Time to recycle Eric Pickles?

‘For most people, the only visible service that they get from the council is the removal of refuse.’

Eric Pickles, Daily Mail, 30th September

What a fatuous comment and how deeply insulting to the thousands of people who work in councils throughout the country.

The hardworking people who empty our bins and sweep the streets have hundreds of thousands of colleagues working alongside them in their councils: 1.7 million according to the LGA1 – yet Pickles says they are invisible.

One wonders what kind of world Pickles’s people inhabit. Do they not register their children at birth or send them to school? Do they not bury their dead? Do they never use a public toilet? Do they fly over the pavements and roads? Do they never look at a tree or stroll in the park? And one assumes they have their own personal fire engine? All of these are services provided by either Cambridge City Council or Cambridgeshire County Council.

‘All the Council does for me is empty my bins’ is not a clever remark from anyone, but there is no excuse for this kind of talk from Eric Pickles, who is the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. He is responsible for local government and should know better. This casual denial of his army of council workers reduces his credibility. He is not fit for the job.

Would you like to see a Farmers’ Market in Queen Edith’s? Possibly outside the Wulfstan Way shops, or in the Hills Road area?

A farmers’ market is a market in which farmers, growers or producers from a defined local area are present in person to sell their own produce, direct to the public. All products sold should have been grown, reared, caught, brewed, pickled, baked, smoked or processed by the stallholder. For more information, see http://www.farmersmarkets.net/

Farmers’ markets are a great way of bringing producers and customers from the same area together. Not only do they support the local economy, but they gives you fresh and healthy food and they reduce food miles – helping the environment as well as making life easier for those who cannot get into town easily.

If you’d like to be involved, please contact me.

books

The Save Cambridgeshire  Libraries petition was presented to Tory county councillors at Shire Hall yesterday (28th September). It is the Conservative administration at the County Council that we need to persuade to keep our libraries in their current form. Professor Jane Elliott, the chair of the Friends of Rock Road Library, spoke eloquently of the need for a professional service rooted in the local community.

The 8,000+ names calling for Cambridgeshire County Council to keep libraries open with professional librarians were presented to Cambridgeshire County Council’s Cabinet at Shire Hall and the Cabinet  heard from campaigners from various Cambridge libraries. There was a strong contingent from Rock Road Library to ‘welcome’ the councillors – you may have seen us on the news. If not, you may still catch it at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rpwxj.

Thank you to all the people who signed the petition, emailed friends, stood around in school playgrounds, as well as everyone still involved with the campaign.

Here is the wording of the petition, which garnered 2,500 electronic signatures and 5,500 on paper. Stupendous.

We the undersigned call upon Cambridgeshire County Council to reject proposals to close libraries or to replace the existing professional service with a reduced service run by volunteers. We believe that libraries are a vital part of the community.

The Council has now dropped its plan to set up a Trust to manage the library service but is still looking at the use of volunteers. While we know there are many people who value their libraries and are willing to spend some of their own time helping to work in the library and raise funds, there is still a need for the experience and expertise of professional librarians.

Co-location, putting public services together is an interesting idea if it can work without too much compromise. Books and bookcases however, do not move easily, so it may be more practical for other services to come to the library rather than for the library to move elsewhere.

Most people who live in the Queen Edith’s area – the part of Cambridge between Hills and Cherry Hinton Roads and Wort’s Causeway – would agree with me. They are represented by three city councillors (including yours truly), and we pay our council tax and business rates to Cambridge City Council. Queen Edith’s is home to Homerton College, part of the University of Cambridge, and a good proportion of the city’s sixth-form students come to college here every day.

Alone amongst the fourteen wards of the City of Cambridge, we are  assigned to the South Cambridgeshire constituency, and have a different MP from the rest of Cambridge. This makes the Cambridge constituency a very strange shape, rather like Attila the Hun! The incongruity of this is supported by the number of times Queen Edith’s separation from the rest of Cambridge is mentioned when the Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire constituencies are described.

You may have read about the shake-up of constituency boundaries. The Government is cutting down the number of parliamentary constituencies and standardising the number of people in them – a good idea, but it involves a lot of arithmetic and calculation, not all of it with results that recognize natural communities. In future, no Member of Parliament is to represent fewer than 72,810 or more than 80,473 electors. The changes are being worked up by the Boundary Commission and they are expected to be in force by the time of the next General Election in 2015.

The proposals have just been published, and you can read them on the Boundary Commission‘s website. If you prefer to look at a printed copy, then visit Cambridge City Council‘s Customer Services Centre on Regent Street, the Guildhall, or the Council’s South Area Office on Cherry Hinton Road.

They are proposing to keep Queen Edith’s in the South Cambridgeshire constituency, even though new areas are going in, such as Teversham and Fulbourn, and its western flank is being converted into a brand new constituency to be called St Neots. It would seem more logical to move one of the wards in the east of the city – moving the village of Cherry Hinton, for example, would maintain the right numbers in Cambridge and South Cambs, and make more sense geographically.

There will be a series of local hearings: the Cambridge one will be at the Gonville Hotel, 10th-11th November. Alternatively, you can comment on line on the Boundary Commission’s website.

police car

E-Cops report that there have been thefts from vehicles in Queen Edith’s recently.

Cars in Topcliffe Way, Beaumont Crescent and Hills Road have been broken into. The police comment: ‘Items taken in some of these crimes include property that has been left on show inside the vehicle. Please make sure you do not make your vehicle a target, by removing property from within when you leave it and always lock and secure it. These offenders are usually just opportunists who will spot something left inside the car and that will be enough for them to gain entry and steal that item in the process causing damage to your vehicle.’ It’s so easy to forget to remove or hide something.

Bikes have also been stollen in Hills Road and there was an attempt to break into a property on Queen Edith’s Way.

The police will be at the November South Area Committee (Cherry Hinton Village Centre) to report in more detail on what is happening locally and to propose their priorities for the coming season.

If you would like to receive regular updates from our local police team and have an e-mail account, why not sign up for e-cops. Visit http://www.cambs-police.co.uk/myneighbourhood/ecops/

Cambridge City Council has just put out a reminder to local groups that grant applications should be in by 5th October 2011.

Sustainable City grants are, as the name suggests, to fund projects that improve sustainability. They should meet one of the following three aims:

• Tackle the causes and consequences of climate change
• Minimise waste
• Protect the local environment

See http://www.cambridge.gov.uk/ccm/content/environment-and-recycling/sustainable-city/projects-we-fund.en to see the type of projects that have been funded recently. Application forms should be sent to Helen Brookes at Cambridge City Council: grants@cambridge.gov.uk

Community Development and Leisure grants are also available. Here is a list of the types of organization and activity that attract grant funding:

• Organisations that provide activities and services to people who are disadvantaged or marginalised by their social or economic circumstances
• Organisations that enable people to improve their own well being and participate in their communities
• Organisations that enable people to participate in making decisions and influence the services that affect their lives
• Activities which increase people’s awareness of the city’s cultural diversity, and provides opportunities to celebrate it
• Activities which bring people together to identify common issues and bring about positive changes in their communities
• High levels of user involvement in identifying local needs and developing projects which respond to those needs
• Organisations which develop and deliver sustainable solutions to social and economic challenges

These grants are decided by the local Area Committee, which meets approximately every two months at the Cherry Hinton Village Centre.

For more information on grants, and to download forms and eligibility rules, see the Council’s website.

Sainsbury’s has applied for a premises licence (to sell alcohol and late-night refreshments) at the Cambridge Leisure Park on Clifton Road, where they plan to open a Sainsbury’s Local. They wish to sell alcohol between the hours of 6.00 a.m. and 11.00 p.m. Details can be found at www.cambridge.gov.uk/licences

If you live or work nearby, you qualify as an interested party and can make a representation on the application. Your comments must relate to one of Cambridge City Council’s four licensing objectives, which are:

• the prevention of crime and disorder
• public safety
• the prevention of public nuisance
• the protection of children from harm

You can comment on line on the Council’s website or fill in a form. Representation-form-person-body

I was surprised to see this application, since the Cambridge Leisure Park is designated as a cumulative impact area, ie a business has to demonstrate that it will not add to alcohol-related problems in the area. (See previous post: http://amandataylor.mycouncillor.org/2011/03/01/388/). The Leisure Park already has a high level of alcohol-related crime and it is hard to see how Sainsbury’s will be able to convince us that another off-licence facility won’t make things worse.

Watch this space.

Cambridge City Foodbank is a local charity launched last November by people from the city churches. It aims to help people in crisis by providing emergency food and other essentials while they are waiting for other care agencies to start work.

The charity collects food from churches and schools and takes it to Pickfords.There, it is boxed up to provide food boxes for three days. Those in need apply via the Citizens Advice Bureau, health visitor or other care agency. At present the food is given out twice a week but it is hoped to increase this to every day this winter.

Livia Fraser of St John the Evangelist Church in Hills Road is bringing the food collection boxes to St John’s. Every Sunday, whether you’re a member of the church or not, you can leave food there just before 10am or 6pm. Here is a shopping list to show the things required:

Food bank

• Milk (UHT or powdered)
• Sugar
• Fruit juice (long life cartons)
• Soup
• Pasta sauce
• Sponge pudding in tins
• Tinned tomatoes
• Cereal
• Tinned rice pudding
• Tea bags
• Instant coffee
• Instant mashed potato
• Rice
• Pasta
• Tinned meat
• Tinned fish
• Tinned fruit
• Tinned vegetables
• Jam
• Biscuits
• Snack bars
• Nappies
• Formula milk