Wednesday 1 October 2014

A note from Dave ....

David

Today I set out how we can secure a better future - and build a Britain that everyone is proud to call home.
A Britain where hard work is rewarded. Not a free-for-all, but a chance for all: the chance of a job, a home, a good start in life, whoever you are, wherever you are from.
I set out our Conservative commitment for the next five years.
If you want to provide for yourself and your family, you'll have the security of a job.
If you work hard and do the right thing, you will keep more of the money to spend as you choose.
We will cut income tax for 30 million hardworking taxpayers - increasing the tax-free personal allowance from £10,000 to £12,500, and raising the 40p tax rate threshold from £41,900 to £50,000.
For those wanting to buy a home, we will help you get on the housing ladder - with 100,000 new homes, available to first-time buyers under 40 at a 20% discount.
We will make sure every child gets a great education so they can reach their potential.
And for those retiring, we will make sure you get a decent pension and real rewards for a life of work.
A good job, a nice home, more money at the end of the month, a decent education for your children, a safe and secure retirement.
A country where if you put in, you get out.
A Britain everyone is proud to call home - and a long-term plan to get there.
So let's finish what we have begun.

Let's secure a better future for you, your family and for everyone.


PM David Cameron MP

Tuesday 12 August 2014

1 Million Superfast Broadband Premises Passed

1 Million Superfast Broadband Premises Passed

Digital infrastructure plays a pivotal role in the Government’s long-term economic plan. Central and local government is therefore investing up to £1.7 billion to extend superfast broadband. In 2010, fewer than half of UK premises had access to superfast broadband. But this public investment, which we can only afford because we have taken difficult decisions on spending elsewhere, alongside private investment, means we have now extended access to 78% of the UK. And by 2017 95% of the UK will be able to access superfast broadband, benefiting millions of Britain’s homes and businesses.

The nationwide roll-out is on track to deliver our targets and today I am pleased to announce that the Government’s programme has now reached over 1million homes and businesses. These are all areas that the private sector would not otherwise have reached. Many local broadband projects around the country and the devolved administrations will be celebrating this achievement.

The current roll-out is expected to provide a £1.5 billion boost to local economies. By 2024, the Government’s current investments in faster broadband will be boosting rural economies by £275 million every month or around £9 million every day. Overall, the Superfast Broadband Programme will deliver returns of up to £20 for every £1 invested, promoting local growth and representing tremendous value for money.

Forty three projects across the regions targeted by Government are now “live” and around 40,000 premises are gaining access every week, double the number being reached in the spring. Current UK coverage of superfast broadband is the highest of the top five European economies and we also lead our European counterparts in terms of take up, competitiveness and pricing.

I firmly believe that this transformation of the digital landscape should reach every area of the UK. Focus is now on the “final 5%” – those areas in the hardest to reach places in the UK that are not covered by existing plans. £10m is being invested in a series of pilot projects across the nation to investigate the best way of tackling these areas. The findings will be used to help decide our future approach so that everyone can benefit from the transformation of the digital landscape currently underway. Backing businesses with broadband infrastructure means they can create more jobs. In turn, that means more people waking up each morning knowing that they have the security of a job.

I am determined to make the UK the best connected country in the world. I look forward to keeping you up-to-date on the progress of the Superfast Britain programme and all our future plans. 


Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport



Friday 20 June 2014

Ham & Blackbird Development MUST be opposed.


Ham & Blackbird


The Council has recently received an application from Inland Homes (some have suggested to me a more accurate name would be Underhand Homes given their vandalistic tree cutting that left trees next to the road perilously dangerous) to build an obscene number of flats (62) with little parking on the site of the Ham & Blackbird. I have no big issue with knocking down an unsuccessful pub / restaurant, but I do object to gross over development by a developer who has proved very early they cannot be trusted: Please see:


http://cllrclifford.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/test.html 


They have tried condescendingly to sweeten this poisonous application with a "community" centre and public plazas to try and make it sound so much better than it is, which in my opinion will simply be a future slum with people arguing with each other about where to park and neighbourhood noise. Am I exaggerating for effect? I think not and could take you less than 50 meters to dwellings that have exactly that problem now. I hope this time, unlike the last similar application, my opposition will be supported by the Planning Committee..


Click on the following link to see Inland Homes Proposal:



Please support opposition to this application by submitting an objection at:

http://publicaccess.rushmoor.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=summary&keyVal=N6WN7GNM0I401  


Thursday 13 March 2014

TAG consultation - Airspace Change Proposal (ACP)

© TAG Farnborough except Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2013
TAG Aviation at Farnborough are proposing a massive expansion of controlled airspace that will engulf the area a lot of us "free wing pilots" fly in. There is a website to view the proposals and to give feedback http://www.tagfarnborough.com/airspace-change-proposal/

Please take a look and post your objections before the end of the consultation process in May.

Our pilots have spoken to Blackbushe airport and they are not objecting because their aircraft use radio so can speak to Farnborough to get permission to transit the new controlled airspace.

We free flyers do not want to see more regulation and controlled airspace. We want less not more controlled airspace. Imagine us as the ramblers of the skies....


DC somewhere over France who have more free airspace
Tomahawk cruising - lost and down looking for road signs...


My mate Daniel Hannan MEP on the Nazi's




LEFTISTS BECOME INCANDESCENT WHEN REMINDED OF THE SOCIALIST ROOTS IN NAZISM

On 16 June 1941, as Hitler readied his forces for Operation Barbarossa, Josef Goebbels looked forward to the new order that the Nazis would impose on a conquered Russia. There would be no come-back, he wrote, for capitalists nor priests nor Tsars. Rather, in the place of debased, Jewish Bolshevism, the Wehrmacht would deliver “der echte Sozialismus”: real socialism.
Goebbels never doubted that he was a socialist. He understood Nazism to be a better and more plausible form of socialism than that propagated by Lenin. Instead of spreading itself across different nations, it would operate within the unit of the Volk.
So total is the cultural victory of the modern Left that the merely to recount this fact is jarring. But few at the time would have found it especially contentious. As George Watson put it in The Lost Literature of Socialism:
It is now clear beyond all reasonable doubt that Hitler and his associates believed they were socialists, and that others, including democratic socialists, thought so too.
The clue is in the name. Subsequent generations of Leftists have tried to explain away the awkward nomenclature of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party as either a cynical PR stunt or an embarrassing coincidence. In fact, the name meant what it said.
Hitler told Hermann Rauschning, a Prussian who briefly worked for the Nazis before rejecting them and fleeing the country, that he had admired much of the thinking of the revolutionaries he had known as a young man; but he felt that they had been talkers, not doers. “I have put into practice what these peddlers and pen pushers have timidly begun,” he boasted, adding that “the whole of National Socialism” was “based on Marx”.
Marx’s error, Hitler believed, had been to foster class war instead of national unity – to set workers against industrialists instead of conscripting both groups into a corporatist order. His aim, he told his economic adviser, Otto Wagener, was to “convert the German Volk to socialism without simply killing off the old individualists” – by which he meant the bankers and factory owners who could, he thought, serve socialism better by generating revenue for the state. “What Marxism, Leninism and Stalinism failed to accomplish,” he told Wagener, “we shall be in a position to achieve.”
Leftist readers may by now be seething. Whenever I touch on this subject, it elicits an almost berserk reaction from people who think of themselves as progressives and see anti-fascism as part of their ideology. Well, chaps, maybe now you know how we conservatives feel when you loosely associate Nazism with “the Right”.
To be absolutely clear, I don’t believe that modern Leftists have subliminal Nazi leanings, or that their loathing of Hitler is in any way feigned. That’s not my argument. What I want to do, by holding up the mirror, is to take on the equally false idea that there is an ideological continuum between free-marketers and fascists.
The idea that Nazism is a more extreme form of conservatism has insinuated its way into popular culture. You hear it, not only when spotty students yell “fascist” at Tories, but when pundits talk of revolutionary anti-capitalist parties, such as the BNP and Golden Dawn, as “far Right”.
What is it based on, this connection? Little beyond a jejune sense that Left-wing means compassionate and Right-wing means nasty and fascists are nasty. When written down like that, the notion sounds idiotic, but think of the groups around the world that the BBC, for example, calls “Right-wing”: the Taliban, who want communal ownership of goods; the Iranian revolutionaries, who abolished the monarchy, seized industries and destroyed the middle class; Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who pined for Stalinism. The “Nazis-were-far-Right” shtick is a symptom of the wider notion that “Right-wing” is a synonym for “baddie”.
One of my constituents once complained to the Beeb about a report on the repression of Mexico's indigenous peoples, in which the government was labelled Right-wing. The governing party, he pointed out, was a member of the Socialist International and, again, the give-away was in its name: Institutional Revolutionary Party. The BBC’s response was priceless. Yes, it accepted that the party was socialist, “but what our correspondent was trying to get across was that it is authoritarian”.
In fact, authoritarianism was the common feature of socialists of both National and Leninist varieties, who rushed to stick each other in prison camps or before firing squads. Each faction loathed the other as heretical, but both scorned free-market individualists as beyond redemption. Their battle was all the fiercer, as Hayek pointed out in 1944, because it was a battle between brothers.
Authoritarianism – or, to give it a less loaded name, the belief that state compulsion is justified in pursuit of a higher goal, such as scientific progress or greater equality – was traditionally a characteristic of the social democrats as much as of the revolutionaries.
Jonah Goldberg has chronicled the phenomenon at length in his magnum opus, Liberal Fascism. Lots of people take offence at his title, evidently without reading the book since, in the first few pages, Jonah reveals that the phrase is not his own. He is quoting that impeccable progressive H.G. Wells who, in 1932, told the Young Liberals that they must become “liberal fascists” and “enlightened Nazis”.
In those days, most prominent Leftists intellectuals, including Wells, Jack London, Havelock Ellis and the Webbs, tended to favour eugenics, convinced that only religious hang-ups were holding back the development of a healthier species. The unapologetic way in which they spelt out the consequences have, like Hitler’s actual words, been largely edited from our discourse. Here, for example, is George Bernard Shaw in 1933:
Extermination must be put on a scientific basis if it is ever to be carried out humanely and apologetically as well as thoroughly… If we desire a certain type of civilisation and culture we must exterminate the sort of people who do not fit into it.
Eugenics, of course, topples easily into racism. Engels himself wrote of the “racial trash” – the groups who would necessarily be supplanted as scientific socialism came into its own. Season this outlook with a sprinkling of anti-capitalism and you often got Leftist anti-Semitism – something else we have edited from our memory, but which once went without saying. “How, as a socialist, can you not be an anti-Semite?” Hitler had asked his party members in 1920.
Are contemporary Leftist critics of Israel secretly anti-Semitic? No, not in the vast majority of cases. Are modern socialists inwardly yearning to put global warming sceptics in prison camps? Nope. Do Keynesians want the whole apparatus of corporatism, expressed by Mussolini as “everything in the state, nothing outside the state”? Again, no. There are idiots who discredit every cause, of course, but most people on the Left are sincere in their stated commitment to human rights, personal dignity and pluralism.
My beef with many (not all) Leftists is a simpler one. By refusing to return the compliment, by assuming a moral superiority, they make political dialogue almost impossible. Using the soubriquet “Right-wing” to mean “something undesirable” is a small but important example.
Next time you hear Leftists use the word fascist as a general insult, gently point out the difference between what they like to imagine the NSDAP stood for and what it actually proclaimed.
Read Daniel's column in the Telegraph three times a week at : www.hannan.co.uk

Follow Daniel on YouTube at : http://bit.ly/EY23g

A humble footnote from David Clifford
My grandmother (affectionately known as Grandma Jackboots) who lived thru the war maintained to her dying day that Hitler was an evil "nationalist socialist".

Monday 3 March 2014

Ham & Blackbird

Mike Smith with Cllrs Lyon & Clifford inspecting the sabotaged trees

Click on the following link to see Inland Homes Proposal:

Ham & Blackbird Developer Presentation

I would be extremely interested in views on this, especially if you did not get a chance to look at this presentation.
The developers were very polite and expressed regret at the felling of the trees ahead of this application. However polite you are cannot disguise an abhorrent application, which I will wholeheartedly oppose.


Monday 24 February 2014

Pub Protection Policy



Another Rushmoor Pub bites the dust.
Many people have been calling on Rushmoor to have a Pub Protection Policy. Here is a typical example:

Possible Pub Protection Policy:

Development will be permitted provided that the following criteria are met:
There is no loss or reduction in capacity of existing infrastructure, including community facilities 

These will be protected unless:

1. It can be proven that there is no longer term need for the facility, either for its original purpose or for another facility that meets the need of the community; or

2. It is to be re-provided elsewhere to the satisfaction of the Council

OR

The loss of a Public House will be permitted (in respect of proposals that fall outside permitted development rights) where it can be proven that there is no longer term need for the facility. In order to justify no longer term need, the applicant will need to demonstrate that they have undertaken the following:

1. Contact information posted in a prominent location on site, in the form of an advertising board (subject to advertising consent, if required);
2. Registration of the property with at least one commercial property agent;
3. Property details / particulars available to inquirers on request;
4. Property marketed for the appropriate use or uses as defined by the relevant planning policy for a period of 12 months minimum;

5. Property marketed at a reasonable price, including in relation to use, condition, quality and location of floorspace.

What do you think?
If you think it is useless and can think of a better policy do share it with me.

I have always felt the best pub protection policy was: Clean and friendly pub that attracts lots of people. As a non alcohol drinker, I would add good food. 

At the end of the day is it the Council's job to prop up failing pubs with regulation?

As a Tory I am naturally against regulation, but I am open to discuss the pros and cons of such a policy. 

Saturday 22 February 2014

Rushmoor World War I & D Day Commemoration



4th August 2014 marks the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War and 6 June 2014 marks the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings, there will be other important conflict dates between now and the celebration in 2018.

Nationally the Government has been working on a centenary programme with the themes of remembrance, youth and education. 2014 will be a more solemn approach rather than a celebration with street parties which will come into their own in 2018.

Hampshire
Hampshire County have funds to purchase books and special collections relevant to WW1 with authors giving talks and themed costume events to support other military events.

·         They have a dedicated website of activities in Hampshire, grants available and information on the war memorials in the County.

·         The County are encouraging the schools “Rock Challenge” to theme on the commemoration of WW1.

·         They are providing small grants to support war memorial programmes (£2,000).

·         A countywide WW1 display will reach Aldershot in October 2014.

·         Display and promotion of the special collections of WW1 related books including the Military collection in Aldershot and the Aviation collection in Farnborough.

·         Talks and at least one major event each year in both the Farnborough and Aldershot library`s.

Local Partners
·         Eagle Radio is recording audio memoirs of military personnel and civilians, over the past 100 years which can be used as an educational resource for schools and museums across the country.

·         Prince Consort Library is doing author talks and walks linked to WW1.
·         Friends of Aldershot Military Museum are seeking funding to develop a WW1 theme to be unveiled on 4 August around Rushmoor Remembers looking at the contributions made by Aldershot and Farnborough as the Country`s centres for the army and aviation respectively, along with the impact of the war on local people. The museum will have a story share WW1 display and the Soldiers Journey exhibition.

·         The Friends are looking to produce a Rushmoor Roll of Honour for WW1 in book form. The names will then be included on an appropriate memorial similar to the WW2 memorial outside Princes Hall.

·         The annual Military Festival will have a WW1 theme and include events in schools, a pupil’s art exhibition and a production of “No Mans Land” and “Our Friends the Enemy” at the Westend Centre. The Farnborough Sixth form are attempting to get in the Guinness Book of records for the largest human poppy. There will be an evening of music at the Princes Hall.  The main event on Saturday 28 June will include museum visits, gun run, medical core demonstration, heritage trails, displays, choir and children’s activities. Sunday 29 June will include a WW1 commemorative park run.

·         The Friends of Aldershot museum should hear shortly weather they have been successful with the bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund to create a heritage trail covering the AUE and Aldershot. (£80k from Heritage and £50k from partners).

·         There will be tours of the Military Cemetery and they have secured Commonwealth War Graves funding for interpretation panels.

National partners
·         The Heritage Lottery Fund are making grants available including a “Then and Now” project (£3k to £10k). For example, the military are looking to have a WW1 replica tank alongside a modern tank at the military festival and perhaps a mess function with a WW1 theme.

·         A Young Roots grant (11 to 25 year olds) is under subscribed and is looking for projects that will leave a lasting legacy. Examples could include “Impact on Sport”, “the Ghurka story”, “Garrison cemetery”, “Story of Aldershot”, “Cody`s contribution” etc.

·         Our residents and partners will be made aware of these funding opportunities.

·         Nationally there is a project by the Imperial War Museum to create a digital memorial containing 8 million stories link to people’s lives and family history. Those signing up to their website can use their official logo when promoting other activities.

Rushmoor Borough Council
·         Commemoration of local Victoria Cross recipients of the First World War by laying down commemorative paving stones in the area in which they were born. These will be presented to council`s commencing August 2014. The only Borough recipient is Alfred Maurice Toye born in Aldershot who received his VC on 25 March 1918. DCLG will pay for the paving stones and their engraving and councils will need to find a suitable location and maintain them.

·         Princes Hall has confirmed the following: 2 June “Saving Private Ryan” film, 3 June “The Longest Day” film, 4 June. “There will always be an England show” and on 12 July the RASC RCT Association Band Concert.

·         The Council put decorative poppies in its trees in Aldershot around remembrance which we could repeat for June, August and November next year (circa £1,500 each event) and there is a nationwide initiative to plant more poppies in parks.

·         The Council will promote in Arena the programme that is being developed both in Hampshire and locally and refer to grant opportunities.

·         The Council is keen to support local projects that support the World War 1 commemorations and will consider funding bids to its small grants fund. Application forms are available on the Councils website.

·         Concert in the Bandstand – 2 August Rushmoor Concert Band

·         Funds from the annual calendar for 2015/16 will be awarded to an appropriate Army Fund. Discussions to take place with partners on creating a WW1 calendar for 2015/16 involving schools.

·         Remembrance and Civic wreath laying to be co-ordinated by Democratic Services for WW1 and D Day.

·         Not directly linked to WW1 but this Council is looking to create a memorial to all fallen heroes since WW2 to be located in the Municipal Gardens. This will be developed with local military families / children and have a formal unveiling ceremony.


·         For the celebration in 2018 the Council will work with schools to create a mural similar to the one we developed on the Aldershot Library commemorating WW1 and the part played by Rushmoor. This could be located in Aldershot/AUE. 

Monday 17 February 2014

Councillors slam reckless pub owners


The Ham and Blackbird public house has come under intense criticism from Empress Ward councillors Gareth Lyon, David Clifford and Brian Parker and local residents for putting passing motorists and pedestrians at risk.

A number of large trees on the site of the Ham and Blackbird pub have been ringmarked with a clear intention of killing them.

In a cynical attempt to bypass the council's planning system the pub is believed to have killed the trees so that they cannot be used as grounds for refusing an application.

The large trees are now highly unstable and are located in one of the busiest roundabouts in Farnborough.

With recent high winds and storms the trees could fall onto the road or the pavement at any moment.

Mike Smith, a local resident from Pierrefondes Avenue said:

"This is appalling behaviour by the pub - they are cynically trying to get round the planning process and should face serious consequences for this reckless and irresponsible behaviour."

Cllr Gareth Lyon said:

"It is shocking to see such terrible behaviour right in the centre of Farnborough. The trees will now need to come down but I am sure that local residents will make their disapproval known to the pub in future."

Cllr David Clifford said:

"With more storms on the way these trees could fall onto cars or passing pedestrians at any moment - the pub should feel ashamed of themselves."


Councillors and residents are now calling on council officers to take action against the pub and to protect residents from the threat of the trees.