Those troublesome scam emails, phone calls and letters!

The other morning I joined around seventy people for a Torbay Business Forum breakfast at the Riviera Conference Centre. The guest speaker was Kevin Foster MP and his topic was the first one-hundred days in the House of Commons. As I am sure you are aware these are difficult times for a politician and I found his grasp of core issues refreshing. I rather suspect that he will keep the faith regardless of political pressure but of course only time will tell.

Kevin Foster

As I say his theme was the first hundred days and I must admit with a title like that I did look around for the executioners block and axe! But this was not a scene from Hilary Mantel’s ‘Wolf Hall’ although he did say that one his first day the new cohort were shown where to leave their swords! What also interested me was the fact that the audience at the breakfast event did not use this gathering as a platform for launching a series of prickly questions. In point of fact there were very few questions and that did actually make me raise an eyebrow.

For the past eighteen years the local MP was Adrian Sanders. The period immediately after the May election will have been a curious road for Adrian as he adjusted to a very different landscape. Before becoming an MP Adrian spent twenty-one years working in the public and private sectors. That is a considerable amount of knowledge and experience. You may be interested to know that Adrian is still very much in business offering public relations, government affairs and lobbying services (www.adriansanders.org). He is very keen to help smaller organisational locally and his fee structure is user friendly.

Adrian Sanders

I have a huge amount of respect for both Adrian and Kevin. It is all too easy to look for the negative and indeed too often people seem to gain enormous pleasure from criticising others. Kevin will certainly need support from the community in the challenging days ahead and it is pleasing that Adrian’s wealth of experience is still available.

One point made by Kevin Foster during his ‘first hundred days’ talk was the nature of communication and how that has changed. He pointed out that not so many years ago if you had something you wanted to tell your MP then it meant picking up a pen and writing a letter.  Of course you didn’t just write a letter you then had to stuff it in an envelope, stick a stamp in the top right hand corner and pop it in a letterbox.

These days that has all changed. Of course many people will still write letters and to be quite honest I find that very exercise quite cathartic. The advent of social media means that that an email can be dashed off in seconds. There is also the facility for the use internet based sites to simply write a quick note to an MP and press send! So easy to do and of course too often the source emails that lack any thought.

I think that Kevin said he had something like two-hundred emails immediately after winning the election. That comment made me shiver because I suspect that quite important messages may have been lost in an ocean of rhetoric. It is also true that too many email communications should really be saved for a period of time and then read again before pressing send or indeed deleting. That is certainly true when written in anger. As the blood pressure rises we tend to lose the ability to reason.

One topic that might interest both of them, Kevin and Adrian, is the rise in spam communications through the letterbox, email in box, telephone calls and text messages. You may have read in the Herald Express recently of a lady who lost thousands of pounds to a telephone scammer. These nasty people are very clever but lack any integrity. We live in an age where personal information is so easily available and it takes little effort to find huge amounts of data about a person.

What really worries me is that whilst numerous people will report scams many others will be too embarrassed to admit falling for these malicious attacks. All this is not helped by isolation and we must look out for the vulnerable. We need to put pressure on the decision makers in the hope that there will be a more serious attempt to weed out these nasty people.

Keep the smile!

from my Herald Express column 9th September 2015

How ‘Socratic’ is the debate?

Doctor Bettany Hughes is a clever lady and so it was interesting watching her ‘bump’ into the power of the Socratic process whilst chatting to a Greek writer in an Athenian café. I don’t know whether you watched her three television programmes on the great thinkers but if you did then hopefully, like me, will have been pushed out of your comfort zone! That Athenian café conversation may make you want to debate with friends over a cup of coffee.

Doctor Hughes has tracked the lives of The Buddha, Socrates and Confucius. All three lived so many years ago at about the same time. That fact is curious in itself. The dominance of their thinking is still so very powerful today. Two comments during the programme on Socrates made me think quite deeply. The first was about the need never to be thoughtless and the second was about how little we know!

Oh yes, there is also one more important point. Never drink hemlock!

For most of us the name Socrates is associated with ancient Greece and the birth of democracy. Churchill (the politician rather than the nodding dog!) reportedly said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been used from time to time.

I suspect that we all believe that we have some control over the political landscape and not so long ago many of us joined the May 2015 queues at polling stations. Sadly quite a few of us didn’t and that has to be a worry. Of course the fact that worries me doesn’t mean that it worries you!

My understanding of the democratic process is that we elect fellow citizens to represent us in the various places of powers. They become the decision makers on our behalf and hopefully those decisions represent the will of the community that elected them. You might want to think about that.

I have little doubt that most of us are aware of the changes happening daily on the English Riviera. Sometimes those changes raise an eyebrow and from time to time may trigger an emotional tingle. That tingle may be of pleasure because what is happening brings joy. Of course the tingle may be a feeling of being somewhat uneasy and less than happy.

Paignton’s Matthew Clark wrote about the Torbay Retail and Tourism Business Improvement District in last week’s Herald Express and worried, it seemed to me, about the democratic process.  Do you have a business related to tourism or retail in Torbay? If you do then how much do you know about it (the BID) and what do your local elected councillors think about it? How ‘Socratic’ is the debate?

Coincidentally I bumped into another local councillor unexpectedly the other evening. My family had given me a voucher for an evening meal at the Harbour Kitchen and so I hopped on a bus with my wife for the short trip to Torquay’s busy harbour. I love the upstairs front seat because the views across Torbay can be stunning. Also sitting on a front seat was former mayor and now local councillor Nick Bye. Nick is a clever man with a brilliant sense of humour and hopefully he enjoyed the short journey as much as we did. His update on what is happening politically gave me hope since there appears at last to be a little unity.

The fact that Nick Bye was on a local bus was for me significant because you may remember me waxing lyrical recently about Kevin Foster MP also using local busses. I see the local bus service as the life blood of a community and it is a worry that so many services seem to be disappearing. Sadly those that suffer when that happens tend to be people who can become too easily isolated. That is something perhaps to debate with your local councillor.

Whilst debating issues with your elected representatives you might also ask what is happening to Oldway Mansion. Sadly it seems to me to be a little like my own house in that it is deteriorating without the money to support the upkeep! We were promised a bright new future for it a few years ago but little seems to be happening. The gardens however have been tended and look beautiful including this iconic palm (pictured) which will bring a smile to our elected mayor Gordon Oliver’s face. 

Keep the smile!

from my column in the Herald Express 1st September

An Endless Green Tapestry That Catches The Eye

Buses, boats and leafy pathways somehow for me capture the essence of South Devon. Even though the local area seems to be a sprawling urban landscape it is the almost endless green tapestry that catches the eye when viewed from the sea.

A week or so ago I hopped on a Western Lady ferry for the return trip from Torquay to Brixham and back. The day was sunny and the boat crowded. It is the first time in a long while that I have had the opportunity to look at Torbay in a very different way.

It was interesting to compare the cost of the ferry trip and then a bus journey. The return trip on the Western Lady was only £3 which seemed far too cheap. The bus fare from Torquay’s Pavilion to Manor Corner in Preston was £2.40. The new high speed ferry has a £6 return fare which also seems very good value for a fast trip. Fine weather does make people want to play on boats but when waves are rough and the rain falls numbers inevitably drop.

I did have a chat with the lady staffing the Torquay kiosk for the Western Lady who told me that this month had been busy and the boat I boarded was full in both directions. At £3 return it is ridiculously cheap given that it’s a lovely way to travel across the bay offering stunning views of the South Devon Coast. Almost a mini cruise!

As we chugged into Brixham the new high speed ferry service was heading out. Sadly the new ‘super-duper’ high speed craft has yet to reach Torbay and for the while they are using the Silver Sea charter boat. This Paignton based twelve seater boat is a very fast way to skip across Torbay.

So many cities around the world now use water transport to avoid traffic congestion and I was very excited when it was announced that a new high speed craft would offering a brilliant commuting route between Brixham and Torquay. The operators say on their website that “Brixham Express Ltd operate an all year ferry service between Brixham and Torquay. The custom built twin screw catamaran is suited to the beam seas of Torbay and we hope to deliver a service that can weather the east winds and swell. Travelling to work by sea, across beautiful Torbay, is a new innovative way to both start and finish your work day. Stagecoach 33 will link with the ferry at Beacon Quay, Torquay to deliver commuters to their places of work.”

As yet this innovative craft has yet to appear and Mary O’Discoll from Brixham Express tells me that she is pulling out her hair out in frustration! Bureaucracy and administrative hiccups seem to be slowing the process. Hopefully within the next month this exciting new boat will reach Torbay. It must be very annoying for Mary and her people that they will not have the benefit of a busy summer season. Mary says that she simply keeps smiling! I like that of course.

I have a certain empathy with them because years ago we had a running battle with Torbay Council in attempting to operate a commercial aqua-sausage business off Paignton beach. At one point the whole elected council was at a standstill debating the future of an inflatable toy on a sandy South Devon beach. Hmm. The main concern apparently was the number of objections received. This was before the Freedom of Information Act and getting detail as to who the complainants were was almost impossible. We did find out eventually after ‘ambushing’ a councillor and it seems that it was a case of numerous objections from one person!  

The latter part of the week was dimpsy and so my woodland walk to Occombe Farm was along dampened leafy pathways. My two year old grand-daughter needed a damp weather activity and Occombe offers endless fun in the converted barns and hard standing outside the popular café. Watching the young ones racing toy tractors around the barns and yard is it seems to me a quintessentially Devonian activity! Dimpsy actually means getting dark or twilight but I’ve always used it to describe those soft soggy days when the mist rolls in from the sea. By the way I have to say that Occombe’s home made beef burger is a sensation and very welcome by this hungry grand-dad!

Keep the smile.

From my column in the Herald Express on the 26th August