There seems to be ever louder calls for the rebels to be armed by the West, which feels horribly similar to Afghanistan 20 years ago – The

West armed opposition to the USSR backed government and those same fighters now kill British and ally troops.

Clearly it’s a far from simple choice as to what to do, but arming the rebels seems unwise. It’s not as if it’s clear who the rebels are, they certainly aren’t going to sign out the antiaircraft guns and return them like library books when the revolution is over.

The no fly zone was very effective in Libya, although probably went far further than originally intended and is much harder to impliment in Syria, both for location and Syrian military capability.

Sitting back and doing nothing doesn’t feel at all right, but overaction can sometimes be just as dangerous as inaction, so here’s hoping the politicians and bureaucrats don’t rush us into something very dangerous.

The first dream was me watching a group of politicians and EU bureaucrats arguing about who’s fault the Euro problems were.  To start with they all seemed to be getting hugely angry with Greece, Ireland and others about their economic situation.  Then one of the group asked how they could hide the fact that they themselves had been hugely involved with the creation of the Euro.  There was general admittance by the group that they were guilty of massaging the figures when proving the case for many countries to enter the Euro, in some cases the reports were works of complete fiction.  Sadly, as dreams often are, it wasn’t possible to see any particular faces, it was just the gist of the conversation that I remember.  I’m sure there must be meetings like this happening all over the Eurozone at the moment!

I woke up early, with that dream still playing in my head.  After a while I fell back to sleep and started to dream again.  This time I was in a huge hall at a very smart dinner.  For reasons unexplained in my dream, I was sitting diagonally across from José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission.  There was a discussion going on with the other people at the table about Greece and the Euro.  In this dream I was involved, rather than just watching.  I wanted to know why the bureaucrats and politicians were so adamant that staying in the Euro was the best thing for Greece and the rest of the EU.  Sadly I awoke before getting any sort of answer!

Dreams are fascinating, but haven’t answered any questions this time.  I definitely woke from the second dream with a feeling that there are agendas deciding the fate of Greece, which are not currently in the public domain.

The decision to cut again in Greece may relax our banks a little and no doubt the European politicians and bureaucrats will be slapping themselves on the back, congratulating themselves. But is this the best for anyone?

Greece clearly doesn’t fit the Euro mould, so wouldn’t it be more sensible for them to make their way out of the Eurozone? It might hurt, no it will hurt, and not just Greece, but surely this death by a thousand cuts will hurt more.

To everyone watching, it’s obvious that Greece will never be Germany, so why on earth do the politicians and technocrats think Greece can be?

A council committee of any size, from local parish council upwards, should reflect the community it serves.  Within any community in the UK there are a huge number of religions and non religious people.  The committee is there to discuss issues, not to make members or visitors feel uncomfortable by inserting one specific religion.

There are thousands of churches, chapels, mosques, temples, synagogues and all manner of religious venues throughout this country, meaning council committee rooms do not need be religious.

I’m sure there will be an argument that this is a christian country, so prayers should be allowed.  That argument just doesn’t wash.  The UK is only christian because legislation states it is, the beliefs of the population don’t make this a christian country and there is a much bigger argument that religion should not be connected to state in any way, one which I would fully support.

This morning one commentator said that this would lead to the banning of national anthems and the like.  Total rubbish!  We are simply asking for the content to be relevant to the focus of the meeting.  By all means say prayers before a church committee meeting, as that meeting is for one particular religion, but not in a public democratic institution where it should not have a religious bias.

It’s a great shame a legal challenge had to be made to remove the prayers and other religious activities from councils, but glad that there has been a decisive judgement.

Watching the Eurozone is like watching the death scene in a very bad amateur play, going on endlessly as the lead actor tries to steal as much limelight as possible, little understanding that they are nailing their career coffin shut with every overacted death throw.

In the case of the Eurozone, the lead actor is replaced by any one of the European leaders, and it’s open to debate whether the death is of the Greek economy, the Italian economy, any other member country economy or the Eurozone as a whole.

Even Angela Merkel is giving hints that Greece has to be allowed to default, so that it can recover.  However default just isn’t an option inside the Eurozone, because currency devaluation and control of interest rates are out of the hands of individual countries.

Much as it pains me to agree with the Conservative MP John Redwood, he did make a good point on the BBC’s Daily Politics show.  Greece is currently in a situation much like a US state.  Should a US state fail, with budgets blown and no money in the kitty to pay it’s workers, then the IMF would not be involved, as it would be seen to be the problem of the USA.

Greece is exactly the same, it may well be able to make it’s own laws, but it isn’t able to control it’s main economic drivers, which means it can’t default and therefore it’s the Eurozone members that must sort out the problem.  The IMF must step back and wait for the Eurozone to sort the problem or fail.

Of course, the big difference between a US state and Greece is that Europe isn’t a Federal state like the USA.  It seems pretty clear that that lack of federation is a significant ingredient of the failure.  The Eurozone has taken the bits it likes from the USA model, but failed to understand the necessary structure for a common currency.

Which has a greater chance of success? – A room full of monkeys succeeding in typing the works of Shakespeare OR a bunch of inept politicians and bureaucrats seeing sense and saving the European economy.  Sadly most people would probably bet on the monkeys.

As for the amateur dramatics, no end seems to be in sight, and some git has locked the village hall doors, so no chance to escape.

Ok, so Hong Kong built a brand new island to house their airport, and Gibraltar’s runway sticks out into the sea, but they are not reasons for building in the Thames Estuary.

To start with, the Estuary is on completely the wrong side of London.  Like Gatwick, it would be a pain in the backside to reach from anywhere but London.  Anyone travelling to the new site, would have to travel through London, which is a horrible experience at best.

When you take into account that the Estuary is a wildlife habitat of very special status, which would be severely damaged and it’s inhabitants, birds of many species, will probably bring down planes, it’s clear that Boris is insane.  Worryingly many of his party are making noises that mean he’s probably got supporters.

Surely it would be much more sensible, if we need more airport capacity, to finally force BAA to sell off Gatwick and Stansted, so that we have three competing airports around London, which will be better for airlines and better for customers.

Just how much public money has been wasted on the development of this crazy idea?  Aren’t we supposed to be in a time of austerity, yet we can burn money on pointless projects!

Personally for me, I’m quite happy if we don’t develop more capacity, and instead encourage Brits to holiday in their beautiful country, without the hassles of security searches, crap airline food, rude staff and long transit journeys.  Even bank holiday journeys, with all the traffic and expected roadworks, don’t take as long as checkin at a British airport.  See you on the north Norfolk coast this Summer!

No sadly, we would notice a smaller Public Sector, because running our businesses would be so much easier!

Of course, I’m not talking about the important civil servants, for example nurses, doctors, teachers, street cleaners, dustbin men etc, who do help with the process of caring and training.

I’m talking about the moronic bureaucrats who push paper, write reports and strategies, who get job satisfaction from filling in forms, and who generate negative wealth generation for the economy.

These same people cannot possibly consider their inefficient, time wasting, wholey unbusiness like approach could have the slightest negative effect on others.

Why, because they have no real world experience of any kind and cannot for one moment consider their paper pushing from a private sector point of view.

So do I have sympathy for the public sector, No not for a second while the hard workers are happy to join the good for nothing paper pushers. When the carers, trainers and other useful members of the public sector disown the waste of space bureaucrats, I will have a lot more time to discuss pensions and pay.

The power mad Union leaders are just politicians in a different skin. Their statements are full of the political waffle which says little, but can lead vunerable people over the abyss.

My biggest concerns are the mixed grouping of those going on strike and the failure to gain public support for the strikes. There continues to be sympathy for our essential services, such as nurses and fire crews, probably even teachers. However there is no sympathy for the bureaucrats and paper pushers. By mixing all striking together it is very unlikely the bureaucrats will gain sympathy aimed at the essential services, but very likely sympathy will be lost from the latter.

Clearly the government is not playing a good or fair game, but it does seem very naive of the union members to think their political union leaders are likely to act in their best interests, nor that they are likely to get much out of government who have no cash.

Worst of all for me, is that the public service hasn’t for one minute considered the pain the private sector have been through since the banking crisis. I’m not talking about the tossers who run big corporations, I’m talking about the millions of small businesses and self employed people who’ve seen their earnings and pensions reduce sharply. There is little sympathy from the private sector and much of the impact of the strikes will only reduce that sympathy further.

A big part of me wants me to shout at the Union leaders and say, ‘Wake up and smell the coffee!’, but like the moron politicians, they couldn’t care less as their salaries and no doubt pensions are very nice thankyou very much.

No my anger is towards the politicians and bureaucrats who pile billions of pounds into a banking system full of crooks with no reform in return, yet can’t fund youth centres, special care beds or make sure children aren’t living in poverty.

A damning indictment of our civil service and political class!

Thank you to everyone who tries to correct the many wrongs our society creates, well done to Children in Need for raising so much and funding so many great projects. Most of all, well done to the ordinarily members of the British public who find that extra pound to donate to a good cause when it’s so needed.

The media and politicians are heavily pushing the message that you need the Private Sector to invest and help get the UK out of the doom and gloom. Many of us in the private sector would love to help, but Whitehall, Westminster, local government and all manner of other government related organisations throw up barriers at every turn of the process. There’s lots of discussion about reform, but nothing substantial ever actually happens to help businesses get on with what they do best, developing business and employing staff.

For more than 2 years, we have been trying to get through planning to build a backpackers hostel in the centre of Norwich. We would like to build a 150 bed hostel on a brown field site, which would employ over 30 people directly, many of them young people, with all manner of offshoot businesses catering for the customers who would stay with us. The process is taking so long, for no good reason, that we are seriously considering pulling out of the project completely, leaving another derelict hole in a city centre and creating no jobs or extra rates and tax revenue. Unless things change dramatically in the next month or so, so much time will have passed, that we’ll need to walk away as the costs are escalating and making the whole project unfeasible.

The biggest frustration is that we are not suggesting some new fangled type of project that is not tried and tested, as there are hundreds of other backpackers hostels in the UK (see www.independenthostelguide.co.uk for details) and we have another backpackers hostel on the north Norfolk coast, just 40 miles from Norwich (see www.deepdalebackpackers.co.uk for details). There just isn’t a backpackers hostel in Norwich, a whole new market for the City. I’d be happy to supply you with a whole host of other information about this tourism market, please just ask.

Here is the timeline of the process so far:

Early 2009 – First started discussions with the planners about the possibility of opening a hostel in the City.
January 2010 – We bought a derelict pub site, which had been boarded up for over 4 years.
July 2010 – We submitted a planning application, which cost us over £13,000.
October 2010 – Planning permission refused as Council had run out of time in the 13 week deadline to get all their questions answered.
December 2010 – Resubmitted the planning permission, with almost exactly the same details.
31st March 2011 – Our plans were unanimously passed by the City Council Planning Committee.
July 2011 – After 4 months of discussions over 2 paragraphs, we finally received our planning permission letter, which included 25 conditions.
October 2011 – Started to submit answers to the conditions, but were told by the Council that we must submit them online and pay again to answer the conditions that the Council had asked us.
1st November 2011 – Answered all the pre-construction conditions, with another 30 page document and 11 drawings.
Mid November 2011 – Conditions application was rejected as we hadn’t included two documents, one of which was submitted with the original planning permission and the second, the archaeological report, which needs to be requested by the planners from the County Council archaeological team.

Throughout the process, we have discussed with hundreds of businesses, organisations and individuals about our plans and grown a huge selection of support, much of which has been supplied to the Council in letter and email form.

From day one of our discussions, we offered for the Council officials and councillors to visit our other backpackers hostel on the north Norfolk coast, so they could see what we already do and understand better the type of place we want to build. That offer has never been accepted by a single official at Norwich, as they said it was outside their planning area and therefore has no bearing.

Because of the torturously slow process and the fact that the City Council seem unable and unwilling to speed up their officials, we are now definitely not going to be open for the Olympics in 2012. It also means that we aren’t employing any of the people we hope to employ. We could have been open in 2011, had the planning process been timely and would have now be looking at opening backpackers hostels elsewhere in the East of England.

If you and your government do not sort out the mind numbing planning system, then you cannot expect us in the Private Sector to help with the recovery.

Changes that must take place urgently include:

• All official consultees of the planning process must make succinct, bullet point feedback, which explains exactly whether they are in favour or against the planning application and the reasons for that support or lack of. There were 13 official consultees with our application and it wasn’t clear to the planning officer, ourselves or anyone else whether many of those consultees supported or disliked our application. The consultees replies were many pages long and failed to say very much at all. In the case of English Heritage, a long document boiled down to 3 bullet points, all of which were very easy to deal with when understood.

• The track record of a planning applicant must be considered by the planners and any example buildings must be visited to have actual proof of that track record and for the planners to have a better understanding of the application. The fact that we could show the planning team what we wanted to build and explain the way it worked should have been a big help to both them and our application.

• Artificial time limits on Councils dealing with planning permission must be reconsidered. Currently telling an applicant to withdraw is still classed as the application being dealt with in a timely manner, yet normally time has run out due to the planners and consultees not dealing with the paperwork quick enough. Expected time scales are fine, but it must be possible, with mutual agreement between planners and applicant, that applications can take longer, if both parties feel it would make sense and complete the application. We had to resubmit our planning application, which was free, but the second application actually cost both Norwich City Council and ourselves huge amounts of time and money.

• Planners must not immediately assume a developer is at fault. We got the very real feeling that the planning team believed their job was to make sure we didn’t build what we wanted to build. They clearly don’t understand the market we are in and had no useful input to the way the building would work or how best to cater for our market, yet they felt it was their job to change what we had designed. By all means question items that you are experienced in, but don’t approach applications with the sole aim to make sure that the first planning designs are not the final outcome.

• Don’t duplicate permissions. As our site is by the river we had to consider floor prevention. The Environment Agency were consulted as an official consultee to the planning application, yet we still had to make a separate application to them for permission to build in a flood plain. Why was this not covered by the planning permission? Likewise, our application was classed as two applications, because the old pub is a listed property. All the documents and application are one, so why then split the application into two parts, surely it would more cost and time effective to include all the listed property consultees in the main planning permission and deal with it all together. We certainly can’t consider one part without another as it is all one site.

• Collective meeting of all consultees. There is no cross communication between consultees on planning permission, so often different consultees counteract each other with their requirements. We circumvented this to some extent by contacting each consultee directly to understand their issues, however that angered the planning officer who wanted control of the process. For £13,000 we don’t feel it would be unreasonable to expect representatives of each of the official consultees to meet in a room all together, twice during the process, to hammer out issues and come up with solutions. This would save a lot of time and costs in the long run for all involved. Too many of the consultees sit in their offices, write long documents which say nothing and when asked for a solution to stalemates have no useful input to the process.

• Economic impact of plans must be considered. There is no official assessment of the economic value of a planning application. Out of the 13 official consultees on our application, not a single one considered the application from an economic point of view. That is crazy as it means planners and planning committees have no idea whether a particular project is likely to be positive for the area.

To sum up, the current planning system is not fit for purpose. It neither serves the applicants or Councils well and is a major barrier for business development. Some of that is the laborious paperwork involved, some caused by the odd interpretation by officials throughout government organisations, but much is down to the time involved and the unknown time scales that make business planning impossible.

Sincerely

Jason Borthwick