Wednesday, February 28, 2007




Further delay in a housing policy for Southampton


A policy for Southampton on family housing has been further delayed. The shambles that is in place continues. As I have posted in the past, at full council in January the Conservatives asked for a policy to be put in place with immediate effect, to protect family housing in the city. The Labour and Liberal parties rejected this and asked for a debate.

This was to have started today, a month and a half since the meeting. You can not accuse them of being slow! This has now been delayed. Thus family housing is still under threat. Yesterday in planning, 28 more flats were passed to be built in the city and no houses. This follows the 251 flats and 16 houses passed at the end of January.

The need to have a policy for the city which provides for family housing of all types at the same time offering a mix of developments so people have a choice is imperative to the city.

The need to address the parking question is also imperative. The council has an inflexible policy on how many spaces can be provided per development. Officers have failed to acknowledge new government guidelines which allow flexibility in relation to the number of spaces that are provided. This should be applied with immediate affect so developers can put in more spaces. Developers often say that they wish to put more spaces in but are told by officers that it will be turned down.


The return of the loony left in Education.

The Labour run Brighton and Hove council has decided to allocate school places by lottery. I can not think of a worse way to allocate children in education.
The conservatives believe every school should be a good school. Not a lottery.
In Southampton we are seeing the consequences of a failed Labour and Liberal Council on the young today.
Southampton is in the bottom quartile for GCSE’s in the country. This is unacceptable. The class war is still alive within education; the then Labour council in Southampton did not like the concept of specialist status schools which was a way for schools to obtain extra funding. This resulted in the loss of £50,000.00 per school. Later on, when they realised their folly, they belatedly allowed schools to apply for the funding.

The use of education by the left to continue their class war is a disgrace and is at the detriment of the children themselves.
There is an idea that Schools should not be under the jurisdiction of LEA’s. Politicians should not be interfering, especially with their politically motivated agendas. Schools I believe should be run by the schools themselves. The head teacher and governors should direct the school - thus accountability.

Monday, February 26, 2007

Border Police

David Cameron has announced today that the Conservatives under the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Lord Stevens would undertake a working group into the creation of a border police.

David Cameron said in his speech that "Right now, our society is not properly defended against the drug dealers, people smugglers, gun importers and terrorists who find it all too easy to bypass the current system.

No single organisation is responsible for performing this vital task.

Instead we have at least six separate agencies, including Revenue and Customs, the Immigration Service, the security services, harbour police, Soca (Serious and Organised Crime Agency), and the Metropolitan Police."


I believe that it is the duty of the government to protect the borders of the state and this government has failed in this.

Denham to stand against Gordon


On Iain Dales blog he proposes John Denham will stand against Gordon Brown for leader of the Labour Party.


Friday, February 23, 2007


The Audit Commission has published its report on Council performance.
Of those improving strongly -
42% are Tory,
33% Labour,
17% No Overall Control
0% are Lib Dem.

In Southampton we are still a three star compared to the Conservative run Hampshire which is four star, and which also has lower council tax.

My personal view of the CPA which claims ‘is about helping local councils improve services for their communities' is about what government wants not what local residents wish to see the council do. The amount of time that the council puts in to this and the money that is spent would be better spent on the city.
Southampton improved in the Environment sector but went backwards in Benefits and Culture according to the CPA. We are told Education is improving yet Southampton is in the bottom quarter year on year, which is totally unacceptable.

Roy Perry a Hampshire County Councillor has done a very interesting analysis on Council tax and services that Hampshire provide.
I have attached what he sent out

Our political aim as a Conservative authority is to be in the top Quartile of counties for Service and the bottom quartile for council tax

We were 6th from bottom in the Council tax of all counties (37) and 5th from bottom for comparable counties with Combined Fire Authorities (21 in total)
So the objective of top quartile for service and bottom quartile for tax level was again achieved

Hampshire has the lowest Council Tax of any County in the South East ( the region that gets the worst deal from Gordon Brown)

To give you some useful statistics for 2007/08

In Hampshire the average Council Tax (HCC,+ District+ Police and Fire) for a BAND D property is £1,301.72
In Southampton the comparable figure is £1,316.25
(think how much more expensive it is to provide services over a vast rural area)
In Test Valley that figure is (using an average for 1,270.46)

In Eastleigh (Lib Dem) that figure is £1311.00 (ie above average)

For Test Valley the Band D District Council tax excluding parishes is £108.45 i.e. 2nd lowest in the County

Basingstoke is the lowest at £96.75, Test Valley 2nd lowest Eastleigh is the 3rd lowest on that list at £114.22 but goes up significantly when they add in their town tax in the centre of Eastleigh + the Parishes- then it goes up to £173.94 whereas the comparable figure in Test Valley is £133.40

On the District list including parish and town council average Test Valley Council Tax is the 3 lowest- only Fareham and Basingstroke are lower. Eastleigh is 6th highest
i.e. for a Band D property Test Valley is £40 a year cheaper than Lib Dem Eastleigh- for Bands G and H the saving is significantly greater. I will try to get those figures

(source Hampshire County Treasurer)
Funding of political parties.

UKIP look to have a few problems over funding. The Electoral commission are to investigate the discrepancies in their financial accounts. This could lead them to have to hand back over £367,697.00 in donations which are deemed to be unacceptable.

This follows on from enquires into the Lib Dems money donated by Michael Brown, and Labours cash for peerages row.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007



Milibands Blog update






Congestion Charging

I am personally against congestion charging as I believe that it hits the most vulnerable in society. We currently pay according to the News of the World to the Treasury since Labour came to power the following….Parking Fines - doubled to £1.2 billionSpeeding Fines - up eightfold to £120 million paVAT on fuel - up from £4.3 billion to £6.8 billionFuel tax - up from £19.4 billion to £25.2 billionRoad tax - up from £4.5 billion to £5.5 billion

Yet in Sholing we have not seen an increase in the maintance of the roads or pavements. In some cases they are a disgrace. To charge motorists to use roads is not the right policy as quite often they have no other option. To say that people should travel at less busy times does not help the teacher or nurse whose shift starts at a certain time.

The Labour councillors in Sholing voted against the traffic calming measures in Middle Road. They also have overseen the cut in real terms of the road maintance budget. To introduce new charges on moterists is unfair and unjust I am looking forward to Tony’s email about road pricing tomorrow.

John Prescott

Prescott the worst example of a deputy Prime Minister any country can have has managed to get an over run in his office by 30% so you and I have managed to pay for his office to the tune of £2.6 million. In the last year he has lost his job, failed to keep his trousers up or his hands off his secretaries and we pay for this.
Opinion polls

Not one for going into opinion polls that much. As they are quite often wrong (1992) and often misleading. They also have the affect of dog whistling for politicians but the latest one in the guardian makes for interesting reading. David Cameron's been given a 13 point lead over Labour when asked how they would vote if Gordon Brown were Prime Minister. This is a further two point lead over Tony Blair as leader.


This will raise the question of does Gordon become leader as many back benchers will start to feel twitchy especially those in marginal constituencies. If they start to see an opinion poll curve that gives the conservatives a greater lead with Gordon Brown as leader will they still support him?

The poll puts the Conservatives on 42%, Labour on 29% and the Lib Dems on 17%.


oh happy Birthday Gordon

Monday, February 19, 2007

Money for Sholing

Speeding Traffic Along Middle Road

For the past three years I have been working hard to persuade the city council to tackle the problem of speeding traffic along Middle Road. I have secured £60,000 in funding for this in this years Budget. I believe that reducing speeding along Middle Road is a top priority, especially because of the number of school children that use the road.

Despite repeated calls from both local residents and myself, the Labour backed Lib Dem Council has done nothing to resolve the matter.

I am very interested in your views as what sort of scheme you feel would be most appropriate. I want to make sure that a local solution can be found that is supported by local people. I would therefore be very grateful if you would let me know what you think by either emailing me or calling me.
Budget Update

On Wedensday afternoon the City Council set its budget for the coming year.

Some of the key concessions achieved by the Conservatives were:
1. Keeping the weekly bin collection.
2. Preventing the introduction of night time car parking charges.
3. Keeping Cobbett Road Library open.
4. Preventing planned cuts to vital children's social services.

In SHOLING we got an aditional £60,000 for traffic calming in Middle Road.

We were also able to presuade the Council to reduce the council tax increase from 3.5% to 3.3%.These things were funded by bureaucracy savings.During the budget debate

Labour Councillors were exposed over their U-Turn on providing free buses across Hampshire for pensioners and over their plans to close Oaklands swimming pool.
More spin from Labour

This is a letter in response to the work of fiction in Saturday's Daily Echo.

Dear Sir,

I write in response to Mr Furness' letter. My claim was and still is that the Labour group on the City Council have said they will provide free bus travel across Hampshire to Southampton pensioners in the forthcoming year. Last Wednesday in the Council budget setting meeting, Labour failed to honour this pledge. Hence my claim that their policy is merely spin and hot air .Mr Furness may wish to sit down with his Labour colleagues and ask them why they promise things but fail to deliver them.

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Reid again uses headlines to make knee-jerk policies

i read this morning about how John Reid was going to register paedophiles online, which i thought was another knee-jerk reaction to bad policy while reading thelastboyscout blog he sort of summed it up better than me so here is what he has to say.


Doesn't John Reid learn anything?He has been in the lucky position of not having his department rediculed for nearly a week, so he feels obliged to present another half-baked, off the cuff, opportunistic policy idea.Last week, at the time of the Birmingham terror raids, captain chaos John Reid opportunistically used the situation to call for the increase in the amount of times suspects can be detained.


So it came as no surprise this morning that following the imprisonment of three men yesterday for the planning of a horrific sex attack over the internet, that he has used this judgement to grab another headline.

This time the Home Secretary has said that he wants to make paedophiles put online identity details, such as email addresses, and chatroom nicknames, on the Sex Offenders Register.Now, this would be a step in the right direction, if the whole idea wasn't fatally flawed.In fact, it doesn;t just have one flaw, but many.

For a start, it's John Reid's idea so it's destined to fail.

It would also be practically impossible tomonitor, as it possible to create a new net id within seconds.Besides how on earth does he hope to keep a track of paedophiles over the internet, when he can't even keep track of them when they do sign the sex offenders register.Take my advice John, sort out the problems of the Home Office first, before you start coming up with even more flawed initiatives.

Letter to the Echo


An in my my view which i have submitted to the Southampton Echo


Much has been written about housing in the city and the overdevelopment of Southampton with the lack of suitable family housing in the city. Last month the Conservative Group put an amendment in full council which called for the protection of family housing.

At Full Council the Labour and Liberals did not support this instead called for a debate about family housing (which is commendable but for the last 6 years flat development has been running at over 80% in Southampton, action would be better). In the January planning meeting last week 251 flats were put through with 16 houses. This is not sustainable development. What we are seeing is the city changed from houses to flats.

Southampton has much to offer and has many different communities but with no current plan and no policy about what sort of developments are to take place in the city. Southampton has become a patchwork of developments. Family housing needs protecting in the city, this does not stop all development but it has to fit in with a policy that is city wide.

Southampton council has failed its residents as the council has no coherent planning policy. Developers are able to go with their ideas which are quite right if the council is not willing to put a policy in place.

We have no environmental policy in place which would cut CO2 emissions from new developments, and no policy to increase the recycling of heat, water and composting. Southampton sadly lags behind many other local authorities in this area.

The impact of the motor car on new developments is seen across the city. We have guidelines from the government that say that developers have to provide x number of spaces per development when the reality is people have cars and this places a burden on neighbourhoods. A parking enquiry was held over two years ago by the transport panel to look into this matter and nothing has come from it. This council in its current format is creating problems. A realistic approach to developments with car parking provision is required.

Tuesday, February 06, 2007


No to ID cards

David Davis has written to Sir Gus O'Donnell giving formal notice that an incoming Conservative Government would scrap the Government's ID card project and asking what provision, if any, has been made in the relevant contractual arrangements to protect the Government - and public funds - against the costs that would be incurred as a result of early cancellation of the scheme. This can only be good news.

Monday, February 05, 2007

Letter to the Echo

Sir,

Labour has promised Southampton elderly that they will provide free bus travel over Hampshire. So where is the money going to come from as it is not in there Budget this year. By the looks of it more hot air and spin by Labour.

Yours faithfully

Gavin Dick

Sholing Conservatives