The next meeting of the South West Area Forum will be at 7pm on 22nd February at St Francis’ church on Hawthorn Drive.  The main item will be about the Big Society.

7th December (start) – Public enquiry on the Waterfront rights of Way (more details here)

14th December – South West Area forum

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

I was at the South West Area forum yesterday. It was quite far away, in the Triangle Church in Dickens Road, but there were issues that affected Bridge being discussed there.

Sadly there were no councillors from Bridge there. No newly re-elected Jim Powell, no soon to stand for re-election Philip Smart and no double County and Borough councillor Bryony Rudkin. For shame.

The other two county councillors from the area were present and there were councillors from the other three wards in the area. There was a debate in which the policing priorities were set for the South West area of Ipswich. Not surprisingly Bridge did very poorly in this. Last year it was generally remarked upon by other councillors of both parties that Bridge was being better represented as the councillors were scared that they could lose to the Tories. It’s now been commented that as Labour thinks Bridge will be in the bag next year that the Bridge councillors are returning to their bad, self indulgent habits of quango hunting and wittering on about pet subjects. I didn’t want to believe it, but when the bread and butter of local representation is neglected like this, then what can you believe?

This is why Bridge must never revert to being a safe Labour seat.

The South West Area forum is today at 7 pm (for the pro-Europeans that’s 19:00) at the Triangle Community Centre, Dickens Road, IP2 0JW.

Here’s a link to a map.

Ipswich Borough Council announced at the South West Area forum meeting that there will be a public meeting devoted entirely to the port noise.  It will be at Grafton House at a date and time to be announced.  I have no idea whether Associated British Ports or Southern CementUniland will turn up.

We’ll announce this on the blog when we know.  To get on the mailing list email noise@bridgeward.org.uk

The South West Area forum was interesting with about half the people at the meeting who had never been before and who came along specifically about the noise (as shown by a show of hands).  Well done to Peter Evans for a professional presentation of the problems with the noise.

An interesting point to come up were the amount of jobs at threat if this goes on, with some major investors worked up about this.  ”Looking into the situation” as Labour have promised on their leaflets is just not good enough.

One of the reasons for setting this blog up was because I’d talked to Des Pawson at the last area forum and he complained that it was impossible to find the area forum on google, yet you could find him at the top of page one when searching for his name.  Bridge needs a web presence, I thought. 

So this is the first time I’m advertising an area forum for Soth West Ipswich.  It’s at 6.15, on Wednesday 2nd September at St Francis church hall up in Chantry.   The port noise will be discussed.

I will see you there.