There’s nothing like a councillor in trouble to jump on a bandwagon.

The Smock on Maidenhall Road, right in the heart of the Maidenhall Estate and next to Stoke High School, has an entirely inappropriate licencing application that will make this pub in the middle of the estate into a night club.  Phil Smart is opposing this, which is quite nice of him as it will not affect him in the slightest as he lives as far outside the ward as he has for all the two and a half decades that he has been the absentee councillor for Bridge.

But there’s something strange here. 

Who completely overhauled the licencing laws at the behest of the alcohol lobby?  Phil Smart’s Labour Party.

Who sent a text message to younger voters in the 2001 election saying “couldn’t give a ‘four x’ for last orders? Vote Labour on Thursday for extra time“.  Phil Smart’s Labour Party.

Who imposed the utterly non-sensical smoking ban that made the community pub unsustainable, putting all night drinking as the only way for many pubs to avoid closing?  Phil Smart’s Labour Party.

Now it is certainly the case that all political parties make mistakes.  The Tories have made more than their share of mistakes from the Maastricht treaty to the threatened closure of the Stoke Park library.  The difference between a decent representative and a party hack is not whether you mean well, but whether you put your constituents before your party.  I live in Bridge, it’s easy for me to make the choice.  But what about the present Labour councillors?

I feel strongly about it because I live in Belstead Avenue, literally up the road from the Smock.  I remember from when I was living in Rectory Road the Friday and Saturday nights (and early mornings) in summer that we had to endure, and I don’t want them repeated here with an all night drinking den down the street.

Phil Smart is not a bad man.  He may be socially awkward and find it hard to accept constituents’ opinions that differ from his own but he means well.  He is not weirdly and coldly ambitious unlike another Bridge Ward councillor (although let’s be fair she could represent anywhere, if it already had a large Labour majority).  He looks vaguely human and you imagine that he would not sell his mother to get up another political rung, unlike his group leader.  And he doesn’t get drunk and blurt out absurd death threats as yet another Labour councillor does.  By the admittedly low standards of the Ipswich Labour party he’s just about OK.

However the question is when it comes to the crunch will he stand by his party or his, admittedly distant, constituents?  So here’s a test by which he can redeem himself:

Will he admit that his party made a complete hash of licencing reform at the behest of the alcohol lobby?

Will he praise Ben Gummer for voting for a partial relaxation of the smoking ban in pubs and condemn Chris Mole for his wholehearted support of the destruction of community pubs?

Will he condemn the 2001 Labour campaign, of which he was a key part in Ipswich, for so enthusiastically calling for all night drinking?

I would love to be wrong on this, but I don’t think he will.

From the South West Ipswich Safer Neighbourhoods Team:

A catalytic converter was stolen from a Mazda pick-up truck parked in a layby on Maidenhall Approach in Ipswich sometime between 9am on Monday 13th December & 10am yesterday, Tuesday 14th December.

If you have any information relating to this theft please contact Sgt Roger Salmon at the South West Ipswich Safer Neighbourhood Team on 01473 613500 quoting reference IW/10/5539

Or

Please use the following link to pass any useful information to Suffolk Police about this incident.

http://www.suffolk.police.uk/News+And+Appeals/Report+Information+To+The+Police/Tell+The+Police.htm

It is very dispiriting to read about the recurring vandalism in the Town and Bridge Community gardens at the Maidenhall Allotments.

This part of the article is quite important, so I’ll repeat it:

Anyone with information should call Police Community Support Officer Rebecca Hillyard at the South West Ipswich Safer Neighbourhood Team on 01473 613500.

I’ve written about the vandalism in that part of Maidenhall before and talked to the police about it.  Last year it was one of the Southwest Area Neighbourhood Team’s priorities and action was done to at least damp it down.  This year it is not, and that is directly related to the fact that not one councillor appeared at the meeting where police priorities were set this year.

That’s what comes of being seen as a safe ward.

Congratulations to Michael Lord and Richard Spring for getting  into the House of Lords.  There’s no real reason to do this apart from inserting an old picture of now Lord Spring when he was campaigning in Bridge at the last election:

Now Lord Spring at Hillside

He was especially keen to be photographed outside the Sure Start near Hillside after hearing the story about Gordon Brown’s visit being disrupted by an independent minded three year old telling everyone “Oh no,  hide” when the Scottish pension stealer came in the room.  (Sadly I can’t find either that video on the Evening Star site or the Sure Start picture on my computer).

I was very impressed with the then Mr Spring who despite the fact that he was about to leave Parliament proved himself to be a very enthusiastic campaigner, and I know from both Labour and Tories that MPs who are just about to depart tend not to be very interested in knocking on doors.

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I was going around getting posters up today and was amazed at firstly how many places I had to go around and secondly how many posters were already up. With the exception of the flats around Vernon Street and Maidenhall Approach (where the Labour candidate lives), the Tories are out-postering Labour in Bridge. Previously that’s unheard of firstly because Tories tend to be more shy and secondly because Bridge is a ward that was so safe for Labour they’ve treated it as a safe seat to parachute in absentee councillors with their eye on higher office than being a “mere” ward councillor.

And frankly that’s been an insult to Bridge.

Yesterday we did some campaigning around Maidenhall Approach, Luther Road, Chilton Court and Belstead Avenue. The Conservative MP for West Suffolk joined us (although Ben Gummer was out campaigning on the other side of the river).

One of the nice things about getting close to the General Election is the amount of mutual aid that you get.

Here are some pictures

It really should go without saying that a three year old should have more sense than a Labour MP.

The Evening Star have a very funny story about a young boy trying to give the sagest advice that Chris Mole will ever get about what his election campaign should do with Gordon Brown.  ”Oh no.  Hide“.  Or perhaps he was just advising the Labour group on the council what to do with Chris Moles “personal vote”.

It’s a good thing that John Cook has a new job, because this kid could have saved the Ipswich Labour Party a fortune, and considering how much the taxpayer funds them – that would mean us.  And the boy’s leaflet design skills are better as well.

I’m proud to say that it happened in Bridge, at the Hillside Sure Start in Maidenhall Approach.  I doubt anywhere else in Ipswich would have had this robust approach to the robbing Scotsman.

Addedndum:

Considering all the coverage that Ipswich Spy did on the visit, and considering that this is what they’re supposed to specialise in, isn’t it odd that they haven’t picked it up.

One of the biggest problems that is annoying the Maidenhall Estate has been the new door times that Ipswich Borough Council have changed due to the security problems in the Station Street flats.

There have been some succesful petitions, particularly on Cardiff Avenue.  What needs to be done is to raise a residents’ petition for the four flats in the block.  It is important that all four flats agree, so you may want to discuss this with your neighbours first.  But then raise a petition saying:

1.  Which flats are covered (number and address)

2.  What new times you’d like the the tradesman buttons to work

3.  The name, signature and address of each of the four residents in the block.

If you hand your petition into the Maidenhall Residents’ Association on Maidenhall Green they will see that it goes to the right person.

I was at the Maidenhall Residents Association yesterday and they have been a victim of typical bureaucratic heavy handed over-reaction.  Essentially due to out of area drug users sheltering in the flats in Station Street they’ve cut the trade access to all the flats across the ward.

This makes sense near the town, for example Station Street and Vernon Street, but the Maidenhall Estate is not in the same position.  It’s a decent walk from the town and there have been few complaints of drug users sheltering down there.  This means that there’s no post, no milkman, no visitors.  If you are out in Station Street you have around twenty neighbours to buzz you in, in Maidenhall Approach you only have three.

The solution – to petition separately for each group of flats – is not practical.  So Station Street has a genuine problem and the housing department did the right thing there.  But Maidenhall Estate was happy with the current set up.  Can’t they just get it back?

This sort of one size fits all knee jerk solution is what Labour specialises in.  A Conservative led administration should do better than this,