Entries from July 2009 ↓

Right at the beginning of April 2007, intrepid local historian Simon Knott (of the Suffolk Churches website) decided to build a site devoted to the Ipswich Railway Station.

There are pictures of Halifax Quay, which is near the Bourne Bridge on Wherstead Road:

I do think Simon made one mistake, which was to ascribe the following to St Matthew’s underground station rather than the EUR public house in Croft Street, which closed a couple of years ago:

If you are wondering why it no longer exists, indeed why so few people talk about it the answer is in this link:

Simon Knott we salute you!

An anonymous commenter (and they want to remain that way as they went to the trouble of using an anonymizer to make this web posting) has taken me to task for pointing out that Chris Mole was using Public Impact to send out party political propaganda using his taxpayer funded office expense account, against parliamentary rules.

I said at the end of the original post “He should pay back every penny that we the taxpayers paid to Public Impact.”

He did not break the rules on using the communicaton allowance, which is designed with the purpose of funding Labour MPs re-election campaigns.

So one year in four he’s kept to both the letter and spirit of bad rules.

However for three of the four years he’s systematically abused his allowances and should pay back every penny paid to Public Interest from his office allowances.

We now know that Chris Mole channels £500 a month to the Ipswich Labour Party for a service which the council ould do for free, but there is a smaller but still odd anomalies.

If we go back to the money we pay to the Ipswich Labour Party:

http://mpsallowances.parliament.uk/mpslordsandoffices/hocallowances/allowances-by-mp/chris-mole/Chris_Mole_0708_IEP.pdf#page=[115]

…we see a line (you may have to go to page 115 manually, depending on your browser) :

Newspapers EADT/Evening Star Online editions       £195

Was the online access to the Evening Star used by any of the Labour staff in the building?  For example, Councillor John Cook the Labour Party agent (who us taxpayers don’t pay for, officially) is very, very fond of commenting on stories some political, some not.

If true it’s a tiny problem, but there really does not seem to be enough care for the seperation of the public and the party political from Mr Mole.

Another Photograph of Bridge, this one is particularly dear to me as it is around the corner from where I live.

Simon Knott (who does the excellent Suffolk Churches website) has also transcribed the plaques.

There is one correction, later on Simon says that he thinks that the pentecostalist church next door used to be St. Peter’s parish rooms, but I was told by Father Leeder at St. Pancras that this was actually an outstation of St. Pancras’s when St Pancras covered most of Bridge Ward.  It may have been both at different times.

Sometimes it’s good to see a happy ending, and this dog from Wherstead Road is now safe due to a thoroughly professional effort from the Princes Street fire station.

I was going through my statistics today and noticed the search Ipswich Noise Abatement Group (this blog comes first).  I rarely take these things that seriously but I thought I’d find out who’s looking at this, from the web address 80.34.174.215, and what do you know, it’s owned by Telefonica de Espana.

Looking further it seems that 11.05% of my web hits are from Spain.  Allow for the fact that this is getting low traffic (it’s a new blog, I say defensively) that’s still abnormal.  You’d expect a few people to be assigned wrongly (1.93% of my visitors are from the Republic of Moldova), but not this wrongly.

So the only people who would be interested are Uniland SA, the parent company of Southern Cement, the most offensive noise polluter in Ipswich port.

So a big Hola to all you Catalan cement makers, and please keep the noise down.

Sometimes it’s hardest to see what’s in front of your own nose. So hidden in plain view is a very important fact, Southern Cement- the people causing misery for all those people in the Hayes, in the Maidenhall Estate, on the Wherstead Road and in Chatsworth Crescent, is in fact the British subsidiary of Uniland SA, a large Spanish cement company. It was on their homepage:

http://www.southerncement.co.uk/

Southern Cement still holds itself out as quite independent saying “This gives us the benefit of independence in the UK with the support of one of Europe’s leading cement manufacturers”.

They were bought out in 2004, not long after they started, although there doesn’t seem to be any press mention of Uniland, which makes it sounds a lot more British.

In fact, according to their results, they make up rougly 1-2% of the turnover and employees of the group.

So not only are they disturbing our sleep two weeks in three they are not even the British based independent that they claim to be.

No wonder they are happy to crank up the noise pollution, they don’t just not live in this town – they don’t even live in this country.

Public Impact, for who we the taxpayer pay more than £4,000 a year, are not a simple print shop.  They are a Labour Party operation, although they do not seem to have any above the counter links.  However they are clear on their (Labour facing) page as to what they are about:

We do not work for the other parties nor their MPs. We are staffed by Labour Party members and supporters.

In short, they are highly partisan and any public money going towards them will be expected to be going towards electing or re-electing Labour candidates.

So bad enough in a “communications” budget, but surely our MP would not misuse his expenses to get their services in an office budget?

Well not the last year, but the year before that?

Sure he did:

£1110.48 for 30,000 leaflets in 2006/07:

http://mpsallowances.parliament.uk/mpslordsandoffices/hocallowances/allowances-by-mp/chris-mole/Chris_Mole_0607_IEP.pdf#=page[58]

£2,546.41 for 70,000 leaflets and 500 posters in 2005/06 (election year):

http://mpsallowances.parliament.uk/mpslordsandoffices/hocallowances/allowances-by-mp/chris-mole/Chris_Mole_0506_IEP.pdf#=page[39]

£1,571.06 for 35,000 leaflets in 2004/5:

http://mpsallowances.parliament.uk/mpslordsandoffices/hocallowances/allowances-by-mp/chris-mole/Chris_Mole_0405_IEP.pdf

£5,227.95 on literature over three years.  That makes up for a lot of lost Labour Party members and union subscriptions.

And here are the rules from the Green Book that is supposed to that claims to govern the Parliamentary allowances:

The AOE is an allowance designed to provide for facilities, equipment, supplies and services for Members and their staff.

It may only be used to meet the following costs:

• Accommodation for office or surgery use or for occasional meetings
• Equipment and supplies for the office or surgery
• Work commissioned and other services
• Certain travel costs not met out of travel expenditure

…….

The only area that the Public Impact propaganda could potentially claim to be calling under is for “Work commissioned and other services”, however even this is not open to interpretation:

• Maintenance services for hardware, software and equipment
• Interpreting and translation services
• Training for Members or staff
• Recruitment services
• Work that you would reasonably expect a member of your staff to undertake, for example, a piece of research

It is cut and dried, Chris Mole has used the taxpayer to pay for propaganda, against both the spirit and the letter of the rules.  He should pay back every penny that we the taxpayers paid to Public Impact.

It’s quieter than before, but who knows how long it will last like that.  Remember you can call 433444 if you are suffering from the noise.

The is a local treasure in Bridge, great atmosphere, plenty of local bands play there and a good beer garden.

So here’s a pircture