#interrail2025: Day 3 (part 1) - a whistlestop tour of Brno

Brno, Monday morning. I’d taken a stroll around the town the previous evening before dinner, and rather liked it, and so I was up early to do it all again, but this time in daylight.

I started with an unexpectedly stiff uphill climb to the cathedral - stone steps, a right knee that wanted to grumble a little and signs of impending fragility made it more challenging than I had anticipated - which is described as a bit dumpy by one commentator but I rather liked it. You know that St Peter and St Paul’s is there, which to my mind is exactly how a cathedral should be.

The climb does give you a decent view of Špilberk Castle, which saved me having to do that too.

Apart from the steps, Brno is a very walkable city, with a relatively compact city core. I did remember to look both ways for trams.

It was, however, time to leave. I might by this time have pretty much lost the ability to speak, but a train was calling me, even if it wouldn’t hear my response…

#interrail2025: Day 2 - “We don’t talk about Brno?”*

Sunday morning dawned bright and early. Cool too, as the temperature had dropped sharply. But Nuremberg is perfectly charming on a Sunday morning without the crowds of a Saturday night, and I thought that a walk would clear the cobwebs before the next train.

As you might expect, Nuremberg has that comfortable sense of a city that does quite nicely for itself, with a high class array of retail opportunities and, despite the results of US and UK-inspired urban renewal, has retained some interesting architecture. The Weißer Turm, which actually has a U-Bahn entrance underneath it, marks the gateway to the shopping district, and I managed to get as far as the castle before turning back to pick my luggage and head for the station.

On reflection, I might have given myself an extra five minutes, as it was a slightly breathless bureaucrat who threw himself and his luggage onto the 10.38 to Schwandorf, where I had discovered a scenic route into the Czech Republic, rather than the obvious Railjet dash via Vienna.

Deutsche Bahn Regional Expresses can be a bit of a mixed bag, and things were made more complex by the unexpected splitting of the train at Neukirchen (bei Sulzbach-Rosenberg). Luckily, I’d got the right half…

I’d left myself just over an hour to connect in Schwandorf (there was an alternative with a six minute connect but I try not to do those anymore), which was intended as an opportunity to get in a few extra steps (yes, I’m still doing my 10,000 steps each day) and whilst I did have luggage to drag, I strode boldly down the mean streets of Schwandorf.

As a small Bavarian town, it does attempt to live up to the cliché. Pretty, white-washed church? Check. Beer garden by the river? Check. I didn’t see anyone in lederhosen, but it was probably only a matter of time.

Back at the station, my connection to Prague was pulling in. Described as a Regional Express from Munich to Prague, the Alex service runs via Plzen and has compartments in first class, which I approve of in an old school sort of way, especially when I get to be undisturbed for three hours, as we wandered across Bohemia. A quick connect to a rather swish Railjet, and I was in Brno in time for dinner. As was Political Animal and his family who, somewhat unnoticed, had picked the same route as I had. And no, I really wasn’t stalking them… or were they now stalking me?

There may have been beer and dumplings involved again, bread dumplings this time - my personal preference - before a relatively early night. A change of scenery beckoned…

* with thanks to Helen Belcher, whose knowledge of Disney hits is clearly superior to mine…

#interrail2025: Day 1 - a day of tight connects made…

I like trains. And no, not in a “isn’t that locomotive interesting” sort of way (although there’s something about a black-painted electric locomotive that calls to me). But I like travelling by train, albeit in comfort. And now that I’m officially aged, it costs rather less to do so.

And we older people get discounted Interrail tickets accordingly, of which I approve hugely.

It would, under such circumstances, be churlish not to take up such an opportunity, and so I bought myself a “ten days in two months” Senior first class Interrail ticket a while ago. I did rather dither about where I would go, but that sort of thing works itself out, right?

Saturday morning was bright and sunny, and an early start found me in London at a decent enough hotel. I skipped breakfast, as Eurostar feed you in Standard Premier (or Eurostar Plus, as I’m going to have to get used to), and headed for St Pancras International for the 9.01 to Bruxelles-Midi. I’d taken the advice of the Man in Seat 61 and reserved a seat near the front of the train so as to make my twenty minute connection that bit less stressful.

As starts go, Eurostar is a fairly easy way to ease yourself into the rhythm of the thing, with a carriage attendant with a wry sense of humour and a sense of speed that I might not see too often in the days to come.

Breakfast was… meh in terms of quantity, although the pain au chocolat was actually pretty good, and the tea drinkable. The yogurt with pecans and caramelised apple was better than I might have feared, but I was not entirely replete when we arrived in Belgium.

A brisk stroll across Gare du Midi, and ICE315 to Frankfurt was, how should I put it, a bit busy. Even a first class ticket didn’t guarantee a seat, and I was pleased that I had taken the precaution of making a seat reservation a couple of days earlier - the Interrail app tells you whether seat reservations are optional, recommended or mandatory, which is a useful thing to know.

What that meant was that “at table” service wasn’t available, so I had to make my way to the restaurant car to get a sandwich and a beer.

But, courtesy of BlueSky, I discovered that I wasn’t entirely alone. Political Animal, who works for the Local Government Association, was on the train with his family, and so we exchanged slightly stalkerish messages. It turned out that both of us were heading for the same place (eventually). Not stalkerish at all, right?

Arriving in Frankfurt on time (Deutsche Bahn, you’re spoiling us…), all that was left was to make a theoretically easy connection for the day’s final destination. Theoretically, because Deutsche Bahn usually have at least one surprise up their sleeve. We were, supposedly, departing from Platform 7, but that was indicating a train to Bamberg which was supposed to have left two hours earlier. And then, the Easter egg, a late platform switch which led to a slightly unseemly scurry to Platform 3.

I made ICE721 to Nuremberg though, a rather emptier, more genteel affair, and arrived in Franconia’s capital in time for a stroll and dinner. My goal… pork and beer.

What I found, apart from a quite buzzy city centre, was Bratwurst Röslein, which claims to be the largest bratwurst restaurant in the world. Yes, really. And, if Germans are claiming that, I’d wager that it’s probably true. There was pork, and a vast potato dumpling, and too much red cabbage for me to eat without exploding. And, of course, beer.

I strolled back to the hotel, rather more slowly this time. It was all going to be alright, even if my ability to speak was becoming increasingly limited…

Candidate selection: this may not be as easy as you think it is…

There was a lot of talk in Harrogate about the importance of “career structure” in relation to potential candidates, and that having a selection schedule would help candidates plan their moves beyond the short-term. It was also asserted, although it was never made clear to me why, that it would improve the diversity of our candidates.

Now this is not exactly a new concept and I am aware that I was talking about career structures for potential candidates nearly two decades ago. But there are some hurdles that need to be overcome.

Firstly, control of a selection timetable currently sits with the Local Parties. They, or at least their Executive Committees, decide that they’re ready, seek the appointment of a Returning Officer and, theoretically, off they go. Of course, there has to be one available, and the basic rules of supply and demand kick in here. It does get more complex if more than one Local Party is involved, because you need to confirm the approval of each of them before you proceed. It would be fair to note that some Local Parties are more engaged than others.

Presuming that the selection timetable is to come from the newly empowered Joint States Candidates Committee, there is therefore a working presumption that conversations will be had to ensure that any such schedule has buy-in from the appropriate Local Parties, unless there is a currently unannounced suggestion that such power might be taken away. I don't have any reason to believe that any such suggestion exists.

Secondly, if you're serious about giving candidates as much notice as possible in order to do the groundwork in advance, there needs to be at least the making of a schedule. If that already exists, then all is good. if it doesn't, we've effectively delayed the start of selections supposedly urgently sought.

My gut feeling is that, in order to satisfy at least the spirit of what has been promised, we need to do the things outlined in my post on Sunday, i.e.

• thrash out a provisional timetable which includes as many seats as possible, in accordance with the plan that Campaigns presumably either has or soon will have

• advise the Local Parties where they fit into that schedule (although hopefully, the Campaigns Team will have had those conversations already)

• tell everybody what that timetable is

• arrange some approval days to handle potential applicants and schedule them

• appoint some Returning Officers for those seats on the early part of the schedule

Only then can we start selections. How much time do we need? Well, we possibly need to establish who is now responsible for what, which is a bit of an open question, especially as we don't have a widely-known timetable for State Party ratification. The organisers behind the adopted constitutional amendment may find that, if they want urgent action, they are somewhat reliant on the people they rather carelessly upset in the first place.

Now I freely acknowledge that I may be giving the impression of ever so slightly enjoying this. I'm not. But I know a little about human beings and how they operate, and you might not be reasonable in expecting a bunch of people who felt rather trashed by recent events to then put their shoulders to the wheel to make it all work.

I'll be encouraging my colleagues in the East of England to move as fast as we are allowed but, rest assured, I will be attempting to synthesise what was promised in the debate into something that can be delivered.

A wounded, but still feisty, Regional Candidates Committee meets…

Occasional readers (and in fairness, this is an occasional blog these days) will recall that in the dying days of last year, I was elected to my Regional Candidates Committee. I had a slightly naïve notion that, especially in the early stages of the Parliamentary cycle, my knowledge of both process and the rather less tangible morality and ethics aspects of candidate selection and approval might prove useful. And then it went quiet.

Someone rather better connected to the internal politics of the Liberal Democrats might have wondered if it wasn’t too quiet. But that really isn’t me now - you forget just how connected you are as a Regional Officer, especially in London.

The publication of the General Election Review did lead to a slight indrawing of breath at the claim that the candidate system is broken (“English Candidates Committee aren’t going to like that.”, I thought) but I didn’t put two and two together until the publication of the Constitutional Amendment F10, effectively withdrawing key functions from the State Candidates Committees.

It wasn’t, and it remains, wholly unclear how a repurposed Federal Committee, with a majority of members with no experience of candidate system management, will “fix” the system and there had evidently been little or no consultation with English Candidates Committee, so one might imagine that, three days before the debate in Harrogate, a first meeting of our Committee might be less than entirely positive.

The agenda was, pretty much in its entirety, a discussion of what had happened, how we perceived the proposal, and what we might do next. One of the problems with a constitutional amendment which is justified by a not easy to deny sense that the system is broken but without any suggestion as what the fixes might be, is that people tend to assume the worst - that it’s a power grab (which it is), or that Local Parties will lose the power to decide who their candidate will be (unlikely, but hold that thought for another day).

And, as a result, we were unable to agree, either as individuals or as a committee, to supporting the proposals.

I did raise two matters of ‘Any Other Business’, however, suggesting that we invite the Regional Campaigns Officer to talk us through their aims for 2025 and where we might fit into that, and that we would write to the seven MPs across the Region to courteously remind them that we’ll be coming to them in the summer of 2027 to ascertain their intention to re-stand (or otherwise), in accordance with the current rules.

We’ve agreed to both, so I have at least made a contribution early…

Coming soon to Suffolk - Local Government Reform and Devolution

It’s now more than a week (but feels so much longer) since I chaired the recent Mid Suffolk Forum of the Suffolk Association of Local Councils. And, unsurprisingly, the main item on the agenda was moves to abolish the current Borough, County and District Councils and replace them with some sort of Unitary arrangement.

In Suffolk, previous attempts have run aground on the inability of the parties to agree. The County Council always wants a Unitary County, whilst the Districts don’t, and Ipswich wants the biggest unit that Labour can reliably control, some sort of “Greater Ipswich”.

In 2009, when Hazel Blears was promoting her own reorganisation agenda, we ran through pretty much that pattern, made more opaque by her apparent willingness to contort the stated criteria in order to achieve her desired goals. Not exactly gerrymandering, but not exactly just either. In the end, the promise by both opposition parties to scrap the whole thing, combined with the passing of time, did for the proposals.

This time, Jim McMahon laid down some criteria which seemed to rule out many potential options - a target population of 500,000 and a county with a population of 780,000 rather pointed to a County Unitary solution. But, unlike in 2009, when the Conservatives dominated the Districts here, now, Babergh, East Suffolk and West Suffolk are run by rainbow coalitions, whilst Mid Suffolk is dominated by the Greens. And none of them are keen on a County Unitary.

There has been some rowing back by the Minister too. Rumours that he’d be happy with a 4 or 5 Unitary solution for Norfolk and Suffolk combined (an average of 320,000 residents for each) create a whole new set of possibilities - Greater Norwich and Greater Ipswich (both good for Labour), a possible reincarnation of “Yartoft”, a bringing together of two struggling port towns plus a rural hinterland straddling the county boundary - but makes reaching an agreed decision that bit less likely.

We were to receive a presentation on behalf of the County Council and, in fairness, Andrew St Ledger, standing in for the County Chief Executive (I might have dressed more formally had I thought she was coming), made a decent stab at explaining things.

There were questions. Smaller Councils, such as my own, are concerned about potential asset transfers as the new cash-poor Council(s) withdraws from non-statutory activities. How does Drinkstone, or Creeting St Peter, cope with the financing of newly-acquired assets? Or, in the case of Stradbroke, a relatively small village with a leisure centre which serves a large geographical hinterland, how can the tax base cope if responsibility falls back onto it?

We talked of clusters, and how they might be organised, of the seemingly deliberate failure of the Conservative Group on Suffolk County Council to share their plans with Opposition councillors in real time. But it was an hour or so extremely well-spent, I thought.

I also got in a gentle dig at Suffolk County Council for its past failure to respond to Parliamentarian requests for briefings on reorganisation plans. Once again, Peers have been forgotten which, given that the required secondary legislation will receive most scrutiny in the Upper House, strikes me as churlish and potentially problematic. That might have struck home, given that Andrew St Ledger appears to be far more capable, and considerably more engaged than Stephen Meah-Sims did last year (albeit that this isn’t a high bar).

I do think that there is a genuine desire to include our sector in the planning of the new local government arrangements for Suffolk, which suggests that some lessons have been learnt. But there are still six months to go before final proposals are required, so I suspect much energy will be expended, and much debate had, before then.

F10 is passed overwhelmingly. Now the work begins…

I have made my position clear on the proposal to change who manages the candidate pipeline. And, whilst the speeches in favour were impassioned, and the problems outlined all too genuine, I remain unconvinced that “moving the deckchairs” actually does anything to address the complex issues that make approving and selecting candidates so challenging.

I did, and still do, support the espoused goals of the movers. All of the issues they raised in terms of diversity, democracy and career development are entirely valid and should be the focus of all of us involved in the “candidate pipeline”.

But the status quo offered a pretty poor defence, and the constitutional amendment was overwhelmingly carried. That’s democracy. And so we move on. I’m not entirely sure who takes on that mantle but, having won, I presume that more detail will emerge.

There is the small matter of State Party approval, and I would hope that English Council will simply acknowledge events and not put obstacles in the way, which "might" delay the transition. In the meantime, as a member of a Regional Candidates Committee, we’ll have to sit down and work out what we do whilst that transition happens.

It’s clear what our campaigners want, and we need to think about how we deliver that in the near term.

My gut feeling, and this is only a first instinctual draft, is to

• thrash out a provisional timetable which includes as many seats as possible, in accordance with the plan that Campaigns presumably either has or soon will have

• advise the Local Parties where they fit into that schedule (although hopefully, the Campaigns Team will have had those conversations already)

• tell everybody what that timetable is

• arrange some approval days to handle potential applicants and schedule them

• appoint some Returning Officers for those seats on the early part of the schedule

We’ll have to assume that the Selection Rules recently passed by the English Party are effective until or unless someone tells us they aren’t, but that’s a (potential) problem for another day.

There was talk of a different role for Regional Candidates Committees, of pastoral care and support. Traditionally, we saw our role, and indeed, it was defined, as process focused, so some of us, myself included, might not have the skill set for that. Training and support were delivered by others, whereas we were rather more neutral arbiters of an occasionally challenging HR process. Indeed, I used my skills as a Returning Officer as a springboard to apply for, and get, a job running high volume internal recruitment schemes for my employer.

I was damned good at running systems and ensuring that they respected vacancy holders and applicants alike, but I wasn’t much good at dealing with the personal issues of colleagues.

But we’ll see. Ultimately, I’d like to see what emerges from this process, so that I can determine where, or if, I have a useful role to play.

A brief sojourn with my Council colleagues

Monday saw me heading to Creeting St Peter for our final meeting of the 2024/25 fiscal year. I have to admit that it feels a little odd to be chairing a Council that serves a community that I no longer live in, but I still feel that I’m making a contribution, and until my colleagues conclude that they’d be better off without me, I’m happy to serve.The agenda was a fairly light one, but with a vacancy and a colleague unable to attend, it was mostly a meeting of noting reports.We did discuss the proposals for local government reform, benefiting from the presence of our County Councillor, Keith Welham, and one of our two District Councillors, Ross Piper.It’s all rather unsatisfactory, as there’s no sense of agreement between the two key players - the County Council on one hand, who want a unitary County, and the massed ranks of the four Districts and one Borough, who want two or three smaller Unitaries. And there’s an awful lot of “well, if we got this arrangement, we could do that”, which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.But rather than waste time in conjecture, we made our way through the rest of the business. That included a planning application regarding putting solar panels on the enormous shed which is the regional hub for The Range. Given that we’d been questioning why they weren’t required in the first place, we were hardly likely to object.The finances remain healthy, which as acting Responsible Finance Officer reassures me, although I am beginning to think that we need to think about a reserves policy going forward.We ended things reasonably promptly, and I was offered a lift back to Needham Market by Ross, who I hadn’t really had an opportunity to talk to up until then. Whilst we come from different parties, I am convinced that he merely wants to put something back into our community and he is certainly keen to take up our issues where he can.Our next meeting isn’t until May, when it will be time for the Annual Parish and Annual Parish Council Meetings. I ought to start thinking about my report, I guess…

More thoughts on those proposed changes to the way the Party manages candidates

Yesterday, I wondered about the impact of proposed changes to how the Party manages candidate approval and selection in relation to my current role as a member of my Regional Candidates Committee. I wasn't convinced that it left me with much of a role.

But it did lead me to take a closer look at the proposals, and the more I look, the less I like it.

At the moment, each State Candidates Committee has responsibility for establishing a list of approved Parliamentary candidates, determining how they will be approved and what the processes are for selecting candidates in each parliamentary constituency. It isn't perfect - there were always issues about whether an approval under the Welsh system was valid in England, and vice versa, although as the systems converged, and the Scots and Welsh Parties effectively adopted the systems developed in England, these problems tended to fade to insignificance.

What does tend to "gum up" the system is:

• a lack of people willing to be approved as Parliamentary candidates

• a lack of people willing to be trained as candidate assessors - it's a pretty full-on responsibility

• a lack of Returning Officers - likewise it's a pretty labour intensive role requiring a varied set of skills

• an unwillingness from some Local Parties to select earlier rather than later

In other words, it's mostly human resources which get in the way of the best intentions of a group of volunteers.

And so, the proposal intends to solve these problems by centralising the process - "professionalising" as the text of the motion reads. From my perspective, it isn't clear to me how changing who manages the process will actually address the shortages of volunteers to actually run it. Indeed, the motion is silent on it, and there has been seemingly no effort to explain.

Now far be it for me to suggest that this proposal has not been drafted with any consideration for the "poor bloody infantry" who deliver most of the candidate selection and approval activity, all of whom are volunteers, but I am aware that there has been no meaningful consultation with those in key positions on State Candidates Committees, and that this proposal has been rushed through in the light of a report which was only published seven weeks ago.

In other words, the General Election Review report has been published, its findings endorsed by Federal Board, and a major change to the party's constitutional arrangements drafted in just five weeks. You'll pardon me if that doesn't suggest that any consultation that might have taken place was perfunctory at best.

Personally, I am unconvinced, noting that those people who spent the past five years at the coal face of candidate approval and selection don't appear wildly impressed either by the General Election Review or by this proposal.

But this may not be the worst of it...

Am I to be abolished just as I was getting started?

Having had what I might describe as "not the happiest experience" with my Regional Party four years ago, I decided that, perhaps, I ought to dip a toe back into the water. And so, I ran for, and was elected to, the Regional Candidates Committee.

As a former member of the English Candidates Committee, Senior Returning Officer and candidate assessor, I do know my way around the world of candidate selection and approval and, I like to think, I have some wider credibility amongst the "candidates fraternity" within the Party. In short, I though that I could be useful.

But change and uncertainty are seldom far away and, in this instance, this comes in the form of a rather lengthy motion/constitutional amendment which will come to Federal Conference later this month.

My attention was drawn to the proposed redrafting of Article 19.1 of the Federal Constitution which currently reads as follows:

Each State Party shall establish a Candidates Committee or provide for some or all of its functions to be discharged by another unit or units (and every such unit shall be deemed to be a State Candidates Committee for the purposes of this Article 19).

The revised version as proposed reads:

Each State Party shall establish a Candidates Committee in order to carry out its responsibilities for elections to the Westminster and European Parliaments as well as any elections to the House of Lords or its successor, including implementing the requirements set under Article 13.5. 

This appears, on the face of it, to deny the right of State Candidates Committees to devolve some or all of their functions to Regional Candidates Committees which leads to the question:

What are Regional Candidates Committees for in this brave new world?

And, I have to admit, the answer appears to be "nothing".

I think that I'm going to have to ask some questions...

Now that bureaucracy is truly a dirty word…

These are challenging times for public administration, nowhere more so than in the United States, where Messrs Musk and Trump (but mostly Musk) are cutting a swathe through government department after government department. And, because Musk has very little experience of government, as opposed to selling ideas - his track record in selling actual things doesn’t seem to be that good if Tesla and X are any indicator - he does seem to be operating on a ‘break things in haste, repair at leisure (if at all)’.

Now, because I live in the United Kingdom, rather than the United States, I don’t have an intimate knowledge of how efficient, or otherwise, the various governmental organisations are across the Atlantic. But there are some truisms that are generally applicable. Politicians often get in the way of good administration - by under resourcing it, or changing the priorities frequently, or by interfering with operational activities. And, in a political system where politicians are rewarded for bringing the bacon home to their state or district, and where horse trading is rampant, the scope for disruption is all the greater.

Like the business community, administrators prefer consistency and evolutionary change. This allows you to make the necessary resourcing adjustments in a planned way, minimising damaging disruption and wasted investment.

And, if your administrative cadre are paid less than the equivalent rate in the private sector, that reliability is a factor which allows government to recruit and retain the sort of quality people who you really want - committed to public service and expert in their field.

Musk doesn’t appear to get that, and why should anyone expect otherwise? If something fails, he is rich enough to write off his investment and move on to the next thing. Previous customers may be less inclined to purchase his products going forward, but there are plenty of potential customers out there. Government is different.

If government screws up, people starve, or go bust, or get hurt, or die. If you reduce, or remove entirely, employees who fulfil important functions, you may suddenly discover that something you want to happen can’t. If you cut tax collection staff, you might find that you raise less money and need to cut things that voters like, or want (of course, this may be the aim of the exercise).

Here’s the key difference though - voters can fire you if you upset them enough - and no investment or PR exercise will change that immediately. I’m fairly confident that Elon Musk doesn’t feel the need to factor that into his operations.

My experience, at least in the United Kingdom anyway, is that the sort of people who complain about too much governance are, simultaneously, the very same people who are demanding that “there should be a law against it”. I don’t get the sense that Republicans see the world quite the same way - they take pride in the idea of self-reliance and self-government. But even they demand laws against “woke”, and limits on things that they don’t like. And who’s going to enforce those laws?

It is a nervous time to be an American bureaucrat, and I’m really not sure how I would respond if the same situation arose in Britain. But, for the rest of us, the experiment in tearing down an entire bureaucracy whilst expecting key business to continue as normal is going to one that some politicians in developed and developing countries will watch with interest, seeking a template for similar policies at home.

But don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone…

Labour: pulling levers and finding that the cables were cut long ago…

I’m not one of those people who wish the Labour government ill. I want the country to be better, and whilst I tend to the view that liberal solutions are, by and large, more effective, why would anybody want their country to be poorer, weaker, meaner?

But, as a civil servant, I also know that it takes time to initiate lasting change. System failures tend to require investment over extended periods, especially when the missing resources are human ones. You can’t just magic up doctors, or police officers or, as the Government are discovering, lawyers. And, as a result, the pledge to “fast-track rape cases through specialist courts at every crown court location in England and Wales” has been walked back.

This presents a wider problem for politicians, as promises to turn round failing public services run into the barrier of poor public sector morale, uncompetitive salary scales and under resourcing of key areas of work. You can’t solve these without a long-term strategy of raising pay scales, proper employment levels and investment in service provision. And that means upfront costs without immediate benefits, leaving any “progressive” administration at the mercy of public opinion whipped up by a hostile media.

It doesn’t help that the public are less patient, less trusting and more likely to have their own world view reinforced by media algorithms. The incessant chatter of supposedly intelligent journalists and commentators doesn’t help either, as they take ever more shallow stances in order to gain attention. You never, or at least, hardly ever, see anyone admit that they were wrong, even when they turn out to be horribly so.

Now, perhaps you could be more optimistic if our body politic consisted of political forces campaigning on philosophical lines, based on propagation of facts and ideas. But it doesn’t.

So, any government genuinely intending to improve public services needs to be honest about how long it will take to generate positive change, and how much that’s going to cost in the short to medium term. And yes, you can talk about the long-term benefits, because high quality public services can, and should, save money in the long term, whether that be in reducing reoffending levels, or care costs for the elderly, or getting people back into the productive economy.

Labour have five years to start that process, and in that time, improvements should start to become visible. But given the damage done over decades, it’s going to take more than just one term to create the public services we deserve at a cost that is sustainable.

Worcester: not going there from exactly here…

Catching trains is usually a fairly straightforward affair, especially in suburban stations. There are two platforms, one ‘down’, one ‘up’, usually corresponding to the usual rules of the road. And, when you have platform indicators telling you when trains are coming and which track they’ll be one, it should be pretty foolproof, you’d think, right?

But I’m getting ahead of myself a bit.

Pre-COVID, when we were last in the Metro West suburbs of Boston, there was a really good local pizza place called “Volturno” which, amongst its various delights, included an octopus starter which Ros and I both rather enjoyed. Unfortunately, the Framingham branch bit the dust, presumably down to the pandemic.

The good news, however, was that the original restaurant in Worcester had survived, and as we were both at a loose end today, we thought that we’d take the train from West Natick and have a nice lunch. The train fare for the scheduled forty-five minute journey was a very reasonable $4.50 each way (no discount for return journeys, I note) and, whilst the trains themselves are definitely showing their age, they’re warm and comfortable enough.

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) is a bit eccentric. Outside of the rush hours, they insist that you board the train at a specified spot on the platform which, at West Natick, is a small raised section at the most westerly end of the platform. And, to make matters more entertaining, during large chunks of the day, ‘down’ trains serve the ‘up’ platform.

On arrival at the station, I noted the platform indicator stating that our train would leave from track 1, the ‘up’ or ‘wrong’ platform, and that we should board from the designated spot. So, you can imagine my surprise when, spot on time, the train arrived… on the other platform.

No problem, right? Simply cross from one platform to the other, board train. But no, there is no footbridge at West Natick, and the sole crossing point is at track level, at the other end of the platform. I am not as quick across the ground as I once was, but I wasn’t simply going to give up, given that the next train was two hours away. And we made it with the aid of a bit of frantic waving and a kindly train conductor who, seeing us heading towards her, held the train until we could board.

Drama, and a bit of cardio exercise, over, we could enjoy the train ride to Worcester, dotted as it is with forests and lakes. And, due to the quirky scheduling which allows twenty-seven minutes for the twelve-minute journey from the penultimate stop at Grafton, we were a full quarter of an hour early arriving at our destination.

Union Station is a rather magnificent gateway to the city, having obviously been built for a time when many more trains served it. Now, apart from the rather workaday commuter trains, it has one long distance Amtrak service, the Boston section of the Lake Shore Limited, per day, and the gorgeous passenger hall is almost entirely wasted on the people scurrying through it.

Worcester itself is in the process of reinventing itself, and I remember going there twenty years ago when the outlet mall built in the downtown area had spectacularly failed, creating an enormous void in the heart of the city. Things have rather improved although, like a lot of American cities, it feels a bit stark and empty of life. Ros reminds me that the development of American cities was, and remains, very different to that of European ones, and I do occasionally need to remind myself of that.

We walked about a bit, admiring City Hall and Worcester Common in front of it, before heading to lunch. Disaster! Volturno was closed for repairs - it might have been nice had they mentioned that prominently on their website, but luckily enough the neighbouring brew house was open and serving some good food and equally good beer. I’d spotted products of the Wormtown Brewery in the past and was now able to put two and two together - Wormtown is a nickname for Worcester.

Replete, it was time to head back to Union Station for the train back to West Natick. As we arrived, it dawned on me - we were on the wrong platform again. And again, passengers were dashing to catch the train. We got off the train, shrugged our shoulders at the eccentricity of the MBTA, and went home…

2025 is here, and so?

I’ve never really been one to mark the New Year. We’re often away, but that’s as much for reasons other than the celebration of the turning of the page from year to year.

But 2024 did see a few changes, mostly psychological, I’d suggest. I turned sixty which, whilst the day itself didn’t really resonate, has led to a mild sense of, well, it’s hard to explain really. I do feel that I’m slightly slower, slightly “older” and thus mildly more cautious. And, of course, this is absurd. Physically, nothing has changed, in that my weight is pretty constant, my underlying health (apart from slightly elevated cholestrol) apparently good if my recent health check is to be believed.

Best of all, I have Ros. Yes, I admit that that sounds a little “soppy” but as the years pass by, I value her in ways that I might not have expected. Even her simple presence enhances my day.

And, with the new home, life is much simpler. Having pretty much everything we need within a short walk (including my office) just allows a degree of spontaneity that didn’t exist when we were in the Creetings and I have a Senior Railcard for when Ipswich comes up short.

So, a new year offers an opportunity (or, if you like, justification) to ring the changes a bit, and that’s my plan for the year ahead. Nothing big, or wildly ambitious, but simply making slightly different choices and engaging a bit more.

Wish me luck along the way…