Ed Vaizey

The Lib Dems in Wantage are shameless. They have just put out a press release claiming credit for a new footpath, when in fact it was the excellent local Conservative district councillor Bill Melotti (www.billmelotti.me.uk) who first brought the issue to public attention.  The Lib Dems are also trying to cut the subsidies available for all arts groups in Wantage.  And now they are claiming an independent candidate in Wallingford, Lynda Atkins, is in fact a Lib Dem…

I have been deluged with mail on our threatened Post Offices.  I have five under threat in my constituency - Childrey, Ardington, Fyfield, Upton and Long Wittenham.  The two  I know best - Childrey and Ardington - are thriving and very busy.  Clearly “profit” is not an issue - the Post Office is simply pushing through a plan that means that all Post Offices will be three miles apart, and any in between get the bullet.  I’ll be spending the week end putting together the case for each Post Office before my show down meeting next week.

I have just sat through the first few hours of the Northern Rock debate.  It may seem a marginal issue, but PArliament is being treated with contempt - as per usual.  The entire Bill will have been done and dusted by midnight - just 8 hours after it was first put before Parliament.  It themn moves to the Lords, where the unelected representatives get twice as long!  Why is the Government in such a hurry - after all they have been prepared to wait 5 months to avoid precisely this debacle.  Surely they can wait a couple of weeks for Parliament to debate it.  Or is this Thursday’s “topical debate” (and you can be sure it won’t be on Northern Rock!) too important to be passed over?

So, about three years after David Davis suggested it, the Government looks set to accept intercept evidence in court.  Makes the case for 42 days even weaker.

No, this is not a sudden Vaizey prediction that Bill Clinton will come back into the race.  It’s a plug for my good friend and colleague, Bill Melotti, who is standing as a County Councillor in Wantage and Grove, follwoing the sad death of Jim Moley.  Bill works tirelessly for the local community, he is young and switched on, he will be a huge asset for the town and village, regardless of yuor politics.  If you live in Wantage and Grove, please vote for him.  His website is www.billmelotti.me.uk

I popped into the BT Archives yesterday, to be shown around by their head archivist, David Hay.  In a non-descript building in Holborn, BT employs three archivists, David and a museum curator, and spends about £2 million a year keeping its archives going.  There is still a business case for them, in terms of marketing and in potential legal disputes, but it is also part of their corporate social responsibility. (Although I was sad to leanr that BT closed their museum during the dot com crash, and dispersed the collection, albeit to five national museums.)  I looked up my dad in old phone books, and was also astonished to come across my grandfather, a barge builder in East London.  Looking at their names in the phone book, it was almost as if they were alive again.  A year ago, I would have had to have come into the building to do that.  Today, I can download these pages from the web.  Archives are far more accessible, and asa result far more sexy.  There has been a proposal to give businesses tax breaks for maintaining their archives, but it has been resolutely ignored by the Government.  We will have to look at it.

Hmmm, my far out prediction that Mitt Romney would be President by this time next year?  McCain seems to have got the big mo’ at the moment, but the fight has not yet been lost.  But I am preparing for a gracious admission of defeat on this one.  Not on Clinton versus Obama though.

I went to the Bodleian library the other day.  It was a memorable visit for all sorts of reasons.  I was there to present prizes to nine children, whose designs were being turned into gargoyles for the Bodleian.  Now that may not seem a big deal, but I suspect they are the first designs for 500 years, and may well be in place for centuries to come.  So to create a lasting monument to your existence on the world’s most famous library at the age of 11 is quite something.

There were other reasons why I loved the visit.  I got to look at and touch one of the Bod’s three copies of the Magna Carta - a major thrill.  In the Divinity Halls, I was able to look on the doorway that Wren created to provide a passage to the Sheldonian.  It was described at the time as a major piece of architectural vandalism, reminding us that great architects were criticised even in the sevententh century.  And in this case, the critics were right.  The door completely throws the symmetry of the building. 

The ceiling of the Divinity Hall is covered in the bosses (shields) of those who funded the building.  Again, a useful reminder that corporate sponsorship was alive and well half a millenium ago.  We should not be so precious about it today, providing it is done tastefully.

I went to visit a refurbished library in Hillingdon on Friday.  It may not sound the most exciting way to spend a Friday morning, but it was.  The new head of culture is a Tory councillor with the unlikely name of Henry Higgins, a man with an appropriately big personality and an ability to get things done.  In the last 18 months, he has knocked down an old library and rebuilt it.  He’s paid for it by putting 8 flats on top.  He’s put a Starbucks in the library, and some very nice Apple Macs.  He got a shopfitter to do the interior for a good price, and renegotiated the contract with the book supplier.  The library now opens from 8 in the morning until ten at night.  In two months, visits have gone up 80 per cent and book borrowings by 30 per cent.  He did it all on his own as well, with a consultant called Tim Coates (who used to run Waterstone’s) with no advice from the Government’s agency the Museum Libraries and Archives Council.  What is happening in Hillingdon is another good example of how you can refresh libraries in the 21st century, and yes, they still have lots of books in them.  Now Henry is going to tackle the other 16 libraries, and no, not one will close.  All for the same money.  It is a Tory council after all.

The Cleggmeister had his turn on the Andrew Marr show this morning.  Apparently the political divide is no longer between left and right (copyright: T. Blair) but between those who believe that the State does and interferes too much (that’ll be the Tories) and those who don’t (that’ll be Labour); those that take the environemnt seriously (that’ll be the Tories) and those that don’t (that’ll be Labour); and those that want to devolve power (that’ll be the Tories) and those that don’t (that’ll be Labour).  Guess which side the Cleggmeister is on?