Green Parties in Cambridgeshire’s fundraising campaign was launched over the weekend and within 48 hours we had reached a fifth of the amount we need!
Do help us get there quickly by joining the crowd: sharing and pledging if you possibly can. Go here to find out how things stand right now.
“Peterborough needs The Broadway Theatre, it does not need more flats. Peterborough City Council should refuse to entertain the idea of the theatre being converted into flats, and robbing us all of a sparkling jewel in Peterborough’s crown. The Broadway is good enough for Bill Kenwright to use for his legendary productions, and is a massive asset to the city. The theatre must remain as an entertainment venue.” says Barry.
Go here to sign Barry Warne’s petition.
Dear residents of Fletton & Stanground ward
I write a week after polling day in order to thank you for your votes.
The voters in Fletton & Stanground voted thus:
*Clark LAB 627
Fisher CON 434
*Lillis LD 722
Monk UKIP 623
Osaman CON 384
Radic GRN 237
Slinger IND 261
M Thulbourn LAB 529
N Thulbourn LAB 522
*Whitby UKIP 691
Williamson CON 406
I can’t pretend I am not disappointed at coming last, but I am not surprised and I am happy to deprive the delightful Peter Slinger of last place!
I’ve provided more detail here.
I thought I’d share a couple of thoughts. The first is about “counting agents”. There was a recount for Fletton & Stanground called by UKIP, who were only three votes away from winning third place. The recount took ages: I think about an hour. It eventually identified one error which awarded the Labour candidate one extra vote, leaving the UKIP candidate in fourth place, this time with a four vote gap. The grass skirt method of counting votes can easily produce a discrepancy. The grass skirt is the name given to a set of overlapping ballot papers which are stuck down using a large piece of paper laid below them, with a sticky “waist band”. The result is a large array of sheets which look almost as if they have been pleated. It is the method used for counting votes for multiple vacancy elections. There are two obvious moments for error. The counter can get the row total wrong. Some were using rulers. Others weren’t. And there is a moment when the whole grass skirt is taken away to a pile on a table in the centre of the room for data input, creating room for data input errors which can’t be scrutinised. Putting sets of results into a laptop is not something which happens with the normal voting system: where votes for one candidate are put into that candidate’s box. In the single vacancy system the counting agent can literally check that the papers come out of the ballot box, that they haven’t gone astray (e.g. fallen off a table) and that they are placed in the right box. Counters are working in the middle of the night and performing a task which is unbelievably slow with a lot of waiting around. It is very very easy to slip up, but with counting agents watching and intervening if a mistake happens, the risks of accidental or even deliberate miscounting (which would be an electoral offence!) are minimised.
Another thought wasn’t mine: it was that of the winning candidate’s partner. She remarked to me that Fletton & Stanground ward “wasn’t Green” because “people didn’t visit the Green Backyard”. I didn’t respond to her there and then (I’m not very articulate on election night and I am still pretty exhausted as I write this) but I felt hers might be an all too perceptive comment. People do visit the Green Backyard: a lot of people visit it. But maybe not that many from the area of the Fletton & Stanground ward? The Green Backyard is very much within the “inner city”, but the outer edges of Stanground, way beyond the parkway, are very rural indeed: green in many other ways. Until this year The Green Backyard was in the old Fletton & Woodston ward and I would say that it has established very strong associations with that area, and also with the embankment and with the city centre: it has become part of the Peterborough tourist’s trail. It is perfectly possible that Stanground village and surrounding area are not as well connected to the Green Backyard which now lies on the furthest western edge of the new ward. The Green Backyard has immense potential to act as a ecological and green project incubator for the city as a whole.
In fact, one of the reasons why I stood in this ward, was that it and its immediate neighbours have been subject to the most extraordinary boundary changes and as someone who knows and is very fond of Fletton, I am frankly concerned that Fletton has been divided into three. Dividing places is one way of conquering them, or of diluting their character and individuality. I mentioned this at the Fletton & Stanground hustings during the election period and at that I raised the possibility of creating a parish council in Stanground and, perhaps another in Fletton. Someone in the audience shot this idea down and the conversation was over before it had properly begun. I didn’t quite catch what she said, but I think it was to the effect that Church Street would never talk to South Street. On reflection, she must have been joking: if I caught her remark correctly, these streets run into one another: they are the same street.
If anyone wants to continue this conversation about parishing the areas of Peterborough which currently don’t have parish councils, here, I’d be delighted. This is a very big project and even if we could find enough support and practical help to see it through, it could take years.
Attended
John Peach CON
Beki Sellick LD
Mohammad Yousaf CON
Ali Shan GREEN
Absent but sent apologies
Richard Ferris LAB
Arfan Khan CON
John Shearman LAB
Graham Whitehead UKIP
Absent and no apology received (or read out)
Sabra Yasin LAB
This account is a transcription of my notes, intended solely for me and makes no pretensions to completeness. In view of some snide and bitter comments in the latest In Touch I am setting the record as straight as I can. The chair was Tony Forster. All are welcome to add statements or comments.
As the person coordinating for the Greens, I did get all the preceding emails and the decision making process was perfectly clear. No date will suit everybody, and ultimately it is the decision of the host when to hold an event. In my view people can wear two hats, and often have no choice but to do so and can do so with style and skill. And there is nothing wrong with missing an event.
Statements from candidates who were present
John Peach CON
Has been a councillor for 28 years and a community activist. Produces an eight page monthly newsletter and a weekly email.
Is concerned about HMOs and private rented properties. Says we need to check ownership.
Beki Sellick LD
Part time transport consultant. FOR selective licensing. AGAINST the super council and why it isn’t really devolution.
Said quite a lot, but I didn’t transcribe it.
Ali Shan GREEN
Said he was new to the Green Party. Wants to see safer roads and green spaces better protected.
Mohammad Yousaf CON
Went to St Paul’s School (no longer exists), then to Peterborough Regional College and is now an accountant, with an office opposite Kings School. Opposed the unitary authority move. Said that Stewart Jackson wants to take a stick to slum landlords.
Concerned about fly tipping, drug dealing, green spaces, anti social behaviour and cyclists on pavements. Unclear about 20mph limits, but wants safe routes to schools.
Thinks we need a CANDO approach to rubbish and an education campaign, enforced by letting agents and landlords.
New property owners already get a booklet from the council: this should include waste.
Has a soft monotonous voice which almost sent me to sleep.
Statements received from absent invitees
Richard Ferris LAB
FOR selective licensing and 20mph speed limits. Has introduced community skips and is working to identify fly tip hot spots.
Arfan Khan CON
Apologies and was visiting a sick relative in hospital.
John Shearman LAB
Apologies and why he can’t ever get to events on Sunday evenings. That he will remain committed to his work for the ward, despite being a carer and having as a consequence rather awkward personal circumstances.
City Council administration is dithering over 20mph.
Graham Whitehead UKIP
Sorry he couldn’t come, but had to take his children to a pop concert. Had organised the slate of 29 UKIP candidates this year. A long & (I thought) well written (compared to last year’s) statement was read out.
Yesterday, inspired by comments about walking by Ch Ali Shan, I smashed a personal best (PB). I completed a hyper leaflet drop. I knew it would be tough, so I decided to use a smart phone app called mapmywalk.
I was thinking I could picture my leaflet drop to produce something shareable with the team (we’d just broken all our leafletting records over the weekend) and that this would be fun for me on a tough day and we might end up with something we could all use. I don’t go nuts for personal performances or PBs (well, not usually!) but the mapping bit could turn out to be extremely useful. But I’d already set off, before deciding to give it a go and downloaded the app on the go. (I wouldn’t do that usually.) So I began with an inaccuracy: a bit of real walk not covered by the walk being built by the app.
Doing this properly, you’d have to decide: what is the start of the drop: where you start delivering, or your home?
As I went, I found good things to snap:
And you can’t go anywhere in Peterborough now without finding ghastly things on pavements. The stuff we can’t live with and before it has done a job is no longer worth the cost of disposal to people who value what cash they can get. I now report there and then, using: FixMyStreet, which has much more functionality than MyPeterborough which, despite being a very poor and unresponsive (i.e. the app developers don’t respond to user queries) app, is the only one listed on the council’s website. Here are some of the horrible things walkers come across every day in Peterborough:
You can pause the “walk” on the app and resume, so as keep the walk part look like an actual walk and the stop and do things or chat to people not look like part of the “walk”. If it were possible to do this correctly, the app would give you an accurate average speed for when you were really walking. It sounds easy, but every time I did something like reporting a discarded pct and then the mouldy chair without remembering to pause the app each time, there would be an impact on my “walk’s” average speed and my results would get less and less true.
In fact, yesterday, I think as I pressed resume, just after the mouldy chair by the bus stop and the public toilets which have been closed for over a decade, I lifted my head, ready to go and a massive training lorry swung swung into a small tree in front of my eyes. There are moments when apps are not even in your consciousness.
But once or twice I also forgot to resume until I was several hundred yards from where I’d stopped. This error is funny because the app creates something which looks like a flight path on the “walk”. When I did this and turned a corner, the app would draw a flight path straight through a house. And when I stopped in The Crown for a coffee (yes, they do), the app stayed there long after I’d set off again, sat and maybe dozing in front of the fire, improving my average as I walked on and on without using any time, and waiting for another short flight.
I wonder if a pedometer rather than a route mapper would have worked better for me, or maybe one which does both? Because unless you are delivering to homes with very long driveways, the app doesn’t see the little sideways ducks and dives from the pavement to the letterboxes. That is OK if what you are mapping is an ordinary walk. But a leaflet drop is something else.
People look down on leafletting or assume (sometimes at their peril) that it is easy. In fact it isn’t easy: it is very physical and the best footwear would probably be cross trainers. It isn’t just the walking: it is the sharp turns round gates, bending down to letterboxes, some of them at ground level. Leafletting certainly gives your whole body a workout. This is why councillors ask people to help them deliver and promise them they can shrink their waistlines. This promise is actually true. It is also hard on the knees, because if you walk fast your body needs to change direction fast.Which app best describes this sort of activity?
As for today, I might write a bit and check on my seedlings or if my legs can cope, I might pop down to the Real Nappy Library, who are doing their bit to reduce landfilled nappies in Central Park today till 2pm.
