Headington Hill & Northway

This is more than a little parochial for me, and just a tad conservative with a small "c" - it reminds me again why little changes can deeply affect people in all sorts of ways. And whilst my own thoughts on this are probably unprintable, and not only because the decision has been made by my employer and landlord and I wouldn't really want to find myself sleeping under a hedge next week, I cannot let this little bit of Oxford's history disappear without some commemoration...

Headington Hill Hall, mark II (mark I is to the far left of this picture), built by James Morrell.

When John Henry Brookes was entering his job as first principal of the Oxford City Technical School in 1928, which, by a circuitous route is the fore-runner of Oxford Brookes University (and so allows us to celebrate our "150th anniversary" in 2015), the Morrell family, already an unusually important non-university influence in Oxford had, six decades previously, built not one, but two grand houses on this side of Headington Hill and had laid out the arboertum/park in their grounds that is now Headington Hill Park, Oxford's most beautiful urban park, if I do say so myself.

Indeed, their estate straddled what is now the main Headington Road out of town, encompassing what is now South Park, Cheney Lane, Cheney School and Oxford Brookes University's main Gipsy Lane Campus, its sports centre and the Cheney Student Village (another hall of residence). They built the land-mark iron bridge across Headington Road on the hill when it replaced what is now Morrell Avenue and Old Road as the main London road, and they owned a farm and other properties on the north west side of Headington Hill Hall that are now allotments and, until yesterday at least, "Morrell Hall" of residence.

The family, which included I believe two Liberal MPs and of course the famous Lady Ottoline Morrell (who started the nearby Garsington Opera which will also, once again, be coming to an end soon I gather) had not lived in Headington Hill Hall since before the second world war, during which it and its park was requisitioned as a wartime psychiatric unit and in 1953 the family sold the hall and park to Oxford City Council until Robert Maxwell started renting it off them ("the best council house in Britain" I believe he used to describe it).

But they retained some of the land around, including that set out by then as allotments on the Marston side of Headington Hill and when the last of the family directly connected with the hall died in 1965, James Herbert Morrell (son of Emily, the last occupant of the hall, and George Herbert Morrell) they made available part of the allotments to the City Council for the development of residences for the students of the now named Oxford College of Technology which had some twenty years previously managed to acquire some of the other Morrell family estate on the other side of Headington Road, which is now our Gipsy Lane campus.

New signs, no sign of Morrell Hall (I'm not sure I'd put the lavatorial status on a road sign!

And those halls have been called Morrell Hall ever since. Until now.

Ten years ago the by then Oxford Brookes University bought land adjacent to Morrell Hall that had been used by government offices since before the war and built what is now called "Clive Booth Hall", named for Sir Clive Booth, the last director of the Oxford Polytechnic and first Vice-Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University who left office the year after I arrived at Brookes. It seems right and fair to want to commemorate the person who managed that momentous transition from polytechnic and council ownership to fully fledged independent university. Indeed I like Clive, for all that he has made his later career out of high office in some of the most powerful QUANGOs in the country - first SEEDA and now the Big Lottery Fund, he is down to earth and always friendly and happy to stop and chat. He was telling me last week in fact how flattered he was, or he thought he maybe ought to be, that there was now a bus running around Oxford with his name on the front (it stops at the halls on Marston Road)!  One of the nice things about working in a university community is that the chief executives, in my experience at least, are nowhere near as remote as they probably would be in private sector businesses of a similar size.

But the university has decided to extend the Clive Booth Hall name to the adjacent, Morrell Hall, site - they were already functioning in terms of management as one site with two identities - with the utilitarian description differentiating the two halves of the hall of either "Clive Booth Hall (ensuite)" and "Clive Booth Hall (non ensuite)".  One might wonder what these titles may be shortened to in the sometimes wicked humour of students!

In a very real sense, we're not talking about a family who happened to live on this hill side but who quite literally made the hillside, in a similar way to the Churchill family or Cavendish family created the landscape of Blenheim or Chatsworth. And so we have to say goodbye to the university's only commemoration of the family without whom the university might still be looking for a suitable home.  You could say that wittingly or unwittingly the Morrells have been the university's biggest benefactor.

"Here lies James Morrell Esq, who died at his bedside at Headington Hill Hall, Sept 12th, 1863, Aged 53" - the grave near the entrnace to St Clement's Churchyard which the family used to reach through the park via the gate on Marston Road.

New blocks are replacing the old at the former Morrell Hall, and they are to have some kind of green energy plant. Little did I suspect at the time that what was intended was to harness the power from over the road in St Clement's churchyard where James Morrell lies no doubt a-spinning in his grave!

You can find lots more information about the Morrell family and Headington Hill Hall and its history at Stephanie Jenkins' very informative Headington website (which also has other links to more information).

And in other news about destruction of historic local interest, here's now what's left of the the majestic old chestnut tree the City Council have just killed in the Headington Hill Park grounds that James Morrell planted 150 years ago:

Felled horse chestnut in Headington Park - apparently this was dangerous. Or something.

I live next door to Headington Hill Park in Oxford, which I think is the nicest park in the city, laid out as it was a century and a half ago now by the Morrell family as part of the parkland setting for Headington Hill Hall, which is now occupied by my employers at Oxford Brookes University. The park was split from the hall grounds some decades ago before the Hall was rented to Robert Maxwell to house his family (the "best council house in Britain" he apparently used to say) and has been managed by the city council ever since.

For a couple of weeks now there has been tree felling going on in all the city's parks as part of a biennial survey of trees that might be getting sick or dangerous. Anyway, I went round the park carefully checking all those with red crosses on, which I assumed were the ones that were going to be taken out and was quite sanguine about it - about a dozen out of several hundred trees in the park and all had either been obviously damaged in last year's heavy storms that felled on in our grounds next door or were clearly lifeless.

However on our daily lunchtime walk I was appalled to see this:

The second most interesting chestnut tree in the park has been hacked around - I don't know yet whether it is actually pollarded (can you do that to something as slow growing as a chestnut?) or in the penultimate stage of being removed completely. But I'm bloody fuming. I am sure there was no red cross on it. A few weeks ago they did cut off one of the most precarious looking branches (but no worse than some other beautiful chestnuts nearby) and whilst I was annoyed by that I thought the pain was all over for this majestic example.

Here's the best photo I have of it from last year.

And in case you are interested, here's one of the one I think is the most interesting tree, possibly that I've ever seen, but certainly in the park.

I have to say, whilst I initially dismissed the notion that trees were being cut down specifically to provide benching for the "promenade" production of Midsummer-night's Dream that's going on in the park this summer, clearly the few trees with Xs on previously would not have been enough to provide the amount of seating space they needed. I am now suspicious that might be the case. If so, it's gross. Who on earth would imagine it would be a good idea to cut down trees to assist a performance of probably the greatest drama set in a magic wood?

Dan Paskins takes me to task for moaning about Labour's tactics against me when they put out that "scurrilous" leaflet while others, including he says the Lib Dems, are doing just as negative things in their leaflets. I should treat it, he says, as an opportunity to debate those issues if I feel so strongly about them and accept that, in such a debate, I might win over some people, or at least their respect for making the case rather than whining.

He provides an example that, in our East Oxford wide tabloid, we ran an article asking whether Andrew Smith, Oxford East's constituency's New Labour MP, was the biggest hypocrite in town for his duplicitous stance on post office closures. He says that as an issue, that too was beyond the remit of the City Council and therefore, by one of my "rules" of discourse not something that should be mentioned in the context of those elections.

Set aside for the moment a leaflet I saw for Hinksey Park ward with a priceless (literally!) picture of Andrew, the Labour council candidate and A N Other hugging a pillar box pledging to keep Grandpont Post Office open. Even if they hadn't made it a campaign issue of their own, economic well-being is, according to their own government, part of the remit of any local authority. The other four districts in Oxfordshire have pledged to fight the closures and to support communities that are affected if they fail in that fight. Already considerable time and effort had gone in, not, it has to be said, much on the part of the city council, as much as by the various bodies that help social enterprises in the county, to keeping Iffley Village Shop and Post Office going after previous owners decided to stop running it. But clearly the campaign issue for Grandpont and Mr Smith's own actions in supporting the closures in parliament are at odds. They made it a campaign issue even if it wasn't. The person in the photos objecting to the closures voted in favour of them when he had the chance. That seems materially different from my case.

Then there's the question as to whether one should simply debate what is thrown at you to debate, or object to it. Well, I don't for one minute believe that putting out a leaflet on the last weekend of the campaign, distorting my views by selective quoting, is an invitation to a debate. After all, I know some Labour lackey had collected the quotes some weeks previously - I saw them trawling through my drug posts in the week commencing 7th April - if they wanted a debate, there would have been time. It was also notable that they did not put out the said leaflet in the part of the ward that might have been expected to be most interested in such a debate, in the halls of residence (though they didn't put anything round the halls of residence to be fair, in their apparent attempt to disenfranchise a quarter of their electorate by not engaging with them).  Yes, let's have such a debate. It is all too rare in this country to be able to have a reasoned debate about drugs policy. And stunts like this leaflet prove why.

Dan thinks my position is significantly different from that of my party. It is not. The party concluded that the current system of criminal enforcement was often if not always ineffectual and counter productive, failing to minimize harm and continuing to put users and others into the realms of the brutal organized crime networks supplying these substances. The main difference really between my position and the party position is the action I would take to remedy that - legalize, regulate and tax - whereas the party still feels that legalizing would not be an option even if it wanted to promote that as policy because of international obligations. As their leaflet nearly managed to get right, whilst not strictly legalizing, policy is that people whose only crime is possession of small amounts of any drugs for personal use will not be impriisoned, usually leading them to further addiction and contact with drugs.  Honest reporting of my opinion would of course also have said that I believe legalize, regulate and tax is the way to stop drugs getting into the hands of children, for example, which was obviously not even explained to former councillor Standingford when asking for her opinion who went off on one about protecting and educating children about drugs.

No, let's face it, I have a moral right in law to object to my work (this blog) being chopped up into sentences and rearranged out of context to create a derivative work whose sole intention, the evidence suggests, was to bring into question my character or reputation. I will argue that doing so (creating a derivative work against copyright rules) amounts to making a false statement of fact about an opponent (the same cannot be said of claiming, correctly, that Andrew Smith is "supporting post offices" in Labour leaflets, but voting for their closures in Hansard, or indeed in Dan's case that a vote for the Labour Party is support for the party that has recently taken us into several illegal wars). I say again, it is this sort of stunt that puts people off indulging in meaningful progressive debate about what is a significant issue in our world, even if not one that I have any power to do anything about whether elected to the city council or not.

I say supporters of prohibition are accessories to the gangland and drug related deaths that happen at home and abroad as a result of the criminal underworld in which the drugs trade operates with justification. Such moral turpitude on the part of those that would shirk that debate or use the difference of opinion for a little electoral gain is shameful, frankly. It's uncomfortable I'm sure, but call a spade a spade - Labour traded those deaths, past and future, for a few extra votes.

I feel I've been tagged in a strange sort of a meme for my thoughts on Oxford's recent local election results by Antonia [From Oxford elections round-up]:

We await with bated breath the thoughts of Stephen Tall, no longer Lib Dem councillor for Headington, his colleague David Rundle, and the third-placed Lib Dem candidate for Headington Hill and prolific blogger, Jock Coats.

Well thanks, she just had to rub it in by mentioning that third place. I am embarrassed and humiliated to have come third. There are of course official post mortems to come yet on the campaign, but whatever their verdict, one simple fact is that I am a "bad candidate". Whatever fresh ideas I may have brought to the council (and I doubt my Labour victor will be doing much of that, sad to say), I cannot escape the fact that I hate knocking on strangers to talk politics with them. So for me, the literature and word of mouth amongst people who have met me outside that context is more crucial than for most. Such glad-handing ought to have happened long before the campaign proper started with voter ID canvassing in late March. And been followed up with a leaflet introducing me properly and extolling my virtues before the cross city campaign started with its more party led focus on whole city issues.

Then there was "that leaflet." On the last weekend of the campaign I had the dubious honour of having a Labour leaflet, apparently partly delivered by Mrs Dromey (I rather hope, Antonia, that you were unaware of that leaflet's existence when we exchanged pleasantries on the Friday evening), using quotes from this blog about drugs policy obviously intended to give the impression that if I won I would probably be found standing outside the primary school handing out various narcotics to the year sevens, or perhaps to their parents! Several opponents have commented that they thought it was one of the worst personal attack leaflets they had seen. I suppose I ought to feel flattered that Labour were sufficiently alarmed by my candidacy to feel the need to drag the contest into the gutter.

You can read it for yourself here. By my reckoning, it at least breaches copyright law (my moral right not to have my copyrighted work treated in a derogatory fashion or in a way designed to be prejudicial to the honour or reputation of the author or director), if not possibly electoral law. Enquiries are ongoing. I am not a sore loser, but I was upset by it. I know it cost me both votes and reputation, even amongst my deliverers.

Anyway, enough of the campaign itself. Will I ever try again? I don't know. For many years, since in fact I was last on the council in 2002, I have wondered whether the present system of local government is fit for purpose. As an ideological descendent of the individualist-anarchists and a mutualist, I find the state, in all its guises, terribly coercive. I believe sovereignty should lie with the individual and he or she should only cede power upwards to representatives over things that they cannot arrange for themselves or in small groups or local communities. Local government is so tied down by Whitehall and Westminster that the current arrangements simply cannot be responsive enough to local peoples' needs.

The main reason I wanted to be on the council was to continue to promote, from the inside as it were, my mutualist agenda of hiving local authority functions off onto social, community led partnerships. The more things compete for the crumbs of council budgets within the tight control of Whitehall oversight the less satisfactory the outcome. Leisure services for example cannot hope to compete in quality at least with private providers while it is within the constraints of council budgeting. Similarly, whilst more difficult, I think the solutions to our housing problems are community led, rather than council, landowner and planning led.

Every time I've lost so far I've come out of the contest wanting to do other things that will make a difference one day outside the council structure. Almost as if to prove we can cope without the psychopaths who are so good at saying the right thing at the right time to get themselves elected. This time it is to continue to promote the social enterprise "alternative" for producing social and public goods and to work on promoting local community e-democracy.

• It will be interesting to watch Labour finally explain where they think there is a "£5m cash crisis" at the city council - reading the latest annual accounts I cannot see it myself. But there's another argument for local government reform - despite us being the tax payer/employers their finances are even more opaque than any company's I've ever seen.

• It will be fun to see Maureen Christian defend the Northway Playing fields from something or other she seems to think threatens them (certainly the only "threat" i heard was my own idea to see if we could fit a cricket square on there by budging up the two football pitches and see if we could get a local cricket team going).

• I think it will be a retrograde step if Labour succeed in removing planning decisions from area committees. They were not perfect there, but I have always maintained that was as a result of the bad legal advice that both sides in any disputed application had the right only to speak for five minutes each - where they have open discussion at area committees they manage to get better decisions and more fruitful interplay between applicant and objectors and a better outcome for both.

• It will also be interesting to see whether the Tories, who, despite not winning a single seat managed to come in second in many wards, and at least the ones in which they tried to put up a full campaign, will be able to keep up that level of work, for example, next year, when their declining reputation in control of the county is up for defending.

• And it will be interesting to see whether this marks the high water point for the IWCA, who lost two of their councillors.

• But I also don't really expect the city council, under any party, to set Oxford on fire with bright new ideas that will markedly change the quality of life for its citizens.

Finally, if anyone has any ideas about what little thank you gifts I can get for two teenaged Muslim boys who managed throughout to deliver most of the half of the ward for which we did not have regular deliverers - not a happy situation to be in at the start of a campaign and one of the first things I hope to put right for next time - I'd be very grateful to hear them! Their father has resisted all my requests for his advice so far!

First, let me welcome all the many new visitors who have been reading my blog, thanks to the free publicity of my Labour opponent's latest leaflet!

In contrast, I and the Lib Dem campaign across the city are focussing on the issues on which the city council can make a difference in local services and stressing our positive record:

• Keeping the council tax down.
• Improving council services.
• Reviewing, and hopefully abolishing, residents' parking charges.
• Improving the quality of private rented housing.
  
• What we have already been doing locally

Let me look at these in more detail:

Keeping the council tax down. Labour and the Greens in Oxford have voted for above inflation increases in the council tax set by the city yet again. We need to maintain pressure on council budgets to force managers to deliver more efficient services without asking more of the hard pressed tax payer. Council Tax is the most unpopular and unfair tax. The Lib Dems would abolish it nationally. Labour have fudged the issue after spending millions (of your money) on a report telling them what we all know.

Improving council services. The independent council watchdog, the Audit Commission, has reviewed the last two years of Lib Dem administered Oxford and given us high praise for improving the state of Oxford City Council and the services it delivers. We have more than doubled recycling and are about to take that to a new level with the pilot introduction in parts of the city of weekly food waste collections which will go to be composted and remove the need to have anything in your ordinary rubbish collection that can go off. We have cut the time council houses are out of action between tenants to just one fifth of what it was under Labour in Oxford.

Reviewing, and hopefully abolishing, residents' parking charges. The Conservative run county council ignored the wishes of residents in Headington Hill and Northway and many of you have told me on the doorstep how unfair you find it that you have to pay to park in your own street. Even those of you without cars and others with driveways to put theirs on understand that this is an extra tax on their neighbours. My Labour opponent opposed my campaign to have the major employers developing in the area pay for implementing a scheme if it proved necessary. Those same PFI developers she was so keen to support have made millions out of the contracts, and millions more through sophisticated financial wizardry while we are paying for what they have imposed on our neighbourhoods. Our streets belong to us - why should we pay twice for using them?

Improving the quality of private rented housing. All too often in Oxford people having to rent their home, and there are lots of us because of Labour's mismanagement nationally of house price speculation, have been used for far too long to accepting substandard accommodation run by landlords who, at times, let homes in a dangerous, unhygienic properties to the most vulnerable people. The Lib Dems in Oxford have started to introduce stronger checks on rented properties going way beyond the Labour government's minimum standards and the small number of only the largest properties they legislated for.

In Northway:

• We have recently agreed a near £60,000 package of investment in the childrens' play area in Foxwell Drive - an important facility that allows younger children in particular to get out and enjoy fresh air and physical activity in a safe, contained environment.

• My colleague Altaf Khan, city and county councillor for the area, has successfully campaigned against Tory cuts that closed the Northway IT hub. Instead the equipment is now in the Northway Community Centre and Altaf is now working towards getting funding to create a pleasant and appropriate space to host the IT hub and get more people learning about and using these fast becoming essential tools of modern communication.

In Headington Hill:

• I have been campaigning against flier and flyposting litter and many, though not all yet, of the venues and promoters are now being more responsible about how they distribute their adverts.

• And I successfully managed to get the city council to take some responsibility for the parking chaos on Pullens Lane caused by the new residents' parking arrangements in other parts of the local area.

I will be campaigning for better, safer, parking arrangements, especially near council built apartment blocks where space at the moment is woefully inadequate, and for new investment in the Northway Community Centre to restore it to a vibrant and well used community facility and hopefully to encourage many more residents to join the community spirit and participate in the sports and leisure facilities in the area. And I would like to help create a "Friends" group for Headington Hill Park and Dunstan Park to get regular users and neighbours involved in managing and developing these wonderful urban green spaces.

But yes, I admit, and am proud to do so, that I am passionate about reducing the dead weight the heavy hand of government at all levels imposes on our lives and communities. I am passionate about those communities instead being enabled to take ownership of local public assets and to meet their own local needs through their own initiatives. And I am passionate about individuals taking responsibility for their own behaviour so enabling us to reduce our addiction to government interference in our lives. And if you stick around a bit and read some more, you'll see I would bring to the City Council innovative ideas about how that could be achieved and financed without adding to the burden of the public purse and the taxpayers' pockets.

Do you have Facebook? Sign up to the elections event to tell me you are supporting me!

...but if some of you arrived here because of a scurrilous Labour leaflet trying to discredit me because of my opinion on drugs issues, I wanted to settle your minds, I hope, with a synopsis of my position...

I am indeed in principle in favour of legalizing the vast majority of recreational drugs - for adults. Once legalized, their supply should be regulated, controlled through a licensing system, and taxed - which can help fund more treatment instead of prison cells. It is not the state's job to prevent adults in particular choosing to put something into their own body, or indeed, like dangerous sports and so on, what they do with their own body, if others are not harmed by that. Such laws actually remove the ability of the individual to be morally responsible for what they themselves do.

That is not to say that I want to see an increase in drugs use. Just that I believe that it is the current approach, the "war on drugs", that creates and sustains an illegal underground market that encourages people into multiple addictions and puts people into the hands of criminal suppliers who could not care less about the health of their customers so long as the money rolls in. It was recently suggested that the international trade in illicit narcotics is now the world's third largest trading sector, after I think it was financial services and energy. When heroin was legal in this country we had 18 registered addicts in the country - despite it being used in common, over the counter, drugs such as cough syrups. Make it illegal and we have seen the level of addition soar exponentially.

This is a long considered and pragmatic position, that agrees with many professionals in the fields both of law enforcement and drug treatment. Basically, that the current system, based on criminal enforcement, puts far more people in danger from drugs - it makes it easier to peddle to children, because the peddlars are unseen and uncontrolled (and sometimes children in the schoolyard themselves). It creates the core of gang and gun culture. It makes it harder to seek help when, in doing so, you have to out yourself as a criminal.

From Colombia to Croxteth, Afghanistan to the Aylesbury Estate, more people die because of the criminal networks engaged in the drugs trade than from the drugs themselves. Our politicians know this and continue to pursue the obviously failed "war on drugs" strategy because it is a populist one that's sure to get some people huffing and puffing and voting for them - don't fall for it - they are nothing short of accessories to murder! We need a mature debate about these immoral laws (any law that actually colludes in and creates the environment that breeds killings in our communities is an immoral law).

Nonetheless, as the desperate Labour party scaremongers know, my theoretical position on drugs is not one that has much relevance in the role of a city councillor, which is why we Lib Dems have decided not to rise to this astonishing personal attack, marring as it does what has been a reasonably well conducted campaign so far, and concentrate on the positive things we wish to do within the remit of the city council. I do not want any more people, and predominantly younger people as many of the victims of the current drugs system are, dying because of a populist and immoral set of laws that create more problems than they fix.

Now, perhaps you will stick around a bit and read up on my positive ideas for the pressing problems on which Oxford City Council could have an influence, such as affordable housing, and partnership working to bring a bit of business sense and community ownership into the management and development of community owned assets - in the process, I hope, giving more opportunities to people to do something fruitful with their lives and leisure time and not get onto drugs in the first place!

Quite by chance, as if on order to make the local elections more exciting in my ward, two local planning issues have suddenly popped up (not entirely unexpectedly it has to be said) that are likely to cause a deal of controversy when they get to decision-making time. I don't want to talk about their planning merits or otherwise on here. But I do want to use them because they are very good examples of why I am so passionate about land reform.

The first, in the ward in which I am standing is an application for new student residences adjacent to the site on which I am a warden proposed by my employers, Oxford Brookes University. To be fair it will make more of an impact on residents in the neighbouring ward, but it is the economics of it all I want to look at not the planning, to show why land value tax would be such a benefit to the community.

The second, just over the main road in the neighbouring ward but which will make a significant impact on neighbours in both wards one way or another is the news today that Tesco have bought up a local former pub building from a local bar/restaurant entrepreneur who had seemingly been knocked back in the early stages of planning such that he no longer felt it worth fighting for his ideas for the site. Here I want to look at how the planning system seems to favour the bigger developer with the financial clout and how this affects the fairness of land law.

But first, the new proposed halls of residence. This site is approximately quarter remaining of a site the university acquired from the Department of Social Security about seven years ago now. When I was last on the council, just at the end, they had owned the site for about six months, if I remember correctly having bought the whole thing for either eight or eleven million pounds through a charitable trust set up for the purpose and were just getting outline planning consent.

The entire site had been only about a quarter used for several years since most parts of the DSS had moved out. And even when at "full capacity" it had been an egregiously inefficient use of a piece of prime inner suburban land - even for offices - since it was half car park and half single storey nissan hut type buildings.

Since it had been government owned, effectively there was no income to the public purse from this land. Once it was owned by a charity the empty land has generated no receipts to the public purse in the form of business rates. The charitable trust sold off about a quarter of the land to the adjacent Oxford International Centre for Islamic Studies, first for use as a contractors car park and now it lies more or less empty. A hectare of prime city centre building land. The university built nearly seven hundred student rooms in new halls on half of the original land and these were opened five years ago now. But it is the effect of this last quarter of of the site I want to examine and show how failing to encourage optimal use of land where it is avail