60 SECOND INTERVIEW: Louise Ramsden and Heather Hamer

BRIDPORT residents Louise Ramsden and Heather Hamer are the driving force behind the upcoming Bridport Wildcats strike project. Louise has lived in Bridport for 12 years and works part-time as an administrator/book keeper for an educational and technical software business with her husband Neil. She has also done voluntary work for the Bridport Oxfam shop, Bridport Citizens Advice Bureau and South West Dorset LETS scheme. Heather moved to Bridport 18 months ago. She previously worked as a medical secretary and teaching basic reading and writing in a Young Offenders institution. She reinvented herself as a songwriter some six years ago and plans to continue writing in Bridport.

COULD you tell me a bit more about the 1912 Bridport Wildcats project? What will it involve?

On Saturday, February 14th at about 10.15am we will gather in Bucky Doo Square, Bridport, in our 1912 costumes and then sing songs, led by our excellent town crier Jane Silver-Corren, just as the original women did, including the Suffragette anthem "Shoulder to Shoulder ". We will then march through the streets to Amsafe (the old Gundry’s factory) where we will have our photo taken by local female photographer Rachel Dunford in the same place they did in 1912. Our aim is to highlight this little known aspect of Bridport's social/industrial/women's history, contemporary issues of equality and to have a bit of fun singing and dressing up! In addition we have been really pleased with the many spin-offs inspired by the project - singing, song-writing, a marvellous exhibition of women artists called Cre8 at the Chapel in the Garden and a play written about the women by Maya Peris of Story traders. You can find out more on our Facebook page Bridport Wildcats 1912 or email ler@neilramsden.co.uk it is not too late if you want to join us.

WHAT inspired you both to get involved and organise the 1912 Bridport Wildcats project?

Louise: I went to a fascinating talk by Carlos Guarita about a local photographer, Clarence Austin. There were some wonderful photographs of women net workers who in February 1912, staged a wildcat (not organised by a union) strike and protested on the streets of Bridport about unfairness at their workplace. The dignity and camaraderie of the women really struck a chord and I thought we could celebrate this spirit by re-staging the photos with modern women in costume.

Heather: Louise told me about the recreating the photograph and I loved her enthusiasm. I felt I wanted to celebrate the feisty women net-workers of Bridport who stood up to the bosses, and the way the town supported them.

ARE you both working on projects apart from the Wildcat strike?

No, Wildcats is taking up pretty much all of our time at the moment.

WHAT do you both like doing in your spare time?

Louise: I like walking, dancing, swimming and Tai Chi. I also love reading, cryptic crosswords and doing a bit of calligraphy. I am a member of the Bridport Film Society and support Bridport Arts Centre.

Heather: I like reading, walking, writing, visiting the town's coffee shops, researching my own family tree, also researching local history. I also support Bridport Arts Centre. After this project I'm going to take it easy and just enjoy the area for a while - though I'm always open to discovering new projects. I was involved (with my ex-partner) in two recording projects last year for Bridport FM - the "Love to Sing" project for local amateur singers, and a collaboration of songs/stories written by the local creative writing group, The Story Traders.  

WHAT drew you both to the area?

Louise: We have family in Hampshire and Cornwall and Dorset was a good point in between both. But really it was the sheer beauty of the landscape that drew us to Bridport. We also loved the local shops like Leakers & Fruits of the Earth, we thought it would be a really good place to bring up our children and indeed it has been.

Heather: I have lived in Bridport for 18 months, drawn here by the creative spirit I found here, and the sense of community. I'm now officially a pensioner, though am outgoing and love meeting new people and getting involved in new projects. There's so much to do in Bridport, sometimes the difficulty is choosing which activity to go with! This is my first time living in a small community, and I love living here. I enjoy living near the coast; I love walking on my own at Burton Bradstock.

DO you have any more projects lined up for the future? What would you like to do?

We will be doing something about the Wildcats at the Rope Walk Fair in May, with the Museum. I hope this event will continue to inspire people to stand up for their rights, there is still a lot to be done with a 19 per cent pay gap and women being disproportionately effected by the growth of zero hours contracts and the low pay offered for vital jobs like caring, in our community. But I think I also need to get on with all the things I've been neglecting whilst organising this event!

www.viewfromonline.co.uk

Why Simple Simon has no penny

“ANY intelligent fool can invent further complications, but it takes a genius to attain simplicity.” 

So wrote E.F. Schumacher (“Small is Beautiful”) without even seeing former health minister Lansley prove his first point.

“Complexity theory”, a branch of mathematics, contains an essential truth not just of biological and physical science but also of human organisation: from underlying simplicity emerges, naturally, complexity both beautiful and functional. But no government minister ever created the human eye or a butterfly’s wing.   

Politicians, civil servants and management consultants get it wrong by making complexity their starting point. Our over-complicated NHS – a multiply-fractured structure – exemplifies this blight on public life.

The main political parties are complexity-addicts. The motive is primarily financial, exploiting the false distinction between ‘private’ and ‘public’ money. False because money is, simply, money.

A small local example. The Lyme Regis Medical Centre building is largely owned by two former practice GPs, now just private landlords. NHS Property Services rents their building with taxpayer’s money. In turn, NHS England has a five-year contract, around £8.5million of public funds, with Virgin Care (a private business) to provide community medical services there. This pays for the GPs, nurses, health visitors, therapists and administrators, their equipment, and the other necessities of public medical care. But some goes to Virgin’s regional and national offices and shareholder dividends – all private.

The medical centre is part of the Dorset Clinical Commissioning Group that’s paying £2.75million of public money to private consultants McKinsey for advice. A shrewd McKinsey employee might invest some of this in Virgin shares to gain a continuing private slice of taxpayer cash. Follow a £5 note through this system and say when it’s ‘public’ and when it’s ‘private’!

The NHS alone multiplies such examples many times. Consider, for instance, the shortage of nurses, impacting on hospitals like Axminster, made worse by private nursing agencies costing hospital trusts much more than directly-employed staff. 

Political irresponsibility

Complex, fragmented organisation isn’t just expensive and confusing for us – it also undermines teamwork. Can directly-employed nurses, agency nurses, outsourced caterers and cleaning staff all work easily as a unit on the ward? More broadly, ‘bed-blocking‘ in large hospitals creates queues of waiting ambulances (thus reducing availability for which the ambulance service is blamed) while beds that could unblock the RD&E are closed in Axminster – because the RD&E, Axminster and the ambulances are separate trusts with isolated budgets.      

How to explain this nonsense? It’s political irresponsibility. Inventing complicated systems that only insiders understand excludes the uncomprehending rest of us, shielding those in charge from informed criticism – we can only grumble, disengage and despair. But – back to the money – it gets worse.

Many hospital trusts’ financial problems flow from the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), started under John Major and exploding (ironically) under Blair and Brown. Instead of government investing public money in the capital cost of a hospital or school, for example, the financing, design, construction, and long-term operation of the building is contracted to one or more private companies (say, a construction and a facility management firm) backed by banks, insurance companies or hedge funds – often foreign-owned.

Essentially, it’s a very expensive national mortgage. Private investors put up the cash, then over 25 years or so are repaid by the taxpayer. The Daily Telegraph (hardly a socialist tract) told of a PFI company’s 53 per cent profit margin last year (a successful FTSE 100 company might make six per cent) with its founder/chief executive’s pay and dividends at £8.6million. A hospital in Bromley, it reported, will cost the NHS £1.2billion, over 10 times what it’s worth, while for an empty Belfast school taxpayers will lose £370,000 a year until 2027.

Who would hand their mortgage provider control over decisions and costs for their home equipment purchases and maintenance, when we hear of the school charged £302 for an electric socket, five times the value of the equipment it wanted to connect?

So why these complicated schemes that emasculate the powers of hospital trusts or school governors, destroy accountability, and pass long-term costs to our children and grandchildren – along with student debt and working out how to deal with spent nuclear fuel?

Simple. Investing public money up front shows in Treasury accounts, so the annual budget deficit looks even bigger. With PFI the capital cost doesn’t appear and, neater still, nor do the capital ‘debts’ incurred for the nation. Government borrowing initially would have been at lower interest than for PFI investors, so the public money needed to repay them over time is all the greater. But a Chancellor avoids a tax rise and looks prudent; future generations must pay for his cynical confidence trick.

It’s not as if the ‘risk’, that favoured capitalist defence, is shifted from ‘public’ to ‘private’ – last month the private company running Hinchingbrooke Hospital walked out of the contract they didn’t like. So who picks up the pieces? Or compare the widespread reluctance to pay the Living Wage: why bother, when Income Support will step in? How convenient, this risk-free version of ‘market forces’ reliant on socialism!

I heard you murmur “railways”? Did you mean the private rail companies, heavily subsidised by public money, with mind-bending contractual arrangements and silly fines to impose on Railtrack (also subsidised) if their trains are delayed? Government wants passengers (‘private’) to pay more of the costs of railways, and taxpayers (‘public’) to pay less. Most passengers are taxpayers: but privatised costs come from Joe Public’s private wallet, not from his tax bill. Isn’t the money the same colour? 

So too with ‘the cuts’, falling most heavily on local government and making it the public scapegoat for austerity. No matter that central government is grotesquely extravagant (think abandoned IT projects): ministers can hypocritically lecture local government about yet more ‘efficiency savings’. How about efficiency savings in Whitehall? 

What to do? There’s no ‘Simple Party’ in the General Election. Maybe it’s time for real anger? Or perhaps focus near to home. Our own town council has become more complicated, wasteful and incomprehensible since 2011. ‘Think globally, act locally.’ Yes, that could be a start.

www.viewfromonline.co.uk

All that good work ruined by secrecy

THIS is my first column for several months, the absence of which has flamed the rumours that I have retired or am planning to do so soon.

Handing over the editorship to my daughter Francesca recently - to be honest she’s been fulfilling that role for several months now -  heightened the anticipation of those who would like to see an end to this column.

When asked if I’m planning to retire, I usually reply: “Hell no, I’ve got two daughters to marry off!”

The truth of the matter is that I have no intention of giving up running newspapers for as long as my health allows me to carry on. I am still the boss at View from and many of you will know that I have taken on additional duties for the parent group to launch and co-manage four new newspapers in central London.

Having worked in London back in the 1980s/90s, I love the capital’s media scene and I’m thoroughly enjoying what will probably be the biggest challenge of my long career.

So what have I missed during the period that this column went into hibernation? Well, things are pretty quiet on the council front (election coming, don’t you know?). 

There’s an occasional spat between the two factions but nothing on the scale of their earlier disgraceful behaviour which showed the town in such a poor light.

If fact, I would like to start by congratulating the council. No, honestly! I think they’ve handled the Monmouth Beach situation regarding the replacement of the chalets that were destroyed in last year’s storms rather well. 

They made sure that the chalet owners would meet the cost of re-routing their road (the chalets site having been moved forward towards the sea) and put in place a scheme whereby the owners would not be able to gain a financial advantage by selling their chalets when built.

This is good local government, protecting council taxpayer’s money.

But then, as this council has done so often, they shoot themselves in the foot by repeatedly refusing to release the cost of the whole contract for the Monmouth Beach work, saying the information was “commercially sensitive”.

In the past the council has always released such information to the press, following the decision being made in secret session. And every other council in this area, including West Dorset District Council, operates an open procurement policy.

Because the Mayor, Sally Holman, is a chalet owner she has steered well clear of the discussions and decision making so as not to be accused of influencing the matter.

So the meeting that awarded the contract was conducted by the deputy mayor, Anita Williams, a qualified solicitor, who was all in favour of releasing the information to the press and, indeed, did so when we contacted her. Apparently, the work is costing around £140,000 - a sum which will be revealed in a few weeks’ time in the council’s public accounts when the contractor submits his bill.

Refusing to release the figure when it is already in the public arena will only fuel ill-informed rumours (at least I assume they are ill-informed) that the council has something to hide.

The government recently issued guidelines to local authorities about being more transparent an accountable to the public, and the Lyme councillors have already decided to study these with a possible change to their standing orders to comply with the document. 

Having sought legal advice and told not to release the figure, the officers are now in a difficult position. To be fair to the council, we decided to print their statement following the controversy on page 6. It’s farcical and adds nothing to what we have already published.

When this council came into existence in 2011 there was talk of more accountability and involving the public more in the decision-making process.

In reality, the opposite has been the case and it is to be hoped that when a new council is elected in May (surely it will be new?) this is one of the areas they might look to change.

Don’t cry for me, Lyme Operatic...

LYME Regis Operatic Society is one of the town’s oldest and most respected local organisations.  

Their members have been entertaining local people for 95 years and have built an enviable reputation for the standard of their  productions at the Marine Theatre over the years.

But times they-are-a-changing - and the Operatic Society has now followed a trend among such groups by changing their name to the more popular Lyme Regis Musical Theatre, reflecting the move towards staging big musicals rather than operettas.

I covered my first operatic production at the Marine Theatre in 1966 - I think it was “Iolanthe”. I rarely missed a show over the years, even when I was away working in London, and having grown up surrounded by the Perry family, synonymous with the Operatic Society, I was once entrusted with running the bar at their annual show.

Today, the Perry family tradition is continued by the current chairman, Johanna Hopkins (nee Perry) and she has steered the society through some difficult times and presided over the change of name.

I have never been a great Gilbert and Sullivan fan but have enjoyed enormously some of the recent shows such  as “Calamity Jane” and “Mame”. I have waxed lyrical over the ever-rising standard of local stage shows, both here and in Axminster, and I am sure the newly-named Lyme Regis Musical Theatre will prosper even more.

And I can’t wait for this year’s show “Evita”, my favourite all-time musical with Kelly Apps (nee Street) in the title role. 

www.viewfromonline.co.uk

Party time at Knowle!

I CAN’T  recall a story that has stimulated such a reaction than the one we broke last week about the East Devon Alliance forming into an official political party and fielding at least 40 candidates to take on the Tory domination at East Devon District Council at the May elections.

Such was the importance of the story that I took the unusual decision of making it the front page lead on each of our six editions across East Devon.

Pulman’s View had hardly hit the streets when my mobile started to ring. I must have fielded at least 15 calls before 11am on my way by train to London, and it soon became clear that my fellow first class passengers were getting a bit annoyed, prompting me to put the phone on silent before dealing with the calls at Waterloo.

Predictably we were accused of political bias. There was only one reason why we decided to give the story such prominence in all editions - news value. At no time since local government was reformed and East Devon came into power had any group mustered 40 or more candidates to fight a local election under one umbrella. I don’t live in East Devon so I can’t be accused of voting for the East Devon Alliance. But I admire their determination to provide the electorate of East Devon with an alternative and their view that rather than moaning on the sidelines they decided to do something about it. That can only be good for local democracy.

This column is not anti-Tory (I have some very good true-Blue friends).  But it is anti-arrogance - and I believe that’s one of the major reasons why so many people are disillusioned with the current set-up.

Such stories, of course, fuel the rumour mill which has been working overtime with suggestions that some Tory councillors want to defect and others have been deselected.

We don’t know whether they are true or not - but we are on the case.

And I was tickled that the East Devon Alliance members decided to throw a party last Saturday night - at Knowle!

www.viewfromonline.co.uk

60 SECOND INTERVIEW: Marjory Mulrooney & Megan Dunford

MARJORY Mulrooney is a local artist making new work and exploring experimental techniques and media. She studied Fine Art at Plymouth University and the University College of London and spent many years working and teaching in the UK, Europe and Sultanate of Oman. She settled in Dorset two years ago with her husband Hugh after running life-drawing workshops in France for eight years. Megan Dunford was born and raised in Dorset and is the exhibitions assistant at Bridport Arts Centre. She studied a BTEC Diploma Foundation in Art and Technology at Somerset College before studying a Fine Art Painting Degree in Cardiff. Megan has since moved back to Dorset where she works for several local arts organisations. They are currently joint curating an exhibition called ‘CRE8’ which will feature work from a group of eight women artists in West Dorset and will be on display at the Chapel in the Garden on east Street. 

WHAT inspired you to work in art?

Marjory: I have always been fascinated by the materials used in making art. From the age of eight when I was given my first ‘real’ box of paints - a lovely black metal box containing perfect little pans of watercolour with mysterious names like 'Rose Madder', 'Gamboge' and 'Viridian' - one of the main starting points for any work has been the material itself. In the past year, I have made pieces which have explored the rich, reflective qualities of graphite. So instead of using it as a pencil, I have made graphite itself the subject of the works, creating abstract, textural images. I am currently looking at other non- traditional materials and will be showing works made from tea bags, string and fishing line in forthcoming exhibitions.

Megan: Curating is becoming more and more of a fascination and a passion for me, so to be able to put on such an interesting exhibition at the Chapel in the Garden, with such an interesting mix of artists is brilliant! My work changes all the time, but I am mainly interested in abstract colour in the landscape and the contrast of surfaces/ materials next to each other. For this exhibition at the Chapel I will be making some new work that reflects the Women of the Wildcat Strike of 1912 and the struggle they had to go through to fight for their rights as Women.

COULD you tell me more about the upcoming exhibition ‘CRE8’?

Marjory: This show grew out of an involvement with the group of women who decided to recreate photographs taken in 1912 of the women workers at Gundry’s who went on strike in protest at their wages being cut. They were among the first women in Britain to take action in order to better their working lot and the intention is to re-enact their protest on Saturday, February 14th starting in Bucky Doo Square and marching to the spot where they were photographed 103 years ago. Megan and I will be among those taking part in the march as well as the exhibition, which is another way of celebrating the work of artists living and working in the Bridport area, who also happen to be women. In a way it is a tribute to those women of 1912 who were such strong role models. There is much more information on the Bridport Wildcats – as they are known – online. Just goggle Bridport Wildcats. The photographs will be taken by Rachel Dunford who will also be showing work in the exhibition.

WHAT other art based projects have you done?

Megan: I also work freelance as a visual art promoter and have worked on events such as Dorset Art Weeks, Dorset Art Fair and Bridport Open Studios. ‘CRE8’ is the first show I have curated without backing from an organisation or event, so very exciting and daunting.

Marjory: I have shown work in a number of countries including Oman, where I spent seven years working and teaching, and in France where I also ran life-drawing workshops for eight years. On returning to the UK, we settled in Penzance, Cornwall, where I showed work with the St Ives Society of Artists and in other gallery shows before moving to Bridport in May 2013. I collaborated in a group show at the Chapel in the Garden with Megan and three other artists in August 2014 as part of Bridport Open Studios.

BESIDES the upcoming exhibition, are you currently working on any other events and exhibitions?

Megan: I have so many ideas for exhibitions or projects later this year, but nothing set in stone yet!

Marjory: I will be showing work in the foyer of the arts centre in June/July 2015, it will be a selection of my most recent works on paper and will be called ‘Out of Line’.

IF you could live your life again, what would you be?

Marjory: I have worked as a teacher in a number of countries besides the UK – mainly in Bulgaria, Germany and the Sultanate of Oman. If I hadn’t become an artist I would have loved to be a musician. Musicians are welcomed wherever they go and I always regret that I never had an opportunity to learn to play an instrument. Of course if you are a singer you can travel light as you carry your instrument with you. That must be the best of all. However, I always wanted to be an artist and am perfectly happy to be able to share what I do with others. It never gets easier though!

Megan: I still feel like I have the rest of my life ahead of me as I am not yet 26. I agree with Marjory to be a musician would be fun, if not difficult at times. However if I had to start again, I would like to be born in a different country, somewhere along a warm coast in the Mediterranean. I love being outdoors and by the sea so this would suit me perfectly.

WHAT is the one thing you like most about working with art?

Megan: It is never boring and you are always changing, adapting and learning.

• ‘CRE8’ will be at the Chapel in the Garden, East Street, from Tuesday, February 10th to Saturday, February 14th at 10am to 4pm and Sunday, February 15th from 12noon to 4pm. Visit www.cre8dorset.wordpress.com for more details

www.viewfromonline.co.uk

Birdwatching’s a better harbinger

HOW many of you in Weymouth and Portland took part in the recent national Big Garden Birdwatch survey?

We did, scraping cobwebs off a couple of summer folding chairs and setting them up in our garden for the required hour during which we dutifully recorded all the birds we saw and then submitted them online for the survey.

God it was cold! The first quarter of an hour was not too bad, but having to sit motionless so you don’t scare off the very birds you are hoping will visit to be recorded took its toll and my feet and hands were frozen by the end of it.

All I had to show for a good while were the inevitable seagulls and wood pigeons and quite a few sparrows, but as time went on we also saw blue tits, a robin, a thrush, jackdaws and, most pleasing of all, a solitary wren flitting jerkily through the undergrowth.

It was great fun and the survey became even more worthwhile once the computer was cranked up and we found that surveyors wanted to know about things such as slowworms as well which do visit our garden occasionally as well as frequent visits by grey squirrels.

That early morning cup of coffee tasted even better than usual because this Sunday we felt we’d actually done something useful to earn it.

New herald of spring is power companies cutting our bills

LOOK out of your window and you’ll see a perfect illustration that spring is on the way.

No, I don’t mean those snowdrops poking up through the border. I mean the postman knocking on your door with news that the gas companies are kindly cutting their charges to us.

Who do they think they are kidding! A true cut of value to consumers would be made at the onset of winter not towards its end.

All across Weymouth and Portland you can hear the sound of sobbing from kind-hearted householders listening to power company fat cats say they only have consumers’ interests at heart and only wish they could make greater cuts.

They make the cuts at this time of year – if they make them at all – because they’ve milked shivering householders of every last penny they can at the higher rate. Making the cut when use will fall sharply in a month’s time makes them look good and keeps reductions in their income to a minimum.

They are in a ‘win-win’ situation, so don’t shed any tears for them over this clap-trap about advance bulk gas buying and being tied to what they paid. Every ‘hard times for the industry’ comment they make can be scotched by a single observation because if they were making a loss they wouldn’t be doing it.

The true situation is that if you don’t hear the word “billion” used when power company profit figures are released then its only because the word “billions” was used, so save your sympathy for us. 

We need it more.

Another ‘oops’ from the council

WEYMOUTH council offices have flown a red flag of embarrassment at half mast following yet another incident where the authority shot itself in the foot.

This time it was by grossly overcharging chalet users for their new lease (by around £200 each), but they picked on the wrong group to do that to because the chalet users group rounded on them like a pit bull terrier with a hangover and publicly ripped them to shreds in a searing criticism of the council.

Having to write a letter of apology to chalet users about the overcharging must have been bad enough, but the whole context of the mistake couldn’t have come at a worse time for the authority, arriving as it did shortly after councillors turned down users’ offer to run the chalets themselves.

The claim then was that if users failed it would harm the council’s good reputation, chalet users replying that the council didn’t have a good reputation to harm.

After this gaffe by the authority I will leave you to make up your own mind whether the council is still holding its head high on the moral ground or whether it is furtively rubbing its shoes on a clump of grass to scrape off the latest stink wafting from its reputation.

Thank you, councillors: phew!

COUNCILLORS have taken pity on audience members at the annual Mayor Making in Weymouth Pavilion.

Previously guests were able to enjoy all the pomp and ceremony associated with the occasion but then also had to sit through the election of the chairmen and vice-chairmen of various committees with all the riveting red tape that went with it before they could go to the reception.

That will no longer apply after full council approved ‘a short break’ between the two sections to allow those audience members not particularly interested in the committee elections to leave the Theatre and go for food in the Ocean Room.

Thank you councillors!

www.viewfromonline.co.uk

Shake-up at the polls?

THIS week we exclusively reveal that the East Devon Alliance, the pressure group formed in 2013, jumping on any hint of maladministration at Knowle, has formed into an official political party and will be fighting at least two-thirds - probably more - of the district council seats at the next election.

By doing so we will be accused of political bias but believe me those who sit on EDDC and want to retain their seats should sit up and take note.

As we report on the front page of each of our editions this week (a rare occurrence), rather than just standing back and moaning from the touchline, they’ve decided to field their own team and fight their cause at the ballot box.

It could result in the biggest shake-up in local politics since local government was reorganised in 1974.

When I had the temerity to write in this column a few weeks ago that in 50 years of reporting on councils I could not recall a time when there was more dissatisfaction with our elected representatives, I was castigated by one of the more arrogant members of the ruling party as “an out-of touch has-been who should have put away my notebook years ago”.  

Don’t you just love it when you’ve got them on the run!

The EDA will be treated with equal distain - and that will encourage them even more.

SOME good news at last for Axminster!

We report this week that the long-awaited demolition of Webster’s Garage - the 30 year-old town centre eysore - looks like it is about to happen after all.

Owners and developers, Hallmark Estates (Devon) Ltd, has secured private funding to enable the old garage to be demolished in preparation for a temporary town centre car park.

This is brilliant news for the rest of Axminater town centre trading community.

Perhaps now would be the right time for the powers that be to put pressure on the owners of the George Hotel which is rapidly becoming a Webster’s Mark II.  

www.viewfromonline.co.uk