The week just gone

This has been a week of balancing my work at Edge Hill with being a Councillor.  At this point in the academic year there are all sorts of deadlines to do with marking and degree classifications so the week started off with me having to meet one of them.  It's always a big relief when that is done as the students won't get their marks or their degrees if we don't get things sorted in time.  Luckily for me I've got some great students and some of the marks are very impressive indeed.

That done however, I had some important Cressington ward and Lib Dem things to do.  I've blogged about the Fairness Commission already which met on Wednesday. As soon as there is more to say about evidence collecting and other opportunities, I'll post it.

This week saw three important meetings for Cressington (meetings with officers not committee meetings). At the first Richard Oglethorpe and I were looking at the maps the Council had drawn up of all the plots of land the Council thought could be used for housing.  Some of these were bizarre and simply either wouldn't work or would involve getting rid of some nice bits of open space that are valued by local people.  Others look doable if there is local support (and we asked for some consultation).

We then discussed, in a separate meeting, the future of Garston Library and Garston Leisure Centre. The Council has been consulting about the future of Libraries and we were worried about what might come out of that for our area.  There won't be any clear recommendations or decisions for a while but I think we managed to highlight the importance of Garston Library and we understand that the useage figures etc prove that it's a valueable resource.

I did a street surgery in the middle of the week, and another on Saturday morning.  These are a good way of talking to people and spotting issues.  Got rained on both times though.

Friday was Shadow Cabinet.  We meet at 8 am (which means I have to be there quite a bit earlier) to do some thinking about the next fortnight's activities on the Council.  It was good to see that Tina Gould's motion on electronic cigarettes had some press coverage and that there's interest in Barbara Mace's work on local history.

Saturday saw good news in the press for one of my colleagues - Richard Kemp - who got a CBE. I had been tipped off about this but had to keep it quiet till it was announced. 

Saturday for me also saw me doing the Councillors' surgery at the Library and then kicking off a petition on a particular local issue (which I'll blog about separately rather than cover in a throw away line)

And today.. well I've been catching up on my work for Edge Hill University, catching up on casework letters and e mails and attempting some research for this week's events and meetings.

Oh, we also had a not very helpful meeting about the plans for Stalbridge Dock.  The deadline for anyone wanting to send in a comment on the Merseyside wide plan is 20th June.  One of my previous posts has the link to the website.

Alleydumping

I realise it can look a bit odd going round photographing dumping and litter, but here's a picture of some dumping I noticed in Cressington ward yesterday.  I've reported it for clearance and the Council say it should be gone by the 15th ( suspect it will have grown by then)

Fairness Commission

Update:

Here's the link to the Islington report mentioned below.

http://www.islington.gov.uk/council/councilfairness/:

Went to the second meeting of the Fairness Commission today.  As luck would have it today was also the publication date for the report of the Islington Fairness Commission, and one of the members of that came up to share some of his experiences and advice.

I'll post a link to the Islington report when I can.

What I found really good about the Islington work is that the report's recommendations were easy to understand and were actually directed to somebody or to a particular organisation.  These included Islington Council itself, the local chamber of commerce, the Mayor of London etc.  That meant that it wasn't a lot of platitudes but some thought out suggestions about practical things that could be done to make Islington fairer.

Obviously a lot depends on whether the recommendations get acted on, but I got the sense that those involved didn't see the report as the end of their work, merely a stepping stone to getting some action.

The first two meetings of the Liverpool Fairness Commission have been scene setting rather than evidence gathering but we seem to be about to move into more evidence gathering mode.

I'll post some links to the Liverpool material when I can.

Doorknocking again

Another good evening's doorknocking in South Liverpool.  This is some of the team we had out working for the Liverpool Lib Dems tonight.

Social Liberal Forum Conference

Our first ever conference takes place this month (in a fortnight in fact).  Called Liberty, Equality and the State we are aiming to look at  policy and do some thinking about some pretty fundamental issues.

It is a Lib Dem led conference and it does include Simon Hughes, Vince Cable and Chris Huhne but we also have speakers from other parties and none. 

The event takes place down in London (although we hope in future to have satellite events for people who can't travel quite so far). 

I agreed to chair a session.  In fact I am doing the kick off plenary which features Simon Hughes, Will Hutton, Neal Lawson and James Graham.  Its a sort of scene setting/agenda setting bit which should lead in well to the workshops.

Quite a few of the tickets have already gone, but if you want to find out more about the conference, the SLF website is here

Woodhey/Bayfield alleygate update

People in the bit off Beechwood Road affected by the ongoing alleygate saga should already be aware but in case there is someone who isn't, here's the update.

All the legal stuff was done when a check showed that the wall we wanted to fix the gate onto wasn't safe enough.

The gate could be fixed sort of freestanding, but then people could simply step around the gate (there would be enough of a gap)

The answer was to pay for a post of some sort to attach the gate to and make sure there isn't a gap.

The Council said it didn't have the money for this.

However there is a small pot of money that the councillors can allocate for projects and I was happy to agree that this should be one of the things we spend on.  Credit needs to go to my colleague Richard Oglethorpe who got the costings and pushed hard to get this done.

Garston Park Fun Day Coming up - and help needed

Saturday 25th June is the Garston Park Fun Day. The weather was fantastic last time and it was great to see so many people there so fingers crossed for another great day.

The Friends of Garston Park will be there again.  This time we're also looking to have a tombola on our stall .  We've got some prizes but we could do with some more.  If you've got something you can give away to help with this, please either drop it off at 80 Long Lane or drop me an e mail so we can sort out about collecting it.  You can contact me at paula.keaveney@liverpool.gov.uk