Headington Quarry Blog

Labour can't find the words...

2006-04-30T23:57:00.000Z

...to describe quite how they are failing Oxford. So they steal mine. I suppose I should be flattered that they are reading and rattled by my criticisms. But resorting to plagiarism - come on chaps, you know what bad form that is in an academic city like ours!

Let's make it clear for them and see if this appears on any leaflets:

There are parts of Oxford, where the council owns most of the housing, that are depressing (incidentally, that's an illness that figures quite highly in areas with high Indices of Multiple Deprivation - it's not a slight on individuals, just a sad fact). If they want to know why otherwise good kids are at a loose end, why they resort to things that others find anti-social, they only have to look at these areas they have counted as their fiefdom for so long. There is precious little investment into the council owned housing stock. Those not in such housing would be surprised, nay shocked, at what counts as "decent homes".

Of course residents generally make the best of it. But if Labour are blind to the chasm in quality between some council estates and other parts of town, they cannot have much of a vision for this fair city and its citizens.

The so called decent homes standard will not prevent abject fuel poverty in a world of rising fuel costs. Subsiding household fuel needs through cash handouts is not sustainable and eventually those people will suffer. People will be less able to participate in the new economy in sub-decent housing.

Labour, it seems, only feel able to address this through enforcement. This battle about who can be toughest will not in the end produce thriving, successful neighbourhoods.

Labour came to power saying that they wanted to be "tough on the causes of crime" which most of us took to mean inequality, especially of opportunity. Yet income and wealth disparities have grown under Labour. And whilst many have seen their wealth grow each year by more than they can earn working because of the property boom, those most dependent on how well bodies like Oxford City Council serve them have not shared one jot in that bounty.

I want to address it through hope. Through giving people hope that they can have a truly decent home, that their kids will have a truly decent education and opportunities outside of school, that they will be able to retire and see out a few years of relative leisure without abject poverty, that they will have a financial stake in their homes and neighbourhoods, that those neighbourhoods will become places that people choose to move to.

If that offends Labour let them quote it and explain why.

Why do our parks close?

2006-04-25T00:40:00.000Z

Does anyone know? I don't think all parks close everywhere at night do they?

In case you can't read it that well it says that it opens at 8am (far too late for most people I know to have a walk before they need to trudge off to work) and closes at 7pm (even now that daylight lasts till at least 8pm and a bit later - but why can we only enjoy our parks in daylight anyway they hold just as many intersting senory attractions at night - peace, quiet, a haven away from the roads and garish street lights and smelly city air).

Is that what you would want if you had a say in how they were run? Let's face it, most of them are not exactly secure in the sense that if someone was up to no good they could quite easily get into them whenever they wanted. So does it matter whether they are locked so as to prevent the law-abiding using them at whatever time they like?

I remember walking a friend's dogs in the dead of night through the big park next to Pershore Abbey without having to climb any gates.
But just to show how beautiful they can be anyway, here's something I caught sight of just before Easter in Headington Hill Park:

And now there are loads of them. Apparently they are Oxfordshire's "county flower" - the snakeshead fritillary. Fantastic.

And Easter always brings a welcome burst from these fellows:

Decent Homes, or Dream Homes

2006-04-21T17:51:00.000Z

I blog in response to Frank Field in today's Telegraph about council house allocations. Saying that Oxford's problems are not merely about allocations, but about the quality of council housing as a whole. I have a vision of not merely "decent homes" but "dream homes" for all our tenants:

It is about housing, Frank, but your vision falls indecently short for Oxford

Parking charges: Labour doth protest too much

2006-04-20T14:01:00.000Z

Again from today's Oxford Mail:

Opposition Growing To Parking Charges

Well yes, of course nobody likes paying for something that they've hitherto enjoyed for free. But let's face it, the reason many of these parking schemes are being put into place, often in the face of oppposition from residents in the first place such as in Headington Quarry, is that more jobs, and therefore more communters, are piling into residential neighbourhoods.

Most notably, in my part of east Oxford this is from Brookes (who I work for so have to be careful about!) and in particular from the reorganisation of the hospitals. So, if these parking schemes are necessary at all (and from experience in my neighbourhood local people may think they are not, until people start parking there and then it's too late to prevent) how should they be paid for? Because they do need to be paid for - there's the upfront capital cost of actually putting down lines and up signs and then there's the administrative costs of processing permits.

In my view it is clear. These parking zones are not being foisted on people because they themselves are parking outside their homes. Quarry is not the same East Oxford environment where the streets were not designed for cars. Many homes after all do, unlike the terraced streets off the Cowley Road, have space for cars on their own property.

No, it's because of expansion of employers in the area. Completely outside the control of existing residents. That's what Section 106 agreements in planning are there for. And because the hospitals in particular were given permission for expansion before sorting out the total cost of mitigating any problems that might cause there's not enough in the pot. So you can thank New Labour for that in the main, desperate as they were to support the flagship Private (Debt-)Finance Initiative schemes their local MP was in charge of at the time. I hate to say it, Labour, but "I-TOLD-YOU-SO" in planning meeting after planning meeting but was, Cassandra like, ignored and silenced by enthusiastic PFI fans.

Labour are not universally against residents parking charges. I've already blogged that they charge handsomely in Croydon and no doubt a quick Google would find many more examples. The Greens would love to price cars off the roads anyway and are being utterly disingenuous in my opinion in complaining that Tories are encouraging free parking for a few evening visitors to our beleaguered town centre businesses whilst punishing city residents - you can read about real environmentally friendly alternative economics of transport and travel in my main blog here.

Indeed when I was last on the city council the then Labour led council was looking for ways of charging in East Oxford, but refrained simply because they could not find a way of making it fair to people reduced to living in shared housing because of high housing costs.

So, take all this political posturing with a pinch of salt. There can be no doubt that all your local representatives, so far as I am aware, will be fighting against charges for CPZs that have become necessary not because of your doing, but because of bad planning decisions made in the name of bolstering New Labour's New Debt Deal that will cripple even the public facilities they were intended to benefit in the years to come.

And if someone doesn't sort out the mess that helter-skelter debt financed NHS growth has and will impose on front line services (and the pretty well unfunded growth of higher education as well), I dare say there might be so many job cuts that one day they'll be ripping up the lines and signs and removing the controlled parking zones anyway! So, Labour, don't pass the buck just because the County Council is a convenient political target; accept your part in the responsibility for creating the problem in the first place!

But just to show I am not all negative on this here's an idea:

Let Control Plus, the private contractor that enforces residents parking areas, pay for the administration of permits out of their takings from fines against those that abuse them. A nice market led solution. If the CPZs are really necessary because of commuter traffic they will pay for themselves. If not, they will make a loss and cease to be enforced and the good residents who so oppose them will be left in peace. And, if it is profitable and remains so, then perhaps some of the fine money should be put towards upkeep of those streets that would then self-evidently be handling more traffic than they were ever designed for.

Hence from Blackbird Leys art thou banished

2006-04-20T12:11:00.000Z

This reported in today's Oxford Mail:

Life Ban For Leys Thug (from thisisoxfordshire)

A violent thug has been banned from setting foot in Blackbird Leys for the rest of his life.

Magistrates slapped an anti-social behaviour order (Asbo) on David Reid, 37, after hearing about 26 convictions for offences including theft, burglary and assault in the past 22 years.

Reid is banned from ever entering Blackbird Leys the first life-time ban for an area of Oxfordshire and will eventually be barred from entering Greater Leys, where he currently lives.

Now, I am sure that this chap has caused a huge amount of misery to other people in his time. And he clearly deserves some kind of punishment and management. But an ASBO? Banishing him from his home area, where his family still lives, for the rest of his life? It's positively mediaeval. What's next for the New Labour Big Brother? Public floggings? Using the perfectly good vegetables thrown out by Tesco for throwing at the prisoner in the local stocks? I appreciate he did not contest the order - though that's probably a reflection of the assistance available to people faced with this non-criminal sanction - but one does wonder whether he'll even understand it.

Even more importantly, does anyone in their right mind believe that the trouble this chap has created will stop because he leaves Greater Leys? No, it will no doubt go with him. That might help Greater Leys, but it's not going to help other areas to have him moved around. So, does he get another ASBO when he causes "sub-criminal" trouble in Northway? Then again in Barton, or wherever he finds himself next? He clearly can't help himself, but whether a series of threats like this is helping him, and therefore those who might have to come into contact with him in future, is extremely doubtful.

So what are the answers? Well, for a start, it was reported also that the magistrate heard that over that 22 year period Reid had picked up convictions carrying 20 years' worth of jail sentences. Has he served them all, in full? It's in cases like this that one is sorely tempted by the Californian idea of "three strikes and you're out" - in other words on the third offense you get life. I don't personally agree with that though, because it has ended up in some very petty criminals incarcerated for life little more than being "naughty boys".

But we have a system of license here. If you do not serve your entire sentence behind bars, which we presume this chap hasn't since he's had time in between sentences to run up 26 convictions, and you're allowed out on "license" it means you can go straight back inside to serve the rest of your original sentence as well as any new sentence for not keeping your nose out of trouble.

So why is a civil order being used here where serving his sentences out might be more appropriate? It is clear he has not been rehabilitated or reformed by his sentences yet, though I do as a good (sic!) Catholic firmly believe in the ability of every individual to be rehabilitated, to show genuine contrition. And this sort of thing clearly diminishes the threat of a civil order intended to curb anti-social but not quite criminal behaviour, or where a criminal conviction would be hard to obtain.

I've long wanted to rail against ASBOs, particularly in Oxford where they are clearly being used as a political tool. Labour's local election leaflets even proudly proclaim that "they" have doled out more ASBOs than any other town in the Thames Valley, as if it's some kind of league table to be proud of. And to hand down the same potential five year sentence to a 37 year old with a twenty year history of criminal offences against which convictions were secured and a bored teenager not getting enough attention at home, at school, not on the correct diet or whatever is just mad.

And I am particularly sad that my good friend, Mick McAndrews, standing for Labour (this time around) in Barton, has allowed his name to go on a leaflet promoting ASBOs, when he himself has realised they are not what is needed in many of the cases he has dealt with. There are some parts of town is which the most decent citizen might be hard pressed not to become terminally depressed and in some cases anti-social as a result. Depressing areas with housing that will never be "decent" except in the fairy tale world of John Prescott's housing team. If Labour were truly ambitious for Oxford they'd be finding ways of dealing with such endemic depression to give their residents some hope for the future. They're not depressing because of the people that are there, I hasten to add, but because homes fit for heroes are no longer even fit. And that responsibility lies firmly at the feet of housing authorities.

I forget the name of the comedienne woman on TV but with Labour in Oxford she was right: "don't abolish ASBOs, they're the only qualification some of these kids will get!" More appropriately, perhaps, "don't abolish ASBOs, it's the only league table a Labour run Oxford can top"!

Back to the "Rec"

2006-04-07T23:26:00.000Z

Out canvassing tonight in Margaret Road I came across a lady with a lot of useful comments and information on the recreation ground and other issues. I hadn't realised that my earlier post on the issue of the pavilion and recreation ground would come across as a proposal/policy/plan to do something that people don't want - to push for something.

What I am trying to "push" if anything is a mechanism, through the same principles as I am working on with my Community Land Trust project, to raise money to enable the local community to get some really decent facilities that it decides on. I do see that recreation ground as immensely valuable community space, though didn't realise that the football is very contentious to some, so maybe the emphasis on sport was misleading.

What I do stand by, however, is a belief that the City Council is not necessarily the body to do this. With so many competing priorities all across the city, for money and resources, and yes, "distant" officers not directly involved in the neighbourhood on a day to day basis I don't see them being best placed or even able to deliver such suburban community goals.

I think it's a potentially very lovely open urban space and needs to be in community ownership so that the differing priorities of different types of users (and of people who don't use it at the moment for whatever reason but would if there was something there for them) can be aired, discussed and then look for ways of delivering them.

I don't suppose there's going to be the time during a full blown election campaign to get interested people together, but out canvassing I've come across two or three people potentially interested, including, I hope the lady tonight who brought up so many good issues.

But it would be good to hear from more people - ideas for what would make that a space they would value and use...here's some ideas maybe (not all from me admittedly):

Non-football sports - cricket was mentioned tonight but what about bowls, tennis, or maybe some kind of multi-sports facility up around where the pavilion area is that could double up as tennis and basketball or netball type space.
A better play area for different ages of children and young people (and with local people involved better maintained like the play areas in Risinghurst under the Parish Council).
A less formal division between football pitch and the rest of the park so that what are essentially once or twice a week occasional users do not dominate the whole park.
Some paths, formal or informal to provide walks.
A sensory garden to give a bit more visual interest to the place and somewhere to sit and while away the time or stop and chat to friends neighbours and other park users.

And in that context of a mixed use area a built facility where the pavilion is that offers more than just changing or drinking facilities for the footballers but modern facilities for all age groups and different facilities - meeting spaces, play spaces, social spaces, and sports spaces.
Just ideas. No promises implied - this is not about me and elections per se, but about getting the best for you all, the local community. But steps, perhaps, towards making it a really well used suburban focal point for all sorts of people and groups.

Multiplying tables...

2006-04-07T13:11:00.000Z

A few of you are a bit annoyed at what one person described to me as a "waste of tarmac" in the form of big low humps at road junctions around the Quarry Road-York Road area.

I agree - they're awful things. I hope they are not finished actually, because they are badly marked and at the ends of Mark Road, Weyland Road and so on you can't really tell if there's meant to be a give-way or anything like that. Maybe there isn't and it's a "common sense" free-for-all, but I hope not - I like my boundaries marked!

But as to why they are there in the first place - some of you said there's no problem with speeding in the area. Tell that to the chap who was caught doing 120mph on a motorcycle on Quarry Rd!

On CPZs, costs and croneys

2006-04-07T10:46:00.000Z

A number of you, especially up around the Quarry Road area, tell me you are mystified, even annoyed, about why you are having a Controlled Parking Zone imposed when there are no apparent parking problems in your area. Well first of course the caveat here is that this is a County Council issue nominally, so I have limited clout in that area. But it stems from City council decisions, notably planning decisions, over the past five or six years, concerning the development of major employers in the area.

I work for one of them, Oxford Brookes University, so have to be a little bit circumspect but to be fair they are not the real culprits in these particular planning issues, which are mostly about the three big hospitals in respect of the Headington central and Quarry areas.

I'm also a Land Value Tax campaigner, so in my ideal world if you wanted a car you'd have a drive to put it on or pay to use our common space, the roads, to do so. But the whole economy of housing, built environment and the need for so much transport to and from work and other places would be different, so it doesn't really apply here.

What is the problem though is that when the Nuffield Orthopedic Centre and the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals Trust on both their sites in the Churchill and John Radcliffe hospitals applied for planning permission for, admittedly much needed, redevelopment of their facilities, there was not enough consideration of the traffic effects.

Yes, there was a working party established called HAMATS (Headington and Marston Area Transport Strategy), but the main high value planning applications were allowed to go through before that was thoroughly consulted on and measures agreed to ameliorate the expected traffic issues. This was always "cart before horse".

What it meant was that the only "stick" the City Council had, which was to make sure that what are known as "Section 106" contributions - which is when a developer has to pay to offset local problems their development will cause such as with traffic - covered all the costs was thrown away in the great Pooh-sticks race to be part of the great government "give-away" called the Private Finance Initiative.

Why? Well, you may remember that your dear Labour MP, Andrew Smith, was at the time Gordon Brown's Chief Secretary at the Treasury, and in that position head of the "Office of Government Commerce", and consequently in charge of the "Private Finance Initiative" a deadly timebomb of a policy whereby large government capital projects are developed and paid for now by private interests and the users of the facilities pay it back many times over in decades to come as it now turns out.

It was not totally partisan I have to say. In particular Mary Clarkson, Labour for Marston weighed in with us - Stephen Tall, Lib Dem for Headington, George Kershaw, Lib Dem for Quarry and myself, Lib Dem for Old Marston & Risinghurst - and we fought hard to keep the planning decisions open until HAMATs had worked out what was needed and how much would be needed to pay for it. Indeed I lobbied the Secretary of State in one case trying to get him to call decisions on the John Radcliffe site in for further consideration because permission was granted even before the public consultation on the initial HAMATs ideas happened.

But other councillors, most notably locally Maureen Christian, Labour for Marston, kept telling us that this was too important a development to hold up, and others were bullied into accepting the plans there and then because they were told that the ORHT might lose their place on the PFI waiting list if permission wasn't granted there and then.

Anyway - what does all this have to do with the far side of Quarry - well, it's been a shambles from the beginning. In the absence of our suggestion getting a decent hearing and evaluation (which was for a dedicated access off the bypass into the hospitals) clearly there was going to be pressure on all sorts of streets - you'd be surprised how far people will walk from their car if they've had to drive in from miles away. I tend to agree that the net may have been thrown too widely to start with and should perhaps be done incrementally. But no doubt there are funding issues with that - section 106 agreement funds have to be spent within a certain time and if they had been used for a smaller CPZ and then you had all discovered that displaced problems into your streets there would maybe have been nothing with which to fund them.

I know down my end in "New Marston South" people were adamant at the time of HAMATs that they did not need or want a residents' parking zone - mostly because they rely on the pavements themselves in some of the streets and would probably have ended up having fewer spaces anyway. But now, within a short period of three years as the Brookes developments have come onstream, they are crying out to have a CPZ.

Experience seems to show then that if there's no insurmountable physical barrier, such as the ring road, the parking problem will be pushed out to areas not included in the initial CPZ. But I dare say that if those pressures do not appear, it could still be revoked in certain areas, and I would help you with that if it becomes necessary.

Power to the Parish!

2006-03-09T08:36:00.000Z

Readers might be interested in this, about the Risinghurst part of the ward. I will perhaps work this up as a proposal for Quarry to have a parish too in the coming days and weeks...

http://risinghurst.blogspot.com/2006/03/power-to-parish.html

"Village Hall" and sports fields...

2006-01-22T16:41:00.000Z

Having been told that parking was a problem on Margaret Road on Sundays I went to take a look today. Dear knows how people coming to football will get here when there are parking restrictions all along the road. The pitches are well used, and no doubt at least half the cars every week come from some distance - with visiting teams. So there's little point telling people they must walk to football, because no doubt those that can already do.

But the real reason for going up there was to have a look at the building loosely described as the "pavilion". People tell me it is actually used for changing for footie and so on. But it doesn't look very welcoming when the pitches are not in use. It didn't look much better when they are I can tell you!

One of the biggest complaints these days is that youngsters don't have anything to do. Well looking at what seemed like hundreds of them out on our local equivalent of Hackney marshes shows that isn't always the case. They should be rewarded with facilities worth the name.

Now I can't find the documents relating to the recent parks and leisure services consultation exercise by the council, but, cynic that I am I will assume that even if there was mention in there of the Quarry recreation ground there's no money to do anything about it. I suppose I could be even more pessimistic and assume that the city actually wants to divest itself of some of these facilities, but I hope not such a well used one.

So I want to float a very vague idea. Don't worry - bulldozers are not going to appear anytime soon - for I am sure there are people about for whom some of this idea threatens much loved community landmarks. But I was just thinking really. Mulling it over. So I wanted to know what people think of it.

Some of you will know that over the past few years when I haven't been on the council I've been working on developing and promoting a mechanism for getting affordable housing and other property assets - much needed in Oxfordshire as a whole - through taking land into trust and using its value to subsidise what people pay for their homes. But there's no reason why it need be limited to housing.

What if we were to bring together one of the Community Land Trusts for the Quarry rec area. Pool the land that the Village Hall currently occupies together with the sports ground and pavilion and play area. Use the village hall site for some affordable housing and with the receipt from the land value try to get the lottery and local councils to put in a similar amount and build a really top notch facility on the recreation ground side of Margaret Road, providing a community meeting space, a dedicated play group facility, a proper sports pavilion and the like.

It probably couldn't, indeed shouldn't, be done by the city council themselves - I don't believe they can do any better than the many local groups that actually use these two facilities regularly. Maybe there's some money for leisure facilities that might come available when the old Windmill School is redeveloped (is that ever going to happen?) - that, together with the land of the sports fields itself, could be the city's contribution.

So, what do people think? A community land partnership for Headington Quarry to provide twenty first century facilities together with a little much needed housing, owned in trust and managed by the community in perpetuity? Sound like an idea worth at least discussing with people? Does anyone know who actually owns the village hall? There's no entry in the Land Register for it. Is it the Friends of Quarry? Holy Trinity Church? Of course I would like to see parish councils with real powers spring up all over the city to be a focus for this kind of development, but in the absence of that a community land trust would do nicely.

Welcome to Jock's Headington Quarry Blog

2006-01-20T13:45:00.000Z

Jock Coats is the Lib Dem prospective candidate for the Quarry and Risinghurst Ward on Oxford City Council, with elections on May 4th 2006. As I wander around the Headington Quarry bit of the ward and pick up news, information and stories I will post them in here (and there will be a corresponding one for the Risinghurst part of the ward linked in I hope).

How you can participate

2006-01-15T10:43:00.000Z

I don't want this blog to be just a one way thing with me rambling on about local issues and no feedback. There are two main ways you can contribute:

If something I've written interests you, annoys you, infuriates you, excites you and you wish to add a comment to an existing story, click on the comments link below the relevant article and fill in the pop-up box. You're comments will then show up as a link below the post. I will get notified of comments so I can respond to them if they need a response.
If you've got a story of your own, I'm happy to let other people join the blog, making it a "team blog" and you can post whole articles that will then appear on the main page. I will "moderate" these, not so much to censor what people are writing, but just to make sure that they are not offensive or actionable. To do this you will need to have a blogging account at http://www.blogger.com/ but you don't need to have a blog of your own there if you don't want one. Once you have your blogging account, click on my profile link and email me to tell me who you are and what your blogging account name is and I'll add it to the "members" list of the blog and then you will be able to post.

Of course in the spirit of blogging - which is designed to be an organic network of people offering their own thoughts and stories, you can set yourself up with a blog of your own, and then use the "blog this" link at the top of each page of the blog to write a story on your own blog with a link back to this blog.