On Friday, we found out that we had won 6 out of 7 seats in the new Winchester constituency.

Across the new constituency, the Lib Dem team got 48% of the vote. The Conservative vote slumped to 38%. Labour collapsed to 4%. UKIP got 6% of the vote and the Greens 3%.

These are better results than we achieved at the County Council elections on the same day as we won the 2005 General Election. Compared to 2005, the Lib Dem vote is up. The Conservative vote is down.

Overall, we saw a 4.4% swing from the Conservatives to the Liberal Democrats compared to our vote last year and a clear swing in our favour compared to the results on General Election day in 2005.

Many congratulations to Jackie Porter, Charlotte Bailey, Brian Collin, Phryn Dickens, Peter Mason and Alan Broadhurst on their victories and many thanks to Terry Holden-Brown for his commitment and hard work on the campaign in Chandler’s Ford.

A big thank you to the voters who decided to back our candidates. We also owe a huge debt to the staff and volunteers who worked so incredibly hard over the preceding months, and to our exceptional candidates for their incredible commitment and hard work over the last few months and years. There’s no doubt that their personal work played a pivotal part in our success on Thursday.

It still hasn’t fully sunk in, but these results put us in very good spirits for the General Election campaign – whenever it may come.

Thanks to your generosity the Lib Dem team has so far raised more than £3,800 towards the Nightshelter and the Trinity Centre!  

We almost all got rather heavily rained on and didn’t sleep too well from around 3 a.m. onwards, but it was great to be part of such a well-organised and successful fundraising event for such a good cause. And, after all, no matter how wet we got, sleeping out on one damp night in May is nothing like having to do it through the winter or for weeks or months on end. We all knew we had dry homes and beds to go home to afterwards. The important thing was that we raised as much money as possible to help people who don’t have that choice.

Earlier in the evening, there were an excellent series of talks and speeches moderated by Debbie Thrower, who also read a very thought-provoking text on her own account (which I unfortunately didn’t note the source down for).  It was particularly moving hearing from people like Ed Mitchell who had been rough sleepers, how charities like the Winchester Churches Nightshelter and the Trinity Centre had helped them get their lives back on track.  (You can buy Ed Mitchell’s book here if you would like to know more).

There are some good pictures and reports on the Sleep Out at the main Big Sleep Out website.  If you’re interested, you can also read the live Twitter reports of the evening.

Even though the evening is over, it remains an urgent cause and both charities are very stretched by high demand. 60 people a month are turned away by the Night Shelter due to lack of space. On average, 20 of the 50 people who use the Trinity Centre report that they slept rough the night before.

If you’d like to donate to the Big Sleep Out by sponsoring the Lib Dem team, you can do so at http://www.justgiving.com/martintod. You can also give directly without sponsoring anyone. Either way, every penny you give (plus Gift Aid) goes straight to the two charities and will help make a real difference.

In the end, it doesn’t do justice to any school to reduce their results to a single measure, and A/AS-level results can never be the only measure of a good secondary education.

But if that’s the game we’re playing, here is another ’single measure’ from Hampshire.

Our local state 6th form college, Peter Symonds, helps more young people get through A/AS-levels with a higher average A/AS points score than every single independent school in Hampshire, Portsmouth, Southampton and the Isle of Wight combined.

Let’s just say that again: one state school – on its own – outperforms the independent sector for the whole of Hampshire, Portsmouth, Southampton and the Isle of Wight – in terms of number of students going through A/AS level and the average A/AS points scores they achieve.

Average points scores are here on the BBC website.

Just to give the exact figures, there were 1,247 young people at Peter Symonds finishing A/AS studies with an average points score of 1025.5.

By contrast, 944 young people finished A/AS studies in all the independent schools in Hampshire, Portsmouth and Southampton and the Isle of Wight with an average A/AS average points score of 901.1.

Of course, it can never do full justice to the education provided by a single school to reduce their results to raw numbers – and a single figure. Here in Winchester, St Swithun’s, Winchester College and Peter Symonds all offer exceptional sixth form education.

As a further example of how numbers can mislead, at Winchester College, many of the students used to take a proportion of their AS levels early, which means those results do not count in the league tables, depressing the school’s overall reported scores.

This doesn’t change the overall conclusions for Hampshire, but it’s another example of the idiocy of assessing a system based on one or other number.

More figures than you ever thought you wanted on the DCSF website.

PS: Winchester College is in the process of moving to Cambridge Pre-U, which will make purely numerical comparisons even more pointless.

A.D. 1125.

In this year sent the King Henry, before Christmas, from Normandy to England, and bade that all the mint-men that were in England should be mutilated in their limbs; that was, that they should lose each of them the right hand, and their testicles beneath. This was because the man that had a pound could not lay out a penny at a market. And the Bishop Roger of Salisbury sent over all England, and bade them all that they should come to Winchester at Christmas. When they came thither, then were they taken one by one, and deprived each of the right hand and the testicles beneath. All this was done within the twelfth-night. And that was all in perfect justice, because that they had undone all the land with the great quantity of base coin that they all bought.

• If you’ve not already visited Winchester Action on Climate Change, please do!  They’re currently trying to get as many people as possible to measure their carbon footprint and then publish it.  It makes interesting reading.  I’ve done it – and once I’d recovered from the shock, it was definitely worth doing and gave good guidance on how to cut my carbon. The site also got a good write-up from John Grant’s GREENORMAL blog recently which was also very encouraging.
• If you were as horrified as I was by the Government’s decision to go ahead with Heathrow’s third runway, you may want to sign up for a bit of land at the Greenpeace website. Very satisfying (although I’m intending to get up there in person at the next suitable demonstration as well).
• The Greening Campaign is really taking off round the Winchester district. Very inspirational.  Find out about the main campaign here, and the campaigns in Fulflood, Oliver’s Battery, Colden Common and Alresford.
• I had great success giving Owl electricity monitors to my brothers and sisters. It’s a nifty handheld monitor that tells you how much electricity your house is using. Their children have since been charging round their houses switching things off – which can only be a good thing.  If you want a cheaper option, I’ve had good experience with this plug-in power and energy monitor meter that you can buy on Amazon.
• I was very excited by the solar LED lights, presented by local company Light-Solar-LED Co. at the recent Colden Common Greening event. They have potential to dramatically reduce our energy consumption for lighting.
• During last year’s Winchester’s bike week (this year scheduled for 13th-21st June) I had a go on a Cytronex electric bike – developed by a Winchester company. They’re not cheap, but there are grants available, and very, very tempting to a regular Winchester cyclist – and if they get more people cycling rather than using the car, will make a very helpful contribution to reducing our carbon emissions!

That’s it for now.  Please let me know if there are any other sites (or green things) you think I should link to.

According to the show:

Former Energywatch chief executive Allan Asher told BBC File On 4 that annual bills of around £1,200 could be cut by a third or more.

You can listen again and read more via the FileOn4 website or read a transcript of the programme here.

Updated on July 1, 2009 – podcast link no longer available

Almost all the people who responded to my email survey were facing increases far above both the 35% reported in the press and the 42% increase for direct debit customers reported by the Telegraph. The average figure was 81%.

The dramatic increase in interest income from British Gas parent, Centrica plc, suggests this is a deliberate strategy – building up cash balances to make money on interest. Since 2006, the interest income declared in their accounts has gone through the roof – doubling from £40 million in 2006 to £83 million in 2007. Interest in their interim accounts for first six months of 2008 (£43 million) is 54% higher than the £28 million interest income reported for the first six months of 2007.

I’d be amazed if it was just a Winchester problem and am interested in finding out who else has the same problem. Please feel free to email me with details at martin [at] martintod [dot] org [dot] uk or use the form below.

cforms contact form by delicious:days

They make an unanswerable case that many Equitable Life policy holders lost money as a direct consequence of regulators failing to keep close enough scrutiny of the company and act on the the risks and problems that they either had, or should have, identified.

The list of the regulatory failures includes:

• Allowing the combination of the roles of Chief Executive and Appointed Actuary between 1991 and 1997
• The failure to adequately scrutinise Equitable Life’s returns and accounting policies and the value of its liabilities from 1990 onwards
• The failure to act on the problems of the differential terminal bonus policy – and the overbonusing of some investors at the expense of others
• The failure to force Equitable Life to create a contingency fund to cover the risk of losing the Hyman case – which challenged Equitable Life policies and, if lost, would leave them open to massive liabilities
• The decision to allow Equitable Life to keep trading after losing the Hyman case

It’s clear that many policy holders have been badly let down by regulators, have suffered financial loss as a result and deserve compensation for the losses caused by the failings of the regulator.

Vince Cable has taken a very strong line on this:

After eight years and 13 reports it’s time for the Government to finally admit that it comprehensively failed to regulate Equitable Life properly.

For years ministers have acted like they were in a castle under siege, hoping that Equitable Life policy holders would give up and go away. Today’s report shows that, rightly, this is not going to happen.

Gordon Brown has overseen a complete and repeated failure of regulation spanning a decade. The outrage expressed by policyholders over this ’serial regulatory failure’ is entirely justified.

After months of dragging its feet, the Government needs to accept the Ombudsman’s recommendation that ‘wrongs should be remedied’.

If ministers choose to disregard this report, as they have done over tax credits and occupational pensions, it will be the final nail in the coffin for the Ombudsman’s credibility.

These are large sums of money, especially at a time when belts are being tightened. Gordon Brown must now admit fault and apologise to policyholders.

It is critical that the Government now sets out a credible, transparent and independent process to enter into a dialogue with policy holders over compensation.

He’s also written an excellent article on the topic at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/07/11/cccable111.xml

Policy holders fully deserve fair compensation after this appalling maladminstration over more than 10 years.

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.

In essence, thousands of families around the country are now paying the price for the Government letting the economy – and banking regulation – get hopelessly out of control. With rising mortgage repayments as fixed interest deals expire and aren’t replaced – and sky high food and fuel costs, more and more people’s budgets are being driven to breaking point.

There is a lot of helpful advice available to people in financial difficulty – for example from the Citizens’ Advice Bureau – but it’s also clear that we need a change in the rules. If we are to avoid the mass repossessions of the 1990s, we need the Government to enforce a statutory code of practice which ensures that lenders only ever repossess as a last resort. This should not just apply to the big banks but also to the large number of secondary lenders who are using court action to pursue their debts in a very aggressive way.

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.

The problem is that their survey doesn’t include enough people from the city itself. As a consequence, the results are totally misleading.

Even though half the people in the district live in or near Winchester, only 2 of the council’s 7 consultation meetings – the ones in the Guildhall and in Littleton – were in or near Winchester.

As a result, only around 1 in 5 of those they asked to complete their survey came from the Winchester area – a much smaller proportion than they would need for the survey to be representative.

The public meeting held in Winchester and the Lib Dem survey of Winchester residents showed that most people in the town are opposed to ’step change’. They also don’t favour building on Barton Farm.

Part of the problem has been the Conservatives’ continuing weak management of the consultation process for the ‘Local Development Framework’.

They originally proposed only one meeting in Winchester in a room that would have seated 120 people. Lib Dem and public pressure managed to get a second meeting at Littleton and to get the city meeting moved to a larger room, but it still was too little too late.

The Conservatives should not conclude that Winchester wants a step-change or to build on Barton Farm based on a small unrepresentative sample. It would be completely wrong to decide anything until they give proper weight to the views of residents in the city itself.

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.

All the survey responses to date have helped give a clear picture of the pressures that people locally are facing.

It’s a very long time since we’ve seen such rapid increases in food and fuel prices – combined with continued increases in council tax and fares. For obvious reasons, both Mark and I are very keen to see that the views and situation of local people are properly represented in Parliament.

If you want to read or see the speech Mark made referencing the survey, it’s available online at TheyWorkForYou.com.

If you’re interested in getting a copy, here are some links:

• Nudge – by Robert Thaler
• Predictably Irrational – Dan Ariely
• The Psychology of Persuasion – Robert Cialdini

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.

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.

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.

One afternoon, we went to the UN Guest House in Kenema, the third city of Sierra Leone, to see if they had any free accomodation nearer to where we were running our training and the following police press release, about dogs, was on the wall.

It’s an very vivid and interesting piece of writing. It paints a very recognisable, and, in some ways, bleakly funny, picture of how police, politicians and local people often interact. But at the heart of it is an awful reality. For many people in Sierra Leone, without access to adequate medical care, even in one of the country’s major cities, a dog bite can be a death sentence.

Here’s the press release:

PRESS RELEASE

FROM:    THE OFFICE THE LOCAL UNIT COMMANDER KENEMA DIVISION
TO:    THE GENERAL PUBLIC

POLICE HAS OBSERVED IN RECENT TIMES AN ESCALATION IN THE INCIDENCE OF STRAY DOG BITES IN THE KENEMA TOWNSHIP WHICH HAVE RESULTED INTO THE UNTIMELY DEATH OF THE INNOCENT VICTIMS, WHICH THE POLICE DEEPLY REGRET. POLICE HAS ALREADY BROUGHT THIS TO THE ATTENTION OF THE KENEMA TOWN COUNCIL TO GET RID OF THE STRAY DOGS TO END THE MENACE AS PEOPLE ARE NOWADAYS GRIPPED WITH FEAR AT THE SIGHT OF STRAY DOGS. CONSEQUENTLY, BANDS OF TEENAGERS HAVE ALSO GONE IN SEARCH OF STRAY DOGS, WHICH THEY KILL, ON SIGHT WITH STONES AND CRUDE INSTRUMENTS LEAVING THE STREETS LITTERED WITH THE DEAD DOGS. SOME PEOPLE HAVE ALSO SUSTAINED VARIOUS INJURIES INFLICTED BY THE YOUTHS IN THE PROCESS OF KILLING THE STRAY DOGS.MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC ARE WARNED TO RESTRAIN THESE TEENAGERS TO REFRAIN FROM PURSUING THESE DOGS AS THERE IS A POTENTIAL FOR OTHER TEENAGERS WITH ULTERIOR MOTIVES TO JOIN THEM TO ENGAGE IN CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES TO THE DETRIMENT OF THE PUBLIC AND MORE PEOPLE MAY ALSO BE INJURED BY THE INSTRUMENTS USED BY THE TEENAGERS. OWNERS OF DOGS ARE WARNED TO CONFINE THEIR DOGS IN THEIR HOMES SO THAT THEY WILL NOT BE PUBLIC MENACE. THE POLICE ARE WILLING TO ASSIST THE PUBLIC TO TRACK DOWN STRAY DOGS WHILST THE TIMELY INTERVENTION OF THE TOWN COUNCIL IS AWAITED TO DICISIVELY DEAL WITH THE SITUATION TO BRING RELIEF TO THE INHABITANTS OF KENEMA TOWNSHIP.

USMAN KAMARA [SUPT]
LOCAL UNIT COMMANDER – KENEMA DIVISION

Here’s a PDF of the original Kenema Police Press Release.

I don’t know which medical charities have particular activities in Kenema, but if you’d like to support improved medical care in Sierra Leone, you can donate to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) or Medical Assistance Sierra Leone.

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’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.

Looking through his site, I liked the idea of linking the QR-code to a mobile facebook page and was inspired by this Harrods ad to create a QR-code for a Twitter sign-up SMS. Here are examples of each:

Another option is that QR-codes may be used for the VCF files used to exchange addresses between phones.  This article suggests linking to one of these files on a website – but I’m not entirely clear why you wouldn’t just put the whole address file into the QR-code as follows?

I popped along to the launch of the new Whizzgo car-club scheme at the Guildhall this morning.

As the Council’s press release says:

Car Club members will have access to a brand new Citroen car, for less than £5 an hour – including petrol, mileage, road tax, insurance, servicing, breakdown, recovery, maintenance and cleaning. What’s more, independent research shows that Car Club members can cut their total transport bills by half.

As well as cutting transport bills in half, separate studies have also demonstrated that the provision of Car Clubs results in a significant reduction in car miles driven, with members walking or cycling more, using public transport more often or simply re-arranging how they make journeys.

The first WhizzGo cars will be available for Car Club members in specially designated bays provided by Winchester City Council in their off-street car parks in Gladstone Street, Jewry Street, Colebrook Street and Middle Brook Street.

At this morning’s launch, they explained that joining Whizzgo also lets you use cars in Leeds, London, Brighton, Liverpool, Southampton, York, Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, Newcastle, Worcester, St. Albans and Belfast.

All in all, a very interesting offer.

Since my latest two car service bills alone have added up to more than my current car is worth (admittedly this is not a particularly high benchmark), it may now be the time to get rid of it and go with Whizzgo!

Back in January, following an invitation, I accompanied the RHCH Medical Director, Dr Kevin Stewart, on one of the daily ward rounds by the executive team to inspect the hospital environment and see that action is taken on areas that need work.

We spent two hours visiting the hospital – mainly in Florence Portal House – seeing the improvements that are being made and discussing the infection control programme.

I’ve been particularly interested in infection control for several years.  Earlier in my career, I was involved in setting up public hygiene programmes in developing countries – teaching mothers and children basic handwashing habits can have a dramatic effect on infant health and mortality -  and have previously met with experts in infection control to learn more about it.

It was very encouraging to see how totally committed the hospital’s management team and staff are to improving infection control and creating a culture of cleanliness within the hospital – and how hard the staff are working to improve things.  It was clear that their top priority is to get the essentials right: regular hand-washing and hand-sanitising – reducing unnecessary use of antibiotics – making the hospital easy to clean and keeping it clean.  I was amazed how many hospitals didn’t mention handwashing or sinks in the recent Panorama survey the BBC published alongside their ‘How clean Is your hospital’ programme (although RHCH did).  Hand sanitiser (essentially alcohol with bit of glycerin and perfume thrown in) is good as far as it goes, but, if there is any dirt on the hands, it is not as good as soap and water.

We also talked about their programme of ‘prescribing’ the insertion of cannulae. It’s been getting great results and it’s very good to see RHCH taking a national lead on finding innovative ways to go beyond the basics.

Most of the time, the best thing that politicians can do about the NHS is stay out of the way of local health professionals. The one area where they can need more support is in ensuring they have enough funding to pay for the right number of beds for the number of patients they have and to modernise the wards to make it easier to isolate people who get an infection.

I know Mark Oaten and I are committed to doing everything we can to make sure that the hospital has the funding and support it needs to do this.  As recently reported on Panorama, if beds are used too intensively, it can increase the risk of infection – even if everything else is done right.  It’s essential that the hospital gets the support it needs to keep reducing bed occupancy rates and to continue driving down infection rates.