Month: November 2014

New Foxton streetlights give cause for concern

07:22 Friday 28th November 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

DOTTY MCLEOD: Have you switched to low-energy light bulbs in your house yet? There’s this new generation of bulbs that promise to slash your bills and to last longer than the standard filament bulbs, and even the earlier low-energy type bulbs we were all asked to switch to in recent years to save money and the environment. Now streetlights are being upgraded too to the fancy energy-saving ones. But despite savings being made through this, not everyone in one Cambridgeshire village is welcoming them. Waseem Mirza has the story.
WASEEM MIRZA: I’m in the village of Foxton, and off of the main road, not far from the village shop, there is a brand new streetlight column put up. But what do people here make of it? Let’s find out. Hello. What’s your name?
LOCAL: Kimberley.
WASEEM MIRZA: This is a fairly recent development here, isn’t it? What do you make of it, and what’s experience of these lights so far.
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Icelandic bank debt – Cambridge City Council recovers a very high percentage of the original sum

07:27 Thursday 27th November 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

DOTTY MCLEOD: Nearly £5 million has been restored to the coffers of Cambridge City Council. It’s part of the £9 million that was lost in the collapse of the Icelandic banks in October 2008. The City Council has been working over the past six years to get it back, and has now sold part of the debt. Lewis Herbert is the Labour Leader of Cambridge City Council. So Lewis, explain exactly how this deal has worked to get the money back.
LEWIS HERBERT: Well we’ve been working hard to get money back from the £9 million as you say. 2008, invested because it was getting a high interest rate, an over-big risk by the then council, because that was a large proportion of our reserves. Two halves: half of it is in England, half of it is in Iceland. Increasing risks in Iceland, and all of the local authorities nearly, and all of the Dutch local authorities have basically been doing a deal whereby people who want Icelandic krona, we’ve got very little use for them, and want to have this particular financial opportunity to recover the money themselves, want to pay us a reasonable amount of money for that. So basically they pay us a very high percentage of our original sum, including for the interest that was due on this money, and we get the money back. And then we can invest it much better, because this money basically Dotty has been frozen for six years. In that period of time that money should have returned 40% or 50% return on top of the £9 million.
DOTTY MCLEOD: So why is it that you can’t get back all of the money?
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Lending into retirement – common sense prevails

07:44 Wednesday 26th November 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

DOTTY MCLEOD: House prices in parts of Cambridgeshire are simply out of reach for many first-time buyers, and now there’s a warning that those who wait too long to try and get a mortgage might find their options limited. A report from the Intermediary Mortgage Lenders’ Association warns that fears of a future clampdown by regulators is preventing mortgage lenders from offering loans that stretch into people’s retirement. So could anyone over 40 wanting to take out a standard 25 year mortgage find themselves turned away by lenders? It’s a worrying thought. Vicky Stubbs is Head of Risk at Cambridge Building Society. Vicky, is it harder to offer a mortgage to people who are in their 40s? Are they going to come into trouble?
VICKY STUBBS: I think with everybody, regardless of their age, what we want to make sure is that they can afford their mortgage, and that they can make repayments over the life of the mortgage. What we do, having the advantage of being a small building society, is look at individual circumstances. So if you have people in their 40s, often people are now not retiring at 60, not retiring at 65, so the first thing you do is have a sensible expected retirement age. Somebody at 40 can still be working easily for another 25 years. Similarly up to about 45. And then you want to talk through their retirement plans, talk through what they’ve done in terms of pension planning, what they’ve got set up so far. And just make sure that they have plans to continue to repay the mortgage. We don’t expect somebody at 40 to have a pension that is fully paid up, ready to pay a mortgage at the age of 65, because clearly they can have another 25 years of saving towards the pension. But what you want to make sure is that people have got pension arrangements in play, people have thought about it, and people are thinking about how they’re going to continue to pay for that mortgage once they are retired.
DOTTY MCLEOD: It seems so unfair Vicky, because the reason that people are having to wait longer to try and get a mortgage is because they’re having to save up the deposit for so long, because wages aren’t necessarily that high and house prices are.
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The Darwin Manuscripts at Cambridge Digital Library

17:47 Monday 24th November 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

CHRIS MANN: Images of Charles Darwin’s original papers where he came up with the theory of evolution are being made freely available online today. The Cambridge Digital Library is releasing more than 12,000 images, which chart everything from his early reflections while on board HMS Beagle, to the publication of On the Origin of Species, which happened 155 years ago today, I can report. I’m joined now by Alison Pearn from the Darwin Correspondence Project at Cambridge University. Alison, hello.
ALISON PEARN: Hello.
CHRIS MANN: 155 years eh?
ALISON PEARN: Yes.
CHRIS MANN: Extraordinary. And such a bit of history.
ALISON PEARN: Yes it really is. And now anybody can go and look at actually how that history was made, in amazing detail.
CHRIS MANN: And such a Cambridge man of course, Charles Darwin, and his antecedents afterwards.
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Unison protest against erosion of NHS salaries

08:27 Monday 24th November 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

DOTTY MCLEOD: A second week of strike action by NHS workers is starting this morning. There are picket lines at hospital buildings across Cambridgeshire. Staff including midwives, nurses and paramedics are involved. They’re not happy about a Government decision to give them either a 1% pay rise or an annual increment, but not both. Sue Marchant’s been at Addenbrookes Hospital this morning. She caught up with Martin Booth who is the Cambridge Health Unison Branch Manager, and asked him about the turnout at the picket line.
MARTIN BOOTH: Well we’re certainly pleased with the response that we’re getting. We’ve got a number of members as you might have seen here, picketing the various entrances. And the people going into work, a lot of them not on strike for various reasons, but they are very supportive of the case that we’ve been making this morning.
SUE MARCHANT: So for those who are not aware, why are you striking?
MARTIN BOOTH: Because 1% which is what all public sector workers have been offered is way below the rise in the cost of living. In the case of health workers it’s even worse, because we’re recommended to get a 1% pay rise, but Jeremy Hunt said we’re not even going to get that. The only people getting that are the people at the top of their pay bands, but there’s about two thirds of health workers who are not at the top of the pay band. They’re getting no pay rise to make up for the rise in the cost of living this year, and next year we’ve not been promised anything at all. We can’t go on like this.
SUE MARCHANT: This isn’t the first strike though, is it? So where does this fit in with the strategy of what you’re trying to achieve?
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Council in crisis awards large payrises to top staff

07:45 Friday 21st November 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

DOTTY MCLEOD: Yesterday there was a big meeting of Peterborough City Council’s Employment Committee. They were discussing the wages of senior officers. Some of them earn as much as £140,000 a year, and some top council staff received pay increases of up to 30% earlier this year. They were taking on new roles. The decision to award these increases has now been revisited. Nick Sandford is the Leader of Peterborough’s Liberal Democrats. Nick, what happened at the meeting last night?
NICK SANDFORD: Well just to put the context, earlier this year back in February there was a private meeting of the Employment Committee, at which these very large pay rises of up to 33% were pushed through. When this became public at Full Council there was complete outrage, and it was decided to refer it back to the Employment Committee. I proposed at the Employment Committee not that we try and unpick all these increases, but that we ask each of the senior officers earning over £100,000 to take a small reduction in their salary.
DOTTY MCLEOD: So when we say small, how big?
NICK SANDFORD: I wasn’t really concerned. I quoted a figure of around about 15%, but it could be 10%, it could be only 5%. But that was rejected by the Committee.
DOTTY MCLEOD: OK. Why are you so worried about these wages? Do you just think it’s too much money?
NICK SANDFORD: We’ve currently got a situation where senior officers, some of them earn up to £170,000. And as I said earlier, some of them had increases of 20% and 30%. One actually had the increase backdated for a three year period, so got £30,000 on top of that. That’s at the same time that the Council is cutting its adult social care budget by 16%. People who are receiving council tax benefit are going to have that reduced by about 40%. So I think all that I was saying was these senior officers on these really high salaries, we should ask them to share in just a small amount of the pain that people on the smallest incomes are having to feel.
DOTTY MCLEOD: Let’s bring in councillor Wayne Fitzgerald who is Peterborough City Council’s Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care. Councillor Fitzgerald, why did you reject this idea?
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Council budget proposals make grim reading

07:41 Monday 17th November 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

CHRIS MANN: Conservative councillors in Peterborough have announced how they plan to balance the city’s budget for next year. It makes pretty grim reading. Peterborough City Council face the challenge of bridging a £25 million shortfall in funds, created by reductions in central government funding. The main headlines from the budget proposals include a £7 million reduction from the adult social care budget, a minimum 10% rise in parking charges for city centre council-run car parks, the introduction of a parking charge for blue badge holders, more than £500,000 to be cut from the budget for Amey who run bin collections and street cleaning. And 30 members of staff will compulsorily be made redundant. And this is just the first wave of cuts. There will be more proposals in the new year. Some Opposition councillors have described them as ‘an attack on the city’s most vulnerable‘. Others have hit out at the Coalition Government for not giving the city enough funding. Joining us now is councillor John Holdich. Morning John.
JOHN HOLDICH: Good morning.
CHRIS MANN: The Deputy Leader of Peterborough City Council of course. A leading member of the Cabinet that put this together. You’ve been in the council for 37 years. Is that right?
JOHN HOLDICH: I have indeed Chris. Yes.
CHRIS MANN: Known anything tougher than this?
JOHN HOLDICH: Never, and it really wasn’t what I was elected to do.
CHRIS MANN: So where (how) did you decide where to put the red pen then?
JOHN HOLDICH: Well it is extremely difficult particularly this year. 14% of our Government funding has been cut,, which is equivalent to £44 million over five years. The next financial year as you’ve reported it’s £12.3 million, but we do have pressures of another £12 million because of the extra people coming into the service. And we do need to make £25 million worth of reductions to be able to balance our books.
CHRIS MANN: Some people will have noticed the correlation. You’re a Conservative. The Government is a Conservative-led coalition. Shouldn’t you be telling the Prime Minister and the Chancellor that they need to stop these cuts, and it’s really affecting people in your area?
JOHN HOLDICH: Well I think we’re always making representations across all the services, and one shouldn’t underestimate the task we’ve got here. For some councillors to attack it, this is the first tranche …
CHRIS MANN: Can you just answer that question again. The Government are the ones who are causing this, according to you, because you’ve had your central funding cut. It’s a Conservative government. Are you going to speak out against them?
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Social security and megatrends – transparency and open discussion

17:40 Thursday 13th November 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

JOZEF HALL: A report by one of our region’s best known universities is warning we’ll need to drastically change the way we manage natural disasters over the next hundred years or we could end up in trouble. Dr Aled Jones from Anglia Ruskin University has written a dramatic report for the ISSA. I spoke to him earlier.
ALED JONES: The ISSA is the International Social Security Association. So it’s the collection of all the social security departments at governments around the world. They work together to look at trends, and how they manage social security, whether it’s health or employment benefits or all the things that come within that area.
JOZEF HALL: What have they asked you to look at, and what have you written?
ALED JONES: So we’ve written a chapter for their new Megatrend report, looking at natural resource trends and climate change. So in effect natural disasters and availability of energy and food, and what that could potentially mean for societies, wherever they are around the world.
JOZEF HALL: I’m probably wrong here, but some scientific soothsaying, looking ahead, modelling, looking back on what’s happened historically, that kind of thing?
ALED JONES: What we’ve been trying to do is looking at emerging trends. So where people have been impacted by flooding, we’re looking at the impact on mental health, where people have been impacted by rising energy prices, what that potentially means for society going forward, the increased number of food banks in the UK and food price rises, what’s likely to happen over the next hundred years and shorter term. And then what does that mean for government responses.
JOZEF HALL: OK. In a nutshell, give us the good news.
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