How projects like The Tram and HS2 turn politicians into chameleons and vultures

The following quote is from a news item in Anna Soubry's e-newsletter dated 5 November 2016:

Beeston’s Central College set to close

Central College has announced that their Beeston site will close after 2020. I met the Chief Executive John van de Laarschot yesterday; he said the plan is to cut costs by reducing the number of campuses and instead build a new £50 million College in Nottingham. 

I am far from convinced this is a good idea. 500 students use Beeston College and whilst I accept the buildings at the rear are in poor condition, the front is modern and attractive - and it has its own tram stop. The closure will be yet another blow for Chilwell High Road. I am very concerned that yet again, the City is taking precedence over areas like Broxtowe.

Now  a quote and link to a page on Anna Soubry's website headed 'HS2 in Broxtowe':

Anna Soubry has welcomed plans to place the HS2 East Midlands hub at Toton Sidings. But the planned line will cause disruption to a small number of houses in Broxtowe, some of which will have to be demolished. There is also real concern about the affect on the environment at  Strelley Village, Nuthall and Trowell. Anna Soubry is committed to getting the best deal for those affected by HS2.

The impact of the tram on parts of Beeston and Chilwell is pretty much as Anna Soubry sees it, especially when she writes 'I am very concerned yet again (that) the City is taking precedence over areas like Broxtowe'.

Personally, I would prefer existing railway lines electrified and modernised so that there can be more, faster, trains to cities like London, Birmingham and Manchester instead of wasting billions on HS2. Another argument used by opponents of HS2 is that the this new high-speed line is all about sucking more business and jobs into London. Those who support HS2 are of the view that if HS2 is good for London, then, by default, it is good for the rest of England too, especially the Midlands.

Downscale these arguments and replace 'HS2' with the Nottingham–Chilwell 'Tram extension' and you have much the same scenario and arguments. The Tram has not gentrified or improved things for Bulwell or Hyson Green in twelve years and, as yet, it has done nothing of note for Beeston or Chilwell — a fact which Anna Soubry recognises. In her own words 'The City is taking precedence'. She could be talking about London and HS2. In fact she probably, albeit unknowingly, is!

I will be long gone come 2036 when the occasional HS2 train stops at the Derby-Nottingham (or Nottingham-Derby) HS Station at Toton, but I have learnt enough in my 72 years to know that Anna Soubry's successor in Parliament (if she is not Mother of the House by then) will also be complaining that 'The City is taking precedence'.

Central College is doing what is expected of it in a society where education has been commercialised and serves the interests of business before the students it is meant to be helping to educate. It is as simple as that. The financial and logistical problem the college is trying to address is one created by Parliament and all three main political parties in England.

I can imagine local Conservative, Labour and Liberal councillors on Broxtowe Borough Council saying much the same thing as Anna Soubry. Political elites in 2016 are like chameleons, they morph colour to please whoever it is they want to please on any particular day. They share policies like vultures share a corpse.

An educated population with access to decent public services and housing should be the No.1 priority.

FOOTNOTE. The new runway at Heathrow Airport also comes to mind. The vision offered  bears little resemblance to the awful reality it will bring about, if you consider the negative impact it will have on the environment, public services and public expenditure.

The coming transport war in Beeston

My title may be a little misleading. Perhaps the war between buses and the tram in Beeston has already begun. Within the next few weeks the first trams may be weaving their way through Beeston, albeit at night and with a police escort. Then they will appear during the day, until we reach the point where, all tests and safety checks completed, they are ready to carry their first passengers.

Then we will all clamber aboard and enjoy the thrill and comfort of gliding along Beeston streets and going into the city along a route which offers new vistas. I will be there with thousands of others and I, like many, am excited by the thought of that first ride into the city centre. There will be others, and at times it will be very convenient, especially if and when I have to visit the QMC Treatment Centre, but most of the time I will continue to use Beeston buses.

To use a phrase I first used in 2013, buses have 'more stops than the tram' and, assuming the Toton Lane park & ride car park is as successful as others along the line of the tram, seats will be few by the time it reaches Beeston and it will be the same in the opposite direction coming from the city centre. This fact alone will prompt many to stay with the buses.

We should remember that the tram has been running through Bulwell for over ten years and local bus routes to and from the city centre continue to run frequently every day of the week. The tram has not flattened the competition. I can even go to Hucknall on a Trent-Barton bus every day and, what's more, in drops me off in the town's Market Square.

By the time many of the first Beeston tram users add on the extra distance they will walk to reach a tram stop and then the extra distance they will walk when they get off, combined with the fact that they may have to stand all the way, they will return to travelling by bus.

The tram will take 20 minutes to travel between Beeston and Nottingham railway station and another 7 minutes to the Theatre Royal. Even on present bus timetables, a 36 or a Y36 will take about 23 minutes for the same journey — in other words the bus will remain just as quick and, if the Toton Lane car park is as successful as others, traffic along the Derby Road should reduce (for a while at least). In other words the bus will remain as convenient for many with the added bonus of having a seat.

Back in the days when the tram was first mooted I argued for a trolleybus network instead (for the same money we could have had a network four times as large), but the then Leader of the City Council, who was a great tram champion said 'Bob, trams are sexy' adding that all surveys showed that more motorists would give up their car to ride on a tram than a bus.

In the event, as much as I love trolleybuses, I was wrong. Trolleybuses are history. They have been overtaken by modern bus technology, not just electric battery buses, but induction systems and 'hybrid' buses using a mix of advanced power technologies.

On street trams in Nottingham will eventually go the same way as trolleybuses and earlier tram systems. Maintenance and replacement costs will be the reason why, along with changing transport technology. Add to this how the tram system is brought to a standstill every time there is an accident or a technical problem and the fact that it is the bus which comes to the rescue and you do not have to be clever to see what fate has in store for the tram. It might be twenty years away, but it will happen!

10-15 years from now we will have driverless cars and buses which can compete with the tram for smoothness of ride and comfort. In Poland, this is beginning to happen (see Buses magazine, March 2015) and the tram may actually make it easier to bring back 'bendy-buses' (remember them). Add to this improved road surfaces and we will soon have streets along which buses will glide as easily as any tram.

The tram and bus in Beeston will soon be at war because they are in commercial competition with one another. Of course the tram will take passengers and money away from the buses, at first, but there will be new opportunities. For the moment Nottingham City Transport and Your Bus are holding their fire and as for Trent-Barton we will have to see what strategy their parent company, Wellglade, have because they also own a stake in the tram.

For my part, I will continue to catch a little L10 on Wollaton Road to the Victoria Centre. It takes 8 minutes longer than a bus from Beeston Bus Station, but it is just a minute from my front door whilst it takes me 10 minutes to walk to the Bus Station.

Many other Beeston residents will be doing the same as me and, perhaps, just perhaps, we will soon have a bus along Wollaton Road and Dennis Avenue which goes along Derby Road to the QMC and city centre, just like the old NCT No.11 (which used to run onto St Anns). The increasing number of students living in the area may help (see my last post).

As for Beeston town centre, I think there has been a lot of hype to date and in a future post I will explain why.

Welcome to Beeston Week

I began shopping in Beeston on a regular basis in 1996 when my wife Susan became the first client of Caritas, which was then (and still is) located above Manor Pharmacy on Chilwell Road. Soon there were other reasons to come, as friends downsized from Lenton and made their new homes in Beeston.

We made up our minds a long time ago to follow them, but aged cats delayed us, then illness, so it was not until December 2013 that we finally put our Victorian house in Lenton up for sale, but because of new planning restrictions in Nottingham, it took until Easter to find a buyer and it was not until May 2014 that we found a lovely little house in a quiet cul-de-sac on the edge of Beeston town centre.

On 21 November (seven days ago) we actually moved to Beeston and after seven days it already feels like home - each time I go into the town centre I meet people I know — it's that kind of place — and it reminds me of the Lenton in the 1980s before the students began to take over every available house.

Devonshire Promenade in Lenton with its twenty-three houses, off Derby Road and beside the recreation ground, was in the eighties a real mix of families, academics and older Lentonians. Local Conservatives called it 'Little Moscow' on account of the number of Labour councillors living there (three, including me) and the number of houses occupied by Labour Party members. With us gone, just two houses remain occupied by a total of three men, all over fifty. The other twenty-one are owned by private landlords and classified as student houses-in-multiple-occupation. This is what we have left behind. Susan and I were community activists and began to loosen the bonds about two years ago in preparation for our leaving.

I tell you all these things because we will be active in Beeston in some way. We will join things and we will certainly help the Labour Party locally. Susan remains a member, but I left the Party in 2013 after fifty-three years because I  am at odds with the Party nationally over many issues. I simply see them as too right-wing, more interested in placating big business than aligning themselves with working people, the poor and disadvantaged. 'New Labour' still runs through them like a stick of seaside rock, whereas local Labour Parties across England struggle to serve those Miliband and Balls mouth platitudes about whilst showing no real commitment. For Nick Palmer to get my vote, he will have to distance himself from the national leadership. I so want to vote for him, but not if it means voting for continued austerity and cuts to local services - neither are necessary.

Scotland may seem a long way from Beeston, but for Labour to stand any chance north of the border it will have to adopt a more left-wing agenda, whereas in England they seem determined to appease the right. They lack the courage to take on UKIP and anti-immigration racists in a way which should worry any libertarian socialist like myself.

Mentioning UKIP brings me neatly back to Beeston and Toton, where a ward by-election will soon take place, thanks to UKIP supporters calling the election if press reports are correct, whereas the political parties on Broxtowe Borough Council had decided to leave the seat vacant because there will be borough elections in May 2015. On this one I am with those who called the by-election, regardless of their politics. To keep council seats vacant for any reason is an attack on democracy. Of course the by-election will cost money — all elections do.

Back in 1979 when Susan and I lived in Mansfield I actively supported the calling of a by-election in the ward where we lived and, in the process, so upset the Labour establishment that they got me barred from holding office in the Labour Party for five years. A few months later we de-camped to Lenton and in 1981 I was a elected a Labour Party county councillor for a Nottingham ward. Although it was all a long time ago, my feelings about local democracy remain the same — it is something we should cherish and nurtured, not something to be put aside for administrative convenience or political advantage. Once you do the latter you are siding with the enemies of democracy.

Susan's association with Beeston and Chilwell go back to the late-sixties when she lodged, whilst a student at Nottingham University, in Chilwell vicarage for two years before moving into Florrie Boot Hall for her final year.

From now on I intend my weekly post (with the occasional extra I'm sure) to be topical and based on what I do, read or hear about Beeston each week. Right now you know a little more about me.

If you have read this far. Thank you.

Robert Howard

PS. I have images and pages to add as soon as I have the time. Moving house has been stressful and there is a great deal to do over the coming months, but I am determined to find the time to help Labour win Beeston North ward where we live, working as a foot soldier if they will have me and if I help Nick in the process it will be a price worth paying to have a Labour Broxtowe Borough Council.