David Ottewell's Politics

I was heartened to hear Frank Rothwell secured a small against-the-odds victory this week.
Frank was the man behind the ‘Hollinwood’ sign that mysteriously sprung up just off the M60 near Oldham – and was promptly removed by the Highways Agency.
He formally applied for planning permission to put the sign back. Officers recommended that Oldham council’s planning committee refuse. The committee ignored the recommendation after a heartfelt plea by Frank.
It probably won’t make any difference – the Highways Agency, which owns the land, has no intention of letting the sign go up again. According to the Oldham planners’ report, the Agency reckons the sign would ‘impact on visual amenity’ and could cause accidents by ‘attracting drivers’ attention’.
It’s not just that the sign is inherently distracting (so is the Angel of the North, for example; so are those huge variable signs that flash up ‘Don’t drink and drive!’ and ‘Are you SURE you are wearing your seatbelt, you feckless, selfish scum?’)**
No, they also object to the specific location. They say it is too close to the motorway. And that HGVs could shield it from the driver’s view until the last possible minute.
But surely, if that’s the case, a common-sense compromise can be found?
**I am paraphrasing here.

The Home Office has revealed today the volume of different drugs seized last year.
Class A seizures are down one per cent – with crack and heroin down 13 per cent and six per cent respectively.
Cocaine seizures, though were, up by 15 per cent.
Cannabis seizures are up seven per cent. In total, class B seizures were up nine per cent.
The biggest rise by far was in class C, with seizures up 37 per cent. Seizures of benzodiazepines (used clinically for depression, anxiety, and so forth) were up 40 per cent. Seizures of temazepam were up 48 per cent. And seizures of anabolic steroids rose by 53 per cent.
Doesn’t all this suggest a targeted push against drugs lower down the scale?

All is not well in the Wigan Labour party.
Neil Turner and Ian McCartney are standing down. And all-women shortlists have been imposed to find two potential successors.
Now it emerges that local party member Ann Rampling has started a petition against the move.
She says anyone should be allowed to stand in order to get ‘the best, literally the best, for our area’.
It’s a bit of an embarrassment, certainly. And yet it seems that all-women shortlists are here to stay. Even David Cameron has suggested the Tories might have to start using them, too. Labour have already insisted on all-women shortlists across the region – not just in Wigan, but in places like Withington and Bury.
In principle, they seem a perfectly reasonable solution to a very real problem. Less than one in five MPs are women. That is not enough. It is not a perculiarly British issue – only 20 countries around the world have 30 per cent of more female representatives in parliament. Sweden and Finland lead the way. Even there, though, the majority of MPs are men (53 per cent in Sweden, 58 per cent in Finland).
And yet, it is a particularly crude form of social engineering.
It is one thing to apply a form of positive discrimination – to say that if a women and a man appear equally well qualified for a post as an MP, the woman may well have the greater potential because she has achieved what she has in spite of the apparent male bias in politics. I think this should be taken into account in the selection process.
That seems perfectly logical to me.
But an all-female shortlist is something else. Since it excludes a significant-sized group of people (i.e. men) altogether, it raises the possibility that the candidate chosen won’t be the best available, or even potentially the best available.
Well, you say, a male candidate can simply apply for a different seat. So he’s not being excluded completely. Maybe. But what if the seat he wants to go for is his local seat? Isn’t his commitment to that seat admirable? And what if that seat just happens to have an all-female shortlist?
Perhaps you simply say that the lists are a necessary evil. But if you accept that the end justifies the means, then doesn’t the same logic demand all-gay shortlists? All-disabled shortlists? Both groups are under-represented in parliament, too. Both could claim this has negatively affected them in terms of public policy.
Harriet Harman is already considering all-ethnic minority shortlists. But why shouldn’t these already be in place? Fewer than three per cent of MPs are non-white. Ethnic minorities make up around seven per cent of the population. So it seems the ‘female issue’ and the ‘ethnic minority issue’ are of approximately the same order, at least in percentage terms.
I’m not saying all-female shortlists are wrong. But I do struggle to understand their justification – other than that they fix the lamentable figures.

MPs were discussing Sri Lanka yesterday. They overran and had to break off for a vote before a summing up by Michael Foster, the under-secretary of state at the Department for International Development.
When they came back, Mr Foster said: “This is a little like playing Manchester United – you get a couple extra minutes when you play them…”

I was interested to learn that there was a place in Piccadilly Village called ‘John Smeaton Court’. Had the powers-that-be decided to name an entire court after the plucky baggage handler who took on the terrorists during the attack on Glasgow airport?
Sadly, it seems not. I’m told it’s actually named after John Smeaton, the 18th-century civil engineer.
I can’t help being disappointed. He may have been the first man to analyse the operation of a steam engine scientifically to increase its efficiency. But as far as I’m aware he never took on al-Qaeda single-handed.

The 10 council leaders of Greater Manchester meet tomorrow to discuss their proposals for closer working.
It seems the government remains keen to give them more powers over key areas like skills and transport. Talks have been ‘extremely productive’.
A report going to the leaders states:

Progress has also been made on transport. Subject to agreement on new governance arrangements, the ministerial agreement is likely to contain a commitment to an overarching objective of examining how the Manchester city region can assume responsibilities and influence comparable to Transport for London. Greater Manchester is likely to see a greatly enhanced relationship with central government, resulting in more ability to influence the prioritisation of transport investment, especially as regards heavy rail, highways and buses.

What’s more, a formal agreement with government could be announced well before the end of the year. There will be a meeting with ministers in the middle of next month to iron out ‘final issues’.
There is an element of ‘get it through and lock in the Tories’ in all this; but the rapid progress is also a sign that government and Greater Manchester are in near-complete agreement.
So much so, in fact, that the ‘city-region’ model drawn up by Greater Manchester is already being seen as a blueprint for other parts of the country – particularly where the skills agenda is concerned. As is so often the case, it seems we are ahead of the game.

Sir Martin Doughty: passion for the countryside
Who says nothing worthwhile ever gets said in parliament?
Tom Levitt, the High Peak MP, this week gave a lovely tribute to Sir Martin Doughty, who died in March.
Sir Martin was a pioneer of conservation, and keen advocate of right-to-access to the countryside. He was also born in High Peak, and a former leader of Derbyshire council.
I can do no better than reprint Tom’s words here:

I may not be the obvious member of the house to speak about marine environments or coastal access, because we have neither coast nor marine environments in my constituency. However, High Peak is the philosophical home of the right to roam: we had the Kinder trespass in 1932 and the first open-access land designated under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, and we have more open-access land than any other constituency in England.
High Peak is the birthplace of the right to roam, but it is also the birthplace of one Sir Martin Doughty. Martin was my constituent, and he died of cancer earlier this year. I am sure that my right honourable and honourable friends on the front bench would acknowledge that without him, there would have been no Marine and Coastal Access Bill.
As the chair of Natural England, and of English Nature before that, Martin was largely responsible for working with various environment ministers… to bring the measure about.
Before Martin was involved in English Nature and Natural England, he was the chair of the Peak District national park and the leader of Derbyshire county council.
He was born and bred in High Peak and lived there his whole life. He lived and breathed the countryside and the natural world and explored it as often as he could with a passion and humour that was truly infectious. In the 20 years that I knew him, he was one of the kindest, most gentle and most principled people that I ever met. Everyone who came across him respected him and very soon loved him.
Martin was also a great socialist, who put principles into practice in a pragmatic, thoughtful and just way. A couple of weeks ago, 200 of us gathered on Kinder Scout on what would have been his 60th birthday. There were friends, neighbours, political allies and even some rivals, people from interest groups, government agencies, local authority leaders and two of my colleagues, my right honourable friend Alun Michael and my honourable friend Ms Smith, who are sitting either side of me tonight. We went not only to remember Martin, but to dedicate Kinder Scout in his memory – it was created the 223rd national nature reserve on that very day.
The ambition to create a national coastal path that is accessible to walkers, climbers and others where appropriate is sound and it is right, and it is Martin’s achievement as much as that of any other individual, although he was never one to claim the limelight. I hope that my honourable friends will consider calling all or part of it either the Doughty way or Martin’s way or something in his memory.
On Kinder Scout a couple of weeks ago, we sang to Martin’s memory. It will be of little surprise on the government benches that we sang ‘The Manchester Rambler’. I had the great privilege of meeting the author of that song, Ewan McColl, once, many years ago, and my constituency is mentioned several times in it. Ewan McColl was the press officer for the mass trespass in 1932 and Martin Doughty’s father was one of the trespassers.

A couple of points I’ve been thinking about concerning topical far-right issues.
One: The fact Nick Griffin put in such a poor performance on Question Time is, while welcome, unfortunately beside the point.
The hand-wringing over whether he appeared ‘bullied’, or whether the programme was ‘hijacked’, is not just wrong-headed (of course any programme with a panellist whose last manifesto called for ‘firm’ incentives for black and Asian Britons to leave the country would focus on that fact), but also beside the point.
The point is that the vast majority of people who are most likely to vote BNP don’t watch Question Time at all. Not even this high-profile episode. The mere fact he appeared on the programme at all – and will claim he was ‘bullied’ – will probably boost his party’s credibility with those potential supporters who didn’t see it.
Two. During the recent EDL march in Manchester, there were – as far as I am aware – absolutely no angry or violent protests by Muslim youths. This fact has gone largely unremarked. But given the extreme provocation, and given that you would expect there to be just as many hot-headed Muslim youths as white youths, isn’t it worthy of both comment and praise?

A bit of light relief. I’ve been pointed towards this story in the Lancashire Evening Post.
It suggests moving the museum from Deepdale to Urbis ‘would put some of the game’s priceless relics at risk, it has been claimed’.
The ‘has been claimed’ is significant. Claimed by whom?
The answer is Ann Stewart – head of paper, painting and frames conservation at the National Conservation Centre in Liverpool.
Apparently she is concerned that Urbis is made up of 2,200 glass panes and doesn’t have protection against UV rays.
“Certainly if it’s all glass and not UV protected, there would be a risk of discolouration and yellowing of the paper,” she says.
This is terrible. Can anything be done to avoid this catastrophe?
The story continues:

She said there could be ways to tackle the problems such as placing programmes in cases…

Fantastic. So Urbis could ruin priceless programmes unless they were displayed in cases. Not exactly the plot of Armageddon, eh?

A couple of updates on the National Football Museum transfer saga.
I’m told by senior sources in Lancashire that the county council – and Preston council – were actually only told about the proposal to shift the museum to Urbis in Manchester ’shortly before’ the news broke. This runs contrary to what I’ve been told by others, but is still a significant claim.
Secondly – and more interestingly – I’m told Lancashire and Preston councils were never asked by the trustees of the museum to prepare their own bid to keep the attraction at Deepdale. The package they have prepared was entirely off their own bat.
Meanwhile, over at the NWDA… Sources there have been at pains to point out to me they have not committed any money towards the £8m up-front cost of a move to Manchester. Which is not to say they wouldn’t, of course, should the deal be done. They are very keen to keep the museum in the north west, after all.