Bridge Ward News » Evening Star

Hire Me

James Spencer — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 18:37:29 +0000

A riverside view has scooped me by almost a week on yet another job to take Dame Bryony away from Bridge, she’s a new columnist for the star. Now this looks remarkably like a bid to become the next Labour candidate for Ipswich.

I wonder if David Ellesmere is feeling like he missed a trick?

Although as one Tory said to me on Friday, I should be in clover at the start of every week.

What’s happened to the Evening Star forums?

James Spencer — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 14:07:31 +0000

I didn’t go there regularly, but I used to find the Evening Star forums to be a useful way of finding out some of the things that were going on under the radar. Now they’ve only got their “finding friends” forum. Does anyone know what happened to their ITFC or general forums?

And here’s the column

James Spencer — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 20:12:53 +0000

Ben Gummer’s column for the Evening Star can now be found on his blog. The last four entries were:

Thank you – 21st May
Getting Started – 28th May
Never Give In – 4th June
Honouring the Hospital – 11th June

Where’s Ben Gummer’s column?

James Spencer — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 22:23:58 +0000

Ben Gummer writes a weekly column for the Evening Star every Friday. Go on the Evening Star website and you won’t find it. If you search the website you’ll find an article about the one joke Blinky Ben column. But no column.

And Ipswich Spy bemoan the lack of an online presence from Ben, ignoring his weekly offline column. Perhaps they don’t get the Star.

Hopefully the Star is sorting this out. If they aren’t they should. This column is probably more of a public service than the Evening Star’s Weird and Wacky column, although we could all nominate a couple of Labour councillors for that spot/

Are BBC job cuts a good thing?

James Spencer — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 23:14:19 +0000

To state the bleeding obvious, the BBC is not a direct rival to me. It also should not be a direct rival to the East Anglian Daily Press or the Ipswich Evening Star, but the growth of its licence funded Suffolk presence has made it a great rival. We may have many problems with these papers, Paul Geater will never win a prize for seeing all sides to a political story for example. But these are locally rooted and locally staffed media which are being attacked for market share by a broadcaster that can put you in prison if you don’t pay their subscriptions. Even Pravda didn’t have that power.

So could the coming drawing in of the BBC’s horns be a good thing for the local media scene in Suffolk?

Shock Revelation: We’re not Luddites

James Spencer — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:38:26 +0000

I was rather angry at the environment portfolio holder Louise Gooch’s comments that the Noise Action Group wanted to shut down Southern Cement. We’ve always been quite clear that this is not what we wanted. I emailed her to let her know that I was angry.

And a miracle occurred.

A politician changed their mind. The presentation put on by the Noise Action Group convinced her that we wanted to be good neighbours (a phrase we keep on using). It does seem that the councillors really, really resent Southern Cement for putting them in the position that they are in.

Other news, the Evening Star have put out a piece on the internet about the Council executive meeting, here.

The Southern Cement meeting – It’s back on

James Spencer — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:32:25 +0000

Well the meeting was cancelled, and now I’ve been told by both the Evening Star and one of the councillors that the meeting between the council and the Noise Action Group is back on.

There will also be a meeting between Southern Cement and councillors. Of course what would be best for both sides would be to meet directly, Southern Cement and the Noise Action Group.

So Uniland / Southern Cement, if you want to meet us then you can reach us at james@bridgeward.org.uk or through your usual channels of communication. Email us, even if you’re not ready yet, even if you want to explain us why you’re not ready yet.

We’re quite nice really, especially when we’ve had a night’s sleep.

Southern Cement – the media take an interest

James Spencer — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 19:29:40 +0000

I got a call this afternoon from the Evening Star about the Southern Cement fiasco. They’ve got wind of the council officers’ proposed climbdown and wanted to know what the Noise Action Group thought. They actually sounded angry, I suppose they got a promise out of Steve Rock who saw fit to cancel the meeting as soon as he thought that no one was looking.

It’s not the refusal of a couple of council officials to meet us that rankles, councillors from both parties are keeping us up to date and the Council Officials will have to meet with residents soon in some form. What rankles is the refusal of Uniland/Southern Cement’s Ipswich manager, Barry Neale, to even talk to us.

This seems more like commercial suicide than anything else. Who would want to deal with a company that is constantly at risk of being shut down by a private court action, council enforcement or public protest?

What better way to calm down angry residents than meeting them?

Chris Mole’s expenses – Wholly, exclusively, necessarily?

James Spencer — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 21:41:40 +0000

We now know that Chris Mole channels £500 a month to the Ipswich Labour Party for a service which the council ould do for free, but there is a smaller but still odd anomalies.

If we go back to the money we pay to the Ipswich Labour Party:

http://mpsallowances.parliament.uk/mpslordsandoffices/hocallowances/allowances-by-mp/chris-mole/Chris_Mole_0708_IEP.pdf#page=[115]

…we see a line (you may have to go to page 115 manually, depending on your browser) :

Newspapers EADT/Evening Star Online editions £195

Was the online access to the Evening Star used by any of the Labour staff in the building? For example, Councillor John Cook the Labour Party agent (who us taxpayers don’t pay for, officially) is very, very fond of commenting on stories some political, some not.

If true it’s a tiny problem, but there really does not seem to be enough care for the seperation of the public and the party political from Mr Mole.

Expenses for Chris Mole – Not as clean as he pretends

James Spencer — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 14:44:17 +0000

if you are interested then here are the published expenses for Chris Mole (here are the ones on his site). I’m going through the expenses now and although Chris Mole has been claiming that he is “underspending” there are some very interesting claims in there.

I will be going through these over the next few days. The Evening Star and the East Anglian Daily Times have done some work and focussed on the cost of his home and some of the expensive tastes (such as £70 headphones and £1000 TVs), but there seem to be a couple of very interesting stories hidden in this which don’t seem to have been touched. More to follow…