À la recherche d'un village perdu

As some of you will know, I am now the remote Chair of Creeting St Peter Parish Council, in that I don't live there any more. And you aren't alone in wondering whether or not this is a good idea. There is, I suspect, every possibility that you come across as the Parish Council equivalent of a colonial administrator, without any real skin in the game.

I've been conscious of that all along, and am entirely up front about being willing to go should Council conclude that the arrangement doesn't work for them or for the residents of Creeting St Peter. But, for the time being at least, everyone appears to be content and are happy for me to continue.

And so, this evening, I made my way back to Creeting St Peter on a cold, damp evening for our first meeting of 2024.

Luckily, we'd made most of the difficult decisions in our November meeting, including settling on our 2024/25 budget, so the meeting was mostly about reports and "box-ticking", in the company of our Liberal Democrat District Councillor, Terry Lawrence. And that meant that I was able to steer us through the business in about fifty minutes, allowing me to catch an earlier train back to Ipswich.

One of the things about having an efficient Clerk and Responsible Finance Officer is that everyone can read the papers in advance, minimising unnecessary debate and make quick decisions, even allowing opportunities for councillors to raise any point they feel they need to. And that means that business is brisk but open - I'm even relaxed about bringing in members of the public to speak should they wish to.

And I'm fortunate in that my fellow councillors, Ayse, Dan, Davin and Lynne, are committed to their responsibilities, are active in village life, and pay attention to what's going on around them. Not every Chair of a Parish Council is as lucky.

So my reign of terror leadership continues, at least until May, and the Annual Parish Council Meeting. May everything continue to run as smoothly as it has so far...

A windy walk in the park

As part of our adaptation to urban life, Ros and I have taken to exploring the wider town, and this morning, we took a short drive to one of Ipswich’s less crowded parks (especially on a windy, grey day), Bourne Park, in south-west Ipswich.

It's not a park I was terribly aware of, although it can be clearly seen from the train as you approach Ipswich from London, out of the left-hand windows. So, what's there to do?

The park is based around Belstead Brook as it flows towards the Orwell at Ostrich Creek (no, I didn't know that either until I looked at a map just now), and includes a rather nice playground with a children's paddling pool which, I guess, is quite lively on a summer afternoon. There's also quite a nice looking picnic area and some public toilets (no, they haven't all been closed!).

It was formally opened by Prince Henry, the third son of George V, on 7 October 1927, and Ipswich Borough Council have kept the dedication in surprisingly good condition, which is nice.

We walked the length of the park and back, sticking mainly to the path as the ground is a bit soft what with all the rain we've had lately, before heading to the nearby supermarket for some provisions.

I rather think that we'll be back...

It’s the little things…

Living in a small village does little for the concept of spontaneity. Indeed, I began to make the case for the benefits of having to plan things in advance, something I didn’t really do much of as a Londoner, back in the day. But, having now reverted to urban living, I’ve begun to realise just how nice it is to have things on your doorstep.

Today, a lampshade was purchased for the lamp in the living room, one a bit larger than we’d previously had. As a result, it needed a support, and the wonderful lighting store on Butter Market sold us just the thing. But the man in the shop said that, if it was the wrong height, we could replace it. So, we took the lampshade and support home, tried it out and found that, yes, we needed something a little shorter.

The four minute walk back to the shop meant that the job could be done, the light fitting restored. Very nice, very efficient.

This afternoon, we had a yearning for ice cream. There’s an ice cream parlour close by, which we studiously avoid most of the time - we try to avoid temptation where we can. But, as a treat, it’s very nice.

There’s little doubt that urban life is simpler in a range of ways, some obvious, some not so. The trick, I guess, is not to take it for granted…

The medieval churches of Ipswich

Day 2 of our course on the history of Ipswich took place last night and it was a slight diversion from the timeline, as we considered the surviving Domesday churches in the town.

I have to admit that I'm not a huge architecture enthusiast. Yes, I can admire a well-turned arch as much as the next man but, in general, I'm not really a detail person. However, Elizabeth Serpell was a lively guide to Ipswich's collection of old churches.

It's my suspicion that Ipswich's gradual fade from one of England's major towns to a relative backwater meant that its churches survived, after a fashion, in that most of them survived, albeit rebuilt and, in some cases, drastically redesigned.

There are exceptions. St Mildred's, which was on the Cornhill, became the Guildhall and was then demolished to make way for the Victorian-era Town Hall. But churches like St Mary Elmes, St Helen's and St Clement's, which are in locations that are slightly off the main thoroughfares, tend to go unnoticed. You know that they're there, but their exact location tends to escape your mind when asked.

In truth, you could argue that Ipswich's churches are not particularly marvellous, particularly in the context of Suffolk. Indeed, Simon Knott, in his glorious paean to the churches of the county, doesn't include a single Ipswich church in his top sixty in the county. 

The Conservative dilemma over when to call a General Election reminds me of a poem…

Framed in a first-storey winder of a burnin’ buildin’

Appeared: A Yuman Ead!

Jump into this net, wot we are ‘oldin’

And yule be quite orl right!

But ‘ee wouldn’t jump …

And the flames grew Igher and Igher and Igher

(phew!)

Framed in a second-storey winder of a burnin’ buildin’

Appeared: A Yuman Ead!

Jump into this net, wot we are ‘oldin’

And yule be quite orl right!

But ‘ee wouldn’t jump …

And the flames grew Igher and Igher and Igher

(strewth!)

Framed in a third-storey winder of a burnin’ buildin’

Appeared: A Yuman Ed!

Jump into this net, wot we are ‘oldin’

And yule be quite orl right!

Honest!

And ‘ee jumped …

And ‘ee broke ‘is blooming neck!

(Anonymous)

You do have to wonder at this point whether or not, in holding onto power as long as possible, the scale of the electoral train wreck that ensues when Rishi Sunak does go to the country gets ever greater.

It's going to be a cold night in political hell on Monday...

I was drafting a piece for Liberal Democrat Voice to be published on Monday morning, and I was reminded that there's a pretty brutal weather system in America's Midwest at the moment.

So, I turned on the weather app on my phone and found this...

And that's in Celsius! Yes, on Monday, it's predicted to be no warmer than -19°C (-2°F) in Des Moines, the state capital of Iowa, where the first Republican caucuses are due to take place.

But is it likely to have any major effect?

You might reasonably argue that the more fanatical Republican activists will turn out regardless, but that urban delegates (perhaps more socially liberal) might be more likely to reach their caucus venues. Research published yesterday by the Washington Post suggests that Democrats are more deterred by bad weather than Republicans. But bad weather also depresses risk tolerance amongst voters.

I'm not sure what that means in a Trump/DeSantis/Haley contest. From a European perspective, Trump looks like the risky option, but he is the former President, after all, and so many American voters seem to have decided that Trump is a victim and not a criminal.

So, we'll see if Iowa throws us all a curveball in the early hours on Tuesday morning...

Local Government finance: it seems that I may have been right all along...

It would be fair to say that I am a fiscally cautious soul. I've loathe to borrow in order to fund expenditure, I believe in balancing the books as far as possible, although I do endorse the notion of investing to save. And as a Parish councillor, I am not bound by legislative restrictions on precept increases, unlike principal authorities.

As a result, most town and parish councils are in modestly good financial shape. The same cannot be said for our principal authority counterparts, many of whom are showing increasing signs of financial stress.

Here in Suffolk, our County Council is looking to make £64.7 million worth of savings over the next two years, and has borne the brunt of increases in costs of children's services and social care. And that has meant something of a slash and burn across the non-statutory services - funding for the arts and culture will be reducing to nil in 2024/25, for example. It hasn't been popular, to say the least.

I am sympathetic... to an extent. The Council is where it is, and to continue spending as it had would be catastrophic in pretty short order. Hard choices have to be made.

However, the Suffolk Conservatives brought this upon themselves with their rather fanatical devotion to freezing council tax under the leadership of the likes of Colin Noble - they didn't increase council tax at all between 2010/11 and 2015/16. By doing so, rather than essaying modest increases in council tax charges year on year, they effectively denied themselves income in each successive years by increasing amounts and, with the Government's cap on council tax increases squeezing increasingly tightly thereafter, it was inevitable that the financial settlement would get more and more uncomfortable.

There were those of us who warned of that at the time but we weren't heeded - the desire for electoral success trumps financial reality most of the time.

And Suffolk is far from the worst affected authority. Counties didn't get involved in commercial property for the most part, and the series of calamitous failures that have dotted the past two years or so tend to feature Boroughs, Districts and big city Metropolitans, but they're now sending up distress signals ever more frequently.

There's no obvious signal that the Government is going to appear over the horizon like the Seventh Cavalry, and an incoming Labour administration may have plenty of other calls upon the resources it can muster. Which means, I fear, that life in our communities will become that much more basic, and councillors will be reduced, effectively, to delivering services specified by Central Government. So much for local democracy.

There is a small (very small) consolation, in that some of the slack may be taken up by Town and Parish Councils. And we've seen recently some of the fruits of that, with nineteen Local Councils successfully bidding for grants under the Community Ownership Fund - the first time that they've been able to do so. That had to be actively sought through the lobbying efforts of the National Association of Local Councils, something that Ros played a leading role in as part of her role as its Honorary President.

But, regardless of what happens this year, an incoming administration needs to think seriously about giving local authorities the freedom to make their own choices, to raise funds according to their needs and to encourage them to innovate, rather than apply centralised shackles. And whilst I'm not convinced that the control-freakery tendency within the Labour Party will want to relinquish that power, I would suggest that, if they want much local democracy to survive, it is a road they need to travel.

The first (of many) evenings about Ipswich

1780 map of Ipswich, credited to
http://www.ipswich-lettering.co.uk/map1780.html

When Ros suggested that we might join the Ipswich Institute, and take a course on the history of Ipswich, I was, I admit, slightly sceptical. But I was persuaded and, this evening, the first part of the course, on Saxon and early medieval Ipswich, took place, led by the former head of the County's Archaeology Unit, Keith Wade.

I'm not a historian, although I do have an interest in history, and I was somewhat surprised to be told that there wasn't much documentary evidence if Ipswich prior to the seventh century, but I presume that there wasn't much documentary evidence of many places where the Romans weren't until they became properly established.

But it is clear that Ipswich was an important place in the pre-Norman period, as both a point of entry for East Anglia and as a community. And, unusually, Ipswich is pretty much where it has always been, with a modern town plan heavily influenced by developments prior to the Norman Conquest.

As a relative latecomer to Suffolk, most of what I know about the county and its history is what I've picked up as I've gone along - the wool trade of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the fishing industry of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, for example - so there was clearly a lot to learn about our county town.

Keith took us through the development (or, in some cases, the regression) of the town through the Saxon and Norman periods, noting that Ipswich had suffered from Viking predations and then, after William the Conqueror came, from royal vengeance in 1075. He also told of how Ipswich's influence in the region declined as other centres (Norwich and Thetford) emerged as competitors.

And, now that we live in the heart of the town, the logic of the street layout makes perfect sense - why streets run as they do, why key thoroughfares are where they are. What did surprise me was that Ipswich developed on both banks of what was a very wide river, far wider than the current River Orwell, as that seems quite unusual based on my experiences of European geography. Keith suggested that the Orwell may have been bridged more than 1200 years ago which seems remarkable to me, albeit logical.

All in all, it was a fascinating two hours or so, and if the other ten weeks are as interesting, I'm going to be much better informed about the place I now call home. Next week, we look at churches, something that Suffolk is famous for...

A very interesting question indeed...

In preparing the Liberal Democrat Voice preview of the week ahead in the Lords, I had noticed an intriguing question from one of the new Labour Peers, Lord Sahota, on the question of tax return processing. Intriguing, because it isn't that often that the Lords addresses the management and effectiveness of HM Revenue & Customs. And, given that I didn't even know if there was a Treasury Minister in the Lords, I was also curious to see who would have to get up and defend us on behalf of the Government.

The answers turned out to be:

• criticism of HMRC's handling of telephone calls

• Baroness Vere of Norbiton

In fairness, the decision to direct as many callers as possible to HMRC's digital offering has been the subject of much criticism, especially at what is the busiest time of year for Self Assessment tax return completion. That said, we do allow a relatively generous amount of time for returns to be completed and submitted (nearly ten months compared to, for example, three and a half months in the United States) and, whilst human nature tends to leave unpleasant tasks to the last minute, most people have the information needed to complete their returns by mid-summer. And yes, I've been guilty of leaving it until late in the past too.

There was the usual cheap jibe at civil servants working at home (yes, Patrick McLoughlin, I did notice...), but I have to say that my personal experience was of being flat out on calls and hanging on to clear the backlog after regular working hours. And I can testify to Charlotte Vere's reply that contact centre staff are keenly monitored to ensure that their performance meets the targets set, regardless of whether they're working from the office or their home.

Whilst Lord Sahota referred to staffing numbers - dramatically understating them by claiming that there are 19,000 staff when there are, as of November, 66,256 - nobody seemed to conclude that, perhaps, there might not be enough staff to do what Ministers require of HMRC.

That's a question that's above my paygrade (in every sense) but, as in so much public administration, if you will the ends, you must furnish the means.

But it was brave of Charlotte Vere to admit that she had personally had to call HMRC earlier this week, and that she had waited about twenty minutes for her call to be answered. Most people wouldn't be terribly pleased to wait that long, although it seems to be increasingly standard for private companies too - don't start me about banks, airlines and furniture companies.

I'll be intrigued to see if there is any follow up as a result of the brief debate, but I'm not expecting much, based on experience...

Twitter, or X, and why I'm planning on hanging around for a while yet...

I've watched as a number of my friends and colleagues have given up on Elon Musk's train wreck. And there's no doubt that, for a variety of reasons, it isn't the site it was.

The quality of the advertisements - mostly for unknown companies selling things that I don't want or, occasionally, for scantily clad women - has certainly fallen off, and whilst blocking them gives me a certain degree of grim satisfaction, it is a bit of a nuisance. And the "For you" option seems to specialise in vaguely annoying people who paid for their blue tick status, thus demonstrating that they almost certainly wouldn't have earned it on merit.

I can see why some would find that sufficiently annoying to just throw their hands in the air and walk away. I certainly wouldn't be critical of anyone looking for a new "home".

It perhaps helps that I don't tend to follow anyone who is trying really hard to be edgy. I do follow my friends and acquaintances, and I'm happy to discard those if they become annoying rather than fun, but I've always tended to use it as a means of steering information towards me from sources that I'm interested in, or are useful for my various roles and interests.

That means that the feeds I follow are local government based - partly because of my roles as a Parish Councillor and with the National Association of Local Councillors - or sports based (I follow a range of mostly unsuccessful sports teams) so that I can keep up with their progress (or lack of it) without having to go to a website. I also follow a bunch of Liberal Democrats and a small, highly curated range of politicians from other parties.

What that means is that my "following feed" isn't anywhere near as annoying as the rest of X. That certainly helps to persuade me that it's worth sticking around. Not worth enough for me to pay Elon anything, you understand, but enough to stay, at least whilst the medium exists in a functional form.

But that, I fear, might not be true for very long at the rate things are going...

My e-mail from the Conservatives cometh...

Mark,

We have halved inflation. Reduced our debt. And now, we are able to focus on the long-term decisions to strengthen our economy.

We will CUT TAXES for 27 million working people, helping people keep more of their money. We are doing this by cutting the main rate of National Insurance Contributions (NICs) from 12% to 10%. For the average worker earning £35,000 a year, that means a £450 tax cut.

That means we can now CUT TAX for 27 million people. Rewarding hard work. With the largest ever NI tax cut.

Yes, I got my e-mail from the Conservatives - it took about sixteen hours but it did come. Do they have a bank of people in Bangladesh or somewhere hand typing them - that would be the sort of inefficient operation that they seem to be specialising in at the moment?

But nonetheless, it came. Such a pity that it contains so many inaccuracies...

Firstly, whilst the deficit may have been reduced, there is still a significant deficit, so debt continues to increase. You might argue that it has stopped increasing as a percentage of GDP, but that's a technical argument which hardly reflects what the ordinary voter will think.

Secondly, most of the long-term decisions being taken appear to be designed solely to box in an incoming Labour administration rather than to build a stronger economy going forward.

But the sheer gall of claiming that you've cut taxes when you've frozen personal allowances for the next five years, bringing more people into income tax, more people into the 40% rate band and more into the 45% rate band, really does take some beating.

By raising tax on some of the poorest working people, rowing back on what was a Liberal Democrat policy to take the poorest out of income tax - and what is so clever about taking money from people with one hand and giving back to them with the other, anyway? - and then gaslighting them in such an obvious manner, they deserve some comeback.

And when people get their April payslips and discover that, rather than getting lots more money, they see very little difference or, more likely, a decrease, they might decide that punishing those who mislead them is a good idea.

So I won't be accepting the invitation to donate money to the Conservative Party.

I was puzzled by one thing though. The small print at the end of the e-mail states:

You're receiving this email because you signed up on taxcuts.conservatives.com. If you'd like to unsubscribe, please click here.

I'm puzzled because, whilst I agreed to receive this one-off e-mail, I specifically didn't tick the box to say that I would like to receive more e-mails going forward. So why am I being offered an opportunity to unsubscribe?

I shall be watching my inbox with interest over the coming weeks... 

As Conservative Party campaigns go, this isn’t a very good one

As a service to my readers, I thought that I ought to test out this invitation from the Conservative Party…

https://x.com/rishisunak/status/1743568319582466303?s=46&t=XnCxlgeW8CvCxo3KZJE-5A

Naturally, I was keen to test their figures against my own calculation, given all of the suggestions from public minded users of X that I might be disappointed. And no, I did not accept the kind invitation to be kept updated by them as to their campaigning - my e-mail inbox is quite busy enough as it is.

Having entered my details into the e-form - name, approximate salary and e-mail address - I was told that I could expect an e-mail to tell me how much more I would have to spend. But no such e-mail has come. And I am disappointed, assuming therefore that either I won’t be better off or, worse still, worse off than I previously was.

Either way, it’s a pretty poor show and, in the event that a Conservative campaigner comes to my door, I will make a point of noting that, if that’s the best they can do, no wonder the public are minded to give them a thorough electoral kicking.

Home again… to sleep, perchance to dream?

Yes, we’re back from another family trip to see our granddaughter (and her parents, naturally). I even found some time to visit my own family in New York, which was as wonderful as ever.

But all I want to do now is sleep. It’s one of the things about getting older - jet lag hits harder and for longer. And I know the advice, try to get your routine back to normal, but the temptation of some horizontal oblivion is just too much.

Luckily, having travelled on a Friday night/Saturday morning, I’ve got a weekend to recover, catch up on laundry and generally feel myself back into the day to day.

So, if you’ll excuse me…

Might the US Supreme Court actually rule that Trump is in breach of the Fourteenth Amendment?

Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

So, with Colorado and Maine currently ruling that Donald Trump is in breach of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the dilemma which has probably been keeping the judiciary awake at night has finally reached the U.S. Supreme Court, as we probably all knew it would.

And, with three members of the Court owing their appointment to Donald Trump, the pressure upon them is probably greater than it has ever been. If you’re a partisan Democrat, do you really believe that Justices Barrett, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are impartial, or that Justice Thomas, whose wife is a high-profile proponent of the theory that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen, could vote any other way than in favour of his wife’s bestest friend?

Partisan Republicans will assume that the perceived 6-3 conservative majority in the Supreme Court will favour their man, but what if they don’t?

It would be a terrible situation for nine impartial judges, but when most, if not all, of the Justices are seen by a sizeable minority of the population as unreliable, if only because they don’t see the world in the same way, it is a recipe for the sort of reaction that the extremists, particularly hardcore Trump supporters, keep threatening.

I tend to the view that there’s enough “wriggle room” for the Justices to rule in favour of Trump, and that they’ll be extremely loathe to take such a conclusive step unless a lower court, probably Georgia, determines that his behaviour was such as to represent “insurrection or rebellion”, and even then they would bend over backwards not to exclude him.

What that tells you is that the bar for exclusion is a high one, as it probably should be, but it leaves space for extremists to push the boundaries ever further until, inevitably, the guardrails that protect American democracy break. As an outsider, that worries me, as a potentially fractured United States offers risks for allies and enemies alike.

It also raises questions about a multi-polar world where the United States becomes ever more insular and transactional in its relationships, whilst the European Union struggles to establish a consistent voice and Russia and China undermine the democracies at every turn.

We watch, nervously, for the Supreme Court…

How you (don’t) end up with a May General Election

There’s been a lot of debate about when Rishi Sunak will choose to go to the country, and a range of theories have been offered, many of them entertaining, credible or logical. And, evidently, with the Conservatives holed beneath the waterline, opposition parties would really like to get on with things.

But, the more I think about it, the harder it gets to formulate a credible path to a May election.

Yes, it’s entirely possible that things get worse as time passes, suggesting that a May election might limit the scale of the seemingly inevitable defeat to be suffered. But we’re already talking about the loss of half of the current Conservatives’ Parliamentary Party so, how much worse could it get?

And the key decision maker is Rishi Sunak, who has been in post for little more than a year. Why would he give up some of the time available to him for so little personal advantage?

Ah, but yes, I hear you reply, he isn’t loved by his own party, and the MPs could get rid of him in order to go in May. Theoretically, they could, but the idea of a leadership contest in the run-up to a spring election would make them look even more shambolic. There’s also the question of whether or not such a process could be concluded in time, and that becomes less likely with every passing day.

The May local elections are likely to be bad for the Conservatives, with their position relative to 2021, when these seats were last fought, a pretty poor one (they then polled 36% against Labour’s 29% and our 17%), but it’s been a while since a ruling Party concerned itself terribly with its local government base when thinking about electoral strategy. So, I don’t see that as a factor in decision making either, even if they might retrospectively regret that.

But for me, the best reason to expect an October election is the human one - hope. This Government is increasingly unlikely to see any substantial improvement in the economy anytime soon - GDP has flatlined, inflation, particularly as it impacts on the less well off, is still an issue, and mortgage payers will see their payments increase as their fixed rate deals expire. But you never entirely know what will happen, and an early election means that you’ll never find out.

So, I’m hoping for a quiet April, with some potential light leafleting in Ipswich, where we elect in thirds, and are defending St Margaret’s ward. We’ll see if I’m right soon enough, I guess…

By Amtrak to the Big Apple…

Due to a technical complication with our flight home, our journey takes us not to Boston, but to New York, and so the question of how to get from Dover to New York arose. The typical answer is to look at flights, and that was an alternative, but luckily, Dover has that rare joy - its own Amtrak station. And I do enjoy a train ride…

For some rather absurd reason, Amtrak recommends that you arrive thirty minutes before your train is due to depart. Not because it will leave early, but simply because. So, Dover, with its limited hours waiting room, complete absence of places to sit and total lack of shelter, tends to encourage you to disregard that advice. Nobody ever said that Amtrak was entirely customer friendly…

I’d shelled out for business class seats for the first leg to Boston’s North Station, which gets you a reserved (and slightly more comfortable) seat plus free non-alcoholic beverages. It’s not particularly expensive, and does make the journey a little less stressful. And the wooded scenery of New Hampshire and Massachusetts passed smoothly enough, albeit slowly - it’s barely competitive with buses, let alone cars, but it is mostly predictable at least.

At Boston, we switched from North Station to South Station for the rather more swish Acela Express service. A first class ticket buys you access to the Metropolitan Lounge, with free drinks and snacks in a rather unexpectedly stylish setting - a significant upgrade on the main train hall which is undergoing major refurbishment. There are even free gummy bears, a particular attraction for the travelling bureaucrat.

You also get complimentary red cap service, which enables you to board the train early, with someone to carry your luggage and load it onto your carriage - a plus if you’re a bit older or your luggage is unusually heavy.

Aboard the train, you’re offered a welcome (alcoholic, if you’re so inclined) drink and a menu, including real food. It’s a bit like what National Express East Anglia was like before Richard Bowker got his hands on the restaurant car service (I have a long memory for a slight…). There’s a steward, in our case, Cheryl, who looked after us efficiently and with good humour, and you can feel taken care of in a way that you don’t often get even in Europe.

And, because Amtrak have rather more control over traffic, the train actually travels at a speed familiar to Europeans, using proper trains rather than curiously underpowered locomotives. And that means that, even with a number of stops, Boston to New York takes three hours and forty-five minutes. Not spectacular, but competitive with the airlines, particularly given the centre city location of the Amtrak stations at each end.

All in all, I’d describe the Amtrak experience, on the East Coast at least, as worth a look. I’d certainly do it again, perhaps in daylight for preference so as to benefit from the views out of the left-hand side as you head south and west from Boston.

And now for New York…

A few things on the itinerary for the new year…

Yesterday’s post was a bit sombre, I guess, but as a way of feeling my way back into this blogging malarkey, it was a start. Perhaps a look forward might be interesting though - no promises, mind!

My role as a Parish Councillor became more “interesting” in 2023, as I’m now a remote councillor, following our move to (unparished) Ipswich in September. I would have been prepared to stand down and leave the opportunity to someone else, but Council want to keep me, and I’m content to stay so long as they want me. And whilst I suspect that this is at least in part because nobody wants to be Chair, I should celebrate the fact that they respect my ability sufficiently to feel it worth keeping me.

That means that, by extension, my role as Chair of the Mid Suffolk South branch of the Suffolk Association of Local Councils (SALC) and thus a SALC Board member remains ongoing as well as my place on the National Assembly of the National Association of Local Councils. I am perpetually surprised by the level of competence credited to me by my colleagues, but enjoy the intellectual challenge that the roles offer. I’ve learned more about communities in these various roles than I imagined possible, and it has offered food for thought in terms of my own roles and my view of the world.

My hope in 2024 is that I can continue to make a contribution, both in terms of ideas and support, at all levels, and I’d like to improve my communication levels in order to aid my community and spread the word about our sector - there’s some incredible work being done out there, and a real opportunity to make lives better.

Politics has been a bit of a drag in recent times. And, whilst a General Election will have a national impact, Suffolk politics is a bit predictable and not exactly inspiring. Yes, we’ll almost certainly get a new MP - and Tom Hunt really won’t be missed - but with little prospect of Liberal Democrat success in the county, I feel that I’d be better off contributing some time and effort to a regional target seat. That means Chelmsford or South Cambridgeshire, I guess.

My place on Federal Council brought with it a little frustration in 2023. Admittedly, coming to the show late may not have helped - I was the first to join via a by-election after a resignation as early as April - but I sense that not only is Federal Council still in search of a role, but that some of its members have an agenda other than that of broad scrutiny. By their manifestos shall ye know them… I did have an idea late last year which might be developable though…

I’ll be at Spring Conference in York - at least, I’ve booked a hotel - which will hopefully make me feel a bit more connected.

I’m still a member of the ALDE Party Council too, something I really rather enjoy. It isn’t hugely onerous - two meetings a year isn’t going to require massive exertion - and because I stood back from Federal International Relations Committee, I’m a step removed from the day to day international work of the Party. But perhaps I should be a little more engaged with the Liberal Democrat European Group (LDEG) and Liberal International British Group in the year ahead.

My other core activity is my day editorship of Liberal Democrat Voice - Monday is my day. It’s been a bit of a struggle of late to raise the enthusiasm to do the job I really ought to do, and I occasionally wonder if LDV really has a role any more. But we do retain quite a lot of credibility, offer an outlet for original and/or radical thinking, and maintain a space for courteous dissent from the leadership view of the world, so I’m going to try a bit harder to keep my bit of the show on the road in 2024.

There’s also my job, of which there is little I can publicly say. I can (theoretically) retire this year, but don’t see much to be gained by doing so - I’m likely to be a long time retired, and work provides a valued framework around which to organise my life. I also, curiously, enjoy my job, albeit it isn’t what I’d set out to do when I left university all those years ago.

But above everything is Ros. It’s sometimes hard to believe that we’ve been married for fifteen years, but Wikipedia says that it’s true, so it must be. I’m still not entirely convinced that she couldn’t do better, but I’m happy to count my blessings. We’ll doubtless continue to explore our new surroundings, travel and dote on our granddaughter, and contribute to making the world about us a slightly better, slightly nicer place than it might otherwise be. It doesn’t sound hugely ambitious, I confess, but in a world where there appear to be plenty of people whose ambitions run counter to that, it’s a contribution.

And so, I’d better get on, hadn’t I?…

Welcome to a New Year: 2024

And so a new year begins, this time in Dover, New Hampshire, where Ros and I are on grandparent duty. It’s been a peaceful trip, with plenty of time spent with our nearly four-year-old granddaughter and her parents, plus my stepdaughter-in-law’s family. Not exactly intense, but enjoyable nonetheless.

One should count one’s blessings, really, especially given events elsewhere. The Israeli attack on Gaza has turned from simple retaliation into something rather more sinister - and if some Israeli politicians are talking about “relocating the Palestinian population”, then the phrase “ethnic cleansing” becomes more apposite. The Israeli government, if it truly isn’t intent on crushing the civilian population of Gaza, needs to explicitly state its “war aims” and quickly. It may already be too late in the eye of global and, particularly, regional opinion.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world needs to focus on what might happen next. The destruction wrought by the IDF will require vast levels of expenditure in order to simply put a roof over the heads of two million people, let alone restore the infrastructure needed to enable Palestinians to manage their communities effectively. But, if Hamas return and continue their strategy of using the local population as a shield against Israeli retaliation, is anyone going to want to do much more than provide basic shelter and sustenance? What is the strategy for a long-term solution and is there an audience for it?

Slightly closer to home, the Russian assault on Ukraine continues. I’ve always accepted the view espoused from the Baltics in particular that the Russians have to be stopped conclusively, and that Ukrainians are fighting on a frontline rather broader than just their own. The philosophical difference between the Russian approach - “we can outlast our opponents” - as opposed to a sense that we in the rest of Europe don’t value our free, democratic societies sufficiently highly, encourages the Russians to keep coming. And, at some point, you have to say that enough is enough, and mean it. We really do have to mean it now.

At home, 2024 promises a General Election. Given that we have a Government which appears to have no real competence - forget its policies (and I try to), it’s the inability to understand how governance works - and is now reduced to setting elephant traps for an incoming Labour administration rather than doing something, anything, that might make our country better, the sense that we must be rid of the lot of them is almost overwhelming. And it needs to be a crushing defeat in order that they might learn something from it.

Admittedly, my expectation is that the lesson the survivors will learn is that they weren’t right-wing enough and were too nice to the poor and vulnerable amongst us. The idea that the people who brought us Brexit and Rwanda, and who mainstreamed an approach to governance that should horrify reasonable people might conclude that a move towards the political centre is appropriate is… unlikely.

We will end up with a government which will mean well (mostly) but will chafe at attempting the sorts of reforms that we desperately need. In fairness, the financial inheritance will be poor, and a risk-averse Labour leadership will see little benefit in picking fights with pretty much anyone for fear of being a one-term administration.

From a personal perspective, I’m not really sure what goals I have for 2024. In career terms, I’m approaching what might reasonably be described as my “twilight years”, and my level of political activity is not what it was - it’s hard to be optimistic as a bureaucrat in a state run by people who not only begrudge your existence but actively undermine the integrity of government every day. That said, the rest of my life is pretty fulfilling and the move to Ipswich has simplified our lives immeasurably.

So, let’s see what a new year has to offer, and hopefully it will bring you, gentle reader, most, hopefully all, of what you wish for…