Weekly news from Bedford, UK, 16th July 2005

Just a summary this week....

It's the silly season, when there is little news of interest to expats. This week BoS leads with a report that a young mother has deserted her family for a killer on Death Row.

The geese are back - in greater numbers than ever.

Every attempt by the borough council to rid the River Great Ouse of Canada geese has failed and now they are back in greater numbers than ever.

In the last three years the council has tried egg oiling, fencing off and relocating the geese.

Now there are more geese than ever and the council is at a loss as to what to do next. A Bedford Borough Council spokesman said:

"Future plans include control of egg hatching and further planting along The Embankment."

The irony is that they cannot be relocated elsewhere because these geese are classed as a pest! Any good suggestions please?!

Last Sunday t he Embankment was more spectacular than usual as several thousand women ran to raise money for cancer research.

Good for them. A by-product of the morning was that The Embankment was closed to traffic, which enabled children to watch the race in complete safety.

Would it not be wonderful if The Embankment was closed off, or at least part of it, every Sunday, so that families could enjoy the walk and aspect without fearing for their lives from boy racers who think it is some kind of English Monaco.

Gates could be built that come down just for Sundays. I have seen such gates in continental towns and fail to see why they cannot be built on The Embankment, so that parts of it are pedestrianised for one day of the week.

SIR - I must add my voice to that of Patrick Hall and call for all tiers of council to be scrapped.

It is quite clearly not working (take a drive on the roads for one example); and that fact seems even more ridiculous when you consider Bedfordshire is one of the smallest counties in the shires.

It should not be this hard.

I have a 'business model' method of running the 'council services' that anyone is free to use, should they wish to take up the challenge and make Bedfordshire a shining example to the rest of the country.

The county's services (and that includes Luton) will be run from one office, either in Bedford, or if you must, at Chicksands.

The organisation will be run as a not-for-profit, much like the railways.

Taxation will be collected via the Inland Revenue - they have the facilities, so why waste money duplicating the service?

All services, housing, highways, social care, education, et al, will be run under one roof, staffed by professionals, paid a professional wage, pooled from the Bedfordshire area working for the people of the county.

Services currently contracted out will be brought in-house; outsourcing does not work and does not save money.

There will be no more secrets.

All documentation, meetings, planning inquiries, etc will be open to public scrutiny.

You will be working for the public and they are your masters, not the other way round, as some councillors would like to believe.

Who will oversee this mammoth?

Two people - a chief executive and a deputy.

Both elected by the people, both with a two-year tenure. If they fail, they are out with no chance of re-election (unlike current incumbents).

If they prove themselves they can stand again to carry on their work.

They, along with the staff, will be paid with a bonus scheme - perform well and be rewarded; perform badly and you can forget your pensions.

If you feel like taking up this challenge, then you have my support.

The idea has been seeded. It is up to everyone else to make it grow.

Gary Myers

Ullswater Close, Biggleswade

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SIR - Patrick Hall's comments on unitary governance are to be welcomed.

This crucial debate needs to be had sooner rather than later, which is why I have also discussed this issue with ministers and penned articles for the press.

Scrapping a level of local government will produce massive savings.

Bedfordshire is the smallest, and worst performing, county council in the country. At a conservative estimate unitary status would produce savings in excess of £200 million - £500,000 in allowances alone.

If we are to be really radical we should amalgamate emergency service authorities back into local government.

Again substantial savings would be realised, in terms of allowances alone £400,000 plus back office administrative support.

The wider impact of the above would be reinvigorating a municipal sense of belonging that we can all benefit from and give real and identifiable meaning to 'the council'.

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SIR - The call to sack the county council is music to my ears.

I welcome everyone to take up my campaign gauntlet thrown down in March - before the elections.

Shamefully, every county performance inspection since 2002 by the Audit Commission, CSCI and Ofsted (youth services) rate Bedfordshire as the worst in England.

Even the county's December 2004 'in house' inspection confirmed external ratings.

The HBS debacle is merely a plague symptom.

Evidence of the pathetic lack of inter council cooperation is the current roads maintenance impasse.

The borough has threatened legal action over the repair of roads, claiming the county has not given it enough money to properly do the job.

This means astonished, nay furious, taxpayers will see expensive Borough CSD staff working adjacent to cheaper county sub contract workers, all having travelled to as far flung a place as Paddington.

Both councils will incur wasteful lawyers fees arguing what rates and payments the county will agree.

It is not just the county council where sackings are needed.

Nor is a Bedfordshire unitary authority the answer because that would undermine local input.

The future of a North Beds village must not be determined by representatives from Dunstable or Caddington and vice versa.

Common sense dictates forming south and north unitary authorities. The expenditure savings, asset disposal and improved performance will be staggering - the Borough's finance management is rated as one of the best in England - and crucially local accountability hugely increasing taxpayer ownership which is clearly missing at present.

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SIR - Why does Patrick Hall not get on with running the country rather than trying to interfere with local government?

Leave the county council alone Mr Hall, we do not want you to gerrymander with our two tier system of local government.

Why do you not campaign to give local government back the powers which all governments seem to take away, and bring democracy back to local government?

You campaigned for a Mayor and 11 per cent of us voted for one, and look what we got. It all goes to show that you do not have your finger on the political pulse of Bedford.

Stick to your role as an unqualified social worker Mr Hall.

BoS editor's note: There were ten further letters supporting Mr Hall's idea and no others against it.

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SIR - I have never been a believer in the biblical injunction that man has dominion over all animals, but the pendulum has swung too far the other way when a building project is delayed, presumably at substantial cost, over some fledgling pigeons which, when they reach adulthood, will be considered vermin.

Would we do the same for baby rats, or baby cockroaches or baby bluebottles?

Then there are the geese, which are back in force on the river despite attempts to deter people from feeding them.

Their faeces are all over the place, including where children play and they are also considered vermin but, apparently, we cannot cull them because the council does not want to offend the bird lovers.

Is it not time for reasonable people to speak against all those who put animals, be they birds, fish or rodents, above people?

Report in the Times&Citizen:

After 60 years of false starts and stalled hopes, work on Bedford's Western Bypass is set to finally start in January.

Despite changes to the route, a protest campaign and problems over cash for the £22 million scheme, the county council hopes to have contractors on site in the new year.

The announcement on Tuesday came as details of compulsory purchase orders for swathes of land earmarked by the scheme's planners were published.

And it also emerged an associated application for up to 2,760 new houses and facilities to be built near the bypass has just been submitted.

It is this private development which will ultimately pay for the road, rather than public money.

Coun Tom Wootton, cabinet member for highways and waste, said:

"2,700 homes, a massive employment area, education and community infrastructure – it's vital for this part of Bedford."

Infrastructure is something we are crying out for and is sadly lacking in many parts. Here we have an opportunity to address that.

I hope there will be an effect on the traffic flows on the western side of Bedford and perhaps in the centre of Bedford itself."

The bypass will connect the A428 at Great Denham with the A421 at the Asda roundabout, Kempston, and will have junctions at Cemetery Road and Ridge Road.

It was on the drawing board as long ago as 1938 and in the late 1970s was planned to come through Queens Park.

But it only got planning consent in its current form five years ago – a permission now close to running out.

And it took a deal with Government regeneration agency English Partnerships to find the money for the two-mile, single carriageway.

The organisation has coughed up the construction funds and will claw them back from the developers after an agreed number of new houses is built.

Mayor of Bedford Frank Branston helped forge the deal which produced the up-front cash and said he was "delighted" with the news.

But the full traffic benefit will not be felt until the A6 is eventually joined to the A428-A421 link, completing the bypass, he added.

Mr Branston said

"There will certainly be an improvement, but you want the full effect. We have got advance funding for the first stretch, but whether we can get it for the other, who knows?"

Less pleased was Margaret Davies, of Action for Rural Kempston (ARK), which has waged a long but ultimately vain battle against the project.

ARK has argued the road and the 333-metre bridge to carry it over the Ouse will ruin peaceful countryside. Mrs Davies said:

"It's a tragedy that an area of such beauty should be ruined by the sheer size and height of this bridge. It will be gone for ever."

According to the Times & Citizen, administrators called in at ATG in Cardington A world-leading airship developer based at Cardington has called in the administrators after running out of cash.

Advanced Technologies Group Limited (ATG) is known internationally for its work in airship technology, including lighter-than-air (LTA) engineering.

Until a few weeks ago around 50 highly-skilled staff worked for the company, but administrators Begbies Traynor admitted "a handful" had already been let go before they became involved.

Begbies Traynor added that new owners could be in place in the next month.

Investors have pumped in the region of £30million into ATG since it was established in 1996.

The company is currently developing AT-10 airships, and work has also begun on manufacturing SkyCat20 heavy-lift aircraft.

Touted customers for the craft include the Ministry of Defence, travel companies and surveillance firms.

Only 18 months ago ATG had hoped to set up an office in Germany to benefit from more generous government help available on the continent.

That was in response to the "derisory" backing the company claimed was on offer from Whitehall.

A spokesman for Begbies Traynor said: "ATG was on the brink of being able to provide a return on the previous substantial investment. Unfortunately, despite the previous substantial cash injection from investors, it now needs to restructure and seek new investment to turn this British aeroengineering triumph into a profitable commercial venture.

"Although it is very early days, we are delighted to report that a number of parties have already indicated an interest."

Firefighters recovered a body from the River Great Ouse in Bedford on Sunday morning after a man was seen falling from a bridge.

A rescue operation began around 10.15pm following reports someone had jumped into the water from the Longholme Way flyover.

The Fire and Rescue Service launched a dinghy at Priory Marina and searched the lower river for the missing man - the branch that runs south of the boating lake.

They pulled his body from the river at around 10.45pm and handed it over to paramedics who attempted to resuscitate him at the scene.

He was taken to Bedford Hospital by ambulance, where he was pronounced dead.

Police are expected to release the man's identity later this week after an inquest is opened.

Fire services in Northants, Beds and Bucks have been judged as "weak" in the first study of management performance.

Essex, Herts and Suffolk fire services were seen as "fair" while Cambs and Norfolk were judged "good".

The Audit Commission study looked at how well fire services in the east are managed and how they are responding to government calls for modernisation.

But the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) said leaving out emergency response efforts missed the point of the exercise. FBU general secretary Matt Wrack said:

They judge us by how quickly we respond, how many lives we save from fires, and how we deal with other major emergencies from chemical spills to flooding or the aftermath of bombings.

That is what the public see as important but this report deals with none of those crucial issues.

The Audit Commission appear to have missed the real point of what the fire service is here to do."

Yarl's Wood detention centre is no place for children, a new report by the Government's Chief Inspector of Prisons has found.

An appalling example from the report included the case of an autistic child who had not eaten properly for four days.

Another case included three children who were detained just before their GCSE exams.
And despite efforts to provide a child-friendly environment, the report also highlighted inadequate education for older children and improvements needed for child protection measures.

Anne Owers, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons (HMCIP), announced her findings on Wednesday after an inspection at the Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre (IRC) in March.

The report confirmed the worst fears of anti detention campaigners.

There have been several complaints about 50cc motor-cycles being driven by teenagers with little or no regard to traffic rules, and particularly to the deafening noise their scooters make.

In some cases one wonders whether the baffles of silencers have been removed in order to exacerbate the situation. Local councillors have already been alerted to this menace, which sems to centre in Putnoe, particularly along Aldens Mead. Some of these riders do not wear crash helmets, they roar down on the wrong side of the road, and sometimes in the early hours of the morning. It can only be a matter of time before police begin to clamp down on these anti-social riders.

If there is any significant news next week, I'll provide a summary. But after that, please bear with me as I really need a rest! All being well, I'll be back in the first week of next term.

Week ending 30 July 2005