Polls and Poll of Polls

Have you noticed how inconsistent the polls are? Some show Labour with a lead by a point or two, then we hear about a poll showing Conservatives with a lead of up to four points.

There's a pattern behind this apparent inconsistency and it comes down to selling newspapers. Editors love a close election, people get interested, they follow developments more closely and buy more newspapers. This year there appears to be a deliberate attempt to play down a favored party's prospects of winning. The Sun, a Conservative supporting paper (in one which always likes to back the winner), has consistently been releasing polls which show the Conservatives behind. The Guardian on the other hand, a left leaning publication, has been showing polling that indicates the Conservatives has leading.

In truth it looks like nothing more than method to sell more newspapers and rally the core support ahead of the election. Nothing gets people interested more than suggesting it's on a knife edge.

Did Miliband go there?

Ed Miliband's accusation that David Cameron is directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of migrants leaving Libya in search of a better life in Europe is a well time political stunt. It tells us more about the desperation of the Labour election campaign than British foreign policy.

Miliband may well be right, there may well have been a lack of planning on what to do with Libya after intervention. The debate however was never going to be about that, and Miliband knows it.

The problem with Miliband's stance is Labour voted in favour of intervention in Libya. Whether they questioned the Tories on post intervention planning is irrelevant because they voted in favour. This is the clearest indication that they supported the plans (or lack of).

Miliband didn't raise concerns about Libya for years afterwards. Then two weeks before a general election, with 800 drowning in the past week alone, he seizes it as an opportunity for personal gain and to smear David Cameron.

Its a dirty tactic to play politics with the deaths of desperate people merely seeking a better life. No one comes out of this looking good.

The IFS is wrong

The suggestion today by the Institute of Fiscal Studies that voters have been left in the dark regarding each parties spending plans for a future government is based on one unfounded assumption. That being, people need or want to know the gritty detail. For most there is already enough detail to differentiate the parties and to make an educated decision.
Here's what we know:

There is a clear difference between the centre-right conservatives and the center-left and left leaning Lib Dems, Labour and SNP in the overall spending plans.

When have the vasty majority of voters ever selected their candidate of choice based on nitty gritty details? Clear assumptions can be made from the information we have above. Spending falls under ALL parties, therefore expect cuts in public services or increase in taxes from whoever forms a government.

The choice therefore comes down to a trade off between short and long term. Anyone who have a mortgage or outstanding credit card bill knows that the sooner you pay of the debt the less you pay in total. With debt decreased or removed you then need less income to maintain the same standard of living (all other things being equal).

So with the Conservatives we have the option of either deeper cuts and/or higher taxes now, but a clear opportunity in 2018 and onward to have no need for further taxes or cuts to take place.

With SNP, Labour and Lib Dems, the cuts will still happen but be less deep and/or taxes will still rise but potentially by less...the catch though is under this option the nation in 2018 and beyond will still be facing a need for further spending cuts and tax rises.

Eden Shopping Centre has helped High Wycombe ride the recession rollercoaster

It’s been almost two years since Eden Shopping Centre opened its doors (figuratively speaking) to the public. What followed was an unbelievable amount of criticism in the local media by letter writers, bloggers and disappointed visitors. It’s too cold. It’s too windy. It will kill the High Street. We don’t need two cinemas. There’s not going to be enough parking spaces. The parking spaces are too tight. The road infrastructure is too weak. The floors are too slippery. We heard it all. Some were valid and some, well, not so valid. One common theme though, was that Eden Shopping Centre opened at precisely the wrong time, the start of the credit crunch.

We are often forgetful though. It’s all too easy to not think back to what we had before Eden. A decaying, damp and gloomy bus station. A poor welcome for visitors, using public transport, to High Wycombe.

The development of Eden Shopping Centre must be recorded as one of the most successful policies followed through by Wycombe District Council. Eden has helped the town’s shopping district to ride through the recession in better condition than many other towns. Shoppers that previously went further afield to Slough; Watford; Maidenhead and Reading are now attracted by what Wycombe has to offer. There is now a greater diversity of stores than ever before, from House of Fraser to Primark, Wycombe caters for the affluent households in the area and also those of us on tight budgets.

Eden has also changed Wycombe beyond recognition. The shopping core of the town has shifted away from the High Street for the first time in history. This is not necessarily bad news for the High Street, the historic market still operates there three times a week drawing shoppers to that side of town and there is still private sector investment in the permanent units on the street. Current construction in Church Square is testament to this. What the High Street offers shoppers after the recession will be a very different experience to 4 years ago, but because of Eden there is enough confidence in the private to invest in this historic side of town. Chiltern Railways willingness to finance redevelopment of Wycombe Railway Station, to provide greater parking and to restore Brunel’s Goods Shed is a fine example of private sector confidence in High Wycombe’s economy.

Yesterday I visited Maidenhead for the first time in almost a year and was shocked by what I saw. It was like a ghost town, I passed shop fronts which have closed their doors and are now redirecting their customers to Wycombe.

Maidenhead is a pleasant enough town, and I may have caught on a bad day and I'm not blind to the fact that January is the most difficult trading months for retailers. But this could and would have Wycombe without the courage of the council to follow through on such an ambitious town centre regeneration policy. I’m not claiming Eden has made Wycombe recession proof, but the change in dynamic of Wycombe’s town centre and positive multiplier effect created by Eden is a good thing.

Wycombe Wanderers have a set up suitable for the Championship, the problem is a Championship set up isn’t suitable for League Two

This weekend I was fortunate enough to attend two FA Cup 3^rd Round Ties. A delayed 2^nd Round replay between Lincoln and Hereford pushed back the winner’s next round tie with Wycombe Wanderers to midweek and provided me with the opportunity to travel into London to watch Fulham host Peterborough. I thoroughly enjoyed my experience at one, the other was very different.

Craven Cottage, the 115 year old home stadium of Fulham FC, brings with it a wide range of reviews from ‘falling down’ to ‘full of character’. My belief is that its firmly the latter, it’s not trying to be the most comfortable stadium in the world and indeed doesn’t compare to anything built since the Taylor Report, but with the oldest stand (The Johnny Haynes Stand) in the football league, its positively brimming with character and history.

Adam’s Park, home of Wycombe Wanderers, is almost the opposite, a modern stadium built only 20 years ago, it lacks character but serves the purpose of an ambitious forth tier football club. And Wycombe Wanderers are indeed ambitious with a deep desire to reach the Championship (2^nd tier), the management of the club are clearly ready for greater things as the setup to manage a large club is already in place. The problem I encountered on a damp and cold Tuesday evening is that it simply doesn’t work for a League Two team like Wycombe.

The FA Cup brings with it all sorts of challenges for clubs. The games aren’t included in the season ticket holders pass and a there is generally lower attendance as a result. Both Fulham and Wycombe approached this problem with a similar fix but only one club successfully pulled it off. Both clubs lowered prices to encourage people to the stadium. At Fulham the cost of a seat was dropped to £15 in advance and £20 on the day. At Wycombe a seat on Tuesday would set you back £15 or a place on the terrace just £10. Wycombe also went a bit further to encourage more families and children to attend and gave entry to all under 16s for just a £1 (Quid a Kid).

Wycombe is a club struggling for attendances nowadays and I can’t quite understand how they can charge pretty much the same price for a ticket as a Premiership team and expect people to come rolling down to the stadium to watch them play. If I were a neutral football fan with only £15, I know which game I’d choose to go to. I guess though, they must me focusing on the ‘family of supporters’ with the ‘quid a kid’ scheme they had in place.

What I witnessed on Tuesday night had many supporters shaking their head in disbelief. With no queues at the turnstiles to get into the stadium, the stewards were demanding everyone goes to the ticket office and buy a paper ticket only to hand it in at the turnstile (for those who have never been to a match outside the Premier League, its common practice at smaller team, to pay simply as your walking into the stadium). A pointless exercise in doubling staffing numbers and cost without any gain. What I found so hard to believe is that on a damp and cold evening, the club enacted a policy to make long queues at the ticket offices meaning many missed the start of the game, instead of allowing people and families (that they did so well to encourage to come along) to enter the stadium in an easy and efficient manner. It just doesn’t make sense to keep people waiting outside the stadium, when they could quickly pay cash at the point of entry. I had to queue for 20 minutes to buy my ticket when I had £15 cash in my hand I could have just handed to the person at the turnstile.

When the stadium is only 25% full, that’s an attendance of just 2,500, this is nothing but a complete failure by the club to manage a good match-day experience. I wouldn’t recommend taking a child along, even if it is just £1 to get them in, Wycombe’s management will make them stand around outside stadium (come rain or shine) for 20 minutes before hand.

The system Wycombe used is actually the same as Fulham (and many other major events) where no one is able to pay for admission at the point of entry. Fulham though, average crowds of over 20,000, and can therefore demand it of the visitors in order to have the match operations run more smoothly. A football game at Adams Park however is not a major logistical event, for a football club that pulls in just 2,500 to operate this system is a shambles.

There’s a simple theory in business, if you want more customers to buy your product (and Wycombe Wanderers are clearly struggling to attract people), make it as easy as possible for them to buy it! It’s an idea which clearly hasn’t come before the Wycombe management board yet.

Buckinghamshire's winter transport policy needs a rethink

In the early hours of the morning, when driving to work through a fresh layer of about 8 inches of snow, I saw something I had heard about but hadn’t ever seen until recently. Outside shop fronts owners were shovelling snow from the pavement, outside houses people were beginning to clear their driveways and the pavements in front of their home.

I’m in Cedar City, Utah and there is no law requiring people to clear the pavements in front of their properties (as is often rumoured when us Brits complain about our snow), but it is common practice here for two good reasons. Firstly, it means they are able to use their pavements, from which everyone benefits. And secondly, it saves on the city council services and money being absorbed on this task and that, instead, is able to be concentrated on keeping the roads clear.

Failure by the previous Governments to send a message out that people should help clear snow without fear of being sued (if a passerby slips) encouraged dependency on councils to do this when frankly they don’t have the money or resources. But when in winter 2009/10 WDC didn’t clear its carparks the for same reason it left us all bewildered. Does anyone honestly know of someone being sued for such an event? No? Excactly. They should be covered by the Good Samaritan Act anyway.

How many times each winter do you hear someone complain “in America they can cope with snow and the roads aren’t littered with potholes....”. Yes, here in Utah they regularly get more snow than in England and therefore it makes sense to dedicate more council resources to dealing with it. But there is a better use of money too. It’s not wasted on large amounts of salt (grit), as everybody knows this may stop small amounts of moisture on the road from freezing, but never has and never will stop the snow from falling there. Money is invested in snow ploughs, there are city snow ploughs dedicated to the service and also residents with 4x4s who can fit a plough to the front of their vehicle are contracted in when needed. And the potholes? They are here too and I suspect anywhere in the world where the temperature regularly fluctuates around the freezing marker. It’s as certain as life, death and taxes.

It’s not the responsibility of the local councils to clear all the snow from all the roads and all the pavements. They can’t make it ‘not winter’. But the two-tier system in Buckinghamshire is a cause of the problem; where one council is responsible for the roads and another for pavements; and where nobody really knows who looks after the county’s other footpaths, (because they’re generally not cared for) or the pedestrian high streets (they’re not really roads or pavements), the buck is too often passed between offices.

Buckinghamshire would benefit from a single authority that carries all the responsibility for keeping us moving in the winter, not least because the buck can’t be passed, but mainly because it can then go back to the drawing board, wipe out all the current failing plans and think again. They need to come forward with a firm policy of what people can and should expect their council to do, and just as important, what people need and should do themselves.