I phoned West Mercia police and asked to be put through to the control room at Telford and they duly put me through to the communications centre in Worcester.  I explained which dual carriageway it was (the A442) in Telford and which interchange had the problem.

“Would you say it was Shifnal to Telford or Shifnal to Bridgnorth?”  Completely different bit of road, not a dual carriageway and miles away from where I said it was.  I explained, yet again, where it was and that it was only a quarter of the way from the police station and that the local police will know exactly where I’m talking about.

“What’s nearby, so I can tell them?” Arrrrgh! I told him to trust me, just to put down what I had told him and the local police who, as I’d just mentioned, were only a quarter of a mile away, would know where I was talking about.

He finally accepted it and after a couple of minutes taking my home address and phone number and asking me if I wanted a reference number for the call I managed to get him off the phone.  All in all it took me a good 10 minutes to report a dangerous obstruction on the main arterial route through a busy town at rush hour and all because it’s no longer possible to speak to your local police station thanks to pointless regionalisation of public services.

Since Telford & Wrekin parted company with the city region, it’s become more and more irrelevant as its focus narrows to providing the same Birmingham-centric services as the plethora of regional quangos infesting the euroregion.  In other words, a pointless duplication.

They had to change their name from Birmingham, Black Country & Coventry City Region after West Midlands NO! registered the name to the City Region of Birmingham, Coventry & the City Region.  They can’t call themselves the City Region of Birmingham, Coventry & the Black Country now that Coventry is no longer part of it so I wonder what they’ll call their quango now … has anyone though about Greater Birmingham?

Anyway, I’m sure the City Region’s unelected leader, Dr Simon Murphy, will appreciate any helpful suggestions you might have.  His email address is simon.murphy@birmingham.gov.uk and his phone number is 0121 464 8168.  Let him have your suggestions, I’m sure he’ll appreciate them.

We waved placards and held up a 12ft banner (with difficulty).  Lots of motorists were stopping in the road to read them and quite a few were honking horns in support and giving us the thumbs up.  The police didn’t seem too fussed at the cars stopping in the road – certainly less fussed than they were at the prospect of me having my mobile phone in the meeting or carrying some leaflets .

We heckled a few MPs as they drove in, mainly asking “can we have our country back please?”.  Khalid Mahmood, a Liebour MP in Birmingham, was chauffeur driven to the event like the good socialist that he is.

Shropshire Tory MPs, Mark Pritchard and Philip Dunne, were there even though the Tories were supposed to be boycotting the regional grand committees.  My MP, David Wright, was also there, sat in the back row on his own.  Seven opposition MPs turned up (most, if not all, Tories) which enabled the meeting to go ahead.  Without them the Liebour MPs wouldn’t have been quorate and the meeting would have fallen at the first hurdle like the East of England one did.

The questions were all pre-prepared, as were the answers.  I left halfway through shouting “Home rule for England” and “English Parliament please” which the usher didn’t approve of and promptly ushered me out of the room.  By the time I left they has done nothing more than read from scripts and have the occasional half-hearted jibe at the Tories.

The police wouldn’t allow me to take leaflets in the room but refused to tell me what law banned leaflets in a public meeting and they also made me turn off my phone but wouldn’t tell me what law banned mobile phones in a public meeting.  An MP walked through the metal detector and set it off.  Someone said “She’s an MP” so she was waved through.  I said “She might have a knife or a gun” but was told “She’s an MP”.  Bearing in mind the rampant lawlessness of MPs, they are statistically more likely to have been taking something into the room that they shouldn’t have been than I was so why weren’t the police doing their job of protecting the public?  I had my son with me and I was under strict instructions not to get arrested so I didn’t create too much of a fuss but I’ll be making a complaint to the police about officers making up the law as they go along.

A week ago to this day I wrote an email to the leader of Telford & Wrekin Council, Andrew Eade, after writing about the city region’s plans for independence:

Councillor Eade told the Shropshire Star “I’ve always said we would stay in the City Region to try and maximise any benefits to our community”.  He hasn’t always said that – prior to the last local election he said that he would pull Telford out of the city region if the Tories won.  It’s taken close to two years and a lot of back-tracking for him to put his words into action.

Maybe the timing is a co-incidence, maybe the email I sent played a part in the decision to leave.  Either way, it’s a big victory and further proof that Greater Birmingham the City Region of Birmingham, Coventry & the Black Country really isn’t going to turn the West Midlands into the land of milk and honey.

This is absolute nonsense. Removing the regional quangocracy will empower local communities, increase democratic accountability in the decision-making process and could provide a vital boost to the local economy at a time when the global economy is taking a nosedive.

Not convinced?

Planning and transport are important areas of policy – the West Midlands has a population the size of Scotland (about 5 million) and the policy that determines when and where a road will be built, the buses and trains run and houses and factories are built is in the hands of an unelected quango with a Birmingham-centric view. Birmingham may be the largest city in the West Midlands but it’s not the only place to live or do business. There are about a million people living in Birmingham – that leaves another 4 million “West Midlanders” treated as an afterthought by the quango that’s supposed to represent their interests.

In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland planning and transport has its own ministry with dedicated, qualified staff and elected ministers answerable to the electorate for the actions of their department. In the West Midlands we have unelected quangos unanswerable to the 4 million or so voters in the West Midlands.

It is wrong to assume that abolishing regional quangos will result in centralisation – there is no reason why the powers given to regional quangos shouldn’t be given back to the local authorities that they were taken from in the first place.

The Birmingham Post cites the collapse of MG Rover as an example of the value of the Regional Development Agency, Advantage West Midlands. “Whilst the MG Rover collapse was a very substantial shock to the West Midlands economy, the impact would have been much greater if the firm had collapsed in 2000? says David Bailey, the author of the Birmingham Post article. True, the collapse of MG Rover had a major impact on the West Midlands conurbation. It had an impact all over the country but the main impact was felt in Longbridge and the urban core of the West Midlands. The effect of the collapse of MG Rover was probably no worse in Worcester or Oswestry or Stafford than it was in Edinburgh or London or Cardiff.

There is no doubt that the collapse of MG Rover required a response on a grander scale than the local authority covering Longbridge but is the Birmingham Post really suggesting that it is beyond the wit of our elected local councils, who themselves manage multi-million pound budgets and provide hundreds of services under close scrutiny of the electorate, to work with each other to cope with the fallout from the collapse of MG Rover or any other “big issue”?

Whilst Advantage West Midlands was diverting all its energies into buying the Longbridge site and providing advice to businesses in Longbridge and the surrounding area, other parts of the West Midlands were losing out. Making certain polices and functions the sole responsibility of Advantage West Midlands is rather like putting all your eggs in one basket. Local authorities either aren’t allowed – or don’t have the resources – to provide the services Advantage West Midlands would have provided if they weren’t concentrating on MG Rover.

Just like a local solution to a problem isn’t always appropriate, a regional answer isn’t always right either – especially in a euroregion so economically and demographically diverse as to contain England’s second city and most rural county. This is why regional quangos like Advantage West Midlands need to be wound up and loose alliances formed on an issue by issue basis by local authorities and other interested parties. This way decision making remains in the hands of democratically accountable local councils but a “joined up” response to bigger issues is still perfectly workable when it’s needed. And more importantly, from the point of view of the local economy, businesses can be reassured that they won’t be subject to the whim of an unelected, undemocratic quango based in Birmingham.

Perhaps Professor David Bailey’s profile at the Birmingham University website might shed some light on his defence of the indefensible:

Of course, you’d have to be one of life’s cynics to think that his defence of Advantage West Midlands is influenced at all by the funding Advantage West Midlands provides to his department or his support for European integration and regionalisation.

England has always been considered expendable by the Labour Party, hence their willingness to embrace the EU’s regionalisation agenda.  Balkanising England suits Labour’s political agenda – England doesn’t vote Labour but enough of “the regions” probably would making it easier possible for Labour to win another election.

The North East euroregion rejected regionalisation in a referendum a couple of years ago but that decision has been ignored.  Only 22% of people in the North East wanted regional government and that was the euroregion that the British government said had most support for regional government.

The people of England don’t want regionalisation, the British government has no democratic or moral mandate to impose it on us.

Technorati Tags: Britishness, No Mandate, Regionalisation

The One Eyed Wonder of Wankistan says that the UK is “the world’s most successful multi-national state” but that the union isn’t “a contract of convenience that can be renegotiated”. Multi-national or multi-regional? Remember, as far as Liebour is concerned there is no such thing as England.

Also today, Jack Straw is going to set out a “statement of British values” that define British citizenship and press the non-existent case for a British Bill of Rights and Responsibilities. There’s that word again – responsibilities. It’s no longer enough that you live here, work here, pay your taxes here or were even born here – you must have some good old British responsibilities for the British good.

The Demon Headmaster will be pressing for more power at local, regional and national level with more power for city governments. The national level is, of course, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (which isn’t even a nation). The regional level, obviously, is England which must never be given any form of acknowledgment as a national entity. City government (aka City Regions – the EU’s favoured form of “local” government) will only apply to England … sorry, the English Regions … because local government is devolved.

Apparently, today is the first day of Jack Straw’s consultation on Britishness, British values and a British Bill of Rights. Has anyone English been invited to take part in this “consultation”? If Jack Straw and Gordon Brown get away with what they’re trying to do right now then that’s the end of England forever.

Technorati Tags: Anglophobia, Britishness, Regions

Technorati Tags: WMNO, Regions, Shropshire Star

Information provided to the West Midlands NO! Campaign following a Freedom of Information Request has raised some serious questions about the City Region.

The City Region will not be funded on a pro-rata basis as previously thought, but by simply dividing the costs into 10 equal shares. This means, for example, Birmingham’s 1m residents will be collectively paying the same £37,062 contribution to the running costs of the City Region as the 160,000 residents of Telford or the 305,000 residents of Dudley.

This is hardly a fair distribution of the operating costs, especially when Birmingham City Council openly admits that Birmingham will benefit most from the City Region:

Birmingham City Council claims that it will not spend more than the £37,062 contribution to the City Region’s budget but Telford & Wrekin Council is expecting to spend at least £77,000 monitoring and working with the City Region and has set aside another £100,000 for costs associated with membership. Is Telford wasting more taxpayers’ money than it’s already wasting by joining the City Region in the first place or is Birmingham hiding the true cost of the City Region?

The response also confirms that no cost/benefit analysis of City Region membership has been conducted meaning that hundreds of pounds of taxpayers money has been committed to funding a project when they don’t know how much it will cost or what, if any, they can expect to gain from it. If this decision had been made by a company, the shareholders would have been baying for blood by now!

Stuart Parr, founder of the West Midlands NO! Campaign, said: “This just confirms what we’ve been saying all along – the City Region will be run by Birmingham, for Birmingham and the rest of us will be paying for it”.

Andrew Bridgwater, West Midlands NO! Campaigner, said “If the City Region is going to turn a profit then surely it should be self-funding? Unless we’re being misled and the City Region is going to cost money for as long as it’s there, I see no reason why taxpayers’ money should change hands at all. In fact, if it is going to cost more money than it makes then all the more reason not to hand over any cash”.

[ENDS]

Technorati Tags: Regions,  Petition

I would like to take this opportunity to just clarify a couple of points.

The £200,000 figure comes from Telford & Wrekin’s own budget proposals for 2008-09 in which they have allocated £100,000 to administration costs and £100,000 for wages.

The city region’s limited company will be limited by guarantee but who will be providing the guarantee?  Council Tax payers of course.  And who will be paying the pensions of the city region’s employees?  Will it be the local authorities who make up the city region or will it be the city region limited company itself?  Either way the pension fund will be made up of taxpayers money.

And if Telford & Wrekin decides to leave after a year when the city region produces no tangible benefits will they have to pay to leave?  Will they have to “buy” themselves out of the company?  Will the taxpayers money they will be putting into pension funds and guarantees be refunded?

This doesn’t just apply to Telford & Wrekin, it applies to every local authority that is taking part in the city region.    The further you get from Birmingham – Coventry, Telford, Wolverhampton for example – the less interest the city region will have in you.  The city region was conceived as “Greater Birmingham” and like all the other unelected regional quangos in the West Midlands, Birmingham will come first.

It will be interesting to see whether any of the councillor in line for directorships of the city region will declare a prejudicial interest.  The Standards Board for England, which has the job of making sure that councillors in England behave themselves, says that a prejudicial interest is not just about a councillor standing to gain financially from something they vote on but also to gain increased stature amongst their colleagues.  Increased stature such as a company directorship, for example.

Technorati Tags: Press, City Region

It has 203 signatures so far and the deadline is the 19th of January.

Please sign the petition and email the link to anyone you know that might be interested in trying to stop the cancer of regional government.

Technorati Tags: Petition, Regions

For immediate release

Advantage West Midlands (AWM), the unelected Regional Development Agency for the West Midlands, has announced its budget for the financial year 2007-08.  The taxpayer will give this unelected, underperforming quango £296m for the financial year.

AWM have just given jobs to two “local” entrepreneurs – Jas Bains and Angela Maxwell – who will be paid £8,371 of taxpayers’ money for working two days per month. [1] When the average full time weekly wage for an adult in the West Midlands is £393.60, where is the justice in an unelected quango paying £350 per day to someone who is supposed to be a successful entrepreneur?  Hopefully they will prove to have more loyalty to the people they have been appointed to represent than John Crabtree OBE, the Chairman of Birmingham Chamber of Commerce and a member of the board of AWM, who was criticised on Tuesday for organising a seminar to help local businesses relocate abroad. [2]

Just a few days ago, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) has release half-yearly figures for performance against six targets that it has set Advantage West Midlands.  If they continue to perform at the same level, they will exceed one maximum target, achieve one minimum target and miss four minimum targets – one of them by a massive 95%.  If they are performing this poorly, can they really be trusted with £296m of our money? [3]

The West Midlands NO! Campaign is committed to exposing the waste, incompetence and misuse of public money by these unelected, undemocratic, unwanted regional quangos and we won’t stop until every last one has been disbanded and power is firmly back in the hands of those we have elected to wield it.

Technorati Tags: AWM, Press Release

By the way, Clegg is the new leader of the Illiberal Democrats if you didn’t already know.  The Illib Dum leadership “battle” was such a non-event I couldn’t be bothered to waste my energy writing about it. 

Technorati Tags: Lib Dems, Balkanisation, England

The President of Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, ironically, has a seat on the board of Advantage West Midlands, the unelected regional development agency whose job it is to attract jobs and investment into the West Midlands.  No wonder they’re on track to miss four out of their six targets from the British government!

The seminar has been arranged by Birmingham Chamber of Commerce and is being supported by Birmingham City Council and will offer advice and assistance on offshoring all or part of their business.

Of course, if the board of Advantage West Midlands was elected rather than appointed from a pool of eurofederalist yes-men, we would be able to boot the President of Birmingham Chamber of Commerce out of office through the ballot box.  But it’s not elected and the electorate is only allowed to pay for Advantage West Midlands, not have a say in how it’s run.

If a local councillor started offering practical assistance to local businesses to move to another town they would most likely find themselves out of a job come the next election but in the unelected regional quangos, incompetence is rewarded.  Take Phil Davies as an example – he used to be the Leader of Telford & Wrekin Council, was sacked by his own party for incompetence and has gone on to secure several high-profile, taxpayer-funded jobs with regional quangos.  The reason?  He’s a member of the Labour Party, he’s a eurofederalist, he supports the balkanisation of England into euroregions and – most importantly – he does as he’s told.

Call me old fashioned, but I think that if you’ve got a job to do then you do it and if you don’t then you should be out of a job – doubly so if your job is in the public sector and funded by the taxpayer.  The President of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, John Crabtree OBE, has failed in his position as a director of Advantage West Midlands by allowing his Chamber to arrange a seminar to encourage local businesses to relocate abroad.  He should be removed from the board immediately and a free and fair election held so that the electorate can decide who is going to have a say in spending Advantage West Midlands’ £300m taxpayer-funded budget.

Technorati Tags: AWM, Birmingham, Offshoring

The half-year results for April-September 2007 have now been published and on balance it’s looking … well, a bit poor really.

The first target is job creation – how many jobs have AWM created?  Their target is to create a minimum of 13,347 jobs and a maximum of 17,653.  So far they reckon they’ve managed 6,211 which is over 900 short if they continue at the current rate.

That’s 0 out of 1 so far, not a good start.

The second target is assisting people into employment – how many people have AWM helped to get a job?  Their target is to help a minimum of 4,306 people get a job and a maximum of 5,695.  They reckon they’ve helped 3,856 so far this year which is well above the maximum target (is it a good thing to exceed a maximum target?).

That’s 1 out of 2 (assuming it’s ok to exceed a maximum target), getting better.

The third target is business creation – how many businesses have AWM helped to create that have shown growth and are stil in business 12 months on?  Presumably this is last years start-ups because these are half year figures, or perhaps it’s an estimate … who knows?  It’s not really relevant anyway because their minimum target is 1,361, their maximum target is 1,799 and they’ve managed 70 (no, I didn’t miss a zero off the end).

1 out of 3 … not good.

Target number four is business support – how many businesses did AWM help to improve their performance?  They have a minimum target of 10,333 and a maximum target of 13,667.  They have achieved 3,626 so far which leaves them almost 3,100 short of their minimum target at the current rate.

Oh dear, only 1 out of 4 so far.

Their fifth target is split into two – how much public and private infrastructure investment has been used and how much brownfield land has been redeveloped.  They have minimum and maximum targets of £172m & £228m for the former and 129 & 171 hectares for the latter.  They have so far levered £52m of investment which is £68m short of their minimum target if they continue at the current rate and they have redeveloped 3 hectares of brownfield land which is 123 hectares (or over 95%) short of their minimum target if they continue at the current rate.

A rather disappointing 1 out of 5 targets hit.

Target number six is the number of people that AWM helped to develop skills.  They have a minimum target of 18,083 and a maximum of 23,917.  They have managed 9,313 so far which is 543 over their minimum target if they continue at the current rate.

So that’s 2 out of 6 targets they’ve been set by the British government that they’re on target to hit.  At the current rate they will scrape through one minimum target and exceed one maximum target which, as previously mentioned, we can only assume is a good thing.

Remember, this is the Regional Development Agency that has a taxpayer-funded annual budget of £300m but which, it claims, controls over £1bn of public money in the West Midlands.  Also remember that this is the Regional Development Agency that is to take over most of the West Midlands Regional Assembly’s powers, responsibilites and budget by 2010 when it is finally abolished.

Technorati Tags: AWM, WMRA, Incompetence

Technorati Tags: City Region, West Midlands

The CfER is headed up by Phil Davies, former Leader of Telford & Wrekin Council.  Davies was sacked a few years ago following a vote of no confidence and was parachuted into a job with a couple of Labourite regional quangos - Transport West Midlands and the West Midlands Regional Assembly – where he wouldn’t be at the mercy of voters or an elected council.

Davies campaigned with CfER for regional government in the West Midlands a few years ago when John Prescott promised referenda in every euroregion in England and then cancelled them because the North East gave the wrong answer.  He helped set up the West Midlands Constitutional Convention which wasn’t the talking shop to discuss ideas or gauge public opinion that you would expect from a Constitutional Convention but had only one stated objective – to come with ideas on how to introduce regional government in the West Midlands.

The Constitutional Convention died a death – their website hasn’t been updated for nearly four years.  The CfER website is now owned by a search engine company and the West Midlands Regional Assembly is being disbanded in 2010.  Not the kind of record that looks good on a CV!

When the CfER was first campaigning for regional government it was calling for regional government with the same powers and the Scottish Parliament.  Now they’re calling for the same powers as the London Assembly – a glorified town council.  Davies says that he wants a return to the time when English cities and counties had the same power as the Scottish Parliament like in the second half of the 20th Century – the Scottish Parliament was only created in 1997 and hadn’t existed for night on 300 years prior to that.  He cites the regionalisation found on the continent as an example of how great things would be if we were to carry out the EU’s directives on elected regional government but fails to mention that fact that no member state has a mixture of national and regional governments in place at the same time.  Can you imagine a single government for Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg) with a national government for Belgium, a national government for Luxembourg and the Netherlands broken up into regions?  Of course not, it wouldn’t be fair but that is what is being proposed for England.

I don’t know which is sadder – that abject failures like Phil Davies still manage to get themselves presented by the media as a credible source of innovation or that people like him really believe that if they write to enough newspapers promoting their regionalist agenda they’ll somehow convince the people of England that what they really want is for their country to be broken up and to be run by toothless regional governments answerable to the EU Committee of Regions.

Technorati Tags: Regionalisation, England

Technorati Tags: Press, West Midlands, Regionalisation, City Region

The West Midlands NO! Campaign warned, as far back as December 2006 [1], that the City Region had ambitions for tax raising powers.

Many “business community” leaders in the West Midlands have backed the City Region in return for a promise that they will get more of a say in decisions affecting both business and residents.

The press is today reporting that ministers are set for a collision course with this same “business community” over the possibility of the City Region having tax-raising powers! [2]

Leader of the West Midlands NO! Campaign, Stuart Parr, said “I would love to gloat and say ‘I told you so’ but this is far too serious a matter for point-scoring.  The people involved with the City Region have no intention of consulting taxpayers and are relying on the business community for support.  Hopefully the City Region will be a tax too far for West Midlands businesses – they’re our best hope for halting the progress of this expensive, toothless talking shop”.

Stuart Parr
West Midlands NO! Campaign
07973296118
http://www.westmidlandsno.org.uk

References:
[1] http://www.westmidlandsno.org.uk/wordpress/?p=77
[2] http://www.shropshirestar.com/2007/11/threat-of-new-tax-for-firms/

The West Midlands NO! Campaign is a non-partisan campaign opposed to the imposition of unaccountable, unelected, undemocratic regional government in the West Midlands.
Regionalisation has been growing throughout England, particularly in the West Midlands culminating in the proposal of a West Midlands City Region centred around Birmingham and incorporating several satellite urban areas.  The City Region has been officially named as the Birmingham, Coventry and Black Country City Region.
There is little or no support for regional government in any part of England yet the UK government and local authorities continue to cede power to unelected regional quangos without the consent of the electorate.
We believe that the introduction, extension and strengthening of regional government and quangos without the consent of the people affected is wrong and demand a public referendum on its future.
[ - ENDS - ]

Technorati Tags: West Midlands, City Region

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