greater Anglia franchise out of Liverpool Street.  Dutch railways seem to operate like clockwork and they might have some good ideas about making our rail service as bicycle friendly as possible…

Should you have £100m to spare (that is the size of the performance bond wanted to ensure that applications are serious), you can pursue this via http://www.dft.gov.uk/publications/thameslink-franchise-2013

I remain sceptical about the UK rail privatisation model which has led to us having the most expensive railway in Europe in terms both of fares and of carrying out routine procedures such as renewing points and track.  When we recently met Norman Baker, the rail minister, he assured us that all new franchise agreements will be much more output driven – as compared with the current contracts which specify all sorts of inputs but don’t seem to result in trains running on time or at all.

Well the proof of the pudding will be in the travelling.

The first question was about former Labour minister Lord West’s call to send “a submarine to stick it up ‘em” in response to the decision by a group of Latin American countries to ban ships flying the Falklands flag from their ports.

It is odd how warmongering the modern Labour Party has become ever since Tony Blair got a taste for it.  Fellow panellist Cllr Shaw was gung-ho for defending the Falklands, without the faintest idea of how we would do it.  The recent Conservative defence cuts mean that mounting an armada similar to the one launched by Mrs Thatcher is frankly fanciful.

Nor is it likely that we would get the same covert assistance from a post-Pinochet Chile or from a United States led by Barack Obama.

This is one case where Churchill’s dictum that jaw-jaw is better than war-war is wholly correct.  We cannot single-handedly guarantee the integrity of the Falklands indefinitely.  Only the international community can do that and they will expect to see some sensible negotiations on ways forward between ourselves and Argentina.

The second question covered the possibility of Mrs Thatcher getting a state funeral.  Oddly I was more sympathetic (with reservations) than either of my fellow guests.  She was the first female Prime Minister (which was truly revolutionary), and whatever one’s views of her policies, no-one can deny that she transformed this country and acquired a huge international reputation.

The last three non-royal state funerals were for Churchill, Earl Haig and William Gladstone.  Haig’s now seems an aberration, Churchill clearly transcended politics with the Second World War, though heaven knows he had his enemies.  Gladstone was a giant but could be pretty divisive too.

We all agreed that the Olympics was going to be the event most likely to put a smile on people’s faces next year.

As for the most significant event of 2010, we more or less agreed that it was a combination of the global economic meltdown and Cameron’s veto.

Other questions covered Scottish independence, our secret talents (following Ed Miliband’s confession of being able to do a Rubik cube in 90 seconds – I said my secret talent was keeping my sectret talents secret), views on people taking a fortnight off over Christmas, the Leveson Inquiry, Vince Cable’s declaration that he was not going to send any Christmas cards to Conservatives, and finally which party leader had had the best year.

Here I agreed with Tom Shaw that all three have ended up having pretty rotten years.  Here’s hoping that next year will be better for all of us.