City misconduct under scrutiny

08:27 Wednesday 30th July 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

[P]AUL STAINTON: The Bank of England is preparing to announce some of the toughest restrictions on bankers’ pay anywhere in the world. It’s expected the Bank will change its code of conduct for city pay to make it possible to claw back bonuses for up to seven years after they’re awarded. There’ll also be a consultation on powers to jail those found guilty of reckless misconduct. The review was ordered following a series of scandals, including the mis-selling of insurance and the rigging of the Interbank lending rates. Here’s our business reporter Adam Kirtley.
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Get Exporting with GCGP

07:20 Tuesday 29th July 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

[P]AUL STAINTON: A campaign to encourage businesses to get exporting will launch in Peterborough today. The Minister of State for Trade and Investment Lord Livingston will find out how local businesses are faring when it comes to selling their products to other countries. He’ll taste the coffee at Masterroast’s HQ, before visiting the headquarters of Redring Xpelair, where they’ll launch new state-of-the-art production facilities that will cost £10 million. Neil Darwin is the Director for Enterprise and Skills at the Greater Cambridge Greater Peterborough Enterprise Partnership.
NEIL DARWIN: Good morning.
PAUL STAINTON: So get exporting initiative. What does it actually mean? Just words?
NEIL DARWIN: Very simply it’s about encouraging more businesses to get their goods and services overseas. Exporting from this country has a really bad reputation, something that’s seen as being really difficult to do. And what we’re trying to do is de-myth it, and make sure that business understands there is support and advice available to make it a lot lot easier than perhaps they think it is.
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Cry Freehold – the Transcript

17:00 Sunday 8th December 2013
BBC Radio 4

[A]NNOUNCER: We know that we face a widespread housing crisis, but is land the real issue? In Cry Freehold, Chris Bowlby investigates.
(MUSIC) (LYRIC) Went to the housing committee/Stood for two hours in a line/They showed me ..
CHRIS BOWLBY: I’m sitting at my kitchen table, in the house I co-own with my wife in East Oxford. It’s exactly where, a little while ago, this story began with a rather boring letter about renewing our buildings insurance. I’ve got the letter here, and what stood out for me is the big discrepancy between what the insurer says the house would cost to rebuild, and what estate agents tell me the house is worth. The difference of course is down to the value of the land my house sits on. And that got me thinking. We talk endlessly about housing, whether there’s a bubble brewing in the south east, whether the Government’s initiatives will inflate the market, the north/south house price divide. But we seem to talk rather less about land.
(DOOR OPENING)
CHRIS BOWLBY: In this programme I want to show that just as underneath our houses there’s land, underneath the housing issue there is a land issue. And we need to understand both. And I’m going to attempt to show that by exploring my own street, neighbourhood and city, Oxford. Because as we’ll see, Oxford’s housing problem is typical of a growing problem affecting more and more places, especially in the south east, south west and eastern England. It’s a problem which on the one hand makes housing increasingly unaffordable, especially for younger people, and on the other hand puts green spaces in and around cities under intense pressure. Land and land ownership, once you start thinking about it, looks like one of the great dividing lines in our society, and always has been.
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Peterborough Council resists online access to public meetings.

07:07 Thursday 24th July 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

[P]AUL STAINTON: So the big question this morning: how do we get you more interested in local politics? Or is it just boring and you feel you’ve got no say and you can never be interested? Well in the last few years we’ve had the fallout from the MPs expenses scandal, Russell Brand urging people to abandon modern-day politics, and an increase in people using local elections to just send a message to Westminster. In some areas of the county like Hampton in Peterborough, only a 24% turnout at the last election. One councillor in Peterborough thinks he’s got the answer to all this. He thinks council meetings should be streamed online. It’s something that Cambridgeshire County Council have just started doing. Well Cllr. Darren Fower put forward the idea at the Full Council meeting last night. Darren, good morning.
DARREN FOWER: Good morning Paul.
PAUL STAINTON: And what was the response?
DARREN FOWER: I suppose the simple response, the term would be negative, narrow-minded, short-sighted. Yes, they didn’t really go with it.
PAUL STAINTON: Oh. Right. So they thought it was a bad idea. Why did they say they didn’t want people wanting council meetings?
DARREN FOWER: It’s not necessarily a new concept. The Liberal Democrats have been putting this forward for at least six or seven years. About five years ago my colleague Cllr. Sandford, he put forward a motion that was actually accepted, to look at a similar sort of set-up. And surprise, surprise, five years later nothing’s happened. We got told that they were thinking about the idea, but the bottom line is the people of Peterborough, they deserve to see how things actually work within the chamber. And my belief is if it was streamed live, you might find that there’s a different result when it comes to local elections.
PAUL STAINTON: You think it might open people’s eyes a little bit as to what goes on and how people behave.
DARREN FOWER: Absolutely. Absolutely. Again last night we had some very narrow-minded views and comments. We know that times are tough, but the bottom-line is they spend so much money on generating bits of paper, and the people of Peterborough should be entitled, or have at least have the opportunity to log on, watch and dare I say even vote on certain things that are being discussed. And then if they decide to leave they can. But yes, I’m afraid I personally think that we’ve still got a city council that doesn’t want people to see the truth, and they prefer to try and control the news that comes out of Town Hall.
PAUL STAINTON: Or is it just the fact that they’re not very photogenic.
DARREN FOWER: (LAUGHS) Well I for one have never been photogenic, so that’s not a factor that I take into account.
PAUL STAINTON: Well I’ll back you up there.
DARREN FOWER: I know you will. But it is one of those things whereby even from the news point of view, from journalists, from the work that you guys do, you’re coming into our county, you need to be able to access. In today’s modern world, it is 2014 after all, and you should be able to go somewhere now, and people who are waking up this morning, getting ready to go to work, should be able to either listen into something, or go somewhere and see actually what really happened. Because unfortunately we have a city council that does generate minutes, but surprise surprise some things are often omitted.
PAUL STAINTON: Would it be interesting though? Wouldn’t people be bored? Some of it’s dull as ditch water, isn’t it?
DARREN FOWER: Yes, and there is that political strategy that does occur whereby techniques are used to either dismiss people that are being discussed .. but the bottom line is the City Council has a very very important job. It’s there to represent the people of Peterborough. And quite simply if the people of Peterborough want to tune in and see what’s being said, as I say, even if it’s just for fifteen, twenty minutes, it doesn’t have to be the three hours, they should be entitled to.
PAUL STAINTON: Yes. Richard Taylor is with us as well. He’s an activist. He films and promotes local politics in Cambridge. You’ve tried to film meetings in the past. You’ve got yourself in a bit of hot water from time to time as well, haven’t you?
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Preserving Peterborough’s past during rampant development

17:37 Wednesday 23rd July 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

[C]HRIS MANN: Proposals to build 350 homes on the site of the former Peterborough District Hospital have been given the go-ahead. They also include plans for a new primary school, which will be incorporated into the building of the historic War Memorial wing. So, how important is it for new developments to include some of the area’s local history? Let’s find out from a couple of people who’ve got an interest in this. Peter Lee is Chairman of the Peterborough Civic Society. Hello Pete.
PETER LEE: Hello. Good evening.
CHRIS MANN: And Trevor Pearce is the Chairman of the Peterborough Local History Society. Hi Trevor.
TREVOR PEARCE: Good evening Chris.
CHRIS MANN: So how important is the memorial Wing in your view?
TREVOR PEARCE: I think very. I’m delighted it’s been saved, and the fact that it’s going to be incorporated into that school. We’ve lost too many of these Chris already. Your listeners will no doubt remember the original post office that was in Cumbergate, and on the front of that was a fantastic war memorial. What happened to that I have no idea. I guess it just got smashed when they built Queensgate. And there’s others that have gone missing round the city.
CHRIS MANN: Do you think they’d actually do that with a war memorial? They would just smash it up?
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Sir Graham Bright on Coping with Cuts

17:18 Tuesday 22nd July 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

[C]HRIS MANN: As many as eighteen police forces, including Cambridgeshire, will not be able to deal with murders, rapes and riots if budget cuts continue. That’s the dire warning contained in a new report by Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary. It also claims that a growing number of officers will be taken off the local beat. So what shape will policing in our county take in the future? I’m joined on the line now by the man who should know. He is Sir Graham Bright, the County’s Police and Crime Commissioner. Hello Sir Graham.
GRAHAM BRIGHT: Evening Chris.
CHRIS MANN: This report from Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary, do you agree with their analysis.
GRAHAM BRIGHT: Well, some of that is quite historical. It goes back four years, and I think things have moved on quite dramatically since then, because I know ..
CHRIS MANN: Does that make it worse or better?
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The train stopping at Soham ..

17:11 Monday 21st July 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

[C]HRIS MANN: Work starts on Monday to build the new train station in the North of Cambridge. And in Soham they also hope to open a new station. James Palmer is the Leader of East Cambridgeshire District Council, who is heavily involved in the project. I talked to him a little earlier, to find out just what the timetable is, and why it’s so important that Soham gets a train station again.
(TAPE)
JAMES PALMER: It’s of primary importance in my opinion. Soham has grown very quickly. People want to live in Soham. It’s a fantastic place. Of course they would want to live here. But anybody can put houses up. Any council can do that. It’s infrastructure that must come first. So if we are to grow the town the way the town wants and to get the facilities that people who live here expect now, in my view a railway station is an absolute imperative to the growth of a town.
CHRIS MANN: How difficult is it to make that happen?
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Big Butterfly Count 2014

11:09 Friday 18th July 2014
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

[A]NDIE HARPER: Have you noticed fewer butterflies in your garden this year over previous summers? Populations grew slightly last year, after their worst year on record in 2012. It’s hoped the good weather this summer will help to boost numbers further, so David Attenborough no less wants your help to count the numbers of butterflies in the UK as part of the world’s largest butterfly survey. Butterfly scientist Richard Fox can explain all. Richard, good morning to you.
RICHARD FOX: Good morning.
ANDIE HARPER: Yes, 2012 a bad summer for a huge number of things, not just butterflies. It was so miserable. But good to hear that there was an improvement in numbers last year.
RICHARD FOX: Yes that’s right. So 2012 was the wettest year for a century in Britain, and was terrible for us and for butterflies. We found in the results of Big Butterfly Count last year, in which nearly 50,000 people took part all over Britain, we found that many butterflies, many common and widespread butterflies, had bounced back. Still their numbers remain much lower than they were a few decades ago. Now obviously what we want to know this summer, this year’s Big Butterfly Count starts tomorrow and runs for three weeks, is whether that resurgence last year was just a little blip, or whether the butterflies will be able to use that as a springboard to increase their populations further this year.
ANDIE HARPER: I suppose the nature of people’s gardens dictates whether they have butterflies or not. We have recently moved. We had a garden which was completely devoted to flowers in the front, buddleia obviously, echinacea and the like. And last year people used to come to our property, we were selling it, and they were just staggered by the numbers of butterflies. Now this year we’re in a different property, still a lovely garden, but not the numbers. So it really depends on the environment, doesn’t it?
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