Back in September, the Chairman of the Trust said something very similar when I challenged him at their Annual General Meeting (as reported in the Echo):

To achieve all our targets we need more ambulances, more crews and more money.

Having the problem recognised from the top is a good first step.  Now we need to see some action to fix it.

On Friday, we found out that we had won 6 out of 7 seats in the new Winchester constituency.

Across the new constituency, the Lib Dem team got 48% of the vote. The Conservative vote slumped to 38%. Labour collapsed to 4%. UKIP got 6% of the vote and the Greens 3%.

These are better results than we achieved at the County Council elections on the same day as we won the 2005 General Election. Compared to 2005, the Lib Dem vote is up. The Conservative vote is down.

Overall, we saw a 4.4% swing from the Conservatives to the Liberal Democrats compared to our vote last year and a clear swing in our favour compared to the results on General Election day in 2005.

Many congratulations to Jackie Porter, Charlotte Bailey, Brian Collin, Phryn Dickens, Peter Mason and Alan Broadhurst on their victories and many thanks to Terry Holden-Brown for his commitment and hard work on the campaign in Chandler’s Ford.

A big thank you to the voters who decided to back our candidates. We also owe a huge debt to the staff and volunteers who worked so incredibly hard over the preceding months, and to our exceptional candidates for their incredible commitment and hard work over the last few months and years. There’s no doubt that their personal work played a pivotal part in our success on Thursday.

It still hasn’t fully sunk in, but these results put us in very good spirits for the General Election campaign – whenever it may come.

Thanks to your generosity the Lib Dem team has so far raised more than £3,800 towards the Nightshelter and the Trinity Centre!  

We almost all got rather heavily rained on and didn’t sleep too well from around 3 a.m. onwards, but it was great to be part of such a well-organised and successful fundraising event for such a good cause. And, after all, no matter how wet we got, sleeping out on one damp night in May is nothing like having to do it through the winter or for weeks or months on end. We all knew we had dry homes and beds to go home to afterwards. The important thing was that we raised as much money as possible to help people who don’t have that choice.

Earlier in the evening, there were an excellent series of talks and speeches moderated by Debbie Thrower, who also read a very thought-provoking text on her own account (which I unfortunately didn’t note the source down for).  It was particularly moving hearing from people like Ed Mitchell who had been rough sleepers, how charities like the Winchester Churches Nightshelter and the Trinity Centre had helped them get their lives back on track.  (You can buy Ed Mitchell’s book here if you would like to know more).

There are some good pictures and reports on the Sleep Out at the main Big Sleep Out website.  If you’re interested, you can also read the live Twitter reports of the evening.

Even though the evening is over, it remains an urgent cause and both charities are very stretched by high demand. 60 people a month are turned away by the Night Shelter due to lack of space. On average, 20 of the 50 people who use the Trinity Centre report that they slept rough the night before.

If you’d like to donate to the Big Sleep Out by sponsoring the Lib Dem team, you can do so at http://www.justgiving.com/martintod. You can also give directly without sponsoring anyone. Either way, every penny you give (plus Gift Aid) goes straight to the two charities and will help make a real difference.

A.D. 1125.

In this year sent the King Henry, before Christmas, from Normandy to England, and bade that all the mint-men that were in England should be mutilated in their limbs; that was, that they should lose each of them the right hand, and their testicles beneath. This was because the man that had a pound could not lay out a penny at a market. And the Bishop Roger of Salisbury sent over all England, and bade them all that they should come to Winchester at Christmas. When they came thither, then were they taken one by one, and deprived each of the right hand and the testicles beneath. All this was done within the twelfth-night. And that was all in perfect justice, because that they had undone all the land with the great quantity of base coin that they all bought.

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.

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 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!

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.

• 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.

Conversations at various WinACC meetings, while out campaigning with Winchester Friends of the Earth for aircraft emissions to be included in the climate change bill (see above) and in Green’s after the monthly Winchester Friends of the Earth meeting have thrown up several interesting local environmental websites.

First off, there’s Dave Walker-Nix’s ‘One World’ website at http://www.wwn-oneworld.co.uk. Dave organised the Friends of the Earth aviation demonstration in the town centre (that’s him on the left wearing the mask).  His site has a collection of fascinating inventions for tackling climate change. Very thought provoking and well worth a read.

David Morgan turned up to his first WinACC open meeting last Saturday.  He has an environmental blog at http://www.reallifenews.com/environment/ as part of his real life news website with a local and personal take on living a greener lifestyle.

The Greening Oliver’s Battery team has set up a website at http://www.greening-ob.org.uk/.  It’s great to see Terena Plowright’s inspirational Greening Campaign starting to roll out across the area.

I served on the Liberal Democrats’ Federal Executive with Donnachadh McCarthy at the time of the Iraq War.  He’s now left party politics and is a full-time eco-auditor. He recently came to speak to WinACC about his work and to give advice on a greener lifestyle.  You can find out more at his website http://www.cix.co.uk/~dmccarthy/

The final site isn’t strictly an environmental site, but WinACC wouldn’t be what it is without the brilliant facilitation of James Martin-Jones. WinACC open meetings are fun, constructive, inclusive, positive and action-focused – and also run exactly to time (always 90 minutes!).  The next one is on June 7th.  Several people I spoke to after the last one commented on how much better they are than ‘normal meetings’.  This wouldn’t happen without James; you can find out more at http://jamesmartinjones.com/.

That’s it for now.  As I find more, I’ll post them up and add them to my links.

(Needless to say, none of these links imply that any of the sites, organisations or people mentioned endorse me or anyone else – they’re just sites I hope you find interesting)…

Winchester had a wonderfully gentle atmosphere on Friday evening.

Around 10,000 people (according to the Echo) were in the centre for the Winchester Passion.

The evening started at Oram’s Arbour and then moved to the Great Hall, followed by the Law Courts, then the High Street and Butter Cross, and finally the west end of the Cathedral.

David Spender has some great photographs of the event – and has set up a Flickr group for the Passion to pull together everyone else’s as well.

The following video (shot on a digital camera at quite some distance) is not great quality, but it does give a sense of the atmosphere outside the cathedral during the crucifixion scene.

Winchester Passion 2008

All credit to the councillors of both parties (and none) who spoke and voted in favour of keeping the Stanmore as a community pub.

I’d built a website to help the campaign and the response it got showed how strongly people feel locally about keeping the Stanmore at the heart of the local community. After the officers recommended closure, a lot of people were telling us we didn’t have a chance. Sitting in the pub last night, preparing for today’s meeting, it felt like a last charge. Everyone, especially Glenn Sumner who spoke at the planning meeting on behalf of the Save The Stanmore campaign, was determined to give it their best shot.

Following through a link in Jonathan Calder’s Liberal England blog to an article about Greg Mulholland in the Bradford Telegraph and Argus, it turns out that we did it in CAMRA’s Community Pubs Week!

The CAMRA Community Pubs week website has a list of things to do to support the week, but I couldn’t find a reference to ’saving the pub from closure’!

The campaign isn’t over. It’s still possible that there could be an appeal – and so we’re still asking people to sign the petition in case we need their help again. But that doesn’t stop today being a very satisfying day indeed.

Current bus passes allow free travel from 9 a.m.  Back in September, the Conservatives announced that they intended to move the start time to 9.30 a.m.

We objected to the plan at the time, increased the pressure at the Council Meeting on January 9th, launched a petition against it last Thursday, January 17th (see photo left), launched the ‘Bad Timing’ website as part of the campaign on Monday and press released the launch on Tuesday.

The campaign got off to a very encouraging start.  Even though it was pouring with rain when I was out collecting signatures, almost everyone we talked to wanted to sign up.

As late as Tuesday, the Conservative administration on the County Council were still arguing for the 9.30 a.m. start at a meeting of Parish Council leaders.  But earlier today they did a u-turn and decided to go back to the original timing.

Good! Local bus services have been attacked enough by the Conservatives running the County Council without the City Council joining in too.

As previously blogged, I was concerned when I saw that the Council Officers were planning to overrule the points raised by local people at the final decision-making meeting on Tuesday.

I hoped the councillors would see sense and back the hours that local people wanted.

The good news is that they have. 

Councillor Wood started the parking meeting by announcing that they would be going with Monday-Friday 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. – in line with residents’ wishes.

As Steve Feeney points out on his campaign website, this doesn’t mean Weeke’s parking problems are now sorted, but it is undoubtedly a good step forward and a credit to his work and the work of local people.

Now the officers have put forward their proposal and … the proposed hours that the parking restrictions will operate remain unchanged.

Very disappointing. This isn’t about high politics – it’s about trusting local people to know what’s best for their local area. I hope that the Councillors at the meeting next Tuesday see sense and vote for the hours that local people want.

You can find out more about the local campaign via Steve Feeney’s excellent campaign website.

This means that there now spaces available on January 17th.

As mentioned previously, this is a hugely important paper for the future of the Winchester area setting out the strategy for major change across the District over the next twenty years – particularly in terms of planning and housing. It’s essential that anyone who is interested should be able to get a place in one of the consultation meetings.

There’s been an incredible level of interest. The meetings in Alresford, Winchester and Wickham have had to be moved to larger buildings and a new meeting has been set up in Littleton.

You can book a place at any of the remaining meetings via this online form.

But the two other consultations in the new Winchester Constituency – in Alresford and Winchester’s Discovery Centre are already fully booked out – with 9 or more days to go before the meeting itself.

We still need at least one more consultation in the City itself. The Local Development Framework, while sounding boring, has huge implications for our city over the next 20 years.

As I said back in December:

The proposals on the table (including an effective assumption in favour of developing on Barton Farm, Abbots Barton and Pitt Manor, and including possible further expansion north and east of the current Barton Farm site, on Teg Down, on Bushfield Camp and further into Pitt Manor Farm) are going to be hugely controversial across the city and also have a potentially huge impact in areas outside the city, such as Oliver’s Battery, Badger Farm, Kings Worthy and Compton.

We urgently need more consultation meetings to ensure that local people’s voices are properly heard.

It had clear targets.

It had a clear baseline measurement to compare against.

And it laid out a draft implementation plan to kick off the process of delivering those targets.

The Conservatives took over control of the council a few weeks later.. and since then – silence.

Their recently published strategy paper – Live for the Future: Tackling Climate Change – and the accompanying action plan – make no reference to these previously agreed targets – nor do they set any targets to replace them. Indeed, one of its most disappointing features is that the strategy paper sets almost no targets for anything.

So, while it’s good that the Council is thinking about CO₂ levels for the District as a whole, it’s not enough. They need to start by putting their own house in order.

Rather than scrapping, sidelining or ignoring their CO₂ target, the Council should be strengthening it.

Lib Dem-led Eastleigh Borough Council is aiming for Carbon Neutrality: I’d love to see Winchester City Council do the same.

Given the recent coverage of Winchester’s environmental footprint, you’d hope that our City Council would be thinking in similarly ambitious terms.

Last Wednesday, the Conservatives in Winchester agreed their plans for Winchester City Council (‘Live for the Future: Tackling Climate Change‘).

And their target for CO₂ reductions by Winchester City Council?

They haven’t set one. There is no target for CO₂ reductions by Winchester City Council in the climate change strategy they agreed last Wednesday!

The document is an embarrassment.

It sets one overall target – to reduce CO₂ emissions for the overall district by 30% by 2012 (even though much of what needs to be done to achieve this is outside their control and this target is barely more than the Government required minimum).

There are some specific targets on housing – although these are mostly inherited from the Lib Dem administration or mandated by government.

And then… nothing.

The officers have come up with a long list of useful ideas, but there is a complete absence of any serious overall framework and of any political commitment or leadership.

Almost all the feedback they have received has been fobbed off with waffle.

Overall, there is:

• No target for any City Council activities.
• No target for Renewable Energy.
• No target for Transport.
• No target for Adaptation Planning.
• No target for community involvement.

The one encouraging decision from the Council was to provide some grant funding to Winchester Action on Climate Change. I’ve been involved with WinACC since the initial meeting back in July and working as part of the Communications team to get the WinACC website ready for launch. (One of my contributions was the abbreviation ‘WinACC’, after it turned out that the WACC web addresses were taken by the World Association for Christian Communication and the Wichita Chamber of Commerce). It’s good to see all the work by WinACC volunteers (from all parties and none), especially the Convenor Robert Hutchison, recognised with some funding.

But, funding WinACC is not a substitute for serious leadership on climate change from the city council. And sadly, that is now proven to be seriously lacking.

This is a hugely important paper for the future of the Winchester area. To quote the paper itself, it covers:

what need(s) to change across the District over the next twenty years

and covers:

• The broad location and balance of development across the authority’s area,
• Management of the housing supply,
• The balance between employment and housing
• The delivery of affordable housing

Despite the critical importance of this strategy, it is currently proposed to have only two consultation meetings in the new Winchester constituency – one in Alresford and one in the new Discovery Centre. And the one in the Discovery Centre is in a room that contains fewer than 180 people (or 120 people if it’s organised for a workshop as planned).

The proposed consultation in Alresford makes sense, but the proposed consultation for the rest of the area around the city of Winchester is completely inadequate.

For perspective, over 450 people turned up to discuss the Tower Arts Centre in the Guildhall and over 200 people turned up to Littleton Village Hall to discuss the closure of their post office. Over 100 people turned up to discuss the Oliver’s Battery village design statement!

The proposals on the table (including an effective assumption in favour of developing on Barton Farm, Abbots Barton and Pitt Manor, and including possible further expansion north and east of the current Barton Farm site, on Teg Down, on Bushfield Camp and further into Pitt Manor Farm) are going to be hugely controversial across the city and also have a potentially huge impact in areas outside the city, such as Oliver’s Battery, Badger Farm, Kings Worthy and Compton.

There’s also a problem that not every option has been properly examined. Some villages are asking for faster expansion than proposed in the paper so that they can continue to support their local school. And important issues such as the Micheldever ‘eco-town’ are not being given the scrutiny they deserve.

In light of this, the proposal to have a single meeting in the Winchester area, in a room that holds 120 people, to discuss the future of the Winchester area over the next 20 years, is a total joke.