Aylestone Village and Earl Russell

Yesterday I defeated the weather and explored Aylestone village.

The first time I tried was the day I found C.P. Snow's birthplace, which is some way from the village proper. It was in the middle of the heatwave and for reason I decided to head for Clarendon Park - perhaps because from a distance it always looks like a shining city on a hill.

After that walk I had a pint (well, 2/3 of a pint - it was that kind of bar) of a cold, keg, craft beer with American hops. It tasted so wonderful that I may spend the rest of my life trying to experience it again.

The second time I got as far as Anthony Burgess's local, the Black Horse, and had to admit defeat from the rain - it was the day the heatwave broke.

This time I made it. Until well into the 19th century, Aylestone was a farming village owned by the Dukes of Rutland.

Aylestone Hall and its stables are still there, now converted into flats, and there are a few cottages and the former village school.

There is also the serpentine and largely terraced Earl Russell Street, which links the village to the main Aylestone Road.

As it was built the year after his death, I assume this was a tribute to the first Earl, better know as Lord John Russell and twice a Liberal prime minister.

I also went on to Aylestone Meadows for another look at its medieval packhorse bridge.

Leicestershire wildlife latest

A lunar hornet moth yesterday

Rare insects have been discovered munching their way through – and killing – trees at a nature reserve. 

Lunar hornet moths, which resemble hornets and have a wingspan of up to 4cm, have been found burrowing into willows at Dishley Pool, in Loughborough

reports the Leicester Mercury.

Let's hope they don't hear about the unique Salix caprea x cinerea subspecies oleifolia x purpurea x viminalis on Aylestone Meadows.

A lunar hornet moth writes: Sounds a bit of a mouthful.

Unique willow tree found on Aylestone Meadows

The Leicester Mercury - quite possibly correctly - claims a "World Exclusive" for its story about a unique willow tree being found on Aylestone Meadows in Leicester:

The plant is a cross between goat willow, grey willow, purple willow and osier, and goes by the official name of Salix caprea x cinerea subspecies oleifolia x purpurea x viminalis.

Readers will recall that a long and ultimately successful campaign was fought by residents and environmentalists to prevent Leicester City Council developing Aylestone Meadows to provide football pitches and associated floodlights, clubhouse and car parking.

Health: Opposing Andrew Lansley is not enough

Like David Boyle I am left a little underwhelmed by the Liberal Democrats' success in bringing about changes to the Health and Social Care Bill:

So in one bound, the coalition has leapt triumphantly into embracing a wholly different series of NHS reforms. Instead of GPs driving forward the commissioning process, there will be appointees representing hospital doctors, nurses and others.

The brave new compromise looks a great deal more like the old PCTs, which are still twitching away prior to being dead and buried.

It is not so much that I was an enthusiast for Andrew Lansley's plans. It's more that I believe a party that has been out of powers for 90 years ought to arrive in government some ambition beyond maintaining the status quo.

David has one intriguing idea for what a Liberal Democrat health policy should look like. My own is that it should receive an infusion of localism and democracy along the lines advocated by the 2002 Liberal Democrat document Quality, Innovation, Choice - otherwise knows as the Huhne Report.

This was one of the best things the party has ever produced, but it seems to have disappeared altogether. There used to be a copy on Chris Huhne's website, but that has gone now. I discussed it briefly in a post from 2005.

It is interesting that two local health issues I have written about frequently both have their roots in a lack of local scrutiny. They are the St Lukes Hospital debacle in Market Harborough and the row over Ayelestone Meadows in Leicester. In the latter case NHS Leicester decided to put £2 million into a scheme that would probably have decreased exercise levels in the city.

That is why we need more democracy and local accountability in the health service. It is the natural Liberal solution and it is the one we should be campaigning for.

Senior Leicester councillor calls for taxpayers to fund Labour propaganda

Labour councillor Robert Wann - the man who wanted to build on the city's major nature reserve - wants to use a publicly funded magazine for Labour propaganda.

The Leicester Mercury reports:

In an e-mail to other councillors seen by the Mercury, Councillor Rob Wann said the magazine could be used to help publicise the party. ...

In the e-mail, Coun Wann said: "We have the Link magazine, which I think we can push a more Labour message through and ensure it gets to every household.

"Who cares if we are challenged for using it for political purposes? We have 52 councillors so why not?"

Link is published 10 times a year and delivered to residents across the city. It costs £346,000 to produce.

To his credit the newly elected Labour Mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby, has stamped on the idea. But this affair does emphasise the problem I wrote about the other day: Leicester has a Labour Mayor being watched over by an almost wholly Labour council.

In this case, the more sensible Mayor is reining in the council, but that isn't how the new system is meant to work. It's no way to run a city.

Leicester City Council finds alternative site for Aylestone Meadows football pitches

Today's Leicester Mercury carries the less than startling news that an alternative to siting football pitches and their accompanying development on the city's most important nature reserve has been identified:

Leicester City Council is planning to split the development between two areas either side of the meadows – Riverside College, in Braunstone Lane East, and Aylestone Playing Fields, off Narborough Road South, where there are already a number of disused pitches.

The paper also quotes Herbert Eppel (Hello, Herbert) from the Aylestone Meadows Appreciation Society:

"As a group we had suggested this site probably about a year ago."

In last week's elections Labour won all but two of the seats on the council - more on that another day. Interestingly, one of the two seats they failed to win was in the Aylestone ward, where the Liberal Democrats gained one of the seats.

I hope that this was because of Labour's earlier enthusiasm for building on Aylestone Meadows.

Leicester politics getting stranger by the day

Leicester politics have been particularly interesting to late and show no sign of calming down any time soon.

The latest news is that Nigel Porter, one of the two Conservative councillors for Aylestone (of Meadows fame), has resigned from the party and will fight the seat for the Liberal Democrats in May's elections.

According to the Leicester Mercury:

At Thursday night's full council meeting, Coun Porter launched a scathing attack on his former group, branding them a "rabble" and saying that Coun Grant would not win the mayoral election, for which he is Tory candidate.

It received a standing ovation from many Labour councillors, including the full council cabinet.

Meanwhile, the city's Lord Mayor Colin Hall is resigning four weeks early due to "health and other reasons." Again according to the Mercury:

Coun Hall has not been re-selected to stand as Labour's council candidate for New Parks at May's election, and he is known to be against the idea of an elected mayor.

The consensus seems to be that he has done a good job as Lord Mayor (a purely ceremonial post - the city will elect its first executive mayor in May) despite a - how shall I put it? difficult start.

How Aylestone Meadows were saved

In fact I have been warned that someone may come back with a similar planning application one day, but I thought this photograph of the demonstration outside Leicester Town Hall last night was worth sharing.

As I blogged then, the planning application to build football pitches together with their associated floodlights, clubhouse and car parking, was rejected by six votes to five. And the Leicester Mercury as a full account of the evening's events.

Thanks to Jenny Cook for the photograph.

Aylestone Meadows saved

According to a tweet from Peter Bedford, Leicester City Council's planning committee has turned down the application to build sports facilities on Aylestone Meadows by six votes to five.

Labour and Lib Dem Mayoral candidates oppose development of Aylestone Meadows

There are signs today that the campaign against the building of football pitches and their associated facilities on the nature reserve at Aylestone Meadows in Leicester his heading for victory.

The front page of today's Leicester Mercury reports that both Sir Peter Soulsby, the Labour Mayoral candidate, and Gary Hunt, his Lib Dem counterpart, have both said they will not go ahead with the plan if they are elected on 5 May. The Conservative candidate, Ross Grant, is quoted as making a confused-sounding call for a review.

Just as significant may be the words attributed to Robert Wann, Labour's cabinet member for culture and leisure, who has been the chief enthusiast for the scheme:

"I will continue to support the application but I would like it to be noted that this is an issue I inherited.


"I can't wait for it all to be over – it has been a tough year."

This is, of course, nonsense. I am reliably informed that until he breathed life into it the application to develop Aylestone Meadows was going nowhere.

And less than a month ago Wann was boasting to the Mercury:

"If we get the decision at 5pm, I'll have the 'dozers on by 7pm."

Still, if even Wann can see that the game is up then it looks as though the Aylestone Meadows campaign has been won.

How Robert Wann has changed his tune over the environment

One notable feature of the controversy over the proposed development of Aylestone Meadows in Leicester has been the way that Robert Wann, the City Council's cabinet member for culture and leisure, Robert Wann, appears to have gone out of his way to antagonise those who are opposed to his plans.

He has accused them of being "selfish" and talked of "the alleged ecological issue at the proposed site". Overall, he has given the impression of caring only about football and having no sympathy for the natural enviroment.

This is puzzling, because in 1990 Leicester was proud to be designated Britain's first environment city. And until recently the Riverside Park, of which the Aylestone Meadows form part, was the city council's flagship environmental project.

Wann's recent pronouncements certaintly contrast with this passage:

Participation in green spaces in Leicester is high, with people getting involved in many different ways and for many different reasons. This has always been encouraged and with Groundwork Leicester and Leicestershire (along with other organisations) volunteers help with the management of some of Leicester’s key nature reserves; people learn more about our natural heritage; and communities build ownership for their local green space..

That is part of the foreword from a document called Leicester Biodiversity Report 2008. You can download it from the Local Action for Biodiversity website. And the author of that foreword? It is Cllr Robert Wann.

Meanwhile there are concerns over the use of herbicides on the football pitches if the development of Aylestone Meadows does go ahead. How will this effect the surrounding nature reserve? Is it possible to maintain a football pitch without them?

More evidence that Aylestone Meadows is the wrong place for football pitches and all their attendant development.

Yesterday's protest march at Aylestone Meadows

From today's Leicester Mercury:

Nearly 400 people, some with horses and dogs, turned out yesterday to protest against plans for a football pitch on a nature reserve.

The Save Aylestone Meadows campaign wants members of Leicester City Council's planning committee to reject a proposal for a floodlit pitch in Braunstone Lane East when it meets next week.

The plans have been recommended for approval by officers despite the site in Aylestone Meadows being part of a nature reserve and designated "green wedge".

Save Aylestone Meadows will be holding a gathering outside Leicester Town Hall at 4 p.m. next Monday before the planning committee meeting that will consider the application.

Campaign to save Aylestone Meadows wins support from Europa Nostra

Hundreds of people marched (very carefully) through the Aylestone Meadows nature reserve in Leicester this afternoon as part of the campaign against Leicester City Council's plans to build sports facilities on it.

The protest was the lead story on the BBC regional television news this eveneing and the BBC News website says:

Leicester Friends of the Earth spokesman Malcolm Hunter said: "We are all for more sports facilities in Leicester, but there are other places where they could go.

"To put this development on part of the Aylestone Meadows local nature reserve would make a mockery of Leicester's claims to be Environment City," he said.

He said traffic and lighting would cause disruption to the habitat and wildlife, which included herons, bats, kingfishers, grass snakes, badgers and otters.

The project is also opposed by Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust and the Leicester Civic Society.

Meanwhile the protesters have won support at a European level. Europa Nostra a pan-European federation of 250 heritage NGOs active in 45 countries, has issued a letter opposing the council's plans:

To whom it may concern

In 1989, the Leicester Riverside Park won a Europa Nostra Awards Diploma, for the creation of a recreational open space for leisure, sport, nature conservation and educational purposes. Through its Awards scheme – then and still - Europa Nostra promotes best practices in cultural heritage protection and conservation through the ‘Power of Example’, aiming to inspire and encourage others to also cherish and enhance their works of art, buildings, monuments, sites and cultural landscapes.

We also congratulate Leicester on its designation as Britain’s first Environment City and have noted on the city’s ‘Leicester Environment City’ website the following statement as part of Leicester's vision:

Leicester will protect and enhance wildlife habitats in our city and ensure its actions have only positive impacts on wildlife in the wider world.

It has been brought to Europa Nostra’s attention that the Leicester City Council will soon be deciding on plans to introduce a football pitch on Aylestone Meadows within the city’s Riverside Park. Upon our study of the proposed development made available by the city planning department, this football pitch is extensive and includes tall high-powered lighting masts, an additional practice field, a large clubhouse with changing facilities for 10 teams, a broad parking lot, and the whole surrounded by high fencing.

Such a facility will clearly severely affect the park’s tranquillity, its nature and its wildlife’s habitat and night-time darkness, as well as disturbing non football-playing park visitors’ appreciation of the natural riverside ecology and environment, and their other sporting activities, such as walking, jogging and horseback riding - equally valid and deserving of support as is being offered football.

Leicester’s Riverside Park - a natural oasis in the heart of the city – clearly plays a significant role in the city’s ‘Environment City’ image. It is obvious from the intensity of protests against the football project, that the city’s citizens love their park strongly and identify it with the proud environmental image of their city.

We have heard from numerous individuals and local groups, including the Aylestone Meadows Appreciation Society, Leicester Civic Society, Leicester Friends of the Earth, CPRE and the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust, who have officially objected to the proposal and continue to oppose the development.

It is difficult to see how the proposed development can be reconciled with Leicester’s Environment City vision described above, and we therefore support the protests against the proposal to build the football facility on Aylestone Meadows.

The London Olympics will not make people more physically active

An article in the New York Times by Jeré Longman echoes an argument that I have long made on this blog: there is no reason to expect that the London Olympics next year will persuade more people to become physically active.

Longman writes:

Research on the Olympic Games stimulating mass participation in sports has not produced encouraging results. In 2007, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the British House of Commons concluded that “no host country has yet been able to demonstrate a direct benefit from the Olympic Games in the form of a lasting increase in participation.”

A study of the 2000 Sydney Games showed that while seven Olympic sports experienced a slight increase afterward in Australia, nine showed a decline.

After the 2002 Commonwealth Games, held in Manchester, England, “there appears to have been no recorded impact on sports participation levels” in the country’s northwest, Fred Coalter, a professor of sports studies at the University of Stirling in Scotland, wrote before London won the 2012 Olympic bid.

It is even possible that hosting the Games will be counterproductive. Longman goes on to say:

The average person may feel a disconnect from elite athletes, he said, while the most sedentary might be put off by perceived pressure to lose weight and become more active. This seemed to be borne out in recent interviews conducted with weekend warriors in Manchester.

“The Olympics are up here and we’re down here,” said Asha Solanki, 30, who works in marketing and participates in martial arts. “It seems unachievable. How many people do you know who do the 400-metre hurdles?”

This obsession with elite sport and organised games is very Labour. You see it in Leicester where at Aylestone Meadows the council is trying to build sports pitches and accompanying facilities, which will be used by a minority of young people, on a wild area currently enjoyed by people of all ages.

I am also worried by the decision to keep an athletics track at London's Olympic Stadium. As the Guardian reported the other day:

UK Athletics has admitted it will be almost impossible to fill the Olympic Stadium when it stages meetings following the Olympics. The main event, the two-day London Diamond League Grand Prix, attracts a 17,000 capacity crowd to Crystal Palace where it is currently held and some of the lesser meetings are likely to struggle to attract spectators.

You can see what will happen. The Grand Prix will move to the Olympic Stadium putting the future of Crystal Palace under question. Then there will be pressure on other athletics venues around the country - Gateshead, the Alexandra Stadium in Birmingham and the Don Valley Stadium in South Yorkshire - to surrender their events too.

So one long-term effect of the Olympics could be to make it harder for most people to see top-class athletics.

Leicester City Council has already spent £150,000 on the Aylestone Meadows site

This blog has been covering the opposition to Leicester City Council's plans to build build build all-weather sports pitches and an accompanying car park and pavilion on the Aylestone Meadows nature reserve.

Friday's Leicester Mercury carried the news that, though a decision on the development has yet to be taken, the council has already spent £150,000 on the site:

More than £68,000 was paid to a private firm to carry out investigative works, looking at the ground which would house the development.

The design of the site and architectural expertise cost more than £55,000 and about £25,700 was spent on two ecology surveys. The rest is made up of planning application fees and internal costs.

The Mercury quotes an unnamed independent Leicester consultant as saying that the figures seem above industry standard.

Meanwhile, the Labour cabinet member for culture and leisure, displaying the charmlessness that has characterised his handling of the affair says: "The costs have come from the alleged ecological issue at the proposed site."

Does this expenditure show that the decision is a foregone conclusion?

Maybe. But it is also a reminder of the silly money thrown at public projects under the last government. The Mercury explains that the Aylestone development is:

part of an £11 million city-wide sports development at 12 locations ... About £5.25 million of the funding for the project came from the Football Foundation and Sport England, but the rest came from local clubs and other sponsors – with £3.5 million coming from the city taxpayer and £2 million from NHS Leicester.

Six of the Best 126

On The Andrew Marr Show this morning Ed Balls claimed that the last Labour government did not run a structural deficit. Nick Thornsby's Blog has the figures that prove it did.

"I took the trouble of looking up how often as Tommy McAvoy he had spoken in the House of Commons in the last four years. The answer was just once in four years when he muttered just four words. Now as Lord McAvoy he has spoken 77 times on this Bill." On Liberal Democrat Voice, Chris Rennard reports on Labour's filibustering on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill in the House of Lords.

In a very personal post on his A Liberal Helping blog, Matthew Hulbert writes of how his father leaving home made him a Liberal Democrat. (That sounds remarkably like the opening to my own article about Harborough's Liberal history in the Journal of Liberal History, 68.)

Asked, by the current government, to review 10 Labour initiatives in a bid to help inform future policy, Professor Janet Walker of Newcastle University and Professor Cam Donaldson of Glasgow Caledonian University, said: "The most depressing conclusion from our review is that despite substantial social resources having been spent on pilots, pathfinders, evaluations and the roll-out of programmes, there is no hard evidence as to their effectiveness." Community Care on the difficulty of discovering whether all that public spending does any good.

The self-explanatory No Police Spies website was launched recently.

Transition Leicester has the latest on the campaign to protect Aylestone Meadows in Leicester from development associated with sports pitches.

Leicester Labour falling out over Aylestone Meadows

The internal politics of the Labour group that runs Leicester City Council are bloody and obscure. I once commissioned a Liberator article on the subject, but still wouldn't claim to be an expert.

But I know enough to have realised that when the council voted to have an elected mayor for Leicester - without allowing the people of the city a referendum on the matter - the contest to be Labour's candidate would provide good entertainment.

That battle will be concluded later this month. The best candidate, at least in terms of appealing to people who are not habitual Labour voters, would be Sir Peter Soulsby. Given Leicester Labour politics, however, that is no guarantee that he will be chosen.

This choice matters the national stage because Soulsby is currently MP for Leicester South and it is widely expected that he would resign his seat - either to fight the mayoral election or if he won that election.

Meanwhile, the election has ignited the controversy over the Labour-run Leicester City Council's plans to build build all-weather sports pitches and an accompanying car park and pavilion right in the middle of the Aylestone Meadows nature reserve.

Friday's Leicester Mercury had a report beginning:

A Labour councillor in Leicester has accused a party colleague of joining in a row about a football pitch to further his bid to become elected mayor.

Councillor Robert Wann has criticised former city council leader Ross Willmott for saying plans to build a floodlit sports pitch on popular Leicester nature reserve Aylestone Meadows should be ditched.

He says Mr Willmott is only using the issue to try to boost his campaign to become the city's first elected mayor.

I don't know the rights and wrongs of that, but I would be fascinated to know how Wann squares his claim that:

"Ross Willmott calling for us to rethink the plan is silly – the plan is still under consideration and a decision has not yet been made."

with his earlier attack on those seeking to protect the nature reserve:

"I think they are very selfish in their approach. The football facilities are part of an £11m city-wide improvement to sporting facilities which will benefit hundreds of local people."

One other point from Leicester...

The city council has generally been run by Labour, but in 2003 the Liberal Democrats became the largest party and took control as part of a coalition with the Conservatives.

It soon became apparent, however, that the Lib Dem group consisted of strong local campaigners who did not have much else in common. There was not enough shared ideology or a strong enough vision of how the city should be run. The result was that the group split and Labour surged back to power in 2007.

Let this serve as a warning to Liberal Democrat MPs and a reminder to us all that, as a party, we need to think and talk as well as campaign.

The Campaign to save Aylestone Meadows

The excellent Leicester Civic Society has a webpage devoted to the campaign to save Aylestone Meadows.

Aylestone Meadows football pitch plan branded "senseless"

I have written before about opposition to Leicester City Council's plans to site an AstroTurf sports pitch and an accompanying clubhouse and parking on Aylestone Meadows.

Yesterday's Leicester Mercury revealed that a report commissioned by the city council's own planning department shows that Aylestone already has more sports pitches than any other part of Leicester.

This strengthens the protestors' case that this new facility should be built somewhere else in the city and leave Aylestone Meadows for everyone to enjoy.

Demonstration against development on Aylestone Meadows

The Leicester Mercury reports that a demonstration is to be held on Thursday (16 September) at 4.15 p.m. outside Leicester Town Hall against plans to build a football complex on Aylestone Meadows.

The paper quotes Sue Eppel (Hello Sue!) from the Aylestone Meadows Appreciation Society as saying:

The work they have planned, especially the floodlights, is going to have a devastating effect on the wildlife."

Certainly it is an odd way for Leicester, which proclaims itself an "environment city" to behave. There must be many less environmentally sensitive sites where this complex could be built.

The defence mounted by the Labour councillor Robert Wann is worth a little attention. He says:

"I think they are very selfish in their approach. The football facilities are part of an £11m city-wide improvement to sporting facilities which will benefit hundreds of local people."

How campaigning to protect Leicester's environment can be "very selfish" escapes me. And if you do the arithmetic, an £11m project that helps "hundreds of people" represents extremely poor value for money.

Perhaps somewhere behind this is the attitude that Tessa Jowell revealed in her speech to the Labour government's sports summit in July 2003:

“Here’s the truth – children don’t want to play sport on badly drained 1950s scraps of land. They want showers, fences and floodlights.”

For people like Jowell and Wann, a meadow will always be a poor substitute for Astroturf.