This Week with Brian
Your Local Area
Including a crazy state, all fried up, trying to please, facts and opinions, the Spanish Armada, faint praise, sins of omission, headlines, summaries, gasping for air, a local focus, a unique organisation, an indirect award, a fly on the wall, CIL elsewhere, an international snake, doing stuff quickly, three finals, random choices, premium bonds, constitutional questions, environmental questions, the bins again, medicinal chimps, lots of skin cells, a mini-bread catastrophe, a ghastly death-toll, four in common and home at last.
Click on the appropriate buttons to the right to see the local news from your area (updated every Thursday evening).
If there’s anything you’d like to see covered for your area or anything that you’d like to add to a segment that we’ve covered, drop me a line at brian@pennypost.org.uk.
Further afield
Every week for goodness how long, I’ve offered thoughts on the crazy state of this planet. It’s a conscious effort to try to step back from the very local events with which we normally deal and consider the big picture. This big picture is not a great look at present. The election of a new Pope doesn’t make my heart race: otherwise we have Trump in the Middle East, a drought and a succession of celebrities on trial for various sexual crimes. If there’s any humour, insight or fresh perspective to be squeezed from these then I’ve yet to access them.
[more below]
• All fried up
Writing about something – anything – is great fun. The larger the canvas, however, the less influence any one piece generally has on anything, unless you happen to be Woodward and Bernstein in the 1970s, or similar. That, of course, was proper journalism: something which still exists now but perhaps in inverse proportion to the number of issues that it needs to address.
When I look at news and comment websites as a reader, I can extract what I need very quickly by skim-reading. When I look at them as a writer, a different part of my brain, the bit capable of deep dives, has to switch on. An individual source can rarely be trusted so one needs other versions of the same story and, ideally, original reports or documents.
The writing is then the easy part. The connections of facts and opinions will hang in my mind for perhaps half an hour and make perfect sense. Then, if I don’t commit them to words, they’re gone for good. Once written, though, a hook is created in my brain on which the matter is hung and which I can easily access later. The day will come, which I anticipate with terror, when I look at this wall of hooks and see hanging from them nothing I can recognise or use.
Until this happens, the question always asks itself as to who exactly I’m trying to please. I’ve decided that it’s only really one person: me. I have no idea if it pleases anyone else. No money, the purest form of tribute, changes hands as a result of this column. I keep my eye on the clicks but these can be due to a number of factors, not all of them of human origin. As we don’t use Google Analytics, I don’t know how long people spend on a particular post. I’m not sure I want to.
In any case, what would I do about it? A measurement is only useful if you then take action based on it. I’m not going to change what or how I write because Google thinks I should. This attitude might show me to be arrogant, lazy, or inflexible. I might pretend that it’s rather an assertion of my unique humanity against the tyranny of the algorithm.
However, the real reason for my not changing my approach is because (a) the styles I use now come to me as naturally as breathing and (b) I can’t be bothered.
This week, though, my brain is all fried up with more immediate and local stuff. Most of this relates to matters taking place within about a fifteen-mile radius of PP HQ in East Garston.
• The Spanish Armada
When I first got closely involved in working with Penny on Penny Post in about 2017, I knew virtually nothing about local matters. Reading various publications that covered the area told me what had just happened but not why, nor what might happen next.
Using one easy tool, which all of us have in our possession (and which I’m not going to reveal), I set about trying to rectify my ignorance. Local readers can be the judge to what extent I’ve succeeded.
When I was at school and doing History A-level, there was a boy in the class who was fascinated – no, obsessed – with the Spanish Armada. He could, and did, intrude all kinds of comments about it into our discussions, even when we were considering matters that had taken place fifty years earlier.
Finally, our teacher’s journey through the Tudor period approached 1588. Young Pete was almost beside himself with excitement.
I had no great affection for Mr Cuthbertson, the teacher, though I was becoming aware that he was pretty good at his job. He had been as irritated by Pete’s Armada intrusions as the rest of us. The day came when he got his revenge.
July 1588 dawned, as it were, in the classroom. We continued our discussion of the events leading up to this failed invasion, Pete squirming on his chair like a belly dancer suffering from piles. Then the big moment came. Pete already had his hand up.
“The Spanish Armada, as we know, didn’t succeed,” Mr Cuthbertson said. “Of much more importance than this, though, is what happened afterwards…”
It was a fine piece of rather sadistic teacher-power. Mr Cuthbertson went massively up in my estimation after that: not because he’d humiliated an irritating narrowly-based know-all, but because he’d confirmed something I’d long suspected: any event is merely the result of a series of other events and a contributory factor to future ones. They are not generally of themselves significant, any more than is an individual electron in the circuit that makes a light bulb work.
• Faint praise
Well, it’s just that way with matters like public petitions or consultations, sewage leaks, elections and planning meetings. The interesting aspects are generally not “what has just happened?” but (a) “why did it happen?”, (b) “what might happen next?” and (c) “what can I do about it?” Despite regular protestations to the contrary, many other local news outlets generally ignore these aspects.
“Spanish Invaders Destroyed in Glorious Victory” is a good headline. “Virgin Queen’s Risky Foreign Policy” or “Catholics Face Possible Restrictions” are less so, although they are in many ways more interesting. The present tense is over-rated. The past and the future have, in different ways, far more potential.
Many news publications separate news and comment, often reserving the latter exclusively for their correspondence section. Outlets with a political agenda – so, most of the non-local ones – add comment in a more insidious way, by omission of other points of view or damning them with faint praise. We all mix fact and comment in conversation. Could it, I wondered, be got away with when writing about events?
I decided that, as no one apart from Penny or me was deciding how we approached these stories, it was well worth a shot. This hybrid approach seemed both different and more interesting to read; and certainly to write.
My view was always that people could tell the difference between news, comment and prediction. An explanation of the causes and results were vital in order to put the event into context. This is much easier to do if you drop into a more conversational, and thus subjective, style.
This required a lot of summaries. Some local stories – CIL, Readibus, Faraday Road, Sandleford, Monks Lane, Chestnut Walk, the former Pirbright site, sewage discharges, NE Thatcham, the local plan, various proposed closures, service devolution and a host more – needed revisiting, sometimes scores of times and for years. Links could be used to refer to previous accounts but each one also had to make sense on its own. This takes, though I don’t want to over-make the point, a good deal of effort.
• Local issues
So: why am I suddenly on my back and gasping for air?
In the last eight days, we have produced four newsletters, counting the one in which this column is featured – two for the wider area we cover, one for Hungerford and for the upper Lambourn Valley. The Hungerford one was the hundredth, so it was a bumper issue with look-backs, competitions and interviews.
There’s more. Between us, we’ve written or updated about fifteen articles, ranging from train services to bin collections, from beehives to VE Day, from crime figures to leisure-centre contributions and from equine safety to almshouses. Penny has run a monthly market, done four cooking classes, attended three events and given a talk. I’ve covered three public meetings. We’ve renewed commercial deals, tried to solve a festering IT problem, dealt with a stressful copyright issue and a car puncture, done a lot of weeding and four times had to round up escaped chickens. It all adds up.
My attention has, even more than usual, been firmly in the local area. Trump, Leo, Vlod, Vlad, Kier and all the rest of them are there: but, today, I just can’t cope with them. Commenting on their doings increasingly, takes my mind away from the things I write about locally which might, just possibly, make a difference: as I think it’s done with a few of the issues mentioned a few paragraphs above.
In the future – however long the sentient form of that proves to be for me – my attention might be inclined to stay there. You do need to lift your head up and see beyond the horizon. However, as mentioned earlier, the main focus has to be on what you might influence. That’s what I think I want to concentrate on.
If you want to support the work we do, Penny Post Publishing CIC welcomes donations through The Good Exchange. Greenham Trust, which is behind this portal, is a unique and remarkable organisation: a positive legacy of the Cold War that none of the people at the Peace Camps around the former air base could have predicted but which all might have welcomed.
• And finally…
• As Private Eye 1649 points out, the sub-postmasters have finally had an award given to them. Sadly, this award isn’t the award of the final settlement of their claims, but the BAFTA that was awarded to the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office. None the less, this made a massive difference to the popular perception of the injustice.
There are many others, including concerning infected blood and Community Infrastructure Levies (see below). Not all benefit from TV series and public inquiries. I’m very glad that the PO victims have had their persecutors exposed, if not (yet) their claims settled. Many other injustices, however, still remain even more unresolved and under-reported.
• On the subject of unaddressed injustices, I’m on a WhatsApp group for people who’ve suffered from under the CIL system, by which homeowners are charged sometimes six-figure sums for highly technical breaches of a process that was never designed to apply to them at all. To its enormous credit, West Berkshire Council (particular hats off to Claire Rowles and Jeff Brooks) has solved the problem here. In many other districts, however, residents are pressing their planning departments to adopt the more humane West Berkshire solution rather than the more draconian ones that often prevail.
The number of people on the group is growing, as is the list of the local authorities involved. I don’t know if ITV is planning a drama series as it did on Post Office but the two scandals certainly have many points in common. If anyone in any part of the country feels they’ve been let down by CIL and would like to join the group, please email brian@pennypost.org.uk and I’ll put you in touch with the organiser.
• I watch with interest to see how Reform UK will operate in the ten councils which it dramatically won control of earlier this month. All are either counties or unitaries, in which case they’re responsible for social care, education and children’s services. These are the things which have sent many local authorities close to the financial edge. I’d like to be a fly on the wall in some of the discussions between the officers and the new executive members in which the municipal facts of life are explained. This article in The Guardian suggests some of the things that the new members will be trying to change.
• What a snake Putin is: first he was going to be there at negotiations with Zelensky and others; now he’s not. Perhaps just as well, given what might otherwise be said. Restoring the former USSR is his aim and we shouldn’t forget it.
• China does stuff quickly. This article in The Week, referring to one in The Observer, claims that “in 2021, Chinese phone maker Xiaomi announced that it was going to make electric vehicles (EVs): two years later, its highly automated production lines were churning out a model every 76 seconds.” Herein lies, the article concludes, the “foundational fear motivating Trump’s trade war with China”.
• So, two of the three European club finals will involve English sides, though not the big one, in which Inter will beat PSG 2-1 (or not). The Europa League final will be between Manchester United and Spurs, the two worst teams in the Premier League which have escaped relegation. One of them, hopefully not Man Utd, will end up in the Champions League next season, bringing England’s tally of participants in the competition to six. The Conference League final will see Chelsea face probably the most serious test they’ve had, against Real Betis: a match I expect them to lose.
• Years and years ago, when I first got interested in football, I helped my mum (who knew nothing about the beautiful game) do the pools, though with nothing approaching success. A few weeks after I’d lost interest, her completely random choices produced a win, only of about £4: but she lost the cheque. This perhaps explains why I have little faith in predictions, including my own, and even less in the questionable rewards of blind chance. None the less, I still have some Premium Bonds: and, one fine day…
Across the area
• Constitutional matters
The annual full council meeting of WBC took place on 15 May. This is an occasion when a good deal of annual business is conducted, such as the election of the new Chair (Tony Vickers) and the confirmation of the Executive positions. There are also several other matters up for discussion, both of which involve internal reorganisations.
The first is covered in item 5.9 in the Amendments to the Constitution, which concerns the proposed abolition of the Advisory Groups for Planning, Transport, and Environment, replacing them with a single Policy Development Group (PDG).
All we know about this at present (there are no other references to it in the paper) is that it “would sit outside of the formal Overview and Scrutiny Process and membership would be drawn from the Executive as well as back-bench Members.” Matters such as who chairs it, who decides what it considers and whether it will be open to the public are not known, or not revealed. Nor is it clear whether it will be capable of independent thought or action action or merely be a kind of committee of the Executive.
It’s also proposed to make changes to the scrutiny system, including replacing the current two committees with three (see item 5.8). As part of this, there are some changes proposed to the constitution.
One paragraph that doesn’t alter is 8.11 (apart from changing “Commission” to “Committee”, the distinction between which I don’t understand). This concerns the procedure for dealing with producing reports. Given the continued official silence on the un-published report into Monks Lane, this is a matter on several people’s minds.
An opportunity seems to have been missed for clearing up ambiguities in this paragraph. Firstly, it says that “Following any review, the scrutinising body [which I assume would include a Task and Finish Group, as was looking into Monks Lane] shall prepare a draft report, with recommendations as appropriate, for publication and submission to the Committee.”
It’s not clear to me if “for publication” means for publication generally, or “for publication and submission” just for the Commission (which might then consider it as a confidential Part 2).
Later on, the procedure specifies that the Monitoring Officer will check the report “for factual errors and consideration of any financial implications”. The implication is that the MO is the sole arbiter of what constitutes an error and it’s silent as to whether or not these will be discussed with the author/s of the report.
Looking at a later clause, “financial implications” seems merely to refer to consistency with the budget and thus not matters like possible breaches of commercial confidentiality. Perhaps those are covered by “errors”. It all seems a bit vague to me.
These points are relevant because the report by the Task and Finished Group was not published, alleged errors were noted but not communicated to the author/s and breaches of commercial confidentiality were alleged. In addition, this was not the process that the report followed as, for some reason, it was referred to the Corporate Board rather than the Scrutiny Commission.
If all this sounds arcane and obscure, that’s because it is. A constitution is not the most riveting read but, if one exists (as it doesn’t, for example, for the UK), it needs to be followed and understood. it’s not immediately clear to me that both have happened in this case.
Nor does it seem that the officers are fully conversant with it. At the ill-fated District Planning Committee meeting to consider the Eagle Quarter application in December, time ran out and it and had to be abandoned because of a confusion about constitutional procedure towards the end.
Wind back to 2022 and, during the Council meeting which was considering Councillor Claire Rowles’ attempts to obtain information about the CIL collection procedures, WBC opted to spend about £4,000 on a legal opinion to explain to its own constitution to the meeting.
Nor is the constitution easy to navigate. For some reason, it’s not in one searchable document but chunked down into several, making it hard to look for something unless you know exactly where it is. Is that, perhaps, the intention?
On the few occasions when I need to look something up in it, my heart always sinks when I reach the section and am reminded that this is how it’s displayed. It’s like going into a library to look for a copy of, say, David Copperfield and being told that the book has been divided into its sixty-odd chapters, each of which has been filed on a different shelf.
Nor am I clear whether WBC’s constitution is periodically reviewed from A to Z or whether it’s just tweaked piecemeal whenever it needs to be changed to reflect the will of the administration.
This in turn leads one to wonder if there are some bits that a more immutable than others. Surely a constitiution is something that sets firm rules about the modus operandi of the organisation? If it can be changed by a simple majority of votes, it doesn’t seem to offer any particular safeguards.
All in all, there’s a lot about this and the way its implemented that I don’t understand. Having it all on one place would certainly help.
• Environmental matters
On Thursday 22 May, WBC’s Executive will consider, among other matters, the progress of the Council’s environmental strategy. You can read the July 2023 to July 2024 Annual Progress Report here. I’ve only had time to give this the briefest of glances and there seem to be some good things tucked away in it, but four points strike me.
The first is Figure 1 on p8 which summarises the highlights of the strategy. There are about 20 items, some of which are legacy projects from previous years and administrations and so not new initiatives: the distinction could perhaps be usefully drawn so people can see what’s recent.
Some, such as the food caddies, were the result of government regulations. There are also some such as the improvements to Newbury station and the Thatcham flood defences, primarily done for other reasons and whose environmental benefits are questionable. Finally, some of the the matters are very minor: is giving 21 trees to the Lambourn Environmental group really a top-20 highlight?
The second is portfolio holder Stuart Gourley’s comment in the introduction, saying that he “continues to be humbled and inspired by the great work that individuals, parish and town councils, groups and communities are doing to help deliver a greener, cleaner West Berkshire.”
This could be translated as an admission that, as during the pandemic, such groups are the ones really making the difference. They are anyway probably better placed than WBC to know what needs doing, to do it and to ensure it stays done. If WBC is concentrating on supporting and helping to co-ordinate that work, as his statement kind of implies, then that’s both beneficial and realistic. Only they can say if this is what they feel is being provided
WBC does, of course, have the power to implement some large changes that are beyond the scope of such groups. One of these is the solar farm at Grazely, permission for which was obtained some time ago. The only mention of it in the report is the laconic and unspecific “over the forthcoming year work will begin on delivering” this. It was, I believe, meant to have completed by late last year. Why the delay?
Fourthly, scroll down to Figures 2 and 3 on pages 19 and 20 and you’ll see two charts about carbon emissions. The second of these clearly refers to “Council” emissions but the Figure 2 has an ambiguous heading: is this the Council or the district that’s being referred to? In any case, neither chart demonstrates the kind of acceleration of progress that the change of administration in 2023 might have led people to hope for.
At first glance, figure 2 might give the impression we’re about 75% of the way to hitting the target. Look at the Y axis, though, and you’ll see that the base figure is not 0 but 8,000. To show the full extent of the remaining journey to zero would have required a chart three times as deep with most of it being blank. At the current rate of progress, zero isn’t going to get hit for about twenty years: the target, however, is 2030.
• Bin days
Following a public consultation in the autumn of 2024, West Berkshire Council will be move from fortnightly to three-weekly collection of black bins at some time later this year. Not everyone agrees with this and there’s recently been a lot of comment and opposition on a number of grounds including possible problems with the consultation, the questionable benefits and the impact that this might have on certain groups.
In this separate article, we take a look at the various issues, including the reasons WBC is doing this, a comparison with the services offered by some other councils and the additional recycling arrangements which may happen in the future.
WBC’s waste team will be doing drop-in sessions for residents to come and ask any waste and recycling questions at various libraries across the district during May 2025 and this article has a link to these.
• News from your local councils
Most of the councils in the area we cover are single-tier with one municipal authority. The arrangements in Oxfordshire are (currently, at least) different, with a County Council which is sub-divided into six district councils, of which the Vale of White Horse is one. In these two-tier authorities, the county and district have different responsibilities.
In all cases, parish and town councils provide the first and most immediately accessible tier of local government.
West Berkshire Council
• Click here to see the latest Residents’ News Bulletin from WBC.
• Click here for details of all current consultations being run by WBC.
• Click here to sign up to all or any of the wide range of newsletters produced by WBC.
• Click here for the latest news from WBC.
Vale of White Horse Council
• Click here for details of all current consultations being run by the Vale Council.
• Click here for latest news from the Vale Council.
• Click here for the South and Vale Business Support Newsletter archive (newsletters are generally produced each week).
• Click here to sign up to any of the newsletters produced by the Vale’s parent authority, Oxfordshire County Council.
Wiltshire Council
• Click here for details of all current consultations being run by Wiltshire Council.
• Click here for the latest news from Wiltshire Council.
Swindon Council
• Click here for details of all current consultations being run by Swindon Council.
• Click here for the latest news from Swindon Council.
Parish and town councils
• Please see the News from your local council section in the respective weekly news columns (these also contain a wide range of other news stories and information on activities, events and local appeals and campaigns): Hungerford area; Lambourn Valley; Marlborough area; Newbury area; Thatcham area; Compton and Downlands; Burghfield area; Wantage area.
• Other news
• 12 to 25 May is Foster Care Fortnight: see the 14 May Residents’ Bulletin or this page on WBC’s website for more information.
• As mentioned previously Joseph Holmes (formerly the interim CEO) has been appointed CEO of West Berkshire Council.
• West Berkshire Council reports that “99% of children in West Berkshire have been offered one of their primary school preferences with 94% being given their first choice of school.’
• West Berkshire Council is highlighting how the National Wraparound Childcare Programme can help parents and carers.
• The animals of the week are these chimpanzees which routinely use plants, some of whose medicinal properties are not known to humans, to treat injuries.
• A number of good causes have received valuable support recently: see the various news area sections (links above) for further details.
The quiz, the sketch, the fact and the song
• Which brings us to the song of the week. It’s very hard to pick what I think is the best Steely Dan song because, pretty much every time I listen to something of theirs, I think “that’s it!” This is my current number one: Home at Last.
• Followed by the Comedy Moment of the Week. Few films were as consistently, and 11 out of 10, funny as This is Spinal Tap and here’s one of my favourite scenes: The Backstage Mini-bread Catastrophe.
• And next it’s the Unbelievable Fact of the Week. This has been gleaned from Edward Brooke-Hitching’s The Most Interesting Book in the World, described as “a miscellany of things too strange to be true, yet somehow are”. This week’s is that humans shed about five billion skin cells every day.
• And finally the Quiz Question of the Week. This week’s question is: What do VE Day, David Attenborough, The Beatles’ Let it Be album and Pope Leo XIV have in common? Last week’s question was: With VE Day (8 May) in mind, roughly how many people were killed in WW2? Estimates vary, but Wikipedia suggests between 70 and 85m. About a third of whom were from the USSR and about a quarter from China.
For weekly news sections for Hungerford area; Lambourn Valley; Marlborough area; Newbury area; Thatcham area; Compton and Downlands; Burghfield area; Wantage area please click on the appropriate link.
