The blog of Olly Wells

I did promise that I wouldn’t be blogging on individual Lib Dems unless they blogged on individual Conservatives or executive decisions in a new spirit of shared common purpose. So imagine my delight when Olly Wells mentioned my name in his latest offering on the parking charges in Woking.

Despite my lack of imagination, I felt the best thing to do was to leave a comment for him underneath. So now I’ve exhausted my mind for this afternoon, I’m off to lie down.

Update 26/9: To his credit, Olly Wells allowed my comment to stand and replied to it but I’m not even slightly convinced. For those who don’t wish to read  it on his website, here it is in full:

Thank you for your comments. To answer your questions I am in favour of reducing parking prices and charging hours to ensure parking in Woking is competitively priced to ensure as many people as possible are able to visit Woking. This will be good for local businesses. I favour reducing the number of cars on the road by increasing the amount of public transport available, making it easier for local people to come to Woking town centre. I would spend the profit from parking (reduced by reduced charging) on improved sustainable public transport. I do not accept that the council’s present flawed financial model is the best or only model available. I believe that this model can be changed to improve revenue and reduce costs. Your next likely comment might be to ask me to tell you how. For this I suggest you vote Liberal Democrat at the next local election, after reading our literature of course. The Liberal Democrats propose real change and real change will not come from simply looking to make small changes within the current boundaries such as reducing staffing levels or increasing council tax. The boundaries need to be changed, this will require our imagination and innovation.

So Cllr Wells is in favour of reducing the car parking charges and times that are charged for. Result – more cars in the car parks and on the roads and good news for business. He’s also in favour of reducing the number of cars on the road through better public transport. Result – fewer people using the car parks and impaired revenue from them. Alongside this, his idea is to spend the “profit” from the car parks on the public transport and that Woking Borough Council should run this transport system (or at least fund it). Result – a great big hole in the budget.

So we have more cars in the car parks and fewer. We have income to boost public transport generated by users that we are trying to drive away. And we have the council’s accounts being meaninglessly broken down so we can state for political purposes than one section makes a “profit“. What about all the other sections of the council that make a “loss”? How does he think that corporate management and member services are paid for?

Cllr Wells avoided answering my question about how you re-organise the council’s accounts to make this work. Instead he told me to read Lib Dem literature (sorry, I’m reading the new Dan Brown book at the moment, at least that’s partially based on fact and it’s a good deal more interesting) and vote Lib Dem in 2010 to find out.

If the Lib Dems have a plan to revolutionise Woking Borough Council, why didn’t they deploy it in 2006/7 when they were in control, instead of ducking the difficult decisions that had to be made by the Conservatives in 2007/8 and are still ongoing? Isn’t this the party that criticises DC for not stating his policies? And I’m supposed to believe that if I vote Lib Dem next year, they’ve got a cunning plan that will allow endless investment in services that are supposed to be provided at other tiers of government?

The only other option is borrowing. And that’s a subject that I’ll be returning to before long.

In the meantime, Cllr Wells may think I’m stunted in this area but I recognise the difference between imagination and fantasy. I’ve also asked enough questions of politicians in my time to know a question dodge when I see one.

The (changing) thoughts of chairman Wells (part 3)

Another post from Cllr Olly Wells, although to be fair at least this one is about Knaphill rather than Burma or the Imperial plunder of British museums.

What readers of his blog might not be aware of is the revisions this posting had to go through in order to make it, well, accurate. Portfolio holder Cllr Melanie Whitehand spotted a more than “liberal” attitude to the facts and contacted Cllr Wells thus:

From: Cllr Melanie Whitehand Sent: 02 September
2009 17:23

To: Cllr Olly Wells

Cc: Councillors; Geoff McManusSubject: Dog
waste bins

Dear Councillor Wells,

It has been brought to my attention that you have placed on your web blog the question put to Council in July by Councillor Sharpley re. dog waste bins and the answer given by myself.

You have used those statements as a basis for further comment on the subject.

I was intrigued by this opening comment…

‘There are fewer and fewer bins for dog waste in Knaphill….

I contacted the Environmental Health department at the Council offices for clarification on this remark, as I was concerned that this was happening. The officer was surprised to hear this assertion as he felt sure that no bins have been removed. Should this have been the case they most certainly would have replaced them.

The second comment re. Barton Close and the lack of a dog waste bin in the area was answered by the officer that dog waste bins are never put that close to residential sites as both the County Council and Woking Council are restricted in this action. Dog waste bins are placed in larger recreational areas. i.e. The Brookwood Country park, Waterer’s Park and St. John’s Lye. The comment to me was that the desire to have dog waste bins close to residential houses was not encouraged from communities for the very reasons that you state, that dog
mess can harbour the parasite Toxi caricanis hence the enforcement of a fine if a dog owner is caught allowing their dog to foul in a public area.

Your third comment, that despite my assurance that…

‘.. where possible replacement or requests for additional bins will be accommodated…’

You report that requests for additional bins have been denied.

This was another comment I put to the Council officer, who again, was confused with this remark as he was of the mind that no requests for bins in appropriate areas have been denied.

Could you possible furnish details of the claims of where dog waste bins that have been requested in particular areas were denied please? And could you offer up evidence of where the losses of dog waste bins are as the Environmental Health department, I am sure, will be happy to replace them??

Regards

Melanie
Whitehand

A suitably chastised Cllr Wells replied, saying:

“I have amended the first sentence on my post as while it is my opinion, I am
more concerned with there not being enough bins in Knaphill and as these are
also being used as dog waste bins there are not enough bins for dog waste. I will
spend sometime checking the dog waste provision in Knaphill further (as I am
sure you will, perhaps we could do this together?)”

So the main premise of his blog post was, well, a bit of a guess, then.

As for whether Melanie has accepted his offer to audit the dog waste bins in Knaphill (but presumably not their contents??), I am yet to hear.

The thoughts of Chairman Wells (part 2)

Another classic blog post from Cllr Olly Wells, who seems intent on talking about anything apart from Knaphill.

This time, he’s hand-wringing about the return of foreign artefacts from British museums and having a good old Liberal self-flagellation session about the lingering wrongs of the Empire. Snore. On the bright side though, he does have a talent for the misplaced assumption. At the moment, he’s got relatives over from Taiwan.

“They have been doing a lot of sightseeing which has been good fun, but as usual
when people visit from abroad questions are raised about our imperial past which
we seem to have forgotten in the UK”

As usual!? More than 31 million people visited the UK in 2008. It seems hard to imagine that they are walking around London admiring Buckingham Palace or exploring Shakespearean Stratford overwhelming tour guides with accusatory questions about imperialism. Most tourists to Britain are just happy to see some sunshine and follow a fat woman with an umbrella.

But Cllr Wells hasn’t finished.

“The key question is should we return all the historical artefacts in the
British and other museums that we didn’t purchase or receive as gifts?”

Funny, I thought the key questions in museums were things like “how old is this?”, “what was it used for?” and “what is its historical significance?” Clearly I was wrong. The question that visitors to the V&A or the Ashmolean ought to be asking themselves is “under what circumstances was this artefact acquired and does it accord with the European Convention on Human Rights?” It all goes to show what a weird world many Lib Dems live in.

Finally, we get

“I don’t want to be seen as anti-patriotic, but it is worth noting that a
significant proportion of the world’s population appears to see us in an
imperial light, rightly or wrongly.”

Perish the thought that Cllr Wells should be viewed as unpatriotic – I didn’t know he cared – but no, it’s not worth noting because the only part of the world’s population that sees us in the light he describes are our enemies.

The problem with Liberals is they’ve spent so long worrying about what this country’s enemies believe that eventually they’ve started to think like them. It’s not good.

The Thoughts of Chairman Wells (part 1)

If you are ever unfortunate enough to entertain Lib Dems to tea, make sure you bake two cakes – one for them to have and one to eat. Having moaned for ages that Woking parking charges were too high, they are now moaning that the action the Conservatives have taken to reduce charges at commercially sensitive times are inadequate.

His latest blog, imaginatively entitled Parking Charges seem to go up and up under the Tories, offers nothing new in the way of ideas about how to address this issue. Yes, charges have gone up. Yes, the council needs to increase its revenue to cover increasing costs.

“I wonder if in Woking parking charges should be linked to cost of providing
parking services and public transport and that the money raised should not be
spent on other things. In Woking this would probably mean a threat to
services that are paid for by the profit from parking.”

He muses. Profit from parking? Can Cllr Wells please explain what this profit is – the parking service is not run as an independently operating financial unit but as part of Woking Borough Council, which doesn’t make a “profit”.

“The money raised should not be spent on other things”- yes, he’d like that, wouldn’t he? Then the nasty old Tories would have no money to provide any other services, which he would then be able to crow about when they got cut. The Conservatives will not cut front-line services in Woking.

“What about restricting any additional income from rises in parking charges to be
ring fenced to only be spent on improvements in parking facilities and better
public transport.”

This gets funnier. Is Cllr Wells seriously saying that Woking should hand over part of its income to Surrey County Council for it to make improvements to public transport in other parts of the county? Are the Lib Dems saying that they would do that? And the parking facilities have only just undergone a multi-million pound capital overhaul. Where is he going to spend this ring-fenced revenue to any effect?

Car parking income is dropping because the recession means that fewer people are using their cars and they are not buying so many goods. The increased cost can never be a good thing – but it is not the primary factor for most people staying away. Woking Borough Council’s experience in the past is that dropping the charges has no effect on takeup.

Cllr Wells’s pie-in-the-sky nonsense shows a total lack of understanding about local government finance, the respective responsibilities of tiered authorities, not to mention a great deal of naivety about how to bring about increased revenues, a vibrant town centre and transport improvements.

God help us if this is the level of the Lib Dem thinking we can expect if they take control next year. But mark my words – if they do, car parking charges will increase in the same way that they have this year.

When the Lib Dems were last in charge, parking charges in Woking went up twice in the same year.

Miles away

One of the differences between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives is that Conservatives want to transform the country whereas Lib Dems always seem to want to change the world.

That’s fine but it does rather beg the question of where the focus of that party and its members lies. Take Cllr Olly Wells of Knaphill for example, who was behind the whole lowering the flag for Aung San Suu Kyi nonsense, which inspired two separate entries on his blog. This week, he’s slightly closer to home in the Artic circle with Greenpeace (complete with links to The Guardian) – all very well, but not really focussing on the needs of Woking or Knaphill.

Conservatives understand that in order to effect change you have to be systematic and focussed on meaningful objectives. Liberals have their heads in the clouds rather than ear to the ground. That’s fine for a pressure group but potentially disastrous in a supposed party of government.