Creeting St Peter: a new Chair reflects...

Well, that was somewhat unexpected.

I had turned up at Monday night’s Annual Parish Meeting and Annual Parish Council Meeting (not the same thing at all) with the sole expectation of a smoothly run meeting, the pleasure of some time with my fellow Parish councillors and a relatively early finish. Our Chair, Machala, is not one for lengthy meetings and chairs them with good humour and efficiency.

The Parish Meeting went according to plan, with the reports from the Chair, the County and District Councillors, the Parochial Church Council and our Tree Warden - we’ve learnt not to expect a report from the Suffolk Constabulary - and we then segued into the Parish Council meeting immediately thereafter.

The first item of business was the election of the Chair for 2018/19, and it was noted by a fellow councillor that Machala had originally intended to serve as Chair for no more than two years. Frankly, I was of the view that she’d done a good job and was perfectly happy for her to continue, but she agreed that this was the case and that, in any event, there was the possibility that she might not be able to serve another full term anyway.

I should have been suspicious at this point, and the suggestion that there should be a natural progression from Vice Chair to Chair did make me wonder, especially as I was the incumbent Vice Chair. I was thus nominated and seconded, and, in the blink of a procedural eye, I found myself Chair of Creeting St Peter Parish Council.

It’s an appointment with immediate effect, so I signed the papers proffered to me by our Parish Clerk, Jennie, and set off, running through the agenda.

Funnily enough, despite more than thirty years in politics, I’ve not chaired very often, although I have had to deal with some pretty haphazard chairing over that time. What that means is that, whilst I may have quite a bit to learn about how to do the job, I have some pretty good ideas in terms of how not to do it.

I managed to steer Council through its business in about an hour, thanked everyone and brought my first meeting to a close.

So far, so good.

I went home, and explained to Ros what had happened. “What do I do now?”, I asked. Her advice was to find out exactly what my responsibilities are, both legally and organisationally.

And so, the reading begins. Luckily, there are plenty of resources out there, primarily via the National Association of Local Councils, and its county affiliate here in Suffolk. I've already contacted the Suffolk Association of Local Councils office to seek access to the NALC website, and notified them of my election.

I also need to think about my priorities for 2018/19, and what I might hope to achieve during my term in office. Of course, this is limited by an obvious lack of resource, and I don’t intend to do anything that is contrary to our ethos as a Council, whereby everyone has a role to play, and we eschew the ‘strong leader’ model so beloved by central government.

I’d better get on then...

Ros in the Lords: East Suffolk (Local Government Changes) Order 2018

It’s not all Brexit glamour in the House of Lords, and whilst most attention is on the series of defeats inflicted on the Government with regard to the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, the business of government limps along otherwise.

Here in Suffolk, the various District and Borough Councils have been pairing off in an attempt to staunch the financial bleeding, merging back office functions, creating joint teams covering planning, council tax collection, and all of the various things done at sub-County level. Waveney and Suffolk Coastal have sought to merge into East Suffolk, whilst St Edmundsbury and Forest Heath aim to merge into a new West Suffolk District. To do so requires authority from Parliament, and thus the appropriate Orders, allowing them to proceed, came to the Lords recently.

Usually, these go through without much comment, but there were questions about the quality of the consultation, and thus then Secondary Legislation Select Committee raised some concerns. And, to be honest, the consultation did look a bit lopsided, with many of the voices in favour coming from other (Conservative) Leaders of neighbouring, or in the case of Suffolk County Council, overlapping authorities. Parish and Town Councils didn’t seem to be quite so keen, and in that context, Ros spoke in her capacity as a resident of Suffolk...

My Lords, I also speak as a Suffolk resident of almost 40 years, although not of either of the areas covered today. I am a former district and county councillor in Suffolk so I have a keen interest in this. 

I have always advocated unitary government for Suffolk, perhaps going back to the old, two-council days before 1974, or possibly 1973, with serious devolution to the towns and parishes which want it. I felt that way because I truly believe that service delivery would be better if we brought together planning and transport, for example, under one council. Local people would not have to sort out which council does what. As a councillor, I know that that is a significant issue. The financial savings that can be made from creating unitary councils have been well established across the country where this has been done. 

Opposition to my view has always been on the grounds of saying, “Well, district councils are important because they’re small and they’re local and the wards are small. Everybody knows everyone and they’re close to the people”. I buy that; I can see that argument. However, it seems that in merging these councils—I am talking about councils as opposed to their back-office functions—big wards will be created and the council offices will, in many cases, be moved away from the area they represent. The advantages of districts are lost without the benefits of unitary government. Bins will still be emptied by one council and the waste disposed of by another, for example. 

I remain concerned about that. I accept the point that Suffolk councils have been in the process of merging their back-office functions to save costs for some years now. That is entirely sensible. However, my council in mid-Suffolk, having done that with the neighbouring authority of Babergh, has now gone completely mad and moved its joint offices to the middle of Ipswich. There is no local connection there. If you are going to defend three-tier local government on the grounds of local connection, you have to show local connection. 

I am worried that all this is being driven by the parlous state of local government finance in this country, rather than some sort of rational, thought-out plan. It feels as though people who live in Suffolk are somehow not being properly engaged with—I will come back to ​that—or brought along in the process. It was interesting that the Secondary Legislation Committee shared some of those concerns. I appreciate the trouble that the Minister has gone to to allay those. Nevertheless, there is still a lot of work to do—to be charitable—to convince people in Suffolk and in town and parish councils that the proposals will work. 

To give what I think is an important piece of context, the report that went to Waveney and Suffolk Coastal District Councils on 14 March 2016 stated: 

“The potential benefits and pitfalls of unitary local government have been well rehearsed previously”— 

through LGR—and, 

“have not been reproduced here. It is uncertain whether the new Secretary of State will be open to such discussions … Similarly, this could not be done in any format without … an impact upon Suffolk County Council. It is assumed at this stage (and without any discussion with the County Council) that this would be strongly resisted”, 

by the county council. In other words, in East Suffolk at least, this was kicked off in 2016 without really knowing what the Secretary of State or the county council thought. 

With regard to the support to which the Minister referred, the problem was that nobody ever had a say about the benefits of unitary councils—which I think, had it been put as an option, would have been more significant—but that did not take place because a unitary authority had been ruled out. 

This continues to be a model. On 21 March this year, the leader of Suffolk County Council announced that he had commissioned a report from ResPublica to look at options for local government in Suffolk over the coming years. This afternoon, the local press are reporting that he has suspended this work, saying that it is because his opponent in a leadership bid is opposed to it. I have no idea whether the second part is true but it shows, given the importance of local government to Suffolk and the services that it delivers, that it deserves better than this.

FIRC: a personal response to the Alderdice Report

Federal International Relations Committee will be discussing its response to the Alderdice Report on Thursday evening, and we have been asked to give some thought to the matter. And, perhaps because my expectations are quite low in terms of useful outcomes, it seems sensible to put my thoughts into the public domain. I’ve adapted the five questions posed in the report, in order to make them suitable for the Committee...

Are there barriers to participation for BAME members? If so, what and where are they?

The barriers tend to be similar to those affecting other underrepresented groups. The cost of attending international events, and the lack of financial support for all but the six members of the ALDE Party Council, reduce the pool of potential participants to those who can afford airfares and accommodation, and this is even more so for Liberal International, whose events are, for obvious reasons, more far flung.

Given that the Party has no budget for international relations activity, other than grudgingly paying our membership fees for both ALDE and Liberal International, and that there is a danger that there will be no staff resource available at all shortly, it is hard to envisage how this might change. A fund to support potential delegates to international events might address the issue of participation, but would not be seen as a high priority at the moment.

Ironically, recent delegations to ALDE Party Congresses have seen an improvement in the diversity of our delegates, and much credit should go to the Party’s former International Officer, Harriet Shone, who did much to make this possible.

Do barriers differ in the Committee?

In terms of the Committee, diversity isn’t bad, with two directly elected BAME members out of six, plus the Federal Board’s nominee. However, the representatives of all of the other various groups entitled to nominate members of the Committee are all white (men), and the co-opted members are both white.

How effective are existing mechanisms/procedures in addressing the issue?

Elections have clearly been effective, nominees have not, thus far. That said, election results offer little guarantee of appropriate levels of BAME representation, and attention needs to be given to the three potential co-options as a way of making good any deficiency. This requires more active and imaginative approaches by Committee Members than has sometimes been the case recently.

Does the Committee do enough to engage with BAME voters and ensure accessibility for potential BAME members?

The mechanism for formally reaching out beyond the Party is unclear, and the Committee has no means of doing so other than articles in Liberal Democrat Voice, lacking as it does a presence on the Party website, or on social media. The communication plan is not taken seriously, and no effective effort has been made to take it forward.

What further steps should, or could, be taken by the Committee to address the issues identified in the review?

Firstly, the Committee needs to strengthen its profile amongst Party members, so as to increase the pool of potential candidates in future elections, and increase engagement. Secondly, it needs to establish what people might be interested in, becoming less Eurocentric along the way if at all possible. Jointly hosting events with groups such as Chinese Liberal Democrats would be a way of doing that. Building links with the various “Friends of...” groups would also help.

A sense of dissonance in Sofia

So, here I am in a cafe on Vitosha, the main pedestrian thoroughfare in Bulgaria's capital, Sofia, surrounded by men enjoying a shisha pipe, a Mozart string quartet on the headphones and a Grapefruit Sour by my side. The sun is shining in a perfectly blue sky, it's warm. Life is good, right?

If only it was that easy.

I've spent the weekend at an ALDE Party Council meeting which has, in itself, gone well. The main business ran smoothly and, as a member of the Financial Advisory Committee, seeing the financial reports earlier than most, I had no questions to ask.

I feel a bit semi-detached, to tell the truth. I'm a member of a party which, through no fault of its own, feels as though it is drifting to the periphery of the ALDE Party as Brexit draws closer. My colleagues are passionate in their belief that we can somehow avert the cliff edge, but I have an uncomfortable sense that our sister parties have moved on and look upon us in the same way that motorists look at accidents on the opposite carriageway - "there but for the Grace of God, but I'm glad it isn't me". They listen to the messages coming from Westminster and take the Government at its word when it talks about when we leave, not if.

Where does a member party from a country that isn't either in the Union, or aspiring to be in it, fit in an organisation whose goals are free trade, freedom of movement, and so on? I don't know that I have an answer to that.

So, what did happen in Sofia? Well, I've got to write that up for Liberal Democrat Voice, so I ought to give that some thought.

However, Sofia is a much nicer city than I remember, although it was December when I came here the first time, and most cities are improved by sunshine. But twelve years of European Union membership have certainly changed Sofia for the better. It's a city of leafy side streets, of Orthodox churches in that curious Turkish style whereby they look like a giant hand has squashed them from above.

I've taken the opportunity to walk around, somewhat randomly, as it isn't a city with that much 'must see' stuff. As a result, I've found some interesting neighbourhoods, a cafe culture that I hadn't expected, and a liberal link. William Gladstone has a place in Bulgarian history, having spoken out for Bulgarian independence in the 1870s. So, naturally, I found ulitsa Uilyam Gladston and took a photograph.

I'll be back in London tomorrow, and it will feel a little like leaving Europe in a psychological sense. Forget geography, being European is a bit like being part of a family. And when your Government are determined to convert the bonds of family into a formal business relationship, you know that it's never going to quite the same after that...

Some thoughts on Ipswich Town, courtesy of an outsider....

I ought to declare my (lack of) interest straight away - I’m a Luton Town supporter, more in the technical sense than the “turning up in rain or wind” one. My life is too complex, and the journey too much hassle, to be anything more than an interested observer. But, living in the heart of Suffolk as I do, the one thing that you can’t help but notice is the place of Ipswich Town in community life.

It perhaps does help that there isn’t an acceptable, credible alternative for some distance. Norwich City are beyond the pale, except perhaps in the borderlands towards Diss, and the other two teams near the county’s edge, Colchester United and Cambridge United, are irrelevant.

But it never ceases to surprise me just how many people I run into who either are season ticket holders, or were at one point or another. And given that, for some time, they’ve been relatively ordinary - no current Championship team has been there longer - being a Tractor Boy (or Girl) is not an easy option.

If the Town are doing well, the town and county seem a little sprightlier, if not, then their failings are a matter of general debate.

But it’s only little old Ipswich, population 130,000 or so, hardly likely to be able to compete at the top level in the modern era. Well, not so, as I’ve already hinted, for they are a county team, as much as a town one, with a hinterland of nearly 750,000 to draw on. And in a corner of the country with little sporting heritage to call its own, the football team is an important emblem.

In recent years, the team struggled, and seemed to be on its way to the oblivion that is League One and away trips to Shrewsbury and Fleetwood (no disrespect to either is meant, but older Ipswich fans still have treasured memories of European nights), until Mick McCarthy was brought in to steady the ship.

To that extent, he was successful, and, for six years, kept Ipswich afloat on the cheap, with little money to spend. The problem was that the football itself was mostly hardworking rather than entertaining, and the fans aspired to better. My colleagues didn’t demand success, but they did want some attacking football and a bit of quality, and that never seemed to come.

It does need to be borne in mind that, compared to a number of other Championship teams, with their parachute payments for Premiership failure, or wealthy owners willing to spend, Ipswich have become relatively poor relations, and similar sorts of teams - Bolton Wanderers and Blackburn Rovers, for example, have fallen further and harder.

As a result, I’ve been modestly sympathetic to McCarthy, because bringing a new man in with a mandate to be a bit more positive is fine, if it goes wrong, someone who can shore up the defence and scrap away will be in demand pretty quickly.

But we’ll see who ends up being unveiled as the new manager. If they seem promising, they might reverse the recent downward trend in season ticket purchases, and improve the fairly negative atmosphere that hangs over Portman Road these days. It might even make Ipswich (and Suffolk generally) a happier place...

Merging Suffolk Councils - a glitch emerges...

I must thank Ros for bringing this to my attention, and the noble Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope for bringing it to hers.

Times are tough in local government, and Suffolk is no exception to that. In the absence of any agreement on forming unitary authorities for the county, the District Councils have paired off to combine services, Waveney with Suffolk Coastal, St Edmundsbury with Forest Heath, and Babergh with Mid Suffolk. Inevitably, I guess, that has led to proposals to form merged authorities, West Suffolk to cover St Edmundsbury and Forest Heath, East Suffolk to cover Waveney and Suffolk Coastal. Consultations have taken place, and the Parliamentary Orders have reached the House of Lords.

There, they have been considered by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which has concerns... Here’s the summary of what they have to say...

These instruments provide, respectively, for the abolition of Suffolk Coastal and Waveney districts and their district councils, and for the creation of a new East Suffolk district and council which covers the same geographic area; and for the abolition of Forest Heath and St Edmundsbury districts and their district councils, and for the creation of a new West Suffolk district and council which covers the same geographic area. 

The Government’s own criteria for council merger proposals include the demonstration that any such proposal commands local support. There is no doubt that the merger proposals for East and West Suffolk are seen favourably by a number of local stakeholders. At the same time, however, significant numbers of residents and, it seems, parish councils have voiced concern about, and opposition to, the proposals; and it may be questioned whether the opportunities provided for such views to be expressed have allowed enough scope to opponents to voice their concerns and have them properly recognised.

It is, naturally, a decision for the full House to consider, but it would be unusual for the Committee’s advice to be disregarded.

I have been unimpressed by the consultation by Mid Suffolk and Babergh thus far, which as reported, has generated a favourable reaction from those surveyed. Of course, what information has been given to respondents is an interesting question, and one that somebody might like to pursue. And it wouldn’t entirely surprise me if the quality of the consultation in East Suffolk and West Suffolk hasn’t been equally sketchy.

It’s worth reading the Committee’s report in full though, and the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government’s briefing, which forms an Appendix.

Personally, I think that moving to unitaries is inevitable - provision of services is probably more important to voters than the intangible benefits of having local authorities closer to the level of residents. But if you are going to consult, and you should, you should do it properly. It is, after all, our choice as to how our money might be spent.

Adventures in Transnistria (part 2)...

I had rather forgotten to report back on the rest of my trip to Moldova, so let’s see if we can remedy that. If you haven’t read the earlier posts on my trip to Transnistria, you can find them here, and here.

Transnistria is not really oriented towards tourists - getting to it is not easy without an airport, or any trains from further west than Chisinau. The lack of knowledge that it even exists can’t help much either. What it does have, other than the KVINT distillery, is the fortress at Bender/Tighina, on the west bank of the Dnieper.

This has always been border country, between the Russians and the Ottomans, amongst others, and command of a major water artery was worth having. In other words, a big fortress was a must.

The number 19 trolleybus runs from the centre of Tiraspol across the Dnieper to Bender, and if you get off at the bus station there, you are tantalisingly close to the main castle. But no, arrive at what looks like the entrance to the fortress site, and a sign directs you around the western side of the fortress walls. It’s a long walk, the signpost suggesting that it’s nearly a mile. That doesn’t feel as though it’s true, because you then arrive at a rundown, of not actually derelict, industrial complex at the back of which is a nondescript building which is the ticket office.

A somewhat unfriendly woman sold me an admission ticket for 50 Transnistrian rubles (a little over £2) and I followed the signs past more post-industrial wasteland until there it was, a quite impressive castle. Yes, it does appear to have been restored somewhat, and a conservator would perhaps not be wildly impressed with how it has been done, but nonetheless, it looks good enough. You can fire crossbows, climb up to the battlements with caution, and there is a graphic display of medieval torture instruments with explanations (in English too) of how they worked.

I did have to get back to Chişinău though, so I made my way back through the post-industrial wasteland, caught the trolleybus back to Tiraspol, and set off for the station. On the way, I stopped at the KVINT store and picked up a half-litre souvenir.

At the station, having confirmed that the next train to Chişinău was in four days time, I went to catch a minibus. Slightly surprisingly, I was greeted in German and encouraged to buy a ticket quickly, as he was due to leave. He escorted me to the ticket office, I handed over most of my remaining Transnistria roubles, and we were off.

At the border, the same border guard approached the bus to collect my entry visa. And then, in fluent English, he rather surprised me by saying, “Actually, why don’t you keep it as a souvenir of your visit to Transnistria?”. I thanked him politely, and we rolled back into Moldova...

@ALDEParty: a day of advanced bureaucracy for political parties

It does sometimes seem hard to believe that I’m now in my seventh year as a member of the ALDE Party’s Financial Advisory Committee. Perhaps that’s because, when I was first appointed, it was on the basis that we would serve no more than three two-year terms, but for various reasons, we have all been extended, some of us for one year, the remainder (including myself) for two.

And in that time, the Committee has evolved. We still do financial advisory stuff, but we also consider grant applications to the Political Projects fund, we examine proposals for new types of spending and advise on such things as fundraising strategy. We are, perhaps, a sounding board for the Secretariat and the Bureau, given our experience of the internal dynamics of political parties. My history as a Regional Secretary, Treasurer and all around bureaucrat gives me an unusual perspective, which comes in handy.

Our relationship with the Secretariat is a healthy one, in that we are willing to ask challenging questions, but have, over time developed a genuine respect for the ability of the senior management team. Indeed, I find myself wondering how the similar relationship between the relevant bodies of the Liberal Democrats and the executive team works. Fortunately, that remains someone else’s problem.

Today, we examined the recently completed 2017 audit, looked at the 2018 budget figures to date, and discussed the relationship between the Committee and the Bureau. We also gave some thoughts on how the Bureau might look at filling the vacancies on our committee as they arise. 

I can’t, for reasons of organisational integrity, discuss the audit. It remains to be considered by the Bureau and the ALDE Party Council, each of which has legal responsibilities, but I am personally reassured that the Party’s finances are healthy and that the fiscal controls are in good hands.

We have had an influence over the years, drawing up an ethical fundraising strategy for the Party which, I understand, has been duplicated by the European People’s Party (plagiarism is the ultimate form of flattery, I guess, although a payment for our work would be nice...), and leading on a restructuring of the membership fee system to make it easier for small member parties from poorer countries.

One thing that does vaguely worry me though is that we appear to have become, almost by stealth, the only group holding the Bureau and the Secretariat to account. Council seems to take increasingly little interest in the day to day running of the ALDE Party, which is rather its constitutionally defined role. In an organisation where transparency is considered important, that might not be critical, but there is a principle here.

When the Liberal Democrats elect members of the ALDE Party Council, candidates tend to talk about ideas, about policy. They don’t talk about how a liberal political party should be run and operated, perhaps because it’s rather dull. And yet, a political party should, in the way it works, reflect its philosophical roots, within the confines of legislation.

I suspect, though, that our delegation is not alone in being more interested in ideas than in process. And if people aren’t interested in process, they are, not unreasonably, not going to pay much attention to such things, trusting the professional staff and the Bureau to take care of it.

Which is why I wondered aloud about reforming Council to sharpen its focus...

Adventures in Transnistria (part 1)...

Tiraspol’s railway station is rather grand, and utterly wasted on the few trains that serve it, but like a surprising number of stations at home, it is a little way from the centre, at the end of a tree-lined avenue. I had a sense of where I was going though, and headed in the direction of the centre of town. This took me past a rather attractive monastery, and then I blundered across the Tourism Information Centre. Now I would admit to not having expected to find such a thing, but there it was, so I went in, in search of a city map.

My sense is that, whilst it was apparently staffed by three women, as they were all sitting in the side office, they didn’t expect to be very busy. However, seeing me standing there, one of them came out to greet me and, upon my request, handed me a colour photocopied sheet of A4 with a map of Tiraspol on one side, and some useful information. She talked me through some of the things to see and do - mostly see, in truth - including the war memorial. Transnistria commemorates three wars, World War II, the Afghan War and the War of Independence against Moldova. It was explained in a matter of fact sort of way, as though I should not be in the least surprised. I was also offered a chance to buy some souvenirs, but as I hadn’t actually been anywhere yet, I opted to wait until later.

Equipped with a map, I set off to explore the delights of Tiraspol. It doesn’t take very long, although what there is is interesting in a kind of bemusing way. The big Soviet style buildings, with Russian flags on, the enormous Russian consulate building, far bigger than you would think it ought to be, and the armoured personnel carrier that commemorates the victory of the “evil Moldovans”. There is even a consulate building (above a shop) shared by the representatives of North Ossetia and Abkhazia, neither of which is recognised by anyone either.

The other thing which is interesting is the dominance of the Sheriff Group in the Transnistrian economy. according to Wikipedia;

Sheriff owns a chain of petrol stations, a chain of supermarkets, a TV channel, a publishing house, a construction company, a Mercedes-Benz dealer, an advertising agency, a spirits factory, two bread factories, a mobile phone network, the football club FC Sheriff Tiraspol and its newly built Sheriff Stadium.

I can testify to a lot of that, and they also now appear to operate gyms/fitness centres, if the adverts showing various muscly men and women are anything to go by. The football stadium complex was rather impressive, a modern facility with what looked like a decent-sized capacity.

What you probably don’t want to ask too much is, where does the money come from to pay for all of this stuff. Transnistria has a population of less than half a million, so one can only presume that the Sheriff Group effectively controls much of the economy and that its relationship with the government is a strong one, or at least has been in the past.

I popped into one of their supermarkets to buy some snacks, and found it to be well-stocked with familiar brands. Clearly, Transnistria is not clinging on to communism despite retaining the hammer and sickle on the flag. The chocolate was Lithuanian, the crisps manufactured by Lays, a brand familiar to Americans. I didn’t seem to attract any attention, or even much interest.

It was time to see one of the most famous attractions in Transnistria. First, I needed to catch a trolleybus...

“You don’t know how lucky you boys are...”

So, it’s my first full day in Moldova, and I’ve spent the day somewhere unusual. It’s easier to tell the story than to explain, so I’ll hope that all will become clear as I go along...

Body clocks are odd things, and with Moldova being two hours ahead, I expected a struggle getting up at a reasonable hour, but I came too at about 6.30, leaving time for a leisurely breakfast before I took a brisk stroll to the Central Bus Station. There seemed to be plenty of people willing to rip me off, but I eventually found the ticket office and bought my ticket on the 10.00 departure for the princely sum of 36.50 Lei (about £1.50).

My destination? Tiraspol, south-east of the capital, but also the capital of the self-proclaimed Republic of Transnistria, which covers broadly the territory of Moldova east of the Dnieper, plus Bendery on the west bank. And yes, they have a flag, a currency and, most important, border control. It is a bit of a conceit, and I guess that they tacitly acknowledge that by not stamping your passport - a bit like the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus. Instead, just like the TRNC, you get an official looking piece of paper which you must keep.

My twenty seat minibus was full to capacity, and we set off pretty much on time, through the cluttered streets of downtown Chisinau, towards the main highway south. This being Moldova, the poorest country in Europe, it’s not in great shape, although they do try. What that means is that we slalomed our way south, past the airport and out into the countryside.

After an hour or so, things got a bit more serious. There were soldiers around, and barriers, and a definite sense that hanging around wasn’t advised. And then, different soldiers, in different uniforms. We stopped for passport checks, at which point it became clear that I wasn’t the only foreigner on the bus. But there were no dramas, and we all piled back on the bus and headed into Transnistria.

The bus station is conveniently located next to the railway station in Tiraspol, giving me the opportunity to have a look around. There aren’t many trains, as Transnistria doesn’t have a lot of railway, but trains between Chisinau and Odessa/Kiev currently have to run that way, and the European Union has kept up the general pretence that everything is normal, funding a new three days a week train service between Chisinau and Odessa, which stops at Bendery and Tiraspol en route.

So, I was on Transnistria soil, and Moldovan soil at the same time, and the adventure was underway...

Welcome to Moldova - not many hurt so far...

Alright, so I've arrived. It isn't quite what I expected, but I'm here, which is good enough, I guess.

Here is Chişinău, the capital of Moldova, and whilst it is fair to say that it isn't exactly setting the tourism industry alight - I couldn't actually find a guide book - I'm hoping to have some interesting experiences whilst I am here.

And it is an interesting place, with a rather unfortunate schizophrenia for such a small, impoverished country. Part of it believes that it is another country altogether, which would like to reunite with Russia (with which it has no border), part of it wants to reunite with Romania, and another minority kind of wants to be independent but has settled for a devolved administration which covers a patchwork of enclaves in the south of the country. There are those who are proud to be Moldovan though, and I may meet some whilst I'm in town.

Moldova does work, after a fashion, although it has suffered for its choices - turning towards the West and, in particular, the European Union, caused Russia to reduce imports from the country's agricultural sector to virtually nothing. Given that Russia was Moldova's major export market, this was disastrous for the economy. Oh, and yes, the banking crisis when the equivalent of one-eighth of annual GDP was stolen by people close to the top of Moldovan society.

And, of course, the Transnistria problem makes it impossible for Moldova to join the European Union - once Cyprus, twice shy.

So, much to consider and to explore. It won't be by train though. Moldova has railways, but passengers seem to be a low priority...

This, apparently, means nothing to me...

Alright, so here I am in a surprisingly hip hotel close to an airport - indeed, it’s called Moxy - so evidently I am off somewhere. And that is indeed true, although exactly where will have to wait until tomorrow. For now though, I am in Vienna, the city of the waltz, of coffee culture, and of one of the best political jokes ever.

A man is in a Viennese cafe and, turning to his friend, says, “I hear that there’ll be a revolution in Russia soon.”. His friend scoffs, “And who’s going to start that then, Herr Lenin and Herr Trotsky sitting in the corner there?”.

In the past, I found Vienna to be slightly unsettling. There was always that vague impression that a squad of soldiers, wearing black, might march around the corner at any moment. Fortunately, those days are over, although Austrian politics is, to be put it politely, a mite on the right-wing side at the moment.

There are, at least, some liberals, courtesy of NEOS, whose leaders I first met over dinner in Brussels. I rather liked Mathias and Angelika, and I still do. They, and their party, are adamantly pro-European, internationalist and liberal, and they do attempt to make politics both fun and professional. Campaigning in the 2014 European Parliamentary elections on a slogan “We Love Europe”, would have been unimaginable at home, which perhaps explains why we lost the 2016 referendum.

And sadly, it is a reminder of what we will probably lose. I am a European to my fingertips, an internationalist of the heart, a believer in the seemingly fanciful notion that, in a complex world, working in harmony with other nations is a good idea. And whilst I am sympathetic to the idea of fighting Brexit to the last ditch, I fear that with a Government too unimaginative to change course, and an Official Opposition led by a man who believes that a new Jerusalem (ah, perhaps the wrong city there) can only be built outside the European Union, there is little prospect of salvation any time soon.

For we will go off the cliff in a year’s time. The only question is, how far is the drop, and how painful will the landing be? And, sadly, the damage will be all the worse for the lack of competence demonstrated by those leading the negotiations. It will be for historians to catalogue the events that follow, and for economists to write their theses on how Britain chose the path that it did.

As for me, I’m doing something vaguely useful, i.e. finding out what life looks like from outside the European Union, and attempting to make some new political friends. Wish me luck...

@BaronessRos in the Lords: Buses

Alright, not perhaps the most glamorous subject in the world, but for those of us who rely on public transport, buses are absolutely core to our options. Ros wanted to remind the Minister that, for rural communities, buses provide a much needed connection to local services...

I thank my noble friend Lord Bradshaw for tabling today’s debate and for being so effective in keeping the woes of the bus industry on the agenda because buses tend to get overtaken by railways.

Like the noble Earl, I shall use my time to speak about rural bus services in England, where there is a particularly intractable set of problems. Last year, when the Bus Services Bill was going through this House, rural issues were raised quite a number of times. The Minister, to his credit, was forced to admit that not enough attention had been paid to the potential benefits that could come from the Bus Services Act if it was implemented in the right way. I know we are not so far on, but it would be very interesting to hear from the Minister what work is going on in the department to make sure that rural areas are not forgotten. During the passage of the Bill, we talked about the way in which the commissioning process could use the Public Services (Social Value) Act criteria to level the playing field with social and community providers of transport. That was something the Minister was quite responsive to, so I would like to hear a little more about that.

I shall make two points which at one level are rather obvious, but which are not always well understood. First, there are different sorts of rural areas. The village I live in in Suffolk is tiny. There are about 200 people in the parish, and it has never had a regular bus service. People stay there only if they have access to a car, and community transport plays an important part for a very small number of people with particular needs. A mile away is a village 10 times the size, which is a completely different kettle of fish. It has always had a very good bus service. People moved there ​knowing that they had access to the nearby market town and then onwards to Ipswich and Bury St Edmunds. The service has undergone successive contractions and it is now getting harder and harder for people to use the bus to get into work, or to hospitals and other places. These are both rural communities but they have very different expectations and needs.

The second point is that it is convenient to think about rural and urban areas separately, but of course they are inextricably linked. The overall health of the bus industry, as we heard from my noble friend Lord Bradshaw, is very bad, and if it is bad overall, it is dire in rural areas. We have to understand that they are linked. Also, there is the congestion problem: given that most rural journeys might originate in a rural area but are going to an urban area, they are also impacted.

The CPRE has recorded that supported mileage by local authorities has fallen by 24%. It is using the term, “the Beeching of the buses”. Many of them are in rural areas. It is quite illuminating that the Campaign for Better Transport worked out that the total of those lost grants is £225 million in England. That is a lot of money for local authorities, but in government terms, it is the cost of a single bypass. It represents 17% of bus journeys but the ones that are the most socially necessary for some groups.

In 2016, this House published a report on the way in which the Equality Act is being delivered. There was a particular strand of evidence from users about the way in which local authorities fail to do proper impact assessments when they are making decisions about bus provision. As a consequence, a number of groups now face very real problems, which are bad enough if you are in an urban area—in a rural area, it is hopeless. Many older people are unable to drive and depend on public transport. Reimbursement of the bus pass is not keeping up with the costs and, in any case, in many places there are no services on which to use a concessionary pass. In some areas, including my own, a switch to community transport schemes is all very well, but the local authority has used the licensing regime of the buses used to deny passengers the use of their concessionary fares pass.

We know that younger people are taking fewer journeys. In an urban area, that is probably quite a good thing, but in rural areas the only practical way for younger people to look for work or attend higher education—or even have some sort of social life—is running a car. I was talking to providers running the Government’s flagship National Citizen Service; they told me that rural transport is a real barrier to participation for many young people and—because the NCS is provided on a county basis—there was a ridiculous situation where students on the Cambridgeshire border were expected to get to Ipswich, which was just impossible by public transport, but could not go to Cambridge, where there is a bus. The delivery of some of these other services really needs looking at.

For jobseekers without access to a car, just getting to job centres is a real problem. There is the iniquity of people being sanctioned when the system lets them down. Then, of course, there are people on low incomes, who are very dependent on buses. In rural areas, ​because there are no buses, it is more likely that people who really cannot afford to do so are having to run one or even two cars just to get to work and so on. The irony of all this is that collectively we are actually spending quite a lot of money on buses. Between the bus operators grant, concessionary fares, home-to- school transport, the voluntary sector and health and social providers, there is a lot—but it has never been joined up.

I know that the Government have created some pilots under the Total Transport scheme, covering 37 local authority areas. It would be really useful to know a bit about the outcome of the pilots and what lessons were learned. On a linked point, the Campaign for Better Transport and the Passenger Transport Group are keen to see a connectivity fund, which would bring together this expenditure. I look forward to the Minister’s answer and I hope that she understands the very real concerns that are being expressed today about the overall state of the bus industry, particularly in rural areas.

Mid Suffolk: the Local Government Boundary Commission for England tries again...

Readers might recall that, three weeks ago, I noted that the proposed new ward boundaries for Mid Suffolk had been delayed. It now transpires that they weren’t wildly convinced by the population predictions offered to them by the District Council and, as it turned out, they indeed contained some anomalies, as pointed out by some of the Parish Councils. And so, it was back to the drawing board in the light of some revised data.

For Creeting St Peter, there is no change from the original proposals, in that we are included in the expanded Needham Market ward, a notional Liberal Democrat seat, I would guess, given that it mostly comprises of the town itself, held at District Council level since 1991, and four outlying parishes which have all returned a Liberal Democrat councillor at County or District level in the past decade... except one. Yes, that’s right, Creeting St Peter. I did try in 2011, honest, but we did win the vote in the Parish in that election if my box count was even halfway accurate.

There are some interesting adjustments, with Stowupland being combined with Old Newton, Haughley and Wetherden to form a two member ward which must be an excellent prospect for the local Greens, given that they hold both Haughley and Wetherden and Stowupland wards currently.

Barking and Somersham, the scene of a Green upset in 2016, gets torn apart, with Somersham going into the proposed new Blakenham ward, and the remainder going into Ringshall and Battisford, a potential three way contest between the Greens, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Much there will depend on how the Conservative vote holds up and who is seen as the most credible alternative.

Despite the loss of six councillors overall (from forty to thirty-four), Stowmarket keeps its seven councillors, but instead of being divided into three wards (North, Central and South), there will now be three two-member wards (Chilton, based on the northern estate of the same name, Combs Ford, broadly equivalent to the old South ward and Stow Thorney, which is everything east of the railway line). The central part of the town will become St Peter’s, and have one councillor.

And, whilst these are all provisional, it would be helpful if they weren’t changed again, as Election Day is less than fourteen months away...

Mid Suffolk - the Local Government Boundary Commission for England rethinks?

We’ve been awaiting the final recommendations for new ward boundaries here in Mid Suffolk for some time, and whilst the proposals are put out for final consultation are not to everyone’s liking (and that includes the Liberal Democrats), they did look like an imaginative and credible solution to the problems caused by a combination of rapid growth in Stowmarket and a reduction in the number of councillors to thirty-four from the current forty.

Creeting St Peter was proposed to be transferred from Stowupland ward into Needham Market ward, which would at least give me a reasonable prospect of living in a Liberal Democrat ward for the first time since I left East Dulwich in 2007.

The final proposals were due to be published two weeks ago, on 6 February, but on the day itself, all went quiet. So, I wrote to the LGBCE’s press office;

Dear Sir/Madam, 

I was led to understand that the final recommendations were due to be published today, until the website was updated at some point this morning to change the date to ‘TBC’. 

Is it possible to find out what the issue is that has caused the delay, and when might we find out what the final recommendations are?

Now, in truth, I wasn’t expecting a rapid response. I know the score as a public official, there is never enough time to answer random questions from ordinary members of the public, but, to my surprise, a reply came back the next morning;

Dear Cllr Valladares

The Commission has delayed publication of its final recommendations for its Mid Suffolk and Babergh reviews. We are currently examining the electorate data and forecasts that underpin all the recommendations and will be in a position to make a further announcement about the completion of both reviews following the Commission’s next meeting on 20 February. We will update the website immediately following that meeting and directly contact everyone who has taken part in the reviews thus far shortly after that.

 Apologies for the delay. Marcus --Marcus BowellDirector of Strategy and CommunicationsLGBCE

I have to admit that I was impressed. And so, the wait goes on, although today in 21 February, and there’s no sign of an update. It’s early days though, and our elections aren’t until next May, so we wait with bated breath...

One sweet day, I’ve made her mine...

Last year, I celebrated St Valentine’s Day by presenting Ros with sixty thousand breeding pairs of Magellenic penguins. Not literally, you understand, because whilst they’re cute, they do smell a bit, and the cottage is really too small for sixty pairs, let alone a thousand times as many. But you get the drift.

And so, my task this year was to find something similarly unusual. So, why not flamingos? In the middle of a desert...

Luckily, flamingos like saltwater, and the Atacama is famous for its salt flats, in which can be found three of the six varieties of flamingo - the Andean and Chilean, plus the James’s version, a winter visitor.

But first, we had a gentle warmup, with a visit to the Valley of the Moon, so called because, well, it looks quite a lot like the moon, and it’s such a forbidding environment that NASA tested out a Mars rover there. It’s not far from town, and we had a guide, Gustavo, who would be taking care of us for the rest of our stay, organised by the hotel.

And it is pretty daunting. The recent rain had caused salt to appear on the surface, looking at first glance as though there had been a light frost. We gingerly made our way across the barren terrain, because you don’t really want to fall over onto the jagged rocks.

Our next stop was an abandoned salt mine. It seems that the miners would drill holes into the rock, insert dynamite and stand well back. If a lode of salt was found, they would dig it out and then repeat the process. It is a bleak spot, with no water other than that you could carry there, and no shade either. Perhaps it was no surprise that they abandoned the mine.

After a break for lunch, it was time to head for the salt flats. The Salar de Atacama is the third largest salt flat in the world (the two bigger ones are across the Andes in Argentina and Bolivia) and it holds about 30% of the world’s known lithium reserves. This appears not to concern the flamingos, which is fortunate, who eat the brine shrimps to be found in the sinkhole lakes that occur here and there.

Laguna Cejar is the nearest of these lakes, and is an obvious place to visit if you want flamingos. They very kindly provide some useful information to read as you follow a path through the reserve, albeit entirely in Spanish, and you get to find out how the whole thing works. And then, you get to watch the flamingos as they go about their business, dabbling the shallow water to stir up the tiny brine shrimps which somehow give them their pink colour. Don’t ask me to explain how this works, as the brine shrimps aren’t pink, but there is science involved.

I was quite excited to find a lizard, which patiently stood still whilst I photographed it, but the flamingos were undoubtedly the stars of the show, gracefully making their way across the shallow water. Generally, we see them in zoos or parks, against a green backdrop, and whilst they look pretty, they seem vaguely uninteresting. But, against a background of crystalline salt, they look somehow more real and slightly less garishly pink, as though painted onto the landscape. Helpfully, Andean flamingos are paler than their Chilean counterparts, which allows you to tell them apart.

But it was time to head back, we had a dinner to eat and sleep to get before the next adventures...

Breathe deeply... very deeply...

We had to leave the seaside goodbye, for our next stop was beckoning. An efficient transfer to Santiago Airport got us there in good time for our flight to Calama, in the north of Chile. Calama is a mining town, the centre of Chile’s copper industry, and apparently relatively unlovely as a result. But we were onbound to an oasis.

San Pedro de Atacama is just that, an oasis in the heart of the Atacama Desert. And, as you might guess, it’s dry, very dry, so I was somewhat surprised to be greeted on our first evening by a gentle shower of rain. This seems sensible, as the town is on the western side of the Andes range, and my ancient geography lessons taught me that the western side of a mountain range is usually wet. But the cold current that runs along the shoreline to the west apparently sweeps rain clouds south, so San Pedro de Atacama receives, on average, about 42 millimetres of precipitation per year - about 1.67 inches.

The town is also at approximately 8,000 feet, which means that altitude sickness is a factor. And, let’s face it, anything above 80 feet in Suffolk is a hill, so we were determined to take our time before rushing off into the desert or the surrounding mountains.

I still had to get in my 10,000 steps though, which meant strapping on oxygen tanks and going for a walk. Luckily, all that time on treadmills walking steadily uphill meant that, whilst taking it easy, I was able to ease my way to the town’s bus terminal, located on the edge of town, to see what opportunities existed should I ever find myself in San Pedro de Atacama with a need to get out of town quickly.

I was reminded that we weren’t far from either the Argentine or Bolivian borders, and there are regular bus services to Uyuni in Bolivia and Salta in Argentina. Admittedly, they involve long journeys over mountain passes - over 4000 metres in each case - but you could if you really needed to, I guess.

The other task was to arrange our excursions. And we were to have a stroke of luck there...

A day on the beach with the Chileans...

Valparaíso is the port town, and its neighbour, Viña del Mar, is the beach resort. The two are connected by Metro Valparaíso, which runs a very efficient service, seven days a week, at frequencies of as little as every six minutes. Fares are about 50p to travel from one town centre to the other, and it seemed like the easiest way to get some time by the seaside.

And indeed it turned out to be as simple as it looked, despite my total lack of functional Spanish. I managed to buy us a Bip card, the local equivalent of an Oyster card, with enough cash on it to get us to Viña del Mar and back, and off we went.

The line follows the shore in Valparaíso, and then cuts under the coastal highway before diving underground and following the main thoroughfare that runs up the valley. I’d successfully worked out which station to get off at, and we set off for a gentle stroll down Avenida Valparaíso before cutting right towards the Hotel del Mar and a pleasant cafe across the street, where we stopped for an emergency coffee break to watch the pelicans.

On a sunny day, it seems like everyone is either out for a stroll or headed for the sand, but as we aren’t really beach people, we settled for a promenade along the shore. And it’s a very nice stroll, with people selling various handmade art, or useful beach stuff. So, we strolled on, enjoying the sunshine, watching the people.

Eventually, we needed lunch though, and so we retraced our steps until we found the Sheraton Hotel, perched on an outcrop on a curve of the shoreline. Now normally, big chain hotel means garish monstrosity, but I have to give Sheraton credit, they’ve done a decent job here, putting something airy and sympathetic to the landscape. Their barbecue chicken wings aren’t bad either, and sitting on the terrace with a cold beer was a very civilised way to bring our outing to a close.

I managed to find the Miramar station, and we were off back to Valparaíso...

Journeys by trolleybus, a quirky solo adventure...

I am, still, methodically recording my 10,000 steps each day, and I needed another walk to make sure that I got there on our second day in Valparaíso. And what better way than to take a properly long trolleybus ride?

So, I walked down the hill, boarded the ascensor, and made my way to the trolleybus stop near to the Armada de Chile headquarters - a wonderful building in the French style that was apparently popular when it was built.

And, as luck would have it, one of the elderly Pullman built American trolleybuses rolled up almost immediately. I handed over my C$280, found a seat, and settled back for a gentle glide across the city to Avenida Argentina, which defines the northern limit of the flat, coastal part of the city.

Glide is the right word, for they move almost silently, the only sound being that of the tyres on the road surface. They’re very comfortable, despite their age and the upholstery, which is amazingly similar to that on buses in Mumbai, a green plastic material. Luckily, unlike Mumbai, it doesn’t get as warm, so you don’t get burnt by the seats.

At Avenida Argentina, I took a gentle stroll towards the shoreline, stopping only to explore a local hypermarket. Prices are not too dissimilar to those at home, although as you might expect, the cost of Chilean wine is significantly cheaper. Otherwise, ignoring the language differences, you might find yourself in familiar circumstances.

The western end of Avenida Argentina has a commuter rail station, of which more later, and, having checked it out, I headed back to the trolleybus terminus, detouring only to explore the long-distance bus terminal.

Now I would be the first to admit that my interest in buses is limited to local ones, but it is interesting to see where you can get to from any particular town or city, and Valparaíso is very well connected, not only to Santiago, but to cities up and down the country, as far north as Iquique, and as far south as Puerto Montt, which is broadly where the roads end and ferries take over. They’re long rides though...

I caught a Swiss trolleybus back, stopping only to take some photographs... of trolleybuses.

I’m beginning to really like this country...

A gentle stroll amongst the cerros, and an antique ride...

Our hotel, amongst its many virtues, offered a walking tour of the city as part of our stay, and the next morning, we were greeted by Cynthia, who has been leading walking tours in Valparaíso for seven years or so.

We started with a gentle stroll around Cerro Alegre, our own area of the city, before taking the ascensor down to Plaza Sotomayor. The highlights of the square were duly noted, but we were then led to the side of a building to take a ride on the city’s trolleybus route.

Alright, I can sense your thought - why a trolleybus, and why is it interesting? Well, Valparaíso has the oldest trolleybuses still in service anywhere in the world, some of which date back to 1947, and they are American in construction. The newer ones, a mere fifty years old, were imported secondhand from Switzerland, but all of them still serve the locals admirably, and the fare is very reasonable.

Now, I admit to being a bit of a bus enthusiast, indeed, a public transport enthusiast, so a ride on an obscure and unusual form of transport suited me just fine. It was a short ride though, as Cynthia needed to make a stop at her preferred butcher, which gave us an interesting glance at Chilean life, plus lots of free samples of cured pork and salami.

Back on the trolleybus, our next stop was the Queen Victoria ascensor (see, I told you that the British influence is strong here!), which was our link to Cerro Concepción, the other prime hill of the city. The architecture is... unexpected, with a lot of buildings clad with corrugated iron sheets, including the various churches.

For Valparaíso was indeed an international city, and permission was given to the Anglicans and the Lutherans to build their churches, so long as they weren’t too obvious. Apparently, they have the best pipe organ in South America, but I’m unable to personally vouch for that.

All that was left to do was to get back to the hotel, made slightly more complicated by the need to get from one hill to another. It meant climbing up the hillside, cutting across and then making our way back down again.

Luckily, we’re both a lot fitter these days...