This follows an extraordinary act of cowardice by the Conservative group in Bedford.

They chose to withdraw their support from this year’s budget that had been negotiated with all political groups by the Mayor. Despite being members of Dave’s all-party cabinet and being fully involved in developing the budget proposals they chose not to vote for them at the budget Council meeting on Wednesday (1 February 2012).

Although, apparently they had only half changed their minds. They did not to have had the courage to actually vote against the budget, they merely abstained.

This looks to me like a purely party political move on the part of the Bedford Tories, putting themselves in opposition to the Mayor’s administration. There doesn’t seem to be any issue of policy or principle at stake here. The Cabinet now consist of Liberal Democrat, Labour and independent councillors.

In a statement on his website Mayor Dave said about the actions of the Conservative group;

“Sadly, they have again turned their backs on working for the good of the Borough, and clearly have separated themselves from running the Council in the interests of local residents and delivering this all-important budget which they approved at every stage until it mattered.”

However, in doing it I was reminded of the posts that I’d written over the summer where I talked about what I saw as my achievements over the eight years that I served as a councillor on Luton Borough Council. Having failed to be re-elected in last May’s local elections, I found the  process of writing those posts rather cathartic and useful in handling the personal fall out from the local election result.

I realised that I hadn’t provided an index of those posts so I thought, I admit a little self indulgently, that I would do so now:

• Musings on the nature of political achievement
• Achievement one: Reforms to the Council’s decision making process
• Achievement two: An intervention in the merger of Downside Infant and Junior Schools
• Achievement three: A little bit of pavement in St George’s Square
• Achievement four: The Luton Summer Festival
• Achievement five: Tackling climate change at Luton Borough Council (See also: Why climate change matters to local government & Luton Borough Council and climate change)
• Achievement six: Founding Luton Culture

It is notable for his explanation of “Ashdown’s Third Law” on the crucial value of the network for organisations. His argument is that in dealing with the consequences of the deep interconnectedness of the global world the most important element of an organisation’s structure is its capacity to network with others.

“In the modern age when everything is connected to everything, the most important thing about what you can do is what you can do with others.”

 

But sadly for us it won’t be in Luton;

‘”I would try somewhere else next time,” she says. “I have to say I was shocked by what I found in Luton,” she adds, describing the constituency as “riven with factions”.’

I am tempted to say – no, that’s not being riven by factions – it’s called an election campaign…..

Gil Scott-Heron – I Think I’ll Call It Morning:

1. Should I take out an injunction or demand royalties?
2. Update on the EDL rally in Luton planned for the 5th February
3. How I became a poster boy for Lib Dem misery
4. 2nd update on the EDL rally in Luton planned for the 5th February
5. Eyewitness report of today’s EDL rally in Luton

This is a thoroughly deserved recognition of not only her leadership of Luton Culture over the last few years, but also her role in establishing the success of the Stockwood Discovery Centre, and her career working in the museums service in Luton and elsewhere. I am delighted for Maggie but I also hope this is seen as a boost for the whole of Luton Culture as the organisation faces some difficult challenges.

Some good news to start the New Year!

Before this all sounds like too much of a whinge there has been some good stuff to. Not least my becoming an uncle again.

I have learned some important lessons this year and I have ended it in a far more positive frame of mind, and more comfortable in my skin, that I started it. I also should record my gratitude to those colleagues, friends and family who have helped and supported me this year. Often when I haven’t been the easiest person to get on with. I am very grateful.

But in all honesty I’m glad to see the back of it.

So I am looking forward to 2012 with the expectation that it will be a far more positive year.

My overwhelming priority for next year is to concentrate on work and business, and in doing so I hope to see a significant improvement in my financial circumstances. I have some half formed ideas and plans about how to do this, but I recognise that, at least for the first half of the year, I will need to do some serious graft.

Beyond that, given the need to prioritise, I’m not making many other plans. Since the local elections, with one or two exceptions, I’ve largely withdrawn from political activity. I felt I needed a break. This is likely to continue for most of 2012 – it will give me some time to work out what I want to do next. However, I have made one or two commitments and intend to spend some time writing and thinking about political issues.

Finally, if things do improve on the work front, I’d like to be a lot more social in 2012 than I was in 2011. I may even throw the odd party!

I’m glad I did. It is a bit special.

A strong and well balanced panel gave a set of fascinating contributions to a discussion on the full sweep of the history of the Liberal Party to what came across as a rather high spirited audience. Julian Glover makes you wish all Guardian journalists were more like him. Paddy Ashdown was on great form with a rousing performance littered with classic quotes. But the real star is Shirley Williams who is scholarly and thought-provoking in equal measure.

Well worth taking the time to watch:

Various thoughts I should have posted in November

At the beginning of the month I found this handy flowchart for working out where you should post your status on social networking sites. Much truth in graphical form.

The organisers of London 2012 have released a series of Olympic posters designed by contemporary artists. I liked the nod to classicism in Chris Ofili’s poster and the sentiment in Tracey Emin’s, but my favourite is the Rachel Whiteread.

In local news it was announced that Bedfordshire is to get a new Lord-Lieutenant. The Queen has appointed Helen Nellis to succeed Sir Samuel Whitbread when he retires in February. Another local change in personnel will happen next year at the University of Bedfordshire when long serving Vice Chancellor Les Ebdon retires in September.

Other happy local news is that there is a new baby elephant at Whipsnade Zoo. The baby was born a couple of weeks ago after a 700 day pregnancy.

Various thoughts I should have posted in December

I rather liked this Magna Carta word cloud; hat tip to Liberal Burblings.

I had a good chuckle at Danny Alexander’s choice of Christmas card.

Far less self aware is this horribly self-pitying interview with Mid Beds MP Nadine Dorries.

There was good news on the development of our local infrastructure with the Government’s announcement that it was giving the go ahead for the first phase of the proposed rail link between Oxford and Bedford. This should have positive knock on benefits for Luton.

I spoke at the time of my fear “that from now on when anyone at the BBC wants some stock footage of a Lib Dem looking miserable it will be that picture of me looking at my phone”. Well that fear has become more real than I could have imagined over the following months, and they are at it again, although this time for some reason they seem to think I am Scottish.

This screen grab is taken from a review of the Liberal Democrats’ year on the BBC website – but I think I have been appearing on the news channel as well.

The news broke in the middle of December that legal arguments had been heard that the disgraced former Luton South MP, who is facing charges related to her expenses, may not be well enough to face trail because of the state of her mental health. Apparently she has been seen by several psychiatrists and that their opinion is that she is “unfit to plead”. There will be a hearing in the new year to decide wether the scheduled trail will now take place.

More here:

Mentally ill Moran is ‘unfit to plead’

Fitness to plead hearing for ex-MP

Margaret Moran ‘unfit to stand trial’

This is a good thing. Over recent years we have become more aware of the importance of proper nutrition in the development of children and we know that it is the poorest within society who most often find it difficult to provide a proper balanced diet. School meals can make a huge difference to this problem. So it is only right that all those who are eligible are encouraged to sign up to receive these meals for free

But why launch this campaign now?

Aside from the obvious direct benefit of getting more people to sign up for free school meals, there is another good reason why councils should be encouraging this. The number of children receiving free school meals is the basis for calculating the pupil premium. For every pupil that gets free school meals that a school has attending it receives a sum of money. In the first year it was £488.

The pupil premium is a way of directing school funding to the neediest pupils. Luton is exactly the kind of area that should be benefiting most from the pupil premium. As I have written here before in its first year it has meant £3,642,000 coming to the town’s schools. If there truly are 5,000 plus pupils who could claim free school meals but aren’t then the town is missing out on a lot of cash.

The introduction of the pupil premium is one of the flagship policies of the coalition government, and something that was insisted on by Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats.

Funnily enough the article in Lutonline, published by Labour run Luton Borough Council, doesn’t mention the pupil premium at all. I wonder why?

Now it seems that the House of Commons Speaker, John Bercow MP, has given his backing to the idea. Or at least deemed the idea “worth discussion”.

In a speech to the Hansard Society to mark the centenary of the 1911 Parliament Act, Speaker Bercow praised the strengthening of the independence of the select committee system that has occurred over recent years. But he argued that it was now time to strengthen the authority of select committees and had three proposals of how to do this. These were:

• New powers to compel the attendance of witnesses
• Greater influence over significant public appointments
• Further ways to “link the output of select committees to the chamber itself”

It was as part of the last of these that he suggested that allowing select committee amendments should be considered. Something, I suspect, that will have caused various mutterings within government.

• You can read the full text of Speaker Bercow’s speech here (PDF)
• The BBC report is here