Drag us into the light ...

At the council meeting on Monday night a journalist up in the gallery made the mistake of trying to tape the meeting. Yes, it was a public meeting of elected representatives and officers, and the item under discussion was in no way confidential.

Taping is not allowed without prior permission, and so the journalist was politely asked to stop. Given the hundreds of cctv cameras positioned around Dundee city centre, the Council Chamber is possibly the only place in DD1 where you can escape the camera's gaze or the microphone's reach.

There can't be much difference between the way we take decisions now and the way our forebears operated in the days before Dundee smashed up its Adam Townhouse and replaced it with the cold, gloomy, oppressive, acoustically dreadful and exceedingly uncomfortable Council Chamber. We pore over thick paper reports, ignoring all the advances of the 20th and 21st century such as computers, tablets or digital projectors.

And we behave badly. There's seldom anyone to see, and even on busy nights only a minority of the electorate can get the true measure of their elected representatives in action.

Which is one reason why we need to livestream the proceedings of the City Council. Video would be best, audio would do at a pinch. If you know that the folks who lobbied you on a school closure proposal or a budget cut were watching - or could watch later online - you might take more time to prepare your speech, work up some sensible arguments, cut out the insults. Or produce better insults.

It would also open up our strange and opaque procedures to public scrutiny. When a deputation makes a great case, wins the argument hands down and still loses because the decisions have been made in advance at private political group meetings, people might feel displeased. When the council appoints its new team of Conveners after the next election, people might expect to see them make speeches about the great things they intend to do. Except that no discussion is allowed on the appointment of Conveners. That might be a surprise too.

So let's catch up with the technology revolution and have councillors doing their work where people can see them .. online. Let's leave the recordings on the web so that promises made and assurances given can be checked against practice at a later date. (Did I mention these are not minuted?). And let's raise our game so that the people of Dundee can be proud of their elected representatives, putting forward their arguments confidently and taking reasoned decisions. I think we should start with the budget meeting on 25 February.

Menzieshill High - time to think ahead

Councillor Jimmy Black reflects on the decision to close Menzieshill High.

 

The debate surrounding the closure of Menzieshill High was generally mature and well argued on both sides. Perhaps the Scottish Government will overturn our decision, but I doubt it. On educational and economic grounds the decision made sense. But some of the points made by protesters made sense too.

We have had local community planning partnerships for a few years now. I would be interested to know if and when the Lochee LCPP debated the demolition of the multis and other housing, the closure and merger of schools, the town centre regeneration in Lochee High Street and the creation of the new community facility, all as part of a single, coherent plan for the area. Perhaps the decision to redevelop Harris Academy should have been part of those deliberations.

We also have a Dundee Partnership. Does the future shape of Dundee's schools and their relationship to local shops and businesses ever feature on the Partnership agenda? I hope the answer is yes, but as we move forwards we need to pay more attention to the unintended consequences of the decisions we take.

Normal practice is to demolish empty schools swiftly to avoid security costs, vandalism and fires. If the Menzieshill community wants to retain any part of the building, now is the time to start putting together projects, looking for funding and so on. There is a pool, playing fields, other facilities. I am not the local councillor and I don't know what is feasible or practical there, but I do believe in the Scottish Government's community empowerment agenda and Dundee has already begun transferring redundant council assets to the community.

Perhaps the best use would be small workshops for new businesses; or maybe new council housing, or allotments, or an urban farm. Now is the time for local people to see the potential in that site and start making plans.

If the Rev Mallinson can harness the energies unleashed in the Save Menzieshill High campaign to help create something new on the site which creates jobs and tackles poverty, then something good will have come of all this. Perhaps the young pupil who spoke so eloquently at the council about his school and his community could get involved.

Final thought... Harris Academy is an excellent school. I believe those who are worried by the new arrangements will soon be reassured by the warm welcome they will have. We will be working hard to make sure that happens.

Extent of poverty spelt out at Fairness Commission

Dundee's Fairness Commission had its second meeting on 26 May 2015; this session was to establish the facts and figures surrounding poverty in Dundee and Scotland.
John McKendrick of Strathclyde told us that only Glasgow had more poverty than Dundee. John Dickie of the Child Poverty Action Group said that child poverty has been increasing steeply since 2011, and that low wages meant being in work was no guarantee of an escape from poverty. Peter Allan of Dundee City Council outlined the work which has already been done, following the Fairness Strategy published in 2012 (which contains detailed statistics about poverty in Dundee).
The meeting heard some practical ideas about what could be done in our city to make things better. One Commissioner suggested that we should do an audit of all the money we spend on poverty related projects, from advice to employability and everything else ... and work out whether we are spending that money in the most effective way.
Another called for Dundee to declare itself a Living Wage City, and there was general support for that.
Commissioner Erik Cramb will be blogging on this meeting, as will others; there will be a website soon which will carry the presentations; meantime you can see interviews with John Dickie and John Mckendrick on YouTube here ... http://youtu.be/y8bkfYKFOq4

Frank's Law

The council meeting on 9 March 2015 agreed to support a request to Government to consider extending free personal care to people under 65, with dementia. Fair enough. If you are unable to support yourself through illness or disability, your age should not matter. I hope the Government will find a way to introduce Frank's Law, not just for people with dementia, but for everyone who requires assistance.

This brings us to the confusing part. The social work department and the NHS both provide care in various forms, and I sometimes struggle to know the difference between the services provided by each. In her moving speech to Councillors, Frank's Law campaigner Amanda Kopel said her family had initially received less support than required, possibly because "one hand didn't know what the other was doing".

My question to the Social work Department was ... will the integration of health and social care improve things? The answer from a senior officer was, basically, yes. That's good news; Alex Neil when Cabinet Secretary banged heads together and passed a legislation saying councils and the NHS simply had to work together. 

Sometimes it takes a law to make public bodies change their practice. I wish Amanda Kopel well in her campaign, and I hope Ministers will find a way of making it happen. The current UK government's austerity agenda will not make this easy, but there's an election soon.

The V&A - looking back, then forward

The Courier series on the transformational effect of buildings such as the Guggenheim was inspired; it strengthens confidence in the V&A project which has huge economic and cultural potential for our city.

However, a series of stories across the local national press about the secrecy surrounding the increasing cost of the project have not been helpful. As an NUJ member I am not prepared to blame the journalists for that.

One of the things I hope the independent enquiry will look into is the way the story of increasing costs was handled. As Professor Beatriz Plaza of the University of the Basque Country points out in this morning's Courier, honesty over budgets is vital to gain public trust. In Bilbao, they set a realistic budget of $100 million and stuck to it.

So our enquiry needs to look at the original budget and whether it was ever remotely realistic for a building of this type. It needs to look at the way the people who decided on the Kengo Kuma building assessed the likely cost of constructing it. For me, everything begins there.

We were warned at the time that the building could not be constructed for £45 million. Well done Jack Searle and Dundee Civic Trust who expressed doubts in 2010 about the construction costs of the Kuma design (see link below).

We have been promised that the enquiry will have the freedom to look at anything it considers relevant. Councillors will also have the opportunity to give their views to the enquiry. That's good; let's do this in an open, constructive spirit for the good of our city. And then let's look forward and deliver this project on time and on the (new) budget.

Story re Dundee Civic Trust and the V&A ... http://www.thecourier.co.uk/news/local/dundee/dundee-civic-trust-recommends-half-of-v-a-designs-be-rejected-1.26847


 

Should we close Menzieshill High?

Dundee's Education Department has proposed the closure of Menzieshill High School, and parents and the community are being consulted via meetings and online surveys. As councillors we will take our decisions when the consultation responses come in.

I've been at two 'official' meetings and one protest meeting, listened to parents' arguments for keeping the school open, tried to respond to those who simply cannot understand why the council would close such a popular school.

There are some debates about practical matters like transport which I think the Council can deal with. The bigger picture is about the quality of education.

In the US there is a strong lobby for smaller schools; people think there is less pupil violence and higher levels of achievement if schools are small. On the other hand, Dundee's Education Department believes Menzieshill pupils will achieve more in the new, bigger school.

I try not to just accept what council officials tell me, so I went looking for independent research and found a 2002 report from the National Foundation for Educational Research (http://www.nfer.ac.uk/nfer/publications/SPP01/SPP01.pdf).

115 pages later, I discovered there is very little evidence to suggest that big schools are better than small schools, or that small schools are better than big schools. It does seem fairly clear that bigger schools are more cost effective and can offer a wider range of subjects.

Then I looked up Parentzone (http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/parentzone/) and checked how well the pupils in Menzieshill do in exams, compared to Harris. Generally Harris is above the Scottish average, sometimes well above. Menzieshill is generally below the average.

I believe this is because Harris Academy is not truly a local school. Harris has a role of 940, and of those 490 live outside the Harris catchment. My guess is that parents with high aspirations for their children are bypassing their local schools and sending their children to Harris. To put it bluntly, Harris has higher numbers of clever kids. Already 150 pupils from the Menzieshill catchment choose to go to Harris.

So what would it mean to close Menzieshill? Harris would be full of children from its new catchment area ... Lochee, Menzieshill, West End, parts of Coldside and the city centre. There would be very little room for pupils from other parts of the city. Harris would be a real, local school.

Menzieshill pupils would have the chance to be educated in a state of the art building with better facilities (although Harris sports pitches are at a distance from the school, it will have a brand new pool, dance studios, music rooms and a recording studio, among other excellent features).

In future, pupils living in the catchment areas of Baldragon, Craigie High and Braeview would be much more likely to send their children to their local school, and those schools would benefit from having a more balanced intake. Plus the Council would eventually save nearly £2 million a year and avoid the inevitable costs of upgrading an old school.

So everyone wins? Well, maybe. It's clear that there is strong opposition from a significant portion of Menzieshill parents, and some pupils. I have very little idea what the Harris parents think because very few turned up to the consultation meeting. I'd be interested to know what the Harris pupils think about it all. Some Rosebank parents do not want to see families split between Morgan and Harris, and we're working on that.

No decisions can be taken until the consultation is over, and I strongly urge people to send in their views. The consultation paper is at http://www.dundeecity.gov.uk/content/closure-menzieshill-high-school and the email address to use is education@dundeecity.gov.uk.

Personally I am beginning to think that closure is the best option, because the pupils in Menzieshill and Lochee will have better opportunities to learn and thrive in a brand new building with a long tradition of excellence. But I haven't made up my mind yet, and the debate continues.

Thanks for supporting me ... now support Chris

A wee word of thanks to the hundreds of people who voted for me to fight Dundee West for the SNP. As announced today, Chris Law will be our candidate. Chris burst on the scene with his Spirit of Independence Campaign and he has provided the excitement new members were seeking.

We now have to get Chris elected; he has a strong body of support behind him and that should now translate into a big team for leafleting, doorknocking and social media too. Good luck Chris; time Dundee West had an SNP MP.

What now for me? The prospect of a normal life, I guess, and that doesn't sound so bad. And I still have plenty of work to do in Coldside. That's what I'll be concentrating on for the next two years.