Weekly news from Bedford, UK

BoS leads with a report that a postmaster is lucky to be alive after being beaten repeatedly with a crowbar.

Two robbers wearing balaclavas threatened customers at the sub-post office in Hitchin Road, Upper Caldecote at 11.50am on Friday morning.

One of the assailants had a plank of wood and the other smashed through the parcel point with a crowbar.

Once behind the counter he attacked the postmaster with a succession of blows with the iron bar, leaving him seriously injured.

The attackers escaped in a red hatchback that sped off towards Ickwell.

The postmaster, who has not yet been named, was taken to hospital with serious head injuries although they are not thought to be life-threatening.

An aggressive beggar has been slapped with his second anti-social behaviour order.

Ricky Bentick, 38, of no fixed address, appeared in Bedford Magistrates' Court on Thursday to answer the ASBO application.

The order lasts for three years and has a power of arrest attached to it.

Under the conditions of the order Bentick is not to approach any members of public anywhere in Bedfordshire and demand money or other personal property, from them.

He is not to spit at members of the public and he is not to enter Ashburnham Road or the Bedford Railway Station.

Bentick is currently serving a four-month prison sentence for theft and begging.

The ASBO will start from his release date which is believed to be around January 10.

If he breaches any part of the order he can be arrested and put back before the court. Bentick was subject of the first ASBO in Bedfordshire in 2000.

It was eventually lifted by magistrates but his behaviour has deteriorated badly in recent months.

Sergeant Peter Byrne of the Town Centre Unit said:

"This man has been approaching people and demanding money for several years and we've had many complaints.

"He has almost laid siege to some areas of town. I'd like to thank the many people who gave statements in this case.

"This is the third ASBO this year that has been granted to individuals committing crime and anti-social behaviour in the town centre area. The Town Centre Policing Team and colleagues in the Crown Prosecution Service are working hard in trying to make Bedford town centre a better place. Those who are thinking of committing crime or disorder in the town centre should take note."

BLUES rugby star Emyr Lewis was badly injured in an apparently unprovoked attack in a Bedford night club on Saturday.

Lewis was struck from behind and suffered three fractures and severe damage to an eye socket.

He may need surgery and will be out of rugby for at least six weeks.

The Welsh centre was out relaxing with other members of the team after Bedford's sell-out game with league leaders Harlequins. Lewis had been named man of the match.

Blues director of rugby Mike Rayer said:

"Emyr was sitting at the bar when this guy just came up and whacked him. He then ran off before anyone could stop him.

"Emyr's face is in a hell of a mess."

Club chairman Geoff Irvine said:

"It had been a tremendous day for the club and the boys were out winding down.

"There had been no trouble but unfortunately there is always going to be someone who wants to show how tough he is and a well-known rugby player is an obvious target."

A tenant has been ordered to remove the Christmas lights from the front of his flat because of health and safety.

Aaron Rose, 22, has been lighting up the front of the communal flats in Warwick Avenue, Bedford, for the past four years. Now Bedfordshire Pilgrims Housing Association (BPHA) has told him that he must remove all of the lights by tomorrow or face losing them.

"I have tried to make the whole block look good and they're throwing it back in my face. It's going to ruin my Christmas if I have to take them down" says Aaron.

Since starting his collection of lights four years ago Aaron estimates that he has spent over £1,000 on outdoor decorations for the building. Each year it takes him almost four days to erect the display, but this year the housing association has written to him stating that the lights must be removed for safety reasons.

Within the letter, received this week, the housing association stated that 'BPHA has no way of knowing how safe the lights are and if there was to be any unforeseen accidents which involved the lights BPHA would have to be held responsible as the lights are placed on a communal block of flats.'

More than £100,000 of beer was recovered from a warehouse in a village farm.

Eight customs officials swooped on Willow Farm, Ravensden on Wednesday evening.

They are pictured loading the beer onto a lorry to be removed from the premises.

A customs spokesman said: "There is an ongoing investigation and we cannot say any more at the moment."

Four out of seven county council directors have resigned in a week.

Bedfordshire County Council's director of finance Nick Bell has handed in his notice and will be moving to Westminster City Council.

It cost council taxpayers £300,000 just to recruit the new management team and now much of the work will have to be done again.

Mr Bell only took up his post in September this year.

Last Friday, deputy chief executive Jonathan Flowers and customer services director Paul Spencer both resigned, Mr Spencer with immediate effect.

Mr Flowers's departure date has been variously referred to as 'Christmas' or 'the end of this month'.

When asked what is his contractual notice period and whether he was being paid for this notice or the time he actually worked, a council spokesman said: "Those are matters between the council and Mr Flowers."

At full council this Thursday, the council will consider the abolition of the posts held by Mr Flowers and Mr Spencer.

Chief executive Andrea Hill said: "The restructuring includes three new positions - Assistant Chief Executive, Director of Community Services and Director of Customer and Corporate Services.

"It is proposed to delete positions currently occupied by Jonathan Flowers (Director of Strategy) and previously occupied by Paul Spencer (Director of Cultural Change and Customer Services)."

The first in the string of departures was director of learning David Doran, ten days ago.

Mr Bell and Mr Spencer were both recruited as part of a 'new intake' of management this summer.

The exercise cost £300,000, of which £25,000 went on 'psychometric testing' to check the personalities of applicants.

At the time, the council's cabinet member for finance Cllr Richard Stay said: "If we want to attract the best we have to pay the market rate."

Train passengers are questioning the safety of their service following claims that drivers are participating in high speed dares.

Train operator Midland Mainline has sacked one driver over a safety related allegation following a police investigation, but have denied reports that a driver had left the controls of his train to have sex with a woman.

Other allegations have centred around train drivers daring one another to strip naked while in control of trains that can reach speeds of 125mph.

A Bedford Commuters Association spokesman added:

"I'm not aware that this has caused any delays, but it certainly makes a change from leaves on the line.

"Seriously though - we are concerned by anything that could put passengers lives at risk and we expect Midland Mainline to deal with any rogue employees very seriously."

A Midland Mainline spokesman said:

"We are one hundred per cent certain that the pictures that have appeared in The Sun are not of one of our drivers. He is not wearing a Midland Mainline uniform and it is not on of our trains.

"Safety is our first priority and when we hear of any allegations against our employees we will investigate them and where necessary we will involve the police.

"We haven't received any other complaints from members of the public or our staff and if we do we will act on it."

Police have had a huge success with Operation Christmas Presence.

During November BoS publicised the campaign and published pictures of the ten most wanted criminals from the county. Officers have now made 277 arrests including one from the most wanted list.

The force has been targeting known offenders with the aim of getting them to court and dealt with for crimes they have committed.

At the same time they will be educating the public so they can protect themselves from becoming victims of crime.

This is the second year that the police have run the operation and will continue to pursue criminals into the New Year.

A Bedfordshire Police spokesman said: "We would like to thank the readers of Bedfordshire on Sunday for their help and support during Operation Christmas Presence.

"We have arrested one of the ten most wanted and have had a really good response from members of the public."

SIR - I was astonished to read the recent letters in favour of wind turbines (BoS, December 4) which suggest that some of your correspondents have not even started to get their heads round the issues involved.

I have recently proffered my full support to the campaign of CLOWD in Podington, which are opposed to this proposal of erecting nine 400ft turbines in the area.

Although the actual site of the turbines is a few hundred yards from my constituency borders, the impact is so vast it will undeniably be felt by my constituents inside the borders of the East Midlands.

The truth of the matter is that aside from the obvious aesthetic impact of the turbines, windfarms are disastrously uneconomic, in both financial and environmental terms.

They absorb a great deal of energy in their construction and installation, and deliver an intermittent trickle of power in return. Wind installations require back-up conventional capacity for calm days, so you pay twice for every megawatt of installed capacity.

Wind only appears to be viable because of the Government's wholly irrational subsidy policy which hoses money at windfarms to the detriment of other renewables. If a future government adopts a more sustainable policy, wind power companies may go bankrupt, leaving landowners with the cost of dismantling these useless monstrosities and restoring the sites.

Coupled with the dangers to local wildlife and the damage to the breeding grounds for birds, bats and badgers and constant noise emissions that can be registered at great distances away, I believe that they are many more effective ways of generating renewable energy.

I urge all in Bedfordshire to join me in supporting the campaign of CLOWD.

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SIR - With reference to your recent article on the RSPB clearing the wooded area to create a heathland, I would like to point out a few facts.

Firstly I am of the age to remember when Sir Malcolm Stewart lived in the lodge.

I used to help deliver milk to him in a pony and trap.

The place then was immaculate with the help of people like Mr Percy Snr.

Then came the army and under Major Poole, a rail track and communications dump was built with little disturbance to the wild life.

Then came the RSPB to decimate the area.

First of all they cut down trees, cleared the undergrowth to make way for their portacabins and car parks, they also created trails so people could look for wild life.

Of course this did not disturb anything (Oh I forgot that they put up a few bird houses to encourage back what they had scared away).

Now they have more than one hundred vehicle movements a day where as in Sir Malcolm's day probably five or six at the most. These people come into the area and try to tell us country folk what is best for the wild life.

My belief is that nature will look after itself if left alone, so their cutting down trees to create heathland will not help.

Where are all the tree loving birds to go or are they going to put up more bird boxes to attract them back?

I can remember walking through the estate to see owls, woodpeckers, jays, tree creepers etc, but not now.

We have lost a lot and it is not only farmers to blame for their pesticides etc. It is people interfering with the natural habitat.

So RSPB think again.

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SIR - It was with great dismay that I read your story in regard to the children who caused damage to the Stagecoach bus last Thursday. This was a service put on especially for children coming out of school but there are similar issues on the county school buses.

I have great concerns about the safety on school buses; this could be a fantastic service to the general community, as well as to children travelling to school, by reducing the congestion on the road at school time. I know, as a parent myself, that many parents do not use the facility because of this kind of behaviour, as well as the lack of seat belts, supervision and in some cases, as has been reported to myself, seats.

The bus driver and one chaperone must find it a challenge to cope with this number of children, and I commend them for their work.

If we were to send our children on a school trip there would be a minimum number of adults to children depending on age, and as they would be travelling on coaches, not buses, there would be seat belts provided.

Some county services are tendered to companies running coaches therefore there are seat belts on these but this is not standard across the county.

The county needs to be looking for a safe service for these children, which will then give parents confidence in the service and in turn reduce congestion.

The mayor speaks out:

Plans to cut down the number of councils we have in Bedfordshire have risen again. In the 1990s, the then Tory Government proposed unitary councils and Labour opposed it. While Luton did become a unitary authority, plans to roll it out across the county were quietly shelved, due to Conservative opposition at local level. Now the Labour Government is suggesting one tier of council is dropped. Patrick Hall, Labour MP for Bedford and Kempston, supports the idea. So, as you will read below, does Frank Branston, Mayor of Bedford Borough Council. But do you? The Government has said it will only carry such a plan through if it has the support of local people. Bedfordshire on Sunday invites articles, such as the one below, either supporting or opposing the idea. At a later stage, we will conduct our own 'referendum' by inviting readers to vote for and against. But first you need to hear both sides of the argument.

DURING the past few months I have visited many of Bedford's 45 parish councils to tell them what is going on at the Town Hall.

When it comes to questions, more often than not the first will be something I can't answer because it is a county council matter.

• State of roads? County (but pavements may be borough).

• Schools? County.

• Clay and gravel extraction? County.

• Willington Rowing Lake? County.

• Tidy Tip? County.

• Council tax? Mostly County.

• Police? Nominally County although really Home Office.

People just do not understand the borough/county split and who can blame them? It is a bit like the Schleswig Holstein question which some of us learned about at school. Only three people ever understood it. One died, one went mad thinking about it and one had forgotten.

This is a democratic issue as well as one of efficiency. The essence of democracy is that you should know who to kick when things go wrong.

As my rural rides have shown me, that essence has been lost. People assume the borough is responsible for everything around them and are baffled when it turns out to be this other body about which they know very little.

And if it is bad in Bedford borough, where the county council resides, how much worse must it be in the furthest reaches of the county?

That people don't understand the system is made clear from this year's county council elections.

The county was in such a mess that Whitehall had put in a man to try to bring it round.

It had just risen from a poorly rated council to 'weak' in the comprehensive performance assessment (CPA).

But it was still among the worst performing shire councils - children's services were the worst, social services was in special measures and its council tax (which is 80 per cent of your whole council tax bill) second highest, all in comparison with other shire counties.

Its ruinous contract with Hyder Business Services to run most of the council services had given rise to so many complaints it had to negotiate its way out at a cost to the taxpayer of almost £8million.

You would think that any council which had perpetrated these horrors would have been savaged by the electorate, but what happened? The party that had been in charge during this disastrous period was rewarded with many more seats and now has an overwhelming majority at County Hall. Would that have happened if voters had understood who was responsible for the debacle?

Leaving aside issues of competence, look at the cost of the two-tier system. Our small county, which now excludes Luton, has four chief executives, the district ones at an average of about £100,000 each, the county chief executive on £150,000, four deputies on salaries ranging between £70,000 and £100,000, four directors of development, finance directors, chief legal officers etc. - all on substantial salaries, three town halls and one county hall, and so on.

Although the change would introduce a one-off cost, I don't doubt that there are substantial savings to be made which could be returned to the taxpayer in reduced council tax or improved services. Either Bedford's town or county hall could go, leaving a valuable site available for redevelopment which could cover the cost of the change.

But the most important benefit would be that the first requirement of democracy would have been met:

People would know who to kick.

More contenders for the Christmas lights competition are on show.

Bedfordshire on Sunday is offering a prize of £100 for the house voted best display.

There will also be £50 donated by the Mayor of Bedford, Frank Branston for the best in the borough and £50 by the chairman of Mid Bedfordshire District council for the best in Mid Beds.

The competition will run until December 20, and winners will appear in the Christmas Eve edition of the paper.

Since the 1970s there have been various changes to our higher education system.

Originally there were three colleges. Bedford College of education was located at Polhill, the PE College at Lansdowne, and the Further Education provision was at what was then called Mander College.

Then came an amalgamation of the three, that frankly never worked. The PE College was perceived to be rather snooty about its provision and looked down on Polhill and especially Mander. Mander, in contrast, had strong union ties and was quite belligerent to the other two sites.

Then the County Council decided that another merger was in the cards, and sought to hive off Further Education and merge Luton Technical College with the two Higher Education institutions.

Eventually the Higher Education provision merged with de Montfort University, based in Leicester.

But this week A surprise merger of Bedfordshire's two universities was announced.

Lowly-ranked University of Luton will join forces with De Montfort University (DMU) in Bedford.

The new institution will be headed by Professor Les Ebdon, currently vice-chancellor at Luton.

Consultations will be made as a new name is sought.

Backed by the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA), the merger will be funded from the universities' £12 million turnover, it was claimed.

The changes could be finalised by August 2006.

The move was broadly welcomed yesterday, but with some reservations over possible job cuts.

Currently, De Montfort University is ranked in 91st place out of 119 British universities in the Sunday Times league table – rising five places since 2004.

The University of Luton dropped 23 places this year, from 83rd place in 2004 to 106th.

Prof Tasker said:

"This is a fantastic opportunity to create new opportunities, with two significant higher education providers in the county, and make an institution to focus on people in Bedfordshire.

"This gross plan for the region will create a greater local and regional management, and this is the right way to go."

Prof Ebdon said:

"We will ensure all staff, students, stakeholders and friends of both institutions are involved in detailed discussions and have an input into shaping their new university.

"The University of Luton has already played a significant role in the economic regeneration of Luton and now we have the opportunity to provide a much stronger involvement in the whole of Bedfordshire."

De Montfort University's Lansdowne Campus is already set to close by September 2007, with all facilities transferred to the Polhill Campus under a £14million centralisation scheme.

I presume, therefore, that de Montfort in Leicester will de-merge (is there such a word?!) Am I glad to be out of it all!

With only a week to go before the days begin to get longer, the weather, presumably the effects of global warming, has been such that many leaves are still to fall, so we still have the pleasure of seeing the lovely colours. This is Biddenham Turn, just outside the Upper School.

May I wish you a good week ahead

Robert

Week ending 17 December 2005