Quote of the day

Eric Pickles yesterday when asked if he thought it was bizzare that Ed Milliband had compared his party's struggle to that of apartheid:

"Well, I suppose there comes an occasion, you turn up, there's a lot of people there-and you just start to talk. These things happen, and we should be in a forgiving mood. I mean, anybody can compare themselves to Martin Luther King."



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Removing Street Clutter (signs)

Lazy blog post today regurgitating a press release, but I know it's an issue in Stratford, with people very concerned about the number of signs on the streets runing the look of the area. As a bit of commentary, Eric Pickles continues to deliver. There's no recess for that man.

Councils will today be urged to get rid of unnecessary signs, railings and advertising hoardings in a bid to make streets tidier and less confusing for motorists and pedestrians.

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles and Transport Secretary Philip Hammond are concerned that the character of the country’s urban spaces is being damaged and have written to councils leaders calling on them to reduce the number of signs and other ‘street clutter’.

The Government believes that in some cases traffic signs and railings are installed by councils in the mistaken belief that they are legally required. However, although some signs are required by law, Government advice is that for signs to be most effective they should be kept to a minimum. To help councils do this the Department for Transport is reviewing traffic signs policy and new advice on how to reduce clutter will be published later this year.

Ministers want communities to inform local authorities of particularly bad examples of clutter as part of the Big Society in action. Organisations who promote good urban design like Civic Voice, Living Streets and fixmystreet.com are already helping people alert councils to examples of clutter and showing people how to carry out street audits.

Eric Pickles said:
“Our streets are losing their English character. We are being overrun by scruffy signs, bossy bollards, patchwork paving and railed off roads wasting taxpayers' money that could be better spent on fixing potholes or keeping council tax down. We need to ‘cut the clutter’.

“Too many overly cautious townhall officials are citing safety regulations as the reason for cluttering up our streets with an obstacle course when the truth is very little is dictated by law. Common sense tells us uncluttered streets have a fresher, freer authentic feel, which are safer and easier to maintain.

“Organisations like Civic Voice, Living Streets and fixmystreet can help councils provide a Big Society solution – local people carrying out street audits will bring power and character back to neighbourhoods.”

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Replacing John Maples - It continues

People are beginning to get very hot under the collar about the selection process for John Maples' seat in Stratford-Upon-Avon (home of this blog), and amongst an information vacuum I think that people are beginning to panic and just make things up.

The current situation as far as anyone knows is that the Association is waiting to hear from CCHQ with regards to the shortlist, effectively who will be on it and how many.  Once that has been decided the membership will then be involved in selecting a candidate from that list in an open manner as they would have been able to under normal circumstances. One thing that is guaranteed is that CCHQ won't be imposing a single candidate on the Association, and that there will be at least three prospective candidates on the short-list.

There has been a lot of talk about the so called "by-election" rules disenfranchising the local membership and disempowering them to be able to select a candidate themselves. However I think you have to look at them in a different light and consider how a candidate is traditionally selected.

Usually prospective candidates apply to CCHQ, who then pass CVs and applications to the local Association. The Association Executive then sifts them  and in most cases interviews these candidates to produce a shortlist. This shortlist which in some cases can be as few as two people is then presented to the entire membership to vote on.

So for the non executive members of the membership, what's changed? Well if anything the situation has improved, there is a guaranteed three people on the shortlist (not a potential two) giving the whole membership more say in the matter. The problem is that the executive lose their totalitarian powers over the process. They have been usurped by CCHQ, and if anything the democratic power has been given back to the membership itself and taken away from those who are locally at the top. The Stratford executive has a large membership, but only a small percentage of them are in the executive. In fact many of them are not overly engaged, just local members, but you can bet they will want to be involved in selecting a new parliamentary candidate. So are these new rules really a bad thing if they increase engagement and democracy in the process for all?

Related Posts:
Replacing John Maples - A Thought
Replacing John Maples - The Procedure
John Maples - The Morning After
 

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Replacing John Maples - The Procedure

ConservativeHome has revealed the shortlisting process that CCHQ will be using to provide the Stratford Upon Avon Conservative Association with a shortlist of candidates to select from.

Eric Pickles, Party Chairman will be given a primary role within it, with no role at all for outgoing local MP John Maples.

The process according to ConservativeHome will be as follows:

• Any candidate on the candidates’ list who wishes to express an interest in the seat will be invited to do so in an email to Gareth Fox, of the Candidates’ Department at CCHQ.
• Eric Pickles will conduct an initial sift;
• A panel of Eric Pickles, Patrick McLoughlin, who is the opposition Chief Whip, and Jeremy Middleton, Chairman of the National Conservative Convention, will draw up the final shortlist for the association;
• The shortlist will be passed to the association for them to select the candidate.

There’s no word from ConservativeHome on how long the shortlist will be, but I have heard from my sources that the rules stipulate that it must be a shortlist of at least 3, and that in reality the list is expected to be larger than that.

I also know that there’s a meeting at Trinity Street (Stratford Conservative HQ) this morning and I’m sure the local selection process from the shortlist will be discussed. As soon as I know more on what we’ll be doing locally I’ll update.

Related Posts:
Replacing John Maples - A thought
Replacing John Maples - it Continues
John Maples - The Morning After

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