Monkey not listening

Following a health debate at the April meeting of Cambridge City Council, Council Leader Sian Reid issued an invitation to attend a public debate on the government’s health ‘reforms’ to both the city’s MPs, Julian Huppert and Andrew Lansley.

Cambridge City MP, Julian Huppert accepted the invitation very quickly, but nearly two months later, we still await a response from the Rt Hon Andrew Lansley, MP for South Cambridgeshire (into which Queen Edith’s falls) but better known as Secretary of State for Health and the architect of the government’s planned changes to health service commissioning.

This is disappointing since here in Queen Edith’s, we have Addenbrooke’s Hospital. The Addenbrooke’s NHS Trust employs some 7,000 staff, many of whom live in the city. The proximity of the hospital also means we have a high proportion of residents with long-term illness.

During the election campaign and since, I fielded questions about the future of the health service from staff concerned about service provision and of course their own jobs. It would be good to hear it from the horse’s mouth.

Following the concerns at his plans voiced at the Lib Dem conference in Birmingham, Mr Lansley declared that he would listen.He said that government will “take the opportunity of a natural break in the passage of the bill to pause, to listen and to engage with all those who want the NHS to succeed”.

What better place to listen and engage with the public and those working in the health service than Cambridge? In fact, what better area than Queen Edith’s?

We look forward to hearing from our M.P.

Ian with former Mayor Cllr Evelyn Knowles

At the City Council’s annual meeting on Thursday, Councillor Ian Nimmo-Smith was made Mayor of the Cambridge for the municipal year 2011-2012.

In his speech proposing Ian, Cllr Damien Tunnacliffe said, ‘Cllr Nimmo-Smith has served as a councillor for over 20 years, and during that time has gained the affection of many, many people from all walks of life. He is a person of great talents and interests, a mathematician, a statistician, school governor, knowledgeable about all things horticultural – a shared interest with Margaret, his wife – a conservator of the River Cam and much more.

‘One great interest is music. I had the pleasure of listening to the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra in which Ian plays, only this past Saturday. Not only does Ian play the viola, he is a violin maker, and for many years ran the Cambridgeshire Holiday Orchestra Association courses for young musicians.’

Ian holds the record for the longest serving Leader of Cambridge City Council. He was Leader for nearly 7 years, from 2003 to 2010. He has also played an important part in committees, especially the Planning Committee.

Ian’s installation as Mayor was witnessed by quite a number of members of his family, including all his children and grand-children, and no fewer than 17 former mayors of the City, including Evelyn Knowles. As an innovation this year (for Cambridge anyway), Ian Nimmo-Smith has started a blog-site for his mayoral year. He will be posting there about his activities as mayor as well as about his work as a local councillor – even the Mayor still gets casework!

The blog site is: http://mayor.cambridge.gov.uk/ Do take a look – Ian has already started posting to it.

The Cambridge News covers the story here.

I am pleased to report that the noisy Virgin junction box on Holbrook Road that had been emitting a loud hum was silenced on Monday morning.

Yesterday, I received a message from Virgin Media, which they’ve asked me to pass on:

Thank you for highlighting the issue with the junction box in the Holbrook Road area of Cambridge. We have visited the junction box and have now silenced the noise caused by the power supply within the cabinet. We apologise for any inconvenience caused to residents in the area.

Paper people

Homerton Children’s Centre, Holbrook Road, is running a series of free parenting courses:

• First Aid, safety in the home
• Back to work course
• 123 Magic; parenting course

All of the courses are free. To book, contact Carly Bareham at the Centre

There’s also a Careers Fair coming up, plus a range of half-term activities for children.

Virgin Media service boxes are causing a nuisance here and in other parts of Cambridge. One particular box in Holbrook Road is emitting a low humming noise, a source of irritation to people living nearby as it can be heard from front gardens. It’s even keeping babies awake!

I have reported this to the City Council’s environmental health officers, who are on the case. As yet, Virgin Media have not sorted out the problem but I’ll continued to pursue this.  Meanwhile, please let me know of any similar problems.

Gagged!

Yesterday was the AGM of Cambridgeshire County Council, at which Conservative Cllr Nick Clarke was elected leader of the Council.  The Conservative Group voted through sweeping changes to the council’s Constitution, giving less than 24 hours’ notice and this was allowed by the Conservative chair of the meeting.

Cllr Manning (elected last year) commented ‘I was astounded by the arrogance of Nick Clarke and the acceptance of the new Chair of the meeting to allow the changes with such short notice.’

Some lowpoints:

• Bus subsidy cuts will continue
• The new constitutional changes gag the number of questions opposition members can ask of the Cabinet
• Conservatives repeatedly refused to delay the changes by a month to give more time to understand the changes

Members of the Lib Dem group repeatedly pointed out how undemocratic the process is and how rushing the changes through was foolhardy and risky. Unfortunately these pleas were ignored by the Conservative administration.

Leader Cllr Clarke was asked how he will assess the effect of his changes. He was unable to provide any targets. It remains to be seen whether any targets will be made public.

Peter Facey, Director of Unlock Democracy, will be leading a Policy Forum on Thursday evening for the Liberal Democrats.

In the light of the AV referendum, and with the Coalition’s House of Lords reform proposals just announced, an interesting evening of facts, visions, reflections, debates and hopes is in prospect. Do come along!

Venue: Ramsey Hall, St Luke’s Church, Victoria Road, Cambridge Start time: 7.30 p.m. 19th May 2011

ENTRY FREE!

Cambridgeshire library managers will be visiting the South Area meeting at the Queen Edith Chapel in Wulfstan Way this Wednesday. They’ll be doing a presentation on the Conservative administration’s library review and seeking the views of the public on the planned changes as well as ideas on the library service and its future viability. The Conservative councillor in charge of the library service has been invited but at this stage we are not certain if he is intending to come. As many local people will know, our own branch library, Rock Road Library, is under threat of closure or downgrade, so please come and speak up.

There’ll also be a presentation on the City Council’s new recycling services (batteries, other plastics, small electrical goods) as described in my previous post ‘Cambridge recycling just gets better and better‘.

and three planning applications:

65 Cavendish Avenue (11/0262/FUL)

37 Monkswell (11/0242FUL)

1 Mowbray Road (11/0535FUL)

You can read the full agenda here: http://www.cambridge.gov.uk/democracy/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=122&MId=374&Ver=4.

George Pippas has been elected as the new Liberal Democrat city councillor for Queen Edith’s. The figures were as follows:

Election Candidate	Party	Votes	%
George Pippas	Liberal Democrat	1318	41%	Elected
Vince Marino	Conservative	830	26%	Not elected
Sue Birtles	Labour	642	20%	Not elected
Brian Westcott	Green Party	416	13%	Not elected

George was a very hard-working candidate and I am looking forward to working with him on the City Council and in Queen Edith’s.

Thanks to all those who supported George and the Lib Dem team yesterday. You may be interested to know Queen Edith’s had the highest turnout in Cambridge (49.9%). Well done everyone!

For the full results in Cambridge, see here.