• With the council elections now little more than two months away, here’s some information about the arrangements for these. Click here for information from West Berkshire and here for Vale of White Horse. Wiltshire and Swindon will not be holding elections this year. (If you want to know which councils hold elections when – it’s not straightforward – click here.)

• So it seems that the web is 30 years old and its creator, Tim Berners-Lee has in this article claims that it is on a “downward plunge to a dysfunctional future,” not on the face of it a ringing endorsement. He suggests three main problems that are infesting it – in brief, malice, greed and intolerance – which, he claims, can be solved by the right kind of action. I’m less sure. Some humans have none of these characteristics but many exhibit some of them some of the time and a few appear to live by them. The web is surely too vast, complex and all-pervasive to be controlled to the exclusion of all evils. It’s a bit like the market economy: you can put some safeguards and regulations in place but, by definition, it has to be its own thing.

• The uncertainty over Brexit reached a new high, or low, on Wednesday night. One thing that might now happen (or might not) is that Article 50 will be extended, perhaps until the end of June. Does that mean that the UK will need to vote for MEPs in the elections which will happen in late May?

• All five of our local MPs voted in favour of the PM’s second unsuccessful attempt to get her Brexit deal through the Commons on 12 March. 75 of their Conservative colleagues, however, did not. I think even the experts are unable to comprehend, still less describe, the various fault lines this issue has exposed in that party. 16 ministers have already resigned because of it. 13 others declined to back the PM on Wednesday night. David Cameron’s aim of using the referendum to heal internal party wounds is backfiring more and more each day.

The fate of one political party is, however, unimportant compared to the fact that the issue is causing a breakdown in the trust between parliament and the electorate, from which far worse evils might follow. The problem started with having a referendum at all, which reduced a very complex issue to a debate that involved, on both sides, some startling falsehoods. Governments are elected to make these decisions, not to pass back unwelcome questions (as happened with the equally divisive grammar-school issue, which was handed back to local councils to sort out). As so much of what was promised by the Leave campaign was impossible to fulfil and as those who voted leave did so for so many different reasons it’s not surprising that we are where we are.

There’s also another issue. Parliament has, quite rightly, asserted itself in the matter of deciding what happens. However, the House of Commons is elected on the first-past-the-post system whereas the referendum was a popular vote. I’ve tried, and failed, to find online if anyone has compiled figures to show what the referendum result would have been were it to have been elected in the same way as MPs are. As the two elections were not conducted on the same basis it’s even more likely that there is a disconnect between the two different expressions of will. The Newbury constituency, for instance, voted by 52 to 48 to remain, as did local MP Richard Benyon. He, and many other MPs, have since been faced with the problem of supporting something which goes against both his own wishes and those who elected him. Technically they voted for him, remember, not for his party.

As matters now stand, parliament is trying to decide something which seems impossible to decide: Richard Benyon MP was quoted in this week’s NWN as describing parliament as ‘a dysfunctional place at the moment.’ The PM in her remarks in the Commons on 13 March described the relationship between the electors and elected as being ‘a fragile trust’. The fact that any public anger is directed against parliament as a whole, rather than the ruling party (as often happens) or individual members (as happened during the expenses scandal), is worrying.

• Meanwhile, democracy on a more local level swings into action soon with the council elections now only six weeks away: click here for information from West Berkshire and here for Vale of White Horse on how these will be conducted. Wiltshire and Swindon will not be holding elections this year. (If you want to know which councils hold elections when – it’s not straightforward – click here.)

• One of the letters in this week’s NWN is from Councillor Anthony Pick in response to Peter Norman’s the week before on the subject of the London Road Industrial Estate. Councillor Pick quotes some sections from the judgement; but further down, the judge’s remarks (after having decided that it was indeed a public works contract) paint a rather different picture. The VEAT notice is described, in section 89, as being ‘incorrect or at best misleading’; and in section 90 as leaving ‘too much unclear’ and giving ‘no picture of the contract as it truly is.’ The observations conclude, in section 91, that ‘the sum effect is a failure to give an adequate justification for the council’s decision to proceed as it did.’

Councillor Pick also refers to three ‘undesirable results’ of the arrangement mentioned in Mr Norman’s letter, for none of which he says there is any evidence. The first, the departure of Bayer, was in fairness probably due to a number of reasons although many still wonder whether more could have been done to keep the firm in Newbury. Councillor Pick says that the offices they might have moved into ‘do not currently exist’, but my understanding is that they would have done by now if the original development plan had been followed. His second point, ‘the failure to obtain from Faraday Development the cost of the A339/Faraday Road junction’ I don’t understand at all. The point, which Peter Norman made, is completely otherwise: Faraday had offered to pay for the junction itself under the original plans but this was not demanded of St Modwens. As for the third point, the loss of the football ground, the new redevelopment plans require the re-use of the land on which the pitch is situated. As one of Councillor Pick’s colleagues, Councillor James Fredrickson, said in July 2018, ‘whilst we would have liked to allow the football club to stay at the pitch, we now need the site to be available for redevelopment to commence.’

• Meanwhile, an article on p7 of the same newspaper reports how the Council’s CEO is keen to continue the project ‘in its original form.’ Which original form is that? I wonder.

• The Newbury Weekly News also has an article on the ‘£2m adult social care error‘ which was recently discussed at West Berkshire’s Overview and Scrutiny Management Commission (OSMC). The report the meeting discussed describes this rather as being a ‘budget deficit’ as the problem was caused by too low a figure having been specified in the budget. The article quotes some trenchant remarks from the CEO Nick Carter about the failures of the systems and some varying opinions from councillors as how matters could be improved. Councillor Graham Bridgman, West Berkshire’s portfolio holder for adult social care, described the article as ‘selective’, the report as ‘thorough and robust’ and that ‘in essence there is complete agreement about the way forward.’  The above-mentioned report also states that adult social care has overspent for the last three years and the scale of the overspend is increasing. Unless something is done – and it will need to be done by the government in the form of its long-promised green paper – this drift will surely continue. The demand for and the costs of adult social care are rising far faster than extra money is coming into the system and these are services that all councils are legally obliged to provide. It’s therefore perhaps surprising that West Berkshire did not choose to take advantage of the extra 2% by which it could have raised its 2019-20 council tax without going to referendum.

• Wildlife verges are to be created one two stretches of the A4 in West Berkshire – click here for details.

• Click here if you run a business and are interested in being involved in West Berkshire Council’s Small Business Saturday event which will take place later this year. 

• The animal of the week is a channel billed toucan from the menagerie at The Living Rainforest. With a beak that size I’m surprised it isn’t always topping forwards. Perhaps it is (but not in this photograph).

• And speaking of animals, I read in this week’s NWN that Basingstoke and Deane Council is reminding people that it is against the law to allow dogs to be dangerously out of control. A person or another animal doesn’t have to be attacked it’s enough that someone feels this is likely to happen. The council’s message is that if you’re around other people or wildlife then use a lead. 

• More information here on West Berkshire’s plan to spend £750,000 on solar panels.

• West Berkshire has launched a consultation (which runs until 24 March) into its latest four-year strategy.

• The letters pages of the Newbury Weekly News this week is mostly taken up with criticisms of the recent announcement by West Berks CEO Nick Carter that more roads need to be built in the area. There are also two about London Road (one referred to in more detail above) and one which warns of the imminent collapse of democracy and the return of medieval tyranny. Given what’s going on in Westminster, he could be right.

• A number of good causes have received valuable support recently, including: Thrive in Beech Hill (thanks to staff at AWE); the Alex Cripps Fund (thanks to many local donors); Swindon and District Samaritans (thanks to Nationwide; Comic Relief (thanks to Sainsbury’s).