Month: November 2021

Will the closure of the bridge linking Brookfield Road in Churchdown with Badgeworth only be 12 months? Shouldn’t local life be the priority over keeping the M5 open day and night?

If you’ve ever wanted to witness the consequences of having a public sector that operates without joined up thinking or consideration for the impacts on real life that its actions will have, you won’t need to look much further than the structural work that Highways England are undertaking on bridges around the Junction 11 area of the M5.

As a regular user of the road between the B4063 near Gloucestershire Airport (what many will remember the lights at The Plough), and The Gallagher Retail Park or Crosshands on The A4019 Tewkesbury Road in Cheltenham passing the House in the Tree, I’ve been experiencing the impact of one of the associated road closures for over a year now.

When Staverton Bridge was closed in the summer of 2020 – for what everyone was told would be a period of some 13 months (the signs said July 2020 – August 2021), it was very quickly clear that very little thought had been given to the project in terms of how drivers would respond and how they would then find their way around.

With many drivers choosing to reach their destination by diverting through Staverton Village and Boddington, local residents have already had over a year of speeding torture and dangerously broken up roads. Those problems have only been made worse by the apparent rescheduling of the works which took place this Summer, meaning that the work to Staverton Bridge and the road closure will not end until at least next spring.

Although I have often thought about publishing a picture of the great plywood back door of a speed camera van that the Villagers in Staverton have created to encourage passing motorists to slow down, it was the news I have seen today published in the My Churchdown Magazine recently about the upcoming closure of the bridge between Churchdown and Badgeworth on Brookfield Road that made me feel it was really the right time to write.

As a Borough Councillor, I experienced how the different agencies of Government interacted and worked – or rather didn’t work together over projects like these, and how the truth about small matters like consultations and handling bad news to the public would be spun and manipulated so that people would react in the most favourable way possible, rather than creating problems for decision makers which were in the majority of cases based upon very reasonable thinking rather than over the top demands.

With the experience that I have, I do not believe that it was ever the intention that Staverton Bridge would be finished within 13 months as initially suggested, and that the arrival of scaffolding over the Bridge in only the past couple of weeks for the reconstructive phases of the project demonstrates that planners will have almost certainly known just how long it would take to carefully complete such a specialist task.

The reality is that those responsible know that if they had gone straight in with a two-year time frame for Staverton Bridge to be closed, there would have been a public outcry of a level that would have been too much politically for them to withstand. Instead, it appears that they have cynically and deliberately strategically moved the goalposts, right at the time when people had got used to the change and were least likely to open up publicly to make a stand.

I believe this view relevant, as the work that will close one of the two direct routes to Cheltenham from Churchdown is likely to be closed for much longer than the 12-month time frame suggests, and with the chaos to commuters, bus routes, school journeys and all other forms of travel that depend on this link every day of the year, this is a project that has a cost to the local area that under these plans is simply too high just to be imposed upon us by a public sector organisation which is under no direct political control.

Yes, the bridge work needs to be done. But why does it have to be done in this way?

Whichever way Highways England complete this work, it will be expensive. But the real, expense needs to be calculated in terms of what the cost will be not just to their own budget, but to everyone else too.

Many of you will have seen the video on social media where a railway bridge in Germany is closed, demolished and completely replaced and open again within 4 days. It begs the question why the authorities and the powers that be cannot think like this and use holidays and night times to minimise disruption and the time that key local roads have to be closed – rather than maintaining this obsession that the roads (motorways) under their supervision must at all costs remain open, unless it is for a purpose that they should choose.

No, MPs should NOT have second jobs. After all, being an MP is NOT a job anyway

The ongoing row over second jobs for MPs has certainly proven to be an interesting one. Yet it has also become increasingly concerning to follow as it has become ever more obvious that so very few of the journalists, commentators and people working around the political sphere have any real consideration or respect for what the role of an MP and public representative should really be all about.

The comments and arguments for second jobs range from the suggestion that MPs with second jobs enrich links with and understanding of the real world, to additional money being the only way to make the job worthwhile. Whilst those against include suggesting that it would be fine to ban second jobs for MPs, but only if they were given a ‘realistic’ salary’.

Nobody seems to have mentioned that being an MP or public representative is not a job.

Being an MP is a responsibility to others. It’s not one that should be taken if the individual concerned cannot guarantee that their responsibility to others will not be compromised by prioritising income, career opportunities, fears, influences of any kind, or any other motivations that put their own needs before anyone else at any time, at any level or in any way.

It is part of the human condition that we can only be loyal to one master. MPs are no different to anyone else. If an MPs priority is income or career at any level, it will not be focused on anyone else.

There are simply no grey areas with this. It really is very black and white.

If an MP can be swayed in their decision making by any factor which will reflect on them personally at any level and in absolutely any way before anything or anyone else, they can be bought. As such, they cannot be relied upon to represent the general public and the voters within the constituency who elected them.

Being an MP or elected politician of any kind requires people who have the life experience, understanding of others and are at a stage within their own lives where they can willingly and unswervingly put the needs of others before themselves in every meaningful way.

It is because we have for so long had a Parliament full of MPs on all sides of the political divides that are ruled by self interest at some level and in some way, that the British Political system – and as a result the whole of the UK – is in the mess that it is in today.

Public service can be the only master of any politician who wants to fulfil the obligations of the role with which they have publicly been entrusted. There simply is no other way.

For as long as we keep electing politicians in this Country and allow them to frame their own roles as careers and jobs, their attitude will continue to focus their attention on nothing other than what the impact and consequences of their actions will be for their future and for themselves before anything else.

There will be many who suggest that this is the way that the system works and that you can only change the system from within. The regrettable truth is that this is a myth perpetrated only for the benefit and furtherance of the interests of those already within that system. People who have a massive investment in ensuring that nothing happens which could bring about the comprehensive systemic change that would serve to help and benefit us all.

Sadly, until we all come together and accept that the people leading this country in government, the establishment and the wider public sector are not working to put our collective best interests, we are doomed to live the same experience. Public policy is today created in all areas of life where the decisions have been made not with us as the priority, but with what is important to the people we elected being always put first.

We only have ourselves to blame for each and every day that this sordid and perverse idea of democracy continues to rule, impinge and inflict avoidable pain and chaos in our lives.

None of the Political Parties that we have on offer to us today are focused on all of us in the way that they should be.

It is we who must make the decision to elect MPs and politicians of all kinds who will make promises and then keep them. Because they are there in our Parliament because politics is a calling or a vocation for them, rather than just an interpretation of a career or a job. One that to them is nothing more than getting the maximum return for themselves for the least amount of work.

We need a real choice in politics. We need MPs who understand and genuinely care. We need #ANewPartyForAll for the next General Election.

To achieve this, we need to start thinking differently and begin to build the alternative to the madness we have got right now.

If you really want all this to change, please visit www.anewpartyforall.org and think about the power that you have to input and help to bring about change.