From the Suffolk Police:

A man is seriously ill in hospital following a disturbance in Ipswich.
Police were contacted at approximately 12:15am on Sunday 17 April following reports of a fight outside The Smock Public House on Maidenhall Approach.
Officers arrived and found a man with a serious head injury. He was conveyed to the Ipswich Hospital by paramedics but has since been transferred to Addenbrooks Hospital where he remains in a critical condition.
A 35-year-old man and a 44-year-old man, both from Ipswich, have been arrested in connection with the assault and are currently in custody at Ipswich police station pending further enquiries.
Anyone with any information in relation to the incident is asked to contact Ipswich CID on 01473 613500. Police are particularly interested in speaking to people who were in The Smock Public House last night.

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

DO NOT USE THIS LINK IN AN EMERGENCY OR IN A SITUATION THAT REQUIRES AN IMMEDIATE POLICE RESPONSE WHEN YOU SHOULD RING 999.

Police Direct Team

The BBC have also picked up on this.

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.

I was at the South West area forum today and it was a subdued affair, rather to be expected when you have it in the middle of the day.  I had to plead quite a lot to change my hours and work at home to accommodate it.  As it was in Austin Street it was great to see some old faces (including the Larters) and a couple of new people as well.

Anyway the meeting had a presentation about the Big Society, and I had a chance to buttonhole one of the decision makers who decided to decommission the Iceni project.  That deserves its own post.  It makes me angrier each time I learn something new about it.

The next presentation was on the gritting operation, and some of the earliest readers of this blog know that I have something to say on that.  Again there will be a separate post on how to get a grit bin in your road if you are not on the gritter route.  Proper Big Society stuff.

Finally there was a talk from the Police about the crime.  I really appreciate the police involvement in these meetings.  After the meeting I tackled the police on the issue about the vandalism in the public spaces in the Maidenhall Estate, including the Stoke Green Baptist church and the Community gardens.   I was relieved to find out that this was something that the police were aware of (although it’s not one of their priorities) and that they were both treating it as more than a collection of separate incidents and they also shared my concern that this could get more serious – indeed it was already very serious.

A surprisingly productive hour and a quarter.

There is currently a suggestion to close the Maidenhall Sports Centre that have been put in front of the Borough Council.  While the borough does need to save money, this could have a terrible effect locally.

We need to run a realistic campaign (and not simply drop a couple of leaflets before going back to Severn Road) to stop any closure.  This needs to look at items such as some voluntarily manning and encouraging our neighbours to use it or lose it.  Joint ventures with the school should also be explored.  It is sadly the case that it costs the council more per visit than other centres do, and any saving of the centre needs to focus on this.

It would be sad considering the money that was given to the politically connected, and hardly well run, Ipswich Caribbean Club, if this were to go without a fight.

I’ve talked with Andrew Cann on this and he has promised me that closure would be a last resort and that all options to keep it open within the cost constraints will be looked at.

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.

Related articles

• Arise Lord Lord (iaindale.blogspot.com)

At the South West Area Forum I made the point that there was a growing pattern of teenage vandalism on the Maidenhall Estate, and that this was a small and persistent group. The councillors for Bridge had more important things to do and unlike the other three wards did not even have one councillor present, after all the police were only setting priorities for the area – an exercise where Bridge came off very badly.

It is only getting worse. The Stoke Green Baptist church has been vandalised. Here’s the police report:

On Friday 23rd July between 7.45pm and 8pm on Halifax Road, Ipswich offenders have thrown a large stone through a window at a church.

A group of eight white males between 14 17 years old wearing sports clothing and carrying rucksacks were seen to run off at the time.

Were you in the area at the time, did you see anything suspicious? Do you know the name of the offender or offenders? If you have any information please contact Suffolk Police on 01473 613500 quoting reference IW/10/3280.

Here’s the link if you want to give information on line:

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

The Evening Star is talking about the Shoreline Management Plan. This rather dry sounding document is vitally important to anyone who lives on Wherstead Road and, potentially the Maidenhall Estate and parts of Old Stoke.

It predicts that Wherstead Road is going to have to close down more frequently due to flooding. Which rather begs the question as to why the Labour Party has always opposed a relief road. Hopefully they’ll stop that now that Bridge is no longer a safe Labour seat. Let’s hope in this case that Wherstead Road is not once again sacrificed as a sure fire electoral bet for Labour to be sacrificed for more marginal wards.

I’ll be back on this later, but it is important for anyone in this part of Ipswich that we keep on top of this, even those of us who live on high ground as we’ll be regularly cut off without some real action.

In the meantime the relevant part of the Shoreline Management Plan is here (it’s in PDF format so you may need to download Adobe) :

https://consult.environment-agency.gov.uk/portal/re/flood/anglian/smp150310/consult?pointId=1267547879064

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.

Ipswich Council is in talks to sell off Ipswich Buses to the Go Ahead group.  No doubt certain councillors who never use the buses (or live in the ward) are preparing their leaflets now.  It’s a good thing I’m not standing as a Conservative in the next Borough elections. Oh wait, I am.

The truth is that subsidising just about anything, and that includes Ipswich Buses, is impossible in the current economic climate and all three parties know it.   We are the last of the G20 countries to climb out of the recession.

The most important thing that concerns this ward is whether the bus services in the Maidenhall Estate will keep at their current levels and whether the progress that is slowly being made with coordinating the bus services on the Wherstead Road is continued.

I will continue to be looking at this and report back.

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.