Adventure Holiday

I really, really like the Idea of an adventure holiday. To be able to go back to the office and have people ask. " Oh Yes, how was the whitewater rafting?". " Not as exciting as the parachute jump.. " I would reply.

But that's just not me. Situated 40 minutes drive from Enlgands best national park I just can't move. A week of sleeping, drinking Cider, reading and some sea air is all I'm capable of. Perhaps I should guilt trip my self less but I do feel very, very slothful.

Perhaps thats what Holidays should be about?

" Its a bit of a bitch to get to isn't it?"

Those were the words of comfort offered to me at the enquiries desk at Leeds rail station yesterday when I asked " When is the next train to Whitehaven?"

The woman huffed and puffed at her computer for a few minutes before offering the above reassurence. I had just missed my "Gold Dust" connection via the Settle to Carlisle line and now had to go via Manchester and, Dear God, use Virgin Trains.

I had had an over long coffee with a prospective Council candidate who foolishly thought I could offer good advice on his prospective career and turned up 5 mins late at the station. I seriously thought about aborting the trip at least until monday but ploughed on. Travelling via Manchester can be quite pleasent if you have the time to break your Journey and have a drink in the city centre. From there onward on the west coast mainline with Virgin trains over crowded carriages and predictably broken, smelly toilets. Finally having missed the Whitehaven Connection by 2 minutes a very happy 70 minute wait at Carlisle station. Not a single shop open at 7pm on a Saturday. Heavily pedestrainised Carlisle should be a pleasure to walk around on a late summer evening but like most city centres it has gone down the Super Pub route (and in a particularly horrible way) so I just huddled in the station with my Book.

Its not just that a pleasent 5 hour journey became an unpleasent 8 hour one. Its the fact I had to struggle with my emereging identity as a middle aged Victor Meldrew figure making resolutions to learn to drive. I'm only 33 and thought I could hold middle age at bay for at least another 5 years.

Well I'm here now for the second leg of my Holiday. Perhaps some sea air will rejuvinate me.

Area Committee

Its not quite defeating 90 day detention or the glorification of terrorism but I led of disturbing out break of liberalism at Thursday nights area committee.

Although no one seemed keen to actually admit to being in favour of it a report had turned up on the agenda proposing a Designated Public Place Order (DPPO) or "public drinking ban" across a vast area of North West Leeds. Not they had actually bothered with a map or anything but it seemed to cover about 30000 people and would also criminalise drinking in all but one of the areas parks. Of which more later.

There is a real issue with anti social "street drinkers" in some of the smaller public squares and gardens in the Little Woodhouse area just off the city centre. Its widely acknowledged that this has been displacement of the problem following a City Centre crack down. So fearing further displacement the proposal was for a collossal new DPPO covering several square miles of the north of the city. The only problem the report acknowledged was that because Woodhouse Moor has a permanent Public Entertainments Licence it would form a small hole in the proposed ban area. This would in turn it was admitted mean that the whole areas street drinkers would congregate there. For reason they couldn't articulate the police felt this would be preferable to the current situation and were askjing us for £6k to help pay for the proposal.

Now I promise readers that the fact that my can of lager on a summers evening in the park behind my house was abnout to becomme a criminal offence was not my primary objection.

The Friends of Woodhouse Moor predictably were furious and had turned up in force. Although I shared there view that the plan was bonkers I did entirely disagree with the solution they proposed - revoke the parks Ents Licence and ban drinking there as well. Philadephia lawyer that I am I'm not prepared to criminalise a glass of wine in the park on a summers evening, still less for the sake of perhaps 30 problem street drinkers.

In the end after I led the charge no one spoke in favour the proposal and the police admitted that one reason for it was that a mass ASBO would be to expensive.

The problems in Little Woodhouse are severe and we need a multi agency response to the issue. WE were told at the meeting that there was no task group. It disturbs me that such an ill thought out, disproportionate and illiberal plan could be put forward as a solution.

On another positive note we are finally making progress on the issue of Graffiti which I'm going to post on seperately.

Towards the end of the meeting it all got rather tense with members of the public making numerious criticisms of the Council. Being a member of the akward squad I actually agree with most of them. Being in opposition was easy and now its our turn to sit in public meetings and defend our all to often sclerotic response to neighbourhood concerns seemingly unable to get even the most basic aspects of "Neighbourhood Management" right.

Still, If I ever do an honest evenings work as a Councillor then an Area Committee is it. If you are prepared to devote enough energy to some thing then eventually you can make a difference to a community. I just wish was a little bit easier at times.

In praise of .... Stephen Tall

When I heard last week that there was to be a Liberal Democrat "blogger of the year" award then it seemed obvious to me that the only worthy winner would be Stephen Tall. Superlative writing, serious policy discussion combined with enough personal whimmsy to make it human its almost the perfect political blog. Although I suspect something of a Valkyre of the party's new Right wing I feel comfortable that it is people like him who seem to be taking over. Urbane and Urban, hard headed and making serious attempts to marry the party's social concern with some hard headed economics.

It was intriguing to sort of meet him last night in a Hotel bar and discuss his triumph. One of the joys of Conference is the collection of half meetings you have. Friends of friends you snatch conversations with asfter a few hours of free wine at the Stonewall disco.

And my second ensuing conference resolution is to go back to Leeds and over haul this blog.

Including the spelling!

In praise of... Emily Gasson

15 years ago next month I was signed upto the party at a University freshers stall. An enthusiastic young woman called Emily Gasson did the honours and by one of those randon Conference coincidences I bumped into her yesterday.

Remembering her name I have followed her progress as a PPC for Dorset North and was delighted when I noticed she had married Ed Davey a while back. Recruitment has been one of my many failings over the years. The biggest single reason people join the party is because someone asks them to. Although we only chatted for a few minutes as we walked back along the sea front the infectious charm and panzer like determination quickly brought back memories.

My conference resolution number 0ne is go back to Leeds and ask all the liberal people I know to join the party.

Conference Blog 1

In some ways I pity any community that is invaded by 1500 Liberal Democrats for a week. I suppose its the price of being a conference town but the locals seem bemused to have 15 people in the local Wetherspoons discussing "Green Switch" taxation while eating their post hangover fry ups. And there are a lot of post hang over fry ups. What always takes me aback about conference is both the heavy drinking and the extent to which its a knocking shop.

I think the root cause is that Conference is an essentially middle class activity. Anyone going is well off enough to have a week off work by the sea, it is in effect a holiday so why not behave as if you are on one?

That isn't to say that the Party hasn't changed over the 15 years I have been a member. When I joined at a freshers fair in 1991 it was a bit like Greenpeace or Oxfam. Entirely worthy but more like a campaigning group than a traditional political party. The same old 15 to 20 MP's from the Celtic fringes were as close as you came to career politicans. Two things have changed and I fear we have to thank Tony Blair for one of them.

The first is the astonishing growth of the Local Government base. If you have 4700 Principal local authority Councillors then you can't help but run a few things along the way. The pursuit, use and subsequent loss of local power has matured the party. Its interesting to see areas where the Lib Dems have been in and out of power several times and the sobering effect that it has on people.

The second is the astonishing growth in paid staff the party now has. Proportional Representation in Europe, Wales, Scotland and London has given us 39 "Parliamentarians" in devolved government with Generious research and office allowances. If you add in a growth of our 20 mps to 63 the injection of that amount of research and political staff has had a real impact. Conference is stuffed full of bright young things with sharp suits and ambitions to be more than a maverick back bencher for a few years in their fifties.

The down side of the professionalism is prose has begun to take over from the poetry. Its no cooincidence in my view that we are Launching " Beating the Greens" at this conference. In middle class and student areas across the country we are finding that our anti establishment credentials aren't enough for some people any more and the Green party is taking our place.

On balance I think the shift is a good thing. Half of our Councillors are up for reelection in 2007 and the bars are abuzz with Cameron and how Ming is doing. After 70 years in the wilderness at least something is now at stake. It may take another long period but I genuinely believe that some of those young thrusting MP's staff will be MP's themselves one day and Government Ministers as well.

Grid Lock Sunday

One of the more pleasent sides of slipping off south this week is avoiding Freshers Week. Yes, I am a miserable old misanthrope and yes, I did go to University myself.

However the plain fact is my ward will see it's population more than double in the next 48 hours and it can all be a bit of a culture shock after the quiet months of summer. Last year I went onto the battle front of Central Headingley and armed with my mobile phone tried to get some sort of Council response to the chaos. and promptly failed miserabley.

Every bar, club and pizza joint in Leeds is out flyering, flyposting explodes, Promotional wagons for clubs cause grid lock on the A660 as they drive at glacial speed while blasting music, free alcolohol is handed out even to drivers of cars and meanwhile 30000 students are all arriving in family cvars try to move in on the same day. While I've no objection to legitimate business's trying to advertise their wares but I do object to a suburban centre being reduced to chaos for 3 three days, selling alcohol to people till they throw up in the street and leaving the council to pick up the bill.

My ward colleague, James Monaghan, has worked quite hard this year on a multi agency response and the proof will be in the pudding. We have used new powers under the Clean Neighbourhoods Act to regulate flyering, have kicked the police out of their apathy and will have considerable enforcement resources on the ground.

If it all works then broadly speaking students will still be able to do what they want and bar owners make a great deal of money. The only difference will be removing the top 10% of excess that intimidates older residents. I welcome all my new neighbours. I started out in Leeds 12 years ago in a shared house in Hyde Park and have stayed ever since. I hope some of the new students will to. As the new term kicks off we enter another round in the ongoing debate as to how we all manage to live together.

My Conference Routine

I have a very set way of dealing with Lib Dem Party conference. I book the time off work then systematically fail over several months to register, book travel or accomodation. I then have a panic the weekend before and end up not going.

For once I seem to have at least partially broken my duck and am currently just off Trafalgar Square enjoying an evening in London and will arrive in Brighton tomorrow. My main aim is to get as much of the training under my belt as possible. Oh and enjoy the sea as I have a real soft spot for Brighton. The main event politically will be the vote on wether or not we keep a pledge for a 50p top rate of tax. I'm not a voting rep and honestly don't know what I would do if I was.
Strictly speaking I'm in favour of Evan Harris' amendment to keep the symbolism of a 50p top rate (and as less than 1% of the population earn over the £150000 pa needed to be eligable it is symbolism in my view).

However I am attracted philisophically by the shift to taxing pollution. The smaller l liberal in me thinks we should trust people with more of there own money in their pay packets and then clobber them only if they make damaging choices.

Either way it all seems to be being over blown by party spin doctors. I recall a very pleasent afternoon spent in a Conference bar once with someone who shall remain nameless. She swore blind she had once being put up to causing trouble at one conference just after the merger with the SDP. By leading a charge against the Leaderships policy they acheived numerious "victory" stories in the press and how Conference had butressed Paddy Ashdowns authority. Sometimes in politics you actually need to be seen picking a fight with your own party. Even if you have to artifically create that fight.

I suspect Evan Harris couldn't be put upto anything and this issue is a genuine one. But when I listen to BBC Radio and senior party front benchers talking up the prospect of defeat on a vote I suspect they will win very clearly then I do give it all a rye smile.

Full Council

By recent standards todays meeting was quite short at a mere 7 hours. I'm going to score it a win for the Joint Administration by 55 to 45 but only really because there are more of us and we have the best debaters. The two highlights that stand out are the debate on the Weekends' Robbie Williams Concerts in Roundhay Park and the increasingly unpleasent spat between the Tory Leader and the Labour Councillor John Illingworth.

The Robbie Williams "Fiasco" makes me laugh. Leeds has no arena of any sort. Any band that can sell out more than the 1500 capacity Student Union simply doesn't come to Leeds. For a City of its size this is a disgrace and what should be done is another post. However it makes the 90000 capacity Robbie concerts all the more important culturally and economically. The events seem to have been an astonishing success with the single but fairly large exception of the travel management plan. The roads chaos ended up closing 11 schools last friday , in some cases with only 24 hours notice.

This was front page news and the Leader of Council (currently a Lib Dem in the rotation arrangements) had to issue a public apology. I have no doubt that this is a serious cockup and Labour were drawing blood until they over played their hand with some of the more hysterical criticism and the mood of the meeting changed. The facts are that 180000 people enjoyed great concerts, an estimated £10m went into the local economy, Roundhay Park is back as a serious events space and we have had a very painful reminder why we absolutely must get our finger out over an Arena.

I won't attempt to explain the byzantine feud betweens Cllrs Carter and Illingworth but I will go "off message" for once. I have known John Illingworth, my Labour collegue for the neighbouring ward, for 6 years. I believe him to be entirely honourable and if he has now been referred to the Standards Board then he is innocent until proven guilty. Cllr Andrew Carter, the Conservative Group Leader is the best public speaker on Council by a country mile. He's very able to make the referral to standards imply guilt in its self. Not only is this wrong but a tad hypocritical as he says his big beef with John Illingworth is that he uses induendo to smear opponents.

I may get into hot water for criticising a Coalition collegue but being the Philadelphia Lawyer that I am I believe in due process which I think should be now allowed to take its course.

Finally I was very disappointed with the Housing debate initiated by the the Labour group. The proposition speech by Cllr Richard Lewis was excellent but the rest turned into a slanging match. And perhaps if the average age of Council wasn't about 55 we would have had more than one oblique refference to first time buyers. An oppertunity missed.

An apology for Technophobia

One of the more depressing aspects of this blog has been the lack of comments. Or so it seemed. I was just fiddling with things trying to allow non bloggers to post comments and lo and behold! 23 unmoderated comments have been stored for me! Its like one of those moments when you find a tenner down the back of the sofa and decide to spend it in the pub.

My two favourite commenters are Merrick ( fellow Hyde Park resident who thinks the things I would think if I hadn't sold out) and former Labour Council collegue Stuart Bruce ( who I recall being very rude about me once on his blog - but we will draw a vail over that.)

I may get round to replying to some of them but hopefully they will pop straight up from now on. Am just finishing a mammoth Email session at the Civic Hall and silently dreading tommorrow. We have a meeting of Full Council.

Is Simon Hughes really that bad?

Alright, yes I did support Simon for the party Leadership earlier in the year and Yes I'm, also grateful for all he has done for Leeds over the years, particularly when we were black whole for the party.

Nevertheless I'm bemused by the level of animosity he now seems to be generating and the apparently urgent desire to prevent him having a second term as Party President. He's a gut liberal, the definning constituency MP of his generation, a consummate media performer and probabley in the twilight of his career. Presidential terms are only two years and hes term limited so this is his last one.

I suspect my bemusement is becuase I'm not a London Apparatchick and so am insulated from how awful he alledgedly is at the Federal organisation part of things. Of course we are a highly democratic party, there are loads of highly qualifies alternatives and no, no one is "owed" a second term. I just wonder if the prospect of another two years of Simon is worth the hoopla, cost and distraction of a second contested Federal Election in the space of a year?

Flower Power

I spent Sunday afternoon at the St Michaels, Headingley flower festival and then the "Flowers of Praise" hymn service that followed. I had gone with a fair few preconceptions which were blown away by the display. They held it in the Church not the hall and tuned the thing into a sophisticated meditation on the seasons beautifully linking in the English Hymnal and the Christian calendar.

The Hymn service that followed featured songs on a flower theme with readings not from the bible but poetry, scientific readings and some mystical work. This may sound like the hippy Church of England but St Michael's is as straight laced as it gets. The money raised was being split between a local cancer charity and the organ restoration fund.

I could help but notice that the service had 5 times the average evening attendence and clearly moved many people. The Church is one of, perhaps the, Iconic building of Headingley and it was great to see it full and in use. To many Churches are locked all week, despite being the geographical centre of communities that need the space. Most of the Anglican churches recent press coverage has been on the issue of Human Sexuality over which it is superfically ripping its self apart. Perhaps there is a lesson in all this that at this time of enviromental crisis the Church could better reach out by using its rich enviromental tradition rather than obsessing about sex?

Relaunch

There are few more telling signs of a failing political career than an attempt at a "Relaunch". Nevertheless I'm having one. I'm reminded of the West Wing episode where CJ asks Toby wether he ever wonders that if they are the ones running the country, then perhaps the country is in a Hell of a lot of trouble? he replies

"Yes, until I meet the other guys."

In this spirit I leave the summer months behind and am trying to re enage with life as a City Councillor. I'm going down to 4 days a week at work from October and am going to drag myself to Brighton if it kills me. Hell I have even booked my self onto some PPC training. However the priority is the ward. Next weekend the population of Leeds 6 will more than double. Its freshers week and we will resume our status as Leeds's most densely populated area. The acres of empty houses and Halls of residence will be filled, every pub in the area will have a queue, the takeaways will reopen and the area will be deluged with flyers, flyposters and lost 18 years olds asking "how do I get to the Uni?" when its actually 90 seconds away.

I hate to sound like a miserable old git and yes it is the student presence that has driven so much of the City's recent success. Their counter cultural influence puts the "Republic" into Hyde Park.

But the darker side of uncontrolled landlordism also means a rocketing mugging and burglary rate, an avalanche of noise complaints, very poor quality accomodation for students, poor social cohesion and a living nightmare for some permanent residents.

The excellent new columnist in the YEP, Rod Mcphee, recently used the terms "urbanite" and "surburbanite" to define the two catergories of City dwellers. The reason I have spent the last 12 years in Hyde Park and 6 as Councillor for Headingley (My twenties and early thirties) is that at heart I am an Urbanite. However the week before freshers week is my annual self assessment. Is it time for a semi in the suburbs?

Probably but not yet. Althought the question gets harder to answer with every advancing year.