The sale of St Austell

In last week's Cornish Guardian, I had more to say on the sale of the former Restormel Council offices in St Austell. It was as follows:

It is well-documented that I opposed the creation of Cornwall’s unitary authority. And I have seen nothing, since then, to suggest that I was wrong to take that view.

I still despair at the take-over of the six district councils by the County Council and the subsequent birth of the highly politicised and ever more centralising Cornwall Council.

As a member of the new Council, I have consistently argued that it should maintain a strong presence in key towns such as Penzance, St Austell, Wadebridge and Liskeard, in order to act as a buffer against the Truro-centric nature of the authority.

I was therefore very disappointed when the Council’s ruling Cabinet voted to proceed with the sale of the former Restormel Borough Council offices in St Austell to a property developer, so that another supermarket could be built in the town.

In terms of the land in question, the proposal is to sell off three-quarters of it, to knock down perfectly good offices and use the receipt from the sale of the land to build new council offices.

Various claims are being made to justify the sale.

The Council claims that the new office would accommodate existing staff based in St Austell, while the developer (Terrace Hill Properties Limited) is spouting the nonsense that the decision would secure 450 council jobs.

The reality is that there are already less staff in the town than in 2009 while the proposed new building would be much smaller, crammed into the corner of the present site with less parking and, crucially, no space for future expansion if and when we wanted a stronger council presence in the town.

The Council, which is failing to maintain the present building, also argues that the new building would save the Council money because it would be more efficient to run.

Terrace Hill Properties Limited meanwhile claim that hundreds of new jobs will be created. Where have we heard that before?

It will come as no surprise to anyone that I fundamentally disagree with the decision to sell the land, which I consider to short-sighted and lacking in financial sense.

It is my intention to continue to oppose this sale and to argue for Cornwall Council to have a strategy for its buildings that reflects the needs of the authority and its communities – not the profits of developers and supermarkets.

Labour wants regional government for the north of England

A number of Labour MPs from the North of England have raised their concerns about “the growing economic disparities within England as a result of cuts in public services, abolition of the regional development agencies and the coalition-induced recession,” and set out calls for regional government.

This follows the establishment of the Hannah Mitchell Foundation with the core objective to “stimulate debate on the benefits of directly elected regional government for the north

Such a contribution to the growing debate about the inequality between, and the future governance of, the constituent parts of the United Kingdom is to be welcomed. However, it has to be asked why did Labour fail to deliver decent devolution settlements during their thirteen years in power to places such as Cornwall, and the regions of the England.

MK on election trail in Bodmin

Mebyon Kernow is standing in the by-election for a seat on Bodmin Town Council (St Mary’s Ward). The election will take place on 1st March.

Our candidate is Paul Ellis, who lives in the Ward and has the experience and skills to be an effective representative for Bodmin. He worked in education for over thirty years as a teacher, the Vice-Principal of a Sixth Form College, and as business manager for a large Community School.

He is a member of both the Bodmin St Piran’s Committee and the Riding Day Committee. He also set up the North West Bodmin Neighbourhood Watch, of which he is the co-ordinator.

Paul is leading opposition to proposals being promoted in the Bodmin Masterplan for the construction of up to 5,000 new properties in Bodmin over the next twenty years, which he rightly describes as “unsustainable over-development.”

Peter Hain and Labour – ten years late!

The former Labour Government Minister Peter Hain, in a presentation at the London School of Economics, has claimed that Labour’s failure to devolve power to English regions has left a “festering sore.”

Mr Hain is reported as saying: “The English question has never been answered. And I’ve always thought that was a flaw in our approach to devolution and it’s left a kind of festering sore. My view, which fits with my own personal philosophy, is you need to decentralise power within England. England is still a very centralised part of Britain and the abolition of the regional development agencies by the Conservative-Liberal Government [has made it] even more centralised.”

Looking beyond England, he said: “I think the Celtic part of Britain is really important to what Britain is. It’s one of the main reasons why I wouldn’t want Scotland to go independent. I think the Scots would be diminished for it but I think Britain would be diminished for it.

Whatever he says now, I would remind Peter Hain that it was a Labour Government – in which he served as a Minister – that disgracefully ignored 50,000 declarations calling for a Cornish Assembly and then destroyed local government in Cornwall by imposing a unitary authority on us.

Mr Hain, all your fine words are a decade too late and an apology to the people of Cornwall would also be in order.

At this time, there needs to be a mature, respectful and wide-ranging debate about the future of the United Kingdom, and how it is governed. Government needs to address the unequal constitutional relationships between the various nations and regions of the UK, and to tackle the centralising influence of London and the South East of England.

And Mr Hain, will you be there with me making the case for the meaningful devolution of political powers to Cornwall?

Bonuses, benefits and fairness?

My article in today's Cornish Guardian focussed on central government's hypocritical approach to bonuses and benefits. It was as belows:

It is an absolute disgrace that Stephen Hester, the Chief Executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), has been awarded a bonus that is equivalent to the annual income of fifty Cornish workers on an average local wage.

Mr Hester receives an annual salary of £1.2 million with numerous other “benefits” for running RBS – 83% of which is owned by the state – while his bonus in share options has been estimated to be worth £963,000.

Prime Minister David Cameron and his deputy Nick Clegg have rightly been accused of a “disgraceful failure of leadership” for refusing to stop the payment of this near-million pound bonus and refusing to live up to their recent rhetoric against crony capitalism, big bonuses and executive pay.

The Chancellor George Osborne has even described the award as “unpalatable,” but he has declined to do anything about it.

I share the view of the vast majority that it is immoral for the super-rich to receive such extra payments. And this is especially so, when ordinary working people continue to face pay cuts or wage restraint, and suffer increasing job insecurity and a massive squeeze on their living standards.

But while the Government is refusing to tackle the bonus culture of the bankers, it is seeking to introduce a cap on benefits paid to poorer households.

It claims this initiative is based on "fairness" and designed to protect those low-paid workers who are paying taxes, but it has actually fostered a debate that has ended up scapegoating families on benefits.

I fully agree it is fundamentally wrong that people can be better off on benefits than in work. But I think that the Government is not addressing this issue in the right manner.

Take housing as an example. Over the last 15 years, the cost of housing has spiralled out of control, and more and more individuals / families are struggling to purchase homes or rent properties in the private sector.

The cost of housing is so high that many working families on low incomes still need housing benefit to help cover the cost of simply keeping a roof over their heads, with the benefit payments in effect going direct to the landlord.

Sadly, the Government is doing nothing to control the price of private sector rents and it is actually forcing Housing Associations to charge more for their rental properties.

The Coalition is dictating that rents of such new properties should be set at 80% of the (extremely inflated) private rents in their immediate locality and this has led to new “affordable” rents in places like St Agnes being over £600 for a three-bed house – much, much more than on nearby estates.

The consequences of such a policy will mean that local people find it even harder to afford housing, and the Government’s bill for housing benefit will inevitably go up.

It makes no sense at all. If the Government was truly committed to fairness, it would act to combat Britain’s bonus shenanigans, instead of increasing the housing costs of the less-well-off.

Following the completion of this article, Mr Hester declined to accept his bonus. But this was because of public pressure and had nothing to do with the Leaders of the Coalition.