Curly's Corner Shop, the blog!

Three cheers for Luke Bozier for introducing some sensible debate to the Labour Party

I’m not normally in the habit of sending readers along to Labour Lost List, but Luke Bozier’s contribution today is lucid, cogent, sensible, and above all necessary. It has sparked a healthy debate amongst the left in a way that neither of the Miliband brothers have managed recently, and I think it represents the sensible opinion of millions of silent voters across the UK.

I spent much of the weekend contemplating whether or not the Labour Party of today is the party I joined four years ago. The answer in most part is no. I felt ashamed listening to Ed Miliband’s speech at the big TUC march on Saturday, when he effectively glorified the ‘stop all cuts’ movement and compared it to such monumental moments of the 20th century as the suffragettes movement which gave women the vote, the civil rights movement in America and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.

As Labour leader, Ed has a legitimate platform from which to address any issue he pleases, but elevating a movement like the TUC march to the level of the civil rights movement I find tone deaf and insulting to that and the other causes he mentioned.

We must ask ourselves, as a party, what kind of Britain we want to create, and whether or not we too are capable of being the party of the vested interest. From my perspective, and that of many others, Labour currently stands for one thing: halting the cuts to the public sector. We have in effect become the party of the public sector. As important as the public sector is, it only represents a portion of society, and is not a panacea for all of society’s ills as many in the Labour Party mistakenly believe. Cutting public spending will have an effect on some peoples’ lives but we have to take hold of our senses – nothing this government can do will take us anywhere near the levels of suffering and deprivation Britain witnessed in the 1980s.

Continue reading this article here.

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……but he’s not the fastest milkman in the west.

South Tyneside Labour councillor Ernest Gibson used to have a blog with his colleague Cllr. Bill Brady (who didn’t contribute a lot), it didn’t last very long but covered what the two of them were up to in Whiteleas ward of South Shields, no sooner than it was up and running and attracting a few comments it was pulled. Ernie is now sending out “tweets” from his own Twitter page just in time for the local government elections, you can follow him here. I’m rather hoping that he raises the bar as far as our twittering councillors go in South Tyneside, because frankly some of the bilge emanating from some of those elected to represent us in the town hall has been pretty dire over the past couple of years.

I hope this doesn’t sound too cynical but lets hope that Cllr. Gibson doesn’t give up on the project a few weeks after May’s elections have been and gone!

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…….their “cuts” would begin to bite in two days time.

It is so easy to forget that during the campaign for the last general election you could hardly pass a cigarette paper between the economic and fiscal policies of the two main parties, the Conservatives were promising around £16bn worth of savings to reduce the structural deficit built by Gordon Brown’s regime, and Labour were proposing £14bn worth of cuts in their next planned budget which would have been effective from April 1st. next year. That £2bn difference is minuscule when viewed against the £1 trillion (and growing) debt that they left us.

Yet now that Gordon Brown has been consigned to the history books and Alistair Darling forgotten about, can the Labour Party in Opposition be responsible enough to stand by their manifesto pledges and talk freely about the areas which would have suffered had they swung their axe?

It appears not, in recent days both Ed Balls, the Shadow Chancellor and Harriet Harman, the Deputy Leader have both evaded questions about Labour’s cuts whilst the party’s leader embarks upon a campaign of supporting street demonstrations and direct action, Balls in his interview with The Daily Mail on Monday made the slightly ridiculous argument that the economy had started to show signs of strong growth at the end of Labour’s stint (0.2% if I recall correctly) and that coalition policies had stunted that growth re-stoked inflation and set unemployment on an upward path. The ridiculous part of the argument is that  the fiscal measures announced in Gorge Osborne’s first budget will not come into effect until April 1st. this year, and Balls knows it full well, it is the same date that Labour’s budget would have been effective from if they had won the election. In his interview Balls gave no clues at all on where Labour would have wielded the axe as they set about “halving the deficit in four years”. Yet he and his leader were prepared to share a platform in London decrying the government for doing what Labour would necessarily have had to do.

Harriet Harman repeated the same lame argument on the BBC’s Daily Politics Show yesterday, and once more utterly failed to convince in her answers to the questions about where Labour’s cuts would hurt.

Interviewer: You talk about the cuts being wrong but you do not talk about the alternative. You also do not mention that you would also be making cuts.”

HARRIET HARMAN: “We do. We say that we would halve the deficit over four years. Now what happened is  the economy was hit by a global financial crisis. We had to allow the deficit to rise to protect the economy.”

Interviewer: “I know it’s tempting to get into the history lesson.”

HARRIET HARMAN: “I’m just trying to explain what we would actually do instead. There is an alternative and that’s what we’re setting forward.”

Interviewer: “So when it comes to cuts where would you cut and what would you cut?”

HARRIET HARMAN: “Well we think that Government is making matters worse because they’re slowing down economic growth.”

Interviewer: “You’re not answering the question and that is the problem.”

HARRIET HARMAN: “Well I am. Because basically the cuts are making. What the Government is doing is making the situation worse. They are making unemployment rise. We are seeing growth falter and that makes it harder to cut the deficit. So my point is they are making the deficit worse.”

Interviewer: “Don’t you see the problem though with this approach because you at the last election said that you would have to make cuts. Now it is impossible…”

HARRIET HARMAN: “Halving the deficit over four years.”

Interviewer: “To get you to say where you would cut. I’ve had Ed Miliband, Ed Balls sitting in the same seat. He wouldn’t say it.”

HARRIET HARMAN: “No well we’ve said over four years. We would.”

Interviewer: “Where? Where?”

HARRIET HARMAN: “We’ve said that we would consolidate backroom functions. That we would hold back on, erm, investment in capital that we’ve been doing so much over the last thirteen years of. So we’ve said it would.”

Interviewer: “Some of the people on that march. Some of those people listening to Ed Miliband would have lost their jobs under a Labour Government. Yes or no?”

HARRIET HARMAN: “Well I think that basically we would see, er yes fewer people employed  in the public sector. We wouldn’t see the increase in public sector employment that we’d presided over. But I think to assert.”

Interviewer: “But that’s interesting so absolutely categorically some of those people who were there cheering for Ed Miliband would have lost their jobs because you would have cut their jobs had you been in Government?”

HARRIET HARMAN: “I think people were actually saying that the cuts are too far and too fast and the idea that the private sector.”

Interviewer: “The answer to that question is yes isn’t it. They answer is yes. Some of the people there would have lost their jobs because you’d have had to have made cuts in Government.”

These are very weak arguments to be barking at people looking to support the Labour Party in opposition especially when viewed against the published spending plans that Balls, Miliband, and Harman had put their metaphoric signatures to when in government only twelve months ago.

Official Treasury figures from the Budget show that Labour would cut just £2 billion less than the Government in 2011-12:

‘Under the plans that this Government inherited, £14 billion of spending cuts were planned in 2011-12, compared with 2010-11. This Government’s spending cuts amount to £16 billion over the same period’ (HM Treasury, Budget 2011, p. 10)

And so we are left with the rather distasteful images of a Labour leadership lacking in honour and candour as they continue to hide the truth about their own planned cuts, whilst standing shoulder to shoulder with thousands who were deceived into believing that things would have been so much different, the anarchists and the perpetrators of violence may well NOT be part of the trades union movement but we can almost guarantee that at every rally and protest planned over the next couple of years they’ll be there. Conveniently, Labour’s spending cuts will not!

Video courtesy of Guido Fawkes.

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Tyneside not forgotten in Budget

One of the better pieces of news from this week’s Budget was the announcement, from a Tory Chancellor who some decried as wanting to kill off the north-east, of the creation of two “enterprise zones” for the region, one to be in Teeside and the other to be on Tyneside, the exact locations to be determined by the members of the respective Local Enterprise Partnerships. I am glad that the announcement has received a “warmish” reception from the Labour Leader of South Tyneside Council Iain Malcolm who said:

“Clearly we have a decision to make, and we have until May until we need to advise the Department for Business on where we want this, but it is a welcome situation.”

The legacy of the last Enterprise Zones created in the 1980 Budget from Nigel Lawson is mixed with evidence of some lasting success and evidence of job transfers where employment had moved into an Enterprise Zone but had been lost from its previous location, from 1981 to 1986 the Enterprise Zones had cost nearly £300 million, but 2,800 firms were established in them, employing over 63,000 people. Some estimate that only around 13000 net jobs were created in the areas attracted by low local tax rates but the government at the time probably saw low tax revenue as being far better  than no tax revenue at all. Some locations such as the Merryhill Shopping Centre in Dudley, the Metro Centre in Gateshead, and the Canary Wharf redevelopment in London are seen as longer term successes where the employment provided probably equalled or bettered the employment that had previously been lost.

For us here in South Tyneside the location of the North East Enterprise Zone will be of paramount importance, as will the transition towards “wind down” as tax breaks and incentives inevitably need to be phased out, the hope being that capital flight will not occur as it did in Scotland in the 80s and to some extent other parts of the UK. Local councils will need to budget carefully in those areas where revenue will be lessened during the life of an Enterprise Zone and then carefully nurtured after the wind down in order to keep any new net jobs and encourage continued economic growth.

One of the most important factors will be the close proximity to the A19 with its new cross Tyne link and the availability of  The Port of Tyne as a major logistics facility, the partnerships arranged with other local authorities will need to be strong and effective in countering the claims of those on the north bank of the Tyne who may well have closer links to government than we do on the south side, although it ought to be appreciated that Cllr. Malcolm has been wisely networking with Conservative and Lib-Dem ministers for at least the past two years from a time when it became clear that Labour would have difficulty in winning an election under Gordon Brown’s leadership. His astute use of his business and political connections via lobbying firm Sovereign Strategy will have put him in a good place to promote South Tyneside as a place to do business, and a borough worthy of continued government support on whatever scale could be managed.

The Local Enterprise Partnership for the north east comprises members of seven councils covering areas of Durham, Tyne Wear, and Northumberland and it will be chaired by former Sage CEO Paul Walker, who after 16 years at the helm of the company was one of the longest serving CEOs of a FTSE100 listed company at the time of his departure, and it is important to recognise that the driving force behind this vehicle will have years of business and enterprise experience, rather than someone steeped in public sector service.

So now the difficult discussions need to begin on where we want an Enterprise Zone to be established, early suggestions include Wallsend with its green renewable energy plan, and land near the Nissan plant at Washington, I’m not sure if it is a requisite that one major zone needs to be created or whether it is possible to outline two or three separate areas that can be dovetailed together to provide a better mix of opportunities, in which case I’d like to see the Monkton business area in South Tyneside expanded to participate in the scheme. Wherever the LEP decides to locate the Enterprise Zone I believe that it is absolutely essential to look at the region’s infrastructure and quickly source more funding to improve the road networks that facilitate easy access to the A19 north and south of the Tyne to eradicate the “pinch points” that currently exist at Testo’s roundabout and the Silverlink, otherwise the eventual completion of the new Tyne Tunnel crossing will not provide as much relief as was first envisaged.

There is an opportunity being offered here for some sustained local economic growth which must not be missed, and our local council leaders need to be prepared to take bold and imaginative decisions which may shape the development of Tyneside for many years to come. They also need to be cognisant of the risks involved by the type of development allowed in the Enterprise Zone and how it impacts upon the livelihood of our existing town centres.

Do readers have any preferences or ideas about where and what type of development we would like to see from a north east Enterprise Zone?

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Former South Tyneside man turns back on local politics

I had accused him of being the biggest political turncoat in Britain, but it seems there were a few others around the country with a record for swapping parties that would make them proud.

Former Newcastle City councillor Ian Proud hails from Jarrow and used to work with me at one time in South Shields, he used to support Sunderland too but I’m not sure if I can trust that he still does. It has been rumoured that the former Denton councillor was about to stand as a candidate in the local elections for yet another party, the fledgling Newcastle First group formed around a couple of disgruntled Tories. Great, what a story, how many parties could you represent in a short political life?

What a shame he decided to change his mind.

Word of warning t councillors in South Tyneside (and quite a few of them have swapped horses over the years) if Proud returns to Jarrow and comes knocking on your door asking to join up, try and find that elusive “temporary membership card”.

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How do we help bring shoppers back to our town centre?

Three and a half years ago I wrote this post which was in essence a formulate idea for providing a temporary or semi permanent cover for South Shields Market Place. Lo and behold that little seed of an idea is now being talked about in town hall committee rooms as South Tyneside Council finally realises that something has to be done, fairly soon, to help inject some life back into the retailing heart of South Shields, many of the ideas being considered have already been raised here, but once again the general malaise of our councillors has affected the creative thinking of officers and the talking about, discussing, and/or consultative phase will drag on for years and years I fear.

OK, so the picture above was only intended to create a discussion point, something to think about, and the post threw in a few more ideas too, but there are others worth pursuing too and again once they get talked about in the town hall they enter a time warp, and do not reappear until a number of years later. I refer to embryonic proposals to introduce a niche marketing concept in the Barrington Street and Chapter Row area, a place for independent retailers with specialised interests to be used as a link or bridge between King Street and the new Asda and Waterloo Square areas. There is a similar scheme that has been working for a number years in the Vine Place area of Sunderland adjacent to Park Lane, and even in the depths of this recession they still have full occupancy of retail units there.

As for our market it is in decline, that cannot be denied, however it is not the only local market that is facing difficulties, Newcastle’s Quayside Sunday market has fewer traders and they too are facing increases in stall rates, Darlington’s market has all but moved indoors or decamped from its traditional home with stalls now appearing in the main shopping streets. Slightly further afield Catterick’s Sunday market at the racecourse appears to be flourishing.

So the big question is “how do we promote and reinvigorate retail in South Shields town centre and the Market Place?”

I have already offered suggestions that include discounted rates for advanced bookings of market stalls, a traditional Christmas Market such as the one seen in Grassington with inducements for traders to dress up in period costume (perhaps they could be allowed to erect their stalls in King Street as a reward), covering the Market Place, musical entertainment, a partner assisted free parking scheme,  adding a farmer’s market to the Friday Flea market, and a few more, follow the links to see my thoughts over the past couple of years.

I know times are hard and retailing conditions are tough right now, and for years we have faced heavy competition from the indoor shopping arenas at Newcastle, Sunderland, Washington and The Metro Centre but we cannot be complacent and sit and wait for the economy to improve. Our council in South Tyneside needs to be proactive and needs to show greater intent by doing something to speed up their decision making processes and show some activity on the ground. The pace of progress needs to be picked up unless we wish to continually play “catch up” with our neighbours.

So, what are your thoughts on improving our retail heart and the Market Place? What would you like to see being done to increase variety and choice, what sort of shopping experience do you want?

Here’s a picture of a very small market development in Swindon (taken from Google Map’s Streetview, it has a semi permanent covering which can be raised or lowered depending to the weather conditions, they have a much larger one in the town centre.

A market in Swindon

I look forward to your thoughts and comments.

Related posts

• South Shields Market Place
• South Shields Market
• Shopping in South Shields

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Karen Buck

What an appalling woman!

So……and this has got me to think about things which are not happening in Japan, North Africa, or the Gulf states……… the Tories and Lib-Dems are not only evil, super rich Eton educated toffs, heinous child killers, and pompous oafs, but they are also misogynists who want to launch a campaign of ethnic cleansing in the capital.

The picture I link to on the left is from The Daily Telegraph where it is reported today that Labour’s front bench “spokesperson” (Shadow Works and Pensions minister no less) Karen Buck has been giving a speech attacking the government’s plan to limit the amount of housing benefit to £400 per week from next month.

I have no problem with her opposing that and will defend her rights of free speech, at least she is being consistent, which is more than can be said for Miliband and Balls when it comes to fuel prices, but the semantics and choice of phrases used was risqué to say the least:

“(The Government) do not want lower-income women, families, children and, above all, let us be very clear – because we also know where the impact is hitting – they don’t want black women, they don’t want ethnic minority women and they don’t want Muslim women living in central London……

“The Government is one that is deeply hostile to middle- and lower-income women having children.

“When you listen to the Tories speaking in Parliament, there is an arrogance and an ignorance that I have never known in my 13 years in Parliament: basically, thinking that anyone whose income is below the top rate of tax shouldn’t have children.”

Talk about going over the top a little! She may as well have said that the Tories want to ethnically cleanse London and force all women to leave regardless of race, ethnicity, creed, or social class, presumably the evil Tories will be happy to see the centre of London occupied solely by men in sharp suits…….duh!

Such inflammatory and divisive language has no place in the modern day Labour Party, whose leaders must realise that the Chairman of the Conservative Party is Baroness Sayeeda Hussein Warsi, this country’s first Muslim member of the Cabinet. However, this is just the sort of evidence that will suggest the Labour Party has still not modernised and is still bedevilled with dinosaur dogmas from the past.

So far there has been no comment from Ed Miliband on his colleague’s outburst, no admission of collective responsibility, no condemnation of his shadow minister’s speech, and no recognition that the policy is clearly designed to trim public costs regardless of who or where it applies to. So Mr. Miliband, are you going to accept this sort of speech as being representative of the modern Labour Party or not?

What the Buck is going on Ed?

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The Northern League

It’s all about roots, traditions, the essential essence of the game, and preserving a place for those with dreams of bigger things.

I guess it all started round 1963 and 1964 the year that Sunderland ended six seasons in the old Division 2 and won promotion back to the top flight. I came from a family of red and whites and they held a row of ten season tickets in the main clock stand at Roker Park, of course there were always games when one uncle or grandfather couldn’t attend, so that’s when I got my chance to go and sit next to my dad and watch the professional game.

To continue reading this guest post that I was invited to contribute – click here

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Normal service will resume shortly

Like a lot of other people in South Shields I am more concerned with the plight of the Japanese (and the Libyan) people right now, every spare minute seems to be used in assimilating and analysing news reports. So matters such as how to get life back into our Market Square, or more shops in King Street will have to wait, they seem so trivial right now.

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Some South Tyneside “charities” are little more than job protection schemes.

First of all I have not enjoyed having to pick on one particular South Shields based “charity” for this article, it was just that the numbers were of such a great magnitude that it was too difficult to ignore, it is among a clutch of organisations properly registered as charities with The Charities Commission. As we face times of economic restraint and much tighter control of public spending, the state and its various organs, including councils such as ours in South Tyneside, are under enormous pressure to produce savings and reduce the amount of taxpayers cash that they spend. Only in this way will there be any future prospect of us being able to keep a little of our hard earned cash for ourselves.

However there are many charities which receive more than 10% of their income from the tax payer in one form or another, a threshold which ensures that they perennially plead for greater protection and greater funding without having to hand out the buckets in the street or post huge plastic bags through our letterboxes. If you would like to learn a little more about “fake charities” then read on here.

So, as the Prime Minister likes to remind us “we are all in this together” and the third sector is part of “the Big Society”, but that should not preclude many organisations listed at the Charities Commission from scrutiny or a necessary reduction in public funding, particularly if the output that they offer is little more than “public services by proxy”.

Of the South Tyneside registered charities that I looked at, the South Tyneside Council for Voluntary Service caught my eye, mainly because of the eye watering amounts of public finance that it consumes, and the very low amount of genuine public donations that it receives, in my view if a “charity” cannot raise a sufficient funding for itself directly from the public then that could indicate that we do not necessarily support its objectives and aims. the South Tyneside CVS submitted its latest balance sheet to the Charities commission in November of last year, you can download it in .pdf form here.

In the year ended March 2010 it had a total income of almost £1m (991,580), of that income only £1013 came from general donations, fund raising or sponsorship, i.e. this is what the average Joe in the street knowingly and deliberately gave them. Their income resources from charitable activity amounted to £854,117, and a further £136,450 came from activities for generating funds. From their income South Tyneside CVS expended £981,401 including staff costs of £653,813, and this for a head count of only 35! They state that their principle sources of income are South Tyneside Council, South Tyneside Primary Care Trust, Capacity Builders ( a publicly financed organisation), The Big Lottery Fund, and South Tyneside Council Area Based Grants. Clearly, this small group of people rely almost exclusively on the tax payer for their jobs and livelihoods.

Furthermore of the £981,401 that it spent, only £53,000 was passed to partner organisations and other groups in the form of grants.

So the cash rolls in from the public coffers and it rolls out mainly in the form of wage costs, but for what and for whom? Wage costs for 35 people suggest an average of around £18000 per head, but some of those listed are part time, and others are in more senior managerial positions, so some latitude ought to be assumed. The largest wage costs are attached to the Health Trainers, those good people who work in the community telling us what we ought to eat, what we ought not to drink or smoke, how and why we ought to exercise, what substances we ought to stop abusing our bodies with etc. etc. All well and good, very acceptable advice, but shouldn’t South Tyneside Primary Health Care Trust be shouldering the costs directly? Instead, they appear to channel money out of their own budgets to South Tyneside CVS and ask them to administer the wage for these trainers, what comes in then goes out, and whatever savings the CVS achieve they are able to keep for themselves, a very adept means of protecting health service workers!

The CVS managed to make savings of around £10,000 in the reporting year which it keeps to add to its rolling reserve to achieve the required 13 weeks worth of working capital, and from what I can glean from this report we have a mass of cash being recycled from a variety of tax funded sources to help pay for services that ought to have been directly supplied by the grant providers originally. This looks like a convenient way of hiding some of our public services from view and effectively protecting them from scrutiny or the effects of government directed cash savings.

It also provides work for charitable groups to administer the wages and associated costs of these services on a very long term and secure basis, the director of CVS, for instance, has been in post for around 26 years. She must be extremely good at the job and highly valued, it would be difficult to find a director or chief executive of a public limited company holding down such a prestigious position for so long.

It is easier to understand now why public relations drives in the local press appear year after year after year during that six month or so period when councils and other bodies are preparing their annual budgets, although sometimes they garner the type of publicity which is not always welcome.

South Tyneside CVS is not alone in living off the public purse, Bliss=Ability, the Laygate based charity which provides an information service for people with disabilities is also registered at the Charities Commission, although it is diversifying and one arm is now a small company. However in its last accounts submitted in September 2009 (.pdf here) they reported an income of £424,000 of which only £801 was voluntarily donated! Becuase of the greater diversity in their activities they were able to find funding from a more diverse range of public sources including South Tyneside Council’s Social Care and Health Advocacy Service, Links (a publicly funded local networking service), the Carers Support Team, the Coalfield Regeneration Trust, Social Enterprise Europe Consensus Development, Community Health and Development, and a Big Lottery Healthy Living fund. Once again a charity that survives on tax payers cash and paid out over £300,000 of its income on staff costs.

South Tyneside Training and Enterprise Network Ltd is another “small company” also registered as a charity with the Charities Commission (last balance sheet .pdf here), who from a total income of £162,300 had voluntary donations of around £5000, mainly from the Yorkshire Bank, the vast majority of the remainder of their funding was also provided in one way or another by the tax payer. They receive grant aid to assist them in finding work for the unemployed. Unfortunately they tend to spend far more than they receive and in 2010 their payroll costs of £309,462 exceeded their income. Unlike many private enterprises who would have folded without further investment, TENS see themselves as a going concern, and the government will see a need for their services to continue.

Groundwork South Tyneside and Newcastle upon Tyne had a total income of £2.88m of which only £36,000 was voluntarily donated, they are profitable and spent only around £200,000 on staff costs, they intend to build high quality “carbon neutral” homes on a site in Reed Street, South Shields.

The point that I am trying to make here is that their charitable status is not determined by the amount of voluntary donations by you and I, but by the largesse of the public purse, and if “we are all in this together” then we have to weigh up the balance between costs and value. We often hear the argument that someone may know the cost of everything but the value of nothing, but it is my belief that many of the projects being pursued by these charities were at some point in the past within the remit of a public organisation directly responsible to a minister, or council responsible to its electors. Over the course of time these functions have been farmed out to pretty much trustees who are now charged with administering public funds by proxy. As such, I see no reason why the organisations who are granting the funding to these charities should not take a long hard look at who they are giving our money too, how much value we get for it, and determine whether or not the services offered could be provided either in the private sector or at the direct cost of the public sector openly and honestly without hiding costs in another organisation.

As things stand, we have thousands of “fake charities“  suckling at the tit of the public purse, spending a small fortune providing jobs for themselves, unaccountable to electors and in many cases set up without public consultation or involvement.

Update 20:50

Just as I’m talking about hiding public services away behind a “charity” cover and protecting jobs, what do I find? It must have been a premonition!

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