Me Too! rolls on.

Free Whitby campaigner Nigel Ward has asked SBC for:

“a complete accounting of all vouchers/invoices for all SBC venues involved in the [Me Too!] scheme”

We know that Whitby Leisure Centre has had a suckle at this public teat to a rumoured value of £30k. SBC has promised the information ‘in a few days’ and in a recent email Nigel pointed out that a working week has passed and that Councillor Mike Ward (one of the few who lives up to his ‘Independent’ tag has also requested the information.

That is a council tax payer and an elected member asking a paid council official (paid at your and my expense) for information on a project paid for out of public (your and my taxes) money and so far that information is not forthcoming.

Email to TWI: SBC levies higher council tax than posh London.

indefatigable Whitby campaigner (and Banjo king) Richard Ineson asks some awkward questions of our Council overlords. As the 2011-12 bills land, right-thinking residents might think he has a point:

Dear Sir,

Here are a few figures which local Council Tax payers’ may find illuminating, I have a particular interest in this very unfair tax as I pay, square metre for square metre, the highest Council Tax of anyone in the United Kingdom.

The Council Tax levied in Whitby this year, 2011 -2012 is as follows

Band B in which my house is listed £1229.50.

Band D which is the supposed national average £1580. 80

Band H which is the highest band £3161.60

In Filey The figures are as follows:-

Band B £1226.77 Band D £1577.29 Band H £3154.58

In Scarborough :-

Band B £1194.22 Band D £1535. 44 Band H £3070.88.

Am I alone in thinking it strange that the cheapest Council Tax is levied in Scarborough?

But there is more, the unfairness of this tax is well demonstrated when we compare our local Council Taxes with those levied in more prosperous areas such as Westminster, and Kensington and Chelsea, where we find that in Westminster the tax is as follows :-

Band B £534.82 Band D £687 62 Band H £1375 24

And in Kensington and Chelsea :-

Band B £839. 31 Band D £1079.12 Band H £2158.24

And yet more, my house is 2.78 metres wide, it has no garden, nowhere to hang any washing and nowhere to house a refuse bin; for this magnificence I am required to pay £1229.50 this financial year.

This contrasts rather sharply with 18 -19, Kensington Palace Gardens, reputedly the most expensive house in the U. K. which was allegedly, last sold for around ninety million pounds – £90,000,000; this house has 12 bedrooms, a jewel encrusted basement pool, marble pillars, garaging for 20 cars and is said to 55 times bigger than an average house.

The lucky owner of this house, which is in Band H pays £2158.24 per annum in Council Tax.

Can anybody explain this to me please?

Yours sincerely,

Puzzled of Whitby

AKA Richard Ineson,
131, Church Street,
Whitby,
YO22 4DE

So to all those SBC officials who said there was no dredging by Sandgate:

What’s this? Scotch mist?
Sandsend dredging by Sandgate in March 2009. Before Sandgate collapsed.

NYCC tweets:

We’ve had suggestions on what more you’d like to see from our twitter, including, events, photos and facts about the area. Any more ideas?

The following: ‘With three layers of local government even before MPs, MEPs and quangos are counted, the people of Yorkshire are overtaxed and over governed. The distant and expensive NYCC has therefore decided to abolish itself and devolve its powers to parish level.’

Parish council election washout.

May 5th’s parish council elections are hardly worth dignifying with the name since few wards throughout the area could muster enough candidates to have an opposed election.

According to the Scarborough Borough Council news site:

At the moment, of the 39 parish councils in the borough, only seats in Eastfield (both the Eastway and Westway Ward), Folkton, the Hinderwell ward of Hinderwell Parish Council, Whitby Town Council’s Abbey Ward and Wykeham are being contested.

As anyone who has observed Whitby Town Council (an offense under the trades descritions act: it is a parish council) in ‘action’ it is clear that it has no power and is no more than a talking shop.

Until something is at stake, and Whitby Town Council has has the power to make genuine decisions that affect the health and wellbeing of the twon, people will not take the institution (which has done itself no favours in recent years) seriously.

Elections to Scarbrough Borough Council’s 50 wards have garnered 50 candidates.

Whitby Goth Weekend

reviewed by Martin Oldgoth.

Extended schools ‘Me Too’ scandal.

If you haven’t read Real Whitby’s exposé on the developing scandal of the ‘extended schools’ voucher scheme, do so at once.

Part one and part two.

Whitby campaigners are still doing spadework on this latest egregious abuse of taxpayer’s hard earned cash. There is more to come out about this. As Real Whitby notes, people around this scheme are saying ‘not me guv’, rather than ‘me too’.

Who could they mean?

Scarborough Borough Council have accused:

‘INDIVIDUALS and pressure groups’

of

‘abusing council complaints procedures, often over frivolous matters, to waste time and money, it has been claimed.’

The allegation that ‘one unnamed individual’ could have cost SBC £82,000 is faithfully reported in all its unsubstantiated glory in the Scarborough Evening News.

Wanting to find out how a local authority entirely funded out of your taxes and community charge works is an expensive impertinence, it seems and the machinery of a council committee can be used to publicly accuse one Whitby resident of ‘abusing’ procedures and ‘wasting time and money’. These are serious allegations, and if SBC believes them to be true they should be made in public without the partial privilege offered by the Council chamber, the individual named and the Council held to account for its utterances.

TWI has seen much of the correspondence behind many of these FOI requests and complaints, and SBC’s attitude would make a mule look like a model of co-operation. Two of Whitby’s more vociferous campaigners have had their emails blacked and their requests for information declared vexatious.

TWI would respectfully remind SBC: we pay your damn wages. And your bills. It would also remind SBC that they have form have form. Scarborough Sea Wall to name but one. By putting walls up against legitimate requests for information and then using the pliant local dead tree press to criticize people only raises in the mind of the curious the Paxman question when confronted with a politician:

‘what have these bastards got to hide?’ (TWI is not questioning the parentage of any SBC staff or councillors.)

By simply releasing the information requested promptly and on time SBC could have defused a lot of campaigners’ interest. By being obstructive, they have merely piqued the interest of campaigners, further heightened Whitby’s feeling of grievance against Scarborough and frankly made ourselves and our colleagues at Real Whitby think that they do have something to hide.

Oh, and not naming an individual about whom you make allegations doesn’t mean you aren’t defaming them. Tolley vs. Fry 1937. Journalism 101.

UPDATE: TWI has emailed SBC’s press office and Cllr Chatt asking for an on the record statement about the identity of this ‘un-named’ Whitby resident and for a breakdown of the vexatious information s/he requested at such hypothetical cost.

Slow start to Goth weekend.

Pubs and taxis have so far reported a sluggish start to WGW. ‘There’s not many goths around,’ was the general view, and there were vacancies reported around the West Cliff guesthouses which are usually booked solid around WGW.

SBC and WTC: FOI requests.

SBC and WTC seem to be very competent at not answering FOIs and declaring citizens who dare to be persistent ‘vexatious’ as a way of not releasing information.

TWI intends to look into this and put some questions to the councils – which you fund – involved. If you have any FOI requests that are overdue and have come up against municipal intransigence, please get in touch.

thewhitbyindependent -at- googlemail.com replacing the -at- with @.

Fantastic public art! A littoral lobster.

Whitby's wicker lobster.

Now this is the kind of thing we need to see more of around town.

Cllrs. Dorothy Clegg and Sandra Turner join the Conservatives.

Former independent Councillors Clegg and Turner will be standing as Conservative candidates in the May Scarborough Borough Council elections.

As Groucho Marx said, ‘these are my principles, and if you don’t like them I’ve got some more.’

(H/t Real Whitby who published this first. I just had to use the Groucho line.)

01723 squadron.

A lot less honourable than 633 squadron.

Now go visit and bookmark

Real Whitby.

They will be blogrolled as soon as WordPress gets over its current indigestion.

News snippet: taxi fares will soon be going up in Whitby: from May it will cost £3.40 to get into one rather than the current £3.20.

Whitby’s harbour master resignation rumours.

Word is flying round the pontoons that Whitby’s  harbour master is leaving his post.

 

A stormy future for Whitby harbour?

The running of the harbour by Scarborough Borough Council is an issue that we at TWI are starting to look into: the Whitby Harbour Board is an organization that appears to have been set up to guarantee the flow of car parking and harbour fees from Whitby to Scarborough and ultimately to fail.

 

A government white paper issued in 2002 directed local authorities to dispose of their interests in harbours. SBC declined to do so on the basis that having responsibility for two harbours (Whitby and Scarborough) and a coble landing at Filey made the disposal too complex.

 

Whereas every person in Whitby with an IQ higher than a seagull knew that SBC takes about £750,000 a year out of Whitby Harbour car parks and mooring fees and that they would not cede these assets and income to anyone. The draft Whitby Harbour Board regulations which allows SBC to charge Whitby Harbour Board whatever rent they wish, the sample figures being sums that seem uncannily similar to the annual harbour revenue.

Striking but derelict and not open to the public: Whitby East Pier

 

As things stand, the larval Whitby Harbour Board (SBC Pravda report) has not yet signed a contract with SBC and if what TWI understands is true, they would have to be very silly to do so as effectively as SBC has declined to specify a harbour board budget, agree the assets to which they are entitled or provide a definitive outline of what constitutes Whitby Harbour.

Anyone who uses the harbour knows it is semi derelict. Whitby’s cargo trade has long since collapsed. According to rumours one of Whitby’s four remaining white fish trawlers is off to the south coast to become a gill netter, a second is scheduled for decommissioning and this Tuesday’s Gazette reports the winding up of Alliance Fisheries with knock on effects on the fish market and ice plant.

Whitby harbour still remains a massive financial liability for anyone contemplating taking responsibility for it. SBC have been responsible for its maintenance for 35 years: the piers have had a few sticking plasters applied, but recent enquiries by Free Whitby‘s Nigel Ward have revealed that if (as it appears) the East Pier lighthouse is leaning and structurally unsafe, the end of the east Pier will be closed to add to the dereliction and closure of the East extension.

This from the local authority that in clear breach of the law let a £25 million contract for Scarborough sea wall repairs without bothering to put it to public tender. According to an engineer who worked on the project, the final cost was £48 million.

WTC’s extraordinary meeting on that phantom £25k.

Public Participation was adjourned until after Cllrs had debated the issue.

First, Cllr Mike Murphy (Chair of Finance & General Purposes Committee) couldn’t get out of the traps fast enough, denying all knowledge of any offer from ARRIVA.

Cllrs Steve and Amanda Smith each (separately) wondered why 6 months could go by since ARRIVA asked for a meeting to discuss ‘recompense’ – and nothing has so far been done about it. Cllr Carson interrupted throughout Steve’s attempts.

Cllr Carson blamed the Gazette for making a mystery where the was none.

Tom Broderick agreed with all three. I pointed out that NYCC’s Cllr Herbert Tindall stood by his remarks at last Tuesday’s Sneaton Castle meeting. Cllr Mike Murphy read out a copy of Cllr Tindall’s email to me. He was unable or unwilling to explain how he came by it.

Cllr Carson opined that ‘maybe’ Cllr Tindall had ‘maybe’ overheard something, ‘maybe’ said ‘tongue in cheek’. In short, there was, in reality, no £25,000 – never has been. It was all perhaps a figment of Herbert’s imagination.

The ‘working group’ responsible for the entire ARRIVA debacle consisted of Cllrs Niall Carson, Walter Jones and Bob Sigsworth. Siggy was absent. Wally never opened his mouth. Carson was the sole mouthpiece.

The Mayor in the Chair had to be asked by Cllr Steve Smith to maintain order. Poor Terry still hasn’t grasped the simple process of voting on any Amendment before voting on the Motion itself.

Cllrs Dickinson and Rixham-Smith tried to contribute but no-one took much notice.

Result? Nobody knew anything about anything – ever.

They will write to ARRIVA saying YES please – to the £25,000 that never existed.

More potash mining for the Whitby area?

The Yorkshire Post reports plans for a new potash mine between Whitby and Scarborough.

The company concerned is Sirius Minerals which runs mines in North Dakota and Australia. The company are holding out the prospect of ‘up to’ 5000 jobs.

Sirius’ statement about the purchase of York Potash is here. It states:

Sirius has acquired York Potash Ltd, a private UK company that has signed various agreements with major landowners in relation to extensive mineral rights covering more than 600km2 onshore and offshore between the towns of Whitby and Scarborough in North Yorkshire, England, where York Potash Ltd has been analysing the potential to develop a new world-class potash project (the “York Potash Project”). The mineral rights relate to all the evaporites including potash (sylvite), polyhalite, rock salt, and intermingled minerals beneath the agreement areas. The region also hosts the Boulby Mine which has been producing potash since 1973 and is known to host extensive deposits of high grade sylvite and polyhalite.

The area already has one potash mine at Boulby: according to a former employee the geology of the Yorkshire coast lends itself to potash extraction because the seam of potash bows close to the surface in this part of the country. He also said that the potash is ‘dirty’ and need treating once the rock has been extracted.

Whitby-Scarborough coast defence plans published

and make the BBC news website.

The SBC news story about the consultation is here. The public wil be able to see the plans and make comments when they are unveiled at Robin Hoods Bay Methodist Chapel on 19th January.

SBC’s £5 million consultant bill.

Scarborough Borough Council have disclosed spending £5 million on consultants over the last two and a half years according to this report from the Scarborough Evening News.

In just 7 months of 2010 SBC managed to spend a staggering £2 million plus on outside consultants.

Or the equivalent of an entire years council tax revenue from 1703 Whitby homes (based on average SBC council tax figure of £1174 from here).

SBC’s generosity to already profitable consultants at a time when VAT and inflation are rising and the bills for Christmas are about to land has prompted Free Whitby’s Nigel Ward to call on SBC’s senior executives to resign.

How did that offer £25k Arriva?

Free Whitby campaigner Nigel Ward has asked Whitby Town Council for details of the alleged £25,000 donation from bus company. A donation some councillors in positions of financial oversight knew nothing of.

Mr Ward asks:

would you please be so kind as to explain to me, in the public interest, and at a time no later than six hours ahead of the Extraordinary Meeting next week, the precise circumstances in which it would appear to be the case that the Arriva bus company can have made an offer of a £25,000 (twenty-five thousand pounds) donation to the Town (Parish) Council, in June of 2010, without the knowledge of the then Deputy Chairman of the Finance & General Purposes Committee, Councillor Mike Ward, and without the knowledge of Councillor Ian Havelock – whose personal assurance I have that he knew nothing whatsoever about it?

Wetherspoons: second thoughts about New Angel deal.

TWI learns that Wetherspons might be getting cold feet about taking over the Big Angel on New Quay Road.

According to a source, the poor state of the Big A means that renovation costs might be prohibitive: the roof is understood to be in a state of collapse, a crack runs through the building from basement to roof and the land on which it stands is subject to subsidence.

TWI will be ringing Wetherspoons on Monday morning to see whether these reports are correct.

Local actor Ian Carmichael dies.

Born in Hull, educated at Scarborough College (which he hated), famously played Bertie Wooster and Lord Peter Wimsey, met his first wife at Whitby.

Ian Carmichael has died peacefully at his Esk Valley aged 89 after falling ill over Christmas.

The Guardian’s obituary here.

There’ll always be a Whitby…

so blogs Katie Gibson a fan of Whitby from Texas.

That so many people find this town (or village as Katie charmingly calls it) so enchanting proves is worth fighting for.

Make Scarborough Borough Council a swimming Borough Council

says Janet Peake, Labour’s candidate in next Thursday’s SBC by-election for Mayfield Ward. She is calling for SBC to join a government scheme which would allow Whitby children, teens and over 60s to swim in SBC pools for free.

According to Mrs Peake, Scarborough Borough Council is the only local authority on North Yorkshire not to offer free swimming to under 16s and over 60s.

Labour sources claim that SBC’s coalition of Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Independent Councillors voted down a proposal to join the Government scheme, which would provide grant funding to subsidise the scheme and that authorities like SBC where many children close to the sea have a moral obligation to teach swimming on safety grounds.

In a letter to Whitby MP Robert Goodwill inviting his support for the campaign, Mrs Peake said that “…it would actually save money for the Council! The government grant would have been over £43 thousand if free swimming was offered, yet the estimated revenue from the over 60s is under £42 thousand for this year.”

Janet Peake has invited Mr Goodwill to meet Labour Cllr Eric Broadbent and Parliamentary candidate Annajoy David in a bid to persuade SBC’s LibIndyCon coalition to reverse their decision.

Edit: press releases are welcome from all candidates in the by-election and civil debate welcome in comments.

Land all caught fish (and feed the bycatch to fish) says Robert Goodwill.

Speaking in the House of Commons Scarborough and Whitby MP Robert Goodwill asked fisheries minister Huw Irranca-Davis to consider allowing trawlermen to end the process of discarding fish outside their quote and use them to make food for the aquaculture industry:

Robert Goodwill (Shadow Minister, Transport; Scarborough & Whitby, Conservative)
“Does the Minister agree that the two key elements are the devolution of day-to-day management to local and regional stakeholders and a land-all policy linked to a secondary market for fish that cannot otherwise be marketed to form a feed stock for the aquaculture industry?”

Huw Irranca-Davies Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Marine and Natural Environment), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
“We are very supportive of that. In fact, we have been playing a leadership role in promoting the idea of a regionalisation of management, which would still involve ministerial accountability and the overarching strategy. The hon. Gentleman is right about the idea of a land-all policy. We need to consider innovative approaches, such as the agreement that we signed last year to look at electronic monitoring on vessels, with the agreement of skippers, to land more and kill less. That relates especially to the abhorrent issue of discards, which skippers, as much as anyone else, abhor.”

Wanted: new home for old whalebones.

Most towns have no sets of whalebone jaws, but Whitby has two which is one too many for Scarborough Borough Council which is looking for a new home for old bones.

The original bones, taken from a 113 ton fin whale caught by a Norwegian whaler and erected in 1963 were replaced in 2002 by the jawbones of a Bowhead Whale killed by Inuits in 1996. Unlike Whitby Piers, the whalebones did receive maintenance, but had deteriorated to the point where they had to be replaced and the Bowhead jawbones were found after a worldwide appeal.

After being removed from West Cliff the originals had been on display in Whitby Archives, but since the Archives closed SBC has had the bones in storage. They are now appealing for a ‘custodian’ of this piece of the town’s past, which commemorates the days when Whitby was a great whaling port.

Anyone who feels their home or business needs a pair of aged whale jawbones to add that ‘wow’ factor and has 19 foot 6 to spare should contact John Woodhead, Scarborough Borough Council’s Northern Area Engineer by telephoning 01723 232589 or email john.woodhead-at-scarborough.gov.uk, replacing the -at- with @.

Eh (high) up: Cook-inspired Yorkshire astronaut bound for Space Station.

STS-130 Mission Specialist Nicholas Patrick gets some first-hand experience with one of the handrails on the Tranquility node, installed in Endeavour's payload bay. Photo: NASA/Kim Shiflett Jan. 21, 2010

When the Space Shuttle launches on Sunday the North Yorkshire coast will have its very own son aboard as Nicholas Patrick becomes the highest-flying Yorkshireman ever.

And like many an explorer before him, Astronaut Patrick was inpired by another famous son of Yorkshire, James Cook. In a neat piece of exploration synchronicity, he will be making his own voyage of discovery on the shuttle Endeavour, named after the Whitby-built Bark on which Cook made his first circumnavigation.

Father of three Nicholas was born in Saltburn by the Sea in 1964 when it was still part of North Yorkshire. His parents are American and he became a US citizen in 1994. He last flew in 2006 as part of a Shuttle crew that delivered a truss to the International Space Station. Once the Shuttle docks with the ISS he will be preparing for the most gruelling jobs an astronaut can undertake – spacewalking for seven hours at a time to attach new modules to the International Space Spation. While circling the earth at 17500 miles an hour.

Although an American citizen Nicholas Patrick hasn’t forgotten the county of his birth and is probably the only Yorkshireman to have seen it from space. Speaking to the BBC he said:

I think back to England a lot. Almost all of my education was over there until graduate school. I remember looking down at England from orbit and being able to see the area of the coast of North Yorkshire where I was born;

His space shuttle launch will be the last night-time launch, and after this there are only five more launches until the shuttle fleet is retired. Nicholas is not the first astronaut to boldly go under the influence of James Cook: Michael Barratt recently returned from a six month stint on the ISS, and regularly cited James Cook as one of his heroes. Mike celebrated his 50th birthday aboard the space station, and Whitby featured on a film emailed to the space station which Mike watched for his 50th birthday.

Birthday in space from Beagle Project on Vimeo.

Nicholas Patrick’s NASA biography is here, his twitter profile is here and NASA’s page for the launch including countdown, readiness and blogs is here.

And the wierd fish keep coming: Skinningrove sunfish.

A sunfish (Mola mola) washed up at Skinningrove. © G. Croft.

Thanks to our correspondent for the latest local exotic fish find: a 3 foot long sunfish found on Skinningrove beach. OK, it’s not Whitby, but we can’t blame this Mola mola for landing up at Skinningrove: these fish are usually found in tropical or temperate waters and, according to a sunfish expert at the University of Berkley prolonged exposure to cold water can lead to sunfish ‘disorientation and death’. Had this sunfish not had its brains addled by an unseasonably cold North Sea, it would undoubtedly have had the good taste to hurl itself to its death on Whitby beach.

According to the British Marine Life Study Society entry on Sunfish: “Although this fish is frequently seen off the south and western coasts of Britain during the summer and autumn, sightings and strandings in the North Sea are much less common.” Sunfish are the largest known bony fish, weighing up to 1000kg and are said to be good to eat. Although this specimen looks like no amount of tartare sauce could make it taste good.

The sunfish stranding comes in the wake of multiple reports of Ray’s Bream being washed up at Whitby and Runswick Bay.

Yorkshire Water: oooops, you did it again.

Not content with releasing thousands of gallons of untreated raw sewage into historic Whitby Harbour in 2008, Yorkshire Water’s crumbling and inadequate sewage system is now polluting a national footpath and Staithes Harbour.

Sewage running from a Yorkshire Water sewer into the layby between Hinderwell and Staithes. The flow was 'many gallons a second' according to an eyewitness.

This morning the lay-by between Hinderwell and Staithes on the A174 was ankle deep in sewage. Sewage is being forced up through the mud of Staithes Harbour bed: the seepage is clearly visible at low tide. Locals suspect that the holding tank on the Cowbar side of Staithes Harbour has been breached,

And a fractured pipe is leaking raw sewage which is pouring across the Cleveland Way between Port Mulgrave and Runswick, eroding the path and contaminating it with sewage. Yorkshire Water claim that the offending pipe is the responsibility of Scarborough Borough Council who are in turn trying to shuffle responsibility off to North Yorkshire County Council.

TWI has seen the photos and will be publishing them shortly.

Community College Question Time turns election hustings.

Whitby Community College‘s 2010 Schools Question Time programme has become the chance for the people of Whitby to judge the candidates asking for their vote in the 2010 General Election.

The organizers have confirmed that four candidates from the main political parties will go head to head in the Community College on 18 March as part of the panel that the organizers hope will once again get the College into the Schools Question Time finals.

The BBC's Sonali Shah (Newsround and BBC News Channel business presenter) will chair WCC's Question Time.

. Most commentators think that the election will be held on 6 May.

Sitting Conservative MP Robert Goodwill, Labour’s Annajoy David, Liberal Democrat Tania Exley-Moore and the Green Party’s Dilys Cluer will share the platform with an apolitical mystery fifth guest. BBC Newsround presenter Sonali Shah has been booked to chair the programme.

Whitby Community College’s Question Time team made the national finals in 2004, and in 2005 and 2007 were one of the four schools whose programme won and whose team went on to make a special edition of Question Time working alongside David Dimbleby.

If this year’s programme has similar success, two of the team will join the Question Time production team for an edition to be broadcast in July 2010.

The 2005 General Election results were:
Robert Goodwill (Conservative) 19,248
Lawrie Quinn (Labour) 18,003
Tania Exley-Moore (Liberal Democrat) 7,495
Jonathan Dixon (Green) 1,214
Paul Abbott (UK Independence Party) 952