Has anyone noticed any cement ship noise on Friday night (23rd April) and all day Saturday (24th April)?

People have been woken at 3 AM again and we don’t want this to be going on.

Update: Since I’ve posted this I’ve had two people from Wherstead Road, someone in the Chatsworth Crescent area (Blickling Close to be exact) and a person from Headingham Close saying that they’ve heard this. So we need to make sure that we’re on top of this.

There’s the Annual General Meeting of the Wherstead Road Residents Association. It’s tonight at the Orwell Yacht Club at 7.30. It’s members only.

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’s election time, you can’t really escape politicians at the moment, at least I can’t.

The one particular politician that I can’t shake off is Ben Gummer.  And as luck would have it he’ll be at Wherstead Road (the top end) at the The Shipwrights Arms, near the Starfish chip sjop, Colwill’s butcher and the Jorna restaurant.  If you’re one of the many people who’ve walked into the Shipwrights Arms when it was a closed social club (like I did about three years ago) then you’ll be glad to know that it is now a public bar.  For those with a Sat Nav its postcode is IP2 8JJ and the full address is 55-61 Wherstead Road.

He’ll be canvassing beforehand, so although it says he’ll be there for 8pm, expect him to be about ten minutes late.

Never heard of Nick Herbert?*

Well if the Tories do win the General Election you will hear about him a lot more.  He’s the shadow environment spokesman for the Conservatives, so it’s a good chance he’ll become a minister if the Tories get in.

When I heard that he was coming down to help Ben Gummer I lobbied the Ipswich Tories to get him down to the docks to get him to talk to some people from the Noise Action Group and the Wherstead Road Residents’ Association about the way in which the port was operating.

The Noise Action Group then got the chance to tell the man who could be the next Environment Minister about how the port can be dismissive of its neighbours, and that engaging people who want a working port that’s a good neighbour will be better than in three years time trying to engage people who don’t want a working port as any sort of neighbour.

Hopefully ABP will at some point see sense and engage with those who wish it well.

Nick Herbert also became a fan of the Steamboat Tavern, which is as it should be.

A photo of Ben Gummer in this blog that he won't object to. Ben Gummer takes Nick Herbert to the Steamboat Tavern to meet the Noise Action Group and the Wherstead Road Residents Association

*I actually had heard of Nick Herbert, but I’m a political anorak on the sly.

Bob Blastock is one of the people that you see everywhere.  I first met him about five years ago when I went to a meeting of the Over Stoke history group.   I wasn’t really that active in local politics at the time, confining myself to delivering a few leaflets and so I didn’t get to many Residents’ Association meeting or Area forum meetings.  Since getting involved I’ve seen Bob at Wherstead Road Residents Association meetings, talking about local history in St Mary’s at Stoke, doing his bit about the cement ship noise, meeting with Malcolm Robson about the bus service, well just about anything.

He used to be a very active member of the Labour Party, although that’s trailed off (as with many people in Bridge) and he’s one of the people who keeps the life of the ward moving along.  We need more like him

He’s now retired formally from the Wherstead Road Residents Association, but I’m fairly sure we’ve not ssen the last of him.

I was at Ipswich Council’s Port Focus group.  At one point it was not clear if there were any councillors from Bridge who would be present (Bryony Rudkin did come in later.) I understand that the minutes will be out soon, and I will link to them.  Until then there are some pertinent points:

1.  Southern Cement have fitted on a silencer.  The Council Officers have all claimed that this reduces the noise considerably.

2.  The dust is going to be monitored partly by access to Southern Cement’s close circuit TV cameras

3.  The point was made by many of the councillors and residents that Southern Cement actually hurt their cause and made life more difficult for themselves by refusing to talk to the residents, and councillors.

4.  The Noise Action Group stated that while a silencer was welcome it was too early to declare victory on the noise and the real test will be in spring and early summer when conditions change.

5.  The port focus group leads into the port liaison group.  Yes, it is too bureaucratic but that’s what comes of not talking to residents.  Any way, we’ve elected Peter Evans, one of the founders of the Noise Action Group and by far the most radical of the prominent activists to the Port Liaison Group.

There are other issues which will be addressed later.

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.

Churchill insurance – which is a decent sized Ipswich employer – is going to be forcibly sold by RBS on the orders of the European Commission.  Hopefully no one in Ipswich will lose their job as a result of this.

The problem is not the breakup as such – it’s just that it is made by a foreign official with no democratic accountability.  The EU is having a greater effect on the lives of the people in Bridge. 

Here’s some of the ways in which EU rules have made life less pleasant in Bridge:

- Competition laws stop bus operators picking up the phone to talk to each other to get Wherstead Road covered by a regular service
- The Post Office in Austin Street had to be shut down in order after an EU mandated programme to liberalise delivery services made this Post Office marginal
- The stupid, stupid, stupid seperation of train and track with the consequent lack of accountability for track problems which does so much to make train journeys long and was done in order to comply with a daft EU directive to open up train services to – well it’s never quite clear
- Open tendering rules which mean that the London Olympics could only look at price and could not look into environmental effects when awarding the cement importing contract to Southern Cement
- The Eastern European influx which even the Conservatives are not intending to control which has driven up rents and driven down wages across a whole swathe of Bridge

Some people claim that membership of the EU has given Britain “incalculable benefits”, which could simply mean don’t bother to tot up the costs and benefits.  Some say that the only problem with Europe is that there’s a “democratic deficit” which is true as there’s no bloody demos and never will be.

This is not a rant to say that we should not learn from how some European countries do things, that would be stupid.  It’s just a reminder that ratifying the Constitution of Europe, now renamed the Lisbon Treaty, will mean more decisions taken by people who don’t understand us and whom we have no mecahnism to recall. 

Just the sort of thing an absentee Labour councillor accustomed to a safe seat would love.

There’s been some media reaction to the meeting yesterday.

Radio Suffolk and Town 102 both publicised the event.  Here is the Mark Murphy show that has me (24 minutes in) and Matthew Ling of the Environment Services (1 hour 37 minutes in)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p004kwht/Mark_Murphy_06_10_2009/

We also got a write up of the meeting from the Evening Star:

http://www.eveningstar.co.uk/content/eveningstar/news/story.aspx?brand=ESTOnline&category=News&tBrand=ESTOnline&tCategory=xDefault&itemid=IPED07%20Oct%202009%2006:18:54:530

They estimated about 100.  I’d say it was closer to  (actually slightly over) 150, having done church attendance counting almost every week for the last four years.  Still packed.

It’s such a shame that the Labour supporter Chris Ward had to put in such an ignorant response: