Oliver's articles in local papers

Spatial Strategy

2009-02-05T08:06:00.001Z

CPRE, 30 January 09

As I write, the debate about the so-called South West Regional Spatial Strategy has entered a new phase. Local governments across Dorset and local MPs on a cross-party basis have registered strong disagreement with the proposals for new building put forward by regional government. And this, of course, is a campaign in which CPRE has also played a leading part.

But there is a danger here.

The danger is that people will think that the problem lies in the particular proposals put forward in this particular Strategy - whereas the real problem is with the very idea of a Regional Spatial Strategy. This is not merely the wrong thing. It is altogether the wrong kind of thing.

For years, the so-called planning system has been far from perfect. Too often, it has not resulted in rational and acceptable plans for enabling our population to be housed in a way that respects local opinion, environmental constraints and the desire to make Britain more beautiful rather than uglier.

But the invention of wholly unnecessary regional government and the transfer to regional government of immense power over "planning" has accentuated this long-running problem.

The result is that we are now faced with ghastly fantasies proposed at regional level and imposed on local government, only to be opposed by locals. And this confrontational system pleases no-one. The objectors, of course, are unhappy. But most of the houses in the regional "plan" will in fact never get built because of the opposition generated and the delays caused by the opposition. So the first-time buyers can't buy and there are two million people on waiting lists for social housing. .

This is not a sensible way for our nation to proceed.

We need to move to a completely different model, in which regions have no part to play in the planning process, there are no national "targets", and local people play a serious and constructive part in developing local plans and local planning decisions through co-operative processes such as enquiry by design.

In this new world, the vehicle for progress will not be the ghastly lucubrations of remote, regional bureaucracies, but local Community Land Trusts, which enable people in villages and neighbourhoods (urban as well as rural) to come together to provide the affordable housing that they and their children need.

That's the way we can square the circle, end the confrontation and provide what is needed, where it is needed, at a price that can be afforded and with a look and feel that connects in a sensitive way with the buildings and the society around it.

Highways Agency

2009-02-03T16:27:00.001Z

Western Gazette, 30 January 2009

I don't know how many readers of this column are addicts of a little book called 1066 And All That.
I have been in this unfortunate condition for about 40 years, since I first read it
The very best bits of the book, I think, are the sets of examination questions. These appear at regular intervals, just as in GCSE revision texts for today's 15 year olds - but the questions aren't quite as expected. I recall, with delicious pleasure, both the question, "what price glory?" and the admonition in italics, "do not attempt to write on both sides of the paper at once".
But my favourite exam question in 1066 And All That is definitely: "who has what written on whose what?"
If I remember correctly, this question in fact relates to Mary Queen of Scots. For reasons which are now wholly obscure to me, I am fairly sure that she had the word "Calais" written on her heart.
Well, I too have a word written on my heart - or rather, two words. They aren't quite as romantic as "Calais". They are the words: "Highways Agency".
I am really as unclear about why I should have spent so much of my time over the last decade thinking about the Highways Agency as I am about why Mary Queen of Scots was so prone to think of Calais.
I certainly would not have predicted 10 years ago that the Highways Agency would occupy this place in my thoughts and feelings. But there is just something about the Highways Agency that can get at you - and it just won't go away.
The most recent example of this wonderful body at work is the discussion that is currently taking place about the south west quadrant in Bridport.
What, you might ask, has this got to do with the Highways Agency?
Under any normal circumstances, my answer would be, nothing at all.
But the circumstances aren't normal, since we are dealing with the Highways Agency.
The Highways Agency is an agency that, as its name implies, concerns itself with highways. But what the name doesn't reveal is that this means being concerned with highways rather than with people.

The aim of this agency appears to be to ensure that as few people as possible contaminate its roads.
This makes a certain kind of sense, once you enter a highway version of Alice in Wonderland. After all, if you could just keep the people off the highways, you could really guarantee that they would work perfectly. Maintenance would be almost nil. The state of the roads would be perfect. There would be no queues and no accidents.
Yes, my dear readers -- for the Highways Agency, the people are the problem.
So the new south west quadrant development in Bridport is deplored so far as this Agency is concerned - because it threatens to increase the number of people using the A35 and, in particular, the roundabout by the garage on the A35 to the east of Bridport.
So the Highways Agency has found a solution - which involves putting enough blocks in the way of the south west quadrant development to make sure that it doesn't happen. That will keep the people nicely off the road and the roundabout.
Dare I suggest another, more radical solution? This would involve persuading the Agency that, despite the undoubted significance of the road, the people are also of some significance?
I see that this might be regarded in some highways circles as a bit revolutionary. But perhaps it is relevant that the people rather than the roads are the ones that pay the taxes that pay the bills for the Highways Agency?

Eyore

2009-01-25T21:50:00.001Z

24 January 2009

Reports on the state of our economy have been moving from bad to worse, and the prognosis for the near future is at least equally gloomy.

It is enormously important not to minimise or understate the scale of the predicament in which we find ourselves. The supply of credit -- the lifeblood of our businesses and the only hope for sustained employment -- has dried up, and we need to recognise the magnitude of that crunch, as well as the scale of our fiscal deficits and national debt, if we are to take the radical action that is required to solve these problems.

But there is a danger in all this - of talking ourselves into even more of a crisis than we genuinely face.

In the end, the cause of our current malaise is lack of confidence - and, although there is nothing to be gained from a false optimism that ignores the realities of our ghastly fiscal deficit or the lack of credit, there is also a need to recognise that even a very severe recession is not the same thing as the total disappearance of economic activity.

This point came home to me very forcefully at my advice surgery last week in Dorchester.

A remarkable man made an unscheduled appearance. He wanted, he said, simply to bring me some good news.

I expected to hear something about a particular aspect of social or cultural or environmental life in West Dorset which was mercifully unaffected by economics, finance and the miseries of doing business at present.

But I was surprised to discover that his good news was in fact entirely on the economic front. He wanted to tell me that his own business was flourishing. He assured me that he was providing both jobs and work for other firms. And he then reeled off a list of friends and acquaintances in Dorchester who were busily at work, churning out goods and services, with the customers and the pounds rolling in.

It was, he said, all too easy to assume that the newspapers were telling the whole story. If you believed them, you would, he claimed, imagine that economic activity was ceasing in Britain. But he could testify personally to the fact that this was far from the case.

And, of course, he was right - not just about his friends and acquaintances and not just about Dorchester or West Dorset, but about the country as a whole.

We are all rightly concerned (and more than concerned) about the fact that the economy, instead of growing recently has been shrinking. For the businesses that no longer exist or are on the edge of bankruptcy, and for the people who have lost their jobs or fear losing their jobs, that reality of reducing national income is the only reality that matters.

But, across Britain as a whole, the ghastly fact of the economy reducing is nevertheless the counterpart of the fact that we still have an economy.

So my visitor had a point -- it's just that his news wasn't newsworthy.

Sustainable Communities Act

2009-01-19T10:07:00.000Z

19 January 2009

Last Friday, there was a meeting in the evening at the Corn Exchange to discuss a new Act of Parliament.

The Act of Parliament in question was introduced by Nick Hurd (then a Conservative backbencher), and was brought into law last year with cross-party support.

It is called the Sustainable Communities Act. It provides a new mechanism for local residents and local authorities to propose changes in legislation and in the way that money is spent by central government in their localities.

I'll wager, dear reader, that - if you have got this far - you will by now be stifling a yawn.

An Act of Parliament. Mechanics of legislation. Machinery of government. Public expenditure analysis. Citizen panels. Local authorities.

Surely enough to send any reasonable person into a profound sleep.

Surprisingly, the organisers of the meeting had hired the big hall at the Corn Exchange, which holds hundreds of people. I gather that eyebrows were raised when this happened - but there's nothing like optimism.

The amazing thing is that the optimism of the organisers was well-founded. Indeed, we could have done with a rather bigger hall, as it was standing room only and there were plenty of people left standing.

Was there some mistake? Had all these people turned up for a disco or bingo? Well … no, actually; they really had all come along to hear presentations about the Sustainable Communities Act and to talk through how it would work in West Dorset.

If you tried to persuade the editors of major national newspapers that several hundred people would turn up for such a meeting on a winter Friday evening in a county town, I suspect they would quietly wonder when the men in white coats were due to arrive. After all, it's well-known, isn't it, that people are apathetic about politics, uninterested in administration, and bored by process?

So why did all these people turn up?

If you had been there, you would very quickly have found out.

People came because they are completely fed up with feeling that somebody else, somewhere else, is making decisions about their local environment -- and that they have no real control.

At present, it's all top-down. And lots of people want to change that.

The point of this ostensibly boring piece of legislation is to create a process for bottom-up decision making.

Of course, this Act isn't a magic cure-all. It will take years to achieve major changes in the degree of local control, as people gradually become more and more aware of what is being done in their area and gradually use the processes established by the Act to bully governments into letting them decide more things for themselves.

But, all the same, it's a start of a new journey in a new direction. After a long period of increasing centralisation, the locals are fighting back - and they are willing to come out in large numbers to discuss how they plan to do it.

Victory for commonense

2009-01-16T13:48:00.001Z

9 January 2009

It is always nice to be able to report some good news - never more so than in the midst of this ghastly economic crisis.

Last week, in this column, I alerted readers to the astonishing proposition - put forward by experts - that the coast road from Bridport to Chickerell would be safer if the cats' eyes and road markings were removed. And I gently pointed out that anyone who had experience of this road at night, particularly in the fog, would be likely to disagree with the experts.

I am very glad to report that, since then, matters have moved on rapidly. The experts have been over-ruled, and a decision has been made to reinstate the cats' eyes and road markings on the sea road.

A small victory perhaps. But a victory, nonetheless, for commonsense.

It would be rash to assume that this is the beginning of a trend - but hope springs eternal, and I am chancing my arm on another little battle for commonsense.

As so often, this particular case springs from a real, live constituent who has written to me about an actual fact - commodities that are in short supply in Whitehall.

The constituent in question has been doing his sums. He has observed, in particular, that 52 divided by 500 is about 0.1 (or 10 per cent).

Why, you may ask, is this piece of arithmetic relevant to anything in particular?

Answer: if you are on Pension Credit and you have some savings, your Pension Credit is docked by £1 per week (or £52 per year) for each £500 of savings that you hold.

Given the startling fact that 52 is about 10 per cent of 500 , this method of docking Pension Credit by £1 per week for each £500 of savings effectively assumes that the income derived by the Pension Credit recipient from his or her savings is about 10% per year.

There may, at some time in the rather distant past, have been a period during which it was normal for pensioners to receive 10% interest on their savings each year. (Actually, for what it is worth, I rather think that this will have been true only at a time when inflation was also running at a noticeable level and eroding the value of savings, so I wonder whether 10% would ever really have been a sensible assumption to make.) But, be that as it may, we can be very sure of one thing - namely, that there isn't a single pensioner around who can expect to receive 10% on his or her savings during the coming year.

Whitehall is a wonderful thing; and one of its wonders is the extent to which each department is insulated from each of the others and from the world outside. So we mustn't for a moment expect that the people responsible for setting these assumptions in the Pension Credit system have a line open to anywhere like the Treasury or the Bank of England or our 60 million fellow inhabitants, who have noticed that pensioners' savings are not going to result in 10% interest rates this year.

But it would be nifty, wouldn't it, if we could pass this valuable piece of information on to the Department of Work & Pensions? So, prompted by my constituent's letter, that is exactly what I have done.

I hope, in some future column, in the not too distant future, to be able to claim a second small victory for commonsense.

Cats' eyes on coast road

2009-01-15T17:04:00.000Z

31 December 2008

Now that the new year is beginning, a lot of people will be wondering where our economy and our society are going.

But, quite apart from any deep and general anxieties about the direction of our economy and our society, we seem to be manufacturing in West Dorset a very particular, local problem of direction.

Imagine yourself, dear reader, on the spectacular road that runs from the Chesil Bank to Bridport along the coast.

In daytime, I cannot believe that there is anyone with a heart so hard that they fail to be moved by the descent into Abbotsbury and the vistas across to Portland and beyond.
There cannot be a road with a better succession of views anywhere in southern England.

But suppose you are making this trip on a dark and foggy night.

Alas, in the dark we human beings find it more difficult to see than during the day. The grand views tend to disappear. Add a little fog - there is often much of it at night on this road - and the lack of view can all too easily turn into something very close to a lack of visibility.

There are various points at which it would be inconvenient, to say the least, to drive off this particular road, especially in a seaward direction. Accordingly, driving along unsighted can be a rather alarming experience.

But, you will say, this man has gone mad. Surely there are those little cats' eyes to catch the reflection of your headlights even in the fog. Don't these, alongside the markings on either side of the road, provide a sure and steady guide?

Alas, dear reader, it appears that modern concepts are being applied by the experts. We are told that removing the cats' eyes and the road markings will increase the safety of the road by making us all much more careful at night.

Forgive me if I exhibit a little scepticism about this expert view. I am sure it is true that in the absence of a visible path through the dark and the fog, we will drive more slowly - but I harbour a nagging doubt about whether driving, even quite slowly, in the wrong direction on this particular road will necessarily enhance public safety.

Now I come to think of it, there are many other roads in West Dorset that do, and many other road that do not have cats' eyes and markings.

We seem, in short, to be at a rather a fork in the road.

We can take the turning marked "increased visibility" or the turning marked "reduced visibility". We can add gradually and progressively to the illumination of our roads by cats' eyes and markings, or we can diminish, progressively, the amount of cats' eyes and markings.

The experts are pointing clearly in the direction of invisibility.

I wonder how many readers of this column share my naïve intuition that we might be better off making our roads easier to see at night?

Naomi's House

2008-12-17T08:28:00.000Z

14 December 2008

Any MP, like any GP or any vicar, receives a certain number of heart-rending letters each year. But none this year has been so heart-rending as a letter I recently received from the parents of a very ill child whose lives have been changed by the help they have received from a children's hospice called Naomi's House.

Like its sister organisation, Julia's House, Naomi's House does fantastic work for children with ghastly illnesses. You have only to visit one of these places to see the value of what they do.

It is an understatement to say that dying is never easy for anyone involved, and we have all had the experience of seeing someone go through the final stages of an illness in a hospice for adults. As anyone who has had that experience knows, these adult hospices also do a fantastic job. The Joseph Weld Hospice in Dorchester, for example, is a marvellous institution that has changed the end of life for multitudes of people and for their families.

But there is something very special about a children's hospice - because there is something especially affecting about a child who against nature is nearing death.

So the outreach service provided by Naomi's House has a very particular significance - and the poignant letter I received was describing just what one set of parents felt about the prospect of this service coming to an end.

The cause of this catastrophe is the fact that, like many charities and many local authorities, government agencies and other bodies, Naomi's House had put money in an Icelandic Bank. They had every reason to think that this was OK - not least because ministers had confidently asserted that it was OK not long ago. But, of course, it was not OK and the trustees have now had to cut back on the services they provide.

A while ago, I thought this was not going to happen - because I was on an Any Questions programme with Harriet Harman, and I heard her distinctly say that she and her colleagues were not going to leave the charities involved to face this problem alone.

But, a few days ago, I found myself in the chamber of the House of Commons having a discussion across the floor with a very pleasant Treasury minister who was unfortunately making it quite clear that, so far as she was concerned, if Naomi's House cannot carry on with its outreach service because of losing money deposited in an Icelandic Bank that was just one of those things.

I am, of course, completely aware that the Exchequer is as near bankrupt as makes no difference. And I am conscious that new money doesn't grow on old trees. But it is also evident that, in the absence of an outreach service from Naomi's House, the NHS is going to have to design a replacement; and I have a dark foreboding that any such replacement will be more expensive and less effective. So I think this really is a case of being penny wise and pound foolish.

Let's just hope that we can persuade the Department of Health to think again. Otherwise, it won't be much of a Christmas for the families concerned.

Anti-social behaviour

2008-12-12T07:07:00.001Z

8 December 2008

We hear a lot about anti-social behaviour.

All sorts of techniques have been suggested for dealing with this worrying social problem. There are Anti-Social Behaviour Orders. There are curfews. There are provisions for preventing drinking in public places, provisions for breaking up groups of rowdy individuals, and a whole heap of other devices to enable the authorities to impose order. There was even a moment when the last Prime Minister suggested marching parents down to the cash point to pay an on-the-spot fine - though this never actually happened.

No doubt, all of this effort at enforcement of the law has very real effect - and it may be the only thing to do when dealing with the kind of anti-social behaviour that emanates from mature neighbours from hell. When dealing with crypto-psychopaths, the heavy hand of the law is probably the only method that stands any chance of protecting the innocent victims.

But a lot of anti-social behaviour, as we all know, comes from young people who are far from psychopathic Some may already be caught in drink and drugs - and there, serious rehabilitation is the only promising avenue of attack. I have long believed that we need something like a ten-fold increase in the amount of intensive abstinence-based rehabilitation in the UK - to bring us up to the level that has made so much difference in countries like Sweden and The Netherlands.

But a lot of the "low level" anti-social behaviour by young people that causes much distress for sober citizens (and, in particular, for the elderly) is due more nearly to wild spirits than to chaotic lifestyles and addiction. Much of this can surely be attributed to a lack of constructive things for the young people in question to do.

I remember visiting an urban estate which had been brought virtually to its knees by teenagers who were running wild - until the local vicar and a local shopkeeper formed a football club. The members of the gang quickly became members of the club, and peace descended on the estate.

But this is not just a problem for inner city estates. Right here, in West Dorset, we, too, have problems of anti-social behaviour (albeit at a rather lower level than one finds in all too many inner city estates).

And I am thoroughly persuaded that the biggest single thing we could do to reduce this sort of anti-social behaviour locally is to find more constructive things for the young people in question to do.

I am delighted to see, for example, that new efforts are now being made in Lyme Regis to increase the amount of provision for the young in that town. Nowhere in England has a better location, finer architecture or more charm. But there can also be few places in Britain with quite so little provision for the young.

It is time to cure that.

Winterbourne Abbas pedestrian crossing

2008-11-26T14:31:00.001Z

23 November 2008

Readers of this column may remember previous occasions on which I have
referred to the vexed question of a second pedestrian crossing on the
A35 at Winterbourne Abbas.

The issue is not a matter of rocket science. At one end of the
village lies the school. Many of the pupils live at the other end of
the village. But there is no footpath on one side of the A35; so
pupils are forced to cross this fast and busy road in order to walk
down the footpath on the other side.

The solution is also not a matter of rocket science. It consists of
installing a pelican crossing at the far end of the village.

Unfortunately, I discovered some while ago that the Highways Agency
manage to spend well over £100,000 on each such crossing. At this
exotic rate of expenditure (roughly twice the cost of our own County
Council when it constructs such crossings), the Highways Agency is
naturally cautious about forking out for new crossings.

How and why the Highways Agency has managed to make crossings cost so
much more is a mystery to mankind. I have taken steps to ensure that
the National Audit Office looks into this – and I am glad to be able
to report that an investigation is now under way.

But the tectonic plates of national bureaucracy move at glacial
speed. It will be years before the world discovers why Highways
Agency crossings cost this much – and yet more years, I suspect,
before the fault is cured. In the meanwhile, we have the problem of
the children in Winterbourne Abbas that cannot wait for years before
they cross the road. Some argue that school discipline is not what it
was. But I have yet to meet a head teacher who would happily wait for
several years before one of their pupils gets to school.

Is there any interim solution? Until recently, I was genuinely
puzzled by this question. But the Parish Council at Winterbourne
Abbas has proved immensely imaginative – and they have come up with a
possible temporary solution. I hope that you, dear reader, will
forgive me if I do not tell you what it is just yet, because I want to
be sure that the teachers and parents and pupils at the school would
all be happy with it before I launch the idea on a wider public. But,
at the time of writing, I am filled with renewed optimism.

What is the lesson that emerges from this little tale?

I think it is pretty clear.

On the one side, the vast, lumbering, bureaucracy of the Highways
Agency: inert, unresponsive, colossally expensive. On the other side,
a Parish Council consisting of people who actually understand the
problem they are dealing with, have some commonsense, are determined
to do the best for their fellow-villagers, and are not hide-bound by
any particular rule book.

Which of the two better serves the people? Answer: the little Parish
Council.

Is this a surprise? Certainly not to me. Everything I have seen in
West Dorset over the last 15 years suggests that people are more
likely to find the quality of their lives improved if more of the
decision making is at a level where local knowledge and commonsense
prevail over the bureaucratic rule book.

Post Office card account

2008-11-17T10:31:00.001Z

12 November 2008

I am sure that there are readers of this column who have post office card accounts.

These card accounts are very useful for people who don't want to have, or cannot easily obtain ordinary bank accounts. They enable the user to access savings and draw cash and make direct debit payments, just like an ordinary bank account. But they operate through the post office.

Some of us fought hard to get these accounts established several years ago, when the Department of Work and Pensions, in its wisdom, decided to stop paying benefits and pensions through paper books and insisted on electronic transfers.

At the time, we pointed out that it would be disastrous for post offices (particularly in rural areas like ours) if they lost the footfall of all the customers who were trying to obtain these financial services - and we managed to persuade the authorities to set up the card account scheme.

To say that there were teething troubles would be a considerable under-statement.

At first, the bureaucracy made huge efforts to make it as difficult as possible for people to get these account.

But hundreds of thousands of people persevered, and have been using the accounts ever since.

This is an enormously important part of what keeps the remaining rural post offices alive, to the benefit of our communities. It is also a very good way of achieving the "financial inclusion" that we hear so much about. For example, some of us have suggested that people should be able to use direct debits from post office card accounts to pay electricity and gas bills. This would enable customers without bank accounts to avoid paying the huge premium charges that go with pre-payment electricity and gas meters.

Last week, in the House of Commons, we debated the future of the post office card account - and people on all sides of the House made almost exactly the same points.

The reason for all the fuss was that some ingenious person had managed to devise a tender process which could well have led to the post office card account being run by … someone other than the post office.

If this had happened, many people living in rural West Dorset would have had great difficulty using their account cards. And the effect on our post offices would also have been catastrophic, since the footfall through them would have reduced.

Thank goodness, we discovered a couple of days later that, notwithstanding the design of the tender, Ministers -- under pressure from MPs on all sides -- had managed to find a way of awarding the contract to......the post office.

Why did both the post offices and the people using the card accounts have this threat hanging over them for so long? The only answer I can provide is that the ingenuity of bureaucracy is limitless.

Get on line day

2008-11-09T15:45:00.001Z

26 October 08

Last Friday was "get on line" day.

So, for me, it was "visit the Yarn Barton Centre in Beaminster" day.

Yarn Barton is one of those unsung organisations that does an enormous amount of good without attracting any serious amount of attention. In its quiet way, it helps people to use the internet - many of whom would otherwise be excluded from the open networks which are a defining characteristic of our age.

We used to think of physical disability and lack of transport as the two most obvious causes of isolation. But lack of access to the net is rapidly becoming as important an obstacle.

So hats off to Yarn Barton, and to the work that it does in overcoming such isolation. But there is more to the relationship between our rural population and the internet than just the ability to log in.

In many ways, the internet is a lifeline for rural communities - a technology that evens many of the odds between country and city.

In the old days (i.e. a decade or two ago, when life did not revolve around IP protocols), there were all sorts of ways in which rural communities had to pay for the privilege of rural tranquillity and quality of life. Whether it was getting to a travel agent, or finding a second-hand book, or checking facts for homework, or watching a film, it was easier and quicker for the city-dweller who could walk round the corner, or take a bus or tube to the travel agent, the book shop, the reference library, or the cinema. Distance and time made all of these things, and many others besides, much more difficult for those living in remote areas.

It is a remarkable - and too little noticed - feature of our times that these advantages of the city have been largely eroded by the existence of the internet. In principle, it is now perfectly possible to combine rural tranquillity with rapid access. Inhabitants of remote rural areas should now be able to get access to bookings and books, to facts and films, to whatever, whomever and whenever it is needed.

But there is, of course, one slight hitch: to participate fully in this new world of opportunity, the inhabitants of remote areas NEED BROADBAND.

Our ancestors understood the requirement for universal access. They provided it as each transforming technology arrived on the scene. Victorian governments in the nineteenth century insisted on railway stations from Crianlarich to Canonstown. Likewise, the great schemes for electrification and mainline telephones in the 20th century stretched out to the remotest farmhouses and cottages.

We met these challenges and provided those connectivities then.

Now, in the age of the net, it is time to provide the new connectivity in every farmhouse and every cottage in West Dorset. So please, oh government, require -- as a condition of BT's license -- the installation of WORKING BROADBAND in our villages.

Credit Union model

2008-10-22T13:14:00.001+01:00

19 October 08

For many years, I have been involved with an excellent local institution - the First Dorset Credit Union.

This credit union was established by a group of far-sighted individuals who were determined to provide an opportunity for people of limited means to save for a rainy day.

The principle of the thing - as with any credit union - is that savers who, like the wise virgin in the parable, have put their money away over the months and years, can then take out an umbrella in the form of a bit of borrowing when the rain does come.

Unlike the loan sharks and even the respectable home lenders, the credit union lends at low interest rates - and it encourages saving in the good years just as much as it permits borrowing in the bad years.

I am delighted to say that our credit union has advanced from strength to strength - and appears to be untainted by the current credit crisis.

Come to think of it, our little, home-grown union provides a rather telling lesson in how to manage the economy.

If our dearly beloved Prime Minister had operated on the same principles, as his Australian counterpart did, saving (credit union-style) in the good years, he would now be in a position to borrow more comfortably as the rain descends on what I fear are likely to be successive and very rainy days in the weeks and months ahead.

What is more, if he had been a credit union-style saver over the last decade, he would not have pumped up the asset bubble which has now spectacularly burst.

And, of course, if the Bank of England had been left in control of the banks, as it used to be, and if it had exercised that control to ensure that they, too, behaved a little more like our little credit union, then people across the country would not have borrowed so much, and might have started saving in the way that credit union participants do.

It may seem fanciful, dear reader, to talk about making the nation's finances more like a tiny credit union. And, of course, I recognise that there is a great deal of difference between the great, pulsating machinery of global finance and the small-scale transactions of West Dorset savings and credit.

But, the more I think about it, the less fanciful the analogy becomes. In the end, after all the dazzling complexities, there are some great simplicities - no matter whether you are talking about something very small or something very large. And one of the simplest but truest propositions of all is that you cannot go on for ever spending money you haven't got.

What very different economic prospects we would now have if that credit union model had been applied to our national fiscal and financial policy.

The local economy

2008-10-17T10:03:00.001+01:00

12 October 08

At a meeting with local businessmen in Dorchester last week, there was
(of course) a lot of discussion about the credit crunch and about the
effects of the economic downturn on businesses and jobs in West Dorset.

I cannot say that there was anything like an optimistic mood – and the
concerns about the ability of small businesses locally to steer their
way through these difficult times was amplified by the news that both
the County Council and Dorset Police had money on deposit with
Icelandic banks.

I do not doubt that there are some tough times ahead everywhere in
Britain as we try to make our way out of the huge mountains of private
and government debt which have been unwisely piled up during the boom
years. What's more, for many small and medium-size businesses in our
area, in tourism, agriculture, manufacturing and services, the
difficulty of finding customers at one end and bank loans at the other
are creating very considerable and very understandable fears.

But there are some strengths on which West Dorset can trade through
these troubled times – and we have to make the most of these.

Businesses that depend on tourism, of which we have enormous numbers,
are a case in point. Given that last summer was already much more
difficult economically than the previous summer, we might have
expected West Dorset's tourism to take a nose-dive. But, with some
exceptions, it doesn't seem to have happened. As far as I can make
out, without any precise statistics but on the basis of pretty wide
anecdotal evidence, quite a lot of people from other parts of Britain
who would have taken their holidays abroad were actually feeling the
pinch and decided to take their holidays in Britain instead – more or
less counter-balancing the fact that each person taking a holiday here
seems (unsurprisingly) to have spent rather less than in previous
years. There are grounds for hope that something similar may happen
again in the next couple of years, as the economy continues to proceed
through very choppy waters.

Our farmers, too, may be to some degree insulated. They have had a
very difficult time over recent years – and, most recently, our dairy
herds have suffered from the fact that the effect of increased milk
prices has been counter-balanced by sharp rises in the cost of
cereals, fuel and other things they have to buy. It may well be that
the slowdown we are now beginning to see in China, the rest of the Far
East and around the world (even if less severe than in a Britain so
heavily saddled with debt) will drive the prices of these inputs down
somewhat, and perhaps create an opportunity for our farmers locally to
begin the rebuild their battered balance sheets – which, in turn, may
benefit the considerable number of local industries and services that
depend on farming.

None of this, of course, implies that West Dorset is an economic
island, or that we can hope to be entirely protected from the general
troubles of the economy. Indeed, at a café in Sherborne last week,
the first thing I was told was that they had noticed people drawing in
their horns and spending rather less. But we do have something that
is genuinely a local economy – and, with any luck, we may be able to
trade on our local strengths to carry us through a period of general
turmoil.

There is in this a lesson – that a strong national economy has to be
built, in the end, on a network of strong local economies rather than
on a mountain of global debt.

John Anderson

2008-10-17T10:01:00.003+01:00

5 October 08

One of the wonderful things about West Dorset is that there are still
many people living here whose families have deep roots in the area.

This gives a special texture to our rural community, and creates a
continuity between the generations.

There is a tendency, however, to imagine that all the characters that
provide rural Dorset with its special feel are home-grown. And this
can all too easily turn into the idea that all those who come to
retire here are somehow an intrusion.

In fact, of course, the truth is quite the opposite. Many of the
people who come to Dorset either to work or to retire are remarkable
characters – and one of the special things about the place is actually
the way in which incomers and rooted inhabitants mingle together and
share in the communal life of the place. I had a very powerful sense
of all this when I attended John Anderson's funeral at Whitchurch
Canonicorum last Friday.

For those who do not know it, I should explain that the church at
Whitchurch Canonicorum is a lovely old place, set in some of West
Dorset's finest countryside, surrounded by fine cottages and houses.
The sun (somewhat unusually) was shining and the church was packed.

Needless to say, I did not conduct a survey of the congregation. But
I bet my bottom dollar that the congregation as a whole was composed
in much the same way as the people I recognised. Of these, some came
from far away; some came from families that had been in West Dorset
for centuries; others live here (and have lived here a good while) but
came here at various stages in their own lives, rather than being
brought up in the place.

John Anderson himself was in the last of these categories – he grew up
elsewhere, with a bishop for a father, learned his classics at
Cambridge (as well as running for the university alongside some of the
fastest runners in history); had a distinguished career in the Navy
during the war; and then became for very many years a teacher.

When I first arrived in West Dorset myself, I had to wait only a few
days before John – who had taught me many years back – was in touch.
As with multitudes of his former pupils, he never failed to provide
lasting after-care.

Having retired to West Dorset some 20 years ago, he entered wholly
into the spirit of the place, participated in local affairs of every
kind, served as a magistrate, adjudicated school appeals, and was – in
short – part of the life and soul of the place.

An incomer, certainly – but not, by any stretch of the imagination, an
outsider.

Correspondence & confrence

2008-10-17T10:01:00.001+01:00

27 September 08

Once a year, politicians of each Party are compelled to attend a party conference.

This week, my Party has been having ours.

As always, there is a strong element of the surreal. Put a whole heap of politicians together with a whole heap of journalists; add a large assembly of the party's most energetic activists; and you are bound to get something that is rather more intense than real life.

But there is never any element of the proceedings more surreal than my early morning dictation.

You see, dear reader, my West Dorset constituents are largely unaffected by all the intensity. They live in the real world. And that world -- with all its advantages and all its problems goes on much the same as always during party conferences.

True, the newspapers and the TV may be filled with tales of financial turmoil, American elections, world events and even the party conference itself. But my constituents continue to write to me about their tax credits, their child support, their housing problems, their village halls and the state of their roads.

These letters need to be answered -- since my correspondents would not take to being informed that I was otherwise occupied and that normal service would resume once the conference (what conference?) had finished.

So, each year, at my normal time of just before seven o'clock, I dictate replies to my patient secretary, holding my phone to my ear and walking along to get some much needed pre-breakfast exercise.

I wonder how it strikes the small number of delegates within whose earshot I fleetingly come. "Once again, I am writing to you about the farm payment that hasn't been made......could you please let me know what can be done to obtain the wheelchair that was promised 13 weeks ago....to ask why Mrs Z still waiting for an explanation of the decision...." I mean, if you saw a middle aged man, wandering around saying this sort of thing into his mobile phone at a fairly early hour of the morning, what would you think?

But what is strangest of all is the way this activity forms a sort of conference-therapy for me.

Everyone at a Party conference is obsessively interested in ........ politics -- everyone, all day. It's just politics, politics, politics. If, like me, you share this interest, it's rather like being a coffee-lover stuck all day in a coffee-shop. You sip, you savour, you imbibed, and eventually you almost begin to palpitate.

But these letters from constituents, letters from the real world about real, down to earth things that change the quality of lives, provide an antidote. They remind you what politics is, or at least ought to be about -- not who's in and who's out, or what somebody wrote in some newspaper, or whether somebody meant this or that, but how people live and how their lives can be improved.

So, dear reader, if you happen to be one of those who write to me during the conference season, I hope you will take pleasure in the fact that, as well as corresponding about whatever it is you want to correspond about, you are also providing a small dose of real-world tonic for your MP.

Across the divide

2008-10-17T09:59:00.002+01:00

14 September 09

I have seen the future - right here in West Dorset; and it is with us now.

If you want to see it too, you have to make a pilgrimage to Thorncombe (which happens to be the village in which I live)..

You have to go up the main street and turn off it down a tiny lane. There you will find a barn.

Some time back, this barn was rather the worse for wear - and had clearly ceased to have the original agricultural purpose for which it had been constructed.

Today, it is as smart a building as any in West Dorset, or anywhere else in the country, for that matter. Its stone positively glistens. It has splendidly restored beams, a magnificent set of skylights which are appropriately invisible from outside, cunningly inserted places for birds and owls to eat and roost, and wonderfully polished restored wooden fittings.

But it is not just a West Dorset stone barn brought back to life. It is also packed with high-tech, eco-conscious design features. It has absolutely the latest air heat recovery system, a solar water heating system, and fixed line broadband as well as - for safety's sake - a line-of-sight wireless broadband system,

Enter the barn, and you find yourself in a brilliantly equipped and ultra-modern office, with ranks of calmly efficient young people working on the latest computers and surrounded by remarkable works of modern art, chic glass and metal tables, and all the other apparatus of the fanciest and grandest of London city firms.

The only thing that differs from a London city office is that this barn, instead of being cramped into some tiny keyhole-space amidst the grime and noise of city life, is surrounded by some of the loveliest of West Dorset's hills and by the charm of Thorncombe's little streets.

The business that is going on in this remarkable environment is, in itself, remarkable. Known as "Across the Divide", it is an organisation devoted to arranging outdoor activities across the world for charities, voluntary bodies and corporations that are raising money for charities. From all over the country, experienced travellers and skillful medics are brought together to lead expeditions that venture not only along the heritage coastline of Britain but also to the North Pole and the Amazon .

The range is vast: an expedition to refurbish a decaying school in South Africa; a tour of a great city by night; the ascent of some dangerous peak; wherever, whatever and whenever - and all quietly and efficiently arranged from this barn in Thorncombe.

Ten years ago, it would have been quite another matter. Twenty years ago, it would have been quite impossible. But today, with broadband communications (mercifully available in Thorncombe, unlike some other parts of West Dorset), it can all be done exactly as efficiently as in a big city office, and with a vastly higher quality of life for those involved.

Those who say that rural areas are inevitably going to be left behind in the fast-moving global economy should pay a visit, and repent !

Self-confidence

2008-10-17T09:59:00.001+01:00

07 September 08

After what seems to have been the worst holiday weather in recorded
history, and amidst the encircling economic gloom, it is at least
cheering that Dorset more than played its part in the stunning Olympic
successes of the British team.

There were so many British medals that it would have been easy not to
spot one of the most remarkable achievements – a young man of only 17,
Aaron Cook, who came fourth (missing a medal by a whisker) in the
Taekwondo competition at the Olympics.

Although Aaron now lives elsewhere, he originally came not only from
Dorset, but from West Dorset. For years, and despite considerable
personal sacrifices on his part and on the part of his parents, he
prepared himself for this moment – and there he was, representing
Britain with huge success well before the age at which most of us have
even the puniest achievements to our name.

Although the 2012 Taekwondo Olympic competition (unlike the sailing)
will be taking place in London rather than in Dorset, I look forward
eagerly to hearing about Aaron's gold medal at the age of 21!

It is no accident that Aaron's own talent and skill have produced such
remarkable results. The immense support he has received from his
parents has surely played a significant part. And I wonder how many
other young people there are in West Dorset who have talents which,
even if not quite on Aaron's scale, could lead to great things if
their confidence and energy were bolstered by a greater network of
support?

This thought came particularly to my mind when I was talking last week
to Relate – who run a really excellent scheme that trains 15, 16, 17
and 18 year old students to lend a helping hand to their 11 year old
contemporaries when those 11 year olds first enter secondary school.

I am sure that, as this new school year begins, there must be pupils
starting secondary school who are finding it daunting or even
frightening – and I am equally sure that the presence of a friendly,
older pupil provides a considerable prop in such circumstances.

It is all too easy to fall into the trap of imagining that doing
something well (or even excellently) is just a matter of having the
talent and access to coaching. Whereas, if one actually thinks about
this from the inside out, it is quite obvious that self-confidence is
a critical part of the mix. Almost anybody who isn't drunk can walk
in a perfectly orderly straight line within a narrow band painted
across the floor of a room – but put the same person at 50 feet up in
the air and ask them to walk in a straight line along a plank of the
same dimensions and in nine cases out of ten, they will find it
amazingly difficult to do. If we want lots of medals, we need to give
young people the same confidence when they are up in the air that they
naturally have when they are on the ground.

Oliver Letwin's Question & Answer session - The Independent, 4th August

2008-08-06T14:44:00.001+01:00

Read how Oliver Letwin, the Conservatives' Head of Policy Review answers readers' questions, such as 'How do we know that the Tories won't revert to the 'nasty party'?'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/oliver-letwin-you-ask-the-questions-884263.html

Post Office closures

2008-07-13T12:01:00.002+01:00

Next week is post office week for West Dorset.

Or rather, next week is no post office week for some, at least, of
West Dorset villages.

On 15 July, we will hear the grim news about the post offices Post
Office Headquarters intends to close locally.

As regular readers of this column will be well aware, I firmly believe
that such closures will be a disastrous mistake. Village post
offices, and the village shops whose footfall they so importantly
sustain, provide not only a lifeline for many villagers who find it
difficult to get to town but also an invaluable part of the glue that
holds village communities together.

No doubt there will be protests – and I shall be joining in them. But
the evidence from other parts of the country gives no cause for
optimism about the willingness of Post Office Headquarters to listen
to such protests. I am not aware of a single rural post office that
has been reprieved as a result of the "consultation". What is more,
the "consultation" period (of six weeks, mainly during the August
holiday period) suggest that no-one is intending to take what we have
to say very seriously.

But all is not doom and gloom.

Post Office Headquarters have made clear that they are willing to do
business with us if we can find ways of saving them the same amount of
money they would save by closing the post office, whilst keeping the
post office open. And, as usual, people all over West Dorset are
showing every sign of being willing to work together to achieve
exactly that result. The County Council, the District Council, Dorset
Community Action, the Village & Retail Shops Association and large
numbers of parish councils have all indicated that they are willing to
help construct a rescue plan for as many as possible of the threatened
post offices.

It is encouraging that people locally care so much, and that people
from different organisations are willing to lay aside all
institutional and political rivalries to do their best for our lovely
bit of rural Britain.

What we need now is a bit of imagination, a bit of luck and a lot of
hard work. Out of these three ingredients, I feel sure we can bake
some very tasty rescue plans. Who knows, we may even end up by a
strengthening of the community spirit which these local post offices
do so much to sustain. It would be naïve to suppose that this was the
plan of the people who proposed the closure programme. But the rain-
makers sometimes provide silver linings as well as clouds.

Phone boxes

2008-06-29T20:24:00.000+01:00

27 June 08

Older readers of this column will undoubtedly recall the Tardis, which was Dr Who's chosen method of time-travel.

What made this object particularly delightful as a symbol of ultra-high-technology was its quaint and ancient appearance. Even to the eyes of a child like me in the 1960s, this phone box looked pretty antiquated. But one step inside, and you were suddenly transported with the good doctor to who knows where – thereby proving that solid English Victorian engineering was capable of more miracles than Brunel ever imagined. Forty years on, I fear that our friends at Ofcom are not showing quite the same degree of imagination.

We are all very aware of the disappearance of village schools, village pubs and village shops. And, of course, many of us are at work trying to save as many as possible of our village post offices. But we now face a new onslaught. This time, it is the phone boxes that are under threat.

All over West Dorset, there are phone boxes scheduled for closure.

Ofcom does have rules about this, and (at least at first sight) the rules sound pretty good.

Ofcom has stated that:

1. BT must not take boxes away from deprived and rural areas;

2. it must keep them in busy areas; and

3. it will only be allowed to take away a call box where there is more than one on the same site.

But, if these rules really mean anything, I am at a loss to understand why we are seeing so many of our rural phone boxes come under threat. As far as I can see, almost all of the boxes which are scheduled for closure actually fall into the categories that are meant to be protected.

The fundamental problem, I suspect, is our old friend, rural-blindness.

If you spend your working days in an office block in London, it seems almost inconceivable that there should be anyone anywhere in Britain who lacks access to mobile phones and a dozen other speedy and convenient forms of telecommunication.

But, if you live in many West Dorset villages, you can't properly access broadband, and you have to go outside and take a long walk to get a mobile signal. So there are – however unimaginable this may seem to people in the Ofcom office block – people living in West Dorset villages who are elderly and vulnerable, and who can be completely cut off if their phone line goes dead for some reason and there is no call box in the village.

Surely, what we need is the spirit of Dr Who. Let's re-christen these ancient Victorian edifices. Let's call them "Multi-Modal and Emergency Rural Communications Centres" (or MMERCCs for short).

I admit the MMERCCs don't sound quite as futuristic as the Tardis – but they could contain proper satellite broadband, a computer screen for internet access and, of course, emergency telephone access. We might then have a 21^st century version of the payphone happily installed in rural West Dorset.

Worth a thought?

SAVING POST OFFICES

2008-06-26T12:15:00.001+01:00

20 June 2008

Time is drawing in for our rural post offices.

Not many days from now, we will hear where the axe may fall in West
Dorset.

Luckily, the County Council and our District Council are more than
willing to play their part in trying to find community solutions which
will keep all or most of the threatened post offices open.

Of course, we shouldn't have to be doing this. The whole closure
programme makes no real sense, and it isn't the right way to be going
about reducing costs at post office headquarters.

But at least we should be able to help a phoenix to arise from the
ashes in many cases.

In villages where I have attended public meetings about this in recent
weeks, I have been struck by the enthusiasm that local people have for
their post office and for finding solutions that will keep the thing
going while cutting the costs for post office headquarters.

I have also been encouraged to find that the headquarters management
team seem to be more than willing to work with our councils and
parishes to establish such solutions.

This whole episode is also interesting proof that the cynics who say
people aren't interested in politics or local government any more are
just plain wrong. In the three villages where we have so far had open
meetings about this subject, the average turn out has been something
between a quarter and a fifth of all the adults in the village. One
has to remember that this is equivalent to a public meeting attended
by about two million people in London.

I suspect that even the cynics would regard that as demonstrating a
high level of public interest.

What is it that brings people out when a topic like this is on the
agenda?

The answer seems fairly clear: it surely has a great deal to do with
the fact that this isn't about some abstruse political argument. It's
about a concrete reality that everyone can see for themselves. And
it's about taking practical steps that can bring about change.

My conclusion is that people aren't apathetic in the way that the
cynics imagine: they just reserve their enthusiasm for topics where
they feel they can make a real difference.

This, surely, ought to lead us to a further conclusion: namely, that
we would have more real democratic involvement if we gave people more
power and opportunity in their own lives by giving communities more
control over their own affairs.

The real enemy of participation isn't apathy; it's centralisation.
Take power away from people, and they will naturally react by staring
at you glumly – at least until they are angry enough to revolt. But
if you give people a sense that they really can take part in shaping
the way they live, they will turn up and they will take part.

Let's just hope that the outcome of the post office saga in West
Dorset is sufficiently positive to justify all that enthusiastic
involvement.

EDIBLE PLAYGROUNDS

2008-06-26T12:13:00.003+01:00

16 June 2008

I don't know whether any readers of this column are regular attendees at the Chelsea Flower Show. But, to judge by the amount of time that people in West Dorset (including my wife) spend in cultivating their gardens, I guess that there may be quite a number who make the annual pilgrimage to see what the Royal Horticultural Society can surprise, delight or shock us with.

For those locals who do go to the Show, it must be a pleasure to see gardens that have also come to the Show from Dorset. There's nothing like making a long trip and finding yourself at home when you arrive.

Anyone who made the trip this year would have had exactly this experience - with a bonus - they would have been able to eat what they saw.

Why?

Well, because the item that not only got a gold medal but also won the Best Courtyard Garden award at this year's Show, was none other than the edible playground developed by our very own Dorset Cereals.

Just to make a point, the plants for the edible playground were grown in Poundbury. The wheat was brought in from Sherborne. The playground was designed by a local guru. And the whole thing was constructed by a local firm.

The great thing about the edible playground is that it has what the managers of the 2012 Olympics call "a legacy". The idea is that, by going to www.edibleplaygrounds.co.uk, schools can find all the information they need to set up their own playground vegetable gardens, so that children can cook with the food they grow. As the organisers say: "it is all about teaching children where food comes from and sharing the fun and satisfaction of growing - and cooking - your own".

And, of course, the edible playground doesn't just feed the stomach, it also feeds the eyes. A little apple tree, a fan-trained plum and a topiaried bay tree add structure and shape. The violas and pansies, marigolds, blue and white borage and day lilies (all, amazingly, edible) contribute colour, alongside the alpine strawberries, the Oregon thornless blackberries, the grape vines and the cherry tomatoes. Meanwhile the herbs - rosemary, chives, thyme, Corsican mint and chamomile - give texture. This in short, is not just a food factory; it is a work of art.

For anyone reading this column who has the ambition to start such a garden, I strongly recommend a visit to the web-site where I understand there is a competition, offering the chance of winning a "grow-your-own garden set".

I do hope that we will shortly see these edible playgrounds sprouting up in schools all over West Dorset. And I hope we will see a generation of little vegetable gardeners sprouting up as a result.

THE GUN

2008-06-26T12:13:00.001+01:00

6 June 2008

I don't know how many readers of this column are or once were fans of the novelist, C S Forrester. Those who were or are may remember a remarkable book of his called something like 'The Gun'.

Unsurprisingly, it's about a gun -- a massive wrought iron eighteenth century engine of destruction captured by Iberian guerrillas in the early nineteenth century and turned against the troops of the regular army that once owned it.

The vast power of the gun, and the vast effort that the guerrillas have to put into pulling it round the rough terrain, become the centre-piece of a magnificent story of courage, vanity and betrayal.

For some reason, this story -- half remembered from reading it forty years ago -- came back into my mind as I found myself hunched next to the Mayor of Sherborne, incongruously turning the handles that released the sluice-gates of the Castleton water-pump.

Below, as we turned the handles, the water came through the gates with increasing force. And above, slowly at first, but then with increasing speed the vast iron wheel of the pump began to turn. Its mass, the unstoppable force of its turning weight, and its threatening rumble as it turned on its axis, all echoed the power of the gun.

But of course the wheel had, from the start, a benign purpose. I am told it was installed in the 1830s, when the drinking of polluted river-water had become a national scandal. For ninety years, it contributed to the pumping of clean water from boreholes to the townspeople of Sherborne -- a monument to the durability and solidity of Victorian engineering.

And, of course, it was a monument to sustainability, using the renewable supply of river-water to pump an unending supply of clean water from the bore-hole without the use of fossil fuels -- all virtually without cost once the great wheel was engineered and installed.

What, you may ask, were the Mayor and I doing twiddling the knobs? And what had happened to the wheel between the early years of the twentieth century and today?

The answers to these two questions are connected with one another.

The mayor and I were twiddling the knobs because we were officially reopening this great pump after decades (almost a century) of disuse.

This act of reopening was made possible by a truly remarkable group of local, volunteer engineers and enthusiasts, who came together over thirty years. They rebuilt the fine stone housing of the wheel and pump. They restored equipment. They raised enormous sums of money. And finally, almost unbelievably, they lovingly recreated the great wheel itself.

There they -- or most of them -- were. Some now ancient, all now justly proud of an extraordinary work of re-creation.

As we listened to the wheel rumbling away. I reflected not only on the connection of ideas and feelings with its near-contemporary, Forrester's great gun of the Peninsular War, but also on the way in which history repeats itself. I wondered how long it would be before the scarcity, costs and risks of fossil-fuels drive us back to some modern version of these grand Victorian schemes for harnessing the renewable power of nature for the improvement of our quality of life..

MILITARY ENGINEERS AND THE COBB

2008-06-26T12:12:00.001+01:00

2 June 2008

Regular readers of this column will be aware that I am not hopelessly in love with public authorities.

But just occasionally, I think we ought to say thank you to a public body that does something well.

This thought came upon me as I walked with my family around the new gardens at the sea-front in Lyme Regis.

I know that the new gardens were only a by-product of the works needed to drain and stabilise the hill-side on the west cliff of the town. And I know there was a lot of disruption while they were built. And I'm sure that everyone who goes there has their very own suggestion about how to make them even better.

But the fact is that, as you traverse the gardens, using the carefully constructed by-ways and high-ways with their changing views of Lyme Bay and the beaches below, you really can't fail to be struck by the loveliness of the thing. The planting (carefully orchestrated by the local voluntary gurus) is appropriate to the hillside and the heritage coast -- wholly unlike the insipid municipal gardening so often found in seaside resorts the world over. Even the lamp-posts bear ammonite-emblems -- an apt and charming reminder of Lyme's heritage.

And all of this, dear reader, was created by our very own district council in cooperation with the town council and local groups, using funds that came from our dearly beloved friends at DEFRA. Astonishing and vastly encouraging, is it not, that beauty has actually been built into a public works project?

These, at any rate, were my thoughts as we wandered to and fro on the hillside.

But then we descended to the Cobb -- and I read again the inscription on the Cobb wall itself, with new eyes.

Who, you may ask, was the genius that designed this world-famous, enormously useful, hugely reassuring and splendidly good-looking monument? Was it a great architect in the employ of some potentate? A budding Michelangelo, imported from some foreign shore? An early progenitor of the Arts Council?

No, it was a team of military engineers. They knew, of course, how to build something solid. I suspect that is still true of our military engineers -- the armed services being one of the things in Britain that actually works.

But these military types of yesteryear knew more than just how to build something effective and durable. They knew how to build something splendid and sublime. They concerned themselves not just with how it would work, but also with how it would look. And they went to the trouble to build into it steps to vantage points from which the splendours of the bay (including, now, the splendours of the gardens) could be viewed.

As I stood there, gazing at the Cobb, I reminded myself that this was, once, nothing unusual. Here was a reminder of a time, now almost a time out of mind, when 'public works' suggested, not something ugly, but something grand -- something to please the heart and spirit, not just the Audit Commission.

How appropriate that the gardens opposite should bear testimony to the fact that this greatness of soul has not entirely deserted our public works programmes. Long may that continue to be the case in West Dorset.

BOVINE TB TESTS

2008-06-26T12:10:00.001+01:00

3 May 2008

What would you do if you had been given two tests for the same disease, and one had shown that you were ill while the other showed that you were well?

I bet you would go and get some more tests, to see which of the two was right and which was wrong.

But this is not, it seems, the view taken by our friends in DEFRA (the much loved ministry for agriculture).

In DEFRA, if you had two contradictory test results on your health, you would not conduct a third test. Instead, you would assume immediately that the test that showed you were ill was right.

Surely, I hear you say, some mistake? Can this really be what a DEFRA official would do under these circumstances?

Oh yes.

I know this because that is exactly what this glorious ministry is doing when it comes to cows and bovine TB.

In case you don't believe me, I should just explain that there are two different kinds of tests currently used to determine whether cows are suffering from bovine TB. One is a skin test. The other is called a "gamma-interferon" test.

I certainly cannot pretend to know what the science is behind either of these two tests, and I have even less idea how accurate either of them really is.

But, even without any such scientific knowledge, I can absolutely confidently tell you that one or other of them is definitely wrong - at least sometimes.

For years, farmers in West Dorset have been discovering that the skin test is far from perfect. But we are now faced with much more dramatic proof that somebody has got something wrong - because there are examples of these two different tests being applied to the same herd of cows. In some cases, one of the tests (the so-called "gamma-interferon" test) diagnoses fifty times as many of the cows as having TB than the other (skin) test.

You must admit that this is a fairly significant difference. I mean, if one thermometer showed that fifty times as many people were suffering from a deadly temperature than another thermometer, you really would want to know, wouldn't you, which one of the two was inaccurate?

But no. Not if you were DEFRA. This great department of state now intends to slaughter all the cows which are diagnosed as having TB by the test which is fifty times more sensitive - and is steadfastly refusing, after court action, to carry out another test.

What will make you sick as a duck, dear reader, is that our dearly beloved friends at the ministry are also going to spend just over £1,000 per cow of your money and mine on compensating the farmers who own the cows. And, just in case that isn't enough, the farmers also stand to lose rather more than £500 per cow because the compensation doesn't equal the cost of buying a new cow and doesn't cover the cost of lost milk.

I am currently talking to the minister about this, in the hope that I can persuade him to ask his splendid department what on earth they are up to. I am not holding my breath for a sensible reply.