Matt's Blog

Sue stood as a Labour candidate for St Michaels (Camberley) in the recent elections. She didn't win but she did have some concerns about the behaviour of some of tellers at the polling booths - nothing earth shattering, just things like the large number of Tory tellers at some polling stations, Tory literature at the polling station etc. So off she went today to discuss her concerns with the returning officer.

8:30pm tonight who should come around our house but the Colin Dougan (the Tory councillor who Sue was standing against) saying that he's been told that Sue has accussed the Tories of cheating. Its bad enough that Sue was door stepped but how did he find out?

According to Dougan, the returning officer told the Chief Executive (Karen Whelan) who told Dougan. Surely the returning officer and the Chief Executive should keep such conversation private until there is a formal complaint and not go around tipping off the local Tory party. How is Sue meant to have an open and honest conversation with the returning officer if they go and tip off the Tories as soon as she leaves the office.

In my opinion, it is the supposedly non-political members of the borough council doing their best to support and help the Tories and quash anything that might upset or embarrass them.

Have you ever wondered what Surrey Heath Borough Council spends all your council tax on? Well I can tell you - its mainly salaries and overheads.
 
They have now published their planned budget for 2011/12: http://www.surreyheath.gov.uk/Surrey%20Heath%20Borough%20Council/eScene/Finance/Revenueestimates201112v1.pdf. It makes very interesting reading if you have the time to dig down into some of the details. Here are a few more interesting items I've extracted:
 
Camberley Theatre
£66k on employees salaries. Sounds fair enough, presumably that's the box office staff who provide a good service. But then we have
£377k operational management salaries,
£106k on corporate services
£160k on operational management overheads and support.
That's £644k of management costs to run a local theatre.
 
Museum
Management costs £194k
 
Parks and Open Spaces
Management direct salaries £254k
Total management costs £412k.
 
Bear in mind over half a million pounds is paid to contracted services so presumably most of the work is actually contracted out so what exactly are they doing to earn their quarter of a million pounds in salaries?
 
Car parks
Management direct salaries £78k
Total management costs £132k.
 
Its a car park for goodness sake, how hard are they to manage? These are just the management costs: maintenance, power, security, repair etc are not included in the management costs.
 
Civil Parking Enforcement  and Controller Parking Zone
Management costs are £502k
Total expenditure of £554k
 
ie over 90% is management costs.
 
Centres of Older People
Management costs of £468k
Total expenditure of £658k.
 
At least now we know why they couldn't afford to keep the Ian Goodchild centre open. It wasn't the running costs of the centre, it was the management costs.
 
Community Alarms
£157k on supplies and services
£261k on management costs, including £166k on direct salaries to managers.
 
So they spend more on the salaries of managers than they do providing the service
 
Corporate Communications
They spend £81k doing whatever a corporate communications department does and then £222k paying managers to manage it.
 
And the list goes on. So next time the council claim they can't afford to keep the library open or need to cut back on service because they can't afford it, you know they can easily afford it, and a lot more, if they weren't so hugely inefficient.
 

The Camberley Mosque debacle is slowly lumbering towards its appeal on April 4th. The Camberley News has an interesting comment on the article about it where they state that Bengali Welfare Association are paying about £80K per day on legal advise for the appeal. I've had independent verification that that amount is accurate.

So we have the BWA in the last planning hearing stating that they could not build the originally planned extension at the back of the school as they could only get funding for an Arabic style mosque. Now they are saying they can't afford to heat or maintain the building but they can afford hundreds of thousands of pounds on legal advice.

If you look at the accounts submitted to the Charity Commision you can see that they are not a rich charity. So clearly they have some form of external funding and whoever is funding them are only prepared to give them money towards a large Arabic style mosque in that location.

My guess would be that the money is coming from Saudi Arabia, it certainly wouldn't be the first time this has happened, eg see these comments by our local MP.

Labels: Camberley Mosque

The good news is that, after an excellent presentation from Sue, the councillors rejects the plans to demolish 89 Gordon Road. Hoorah. However we also had to sit through several other planning applications. One was from Longacres nursery to extend the size of their building by about 250 square metres. Bearing in mind that this is in the green belt I thought it would be obvious that they would follow the planning officers recommendations and reject the proposal. But no, nearly all over them tried to make out that it wasn't proper green belt because there were roads and railways surrounding it, not to mention a car park so allowing Longacres to extend even further was just fine. The fact the Longacres has a history of building and selling what they want, regardless of planning restrictions didn't seem to bother them either.

There was another application in Bagshot which fell within 400m of the Special Protected Area so it would be illegal for them to grant planning permission. They still did their best though. One of them asked why they couldn't just approve it anyway. Another asked if they couldn't move the SPA a bit further away.

All these pesky restrictions on green belt development and SPAs must be such a nuisance for them. Or would be if they took them seriously.

I'm reliably informed that a planning appeal has been launched over Camberley mosque. I've no idea on what grounds so it will be interesting to see if there is an award for costs.

I'm not sure I trust my councillors which is why I've voted to have an elected mayor. If the councillors can appoint who they like as mayor then there will be even less independent oversight of them.

Either way you can have your vote here: http://www.surreyheath.gov.uk/survey/decisionmaking.htm

I notice the choices are "strong leader" or "elected mayor" like someone who is elected can't also be a strong leader.

There is a email doing the rounds about Bedfordshire police policy of entering Muslim households. I've reproduced it below. Bedfordshire police have responded to this here. Unfortunately, they fail to address the real issue. The issue is not whether they have a policy when entering a Muslim household but whether they have a similar policy respect for any non-Muslim groups. Reading their response it looks like they don't.

RULES REGARDING TERRORISTS AND DANGEROUS CRIMINALS



If they are non-Muslim

• Consider the most opportune time of day to be able to arrest suspects with minimum resistance
• Apply all necessary force to enter the premises and arrest suspects accordingly.


If they are Muslim:

Community leaders must be consulted before raids into Muslim houses.

Islamic State by 2070.

Romans, the estate agents, have just put in a planning application for a huge 3m illuminated sign stuck next to the A30. Bit of a cheek given that they wrote in support of the mosque planning application on the grounds that it would improve the street scene.

This is what it will look like: https://www.public.surreyheath-online.gov.uk/whalecom60b1ef305f59f921/whalecom0/Scripts/DocsOnLine/47399_6.pdf

I think I will engage in my new found hobby of writing to the council.

Having heard Dr Hargey speak at the council meeting I've been reading various article by and about him. This is one of the interesting ones, if only because of the poor light it throw on the MCB.

In other news, the Camberley Mosque website has been updated to say that the "rundown building that we use as a place of worship is too precious to be replaced by a new modern building so please continue your worship in the existing rundown building as normal"

Mrs Chaudhry has said that "in the meantime (waiting for the appeal process) the building is going to be as it is, in a terrible state"

The new plan appear to be to let the building fall into disrepair. Hopefully the council won't let them and will issue a repair notice, something it sounds like they should've done a while ago.

Labels: Camberley Mosque, MCB

I was at the extraordinary council meeting last night to decide on the mosque application. I'm glad to say, nearly all of the councillors voted against the plan. Why it had to go to these length I don't know. There was little in the way new information. My suspicion is that previously the planning committee hadn't given the matter much thought and allowed themselves to be led by Councillor Bell. Perhaps next time they'll actually bother to read all the available documents. And if someone could chivvy them along as well; I've never seen so many people take so long to say so little.

I think we won in the end because we focused on the planning issues. When the other side spoke, most of them talked about their needs for a suitable place to pray and meet. No-one was denying that. What they failed to do was justify why it had to be on that site with that particular design.

We had Taj Hargey speaking on our behalf. He made the very good points that the proposed design wasn't a global mosque design but specific to certain parts of Asia: there is no need to have domes and minarets. And having separate prayer facilities for men and women (and the women's only about 25% of the size) isn't part of moderate Muslim belief.

The evening took at nasty turn at the end when someone threatening to kill Dr Hargey and he had to have a police escort away from the venue.

Labels: Camberley Mosque

The mosque is now in the Telegraph and The Times.

People have been gathering outside Camberley Theatre already but the police have moved them on.

Labels: Camberley Mosque

For anyone going to the meeting on Wednesday, it is worth reading the council's final report: http://www.surreyheath.gov.uk/council/committees/meetings.htm?pk_meeting=949&comid=4

Labels: Camberley Mosque

Alan Hillier has posted an article about the mosque of the LibDem website. It's almost as if he hasn't read the English Heritage report. I've sent them my comments but who knows if they'll make it through moderation. If not, here they are:

In response to reflections on the Camberley Mosque planning application (by Alan Hilliar on 3rd March 2010):

> I've visited the London Road site and studied the plans the plans for the proposed traditional mosque carefully.

Comparing these comments with the English Heritage report makes interesting readings. Your statements about what you state EH think and what they have actually written seem to diverge somewhat. The EH report is at https://www.public.surreyheath-online.gov.uk/whalecom60b1ef305f59f921/whalecom0/Scripts/DocsOnLine/39807_15.pdf

> As regards the value or character of the existing buildings, in my view it's only the old 1906 infants' school that is more interesting architecturally, and that would be retained with the current application.

But EH state that "the crowding of the Infants' School denies it the space usually desirable for this size of building" They also say that "it is wrong to deny that the building is part of a group and wrong to deny that it is related to other buildings".

> The Council has (in 2002) already granted permission to knock down most of the main school building, retaining only the front wall and Surrey County Council and

About the previous plan EH say "the permission granted in 2003 would not, if full implemented, affect this interest very significantly, as the shape and evolution of the building would continue to be legible". This is completely different to the new plan.

> English Heritage have said they think the main school building doesn't contribute significantly to the character of the area.

EH say that the building is "significant in its own right" and that "the building as it stands makes a positive contribution to the conservation area".

> Having read the other comments on the various web sites very carefully, I don't think the issues are around the size and shape of the proposed new building. It sounds as if the main points are that a traditional mosque feels out of place in a very public location like the London Road and that it seems to symbolise an intrusion into our traditional English culture. Perhaps also it seems to jar that a Victorian school should be replaced by a traditional Mosque.

I am tempted not to attempt to respond to the issues other than the design aspect because it is difficult to do so without being accused of racism. However, I will attempt to do so.

Is fighting to preserve visible aspects of your culture and history wrong?

> In terms of the making the appearance of the proposed new mosque building more acceptable, we could perhaps ask the applicants to soften the impact of the new building by putting more tree planting along the London Road, so that you would see very little of the traditional mosque as you drove along the road. We could ask that they cover the outside of the building in (say) traditional Victorian red brick, so that the colour would blend in with the TA centre next door.

Perhaps if they'd stated in the plans what they were going to build it with, we could discuss it. As it stands, we've no idea what materials it will use which seems unreasonable for a conservation area.

> But beyond specific design issues, I don't think that in reality, a traditional mosque would represent a threat to our culture. We have plenty of traditions of our own which underpin our sense of identity as a country and a community.

One of those traditions is our architecture so demolishing our historic buildings is a threat to our culture. Yes we have plenty of other areas of culture but that doesn't mean we should be happy about part of our heritage and culture being destroyed.

Perhaps if it was a well designed mosque, more people might agree with you. Again quoting from the EH report "the submitted design does not have have enough architectural quality" and "it is hard to see how the character of the area ... could have been a key factor that informed the design"

> I don't think we need to feel in any way threatened by this application, and I don't feel that it holds the symbolic value that some would suggest.

The fact that you don't see a symbolic value in the design does not mean that there isn't a strong symbolism in it. Having a traditional mosque so close to the RMA will be seen by people of both sides of the debate as symbolic. Therefore the symbolism of the design has to be considered. It doesn't matter whether the symbolism is intentional, that symbolism still exists. Even you agree that there is a significant symbolism when you say "it seems to symbolise (to others) an intrusion into our traditional English culture".

Labels: Camberley Mosque

# posted by Matt @ 9:05 PM 2 comments

I've been trawling through some of the details of the planning application and they make very interesting reading. For example, have a look at appendix 1, statement of community involvement page 19. Look at how little space is given to the women's locker and changing space.

Also look at the planning statement page 30: "Muslim women wear the veil and gown to conceal themselves from men". I see plenty of Muslim women just wearing a headscarf. This implies the mosque is going to require women to be fully veiled.

And on page 17 "One of the interesting issues and design features in contemporary mosques is the space of prayer for women. Typically around 15% of the prayer space is given to women who are usually housed to the sides, separated from the men"

By using the word "contemporary", they are implying that their particular brand of Tablighi Jamaat Islam is the normal one and we should all accept it. Its not and we shouldn't accept it. Muslim women are no less religious than the men and shouldn't have to wear a veil to attend a mosque. Nor should they have reduced facilities than the men. Or is the mosque going to be male dominated and they'd really much prefer it is the women stayed at home?