Hello. I'm John Woodman.

Before today the most frightening experience of my life was my driving test(s). I failed three times and was a nervous wreck before each one. Since then I’ve handled the things that came my way – exams, public speaking, serious work and personal conflicts, being stranded abroad, family loss – without too many worries. But today was the worst ever.

I went on my first canvass.

I knocked on people’s doors to explain who I was and to ask them for their views on local issues.

I was accompanied by a past master who taught me what to do and explained that a thick skin was essential. In fact, I was surprised how pleasant everyone was: I’m not sure I would have been if a strange couple had bothered me in that way. (Actually, by co-incidence a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses called on me that morning. Recognising what I would be doing later, I was very polite.)

The other thing that struck me was the high percentage of people who expressed a real disillusion with politics and politicians – to the extent of wondering about the point of voting. The hardest question for me was when one of the disillusioned asked if I agreed with him a bit. Well, yes, I did. But that is one of the reasons I want to get involved. Power does corrupt – not financially, perhaps, but behaviourally. There is a gap between governing and governed. So just as Obama says, its time for a change. I want to provide some practical common sense. But most importantly I want people to take an interest and vote.


By the way – why does (almost) every house in rural Northumberland (including mine) not display its name or number? It couldn’t be to put off political canvassers could it?

Family Affairs

I got a call last week from someone in Morpeth: I think we’re related: can we talk?

When I first moved here, I looked into my family tree. I was prompted by two things: a curiosity about how local I actually was - given that I was an interloper - and uncertainty about a relation in Bamburgh: we knew we were related, our families had always known that, but not how.

I went back to the early 1800’s and managed to find almost all my relations 5 generations back (there was only one fairly common name, Robson, so it wasn’t too hard). There were no obvious skeletons – the BBC wouldn’t want me for ”Who do you think you are?” - but a couple of surprises: I hadn’t known my Dad’s family had been Tyne valley farmers, and there was another John Woodman (who I had never met or heard of) still farming there. My Mum’s family mostly came from round here, with one section coming from Seahouses. I started looking before a lot of information was on the internet and that somehow made it more fun – looking at lots of old ledgers and microfiches, cross checking and so on just like a genuine researcher.

I had gone straight back through the generations, I hadn’t gone sideways. So when my new relations came round to go through everything I learned even more and discovered a whole series of new Woodmans. I dug out some old photos of my grandparents on Bamburgh beach when they were young. Apparently there was a family likeness to the distant cousins.

My mother was never particularly interested in the family tree – it was more important to her to look forward. But to me, knowing the past sets life in context. I looked at the diagrams I made of the couple of conversations when I tried to extract information from her. One great uncle of my Dad’s was described as a “bad egg”. But we went on to other people without me finding out the reason. A couple of years ago I wrote WHY? next to “bad egg”. I will probably never know now.

Customer or Person?

“Whole Council Blueprint Design”, the new Council’s outline plan, describes us (the residents) as “customers”. It may just be me, but I don’t think of myself as a customer of my local Council. A customer is someone who purchases goods and services. Wikipedia tells me the word historically derives from "custom," meaning "habit"; a customer was someone who frequented a particular shop, who made it a habit to purchase goods there, and with whom the shopkeeper had to maintain a relationship to keep his or her "custom," meaning expected purchases in the future.

The word sounds nice and inclusive, but it speaks of arrogance. “Customer” implies a commercial relationship where there is a choice of what and how to buy. The Council is a monopoly supplier of largely pre-determined services we have to have.

Institutionalising a commercial relationship with a monopoly means one side - us - will always be in a weaker position. The words the Council should be institutionalising are words like “public service” and “people”. They should be our public servants. They exist to help us. We are not their customers to accept only what they want us to accept.

Belonging to Whom?

The new Council is going to create a new layer of local government: “Belonging Communities”. It’s not clear what they will do: they have the potential to emasculate the elected Parish Councils and to increase centralisation, although the stated intention is to increase local involvement in decisions. The cynic in me thinks that when people in government say they want to increase local involvement they are looking at appearances rather than reality.

We currently have an elected County Council, elected District Councils and elected Parish Councils. In future we will have an elected unitary County Council, (replacing the 6 District councils and the old County Council) which will create 3 Area Communities and 27 Belonging Communities. The Parish Councils will remain.

Plans for how this will operate have been published: “The Whole Council Blueprint Design”.

It is vague about how the layers will interact, and in particular how this new “Belonging Community” layer will operate. It says there will be no prescription about what they will do, but they will be community forums bringing together the parish councils, development trusts and other community groups in an area. They could become “accredited” and have responsibilities and potentially budgets delegated to them. Specifically, they will “inform and influence community chest funds”. This means that an unelected and partially self-appointed group will be able to override and direct the elected parish councils – which in the Bamburgh Division at least have done good work.

I can see there are some topics where Parish Councils need to act together – but this can happen now. They do not need a Belonging Community forum to do so. The imposition of this extra layer will suck responsibility away from the Parish Councils and diffuse it amongst the layers noted above. Such diffusion always increases the control of the centre. And I am sure that that is the intention.

The three Area Communities are too large to provide local relevance for decisions: the Bamburgh Division for example will be in the “North” Area, which broadly comprises the old Berwick, Alnwick and Castle Morpeth district councils. The Area will be responsible for most regulated services, such as planning, licensing and waste disposal. Coupled with the new Belonging Community layer and the reduction of influence of Parish Councils, this all suggests a real distancing of services from people.

Cross on the Coast

The 6 local (C of E) churches have 6 services leading up to Lent in each other’s churches. I went to Belford last week. I found the sermon very simple and moving on the subject of respecting life (in the widest sense of the word).

It came back to me on Saturday as I hacked my way to the (joint) lowest score of the day at golf. I did not treat the grass with respect. Nor my clubs. But the weather and scenery were beautiful. It really is life affirming to live here.

The year's at the spring,
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in his Heaven -
All's right with the world.

From Pippa Passes by Robert Browning.

But someone apparently committed suicide locally during the week, far from their home. I suppose people’s problems are made even harder to bear if much is good elsewhere.

Scot or Not?

Should Berwick be in Scotland? It's a topic that's being manufactured by parts of the media at the moment. At the end of the day its not very likely to happen but of course it should be the choice of the people of Berwick (and Scotland).

I assume the question relates to Berwick town (whose history is part-Scottish, whose football team plays in the Scottish league and whose railway station is already assumed by National Express to be in Scotland for some of its fares) as opposed to Berwick District Council (whose lands were invaded by various border reivers in the past, but which otherwise I think has little connection).

Economically Berwick town looks to Edinburgh at least as much as to the South given the rail link, the dualling of the A1 north of the border and the success of Edinburgh. But the main reason people might want to become part of Scotland is the extra level of benefits (for example, care costs and tuition fees) they would get. People further south may want some of that as well. The trouble is that England is paying for those extra benefits so there's a limit to how much of England Scotland can swallow. Berwick is probably OK, much more probably not.

(I know it's claimed to be Scotland's Oil, I know the SNP would like more tax raising powers, but the main reason for the extra benefits is the formula for funding Scotland which benefits it more than the North East and other poorer regions of England.)

And this highlights a real problem with decentralisation. If you give more powers to county and parish councils (as you should), they will choose to spend money in different ways. People will therefore have different levels of service in adjacent areas. So you have to make sure the funding arrangements are fair otherwise the decentralisation cannot last.

I am sure that over time either the differences in services between Scotland and the North East will reduce or taxes in Scotland will rise. I'm therefore very happy to stay in England.

Photos

I’ve always been keen on photography. But not when I’m in the picture. I have almost no photos of me. So I was a bit concerned when my campaign team said that I should have some photos taken of me around the Division. I think they wanted to prove that I had some friends and people would talk to me.

We started in Bamburgh, a group of Conservative supporters and friends (they are not mutually exclusive) with me. We tried to look enthusiastic as we stood in the cold and discussed our surroundings and even a relevant issue (rural post office closures).

“Oh look! There’s a castle at the end of the street.” At least the castle looks a lot more impressive as a village marker than the Viking flats in Seahouses. In fact it’s probably the most impressive village landmark in the country. Neither of course are what you could call affordable housing.

The local papers: Signs of the Times

The last two weeks have seen further comment about Berwick Borough Council’s focus on what it calls illegal signs advertising local businesses. This follows its actions last year in spray painting them. Apparently the Council, not content with vandalising some signs and opposing planning permission for others, has now gone back on producing guidance for businesses on what would be allowable.

I have a limited experience of this: I received a curt letter last year telling me to take down some innocuous signs on minor roads indicating the location of a local business. Neither the business, the signs nor the location had anything to do with me so I replied as such but also wondered why they would want to focus on this issue when there were so many other problems in the planning and regeneration area. They didn’t reply.

This area relies on tourism and on small scale businesses. The Council is there to support its residents and businesses. It seems to have forgotten that.

It reminds me of the Lib Dem Council I lived in London: it too focused on its own interests to the extent that even its leader noted “too many people feel that the council does things to them”. Sounds like Berwick.