Lies, Damn Lies, South Parade Pier and the Pyramids

I was particularly struck by a report on The News website that appeared today, being an account of what happened at East Southsea Neighbourhood Forum meeting on Thursday night.  I was at the Forum and feel the report is a very one-dimensional version of events.  As the Pier is, with the Pyramids, part of the great Southsea seafront fiasco, it is worth giving an alternative account of the meeting.

It started with a report by one of Southsea’s beat Police officers, and immediately we plunged into controversy about the Palmerston Rd pedestrianisation.  A resident felt that the Police should take more action against those who still drive the length of the precinct, to which the officer replied that there are still so many instances of people driving through that it is felt to require “education” and advice rather than issuing of penalties.  The questioner protested that people should be getting summonses, but the officer replied that it’s at Police “discretion” whether to penalise or not, unless the public wish to take it up with superior officers.  A little later on, Cllr Vernon-Jackson even admitted himself that the Palmerston Rd changes “have not gone well”.  Some understatement now that we have the Lennox Rd South block in place too, but nobody wanted to get into that row at the Forum.

Simon Hayes, the new-ish Police and Crime Commissioner gave a talk which for the most part was uncontroversial.  Southsea Police Station (in the former PCC transport offices) is due for disposal, and Cllr Luke Stubbs asked what conditions the Police could impose to secure the preservation of the architecturally-important building.  I thought Mr Hayes’ response that the Police are concerned solely with realising the maximum for the asset was disappointing from an organisation with a community role.  This will be something to watch out for as time goes on.

Southsea Greenhouse then gave a brief presentation, their website will explain it far better than I can here.

Leon Reis of the People’s Pier then rose to introduce the topic of South Parade Pier, but before he got anywhere was immediately heckled by the Pier’s owner, Fred Nash, shouting that the Pier is not for sale and is being repaired.  The first claim may well be true, the second seems more surprising.  Some fencing was put up along the shore a while ago to limit access to the underside of the Pier, but this is totally ineffective and anyone can still see what a state the underside of the Pier is.  There is a large-diameter pipe with a section missing which has been dripping God knows what into the sea for months.

There has apparently been some work on the deck of the Pier, although as most of it is still currently closed, and the Gaiety bar is without a license, there is clearly still much to be done.  Mr Nash himself estimates that his work will not be completed until “late this year” and that reopening is dependent on the city council declaring the Pier safe.

So this is where the report in The News lacks vital context when reporting that Mr Nash has offered the “back end” of the Pier to the South Parade Trust for £1.  All they or anyone else would be buying is a big pile of liability and risk.  It would rely on the goodwill of Mr Nash to allow access to the back of the Pier, and supposes anybody would put money in to redevelop the back end of the Pier when the front of it is, and may well remain, an eyesore and an embarrassment.  You’d have to be mad to take such an offer up.

I have not been present at previous discussions between Mr Nash and the community, but the decidedly chilly atmosphere of this part of the meeting suggests it is not a happy relationship.  I am not sure what gives substance to the claim in the News report that there was “an awful lot of support for what we are doing”.  When Mr Nash was questioned by an audience member why the Pier was not now for sale, when it was last year (and failed to attract any interest at an asking price of £200k), he skirted round the question a couple of times before stating that in the wake of the death of his former business partner the owners had had a change of heart.  This, together with his intervention earlier, was if anything a disappointment to most in the room.

Another source of contention arose out of Mr Nash registering a business with a very similar name to that of the “People’s Pier” campaign, causing them to adopt the name “South Parade Trust”.  This sounds a bit more of a solid name to me at least.  Having supported the revolutionary Pompey Supporters Trust myself it is not much of a leap from being a supporter of PST to being one of SPT.

A particularly undignified passage were the questions from Mr Nash about funds raised by Pier campaigners, and what would happen to them while the campaign to buy the Pier is building.  Mr Reis assured the meeting that any funds raised would be held in a responsible manner.  Mr Nash offered no explanation for why he would wish to name a business after the group hoping to buy the Pier off him.

We were fortunate at the meeting to have an intervention from Scott McLachlan, one of the Pompey Supporters Trust’s leading members who has sat on their board.  He gave a brief explanation of the Trust model of ownership.  PST was formed long before supporters knew how they could acquire the club, and was building funds for a long time and holding them in an escrow account.  It seems to me that the PST model is ideal for setting up a community-run business, should Mr Nash wish to sell up at some point.

Gerald Vernon-Jackson then became involved in a long debate about public toilet provision, and we heard again most of the same arguments rehearsed at the full council meeting.  He admitted that the consultation process leading up to the decision was flawed, as it failed to make clear that maintaining the status quo was not possible.

Cllr Vernon-Jackson then repeated his usual insistence that there is no alternative to taking £200k out of the public loo budget, that no alternative cuts are possible, that the Lib Dems in central government enforcing public spending cuts are nothing to do with him and his city council colleagues, and that all the problems of Southsea seafront are caused by the gaping hole in the land that Harry Redknapp owns.  It was one of the most obvious and ineffective attempts at a diversionary tactic I have seen in a long time to drag the unpopular Redknapp into this, but GVJ was getting a hard time from the audience and was rattled.

He was particularly evasive when I put to him that if financial considerations are paramount when it comes to public loos, the PCC decision to keep pumping our money into the Pyramids is particularly unwise; it will be at least £2m over five years.  PCC’s own officials calculate that there is a substantial cash saving over the five years to be had by closing and demolishing the ageing centre rather than allowing a new operator to take it over.  I asked why the council was committing the taxpayer to an open-ended spend on maintaining the centre as landlords, and was staggered when Cllr Vernon-Jackson twice assured us all that there is no such liability.  That is certainly not what I understand the terms of the lease to be – as I understand it, the taxpayer is liable for major repairs to the centre, and that nobody in fact bid for a lease on the terms that Vernon-Jackson described at the Forum.  Let’s put the discrepancy down to him getting confused in a lively meeting.  Everybody agrees though that the city council is going to be putting at least £400k a year into the Pyramids, and when Vince Faithfull joined in asking why that is being done, Cllr Vernon-Jackson could only repeat that he feels the Pyramids add value to the tourism and the economy.

We have no idea what the liability will be.  Barely a couple of days after the decision to grant a new lease, the Pyramids pool was closed unexpectedly because of machinery failure.  The Pyramids have a long history of unreliability over the last 25 years and there is no reason to suspect that will change now.

Aside from the foolish managerial decision to grant a new lease, for the political dimension to the Lib Dems’ conduct we have to spool back to the full council meeting last Tuesday.  A particularly incendiary contribution was the deputation from Jim Fleming, protesting against a congratulatory motion on renewing the Pyramids lease.  He denounced the Lib Dems for their “hubris in taking the taxpayers for idiots”, and compared Vernon-Jackson and Cllr Mason to out-of-control gamblers.  As Mr Fleming pointed out, PCC officials diligently recorded a variety of misdeeds and incompetence on the part of the previous Pyramids operator, SCLL, which the Lib Dem group ignored.  The humble taxpayer still does not know what PCC officials uncovered.

Back at the Forum, once Cllr Vernon-Jackson had admitted that the Palmerston Rd pedestrianisation had not been a success, he was pressed by Vince Faithfull on the nature of consultation on any changes to Osborne Rd.  GVJ promised that 6000 households would be involved in the consultation.  We will have to keep an eye on what happens with any new scheme, given the disasters of Mike Hancock’s pedestrianisation of Palmerston Rd and Jason Fazackerley’s road schemes around the seafront.

The Forum petered out at that point, and your scribe immediately bolted to the bar, being in danger of dying of thirst.  It had been a long meeting, and I felt sorry for Cllr Hunt who was sat at the top table all night looking bored and not saying a word while Cllr Vernon-Jackson did all the talking.  It was almost as if he was under orders to be quiet.

The Royal Beach Hotel is a good venue for that sort of meeting, with a good bar for a couple of restorative Guinnesses, and hopefully whatever changes take place with the redevelopment of it will retain its character.   The issues discussed at the Forum will run on and on, but until we have a change in the political direction of the council, they will keep running downhill.

Portsmouth City Council Meeting 11/6/13, Part 2

In the first part I reported some of the highlights from the part of the PCC meeting on Tuesday which related to the Sure Start programme and the Lib Dem cuts to it, which have been fiercely contested by parents and opposition politicians alike.

The next two items on the agenda both concerned public toilet provision.  If we get past the initial eye-rolling this sort of municipal responsibility often generates, there are important principles of financial responsibility and managerial competence involved.  The city council spends around £540k each year on public loos, and as part of the cost saving across the council £200k has been cut from the budget.  After a consultation it was decided to close 13 of the 25 facilities and introduce charging at 2.  As is traditional with Portsmouth City Council, the decisions had effectively been taken before the consultation closed.

Conservative Cllr Luke Stubbs has collected a petition with over 1000 signatures on it protesting against the cuts, suggesting that charging be extended or that savings be made elsewhere in the city council budget.  He spoke in support of reviewing the decision, pointing out that the closures did not seem always to reflect the scoring carried out by council officers to assess the state of each site.  He referred amongst others to the closure of White Hart Rd, which has good accessibility for those with difficulties alongside the retention of Point Battery, which does not; and to Hilsea, which has been closed although it scored highly in terms of the scoring criteria and has a high usage figure.

He also pointed out that although the administration’s “community toilet” proposals are a good idea, they seemed to be developed only after the outcry about the cuts arose – it was not a considered part of the original policy. Indeed Cllr Stubbs said the timing of the community toilet scheme was “entirely a sign of panic”.

Having followed the controversy over the months myself the community toilet scheme has every appearance of being a panic measure, and that having failed to prepare it properly in advance it is no surprise that it has failed to win support from the business community.  So far only Wightlink have agreed to allow their facilities at the ferry terminal to be used, which is welcome, but they are located some way from the current toilets which are to close.  In fact they are already widely used by the public anyway, since there is no kind of barrier to entry.

Cllr Scott replied for the administration, and seemed to make the mistake of dismissing the petitioners at the same time as rebutting Cllr Stubbs.  She also referred repeatedly to Cllr Darren “Saunders”, which he took with good grace, but it leaves the rest of us wondering about the conduct of the administration if Cabinet members can’t get each others’ names right.  Cllr Stubbs reminded us that apart from the Pyramids the council had wasted millions on those useless electronic bus shelters a few years ago and has a long history of poor spending decisions, of which this year’s budget is another example.

Cllr Hunt spoke next, observing that English Heritage would be prepared to work with the council on works to the Point Battery loos, as they had done with the Square Tower and the introduction of a champagne bar at Southsea Castle.  On the grounds that neither of these required structural alterations on the scale needed at Point Battery, it seemed a weak response, but as always he made it with great vehemence.

Cllr Winnington seemed to admit that the decisions had been taken to minimise their impact in Lib Dem-held wards (that would explain why “Conservative” Hilsea lost out despite being an excellent facility).

Conservative Cllr Park pointed out that it was a strange decision to mark the city council taking on new responsibilities for public health by closing public toilets.  The Hilsea toilets were very valuable to the community as they are sited at a major bus interchange, and recent timetable changes increase the number of changes being made from one route to another there.

Cllr John Ferrett for Labour immediately pointed out that Cllr Vernon-Jackson talks about cuts imposed by central government in the council chamber as if it has nothing to do with him, despite being a “confidant” of Nick Clegg.  The introduction of the community toilet scheme was “incompetent” and the cuts to the budget were anyway deliberately biased to hit services this year (when there were no council elections) to avoid making them next year (when there are).

Cllr Jones, who represents Hilsea, supported Cllr Stubbs’ petition.  As well as the importance of the facility to bus users, Hilsea is an important outdoor leisure area with Hilsea Lido just coming back to life.  Many First bus drivers use the public toilets rather than ones in the depot. First Hampshire had been approached about the community toilet scheme but had refused to contribute.  Cllr Jones pointed out that the economics of charging were more robust than Cllr Scott had assumed when she dismissed the idea in her speech.

The debate carried on, with a general theme of Lib Dem councillors attacking businesses and community groups (Cllr Winnington singled out Hilsea Lido) for not joining in the community toilet scheme.  First Bus were a target, on the grounds that some of their services are subsidised by PCC.  Cllr Hunt committed to coercing council leaseholders to join in where he could.  Cllr Andrewes went so far as to say that he’d close all the public toilets even if there was no pressure to make cuts!

Cllr Horne pointed out that there are capital costs to be incurred in making Paulsgrove community centre toilets available (£15-16k) and ongoing costs of maintaining them given the higher usage to be expected.  The council’s own officers had stated that in their current state they were not suitable for wider use.  Cllr Horne also asked why, if the administration.is subsidizing the Pyramids £20 per visitor, public toilets could not be supported.

The matter was put to a vote, and Cllr Stubbs’ call to review the policy was defeated by the Lib Dem majority.

The next item was another petition from Mr Mark Lewis of the Lodge Arts Centre in Victoria Park.  His centre is faced with the problem that the public toilets in Victoria Park were lost when Victoria baths were demolished, and years later the University (who are supposed to be building on the site) are no nearer getting a new facility built.  He asked the council to consider building a new facility in the park.  He understood that there would be a cost, but such a facility would last 50 years.  The toilet in the Lodge is made available to other park users, but it is not suitable for such large number of people, and there is no signage to the toilets in the Guildhall Square.  Provision of public toilets is the sort of thing Portsmouth should provide if it aspires to be a City of Culture (an excellent point, but as I’ve written before, the Lib Dems are a bit confused on the issue).

Cllrs Hancock admitted the signage was poor in his reply, and promised to do something about it.  He repeated his complaint about the petition procedure.  Cllr Hunt repeated his view that council leaseholders like the Lodge should be compelled to provide facilities as part of ongoing lease renewals.  He had a grumble generally in this debate and the previous one that community and charitable groups should make more of a provision to provide community toilets.

Cllr Jones pointed out that public toilet provision was a hard thing to expect the Lodge to bear, and that they had recently been threatened with a rent increase of over 100% by the adminstration.  She asked why the administration had not required the university to provide interim toilet facilities, since the “Blade” hall block to go on the baths site was being delayed.  The only answer to that question from the administration seemed to be “we don’t know what the university are doing”, which seems a rather loose way of treating a key development site in the city, and one which has lain empty for some time.

That debate ended with the council thanking Mr Lewis for his petition, but not committing the council to provide any facilities in Victoria Park.

I’d add to the criticisms of the administration’s toilets policy that community toilets in businesses or centres open only during daylight hours do nothing at all to provide a service to the “night time economy”.  The total budget for public toilet provision is rather less than Cllr Hancock blew on pedestrianising Palmerston Rd, against the wishes of the community.  For the sake of saving £200k a service is being lost which it will not be possible to replace in the long term if the council now sells off closed sites.  This whole policy is another example of muddled thinking by the Lib Dems, and a “cut today and hope the voters forget next year” approach.  It is at once both incompetent and dishonest.

The next item on the agenda was a deputation about the Pyramids from Mr Jim Fleming, which I will save for another chunk of blog on the Pyramids fiasco in general.

Sure Start Debate at Portsmouth City Council 11/6/13

I hadn’t been along to a full meeting of Portsmouth City Council since the days of the Parkway planning row, 20 or so years ago, but yesterday I made a return.  There were a couple of contentious items on the agenda; although the decisions concerning them had already effectively been taken at Cabinet level, there is still plenty to debate, and will be in the future.  In this chunk of blog I’ll give you a flavour of the debate on Sure Start.  The Lib Dem council is faced with a need to make savings, and has decided to do so by cutting 21 front-line childcare posts.  This has sparked outrage from parents and concerned residents, as you’ll see.

The meeting started with the Lord Mayor proceeding into the chamber behind the mace, prayers being said, and it started without Mike Hancock who turned up late.  He looked relaxed in a cream blazer with a red handkerchief falling out of his breast pocket, and sat in the middle of the Lib Dem group.  I guess we still call them his “colleagues” although he is pretending not to be a Lib Dem for Westminster purposes.  Cllr John Ferrett asked Hancock later in the meeting if he is a Lib Dem at Council level or not, but couldn’t prise an answer from the usually-loose lips of our local feudal baron.

The Lord Mayor, Cllr Stagg, then warned councillors that in order to keep proceedings going, she was going to apply the rules of the radio game-show “Just A Minute”, fining councillors a pound for hesitation, repetition or deviation, proceeds to go towards her Lord Mayor’s Appeal.  Councillors are generally restricted to 6 minutes per contribution to a debate, as are those presenting petitions or deputations.  That’s a reasonable amount of time for any skilled speaker to outline their case.

The meeting got off to a start as Nikki Coles of Save Our Sure Start gave a moving speech in support of the petition to reverse the Lib Dem cuts to Sure Start.  The essence of her case is that retaining centres themselves while cutting staff in them is no safeguard of the service; all centres will remain open, but some will be staffed by untrained staff in future instead of trained permanent staff.

The debate that followed was opened by Cllr Wood, the Cabinet member responsible for the decision.  He wrung his hands over the difficulty of having to take decisions, but thanked the petitioners for their concern.  Cllr John Ferrett for Labour reminded the council that the Lib Dems had been forced to moderate their plans in response to pressure from voters and the other parties but were nevertheless cutting the service by 48% in cash terms.

Conservative councillor Young pointed out that there remain doubts over the level of service next year, since the funding proposal from the Lib Dems can only be guaranteed this year.  The Lib Dems have not solved the problem of funding Sure Start in the longer term.  Cllr Jones highlighted the research done by Conservatives into securing “match funding” from outside bodies for Sure Start services.  This is a fertile area for further research, and may well provide some security against further cuts by the Lib Dems next year.  As Cllr Jones said, other ways of engaging parents in the Sure Start service such as allowing births to be registered at centres should be considered.

There were originally plans to reduce the number of Sure Start centres, which gave rise to a hilarious incident involving Cllr Madden (who was Labour for decades, but is now Lib Dem) and Cllr Gray (who was a Lib Dem for five minutes, but is now Labour).

Cllr Madden regretted that Sure Start campaigners had received a certain amount of criticism, and that he could not guarantee his party had not been involved.  He disputed the notion that there had ever been plans to close centres.  This brass-necked statement collapsed when Cllr Gray presented him with a copy of the council’s Flagship magazine (February 2013, page 25) which listed exactly the centre-closing proposal Cllr Madden denied ever existed.

(click to enlarge)

Of course, what had happened was the administration came up with an even-more drastic proposal to cut the Sure Start service, but realised over time as popular fury grew that it could cut the staff and keep centres open and claim that “no service provision will be lost”.

The obvious problem with the adminstration’s strategy was succinctly nailed by Cllr Ken Ferrett who pointed out that some centres would be left with not much more service than a “caretaker and a bottle of bleach”.  Sadly much of his speech was difficult to follow from the gallery due to Lib Dem barracking – he had clearly got under their skin with his remark.

Portsmouth’s panto villain, Cllr Lee Hunt, rose to boos from some in the gallery and decided to reply by criticising the petitioners for attacking the wrong target.  The people to blame for the Sure Start problem, he said, were the bankers and the Labour Party for their folly before 2010.  I am not sure why the Lord Mayor did not interrupt Cllr Hunt for “deviation” – so much for the “Just A Minute” rules.  He even managed to contradict Cllr Madden, sitting in front of him, suggesting that we should not obsess about “bricks and mortar”.  Most of us in the gallery took that to mean that in fact centres will close next time the Lib Dems cut Sure Start.

Cllr Andrewes, sadly, is one of those people who makes his allotted 6 minutes feel like a life sentence.  The main point of his speech was to observe that if you’re strapped for cash, you have to shop in a different way in the supermarket.  He said he would “like to spend the entire council budget on childrens’ services, but when you are in the supermarket you have to shop in a different way”.  I think we counted about 8 repetitions of this odd analogy.  My view is that if I’m not happy with the value for money a supermarket offers me, I shop somewhere else.  I am sure voters will apply the same logic to choosing a political party next May when they tot up the money wasted by this administration.

Mike Hancock intervened to say that the process for taking petitions was flawed.  This was a weird thing to say – it is not the petitioners’ fault.  The system whereby Cabinet members take decisions and they are only rubber-stamped at full Council meetings is not a great one in terms of public accountability.  If people felt their responses to consultations were being taken seriously, perhaps there would be fewer petitions?  Cllr Hancock conveniently forgot the Palmerston Rd pedestrianisation consultation, which he ignored before he blew a fortune on the work.

Cllr Fazackerley intervened to say that he had only had 1 email on Sure Start but several asking that the Pyramids be kept open.  And then he said “I’m not saying that I think Sure Start doesn’t matter” which is a strange thing to say after saying he thinks people care more about the Pyramids.

Cllr Vernon-Jackson did his usual “what would you cut instead?” routine, which is an exercise in chutzpah from the man who has just signed us up for another £5m of risk at the Pyramids.  Cllr Wood wound up the debate, the administration’s response thanking the petitioners was carried at a vote, and after a short break the council moved on to the next business.

This isn’t the last we will hear about Sure Start, partly because the Conservatives have plans for improving the service, and partly because Lib Dem budgeting means we will all be back to square one next year.  The parents and campaigners will keep up the pressure I am sure and will highlight any failings of the service to match the promises Cllrs Wood and Vernon-Jackson have been making.

I’ll come on to the remainder of the meeting, which was just as contentious, in the next chunk of blog.

Mike Hancock’s City of Culture Confusion

The point of this blog is to correct and comment on a press release about Portsmouth’s City of Culture bid issued by Mike Hancock.  He issued it on May 16th, but I missed it at the time, and in the meantime everyone has been distracted by other controversies involving him.

I’ll deal with the relevant points below, but first a reminder of what the City of Culture bid is about.  Sometime in June (nearer the end of the month) the shortlisted bids for the 2017 City of Culture award will be announced.  This is awarded ever four years, with the bidding beginning 4 years in advance and a final announcement 3 years ahead.  There were bids submitted by

• Aberdeen
• Chester
• Dundee
• East Kent
• Hastings and Bexhill-on-Sea
• Hull
• Leicester
• Plymouth,
• Portsmouth and Southampton
• Southend-on-Sea
• Swansea

This is the second running of the competition – both Portsmouth/Southampton and Hull entered for the right to be this year’s City of Culture, but neither got onto the shortlist and it was eventually won by Londonderry, Derry, or whatever else you want to call the place.  Londonderry has a big programme of events running through the year.  It got into a bit of a mess before the year even started, and in the year to May ran up a £611,000 deficit due to poor ticket sales, with the risk falling upon the taxpayer.  Indications now are that the gap is narrowing somewhat, and it may well break-even over the full year – the lousy weather in the first few months can’t have helped.

The City of Culture programme is designed to allow the host to market their existing attractions better and to develop new cultural activities, as well as giving them a chance to host major events organised by national bodies.  However the onus is on candidate cities to put together a programme that meets quite tough criteria in the first instance.  The full DCMS briefing (PDF, 28 pages) is here.

The announcement that Portsmouth and Southampton would again be entering a joint bid came early in March.  Personally I’m disappointed we are making a joint bid; we are of a comparable size to other bidders and have an outstanding cultural and tourist offer on our own.  The point of tying up with Southampton seems to me to be all about scale, and not so much about common ground.  I’m not sure at this point what the cultural virtues of a joint bid are.  But I certainly have no doubts about Portsmouth’s credentials as a cultural centre, or the imagination and commitment of the people running our bit of the bid.

Mike Hancock rarely speaks at Westminster to represent his constituents, but keeps up a smoke-screen of press-releases and Early Day Motion activity.   The full press release is on his website but I’ll quote it extensively for the purpose of review.  I haven’t corrected any mistakes in the original:

“Today Mike Hancock urged Portsmouth residents to get behind the city’s’ joint bid with Southampton for the UK’s 2017 Capital of Culture, and to put old rivalries aside. It is hoped that this ‘unusual’ pairing will set the two South Coast cities apart for their rich maritime history and really demonstrate what the Solent has to offer”

Well, as the bid document makes clear the title isn’t awarded on the basis of history, it’s done in response to what can be done in the future.  It seems unwise to remind everyone in the first paragraph of the release that the two cities have their differences.  Maritime history is all some politicians ever go on about, it’s as if they would be content to see the Navy vanish completely and the Dockyard become one big museum.

As an aside, one of the City Council’s most unattractive ideas (in the “Seafront Masterplan” (see p.79 of the PDF) is to close the Royal Marine Museum at Eastney and relocate it to the Dockyard.  Why?  To “free up” the site for a hotel!  Anybody who was down at Eastney Barracks for the ‘BBC Antiques Roadshow’ yesterday will, I hope, share my view that this is totally barmy.

“The UK Capital of Culture is a Government-led programme which was inspired by the recent success of Liverpool’s time as European Capital of Culture in 2008. Portsmouth and Southampton are amongst 29 cities competing for the title and Bid Chiefs will hope to express the culture of both cities and their people, authors, architecture, artists, theatres and of course football clubs.”

The name of the programme is ‘UK City of Culture’.  The reference to “29 bidders” is a mistake – he is thinking of the 2013 competition which attracted that many bids.  Additionally, as the DCMS guidance makes clear, sporting activities are not a direct consideration in assessing bids.  We are rightly proud of our football club, but it’s not a help to us in this.

“This really is a historic moment for both Portsmouth and Southampton who, despite their differences, are uniting for a shared goal. This is a great opportunity to showcase the Solent which, if we win, would bring the cities an estimated £100m in investment and tourism.“

Always be careful when a politician talks about “investment”, especially when it’s “estimated”.  Portsmouth Lib Dems have been talking about “£1Bn of investment” being generated by their existing Masterplans.  Beyond a couple of planning applications for new hotels, there are few signs of private enterprise investing in accordance with them, and no sign at all of Northern Quarter (yes, that again) being built.  If work was started on Northern Quarter tomorrow, it would still be a building site in 2017.  A half-share of £100m of investment would be welcome, but the City Council certainly doesn’t have any ability to guarantee it.  Labour Southampton City Council has a record of management as inept our our own Lib Dem-run fiasco, so any bid will need careful scrutiny.

“Portsmouth really does have a lot of to offer as not only has it been the home of the Royal navy for centuries, but it is also been the residence for two world famous authors; Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens not mention our architecture, people and arts. I hope this rich cultural legacy when added to that of Southampton, which is the home of the Merchant Navy, will be enough to win the title.”

If we can have a 300-foot tall gold-plated statue of our latest great Pompey literary figure, Christopher Hitchens, I might be more enthusiastic.  Hancock has put down an Early Day Motion in support of the bid in Parliament listing some of our other great cultural figures.  Unfortunately, when it came to Southampton the most recent example available was Benny Hill (no, really).  But back to the press release:

“Both Portsmouth and Southampton are working hard to make the most of their cultural achievements, the highlights of which are Southampton’s SeaCity museum and the soon to be completed, Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth. Not only would winning this title bring extra revenue in tourism but it would also see the cities used as the venue for international events such as the Brit Awards, Electric Proms and BBC Sports Personality of The Year.“

The Mary Rose museum is fantastic; I actually had a tear in my eye when I saw it, because it took me right back to watching her emerge from Spithead on TV all those years ago, and because for a long time she was quite a forlorn sight in a haze of water-spray in the Dockyard.  The new museum, however, does her every justice and is one of the finest in the whole world.  But again sadly Mr Hancock is obsessed with our maritime pasts, and not our cultural futures.

There is also no guarantee that the events Hancock mentions above would be held in either Portsmouth or Southampton should the bid be successful, and particularly not the ‘Electric Proms’, which the BBC axed three years ago.  He seems to be relying again on out-of-date PR blurb.  Of course deciding which city gets which event would be a contentious process.  I see Londonderry has had Radio 1′s ‘Big Weekend’ event this year – anyone who remembers the huge crowds the old Radio 1 Roadshow used to draw to Castle Field will see the obvious potential in Southsea.

“It is hoped that this EDM will drum up support and Mike will continue to monitor the progress of Portsmouth and Southampton’s bid closely.“

Hancock is referring to the Early Day Motion I mentioned above.  To date, nobody else has signed it to show their support, which is a pity, but probably a reflection of the standing of our part-time MP with his peers.

The bookies presently make Chester 4/1 favourites, with Portsmouth/Southampton at 8/1 (you can follow the market here if you fancy a punt).  I don’t set much store by those odds myself, but we’ll see what happens nearer the end of the month.  Hopefully we’ll make it onto the shortlist and we’ll see what goes into the fuller bid document with interest.

Hopefully Mr Hancock’s future public statements on the matter will be of a higher standard.

Mike Hancock and the “Pompey Spring”

The Lib Dems issued this press release last night about Portsmouth South MP Mike Hancock:

“Following Mike Hancock’s receipt of legal papers in a High Court civil action, Nick Clegg has asked the Chief Whip to convene an urgent meeting under the disciplinary procedures of the parliamentary party between Nick Clegg, Simon Hughes, the Chief Whip and Mike Hancock.

Mike Hancock strenuously denies the accusations made in the civil action. We are not prejudging the outcome of the case, but given the seriousness of the allegations, Nick Clegg has instructed the Chief Whip to invoke the disciplinary procedures of the party.”

It’s a pretty weird statement, and state of affairs, for the Lib Dems to arrive at.  It’s been clear for some time that Hancock would face a civil action over claims of sexual harrassment made by a constituent.

National media attention have concentrated on Hancock’s role as an MP, but he devotes most of his time to Portsmouth City Council.  The local Lib Dem party has been the Hancock family’s own feudal system for 30 years.  Hancock has a lamentably bad record of attendance and debate participation at Westminster.  His defenders always refer to heart surgery he had last year but it is strange that while it supposedly still prevents him performing his duties as an MP, or attending disciplinary hearings at any level, it has had no effect on his ability to work as a councillor running the vital redevelopment portfolio.  It is as a consequence of this dual role that the awkward questions for Nick Clegg and Gerald Vernon-Jackson continue to mount up over their handling of the affair.

Everyone knows that Hancock is a colourful figure, admitting himself to a string of extra-marital affairs over the course of his 40 years in politics.  While his most famous dalliance with Katia Zatuliveter almost certainly did not have the “security” dimension some more excitable journalists hinted at, it is a reminder that Hancock has a long-standing business and lobbying interest in the murky world of post-Soviet politics.  He has just recently sided with the dictatorial and barbarous regime in Azerbaijan against the democratic government of Armenia, for instance.  Hancock’s attendance at Parliament has dwindled to the extent that this calendar year – long after he resumed full control of his affairs at council level – he has failed to vote 99 out of a possible 111 times.  He put out a press release about what the Lib Dems were doing about the Queen’s Speech without actually participating in the debate himself.  Mike Hancock is a part-time Member of Parliament.

At city council level, Hancock’s regeneration portfolio is in chaos; the Northern Quarter redevelopment of the city centre is running years behind schedule, has lost its two “anchor tenants”, and will now be half the size originally envisaged (and far smaller than similar schemes in competing city centres).  Hancock bulldozed through a disastrous pedestrianisation of a main route in Portsmouth, managing to infuriate residents and traders alike.  The city council routinely publishes masterplans for developing areas of the city that have little relationship to reality.  If you look at this play-school artist’s impression, you have to wonder if the money spent on these schemes has been spent wisely.

Residents wonder how the council proposes to get any of these things done when their existing schemes are in such a mess and there are deserted building sites in key locations.  That picture is repeated across the whole field of our Lib Dem council’s activity.  The next local elections in the city aren’t until May 2014, but they are likely to be an annihiliation of the Lib Dem party at council level, whatever happens to Hancock as an MP.

So with that disastrous record in mind, of irresponsibility and incompetence, why has it taken so long for the Lib Dems to do anything about it?  If Hancock had been an employee of Portsmouth City Council rather than a councillor, he would have been suspended long ago over the allegations against him.  Revised DCLG guidelines mean that the city council can only suspend his portfolio responsibility pending investigation (which is ongoing), but Gerald Vernon-Jackson has refused to do even this.  At national level, Nick Clegg has handled the Hancock case even more poorly than he did Rennard.  The complainant’s lawyer first wrote to Clegg in March 2011, but nothing resulted.  Either he should have commenced disciplinary proceedings when the allegations first came to light, or he should have waited until Hancock had his day in court.  As with the Rennard case, in not acting early Clegg gives the impression of not caring about serious allegations.  The chaos grows this morning, now that Hancock has put out a statement saying he will not attend the disciplinary meeting.  He also admits that the clock is now ticking on his time in politics, saying “I will go at a time of my choosing or if the people decide to get rid of me.”

When I talk about a “Pompey Spring”, I don’t just mean getting rid of Mike Hancock.  Lib Dem politics in Portsmouth are mired in sleaze – I won’t go now into the David Fuller case but have a read for yourself – and incompetence.  The likely replacement for Mike Hancock as Lib Dem Westminster candidate is Gerald Vernon-Jackson, another arrogant career politician and hopeless leader of the city council (not to mention a former Rennard apparatchik).  We need a clean sweep of these Lib Dems out of our politics, at Westminster and council level, and I am sure the people of Portsmouth can’t wait for a chance to deliver their verdict at the ballot box.  I read a fair amount of nonsense in the national press about Hancock’s “popularity” here, or the electoral prospects at a by-election, and it will be fascinating to see how quickly the media gets a grip on the real situation in Portsmouth. #PompeySpring is coming.

HMS Excellent 1830-1930

I was shopping in Chichester last week when I came across the centenary history of the gunnery school at Portsmouth, published by Charpentier of Portsmouth.  The famous Excellent, Collingwood’s ship, ended her days moored in Portsmouth Harbour, and the earliest formal courses of instruction were held in her around 1830.  Soon afterwards the Admiralty formalised the arrangement of the Gunnery School as HMS Excellent and the name was carried by several ships moored in the harbour to house the school.  Eventually the establishment moved onto Whale Island in the 1890s, and with the changes in naval weaponry after World War II the original purpose of the establishment changed too.  Excellent was recommissioned in 1994 after several years’ lapse as the command for Whale Island, which as the MoD page shows is still a vital part of naval organisation.

I haven’t had a chance to read the book yet (I have a long list of stuff to get through first) but as the plates in it were so fascinating, I snapped a few and they appear here.  They are a bit fuzzy as I took them with the phone on my camera, but hopefully they come across well enough to be worthwhile.

I was in a bookshop and luckily this was sat at the end of a row of books, otherwise I might not have spotted it as there is absolutely nothing on the spine.  But the cover has this marvellous plate of a painting by Harold Wyllie (son of the great WL Wyllie) and it immediately caught my eye.

The Wyllie plate again as frontispiece, and the title page.  Charpentier were based in the High Street, and were devastated during the Blitz along with so many other historic businesses and homes.  The image below is from a different book, “The Portsmouth That Has Passed”, and it tells the story better than I can:

We make fairly little fuss about the devastation of so much of our historic city, perhaps influenced by the wartime necessity of discretion in order not to give information to the Germans about the effect of their bombing.  Perhaps also we are conscious that post-war “reconstruction” entailed much further destruction of heritage which today would attract outrage and be forestalled.  Although the Luftwaffe bombed large parts of Portsmouth to rubble, HM Dockyard was their first target and they did less well against it than they would have liked.

But to get back to HMS Excellent,

This is the ex-HMS Boyne, which was renamed Excellent in 1834 and was moored in Fountain Lake.  She served as the home of the Gunnery School until 1859, when she was replaced by HMS Queen Charlotte, which was also then renamed Excellent.

This illustration of a gun deck around 1850 will look familiar to anyone who has been on HMS Victory or HMS Warrior, two ships built almost a hundred years apart.  In all that time the nature of naval warfare changed little, although things moved on much more quickly from the 1860s.

This map of the harbour and Whale Island in 1862 shows Excellent with Illustrious moored ahead of her.  The Gunnery School had already expanded beyond the original ship, and Excellent and Illustrious both shot at targets out in the harbour.  There was a reasonable trade in recovering the shot at low tide and returning it to the school!

At that time Whale Island itself was just two small low-lying islands, the larger of which was used as a rifle range.  From 1867, the islands were built up and joined using spoil from the excavation of basins in the Dockyard, a process which carried on for 25 years with the help of convict labour.

The first building on Whale Island.

Eventually Illustrious was found to be in danger of disintegrating, and was replaced as the sister to Excellent by HMS Calcutta.  You’ll see the two are joined by a rope bridge.

This map shows the island in more or less the shape it exists today, expanded by the dumping of spoil from the excavation of Dockyard basins.  There was a railway viaduct to the island to carry the spoil, which existed until the 1890s when it was removed having outlived its purpose.  I had no idea there had been a viaduct there; most people know about the old viaduct between the Harbour Station and the Dockyard (the name of South Railway Jetty gives the game away) but I’ve never heard of this one before.

The book doesn’t explain when this photo was taken.  Two field gun tournaments to commemorate the exploits of naval gun crews on land in the Boer War commenced in 1907, the Brickwood Trophy (presented originally by the famous Sir John Brickwood) which still carries on today at HMS Collingwood, and the competition at the Royal Tournament which ran from then until 1999.  Some more history of the competition is here.

The buildings around it look rather different these days, but the parade ground is unchanged.

This painting shows SMS Nurnburg, a German World War I cruiser.  She had been surrendered with the German Fleet at Scapa Flow, where many of the ships were scuttled by their crew.  However Nurnburg had been seized by the British and beached before she could sink.  After some time moored at Portsmouth in Fountain Lake, she was sunk as a gunnery target south of the Isle of Wight.

Collingwood is a name familiar around Portsmouth, the shore establishment at Gosport being named in his honour.  Collingwood made his name in HMS Barfleur at the “Glorious First of June” and in HMS Excellent at the Battle of Cape St Vincent, where the fine gunnery of his ship attracted much admiration.  St Vincent College at Gosport is housed in the former HMS St Vincent shore establishment – their website at the link above has a lot of interesting material about the battle.

Appropriately (but coincidentally) it was the same Excellent which later became the first home of the Gunnery School.  Nelson was 10 years younger than Collingwood and looked up to him in many ways.  Collingwood fought as Nelson’s second-in-command at Trafalgar, and after Trafalgar was Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet until his retirement shortly before his death in 1810.

His brilliance both as a commander in battle, and a tactful representative of British interests in the Mediterranean meant the Admiralty kept him in post at some cost to his health, and he returned to his home in the north-east in 1809 more or less worn out after unending years at sea. Collingwood is rightly revered in naval circles everywhere, but he deserves a far higher place in this country’s consciousness than he has.  Like many others (my own hero is Cunningham) he is overshadowed by Nelson; it is crazy that a country which has produced so many brilliant naval leaders is so bad at perpetuating their memory and remembering the lessons of their service.

Last illustration from the book, a gorgeous plate of the crest of Excellent and her motto, which is that of the Navy as a whole: “If you desire peace, prepare for war”.  It is a quote from Vegetius’ 5th-century work “On Military Matters”, one of those works now often referred to by mystical management consultants who confuse warfare with peaceable human relations.

And that’s the end!  I’m looking forward to reading the book properly and delving into the history of a place thousands of us pass every day, but which few of us get to visit.

WATO Disaster!

Ed Miliband was on The World At One this lunchtime with Martha Kearney, and he was subjected to a fierce grilling on the whole range of Labour policy (or equally, the lack of it).  I often criticise Miliband for his poor public speaking; at Prime Minister’s questions, he is unable to keep going for more than about ten seconds without needing to refer to his script.  At PMQs, any competent performer will need paper only to get a quotation correct, or to refer to some statistics.  But Ed struggles.  In debate his voice starts to soar up like an excitable kid in a school debating society.  The long and the short of it is, whoever is doing his coaching has done an abysmal job so far, and they are running out of time to get him fixed.

Someone has uploaded the full excruciating twelve minutes of hesitancy and desperation to Audioboo, but as a public service I have done an edit to get down to the real message of Ed Miliband, which so often gets lost in obfuscation and nervous delivery.

I often say that if you really want to learn how to perform as a politician, you should study the timing and delivery of a really good standup.  I am a huge fan of Dave Allen, for instance.  I’ll write some more about this another time, but frankly if you can’t do better than Ed Miliband does whenever he pops up, you’ll never make a convincing politician.

The Miners: Thatcher vs Wilson

Put any search into Google about the strike of 1984-5 and you will get all sorts of stuff about it being “the beginning of the end of coal mining”, or a “death knell”, or you can read similar judgments on most news sites in obituaries of Margaret Thatcher.  It has become accepted in the media without any critical examination that Margaret Thatcher killed coal mining in the UK.  But it was the ever-erudite @allanholloway who brought to my attention a few weeks back that more coal mines closed under Harold Wilson’s governments than under Margaret Thatcher’s, and I owe him an apology for not having credited him sooner, given the number of retweets I got for passing that on earlier.  Based on these figures from the government about 290 mines closed under Wilson in all his time in office, and about 160 under Thatcher.  Because the figures are based on year end totals of pits operating, it’s not possible to be precise, but the relative scale of those numbers is clear.  So why isn’t Wilson execrated by the Left for his part in the decline of coal mining?

I remember well the tragedy of the miners’ strike of 1984/5, which was a response to the planned closure of just 23 pits under the MacGregor Plan, but not any upheaval in the 1960s when a much larger programme passed without the level of unrest we saw later on.  One reason may be that in fact the programme of closures could and should have been much more rapid.

The argument about the impact of the closures of the 1980s will go on.  But it should be informed by an appreciation of the huge losses incurred by the National Coal Board, the buying-off of the National Union of Mineworkers over many years by successive governments, and the panicky politicking of Labour in office.  The truth is that while Wilson closed a huge number of mines, he left many open which he might have closed, and his reputation should suffer on two counts which appear initially contradictory.

I wanted to remind myself of the flavour of politics of the Wilson era.  For all his faults, Wilson is an under-rated Prime Minister, who had to contend with tremendous forces of social change, economic change (some of that self-inflicted decline, true), and international change.  He was attacked for being gimmicky, for liking an expedient, but at least it was a testament to his speed of thought that he was able to keep pulling rabbits out of hats.  As an instinctive politician he was far more skillful than anyone I can think of active now.  It is impossible to imagine Callaghan or George Brown doing any better, or Maudling.  Heath became a proven failure.  Macleod, Healey or Powell are all great “what ifs?” who weren’t close enough to the summit at that time.

As it goes with party leaders, so it goes too with diarists and memoir-writers.  It is still the case, nearly 40 years after their publication, that nobody has written anything to touch Richard Crossman’s three-volume Diaries of a Cabinet Minister as an impression of government and politics.  Alistair Campbell or Chris Mullin perhaps run him close.  So naturally I turned to this long-term friend and close collaborator of Wilson to see what he’d recorded about coal.  Crossman never had direct responsibility for anything to do with the industry, but his “political antennae” were receptive (although they often led him to perform bizarre looking U-turns) and he grew in Cabinet seniority over the course of the government.  A few extracts from his diaries, detailing Cabinet or Cabinet Committee discussions, follow.

June 4th 1965: “We were confronted with a very characteristic recommendation from Fred Lee, our trade-union Minister of Power.  His main concern seemed to be that we should on no account give any kind of tapering subsidies to help declining coalfields such as those in Scotland and South Wales.  It’s extraordinary how a Department can get a Minister down.  It would have been difficult to conceive nine months ago that Mr Lee would have been opposed to any kind of help for the coalminers and blind to the fact that tapering subsidies are politically essential”.

So almost 20 years before the MacGregor Plan, Labour were grappling with the reality that mining was in decline and that subsidies during run-down were required to make it politically palatable.  In the event, subsidies were approved, indeed almost forced on Lee, by Cabinet, although far from being “tapering” relief, they became a constant feature as mine closures were delayed for political reasons.

August 4th 1965: “After I had left Cabinet yesterday afternoon there had been a deadlock on coal prices [charged to the consumer], so the problem had been pushed back to EDC [the top Cabinet economics policy committee] this afternoon.  Callaghan had all the logic and arguments on his side.  They were rehearsed by Fred Lee, the Minister of Power, who reminded us that last March he had asked for the necessary increase and it had been postponed because of the municipal elections.  He had asked for it again in June and on that occasion it had been postponed because of the incomes policy. ‘Every postponement,’ he said, ‘costs us several million pounds a week.  For God’s sake give us the increase quickly and in the right places.  Put coal prices up in the unremunerative areas – Wales and Scotland and Lancashire – while keeping them steady where the coal actually makes a profit, in the East Midlands and the West Riding’.  George Brown’s reply was that at the present juncture an increase would be tantamount to political suicide…Callaghan turned round and said, ‘Some time we have to face reality.  That time has come now.  We ought to put the prices up and keep the wages steady’.”

Crossman then records a raging row between George Brown, opposing price increases, and Callaghan, favouring them, before Crossman asked if:

“‘…we could make this year’s £50m deficit [about £850m today] at the Coal Board part of the general write-off?’  Callaghan, forced to reply, said ‘Well, of course it’s technically possible’.  So I then remarked, ‘Well, in that case, I am on George Brown’s side’.  When he’d finished the count [of votes round the table] George Brown said he had a majority on his side…the seven to five majority for economic madness but for political sanity.”

Clearly, the economic case for coal industry rationalisation was overwhelming, to eliminate losses which, accruing to a nationalised industry, were eating up the wealth of the whole nation.  On September 1st 1965, Crossman notes

“…poor Fred Lee was left speechless, with the vast Coal Board losses piling up.”

Those are from the first volume of Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, and in the period covered by the second volume the Wilson government accepts that a plan of closures must proceed.  The plan for rationalising the industry was debated in the Commons on July 18th 1967, Crossman writing (as Leader of the House) of Labour MPs from mining constituencies that:

“…provided they could make their protest these miners felt that they were bound to support the Government in an action which really meant the destruction of the mining industry.  What these miners’ MPs showed was a not very edifying loyalty, because people should not be as loyal as that to a Government which is causing the total ruin of their industry.  As the night went on I was pleased that they were so pleased to have me there but I was also shocked by their pathetic lack of fight”.

This is a revealing passage, because it illustrates that even such a renowned intellectual as Crossman supposed that an industry should be sustained indefinitely in defiance of the facts, and for all the venom Labour MPs produce these days about Thatcher or the fate of the pits, they did little at a time when they were in power.  In the event, Wilson delayed the closures on political grounds because he didn’t want to add to the usual increase in unemployment over the following winter.  However Crossman notes on November 21st 1967 Dick Marsh’s (now the Minister of Power) protest that pit closures were justified because

“…you can’t sell any more coal and we’ve already got some 30 million tons of stocks piled up and there’s no more room to pile coal”.

On February 12th 1968, there is some passing discussion of the proposal to build a coal-fired aluminium smelter in Scotland (“economically ruinous in the sense that the [coal] price would have to be subsidized”).  As an alternative to the smelter as a means of eliminating large piles of surplus coal, Wilson was considering building a new coal-fired power station alongside the nuclear one at Seaton Carew despite

“figures showing that a coal-fired station would load us up for 30 years with inefficient plant and cost far more…Of course in economic terms this proposal was a scandal.”

Lord Robens was Chairman of the NCB, and was part of that generation of Labour politicians like Wilson, Callaghan, and Brown who seemed destined for great things.  But he lacked stomach for the fight, and took the NCB job, where before long he was known as “Old King Coal” in a chauffered Daimler with NCB1 for a licence plate.   In the 10 years this Labour grandee and former darling of the union barons held the post, between 1961 and 1971, about 300,000 miners lost their jobs and around 400 pits closed.  Many of those that remained did so, as the extracts above suggest, in an equivocal relationship with economic reality.

As a consequence of the1967 Fuel White Paper, Robens expected that coal mining would have ended in Scotland, Wales and Durham by 1980. The number of jobs in the industry would contract from 387,000 in 1967 to 65,000 by 1980.  At the start of the 1984 strike, there were still almost 200,000 miners.  Some of that is because there was a brief rally for coal after the 1973 oil crisis, but it was mostly because of union power and the political weakness of Wilson and Heath.  The industry still required subsidy, despite the challenges to other fuel sources posed by the oil crisis.  Figures below are for the 10 years after 1973, in £m, from a written answer in Hansard in 1984:

1973–74     239.8
1974–75     46.1
1975–76     —
1976–77     11.1
1977–78     24.0
1978–79     117.7
1979–80     189.2
1980–81     175.0
1981–82     455.1
1982–83     386.0

By the time Thatcher came to power, she was faced by trade unions drunk with hubris, who had tested the mettle of Parliamentary democracy in the preceding years; and a National Coal Board that had for too long been protected from the realities of modern economics.  In the 60s, the impact of pit closures had been muffled by an economy and employment transitioning into new areas.  But the fundamental weakness of Labour policy at the same time, of failing to devalue sterling, of succumbing to the unions, of pursuing statist models of economic direction, all these damned the economy to the stagnation of the 1970s.  Labour damned the people displaced from the coal industry when eventually final rationalisation took place to a far greater hardship than need have been the case.  I can understand why feelings run high about Thatcher in former coalmining areas, but the fury blinds those who express it to the failures of Labour in power over many years.  Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see coal mining return to areas  it has left, if it can be done economically and without burdening the state.  The proud traditions of those communities, stretching back generations, are exactly the sorts of things the Tory Party should be seeking to preserve where possible.

A final point: there has been a lot of coverage of the reaction in the old Durham coalfield to Thatcher’s death.  This PDF lists the closures of Durham pits, year by year from 1950-93.  15 pits closed under Thatcher.  Under Wilson, 58.  I mentioned the nuclear plant at Seaton Carew, which happens to be on the edge of the Durham coalfield, and it operates to this day.  Wilson never built the coal-fired power station he intended as a compensation to the Durham miners who felt betrayed by the construction of a nuclear plant.

Pompey, PR Own Goals, Libel Reform, Litigation

I tweet mainly about football and politics, and I am sure that there are people interested in just one of those following me who wish I wouldn’t go on about the other thing quite so much.  This is a rare case where the two are inextricably linked.  It relates on the one hand to the struggle for ownership of Portsmouth FC, and on the other to the law of libel.  Let’s deal with the Pompey angle first.

I’ve referred often in past blogs to the involvement of Portpin in Pompey in unflattering terms.  For some time, in parallel with the dispute over the valuation of Fratton Park, there has been another bidding group trying to muscle in – the consortium fronted by Keith Harris, lately of the ailing brokers Seymour Pierce.  Rather than rehash the reasons for caution over this, I’ll refer you to two pieces by Mike Hall, here and here, and feel the need to say not much more on the matter.  Mike Hall doesn’t make the point, but the would-be Finance Director, John Redgate, held the same position under Portpin and then CSI, and so provides further continuity between the three.

There was originally a third piece, since taken down.  This examined the background of another member of the Harris consortium, Pascal Najadi.  I am not going to say anything about this gentleman’s role beyond this: he has threatened Mike Hall with legal action for defamation in a press release which reportedly came from David Bick at Square 1 Consulting. You can click on the image below to enlarge, or view it as a  pdf.

I have tried to find out from Mr Bick why the heading names Portsmouth FC alongside Pascal Najadi.  The club are not party to the threatened action, and Mr Najadi owns no stake or interest in the club.  It is, in the most literal sense possible, nothing to do with Portsmouth FC.  So why pretend it is?

I also tried to find out from Mr Bick whether he issued the release himself, or if someone else did.  It names Mishcon de Reya, but they wouldn’t comment on it when I spoke to them.  I don’t have a number for Mr Najadi, but the release says “call David Bick”, so I did.  No answer.  Because there is a very real problem with the release – it is mostly gibberish.  Not gibberish in the sense of “employing specialist legal language”, but gibberish in the sense of “failing completely in spelling, grammar, and syntax.”

We should consider the possibility that some malicious soul has put that release out, naming Mr Najadi, Mr Bick, and Mishcon, but written it in the most illiterate manner in order to discredit them.  The Harris bid has attracted a fair amount of ridicule, including the now-obligatory “Downfall” spoof, as well as the more forensic attention of bloggers.  The press release was sent in the first place to a Hereford blogger, which seems strange, and as the piece explains, it seemed to come from Malaysia rather than London.

I would expect an early report of forgery from Mr Bick, but there has been no disavowal of the press release after several days.  The reluctance of Mishcon de Reya to own up to involvement in this fiasco is becoming more understandable.  Law rests on precision in language, and there is precious little of it in that press release, beyond the clear and onerous conditions it imposes on Mike Hall.

The tie-up between the footballing and legal/political aspects of this story is the topicality of the case with regard to libel reform.  Writers in any sphere can be subjected to legal action designed to silence them before the public has a chance to judge the merits of a case for themselves.  Without making any comment about the accuracy or otherwise of Hall’s third piece, it is clear that being a blogger can in general be a perilous occupation even when the facts are on the writer’s side.  The legal process is at present slow-moving and expensive for individuals without major legal and financial resources behind them.

The law surrounding libel and press comment has for a long time been held up as something in our legal system requiring urgent and widespread reform.  That is not to say that anybody wants a “wild west” outcome where anybody is free to libel people without being held accountable.  But at present the law can be abused to prevent the disclosure of important, relevant, and true information about figures in public life and their activity.  If you peruse the libelreform.org website you will find a number of cases – including the infamous one involving Sheffield Wednesday fans – where the law has failed to provide a legal system that is fair, affordable, and easily understood by everyone involved in it.

There is a Defamation Bill before Parliament at present which would remedy a lot of the defects of the law as it stands, but it is under threat because it has been “hijacked” in the House of Lords in the wake of the Leveson Inquiry.  Under the leadership of Lord Puttnam it has been amended to introduce press regulation in a totally unacceptable form.  Puttnam has changed the direction of the Bill from being a moderate and sensible repair to libel law, to something which has no chance of reaching the statute book because it muzzles the press and public.  If this Bill fails, and at present it is likely to, there is no guarantee that a replacement can be quickly got through Parliament any time soon.  If you would like to sign the petition to MPs to save the present Bill so that the offending Puttnam clause can be removed, you can do so on the libelreform.org website.  It’s time to rebalance the law and defend free speech.

There is a “fighting fund” (see bottom of this blog for details) for Mike Hall’s defence, because the issue is that even were the court case to end quickly in defeat for Mr Najadi, it could still cost a lot to fund the defence far enough to see it get to court.  The fund has had plenty of contributions from supporters of Pompey who are concerned that someone who has done so much to expose the motives of others involved with the club in the last five years should now be threatened.

It is a remarkable tribute to the accuracy of Hall’s earlier pieces, many of which make strong statements about wealthy people able to afford expensive lawyers, that nobody has tried to sue him before.  Many of the things he has unearthed have been repeated by mainstream journalists who all have sensitive legal departments to restrain them in doubtful cases.  Neither of the other two parties in the Harris takeover have disputed the facts as Hall lays them out.  Mr Najadi is already falling victim to the “Streisand effect” in that while very few people had heard of him before this press release, he has now achieved a great deal of celebrity, although those coming late to the event will not necessarily know what Mike Hall wrote about him.

And that is the peril of our unreformed libel law; it offers little opportunity for quiet mediation and arbitration.  Instead it imposes a confrontational approach on litigants which risks unfair collateral damage to their reputations when they are taking action against popular figures with an ardent group of supporters.

It is of no benefit to Mr Najadi as a litigant that the legal process is so expensive; no litigant wants to see their opponent bankrupted first if it reduces their chance of being able to extract damages later on.  In the internet age it is simply impossible to “unpublish” something once it gets into Google’s cache, or spreads to parts of the world out of the reach of the London courts (despite the dreadful reputation English law has for libel tourism).  The law is way out of date when measured against modern media and modern expectations that justice has to be available to all and not just those who can afford expensive lawyers.  Then again, you can’t always judge the strenfh of a client’s case by their expensive lawyer.  Chris Huhne and his partner Carina Trimingham have both had unfavourable outcomes despite having retained Mishcon de Reya.

Now that the court date of April 10th/11th has been set for the hearing to value Fratton Park so that PKF can sell Portsmouth FC to the Pompey Supporters’ Trust, it is inevitable that there will be another attempt by the Harris/Portpin zombie collective to derail proceedings.  During the Portsmouth City Council meeting deciding whether or not to make a loan to PST, a remarkable email arrived from the Harris bid misleadingly claiming “preferred bidder” status.  PKF have made it clear that since the Football League will only entertain PST’s bid, PKF have no option but to make PST their preferred bidder.  It is debatable in any case whether a bid which met with widespread fan hostility could be said to guarantee any kind of viable outcome for club or creditors.  I have spoken to a creditor myself who admits that a bid hostile to PST is not something they would support, for precisely that reason.

Since the Football League is effectively a “private club”, there is nothing in law that can be done to compel them to change their mind.  It is because the FL is such a private club that HMRC have had to put up with the Football Creditor Rule in football club administrations – if the Premier League and Football League won’t let you in, for whatever reasons they choose, then the likely outcome is liquidation.  The League have no responsibility to the creditors of their member clubs unless they choose to make it so (as they have done with players).

Supporters of the Trust bid will be hoping that the court rules in favour of a valuation they can meet (the evidence is that the PST offer is at least equal to any of several valuations that have been carried out) and that PKF proceed quickly with a sale to allow PST to take ownership and start rebuilding.

Fans have contributed massively in terms of individual pledges to PST, and a collection of more wealthy fans have put in a substantial sum themselves to fund the club even while PKF are running it. Getting the PST bid to completion from here relies on the continued support of the Football League, and of Portsmouth City Council in making the loan to PST.  PCC have already taken extensive legal advice about their position, and are very sure of it.  As I’ve shown above, if the League are happy with PST then there isn’t much anyone else can do about it.  There has been a lot of chuntering from what I suspect to be plants and sock puppets in the social media, trying to destabilize the PST bid, but that is a subject for another blog.

Mike Hall stands by the content of the removed third piece.  Even without that piece being considered, we are entitled to be cautious about the Harris bid given its provenance and the erratic strategy employed by the Harris PR team.  I saw enough in Hall’s first two pieces to be clear in my own mind that this bid is something to be opposed rather than welcomed.  However, if anybody from the Harris/Bick/Najadi side wishes now to respond to any of the queries I have made previously, I will be happy to update this blog to accommodate them.

Of course, anyone can reach for their lawyers and start making threats against the League, City Council, or anybody else – but they should make sure before they do so that it isn’t going to backfire on them.

To contribute via Paypal to the fighting fund for Mike Hall, please enter SOS_Pompey@hotmail.co.uk as the recipient.  You can also sign a petition asking Pascal Najadi to drop the threat of legal action here.

Enough is Enough, Again

It is a year and a week since I posted my first blogpost about Pompey, entitled “Enough is Enough”.  As it turns out, we have been through quite a lot more than we had already endured, thanks to the strange mix of naivety and obstinacy that is Balram Chainrai’s way of doing business.  At the time we went into administration again, we had grounds for optimism in that Chainrai failed to get his way with the appointment of UHY Hacker Young, with the court imposing PKF and Trevor Birch as administrators.  Sadly, in the intervening year many of us have come to curse PKF just as much as we once did UHY; indeed, for most of that period Trevor Birch looks like he has been dancing to Chainrai’s tune.

The Pompey Supporters Trust have been doing a superb job putting their bid together, often in the face of indifference from PKF, and getting it to a stage where they have converted sufficient pledges to mount a viable bid.  They’ve had my money and I support them wholeheartedly.  Having been faced with the choice of Portpin by Birch as preferred bidder, they kept working and have eventually driven Chainrai away from the position where he is a viable owner of Pompey.  It is unlikely he would pass the Owners & Directors Test, and it was the realisation of that which brought about the abrupt and farcical change of direction by PKF last year.  It was suggested while Portpin were still preferred bidders that there is some “legal kryptonite” in Chainrai’s possession which paralysed Trevor Birch and his minions; nobody outside the process could believe that a sale to Portpin could be passed by the authorities.  Indeed, the very slow progress since in getting to court to allow the sale to PST to proceed prompts questions about whether there is still something in the background which gives Chainrai a hold over PKF.

During this latest administration, the club has been whittled away to the point where all anybody would be buying is the ground and a pile of debt.  There are no players, no commercial infrastructure, no training facilities, and few remaining staff.  The club’s financial position has deteriorated to the extent that it is being sustained by a group of relatively wealthy individual supporters writing cheques every week.  Until the club leaves administration, that situation will not improve; the costs of doing business in administration are generally quite a bit higher than would otherwise be the case.  Then there is the complaint, heard from several people who have left PFC voluntarily during PKF’s tenure, that PKF have done a poor job of managing the business.  Trevor Birch is supposed to be a “football man”, having been a chief executive himself in his time.  Unfortunately during his time the management of the club has exhibited little commonsense or commercial flair (the Official 2013 Calendar is a case in point).  One or two of the staff inherited by Birch should probably have been jettisoned when he arrived, given their previous record at Fratton, but perhaps they will be removed after the PST takeover.

The latest adjournment in the PKF/Portpin court case to determine the value of Fratton Park is a disappointment, but not any kind of sign that the PST bid is flawed.  The yawning gap between Portpin’s valuation of Fratton Park and PST’s is a sign of Chainrai’s delusions, not poverty on the part of the supporters’ bid.  There have been several valuations of Fratton Park which tally with PST’s.  It is hard to see what is keeping PKF from testing those valuations in court, where the chances of Portpin winning should be microscopically slim.  But we have another adjournment for two weeks, with all the undesirable side-effects that entails.

It means another two weeks of drift, of not being able to make any permanent signings, of commercial stagnation, financial uncertainty, and growing scepticism from supporters that this miserable process will ever reach a conclusion.  Sure, it also gives the Trust another two weeks to firm up their bid, to recruit additional pledges and to convert some of those still outstanding.  But there is only so much PST can do before they own the club, while there is a huge amount for them to do once they have the keys to Fratton Park.  I can imagine the frustrations of the bid team.

And yet we never hear any real comment from the Trust on the conduct of the administration.  We know that PST have been poring over the books for some time, so they have a good idea of what the state of affairs is, and we all know that it is not a good state.  They must have concerns about PKF and the weakness of their efforts.  However, the official line is that the court case is a matter between PKF and Portpin, and there is nothing more to be said until it is concluded.  They are, of course, right that the court case is not something PST is involved in.  But I do not agree that patient silence is always the right way to deal with PKF.  There is a growing risk that silence, however diplomatic, allows misplaced scepticism to flourish among supporters.  These delays are not the fault of PST, so why not pin the blame where it lies – with PKF and Portpin?

The first anybody heard about the latest adjournment was in a Daily Telegraph story quoting a “Portpin spokesman”. I generally take anything about Pompey in the Telegraph with a pinch of salt – they have published a couple of daft stories about Pompey lately, based on weak sourcing; in itself, even the news of the adjournment is no cause for panic.  At first I was inclined to think they had got in a muddle, and were anticipating a date being set later on to hear the case properly.  However it quickly became clear that in fact things are as the Telegraph describe.

It amazes me that PKF would not warn their preferred bidder that the adjournment was being granted.  It amazes me a bit less that their was no proper statement from them for wider consumption.  Pompey’s website has a bare announcement that the case has been adjourned; there is nothing at all about it on PKF’s.  We are all in the dark as to what the cause of the delay is.  Of course the people involved will have signed confidentiality agreements, but it is hard to see why PKF could not agree a form of words to give confidence to the outside world that the process is actually advancing.  It seems to me to have stopped dead, with PKF having rings run round them by Portpin.

It was certainly not diplomatic language of me to suggest on Twitter earlier that PST should give PKF a bit of a “public kicking”, but I think it is time to remind ourselves exactly who is supposed to be doing what in this process.  PFC is for sale; PKF have been charged with selling it.  There is only one realistic buyer, PST.  PST are ready to conclude the sale, subject to PKF getting a valuation ratified in court.  In every respect in this transaction, PKF are someone’s servant – the High Court, the creditors of PFC, and PST as the “customer”.  PKF have an awful lot to lose should they fail to complete a sale; their credibility has already been hammered by their lack of progress at Pompey over the last year.  Their lavish fees are at risk if the club is liquidated.  In my view, PKF are ripe for a bit of a kicking.  They have been slow and questionably competent.

The Trust are reluctant to get involved in that; Colin Farmery, the Trust’s spokesman, tweeted back to me that it would be “stupid” to do so.  I have the very highest regard for Colin and everyone else in the Trust management, but on this occasion I think their tactics are too cautious.  What are PKF going to do about it if PST question the delay publicly?  What do they have to threaten anyone with?  Are they going to liquidate because someone tells them off?

The last thing I want is the impression to get about that PST are idle during this delay, because nothing could be further from the truth.  But whatever they say about anything else, the court case and the delays are what dominate the public’s consciousness.  We don’t know why the delays happen, and it seemed at first the Trust didn’t either.  Something similar seemed to happen in the lead-up to the adjournment in December.  I am sure the problem is at PKF’s end and would much rather risk a bit of a row with them in saying so than allow any misleading ideas about PST to develop.

I do not accept that politeness cures someone else’s incompetence, or that being a bit rude is always irresponsible.  We have put up with plenty since late 2008, put up with it for a long time with courtesy and affability, and suffered massively as a result.  As someone with experience of business in the “real world”, I have decided the balance of probability in football is that if you suspect someone to be useless, they almost certainly are, and you should do something about it.  Football is awash with people who would be unemployable outside the game, and we at Pompey have come into contact with too many of them as employees of our club and administrators at governing bodies.  Don’t sit down with them for tea and biscuits, get your (strictly metaphorical) Molotov cocktails ready.

I’d like to see PST start to explain (if they know) or question (if they don’t) why the process is dragging on, very much to the detriment of the club and its supporters and the enrichment of PKF.  PST may feel that diplomacy will get them further, I feel that while they are on that journey they run a risk of people being confused about the direction of travel or the identity of the driver.

If, reading this, you aren’t already a member of the Trust, do join it.  If you can, get involved in buying a share, because you are buying a piece of the future.  I am sure PST will get the job done, and in a year’s time I will  be sitting here typing about the rebirth of the club.  But we are close enough to overcoming this first, huge hurdle that we should be confident in giving PKF a bit of a shove.  PKF have been lucky to have PST as a prospective buyer.  Just about anyone else would have got fed up with the conduct of the administration and walked away long ago and let PKF look like idiots.  Let everyone see how hard PST have fought to get here, and let everyone understand the scale of obstruction they have overcome.