While looking out of the window at the sun shining down on the blue waters of the Teign and the Exe estuaries it was hard to believe that the rest of the country was grinding to a halt.
Yet the train manager on my London bound service asked if any passengers with laptop internet access could update him on what was happening! Presumably this was to inform the driver of what conditions lay ahead and what time we could expect to arrive in Paddington.
Monday morning’s snow induced transport chaos in the capital and the South East prompted the office of the new Managing Director of First Great Western to phone mine wanting to know if I was going to be delayed for our meeting that afternoon.
They should know, was our response, as I was on one of his trains!
In the end the journey took 15 minutes longer than normal. The train was only a few minutes late because it made a couple of unscheduled stops to pick up passengers whose services had been cancelled, and I struck lucky with the tube trains that were running.
I met with the new MD Mark Hopwood on time and was able to congratulate his company for doing their best on a very difficult day. Other train operators cancelled far more services than FGW.
We discussed the ongoing problems of obtaining more rolling stock, how to protect our links with the capital and even increase the number of services between Torbay and London, and the desirability of seeing rail electrification across all main lines and the likelihood of better capacity at Reading to reduce delays to and from the west country.
There is some good news likely on rolling stock over the next few years and on the number of services FGW might offer across South Devon and I shall continue to lobby the Government on removing the barriers to improved services for the area.
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I was actually rather impressed with a ministerial reply to a written parliamentary question I tabled the other week.
While I have no doubt that Torbay’s small unitary authority has the desire and will to face the challenges that confront it, I am concerned that we lack the capacity to make an impact on child poverty.
I asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what factors the Government has identified as the main causes of child poverty.
The reply contained a number of factors that some might say are obvious, but it was good to see a Government response encapsulating the problem in one coherent paragraph.
The Minister said that children raised in workless households are at a far greater risk of poverty than those in working households. Other causes of child poverty are a lack of skills and educational qualifications, parents or children with a disability or poor health, low aspirations and living in deprived communities and communities with higher crime rates.
These are the factors that ought to drive local responses to reducing child poverty.
While Torbay as a whole has a below national average crime rate there are parts of the bay where we share all of the ingredients for high numbers of children living in poverty.
Torbay was losing jobs even before the economic downturn became official and we will inevitably see a further rise in child poverty unless we can turn the tide and keep people in work.
Part of the answer is what I wrote last time. Torbay’s priorities ought to be to improve our transport links to help diversify the economy in order to attract higher value jobs, constantly improve our education and training offer to attract higher quality investment into the local economy, and ensure the supply of secure affordable housing.
The Government has set a target of 2020 for the eradication of child poverty. In my opinion this is not ambitious enough for the world’s fifth largest economy as it condemns an entire generation of children to remain in poverty.
Even without the current recession delaying progress towards the Government’s target none of these things are possible without committed political leadership locally and coordinated Government effort across the tax, benefits, education/skills and local government sectors nationally.
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Peers who break the rules and the law should be expelled from the House of Lords.
It cannot be right that there is one rule for the vast majority of us, and another for Lords.
Local Councillors couldn't get away with 'bending the rules', or breaching codes of conduct, because they are subject to legislation. Guess who passed this legislation over them. Members of the House of Commons and House of Lords, that’s who.
Every elected Councillor in the country signs up to the Local Government Code of Conduct 2007 on their election.
The Code of Conduct covers areas of individual behaviour such as members’ not abusing their position or not misusing their authority's resources.
In addition, there are rules governing disclosure of interest and withdrawal from meetings where members have relevant interests.
Members are also required to record their financial and other interests. If they breach this they face being reported to the Standards Board for England, and the ultimate sanction if a complaint is upheld, is to be removed from public office.
I think its right that elected members are subject to these rules, although the Standards Board outside of Torbay has had some flack in the past for acting too zealously.
But compare this to sanctions to legislators on the House of Lords: they cannot ever be removed even if they break the law!
It’s crazy. MPs, and Lords should be subject to the same level of scrutiny and probity as local councillors.
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