Should we punish risk or consequence?

Just been listening to Lord Ahmed's solicitor criticising the 12 week jail sentence handed down today to his client who was found to have been using a mobile phone while, claiming he was a scapegoat. My understanding is that whilst the police investigated a collision involving Lord Ahmed, it was discovered that he had been using his mobile phone to text over a long period of time earlier in the journey, although this wasn’t a factor in the accident that later occurred.

When someone drives after drinking, or if you text whilst driving, or choose to drive in any other way that significantly increases accident risk, there is a good chance that you won’t cause an accident, let alone leave someone killed or injured. But there is also a significant chance that drink driving or texting whilst driving will result in the death or serious injury of an innocent party.

If Lord Ahmed’s texting had resulted in a death or serious injury, the prosecutors and victims family would doubtless have rightly expected a very significant jail sentence, far in excess of 12 weeks - a quick search of BBC news reveals a number of tragic examples. I think there is a case to be made that if we want to reduce the death toll on our roads further, perhaps we need to punish more based on how recklessly risky the behaviour of the driver was, regardless of the seriousness of the consequences, as once a risk has been taken, the consequences are ultimately just a matter of good or bad luck. So personally I think Lord Ahmed has got away lightly – the message needs to be sent that texting while driving is not acceptable under any circumstances.

There isn't much relevance of this to Coleridge, except that I can't help thinking about how the police have chosen to police the Hills Road Bridge roadworks, where recklessly dangerous overtaking manoeuvres have been all but ignored for the purposes of law enforcement, and how different this approach would be if one of these manoeuvres, that are completely unacceptable, was unfortunate enough to result in the death or serious injury of a cyclist.

Police and Council Street Surgery Planned

A street surgery is planned for residents of Rustat Road, Argyle Street and William Smith Close from 6pm on Wednesday 4th March, outside Northfield's Stores on Greville Road.

The local antisocial behaviour officer, police officer, housing officer, city ranger and fire safety officer have been invited as well as ward councillors. Coleridge Conservatives intend to be there.

The police and city council have organised the surgery to give people a chance to meet officers and discuss any issues. In particular it's a chance to talk about crime, antisocial behaviour, fly-tipping and environmental improvements.

There was an intention to hold a meeting between councillors and the police to discuss how to deal with recent waves of crime in this area, and extending eastwards through the ward. We hope, excepting the possibility of a miracle solution arising at the street surgery, that the surgery will not be a substitute for that meeting.

Exclusive: Tesco Still Trying to Open on Mill Road

Tesco have withdrawn their appeal against refusal of planning permission for refrigeration equipment on their proposed store on Mill Road, that was due to be held shortly at a public enquiry.

However, Coleridge Conservatives understand Tesco have not given up on opening the store on Mill Road, but believe they may be able to meet their needs for the new store without requiring this planning permission, by installing plant within the store, and they are due to meet the planning department shortly to discuss.

Tesco already has sufficient permissions to open a store on the existing store footprint, but had been seeking permission to install refrigeration equipment on the building.

A new localism

David Cameron today announced a Green paper outlining Conservative policies for local government if they win the next General Election. The key theme is about returning power back to local people as opposed to the current system where local government is frequently just a branch office of national government, controlled by endless streams of dictats from on high. I am particularly encouraged by the plans to abolish centrally imposed housing targets, giving Councils more power to control their own destiny and allowing them to benefit from measures that strengthen the local economy.

Here are the main ideas - the full paper is available on conservatives.com:

Strong local economies
• Abolishing all regional planning and housing powers exercised by regional government, returning powers and discretion back to local councils.
• Creating bottom-up incentives for house building, by allowing you to keep the increase in council tax revenues from new homes, rather than it being equalised away by Whitehall.
• Allowing councils to establish their own local enterprise partnerships to take over the economic development functions and funding of the Regional Development Agencies.
• Giving a real incentive for councils to promote local economic growth, by allowing you to keep the uplift in business rate revenues.
• Giving local authorities a new discretionary power to levy business rate discounts, allowing you to help local shops and services (for example, rural pubs, or post offices).
• Increase the freedom of your council to act in the best interests of residents, by giving councils a general power of competence.
Vibrant local democracy
• Letting councils choose their own organisational structure, such as returning to the Committee system if you wish.
• But building on the success of the London Mayor, giving citizens in the large cities of Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Wakefield, Coventry, Leicester, Nottingham, Newcastle upon Tyne, with the opportunity to choose whether to have an elected mayor, through a mayoral referendums. The referendums would take place on the same day to ignite a national public debate.
• Abolishing Comprehensive Area Assessment – which looks to be just as burdensome as its predecessor, and further curtailing the number of central targets imposed on councils.
• Empowering citizens, not Whitehall, to ensure value for money by requiring more detailed information on local (and central) government expenditure to be published online.
• Continuing the work of the Lifting the Burdens Task Force to identify unnecessary burdens, and putting its recommendations into practice.
• Ending all forced unitary amalgamations of local authorities which have not already gone ahead – such as cancelling those planned in Norfolk, Suffolk and Devon.
• Abolishing Labour’s new Infrastructure Planning Commission quango.
• Scrapping the Standards Board and repealing the flawed ‘pre-determination’ rules that prevent councillors from standing up for constituents’ views on local issues.
• Abandoning plans to regionalise local fire services, while providing new measures to enhance resilience in the case of a national emergency.
Gordon Brown’s target-driven, top-down government has hindered strong local economies and discouraged civic pride. We will bring councillors and their constituents closer to the levers of power. This will start to restore the trust that has been lost in our political system under Labour.

Former Post Office could become take-away

Last week the following planning application was submitted:

09/0059/FUL, 164 Hills Road, Conversion from confectionary to hot food takeaway (A5).

Which I think is the old St John's Post Office, that was the vicitim of Labour's post office closure program. Another step towards this area of town looking like an anonymous part of London surburbia...

Crossing Success

Usually when residents complain about the timings on crossings, there response from the Council is that there is nothing that can be done, as they are optimised already. But with the crossing on Coleridge Road near Greville Road, it turns out that there was a problem, and I've now had this back from the Council:

"I am pleased to advise you that our maintenance contractor has repaired and upgraded the crossing, and it is now working correctly. The settings have been checked and the clearance period following thepedestrian/cycle green signal is now variable - dependent on the presence/absence of people on the crossing. This will result in minimal delays to vehicles at times of low pedestrian flow."

Many thanks to the County Council for sorting this one out.

Exclusive: Standards Committee Whitewash

Following an incident in which he blocked an ambulance from reaching an injured patient, the Standards Committee at the City Council has today found Cllr Rosenstiel guilty of breaching the Council's Code of Conduct, in both failing to treat others with respect, and in bringing his office of Councillor into disrepute, despite strong protestations from Cllr Rosenstiel's barrister against the latter.

The meeting agreed on the facts of the case as set out in the Standards Board investigation report, with the exception of whether or not the ambulance had flashing blue lights on at the time – the ambulance service didn’t want to argue the point as Colin accepted he knew it was an emergency vehicle treating a patient after the conversation.

Cllr Rosenstiel’s barrister accepted the code of conduct breach that he had failed to treat a person with respect, and that Cllr Rosenstiel was acting in his official capacity, but argued extensively, quoting Ken Livingstone’s case in his defence - claiming Cllr Rosenstiel had brought himself into disrepute, but not the office of Councillor.

After noting that he was responding as ward councillor, had called council officers during the incident and referred to his status as Councillor whilst remonstrating, this defence wasn't accepted.

But in a unanimous decision, the panel then decided that the only santion applied would be that an apology would be agreed - personal, full, unreserved and unqualified, to both the ambulance driver concerned and the head of the ambulance service. This is right at the bottom end of what could have been applied, and in my view wholly understates the seriousness of the incident and its possible consequences. It will be interesting to see if Cllr Rosenstiel's constituents share my opinion that his position as a Councillor is untenable.