Entries from August 2009 ↓

This message was sent to the cement ship email list (ask me and I’ll add you) and I think that it is a good idea to give it as broad an audience as possible:

Dear All,
SOUTH WEST FORUM MEETING at 6.15pm St Francis Church Hall, 192 Hawthorn
Drive, Ipswich, Wednesday 2nd September 2009
THIS Wednesday is an important day concerning our on-going noise battle   At
the SW  Forum Peter Evans will get a short time to present our case. There
will be many councilors present .
It is very important that as many people as possible attend, so it can be
seen how many people  are affected and are bothered enought to attend .
PLEASE DO YOUR BEST TO ATTEND.  Do tell your neighbours as well.
If you need a lift, give me an email or phone call.
If you can take a passenger or two, please contact me.
I know all these meetings are wearing and it seems that we are not getting
very far quickly, but NO SHOW  will mean NO STOPPING OF THE NOISE.
We must keep up the pressure. They would like us to give up.

Apparently sites like this are “hyperlocal” and the wave of the future, the phenomena has been written about in the Guardian and even has at least one blog dedicated to it.

And you, too can be part of the phenomena by becoming a street reporter.

It’s not finished, and there’s going to be more, but we’ve started a noise abatement group site here:

http://bridgeward.org.uk/group/noise/home.html

We’re hoping to get some help with delivering an upcoming leaflet in Stoke Park and Maidenhall Estate, as well.

Well the noise has started again.  Please don’t forget to complain.  It would be interesting to know whether it’s better or worse than usual.

We are also looking for people to be able to give lifts to the South West Area forum next Wednesday.

The recent sad announcement of job losses at Ransomes means that one of Bridge’s formerly major employers is a good time to revisit the history of the firm.  Formerly Ipswich (which chided me, quite rightly, for my uncanny ability to get the wrong road names) has an interesting take on Ransomes history.  He quite rightly points out that the first beneficiary of big government is big business.

I have very little time for those who wish to stand for election, including myself, and I don’t mean to make any exception here.

If you wish to meet, harangue or lobby the Conservative parliamentary candidate he will be at Isaacs on the waterfront on the less good side of Ipswich at 8pm today.  Give him hell.

There’s still time to complain about the expansion of Southern Cement, but it will run out soon.  We’ve already had councillors from Stoke Park (who are now getting a large number of complaints about the noise) and local Residents Associations.  One of the Bridge ward councillors has also expressed his unease.

We’ve also petitioned the Council Executive to take the decision rather than the officials.  By all means join in and keep up the pressure.  The address is:

I’m not always complimentary about councillors, so I’m going to have to take a deep breath and be nice about some of them now.

The Evening Star’s excellent piece of investigative reporting that dug up councillor’s expenses across Suffolk shows a couple of interesting things about Ipswich. I’ve done some further number crunching (you can see the spreadheet here) and it shows that at least with expenses Ipswich is the second cheapest council per councillor and although a 4% increase is above inflation but is still far lower than the average increase in the county and lower than any proposed increase in MP’s expenses.

So for once, we can say well done to Ipswich Borough Council.  To be honest this can’t show the benefits of a Tory administration (many other Suffolk councils are Tory) but it does show that a closely competitive set of elections can keep councillors honest.  With losing by 13 votes, I’m glad to be contributing to that fear.

If Chris Mole started to think of Ipswich as being marginal would he be so cavalier in using taxpayer money to pay salaries for the Ipswich Labour Party?

You can join the Ipswich Hospital Trust at the link below:

http://www.ipswichhospital.net/foundationtrust/membership.asp

I know that some people who read this blog may be suspicious of this, but we need to get some local involvement and direction in our health services, and setting up and taking part in the trust is the best way we have available.