Blog Kernow

From Sennen to Saltash people are asking just one thing. ‘Is Cornwall Council fit for purpose?’ This week another shambolic spate of contradictory statements and rapid reversals of position seeped out of the Truro bunker. This time the issue was pay for the council’s corporate (of course) directors, those extremely handsomely paid bureaucrats who were set up at the top of the local government Read more / comment »

Full marks to Lib Dem Leader Nick Clegg for keeping his promise to hand back the profit he makes when he sells his MP's second home in Sheffield.

When the expenses scandal broke last year, Nick came out with a very clear line - that he did not think it right for MPs to be in the property speculation business. He regarded the second home he bought with taxpayers' money as being on loan to him and he pledged to return any profit he made when he came to sell it to taxpayers.

Now that expenses rules have changed, MPs can only claim rent and so Nick is selling his second home and will be renting in the city.

The pics are of Nick and his wife Miriam at the house in Sheffield on polling day back in May. Miriam hosted a coffee and cakes party for all the journalists who had been with Nick for the election campaign tour.Read more / comment »

It's very sad to hear of the passing of Sir Cyril Smith, the former MP for Rochdale and one of the most memorable public figures of the 70s and 80s - even more famous than Lembit is today.

I remember Cyril coming to the first Hemsworth by-election in Yorkshire in 1991. Our candidate, Val, owned a couple of fast food takeaways and we held a photo op with Val feeding pizza to Cyril. Not surprisingly, the cameras loved it.

Cyril was never one to 'conform' - he opposed the traditional party stance on capital punishment, nuclear weapons and abortion - and that attitude applied to himself as well. He wasn't someone with a weight problem - he was fat and never tried to hide it. Hence the willingness to play up to his caricature with the photo op in Hemsworth.

My condolences to Norman - his brother and ever faithful attendant - and the rest of the family.Read more / comment »

Iain Dale has written a post about the new EU Referendum Campaign. Sorry to have to ask, but it is a joke, isn't it?

There's no sane campaign organisation whose website front page splash includes a picture of the Prime Minister with a small dog and the words - 'Give us a referendum on Europe... or the puppy gets it' - see pic right.Read more / comment »

The Chief Exec of Cornwall Council Kevin Lavery had arranged a meeting with the Helston and Lizard Community Network. This took place at the One Stop Shop, Isaac House. I welcomed this, as its sometimes hard to have a conversation with Kevin whilst over at County Hall due to busy schedules. The Leader of the Council was there too in his official role, and being a Councillor in this Network

There are 7 Cornwall Councillor in this network, but only two managed to attend due to diary conflicts, or due to some other reason. That gave Mike Clayton and I more time to talk. The brief was simple. Ask what you like. Now this is the type of brief I like as there can be no prepared answers.

I raised a real concern I have, and from speaking to other Cornwall Councillors they have the same issue. This is the relationship between the Cabinet and the Council. Now in principle I support the Cabinet system, but I have some very grave concerns on how this is being interpreted at present. I said to Alec and Kevin that if nothing changes and there is a change of rule from central Government on how a Council is set up, then the Cabinet is in real danger of being replaced by a Committee system.

What I would like to see from the Cabinet is a change. At present a lot of back-bencher's feel they are out of the loop on how decision are made. I am not asking for every detail to come to Council as we would not get anything done. But what I did say is (and I use my own expression). that the Cabinet 'throws a few bones to the council'. This way, the other 113 Members feel they are actively involved, and not just there to make up the numbers. Since the formation of Cornwall Council there have been only 3 real policy debates by the Council. Everything else has been done by the Cabinet.

If some items were referred to the Council for their views those back-bencher's would feel they are included in major policy and expenditure decisions.  I did not expect any promises from either Kevin or Alec, but I felt I have given my eight pennies worth. What took me back was Kevin agreed that there is a concern on this issue,  and would welcome more debates and decisions at Council. As there is a 'them and us' feeling at present.

Now this is not going to change over night (or at all) because there are various legal and constitutional issues that need to be over come first, but its not impossible. I came away that at least I had said something that had been bothering me for sometime.

For me, I can't help liking Kevin and Alec. I really think they want Cornwall Council to work, and to be a leading Council in the UK. To do that he needs the Members support and we need to support them. Its a two way street in my book.Read more / comment »

More than two months now since Cornwall councillors asked officials to mail Nick Clegg about second home voters. Still no letter has been sent.

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A new spectator sport kicks off on Monday - who can devise the most entertaining way of getting MPs to vote against things they are really in favour of (or in favour of things they are really against)?

I will be surprised if on Monday evening any of Cornwall's MPs fail to vote in favour of the Bill which in its present form would abolish the historic political boundary with Devon.

Now the Green Party MP Caroline Lucas tells The New Statesman magazine:

"As MPs start the second reading of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill on 6 September, I am tabling an amendment that would rewrite the referendum question to allow people to choose from a wider range of voting systems, including properly proportional options such as the additional member system (used in elections for the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and Greater London Assembly) and the single transferable vote (used in Northern Ireland)."

This means Lib Dem MPs, as members of the coalition, could be whipped into voting against the sort of proportional representation voting system they actually campaigned for in their election manifesto. Funny old world...

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Some interesting reading for the weekend here from the New Economics Foundation: The Great Transition (pdf)

Of particular interest to readers of this blog may be the chapter -The Great Localisation and Engagement- which argues for the re-localisation of our democracies and economies (pages 56-66).Read more / comment »

Council Tax payers will no doubt welcome the news that executive remuneration packages at Cornwall Council are due to be renegotiated to reflect the tightening of the public purse. The West Briton group of newspapers have reported the move as one led by the Leader of Cornwall Council, and include a series of gushing quotes from Cornish Conservative MPs, praising the Leader for tackling this thorny issue.

I’d be inclined to join in with the praise if it bore the slightest relation to the truth. The Leader of the Council was recently asked, via a question from a member of the public to Full Council, whether such a move was being considered in the light of the strain on finances and the need to protect frontline services. His response was a curt, one word answer: “No”.

It is abundantly clear that this move was instigated by the Chief Executive and the senior officers themselves, and I applaud them for the gesture. It appears that it had little, if anything, to do with the ruling administration at Cornwall Council. Nevertheless, their Damascene conversion to the concept of wage restraint should be welcomed.

Perhaps now they will reconsider their previous refusal to examine their own Special Responsibility Allowances as Cabinet Members.

(Update: Richard Whitehouse, the Cornish Guardian & West Briton’s Civic Correspondent has been in touch to point out this article ‘clarifying’ the Leader’s position on executive pay.)

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As I posted here previously, the Council is due to consider the next steps in its webcasting pilot at its meeting on 7th September. The recommendation before the Council is as follows:

Recommendation that:
(a) the pilot webcast arrangements be extended to 30 April 2011;
(b) arrangements include the Trelawney Room so that meetings of Cabinet are webcast from October 2010;
(c) to make best use of the facilities at County Hall, and to test the public interest in viewing other types of meetings online, the equipment be used to webcast some other meetings held in the Chamber and Trelawney Room;
(d) officers be given authority to make the necessary preparations for a formal tender process for a webcasting solution for a 3 year period from June 2011; and
(e) a full evaluation report of the pilot webcast arrangements including future proposals and costings be brought back to the Council meeting scheduled for 29 March 2011

The six month experiment of broadcasting Full Council meetings appears to have been a success and it is now a question of how extensive the roll-out should be. While I’m not necessarily sure that there would be a particularly vibrant market for, say, live webcasts from the Audit Committee (no offence to those who enjoy such things) I do think there might be significant interest in the Council’s Cabinet meetings and many issues which come before local Planning Committee meetings. The recommendations above represent the first step, and I and Andrew Wallis will be happy to propose this to Council on the 7th.

(To view live or achived meetings of Cornwall Council follow this link, and the full agenda for the meeting on 7th September can be viewed here.)

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