Strayside Sunday: The right to citizenship comes with responsibilities

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party.

One of the many things that propelled Tony Blair to Number 10 Downing Street in 1997 was his assertion that the relationship between the individual and their state is one in which the rights citizens receive come at a cost. This is financial (in the form of taxes) and behavioural, (in the form of individual responsibilities). The then Prime Minister’s thinking was much influenced by the American sociologist Amitai Etzioni and his writings on communitarianism. Communitarianism promotes the roll of community and communal good in social and political life and institutions. It serves as a welcome antidote to the liberty and individual rights obsessed purveyors of modern liberalism.

This week, the United Kingdom Supreme Court unanimously voted to uphold a ban that stops Islamc State of Iraq and Levant bride Shamima Begum from returning to the country. Now 21 years old, Begum left the country six years ago to join ISIL (Daesh) in order to join the violent struggle against the tyranny of you, me and our government. It is reported that she was inspired to join ISIL by, among other things, watching videos of the beheading of western hostages by Jihadis. Along the way she met a fellow recruit, a young and radicalised Dutchman, fell in love and, on arrival in Syria, got married. The couple had three children, all of whom have died in the terrible conditions of the Syrian ISIL camp where Begum is interred.

In 2019, then Home Secretary Sajid Javid stripped Begum of her UK citizenship. Howls of predictable dissent followed; mostly from those on the left. The poor girl was impressionable, just a child when she fled for Syria. How could we be so heartless as to cast her adrift in the world, stateless? Sure, Begum made mistakes, but don’t we all when we’re young? Of course, in our youthful exuberance we all cock-up. But, and this is where clear headed thinking and perspective matters, not too many of us act out our adolescent neuroses by joining a gang who want to kill our fellow citizens and violently overturn our very way of life. Our right to British citizenship comes with a set of responsibilities. Citizenship should be an active condition. We are born into it but have to live up to it. The right comes with clear responsibilities, or it is next to meaningless.

On March 16th we will have been locked down, in one form or other, for a full calendar year. Throughout, we have been asked to assent to a reduction in the rights we hold close; freedom of association, freedom to meet up, freedom to work where we want, freedom to travel, the freedom to be free from home schooling our children. The novelty and collectivist British bulldog spirit of the first lockdown has, for me at least, given way to ennui, to a rising tide of frustration and the desire to howl at the moon. I’m tired of being stuck inside and told what to do.

Yet I’m willing to put up with it for a while longer. Why? Because my government, in all its flawed glory, has not only found a way to keep the NHS running during the pandemic, and is delivering a world-beating (with the exception of Israel) vaccination programme. Like millions of Britons I’ve benefitted from my vaccination first dose and I am thankful. I didn’t have to pay for my vaccination, the government provided it as my right. In return it has asked me, as it has asked you, to dig in for what we hope will be just another four months and do as we are asked along the way. That feels like a good deal to me.

The Culture Wars were in the news this week. However, following a YouGov opinion poll it turns out not too many of us know what that means. A full 76% of us had either not heard the term or could define it. Just 4% of us “correctly” identified that the culture war is a disagreement about how we preserve and view culture, history and our national identity. In other words the much reported and chattering class social media battlefields of this war – elements of cancel culture, no platforming, de-naming and statue tumbling for example – are generating, it seems, a great deal more heat than light.

I don’t partake of much social media. I believe it to be one of the great ills of modern life. An anti-social environment in which people feel it is their individual right to give vent to their spleens, who use the medium as payback, no doubt, for being on the receiving end of a physical ‘pile-on’ back in their school days, who use the ‘safe space’ of the medium to substitute ill-informed dogma for reason and nuance, who accept no real responsibility for what they write as their right.

My editor tells me that following last week’s column there was a minor Twitter squall because I referred in it to Ulster and the troubles. The troubles in Ulster were unambiguously awful, of course; a point I made in the piece but which was conveniently missed by some of the local Twitterati. My working title for last week’s piece was “A perspective on perspective.” My beloved Grandma Bell was in the same class at school in Milnsbridge as Harold Wilson and, whenever I asked about him she always said he was “too clever by half.” I fear that my last week’s attempt at a ‘meta’ piece might well have received her same sideswipe. To avoid any confusion this week let me be direct. As we emerge from lockdown our society needs a great deal more communitarianism and a great deal less liberalism. Twitter would be as good a place as any to start.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

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Strayside Sunday: Planters? We have bigger problems up the road

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party. 

People really care about transport and traffic.

In my column last week I made the point that car design has been made less interesting; less angular, more rounded, better to adhere to pedestrian safety concerns.  In my mailbag this week I was taken to task for suggesting that cars only occasionally collide with pedestrians.  For the avoidance of doubt I want to make plain that any pedestrian death is of course one too many.

In fact, it has been pointed out to me that in the United Kingdom during 2019 there were 1743 pedestrian casualties with 1748 road deaths (including vehicle occupants).  I agree, this cannot be defined as “occasional.”  However, for perspective, given that the Department for Transport reports that we Brits took to the roads in our vehicles for a total of 272 billion miles in 2019, the number of pedestrian deaths is mercifully low.

Clearly pedestrians were not ‘front of mind’ to car drivers confronted with North Yorkshire County Council’s implementation of new traffic control measures at Harrogate’s Beech Grove this week.  Finding their route blocked with large planters, it seems that rather than turn around and navigate the roads, several drivers simply took off across the stray to avoid the obstacles.  The impromptu rally left several deep tire tracks in our cherished green space and, allegedly, saw other drivers find alternate routes through the private carparks of the apartment buildings on the road.  For some reason Dick Dastardly, Muttley and Penelope Pitstop spring to mind: Whacky Races indeed.

The Stray Defence Association (SDA) has mobilised, with their Chair, the redoubtable Judy D’Arcy Thompson to the fore.  It strikes me that what with Harrogate BID (BID), Independent Harrogate (IH), Harrogate and District Cycle Action (HDCA), Pinewoods Conservation Group (PCG) and the SDA, the political scene in Harrogate is beginning to resemble Ulster in the troubles.  Now, before you get exercised, of course I don’t actually think that, nor is it my intent to diminish the horrible importance of the traumatic lived experiences of those across the Irish Sea. Indeed, nor do I demean the activities of Harrogate’s various interest groups.  Quite the reverse.  In fact this column is a weekly and affectionate exercise in celebrating Harrogate’s vibrant local life and politics.

By the way, 2019 was also the year in which North Yorkshire County Council conducted a public survey into traffic congestion. 77% of us reported that we would use cycling and walking infrastructure, were it to be built.  This is but one piece of evidence being used by our fearless local leaders this week as they reached for the top shelf, grabbed an existing plan or two and blew off the dust.  Yes, plans to pedestrianise James Street and Station Parade are back on the agenda and lovely artists renderings of tree-lined, single-lane boulevards, segregated cycling lanes and promenades are circulating.  The almost £8 million Station Gateway Project is alive and well.

This will likely, and with some justification, enrage many in Harrogate’s business community, particularly those with commercial interests on once-proud James Street.  What I want to see and hear from our county and borough councillors is a cogent plan for economic renewal, for enterprise creation, for the bringing together of place, work and community.  In the absence of leadership, vision and common purpose, narrow interest groups with opposing views will continue to flourish.  Discourse will be lost to the cacophonous and shouty voices of entrenched opinion.

The world is undergoing profound changes, accelerated by Covid-19.  How we work will never be the same again, with company after company embracing a permanent work from home culture.  In-store retail shopping, already in decline before the pandemic, faces the end of days.  One of the most successful companies of our time is called Shopify; a Canadian tech giant that allows anyone to create a brilliant virtual retail presence for their venture (including payment and product distribution) for a monthly subscription of £25.  In the face of such profound change it just isn’t good enough to dust off old plans and comforting drawings.  We need discontinuity, creative thinking and innovation.  Nor is it good enough to find comfort in the way things were, in how we have always done things, in how we have built our businesses over the years.

Harrogate remains a great place to live, this notwithstanding that we hear this week that our council tax is going up significantly (£50 at Band D).  As we wait with bated breath for the Prime Minister’s Monday press conference, for what we hope will be a tentative lockdown easing roadmap, the £300 billion plus costs of Covid-19 and its economic impact begin to hove chillingly into view.  Council tax increases are just the beginning.

Conservatives both national and local have always felt that their point of difference is effective economic stewardship.  With the Bank of England predicting that unemployment could reach 10% by the middle of 2022, the cost of welfare benefits is set to sky-rocket.  Rishi Sunak is in an unenviable position; he’s paid Paul and now needs to rob Peter.  It seems inevitable that income tax rates will have to rise.  A one-off wealth tax has been suggested.  Increased inheritance tax is on the table, as are both a capital gains tax increase and a closure of tax efficient enterprise investment schemes.  If implemented with a dead hand, if we are ever to pay off our Covid-19 bill, these measures could choke off any prospect of the economic recovery the country desperately needs.

Local traffic and transport issues are important but they are a second order problem.  We are in danger of squabbling over the deckchairs while the Titanic sinks.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

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Strayside Sunday: Let’s ruffle a few feathers

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party. 

Not since the hay day of Dawn French’s The Vicar of Dibley have Parish Councils had so much exposure. In the aftermath of Jackie Weaver’s break-out Zoom performance at Handforth Parish Council, local Mayor Barry Burkhill now faces a vote of no confidence because, it is alleged, he did nothing to halt the bullying and laddish behaviour that was very much in evidence.

Here at home, Killinghall Parish Council is at odds with the people it represents.  It seems that a local gang of ruffians have been behaving badly; hanging around street corners, stealing food, squealing and squawking at night, leaving their mess in the streets, giving people the bird.  The Parish Council has labelled the gang “feral” and pleaded with local residents not to encourage them.

I’m all for law and order; tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime and all that; but I give my full-throated support to the vocal locals and take up their Facebook cry, “save the Killinghall 8.”  Yes, a loud, proud, feather-fanning peacock and his harem of peahens are strutting around the village as if they own the place.

Parish councillors have used their Facebook page to plead with local people to give the birds a wide berth and not encourage them by leaving food.  Killinghall residents have used their own Facebook page to hit back in support of what they call these “awesome birds” that are “part of our village identity.”  Local competition is at play here too; just down the road, Bilton’s famed Peter the Peacock has his own Facebook page and can boast over 500 followers.

It turns out, by the way, that peacocks are not indigenous.  It is thought the magnificent birds were brought here from India by the Romans.  What did they ever do for us?  Cement, roads, canals, viaducts, personal hygiene and peacocks; who knew?  According to the RSPB, peacocks and peahens in the wild (as opposed to in Killinghall or in Bilton) survive largely on a diet of grass.  They can live off the land, quite happily, without human intervention.  Perhaps therein lies the solution to this unseemly stand-off.  Killinghall Parish Council should resist its jobsworth impulses to be seen to be doing something important and local residents should be left free to appreciate these great birds; but not to treat them as domesticated pets.

My dodgy ticker means that I’m classed as clinically vulnerable and therefore advised to stay indoors and Covid-safe.  And, as lockdown drags on I look longingly through my sitting room window at my parked car on the street opposite.  I’m not a Clarkson supporting “petrol head” but I do like to drive my car.  It’s quick, handles like a dream and, given it is an electric hybrid, produces both limited emissions and is just enough of a virtue signal for me to get an environmentally friendly pass from my Generation Z daughters.

Regular readers of this column will know the loathing I feel for the use of hyperbolic language to inflame the often mundane but nonetheless important situation to the point where heat obscures light.  The “war on motorists” is one such turn of phrase.  Really?  Ok, cars are not as interesting to look at as they used to be.  They don’t growl and belch smoke as much as in the old days.  They use much less carbon fuel and produce far fewer emissions.  They are safer, both for their passengers and for the occasional pedestrian they collide with.  All this must be progress, I suppose.

However, passions flare when the interests of cyclists or the walker are introduced into the discussion.  Much kerfuffle has resulted this week from North Yorkshire County Council’s use of a LTN (Low Traffic Neighbourhood) experimental order for Harrogate’s Beech Grove and Lancaster Road.  The order bans non-residential traffic and allows for the installation of barriers such as bollards and planters.  This is part of the county council’s plan to help address climate change and increase active travel to get our increasingly obese and (consequently) chronically unwell population off their spreading behinds.  Rather than getting bogged down in protracted public consultation, NYCC has shown the courage of its convictions and, for once, acted in the unambiguous common good.

Through gritted teeth and in the interests of balance I find I have to endorse, for this one time only, the words of Harrogate Borough Council leader Richard Cooper, “the fact of the matter is that we cannot pretend that traffic congestion, poor air quality, a diminishing environment and climate change can be solved without radical changes to our transport infrastructure and our personal travel habits.”  He is spot on.

I’ve used this column previously to agitate for a new and imaginative plan to reinvigorate what is now, in the age of Covid-19, a ghastly, ghostly Harrogate town centre.  When we emerge from lockdown (please let it be ‘when’) the county and borough councils need to act with the initiative shown by NYCC and its use of experimental orders.  We need to scrap moribund planning rules, encourage mixed use, bring in small and artisan business with grants and attractive rates, open enterprise zone workplaces for creative and technology business, create affordable residential space and yes, use imaginative shared-space traffic schemes that balance the access, safety and speed needs of car drivers, cyclists and pedestrians and that balance economic with environmental interests.  If we succeed we could be as proud as a Killinghall peacock.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

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Strayside Sunday: Let’s get Jackie Weaver in to sort out Harrogate Borough Council

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party. 

This week, I thought I would share something from my small but active Stray Ferret postbag. While working away at my kitchen table, my email pinged with a missive from a reader who, to spare blushes, shall remain nameless.

Attached to the email was a photograph of what turned out to be an article from 31st January’s Sunday Times (“The furlough firms that gave money to the Tories”). It turns out that several companies, both major and minor, availed themselves of shedloads of Dishy Rishi’s furlough scheme cash and, during the same period of time donated large sums of money to the Conservative Party.

As I scanned the list a familiar name stood out; The Fat Badger has never been at the top of my list of favoured watering holes, although I understand it is popular with the punters. It seems that the company that own’s Harrogate’s Fat Badger Pub had gifted £18,000 to the party of power all the while participating in the furlough scheme. In the subject heading of my reader’s email it said simply, “Is this right?”

Although The Times piece made clear that no laws have been broken (both individual and company donations to political parties are entirely legal), the answer, of course, in my view is no. All hospitality businesses are going through a torrid time and the furlough scheme is vitally important for their survival. But the issue here is that furlough money is intended to plug the gap in company finances created by the Covid-19 economic downturn. If companies in receipt of furlough monies still have the discretionary funds required to make political contributions, they are in danger of creating the perception that they are accepting furlough funds in bad faith. To avoid such bad ‘optics,’ business owners could and should make political donations in a personal capacity from personal funds, if so minded.

I for one don’t believe in political donations; in my view they should be banned and parties funded by the state to an agreed and equitable formula. I believe that state funding for political parties would be a simple and transparent way to reduce the undue and unwanted influence of those interests with the power and inclination to pay for it.

With the end of the Covid-19 crisis perhaps mercifully in sight, we are hurtling towards an inevitable reckoning for the government. It will be hoping that its success in testing and vaccinations (the latter of which has been nothing short of spectacular) will mask its howlers. Stories of wholesale furlough scheme and government emergency loans frauds are starting to surface. In its rush to do the right thing; to get money to where it was needed when it was needed, the government played fast and loose with the usual rules of engagement. Advantage has been taken.

My vote is that we should send in Jackie Weaver (from the Cheshire Association of Local Councils) to sort it all out. Clearly not a woman to be messed with, Ms. Weaver shot to internet stardom this week for her brilliant handling of a Handforth Parish Council Zoom meeting. More specifically, for her handling of a group of swearing, raging, cackling and spluttering (mostly) men. This Iron Lady for our generation retained an icy calm and was ruthless in her use of the cursor, dispatching several misbehavers to that modern purgatory, the Zoom waiting room. Never has a row over standing orders been more compelling. My favourite line in proceedings was from Aled’s iPad, “she’s kicked Barry out, so I’m leaving.” Who needs Emmerdale?

Ms. Weaver’s matter of fact and straightforward response to the viral storm has been priceless. She can’t see what the fuss is all about. The impression one has is of a group of silly and frustrated men, egos inflated by their minor office holding, attempting to throw their weight about. Our Jackie simply sorted them out and got proceedings firmly on track. It strikes me that if councils were like football teams I would agitate for Jackie Weaver to be transferred to Harrogate. I’m not sure Richard Cooper and his merry bunch at the Borough Council would respond well to Ms. Weaver’s hard-tackling style. She would strike the fear of God in them. And I for one, would pay really good money to see it.

Maybe it was ever thus, that we are governed by ordinary people, doing their best. Mostly decent people who share our flaws, who have some good days and some bad. That’s why we need transparency about how decisions are made in government, especially when it comes
to spending vast amounts of taxpayer money. And it’s why we have rules, because people, human beings, left to their own devices, get things wrong. From the government in Westminster, to Harrogate Borough Council to the Parish Council in Handforth, politicians rise to their relative level of incompetence. We have to keep an eye on them or they will misbehave. Time to send in Jackie!

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

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Strayside Sunday: It’s time to give praise where praise is due…

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party. 

Shock news this week from Harrogate Borough Council; the elected body voted to do the right thing!

With 8 councillors voting against and with 4 abstentions, the planning committee turned down Danone’s application to expand the footprint of the Harrogate Spring Water plant at the Pinewoods; notwithstanding being presented with a report for consideration that gave outline approval to do just that.  This represents a real victory for the Harrogate environmental coalition that campaigned against it.  By mobilising so effectively they have stopped the felling of Rotary Wood, the public access oasis at the site, beloved of local walkers, dogs and assorted wildlife.  Mother nature and local residents will be pleased.

Our councillors must have arrived at the conclusion that the opportunity cost of the creation of a dozen new jobs and an uptick in the revenue and ground rent that HBC receives from Danone (but won’t report because it is bound by a “commercially sensitive” and therefore confidential agreement) did not compensate for their likely discomfort at the hands of their constituents.

It may also be that the sword of Damocles represented by the likely swallowing of HBC in the pending devolved authority looms large and threatens the comfy sinecures of our elected councillors.  Accordingly, they need to get some credits on the record before the candidacies for the new body are doled out.  Still, good on them, the decision they have taken is obviously correct.  More such please and, until then, the rest of us should more drink water from the tap and less from single use plastic.

As a child I attended church and Sunday school assiduously (Church of England and Anglo-Catholic).  Now in my early fifties, I returned to worship 2 years ago (very much Anglo-Catholic) and was confirmed.  Attending gives me respite and comfort, even and especially in current circumstances, where face masks are required, congregational singing is banned, the organ is silent, the choir temporarily disbanded, the pews occupied one at each end and when the vicar races through the liturgy in 26 minutes flat.  The censer smells have gone, the bells remain.

I am not a fan of the current head of the church of all England, the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Portal Welby.  For one thing he is from the evangelical wing of the church and, given my domestic circumstances, I’m rather hopeful that come judgement day my preference for a New Testament reading of the bible proves justified.  This week Archbishop Welby saw fit to proclaim that Boris Johnson should relocate from Downing Street to Westminster Abbey and, ad orientem, pray for forgiveness.

Now, I grant you Boris is a bit of a lad.  As we know he has fathered an unspecified number of children with an unspecified number of women, both in and out of wedlock.  He is an admitted adulterer.  We know too that he is unafraid to tell porkies; I for one am still waiting for the £350m per week from Europe for the NHS that he promised on the side of a bus during the European referendum campaign.

But did Archbishop Welby suggest these sins should be the basis of BoJo’s penitence?  He did not.  Rather he was passing judgement on the Prime Minister’s motives and performance throughout the Covid-19 crisis.  When I heard this on the car radio I felt a flash of real anger and was halfway through shouting at the dash that “Justin Welby is a complete…(insert expletive of your choice here)” before I was able to get a grip of myself and not vocalise the last and profane word in the sentence.   God forgive me.  I think He will, after all Mr. Welby is just a man, not a politician and should respect the notion of the separation of church and state.

Covid-19 has tested our generation and its government in ways we did not imagine nor plan for.  Have we responded faultlessly as a people to the privations of the pandemic?   We have not.  Has the government’s performance been perfect, or even consistent?  It has not.  With now over 100,000 UK fatalities and one of the highest death rates in the world, come the inevitable public enquiry there will be much warranted criticism and, that horrible and over-used political phrase, “lessons learned”.  However, the United Kingdom led the world in rolling out mass testing and now leads the world in rolling out mass vaccinations.  We should be rightly proud of both.

My radio incident occurred on Thursday when I was driving to have my own Covid-19 vaccination (I’m on the clinically vulnerable list).  On arrival I was met with kindness, tender care and ruthless efficiency.  My heart jumped for joy when I saw that I was to receive the Oxford vaccine; home grown, developed on established and proven technology and with an efficacy of greater than 90%.  I was admitted early, because there had been more than a few “no shows” (yes, really; people are not showing up for their scheduled vaccinations).  In fact I found the whole experience strangely emotional; this is a long way from over, but I felt, for the first time, the relief and joy that the prospects exist for a return to some form of normality.

My hope is for a “new normal” in which we (individually and collectively) take our justified share of responsibility and confront the truth; our Covid-19 death rate is one of the highest in the world because our rates of obesity and related, avoidable chronic conditions are among the highest in the world.

A new normal in which extremes of perspective are voiced less vehemently and receive less attention:  One in which we can congratulate a government for its accomplishments while constructively criticising its failures.  One in which we can thank our national government for its vaccination planning and foresight and turn up to receive our dose so that it does not go to waste.  One in which we can thank our local government for choosing the common good of the environment over the narrow profit of business.  Kinder and better.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

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Strayside Sunday: Global brand presents global dilemma

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party. 

“Thousands have lived without love.  None without water.”

So said the great poet and York’s own W.H. Auden in his poem ‘First Things First.’

Water is elemental, an essential building block for life on earth.  The human body comprises up to 60% water and global water security is, in my view, one of the most under-reported threats faced by contemporary civilisation.  The World Health Organisation reports that 1 in 3 humans in the world today have no access to an improved water supply, which is to say they have no access to clean and drinkable water.  And at current rates of global climate change the United Nations predicts that 6 billion of us will face water scarcity by 2050.

All of this to inject some context and perspective into the debate raging in this parish between Harrogate Spring Water, the council and a coalition of locals and environmental campaigners over the future of Rotary Wood, a publicly accessible green oasis planted in 2005 by Harrogate residents.  French consumer goods and yogurt giant Danone (revenues €25 billion or thereabouts) has asked Harrogate Borough Council (revenues a great deal less) to consider an application to expand its Pinewoods spring water bottling plant, create a few new jobs and level some much cherished woodland.

On January 18th Harrogate Borough Council published a report recommending conditional approval for Danone’s expansion plans; on the grounds that  Harrogate Spring Water is a ‘global brand’ and a ‘strategic employer.’  This in the face of 328 planning objections (only 28 in support) and a weekly Friday protest at the town hall by local primary school teacher Sarah Gibbs, dressed like a tree for the occasion.  It should be noted that not only do the council already benefit from an annual ground rent of £13,000 – they also own the land on which the bottling plant sits – and therefore benefit from what is known as a ‘turnover rent’ (a share of turnover), cannily negotiated when the plant first opened.

I have some sympathy with the council’s dilemma.  Harrogate Spring Water is globally known; the company promote our town’s name from Tokyo to Toronto.  Indeed, to his astonishment, a good friend of mine was once served Harrogate Spring Water at a restaurant in Moscow.  Spasiba!  The council is in a tough spot; the global (let alone local) economy is on its knees and their books are short close to £5m as a result of Covid-19.  Apparently the council won’t (or can’t) reveal the full extent of what we stand to gain from our share of any increased turnover resulting from the expansion.

As regular readers of this column will know, I don’t believe, as a matter of principle, that commercial dealings between government and business should be kept private in any circumstances.  Transparency means accountability.  In this case if we knew how much the council stood to gain financially from Harrogate Spring Water’s expansion then we could take a more informed and nuanced view of whether or not to lend our support.  As it stands all we know is that we must lose a significant slice of nature and public access to it for a meagre 12 new jobs.  I’m not convinced it’s worth the sacrifice, even with Danone’s Section 106 agreement requiring them to plant replacement trees and promote biodiversity on another site.

I am convinced however that, in a world where so many don’t have access to clean drinking water, it is the height of wasteful and selfish consumerism to drink bottled spring water when we in the developed world have a perfectly good alternative from the tap.  I’m convinced too that the production of even one more single-use plastic bottle, recyclable or not, is one too many.  Is my own conscience clean in this matter?  Of course not: Holy Mary Mother of God, pray for us sinners now etc.  Indeed, only if all those who oppose the expansion at Pinewoods so vehemently, can look one another in the eye and say in truth that they don’t drink bottled water from plastic bottles, are they entitled to vent anger. As Auden says in ‘First Things First’:

“Misinformed and thoroughly fleeced by their guides,

And gentle hearts are extinct like Hegelian Bishops.”

I can’t let the week pass without mentioning the inauguration of President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr, which I watched with a mixture of relief and wonder on Wednesday.  I found the ceremony deeply moving; for me it represented a return to the United States in which I spent 11 of my most formative years – idealistic, international, aspirational.  Neither Lincoln nor JFK in his rhetorical skills, Biden’s speech was nonetheless gripping.  I thought its best passage was “Through civil war, the Great Depression, world war, 9/11, through struggle, sacrifices and setbacks, our better angels have always prevailed. In each of these moments, enough of us — ENOUGH OF US — have come together to carry all of us forward, and we can do that now,”

On his first day in office Biden signed Executive Orders that returned the US to the Paris Climate Change Agreement (in time for the COP21 conference in Glasgow at the end of November) and to the World Health Organisation.  Thank goodness.  Globally, in the United States and here at home in Harrogate, if we are to slow and reverse global warming and its awful effects – melting ice caps, famine and, yes, drought – it will take enough of us to come together and act for the common good.  The number of people on the planet without access to safe drinking water or indeed any water at all grows every day.  For the people of Harrogate, water, tap or bottled spring, is not a matter of life and death.  For 2.2 billion people around the world it is.  We should remember that when we make decisions in the narrow and parochial economic interest, rather than in the global interests of the environment.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

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Strayside Sunday: Computer says ‘No’ (if you are a badger…)

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party. 

The comedian David Walliams’ brilliant early-2000s Little Britain series of sketches in which a gormless, obstructive female bank clerk, shop assistant or council worker parrots an automated rejection of a loan, credit or welfare application were so funny because they captured one of the great frustrations of modern life:  The outsourced, de-humanised, jobsworth enabled, machine-based decision making of our times;  the imposition of an electronic barrier between the customer and unseen service provider; the replacement of an accountable human face with programmed software and technology.

Scroll forward almost twenty years and our good friends at Harrogate Borough Council have, in this spirit, added to their ever-lengthening list of “you couldn’t make it up” bungling howlers.  This week, the Stray Ferret reported that Harrogate resident and keen birdwatcher Bill Shaw, was shocked to find that his objections to Richborough Homes planned 95-dwelling development at Granby Farm had been heavily redacted on the council’s planning portal.

Mr. Shaw’s objections were not a matter of national or local security and they did not expose the names and secret activities of individuals in the sensitive employ of the state.  Rather, Mr. Shaw had made the point that Granby Farm is rich in wildlife; with roosting owls, feeding kites, setting badgers and buzzing bees about to be evicted from their homes in favour of upright and two legged animals.

It turns out that Harrogate’s planning department is now so resource strapped that an algorithm (defined by the way by Google’s own algorithm as ‘a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, especially by a computer’) has replaced the planning officer who used to read planning objections and, using their experience and discretion, mark out anything that might identify, embarrass or compromise concerned individuals.  The ‘redaction algorithm’ (how sinister is that?) got the bit between its teeth and blacked out any reference to Mother Nature and her bounties.  And, in what must have been one of most egregious displays of misplaced irony I’ve seen – because I can’t possibly believe they could have been serious – the council put out a public statement in which it said that “our redaction algorithm has been overzealous.”  I wonder if the redaction algorithm has been hauled into Richard Cooper’s office for a dressing down, told to “cool it,” or perhaps is in receipt of a written warning?

This episode is both comic and troubling.  As well as making us laugh it shines a light on the creeping ethical and practical dangers of replacing human with artificial intelligence.  Beyond making sure that the any algorithms we use actually work well, and in this case it most certainly did not, we need to ask the first principles question; does the use case sufficiently protect the principles of transparency and accountability that are fundamental to our democratic system?

When the future of our environment and wildlife is at stake, when our need for housing stock is urgent and when we must surely make nuanced and well-informed choices that balance the benefits and risks of these two competing factors, I want skilled, informed and accountable people and processes to assess the plans before them in light of any objections made.

In example after example Harrogate Borough Council demonstrates a willingness to bend the rules and ignore the spirit of accountability and transparency.  Having sat on its hands for four months following the damage caused to the Stray by the 2019 Tour de Yorkshire it ignored normal procurement and competition rules on the grounds of an ‘emergency’ and awarded contractor Glendale Services a sole source contract worth around £40,000.  Thank goodness the Stray has been repaired because I’m sure it will see a huge increase in foot traffic as a result of the Council’s sole source award of a £165,000 contract to an Ipswich based company, the Jacob Bailey Group, to build a new ‘destination management system’ (website) for Visit Harrogate.  This decision justified on the basis that we now face an economic ‘emergency.’

It’s been revealed too that the council spent £57,630 on a judicial review defence in respect of the decision to press ahead with the housing development at Green Hammerton, instead of Flaxby Park.  Having initially refused to say how much of our money they spent on lawyers defending a planning decision they made in our name; and having received a Freedom of Information request for their troubles, the offending number was finally revealed in a tweet.  The initial refusal to share the lawyer’s fees was justified with the absurd claim that lawyer’s fees should remain private.  What cobblers.  We have every right to know what the council spends on professional services so that we can make an assessment about whether they (we) received value for money.

And here’s the rub.  The council is spending taxpayer money.  Millions of pounds of it.  It is our right to know that it has been spent well.  It is our right to know who made the decision to spend it and why.  It is our right to be able to judge the decisions and actions of those who presume to govern and administer.  It seems to me this council will hide behind any old excuse to act as they please and combine arrogance and incompetence in equal and generous measure.

“Computer says no.”

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

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Strayside Sunday: Return to lockdown shines a light on those leading us

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party. 

Here we are again.

Locked down tight. Shielding from the any one of the three Covid-19 variants currently spreading across the land at exponentially increasing rates. Working from home if at all possible and avoiding all but necessary travel. Obsessively checking and rechecking our place in the vaccination queue and hoping against hope that the ability of the NHS to get vaccines into the arms of the population matches the prodigious available supply of those vaccines.

I fully support Boris Johnson’s decision to return to a national lockdown. With record numbers of positive Covid-19 tests being reported each and every day and as high dependency and critical care beds in our hospitals approach full capacity, he and the leaders of the Kingdom’s devolved parliaments had little choice but to turn the door key once more. Sir Keir Starmer, who is quickly establishing a reputation for himself as both Cassandra and Statesman, gave the Prime Minister his fulsome support. Clearly he has been spooked by the confidential briefings on the spread of Covid-19 he receives as Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. Regardless, we should laud him for his principled stance.

One person to whom the nom de guerre Statesman could never be attached is Gavin Williamson. Surely Mr Williamson can now confidently be ranked as the worst Education Secretary to have ever graced the government benches. Schools’ leaders and staff are in open revolt, stoked up as ever by their unions, angered by Mr Williamson’s combination of myopia, lettuce-like communication skills (green, wet and limp) and post-hoc policy announcements.

Parents must again help school their children at home and confront a patchwork quilt of online educational provision, which follows, broadly speaking, the established pattern that those who would benefit most from excellent services are those least likely to have the opportunity to do so. And those parents least able to afford the required time away from work to help their children learn are faced with the worst of Hobson’s choices: work to earn now and limit their children’s educational opportunities or prioritise educating the kids and struggle to earn the money needed to put food on the table.

Mr Williamson is self-regarding and childish (the man keeps a Tarantula on his House of Commons office desk for ‘House of Cards’ effect, for goodness’ sake), he is dishonourable (Theresa May sacked him as Secretary of State for Defence because she had “compelling evidence” he had leaked confidential and sensitive National Security Council – he denied it but everyone in Westminster didn’t believe him for a minute, such is his reputation for cheap and transparent politicking), he is, well, a bit thick (which we ought to forgive him for) and, given that, inexplicably arrogant (which we shouldn’t).

In the end, though, I believe that we get the politicians we deserve. If I’m right, the current crop of British politicians serve only to confront us with the inconvenient truth of our just desserts. The view in the mirror of our public life is unedifying. To change it we have to care more, watch more, say more and do more. We must. If we don’t, there is every danger that we will follow in the misguided footsteps of the United States and undermine the fabric of our polity so as to expose its limited foundations and character.

It’s remarkable that a third national lockdown in the United Kingdom is only the second story this week, and second by a long chalk. The events in Washington DC on January 6 and 7 were truly extraordinary. A sitting President walked into the garden of the White House and incited the supporters he has anyway spent four years inflaming to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, lay siege to and storm the Capitol building that is home to both houses of Congress. This on the day of a joint sitting to ratify the US Electoral College votes and elevate the Biden/Harris ticket to power.

The MAGA (Make America Great Again) gang overran the Capitol Hill police and security staff and tried to establish mob rule. Windows were smashed, crash barriers were upended, walls were scaled, offices were occupied, weapons were brandished, a woman died of gunshot wounds and three others lost their lives. Donald Trump almost got his Presidential death wish, to bring down American democracy because it didn’t give him the electoral result he wanted.

Trump, his family and assorted sycophants have brought low the United States’ reputation as the cradle of democracy. Using his bully pulpit, the social media wild west, friendly and partisan television networks, toadying public officials, a successful populism that enflames and exploits the prejudices of the ignorant, 60 fallacious lawsuits and pure brass neck, this man tried everything to cling on to the power he lost in November’s elections. Thank goodness that America’s system of government and judiciary held in the face of such a brazen assault. The alternative is unthinkable.

Unless the powder keg explodes between now and January 20, Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th US President that day. Frighteningly, a YouGov poll of Republican voters conducted this week reports that fully 45% of them believe that Biden’s Democrats stole the election.  Biden will consequently step into a smouldering crucible, packed with the combustible tinder of opposing views. For all our sakes, we have to hope his unique political emollience can walk the US back from the brink.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

Strayside Sunday: Good riddance 2020 – but what awaits us this year?

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party. 

Goodbye and good riddance 2020.

As the new year begins we can reflect on the tumultuous events that none of us could have predicted 365 long days ago. Covid-19 has become an ever-present spectre in our national life, threatening our health, grievously damaging our economy and sharpening the grindstone of everyday living.

From the collectivist blitz spirit of spring when we all agreed to “Stay at home. Save lives. Protect the NHS,” through a summer of cancelled exams and educational turmoil for our young people, to a late autumn second national lockdown and into a winter of new, more transmissible variants, remembering the “before times” brings to mind the universal human luxuries of social and physical contact, the democratic luxuries of liberty and freedom of movement and the relative financial luxuries (for some but by no means all) of economic stability.

There have been bright spots of course. The way the nation rallied publicly in support of healthcare and other front-line workers; clapping from our doorsteps as one, draped in the colours of the rainbow. Captain, (now, deservedly, Sir) Tom Moore’s valiant one hundred lap trek around his back garden on his walker to raise over £30m for the NHS. Myriad examples of local and voluntary support groups organising to ferry food and kindness to the isolated and alone. This was and is truly the best of British.

Our behaviour hasn’t been flawless. Injunctions against gathering and socialising were increasingly ignored as compliance fatigue set in.  This was perhaps understandable for reasons valid, for example choosing to prioritise our mental health and, for reasons less so, as a reaction to the ever-changing government-imposed restrictions, broken promises (the five-day Christmas being just the latest example), confused guidance and mixed messaging.

Fundamental trust in the Conservative government’s actions and motives has been damaged too. From the scandal of eye-wateringly large contracts awarded, without due process, or even prior qualification, to the Chumocracy to supply flawed PPE; to its tone deaf refusal to provide free school meals for children who needed them; to the latest example, a national NHS Test & Trace programme (actually run by Public Health England) based initially on the idea that a single technology, developed at the centre, could meet the hugely diverse character and needs of the British population; one worries that our government, just over a year into its term, is in office but not in power.

And they are spending staggering sums of our money in the process; over £10bn was spent on PPE; Test & Trace, the latest failed attempt to build a national technology system, has so far cost the taxpayer £22bn, yes, that’s £22 BILLION!. Only when council leaders reacted with fury at the Test & Trace system’s unfolding and predictable inefficacies did the project pivot to work with and exploit the knowledge and existing networks of local authorities.

Scratching the surface reveals that Serco, one of the private companies leading the effort, have themselves subcontracted twenty other private businesses to help deliver the work. It has been a fiasco and a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money. Come the revolution heads should roll but it is nonetheless rumoured that Dido Harding, the head of Test & Trace, will be rewarded with the position of NHS England Chief Executive on Sir Simon Stevens’s impending retirement. I kid you not.

My hope is that, if anything, the events of the past year will cause us to look again at the type of country we want to build. One in which the public good becomes paramount, one in which health and wellbeing (particularly for the less well to do) become the North Stars guiding politicians and policymakers in their actions, one in which we define anew what constitutes, in both conception and implementation, the affairs of state. If not a bigger state then a more activist state. A state that understands and acts on its obligations to care for its people first and one that recognises that capital does not, as we have seen yet again, a soul possess.

However, I suspect that with a Brexit deal now signed, whatever you think of it on the merits, the government will charge ahead with policies designed to stimulate business and trade. From free ports to enterprise zones, from tax incentives to fiscal stimulus, the government has to rebuild a battered economy. If it is to do so and return itself to our electoral (or at least opinion poll) affections, then it must demonstrate that it has “levelled up” the economy while delivering humane social improvements.

I wish you all a happier, more contented and above all healthy 2021.  With mass vaccinations now underway, I very much hope that will be the case, so that when spring comes around again, we will experience the rebirth, rejuvenation, renewal, resurrection and regrowth that the season usually promises.

Let’s hope too that the bright, sunny, international trading uplands long promised by the Brexiteers comes to fruition and that the Conservative “levellers” spend the spoils on the areas and initiatives that need it most.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

Strayside Sunday: We are treating the homeless as human cargo, fit only for containment

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party. 

The housing and homelessness charity Shelter has been in the news this week.  They have gathered data that shows that 253,000 people in the UK will pass this Christmas season without secure housing.

During the first lockdown, swift and decisive government action virtually eradicated homelessness in our country by housing people in utilising otherwise deserted hotels, boarding houses and vacant rental properties.  As a result of the “Everyone In” initiative, many of the most vulnerable in our society could at least face the threat presented by Covid-19 certain in the knowledge that they could do so with a roof over their heads and have beds on which to sleep.  An issue that has taxed and stumped policymakers for years was solved with an alacrity that betrayed the repugnant and rank inaction of successive and previous governments of all political persuasions.

Last week, the Stray Ferret reported that Harrogate Borough Council has provided emergency accommodation for local homeless people for the ‘festive’ season.  This under the Severe Weather Emergency Protocol (SWEP) that obligates councils to provide cover and shelter during the inclement weather conditions of the winter months.  So they should.

However, in their infinite wisdom Harrogate Borough Council has installed 3 bright yellow (“look everybody, homeless people!”) shipping containers in the Tower Street Carpark.  They are chain-link fenced in and, unless alterations are to be made to them, are windowless and appear ill-ventilated.  This is truly shameful.  The idea that in a wealthy, albeit resource constrained, Covid-stymied civilised society, that we should think shipping containers provide appropriate shelter for anyone at any time of the year passes understanding.

What of compassion?  What of humanity?  What of simple human decency?  As the occupants exit their steel, aluminium or fibre-reinforced polymer (which are the materials from which shipping containers are apparently made) billet, they will look across the street at the local Travelodge; now open for business, as our national government seeks balance the need to keep the economy moving, with the possible health risks posed by Covid.  I doubt very much that it, or indeed any hotel in Harrogate is currently operating at full occupancy.  But surely it is not beyond the wit of man or woman to manage occupancy across the borough to meet both private demand and the needs of those living on the streets.  Especially in circumstances in which private enterprise has benefitted hugely this year from the wonton largesse of (taxpayer, our children and our grandchildren) funded loans, grants, furlough schemes

All housing developments these days come with a requirement for an element of social housing.  Or they should – it turns out the North Yorkshire County Council’s housebuilding company Brierley Homes is under criticism for avoiding having to build affordable dwellings at their developments in Bilton and Pateley Bridge.  None the less, perhaps we could ask the same of larger hotels; that they provide a small number of rooms for the socially disadvantaged?

The uncomfortable truth of course is that business does not want to co-mingle the homeless with paying guests.  The even more uncomfortable truth is that you and I would think more than once about patronising a hotel in which we might bump into the homeless in the corridor.  We’re alright jack and anyway our consciences, pricked as they are by this and other injustices, don’t tend to compensate for any compromise of our own comfort or hotel “experience.”  Our fear-fuelled prejudices of the smelly, drunk and drug addled dispossessed don’t add to the ambience of a stay away.

Harrogate is often named as one of the most desirable places to live in Britain.  It’s a reputation of which our council is rightly proud.  If an appeal to HBC on the merits won’t make them do better by the homeless then how about this?  Harrogate risks damaging it’s reputation.  It will become known as the kind of affluent and selfish place that wants to hide the fact that it has the same knotty and mucky problems and challenges that inner cities face.  It is in danger of becoming known for hiding its homeless in plain sight, for thinking so little of its least fortunate charges that it seeks to make them human cargo, fit only for containment.  It doesn’t make me proud to live in a borough whose council would do this.

At our holidays and high-days visits to church in the days to come we will bask in the warm and sentimental candle-lit glow of self-satisfaction that follows.  They tell us that this is the time of year for peace and goodwill for ALL men (and women and children).  We will all agree with that and likely walk swiftly by the Tower Street Carpark on the way home, heads down.  Let’s demand better of each other, of our local authority and of national government.

Bottom line, we should get our homeless inside, in real accommodation, for Christmas – and make sure they can stay there

That’s my Strayside Sunday.  I wish you all a very Happy Christmas.

Paul is taking a break over the Christmas period. Strayside Sunday will be back on January 3 2021.

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