Martin Tod

I’ve been working with Mark on an online version of the cost of living survey that he recently put in the Hampshire Chronicle.

Surveys are still coming in and we are still collating the full results, but Mark already used the early results in a debate on the cost of living on July 9th.

All the survey responses to date have helped give a clear picture of the pressures that people locally are facing.

It’s a very long time since we’ve seen such rapid increases in food and fuel prices - combined with continued increases in council tax and fares. For obvious reasons, both Mark and I are very keen to see that the views and situation of local people are properly represented in Parliament.

If you want to read or see the speech Mark made referencing the survey, it’s available online at TheyWorkForYou.com.

Nudge - and similar books of behavioural economics are getting a lot of attention at the moment.  I’m particularly interested to see if they can provide any help to the work of the Communications Team of Winchester Action on Climate Change.

If you’re interested in getting a copy, here are some links:

• Nudge - by Robert Thaler
• Predictably Irrational - Dan Ariely
• The Psychology of Persuasion - Robert Cialdini

Here’s a link to the Cabinet Office paper titled Personal Responsibility and Changing Behaviour referenced in the Guardian article on ‘Nudge’.

Other works on behaviour change relating to climate change worth looking at… WinACC recently highlighted ‘Weathercocks and Signposts: The environment movement at a crossroads”. DEFRA’s Framework for pro-Environmental Behaviours is also useful reading.

I’m surprised that the Chamber of Commerce and George Beckett are so negative about the impact of the move of the Police Headquarters from Winchester to Chandler’s Ford.

This is not the same as a big local business going bust or moving to the other end of the country. No-one’s losing their job. No families will see a big drop in income. The jobs aren’t disappearing. They’re moving seven miles down the road to Chandler’s Ford. No local families will be forced to move away from Winchester and there will be no reduction in the number of police officers working out of North Walls.

People also spend most money where they live, not where they work, so the extra houses in the town centre are likely to help local business, not hurt it.

Looking at Winchester as a whole, one of our biggest problems is lack of housing, particularly affordable and social housing, rather than lack of jobs. Every day, 18,000 people commute into Winchester and 8,600 people commute out. Thousands of families are on the waiting list for social housing. The move will help address that imbalance, reduce commuting and help Winchester house more local people.

Importantly, we will get these extra houses, which count towards government targets, without being forced to build on green fields.

Some businesses will be hurt by fewer people popping out to shop at lunchtime, but more will be helped by 294 more families living and shopping in the heart of Winchester. Overall, this move should be good for local business, good for local people and good for the local environment.

Yesterday afternoon I got a nip from a dog while out delivering leaflets.

No big deal you might think. Clean and disinfect the wound. Check that tetanus is up to date. Get on with life.

But it reminded me of a sign I saw posted up while I was out in Sierra Leone a few weeks ago running some training for the Westminster Foundation for Democracy.

There were a team of us from the Lib Dem, Labour and Conservative parties working with local council candidates from the SLPP, APC and PMDC to help them prepare for their local elections.

One afternoon, we went to the UN Guest House in Kenema, the third city of Sierra Leone, to see if they had any free accomodation nearer to where we were running our training and the following police press release, about dogs, was on the wall.

It’s an very vivid and interesting piece of writing. It paints a very recognisable, and, in some ways, bleakly funny, picture of how police, politicians and local people often interact. But at the heart of it is an awful reality. For many people in Sierra Leone, without access to adequate medical care, even in one of the country’s major cities, a dog bite can be a death sentence.

Here’s the press release:
Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve decided to switch our office to using electricity from Ecotricity - so the press turned up yesterday to take some pictures in the back garden of our office.

Reassuringly, it doesn’t cost any more than the standard tariff from a non-green supplier.

We’ve had pictures of Mark and I waving low energy lightbulbs around before when we switched all the bulbs in our office.

Here’s one of the rare pictures from yesterday where we’re not all waving light-bulbs around - only one of us is:

On a more substantive note, the head of ecotricity has a thought-provoking blog at zerocarbonista.com. His view is that the biggest barrier to more wind energy in the UK is the planning system - not lack of feed-in tariffs:

Two thirds of all wind projects are refused by District Councils at the planning stage, and two thirds of all appeals are upheld by the government – a lot of bad decisions being overturned, eventually.

And wind energy is the only major generation source that depends for planning on District Councils – the government deals with all others for very good reasons. District councils are not up to the job, on the whole.

I’m loth to see any decisions move towards central government without a very good reason - overall, I’d like to see more local decision-making, not less - but there may be a case for making it a county council decision - like minerals and waste.

I’d also like to see CO₂ as an explicit factor in all relevant council and government decisions. Crediting new wind turbine developments against councils’ carbon targets could be another, more local, way to address the issue.

More on the zerocarbonista blog about feed-in tariffs and planning here.

Another green energy supplier used by Lib Dems (including our national office) is Good Energy.

I’ve been surprised by the response to my previous post on QR-codes - the 2-d barcodes that can be read by mobile phones.

I’m still skeptical, but Roger, the editor of http://2d-code.co.uk/ wrote to point me at the impressive Japanese experience with QR-codes - apparently 51% of Japanese mobile phone users use the barcode function.

Read the rest of this entry »

I popped along to the launch of the new Whizzgo car-club scheme at the Guildhall this morning.

As the Council’s press release says:

Car Club members will have access to a brand new Citroen car, for less than £5 an hour - including petrol, mileage, road tax, insurance, servicing, breakdown, recovery, maintenance and cleaning. What’s more, independent research shows that Car Club members can cut their total transport bills by half.

As well as cutting transport bills in half, separate studies have also demonstrated that the provision of Car Clubs results in a significant reduction in car miles driven, with members walking or cycling more, using public transport more often or simply re-arranging how they make journeys.

The first WhizzGo cars will be available for Car Club members in specially designated bays provided by Winchester City Council in their off-street car parks in Gladstone Street, Jewry Street, Colebrook Street and Middle Brook Street.

At this morning’s launch, they explained that joining Whizzgo also lets you use cars in Leeds, London, Brighton, Liverpool, Southampton, York, Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, Newcastle, Worcester, St. Albans and Belfast.

All in all, a very interesting offer.

Since my latest two car service bills alone have added up to more than my current car is worth (admittedly this is not a particularly high benchmark), it may now be the time to get rid of it and go with Whizzgo!

I was very encouraged to see today’s Hampshire Chronicle report on how Winchester’s local hospital is making progress in the battle against MRSA.

Back in January, following an invitation, I accompanied the RHCH Medical Director, Dr Kevin Stewart, on one of the daily ward rounds by the executive team to inspect the hospital environment and see that action is taken on areas that need work.

We spent two hours visiting the hospital - mainly in Florence Portal House - seeing the improvements that are being made and discussing the infection control programme.

I’ve been particularly interested in infection control for several years.  Earlier in my career, I was involved in setting up public hygiene programmes in developing countries - teaching mothers and children basic handwashing habits can have a dramatic effect on infant health and mortality -  and have previously met with experts in infection control to learn more about it.

It was very encouraging to see how totally committed the hospital’s management team and staff are to improving infection control and creating a culture of cleanliness within the hospital - and how hard the staff are working to improve things.  It was clear that their top priority is to get the essentials right: regular hand-washing and hand-sanitising - reducing unnecessary use of antibiotics - making the hospital easy to clean and keeping it clean.  I was amazed how many hospitals didn’t mention handwashing or sinks in the recent Panorama survey the BBC published alongside their ‘How clean Is your hospital’ programme (although RHCH did).  Hand sanitiser (essentially alcohol with bit of glycerin and perfume thrown in) is good as far as it goes, but, if there is any dirt on the hands, it is not as good as soap and water.

We also talked about their programme of ‘prescribing’ the insertion of cannulae. It’s been getting great results and it’s very good to see RHCH taking a national lead on finding innovative ways to go beyond the basics.

Most of the time, the best thing that politicians can do about the NHS is stay out of the way of local health professionals. The one area where they can need more support is in ensuring they have enough funding to pay for the right number of beds for the number of patients they have and to modernise the wards to make it easier to isolate people who get an infection.

I know Mark Oaten and I are committed to doing everything we can to make sure that the hospital has the funding and support it needs to do this.  As recently reported on Panorama, if beds are used too intensively, it can increase the risk of infection - even if everything else is done right.  It’s essential that the hospital gets the support it needs to keep reducing bed occupancy rates and to continue driving down infection rates.

While reading the davidthedesigner blog for my latest typography fix, I spotted this article about QR-codes. They’re a sort of square bar-code that can be read by mobile phones. You can generate your own here and get the software here.

Are these ever likely to take off? Should we start printing them on posters or business cards? I doubt it - but here’s a test image with a hidden message which you can use to send me your views.

We’re all stunned by the great results of the elections last Thursday:

• More votes and more seats in the Winchester District and the new Winchester constituency than the Tories
• Highest Lib Dem share of the vote in Winchester district or county elections since 1998 
• Swing from the Conservatives to the Liberal Democrats for the second year running

We knew that our campaign for a greener, fairer and safer Winchester was getting a strong response - and that people were reacting well to the strong record of our candidates - but getting the highest vote for 10 years was more than we expected!

The picture in the new Winchester Constituency was even better: 49% of the vote, vs only 43% for the Conservatives, and 12 out of 17 seats.  Unfortunately we missed winning Hiltingbury West by only 20 votes or it would have been 13 out of 17 seats.

Even if you include the latest results from the wards which weren’t up this year (which are all Conservative), we still beat the Tories by 48% to 44%.

Overall, a very encouraging night.  And a big thank you owed to all the people who worked so incredibly hard and, most of all, to all the people who voted for us on Thursday.

Post-note: I’ve just checked the County Results.  Our results outperformed those as well - so I’ve updated the post accordingly.