Winter Wonderland

Well not quite. We have only had a few inches of snow in central Leeds, a lot of which is already melting however it looked lovely tonight.

Headingley had a slightly "Narnian" feel to it. I was walking to St Michael's up Cardigan road. Its a moot point where Hyde Park ends and Headingley begins but I always take the COOP as the start. The cardigan road conservation area really was stunning just as dusk was turning black. With the old mansions and flats set so far back from the road and large lawns and trees covered in crisp snow it was quite a sight. Low traffic and low pedestrain footfall in the cold made it so quiet and as I turned up into bainbrige road you could see the Church dimly lit set back behind the trees. It was all a bit like a christmas card - except its march.

I was late for Even Song. This was because I had spent to long inspecting some recent road resurfacing and making a mental note about an unauthorised neon sign. In case you were wondering, yes, being a Lib Dem councillor CAN make you obsessive.

The service was good. As ever set in the smaller lady chapel. This well lit while the rest of the church is dim giving a huddled feel to a congragation of perhaps 25 in total. The whole thing was the CoE at its best, a beautiful anthem from the choir, Cranmers prayer book with a bit of pruning to get the thing into an hour, rather lame but accessible 7 minute sermon and an eclectic mix of decent hymns.

I won't frighten to many horses by getting "spiritual" but the old testament reading and some of the second hymn meant quite a bit about things are going on in life and I felt a bit better afterwoods. I'm ashamed to say I didn't stop for coffee as people tend to complain about the bins. The 15 minute walk home seemed a lot warmer and the snow is melting fast, the area is comming to life again with loads of students out chucking slush balls at each other. The magic ends when I get past the Co op again and Inner city grime reasserts its self. The magic disappears just like in Narnia.

Hold the Front Page!

I am quoted on the front page of the Leeds Weekly News (west leeds edition). The main quotes go to my ward collegue along with a picture but a front page quote is a front page quote. I don't usually bang on about being in the paper but this week's story is particularly fun.

One of the draw backs about being a liberal is you don't get to do populist rabble rousing. You can appeal to your core vote or "base" as long as you are at a conference of guardian readers.

However we have just had a big planning victory over bete noir Chris Ure of Arc Inpirations Ltd. I can't afford to be sued so I shall say no more on that other than the unanimous view of residents in my experience is that His recent bar developments have not done the area any favours. I'm often accused of being "anti pub" which is odd seeing as I spend must of free time in them. However I do hate "drinking warehouses" and am pleased to have helped pass a local licensing policy to stop any more in Headingley.

As owner of the famous Lounge Cinema which he closed last year he made an application for a very intensive redevelopment of the site which has been halted by the Councils planning panel. A local journalist, showing more investigative verve than you would expect, has run a piece pointing out that the 79 letters of support for the scheme all came from a "drop in" run by the applicant where a large number of his staff seemed to attend!

Of course I should be appalled that a local businessman has been done over by a tabloid but on this occasion I feel we are on the side of the Angels and I was happy to help!

I wonder if this is how Tories feel when they get a piece on sponging asylum seekers in the Daily Mail?!

The Mother of all Talk Shows

I have just finished listening to George Galloway's new talk show on talkSPORT. (1056/1089 am) Its a piece of counter intuitive scheduling from a station dominated by right wing "shock jock" style broadcasting. Now I appreciate that I may be expelled from Lib Dem blogs and wider society in general but I have to say

It was rather good.

I listen to a lot of radio and my default setting should be Five LIVE but its gone so tabloid that I increasingley either switch to Radio 4 or go "proper" tabloid with talkSPORT. The format involves punters ringing up, being left on hold for 45 minutes at full national rate before being given 30 seconds to 2 minutes with a presenter. A presenter who tells you his views, praises you if you agree and cuts you off if you don't. George is very good at this as you can imagine and is a cut above the rest in terms of his oratory which he suceeds at fitting in between ad breaks. I suspect he will never recover from Big Brother which was a gift to the Tabloid press who wanted to destroy him. I am however am more forgiving as he is an inevitability of the way politics is going.

Turnouts are droping, party identification and membership are falling, single issues dominant and voters become more and more consumerist. Nulabors move to the centre has vacated signifigant ground on the left with no where else to go in a first past the post system (in england)

It doesn't surprise that some one with Georges media skills has come along and joined the Circus. I have always felt that RESPECT is a brand rather than a party and owes more to Coke or Mcdonalds than say the Conservatives or Liberal parties. Of course the sales of Consumer goods have been more boyant of late than political parties.

Georges does "Anti Politics" with distinction and if he can get paid signifigant sums from a right wing radio station to get his message across then good luck to him. Its a medium better suited to the task than Big Brother ever was going to be. Would I want him as constituency MP ? No. Do I think Respect is a sham marriage of convenience between trots and fundamentalists? Yes .Is George profoundly illiberal? Yes.

However in a parliament of 640 odd MP's there is room for a maverick doing a talk show. It challenges conventional wisdom but then so does the Focus leaflet.

Conference

Even I can't find an excuse not to go to conference when its on my door step so I will be around if anyone wants lunch or a trip to bettys. I may be cheap skate and just get a free pass for the training/fringe events but do call me and say hello if you are comming "up north."

The reality of power

So Headingley "town centre" is get a "public drinking ban" technically known as a Designated Public Place Order (DPPO) courtesy of the Local Lib Dem councillors. This was my "baby" and its taken 10 months to get through.

So here I am using Blairite Anti Social Behaviour legislation and a "ban" to boot. Whats going on?

Welcome to local government! Headingley suffers appalling ASB or drunken yobs to be blunt and it has got much, much worse as big vertical drinking warehouses have sprung up aimed at the student market. However the problems last year round and are often at there worse on match days at either stadium, so no student bashing from me! The legacy of vandalism, broken glass, vomit,verbal abuse and noise has driven most families out of the area. What is really a small suburb has to cope with over 3000 people on a busy night with no public toilets, transport and precious little policing. The Black and White taxi ranks have long been over run by private hire. I probably sound like I'm 96 but to be honest the scenes you see are often worse than the city centre which is at least set up to cope with these issues.

So in meeting after meeting, email after email, letter after letter and phone call after phone call residents bring the issue to me often in tears sometimes shouting. The planning and licencing laws are stacked in favour of the developers. The police pay lip service to the problem but do little. They have to prioritise serious crime and see the issue as being drunken middle class kids enjoying themselves. In the six years I been around I've known one senior officer take the issue seriously other than that diddly squat.

So what to do? well what you can. A DPPO makes it an offence to bring from an open can or glass in a large chunk of central Headingley if an officer asks you to stop. Of its self its a puny power but we have struggled on to try and set a "tone" with local pubs who will hopefully stop glasses being taken out. I'm also hopeful that the notices and education campaign will have a modest effect. It also raises the bar for the police and is a stick to beat them with if they don't enforce it.

Will this have any effect? not much I suspect but when you work at grass roots level you have to do what you can however imperfect. In any decent democracy we would have more power over the things that really work. Police deployment, licencing and planning policy and the "polluter pays" principle of charging these pubs for the hell they cause. I imagine DPPO's started life as a press release in milbank like so much of New Labour criminal justice legislation. It will have got the requisite news hit and is then left to gather dust on the statute books. Never mind its a nightmare to impliment and comes with no resources to police its self. Never mind the fact it addresses symptoms not causes.

So do I feel compromised implimenting something I don't really beleive in ? Yes, but in the end the greater principle has to be sustainable communities where people are free to live there lives in peace. If a piece of blairite legislation puts a small spoke in the wheel of the Superpub Industry then so be it. Until the revolution comes.