News Roundup April 19

Nikki Barton, campaigning as an independent candidate for Surrey in the upcoming elections under the banner Haslemere First, has her own website, facebook page, and Twitter account.

On her website, a lady called Emer (presumably – Emer is a popular Irish girl’s name if not well known over here) challenges Mrs Barton on claims or promises  in her manifesto leaflet to be listening to  and engaging with her electorate.  To quote:

“In your manifesto leaflet you make much of engagement, and listening:

 “My priorities, if elected, would be:

 (a) to listen to the concerns and needs of the community
 (b) to give Haslemere the voice it deserves in Surrey, and
 (c) to stand up for the principle of open and meaningful  engagement between the people of Haslemere and local  government at all levels.

If elected, I would ensure open and full consultation took  place with all groups before decisions were made”

I fear this is not how you are perceived by many residents, for example those in Beech Road, Courts Hill Rd, Kings Rd, Longdene Rd, the great majority of whom would dispute the notion that you have listened to them at all.

Can we look forward to you turning over a new leaf?”

Mrs Barton’s response contains this sentence:  “I am certainly looking forward to finding ways for residents of all roads in Haslemere, not just the ones you list, to be listened to by Surrey.”

Now, I don’t know whether Emer lives in  one of the roads she mentions, or indeed is a Haslemere resident at all, however I suspect that if so she might feel that Surrey CC was listening just fine, it was Mrs Barton who wasn’t listening.  That, at least, is the charge she levels here.  Mrs Barton is certainly learning quickly the politician's art of misdirection - field a criticism of herself by implying that the failing lies with someone else.


The challenge is then taken up by others, and responses come from two of Mrs Barton's cohorts, Viv Williams (or Shorleson) and Aine Hall, her election agent. Mrs Williams for example replied: "So you are wrong! HPAG, of which I am proud to be supporter, did contact Beech Road....Furthermore, the HPAG was fully engaged in the Courts Hill Road process of which I was a participant. "

Mrs Hall added the following contribution: "Many Beech Road residents were concerned about the parking proposals for their road so they got in touch with Nikki Barton and me. We tried to help in several ways. I arranged for Town Councillor, Stephen Mulliner, to meet with Beech Road residents last year to see if there was a way to find a solution. (You are aware of this meeting as I read about it in your recent letter to the Haslemere Herald). I had several conversations with Nick Brown, Beech Road, and gave him information about setting up a residents’ association for Beech Road residents. I put him in touch with Nikki Barton"

Well, I canvassed a few residents of Beech, Courts Hill, and other roads involved in the ROP schemes, and they remember things differently. Sure, they recall being contacted, but they don't recall being listened to, in fact their impression was that as soon as the HPAG crowd understood that their correspondents took an opposing stance, all communication stopped. Some of them recall receiving messages from another of the HPAG cohort, telling them they were alone in their views, or that they didn't understand. As one such told me, speaking in the first instance about Mrs Williams,"she did not contact me personally (she left that job to [redacted] who demanded that I desist from our campaign as I had no understanding of the issue!). Unfortunately I deleted his email as I was furious at his patrician attitude."

The Beech Road activists, or the several I have managed to contact, also don't recall HPAG "helping" in any way once it became clear that close to a 100% majority of their neighbours, and the Hospital League of Friends, were in favour of a scheme which HPAG opposed. they are puzzled as to who the "many" residents were who were concerned, or who were "they" who got in touch with Nikki Bartonn - certainly not anyone I have spoken to, anyone that they in turn can identify.

The Haslemere Herald has another crop of letters this week about the elections and/or the parking question.  Councillor Mulliner puts up a spirited defence of his position following the last week’s letter challenging his attendance record – and I am sure that he is right to say that the work of a councillor is not confined to attending meetings.  It seems he plans to hang up his croquet mallet, and stand down from the Waverley council at the 2015 election, so he can devote more time to Surrey.  Curiously, he must have had his election for Surrey CC already, two weeks ahead of the main election day on May 2, and without many people noticing, judging by his sign-off in the Herald!

 

Various residents of Courts Hill Road have written in collectively to voice their support for Mrs Barton.   

 

 

 



Note that they refer to themselves as resident of Courts Hill Road, but the reality is that there are two Courts Hill Roads, East and West, a fact which Surrey CC recognised when it prepared parking proposals and sought consultation responses on them.  The undersigned are residents of Courts Hill Road East. 

You only have to walk the length of the road to see that the two halves are quite different:  East has a smaller number of larger houses with larger gardens and apparently larger areas of off-street parking (this last observable on Google Earth).  It typically has few or no cars parked along it.  West has smaller houses, closer together and with smaller land areas.  It typically fills with cars during the day, with only the white lining around drive entrances unoccupied.

So, the “Eastenders” were implacably opposed to restrictions on on-street parking – which does not affect them the way it does the West-enders.  As one of their number, Viv Williams/Shorleson did indeed contact other residents but there is no evidence that she listened to what they had to say in response, as the Westenders almost unanimously supported the parking restrictions and wrote in to the consultation to say so.

The Westenders nearly lost their battle though.  Surrey CC officers recommended to the local committee to withdraw the proposal due to the level of opposition – 71 objections.  The Westenders raised a new petition which they presented to the local committee in January, observing that the 29 supporters were in effect the 29 householders in that stretch of road, and most of the objectors were not even residents of either part of the road.  The committee overturned the officers’ recommendation and proceeded with the advertised proposal.

A second letter supporting Mrs Barton comes from Clive and Melanie Rollinson, owners of Woodie & Morris in Petworth Road.

Again, it misses Ian Sutch’s point:  residents of Beech Road and elsewhere may have seen contact from the Rollinson’s party, but there was nothing “two-way” about it – once they realised that the people they were contacting actually had different ideas, they broke off contact, apart from sending in the shocktroopers to tell them that they were wrong, or didn’t understand the issues, or were alone in their stance.

Finally, on the subject of letters, the Liberal Democrat candidate for the Haslemere council seat, Peter Nicholson, has written in.  That leaves only the Labour candidate for Haslemere:  perhaps he wrote to the Farnham Herald by mistake.

I do however find Mr Nicholson’s letter bizarre.  As a candidate for Surrey, you might imagine he would advance his case to be elected, write in support of LibDem policies, or their (quite creditable) record in local government in other authorities, or express his commitment and enthusiasm to serve the interests of the residents he seeks to represent.  Instead, he writes a strange obsdervation about unitary councils, the effect of which would be to abolish Surrey CC altogether!  The UKIP candidate, I observed last week, seemed mainly fixated on Brussels.

With such a lacklustre collection of candidates, one despairs about who to cast a vote for!

According to the Surrey Advertiser (via their on-line edition) there are rumours that Marks & Spencer may open a foodstore in Godalming when a suitable unit becomes available. “Suitable” means accessible for large delivery trucks bringing in goods from a distance. (Independent local shops source more goods locally, and receive multiple smaller deliveries from multiple sources, often in smaller vehicles.)

Commenting on concerns about the arrival of another multiple in the town, the president of Godalming Chamber of Commerce, David Taylor, made some slightly curious remarks. He said: “Most of the complaints and concerns I hear about high streets are from Farnham and Haslemere residents, not Godalming ones. There are many reasons for this. In Godalming, us traders are very good at talking to each other and supporting each other. And we also have 80% independent shops which I think makes trade more stable.”