MORE THAN A MATTER OF ANNIVERSARIES

The one hundredth anniversary of the start of the First World War took place on Tuesday, with the anniversary of Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war against Serbia (28^th July 1914) it largely passing unnoticed, here at least. The anniversaries of the staggered start of the war will obviously have a much higher profile over the next week. While the focus understandably will be on the events surrounding the start of the war there will also be a focus on the almost inexplicable (at least from the hindsight of our twenty first century perspective) enthusiasm with which the states and many of the peoples of Europe are perceived to have eagerly rushed to war. 

Royal Fusiliers in Mons 22nd August 1914 

The selective remembrance of anniversaries is complex business: June 28th this year marked the anniversary of the assassination in Sarajevo that started the European slide into war. August 1^st 1914 saw Germany declare war on Russia and Serbia with France mobilized on the evening of August 2nd, when Germany invaded Belgium and attacked French troops. On August 3rd, Germany declared war on France. August 4^th is a more significant date this side of the channel being the date that Britain declared war on Germany, nominally because of the invasion of Belgium. 

Even when it comes to selecting which battles to commemorate the choice will be a complex one as Mons (23^rd – 24^th August 1914) and La Cateau (26^th August 1914) were both relatively small but  largely British battles. They were followed in rapid succession by First Marne (5^th and 12^th September 1914), First Aisne (13^th September (1914-09-13) – 28^th September 1914), La Bassée (10th October – 2^nd November 1914) and First Ypres (19^th October – 22^nd November 1914) Aside for Mons, La Cateau and First Aisne much of the fighting of 1914 (on the Western Front) until Ypres involved mostly French and Belgian troops attempting to hold off the German Armies.

Britain's involvement (aside from at sea) was initially limited to its small regular army and the Territorial Army. The larger British army’s of popular memory never emerged until 1915 and 1916 (conscription came after two years of war). One result of the brutal and sustained fighting of the autumn and early winter of 1914 was that the precision instrument that was the regular army almost ceased to exist. The grim battles of Flanders halted the German advance short of the Channel Ports and Picardy and established the trench line that became the Western Front, which existed from the winter of 1914/1915 until the spring of 1918. 

Then (as now) when a war is underway then understandably (and rightly) our service personnel, their families (and subsequently our veterans) are very much in the public eye. During the last decade successive Westminster governments have worked hard to ensure that our service personnel have had a much higher profile, making use of various important anniversaries of previous conflicts, sporting occasions and regularly promoting armed forces day. As we slowly approach the one hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, and another cycle of poignant anniversaries we may expect more of the same.

Yet as the direct involvement of UK service personnel in the cycle of Blair’s wars begins to wind down we should remember how Westminster (with the honourable exception of the 1945 Labour Government) has treated our war veterans after previous war’s ended and faded into memory. We all need to work to ensure that never again does a Westminster Government makes the decision that dead heroes are cheaper and less trouble to maintain than live ones.

MEANWHILE OVER THE BRIDGE...

Interestingly enough, while Labour has problems with devolution in Wales, it is beginning to look like this is not the case over the bridge. In England, Labour has promised English cities more powers over transport, housing and employment to help close the "productivity gap" with London. If elected at the next Westminster General election, the Labour Party has pledged to hand £20 billion pounds to councils to spend on skills, back-to-work schemes and infrastructure, so says current Labour leader Ed Miliband. Ed has suggested that the Con Dem government has missed opportunities to give English towns and cities the economic levers they needed to generate new jobs. This announcement followed a review by the former Transport Secretary Lord Adonis, a future Labour government would invite every local authority, local enterprise partnership and university (in England) to work together in partnership with local businesses to bid for resources. Apparently the doubling of existing devolved funding would amount to the "biggest devolution of powers to towns and cities in a hundred years." Perhaps the party formerly known as New Labour is finally beginning to speak for England. 

SIZE MATTERS

It is an inescapable fact that Wales is a small relatively rugged country, now this is not a problem it is a virtue, a positive and should work to our advantage in so many ways. Our local government structure should also reflect this ensuring that services are delivered as locally as possible – it clearly does not do this. As a small country what might work better, judging by the experience of other small countries e.g. Norway Slovenia, etc) would be to focus primarily on having efficient small district level councils rather than the creation (or recreation) of ever larger artificial local government structures.

If we accept that the highly politicised 1992 reorganisation has not worked, then making the local government units bigger (again) won’t help things much. A real opportunity to take out an entire tier of local government has been missed. On a very basic level we need to actually work out exactly what we want local government to actually do and what services we want or don’t want it to provide. Once that has been done then we can move on to address the fundamental problem of local democracy and local accountability for decisions made.

Simply tweaking a local government structure, that is nineteenth century at heart, just won't do. Our existing local government structure is badly funded and barely democratic combing a dreadfully low turnout with the local peculiarities of the first past the post electoral system and a real remoteness from local people. If when the dust settles we end up with 5, 8, 10 or 12 new local authorities the only certainty is that a real opportunity will have been missed to reshape local government in a meaningful way and to make it democratically accountable to local people.

Take Housing, or more specifically Housing development, this has always and probably will remain for the foreseeable future at least a contentious issue. At heart of the problem lies the fundamentally flawed local government LDP (Local Development Plan) many of whom focus on maximizing the amount of housing that can be constructed, regardless of actual local demand for housing.   In the South East and the North East, planning for housing is influenced by cross border pressures (and demands) from the Merseyside conurbation and greater Bristol.

House prices in the southeast and the north east of Wales are also affected by higher house prices across the border, which in close conjunction with perceived lower house prices this side of the border increase pressure for development. Over-development is now a key issue (in south east this is very true along the Gwent levels and in and around the Wrecsam in the north east). Local authorities seek to cash in by maximizing the amount of housing constructed, well beyond the ability of local infrastructure to cope with increased demands and devouring our green spaces.

The LDP and the UDP (Unitary Development Plan) have reached the point where, much like the structure of our local government, they are no longer fit for purpose. The National  Assembly has pretty much been reasonably comfortable with the current local government and planning set up and has failed to exercise any meaningful overview or to be honest (save for between 2007 and 2011) actually realistically plan the development of our country. The proposed reform of local government is on a fundamental level little more of a tweak rather than much needed root and branch reform.

On a local, regional and a national level we have serious issues with planning and the provision of services, something which fundamentally affects almost every aspect of public service provision. Whether we are talking about our NHS, our education system, our emergency services, our public transport or infrastructure projects we need to develop a detailed and comprehensive planning system that takes into account local needs, local demands, our national interests and on a basic level our geography. Simply trying to make the flawed Anglo-Saxon model, whether in education, the NHS or in other areas apply to a fundamentally small country is clearly not working.

At the heart of the proposed local government reform, is a fundamental failure to bring in Single transferable Vote (STV) as is used in Northern Ireland and Scotland, to make every vote count and our local authorities democratically accountable. People don’t vote for a variety of reason, a lack of political choice, a lack of any real alternatives and perceived enshrined one party dominance (a problem that affects significant portions of local government in our country).

Now while history tends not to repeat itself, simular circumstances often arise and the same mistakes can be made. This times around despite devolution things may not be that different,  the reform of local government in 1992 was highly politicised, pushed through by a Westminster based Conservative government, for its own reasons. This  time around the failure to reform our local government may have more to do with efforts to enshrine or preserve Labour dominance in the new structures than anything else – oh how things change... 

PURE COINCIDENCE?

House building (PA)

History apparently does not repeat itself, but, very occasionally simular events and simular circumstances can arise. Back in 1997, early the first term of the then pre Iraq Blair government, there was extensive lobbying form the building trade to weaken the pre-election pledge to make homes more energy and more thermally efficient. 

Ironically this is something that would have over the longer term have saved all of us money and potentially reduced our energy bills. This decision it is worth noting was taken during a period of relatively cheap energy. Following the successful lobby from the building trade the energy efficiency measures were quietly watered down to the point of ineffectiveness.

Now some 15 years later, by way of coincidence, the Labour in Wales Government (in Cardiff Bay) following another successful lobby campaign from the building industry has followed in Blair government’s footsteps. They have managed to achieve some drasticreductions in proposed new home energy efficiency targets - something that may marginally benefit the house builders but won’t benefit the rest of us. Basically the Labour in Wales government, planned to introduce building regulations which would have required 40% carbon emissions savings, this target has been reduced to 8%.

Housing Minister Carl Sargeant, under severe pressure from housing developers, who had warned the tougher regulations were making it uneconomic to build homes in much of Wales, has thrown in the towel. His decision benefits the House builders in the short term, but, future house owners will lose out as result of having less energy efficient houses in a time of ever expensive energy bills. This decision at the end of the day is about ring fencing in the short term the profits of the house builders at the longer term expense of the house buyers. 

WHAT PRICE DEVELOPMENT?

Protest Camp in flames (Associated Press)

Myanmar (Burma) may be slowly moving towards democracy, but, other issues are yet to be resolved. Once important issue that is still to be resolved (not just in Myanmar) is the age old one of the relationship between who owns land, who lives on it and what other people (and governments) want to do with it.

Police have used water cannon and tear gas to break up protests against the development of a vast Chinese-backed copper mine in the north-west. Riot police used water cannons, tear gas and smoke bombs to break up the 11-day occupation of the Letpadaung copper mine, wounding dozens of villagers and Buddhist monks. Protesters said dozens were injured and that their  camps were set alight in Monywa town. Local farmers, monks and activists have been protesting against what they say are forced evictions to allow for the expansion of the mine, Burma's largest.

Aung San Suu Kyi (the Opposition leader) has visited the area to meet protesters and wants to mediate a settlement.  Protests by local farmers started last June when they say they  were forced to accept a deal (two years ago) which meant that they gave up their land in exchange for new housing and financial compensation. The mine is jointly owned by the Myanmar military and the Chinese arms manufacturer Norinco. The mine company has stated that the deal was voluntary, and that only a small minority of farmers rejected it. The expansion mine's billion-dollar expansion project covers several thousand hectares of land in Burma's Sagaing region.

When it comes to development, for natural resources, including minerals and food production or housing and sustainable energy developments (in Wales, Europe and across the world) there is a growing problem with finding the balance between economic development, the environment, job creation and the impact of development on local communities.  In the developing or the developed world the bottom line has to be that that local people should have a significant say or even control over the development process and any community should benefit from the development (or exploitation) of local resources.

A GOVERNANCE OF SPIVS...

The Westminster government is promising (in England) to get planning officers "off people's backs" with a relaxation of current rules. In true Spiv fashion ‘ for a limited period, people will be allowed to build larger extensions on houses (up to eight metres for detached homes and six for others). Shops and offices will also be able grow to the edges of their premises as Plan A (harsh Public Sector Cuts) fails and a note of desperation creeps in Westminster ministers seek to boost the economy.

On the surface it sounds good; it seems reasonable, save for the fact that somewhere amidst the smoke and mirrors is a plan to reduce developer’s obligations to build proportional amounts of affordable housing. Not that long ago, a matter of a few months, the Westminster government rewrote the entire planning framework (for England) despite some fierce resistance from countryside campaigners. Now Westminster ministers want further changes to planning rules (in England) in an attempt to boost house-building and revive the economy.

Meanwhile this side of the bridge a major change in planning rules in Wales aims to ‘tilt the balance in favour of economic growth over the environment and social factors’. This decision may be aimed quite specifically at overturning those few occasions when our Local Authorities have rejected some developments (often at the behest of local residents) rather than putting economic needs ahead of economic and environmental benefits.

The Labour in Wales run Welsh government will formally announce this controversial move sometime next month. The problem lies not with the planning system, which is far too weak, and has proved itself to be more than capable of blatantly ignoring expressed local concerns, with few real consequences for the decision makers. Any meaningful supervision of the planning process by the Welsh Assembly Government has proved to be pretty minimal.

Quietly in Westminster we are moving towards having ‘a Government of Spivs, by Spivs and for Spivs’. The rules and regulations are blamed for the lack of economic growth rather than it being a direct consequence of the banking crash, the bankers recklessness and years of allowing the so called ‘free market’ to drive economic policy and economic planning. Oddly enough, overregulation and red tape did not cause the financial crash – the banks did.

Poor regulation, stupidity and greed and a desire by Government’s (of all political hues) to look the other way as long as things appeared (on the surface at least) to be working all contributed. Now here in Wales, our local authorities, certainly not the best guardian of the public interest and our environment have been bluntly told, by the Welsh Government, that they should recognise that ‘there will be occasions when the economic benefits will outweigh social and environmental considerations’.

Tell that to the residents of Torfaen, who have been fighting the plan and the good citizens of Abergavenny who have been fighting to retain the livestock market in the town. Or perhaps the concerned residents of Carmarthen who are worried about the impact of over large housing developments or the concerned residents of Holyhead who are opposed to new marina development. All these people (and all of us) have been ill-served by the planning system, by our local authorities and our own Government in Cardiff – why should we expect the Westminster Government to be any different...