Month: March 2019
West Seaton residents will have to vote in Beer, despite promises there would be a polling station in Seaton.
People in the western side of Seaton who have been shunted – against the protests of the Town Council and the West Seaton and Seaton Hole Association – into the Beer and Branscombe district ward, will have to travel to the Mariners’ Hall in Beer to vote on May 2nd. Despite Cllr Marcus Hartnell assuring the Town Council that there would be a polling station in west Seaton (in what is now the ‘Beer Road Ward’ for the Town Council election), Seaton voters are more or less being forced to drive to Beer, unless they fancy a vigorous up-and-down hill walk via the Coastal Path or the rather dangerous main road. This is adding insult to injury. The district ward is still called Beer and Branscombe, although there are far more Seaton than Branscombe voters in the revised ward.
Jack Rowland and Dan Ledger are standing in Seaton as Independent East Devon Alliance candidates for EDDC
JACK ROWLAND, current Deputy Mayor of Seaton and former Mayor, who chairs Seaton Area Health Matters which is striving to retain the hospital as a health hub, and DAN LEDGER, a town councillor with special interests in employment, housing and leisure facilities in the town, have announced that they are standing to represent Seaton in the district elections on Thursday 2nd May.
On-street parking tariffs: need for strategic approach which supports public transport and cycling recognised by County committee
The Corporate Infrastructure and Regulatory Services Scrutiny Committee debated a ‘call in’ of proposed increases in on-street parking charges, which the Lib Dems argued were inconsistent and in some cases excessive. However the point was made by Labour Councillor Yvonne Atkinson that we need to look at the possibility of using parking income to support public transport and cycling. I urged a more ‘strategic’ approach and this was recommended by the Committee.
Connecting Devon and Somerset: broadband rollout is a ‘mini-Brexit’ says Tory councillor – and he didn’t mean that as a compliment
The disaster that is the Gigaclear superfast broadband rollout came back to Scrutiny on Tuesday. Councillor Rufus Gilbert, the Conservative cabinet member responsible, called it a ‘mini-Brexit’. Even if it all works out in the end, 50,000 homes and businesses still won’t be connected in 2020. And no one thinks it will. Cllr Gilbert’s point was that ‘we don’t want a hard exit’ from the Gigaclear contract. He claimed that we will know ‘by the summer’ whether Gigaclear can recover – the rollout timetable for communities is still unknown. But when I pressed for a more definitive update at the next Scrutiny meeting on 26 June, he said that would be too early. This debacle, impacted but not solely caused by the Carillion collapse, is surely another big nail in the coffin of outsourcing in Devon. In the meanwhile, people affected will be able (from April) to claim from the national Better Broadband Voucher Scheme. I’ll post details when I have them.
Outsourced property management: minimal ‘profit’ for DCC, while ‘all the income generation is cheques from County Hall’ – time for a rethink?
Devon County Council outsources its property management to Norfolk Property Services. DCC has 20 per cent equity in NPS, but the forecast profit share for DCC in 2019-20 is a mere £78k. This emerged at DCC’s Corporate Infrastructure and Regulatory Services Scrutiny Committee on Tuesday, leading Tory councillor Paul Crabb to make the comment in the title to this piece.
Why I’m not supporting the idea of making St Boniface the Patron Saint of Devon
The Boniface Link Association are asking County Councillors to back this proposal. I’ve explained my position in this letter to them:
Thank you for writing to me about your proposal that St Boniface should be made the Patron Saint of Devon and his day be made Devonshire Day. I found your letter and the leaflet most interesting, and as a staunch European I was attracted to the story of Boniface’s European connections. I certainly appreciate the role which Christianity has played in the creation of modern Devon, England and Europe.
However I am afraid that I cannot support your proposal. This is because we no longer have a primarily Christian society, with many belonging to other faiths such as Judaism and Islam, and half the population no longer identifying with religion at all. In this situation, I don’t believe it is appropriate to further entrench Christianity in the symbols of our local institutions.
I particularly think that St Boniface is the wrong figurehead for our County since his story is so much about missionary activity to convert the ‘heathens’. In this light, many of us today would be regarded as heathen, and I think it sends out the wrong message – especially to children of other faiths and none – to adopt as our patron someone who is identified with this particular aspect of our history. I hope you will understand why I will be opposing this proposal when Nick Way brings it forward.
I have written to @neil_parish to represent the 7,000 of his constituents who have signed the petition to #RevokeArticle50. We are the people, too. Listen to our voices of common sense.
Dear Neil,
I am writing to represent nearly seven thousand of your constituents who have signed the petition on the Government website to revoke the Article 50 notification to exit the EU. This is the largest number who have ever signed any petition. Across Devon, over 100,000 people have supported it, and nationally the total is now 4.8 million.
I know you have taken the position that the 2016 result means that you have to support Brexit, and you have backed Theresa May’s deal. But that deal, which no one likes, has now clearly failed. Mrs May is reported to be prepared to back a No Deal Brexit, but I am sure you know that this could mean: shortages of medicines; failures of food supply chains in Devon; lambs slaughtered because they can’t be exported to Europe; a severe shock to our national economy; and violence in Northern Ireland, with Devon police sent to the province to help maintain order.
Since we have only a fortnight to prevent this self-inflicted disaster, I urge you to support a policy of ‘Revoke and Rethink’. Revoke the Article 50 notification to the EU, and give everyone time to reflect on the mess that the current Brexit proposals have caused. If in due course, a Government produces a coherent new proposal for Brexit, and can negotiate that with the EU, we can put it to the people and negotiate it with the EU.
For now, however, it is time to call a halt to this national humiliation. We, the thousands of your constituents who have signed the ‘revoke’ petition, are part of ‘the people’ too. Please listen to our voices of common sense and help ensure that our country comes safely through the impending crisis.
Regards, Martin
Over ten thousand people in East Devon have signed the petition to revoke Article 50 in the last 48 hours.
Latest figures for Tiverton & Honiton constituency, 4686, and for East Devon constituency, 5944, making 10620 in the East Devon district!
Seaton’s rogue councillor is at it again on Facebook. I’m reporting him to the Liberal Democrats, because this self-appointed Town Censor certainly isn’t a liberal. Paddy Ashdown must be turning in his grave.
Seaton EDDC and town councillor Peter Burrows (pictured in his Facebook logo with the late Liberal Democrat leader, Paddy Ashdown) resigned as mayor in January after self-confessedly ‘bringing the town council into disrepute’ after abusing a ‘Tourist Information Centre’ Twitter account to pursue a personal grudge.
Now, in the very week in which East Devon’s Monitoring Officer has formally censured him on four counts, Burrows and his co-administrator, Tony Antoniou, have abused their positions as admins on a community Facebook group to remove me from the group, as I found when I tried to post details of the Stagecoach bus consultation to the group, to which I’ve belonged for years. No warning was given and neither has responded to requests for an explanation.
This example of arbitrary censorship raises two fingers to Town Council recommendations – in response to Burrows’ January actions and expected to be adopted in two weeks’ time – that councillors should ‘behave responsibly, considerately and professionally’ on social media and should NOT be Facebook admins.
It is laughable for Burrows to call himself a Liberal Democrat. This self-appointed Town Censor has no respect for the idea that a community Facebook group – the group in question is called Positive Development for Everyone in Seaton and was set up after a community meeting – should be open to a County Councillor to post important local information, and indeed for members to express views different from the admins’.
There is a long history of Burrows arbitrarily removing people and posts from different Facebook groups. I have considerable respect for the Liberal Democrats – their members on the County Council are fine councillors and I work with them closely – but Burrows is bringing his party into disrepute. I am reporting him to their regional organisation for his latest antics.
Seaton & Colyton MATTERS 