Re: MARGARET EDWARDS

Greetings to Liam Plumridge

I noticed from your e-mail address that you are the dude who has
written several letters to the Haverhill Echo in recent months. I
wondered who you were, with your interest in Haverhill Town Council and
Arts Centre issues. I understand you are a year 11 star in one of the
Haverhill senior schools, a student leader and a writer of articles in
the Haverhill Echo. A man considered to have some leadership and
journalistic skills.

So by what strange coincidence do I find you appearing on the heals of
postings by the Haverhill conservative mayor's wife, Margaret Marks
(Margaret Edwards) on a semi active Usenet forum. I read your letters
in the Haverhill Echo with interest, someone, perhaps a councillor,
council officer or newspaper staff member has been coaching you in
writing those letters. I suspect the same person also encouraged you to
post here? It does appear to me that a talented individual like you is
being used by someone in a political mind game. I would love to know
who sent you and who is helping you with information to write the
letters in the Haverhill media.

I am aware of your letter in the Haverhill Echo this week and that
Chris Cullum intends to respond. I was tempted to reply with my own
letter, but I can reply here instead.

Firstly, I would like to reply to an earlier letter you wrote to the
Haverhill Echo; you refer to fellow students on a bus who found it
strange that you were reading a book, you went on to criticise those
students saying they should stop working on computers and play carpet
bowls or visit a production at the Haverhill Arts Centre. Your
criticism of your fellow generation was I found a bit unfair and
generalized. If you refer to the so-called chav then fair dos, the chav
may indeed have trouble turning on a computer let alone read a book.
There is however another group that includes Goths, skateboarders,
computer users, sports people and the dudes who perform in musical
bands who are not representative of the students you had a generalized
swipe at. Few students will play carpet bowls as it is too sedate; few
young students will read a book on a bus as it is not "cool", but
they may read books on their own at home; the Haverhill Arts Centre
does not attract so many people from your generation because the
Haverhill Town Council does not put on enough events that will attract
their interest. The Haverhill Town Council is run by a lot of elderly
people who have not got a clue about the needs of younger generations.
The idea that students may enjoy a good game of bowls is the sort of
notion that Haverhill Town councilors of advanced years like Cllr Tim
Marks, a man approaching his 70's may have, but they bear no notion
to the reality of the interests of Haverhill students. On the Haverhill
Town Council there are only two people who have some knowledge of young
people's needs: Cllr Mick Graham who is a sports coach of the
disabled and of young people; Cllr Sue Fanning who is experienced in
community youth work and special needs students, she has had some
trouble with the Haverhill Town Clerk who froze her out of the
Community First committee (this committee deals with youth issues) for
reasons known only to him. The loss of an experienced and qualified
councillor like Cllr Fanning from the Community First committee due to
the actions of the Haverhill Town Clerk was a serious blow to the town
council's ability to connect with the young people of Haverhill. Your
generation, the so-called generation Y is a very talented and promising
generation for example Cllr Graham's son (age 15) has represented
England in athletics; Cllr Graham is coaching a 16 year old in cross
country who is ripping apart the record books in many of the races he
enters and looks set to become the next Seb Coe; I worked alongside the
Colchester based King Twins (aged early 20's) who represented England
in athletics during the 2006 Commonwealth games; a guy I know aged 17
in Northern Ireland sold his internet business to a top internet firm
in Paris in 2005 for a nice profit, he has now set up another internet
business; a 15 year old in the USA will shortly start his PHD and is
credited with stopping a tribal war in Africa, has met top world
leaders including Bill Clinton and has now had four noble peace prize
nominations! The list goes on. So do not be too harsh on your
generation.

Turning to your more recent letter, it appears you have been coached in
putting this letter together by someone. I will reply in a
"logical" manner.

Chris Cullum asked if he had a heart attack would the staff of the
Haverhill Arts Centre be able to help him. Chris Cullum has asked a
serious question in a sarcastic manner. Mr Cullum is no longer on the
Haverhill Town Council but has asked through a newspaper if the
defibrillator is available for heart attack victims in an emergency.
The question was addressed to Cllr Ted Trebble, who as a member of this
council was in a position to answer the question, it was not a question
you could answer Mr Plumridge. Obviously if a guy has a heart attack in
the Haverhill Arts Centre then the emergency services would be
contacted, however the question asked if the defibrillator could be
used in an event of a heart attack. The answer based upon last
information I have is that no the defibrillator would not be available,
the defibrillator is the wrong type of defibrillator, the staff appear
not to have been trained to the degree required to use the equipment,
and the health and safety and insurance issues relating to this
equipment has not been addressed. In summary any untrained member of
staff using a defibrillator that perhaps is the wrong type or has not
been safely maintained would probably kill Mr Cullum if they used it on
him. Mrs Margaret Marks (aka Margaret Edwards) who as a First Responder
knows about defibrillator even pointed out that the user of a
defibrillator could also be killed. I am sure that the Haverhill Town
Council is not even aware of the safety concerns that have arisen about
defibrillator recently in the USA. As far as I am aware the
defibrillator continues to gather dust in a box in some cupboard in the
Haverhill Town Hall. Perhaps it is now time for Mrs Marks and her
husband, Cllr Tim Marks, Haverhill Mayor to address this defibrillator
and come clean on what is happening about this issue to the Haverhill
public.

Mr Cullum asked about why his council tax was going up year after year
in connection to the Haverhill Arts Centre. Mr Cullum and I opposed the
Haverhill Town Council taking over the running of the Haverhill Town
Hall and running the Haverhill Arts Centre as we considered the
arrangement to be complicated and a white elephant. As a direct result
of running the Haverhill Arts Centre the Haverhill Town Council has had
to increase its precept (council tax) by a huge percentage every year
over the last 3 years, this year it was a staggering 80%+ increase. The
arrangement is complicated. The Haverhill Town Council are given a
grant by St Edmundsbury Borough Council to run an arts centre in a
rambling Victorian building, the grant pays for the upkeep of the
building and the running of the entertainment in this building. The
grant by the borough council is given directly to the town council who
then pays a certain amount of money to the charity that looks after the
actual Town Hall building, whilst the town council runs the arts centre
within the building. All the members of the Haverhill Town Council are
the trustees of the charity running the Town Hall. To complicate things
the Bistro/bar in the Haverhill Arts Centre is run as a separate
business concern. To tie everything together the Haverhill Town Clerk
is the charity clerk and a director of the bistro company. Everything
is so tied up together that if any part of this complicated arrangement
goes wrong then there is going to be a huge bill for the Haverhill
residents to pay. Putting aside that the town clerk is heavily
overloaded with responsibilities, the town councillors are either
afraid or unwilling to address a very serious issue that if the town
clerk were to suddenly retire then the central force holding this
complicated structure together would collapse like a pack of cards
leading to all kinds of problems.

I understand Mr Plumridge that you have been involved in Young
Enterprise, you will therefore understand the concepts of business. The
Haverhill Arts Centre is a business that puts on entertainment for
which it gains income. Mr Cullum and myself consider that the Haverhill
Arts Centre should be run as a business without public funding, and
that the Haverhill Town Hall should be run by a private trust by people
who are experienced and interested in running arts venues. If you were
to visit Cambridge you will see that there are dozens of venues that
are run privately who make a profit, the Haverhill Arts Centre is the
only proper entertainment venue in Haverhill and does NOT make a profit
in the proper sense of the word. To make a profit the Haverhill Arts
Centre relies on a huge grant from St Edmundsbury Borough Council that
is given to the Haverhill Town Council, who in turn has to add
additional investment from the town council precept to make ends meet.
If the Haverhill Arts Centre was really profitable it would not need
ANY public funding from either the Haverhill Town Council or the
borough council.

The Haverhill Town Council makes a misleading claim that it makes a
profit from the entertainment part, however in the larger picture the
town council is having to bail out the Haverhill Arts Centre from its
own resources. The Bistro, that is being run as a limited company, is
running at a loss, this requires constant financing by the town
council. The town clerk has been pulling off some financial wizardry by
moving pots of money around to keep the whole complicated structure of
Haverhill Town Council - Bistro - Haverhill Arts Centre -
Haverhill Town Hall Charity working... unfortunately it is a system
that probably only the town clerk understands. The two big financial
killers in the whole equation are the town hall building and the grant
from the borough council. The borough council are looking to cut its
funding of the arts centre, it is only because the town clerk has put
the fear of god into the conservative ruling administration of St
Edmundsbury Borough Council that any grant cut would equal closing of
the arts centre, meaning a potential vote loser for Haverhill based
conservatives that he has persuaded them not to cut the funding;
eventually the borough will cut their funding and the town council will
be faced with closing the arts centre or increasing the council tax by
huge amounts. The Haverhill Town Hall building is another problem, the
grant by the Borough is enough to run the entertainment but not cover
the buildings; the Town Hall is a listed Victorian building that over
the coming years will cost a fortune to maintain; unless an already
overworked town council can find alternative funding then the buildings
will mean a rise in council tax. As a student Mr Plumridge you do not
have to pay council tax, but your parents do and like many people in
Haverhill there will come a point when underwriting this white elephant
via heavy council tax increases to keep the Haverhill Arts Centre /
Haverhill Town Hall going will become too much. Obviously the example
you mention of the crude Puppetry Of The Penis and the uninteresting
Keith Floyd may pull in the crowds but then why should the people of
Haverhill pay three times for this entertainment... the price of the
ticket, the cost again in Haverhill Town council precept, the cost
again in the Borough council share of the council tax to grant fund it?
It is very expensive the entertainment being put on in the Haverhill
Arts Centre.

Some other issues. The board of directors of a business should be
interested and have the skills to run a business; the Haverhill town
councillors have no experience, limited skills and have varying
interest in running arts centres; the town councillors rely on two key
officers to run the whole complicated show. If either of these two key
people disappear then there will be problems. Councillors having to
address charity, business and council administrative law to run an arts
centre with the complex arrangements in place is a total nightmare.

Many of the posters to this newsgroup are either current or former
councillors, many of these guys become councillors because they wish to
contribute to the wellbeing of their community. The Haverhill Arts
Centre is not the most important thing in Haverhill or to the
community, where people will travel mostly to Bury St Edmunds and
Cambridge for their entertainment. Haverhill people care about
attracting more shops, recruiting more police, gaining a railway,
doctors and dentist facilities and attracting quality employers. The
Haverhill Town Council has decided to make the Haverhill Arts Centre
the centre of its being, the town council has been hijacked by the arts
centre. The real issues that Haverhill residents care about and why
people become councillors is being overshadowed by crisis management
and priorities of running an arts centre that most Haverhill residents
neither visit or are interested in. A large percentage of the unpaid
Haverhill town councillor time, of council officer time, energy, money
and planning is tied up with the arts centre. Mr Cullum is interested
in the real issues that town cares about and not in an arts centre,
this was one of the reasons he quit as a councillor, he now quite
happily is working for the benefit of the town as an ordinary resident
and appears to be achieving more by doing so. If I was really
interested in running an arts centre then I would run it as my own
business and be paid for it. It seems a bit much to expect unpaid
councillors to help in the running of a venue they have limited
knowledge or interest in. The concerns of Mr Cullum about the arts
centre is as you see not "petty" Mr Plumridge, but is one shared by
a great many in the town who are aware of the issues.

Mr Cullum asked why the Haverhill Directory had not been published and
you felt it was not an item worthy of spending money on as the
information was on the internet I do not agree with you on this Mr
Plumridge, there are many residents, especially the elderly, who do not
have internet or know how to use a computer. It is no use telling an
OAP aged 80 to trot down to the library to look at the internet for
information unless there is some serious funding available to teach
OAP's some basics like how to use a mouse or using search engines.
The Haverhill Directory was one of the more useful items that the
Haverhill Town Council invested in, much better than the hanging
baskets that they practically gave away, which far from making the town
more pretty is hidden away in people's back gardens. I suggested to
the town council to feature the "Haverhill Face" on the front cover
of the last Haverhill Directory, a computer project that combined many
Haverhill resident faces to make up an overall face that was widely
reported in the world media, this suggestion was taken up and a very
cool directory was produced. As far as Haverhill-uk is concerned, the
town council has paid a lot of money for in my opinion a poor quality
council web site that will win no awards and is as useful as a dodo's
toothbrush. The people of the town deserve to have something useful
from their town council who happens to sting them with ever increasing
council tax bills every year, so the Haverhill Directory should be at
the top of the agenda.

The fourth question by Mr Cullum was what was the ratio of spending on
services against administration of providing those services. This
question is NOT as you put it "IRRELEVANT", it is a very sensible
and important business question. Every business, charity and council
provide a product or service... the whole idea is to keep the costs in
providing the product or service to a minimum. If I made a donation of
£1.00 to a charity like perhaps War Child or to the Haverhill Town
Hall charity I will be interested in how much of that pound will be
split between the service and the administration in delivering that
service. If out of a £1.00 donation to War Child 90p is spent on an
arts project that brought two warring sides closer together that would
be cool. However, if 90p of a £1.00 donation to War Child is spent on
a modern new office, staff outings and a profit share scheme for the
directors I am going to get annoyed. War Child in fact is one of the
leading charities that keeps admin costs down in favour of providing a
service to child war victims. The Haverhill Town Council provides a
service such as the arts activities, however it also pays out huge
amounts on advertising, staff wages, telephone, rent... all
administration. So the very relevant question of Haverhill residents
like myself and Chris Cullum is how much of each pound taken off us in
council tax goes to the services that are provided by the Haverhill
Town Council. Both Mr Cullum and I know that the town council pays a
heavy salary/wage bill, we know that the town council employs a full
time accountant for instance rather than outsourcing the task to an
outside agency. We also know that there are lots of costs like
advertising and insurance that could be better managed. We know that
council officers are being paid overtime to attend meetings on outside
bodies that actually the councillors should be doing, and possibly
free. We know that the Haverhill Town Council due to its complicated
practices has made some serious misjudgements or mistakes that has been
costly to address. We know about the bank charges that the town council
experienced which could have been avoided with better financial
planning. The town council somehow failed to pick up a missing £24K +
figure in the accounts until two years later. The town council is
pulling pots of money from all over the place for different projects in
an almost scatterbrain and random fashion making it difficult to keep
track of. In other words we believe the Haverhill Town Council is a
total administrative shambles that has cost us a lot of unnecessary
council tax.

Good business practice is to achieve a result or provide a
product/service with an efficient and effective expenditure of
resources on administration. Mr Plumridge, if you are ever employed or
self employed you will then learn the benefits of keeping the admin
costs down. Businesses that cannot keep admin costs to an effective
level go bankrupt which means no profit for the owner or wages for the
employees. Whereas businesses go bankrupt due to their mistakes, the
councils simply get the council taxpayer to pay for the mistakes. Mr
Cullum and I are fed up of paying for Haverhill Town Council mistakes.

Mr Plumridge, you cross swords with Chris Cullum, me or others who have
had considerable experience of this town council based on what you read
in a biased local media, or from whatever source has been feeding you
the information to be able to write your letters. Writing letters
defending something that you do not know the full story about will win
you know merit marks. Those who ask questions and speak out will win
enemies but will also win respect. If a guy is attacked, then he knows
he is on the right path because he is upsetting someone in power who
perhaps does not want the general public to know what is going on. The
powers above consider a citizen who praises them, is silent or does as
they are told to be a good citizen... a citizen who speaks out or
questions issues is considered by those above as a "troublemaker"
and an "idiot". The powers above are always working towards their
own interests and if a citizen does not question or speak out will
gradually find themselves in a dictatorship with few rights. The
current Labour administration since 1997 has been passing into law
numerous acts of parliament that has reduced individual rights and
increased the powers of those above. Recently Labour has introduced a
boring bill called the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, it is a
bill that is designed to create "efficiency" and reduce "red
tape", the champions of this bill will tell the world how wonderful
this bill is, the "troublemakers" like Chris Cullum and myself
would question such a bill and perhaps oppose it. Should the
"troublemakers" not speak out then this legislation will move into
law enabling new laws to be passed without having to go through the
usual checks and balances that safeguards individual rights, this then
leads rapidly to a dictatorship.

Excuse the essay but as you see I could not put all that in a letter to
the Haverhill Echo. I salute you for your success as a student leader
and your impressive skills. I hope you will see that the issues on the
Haverhill Town Council are not as straight forward as you have made
out. I also hope that you will start to question those who appear to be
coaching your political views. I hasten to add that the people
belonging to Labour and the Conservatives in Haverhill are not
representative of the overall parties, but are a unique species in
their own right. Haverhill has a certain quality that sets it apart
from the rest of the world.

Mabon Dane

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