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Monday, 21 December, 2009 
A very happy New Year to your all! I was racking my brain the other day trying to remember the name of a biblical tale of a man giving his three sons an equal amount of money before embarking on a journey. 20 minutes of Google searching later I found the ‘Parable of the Talents’ about three servants being given unequal amounts of money – should my memory be this bad at 34? To paraphrase the tale, the returning master is less than pleased with the one servant who does not take a risk with the opportunity he is given, but simply buries his share of the money for safekeeping. Life’s full of risk-takers and the risk-averse. I worry greatly though, that over the last two decades, the risk-averse have won every major battle. In 1995 “No-win, No-fee” was introduced in the UK as a way of reducing the legal aid bill. The idea must have seemed like a winning one at the time. Cut costs to taxpayers, open up access to the legal system for people on low or no income – everyone wins. The reality though is one of an unintended consequence. That consequence being that it became too easy to sue people with seemingly no downside to doing so. This is reward without any risk. This was a very bad precedent. There should always be a potential downside, however minor. We saw in Leeds City Council the true scale of these problems when we changed administration in 2004. If memory serves me right there was a figure of around £4m in outstanding claims against the Council for trips and damage caused by the state of the roads and pavements – and back then the roads were very bad. We set about reviewing the cases. In one, several members of the same household claimed to have all tripped over the same pothole, on the same day and put claims in via different solicitors. What an unlucky family… the same pothole… 6 times over… on the same day…what are the chances?! We stood up to them and they didn’t get a bean, but a few years back they would have done. All no-win-no-fee though, so again, no downside to them trying it on. Schools and even parents no longer allow children to take any risks and to learn from their mistakes. If a child falls out of a tree and breaks their arm, they learn the dangers. It’s part of life. We can’t just ban children from climbing trees. Teachers are rightly terrified of being sued as parents assume no harm must ever come to their child and if it does, then someone must be to blame…other than the parents themselves of course. I remember having a ‘discussion’ with our Forestry Department after they initially refused to plant horse chestnut trees on a street, because children might climb them to collect conkers and be injured. I am not joking… after all in 2004 South Tyneside Borough Council chopped down chestnut trees to stop kids hurting themselves while gathering conkers. In Roundhay we’re working now on a scheme of which I hope to be very proud. The Bumps at the end of West Park Ave is going to be transformed, not with oodles of brightly coloured play equipment (although there will be new swings) but instead with landscaping, new ‘bumps’ added and a dry river bed rising to a mound of boulders for children to clamber over and play on. This scheme has not been without it’s problems. I sent officers away to find a way around a ruling that dictated anything over 80cm high should have expensive ‘safety surfacing’ under it – not practical for large boulders. As a child I played in Hetchell Woods around Hetchell Crag with it’s 40ft drop and, believe it or not, NO SAFETY SURFACING AT ALL! How did I ever survive? Through learning to take responsibility for my actions and not going too close the edge. That’s how. We need to have a transformation in this country where we realise that life isn’t necessarily fair. We need to understand that there is no reward in life without risk (you’re talking to a man who in the middle of a recession has gambled taking redundancy from work to pursue his political career!). We also need to understand that given equal opportunities, not everyone will do equally well. We are not all the same. You could give someone like Richard Branson £100 and he’d turn it into £9.7m and you can give Michael Carroll £9.7m in Lottery winnings and he will turn it into a prison sentence. The sooner we have a responsibility-revolution in this country the sooner we’ll get back to having dynamic businesses, lower unemployment, stronger economy and better prospects for us all. We owe it to our great country to return to taking responsibility, so I say to you: Let’s pick up our feet Let’s look where we are going Let’s plan ahead that a wet floor may be slippy Let’s accept that sometimes there is no one to blame but ourselves. Have a great 2010, and mind how you go! Matthew Lobley Roundhay Ward Conservative Councillor
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