This group does a great amount of work helping people deal with the fluctuations with money without going to a doorstep lender. It operates throughout Suffolk, so it can be said that it is the largest financial institution with its headquarters in Bridge.

Alan Pilbeam, MD of First is doing a presentation to the Ipswich Transport Society tonight at Bridge Ward Social Club in Austin St, at 1930. Public can attend for an entrance fee of £2.50
 
I will be there (although I’m coming from London so this will be at the mercy of the trains).  There should also be a couple of people from Wherstead Road who want to talk about the curtailing of Route 66.  If you’re coming then please email me at james@bridgeward.org.uk or find me at the meeting.

The problem is not the breakup as such – it’s just that it is made by a foreign official with no democratic accountability.  The EU is having a greater effect on the lives of the people in Bridge. 

Here’s some of the ways in which EU rules have made life less pleasant in Bridge:

- Competition laws stop bus operators picking up the phone to talk to each other to get Wherstead Road covered by a regular service
- The Post Office in Austin Street had to be shut down in order after an EU mandated programme to liberalise delivery services made this Post Office marginal
- The stupid, stupid, stupid seperation of train and track with the consequent lack of accountability for track problems which does so much to make train journeys long and was done in order to comply with a daft EU directive to open up train services to – well it’s never quite clear
- Open tendering rules which mean that the London Olympics could only look at price and could not look into environmental effects when awarding the cement importing contract to Southern Cement
- The Eastern European influx which even the Conservatives are not intending to control which has driven up rents and driven down wages across a whole swathe of Bridge

Some people claim that membership of the EU has given Britain “incalculable benefits”, which could simply mean don’t bother to tot up the costs and benefits.  Some say that the only problem with Europe is that there’s a “democratic deficit” which is true as there’s no bloody demos and never will be.

This is not a rant to say that we should not learn from how some European countries do things, that would be stupid.  It’s just a reminder that ratifying the Constitution of Europe, now renamed the Lisbon Treaty, will mean more decisions taken by people who don’t understand us and whom we have no mecahnism to recall. 

Just the sort of thing an absentee Labour councillor accustomed to a safe seat would love.

The Noise Action Group would like to run a walkabout of the area the next time the cement ship comes, so please let me know if you would like to help.