• Trump

When he last took over in early 2017, one of the more curious aspects of the handover was his almost complete indifference to and lack of curiosity concerning the workings of the US government departments. At some of these, including Energy and Agriculture, his team’s main interest was in rooting out as many Obama appointees as possible and culling staff who had believed in anthropomorphic climate change. There’s no reason to suppose matters will be any different this time.

According to this article in The Guardian, Trump had, and perhaps still has, an obsession with Obama, a dark mixture of fascination and antipathy directed towards this smooth, eloquent intellectual who was so many things that Trump could never be.

With Biden, however, the relationship is far simpler: Trump really hates him. Sweeping away his appointments will be seen as not only a necessity, but an active pleasure. Trump is always in need of an enemy to help stoke up his invective. Your predecessor is always a good place to start. The Labour Party certainly believes that, with criticisms of their tarnished inheritance still pouring out of Starmer, Rayner and Reeves’ mouths over five months after the election.

If Trump likes an enemy, he also likes to do a deal. How good he has been at that is open to debate, but the point is that he believes it. In the short term, even a bad deal is better than a war. Trump would also like to see himself the man who prevented WW3, something that Putin has many times suggested he’s ready and willing to start. Being susceptible to flattery and not much interested in Ukraine, Trump may well sign anything in order to pull out. He will then point to the $60bn which the country will save by no longer bankrolling Kiev.

His winning slogan of “Make America Great Again” (which could also be translated as “Make America Rich Again”) is simple. Anything on the foreign stage that is likely to satisfy this will be the top choice. NATO, the UN, the WHO and many other bodies to which the USA contributes will be bracing themselves for contribution cuts following Inauguration Day. After all, the USA was great long before any of these pesky international bodies came into being. The one ally that seems safe is Isreal: US presidents support the country, that’s just the way it is.

Domestically, the big enemy has already been identified: his own government. Dismantling the bureaucracy seems his main target. Some of the departments organise, support, manage and prevent a whole raft of issues, ranging from forest fires to nuclear theft, so slash-and-burn might have some unwelcome consequences. With Elon “Make Twitter Great Again” Musk at his side, his mission stands more chance of success than it did last time. Mind you, they’re both thin-skinned egomaniac control freaks, so it’s possible that their relationship might prove short-lived.

• Decline

Much the same mantra has recently been uttered by Keir Starmer. In a speech this week he referred to the Civil Service as being in a “tepid bath of managed decline”, whatever exactly that means. Is it a crossword clue that somehow found its way into his speech? Then a few days later, he was licking the civil servants to death by saying that they’re “admired across the world”. What’s going on?

At least he didn’t make this into a list. Before the election and since, he offered us five missions built on three foundations. More recently, that’s been upgraded to six milestones. It seems that he briefly went all Truss/Trump on us and identified Whitehall as the enemy. Unfortunately, he has neither Trump’s autistic unawareness of having caused offence nor an Elon Musk on his team to help do his dirty work.

That’s not to say that the way the country’s run doesn’t need reform. In his shoes, I’d start with parliament. There are a lot fewer people there than in Whitehall, and any battles would probably be more popular with the public. The best reforms would involve the government relinquishing some of its stronghold on the way matters are organised in the Commons. Legislating to reduce your own power is a real rarity but, in a legislative chamber, it’s also a good thing.

Attacking the public servants, as both Trump and Starmer are doing, is less commendable. Efficiency and reform is always needed, but undermining them also risks undermining the people elected to make the decisions. Legislating is the easy bit: the measures then need to be put into practice.

• Inquiry

The Post Office Inquiry has reached the end of its mammoth series of sittings with the final closing statements on 17 December. These included coruscating final criticisms of the organisation’s conduct, Sam Stein QC claiming that the culture of divide and rule, delay and obfuscation existed now with regard to the compensation just as much as it did in the past regarding the prosecutions. Sky News reported that final sessions revealed, or confirmed, that at least 70 people in the PO or Royal Mail knew of the bugs, errors and defects in Horizon, some as long ago as the end of the last century.

We’re clearly dealing with a dysfunctional organisation dominated by arrogance, entitlement and corporate defensiveness. When I was watching the livecasts – which from time to time became as obsessive an activity as following a test match – I was more than once struck by the breathtaking incompetence and stupidity of some of the witnesses, many of whom were part of the PO’s in-house legal team. I long thought you had to be bright to become a lawyer. Now I’m not so sure.

As I’ve mentioned before, I do hope the bosses of large organisations up and down the land have watched these proceedings and asked themselves if they want to be cross-examined by the likes of Jason Beer. I hope that they were asking, “Do we have any Horizons of our own on the horizon?” and, if the answer was even “maybe”, doing something about it.

Sir Wyn Williams and his team will now need to reflect on the hundreds of witness statements and over 70,000 documents that the Inquiry has produced before producing a final report.

Huge congratulations once again to all the sub postmasters who were brave enough to keep on fighting, led by Alan Bates – sorry, Sir Alan Bates. Hats off also to Computer Weekly, which first broke the story in 2008; Private Eye, which helped keep it boiling; and journalist Nick Wallis, who did a lot of the work for both. As matters reach this pause, it seems fitting to leave the last words to him.

• Reforms

The administrative map of the UK is chaotic. The simplest way of describing it is to say that some councils (like Oxfordshire and Hampshire) are two-tier, with functions divided between counties and districts. Others (like West Berkshire and Wiltshire) are unitary or single-tier, although the former term is only generally applied to those that were created as such, West Berkshire having been in the late 1990s.

Where there are two tiers, the higher one will deal with matters including social care and highways, and the lower-tier one with matters including planning and refuse. However, there’s no particular logic to this. Were these two example pairs of duties to be swapped, most people wouldn’t bat an eyelid.

Nor is there any logic in why Oxfordshire is two-tier and Wiltshire one-tier. One reason might be the existence of a particularly influential city in the county which required its own unitary authority, thus justifying the segregation of what was left. Historical accidents are also involved. It could do with being straightened out. One reason is perhaps that having councils with the same responsibilities makes staffing changes easier. It can’t, for instance, be easy to take over as the CEO of a unitary when your main experience has been in district councils with fewer responsibilities.

The government has decided that, as well as shaking up the planning system, it wants to streamline the local-government map. Clearly, it doesn’t want claims of thwarted democracy to stand in its way, so it’s proposing that decisions about changes (mainly abolishing districts) are decided as much as possible before the next local polls. The Local Government Chronicle has reported that “county leaders have been given just over three weeks to decide if they want to cancel May 2025’s elections in favour of pursuing devolution and reorganisation.”

As a means of reminding councils who’s boss, this could hardly be bettered. Also, if you’re going to change something, there’s much to be said for doing it quickly. However, this could all have been announced months ago. The contempt that central government has for local councils clearly survives changes of national government. They’re treated like Cinderella, or poor, dumb Fredo in The Godfather, doing all the jobs that the bosses regard as infra dig.

Then, by stark contrast, you have moments like those during the pandemic when the councils and local voluntary groups in many ways came to the rescue of the response after months of chaotic messaging from Whitehall. As with Trump and Starmer’s attacks on public servants, it’s important to be aware of the difference between an enemy and a friend or supporter with whom you happen to disagree and without whose support you own job would be harder, or impossible.

 • And finally…

• The situation in Syria remains fluid, not least because (as mentioned last week) the true nature and ambition of HTS and its leader, variously known as Jolani and Sharaa, remain unclear. Nor is it completely certain that HTS will remain at the top of the pile. This BBC article suggests that the group’s recent record of running Idlib in the north west of the country gives some cautious grounds for optimism. In an interview with the BBC Sharaa said that he believed in education for women. It says much about how low the bar has sunk with regard to governments with any kind of radical Islamic parentage that such statements are regarded as concessions and marks of enlightenment, rather than just basic assumptions.

• Thames Water: how many times have I typed those words in the last few years? It’s in a huge mess and should be nationalised. We can’t afford to do this, the last government and the current one has said. Wrong, according to Richard Murphy of Funding the Future. This can all be done with bonds. These are, he explains,”an IOU, a promise to pay, issued by the government via the Treasury… to the people who previously owned shares in the businesses that are nationalised.”

• Returning to the subject of reforms to the planning system, two different views about nimbys (on which nebulous group the government has also declared war) found their way into the letters’ pages of The Times, as reported by The Week. One, from a representative from Oxfordshire CPRE, claimed that smaller and more affordable homes on brownfield sites would attract less opposition than the larger properties on greenfield sites that developers favour. Another, in response to this from a planning consultant, asserted that there would always be opposition from some people to any development, “no matter how tenuous”.

As the former wants to preserve the rural landscape and as the latter is professionally involved in building more homes, these perhaps cancel each other out. However, it’s worth remembering that, without exception, every single one of us lives in a home that was at some point a piece of virgin landscape.

• There have been a number of measures proposed or enacted across the world to restrict social-media access to young people. The real problem, Tomiwa Owolade argues in The Times (as reported in The Week) is with the internet itself. Boys’ brains mature later than do girls’ and the result, for males, is that the constant easy-access and quick-gratification that the web provides inhibits the brain’s ability to learn about concentration and delayed gratification. “Male teens,” he concludes, “aren’t so much being radicalised as enfeebled.”

• The Church of England is certainly in turmoil. The AB of C, Justin Welby, recently resigned as a result of accusations of failing to act in cases of historical child abuse. Now it transpires that his number two, the Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell, who was due to take over the reins until a successor to the former oil executive could be found at Canterbury, is himself  under fire for very similar reasons. I’ve always wondered why England has only two archbishops. Germany has seven, France 15 and Italy 44.

I’m reminded of some almost extinct species which is reduced to two individuals: but are they a breeding pair? So far, English archbishops have managed to reproduce by whatever selection method they employ. But who would want the jobs now? As a species, are they viable? If Starmer’s government has any pretensions to reform, it should without delay kick the 26 bishops and archbishops out of the House of Lords. There are enough over-educated hypocrites in public life as it is without allowing platforms for extraneous anachronisms to lecture us about our morality and legislate upon us.

As Oliver Cromwell said to the Rump Parliament in 1653, “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately – depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go…”

Across the area

• Our three MPs

July 2024 saw three new MPs elected in the Penny Post area (as well as the first outing for a new constituency): Lee Dillon (LD) in Newbury; Olly Glover (LD) in Didcot and Wantage; and Olivia Bailey (Labour) in the new seat of Reading West and Mid Berkshire. Our congratulations to all of them.

As their first Christmas in their new roles approaches, we thought we’d get in touch with them all to see how their first five or so months in SW1 have gone. We asked them all the same six questions by email on 15 December and, within a few days, had all three sets of answers in. Click here to see what we asked and how they replied.

• A look back at 2024

We’ve covered a great many stories relevant to the Penny Post area in 2024 in this column. Some have been mentioned more than once for the simple reason that they take time to go away (and in some cases still haven’t). Below is a list of some of the main ones, arranged in no particular order.

Finance. All councils have been under the cosh recently and all, certainly in this area, have had to look at some serious cost-cutting measures. The real problems here (aside from the lack of adequate government support) are inflation, SEND costs and adult social care. We’ve looked at the various consultations and other proposed economies from West Berkshire Council (WBC) and others, pointed out how you can have your say, and highlighted aspects of the Council’s proposed solutions which seem problematic.

• Flooding and sewage. This has been a recurring story as well, and much of our coverage has focussed on how the councils at also levels have engaged with local pressure groups and charities and with the EA and Thames Water. 

• West Bershire’s local plan. This has been a constant backdrop to the year and has yet to be fully resolved. The issue became protracted and more divisive after the election in 2023 as the Lib Dems wished to withdraw the plan submitted for examination by the Conservatives, but were prevented from doing so. The Planning Inspector’s work in 2024 culminated in late summer with the announcement that, partly because of these delays, other sites would have to be found, including increasing the controversial NE Thatcham site back up to 2,500 homes. The consultation on the major modifications continues. If the process feels like it’s been going on for years that’s because it has. This is all against the backdrop of a number of reforms and increased housing totals from SW1. Work on a new one will probably need to start before the ink is dry on this.

• The Vale of White Horse’s local plan. This, which (like just about everything the Vale does has been conducted hand-in-hand with South Oxfordshire) has in many ways been less controversial than West Berkshire’s. It’s also been a lot less controversial than South Oxfordshire’s last one which it tried to withdraw following the 2019 change of administration but was forced to proceed with it by the government. Members of the current WBC administration will know just how that feels.

The community infrastructure levy (CIL) scandal. This was a problem which the new administration at WBC inherited last year and I’m pleased to say that a solution to the problem appeared to have been found earlier this year. In essence, what might be termed over-zealous interpretations of administrative procedures, heavy-handed collection tactics and a general doubling down on the consequences when they started to be exposed by some of the victims, created a problem that the then administration found hard to deal with. The issues were then repeatedly highlighted by a few principled councillors (and by Penny Post). This statement from the then acting Leader (and now Leader) of WBC Jeff Brooks in March 2024 sums up much of what had gone before.

Faraday Road football ground. Goodness me, where does one start? The problem with this issue is that it has, over the years, got entangled with a number of other matters, including attempts made to resolve the problem. I have, after taking a deep breath and dunking my head in a bucket of cold water, written as brief and dispassionate a summary of the issue as I can which you can read in this separate post.

Eagle Quarter. This is another matter (concerning the proposed re-development of the Kennet Centre) which, although clearly located in Newbury, has come to have area-wide significance. This has particularly happened in the last two months when two attempts were made to determine the application after years of discussion and public wrangling, first at the Western Area Planning Committee, then at the District Planning Committee. Both, embarrassingly and unnecessarily, were timed out and a third attempt will be made in January.

WBC’s Scrutiny Commission (SC). I had long argued that it was insane that this should be chaired by a member of the ruling party. The Lib Dems agreed and promised to give the position to an opposition member. The Conservatives clearly hoped that, as runners-up, the role would go to one of theirs. In fact, the then leader Lee Dillon chose Carolyne Culver of the Greens. This made a lot of sense as many of the matters that would be looked at had their genesis under the Conservatives, and their chairing the SC would merely replace one possible perceived bias with another. Few would argue that she’s been energetic, dispassionate, efficient and forensic, and raised the profile of this important role. Matters which the SC has looked at in 2024 (some more than once) include finance, sewage, flooding, Covid recovery, the schools clawback and SEN and social-care costs. These are only some of the matters that need looking into.

Honourable mentions. We’ve also got to give a shout out for a large number of organisations which are, like the Scrutiny Commissions at WBC and other councils, dealing with problems and issues not of their making. These include the many voluntary groups and charities which help people with matters ranging from drug-dependancy to fuel poverty; pressure groups and flood forums which have kept residents informed and the Environment Agency and TW on their toes; all the environmental groups, bloggers and campaigners who have done so much to normalise discussions about climate change and bio-diversity and have helped to combat the insidious tide of disinformation; and the parish and town councils in the area, all of which get on with their jobs without payment, increasingly providing services which the parent authorities can no longer afford to do.

We have done our best to support, explain and publicise the work these do and will continue to do so. We can’t list them all – it would be too long and inevitably miss someone out. You know who you are. Hopefully, as a result of our publicity, others do as well.

Particular mentions must also go to two organisations which our district is particularly lucky to have: Volunteer Centre West Berkshire and Greenham Trust, which help provide the fuel – in the form, respectively, of staff and funds, which many of these groups require in order to survive.