Kevan Lim

Well the reality of defeat hit home today. I had to go into the county council to close out all my files and transfer my emails to my own account.  Unfortunately someone had decided to switch off all the computer access for councillors who were defeated.  I never cease to be amazed at the insensitivity of some people.  Apart from the fact that I did not end my term as a county councillor until the end of today, how does anyone think you can access your files if they have closed down computer access.  It is important because I still have several important personal cases which I want to make sure are transferred to appropriate officers for action before I end.

Anyway when the computers were switched back on I received a number of emails both from opponents and residents regretting my defeat.  Whilst I appreciate the thoughts it only added to my depression.

The defeat also meant I am  no longer the UK representative on the European bodies I was involved with.  As a consequence I have to arrange  votes to be provided to the Norwegian vice president in connection with an important meeting in Odessa Ukraine this week.  Fortunately she is happy to vote on behalf of the UK delegation.

One good email arrives from one of my French local government contacts who regrets my defeat and complains I should have told him earlier so he could have sent over  his  Corsican brotherhood to campaign on my behalf.  I remember reading the book by Robert Ludlum “The Matarese Circle”.

Not sure having a campaign run by a brotherhood intent on world domination through corruption and anarchy would have helped, although it gave me a laugh and lightened my mood.

I have one final task which is to attend my last meeting of the European energy group in Brussels on the 19th June.  Then its time to really decide what I am going to do.

Chambers, Jane Liberal Democrat 678

Carter, Paul Justin Conservative 561

Lim, Kevan Labour 526

Cavanagh, Brenda Patricia Green 387

Bad result. This was my 7^th election, once in Bedfordshire, 3 times in Manchester and then this was my third in Ipswich. I had never lost so the defeat was even harder.

Its Saturday night and I am coming to terms with my defeat. Although in comparison with many other places especially Lowestoft, I can look on my result with some pleasure. I always knew it would be a tight call.

Based on last year I have only lost about 220 votes. The libs are hardly up and the conservatives have made limited progress with all the extra votes on the waterfront. In reality my defeat is down to a protest vote with labour votes switching to Green. I can live with that . In some parts of Ipswich and in Lowestoft the labour vote has gone to BNP or UKIP.

In some ways today was a difficult day. I have to start deciding what I do.

But it was helped by my daughter who performed with the co-op juniors at the Sidegate fate. She was great, 5 years old and a confident ballet dancer.

I have enjoyed my 6 years on the county council. At least I leave some things behind like the Explore card which I know would never have happened without me.

Will I stand again who knows. The one thing I do know is that some of the Labour Cabinet have betrayed every basic principle I believe in. Their first concern has been their own self interest and not that of the party or the country.

This will be my last post before the election results are declared.

Like 2005 the count is not until friday.  However in 2005 I knew on the thursday night I had won.  The first stage in the count is to verify the total number of ballot papers.  During this stage its possible to watch the ballots being checked and to calculate how well you are doing.  Unfortunetly this time that won’t happen until friday morning so it will be a very nervy thursday night.

The decision today by Hazel Bleers to resign from the cabinet is typical of the attitude of some at westminster who think that elections are all about the national government. Its quite frankly arrogrant disrespect for those of us who think the election is about local services and who is best to run the county council.

However I am still confident.  I think I have done enough to win.  All I can hope for is that people will go into the polling station and vote on my what I have done over the last 4 years and who is best to represent their interests in St Helens.

Thats all I can ask

The current campaign about the future of Heart Attack treatment being lead by the Ipswich evening star has generated an enormous amount of correspondence and views.

Everyone seems to assume that the transfer of some patients to specialist centres will be dangerous for those patients in Ipswich.

However it is clear that the professionals recommending this change seem to believe it will save lives.

The real problem is that none of the implications of the change were clearly spelt out a year ago when it was approved by the Strategic Health Authority which was a major blunder and the evening star never campaigned against the change until a few weeks ago just before it was due to start. Another big mistake.

That’s why I have been pressing the County Council’s scrutiny committee to discuss in detail the proposed changes to understand what they actually mean for patients and why it is claimed they are better for treatment.

That will now happen on the 20th July.

Unfortunately this whole debate has been turned into a political football with the leader of the county council claiming that the changes will put lives at risk and he will stop it.

I don’t think such statements are helpful. We need a decision that saves the most lives and makes the care of heart attack patients better. I am not certain yet whether that should be in specialist centres or in Ipswich.

What we need on the 20th July is a full and clear explanation of the implications of the changes and then the review needs to determine what is best for Ipswich patients.

The current campaign against the changes has given us a delay which now enables a sensible review of the implications.

That review should produce a decision that is in patients and families best interests whether or not it is necessarily in line with any editor or politicians view.

The final weekend before an election is always a very nervy time. You can never be sure if you have done enough.

If you read the newspapers and the opinion polls over the weekend it makes for pretty depressing reading if you are a labour politician. However I still remain optimistic.

Almost every house in St Helen’s has had a least 2 leaflets outlining some of my views.

I get the impression that people will vote differently between the county elections and the European elections. Indeed several people have said they will vote for me, but not for labour at the Europeans.

As my seat is the most marginal in Ipswich then i clearly will be under pressure if there is a swing towards liberal or conservatives..

However all I can do is ask people to vote based on my record over the last 4 years.

The most frustrating thing is when someone says to you, yes you have been a good county councillor, but I want to send the government a message. It does seem strange that often it is someone who does not like what the conservatives have been doing at the county council but are happy to vote against me even though the consequence is a return of a conservative county council doing the very things people have been complaining about. Its not a logic I can follow.

Certainly this is one of those occasions where if I am to win then I will have to persuade enough people to ignore national considerations and vote for me.

Come Thursday I will know if I have been able to do that or whether I will be reaching for the Valium.

When ever we have a local election campaign there is one issue that I can guarantee will come up in discussion with electors. Its the highly likely prospect of residents not understanding the difference between the county council and the borough council.. For most people its the council and they have almost no idea of the difference between the two councils. And why should they.

A typical example was a letter from a resident supporting improvements around Clifford Road School for children’s safety, but blaming me for allowing a planning application in the area which will increase traffic even though its the borough council who made the planning decision.

There is absolutely no reason why we should have two councils. Its a reason why I have always supported having a single unitary council for an area. It means voters have a clear line of accountability, one council to deal with and one councillor with responsibility for decisions in their area and we avoid the kind of duplication of services and costs the current system give us.

One issue which I hope will come out of the current public anger about national politics is greater power for local councils. But if councils are to have any impact then government has to simplify the system. That should mean that all public services including health and economic development in an area should be the responsibility of one council. It seems so obvious.

The problem is that successive governments have made it more complicated. Its no wonder voters get confused.

Well today the Evening Star has used my comments about the reduction in Home Care numbers following the conservative changes to the free home care scheme in 2007. Yet amazingly, Graham Newman the conservative executive member for adult care at the county council is claiming its nothing to do with changes they made. In a bizzare quote he says it was the fault of the Labour led county council and changes made in 2003.

Well I think he needs to get his diary out. The conservatives won control of Suffolk County Council in may 2005. According to official figures from the county council, in 2004, 5300 people were receiving home care, went up to 5600 in 2005 with 80% getting it free. In 2006 it had gone up to 5725 with still 80% getting it free.

Then the conservative changed the scheme. Indeed we managed to delay implementation of the ending of the full free home care but it still went ahead in 2008.

And guess what, the numbers dropped in april 2008 to 3523 with only 20% getting it free.

So how could anyone but the conservatives be responsible for the fall in numbers. It would be much more honest if they accepted thats what they had done. As one conservative said at the time. Our priority is the 80% of people who don’t get home care. More »

In any election you will get people making claims in their literature. Often its a question of interpretation.

So for example I claim that the £56 million taken by the conservatives out of spending on social care services over the last 4 years is a cut. The conservatives claim that they are spending the money more wisely mainly by charging for their services. So home care which was free for most is now a charged service.

So technically neither of us is wrong. They have reduced the budget and taken in a significantly higher proportion of the remaining budget by charging. They will argue this is fair, I maintain its unreasonable as some of the most vulnerable are paying higher costs rather than the general taxpayer.

So for the voter its a question of which direction is right.

However when election literature is fundamentally wrong how does the voter know.

The conservatives have now issued election leaflets showing all the council tax increases since 2001. Surprisingly their chart shows the conservatives responsible for the last 5 county council budgets. Which is strange considering they have only been in control of the county council for 4 years.

The problem is that budgets are set in the February of each year so in 2005 it was the Labour/Liberal administration who set the budget and with the Conservative opposition voting against. The Conservatives then won in may 2005 and inherited that budget.

So does it matter you may say.

Well I suspect most people won’t even notice. However it does raise the question, if the conservatives don’t even know how many budgets they have been responsible for, then are they capable of running the county council.

or could it be something to do with the fact that it was one of the lowest council tax increases since 2001.

Excellent article in the times today from comedian Frank Skinner. I especially liked his paragraph
“You see, I now realise that David Cameron, with his pushbike and his “call me Dave” man-of-the-people-ness, had begun to blur my long-held view of what the Tory party was all about. Thank God, Mr Hogg and his moat have brought me back to my senses. The most damning criticism aimed at MP’s nowadays is that they’re isolated and out of touch. It’s pretty hard to refute that if you’ve got a moat.”

The thing so many of the MP’s who have been bending the system don’t seem to understand is that most of us would find it very extremely difficult to write a cheque for £41,000 or even £13,000. I know if i did it would bounce!

In the current public fury it not surprising but bizarre to see parties like UKIP dramatically increasing in the polls for the European elections, especially as one of their elected MEP’s last time is on police bail pending fraud investigation on his expenses. However if all this fury leads to a system that is open, accountable and strictly regulated then in the long term it may benefit us all.

However the real danger of this fiasco is that the issues that really matter like home care, better education and health get buried in the public demands for heads to roll and we end up with people elected to both the county council or the European parliament who either cannot do the job or even worse don’t want to do a proper job but get there simply because they are none of the above

So if anyone wants to know, no I don’t have a moat and I wouldn’t have anywhere to put it.

Crazy 24 hours.

Firstly an interview for Radio Cambridgeshire in my role as Chair of the Europe panel of the regional assembly. They wanted someone to explain why European issues were important.

Then, Suffolk Colleges “any questions”. Run like the real thing with the media students running the studio. Facing Jeremy Pembroke, Mike Baxter from Ipswich town and a representative from federation of small business. Interesting. Of course first question of the night was to me about MP’s expenses. However my views that the whole situation is disgraceful and damaging to democracy seem to be shared by most of the audience.

Most interesting session was when we got onto UK debt, an issue I will return to.

This morning Cambridge for further discussions about the future of regional arrangements in the east. A complete mess because of the governments insistence on some regional grouping that can only contain leaders of councils. we have made some progress but my problem is convincing government ministers to leave the best arrangements to people in the region rather than imposing from London.

And then back to ipswich for the Labour Party regional launch of the European campaign with cabinet minister Liam Byrne. Probably a complete waste of time especially as nobody talked about Europe. However I did manage to grab Liam Byrne and pressed the need for the PM to do something decisive about MP’s expense.

Which brings me back to the debate at Suffolk College on debt. Whilst David Cameron seems to be projecting a voter friendly image, a bit like Tony Blair and claiming that the conservatives have changed, on the ground in Suffolk we still seem to have the old style Tories in action. One of Jeremy’s key responses on national debt was to say, that it is essential that we dramatically reduce the size of the public sector.
Which means in Suffolk more and more reductions in social care, higher charges and probably drastic cuts in staff.

Of course we will have to make choices and even if we win the county council I do not expect the choices to be easy. But its clear I could never be a Tory because Jeremy and his colleagues don’t seem to understand that what the public sector is about first and foremost is protecting the weak, the poor and the disadvantaged. In the brave new world of new Tories the Tories of Suffolk seem to be locked into the age of thatcher.