I was at the Wherstead Road Residents Association reporting the committee on what I’ve been doing on the buses and the noise yesterday and having almost got run over crossing the road it seems clear that the road needs a crossing.

This is something that the committee are clear on, in fact the Association has been requesting that since the 1970s (they’re not quitters).  This could, if sited in the right part of the road also slow down the traffic and discourage the lorries that Ipswich Council when under the Labour party encouraged when they stopped the roads being built for the east bank.

The tragedy is that if Bridge was a ward that was marginal when the council were looking at the decision then the interests of the ward would not have been so cavalierly overlooked.  There are only three people who benefit from Bridge being a safe ward, the councillors, and two of them don’t even like Bridge enough to live in it.

The Lib Dems are a strang bunch, but this is probably odder than normal.  A Lib Dem councillor in Hampshire has seen aliens, in the local shopping centre (thanks to Paul Staines for that little gem.  Believing in aliens in your back garden is fairly odd, you’d think.

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall you’d also think that it was odd to believe that the Soviet Union was better run than Britain, but as recently released Soviet archives now show a whole swathe of senior Labour Party officials did, despite what they said at the time.  To get on in the Labour Party in the late 1970s and especially after the SDP left in the early 1980s it helped to be either pro-Soviet or ambivalent about the crushing weight on the human spirit that was expansionist communism.

So which political figures in Bridge Ward did well in the loony left early 1980s.  Why step forward Councillors Jim Powell and Phil Smart who first became councillors in 1982 and 1983 respectively, the time when the Labour Party was clinically insane (and it turns out a large chunk of its leadership, including the genial liar Michael Foot, were treating with the enemy). 

It would be interesting to know who they thought was worse, Thatcher or Brezhnev.

The Bell Inn had the most Labour posters (3) of any building in Bridge Ward at the County Council elections.  That’s a sad fact that I suspect a lot of people don’t know.  A sadder fact is that we had as many Tory posters up.  Two of the ward’s Labour councillors have larger houses than I do, and I’m sure they’ve put up loads of posters but as they don’t live in the ward they can’t enter this rather nerdy competition.

I wondered why this soon to be derelict pub would do that.  I still don’t know.

However this ia a more interesting fact.  The Bell Inn will be gutted and is applying to become a Sports Bar.

Bridge has Labour councillor Phil Smart on the planning committee.  It will be interesting to see if he feels that he can vote on whether one of Labour’s biggest backers in Bridge should be able to gut the oldest pub in Ipswich to provide some godawful copy of the Drum & Monkey.

Just finished the noise meeting which was quite productive.  There were about 150 people there.

Some of the highlights:

• No one from Southern Cement wanted to speak or identify themselves, which was expected.  No one from the Port of Ipswich did either, which was disappointing.
• There are plenty of people outside the Noise Action Group who are very angry.  If Southern Cement and Uniland think that these people won’t cause problems if they’re snubbed, then Associated British Ports after the animal rights protests will have a different idea.  Dialogue with the Noise Action Group will keep hot heads cool.
• It was nice of Chris Mole to turn up, but he gave a poor speech.
• Phil Smart gave a better speech than Chris Mole, and had the germ of a good idea with getting residents to talk to the port in general.
• There were lots of ideas for quietening the operation, some better than others.
• Nadia Cenci, who suffers from the noise, gave a great speech, asking not why, but how, to sue Southern Cement and Associated British Ports to close them down.  Again this is another worse alternative than dialogue.
• There are people miles away who hear this.  We knew that, but we found more.
• The dust is an emerging issue which is angering a lot of
• Council officers sounded well and truly peeved with Southern Cement’s refusal to talk to residents.  After all at times they were being abused because Southern Cement won’t talk.
• Only one person refused to give their contact details at the end of the meeting.

So Southern Cement, I know that you read this blog, and I know you want a way out.  It’s d-i-a-l-o-g-u-e .  It’s better than being shut down.

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.

Our councillor Phil Smart appears in the Evening Star saying that “The solution to traffic congestion is through better traffic management and the reduction of demand through better public transport.”

This is all very worthy.  However when I was at the Maidenhall Residents Association there were only two people who did not walk to this very well attended meeting, and Phil Smart was one of them.

So here’s a strategy for reducing demand – represent a ward that you live in.

I would be very interested if someone could help me find some television footage of Councillor Phil Smart on the local news on Tuesday 4th August.  He was interviewed outside Ipswich Station (it was nice of him to make it so far from his house) in which he talked about the train strike.

This self described transport guru was saying how easy he found to get to work, without making it clear that he was commuting into northern Essex rather than London, like so many of his constituents.  Why he was making light of this appalling treatment of the far left rail unions by this councillor elected in 1983 is a mystery that I find it hard to resolve.

Now why would a 1980s era Labour councillor make light of the plight of his constituents in a way that covers up the actions of Marxist led trade union? 

The website of Chris Mole was paid (at double the going rate) for by you and me, as taxpayers.

http://mpsallowances.parliament.uk/mpslordsandoffices/hocallowances/allowances-by-mp/chris-mole/Chris_Mole_0506_IEP.pdf

If you’re a Labour loyalist then this is a good deal, if you’re not then you’ve been robbed.

When one of the most prominent links on their website is to a scaremongering Labour website you can almost hear the refund cheque being written.  The office expenses are not for party political activity after all.

You then get some of the frankly bizarre poll questions that make you wonder if the author hasn’t been hired from the Chinese Communist Party Department of Very Fair One Sided Poll Questions.  Take this example:

“Do you agree that getting a university campus in Ipswich is a major triumph for the Labour Party in Ipswich”

How do you parody that question?  Remeber that you, not the Labour Party paid for that.

From beyond parody to the screaming subtext, how about this poll question:

“Do you think that local Tories and Liberals were vindictive to sack Labour councillor Phil Smart from the chair of Ipswich Buses for revealing cuts plans”

Now what would the publicly funded Chris Mole website, Ipswich Buses and Councillor Phil Smart all have in common?

Chris Mole has a website, which is all very nice, and it’s a very good party political website.  However, and you’ve probably guessed it, who pays for it.  Well, I’ve got an expenses claim:

http://mpsallowances.parliament.uk/mpslordsandoffices/hocallowances/allowances-by-mp/chris-mole/Chris_Mole_0506_IEP.pdf

That’s £2408.75 for a website.  That is as much as it looks.  For example, Public Impact, the rule breaking Labour campaigning group, will do a website for £1200.

So who is this “SS Double Design”?  I don’t want to make any second world war jokes, but, really.

For the first time in years we actually had some (albeit minor) flooding in our house although my wife was at home and had the presence of mind to get some newspapers to soak it up so no damage was done.  It seems that it was a problem with the drains which soon sorted itself out, but it does show that the idea floated by Phillip Smart, one of our non-resident Labour councillors that the existing flood barrier should be lowered to be “more pleasing” to the eye is madness.