Bingham's Adjournment Debate in the House of Commons today

Bingham secures Adjournment Debate on the Bypass

Thanks once again to NMB contributor Kirtle Green for another blog, which can be read below.

Andrew Bingham, Enemy of the Peak District, has secured an imminent pre-Christmas Adjournment Debate on the Bypass, which will take place tomorrow in the House of Commons. An Adjournment Debate traditionally takes place as we understand it not before the Full House, but “in camera” as it were with any interested parties present, and a Ministerial representative from the Dept of Transport.

Incidentally, we don’t feel the MP has done much homework on the Bypass, so it will be interesting to know which version he turns up supporting, dependent perhaps on how he has been briefed (by whoever is lobbying him on all of this.) After all, there are plentiful versions of the road out there. Which one he is talking about – something he has never troubled himself to elaborate on up till now - may at last become clear. Mind you we wouldn’t bet on it! Over the past 12 months, Bingham has variously called the scheme the 'Glossop Bypass', 'Tintwistle Bypass' and now the 'Mottram-Tintwistle Bypass'. Little details like “where a particular road is to go” or the probable impacts on his constituents don’t really seem to matter in the remote and somewhat un-thought-out governmental world of Andrew Bingham MP.

At the outset we called the MP an “Enemy” because nobody who is not in some way adverse to iconic countryside would want to touch one blade of grass or animal habitat of the fragile Peak District, let alone plan to drive a road and urban sprawl through it. Its future seems far from secure whilst this guy is touting his trade.

Ironically, Bingham said in his maiden speech that he felt he represented the most “beautiful constituency” in the UK. We would not quite agree with that superlative but it is certainly one of the finest – I moved here 27 years ago and as it stands in a bypass-less state, I have never found anywhere better to live. Go out in the snowy wilderness now and who could be failed by such icy splendour.

I therefore marvel at his eagerness to undermine its status and make it mundane, suburban or desolate like so many of the urban areas it sits between. There is no accounting for MPs really - except perhaps expenses accounting - as it wasn’t any different with the late great Tom Levitt . They seem to talk up the beauty of their constituency and then lay plans for its demise.

Mr Bingham of course with his gracious lady companion, the MEP Emma McClarkin, did a foot tour of the constituency in his opposition days. Those wilderness years were very considerable, so Mr Bingham being a bit of a one trick pony, this may be one one reason why he seeks to placate the road lobby to prolong his sinecure. No doubt in his travels he came across some very scenic and ecologically important scenes which he marked down then with a note “come back and destroy in the future”.

He probably identified all kinds of spectacular areas. Take my word for it, some of the proposed bypass routes under any sane constitution would have years ago been placed under conservation orders or put in the National Park. This should still be the case now, but our elected officials have quite other thoughts in mind. One could perhaps perceive Mr Bingham on his travels keeping his beady bespectacled eye open for particularly important landscapes such as these for some deforestation, or bulldozer work for a road. Now his time has come as MP, and seemingly nowhere is safe in the Peak District as he has pledged “not to let this issue rest”.

Well done Andrew Bingham, statesman and orator, what a great spectacle you are!

Bingham makes his maiden speech - now it's the 'Tintwistle Bypass'!

The new Tory MP for High Peak, Andrew Bingham, made his maiden speech in Parliament this week (which can be viewed on the video above). Bingham clearly had an attack of nerves, as he fluffs and stumbles through the 7 minute speech (The transcript (which reads much better than it was spoken) can be read here). But unlike his predecessor* Tom Levitt, he marks his card and mentions the Bypass.

Only this time it's the Tintwistle Bypass. Showing his unfamiliarity with the TMBC proposals, he states that "Tintwistle shudders and resounds to the thundering of wagons as they cross the Pennines" and therefore needs a Bypass - which is why Tintwistle does not form any part of the current plans! You may remember that during the election hustings on High Peak Radio, Bingham continually referred to the Bypass as the 'Glossop Bypass'.

Other than that, this speech surely ranks as one of the most embarrassing things we've heard in a long time, especially his shtick about being the 'Member of Parliament for Royston Vasey', FFS...

*at the beginning of the video, Bingham describes virtually everyone as his predecessor.

Andrew 'Tweedledumber' Bingham wins in High Peak

High Peak Councillor (and blogger) Anthony McKeown broke the news of the High Peak election result first on Twitter - and the winner is the Tory Andrew Bingham. It's High Peak Labour Party's own fault - they failed miserably by not taking swift and decisive action over the expenses fiddles of the crook Tom Levitt.

We're sure some very odd people would like to extend their congratulations to Bingham, 'Tweedledumber' in our parlance due to his non-difference from Tom Levitt regarding the Bypass, but the choice on this issue between all the three main candidates was a non-choice for us. Nevertheless, this writer regards Bingham as the natural enemy and we intend to be ruthless.

Labour, Conservative & Liberal Democrat High Peak candidates declare war on their constituency

Well, we did promise to examine last week's High Peak Radio hustings in more detail, so we're returning to dissect the words of the three main candidates that featured in that debate (the audio is once again at the bottom on the post) - Labour's Caitlin Bisknell, the Liberal Democrat Alistair Stevens and the Tory Andrew Bingham.

47 seconds in, the debate turns to the housing targets imposed by the Government of the East Midlands upon High Peak Borough Council. All three candidates turn this into a call for affordable housing, but readers need to be aware that this is coded language and does not necessarily mean the same thing as Social Housing (which is actually being slowly dismantled), with affordable housing actually meaning affordable to those on an average wage, something which those in most need of housing can only dream about. It also increasingly means that these homes are 'shared ownership' (i.e. mixed mortgage/rent), a sector which is currently somewhat problematic given the complete lack of mortgages available to anyone on a low income (something which is likely to continue long into the future). In addition, readers should know that the housing targets specify that only a small proportion of the planned units must be 'affordable'.

Thus what we're seeing here is an attempt to justify large scale development on Greenbelt land for a 'projected need', and not necessarily current need, which could arguably be accommodated by the occupation of existing empty homes and the use of recognisably brownfield sites.

The contributions can be summarised thus: Bisknell calls for building on the Green Belt (contrary to local development plans), Stevens thinks the targets aren't high enough (but then he's an estate agent!) and calls for a political united front.

At 2:28, the issue of Cowdale Quarry is raised. In essence, this is a crackpot scheme which, on the surface, seeks to turn a long disused Quarry (over 62 years) into a bottled water plant, but is actually an asset-stripping environmental outrage. Both Bingham and Bisknell decline to comment on the basis that a planning decision has yet to be made, and if they are not elected as the High Peak candidate, as members of the Council they have to make a decision about it.

Which is interesting. Because keen readers will also know that the planning permission awarded by HPBC for the High Peak end of the Glossop Spur has now expired and, if Roy Oldham and Co. are serious, will need to be renewed again in future. Since later in the debate, they both declared enthusiasm for Bypass 2.0, we can only assume they have prejudiced this application.

At 3:39, we get a long rant from all three candidates about the need for Bypass 2.0. Bisknell's support seems not exactly unequivocal, but she goes on to mention the need for a Bypass for Fairfield near Buxton, which is a new one on us ('No Fairfield Bypass' anyone?). Bingham refers to Bypass 2.0 as the 'Glossopdale Bypass', and speaks in favour of it, but makes no promises about funding, saying he will 'fight very hard' for it if elected - Game On then Tweedledumber! The Estate Agent agrees.

The final section is the one we mentioned in our last post - yes, it's our question which we emailed in (though High Peak Radio chose not to mention that, or the blog), and it went as follows:

The 3 main candidates go on and on about reducing Carbon emissions, yet they all support the construction of a Bypass, along the lines of the discredited Longdendale Bypass, but now through Mottram and down into Glossop. The old plan would have seen Carbon emissions increase in this area by 15,000 tons each year. Doesn't this make a nonsense of their claims to be 'environmentally friendly'? Surely the best way to be green is not to pollute the area with more traffic and CO2?

And of course we then had Alistair Stevens telling us to 'get real' because the road would be used for 'green cars' (apparently powered by wind turbines). He must know about these things, after all he's an Estate Agent...

That just about wraps up our little contribution to the 2010 General Election. Just remember: whoever you vote for, the government always gets in. Voting for any of this lot ensures business as usual, which also means a war on the local environment, and that's a war that will not go unanswered in the years to come.

High Peak Hustings - Bypass 2.0 is for "cars powered by wind turbines"

Yesterday saw 3 of the candidates from the main political parties contesting the General Election take part in a 'hustings' event on High Peak Radio. NMB audio faeries whipped out their copies of Audacity to make a recording, and we've edited the 'lowlights' of the proclamations of the three candidates - i.e. the bit where they reveal their plans to trash the environment of the High Peak in numerous ways - and you can hear this at the foot of this post on the mp3 player.

We'll be back soon with a fuller analysis, but for the time being, we'll leave you with Alistair Stevens' (Lib Dem) bizarre The Day Today-esque response to a question we posed (which begins at 7:14) - the Bypass he wants to build will be for "cars powered by wind turbines". Whatever next...

A future free from the Bypass?

Now we don't pretend to have done a full survey of all the election literature circulating both Longdendale and the High Peak, but from what we have seen so far, it seems remarkably free of mention of Bypass 2.0.

In the High Peak, in leaflets mailed and posted by the successor to Tom 'Shiteman' Levitt - Caitlin Bisknell - there's no mention the Bypass anywhere. This is also the case in the examples of literature delivered on behalf of Andrew 'Tweedledumber' Bingham (we will try to post scans of these leaflets when we have time).

But the most interesting case is that of the Labour PPC in Stalybridge & Hyde, Jonathan Reynolds. A website has been erected for his campaign this week, by the looks of it in a rather hasty fashion. Here's what we noticed on a cursory glance:

1. It seems to contain rather a lot of press releases about James Purnell - in fact, it appears to be Purnell's website with a makeover - a bit like Reynolds himself.
2. Reynolds 'About me' spiel on the website makes no mention of Bypass 2.0, although there's plenty of talk about 'better transport by road and rail'.
3. Politicians and other folk publicly backing Reynolds on the site DO NOT include fellow Councillor Sean Parker-Perry (wonder why?) and, crucially, Tameside Council leader Roy Oldham.
4. As we've already said, this website appears to be James Purnell's redirected to a new domain name, and in the haste to get it online, Reynolds seems to have overlooked the fact that it does not contain his agent's details*, but does contain those of the General Sectretary of the Labour Party (Ray Collins) at the bottom (as a Labour MP's website often does). Those more well-versed in electoral law than ourselves may want to see if anything illegal is taking place.

Whilst we haven't seen Reynolds campaign literature yet, it seems clear that many of the major political parties in the area do not consider the Bypass to be a campaigning issue. How long this lasts for after the election remains to be seen.

*UPDATE, 22/04/2010: a recent article in Tribune magazine carries a description of what seems like internecine civil war within Stalybridge and Hyde Labour Party, being heavily critical of Reynolds and his 'backers'. It makes clear that Reynolds was struggling to find an election agent, but has now secured Mike Kane, who some may remember replaced Mike Doherty as James Purnell's Office Manager when Doherty was sacked for writing to the press to back Purnell without declaring that he worked for him. Reynolds website now names Kane as his agent, although bizarrely he seems to have been  re-named 'Michel'.

Andrew Bingham - Tweedledumber

Last week's Glossop Advertiser saw a number of all-too-familiar letters from pro-bypass fuckwits decrying the Highways Agency's decision to withdraw from the Public Inquiry. But amongst them was nestled this letter from High Peak Borough Councillor Andrew Bingham, the Tories Parliamentary Candidate for the area.

In it, Bingham paints a picture all too familiar because it's the same one painted by Tom Levitt, the man whose job he's after: the Bypass as the key to capitalist prosperity for the High Peak, representing an alleviation of all the traffic problems in the area, supported by almost everyone (none of whom can actually be bothered to officially do so). 

In our view, these non-differences between Labour and Conservative represent all that the political and economic system can offer here or anywhere else. They demonstrate the hollowness of both parties claims to an environmentally sound future where the infinite growth of markets is both necessary and desirable. Neither of them have anything to offer to anyone who believes in anything different.

You won't be surprised to learn that Bingham is as big a fan of the New Mills Torrs Hydro as is Levitt.  For us, this speaks volumes about his credibility, but we won't labour the point lest it appear to be our hobby-horse. 

Our sincere hope is that the legitimacy of the world of Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber, as represented by Bingham and Levitt, is on it's way out. Since it would appear to be high likely that Bingham will replace Levitt at the next General Election, we'll be keeping our eyes on him over the coming months.