After being contacted by several local residents, I’ve been reading the 50 page summary of the Ombudsman’s report into the Equitable Life scandal - and the summary of the EU report (for which, incidentally, the investigation was led by a Lib Dem MEP - Diana Wallis) and they both make very disturbing reading.
There’s been an alarming increase in mortgage repossession claims at Winchester Crown Court.
The Ministry of Justice published figures on August 15, 2008 showing that the number of mortgage possession claims between January and June 2008 at Winchester Crown Court were 68% higher than a year earlier. Possession orders were 15% higher.
The 60% year-on-year growth in mortgage repossession orders from April-June at Winchester Crown Court is the 8th highest increase in the country.
It’s an extremely worrying trend. We look set to see the highest level of repossessions at Winchester Crown Court for at least 10 years.
After all the work getting Church Lane’s speed limit in place and approved, and putting up the signs, you’d think the trees could have been cut back so that people could actually see them!
Peter Mason is on the case. I’ve also reported it at FixMyStreet and the County Council website.
Peter has also requested a flashing sign to help clearly establish the new speed limit in the mind of regular users of Church Lane.
There’s a big problem with the Winchester City Council survey which they’ve used to conclude that people locally want step-change growth or to build on Barton Farm.
The problem is that their survey doesn’t include enough people from the city itself. As a consequence, the results are totally misleading.
I’ve been working with Mark on an online version of the cost of living survey that he recently put in the Hampshire Chronicle.
Surveys are still coming in and we are still collating the full results, but Mark already used the early results in a debate on the cost of living on July 9th.
Nudge - and similar books of behavioural economics are getting a lot of attention at the moment. I’m particularly interested to see if they can provide any help to the work of the Communications Team of Winchester Action on Climate Change.
If you’re interested in getting a copy, here are some links:
Here’s a link to the Cabinet Office paper titled Personal Responsibility and Changing Behaviour referenced in the Guardian article on ‘Nudge’.
Other works on behaviour change relating to climate change worth looking at… WinACC recently highlighted ‘Weathercocks and Signposts: The environment movement at a crossroads”. DEFRA’s Framework for pro-Environmental Behaviours is also useful reading.
I’m surprised that the Chamber of Commerce and George Beckett are so negative about the impact of the move of the Police Headquarters from Winchester to Chandler’s Ford.
This is not the same as a big local business going bust or moving to the other end of the country. No-one’s losing their job. No families will see a big drop in income. The jobs aren’t disappearing. They’re moving seven miles down the road to Chandler’s Ford. No local families will be forced to move away from Winchester and there will be no reduction in the number of police officers working out of North Walls.
People also spend most money where they live, not where they work, so the extra houses in the town centre are likely to help local business, not hurt it.
Looking at Winchester as a whole, one of our biggest problems is lack of housing, particularly affordable and social housing, rather than lack of jobs. Every day, 18,000 people commute into Winchester and 8,600 people commute out. Thousands of families are on the waiting list for social housing. The move will help address that imbalance, reduce commuting and help Winchester house more local people.
Importantly, we will get these extra houses, which count towards government targets, without being forced to build on green fields.
Some businesses will be hurt by fewer people popping out to shop at lunchtime, but more will be helped by 294 more families living and shopping in the heart of Winchester. Overall, this move should be good for local business, good for local people and good for the local environment.
Yesterday afternoon I got a nip from a dog while out delivering leaflets.
No big deal you might think. Clean and disinfect the wound. Check that tetanus is up to date. Get on with life.
But it reminded me of a sign I saw posted up while I was out in Sierra Leone a few weeks ago running some training for the Westminster Foundation for Democracy.
There were a team of us from the Lib Dem, Labour and Conservative parties working with local council candidates from the SLPP, APC and PMDC to help them prepare for their local elections.
We’ve decided to switch our office to using electricity from Ecotricity - so the press turned up yesterday to take some pictures in the back garden of our office.
Reassuringly, it doesn’t cost any more than the standard tariff from a non-green supplier.
We’ve had pictures of Mark and I waving low energy lightbulbs around before when we switched all the bulbs in our office.
Here’s one of the rare pictures from yesterday where we’re not all waving light-bulbs around - only one of us is:
On a more substantive note, the head of ecotricity has a thought-provoking blog at zerocarbonista.com. His view is that the biggest barrier to more wind energy in the UK is the planning system - not lack of feed-in tariffs:
Two thirds of all wind projects are refused by District Councils at the planning stage, and two thirds of all appeals are upheld by the government – a lot of bad decisions being overturned, eventually.
And wind energy is the only major generation source that depends for planning on District Councils – the government deals with all others for very good reasons. District councils are not up to the job, on the whole.
I’m loth to see any decisions move towards central government without a very good reason - overall, I’d like to see more local decision-making, not less - but there may be a case for making it a county council decision - like minerals and waste.
I’d also like to see CO2 as an explicit factor in all relevant council and government decisions. Crediting new wind turbine developments against councils’ carbon targets could be another, more local, way to address the issue.
More on the zerocarbonista blog about feed-in tariffs and planning here.
Another green energy supplier used by Lib Dems (including our national office) is Good Energy.
I’ve been surprised by the response to my previous post on QR-codes - the 2-d barcodes that can be read by mobile phones.
I’m still skeptical, but Roger, the editor of http://2d-code.co.uk/ wrote to point me at the impressive Japanese experience with QR-codes - apparently 51% of Japanese mobile phone users use the barcode function.
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