I Thought 'Legal Graffiti' Had Been Banned?

Here's an odd one.

Last year JoCo went on one of his occasional macho trips about banning stuff and this time it was 'legal graffiti' that got it in the neck. Apparently, even legal graffiti of the sort done by youth groups etc in an attempt to get young people engaging in art forms that they are better able to relate to makes the place look untidy and the realm of yobbos.

Unless of course it's three of NCC's councillors who want to install a 'wildlife graffiti mural' under the bridge over the Leen near the church, then it's all ok.

Don't get me wrong, it's a nice idea, I just can't understand why one form of graffiti done with full permission is 'bad' when another is 'good'. I would email one of the councillors concerned Cat Arnold to find out but she doesn't reply to emails so there's no point.

Lack of Engagement Woes...Again

Unfortunately I have to report that my initial optimism at One Nottingham's response to my request for a copy of the decision to award Nottingham Equal funding appears to be misplaced.

As I said before, ON's PR chap Kevin Bartlett provided me with copies of board minutes but said that the decision to pick NE was made by a tender panel, a detail not mentioned in the NCC decision to provide match funding. That just mentioned a lack of other potential organisations.

I have written back to Mr Bartlett, twice, asking him for a copy of the tender decision and meeting minutes as their guidance says that this should normally be provided under the Freedom of Information Act and Kevin did say he would deal with my request under FoIA principles. Not a peep back from him sadly and he sounded so friendly at the outset.

What have they got to hide?

The next tactic I think is to test just how independent ON is from NCC by putting in a FoIA request to NCC itself. NCC's financial regulations state that contracts over £50k must have three bidders. The financial regs can be dispensed with if a justification can be provided but according to Kevin that didn't happen. We'll see what they say.

In other clamming up news, after encouraging all and sundry to write to their councillors about discretionary housing payments I made a point of doing so myself. Ten days ago I wrote to my own local councillors, Cat Arnold, Rob Lee and Mick Newton, the three party leaders and relevant portfolio holders Graham Chapman (resources), Eunice Campbell (adult services) and David Liversidge (housing).

Wanna know how many replies I've had? One, from Lib Dem leader Gary Long who said he would support DHPs being sent for scrutiny. Hats off to him at least. Nothing from anybody else, not even my own councillors which is an absolute disgrace. I've never had a reply from any of my local councillors apart from one from Mick Newton and that was when he was off sick.

These wasters are a disgrace to democracy. How can they complain about people not voting or otherwise engaging in political life when they steadfastly ignore people who do? How often do politicians howl in condemnation when people dare to take matters into their own hands and riot or stage other forms of direct action? We hear them mewling and puking that we should effect change by democratic means but ignore us when we do. It's not a party political thing, they're all part of the same disease, although we do have a particular problem with councillors being little more than vote fodder at the beck and call of the leadership in Nottingham. The last thing that elected representatives of that calibre want is for people to take an interest in what they're doing.

One Nottingham - They're on YOUR Side (and They Want You to Know It)

One Nottingham has given its Board a briefing on changes to benefit rules introduced by the Tory government (yes, I know it's got Lib Dems in as well but if I was a Lib Dem I'd be keeping very quiet about that).

They really want you to know about this, there was an article fed to the Post even though it was an internal document. They care you see and they want to make sure you know it.

What I can't work out* is why the sudden concern? Of course, most of the changes are horrific, especially those around Housing Benefit and those Lib Dems currently on secondment to the Conservative Party really ought to be throwing themselves under buses with shame.

But, just like in 1997 when New Labour hit the ground running with many of the Tory initiatives that had been started, especially those around benefits administration, the ConDem cuts are pretty much an extension of what Labour was doing anyway, but with knobs on. Let's look at a few of the issues that has them shaking in their boots now and contrast them with the things they didn't give a shit about when their lot was in charge.

The briefing starts off with a general preamble on the numbers claiming working age benefits, they rightly point out that most are claiming incapacity benefits rather than Jobseekers Allowance. Exactly the people who stand to lose out thanks to the previous government's change to Employment Support Allowance then, which is discussed later in the briefing. The new medical test has resulted in huge numbers of  people being refused ESA and being forced onto JSA instead. Furthermore, if you don't take part in 'work related activities' you only get a rate equivalent to JSA anyway. Current IB claimants are to be moved onto ESA in the next year or so (again, previous government). Yet it's taken until now for ON to notice all this in a paper that purports to describe the NEW government's cuts. Strange.

Next, Tax Credits and they are on fairly strong ground here, the cuts proposed are completely new. Working families with children were one of the few groups (along with pensioners) who emerged relatively unscathed from New Labour. On the other hand Tax Credits was always an administrative disaster and the alleged advantages were somewhat overblown so not too much credit for the previous government here.

It goes downhill from there. Of course I agree it's shocking that the Health in Pregnancy Grant is to be abolished and the Maternity Grant limited and I applaud anybody shouting about it from the rooftops. But, as the report does accept, the moves to force lone parents to sign on is a continuation of the previous government's policies. Was there a briefing when that was originally announced? I think we should be told.

There's a brief mention about benefits for mortgage interest which will now be paid at the 'average' mortgage rate. This is another inevitability, the current flat rate of 6% was only ever meant to be an interim measure unfortunately.  If I sound too comfortable about this I'm not; this one catches me. I'd very much like the 'interim measure' to remain.

More devastating for some was the previous government's measure to cap mortgage help for those on JSA to two years which was introduced at the same time as the increased standard interest rate. It was all packaged up as, I kid you not, measures to prevent repossession during the recession. Obviously its success depended on who you are. That one should be hitting the first claimants next year.

As for housing benefit, well as I say, words fail me at the injustices here. But let's have a look at the cuts brought in by the previous government shall we?

Initially there was a change from benefit being based on your actual rent to being based on some mythical average figure that always seemed to be lower. This was followed more recently by the introduction of Local Housing Allowance which, while being a bit of a swings and roundabouts affair certainly left plenty of scope for taking out the good bits. In fact the previous government proposed the removal of the right to keep excess benefit if you negotiated a lower rent (this was a key selling point when LHA was initially proposed), they abandoned this when the election loomed. Having won the election the Tories picked this one up and ran with it. We also had the reduction of maximum backdating from 12 months to 3 and the reductions in benefits if you're found guilty of anti-social behaviour (it took Labour two goes to get that one in. The first attempt caused an exodus of local Lib Dems when the party rightly argued against it. Yes Cllr Rob Lee, everyone's staring at you). And, not strictly benefit related but it was Labour who introduced introductory council house tenancies, thus ensuring that new tenants on benefits had no legal defence against eviction when their Housing Benefit claim was inevitably delayed. What's that you say? Surely NCC wouldn't evict tenants in that situation...?

Next we move onto *suffers series of nervous ticks* Discretionary Housing Payments, which I've written about comprehensively in the past. In a nutshell the government appears to be offsetting some of the Housing Benefit cuts with a big increase in the DHP budget.

Essentially this will be a disaster for Nottingham as the Housing Benefits service has consistently demonstrated a total inability to administer DHPs for the nine years they have been in operation, consistently underspending their allocation causing following years' allocations to be reduced. Obviously this doesn't warrant any mention in the ON briefing. I estimated that this fact alone had cost Nottingham tenants around half a million pounds between 2001-09 and that was being conservative. Meanwhile, the Post was reporting that evictions due to rent arrears had shot up by 42% in 2007.

I could go on.

But thanks One Nottingham for finally making it to the party. Where were you when the previous government were vandalising the benefits system with gay abandon? You were cheering them on, that's what you were doing because it was your sons of bitches wielding the wrecking ball**.

You don't give a shit about poverty, you only care about the tribe.

* I can really.

** Not that that excuses the current hate on poor people, a plague on all your houses I say.

NCCLols is Billy No Mates

I recently wrote to my three local councillors, Cat Arnold, Rob Lee and Mick Newton, as well as my MP Graham Allen about the CEHRNN debacle. Thought I'd update you on the response I've had so far.

Of the councillors only one has replied, Mick Newton. Not a peep from Cllrs Arnold or Lee, despite my sending a reminder.

I've written to Cat Arnold a few times now and I've never heard anything back. Previously I'd never bothered with Rob Lee after, having voted for him as a Lib Dem, he then defected to Labour over the issue of housing benefits sanctions for alleged anti-social behaviour. I put that to one side for this issue due to its importance but my initial assessment that he is little more than a worker drone for JoCo has yet to be challenged.

Who knows, they may well be so busy campaigning behind the scenes that they haven't found time to reply to lil ole me and if that turns out to be the case I'll be more than happy to take it all back.

As for Graham Allen not a peep, on this issue at least. I know that technically he has absolutely no jurisdiction over NCC affairs (and made that clear in my email) but he does have influence and surely would and should have a view,

On the other hand, today I got a rather chummy letter from him about the Robin Hood Tax. Thankfully, GA supports this measure and was obviously keen to highlight our common ground, a couple of days after the general election was called.

Maybe I'm asking too much, after all I'm only worth one vote.

Now, Now, Children, Stop Swearing

Every now and then I lose the will to live. Ok, pretty much every day I lose the will to live at some point largely because I insist on paying a daily visit to the NCC website to see what our local representatives and their minions have been up to. The arrival of the full council meeting minutes is always good for a little weep as very little actually gets decided, it's more an opportunity for a bit of political argy bargy with planted questions from the nonentity cannon fodder who can't get on any of the committees.

This one caught my eye -

"Councillor Lee asked the following question of the Leader of the Council:–

Would the Leader agree that foul and abusive language in our Parks is unacceptable and would he extend our respect initiative into the City’s Public Parks and Open Spaces?

Councillor Collins replied as follows:-

Thank you Lord Mayor and can I thank Councillor Lee for his question and yes, I do agree that foul and abusive language in our parks is unacceptable and will discuss with the CDP ways that the respect initiative can be extended in the city’s open spaces."

Is this what we want our elected representatives wasting their time on? Nothing better to do than to than try and worm your way into Pope Collins' inner circle? What next, ban farting in the bath?

Councillor Lee is of course one of those who got themselves elected as Lib Dems in the 2003 election at the height of the Iraq War backlash against Labour (and no disrespect to the Lib Dems but in Nottingham they are rather a small pond compared to Labour so a little fish would have a much better chance of being selected). He then defected to Labour via a token period as an Independent to try and make it look like that wasn't what he was planning to do all along. Of course he doesn't mention that little detail in his bio.

To me, and hopefully anybody else who has as much as a passing interest in democracy, that's a hell of a lot more offensive than a bit of swearing in the park. And it's not as if there aren't enough measures already in the various Public Order and Protection from Harassment Acts for the Police to use in appropriate circumstances. And we'll leave it with the police if you don't mind, any of those plastic warden types tries to give me an on-the-spot ticket for swearing will find it re-entering his person via a new bumhole.

Anyway, before Councillor Lee tries to ban swearing in blogs I'd just like to say this. In your stupid potato face Rob Lee you turd-brained turncoat of a twat.

And there is another appearance of the same old 'poor widdle me' passive aggressive silliness I wrote about the other day, this time from Cllr Bull.

Admittedly there were arguably some mitigating circumstances for NCC's hottest councillor, there had been a bit of an ambush of green inked 'questions from the public' and Cllr Bull clearly felt she'd done quite a bit for them already but this sort of thing -

"I have to say though, that I am somewhat disappointed in the questions asked, since I have been working with the group of Churchfield Lane residents directly for over 3 years on these issues."

Well, it's not very dignified is it, kind of a bit schoolma'amish. And she does go on as well, wittering on for seven long paragraphs about all the work she'd done.

Bit of advice. They're not listening. The green ink brigade have their view of the world and nothing you do for them or say will shake it. Keep it simple and factual and get to the pub a bit earlier.

Although I do admit, I did feel a bit sorry for poor old Cllr 'Trembling' Trimble who had to deal with yet another question from Tory Leader Cllr Price on behalf of the exceedingly posh and members-only Wollaton Park Golf Club. Who said class war stereotypes are dead?