Neighbourhood Partnership conference

No visit to sunny Brighton for me ... no, I get to go to the North Stand of Hibs Stadium instead ;-)

Neighbourhood Partnership (NP) Conference all-day today --- being held for delegates from the boards and sub-groups of all 12 NPs, as well as from the 12 youth forums across the city.

More to follow later, no doubt ...

Voting matters ...

Personally, in all the political circumstances, I thought the set-piece speech from Gordon Brown today not only came across pretty well but contained that difficult-to-achieve mix of 'past achievements' and 'future offer' ...

... the BBC has full coverage of the wide range of reactions to the events of the afternoon!

On a purely personal note, huge disappointment about the commitment to a referendum on AV (the Alternative Vote) - to be held after the next election.

Yes, the Leader of the Labour Party has finally admitted that First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) is no longer fit for a modern, pluralist democracy: that's quite an admission!

--- but potentially replacing it with 'another' majoritarian system would not be, if you'll forgive the pun, my first preference :-(

Policy and Strategy Committee Meeting

The "Policy and Strategy Committee Meeting" today did, for once, contain some policy and strategy. Amazing.

The 'Alternative Business Models report' was approved unaltered - all three Opposition Groups put up different amendments, and our own attempt to get the issue discussed at Full Council thus failed :-(

Interesting that several speakers from the Lib/Nat Administration openly admitted that the whole process was being driven forward for financial reasons. At least the Tories have an ideological under-pinning for their support of this general course of action - those currently in charge are simply doing it to 'save money'.

Depressing stuff.

Mind you, the meeting got even more depressing when the worst satisfaction ratings ever achieved in Edinburgh were simply noted and Directors asked to do a bit better.

Requests to have the matter debated more widely at Full Council were, once again, dismissed out-of-hand. Can't have any of that pesky local democracy getting in the way, can we :-(

I do though suspect members of the public may have a somewhat different view on what action they would have liked the Council Administration to take.

Opportunity update ...

Transpires today that my concerns about the 'Opportunity Areas' report (at tomorrow's Policy and Strategy Committee Meeting) where ill-founded ...

... it's not 'nearly 3,000 Council Staff' who will be affected, but potentially 3,880!

An amended Appendix 4 has been circulated and has clarified the total figure of Full Time Equivalent (FTE) posts which are within the five opportunity areas.

Nothing to worry about then.

Allotment afternoon

Have had a fairly quiet day - thank goodness :-)

My mid-life crisis is clearly now well-and-truly established, as the highlight of a visit to the allotment this afternoon was discovering a late-flowering (and differently coloured!) water-lily in the pond!

What can you say ...

... anyhow, other excitements included our first crop of baby-sweetcorn (didn't grow them last year), and some early brussel sprouts - along with an abundance of flowers.

Dug more leaf-mould in to a couple of the beds, and will get those late-cropping potatoes in very soon ... allotment sprouts and potatoes looking increasingly likely as part of the Xmas-day fayre :-)

Long road to the manifesto ...

Participated in one of the now periodic
'Edinburgh Labour' policy events, over in the East of the city, earlier this morning.

An enjoyable few hours of debate ...

... just a pity there are still 30-months, or so, to go before we actually turn it all into a local manifesto for the 2012 elections!

Can't come soon enough.

COSLA

Attended my first Group Leaders meeting for a while at the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) today ...

... I can't for the life-of-me think why I don't go more often :-((

Opportunity Areas?

Late paper, out just today, for next week's Policy and Strategy Committee meeting - you can see it here ...

... I've been chastised previously for daring to mention the sheer scale of what has, for several months now, been actively considered - all under the guise of 'Alternative Business Models'.

Wasn't I just indulging in a bit of political scaremongering?

Well - as implementation of all of this gets perilously close (the 2010/11 local Budget will be set in less than 20-weeks time!) do have a look at the diagram contained within Appendix 4 of this report ...

... I'm not sure why the Full Time Equivalents (FTE) for staff involved in 'Corporate and Transactional Services' isn't shown in that diagram, but it must be several hundreds - so if you add up the five areas that are now being considered for privatisation (sorry - as 'opportunity areas' ... seriously, read the report!) then we're talking about some 3,000 Council Staff.

That is a pretty significant percentage of this Local Authorities total workforce. Such a whole-scale outsourcing could have a huge negative impact on the levels of service the citizens of Edinburgh currently receive ... the five 'opportunity areas' do indeed include many front-line services.

And as I said just last week - I remain very worried that there's simply not enough political maturity in Edinburgh's City Chambers to avoid what looks increasingly to me like a bureaucratic 'budgetary top-slicing' and widespread 'outsourcing programme' to be continuously inflicted on the capital.

... 'opportunity' indeed :-(

London for the day

Down in London for the whole day - Electoral Reform Society (ERS) meeting just finished ... all scintillating stuff I can tell you ;-)

Sleeper back up to Edinburgh this evening and a pretty flat-out Friday and Saturday ahead of me ... roll on Sunday is all I can say!

Please shut up

SNP Government education policy is falling apart at the seams;

SNP/Lib-Dem Council is achieving the worst satisfaction ratings ever in Edinburgh;

Ex- Labour Minister decides to assist in driving home the message that Labour has a proud record of policy delivery!

If I had hair, I'd be tearing it out :-(

Don't blame us - we're only in charge

Local press are covering the Annual Residents Survey this afternoon - you can see the story here - and the local SNP/Lib-Dem Administration are clearly trying to pin the blame for some truly appalling 'satisfaction with the Council' statistics on the trams, and the trams alone.

... now, even long-term supporters of the project would accept that the ongoing construction of the route is hardly endearing the public to trams at the present moment - but to try and avoid all political responsibility for some shocking figures by blaming one project just won't wash.

Please do have a look at the figures in the report - second table on page 5 of Appendix 1 is truly shocking ... satisfaction rates with the Council have dropped by nearly 20% in just 2-years; and dissatisfaction rates have gone up by over 15%

But it's okay really - the trams are to blame, nothing else - and the following list of post-May 2007 policy successes has nothing whatsoever to do with the current appalling ratings for the City of Edinburgh Council:

• attempting to close 22 Schools and 4 Community Centres, immediately after new Administration took power in 2007
• attempting to ‘gag’ school deputations at Council Meetings during this process
• failing to establish a properly funded school building programme to aide any such school closure process
• increasing the cost of school meals by 10p – an inflation-busting 6% rise
• removing the hot meals service from 14 of the 18 Council Nursery Schools in the city
• removing kitchen staff (and hot-food preparation) from 6 Primary Schools in the city
• removing the offer of a hot meal on a Friday lunchtime from all Secondary Schools in the city
• thus all (obviously!) damaging the uptake of healthy and nutritious school meals across Edinburgh
• cutting devolved school budgets by 1.5% in their first budget – some £870,000 removed from schools
• cutting £966,000 from the ‘SureStart’ programme in their first budget
• signed a Single Outcome Agreement, thus accepting the Council should deliver SNP Government manifesto commitments with no additional resources being provided to do so
• have thus failed to reduce class sizes significantly
• have thus failed to commission any new school buildings
• have thus failed to increase Nursery hours provision significantly
• closed down several Community Newspapers across the capital, which were locally popular and key sources of community information
• have closed down a raft of successful local community projects – latest example being ‘Instep’ at Castlebrae Community High School
• totally mismanaged the Fairer Scotland Fund implementation, particularly in the North of Edinburgh
• re-introduced old desks and chairs to Council meetings at a cost of over £112,000 – nearly £2,000 for each Councillors desk and chair
• spending over £1,600 on introducing ‘traffic-lights’ into the Council Chamber to help the Lord Provost do his job
• trying to spend £1.3million on ‘ceremonial flags’ for the city
• trying to introduce ‘ceremonial robes’ back into the Council, indicating it would distinguish elected Members from the ‘Hoi Polloi’

... and we're not even half-way through the current Council term yet :-((

Assisted suicide law 'clarified'

I know today's news on assisted suicide only applies to England and Wales ... but I do think it has significant importance for the upcoming debate in the Scottish Parliament.

As I've mentioned before, I appreciate that many people have strong opinions on the issue of assisted-suicide, but personally I very much welcome developments South of the border today and I do hope they feed into a rational debate here in the Scottish Parliament in due course.

Three stikes and you're ...

By complete and total chance, the same morning that the Education Secretary has scrapped the SNP pledge on class sizes of eighteen for Primaries 1, 2 and 3:

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Manifesto Quote: "We will reduce class sizes in Primary 1, 2 and 3 to eighteen pupils or less to give children more time with their teacher at this vital stage of their development."

That's NOT going to happen.

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... the Scottish Government has also published the 2009 "Pre-school and Childcare Statistics" ...

And guess what: Whole Time Equivalents (WTE) of GTCS (General Teaching Council for Scotland) registered teachers in posts providing pre-school education has fallen for the second year running.

... worse still: the overall percentage of children who have access to a GTCS registered teacher providing pre-school education is exactly 70%.

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Manifesto Quote: "We will increase the provision of free nursery education for 3 and 4 year olds by 50 per cent. That means increasing the entitlement from 400 hours a year to 600 hours a year. We are concerned at the removal of nursery teachers from nurseries in some council areas. We will deliver access to a fully qualified nursery teacher for every nursery age child."

That's NOT going to happen.

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Of course, the other main education policy commitment, to match earlier school building programmes brick for brick will be delivered - won't it?

What is it that's commonly said about "three strikes and you're ... " ??

Political car crash

Quite frankly, the SNP's education policy programme is in a complete mess ...

... instead of suffering 'death by a thousand denials' why doesn't someone senior in the Party have the guts to admit what's obvious to everyone else in Scotland: they're not going to meet any of the main school-based, education commitments from their May 2007 manifesto? Why continue the charade that all is well?

The Nationalists are in the middle of a car crash (when it comes to education policy) and the SNP need to walk away from the scene of the accident as soon as possible - pretending that the crash hasn't happened is helping no one and is an ongoing, cruel deception for many, many parents across the country.

... someone really needs to get a grip on all of this :-(

Car free day

Almost dare not mention that it's car free day today ...

... and no bike-helmets in sight on their logos??

Outrageous.

Quiet news day!

Oh dear, oh dear - you can definitely tell it's a local holiday weekend ...

... and clearly a very quiet news day :-(

All that said - there is a serious issue behind all of this ... just a pity that wasn't the focus of the news story.

Local SNP finally see some sense ;-)

Despite the dripping political cynicism of last Thursday's Full Council Meeting - there was one light-hearted moment during the 'questions and answers' session, which I failed to re-count earlier ...

... my colleague Maureen Child was pursuing a supplementary question with the Convener of Education about Castlebrae Community High School when said-Convener responded (something like) that Councillor Child was being somewhat dishonest in her interpretation of events - you know, the usual political banter that mature adults generally ignore ...

... of course, I couldn't resist a muted 'chuck her out' call to the Lord Provost, which promptly received a somewhat louder than intended 'I'll second that' from the SNP benches :-)

Of course, I have no idea which SNP Councillor showed such stunning foresight and bravery :-))

- somewhat sadly, the Lord Provost ignored our combined pleas (don't think he even heard them!) and we didn't resort to using Standing Order 21 in an entirely inappropriate manner.

- maybe next month??

Glum Councillor?

I know this site has been around for a while - but thought I'd flag it up to regular readers of the Really Bad Blog ...

.. please, if ever I start to pose for photos like that - tell me loudly so I can quickly seek some therapy :-(