Thursday 19 February 2009

Rose Cottage - what's at stake

Rose Cottage
400 years old
grade II listed


This is Hasty Lane - where Rose Cottage is (click to enlarge):
This is what it would look like if the Airport got it's way:
And this is the proof we don't need to expand air freight:
If you want to help Save Rose Cottage, please sign our online petition:

Sunday 15 February 2009

Could this man bring down Gordon Brown?

Paul Moore - former Head of Risk at HBOS turned whistleblower

In today's IoS Paul Moore is quoted as saying:

"Brown presided over a policy based on excessive consumer spending based on excessive consumer credit based on massively increasing property prices, which were caused by excessively easy credit which could only ultimately lead to disaster. But no, in Gordon's mind it was all caused by global events beyond his and anyone else's control."

Which is the best summation of the current crisis I've heard recently. The fundementals are hardly new, however, as seen here in by our Shadow Chancellor Vince Cable in 2003:

"As the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee meets, almost certainly to raise interest rates, there is growing alarm in government about an impending crash in house prices. Higher interest rates and falling house prices could trigger a bloody end to economic growth driven largely by unsustainable consumer debt tenuously secured against nothing more substantial than asset inflation."

Which doesn't trip off the tounge nearly as well, but when unpacked says much the same as Moore's analysis just over 5 years later.

Anyhow, enough Vince worship - Moore says he has 30 documents that could end Brown. Looks like this could be an exciting week ahead! This feels like it could turn into a mega big story.

3rd Poll Surge in a row.

source: politicalbetting.com

Last week I reported a poll surge taking us to 22%. I added the usual cautious notes, however, as one poll on it's own isn't a reliable indicator.

Then a second poll came out with another, albeit more modest, surge taking us to 18%.

Well today I can report the latest COMRES poll has taken us to 22%, and this time only 3% behind Labour who have dropped to 25%.

There is, however, one slight cavaet. A poll released later last night from YOUGOV, puts us DOWN to 14% and Labour unchanged on 32%. This is slightly odd as Labour are in the 20's for all other three polls, and this is the only poll where our support is sinking rather than rising.

This might be explained by the near universal cry from all quarters that YOUGOV's internet (rather than phone) methodology is flawed, and is very unreliable.

For once, it seems the bad news is the abnormality, rather than the other-way round.

Saturday 14 February 2009

Canada vs Britian - who is best placed to weather the economic crisis?

Brown has often said that Britain is best placed to weather the global economic crisis.

Here's what the Canadian Finance minister said recently:

Flaherty told CTV that Canada's banking system was stable and that the country had been helped by a decade of running budget surpluses.

"We have lots of room to maneuver at a time of crisis ... so we don't have to create permanent deficits," he said.

"The Americans, the British have a lot of trouble because they've been running deficits and when you hit rough waters like this and you start really spending a lot of money it's going to be hard for them to come out of it," he said.

According the World Economic Forum, Canada has the soundest banking system, whilst the UK is ranked 44th.

Wednesday 11 February 2009

Second poll surge for Lib-Dems

The second poll surge for the Lib-Dems at the expense of the two other parties is covered in Political Betting

Sunday 8 February 2009

Poll surge for Lib-Dems in latest ICM poll

Political betting: http://politicalbetting.com/



A caution over the figures by UK Polling Report: http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/1873

Could this be the long awaited "Vince Cable" effect? Has the Million Door Challenge been met? Has news of Lianne Williams sensational by-election victory swept the nation?

Will be interesting to see next months poll, and other polls taken this month - will they also confirm a strong showing for us at the other two parties expense?

Save Rose Cottage Update

This is a copy of an email I sent out yesterday, updating people over the SRC campaign.

Save Rose Cottage
Rose Cottage, situated on the historic "Hasty Lane" on the edge of Manchester Airport, is a stunning grade II listed 17th Century dwelling, beautifully maintained by the current tenants, a family of three.
The Airport plans to demolish Rose Cottage and three other tenanted properties, so that they can double air frieght capacity by building two giant air freight cargo sheds.
English Heritage, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, Greater Manchester Archaeological Unit, the Council for British Archaeology all oppose the plans.
The Liberal Democrats, the Green party and Friends of the Earth have joined forces with local residents who are campaigning to Save Rose Cottage.

Dear friends,

I was in meetings for most of yesterday, so didn't have time to send this over, but I've got an important update for the Rose Cottage Campaign.
English Heritage Response
English Heritage (EH) have finally received the report from Manchester Airport's agent, White Young Green (WYG), stating that they will not re-draw the plans to incorporate the cottage into the development.

In turn, EH have written a letter to Manchester Planning Department outlining their advice, which I attach to this email. Here's an extract (emphasis mine):

The supplementary statement explains in considerable detail why the applicant believes that the operational requirements of the new development would make the retention of Rose Cottage in situ impractical. It will be important that the City Council satisfies itself on the validity of the arguments set out in the supplementary statement. If the City Council is convinced that these arguments are indeed valid, then it will need to consider whether the new development brings "substantial benefits for the community", which are sufficient to outweigh the loss of a nationally important historic building.
The application should be determined on the basis of a careful consideration of the extent to which any community benefits arising from the development proposals can be proven to be sufficiently substantial to outweigh the loss of a nationally important Grade II historic building.

Reading between the lines, EH seem to be suggesting WYG's arguments are both invalid and insufficient As an alternative plan incorporating the Cottage into the development is not forthcoming, then EH now remain in their holding position which is to "strongly recommend refusal". This is pretty strong stuff from EH, which is highly regarded by Manchester City Council.

So what does this mean? If WYG came up with a new plan, incorporating the Cottage in the design, then it may have been easier for the Planning committee to accept the application. This wouldn't be desirable from our point of view as four families would still be made homeless, and the Airport would still grow at an unsustainable rate. I believe it will now be more difficult for the planning committee to accept the application for demolition, on the grounds that EH now "strongly recommend refusal", and it will be difficult to prove that the benefits of demolition will "sufficiently ... outweigh the loss of a nationally important grade II listed building", especially when we're in a recession / depression. Air freight is rapidly receding (see next), not expanding. There are better things to spend £20m on!


Manchester air freight down by 42%
Manchester Airport air freight is in steep decline
Geoff Muirhead CBE was interviewed by BBC economics editor Evan Davis on 'Bottom line', a Radio4 show. Here is what was said:
Geoff Muirhead: If you were to look at air freight and 60% by value of goods that this country imports and exports comes in air freight, air freight's off by 30%. [pause] And I mean that's a reflection of what's happening in the world at large...
Evan Davis: That is a HUGE....
Geoff Muirhead: ...it is, the issue isn't whether we can cope with change, the issue is the pace of change at the moment is unmanageable - and that's what we need to get under control.

The whole argument behind the Rose Cottage demolition is that air freight capacity needs to increase at such a rapid level that we should double it within the next year or so to cope. As is seen in this interview, air freight is actually decreasing, rather than increasing, so the economic argument doesn't stack up.

Manchester freight stats are available on-line: http://www.manchesterairport.co.uk/manweb.nsf/Content/TrafficStatisticsArchive

As you can see, Jan figures show a whopping 42% reduction, compared to the same month last year. Hardly a sustainable argument for doubling air freight capacity. (Thanks to Vanessa Hall from Manchester Greens for pointing me in the right direction)


Now what?

I spoke with Planning again, and enquired about the impact of the EH letter. They told me that they have gone back to the Airport, asking them to come up with an economic justification for the expansion. They said that since EH's advice is to prove that this will bring substantial benefits for the community, they will be asking the Airport to do just that.

Then the planning officer dropped a bombshell - he told me that should the airport not be able to prove this, then he doesn't think the application will go to the committee at all!!

My heart kind of skipped a beat, so I jumped at the chance to really hammer the message home - "I do wonder if the Airport will be able to do this, because speaking frankly, if we are in a recession, or even now a depression, how much Air Freight capacity will we need over the next few years?" and "Do we really want to spend £20m on a white elephant?". The planning officer was unaware it was going to cost £20m, and seemed anxious to agree we "mustn't get this wrong!"

We will now have to wait to see how the Airport responds, and then see how the planning department responds to that response. It seems to me that the application hasn't changed, but the world around it has, as the worsening economic situation lends less credibility to the plan as every day passes.

I think we will have a window of opportunity to hand in a printed version of the petition to MCC between the Airport response and MCC's response - that way we might be able to influence what the planning department recommends. This segways me nicely to....


Petition and Facebook update

Since my last update, we have grown in the following ways:
Petition website
15th January: 547 Petition signatures
6th February: 559 Petition signatures
Please sign if you haven't - please forward if you have.

Facebook group
15th January: 525 Facebook members
6th February: 528 Facebook members
Please join if you haven't - please forward if you have.

As you can see, we've hardly grown in the last 3 weeks. We must, must spread the word further and faster. Please, please, please, forward this email onto your friends and ask them to send it on also. We need to raise awareness further. We've had fairly good media coverage, but we're still under 600 signatures. We're really aiming for 1000, and we need to step up a gear to get that 1000 before the Airport respond to MCC. I will probably send out another email in the next week or two asking for more distribution.

If you've been collecting signatures using the hard copy version of the petition - thank you very much - hugely appreciated. Please make sure these are either sent back to me in the next week or so, or input on-line, as I may need to suddenly submit a paper version of the petition in the afore-mentioned window of opportunity.


The following organisations are leading this campaign:
Contact: Cllr Martin Eakins, Parliamentary Spokesperson for WSE, 07507 8547101, 0161 2152930 cllr.m.eakins@manchester.gov.uk
Contact: Lance Crookes, Northenden Green Campaigner, 07951508630, catslab@tiscali.co.uk
Contact: Ali Abbas, Manchester Friends of the Earth, ali@manchesterfoe.org.uk