Tag Archives: Caroline Page

'Divesting' services, eXplore card, New Strategic direction, Suffolk County Council, Uncategorized, Your councillor

Suffolk Politics and the English Language

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I’ve just come back from Suffolk’s latest full council meeting – the centrepiece of which was a debate on the administration’s  Update to the New Strategic Direction ( click here: its the last document on the list).  Many of the Lib Dem and other opposition members, including myself, laid into this  incomprehensible  piece of bureaucratic gobbledegook.

In return some, but not very many, members of the Conservative majority reproached us for using unkind words. (Oh, and for writing nasty blogs which criticised them.)  They suggested, cynically, that we Lib Dems were being cynical and destructive of  the Administration’s  highminded efforts to listen to the residents of Suffolk. “We want to free the people of Suffolk from the chains of excessive bureaucracy, and give them what they truly want”, they claimed.

They might have convinced me if it weren’t for all those emails I’ve been getting these last months from Suffolk people  facing the prospect of being without buses, without bus passes, without explore cards, school crossing patrols, libraries, care provision, respite provision etc etc. All of whom complained that they HADN’T been listened to, and WEREN’T getting what they wanted.

Other Tory councillors – the  numbers of the disaffected raising daily – were ‘layin low and sayin nuffin’. It didn’t stop them voting with their peers, though.

Dante MUST have reserved a circle of hell specially for those who lack the courage of their convictions!

I didn’t bother explaining why the Admin’s take on libraries is wrong, their take on transport is wrong, their take on the explore card is wrong . I have said all this before to much jeering from these highminded listeners to the people of Suffolk. Instead, I concentrated on how they were hiding behind incomprehensibility. I said:

I have endeavoured to read this document,  I have really really tried. And I’m good at reading: I have an MA from Oxford (English Language and Literature). Last year I worked on the great Oxford Historical Thesaurus – which covers all the meanings of all the words that have been used in English over the last thousand years.

I have even managed to read and enjoy the collected works of Walter Scott!

I would suggest that if there is meaning to be taken from a piece of writing I am the very person to take it.  However –

THIS piece of (for want of a better word) writing,  has done what Walter Scott, Beowulf , even John Milton, couldn’t do. It has defeated me utterly.

I can only conclude that the reason no meaning can be extracted from this piece is because there is no meaning to be extracted.

Is this accidental? Is this deliberate? Who can tell? As George Orwell puts it “what looks like an unclear expression of a clear thought might actually be a perfectly clear expression of an unclear thought.”

However, from reading this, one thing does become crystal clear. Either you don’t know what you want to do, or you don’t want to tell us.  Come on,  Cllr Pembroke can you give us your plan in words people can understand, so we identify clearly what action IS being recommended!

Cllr Noble attempted a comeback by trying to explain that the NSD WAS rather a ‘complex’ idea.  (The implication being that maybe it was a little bit too complex for lesser minds to comprehend in all its glory.)

Cllr Noble: complex and unclear are two very different words:

  • Complex implies that something has many separate aspects, which are necessary but difficult to understand;
  • Unclear denotes a muddle!

Complex or unclear? Gentle reader, I invite you to click on the link above, read the ‘Action Recommended’ section on the first page and judge  for yourself.

62a and 62b, Buses, Cabinet, cuts, New Strategic direction, Suffolk County Council, Transport, Uncategorized, Woodbridge, Your councillor

Woodbridge’s 62a and 62b scrapped without warning!

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OK, I saw it coming – I knew the bus-unfriendly Guy McGregor, SCC portfolio-holder for Transport and Highways, was out to do it  – but it still makes me angry!

Woodbridge has now lost ALL its evening, Sunday and Bank Holiday bus services – victims to  the prejudices of a portfolio-holder who treats buses as  if they were Babes in the Wood – to be  led out into the woods and lost, their pathetic corpses buried under leaves.  He then has the brass neck to boast on his website that: ” I have driven the improvement in the provision of bus services in Suffolk.” To carry on the Panto metaphor “OH NO you haven’t!!!” You are presiding over its demise!

[Here I had to stop writing to take an urgent call from my constituent, the septuagenarian dancer John Raven who relies on the buses – particularly the 62a and b  – as he travels to and from Ipswich’s Regent theatre  daily, often in the evening. Mr Raven and I met years ago, as we travelled to Ipswich by bus. Neither he or his wife can drive, they both find it hard to walk far,   and they live a good  half an hour’s walk from the train station (which will bring him into the wrong side of Ipswich). This cut will devastate his life.  But is he devastated? NO! instead the feisty Mr Raven is LIVID  and he’s out to tell people so.  Mr Raven is not taken in by weasel words: he recognises that Cllr McGregor is figurehead for a regime that  simply diesn’t care]

It seems Mr McGregor’s desire is  to be shot of the subsidised public bus services to rural areas – a lifeline to many people in the countryside who cannot afford, or are unable (by reasons of health, age and poverty) to drive.  Not that Mr McGregor puts it so directly. Indeed he drips honeytonged appeasement. Its not that he’s cutting the services – oh no – far from it.  Mr Mcgregor merely  plans to ‘remodel’ much of   Suffolk’s  rural transport, by replacing services with a ‘demand-responsive’ alternative, one that (he fails to mention) has to be booked a day in advance and is not available outside working hours.

And he certainly doesn’t mention that the money to underpin this  Demand Responsive Solution to the death of the subsidised scheduled bus services was taken out of  his capital expenditure budget a full year before  the NSD was mentioned.

Bus users of Woodbridge,  your valued local service didn’t fall – it was pushed!

Let’s be clear here  – talking about demand responsive transport solutions  is  a load of  meretricious tosh if you referring to buses like the 62a and the 62b.  Why? Well,  if you press them, SCC  officers admit that:

“demand responsive transport operates between 0700 and 1900 Monday to Saturday and we are unable to offer any extension to these hours”.

So our 62a and 62b services will therefore not be replaced with demand responsive transport: they will be replaced with nothing at all, and residents in Woodbridge will have NO sustainable transport in the evenings, on Sundays and on Bank Holidays.

Those residents who do not have, cannot afford to, or are unable to drive a car, will be left sitting at home!

Last week I suggested to  Mr McGregor that he was targeting his transport cuts disproportionately at Suffolk’s sustainable transport as  I questioned his part in the SCC proposed budget for next year.  He agreed that this was the case, but added

“When they were consulted, residents in Suffolk said they were saddened that these cuts were happening, but they know the reasons why they have to occur.”

Oh yes, we DO know the reasons why our buses are being cut, Mr McGregor!  Its because you prefer to add a couple of millions to the already bloated roads budget than give a moment’s concern to those residents of Suffolk who do not drive cars. That’s what saddens us!  Decisions are being made on our behalf  by someone who doesn’t care a hoot for buses, nor for the people who use buses, and most of all, for the plight of the people who have no option but to use buses!

While I remember, it was at this very same Cabinet meeting that Jane Storey, deputy leader of the SCC administration, and arch apologist for the New Strategic Direction  really excelled herself. In bringing next year’s budget to Cabinet she had the unmitigated CRUST to say (with an ineffable blend of complacency and certainty), that this budget – yes the one that is cutting school traffic patrols, divesting libraries, abolishing the explore card and stopping the very buses that rural people most need  “will deliver first class services to the people of Suffolk. ”

Oh, and she also added that the administration have “tried to prioritise the vulnerable in our society.”

I kid you not!   I wrote her words down as she spoke them so I could make sure to pass them on in all their appalling glory!

Cllr Storey, like Cllr McGregor , you seem to have the same relationship to services for the vulnerable as the Wicked Uncle had to the Babes in the Wood. Oh yes you DO!

Oh NO you dont???

Well why not  put your money where your mouths are, and forgo your cuts to essential and irreplaceable services in favour of supporting the most vulnerable of Suffolk’s road users – those who are  dependent on your subsidised buses!

Residents of Woodbridge, and beyond – if you wish to persuade Cllrs McGregor, Storey et al of the error of their ways and hope for a regular panto Transformation Scene, please sign the online petition

http://petitions.web-labs.co.uk/suffolkcc/public/Save-Woodbridge-Buses

Or you can sign a paper copy in Woodbridge’s Shire Hall. We MUST keep reminding them that this is a bad thing to do – or they might carry on thinking that it’s prefectly ok.

'Divesting' services, Buses, Cabinet, Care homes, Council spending, cuts, Libraries, Lollipop patrols, New Strategic direction, Schools, Suffolk County Council, Woodbridge, young people, Your councillor

Cuts in Suffolk – don’t ever forget who’s holding that knife!

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As your county councillor I am horribly anxious about so many different  things simultaneously.  

This week  its been the almost certain loss of Suffolk’s libraries, school crossing patrols, care homes, bus services, the eXplore card, and services for families  that has  been most worrying me.  That, and the impact of these losses on the people of Suffolk.

For clearly, Suffolk residents are  likely to be losing all of these, losing them irrevocably, sacrificed to the ideological insanity of an ‘enabling’ council, run by affluent, untroubled  people who say:  “Do as I say, not as I do!”   It is  a Topsy Turvey world where those who run it can demand  pay moderation, job cuts, and employment freezes for everyone else but themselves;  can parrot the mantra of “Greenest County” and drive everywhere in a 4×4; can declare themselves determined to protect ‘the most vulnerable’  but do not include in this category the elderly, the very young, the disabled , or the disadvantaged.  

Pah!  

However,  I would urge you not to confuse national policies with our current disgraceful  local vandalism. For a start, such confusion could – no, WILL –  let those responsible off the hook! The New Strategic Direction has been a long time in the planning. It is making cuts greater than required in services the administration doesn’t value. A cynic would suggest that it is using the national situation as a cover for doing so.

Remember, in Suffolk the Liberal Democrats are not in any kind of coalition – they are very strongly the opposition party.  And as you know, both I and my colleagues have been fighting these cuts from the day they were first heralded, back in last September. Let us be clear here – although we are in opposition,  Suffolk Lib Dems are fighting this New Strategic Direction as a matter of common sense rather than party-political politicking.  We are fighting it because the effects will hit people of all ages, and backgrounds and political hue.

We – like any sane, sensible people – think there IS such a thing as society, and that  actually in Suffolk we had – till recently – a society that ran quite well. One that looked after its old and its sick and disabled, that tempered the wind to the shorn lamb. We think a  County Council should respond to its residents and their needs:  that the council is there to represent  and protect them and serve them. We are not so arrogant that  we forget that SCC  is paid for by the people of Suffolk, out of their own money! We feel that those who pay the piper should be allowed to call the tune!

 The council’s current bizarre ‘New Strategic Direction’ (which seems to combine ‘selling off of the family silver’ with dumping some of it in a skip) does not seem to think  this way. Far from intending to deliver ‘the best’ for the people of Suffolk,  the NSD  does not intend to deliver anything at all!

 Care homes, libraries, bus services and school crossing patrols:  all of these are not just ‘optional extras’ to be dispensed with and disposed of  by those who do not use them (and seemingly fail to remember they do not own them).  Yet there is such a thing as society in Suffolk, and all these services are ones that make you proud that it still exists.

Suffolk County Council is cynically using the cuts in central government grants to justify what it plans to do, but central actions (whatever we think of them) do not in any sense explain what is being done here in Suffolk.  The Coalition government is not going to win any popularity contests while trying to recoup the eye-watering deficit bequeathed by Gordon Brown and the last thirteen years.   However it should not be expected to carry the can for the ‘scorched earth’ decisions being made – without reference to the public or even a business plan – by those who have created the ‘New Strategic Direction’.

But the CEO and the Tory administration at Suffolk County Council are not the only people to blame for this mess. There’s also the sheer apathy of all too many of the people of Suffolk to factor in!    

In late October/November last year I  – together with many other colleagues – trudged around a large area of Suffolk Coastal delivering 23,000 copies of an emergency leaflet which tried to alert the people of Suffolk to what lay ahead. 

The administration accused us of ‘scaremongering’ – yet our direst predictions were less terrible than the truth.

We did our best and gained a huge amount of support from those prepared to listen – but it was not enough. Far too few people took notice. Some hoped it wouldn’t  really happen under a Tory watch, others hoped to regain popularity for the Labour party by standing on the sidelines and letting our society crumble, others  just hoped that the problem would go away if they shut their eyes and buried their heads in the sand.   

So, once again I urge you to put aside party-political differences and take action!  After months of refusing to listen to the people it represents, Suffolk County Council has finally  put up an e-petition site. Register on it and add your name  to an existing petition or  start a new one. Or best – do both!

http://petitions.web-labs.co.uk/suffolkcc/public/

You can sign any petition – the only qualification is that you need to live, work or study in Suffolk (for example, I have signed all the Library petitions as I believe in an integrated service for the county) but current petitions that particularly affect you are :

Save our School Crossing Patrols – the St Mary’s School Woodbridge lollipop man is going to be cut along with the other 97 lollipop posts across Suffolk, to save a sum of money that equates to to less that 80% of the Chief Executive’s annual salary!

Save Woodbridge Library: it will not be closed –  but it is still in danger of ‘divestment’.

Save Woodbridge Buses  Cuts – confirmed yesterday – to SCC subsidised services will leave Woodbridge without any evening, sunday or bank holiday bus services, plus cut easy links to other towns and villages. This will cause huge problems to those who can’t, don’t, or can’t afford to drive 

Save the Explore Card  Up till now young people have had this card to help with travel costs to post-16 education, to work and to find work, and for socialising. Explore cards were available free to students 16-19, and have enabled them to pay only half adult fares on buses and on many off-peak rail journeys. Additionally, the SCC post-16 transport policy relies on the fact that all post-16 students can have an Explore card to help with fares – and a very good thing too!. The proposed abolition of the card would mean there will be more cars on the road because many more young people will be driven or drive to school, college, employment etc. It will put more, less confident cyclists on busier roads. It will lead to less take-up of FE education because of difficulties of access. It will harm young people’s chances of going for job interviews and training. The proposed abolition is a retrograde step that threatens the very education and employment opportunities that our young people need in order to help us out of our current economic crisis. It also makes a mockery of our ‘Greenest county’ aspirations 

(NB: A word of warning sometimes the e-petition links work poorly. If so , go to the site and navigate from there! And if it doesn’t work, keep trying until it does.)