Entries from September 2010 ↓

From the Labour Party website, how the Ipswich Labour Party voted on first preferences:

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A Labour councillor in Bridge Ward called me “more than a little bit arrogant” and a Labour councillor outside Bridge called me a “big head”.  Perhaps they weren’t talking about my speaking out of turn after all.

All I can say is that if I can make Ben Gummer photogenic, I must have some talent.

(No road signs got broken in the making of this photograph.)

Now I know that our absentee Labour Councillors are decent, well meaning types, but the thing that gets me up in the morning is their patronising attitude that they know best and we, mere residents, know least.  And that we should be grateful for their concern.

The Labour Party conference showed another example of this paternalistic attitude.  Bryony Rudkin attacked the Suffolk County Council divestment plans.  There’s a lot of questions to ask about this, and there is a job of opposition that needs to be done to keep a place healthy.

But what really stuck in my craw, and those who know me can imagine the violent revulsion that I had to this, was this little point:

At the council meeting last Thursday, one Conservative said his village had come together to build a new doctor’s surgery.

“That might be fine in the nice comfortable villages but who’s going to come together to build the doctor’s surgery in my area of Ipswich where there are some quite serious deprivation issues?”

Now, please tell me that was a clap line for a Neanderthal audience smarting from defeat, and that she didn’t think that it was a serious point.  There may be a more complete speech, which I will be glad to publish.

Bridge has the Wherstead Road Residents Association, still going strong after forty years and the longest continuously functioning residents’ association in Ipswich.  It has the Maidenhall Residents Association that keeps a presence and a community together.  The port noise was stopped largely by a concerted action from residents across Bridge and Stoke Park, spontaneously organising.  There is the Stoke Green Baptist church and Saint Mary Stoke which have great outreach services to people more deprived than you would find on Corder Road, which if we are going to get picky about this is closer to the area which Dame Bryony represents.  And this is not to mention such groups from allotment holders, social clubs, Pentecostal churches and Neighbourhood watch groups that do a great deal of good in Bridge.

These groups are ignored by that sort of dismissal.  Now building a doctor’s surgery may be a stretch but just because we do not have the most expensive houses in Ipswich does not mean that we are incapable of organising ourselves.  We need help, not direction.

If you want to insult us go and do it to our faces and in your leaflets, not to a hall of useless, overpaid, overpromoted and spendthrift public sector middle managers up in Manchester who got us in this mess in the first place.

For reasons that puzzle me I am still getting gossip from the Ipswich Labour Party.  Two different facts from two different people:

1.  The Ipswich Labour Party could not get a stand together for the Suffolk University College freshers’ fair.  The Tories did.  The Lib Dems did too, during their party conference week.  A couple of left wing students are mighty annoyed, apparently.

2.  Membership figures have been shown to me which show that while there are 16 members who are “young” (under 28) there are 98 who are pensioners.    The Ipswich Labour Party is more than six times as likely to be eligible for a free bus pass than a young person’s rail card.

These two facts are not inconsistent.

Bridge Ward News.  You’re go to site for Ipswich Labour gossip.

After moaning about the buses, something seems to have come out of it,

I’ve been told that there will be six new and second hand double decker buses ordered by Ipswich Buses, which will mean that most of the services to One College will be running with double decker buses.

Sometimes it feels like you are banging your head against the wall when doing this stuff, so any victory is welcome.

But most of all, well done to Ipswich Buses.

She’s done it again.  On BBC Look East just now Dame Bryony Rudkin was quoted by the reporter offering support to Ed Miliband who lost the Labour Party members’ vote, and so won the election.

However Mama Rudkin was credited as “Labour Group Leader on Suffolk County Council”.  I know she’s a Dame, but she’s only a deputy leader.  She has form.

As Sandy Martin, who supported the candidate with the fewer votes, may say, once is an accident, twice is a bit of a pattern.

I am hearing quite a few complaints about the bus services to the One College, and the fact that they are simply inadequate at the moment, particularly from the Maidenhall Estate. It doesn’t appear to be a problem with the frequency so much as the peak capacity.  Double decker buses would appear to be a good idea at this time.

Ipswich Buses has a deserved reputation for responding to customer demand around Ipswich, so I hope that we will hear get something on this.

Kevin Algar at A Riverside View, a promising local blog, takes aim at safe wards and the perils of living in them.

I’m not going to write any more about the Papal visit unless I have a really good excuse.  Just a couple of random thoughts.

The Newman Beatification Mass was wonderful and it actually felt Catholic.  I remember the John Paul II visit as a child and what I remember of it was that it felt like Catholics were no longer looked down on, we had arrived.  It wouldn’t be long before we’d be Anglicans with Irish surnames.

This did not feel like that at all, and was a real affirmation of a distinct and vibrant religious tradition.

Another thing that I noticed that looking around the park that there was an obvious homogeneous religious identity, but in terms of class, ethnicity, age and  reason, this was a really diverse crowd.

Which brings me on to the atheist demonstration. It proved quite a lot. Firstly that there are an awful lot of computer programmers in their late 30s who can’t maintain a long term relationship.   But there weren’t a lot more of any other people.  200,000 lining the Papal route in London, 80.000 in the Hyde Park vigil versus  between 5,000 (police estimate) and 12,000 (organiser’s claim).  At best that’s a 23 to 1 disadvantage in street presence.  This does not reflect the state of belief, but the fact that most atheists are actually quite polite, and while they may think you’re deluded, can quite easily see that religion provides quite a lot of net good.  It may not be an indication of what people think about the existence of a creator God, but it’s an indication of who cares enough in the ballot box.

If the Labour Party is tempted to go down the anti-religion route they will be seriously stupid.  Talking of which Ed Balls and Harriet Harman both have form in this area. Those two names coupled with electoral stupidity, now who would credit that?

All being well I will be on my way to Birmingham to see the Pope, or at least be in the crowd, and I’m very excited.  I’ve seen his predecessor twice, once in Paris and once in Rome, but I’ve never seen Benedict XVI nor have I seen the Pope in England.  I’ve also not been to a beatification, although I was mistaking it for a canonisation for a few weeks.

We are going to see some awful behaviour from the organised atheists, Paisleyites and (it seems from the news) Islamist terrorists that won’t exactly convince me that I’m on the wrong side.  Thankfully with 72% of the population at the last census this is still a Christian, if not a regular churchgoing, country.

However I fear that the Holy Father may have more formidable opposition than assorted overgrown teenagers, and that is the  Bishop’s Conference of England and Wales.  They really don’t seem to have been able to organise anything very well.

But the sun is shining and the Pope is here.  Long Live The Pope.

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