The Euro Election, the Stapleford South East ward election and a Borough Election footnote...

I cast my postal vote today in the Euro Election. I have been in the habit of spoiling my Euro Election ballot paper because I believe the Party List system is undemocratic. Take the East Midlands. Five names per party, so if a party gets c.40% they get two MEPs and the top two names listed by the Party are elected. Voters have no say in who is elected and it is unnecessarily complicated! I would amend the system to give me five votes for named individuals instead of one vote for a Party, so I might vote 3 Labour and 2 Greens and Labour might get 30% of the votes and the Greens 20%. Labour would get at least 2 MEPs who would be the candidates who got the most votes - NOT necessarily the Party’s choices. 

The Labour Party continues to flounder when it comes to Europe despite saying quite clearly ‘Labour accepts the Referendum result’. It is split just like the Conservatives. We are either in or out. We can leave soft or we can leave hard. If we leave I’d like it to be ‘soft’, with as little disruption as possible but, like it or not, the Euro Election on the 23rd is, in effect, going to be ‘The People’s Vote’ / 2nd referendum but not a ‘Confirmatory vote’ because no one knows, as at today, what the terms of our leaving are going to be! So, if you want to leave you’ll vote Brexit or UKIP. If you want to stay**, you’ll vote Change UK, Liberal or Green and I have cast my postal vote for the latter today. Voters and the media will aggregate these votes and ignore what Conservative and Labour votes there are (though it could be argued both are in the leave camp). I suspect the two right-wing nationalist Parties will carry the day. There is still a lot of anger out there. In other words we have to hope Labour can, after weeks of negotiations with May, deliver a soft Brexit.

**Outside England there will be other remain parties to vote for and if Scotland votes decisively different to England then independence will be back on the agenda big time (I would be an independence voter if I was in Scotland).

I want to stay in the EU but in the absence of a majority of votes for the three pro-EU political parties  on 23rd May then the arguments for another EU vote of any kind will be dead. This is a mess of Parliament’s making and the confrontational politics of first past the post (FTP)... 

...and please please don’t pretend we have a coalition government now. What we have is a mess and far too many MPs who are craven.

I have no idea of what is going to happen in the delayed Stapleford South East Ward Borough Election on 13th June, but in 2015 all the Parties were close.* Anna Soubry claims it is between the Conservatives and Liberals. The national scene is so unpredictable that any last minute event could tip the result regardless of how much effort local councillors and activists put in. One thing is certain. The Conservatives have to be defeated make life easier for Labour and the Liberals to run Broxtowe Borough Council.

*Highest votes for each Party in 2015:

836 – Conservatives
781 – Labour
672 – Liberal

Given the Liberals performance in the nearby wards of  Beeston North and Bramcote in the Borough Elections on 2nd May just gone they must fancy their chances. 

The voters in Stapleford South East ward are going to be get the attention of national politicos and the media for sure, and with the closing date for nominations being this coming Thursday 16th May, what other political parties and groups will be putting up candidates? We will know soon enough.

It may be that a outsider will take it. I doubt if Broxtowe has had a ward election like this one in its history.

Finally, the few who visit my blog will know that I believe with increasing numbers of houses being occupied by students comes declining electoral rolls. I call it 'Lentonisation' because this was certainly the case in neighbouring Lenton, where the number of city councillors representing the are has fallen from 4 to 3 in the latest ward boundary review, and I have made the same prediction for Beeston. I was fully expecting to see a decline in registered voters and as the table below shows it hasn't happened — yet.

I stand by my prediction. It took Lenton a good 25 years to change out of all recognition population-wise as more and more owner-occupier families sold to private landlords and house prices escalated beyond the reach of families and other would be Lenton residents.

For now the Beeston ward totals show that only in Rylands have voter numbers decreased, then by only 26 votes. 

The Local Government Boundary Commission for England at the time of their Broxtowe ward boundary review in 2013 estimated the number of voters by ward and I have included their estimates in the final column (in italics). Both Central and North ward are well over the LGBCE estimate and I suspect this is student related. New housing developments add to the totals but these have yet to materialise on a large scale. There is Broadgate and the old fire/bus station site in the pipeline.

I hope I am around in 2023 to see what has happened by then.

No sign of Change in Broxtowe Borough Council elections

Change UK, the new political party of which Anna Soubry is a member, is fielding no candidates in the Broxtowe Borough Council elections  (click here to see full list of candidates ward by ward) whilst already announcing that it will contest the European Parliament election a few weeks after the local elections n 2 May, should they take place.

Of course we could crash out of the EU at 11pm this Friday, despite Parliament voting heavily against a ‘no deal’ Brexit. If we don’t, then taking part in the EU elections has to be taken as more likely than not.

Change UK’s failure to contest any council seats/wards tells us that they are no better than a vanity exercise. They have, it seems, invited individuals to nominate themselves to be potential Change UK candidates in the EU election. There was no such invite in Broxtowe for the Borough elections or have I missed something?

If there is a snap General Election then Ms Soubry will be depending on the media to do her campaigning and on the one free postal delivery she will get. It may be enough to get her re-elected once but even in the age of a Facebook and Twitter political parties need local organisation and foot soldiers. In the absence of any Broxtowe Borough Council election candidates Ms Soubry clearly has neither a local organisation or foot soldiers.

There are two factors which may impact on the Beeston wards. The first is the fact that many of the students who have registered to vote will be absent because the local election is happening during the University’s Easter break, and the other is Brexit. Will those who want to leave the EU desert the Liberal candidates in Beeston wards and others across Broxtowe? I suspect the answer to this question is no. Voters, in my experience, have the savvy to distinguish between local and national, even if, at times, they use local elections to punish national governments/parties they have come to dislike.

Finally, there is the need for those who vote in person to have one/two forms of personal ID with them when they go to vote. Without it they will be unable to vote. Spending all day as I will be on the Beeston Fields Recreation Ground poling station as a teller for the Labour Party (ie. collecting polling card numbers from those willing to share them as they enter or leave the polling station). I will be recording how many are unable to vote (assuming they are willing to share this information). Asking would-be voters for ID is, based on years of experience, as unnecessary and I see it as an attack upon democracy by Conservative politicians both nationally and in Broxtowe.

Of one thing I am sure  - that what happens across Broxtowe on 2 May is far from predictable. I can’t remember local elections quite like this in all the 60 years that I have been active. There is also a possibility that there will be a General Election in May if Theresa May is forced to go.

Beeston Fields Pocket News comes to Central Avenue

Well, sooner than I thought, I have the first copies of my very own Beeston Fields Pocket News in four of the shops on Central Avenue in Beeston Fields. I am printing 100 copies to see how it goes, but the initial response has been good.

I was asked "Is this the size?" and I have to agree it is different. A sheet of A5 landscape paper folded in half to create a four sided A6 newsletter. Below is the front and back pages of Beeston Fields Pocket News No.1. In the middle (pages 2–3) is my Beeston Fields map (see my last post).

It is, in some ways, a take on my Beeston map which will be 5 years old this year. The catchline 'Open here to activate' will be familar. With the space I have I can't say much, but I have created it to be easily readable and, I hope, fun. The next issue, which I hope will be in June, will have a local history feel to it.

Right now enjoy this exclusive look at pocket news Beeston Fields style...

Beeston’s forgotten Fields Estate

Click on the map to enlarge.

I am in no doubt that the Beeston Fields (Garden City) Council Estate is the poor relation of Beeston, almost forgotten between three main roads and the town's centre.

To to its east, on either side of Woodside Road is Nottingham City Council's Lenton Abbey Council Estate, also a 'garden city estate' dating from the 1920s. The two estates are barely distinguishable, the housing looks the same unless you look closely. Parts of the estate has a real 'arts and crafts' feel about it. At a first glance these house are the same as houses on the Lenton Abbey estate but there are differences. I will add a picture from the Lenton Abbey side in a couple of days and then you can look for the differences without any help from me.

For the records the boundary between the Nottingham and Broxtowe councils is Tottlebrook, long gone and now culverted beneath Woodside Road but once open for all going along Brook Road to see and evidence of this fact still exists for those who care to look close enough:

This is where Tottlebrook passes under Brook Road, which almost certainly takes its name from Tottlebrook. Not a trace of the brook remains, no signs mark that is a boundary point between two councils. I took the picture looking east towards Woodside Road. The houses in the background are on Woodside Road, part of the Lenton Abbey estate, in Nottingham.

I live on the Beeston Fields estate, albeit a detached corner built on infill land left isolated by the fact that Central Avenue should have originally been between the Derby and Wollaton roads, but the Wollaton Road Allotments were in the way and fought off the building of the road. This is a story, if already told has been lost. It is clearly part of local memory because I have heard variations of the same story several times.

I am a regular visitor to the parade of shops on Central Avenue, where its small sub-post office is open every day as it the relatively new DoughMother bakery. A good few of the shops have been in business for a very long time and all are occupied although not all open at the same time.

I also deliver for the Labour Party and, with elections coming up, there is more to do than usual and, somehow, I spot things which have previously gone unnoticed by me, such as the remains of the Brook Road / Tottlebrook bridge. Another thing was this pink littler bin at the junction of the Boundary and Brook roads.

Below is a view of the triangular open space which is part of Abbey Court. I suspect that 'Abbey' reference relates to Lenton Abbey, then probably the house and not the council estate which is separated from Beeston Fields by Tottlebrook. Something to research at sme point.

I chose the word 'forgotten' to describe the Beeston Fields estate because of this public noticeboard in front of the Central Avenue shops at the Dennis Avenue end. It is as good as empty and which I take as a measure of the interest shown by the estate's present councillors. Knowing the two Labour Party candidates for Beeston North ward (which includes Beeston Fields), Jennifer Birkett and Javed Iqbal, as I do this notice board won't be empty for long once they become our councillors.

Anyone who reads The Beestonian, the town's free alternative street magazine, may have read about DoughMother which I have got in the habit of visiting most weeks. Click here for link to Beestonian story.

Here is a picture from inside DoughMother with its owners, Alican (2nd left) and Houlia (3rd Left) and Labour's Jennifer Birkett and Javed Iqbal. The welcome is always warm and friendly and there are a number of tables where you can sit and eat.

The leek pasties I take home to eat on their own or with a small cous cous salad of small tomatos, peppers, peas and celery, with beetroot on the side (I usually eat a chocolate brownie in DoughMother with a lovely cup of black coffee. I hold a bite size piece of the brownie in my mouth and let it melt as the coffee washes over it — never have two things ever been so made from one another if exclude your true loves).

And whilst I'm talking about food I should mention Cob Central at the south end of the Central Avenue shopping parade, where the owner, Michelle, has been doing café fare since just before Christmas. I call in whenever we fancy a bacon cob. Michelle is always generous and at £1.50 for a large cob she offers the best value I know. She also does lunchtime meals like egg/sausage/beans/chips in a range of combinations. I took this pic of Michelle on my last visit and those are our bacon cobs she is holding!

I have written about Beeston Fields Recreation Ground before and make no apology for doing so again. I feel passionate about green spaces like this and pocket parks, and can trace my love of them back to my childhood. For 35 years we lived in a house overlooking Lenton Recreation Ground in Nottingham, also with a bowling green. It helped me lose 6 stone because it had a footpath all the way around it and that is the only thing missing from this lovely neighbourhood park — a path which goes all the way around. My Beeston Fields spider map at the beginning of this post marks the 'missing footpath'.

This is where we need to path, along the west, north and east edges of the park. At a distant it looks perfect...

..but close up you can see why we need a path. The grass has gone in places and if the ground is anything but dry it sticks to your shoes. Once the election is over and we have elected Jennifer and Javed as our new Beeston North ward councillors I plan to work with them to help establish a Beeston Fields Recreation Ground Friends / Support Group open to all park users.

Finally a reminder that at the south end of Central Avenue there is a modern health centre and a pharmacy. The house numbers at this end of Central Avenue provide tangible evidence that the avenue's southern end was not intended to be here.

I will return to Beeston Fields again before very long when my map has been incorporated into a postcard promoting the shops on Central Avenue.

Finally, an insight into how Broxtowe Borough Council regard Beeston Fields. They see its greens as a dumping ground for repair equipment and the like and we are all polite that we let them. A few weeks ago Wollaton Crescent was one of the Council's chosen dumping grounds. The company invloved did knock on our doors and told us what they were doing and full credit to them for that but as nice as they are the damage to the grass will take a long time to disappear...

...whilst on Dennis Avenue right now there is yet more equipment. I admit to not having an answer to the problem in the absence of residents being pro-active themselves and turning these garden city green spaces into mini-meadows or some other kind of communal space.

All this has prompted me to think about publishing my own Beeston Fields newsletter of sorts. Watch this space...

Broxtowe Borough Council elections. 1973–2019 What do they tell us?

Click on table to enlarge. 

Labour has only only won outright control of Broxtowe Borough Council twice (in 1995 and 1999). The Conservatives have won outright control 7 times and there have been 3 elections where no party has won outright control.

The Liberals did not have any councillors prior to 1987 but if their aim was to achieve a balance of power rather than outright control then they have been more successful than Labour.

The 1983 elections were muddied by the presence of SDP candidates who split the left vote to the advantage of the conservatives (their most councillors ever — 38).

The 2019 election on 2 May may see the intervention of candidates standing as 'Independents' supporting Anna Soubry and the breakaway 'Tiggies' (The Independent Group) and it would be foolhardy to try and predict the outcome of such a intervention.

Logic says Anna Soubry needs to create a grassroots organisation across the constituency if she wants to hold onto her seat for more than one general election. When better to road test it than in May’s borough elections.

We can all play around with statistics, but something special will have to happen in the next six weeks for Labour to take control of Broxtowe Borough Council. Perhaps, just perhaps, Anna Soubry fielding candidates might just split the Conservative vote enough for Labour to win — but this is assuming no Labour voters are tempted to vote Tiggy if they get the opportunity.

In the meantime all Labour can do is to motivate its supporters to vote whilst not making a lot of noise in the process. Ideally, Labour wants Conservative and Liberal supporters to fall asleep on 1st May and not wake up until 3rd May!

Council Tax exempt student housing in Beeston map now showing numbers

The earlier map just showed locations and not how many properties at that location as defined by the postcode. These are overwhelmingly in Beeston.

I have now entered a number in the postcode pin on the map and entered an explanation on the map itself. The map is a good guide and I make no other claim for it. Six months from now the number will have increased as private landlords buy up more houses in Beeston to let to students, given the continuing restrictions in Nottingham. My aim over the last few years has been to demonstrate that you can map what is happening. At 70 I stopped doing committees and at 75 in a few weeks time I will let others worry about Beeston as I move onto more personal interests. I will help if asked but my self-volunteering days are really coming to an end after 60 years!

I do not doubt for one moment that the Lentonisation of Beeston continues apace. 

I also believe Broxtowe Borough Council should work closely with students and other young people needing housing in the Borough to develop innovative housing schemes, which the young tenants would co-manage with others, ideally funding by a levy on landlords equal in value to any council tax exemptions they receive for existing properties. This money could be used to help secure funding to build housing in partnership with students and other young people. The way the present council tax exemption system works just means extra unearned income for landlords. Decent homes for all trump landlord profits.

Click on the map to enlarge:

Mapping Council Tax Exempt student property in the Broxtowe Borough Counccil area

The six maps below have been created using data listing 567 properties I received from Broxtowe Borough Council today. I will add comparative data in a few days.

If I can create these maps (and the earlier Beeston HMO Map below) with my very limited I.T. skills then it should be easy enough for others to do it better than me. For now I publish my maps without comment (click on a map to enlarge):

At best the data has to be taken as a guide and needs more attention than I can presently give it. Compare the map of Beeston council tax exemption properties above with the map of Beeston HMOs below. Broadgate (pin showing 10) and Low Road (pin showing 14) in particular. This may a case of where multiple entries for the same postcode do not show up on the council tax exempt map — in other words my council tax exempt property map for Beeston should have more 'pins' than it does.