Thank you, Madam Mayor, for the opportunity to say a few words about the life of Robert Burns.

I cannot claim any particular expertise or insight. Despite a Scottish heritage – the Tods originally come from Dalkeith in Midlothian – I can’t claim to have read all his works.  However I will try my best to provide some unexpected insight – and bring to light a few aspects of his life that you might know.

Born in 1759 just outside Ayr – the son of a tenant farming family.  He lived in difficult circumstances. His father continuously struggled financially – although the family made sure he got as good an education as they could afford.

He worked for many years as an agricultural worker and as a tenant farmer himself.  It was only following the spectacular success of his first published book of poems that his circumstances were transformed.

He moved to Edinburgh before spending all the money he’d earned in about 18 months and retraining as Excise Officer.

But then, tragically young, his health began to fail – and he died at the age of 37.

A man of enormous passions – he had, shall we say, a colourful love life – 12 children are known of – from at least 4 different mothers – only one of which he married – and there are more than 900 direct descendants of his alive today – but also great political passions – and a great ability to capture those passions and the passions of everyday life in verse.

I’m going to try something quite brave now and seek to find linkages between Robert Burns and Winchester

We know that Robert Burns is Scotland’s favourite poet.

But who was Robert Burns’s favourite poet?

Or rather who was the poet he most liked to quote…

And this is something we know – and we know the quote he most appreciated – and repeatedly cited in his letters:

“On reason build resolve
That column of true majesty in man!”

Described by Burns as “My most favourite quotation” in a letter on 10th August 1788.

He really likes this quote – in another letter he writes:

Come, then, let me act up to my favourite motto, that glorious passage in Young:
“On reason build resolve
That column of true majesty in man!”

And who is the Young he refers to?

The Reverend Edward Young.

Born at Upham in 1683. Educated at Winchester College. A true Winchester district man.

Taken from his poem “Night Thoughts” written between 1742 and 1745 – which some of you may know from the engravings prepared for it by William Blake.

And some of you may also know the quote:

Procrastination is the thief of time

Some of you may live it!

The reference to reason and resolve wasn’t the only part of Night Thoughts that Burns liked to cite – another quote – surprisingly relevant and surprisingly prescient for today’s world of fake news:

“What Truth on earth so precious as the Lie!”

and again, from the same, when Burns was unclear how one of his works would turn out, he cited Young’s:

“Tis nonsense destin’d to be future sense.”

And one of Burn’s most brilliant, insightful and oft-cited phrases

‘Man’s inhumanity to man’

also clearly echoes the same poem’s

”man’s revenge, and endless inhumanities on man’

Burns may never have set foot in our county, but if we believe his letters, one of our former residents clearly provided him with a fair share of creative and philosophical inspiration.

So now we know a bit of what Burns thought about a poet originally from our area.

I’m not going to claim any literary knowledge, but I am interested to know what writers from our area thought of Burns.

What, for example, did Jane Austen think of Burns?

We can’t know exactly, but in her unfinished novel Sanditon, sadly unfinished due to her death in our town only a mile or two from here, she has the heroine, Charlotte Heywood say of Burns:

 ‘I have read several of Burn’s Poems with great delight,’ said Charlotte as soon as she had time to speak, ‘but I am not poetic enough to separate a Man’s Poetry entirely from his Character; – and poor Burns’s known Irregularities, greatly interrupt my enjoyment of his Lines. – I have difficulty in depending on the Truth of his Feelings as a Lover. I have not faith in the sincerity of the affections of a Man of his Description. He felt & he wrote & he forgot.’ ”

While Burns may be Scotland’s favourite poet – I think we can see from that why Jane Austen is England’s favourite novelist.

They are, of course, the opinions of Jane Austen’s heroine – and not of Jane Austen herself. But would she have cited those feelings of ‘great delight’ if they weren’t feelings she had herself. I suspect not!

John Keats – one of our greatest Romantic poets – what does he think of the Scotland poet who helped blaze the way for the romantic movement.

We all know that in September 1819 he came to Winchester and wrote his famous ‘Ode to Autumn’ either on a walk through the meadows to St Cross or up to newly planted corn fields on St Giles’s Hill depending on whom you believe.

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, close bosom-friend of the maturing sun.”

(Intriguingly, Burns was also quite a fan of autumn. He wrote in a letter in August 1793 that “Autumn is my propitious season; I make more verses in it than all the year else.”)

But coming back to Keats, you may not know that the summer before he visited Winchester, he went on a walking tour of Scotland, Ireland and the Lake District with a close friend.  And that he deliberately designed the tour to include Burn’s birthplace and his grave.

On July 13, 1818 he visited Burns’s birthplace and wrote to a friend about it.

Then we proceede[d] to the Cottage he was born in – there was a board to that effect by the door side – it had the same effect as the same sort of memorial at Stratford on Avon – We drank some Toddy to Burns’s Memory with an old Man who knew Burns – damn him and damn his Anecdotes – he was a great bore – it was impossible for a Southron to understand above 5 words in a hundred. – There was something good in his description of Burns’s melancholy the last time he saw him. I was determined to write a sonnet in the Cottage – I did – but it was so bad I cannot venture it here.

However after visiting Burn’s tomb, on July 2, 1818, Keats was rather more successful –

On visiting the tomb of Burns

The town, the churchyard, and the setting sun,
     The clouds, the trees, the rounded hills all seem,
     Though beautiful, cold—strange—as in a dream
I dreamed long ago. Now new begun,
The short-lived, paly summer is but won
     From winter’s ague, for one hour’s gleam;
     Though sapphire warm, their stars do never beam;
All is cold beauty; pain is never done
For who has mind to relish, Minos-wise,
     The real of beauty free from that dead hue
     Sickly imagination and sick pride
Cast wan upon it! Burns! with honour due
     I have oft honoured thee. Great shadow, hide
Thy face—I sin against thy native skies.

So as we gather here in Winchester today – and ponder the greatness of Robert Burns – we are lucky to have two local guides to help us along the way – and one man who was a guide to Robert Burns in his journey to greatness.

Edward Young provided Burns with poetic inspiration and Burn’s favourite motto.

Jane Austen seemed unsure of Burn’s morals – but completely clear that we should read his poems with great delight.

And John Keats was so inspired by Burns that he designed a walking tour to visit the sites where he had lived and wrote poetry in his honour.

We can do no less than join them in our admiration.

So please be upstanding and let us join with Keats in honouring Burns, with Austen in delighting in his poetry.

And toasting the immortal memory of Robert Burns.

Most graffiti in our area is removed by the Business Improvement District or by the City Council and both have significantly increased spending recently to get more removed. Strictly, neither can remove it from another organisation’s property without permission – and that includes the boxes owned by Openreach and Virgin Media – as well as substations owned by SSE – and equipment owned by Network Rail.

Each of these has places to report graffiti – currently as follows:

• On public buildings, monuments, benches and bins
  • Winchester City Council – Clean My Street (or use the Your Winchester Android app or iPhone app and look for ‘Clean My Street’)
• On cabinets
  • Openreach – Reporting Damage or Safety Problems
  • Virgin Media – Reporting Cabinet or Manhole Damage (you can also post in this webforum, which I’ve found works really well)
• Near the railway
  • Network Rail – for problems on or near railway tracks.
  • At stations, use this South Western Railway form.
• On substations
  • Scottish & Southern Electricity Networks – Substation Repair

One tricky thing to handle is identifying which organisation a cabinet belongs to. Openreach has a guide to this (pdf) – but, if there isn’t an obvious logo or label (or even a barely visible faded one), the main trick is to look at the keyholes on the cabinet.

BT Openreach has triangular or star-shaped insert.

And Virgin has more conventional keyholes.

It’s always helpful to take a photo. Also write down or photograph whatever numbers are on the box in case it’s a useful reference. Openreach also ask you to use the What3Words app or website to get a useful link or set of three words to give an exact location – and I’ve also used this successfully with other organisations! If you don’t like using a proprietary system and want to use a more open reference or app, then the Ordnance Survey’s OS Locate app gives you easy access to latitude, longitude and National Grid references.

Any other comments or suggestions on how to get graffiti removed? Please add a comment below.

But my computer didn’t have Bluetooth. So I bought TP-Link UB400 Bluetooth Adaptor online, because I’ve used and liked their stuff before. But when I plugged it in it didn’t work! Windows 10 kept telling me I didn’t have Bluetooth installed.

I went to the TP-Link FAQ for the UB400 – but nothing they suggested worked.

After a bit of Googling, I went to the Windows Device Manager, looked at the Universal Serial Bus controllers, and disappeared down a rabbit hole trying to fix the “Unknown USB Device (Device Descriptor Request Failed)” problem.

And only then did I go to the “CSR Bluecore Bluetooth” driver that also appeared on the list of Universal Serial Bus controllers when I plugged in the dongle. As an experiment:

1. I right-clicked “CSR Bluecore Bluetooth and selected “Update driver”
2. Clicked on “Browse my computer for driver software”
3. Clicked on “Let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer”
4. Picked “Generic Bluetooth Adaptor” in place of “CSR Bluecore Bluetooth”
5. Clicked “next”

and suddenly everything worked!

So that’s my solution! I hope it works for you too.

The lower level of traffic is causing some immediate problems, such as increased speeding; revealing other problems, particularly in places where our pavements are too narrow for the number of people who want to use them; and also showing great opportunities, with a big increase in walking and cycling, particularly on our rural roads.

As we move into the recovery phase, we also need to do more to make our centres “social distancing” friendly. This means wider pavements and, learning from other countries, more opportunities for businesses to have widely spaced outdoor seating areas. People need to feel confident and safe coming back to our towns and villages knowing that they can easily move around in a socially distanced way.

What sort of measures would this give us?

• We need to tackle the heavily walked and queuing areas where the pavements are too narrow and the roads are too wide. An obvious place to start is the one-way system. I’d like to see if we could cone the whole one-way system down to a single lane with the rest reserved for walkers and cyclists – single lane in North Walls – single lane in St George’s St – narrowed single lane in Jewry St – narrowed single lane in the upper section of the High Street. If possible, we also need to do something for pedestrians on City Bridge and Romsey Road bridge too (although given both are heavily used by buses, this will be harder).

• On speed, we need to finish the job in Winchester and extend the 20 mph zone to residential areas across the whole city. We also need to narrow roads and widen pavements or add cycle lanes where there is a particular risk of people driving too fast. I would love to see up an uphill cycle lane on Chilbolton Avenue, for example.

• We need to create space for businesses to use the highway for widely spaced outdoor seating. The most obvious option to do this is to fully pedestrianise the Square. We may need a couple of blue badge parking spots for people who need parking near the centre, but we should definitely stop through traffic.

• Finally, one minor irritant that I know concerns some people. We need to revisit our push button crossings. Can we make them sensor or timer driven – so we don’t all need to push the button?

Make sense? Any streets, roads or priorities I’ve missed?

One of my responsibilities at the council is the City of Winchester Movement Strategy, so I’m already talking a lot with council officers and engineers at the City Council and County Council about how we can improve our streets. I promise to pass on any ideas that people send through!

Yesterday’s meeting of Hampshire’s Conservative cabinet confirmed that they will go ahead with their reckless £140 million cuts. These will only cost us more long-term.

In particular:

• Their cuts to health and care will mean that the NHS is unable to hit the financial targets laid out in its ‘sustainability and transformation plan’ – and will put health and care services under even more stress.
• Their cuts to Household Waste Recovery Centres are almost certain to lead to more fly-tipping.

In a surprise decision, the Cabinet also voted to recommend extra money to support parish and town councils in covering for services cut by Hampshire – such as community transport, school crossing patrols and subsidised bus services – however the Conservatives still have not put anything in place to support the many areas of Hampshire without parish and town councils – such as Winchester.

There’s also still no sign that they are taking any account of the impact of the cuts in less well-off areas of Hampshire.

Martin Tod, Liberal Democrat County Councillor for Winchester Westgate, commented:

We’re paying the price for the Conservatives’ incompetent and chaotic management of Brexit and the economy. This has led to collapsing investment, the lowest growth in both the EU and the G7 and rapidly growing inflation. Aside from the effect on people’s cost of living and the very real threat to businesses and jobs, this utter incompetence makes it even harder to tackle the crisis in funding for council services.

These cuts are a disaster of the Conservatives’ making – Conservative MPs, Conservative Ministers and Conservative Councillors have all contributed to this fiasco – and it will hit local people hard. The Conservatives are now compounding their failure by deciding not to have any kind of plan for the many areas of Hampshire without parish and town councils.

This is a real threat to Winchester – and, along with my colleagues, I will continue to push for the council to put in place a plan for unparished areas – and to stop the most damaging of their proposed cuts.

And nationally, the sooner we can find a way to ‘exit from Brexit’ and focus on a plan to turn round the economy, the better it will be for jobs, for businesses and for our local public services.

Like many, I’ve been surprised at how shambolic the Conservative Party’s national campaign has been. We supposedly have a ‘strong and stable’ Prime Minister, but frankly she’s been all over the place.

First, we had the shambles of the ‘dementia tax’: poorly thought through and an embarrassing flip-flip when it came to light.

We’ve had ever more evidence at the damage that Conservative cuts are doing to vital public services like the police, health and education.

And we’ve had platitudes and no detail on what the Conservatives want to do with the Brexit negotiations – and what they intend to do to offset the massive risks that the Prime Minister herself admits exist.

We need a change.

As your MP, I won’t only vote for the party line, I’ll put Meon Valley first:

• working to get proper funding for our health and social care services,
• making sure none of our schools lose funding – and stopping any of them being downgraded to secondary modern status as the Conservatives propose
• working to block any Brexit deal that doesn’t protect local jobs, local farmers and local businesses – doesn’t maintain full shared security cooperation – and doesn’t have full membership of the single market. I will also seek to make sure that the British people have a final say on any Brexit deal reached.

Even if the Conservatives win nationally, they still need a strong opposition. Please use your vote to back me and ensure that Meon Valley’s best interests are fully represented in Westminster.

The atrocity in Manchester was horrifying and very distressing. One of the few points of light has been the failure of ISISâ€s strategy of using this kind of attack to polarise the community in Manchester and nationally: theyâ€ve almost completely failed to do this. It has also been reassuring how quickly the security services seem to have wound up the network responsible for the attack – enabling the terror threat level to be reduced from critical to severe.

The critical question remaining is how it could have been prevented. People who knew Salman Abedi reported that he was a risk on several occasions but he still slipped through the net.

While we need to wait for the results of Police and MI5â€s review of this failure, one reason for Liberal Democrat concern with the brutal Conservative cuts to policing budgets – including here in Hampshire – is that this kind of problem might emerge. Thatâ€s one reason our manifesto pledges to increase community policing by giving an additional £300m a year to local police forces.

We also need to continue to collaborate internationally in fighting terrorism. Theresa Mayâ€s plans for an ultra-hard Brexit must not be allowed to jeopardise this. Finally, we must also resist the temptation to use this to justify indiscriminate snooping powers or to weaken encryption. The priority must be strong community relations to identify people who are potential risks – and then focused efforts – via surveillance or, if necessary, through TPIMs to disrupt any potential attacks before they happen.

I summed up on a proposal at today’s council meeting that it should be compulsory for all council proposals to report on the air quality impact of any action they recommend.

Under the Conservatives, again and again, the council has treated air quality as something that’s only done by the environment team.  Other departments are left free to ignore it. It happened with Station Approach. It happened with the ‘pollution patio†in St Georgeâ€s Street. And the proposed new Parking Strategy doesn’t do enough. With 51 deaths a year in the Winchester district from air pollution, this canâ€t carry on.

It’s got to be impossible to ignore air quality in council plans – right across the council – as well as making sure that the Air Quality Action Plan due later this year does enough to tackle it. You can’t sort air quality in a silo. It’s got to be everyone’s business.

Thatâ€s what we proposed. And itâ€s deeply disappointing – although not surprising – that, once again, the Conservatives voted it down.”

• Station Approach
• Station Area Parking
• New Tory ‘Tip Tax’
• Our crossing campaigns
• The local vote to ‘remain’
• Air Quality
• Grammar Schools
• Safer Routes to School

Download St Paul ward Autumn 2016 Focus (pdf, 4.8MB)

They have a great value non-profit rate (if you ask nicely). It’s great for handling trading. It’s great for handling digital downloads. All we needed was for it to handle donations and we were done!

The good news is that there’s a pretty straightforward way of doing it by using Shopify’s approach to collecting customisation information – as outlined here.

To make a Shopify product page work for donations we wanted to do three things:

• Ask about Gift Aid
• Remove the quantity selector
• Put the description above the area where people select the donation

You can do all of this by working your way through the customisation page – with a few tweaks along the way.

1. Create a new template for donations
   Take the same approach as Shopify outline for customisable products – although I called my page donation instead of customizable.
2. Add customisable form fields that ask about Gift Aid.
   The code I used for this was:
   <div>
   <h3>Gift Aid</h3>
   <strong>Boost your donation by 25p of Gift Aid for every £1 you donate. </strong> Please treat as Gift Aid donations all qualifying gifts of money made:
   
   <input id="giftaid-today" name="properties[Include Gift Aid made on donations today]" type="checkbox" value="Yes" /> <label class="inline" for="giftaid-today">Today</label>
   
   <input id="giftaid-p4y" name="properties[Include Gift Aid made on donations in the past 4 years]" type="checkbox" value="Yes" /> <label class="inline" for="giftaid-today">In the past 4 years</label>
   
   <input id="giftaid-future" name="properties[Include Gift Aid made on donations in the future]" type="checkbox" value="Yes" /> <label class="inline" for="giftaid-today">In the future</label>
   <p id="taxstatement"><small>I confirm I have paid or will pay an amount of Income Tax and/or Capital Gains Tax for each tax year (6 April to 5 April) that is at least equal to the amount of tax that all the charities or Community Amateur Sports Clubs (CASCs) that I donate to will reclaim on my gifts for that tax year. I understand that other taxes such as VAT and Council Tax do not qualify. I understand the charity will reclaim 28p of tax on every £1 that I gave up to 5 April 2008 and will reclaim 25p of tax on every £1 that I give on or after 6 April 2008.</small></p>
   
   </div>

   The relatively long name descriptors are needed to make the shopping cart and payment pages look sensible when your visitors check out.

3. Remove the quantity selector
   Just replace the selector code with a hidden input field. Specifically, replace:
   <div class="product-single__quantity{% unless settings.product_quantity_enable %} is-hidden{% endunless %}"><label for="Quantity">{{ 'products.product.quantity' | t }}</label>
   <input id="Quantity" class="quantity-selector" min="1" name="quantity" type="number" value="1" /></div>

   with

   <input id="Quantity&quot;" class="quantity-selector" min="1" name="quantity" type="hidden" value="1" />
4. Add a bit of JavaScript to hide the Gift Aid text until needed.
   I added the following inside the final script tag:
   var countChecked = function() {
   var n = $( "input:checked" ).length;
   if( n == 0 ) {
   jQuery("#taxstatement").hide();
   } else {
   jQuery("#taxstatement").show();
   }
   };
   countChecked();
   jQuery( "input[type=checkbox]" ).on( "click", countChecked );
5. Reorder the page until you have it how you want it.
   I moved:
   <div class="product-description rte">{{ product.description }}</div>

   just below the form tag:

6. Create a new product in Shopify as you would do normally, but select product.donation as the template suffix (in the bottom right of the page). The end result should look something like this.

Er. That’s it. Comments and suggested improvements welcome.

Sir,

Nobody opposed the scheme for station approach because they opposed having new offices in the city.  Councillors opposed it because it was a poor design that was slammed by the independent jury, crammed far too much onto the site, was set to create disastrous congestion and air pollution, and would ruin the appearance of the town for people arriving in Winchester.

The argument put forward by Stephen Gates on behalf of the Hampshire Chambers of Commerce last week is the same one that made the Brooks happen. Something needs to be done. This is something. Therefore it should happen.

The problem with that argument is that it sets absolutely no standards at all for the quality of design and impact on the area.

Letâ€s not forget how mediocre the scores given to this design by the independent and expert design jury appointed by the council actually were.  Nothing about the scheme was scored as excellent. Nothing about the scheme was even scored as good.  And several aspects of the scheme were marked as less than satisfactory.

And thatâ€s on top of the schemeâ€s failure to take even the slightest notice of concerns raised by local residents about congestion, traffic and pollution.

As others have noted, the Conservative partyâ€s disastrous policy allowing offices to be converted into housing at will is hitting the city hard.  We do need more modern office space. But that doesnâ€t mean that councillors should approve the first scheme to come along – no matter how bad it is.

Cllr Gottlieb is wrong to blame all the ills of the council on the council’s senior management team.

The people that authorised the Station Approach Planning Brief and the Highcliffe Consultation – and who agreed to continuing the Station Approach development despite three out of five architects dropping out – and who are also legally accountable for most decisions of the council – are the Council’s Leader and Cabinet.  And for all of the last 5 years – and for all the decisions Cllr Gottlieb mentions – the Council Leader and Cabinet have been Conservative.

While opposition Liberal Democrat and Labour councillors – and, on occasion, even some Conservative Councillors – have been able to put up proposals for reform and arguments against the proposals put forward by the Conservative administration – and have done so in all the cases he mentions, in almost all cases the Conservative Cabinet have ignored them or the Conservative majority have voted them down.

If Councillor Gottlieb wants to know what it will take to change the council and change the priorities of council officers, the answer is simple.  The Conservatives need to be voted out.

Madam Mayor

Too much of our discussion this evening has been obsessed about procurement law, process, risk and profit.

Forgive me, but I think what we need to be obsessed about is getting a better scheme for Winchester – better than the one we have today

There has been definite progress vs. the 2014 scheme.  We have a bus station.  We have affordable housing – two things that the Liberal Democrats and many others have pushed for.

At the current time, no-one has proposed – and no outside advisor has identified – a robust plan that outlines a timely plan for development of the site – and guarantees features such as a bus station and social housing – in the event that the Development Agreement is terminated.

I agree that this is urgently needed – it’s something I’ve asked for at Overview and Scrutiny – and it would be irresponsible to take a decision without having this clarity.

We have at least 6 options:

• Continue as we are
• Continue as we are and seek and achieve improvements
• Some want to retender the current contract.
• Some want to start the current process again from scratch.
• Some want to start again with a new masterplanning approach
• Some want to allow piecemeal development

These are 6 different options. Each option has different impacts on cost, on timing, on the council’s finances and on whether we are able to achieve important public benefits such as a bus station and social housing.

We have no clarity on any of these options – and it would be wrong to terminate without that clarity

While people rightly have concerns about the design, the design and the development agreement are not the same thing! And if they were, then retendering the contract would mean that we ended up with the same problem.

The Development Agreement does not specify the detailed design of the site – and many of the features that residents are rightly concerned about – that we in the Liberal Democrats are concerned about- that I am concerned about – such as:

• the height of the development,
• the quality of the buildings fronting onto the street, especially in Friarsgate,
• the layout of the street plan

are not specified in the Development Agreement.

It also includes elements that are not in the development agreement such as the office space, the youth club – which has been provided by St John’s – and the RAOB club

These were covered in the Planning Permission – which did not form part of the Judicial Review – and can, in principle, be changed, amended, adjusted or resubmitted without changing the Development Agreement.

Most of the objectives of the Development Agreement – including:

• A bus station with 12 parking bays, 3 layover bays and toilets
• 287 units of housing – including 100 affordable units, of which 20 are social rented
• An area for relocation of the market – including a bin store and compactor
• A civic square
• Maintenance of current levels of retail (>90,000 square feet)

remain desirable objectives for the site.

There is dispute about the level of parking. But there are genuine questions about what flexibility the Development Agreement gives us about parking – which unfortunately cannot be discussed in open session.

Ultimately our problem is not with the Development Agreement – it is the design of the scheme against the development agreement.

We need to see change.  We need to see improvements.  And we believe it is possible – without changing the development agreement.

But we don’t want to accept the motion unamended, because that closes off the opportunity to terminate the agreement in the event that we don’t get the changes we need.

We need to see improvements.

And if we don’t see improvements, we have to have the ability to terminate the deal with clarity about the way forward from that point.

And that is why I ask you to support Councillor Thompson’s amendment.

For Winchester this will be a catastrophe!

Why?

First, nearly half (48%) of all councils have sold off or transferred their council housing to housing associations.  Only around have of all councils actually have any council housing at all, and only the councils that do will be paying for this national programme: Winchester is one of them.

This unavoidably means that sales of council housing in Winchester (and other areas with council housing) will be subsidising ‘right to buy’ in the rest of the country. And because we haven’t transferred our council housing to housing associations, we also have less housing association housing than other areas – and so our area will get even less of this money!

To put it another way, 52% of councils – including Winchester – will be subsidising ‘right to buy’ in the other 48% of council areas.

The second problem is that Winchester is an expensive area – in the top 10% of the country for house prices – which means that a much higher proportion of our council housing will be amongst the most expensive 5% of council housing in the country and so will have to be sold when it becomes free.  We have a completely disproportionate share of the ‘most valuable 210,000 properties’ that the Conservatives are planning on using to fund the scheme.  As soon as a family home becomes available, it won’t be used to support people in housing need, but will be flogged off on the open market to pay for ‘right to buy’ somewhere else in the country. And because the biggest cost relating to housing is the cost of the land, we won’t be able to afford to build many replacements. At best, the only type of new council housing we could manage each time we were forced to sell a family homes would be a small flat – and that doesn’t help tackle our affordable housing problem.

So the net effect of this policy is a disaster.  A large proportion of our council housing – especially bigger family homes – will have to be sold off. And our area will see hardly any of the money.

It’s completely bonkers. And another reason to vote for Jackie Porter as the only way to stop the Tories in Winchester on May 7.

‘The works that are being undertaken in Tower Street relate to on-going maintenance work by BAM Construction to the elevations of Elizabeth II Court. Due to the location and nature of the works these are weather dependant and have resulted in the cherry picker remaining on the road for longer than originally anticipated. Hampshire County Council and BAM are sorry for any inconvenience this is causing to residents.

The siting of the cherry picker in the residential parking bays is necessary to enable uninterrupted access to Tower Street by pedestrians and vehicles. All options for the siting of the cherry picker were considered before progressing with this work and BAM are keeping the number of bays used to a minimum.

This week, work is progressing well due to the spring weather, and BAM Construction are hoping to be in a position to hand back a number of car parking spaces by the end of the week. BAM are also aiming to have work to the Tower Street elevation completed by the end of April, but once again, this date is weather dependent.â€

The big topic is ‘Local Plan Part 2’.  This is due to set our detailed local planning policy – mainly what type of buildings and other developments go where – for the Winchester District until 2031 – so it’s important to get it right.  To this end, a group of local organisations are running a briefing and discussion evening on the evening of Tuesday 11th of November. The City Council will be running a consultation the following day.

A more immediate issue is the plan to redevelop the Police Headquarters in Romsey Road. The Hampshire Chronicle has a useful article covering the recent past of the site. As it says:

Outline planning consent for 294 flats, access and parking was granted in 2007 and then extended in 2010.

However the proposals are likely to be quite different and it will be important to see how they match up to local housing needs, to the design of the area and whether they provide sufficient local infrastructure.

Finally, if you feel like building something yourself, RIBA South has organised a Winchester Design Day at the Guildhall featuring a bunch of local architects!

In order to sort this out, I wrote to the Police Commissioner and the Chief Constable – and now I have their answers.

First, the letter:

Dear Chief Constable / Mr Hayes,

As you might have seen in the Hampshire Chronicle, there is now some confusion amongst residents in my area about the policeâ€s policy on speeding.

As Iâ€m sure you know, in the most recent year for which we have figures, 597 people were killed or seriously injured on Hampshireâ€s roads and both Winchester and Hampshire are well below the national average in the most public health statistics on this figure (as attached).

My specific question relates to enforcement of 20 mph speed limits.

Are these speed limits due to receive a different level of enforcement compared to other speed limits?

Is there an agreed policy that specifically highlights 20 mph (in comparison to all other speed limits) as a speed limit that will not be enforced? Would I, for example, be able to drive through a 20 mph area at 30 mph with a police car behind me and expect nothing to happen?

In the past, Iâ€d also been told that Community Speedcheck (which is getting a strong level of interest from local residents who are keen to see the 20 mph work) could lead to action in some areas if it highlighted that an area had particular problems with speeding. Had I understood that correctly?

Any clarity that can be provided on this would be much appreciated. This is an area of great interest – especially in areas where the 20 mph has been introduced – but also amongst other Winchester residents that use the city centre area 20 mph zone.

Yours faithfully,

Martin Tod
—
Cllr Martin Tod
County Councillor, Winchester Westgate, Hampshire County Council
01962 710244 – 07887 986048 – martin.tod@hants.gov.uk

The Police Commissioner was first out of the blocks!

Dear Cllr Tod

Thank you for your question in relation to the 20mph speed limit in Winchester. Before this speed limit was introduced, the City Council undertook a period of consultation. In the consultation documents they acknowledge that “in the historic core of Winchester, the majority of traffic is already travelling at relatively low speeds and if more vehicles travel at 20mph or less this may encourage others to do likewise.” Addressing the question of how the limit will be enforced the consultation papers say “Signs at the start of the speed limit would be used to indicate to drivers that they are entering a 20mph speed limit restriction. In addition, roundels painted on the road and small repeater signs will be required to re-enforce the speed limit at specific intervals. The Police are responsible for enforcing speed restrictions, however 20mph speed limits are intended to be largely self-enforcing and are only introduced in areas where existing traffic speeds are already at a level where they are considered to be self enforcing.”

This position is supported by international studies which show that 20mph speed limits enforced with signage alone usually achieve a mean speed reduction of between 1-2 mph and so when pre-implementation mean speeds are 26mph or less the speeds will reduce to 24mph or less following the introduction of the new speed limit. This is reflected in the Department of Transport guidance on setting local speed limits (DfT circular 01/2013) which, in the case of 20mph limits, states that mean speeds should not exceed 24mph. The document clearly states “to achieve compliance there should be no expectation on the police to provide additional enforcement beyond their routine activity, unless this has been explicitly agreed.” Referring back to the consultation paper it would seem that such an explicit agreement is not in place.

Inappropriate speed is widely acknowledged as being a contributory factor in road collisions, particularly in those which result in death or serious injury. Since 1st April this year there has been 1 serious injury collision recorded within the confines of the new 20mph speed limit. This collision was as a result of a vehicle reversing and driving onto the foot of a pedestrian and so speed was not a contributory factor in that collision.

Notwithstanding this I am keen to ‘protect people and places’ and have included road safety in my police and crime plan. This may take a variety of forms from ensuring vehicles are road worthy to Community Speedwatch. Indeed I have made £135,000 available over 2 years to courage the expansion of Community Speedwatch. Community Speedwatch is specifically designed to take place in 20 or 30mph limits or zones and there are currently 754 Speedwatch volunteers in 61 active schemes throughout Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. If you would like further information about how you could become involved in this then please contact your local Neighbourhood policing team.

Simon

Simon Hayes
Police and Crime Commissioner
Hampshire and the Isle of Wight

I fired off the following letter for clarification:

Thank you very much. This is very helpful.

Can I confirm that the expectation is that Hampshire Police will be operating in line with Department of Transport policy – namely that the police won’t be providing additional enforcement, but will be undertaking the same ‘routine activity’ that they undertake with all other speed limits?

I am pleased to hear about your support for Community Speedwatch. I am very keen to get this set up too. One of my colleagues, Cllr Derek Green, is leading on this in the Stanmore 20 mph zone in my division.

Best wishes,

Martin Tod

And then got further clarification:

Dear Cllr Tod,

Thank you for your reply. Dedicated Police speed enforcement activities are directed towards the areas where they will have the greatest impact in terms of reducing the numbers of people killed and seriously injured on our roads. As a consequence, there was no dedicated speed enforcement activity undertaken by the police on the roads now subject to the 20 mph speed limit before the limit was reduced. Therefore, any activity directed to those roads now, as a consequence of the reduction in the posted speed limit, would constitute additional enforcement activity.

However the DfT guidance means that if an officer, engaged in routine patrol, were to see an offence committed then they are free to deal with that offence, however there is no expectation that officers would be deployed in dedicated speed enforcement activities.

Regards,

Simon Hayes

I then got a very helpful letter from Inspector Andy Storey from the Roads Policing Unit on behalf of the Chief Constable.

Dear Cllr Tod

As the roads policing lead for the north of Hampshire I have been asked to respond to your query regarding the enforcement of 20mph limits.

The short answer to your query is that there is no policy that sets apart enforcement in 20mph limits to enforcement in any other area subject to a speed restriction.

The Constabulary though does operate a ‘tiered’ approach to enforcing speed limits across the Force area.

My officers on the Roads Policing Department will concentrate their enforcement activities in areas that display a high collision history – they will generally not include roads subject to a 20mph restriction.

I currently work from Whitchurch which also has a 20mph restriction and am often asked this very question. However, over the last 3 years prior to the implementation of the restriction there have been virtually no injury accidents on this stretch of road so I have to target my officers activities in other areas which have suffered with a higher than average number of collisions.

The Safer Roads Unit who utilise camera vans also take a similar approach.

In addition to Roads Policing and Safer Roads officers, there are Safer Neighbourhood Officers who are often involved in Community Speedwatch schemes which is the second element to your query.

Whilst they will have competing priorities, the activities of these officers together with the volunteers, if appropriately trained, could be utilised in the 20mph areas.

It is worthy of note that a feature of a 20mph zone (or limit) is that it should, to a degree, be self enforcing. By that i mean that the road itself should be engineered to reduce speeds by building in chicanes or through the creation of speed humps. If speeds are reduced in this way then the need for active enforcement largely subsides.

Also, and I know it may sound obvious, but it is worth checking that the restriction fully complies with legislation (ie. the size and placing of repeater signs) so that it is legally enforceable before any such activity is undertaken.

I hope this helps to answer your query

Regards
Inspector Andy Storey 44819
Roads Policing Unit, Whitchurch Police Station, Dances Lane, Whitchurch, Hampshire, RG28 7EG
TVP & Hampshire Constabulary Joint Operations Unit

I followed up as follows:

Dear Inspector Storey,

This is extremely helpful – and makes a lot of sense.

Is there an issue if I quote this publicly? The media ran a big story in Winchester saying that 20 mph was not going to be enforced (with the implication that it would not be enforced at all!) and your email makes it clear that it will be enforced in the same way as any other relatively safe road.

Best wishes,

Martin Tod

and got the following helpful answer back:

Dear Cllr Tod

I have no objection to the comments being made public.

I am aware of some of the comments from the media and how the public perception may have been influenced by what has been printed.

As I say, the reality is that police activity in 20mph limits may be infrequent for the reasons given below but that doesn’t mean it can’t or won’t happen at all.

Regards

Inspector Andy Storey 44819
Roads Policing Unit, Whitchurch Police Station, Dances Lane, Whitchurch, Hampshire, RG28 7EG
TVP & Hampshire Constabulary Joint Operations Unit

So there we have it. 20 mph will be enforced – but will, for wholly sensible reasons, not be the top priority for enforcement.

And if you were planning to speed through a 20 mph zone with a police car on your tail, don’t! (And don’t even if you don’t have a police car on your tail!)

But letâ€s focus on what we all agree on – and focus on the importance of being a ‘serious party of government’. Here are a few thoughts on what other ‘serious parties of government’ do differently to the Lib Dems and what that might mean for how the direction of the party needs to change.

Here goes:

‘Serious parties of government’ make pledges and, generally, try to keep them

One of the stranger consequences of the tuition fees catastrophe is that the leadership and leadership loyalists have decided that the Liberal Democrats shouldn’t make pledges any more.

The other ‘serious parties of government’ donâ€t agree with them.

While Labour donâ€t always appear to be serious about government now, they certainly were under Tony Blair in 1997.  Remember this?

Itâ€s a pledge card.  It even has the word ‘pledge’ written on it. And Labour were pretty serious about keeping to them.

What about the 2010 pledge from David Cameron on government support for pensioners?

Heâ€s kept it – even though itâ€s far more expensive than, say, the tuition fees pledge.  And heâ€s just made another couple with a 2017 referendum on Europe as a ‘cast iron pledge‘ and another pledge to pensioners to increase the pension by 2.5% a year till 2020.

And this is hardly surprising.  People want to know what ‘serious parties of government’ want to do in the future.  This is particularly important in a coalition when there’s a real danger of giving the impression that what the government is doing is all youâ€re about.

That’s why the Conservatives are smart to be making pledges. And why it’s wrong for the Lib Dems to have decided they’re always a bad idea.

When in coalition, ‘serious parties of government’ make clear what they’re being stopped from doing

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have taken almost diametrically opposed approaches to communicating their achievements in coalition.

Nick and his central team of advisors have gone with a “what weâ€ve got and what we’ve stopped” strategy – outlining Lib Dem achievements in Government – and what we’ve stopped the Conservatives from doing.

David Cameron and the Conservatives have gone with a “what weâ€ve got and what we’ve been stopped from doing” strategy and havenâ€t put any effort into telling voters what they’ve stopped the Liberal Democrats from doing.

David Cameronâ€s strategy is working better.

Ultimately this is hardly surprising. While not repudiating the achievements of the coalition, the Conservative strategy makes it clear that they want to be doing something more and different to what the coalition government alone is able to achieve.

The Liberal Democrat strategy does the opposite. It reinforces the Conservative message (always a bad sign) – and does nothing to give any steer on what the Liberal Democrats would be doing or trying to do if governing alone or negotiating a new coalition.

Focusing on what you’ve stopped the Conservatives doing also reminds people of what you’ve not stopped the Conservatives doing – which, unavoidably in a coalition, is going to include a bunch of things your supporters are unhappy about.

In essence, it leaves the Liberal Democrats defending the coalition as the best of all possible worlds, rather than making clear – as we should always be doing – how we want things to be better than they are today.

Not smart. Not something that ‘serious parties of government’ do. And something that needs to change.

The most successful ‘serious parties of government’ challenge the status quo

Political theorists like to contrast establishment parties and challenger parties, but real life experience suggests that the most successful politicians and ‘serious parties of government’ are able to ride both horses.

Keith House has laid out the case for being a ‘party of government and a party of protest’ on Lib Dem Voice – and I had a go on the BBC on the issue of not being a ‘party of complacency and the status quo‘.

Even more simply, Nick Clegg was the insurgent in the 2010 Prime Ministerial debates and won (at least the first one). He was the representative of the establishment in the 2014 EU debates and lost. Of course, that’s not the whole story. But a large chunk of the British electorate – left, right and centre – are looking for change from where we are today – and only one person in the 2014 debate was seen to be offering it.

Two of the most striking examples lie outside the Liberal Democrats.

It’s no coincidence that Britain’s most electorally successful Prime Ministers – Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair – started out being seen as outsiders challenging the status quo and having an agenda for change – and stayed that way more or less until the end.

Margaret Thatcher – to put it mildly - never gave any sense of satisfaction with the status quo or with the establishment until the day she died.

In both cases this could put them in conflict with members of their own party, but this was generally because they were seen as wanting to change things too much or too quickly – and not because they appeared to be taking things too slowly.

And it wasn’t just something that happened to get them elected first time. It was something they kept doing all the way through their terms of office.

Is that all there is to it?

Unfortunately not. There’s the small matter of delivering distinctive policy in government (and not just what was agreed back in 2010 in the coalition agreement) – and having the right set of policies that take you beyond the status quo.

It’s possible for a policy to be radical, promised in your manifesto and wildly unpopular – as Margaret Thatcher discovered with the poll tax.

But a complacent defence of the current situation and treating the coalition government as the best of all possible worlds is no longer an option. If the leadership of our party could learn from other ‘parties of government’, start telling us what they want to do if they weren’t held back by the Conservatives – what we’d be delivering if we had more MPs and a stronger position in Government - and get the party back to challenging the status quo, it would be a huge step in the right direction.