Spot the Difference
Tag: councillor
Peterborough, This May Be The Change
The almost invisible Holdich Motion
The Motion which was not properly discussed at last night’s Extraordinary General Meeting in Peterborough was this:
The full text reads as follows:
”
|
EXTRAORDINARY COUNCIL |
AGENDA ITEM No. 3 |
|
13 APRIL 2016 |
PUBLIC REPORT |
MOTIONS ON NOTICE
The following notice of motion has been received in accordance with the Council’s Standing Order 13.1:
1. Motion from Councillor Ferris, Councillor Fower, Councillor Johnson, Councillor Knowles, Councillor Murphy, Councillor Sandford and Councillor Shaheed
Council notes the announcement by the Chancellor of a devolution deal for the East in his Budget on 16 March; but regrets that the deal, in its current form, is not acceptable to this Council.
Council requests that the Chief Executive write to the Secretary of State for Local Government to bring this resolution to his attention.
The proposed East Anglia Devolution Agreement can be found at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/508115/The _East_Anglia_Devolution_Agreement_FINAL_with_signatures_and_logos.pdf
A hard copy of the document will be available in each Group Room.”
But this was not debated. Instead:
The wishy washy “Holdich Amendment” was passed.
You wouldn’t pick up what happened if you just watched the BBC News at 10pm (which I did and which Cambridge City Council members may have done). And if you looked for what follows on the council’s website, you wouldn’t find it (as I write).
The council did publish it on its Twitter profile: ***
Cllr Holdich is now proposing an amendment to the original motion pic.twitter.com/K75VrhvGvd
— Peterborough Council (@PeterboroughCC) April 13, 2016
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The ruling Conservative Party’s Holdich Amendment was discussed and voted FOR. It thus becoming the substantive motion and the only item which could be voted on. This removed any opportunity to discuss the original motion. It also positioned the council as unhappy, but wishing to remain in the conversation. At least one councillor believes that the city would have been excluded from discussions on the “proposed East Anglia Devolution Agreement” #ToryDevolution #EasternPowerhouse or what I think it is: #PseudoDevolution had it voted FOR the Ferris Motion.
The council published this, but only on Twitter at 7.15pm last night (the meeting began at 7pm). The council has not published this, which is the Order Paper and which shows how the Amendment took precedence over the Motion. I believe it was highly discourteous to Cllr Ferris, the author of the motion to reveal it to him only at c 9.30 on the same day, especially since most people know he holds down a full time job as well as his councillor role.
Cllr Chris York and (I think) Cllr Yasmeen Maqbool did not make the meeting and didn’t send their apologies. The other absent councillors are listed below on my annotated Order Paper.
Nobody asked for the vote to be recorded, so electors cannot identify (nor could I) who voted for what on the second vote.
Air Pollution and Peterborough City Council
Picture is at http://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/aqma/lis… and the status of the Air Quality Management Area (two small areas in Whittlesey) has not changed since 2007 when the breach of legal limits was notified to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).
Peterborough City Council’s other progress on air pollution since then:
Council has never had a public information campaign to stop domestic and commercial burning of landfill, construction and commercial wastes, which is particularly prevalent in high housing turnover areas close to the railway station. Smoke and smog affect visitors’ perceptions of the city as they step onto the platform and air quality has a serious and ongoing impact on residents’ health and wellbeing. Many people living in the city have actually forgotten what fresh air smells like: they are no longer aware they are living in smoggy conditions: they simply don’t smell the smoke any more. These fires (many of them illegal) are set in the evening, just as council officers go home and since they are usually “safe” (i.e. someone is supervising the fire and it isn’t getting out of control) the fire brigade is not required to take action.
Council decided to approve, construct and launch (2016) its very own landfill waste incinerator with Cllr Kreling (on the planning committee at the time of approval) observing that if she couldn’t see anything coming out of the stack (the planning committee was taken on a tour of a similar monster), nothing was coming out. The council has never agreed to and is not live streaming data about its emissions from the stack.
Peterborough Renewable Energy Limited who were the first to propose an incinerator for the city did agree to live stream their emissions data on their website. But this is not the incinerator which has gone live.
The Chair of the Planning Committee, Councillor for East Ward, the ward with both planned incinerators sitting in it, offered to throw Richard Olive and me out of the council chamber She couldn’t throw us out because she couldn’t find a bailiff. But she was perfectly able to make a lousy decision without listening to evidence. For me, this was my introduction to the realities of politics in Peterborough. Most people have a vague sense of trust in their elected representatives. I lost whatever tiny bit I had left that day.
Between then and now council decided to knock down and pulverise numbers of large buildings made of brick, cement and plaster (Thomas Deacon School and several other predecessor-to-PFI schools, Bridge House, Peterborough District Hospital & assorted buildings on site). No dust suppression in place during the works and no coverage of the remaining mountains of dust (I observed the 20 ft high mountain of grey dust next to Aldermans Drive yesterday: 14th March 2016).
The Junction of Taverners Road with Bourges Boulevard is close to and downwind of the pile of pulverised sky scraper hospital and is also in a high density residential area. This junction is now close to breaching traffic pollution limits and that is according to official monitors. Are we surprised? Hardly. Cough Cough.
In London it has been shown that official monitoring is significantly understating the true state of affairs: http://cleanair.london/?s=monitorin…
People feel there is nothing they can do. But there are a few things.
- More people need to observe democracy in action, even if it does mean risking getting thrown out of meetings. The dishonour of getting thrown out is not yours.
- We could choose not to reelect councillors who fail to help improve air quality and who drive themselves around in heavy overpowered diesel vehicles.
- We could vote in councillors who don’t drive. Or who drive electric, hybrid and low emissions vehicles. The importance of leadership cannot be overstated.
- We could vote in councillors who understand that a 20mph speed limit in Peterborough’s residential streets would make cycling and walking pleasanter and would reduce the number of journeys taken by car.
- We could find a real time air pollution app which relies on independent air monitoring and which works in Peterborough, so that we are not obliged to rely solely on council owned data.
- The council could live stream its incinerator emissions and on street air pollution monitoring data on its website. If it is proud of what it is doing, there should be no qualms in showing off its achievements.
How I wonder how you park?
On the 21st April 2015 a hustings was held in All Saints Church Hall, Park Road Peterborough. This is a rare thing in Peterborough: a ward hustings. As far as I am aware Park Ward is the only ward in the unitary authority of Peterborough which holds a regular hustings events. Here, voters are invited, either by the residents’ associations or by whoever leaflets the ward. Park Ward has begun to view them as an important part of the run up to election day. I am a big fan of hustings, as a glimpse at my blog will confirm. I’d like to see several in every ward, since they give people chances to thrash out where candidates stand on different issues, and how they perform, and what they are like.
Anyway every candidate appearing on the ballot paper in May had been invited to the Church Hall by a local residents’ association and the turnout was small, but respectable and well informed. John Peach, CON, was the last candidate to arrive. I would probably have been taking my seat and organising bits of paper when there was the very slightest flutter of excitement in the audience. The hustings proceeded without incident.
One of the most true and telling observations of the 2015 election campaign was made by a man at the back of the audience. He pointed out that climate change had disappeared from all the parties’ election campaigns.
After the event someone else came up to me and asked me to accompany him into the car park to see how John Peach had parked his car. He claimed to have felt an impact, but I am pretty sure his tongue was in his cheek and I have to say the wall did not move for me. But naturally I had a look. And of course I took a photo.
I couldn’t see the wall behind the rear bumper at all. Can you?
I realised that had there been the sort of penetrative event you see in a crazy American road movie, instead of talking to a man in a car park, I might have seen a man flying across my field of vision and just for a second I imagined him fly, hanging on to his church hall chair as a massive black car skidded across the parquet floor in a hail of bricks and plaster dust. But that was just me imagining something which certainly did not happen that evening. Thank goodness.
What I did observe is that Cllr John Peach, (who was reelected and has since been crowned Mayor of our fair city) had proved himself capable of parking his car next to a wall in such a way that there is not a single millimetre between the car and the bricks. Not a single one.
I blog this now only because the antique Jaguar, the mayoral vehicle EG1 is reportedly:
and I for one would like to know how #PossibleRightOff happened.
And what it costs to keep this particular mayor in maintenance and insurance.
Perhaps Conservative councillors could tell the voters exactly what they each spend on driving around the city in very fancy cars, and how much of that expense is funded by residents?
