31 July 2009

Praise me and pass the fatwa.........

A carrier pigeon landed on the window ledge a little while ago and I read the note it carried with something approaching incredulity. It suggests that Somerton Town Council will be spending a couple of grand answering questions put to them by the External Auditor.

Now, if my memory serves me correctly, Clive Dyer was on his bended knees recently begging for financial support from Somerton Town Council. He managed to get £1500 but only after about 20 minutes of begging and some support from Jimmy Z. Maybe if the Town Council had offered reasonable access to public documents then they wouldn't find themselves in this position.

So, if that is true, does it constitute a reasonable use of public funds? Well thats an interesting question. If the documents that the member of the public is asking for, if those documents prove that everything at Somerton Town Council is absolutely kosher, then why not just make them available? Why fight it? And, if you fight it for no good reason then the expenditure may not qualify as a good use of public funds. Maybe its even wasteful and unnecessary. And, were that to be the case, then maybe the individuals who take that course of action should be made personally liable for the expenditure.

And on the other side of the note was information about the Fatwa. Evidently Ayatollahs Keenan and Canvin have required all members of the Town Council not to speak to Niall Connolly. It would seem that they are afraid of being misrepresented. Well, here's a suggestion. When a member of the public writes to the Town Council, how about replying in writing? That way the Town Council can put their position down in black and white, without fear of misrepresentation. Or, how about allowing members of the public to record Council meetings? That way, there will be an independent and accurate record of the conduct of events.

But, of course, there is a problem with these proposals - they might make Somerton Town Council accountable and that would never do.

Till next time, may your God go with you.

Niall

27 July 2009

Who will be next.........

The following was published in 'The Viaduct', issue No.72, dated August 2009

Xenophobia is a dislike and/or fear of that which is unknown or different from oneself. It comes from the Greek words ξένος (xenos), meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος (phobos), meaning "fear." The term is typically used to describe a fear or dislike of foreigners or of people significantly different from oneself, usually in the context of visibly differentiated minorities. (Source: Wikipedia - Xenophobia)


The following is a quote from Cllr Martyn Smith, Somerton Town Council meeting, 23rd June 2009:
"I've lived in this town for 19 years nearly so I'm an outsider and I've been fairly well accepted but what really gripes me and we have several of them and I'm not going to name them but you probably all know who I'm talking about we have outsiders coming into this beautiful hilltop Saxon Town and the first thing they want to do is to slag it off well if they want to slag it off why don't they bugger off and leave us alone thank you."

Wikipedia describes 'Political repression' in the following terms:
Political repression is the persecution of an individual or group for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing their ability to take part in the political life of society. Political repression may be represented by discriminatory policies, human rights violation, surveillance abuse, police brutality, imprisonment, involuntary settlement, stripping of citizen's rights, and violent action such as the murder, summary executions, torture, forced disappearance and other extrajudicial punishment of political activists, dissidents, or general population. Where political repression is sanctioned and organised by the state, it may constitute state terrorism, genocide, politicide or crimes against humanity. Systemic and violent political repression is a typical feature of dictatorships, totalitarian states and similar regimes. In such regimes, acts of political repression may be carried out by secret police forces, army, paramilitary groups or death squads. Relevant activities have also been found within democratic contexts as well.

23 July 2009

That's not a campervan.......

A few days ago I was walking along Parsonage Hill and noticed a huge truck which looked very like the kit that Wessex Water uses. The immediate thought was that there must be something wrong with the drains but this wasn't the case. On closer inspection, the vehicle turned out to be a campervan but one like I've never seen before.

The owners of this device are Clive and Anne who have just returned from their first outing in this vehicle, a warm-up journey through Egypt and Libya. They stopped off in Somerton to meet up with friends and we were lucky enough to be invited round to see some photographs of their travels. You've probably done the same sort of thing and been entertained with photos of so and so in front of the Eiffel Tower, sitting in a restaurant, waving from a tramcar etc etc etc. Well, this was nothing like that and the story of their journeys was absolutely riveting.

Clive and Anne are not what you'd call 'ordinary motorhomers'. Their idea of fun is a 9 month trek from the UK to China and back. They travel in the company of other like-minded adventurers and the story of their journeys can be found here. Pay particular attention to the chapter 2002-10-20 titled 'More Photographs (October 2002)' and have a look at the 'China 2002' route map. Quite amazing.

Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman have done a couple of TV series chronicling their motorcycle journeys and they had a ton of help - back-up trucks and 4drives plus a London based control center to hustle on their behalf via satellite phones. In comparison, Clive and Anne, and their fellow adventurers, followed some of the same terrain but about 6 weeks after Ewan and Charlie. The big difference was that Clive and Anne and Co were, generally, on their own. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

Respect.

20 July 2009

Lets burn money...........

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Looking backwards, its always easy to recognise mistakes and lost opportunities. But that's no reason not to indulge in a little 'looking back' and the 1977 'Somerton Town Plan' gives some idea of what was on the community's mind a little more than three decades ago.

On page 68 of the document (see below) its interesting to notice that high on the agenda was the idea of a dual purpose community facility which would expand the the existing Sports Club's building whilst, at the same time, giving the community a hall capable of satisfying its needs. The idea of a multi-purpose facility would go a long way to ensuring that the investment was utilised fully and, today, the concept could be developed further to include consideration of the needs of Somerton's schools.


The advantage of a project which would address educational needs as well as those of the community would be to open the door to additional funding. It would, of course, mean that the schools would have some sort of exclusive use of the facility for periods of time but that would seem a small price to pay. Bringing the schools into the mix would greatly extend the stakeholder group, bringing parents into the facility on a regular basis and making such a building a very real part of the community. Compare that concept to what we have now - an unloved tin box on the furthest edge of the town in the middle of a concrete wasteland.

So, how did Somerton get into this unholy mess? The answer to that question is simple - Somerton didn't get itself into this mess, Somerton Town Council got Somerton into this mess. The problem now is whether or not Somerton Town Council can extricate itself and, if it does, how much is that going to cost Somerton?

Given his recent comments about the value of the building, a number of Somertonians have contacted Muck&Brass to suggest that Cllr Tony Canvin may wish to buy the Tin Dunny. Muck&Brass doubts that will happen and, if the Dunny is sold off, Muck&Brass doubts that Somerton will be able to recover the Town Council's investment.

Meanwhile, further expenditure on the Dunny is clearly being planned with mention being made of rainwater harvesting and installation of solar collectors or one sort or another. Talk about throwing good money after bad. Its fair to ask, exactly what is the community getting in return for this investment? Very little, but that was never the idea, was it?

Till next time, may your God go with you.

Muck&Brass

15 July 2009

Out to lunch.

It's often hard to understand Somerton Town Council's thinking and last evening's meeting (14th July) was yet another curio. A large chunk of time was given over to a discussion about a funding request from Somerton's Youth Club. From the information presented at the meeting it would seem that, as a result of the coincidence of a number of factors, the Youth Club finds itself very short of funds.


Now, there seems no disputing that the Youth Club is already functioning on a very tight budget and no-one at the meeting disputed the general view that the Youth Club is of very real benefit to the Community. The Club isn't profligate with its limited resources and already functions with significant support from volunteers. So, you might have thought that Somerton's Town Council would want to jump straight in and support the Youth Club in order to secure its future, for the next 12 months at least. The cost of such a gesture was suggested to be in the order of £3,000, not very much to ask for compared to the money that has been lavished on the Tin Dunny. So it came as something of a surprise to listen to the discussion and hear councillors debating whether or not to offer the Youth Club £500!

To his credit, CCllr Jimmy Zouche added his voice to the impassioned plea heard from Clive Dyer and, as the discussion progressed, Somerton Town Councillors managed to raise the bar a little and finally approved a grant of £1,500.


Now, given that these are public funds, and subject to scrutiny, its unreasonable for anyone to expect that the Council would throw money about carelessly. But the caution that the council displayed last evening stands in stark contrast to the way that money is spent in other areas. In this I'd remind readers of the invoice which was reproduced in an earlier blog. £2,174 for providing invoices when the Youth Club has to beg for £1,500. Something of an imbalance don't you think?

Till next time.

Muck&Brass

14 July 2009

Get three quotes ..............

Here are three great quotes from leading lights on Somerton's Town Council during the meeting of 23rd June 2009

Quote 1 from Cllr Paddy Keenan
"...... this summed up what you (Cllr Neale) have been complaining about. You cannot get the quotes. Its been like this for 10 years. We always end up doing it ourselves. Getting people to produce quotes is a waste of time."

Paddy has never been in favour of getting quotes, nor of competitive tendering. Paddy also seems to think that this is an experience peculiar to Somerton. By Paddy's way of it, you can't get trades to quote in Somerton. Maybe that is the experience of Somerton Town Council but it isn't the experience of the rest of the population so its fair to ask why Somerton Town Council has such difficulty in getting quotes. Maybe its because most trades in Somerton have the view that work for the Council is somehow pre-ordained, making it something of a closed shop. Maybe that's why Somerton Town Council experiences such difficulties.

Quote 2 from Cllr Martyn Smith
"We paid about £700,000 for this and its probably cost in round terms about £150,000 to convert it ........... lets say £200,000 so we've made £750,000 profit on the piece of land we've bought a building for £700 and converted it for another £200 so this building has cost us about £250,000 by my calculations and I think that we've got a bloody splendid building for 250 grand it must be worth on the open market at least 4 times that probably 5 so I think we shouldn't be slagged for spending the ratepayers money we should be slagged for getting the community hall at a very low cost because we could not have done this even if we had the land which we didn't."

Imagine you buy a house for £100k and spend £25k on doing it up. You sell it for £250k. How much profit do you make on the deal? Most people would think that you had made £125k but in Cllr Martyn Smith's mathematical model, you actually made £250k profit. That's the sort of accounting that almost destroyed capitalism 18 months ago.

Quote 3 from Cllr Tony Canvin
"The beauty of what we've done here I agree it probably isn't the right place but the beauty is if we'd spent the same amount of money in the middle of that sports field and it didn't work what would you do with the building if it doesn't work here you've got a £1.2M building for sale with that money back in the council's pocket we haven't took one risk with one penny I could have sold it tomorrow morning no problem."

There is a commonly held view that the Etsome Terrace/Tin Dunny asset swap was nothing more than a property deal. It had nothing to do with the community and, in fact, the community was actively excluded from having any say in the matter. So now, our revered leader, Cllr Canvin, lifts the veil just a tad and admits that it probably isn't in the right place. Well, I suspect that the Somerton Community Hall Steering Group could have told him that, had he been interested enough to ask.

The problem with the Tin Dunny is that its only connection with the Community of Somerton is that Somerton's Community is paying for it. So, if it fails it will fail because the Town Council ignored the community and did a deal. Lucky for the Town Council that it wasn't their money. Unlucky for the Community of Somerton that they will have to pay for the mistake.

Till next time, remember Rolf Harris and tie your Kangaroo down, sport.

Niall

12 July 2009

In the Court of the Kangaroo King

What: Meeting of Somerton Town Council
When: 23rd June 2009
Where: The Tin Dunny
With: 15 Members of the Public (MoP)

07:30 Apologes from Cllrs Bisgrove, Morgan, Smith (D) and CCllr Zouche
Public Q's for local Police. Sgnt Allan Bell introduced himself and discussed policing in the Somerton area. In summary, Somerton is below the National Average for crime reporting. ASBOs in Somerton are down significantly since last year. Judged by ASB stats, Somerton is a good place. Cllr Neale raised issue of speeding on Langport Rd and Sgnt Bell informed the meeting that a request has been made for increased Road Traffic presence. 07:35 and Cllr Neale raised the issue of alcohol consumption on the playing fields. Cllr Webber reported having been approached by an MoP regarding the sandwich board sign obscuring visibility at the Sutton Rd/Langport Rd junction. Cllr Keenan observed that this was not a Police issue. An MoP observed that Neighbourhood Watch in West End has made an improvement and congratulated local Police. Cllr Keenan echoed those congratulations. 07:39 Cllr Smith (M) referred to perennial problem of parking in West Street. An MoP raised the issue of disabled carriages and enquired about regulations for them. An MoP questioned the use of flashing speed signs and their effectiveness. 07:45 Cllr Neale raised issue of vandalism at Junior School and robbery at Costcutter cash machine. Regarding the latter, Sgnt Bell confirmed that arrests had been made out of town. An MoP stated that 'Lord Jimmy Zouche' doesn't exist. 07:48 Public Q's and comments. An MoP enquired about progress in cleaning up Etsome site (letter has been written). An MoP enquired about progress on Medical Centre (none). Cllr Neale raised issue of loos on sportsfield and enquired about progress. Cllr Keenan reminded Cllr Neale that the Council left it to Cllrs Neale and Rees some 6 weeks previously. Cllr Neale reported that one quote had been received. Cllr Keenan suggested that: "...... this summed up what you (Cllr Neale) have been complaining about. You cannot get the quotes. Its been like this for 10 years. We always end up doing it ourselves. Getting people to produce quotes is a waste of time.". There followed discussions about: quotes; the steps in New St; the paving slabs in the Square and the shrubs on the railway path at Behind Berry. An MoP raised the issue of 'dog mess' in the town and during the discussion Cllr Smith (M) observed that dogs can't read signs.

07:59 Cllr Keenan suspended the meeting and convened the Somerton Kangaroo Court which took up approximately 15 minutes.

08:15 and the meeting reconvened. Declarations of Interest attracted none. The Minutes of the last meeting were approved and Matters Arising covered: the lack of a bus stop on Behind Berry; thanks from Mrs Thomas for the flowers; the survey of the Parish Rooms for a water meter; (08:17) a discussion about the Portaloos for the sportsfield and, finally, the Town Clerk then provided the following, "Just an update on the previous Freedom of Information enquiry from Mr Connolly following the last meeting I sought some legal advice regarding the ability or otherwise to charge .... and the comment I had back was that if the Authority reasonably suspected that information might be tampered with, damaged or destroyed then there was grounds for there to be a member of staff there with the person and a charge could then be levied on the basis of the original charge or what is called a search fee. That information has been passed on to Mr Connolly .........". 08:22 and Finance saw the schedule of payments approved and Cllr Harrison suggested some clarity about the expenses for the hall. 08:25 and Planning Applications saw no applications for discussion. 08:26 and Correspondence dealt with: requests for grant support (£100 approved); invitation to bid for insulation grants for community halls, sustainable electricity generation and electric vehicles; a letter about verge cutting and a letter from the Arts Festival enclosing 4 tickets for a concert. 08:31 Cllr Keenan asked if there was any pressing additional post. 08:31 The Town Clerk advised the meeting, "A further FoI enquiry from Mr Connolly which I am currently checking as to whether any of the information he has asked for is exempt information under the Act. My initial comments back to me the enquiry actually relates to my personal contract of employment but I am waiting for a response in writing before corresponding further with Mr Connolly. Its that aspect which I would when I said earlier that I wanted to raise something within the Council meeting....... One of the recent blogs referred to the Council tax banding ....... in Somerton when he asked if I had information on precept levels over as many years as possible I said well I've been here over 20 years but didn't have the information ready to hand as it wasn't something that was collated in that form. Those of you who have read the blog will now see how it is now on the blog. ......so he went to the District Council and got it there. I in fact at the meeting suggested that the information would be more easily available at the District Council. I was not denying that we had the information. It was not on one single piece of paper. I did in fact get all the information within about 15 minutes but on the basis that the blog as other councillors have said has a certain spin on it I will seek Council's approval that in future I will not to talk to Mr Connolly but I will correspond in writing so that at least if there is any spin the opposite is available for correlation for a conversation taken out of context can never be proved either way. I have done this once in the past with another gentleman where he said I said something over the phone which I know I did not. The Council at that point approved any further contact to be in writing so I am seeking your approval." Cllr Keenan stated, "If I could just I would personally like to say and therefore there will be no insinuations of what was said or not said so if everybody is happy we will ask for all communications with Mr Connolly to be in writing please." Cllr Canvin stated, "That goes for all councillors. I think that goes for everybody sat round this table." An MoP asked if that applied to everybody who wants some information or just Mr Connolly. Cllr Keenan replied, "You can request anything at all, you can have it. Do not expect to walk into the Clerk's office and just say I want to see 20 years of accounts ...... that cannot be done that might happen at County Hall that might happen at District Council where there are swarms of people but up here there's one............We've asked for a vote of support for the Clerk......everybody show of hands." Cllr Neale then introduced the Core Strategy Programme which he described as being part of a "Regional Spatial Strategy" which may now be on hold due to legal challenges in the High Court. The Town Clerk confirmed that workshops relating to it were still on schedule. 08:40 and the Finance Committee made it to the floor. Cllr Neale proposed the setting up of a Finance Committee to oversee and regulate the financial activities of the Council. The Chair asked Cllr Deering to respond which he did, at length. There ensued an exchange of views between Cllrs about what work was being done for the Council, by whom and on what basis. 08:53 Eventually the proposal to set up a Finance Committee was approved and the Meeting moved on to the Approval of Accounts which it was informed have been approved by the Internal Auditors. 09:03 Market Towns Investment Group funding for replacement flags in Market Sq. Cllr Neale fronts this project and the Chair suggested he team up with the Town Clerk to co-ordinate it. 09:08 The Old Town Hall grant funding request. The OTH group made a presentation to the Council seeking £350 grant support which was referred to the Finance Committee. 09:21 Chair's report contained nothing which led to Agenda Items for the next meeting and The End at 09:22

1 July 2009

Right to a reply?

At last week's Town Council meeting, Cllr Paddy Keenan seemed very interested in the concept of 'right to reply' and its an interesting subject to discuss.

Take, for example, the right of a ratepayer/voter to be able to write to their Town Council and, not unreasonably, to expect and to receive a coherent reply. Its not a very complicated idea and its all about engagement with the community. Communication. Being accountable.

But that seems to be a bit too advanced for a clown show like Somerton Town Council. Even with a very well paid, full-time Town Clerk, Somerton Town Council can't manage to put toner to paper and reply to reasonable enquiries from rate payers and voters. The last blog carried a reproduction of a letter from August of 2008 which went unanswered and below you can see a letter from September of 2008 which also went unanswered.



But mere voters and rate payers aren't the only people who are ignored by Somerton's Town Council. In February of 2008 the letter below was sent to Mr David Heath, MP and, as a result, Mr Heath wrote to Somerton Town Council. Response? Nothing. The Town Clerk claims that an acknowledgment was sent but that isn't quite the same as a reply, is it?



Somerton Town Council are very well resourced, as the accounts prove. There is a full time Town Clerk, handsomely rewarded for duties which cannot be described as onerous. So why can't the Town Council reply to letters of enquiry. The answer is because the Town Council don't give a damn about the community. Somerton Town Council is only interested in doing property deals and using the community's money to make them happen.

Have a look at the Precept curve from a couple of blogs back and ask yourself what, if anything has Somerton received in return for the massive hike in Precept? At the same time, you might ask who were the councillors who engineered that hike? What was their agenda?

So when the awfully glib Cllr. Keenan rants on about a 'right to reply', once again, he would be well advised to take a long hard look in the mirror. But Muck&brass forgets one thing. Somerton Town Council's motto is 'Do as I say, not as I do.".

Till next time, look out for the pigs in the trough.

Muck&Brass