Maggy Daniell

So now we have a new Leader of the County Council, officially as of yesterday.  I wonder if we will get any changes, other than of style?

Ken Maddock took 35 minutes to recite all the wonderful things (not!) that he had done over the last three years in office.  He put a quite amazing spin on his dreadful record of service cuts and poor decisions.  And as well as claiming credit for projects in Somerset that were started during Lib Dem days – which  even he described as ‘investment’ – he then added an inevitable dig about his inherited ‘debt’.  He just does not get it.  Borrowing money to invest in projects for the future is good for Somerset’s growth, and is repaid over time by those who benefit from it.  To compare it to the Bible story – the last Lib Dem administration spent their talents and got more back; he buried his and has nothing to show for it. 

His replacement, John Osman, was shorter and more poetical in his delivery (all that was missing were violins in the background).  It sounded good.  But what we need to remember is that he was KM’s second in command and voted for all those cuts, so he is tarred by the same brush.  We’ll have to wait to see if he will do anything differently in substance.

I don’t know if it was because I missed the last full Council meeting, but it felt better this time.  Despite the high flown periods and the long eulogy, there was a feeling of energy in the chamber.  I know we felt it amongst ourselves.  We have just started the countdown – it is 12 months to the election.   That means there may only be 12 months more to endure with this lot in charge.  It is even possible that there will be something of Somerset left to inherit.  For one thing is sure – they needed a new leader and a change of style to try to convince electors to vote for them again.  Only time will tell if they can fool enough of the people next time.

I’m officially ‘off sick’ at the moment, recovering from an operation.  I found it absolutely fascinating, being a patient in a British hospital, as – apart from having my appendix out in Switzerland – all my hospital experience previously has been on the other side, as a nurse. 

Probably with this tugging at my sub-conscious, I’m re-reading some Lucilla Andrews novels.  She invented the ‘medical romance’ genre, but her books also have very evocative descriptions of nursing in ‘the good old days’ of the early NHS.  Some recall her wartime and 1950s nursing work, but most are set in the 1960s.  I started my training after that, but was also in a major London hospital, and there were still a lot of similarities.  At the little country annexe where I did my first two wards, we still scrubbed instruments and re-packed them for the steriliser; scrubbed and dried red waterproofs in the sluice; and walked down windy corridors to the little nurses’ home – just like in her books.

 It was undoubtedly a very different era.  In those days there wasn’t much money around, and nurses were all ‘dedicated’.  You had to be, since the pay was appalling, the shifts anti-social, and if you got married you had to stop nursing.  It was also extremely hard physical work, and quite regimented, with Sister and Matron authority figures to fear.  Much of this was still the case when I started, although we did have one extremely modern touch – our mercury thermometers registered fevers in Centigrade.

Now we have fancy machines that record everything, and although nurses are still busy, there is far less physical strength or stamina required.  They are professionals, with better working conditions, and do not ‘lift’ patients.  Neither do they expect them to give up their independence for the duration.  Just as medicine and nursing have changed, so has the role of the patient.  And, on the whole, I think this is a good thing. 

 In Lucilla’s days, sick people entered a ward and adopted the role of ‘patient’.  They conformed, just as the nurses did, to the regime.  Their position was a passive one, they did as they were told, and mature adults obeyed instructions – even those given by 18 year old student nurses – and reverted to dependency.  A week or two after the operation, they were discharged, possibly to a convalescent home, to regain their full health and re-learn their independence, before resuming their previous ‘fit’ role in society.

 How different it is today!  If my op had gone according to plan, I would have been discharged the next day; as it was, I was kept in for two nights.  But at no time was I ‘talked down to’ or not kept in the picture about what was happening and why.  I was expected to move when I was able, be independent as much as possible, and carry on life as normally as I could.  So I enjoyed the rest and continued being ‘me’.  The nurses were there, but ‘available’ rather than obvious.  I certainly had the appropriate amount of attention on my first night, but as I had no post-op problems, I don’t know from personal experience what it would have been like if I had ‘needed nursing’. 

 My instinct tells me that I would have got just as good care, but it would have been differently delivered than in Lucilla’s time.  I was actually impressed – and reassured – by my time in hospital.  The NHS gets such a verbal battering sometimes that one wonders.  As it is, I think maybe some of the problem lies with us – our expectations haven’t caught up with modern reality, and sometimes we would quite like to revert to a dependent position for a while! 

 Modern hospitals eat money – they are technically efficient places, and staff get proper salaries.  The NHS we have today has needs so different from 1948’s (and so does society) that it is obvious we need to get away from a sentimental image of it.  On Question Time last Thursday it was referred to almost as a religion; but actually the S stands for Service, and that is how we ought to be looking at it when we make decisions about its future. 

 …Because its future is going to be different from the way it is now, just as my experience was different from Lucilla’s, and both were vastly different from that of the young nurses who looked after me.  So I’m watching what is happening in Parliament with great interest, and hoping that sensible, practical (and affordable) changes to the NHS structure will be enacted.

Not content with slashing the Youth budget by 75%, and closing the youth centre in Frome which plays host to many of the organisations helping needy young people, the Tory administration at County Hall is now proposing to deprive vulnerable young carers of 50% of their tiny budget as well.  Young Carers gets just £140K spread across Somerset to provide support for the young people in the county who look after a dependent relative.  This money is spent on support staff and meeting venues; any trips they may go on are financed through their own fundraising.  Meetings have already been cut from fortnightly to monthly; in future – unless these plans are opposed effectively - they will be vitually non-existent.

Yet these youngsters are often amongst the neediest in our society – performing a caring role, often alone, as well as trying to manage schoolwork and domestic responsibilities.   Meeting other young carers and social work support staff is one of the few ways they have to be amongst people who understand the terrible burden they carry and who are able to ease it a little. 

Under any circumstances it would be shameful to consider cutting their funding.  To do so because of an unrelated legal bill is abhorrent.  Yet the Tory administration has incurred legal costs of £70K fighting a challenge to its planned closure of public libraries, and that equates to half the total Young Carers funding, so they have been made the sacrificial victims. 

SCC lost the case because they neglected correct procedure when introducing their cuts; the libraries were saved, so they are now attacking services for the vulnerable young to pay for their incompetence.  This is another example of poor governance.  The Somerset Tories are so keen to slash budgets that they do not look at the consequences, nor even do them in a way that complies with recognised best practice.

On Thursday 20^th October,  I will be introducing the second of the County Councillors’ public meetings about traffic and transport in Frome.  This will include the feedback we promised, from our meetings with police and County Highways officers.

But that is not all.  It will also be a ‘workshop’ session. We want road users of all kinds to come along and participate – saying how you get around and what improvements are needed.

The intention is to find solutions to traffic problems in Frome which are based in the real world. What matters is outcomes – making Frome safer and more practical for all road users.

 There will be 6 topics:

 Conservation Area – special considerations, traffic, parking and solutions

 Pedestrian flow – natural routes and barriers, solutions

 Disabled usage - routes, barriers, solutions

 Cyclists – natural routes and barriers, solutions

 Car traffic - flow and barriers, solutions

 Retailers, business and HGV needs - usage and problems, solutions

The Traffic and Transport meeting begins at 7.30pm at The Assembly Rooms behind the Memorial Theatre.  Parking is available.

Please come along and participate.  Traffic problems affect us all.  Solutions are something we can find together.

The info below is from a meeting hosted by the Somerset Towns Forum which I attended recently.  It shows the situation in two towns which had new supermarkets.  Wellington has ‘edge of town’ supermarkets, Shepton Mallet had an ‘out-of-town’ supermarket which moved into town.  In both cases supermarkets already existed, and whatever significant effect they had had on independent shops had probably happened when they were first built.  The relevance to Frome is that we have out-of-town supermarkets and are wondering what would be the effect of opening one in the town centre.  These summaries are from a member of the Chamber of Commerce in each town.

1) WELLINGTON.  The town has around 12,000 residents, 4 bank branches, many independent shops and a number of  ‘local chains’. It currently has a metro-style Co-op in the centre of town, an Asda on the edge of the town centre (1393 sqm or 15,000 sqft), and a Waitrose store slightly nearer the town centre that opened two years ago. This is 1300 sqm (14,000 sqft).

The new Waitrose store has been very popular, particularly in attracting customers from further afield (using the jargon – ‘affluent greys’ doing ‘destination shopping’) though has added to the traffic problems in the town centre. The Chamber did point out its concerns at the application stage, but were effectively told by Highways ‘you get a supermarket with congestion or no supermarket’. The Chamber also wanted the store not to have a cafe or wet fish counter.

PROs of the development: Waitrose management have been very helpful, including advising traders on South Street on a Shop Local campaign, and speaking at Chamber meetings; they supported the Wellington Food Town events; they have paid for new signage in all the towns’ car parks; provide 2 hours free parking in the Waitrose car park (compared to council-owned car parks which are all charged for); the development prompted the Chamber to develop an excellent shopping map.

CONs of the development: Traffic congestion in the town centre has worsened; the store was allowed a cafe and to sell wet fish; though the store is well within walking distance of the existing shops, few shoppers so far have been doing linked trips (though some are now using the fish shop in town as there is more choice).

2) SHEPTON MALLET. The BBC filmed ‘The High Street’ series in Shepton Mallet last year, which showed the development of its High Streets through the years. If there was one theme of these programmes, it was that ‘everything changes’. Town centres have to be flexible and adapt to what people now want on the High Street, and not look backwards.

Tesco in Shepton began with an out of town store in 1995, but moved to its current edge-of-town centre location in 2006. The store was 100,000 sq ft then but has just grown to 150,000 sqft (and now sells more clothes, car parts, electrical etc). There are also 5 other stores in the same development – Argos, Boots, New Look, Laura Ashley and a pet store.

There is 2 hours free parking in the store car park, but an ongoing issue is how to entice shoppers down to the town centre, which is around 300m away and across two busy roads.  This is one of the best performing Tesco stores in the UK (also apparently affecting Tesco in Wells and Sainsbury’s nearest store). Council-owned car parks nearer the town centre are all charged for.

PROs of the development: Less empty shops than before, with more niche shops; the Tesco store has triggered several initiatives in the town centre; public realm improvements and Shopfront enhancement scheme were funded through Section 106 (planning gain).

CONs of the development: Size of store and range of products makes it harder to attract shoppers to other retailers in town centre; road network does not help to make it easy to walk into town centre.

I have mixed feelings about the paving in Shephards Barton.  Some of the new Independent councillors have just replaced the tarmac in-fill there with paving slabs from the reclamation yard, doing the work themselves.  On the one hand I am pleased that it is restored to how it was; and I have sympathy with the ‘get on and do it’ attitude – we all like to see an immediate result for our labours. 

On the other hand, I am concerned that by doing it this way they acted without authority and outside their remit – literally interfering with the responsibilities of another organisation.  And because they aren’t professional pavers, a couple of the slabs have been left proud and present a trip hazard which wasn’t there before. 

This could be risking the reputation and finances of the Town Council (and therefore us as tax payers) by leaving it open to prosecution.   There are better things to spend our money on than damages – but in this case the County Council contractors will come and put it right.

The new councillors have had six months to learn the limits of the Town Council’s responsibility and how things should be done.   They are not an informal community group, they are town councillors; and have been elected in good faith to do a certain job on behalf of residents.  They were not elected as paving contractors.

This is not about me being ‘stuffy’.  I would also love to just pitch in and do things without having to think of the consequences.  But as councillors you have to look at the bigger picture and consider everything, not just the immediate problem.  And it is a bit inconsistent of them to complain about SCC doing something illegal (removing a Listed Cockey Lamp from the Conservation Area) and then go on to do something illegal in the Conservation Area themselves!

The ironic thing is that if they had asked to do this, it would have been allowed – as long as they used authorised pavers whose work is covered by insurance for public liability.  In any case, actions like this are not sustainable.  These councillors cannot turn out every week to maintain all the historical street furniture, cobbles, paving, rails etc in the Conservation Area.  It will need to go through ‘the proper channels’.  And I know that sounds boring, but it is why we have councils.  

Councils think of consequences, they are covered against claims from the public, and they have the right people to do the job.  At present we are in a period of reduced resources and things take longer.  That is the downside.  The positive to this situation is that it opens  up opportunities for new relationships between different tiers of government and between the Town Council and community groups.  So the Town Council could take over more responsibilities, if it wants, and if it does it ‘responsibly’. 

A more useful way for councillors to act – and what they are elected to do – is to make or change policy.  Councillor Alvin Horsfall and I – as well as County councillors from other towns in Somerset affected by tarmacing – have been trying to get the policy changed.  This may not be as dramatic a method as digging up tarmac, but it works.  The tarmacing has now been put on hold while alternative saving measures are considered.  This will be more effective in the long term – and should mean that town councillors won’t have to lay another slab.

The city rioters seen on TV, many of them young people, bring some very serious questions about our society.  It’s easy to say they are ‘the lost generation’ but what does that mean? It wasn’t just young people, or the jobless, or the poor, so none of those ‘reasons’ or ‘excuses’ can be used, as has often been the case. 

There is now another voice being heard. Other citizens were reacting as people in past years have: what they are doing is wrong.  It seems a long time since ‘wrong’ (and therefore ‘right’) have been stated without apology.  For years we have been using shades of grey in our speech, in our thinking, in the way we have seen our lives.  And I am not for one moment suggesting that there isn’t a continuum in most things, or that we all don’t see in a ‘relative’  way.  But what we have lost is hard and fast rules, and the belief system that goes with it.  We no longer have an ideology.

Our culture is described as ‘post-Christian’.  Our political parties battle for the centre ground.  Our principle influence for one generation was television and is now the Internet and social media.  We are all affected by what is ‘trending now’, whether we realise it or not.  Our news is entertainment and is restricted to what is telegenic.   The rioters were checking the web to see if they were on the news; they were creating their own entertainment.

Old certainties were lost years ago.  For working people there is no job for life; we are now more likely to do one a year on average, with periods of unemployment along the way.  Families are no longer in the old nuclear model, they are temporary contracts until partners and parents change.  We are agnostic about religion and there are no political ideologies in which to believe and commit.  Role models are celebrities, often famous only for being famous; rarely for their achievements.

‘Thou shalt not covet’ is not even understood anymore.  We live in an advertising age where we are encouraged to want things we haven’t got.  Envy and greed are now called ‘aspiration’.

In any society, you reap what you sow.  Riots and looting are the logical consequence of living in a culture where greed permeates down from the top, where there is huge disparity in wealth, which lacks moral structure, has no certainties, and is without belief in anything beyond self-interest.  And you cannot ‘fix’ a society overnight, especially when the influences which dominated its formation continue to influence our thinking.

Fortunately more basic human needs and instincts still exist.  A need for family, friendship, group identity, and community spirit, even a basic sense of right and wrong are still to be found, and not only in the older generations and the non-city-dwellers.  But this is despite all the influences of modern culture, not because of it. 

People are happier with belief in something.  In times of insecurity, fundamentalism – whether religious or political – is attractive.  It offers certainties and reassurance - and is simple.  It is sound-bite belief, it requires no effort.  We are now too lazy to want to think deeply or to do research in order to get our opinions; so we buy what is presented well. 

It is fashionable to ignore history nowadays, but our society is just repeating what has happened before.  Our economic situation is dire and a big section of society will probably never be able to (legally) fulfil the aspirations we have been encouraged to have.  That being so, we can expect more frustration and anarchy, more drastic measures to deal with it, more polarisation, and the rise of extremist political movements.

…Unless we are able to do something far more drastic, and change the aspirations of our society?

Following on from the Festival, and having mentioned there was something for everyone, I was quite sad to learn from a wheelchair user that this wasn’t the case.  Last year he had been to the Food Feast in the car park around the Cheese and Grain.  It was the first year of using that site, and there was less space then than was provided this year so it was quite crowded.  He needed to get through and couldn’t – and polite requests just got him rude responses.  So he went home.  And this year he hasn’t bothered going.

This is the sort of problem frequently faced by disabled people.  They often have to rely on other people’s goodwill, and sometimes it just isn’t there.  There is still an institutional blindness about their needs, despite obligatory sign-up to DDA compliance, so what they need isn’t automatically provided and it is left to goodwill – or not.  None of us want to be dependent on others, but if we don’t make it equally easy for the disabled to do things on their own, we create dependency.   This still isn’t an inclusive town.

Wheelchairs are the symbol of the disabled, and the most obvious to us all – but the disabled are a wide spectrum of people, most of whom don’t need a wheelchair but do need a bit of consideration when planning events, town design, signs, access of all kinds.  What is needed is not so much kind actions as acceptance of equal rights to function independently.  Disability and dependence should not be seen as interchangeable terms. 

I was at a ‘Storytellers’ event on Friday – nothing to do with the Festival, but instead a group of disabled people who were revealing their artwork and putting on a bit of a show.  Victoria Park’s storage shed now has two big murals.  One shows the happy side of their lives – by the seaside, with their families and friends, swimming, having fun together.  The other shows some of the barriers that they come up against on a daily basis and the effect it has on them. 

A lot of the barriers are to do with transport, and these are what particularly concern me as a County Councillor.  It is fine having a bus pass but if you cannot use it before 9am it is no use for work.  Mostly work is low paid, so a fare of several pounds a day is a significant amount.  The alternative to regular buses is Mendip Community Transport.  This has recently had a revamp and ‘Slinky’ buses are now around, which have a lot more street-cred.  But I’ve heard a number of people complain about the hassle of arranging transport and the long time ahead needed to book.  After repeated hassle quite often the normal human reaction is to not bother – one of the reasons for poor take-up.

The time taken for any bus to get to its destination is significant.  Very few of us abled-bodied people use buses and if we occasionally do, we moan about the winding route.  It is no different for Slinky users, except that the route is probably even more winding and the journey is done on a regular basis, so a huge amount of each day is wasted in just getting there.  All you have to do is visualise your own easy journey by car and compare it with the equivalent by bus – assuming there is one for where you want to go – and you start to appreciate how limiting it is.  Freedom of movement is something we take for granted, whether by car or through a crowded Food Feast.  Not everyone can.

I don’t know whether others share my view, but I think this is the best Frome Festival to date.  As a Town Council representative, I had been with the Festival Board over the last few years and I’ve seen for myself some of the volunteer effort that goes into making it the success it clearly is.  What has also happened over that time is an increasing involvement of the community, both in staging events and participating in them, partly the result of having ‘inclusiveness’ made a priority by the team.  It works.  It is a good community event and just about everyone can find something to join in with over this 10-day period. 

It is also nice to see Frome letting its hair down, and the variety of costumes Fromies find to wear!  One of the best came straight from ‘Deadly is the Female’ in Catherine Street - a lovely burlesque outfit which our resident-poet ‘Muriel Lavender’ wore at the Launch event.  For me, she made the evening, although others were there more for the music (which ended up as a jam and went way beyond the official finishing time).

The relaxed atmosphere and even more relaxed costume code was very apparent at the Food Feast on Saturday night, when a wide range of foods and drinks was on offer, accompained by a selection of music in the open air around the Cheese and Grain building.  The venue seemed to work better this year, not least because there was more of the car-park used for the stalls.  I was there with my Fair Trade hat on (well, actually it was an apron) and since we had a wine licence this year we made a bit more than with just the usual chocolate bars and apple juice.

On the Sunday it was the Green Fair (and again a stint at the Fair Trade stall, this time with a Treasure Chest of FT goodies on offer instead).  There were lots of folk there, even in the afternoon – and a wide range of eco-friendly initiatives on show.  I took a great liking to the yellow electric scooter, but it is strictly for short journeys; it wouldn’t make it to Taunton without a recharge!

I would really recommend a lunchtime concert.  This year’s was a recital of organ music interspersed with poems by Christina Rosetti (a one-time resident of Frome) and was a beautiful hour in a busy day.  A complete contrast was an evening  walking tour of ‘Frome’s Lost Pubs’, ending up at a Real Ale remnant of a bygone age, The Griffin.  One sad feature of this tale is the disappearance of traditional pub signs, and their replacement by computer-generated ones stating their names, with no picture or history to them.  In a town like Frome, with so much creativity around – as well as opposition to becoming a ‘clone town’ – it seems surprising that no-one has noticed this creeping blandness and started a campaign against it. 

Last night we had a fabulous time at the Merlin Theatre, watching ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’.  It wasn’t what I had expected, but it made much more sense the way they did it than when I studied Shakespeare at school.  The actors were students from Frome College and they looked to be enjoying themselves – especially the mischievous fairies (who were dressed as St Trinian’s type scholars!)  Initially I wondered how the World War II music and uniforms were going to fit in, but they worked well – and it probably helped challenge a few preconceptions that we already knew what the play was about!

I’m not sure what we’ll be doing for the next few days – there is so much choice it is difficult to fit in one’s day job…

It might not grab the attention of residents, but it has a lot of impact on councillors – The Boundary Commission is currently looking at how Somerset voters are represented at the County Council.  Their prime motivation is to get some sort of numerical equity across the County.  It doesn’t matter if Wiltshire or Yorkshire have 5,000 or 20,000 voters per councillor, and these are different numbers from Somerset.  So long as each councillor has about the same number within their own county, then each vote has about the same weight.

There has been a lot of movement within Somerset in recent years.  It is an attractive area, so there have been numerous incomers from other parts ’escaping to the country’ here.  The numbers have increased through ‘natural growth’ as well – ie children. Some of the young people who might have left home in different circumstances are now having to stay with their families because they cannot afford to buy or rent on their own; or because they haven’t got jobs.  All these factors, and others, mean that some divisions have many voters and others have few.  Because the variance is significant, the boundaries will be changed.

So, feeling a bit like turkeys voting for Christmas, the county councillors have all been looking at their divisions over the last week and thinking about how the boundaries should be changed.  We won’t be making the changes, that is for a non-political body, ie The Boundary Commission, to do – but we are supplying the local knowledge.  That means what housing is likely to happen in the next five years, which communities logically go together (and which definitely don’t- a big factor in the rural areas), which anomolies have occurred as a result of changing District Council boundaries in 2007 etc.

In Frome we have a lot of the latter, since the District ward I used to represent, Oakfield, was brand new and its creation from parts of other wards caused a shuffling about of boundaries across the town.  There is now the chance to line them up again, and – as well as being a lot less administrative hassle for councillors – this is something that would impact on residents.  At the moment it is really confusing for some people who live in a different County division from their neighbours, go to a different polling station, and have a different councillor!  Tweaking the boundaries should change that situation – but we will have to wait till next year to see whether logic won.

The other things we are asked to consider is the size of our council and the geographical size of the individual divisions.  Although numerical equity is a good thing in itself, we all feel that some weight should be given to manageability.  We don’t think the Council size should be much less, with 55 seats being the mimimum needed, compared to the present 58.  Some of the rural divisions are huge, covering dozens of parishes; and these are far harder to cover than town divisions.  A near colleague has 16 parishes – so that is 16 parish meetings to attend, in addition to  County Council meetings; and her casework is very spread out, involving lots of travelling.

I have a nice mix in my division – mostly urban (but covering all types of areas from the town centre out to the new developments), and with just one rural parish at present.  Being slightly under the optimum figure for 2016 of 7,600 voters, and with no major housing schemes planned for that time, my division is likely to change.  It will probably gain a chunk or two from somewhere else (and possibly also lose an odd bit or two if it becomes ‘coterminous’ with the District boundaries).  This wouldn’t make a difference for the next two years but does mean ‘Frome Selwood’ would look different for the next election and might even have another name.  We will know next year what has been decided.