Entries from January 2010 ↓

Well done to Suffolk Coastal Conservative Association for choosing some local candidates in their short list.  One of the depressing things about the professionalisation of politics has been the growth of the short lists with members who have no links to the constituency.

Another mess like Ipswich North would be too much.

I was at Ipswich Council’s Port Focus group.  At one point it was not clear if there were any councillors from Bridge who would be present (Bryony Rudkin did come in later.) I understand that the minutes will be out soon, and I will link to them.  Until then there are some pertinent points:

1.  Southern Cement have fitted on a silencer.  The Council Officers have all claimed that this reduces the noise considerably.

2.  The dust is going to be monitored partly by access to Southern Cement’s close circuit TV cameras

3.  The point was made by many of the councillors and residents that Southern Cement actually hurt their cause and made life more difficult for themselves by refusing to talk to the residents, and councillors.

4.  The Noise Action Group stated that while a silencer was welcome it was too early to declare victory on the noise and the real test will be in spring and early summer when conditions change.

5.  The port focus group leads into the port liaison group.  Yes, it is too bureaucratic but that’s what comes of not talking to residents.  Any way, we’ve elected Peter Evans, one of the founders of the Noise Action Group and by far the most radical of the prominent activists to the Port Liaison Group.

There are other issues which will be addressed later.

One of the most frequent searches I get is for the Ipswich Underground.

I’m not really how I can say this nicely but IT NEVER EXISTED.

However here are some links:

The Ipswich Star discussion

A transport forum discusses this

The Flickr group

And the page that started the whole thing

Sorry for the Daily Mail type headline, but this little comment invited it:

http://www.davidosler.com/2010/01/hewitt_hoon_and_hubris.html#comment-40564

Ipswich’s very own Andrew Coates manages to fit in quite a few little allegations:

- Ipswich Labour, led by John Cook the Norwich North candidate (the “full-time Secretary-Agent”) is busy building links and working closely with the “hard left”
- The Ipswich Buses campaign is a front for a hard left campaign
- Sandy Martin (“Comrade Sandy Martin” no less) was elected as leader of the Suffolk Labour county council group (all four of them) because of non-Comrade Bryony Rudkin’s Blairite deviation

John Cook is definately left wing enough to be comfortable in a BBC editorial meeting but I suspect that he won’t welcome Andrew Coates blowing the cover on that non-existent plot.  Chris Mole, who’s the minister in charge of bus privatisation, could stop the bus privatisation in its tracks, but he won’t.  Ipswich Labour councillors, including the alleged Brezhnevites of Cook and Martin, could force him to block it, but they won’t.

They know that if Labour gets in they will have to privatise it in some shape (which is why they are saying it’s not the right time) and that currently it makes a great signature magnet and vote propellant.  I’m not saying this as a condemnation as I know that all parties do this.

The Ipswich Buses campaign is a way of getting some last gasp of life from the grass roots, no more, no less.

I can’t claim any insight into the machinations of the Suffolk Labour group of four, but whatever they may tell their former comrade about their Leninist sympathies I somehow think that the fact that Sandy Martin comfortably won a marginal seat in the face of a concerted Tory campaign while Bryony Rudkin almost lost one of Labour’s safest county seat in the face of one Tory leaflet (I was her Tory opponent and I spent most of election day in Sandy Martin’s seat) probably had more to do with it.

I know who I’d want to lead me.

Why the contrasting fortunes?  Sandy Martin is a good local campaigner and he’s loved for it.  If he was a right wing Tory or a dripping wet Liberal doing the same sort of assiduous work he’d win with the same ease. 

Bryony Rudkin may have other qualities, but she’s not interested in being a ward councillor and everyone knows it.  In four county council elections, she’s never sought re-election in any ward, and when she tried to to represent substantially the same ward as she represented in the borough she got the second worse Labour result on the night (after Gainsborough – and no one saw that coming).  Not only that her previous ward, the rock solid Chantry elected a Tory for the first time since the estate was built.  If I were Andrew Coates I’d be asking why Labour lets her float around safe wards like a butterfly making safe seats marginal.  Obviously not much sympathy for his revolution in the self-destructive Labour machine.

There may be some pseudo-Marxist plot to get rid of all traces of the Blairite deviation from Suffolk County Council, but just perhaps it may be that Labour councillors recognise that they’re better off with a leader who wins marginal seats than one who almost loses safe ones.

A pioneering agreement in Oxford may be able to offer hope to people on Wherstead Road.  Wherstead Road is plagued by sporadic bus services, which would be far more tolerable if they were properly spaced out.  Under typically stupid European Union rules this cannot be changed because there are a number of different operators on the route they cannot get together to redraw the timetable to space out their bus times, the authorities prefering that they bunched up their services to make them “competitive”.  Why Europe needs to get involved in bus services that don’t even cross a county border, let alone an international border, is typically left unexplained.

This has meant that there is an almost two hour gap between buses in the evening on the route out of the town centre, and this starts almost exactly when the first commuter train comes in from London.  Thanks Brussels. 

Oxford has moved to stop their version of this needless, mandated competitive inefficiency by getting an agreement between the bus operating companies.  Hopefully we won’t have some European under-secretary for buses deciding that this won’t work.

In fact the minister who could decide on this would be Chris Mole.  I know that he doesn’t keep an eye on local media any more, but a couple of his tax paid staff do (even this humble site), so perhaps they can pass on the message that if he blocks the Oxford deal it will play badly on the Wherstead Road.  We’ll make sure of it.

The cement ship has been spotted in port, coming in this morning. I noticed a hum at Belstead Avenue at 6.40 in the morning, but it wasn’t that intrusive.
If anyone else notices the hum, or doesn’t notice it, then it would be appreciated if you can let us know. This is going to be a test case for the actions of Southern Cement and the Port of Ipsiwich.

We hope to give a more full account of the port focus group in the near future. We have managed to get Peter Evans, one of the founders of the Noise Action group, appointed to the Port Liaison group. Southern Cement have also fitted a silencer on their unloading machinery. While welcoming this we want to see if the recent quiet spell is due to the silencer or the fact that winter seems to have dampened the noise.

To get on to the Noise Action Group newsletter simply email noise@bridgeward.org.uk

The Council runs a bus service.  They want to sell it off.  There is a big local campaign led by the local (and under threat) Labour MP.  The government minister in charge says that while sympathetic, there’s nothing he wants to do, saying that it’s up to councils.

But it’s not Ipswich, it’s Plymouth.  And the minister who has the power to shut the whole thing down?  Chris Mole.

He could do the whole thing in Ipswich, his own patch.  He won’t.  Why?

Well if you look at the speech it gives a clue, lot’s of talk about how much he likes council owned bus services and no real action to keep them council owned.

He may not exercise his power to keep the buses council owned, but at least it will get the petitions signed and the vote out.  And in the end that’s all that counts in Labour’s once proud Fortress Ipswich.

I’ve spent some time when I should have been doing proper work updating the blog and finally putting a new look in.

If anyone has any ideas for a better WordPress theme then let me know.

The Ipswich2006.com domain has been hijacked.  This was a great site with a lot of old photographs and memories, particularly around Old Stoke.  Now if you go to the domain it’s been hijacked by some comparison site:

http://www.ipswich2006.com/

There’s still a discussion site here:

http://www.mrsite.co.uk/uforum/default.aspx?siteid=ipswich2006com&domain=ipswich2006.com

The ownership details are here (I have no idea if they are current or historic) :

http://whois.domaintools.com/ipswich2006.com

The Evening Star has a piece about a substantial step forward in the campaign to stop heart services being removed from Ipswich hospital.  Would it have been at all possible without Ben Gummer’s campaign and investigation?

In other words if had been left to Chris Mole then the heart services would have gone.  There’s no use denying this.  No matter how much Labour councillors hate it, being a marginal constituency – or ward – has its advantages.