Richard Fisher

One of the treats that can be enjoyed living in North West Essex is Saffron Hall. This concert hall was funded by a very generous gift from a benefactor and the hall has been built in the grounds of Saffron Walden County High School. It has world-class acoustics and has developed a diverse, high quality programme of concerts and events. It also provides an outstanding venue for school productions and concerts, together with other educational work.

This afternoon was a real treat with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra performing Haydn, Szymanowski and Dvorak – all conducted by Lahav Shani and with Nicola Benedetti performing in Szymanowski’s  second Violin Concerto. A truly outstanding concert which deservedly had a full house.

If you get the opportunity to visit Saffron Hall for an event, make sure you seize it!

Enjoyed a great night yesterday at the BETT awards. These celebrate the creativity and innovation taking place in technology for education. There were some terrific examples of ICT provision for nurseries, schools and colleges, providing resources to support pupil achievement.

Particular congratulations to GL Learning for being awarded “ICT Exporter of the Year.” Very well deserved. In the UK we may be struggling with our manufacturing exports, but what’s being achieved in education is a resounding good news story.

I did a double take when listening to the radio yesterday: was I really hearing the latest development in Labour’s tangled defence review?

It turns out my ears were not deceiving me. Jeremy Corbyn had really suggested we might keep the Trident submarines that form our nuclear deterrent, but that they wouldn’t carry the missiles anymore. The justification seems to be that the Japanese do something similar.

Nicola Sturgeon argues coherently against replacing trident, and takes the job issue head-on saying the SNP would create new jobs to replace those that would be lost. It’s a credible argument, whether we agree with it or not. But this latest proposal from Jeremy Corbyn seems to represent the worst of all worlds – we carry on running a redundant set of submarines just to protect the jobs.

At a time when we desperately need a strong opposition to take on the government, I despair.

Best wishes to all my readers for a happy and peaceful Christmas

Reading all the coverage about the Climate Summit in Paris, it seems too many people are being overly cynical about the outcome. It has been a considerable achievement to get the nations of the world to agree on a positive plan of action. I’m sure there will be arguments in the future and claims that people are backsliding, but getting the agreement in place was a major step forward.

It contains some ambitious goals. If nations, collectively, manage to reach peak greenhouse gas emissions asap; limit the rise in global temperatures to less than 2 degrees and provide $100billion annual finance for developing countries by 2000 then that will represent major progress. Let’s celebrate and hope that everybody delivers on what they’ve promised.

With the tragic events in Paris and the on-going threat to both our own country, Europe and much of the rest of the world, we need our democracy to function properly. It is essential that we stand together, take decisive action when it is needed and ensure the values that underpin our society are defended.

But one key element is missing: We seem to have no effective opposition in parliament  (although the House of Lords are doing their best). This is not to “oppose” for the sake of it, but to ensure government is supported in times of threat and crisis but also held to account.

For this to happen, there needs to be an effective leader of the opposition who demonstrates that they understand the issues facing the nation and who carries the confidence of the nation in performing their role. Unfortunately we have a Labour party leader who fails on both counts, just at a point in our history when an effective leader is essential to ensure that our democracy functions properly.

Enjoyable visit last weekend to Ireland to watch one of the family run in the Dublin Marathon. It’s a long time since I’ve been to the Emerald Isle and, despite the rain, it was a highly enjoyable weekend.

First of all, our runner did it in style (3 hours 43minutes) raising lots of money for charity in the process.

Secondly, it was a good opportunity to see parts of Dublin that we’d probably never normally visit, including some of its beautiful Georgian streets.

Finally, I just love the old post boxes, painted green but still in some cases bearing Edward VII’s crest. They sort of capture the history of the city.

Watching the BBC news coverage about the housing debate in Saffron Walden, Essex last night I was struck by how difficult it is to convey the complexity of issues this subject involves in a short news item. The challenge faced by towns like Saffron Walden was captured well, as was the argument that houses have been proposed in the wrong places and without the services they need. The need for new affordable housing was also highlighted.

What was missing was reference to factors such as:

• New housing being sold to buy to let investors rather than aspiring homeowners. I suspect most new housing is going to the “buy to let” market, with little being affordable to young people wanting to own their own home.
• The government’s removal of planning obligations on developers to build new affordable housing on new developments, allowing them to built “starter homes” instead. Starter homes will not be affordable to the people on the local Council’s waiting list and, with the government promoting right to buy as well, there will be more and more people on low incomes without access to housing. If this carries on, many local young people and families will never have access to adequate housing.

So, it was good coverage of the housing situation in Saffron Walden, but it could have said so much more!

Housing Associations have found themselves between a rock and a hard place. The Conservative Government promised to extend the “right to buy” for Council Tenants to Housing Association tenants as well. But, unlike Councils which are public sector bodies, Housing Associations are independent – many of them are charities.

Increased Government direction of Housing Association decision making risks them being reclassified as public sector bodies, losing their independence. This would hamper their important role in developing much needed new housing (including affordable housing for people on lower incomes). Last year over 30% of new homes built in England were developed by Housing Associations.

Faced with a Government determined to force through the “right to buy” for their properties, the Housing Association’s trade body (the National Housing Federation) has put together a voluntary offer to introduce a “right to buy”, in return for maintaining independence and a commitment from the Government to work in partnership to build more homes.

The alternative for Housing associations would be legislation, forcing through the “right to buy” with no control by their boards. It appears that Housing Associations have voted overwhelmingly to support the voluntary offer, choosing the National Housing Federation “rock” rather than the “hard place” of Government legislation.

Here’s hopping the Government accepts the offer and honours its side of the bargain.

With the election of Jeremy Corbyn , the transformation of the Labour Party seems to be complete. A quite deliberate and determined rejection of ‘New Labour’ and ‘Blairism’ in favour of what is either a return to the failed policies of the past or a major step towards a radical new vision for Britain. Time will tell. I fear it will be the former, and there is no guarantee that the latter would appeal to the electorate. Great principles are pretty worthless if you cannot put them into practice.

A sad note was struck on Sunday morning when a well-placed source told Radio 4 listeners that the new leader of the Labour Party does not believe the Churches have any useful contribution to make to political debate. I believe he ignores the contribution that the Churches continue to make to the cause of social justice at his peril.