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 105^th 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.

Read More: 

• Harrogate Spring Water's Pinewoods expansion plans refused


• Councillor's "pride" at Harrogate Spring Water decision