Archive for September 2011

The proposed new parliamentary boundaries for Luton

Yesterday the Boundary Commission for England released it’s proposed changes to parliamentary constituency boundaries.

The headlines for Luton are:

Luton South loses the parts of Central Beds (the village of Caddington and the surrounding area) it currently has to a Hemel Hempstead seat. It gains from Luton North the two wards of Barnfield and Saints.

Luton North loses those wards but gains the four Central Bedfordshire wards that contain the town of Dunstable. It is renamed Luton North and Dunstable. I’m not yet sure what I think about this change.

The big news for the rest of Bedfordshire is that Nadine Dorries’ seat of Mid Bedfordshire is effectively abolished. It’s various wards are broken up and distributed amongst the remaining Bedfordshire seats and two of the Hertfordshire seats. This has the potential to lead to an interesting Conservative selection battle for the reconfigured South West Bedfordshire constituency.

I had blogged previously about the potential implications of the boundary change for Luton. I was right in my expectation that the two Luton constituencies would be shifted north and west respectively. But I wasn’t expecting Luton North to be joined with the whole of Dunstable.

I will confess to a little bit of disappointment that the fun and games of a Luton South and Harpenden seat have been avoided!

As for the political implications of this, my initial reaction is that these changes make Luton South a little safer for Labour. It is bad news for the Tories in the seat as they lose the mainly Conservative voting Caddington. It could also be good news for the Liberal Democrats. At the last local elections they got a reasonably good vote share in the two wards that move into the constituency from Luton North and they have one councillor in Barnfield.

At the moment I am less clear about the implications of Luton North joining with Dunstable other than it will make the seat more competitive.

However, the big question is whether or not these proposals get implemented. They have to get the approval of parliament first and there is that old thing about turkeys and Christmas.

 13th September 2011   11:31   1  Tags Luton, Politics 

Margaret Moran is “unsocialist and unsociable”

Having written something almost complimentary about former Luton South Labour MP Margaret Moran in my last post here I thought I ought to redress the balance. Luckily this tweet appeared in my Twitter feed today thanks to @lordbonkers and I thought it needed sharing.

This is how The Olive Press, “Spain’s No1 English news website”, reported the news that Moran is to face 21 expenses charges;

You can tell from the quotes in this article that British ex-pats who move to Spain soon lose touch with the mother country by the way they seem to think that most Labour MPs still describe themselves as socialists!

‘One neighbour Nick Nicholson….said: “She must be gutted. We did not come here for this petty, completely unsocialist behaviour. It is bloody minded and completely unsociable.”

Another neighbour Nuri added: “She is meant to be a socialist MP, but behaves like an English imperialist from the days of the Raj.”’

 12th September 2011   21:20   0  Tags Luton, Politics 

Luton Labour MP Gavin Shuker votes for Dorries amendment

Yesterday saw the attempt by the Conservative MP for Mid Bedfordshire, Nadine Dorries, to amend the NHS bill to change the legal basis by which women seeking an abortion receive advice and counselling. Now this is not area where I would claim to have a great deal of knowledge, but I know a piece of bad legislation when I see it. This extremely controversial amendment had united woman’s rights groups, the medical profession, and many others in opposition to it. It seemed to be based on the assumption that the current system is failing and those involved in it where largely motivated by things other than the welfare of the women they were dealing with. Evidence for this assumption was not provided.

I don’t generally approve of Diane Abbott MP but she did make a very good and well argued speech in yesterday’s debate. One with which it is hard not to thoroughly agree. She said;

“The case that the amendment is intended to make is that tens of thousands of women every year are either not getting counselling that they request, or are getting counselling that is so poor that only new legislation can remedy the situation. I might say, after many years in the House, that in matters of this kind, if legislation is the answer we have almost certainly asked the wrong question…..

…the proposers of the amendment are asking us to believe, on the basis of purely anecdotal evidence, that tens of thousands of doctors, nurses and charity workers involved in the 190,000 abortions a year are wilfully ignoring both the law and the guidance of the British Medical Association and the Royal Colleges. They go further than that, arguing that tens of thousands of doctors, nurses and charity workers are merely in it for the money. They imply that those men and women are involved in some sort of grotesque piecework. It is almost as though they were paid per abortion. The proposers of the amendment, I might add, also seem to be arguing that thousands of women do not actually know what they are doing. It tells us something about the validity of their claims that they are obliged to smear tens of thousands of doctors and nurses to make any kind of case…..

…There is no evidence base for the amendments, and on the basis of all the recent polls there is no substantive support for amendments of this nature. Legislation addressing the issues raised by Government Members is already in place. This House should have more respect for the medical profession and for the vulnerable women who put themselves forward for abortion in one of the most difficult periods in their lives, rather than support an amendment of this nature, which is spurious and baseless. I urge the House emphatically to reject the amendment.”

So the question has to be asked – what on earth was the Member of Parliament for Luton South, Gavin Shuker, doing voting for this amendment?

I’m afraid you can’t justify this vote with arguments based on religious and moral views on abortion. This wasn’t about that issue. This is very bad judgment on Gavin’s part.

They irony is that his predecessor as Labour MP, Margaret Moran, who is facing charges of forgery and false accounting later this month, given her record on women’s rights, I’m pretty sure would have voted against. Gavin, you are being seriously misguided if in comparison to Margaret Moran you come off worse!

In fairness I should say that the Conservative MP for South West Beds, Andrew Selous, along with, embarrassingly, four Lib Dem MPs, also voted for the Dorries amendment. So he isn’t the only one displaying bad judgment. The other Labour MP for Luton, Kelvin Hopkins, voted against.

Happily, the amendment was voted down with a massive 250 majority (368 against – 118 for).

 8th September 2011   12:19   2  Tags Luton, Politics 

Margaret Moran to face 21 expenses charges

This blog has often in the past talked about the scandal surrounding former Luton South MP Margaret Moran and her parliamentary expenses. Today it was announced by the Director of Public Prosecutions that she will face 21 charges for allegedly claiming parliamentary expenses illegally when she appears in front of City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court on the 19 September.

She will face 15 charges of false accounting and 6 charges of forgery.

The BBC has more: ‘Ex-Luton MP Margaret Moran facing 21 expenses charges‘

For more on the background to this you can read the full list of Margaret Moran related posts on this blog.

 6th September 2011   23:30   2  Tags Luton, Politics 

Random Thoughts 10: economics, quality writing and Miss USA on evolution

This is the tenth of my “Random Thoughts” posts. Since I started doing these back in March they have been less regular and more, well, ‘random’ than I had intended. But I do think they have added something to the blog. The main purpose of recording things that I find interesting but haven’t the time or the inclination to write a full blog post about is being fulfilled. So I think they will continue.

This edition has links to various bits of quality writing by people I vaguely know and an opportunity to indulge in a quality pleasure.

First we turn to the economy. Nick Thornsby has a very insightful post on ‘Why the cuts are necessary, and the chart that explains (nearly) all‘. He gives one of the clearest explanations I’ve seen of the facts and historical background that underlie the government’s economic policy and shows how facile much of political debate is about this issue.

Part of  why this post is so good is that Nick clearly understands the difference between debt and deficit. This enables him to make this strong point:

“the suggestion, made by some, that the current deficit is not high by historical standards is clearly nonsense. The deficit in 2009-10 was much higher than at any other time since the second world war, and almost double the usual level in previous recessions.

While it is true that the national debt is currently not particularly high by historic standards, that would soon be untrue were we to continue borrowing at the current rate.”

Cllr Richard Kemp says goodbye as he stands down from the post of the Leader of the Liberal Democrats in Local Government.

Food for thought from Daniel Ratchford on ten trends that are transforming local government.

In line with my recent theme of considering the future of the Electoral Reform Society, James Graham has delved into ERS’s past to come up with this challenging, but convincing, recommendation for changing the Society’s objectives.

Sarfraz Manzoor’s favourite album is by Bruce Springsteen. I didn’t see that one coming. :-)

Finally, that guilty pleasure. I admit to being a little uncomfortable with the ethics of laughing at beauty queens, but still I did find what follows very amusing.

A tweet from @lordbonkers led me to the excellent Open Culture website, which in turn led me to an article which I thought I would share. It has two videos, one of which is a spoof of the original, and they are very funny – but at the same time – the whole thing is more than a little frightening. I won’t say any more but do go and find out what the responses were when the Miss USA 2011 contestants were asked the question “Should evolution be taught in schools?“.

 4th September 2011   12:25   0  Tags Random Thoughts 

Results of the Electoral Reform Society council elections

The Electoral Reform Society (ERS) are meeting in London for their AGM today and I imagine that those attending are digesting the result of the ballot for the Society’s ruling council which were declared a couple of days ago. The full results are here:

Having over the last few weeks blogged about these elections here and here, I thought I better record my response to the result.

All of my top five choices of candidate got elected – so on that score I am happy with the outcome.

In general it looks like a victory for the “reformers”. Only a handful of the incumbents who were re-standing were re-elected so there are a lot of new faces on the council. Hopefully this injection of new blood will give the ERS new energy and new direction.

However, there are also some experienced old hands who have been elected who can provide some continuity. I was particularly pleased to see that Michael Meadowcroft and Keith Sharp were elected. So my impression is of a balanced result which has the potential to be a good thing for the future direction of the ERS.

In an email to members Katie Ghose, the ERS’s Chief Executive, has commented:

“Our recent elections have returned a Council that reflects what our members want – a mix of experience and knowledge, long-serving members along with fresh faces, cross-party representation and a good diversity of age, gender and nations.”

This looks to be about right. If the winners are able to dial down some of the language which was used in the election campaign, work to respect and understand each others opinions, and operate through consensus then I think those elected have the makings of a strong team.

 3rd September 2011   13:23   0  Tags Politics 

Former Luton Council Chief Executive to chair government’s panel on riots

Darra Singh, a former Chief Executive of Luton Borough Council, has been chosen to head the Communities and Victims Panel that the Government has set up to talk to those affected by the riots in August and to attempt to understand why they occurred. The Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, announced the membership of the panel this week.

Darra was the Chief Exec for my first few years as a councillor in Luton and so I got to see him at work. I reckon he is a good choice for this role. I have in the past praised the work he did as chair of the Commission for Integration and Cohesion under the last Labour government. Some of the conclusions of that commission where quite challenging and so if this new panel applies the same degree of rigour to it’s work it’s conclusions won’t necessarily be comfortable for the current coalition government.

The establishment of this panel is in step with the more sensible response to the riots that Nick Clegg has taken. I think it is unlikely that Darra will be inclined to endorse the more wilder aspects of the Tories knee jerk response. That said, I get the impression that he is respected across all political parties so what he and the other members of the panel come up with should hopefully have some weight.

 2nd September 2011   11:41   3  Tags Luton, Politics