Entries from May 2010 ↓

I was full of anticipation when Gordon Brown announced his list of peers, but I’m afraid that Bridge Ward has been cheated.

It seems that in a typical act of short sightedness Dame Bryony Rudkin is not Lady Bryony. Why is there no peerage for Bryony? If there can be peerages for Floella Benjamin and Guy Richie’s mum, surely the treasure of Bridge Ward deserves her emine. Lady Bryony of Tuddenham Road has a nice ring for the treasure of Bridge Ward.

I suppose the recession, the deficit, the European Constitution and the sale of gold at the bottom of the market are all worse marks against the most disastrous Prime Minister since the War of the Roses, but not by much.

Just a note to say that the fun day will be on at 28th August. More details to follow.

A story reaches me about the small business hustings at the General Election.

A questioner asked whether the General Election candidates lived in the Ipswich Constituency. Chris Mole answered that he had been around for thirty years. Ben Gummer said that he was living in the constituency and had been in Suffolk all his life. Mark Dyson (who’s now left the scene) came out with some waffle about Battersea being like Bristol being like Ipswich.

An interesting question, and I wasn’t at the hustings so it wasn’t my particular obsession coming out again. Or was it?

The questioner was Susan Smart, who runs a successful design agency Double S Designs. She’s probably better known to readers as Mrs Philip Smart, the wife of the youngest mayor of Ipswich, Labour transport spokesman, former chairman of Ipswich Buses and proud resident of Holywells Ward. Oh, and a councillor for Bridge Ward, I suppose he needs a platform and Bridge was as good a safe seat as any when he started.

So is this a guilty conscience, or a nagging fear?

Whoever the Conservative candidate for Bridge is at the next borough election I’m going to move heaven and earth to make sure he or she lives in the ward. Can Labour promise the same?

As it’s Philip Smart’s turn to be up for re-election, that will be an interesting question.

If anyone has any questions for the port or enviromnmental services, please let me know. It starts at 6 pm, Monday.

Don’t worry, I’m still alive. Just resting.

The next meeting is on the 24th. If you have any comments or questions on the port and whether it is being a good neighbour then please email me on james@bridgeward.org.uk and I will take your queries further.

OK, this is for the political anoraks out there. 200 years of Hansard is now online, and this includes every MP Ipswich has had since 1803.

I’ve started looking for local mentions and I’ve found three for Wherstead Road and two for Burrell Road. (The search facility is slow, but it is more complete than using Google). Belstead Avenue, Rectory Road and Belstead Road don’t seem to get mentioned at all – I do, however have suspicions as to how complete the search facility is. Maidenhall Estate and Laurelhayes are also badly served. I do hope that Ben Gummer does better.

On the other hand the Port of Ipswich gets 58 mentions and Ipswich Buses gets two.

Searching for your own name is more fun that it should be.

I was at the Maidenhall Residents Association on Friday to pick up some information and we got to talking about their website. It seems that when they search on Google then my website comes up first and theirs’ doesn’t come up.

They have had a bit of an issue updating this, but their website is here:

Maidenhall Residents Association

Hopefully this will help them get on the first page of Google, and if it doesn’t then anyone who’s just found the post through searching for them will find it now.

If you have come looking for their site, feel free to stay around.

I’ve managed to get Ben Gummer to agree to a trip to Parliament for Bridge Ward people. Please let me know if you’re interested, it’s very early days at the moment.

My email is james@bridgeward.org.uk

Some miscellaneous notes before politics stops being as interesting. I’m going to squeeze in as much as possible, as I don’t think I’ll get away with it otherwise.

When Chris Mole saw the figures, instead of calling for a recount (as we all feared) he reached over to Ben Gummer, extended his hand and said “well done, Ben”. He then read a pre-prepared speech which was peculiarly graceless – not even mentioning Ben’s campaign in the same way that Bill Rammell had. Then on TV the next day he is gracious again.

Why this split behaviour, this departure from the norm? Well it was the Labour Party activists, who seemed to have stitched him up by concentrating on winning the borough, who had stayed to listen. It was very clear that Chris Mole was talking about an imminent election, and he dearly wanted to be the candidate. And Ipswich Labour Party was in no mood to let a conciliatory speaker be there candidate.

I think we won’t see Chris Mole stand again, and instead see a senior figure from the current Labour group emerge as the candidate. Just coincidentally they will probably be one of the same people who decided to cut Chris Mole off.

In other news Alasdair Ross is going as Labour’s candidate as mayor. Yes a real uniter, not a divider. If the Liberals do give it to him then it should keep him busy and away from internal Labour matters. Funny that he’s the candidate as he would be almost as troublesome as John Cook if he rumbled what the Labour group had done. But some people find it hard to think about more than one thing at a time.

Finally my builder called up today to talk about the coalition, he’s barely talked more than two words about politics – and that was just to say that my wife was in a leaflet. It was the main topic in the office, although the known Labour supporters were not chatting so much. At least I know where all the Tories are now should this get to be like the 1990s again.

That’s a lot done.

I will start going back to normal and courting the smaller Bridge specific readership now that the excitement of coalition building and elections seems to have worn down.