In defence of Inter Faith Week

It was the UK’s first-ever national Inter Faith Week last week, and communities secretary John Denham marked the occasion by calling for a “deeper and broader relationship between Government and faith communities”.

Denham's Department for Communities and Local Government spent the week working with the Inter Faith Network to facilitate community events across the country – football matches, shared meals and pilgrimage walks were among the activities – to bring together people of different faiths. Denham confirmed that £2 million in funding would be made available for faith-based community groups and announced a new panel of religious experts has been set up to advise Whitehall.

Some may view the latter as a sticking plaster in light of recent accusations in the national press that the government is using its Prevent scheme - set up to support Muslim communities - as an opportunity to “spy” on potential terrorists. Nevertheless, Inter Faith week and the accompanying measures are hardly the most controversial of public decisions.

Yet it prompted at least one attack, by philosophy professor AC Grayling, who accused Denham of pouring “scorn” on the country’s “secular majority” and criticised the Government’s decision to set up a faith advisory panel.

“Apart from the fact that 'faith groups' represent less than 10 per cent of the population – namely, the less-than-10 per cent who go to a church, mosque, temple or synagogue regularly each week, and therefore represent no one but themselves and a tiny minority – what does Denham think he is going to learn from them? Are their points of view not extremely well known and entirely predictable?”

So wrote Grayling – whose story in turn prompted a robust defence from Denham two days later:

“Grayling obviously believes that faith is responsible for community tensions. But while it would be ridiculous to say faith has never played a role, it is equally unhelpful to ignore the contribution of class, culture, migration, racism and economic change,” he said.

I’m inclined to agree. Because faith is a fact of life, just as all differences are, and people of faith surely have a right to be represented by government in the same way other minorities are.

By SARAH TOWNSEND

Landscape Institute Awards

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Spent a bit of time this afternoon combing the streets (well, virtually, anyway) in search of the very best street-level panorama of this year's winners of the Landscape Institute Awards. Alas, all I could come up with was this: a view of Queen Square in Bristol.

Bristol City Council's Urban Design and Conservation team took home the Heritage & Conservation prize at yesterday's awards for their restoration of what is apparently one of the largest Georgian squares in the UK.

Elsewhere on the night, the President’s Award went to St Andrew Square in Edinburgh, designed by landscape architects Gillespies, while the Peter Youngman Award, which honours an outstanding contribution to landscape, was bagged by the Olympic Delivery Authority for their plans for the 2012 Olympic Park. (For a full list of the winners, click here.)

But when trying to find a representative view to link to for these spots, Google's online maps pretty much drew blanks. Well, they did for me at least. Any citizen cartographers with a more attuned compass may have better luck. Leave a comment - and link - if you do.

Railing against England's stations

Everyone has had a nightmare experience at a railway station.

Common gripes include being confronted by a post-7pm retail desert, non-existent disabled access, leaky roofs or dodgy unlit areas. Most of those used to traveling by rail in England will no doubt be able to reel off a list of their least favourite stations.

Now the Government has its own list. The Station Champions’ report commissioned by the Department for Transport and written by Sir Peter Hall, Professor of Planning and Regeneration at the University College London (and R&R columnist), and Chris Green, the non-executive director of Network Rail, named and shamed the ten worst rail stations in England, as determined by customer satisfaction surveys.

According to the list, Manchester Victoria (photos above by Gene Hunt and below by Phil Beard) is the worst station in England, followed by Clapham Junction and then Crewe. Then, in descending order, the others were Warrington Bank Quay, Barking, Preston, Wigan North Western, Luton, Liverpool Central and Stockport.

Already there are those jumping to the defence of these maligned hubs. One commentator suggests the peeling paint at south London’s Clapham Junction is a small price to pay for a station that provides trains every couple of minutes that can whisk you away to the seaside, the City or the suburbs.

Clearly, then, there is disagreement in what makes a bad station. Is safety more important than car parking, for example? Does availability of staff trump the services on offer? Or are other rail stations more deserving of a place in the worst ten? Cramped Victoria, perhaps, or prefab-tastic Euston? Poorly laid-out Birmingham New Street or depressing Didcot Parkway? Or how about dank-smelling Twickenham or underwhelming Coventry? We want to know if you agree with the report’s choice of worst offenders. Vote in our poll at the top right of this blog.

By SUSIE SELL

No alarms and no surprises

Heavily trailed and containing no surprises this morning’s Queen’s Speech was something of a damp squib. Even the annual gag by Dennis Skinner, Labour's republican MP, fell a little flat: “Royal expenses are on their way,” he quipped as Black Rod strode into the Commons to summon MPs to the Lords. But what seemed a suggestion that he would like the Royal House subject to the same expenses scrutiny as MPs drew little in the way of laughter.

Inevitably much of the media coverage has focused on the fact that few of the Bills announced are actually likely to get on the statute books, given the proximity of the general election and the little time left for Parliament to scrutinise legislation. The Tories have said the speech was more a election manifesto than legislative programme. In any case there was little for regenerators to get excited about.

As expected, the Child Poverty Bill will enshrine in law the Government’s commitment to eradicate child poverty by 2020 –even though the Government is well short of the stated milestones towards that target. This is matched by the Equality Bill, which will place a duty on all public bodies to consider how their policies will work to reduce inequality and meet the needs of different social groups.

The measures to crack down on antisocial behaviour outlined by the PM in October also appeared in the speech. These will be enshrined within the Crime and Security Bill and include legislation that will see all parents of young people who breach an Asbo hit with a parenting order. “And if that is broken they will pay the price,” Gordon Brown said back at the Labour Party conference in Brighton.

Elsewhere, the Digital Economy Bill will legislate to commit the government to universally available broadband in the UK by 2012 through a public fund and a 50p per month tax on telephone lines. And the Education and Families Bill will see parents given new guarantees that schools will raise their standards – as well as more powers for schools secretary Ed Balls to intervene and close schools deemed to be failing.

What was new came later in the Commons, when the PM set out four new uncosted "guarantees" for unemployed young people in a bid to tackle youth unemployment. For Her Majesty, however, there were just seven brief minutes in which to announce 13 Bills which everyone new all about already. No surprises then and precious little to cheer. What did you make of it?

Next stop the pre-budget report on December 9.

Forth crossing fly-through

Scottish ministers today unveiled the legislation needed to build a new road crossing over the Forth. The crossing, which would have a span of approximately 2.7km, is being planned due to the deteriorating condition of the existing bridge.

Click the video below to view a fly-through of how the bridge might look when completed:

New attack on quangos

Quangos have come under renewed attack. A new study by the Local Government Association says that quangos give local people little say over what they do and are failing to provide value for money for the taxpayer.

The LGA used a traffic light-style scoring system to rate quangos on value for money, accountability and openness. According to the LGA, a red rating means that there is a serious problem, amber means there is cause for concern, while green means satisfactory. 

Here's how the report rated some quangos which have physical regeneration, economic development or community renewal-related responsibilities:

Quango	Value for money	Account-ability	Open-ness
Environment Agency	AMBER	AMBER	GREEN
Equality & Human Rights Commission	RED	RED	GREEN
Homes & Communities Agency	GREEN	RED	GREEN
Learning & Skills Council	RED	AMBER	GREEN
Regional development agencies	RED	AMBER	GREEN
Tenant Services Authority	AMBER	AMBER	AMBER

HTML Tables

The Telegraph has already seized upon the findings of the report. But I'm slightly puzzled as to how the report's authors arrived at some of the ratings. In particular, I wonder why the report authors have awarded the RDAs a red rating for value for money. An analysis of the RDAs' impact published earlier this year by PricewaterhouseCoopers concluded that there is reasonable evidence that all RDAs have generated regional economic benefits which exceed their costs.

And it's no surprise, given the origin of the report, that local government "scores green on all three principles of value for money, accountability and openness".

The LGA's original press release on the report said that it had been "peer-reviewed" by the New Local Government Network. But interestingly, we have since received a clarification email from the NLGN, saying that while it had been asked to comment on the research, "this does not amount to peer-reviewing, and we cannot endorse its findings". 

Tobin or not Tobin?

There was an interesting comment piece by Polly Toynbee in yesterday's Guardian about the so-called Tobin tax: a levy on financial dealings first proposed by American economist James Tobin.

Toynbee claims that, contrary to reports in the Financial Times, Gordon Brown is keen on the idea, and – crucially – that the idea is supported by some heavyweights in the US, including Congressman Barney Frank (pictured above, photo by Shamigo) and White House economic adviser Paul Volcker. It also has some backers in France and Germany. So potentially, if Brown were to impose the new tax, financiers wouldn’t have any incentive to quit London for New York, Paris or Frankfurt because they’d face the same tax regime when they got there.

But what’s really interesting about Toynbee’s column is that she gets into a bit of detail about how much such a tax could raise. Quoting a report put together by the Austrian Government, she claims that a 0.05 per cent tax on all domestic financial trades would raise a whopping £100bn every year – and that’s assuming that imposing such a tax would provoke a two-thirds drop in transactions from the money men taking their business elsewhere.

With so many huge figures being bandied about at the moment, it’s worthwhile stepping back and thinking about what that sort of money can buy. The NHS – the world’s fifth-biggest employer – costs the exchequer considerably less than £100bn. Or how about this more directly regeneration-related statistic: The amount of money required to build out all of the projects listed in our Top 100 Regeneration Projects listing comes in at just (!) £93bn. With £100bn we could have 11 Olympics, or seven Crossrails. High-speed rail too expensive? Tobin!

There are serious obstacles to implementing a Tobin tax – almost all to do with international co-operation and the need for politicians face down the howls of rage from their various financial centres – but it has got to be worth a try. The alternative is that we all pay the price for fixing the economy (broken by the international financiers) through cuts to public services and tax increases.

By ADAM BRANSON