Raleigh’s News & Observer recently brought us the news that three Republican (GOP) candidates are running for seats on the Wake County Board of Commissioners. The Republicans lost control of the Board last year and in the 2016 Campaign they plan to take a page from the Democrats’ playbook.
One GOP candidate was reported as saying that he had found out that education was an important issue.
No sh*t Sherlock!
In 2013 the GOP at state level budgeted to drain US$ 500 million out of public education in the state whilst moving $90 million from public schools into private schools via a new voucher program.
The evidence of detachment from reality was underlined by the rationalisation that the four ousted Republican commissioners were “collateral damage”.
What planet are these people on? Education is a key means of attracting jobs and providing social mobility. Bringing in efficiency is one thing but if you think that you can skimp on education then you are living in Cloud Cuckoo Land and as a politician you deserve what you get!
For more information please see: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/wake-county/article48443000.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-sargeant/north-carolina-education-cuts_b_3785414.html
Author: Brian Riley
Meanwhile on Planet Babergh
I sometimes reflect how life in/on Babergh District Council seems how life might be on a distant planet/country where rules and standards as we know them do not apply.
So I was intrigued to read that on Thursday 16th December the Joint Scrutiny Community are to look at Council Grants and External funding and resolve that the following be the subject of further investigation:
(a) To include the external funding offer in the work of the Grants Review Project to maximise opportunities for our Districts through externals funders and opportunities locally, regionally and nationally.
(b) To research the reduction of our Communities Grant spending from 2017 to 2020 and align internal budgets for non-grant allocations.
(c) To pay the Annual Revenue Grants in interim stages to ensure robust monitoring, evaluation and meeting of strategic priorities. (my italics)
My initial thoughts were that this business was ultra vires. Scrutiny is a reactive committee and does not promote policy – that is the purpose of the Strategy Committee. At a stretch you could say that this activity comes under the role and function heading of “undertaking the Council’s responsibilities in relation to financial governance issues”. But it is a stretch and my earlier point stands, Scrutiny does not promote or formulate policy – that is the purpose of the politicians on other committees.
The paper for discussion on Thursday tells us that grants in Babergh total £419,000. We are not told what the criteria are for successful applications, where the money went, who proposes recipients and who approves the applications.
I get concerned when I see that grants will be paid in interim stages. As a former lending banker I am familiar with stage payments in building projects. These are usually predicated upon surveyors’ certificates and let builders (and bankers) access the credit ratings of the principal parties. There is unlikely to be a valid comparability with District Council grants.
I get concerned when I see that the stage payments are to ensure robust monitoring, evaluation and meeting of strategic priorities. How many extra people do we need to employ to robustly monitor and evaluate? Why can’t we be happy with the ability of the recipients to employ the monies properly? If we are that concerned with the probity and abilities of the applicants, then we do not advance the funds. If we really need to copper bottom the proposals then let the local Councillors recommend the grants and monitor their usage.
I get concerned when I see the Tory party of smaller government being lead by the officers into the bogs of greater bureaucracy. The Joint Scrutiny Committee has no business in this matter at present and it begs the question as to who is giving leadership in Babergh District Council. When none of Babergh’s political parties had overall control, decisions were (in theory) directed by the Political Leaders Group. Since there was no overall control, the executive and officers of the Council felt obliged to provide the leadership that was lacking.
Despite the Conservative Party’s successes of May 2015 that position seems to continue.
Squirrel as an Economic Indicator
My UKIP friends in Suffolk talk about the Chihuahua of Doom (see previous blog on 22nd December 2013) but I’m indebted to columnist A.C. Snow of Raleigh’s News & Observer for the comment that he has a friend who assures him that the local economy is in good shape. The barometer of financial well being is the squirrel population.
Apparently during the bad patches people eat squirrel and they are not doing that now! According to chef Georgia Pellegrini squirrel hunting is more American than apple pie…. Few things are more intertwined with American history and tradition.
Squirrel is, in fact, one of the most popular game animals in the eastern United States. Squirrel also features in the 1931 book Joy of Cooking. Our edition dates from 1980 but the recipes are still there.
Please see:
http://www.newsobserver.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/ac-snow/article49250445.html http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/01/22/why-eat-squirrel-really.html
http://www.thejoykitchen.com
Orphan Frenk
The good news from Nichola Elvy today was that the crowd funding target of £5,000 for Frenk Mansor has been reached and exceeded.
Interestingly £725 came from the team at SDITH which I think may mean Shot Dead in the Head (manufacturers of humorous and serious T-shirts and other ephemera).
Very many thanks to those of my readers who responded to the appeal.
God bless
Hadleigh Market
There are times when you see things that you wish you hadn’t. You dismiss them from your mind and then they come back in the early hours of the morning, when you should be dreaming of nice things.
I was visiting Hadleigh last month and noticed a poster in the Co-op inviting comments and suggestions on the future of Hadleigh Town Market. As a market town we have a long tradition of markets and fairs. Within recent years we have seen the market shrink from two days a week to one (Friday) and recently the key anchor merchandiser (the greengrocer) announced that he was retiring.
I’m all for consultation and accessing the community of knowledge and so I welcomed the outreach initiative. And then I saw what I rank as five of the worst words in the English language ever strung together. There at the bottom of the poster is the strap line “Managed by Babergh District Council”.
The disconnect between the reality and the ability to organise tea parties at Twinings is historical and self evident. Babergh are the Council who insisted on trying to foist a Tesco supermarket on Hadleigh despite the overwhelming evidence that it would be an economic disaster and destroy the High Street and the town. These are the people who have sat on East House leaving it empty since 2006 when it could have continued as a community asset. These are the people who gave us car parking charges in the face of overwhelming evidence that small towns need the support that free car parking gives them to continue their vibrancy and to enable small businesses to compete against supermarkets.
Babergh, for as long as I have known it, thinks of itself as the inheritor of the view that ‘the man in Whitehall knows best’. This socialist statist view came from Baron Jay who in 1937 wrote: “In the case of nutrition and health, just as in the case of education, the gentleman in Whitehall really does know better what is good for people than the people know themselves.” Babergh self inherited this arrogance which continues to manifest itself in their actions.
And what of Hadleigh Market. The Town already hosts monthly Farmers’ Markets and there is scope for people to enjoy more artisanal as well as more exotic products (I particularly liked the Nile Perch available from Crystal Waters). However at the risk of being a Cassandra, I can’t see the helping hand of Babergh being a significant plus factor in the Market’s future.
Crowdfunding for Frenk Mansor
There is a crowdfunding exercise for an orphan called Frenk Mansor
(https://crowdfunding.justgiving.com/ChristmasforFrenk).
Frenk is, a ten-year-old Christian boy who lost his parents last month (November) when the boat he was travelling in capsized in the waters between Turkey and Greece. Frenk fled from northern Iraq with his mother, father and little sister and brother when their hometown Qaraqosh (also known as Bakhdida) was overrun by IS fighters in August last year.
After a dangerous journey from Iraq, Frenk’s family arrived on the coast of Turkey where they boarded a boat on the night of 16 November to make the perilous crossing to the Greek island of Kos, in search of protection in Europe. Overloaded and amid high waves and strong winds the boat capsized. Frenk’s family drowned but somehow Frenk survived.
Frenk’s uncle Mark who lives in London, immediately flew to Greece when he learned of the tragedy and is working with the British Embassy in Athens to try to bring his nephew to the UK. Needless to say Frenk’s life has been shattered by the death of his parents and siblings. His uncle is doing everything he can but he could do with some help.
The crowdfunding is being sponsored by Nichola Elvy and she aims to:
Provide funds to meet Frenk’s basic needs – food, accommodation, transport – in Athens, Greece.
Assist Frenk with the difficult legal process that will enable his uncle to bring him to London.
Give presents, food and money so that Frenk can enjoy the best possible Christmas he can amid these terrible circumstances.
All the money will go to Frenk.
Nichola works during her holidays with a Dutch charity in Kos and will go to Lesbos on Boxing Day. Nichola meets her own travel, accommodation and jeep-hire expenses. The same goes for all the volunteers with the Boat Refugee Foundation (Stichting Bootvluchteling).
As well as much-needed immediate financial help, plans are being made for a long term support group for Frenk. When you see his photo you will see a rosary around his neck but Nichola makes it clear that she would be equally concerned for the child of a Moslem or an Atheist.
We have known Nichola and her family for over thirty years. On the basis that you direct your charitable monies towards people and organisations you trust, then the Elvy’s (and Frenk’s needs) come near the top of the list.
To help please go to https://crowdfunding.justgiving.com/ChristmasforFrenk
Educating Homeless Children
Politics is said to be the art of the possible. In reality it is really about the use of resources and how best they can serve the community. Raleigh is a prosperous and growing city centred in Wake County, so it was with some surprise that I read in the News and Observer that there are some 2,736 homeless children attending schools or about 3% of the school population. These children face physical, emotional and developmental issues that make receiving an education even more difficult.
According to the Salvation Army of Wake County’s Project CATCH (Community Action Targeting Children Who Are Homeless) program “One in 30 children experiences homelessness. You can go into a Wake County classroom and one child will be homeless, statistically.
They have as many dreams as the child next to them, but they have a harder road. Students need to have their basic needs met before they can learn.
The Wake County school system works to provide housing assistance to homeless families. The school system also tries to help provide clothing to homeless students in addition to bus service, free school meals, first aid and counseling. The district works with 168 community organizations.
One of these is the Haven House Services (http://www.havenhousenc.org) which has been providing comprehensive services to the youth and families of Wake County for over forty years. They came to my attention through my hairdresser’s who are having a food and supplies bank drive – see the needs list attached.
I find two things astonishing. First that we can have so many in need whilst we are in a land of plenty. Secondly that there are 168 community organizations working to alleviate this black spot on our county’s reputation.
This brings me back to resources and their usage. How do we protect and nurture these families and give them the hope of upward social mobility?
Haven House Services requirements.
To read more please go to: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article47067030.html
A.S.P.I.R.E.
Ever since I was elected a County Councillor I have been critical of Suffolk’s ASPIRE programme. This is a motivation tool aimed at the staff and the ASPIRE values are:
- Achieve – We are the best we can be
- Support – We work as one team
- Pride – We take pride in and are proud of what we do
- Inspire – We model the ASPIRE values
- Respect – We give and earn respect
- Empower – We empower, encourage and motivate people
I was especially critical of a poster proclaiming that the Council’s key achiever was a community psychologist who planned and co-ordinated conferences and supported staff to learn and develop their skills alongside colleagues and services users. My success was to have the poster removed since I objected to staff seeing at least twice a day a poster telling them that they should achieve through the soft side of management rather than take on the hard choices of achieving more for less in the interest of the tax payers and residents at large.
Ideas like ASPIRE are like vampires. They never die unless they have metal stakes driven through the hearts. The posters are back again.
This time they read as follows:
- A is for being Adaptable
- S is for Embracing Digital (I know there appears to be an outbreak of alphabetical illiteracy and I couldn’t work it out either)
- P is for Leading Change
- I is for Agile Working
- R is for Politically Aware
- E is for Commercially Savvy
Apart from the last two (and I do applaud an officer who seeks to measure his operational efficiency against commercial benchmarks) the rest of the ASPIRE examples are a tad Ho Hum and if this is the best we can to do motivate staff, then it is time to follow the money and cut off the supply.
Venus Flytraps
I’m often asked about our lives in North Carolina and it sounds banal to say that we moved here because it is very much like Suffolk but with its own quirks.
It’s the little things that matter and so our curiosity was piqued when we read in the local newspaper (News & Observer) that poaching Venus Flytrap plants has been a felony for nearly two years and that two plant-nappers were recently caught in the act and now have bail bonds set at $1,000,000 (c.£600,000) (a figure usually ascribed to murderers).
The plant is native to the subtropical wetlands of North Carolina. It catches its prey—chiefly insects and arachnids— with a trapping structure formed by the terminal portion of each of the plant’s leaves and is triggered by tiny hairs on their inner surfaces. When an insect or spider crawling along the leaves contacts a hair, the trap closes.
In early November the sheriff’s deputies charged two men with taking 1,025 Venus flytraps from the Orton Plantation along the Cape Fear River. The Plantation covers thousands of acres and is sufficiently wild that would-be thieves could be dropped off along the roadside and slip unseen into the woods. From there, they would dig all day on their knees, concealed by tall grasses.
In the current case, a staff member on the plantation spotted two men with a backpack and no reason to be on the private property. They were reported to a sheriff’s deputy and when the officers approached, the men ran across a grassy field. The officers then drove to the other end of the plantation and waited for the men to emerge. Once they saw the officers waiting, the men turned around and ran back to where they started. This apparently went on for some time like a scene from “O Brother Where Art Thou” until the men, exhausted, turned themselves into custody. The dog unit found the backpack along with a machete, which is frequently used as a flytrap-digging tool. All the recovered flytraps were replanted in Orton’s greenhouse.
It is apparently many a year since men could bumble around in the swamps undetected for long. And these particular woods, are known to contain alligators.
So all in all, it’s something that’s nice to know but definitely something to avoid.
For more please see http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/josh-shaffer/article47063170.html
Going Native
I often hesitate to pick on another politician based upon a single article in a newspaper, but the Daily Telegraph of 20th November reported on an interview given by Lord Porter of Spalding wherein he stated that whilst he is not happy with the six figure salaries enjoyed by council chief executives there is little that can be done…because that is the way the world is! Gary Porter is Baron Porter of Spalding CBE, a British Conservative politician, local government leader and member of the House of Lords.
He is also a South Holland District Councillor and most importantly Chairman of the Local Government Association. He was created Baron Porter of Spalding, of Spalding in the County of Lincolnshire on 15th October 2015.
In the article he draws the comparison with top footballers with whom he is also “not happy” about their being paid a lot of money. But as a person in a leadership position he does have choices. He can choose not to support a football team if he thinks they are over promising and under delivering. A top footballer is expected to thrill millions across the globe and has a limited performing lifetime. And for many people the purpose of top footballers is to be the recipient of gratuitous abuse whether it is appropriate or otherwise. A top footballer is always at risk of career terminating injury. I have yet to see a Council Executive whose brain was overworked in the performance of their duties.
The real test of a Council Executive’s pay is whether the recipient provides added value. I have known a few Council Executives directly and I have yet to discern added value. For the most part they are administrators who do not provide leadership but manage to convince senior elected officials that they have to pay the most to get the best. But we do not always need the best. I would like a Rolls or a Bentley but I happily settle for a VW.
When Babergh was enjoying its executive leadership challenges I suggested that we could emulate the Roman Empire and split the job between the three (at most) next senior executives. They would have to work together towards common goals. They would not need a fourth person to coordinate their actions and give them direction as if they were teenagers. They would however need political direction.
Equally I suggested that they should advertise the post at £80,000 instead of £100,000+ and see what they got. They might have got ambitious candidates with acceptable capabilities, qualifications, experience and vision. Instead the senior councillors (i.e. the political leadership) outsourced their problems to an Executive Search Consultant and the rest is history. There was no challenge and consequently I feel that they ended up overpaying.
And what of Lord Porter? Where is his challenge and leadership? What happened to the man I once met and admired? Has he succumbed to the Sir Humphreys of the Local Government Association?
The evidence is clear enough. One does not need to be in the Third World in order to go native!
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