Conversations

In my previous post I wrote an open letter to Lynne Feathersone about her proposed ban on the enforcement of parking controls on private grounds; specifically on private estates.

Where I live — in a small flat in a mansion block with a wonderful view looking over central London — is within such a private estate. It is pretty large: there are over 600 flats (apartments) and a similar number of houses, spread over a good-sized area of land, and there are two road entrances (except in bad weather when more side gates may get opened) and while each mansion block had an entryphone system installed about ten years ago it would be financially impossible to install something similar from every home across the estate to the top and bottom gates. The top one has an automated barrier fitted which closes automatically each night around 11pm and opens around 10am, although between those hours it will rise to let you leave the estate or you can enter with a 'beeper' which you can rent from the estate management committee for £50.

The lower gate is closed a few times each year for a few hours so that the 'private' nature of the roads can be legally enforced and maintained. At these times (and on the evening of Halloween) one of the estate staff stop vehicles and pass them through if they have a valid reason to be on the estate. But it wouldn't be a practical option to have a 24/7 attendant on the gate (though, as it happens, there used to be one in the 1930s when the estate was built, as there was also a pony and trap to bring people up the hill to their home from that main lower entrance.)

So returning to that post, Lynne and I engaged in a 'conversation' yesterday via twitter, and this is a record of that interaction.

lfeatherstone: Holly Lodge has gates-first defence-and ticketing better alternative which is properly regulated and a proportionate punishment

alisonw: Two gates, neither staffed. Top closed 11pm-11am otherwise open, bottom always open. No deterrent therefore. Thx for reply.

alisonw: plus a ticket has no effect on a dumped vehicle, which has been the major problem in the past.

lfeatherstone: duumped vehicles can be removed if no tax etc. Why don't you close gates? No need to answer - but seems the logical way forward

alisonw: sometimes (amazingly) dumped vehicles still have tax discs on display. Closing gates if few homes is fine but not if 600+

lfeatherstone: well - ticketing is an adequate 'punishment' for what is, after all, a parking offence

alisonw: except that the legal & actual effectiveness of a privately-issued 'ticket'is very close to zero so minimal effect.

And that is where we've currently left it. I still feel that the current proposal is going to lead to serious problems. It is sensible where the area to be managed is small enough to be gated in a controlled manner, but not for the large-size residential estates so common across London.

The ban on clamping.

The BBC are reporting that Lynne Featherstone, as the Equalities and Criminal Information Minister, is to bring forward a bill to ban the clamping or removal of vehicles parked on private land. It is "committed to ending the menace of rogue private sector wheel-clampers once and for all" she says. In the main I completely agree with the sentiment where it is unclear that you are on on 'private land', for example where there are no gates to pass through from the public highway.

But where I live this will cause serious problems, so I have just written to Lynne asking that she reconsider the detail of her proposals.

"Hi Lynne,

Though I live 'just over the border' so to speak, I felt I must write to you as a matter of urgency over today's announcement about the banning of wheel clamping and towing away on private land in England and Wales.

The Holly Lodge estate, where I live, as with many other similar estates is actually private property; the road upkeep is paid via a fee from each householder (and a substantial contribution by Camden Council for the blocks they lease).

As private land - and outside the remit of parking controls by the Council - it has been for the estate management committee to deal with dumped vehicles and such, usually by removal after warnings have been left on a vehicle for many days but occasionally when it is blocking an entrance.

The proposals you have announced today would appear to place the maintenance and free access to such roads on many estates in severe danger of becoming dumping grounds for old vehicles.

The council haven't the power to manage this, and the police only get involved where they is 'danger' involved.

Could I ask that this situation - which I know is widespread in London and elsewhere - is urgently considered before the bill is brought forward.

Thankyou"

We already have the occasional problem with people realising that they can park on the estate when the adjacent roads are subject to parking restrictions, so this would make it massively worse. If dumped vehicles, especially, can never be removed then the possibility for residents to find themselves a place to park near their home will reduce and, in time, disappear. And although we have gates to the estate it isn't practical or feasible to have them staffed around the clock.

If you also live on such a private road please let Ms Featherstone know by using the contact form on her website, or by commenting here.

Where you live

I'm listening to Radio 4's The Westminster Hour at the moment and, unsurprisingly, the discussion is about the recent General Election and where do things go from here. One of those discussions is about PR (Proportional Representation) and the perceived need for the relationship between the citizen and the MP in the form of the Constituency relationship. Some MPs and commentators suggest it is sacrosanct and must never be broken, which some forms of PR (such as AV+ and list) partially or completely do.

But I'm wondering whether that relationship is all it is suggested it is.

At this election the boundary between seats in my area was shifted, and where I had been an voter in the Hampstead & Highgate constituency for the last 24 years I was now voting for an MP in the Holborn & St. Pancras seat. I didn't get any choice in that 'move' — my home hasn't changed. And, as I commented in a recent post on the results, the lines dividing the nation into constituencies are pretty much random; though sometimes they may associate similar areas together they are just as likely to separate one area into individual, illogical parts.

So is the 'Constituency' all it is said it is? If you know which Member of Parliament is representing you (or, indeed, which Members plural) then does there need to be a direct relationship between them and where you live? Does where you work actually matter more, for example?

In London there are 'constituency' members of the London Assembly, and 'top-up' or 'London-wide' members, and residents of London can go to either 'type' of Assembly Member as they choose. Similar arrangements apply to other elected bodies in some areas.

So would Parliament fall apart if the method of allocating new MPs based upon the number — and proportion — of votes received changed from the present (and clearly outmoded) method?

Somehow I don't think most of us would even notice the change.

Random lines

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a fairly well-defined entity. A really big island, lots of smaller ones, bits of another big one, and spots in between. The UK Parliament — located at Westminster — serves as the representative body of this entity. 650 Members of Parliament form that body, drawn from all points of 'GB&NI'.

But how are they drawn from that area? As we saw on May 6th it is a matter of random lines drawn across the countryside, dividing populations into zones of allegedly similar sizes with each of those zones returning an MP based on which candidate receives the highest number of votes, no matter whether more people voted against them rather than for them.

These lines, in some areas, sometimes delineate cities or towns in a meaningful way, but even then they can have the effect of disenfranchising the majority of a population. One of those things once called gerrymandering. Take Oxford, for example. In Oxford East the Conservative candidate — Nicola Blackwood — received 23,906 votes, and won the seat from LibDem Evan Harris who gained 23,730 votes — 176 fewer. Richard Stevens for Labour only took 10.6% at 5,999 votes. Next door in Oxford West the results were in the reverse order: Labour's Andrew Smith won with 42.5% of the vote — 21,938 — to Steve Goddard's 17,357 LibDem votes and the Tory Edward Argar brought up the rear with 9,727 votes.

So that random line splitting Oxford in two resulted in one Conservative MP and one Labour MP being elected to the 2010 Parliament. But who drew that line? You take the total vote across both constituencies and whilst Labour support reaches 27,937 and Conservative 33,633 the Liberal Democrat total leads the way with 41,087 — substantially higher than either of the other two main parties, yet they didn't achieve any representation in Parliament.

In York, there are also two seats, York Inner and York Outer, and Outer elected a Tory MP and Inner went to Labour, yet the totals for the city were Conservative: 35,034 LibDems: 30,918 and Labour lowest on 27,681. Logic, therefore, would suggest that the City of York should have elected one Conservative and one Liberal Democrat, yet it didn't.

How can these results ever be right?

There are hundreds of similar examples across the nation; very few MPs received over 50% of the vote in their constituency giving them a real personal mandate. And this is before we account for the thousands of people in Birmingham, Sheffield, Maidstone, Manchester, Hackney, Islington and elsewhere who were unable to even vote despite queueing for hours, often in the rain, to exercise their democratic right to be counted. Whilst one would hope there was no intent to disenfranchise the electorate like this, it seems that whilst the law says a polling station must close at 10pm there is nothing that says how many booths must be in that station, or how fast the staff must work through the queue.

I've had a permanent postal vote now for some fifteen years and, whilst it was noted yesterday that votes had 'gone astray' in York and one doesn't know that the ballot paper I sent via the Royal Mail definitively arrived at the count, I trust that it did. And all elections — even where you stick the paper with the 'X' on in the box yourself — is about trust. People place their trust in the system that their vote will be counted. They place their trust that the result will be meaningful. They place their trust in the representative nature of our electoral system; that we don't operate a delegated authority where an MP only represents those who voted for them, but expect that the constituency MP will represent everyone in that area.

Are we right to do so?

When I first moved to Highgate I joined the local Labour Party, indeed I became branch secretary and later Womens' Officer for the Constituency. Before that I'd had jobs where to be seen as politically active was very much frowned upon. When the leadership election took place which returned Tony Blair I left. Then, about ten years ago I joined the Liberal Democrats and was very active with them, supporting friends in elections, trying to get selected for a seat myself, and serving as the Chair of the Party's GBLT group. At the moment though I'm not a member of any political party. But I am still a member of Make Votes Count and a very firm believer in the principle of proportional representation; that the MPs we elect should be from political parties in a broadly similar ratio to the number of people who voted for those parties.

Yesterday, this country elected representatives from a range of political persuasions to the House of Commons. The numbers of each party were, very clearly, not fair or a reasonable response to the voters' intentions, and there is no clear path to Government. I joked on Twitter that — given the earlier statement by the Governor of the Bank of England that whichever party formed the next government the nation's response to the massive cuts they would have to introduce would keep them out of power for a generation — they'd all succeeded in not getting elected.

Thing is, any coalition Tory-LibDem, Labour-LibDem, even Labour-Tory, would not reflect the intention of the electorate. They voted and, for better or for worse, we have a 'hung' Parliament. It isn't for those elected to decide amongst themselves who should take power, it is for us — the Nation's people — to expect them to all work together, to get this country back on its feet in the face of financial adversity. The newly arrived Parliament needs to set aside their differences and work — informally — together.

It is time for a national Government, not a fix-up.

What is a bigot?

Yesterday, a certain leader of the Labour Party went walkabout 'meeting the people of Britain' as part of his election campaign. So far, so good, if you like that sort of thing. He then chatted with a 'woman on the street' about a number of policy topics she politely raised. One of these brief enquiries was about the number of people arriving on these shores from other part of the European Union, others were about the state of the UK's finances and other 'hot button' issues. Gordon Brown — who clearly sets his own timetable for such events — made a few brief remarks and some minutes later the discussion ended and he departed in his shiny big black limousine.

Except he forgot he was still miked up (for Sky News) and made a few choice comments about the previous ten minutes meeting Mrs Duffy and others. First he called the discussion "a disaster" (to the surprise of just about every media commentator), then cast around for someone to blame — alighting on one of his long-term staff — and then uttered what appear to have been fatal words for the Labour party in this election "She's just a sort of bigoted woman".

Now, as many have pointed out, the dictionary says bigot means someone with utterly fixed opinions, ie. isn't the same as 'racist' which some commentators appear to be trying to equate the accusation with. But either way, Mrs Duffy — in her own words a life-long Labour support and someone who would be voting for that party — had put her questions very politely, and Gordon hadn't really answered them. But after trying to blame everyone else Brown finally went on a mea culpa trip, it seems more for the comments being heard than the comments themselves.

So he apologised on BBC Radio 2. Then on all other media. Then went back to visit Mrs Duffy at home and apologise again. Then wrote to Labour activists to apologise again!. Methinks the gentleman doth apologise too much! Instead of saying sorry — and meaning it — and getting on with things so that the story died with the news cycle — hopefully to get replaced by something else asap — he kept it so alive that it is still leading the media's election coverage more than 24 hours on.

When I first saw the clip of the event I tweeted "I don't believe what Gordon Brown says either. I am therefore also a #bigotedwoman by his standards. Good! #election2010" When I made that tweet I had only seen the 'end' part of the meeting between her and Brown (nothing about immigration) and it appeared that Brown's outburst was over her simply disagreeing with him. And I very much disagree with him too …

But then a friend of mine — elmyra (Milena Popova) — made a post about how she felt about the discussion around this event reproduced by The Guardian, and including my tweet.

Personally, I am very strongly against any attempt to ostracise anyone who has come - legally - to this country. I welcome them with open arms and - personally - would be fairly happy with an 'open door' policy (like water, population finds its own levels in a given area). But it didn't hit me from what I saw of that initial meeting between Ms Duffy and Mr Brown that there was anything more than a simple polite query:

She wasn't antagonistic in any way in asking a question to which no party has properly answered (I'm ignoring the BNP of course) and is - quite clearly - something a substantial number of Labour voters have concerns about. Unlike others on her estate interviewed subsequently she wasn't that rabid nor - it appeared from what I could see and hear - was she being 'anti' european, more querying that it appears uncontrolled. I didn't hear a "flocking" comment, though how that word is interpreted very much depends on the listener. After all, a Vicar talks about 'their flock', meaning those follows of their religion attending their church.

People coming to the UK from the EU aren't 'immigrants' per se, they are part of the European Union of which we in the UK are an integral part and, just as much as they can come here so many British go 'there' too.

But the coverage … Well Labour leaders have said "he is only human" so often I almost start to think there may have been some question about it, and many have said they are releived that Brown wasn't as over-the-top as he sometimes can be. Brown and other Labourites have all stated "She is not a bigot" so should we take that at face value, or is that too something they denounce in private to each other?

Some have even said "we all do it" to which my comment is "no we don't!" but that he held an opinion in private directly opposite to that he openly stated unprompted moments before is, in my view, reprehensible. If the microphone hadn't been forgotten by him (which I note happened again earlier today) then there would have been no apology of any kind. This is a petard of G.Brown's making and no-one else.

If you hold an opinion then you shouldn't be afraid to be public about that opinion. Especially if you are a politician asking people to trust their future and that of the country in your hands.

Social Media politics

Once Parliament is Prorogued Members of Parliament still receive their salaries but may not campaign during the election period as 'Joanna Blogs MP', indeed they have to drop the 'MP' for the duration. In the last General Election it was noted that many a was-MP-now-candidate had to stop using their 'normal' website — because it included 'MP' in the domain — and create a separate election website. They could retain the old one, just not update it.

Well next year we'll be seeing a similar problem arising with all those MPs who Twitter or use FaceBook. People such as JimMurphyMP, patmcfaddenmp, AdamPriceMP, MikeOBrienMP, willierenniemp, TomHarrisMP, DewsburyMP will all need to change their names on Twitter and in some cases can't just drop the 'MP' as other people already have the handle (eg. MikeOBrien) and on other services it isn't possible to change your handle.

Could make 'name recognition' a whole new issue next year...