Bower's Blueprint #3 - No to forcing Marshall off the airport

This is the third of a series of posts on Bower's Blueprint for Coleridge - a set of pledges to which I would work if elected as county councillor on 4th June.

No to forcing Marshall Aerospace off the airport
I will resist plans to build high density housing on the site of Cambridge Airport.

Why are we opposed to development on the airport?
Marshall is a key local employer that provides training and opportunity for people in Cambridge; we do not wish to see it go.

We are concerned about the effect on traffic in the East of Cambridge from the development. Although a cynic might suggest the Lib Dems supported the airport for development as it is a long way from their voters in West Cambridge, they claim the proximity to the centre of Cambridge would make it ideal for a car-free development, as everyone can walk, cycle or use public transport. They would wish this fantasy to be enforced by providing no new major roads, limited car parking on the development and a congestion charge in Cambridge.

This is the same type of fanciful thinking that assumes nobody living in any new development will want to own a car if you don’t provide adequate parking. However the consultant's report looking at the transport effects concluded that even if a congestion charge was introduced (which we are of course completely opposed to), the effect on East Cambridge roads would be horrific, with the dualling of Perne Road, and even more chaos on Newmarket Road. In short, a terrible deal for existing Coleridge residents.

How did the idea come about?
The proposed development on Marshall’s Airport is a direct result of the Labour Government's top-down housing targets which mandate how many homes must be built in our area. Although local authorities were involved in deciding where housing should be built, coming up with the structure plan in 2001, which became the Regional Spacial Strategy for the East of England, it was clear from the sheer numbers the Government required that many unsuitable sites would be chosen.

Conservatives were the first to warn in 1998 that Labour's targets for increased housing (in the South, while bulldozing the North) would lead to the threat of Cambridge Airport being chosen for development. These warnings were dismissed by Labour initially as scaremongering but David Howarth's Lib Dems in Cambridge soon requested that the airport be used for 12,000 homes!

How likely is it to happen?
Marshall has tried to find a site to which to relocate its business, but has so far failed to do so. This is a major barrier as to date management have indicated they would like to keep the aerospace business close enough to Cambridge for most staff to transfer to the new site.

'Cambridge East' is the last of the fringe areas intended to be developed and with other fringe sites around Cambridge stalled due to the spectacular collective misjudgement about the housing market it seems unlikely that it will be built any time soon.

Who is driving it now?
Cambridge Horizons, which is a 'partnership' quango, has been bullying Marshall to hurry up plans to find a new site for its business with the threat that the land would be put back in the greenbelt and therefore not available for Marshall to develop itself at some point if it should want to. There seems to be a last ditch effort going on to force through the development.

What can Conservatives do?
The Conservative Party has pledged to scrap Regional Spatial Strategies and allow councils to rewrite their Structure Plans so that developments can reflect local needs and priorities. When Coleridge Conservatives discovered this policy we were ecstatic, as this really would save Cambridge!

This is only one part of radical plans by David Cameron to redistribute power from the centre back to local areas. It will help to end the culture in elected local government representatives of blaming other levels of government for all their woes instead of taking responsibility.

While we wait for what I hope will turn out to be a Conservative government I pledge to resist the existing plans for Cambridge East.

Police Raid Golding Road Address

I've had the following from the police via ecops:

"Yesterday a warrant was carried out at an address in Golding road. As a result of this a large amount of what is believd to be class A drugs were discovered and five people were arrested. Class A drugs include Heroin and Crack Cocaine. This warrant was carried out because of information received from local residents and your local officers. If this is proved to be Class A then the total value would be in the thousands of pounds, a significant amount. I would like to thank all the people that gave me information and please continue to do so. Sometimes it may seem we are not acting fast enough but we have to make sure these things are carried out at the right time."

If this is the address I am thinking of, then the police have known about it for ages - I certainly passed on resident concerns over a year ago, and I will be interested to know the outcome. If the people arrested are found guilty of serious drug offences, I will have questions for several authorities about why this was allowed to go on so long.

However, incidents of this type are relatively rare in Coleridge, and with the support of local residents, we can make sure dealing in illegal drugs is stamped on very hard and as quickly as possible.

Speeding priority moves forward

Following our victory at East Area committee on police speeding enforcement, I have been trying to help move forward this priority, and suggested the following action plan:

• Ask Councillors in East Area what the key problem roads are that they would like to see tackled. (For Coleridge I suggest Coleridge Road and Birdwood Road top priorities, then Rustat Road and Cherry Hinton Road).
  
• Prioritise Roads for consideration.
  
• Use speed monitoring equipment (as used in Queen Ediths Way to assess situation prior to action)
  
• Police enforcement action, backed up with local publicity, press, Speedwatch etc. over a period of time.
  
• Use speed monitoring equipment again to determine if actions have had an effect even when enforcement patrols not present.
  
• Evaluate if we have learnt anything useful for tackling this problem going forwards
  

These suggestions have now been considered by the officers Neighbourhood Action Group and they will come up with their version of the plan - we will be taking a close interest in this to ensure it reflects the priority adopted by the committee.

Postal Votes being received

Postal ballot papers for the County and Euro elections should have been posted late last week, and will be arriving imminently if not already.

We would encourage everyone to return them promptly, but if it does get too late to post, they can be returned (fully completed per the instructions) to your usual polling station on polling day, June 4th. The instructions need to be followed very carefully, especially the declaration, or the vote won't count (I understand that if the signature or date of birth is missing/wrong, the ballot papers aren't even opened...). If you need to be issued with a new ballot paper, or need any help, please ring electoral services at the City Council on 01223 457048.

The Euro ballot paper is a bit of a monster - 14 parties. I would urge everyone to vote Conservative obviously, but I was having chat in the pub last week with a friend who works for Labour's Eastern region MEP. 

We disagree on many things, but the one thing we did agree on was what a bizarre reaction to the expenses problems of MPs a UKIP vote would be. They really do win hands down when it comes to dreadful behaviour or failing to stand up for their constituents. Of the 12 elected at the last European elections, one-third have left or been expelled since. 1, Ashley Mote was found guilty of 21 counts of fraud and sent to jail. Another, the Eastern region's Tom Wise has been charged with false accounting and money laundering. And the ones that do remain have failed to stick up for British interests in Europe - voting to let French and Spanish trawlors fish in British waters, voting against laws to cut down on red tape, and voting against free trade to open up markets and help developing countries. No wonder former leader Robert Kilroy-Silk said "Frankly I don't rate any [of UKIP's MEPs]... I was embarassed at their behaviour, their naivety and their immaturity and their stupidity"

If a protest vote now allows a hard working Conservative MEP, who would stand up for Britain to be replaced by another UKIP waste of space (or worse), it would be very bad news for Britain.

I've already posted my ballot paper!

Bower's Blueprint #2 - No to a Cambridge Congestion Charge

This is the second of a series of posts on Bower's Blueprint for Coleridge - a set of pledges to which I would work if elected as county councillor on 4th June.

No to a Cambridge Congestion Charge!
I fully oppose congestion charging for Cambridge. We do not need another Labour stealth tax and particularly not one so inequitable that it would tax the poor off the roads. I have been campaigning against the idea ever since it was first floated and will continue to do so.

How did it get to be on the cards?
Having been forced by the government to build unimaginable numbers of housing in the "Cambridge sub region" Cambridgeshire County Council needs funding to put in place the transport infrastructure that the developments require.

Unfortunately the government compounded the problems by offering the requisite funding with the blackmail condition that the county must implement congestion charging in return.

Our record
Cambridge Conservatives have had some successes in opposing congestion charging:

1. Under our pressure the county council decided to set up a transport commission to look at all the options for transport in the county, meaning that congestion charging was not an inevitable outcome.

2. Richard Normington, the Conservative Parliamentary Spokesman for Cambridge, wrote to Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Transport, asking him to follow Conservative Party policy and drop the link between TIF and congestion charging. Cambridgeshire County Council then followed our lead. (There are signs that this could be successful - see below.)

Also to be congratulated are our neighbours, the Conservatives running South Cambridgeshire District Council, who have formally rejected the tax.

The other great development in the battle against congestion charging was the decisive rejection of a TIF bid for Manchester that would have included congestion charging. It was rejected by 84% of voters including a majority in every district.

Despite scaremongering from pro-TIF groups, i.e. all the other parties, recent news reveals that Manchester has been given £1.4bn of extra transport funding in place of the abandoned TIF bid.

Where do the other parties stand?
Labour - the government is blackmailing us with the charge and locally Labour have been in favour of road pricing in the past although at the moment they are appearing to oppose the charge, so we can't be sure exactly what they think. The Labour PPC was several months late making up his mind - sort of.

Lib Dems - in favour in principle. Not that you would have thought it from some of the literature they have put out. They are not known as the 'all things to all men' party for no reason... They are of course trying to get the best of both worlds by opposing specifics and stoking up the worst kind of nimbyism with irresponsible suggestions that their audience is not responsible for congestion and should somehow be exempt. This is a completely unworkable solution of course - even without a discount/exemption the charge would cost more to run than it would raise - with one it would be a complete financial disaster!

Green Party - in favour in principle and practice.

Spot the camera

The problems are continuing on Hills Road bridge. The hope of the single lane working finishing by Mon 18th has been dashed by technical problems and the weather. The hope had been to place 10 piles into the bridge in 5 days. Unfortunately the first pile took four days, after the steel reinforcement cage got stuck in the concrete and had to be drilled out. There was more progress last weekend with 4 piles placed, but high winds stopped the rig being used on Monday (so the road stayed open in both directions). The work may be finished by the end of the week, subject to no further delays.

The mobile CCTV that had been asked for for the duration of single lane working has been even more of a Saga. The intention when I requested this was to deter dangerous driving, and look out for dangerous traffic infringements to encourage more effective policing of the situation. 

On Monday 11th, the promised CCTV hadn't been put in place. Despite months of reminders and specific assurances I received only a week earlier that is was in hand, nobody from the County Council had spoken to CCTV at the City Council. A few phone calls later and this was fixed. Its tempting to say they shouldn't have bothered. In terms of deterrent, here is the photo from a similar angle to that for a driver from Cherry Hinton Road, about to turn right and mow down a bike on the bridge. The little yellow sign is the only warning that they are caught on camera (assuming they hadn't noticed the camera itself higher up the lamppost).

There are two cameras, at each end of the bridge. These may or may not be able to spot problems on the bridge - we may never know. The City Council CCTV operators don't believe that dangerous overtaking (or doubtless anything short of a serious injury accident) is a problem worthy of police involvement, and they are currently refusing to allow anyone to look at the tapes to understand what incidents of a lesser nature are occurring, so there is no prospect of using the cameras to help drive an enhanced police response to the problems. Not impressed, I just hope nobody is seriously injured during the rest of these works...

European Team Supports Coleridge

The Conservative European team for our region (East of England) was supporting Coleridge tonight, knocking on doors. We have a strong team going into the elections for the European Parliament, determined to stand up for British interests in Europe.

Conservatives have a track record of getting good deals out of Europe - sadly many of these have needlessly been trashed by Labour in the hope of being 'good Europeans', such as the rebate and opt-outs on various bits of legislation.

Pictured above are Vicky Ford (left), who is third-placed candidate on the Conservative list and Robert Sturdy MEP (right), both of whom take a special interest in Cambridge.