Entries from September 2009 ↓

Remember the Council executive will be hearing arguments for and against whether Southern Cement should expand its operations.

It will be at Grafton House in the Orwell Room, 15-17 Russell Road, at 6pm Tuesday 22^nd September.You can get a map here:

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&q=Grafton+House+Ipswich&ie=UTF8&ll=52.054259,1.143179&spn=0.008075,0.027509&z=15&iwloc=A

If you let me know about whether a lift will be needed then I can see about getting lifts arranged.

It is very important to tell your friends and neighbours.

The moves to merge council functions, reported here, seem to be a retrograde step.  We do need cuts in spending but this should not be seen as a way of getting the provision of services further away from council tax payers.

Council officials are too autonomous at the moment.  This plan was drawn up by council officers.  It seems to echo the American ballerina and political fixer Rahm Emmanuel’s quote, “never waste a good crisis”.

The sad thing is that Labour is saying the right thing, but for the wrong reason.  Due to the most incompetent government since Lord Liverpool we are now in a deep financial hole, and it’s starting to be recognised out there.  Even as a political stunt knee jerk opposition to cuts will only get Labour so far.  Labour supremo David Ellesmere’s response shows exactly why Labour currently is not fit to run a whelk stall let alone a country (but he does have some influential support).

Democracy is the reason to oppose this silly plan, not keeping every unison member in a job.

I’ve been trying to contact Southern Cement for a while now, as some of you will know without much success. I’m firmly of the opinion that the best solution all round is for them to voluntarily look for a solution that will enable people to get a night’s sleep.

Last week I thought I was finally getting somewhere when after a couple of attempts to talk to them by phone they called back and asked me to email them, which I promptly did. So after a couple of reminders I got this response from Barry Neale, their UK manager, on Monday:

“Dear Mr Spencer,

I am not able to enter into discussions with you or your group at this stage.”

…and that’s it.

If they were a teenager they’d have an ASBO.  If they were a family they’d be evicted.

Remember the meeting on Tuesday.

The Ipswich Council executive has agreed to consider a petition from the Wherstead Road residents association.  They are opposing Southern Cement’s application to build a new silo and asking the Council to refer this decision to a democratic body. Unfortunately the Council cannot consider the noise as a reason to oppose the extension of the plant. However we are opposing it on the grounds of dust.

We have been told by councillors from both the Conservative and Labour parties that it would be a good idea to get a large number of people to turn up, so please come along and get your friends to come along. It will be in the Orwell Room at Grafton House, 15-17 Russell Road, Ipswich at 6pm on Tuesday 22^nd September. You can get a map here:

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&q=Grafton+House+Ipswich&ie=UTF8&ll=52.054259,1.143179&spn=0.008075,0.027509&z=15&iwloc=A

If you let me know about whether a lift will be needed then I can see about getting lifts arranged.

It is very important to tell your friends and neighbours.

One of the subject that comes up on the doorstep, and in general conversation is that the pubs are closing.  The EUR, the Live and Let Live and the Silver Star are three that I can think of on the top of my head.

We all know that this is happening across the country, but did you know that across the country six pubs a day are closing?  This fact comes from a Conservative Party campaign to Save the Great British Pub.  They believe that this is because low alcohol drinks such as beer are taxed too much while high alcohol content drinks are taxed too little and not enough targetting of the anti-social drinkers who swarm around Ipswich town center on a weekend.

Perhaps, but the smoking ban didn’t help, either.  As a non-smoker it’s nice to be able to not have to choose your pub carefully (or put up with tobacco smells) but it’s hard to deny that this killed off otherwise viable pubs and social clubs.  Conservative Central Office seem to have missed that one.

Any way, they may be a bit too politically correct to go to the root of the problem, but it’s a step in the right direction.  You can sign the petition here.

Not that it seemed like it tonight

(Thanks to Gavin Maclure for the photo).

I asked some time ago when talking about Chris Mole’s website, “who is this Double SS design” that created his taxpayer funded site.

I got an email recently saying that it was actually Double S Design, run by Soo Smart, the wife of very long serving Bridge councillor Phil Smart.

How cosy.

I encouraged you to comment on the Evening Star article, so I thought I might as well do the same.  This is what I’ve put I’ve said on the site:

If Southern Cement’s accuracy matched their complacency then we would all be a lot better off.

1. They have been going for seven years, but in that time they’ve greatly expanded, taken on new (noisier) equipment and been bought out by a Spanish multinational

2. They have been getting complaints for three years. Implying that these complaints are new seriously misrepresents the whole situation.

3. Council officials ruled on this and not Ipswich Borough Council. Councillors on both sides are far less sympathetic to Southern Cement

4. The Council officials said that they did not have sufficient evidence of statutory nuisance, which is not the same as saying that they thought that Southern Cement were in the clear

Southern Cement seem to be intent on continuing this boycott of talks with sleepless local residents. This harms them because they get no credit for any of the ways they are trying out to minimise the noise. By refusing to talk to their neighbours they are harming their long term business. Not very clever.

There’s an article, rather unsympathetic, in the Evening Star on the port noise here.

What’s interesting is the response from Southern Cement:

“Up until recently this operation has been ongoing for almost seven years without any apparent problem,” the spokesman said.

“The council did not consider there to be any breach of legislation and has written to local residents informing them of this fact. Southern Cement has been actively investigating ways of minimising perceived noise and we will of course co-operate with IBC should further investigations arise.”

Seven years without a complaint?  Well four years at a smaller scale and then a growing number of complaints that’s shaken up the Bridge and Stoke Park areas of Ipswich.

I’m sure that Southern Cement are actively investigating, but wouldn’t it help if they actually talked to local residents?  That way their efforts would at least be known, and communicated to the local community,

You can comment on the article on their website if you wish.

(By the way we’re still looking for leafletters).

Does anyone know a good place to store audio clips.  I’ve got a couple of good clips from local radio that I’d like to share but can’t afford to blast my bandwidth.