Accident blackspot junction needs improving as matter of priority

IMPROVEMENTS are needed to Culmhead Crossroads, which is considered to be one of the worst accident blackspots on the Blackdown Hills.
I have had a close look at the junction after concern was expressed by local resident Robin Morris, who has frequently experienced cars crashing into, and sometimes through, his garden hedge, and who has also narrowly avoided being knocked down.
Matters came to a head for Mr Morris with a recent crash at the junction between two Audi cars in which some of the occupants suffered serious injuries.
Now, I am asking highways officials to improve the warning signs and rumble strips on the approaches to the junction, and I also want to see changes to the white lining which would make it safer for vehicles crossing the junction.
I have looked into the accident statistics for this junction going back over 10 years and there have been 17 people injured in that time, not including the recent crash involving the Audis.
On top of these, there have been many more minor accidents where, fortunately, people have escaped injury.
So, it is quite clear that there is a problem which needs to be addressed at this junction and I have therefore made some suggestions which I hope will improve safety.
If this was a more major road, then I am sure its accident statistics would have seen something done about the situation long ago.
I think people living and working on the Blackdown Hills deserve to see the county council putting just as much effort into making their roads safer as they do in the urban areas.

• The photograph shows me (left) at Culmhead crossroads with resident Robin Morris and some of the wreckage left from the recent double-Audi car crash at the junction.

Speak up now to help save Blagdon Hill School from closure

THE governors of Blagdon Hill Primary School continue to have my full support in their fight to save the village school from closure under Somerset County Council spending cuts.
I visited the school again yesterday with Mark Formosa, who is the Conservative Parliamentary candidate for Taunton Deane and who is passionate about the need to maintain small schools.
We are urgently calling for everybody in the local community to send their comments to the county council before the public consultation process ends on Friday, June 6.
Interestingly, Mark discovered by coincidence that as a youngster he went to the same school in Cornwall as Blagdon’s chairman of governors, Jonathan Langdon.
The county council say they are talking about the quality of education in small rural schools - but we all know they are really interested in cutting money from a budget they have mismanaged despite doubling our Council Tax in 10 years.
Now, rural residents are being threatened with paying the price of the county’s blundering through the closure of village schools not just here on the Blackdowns, but across many areas of Somerset.
Blagdon Hill provides quality education for the children who attend it, and the small class sizes mean pupils can receive a high ratio of one-to-one attention from their teachers.
Pupils receive excellent sports tuition, every child goes swimming every week of every term, every child plays a musical instrument, there is a computer in class for every two pupils rather than a once-a-week session in an IT suite, and children with special needs are able to make huge progress in such an environment.
All this is reflected in Ofsted inspection reports which rate the school and its teaching environment as good, good, good.
Yet, the county council are contemplating closing Blagdon Hill School and they are already putting off potential pupils by not telling parents moving to the area that the school is there.
I was extremely impressed by the strength of local feelings which came out of the recent open meeting and drop-in sessions, which I think rather took the county council by surprise.
They were gravely mistaken if they thought Blagdon Hill residents would be a soft touch, and I hope that if enough people put sufficiently robust arguments to them before the close of consultation on Friday, then we may have a chance of stopping this closure.
It does not make sense to be closing any school at a time when schools in Taunton are already over-subscribed and we face thousands more homes being built in the town with a huge influx of new residents and their children.

• The photograph outside Blagdon Hill Primary School shows (left to right) acting head teacher David Hawkins, chairman of governors Jonathan Langdon, Mark Formosa, parent-governor Jayne Simpson, and Blackdown ward Deane Councillor John Thorne.

Red phone boxes under threat from cost-cutting BT

BT has just announced it wants to remove the last remaining red telephone boxes in many of the Blackdown Hills communities.
Four call boxes would be lost from the Blackdown ward which I represent on Taunton Deane Borough Council, and many more in the wider area around Wellington, where I am campaigning to become the county councillor next year.
As a businessman and a homeowner who gave BT the boot many months ago because of its appalling customer service and billing incompetence, I perhaps ought to declare an interest here.
That said, I am absolutely appalled that BT has suggested these phone boxes should be removed.
In nearly every case, it will leave whole communities without any access at all to a public telephone.
When I challenged BT, they were not even able to tell me how much use is made of these call boxes because they said they did not keep proper records.
They tell us they want to close them because they are losing money, but BT has a public service obligation and I am demanding they honour that obligation.
I do not just want to see this closure programme stopped, I want to see BT restoring many of the call boxes they have already removed.
I believe every community should have at least one public call box which people can use in the event of an emergency.
BT claim that most people have a mobile phone, but my phone does not have a signal in many parts of the Blackdowns, and if my car broke down, for example, I would have to find the nearest phone box to call the AA.
I have pointed out to our Deane council leader, Ross Henley, that we have the ability to make it very difficult for BT to close the phone boxes.
As a council, we can formally object and take BT through a pretty lengthy appeals process where every proposed phone box closure would be examined very carefully.
There is no question in my mind that we should do everything possible to resist these iniquitous phone box closures.
BT is presently consulting on the proposed closures and I shall be putting the case as strongly as possible against this move.

• The photographs show (TOP) me outside the phone box in Ford Street, just outside Wellington, which is on BT’s closure list, (MIDDLE) the under-threat phone box in Blagdon Hill, and (BOTTOM) the cobwebs which show the Stapley phone box has not been used in a very long time.

SatWav - the new political term you heard here first

A NEW political term is being introduced to the language by this blog today – it is SatWav.
It stands for Say Anything To Win A Vote.
The device has been developed by the Liberal Democrat Party, especially by their members in Taunton Deane, who used it when campaigning in this year’s local elections, resulting in them winning one more seat than the Conservatives on the Deane council.
Although perhaps not obvious to a lot of people at the time, it is now becoming noticed by anybody who drives on our roads.
Because, just six months after the Lib Dems formed their administration to run the council, they are already proposing to put up car parking charges in the Deane.
It a move of breathtaking hypocrisy, the Lib Dems have announced not just an increase in charges – but a staggering 20 per cent hike for many car park users.
In addition, they are ratcheting up the cost of parking permits by almost 11 per cent in some cases.
As recently as May, when the Lib Dems were electioneering, they were complaining that car park charges were already too high and were attacking Conservatives for previous increases.
To me, the Lib Dems’ car parking policy is a tax on people living on the Blackdown Hills who have little choice but to use their cars to travel into town for their shopping and services.
Taunton Deane Conservative Parliamentary candidate, Mark Formosa, told me: “The Lib Dems were elected on the manifesto of lower car park charges but now they are putting them up by 20 per cent.
“The way the Lib Dems have deceived the voting public over car parking charges is to be condemned.
“Even the smallest increase they have put forward in Taunton is still twice the rate of inflation.
“This is a slap in the face for the people who voted Lib Dem and shows the party’s disregard for the public they should be serving.
“Hypocrisy is probably the most polite way I can describe the Lib Dems’ disrespect of the voting public.
“They say one thing during an election and then do completely the opposite when in power in the hope people will have forgotten about it when the next election comes.”

ISiS vote - an historic occasion for the wrong reasons

LAST night, I attended a specially-convened meeting of the full Deane council which I believe in time to come will be seen as an historic moment.
We were being asked formally to support the council signing up to the ISiS project – Improving Services in Somerset.
I spoke against it, and I voted against it.
I was the only councillor to do so, although one of my Conservative colleagues also voiced some concerns as well.
Needless to say, the vote was carried overwhelmingly and the Deane council is now on course to enter a partnership with the global IT giant IBM and with Somerset County Council as a third member of the deal.
It means the councils will pay IBM something like £400 million over the next 10 years to run a number of services better than we do at present.
Of course, by running the services better, IBM will be able to run them more cheaply, and will generate millions of pounds in savings which we councillors can then use to provide even better services to you, the public.
So, the public will benefit twice over. Once, because IBM will be coming up with all sorts of brilliant new ideas for giving people what they want where they want it and when they want it; twice, because it will cost less than it does now and will mean council tax does not need to keep going up like there’s no tomorrow.
Hundreds of staff from both councils will transfer to the private sector to work for IBM.
Their jobs and terms of employment will be guaranteed for 10 years, so they say.
You may well ask, then, why was I so stupid as to vote against it.
Well … all of the above is theory.
I’ve lost count over the past 30 years of the number of stories I’ve read, or even written myself as a journalist, about local authorities entering groundbreaking new partnerships which will revolutionise services for ratepayers and save money.
Those which have actually succeeded can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand.
I do not believe for a moment that IBM will deliver what they promise. I also do not believe for a moment that the Deane council will actually be able to hold them to their promises.
I would be surprised if we don’t see the departure of a lot of the staff who have moved over, as despite what may be promised, working for profit-driven private enterprise is far different than the world of public service.
To me, it appears more of a grandiose, empire building exercise designed to improve the job lot of senior officers who are most involved.
As a fairly new councillor, I’ve come to this at the eleventh hour, after political party leaders on all sides have swallowed the IBM line hook, rod, and sinker, and committed themselves to the deal.
They have been looking at it for something like two years already, so they ought to know a lot more about it than I do.
I do not profess to properly understand the business case behind the deal – we’ve hardly been told a lot about it, and what we have been told is by way of bombastic presentations where figures in the tens of millions of pounds are bandied around and anybody who queries anything is simply told: ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get it right on the night.”
Alarm bells started ringing for me when a presentation was entitled “Improving the social and economic well-being of Taunton Deane, Somerset, and the South West.”
I asked why the South West, why not the UK? The question was taken seriously and they started to explain that we should first concentrate on the area we knew best …
I am told about 30 other local authorities and public bodies of different sorts around the South West are keeping a watching brief on ISiS and could sign up to it later on to share in the glory and the savings.
Well, I am just a poor councillor elected by the good folk of the Blackdown Hills to make sure that their black bin bags are collected on time and that planning applications are processed properly, and that sort of thing.
They did not elect me to start running schools in Cornwall or libraries in Gloucestershire.
Yes, I believe history was made last night. But I think in 10 years’ time we will be looking back and seeing that it was for the wrong reasons.